PDCOO Chapter 11

Dieter had once had a dream.

That one day he would open his eyes and find Anna beside him, aproned, calling his name gently.

"Dieter."

Today, that dream had come approximately 80% true.

Anna was beside him, aproned, asking gently:

"Are you all right?"

Lying there, he got a proper look at Anna's neatly arranged, rather lovely face.

That part was fine. The surrounding situation, however—

Was not, in any particular—

Happy.

Dieter spoke through gritted teeth.

"Why are you the one holding me, Bertram?"

Not that the explanation was necessary. The situation was obvious enough.

Dieter had blacked out when the wolf's paw found him. Bertram, after dispatching the wolf, had carried Dieter the full distance to the restaurant. One-man casualty transport. In other words, the pose illustrated in children's storybooks:

The one where the prince carries the princess.

Dieter's face was the color of wild raspberries.

"Put me down!"

The real prince, Bertram, declined with perfect composure.

"If you attempt to stand now, your ankle will be completely destroyed. Trust a professional. I intend to hold you in this position until the physician arrives."

"You called for a physician? As if he'll show up before dinner. Just put me down! Your arms are like wood—it's uncomfortable!"

"Indeed. I apologize for the discomfort. Allow me to fix that."

"...Hey—"

Bertram began to gently rock Dieter, exactly as one might rock a small child.

Laughter erupted on all sides. Dieter yelled at someone to please fetch the doctor already, but no one listened. Even the village chief was laughing and calling for a toast.

One young man was down with an injury and the atmosphere couldn't have been more cheerful. Dieter's was a minor wound, certainly, but above all, it was the pristine wolf pelt spread across the restaurant floor that had the villagers grinning.

Anna wove between them with drinks and leaned toward the village chief.

"That wolf—how was it caught? Bertram really did it himself?"

"Ha, well now—"

The village chief laughed and began recounting Bertram's feat as though it were his own adventure.

The method had been simple. He'd grabbed the tail cleanly and yanked. The spine snapped, and the wolf went limp. Clear the body, and it was done.

When the village chief tried to explain the specifics, Bertram stepped in and shook his head quietly.

"Please don't explain it. I would prefer not to convey cruel details to Anna."

"Hm? Thought you had no feelings. You worry about that sort of thing?"

"All the more reason to pay attention to it. I find it easy to be perceived as a ruthless monster simply by stating facts. I've had some experience with that."

"Ha. Must've had a rough time of it. All right, I understand."

There was a flicker of sympathy in the village chief's eyes.

In the glances from the young men drinking nearby, the suspicion had gone out as well.

On their way back down from the mountain, Bertram had announced preemptively that he would take no share of whatever the pelt sold for—removing that potential point of friction before it could arise.

He came across as oblivious at first glance, and yet here and there, the survival skills he'd quietly accumulated while wandering showed through.

It was not only unexpected social grace that he showed the villagers, either.

"Chief, you said there have been no disappearances in the village recently?"

"That's right. And honestly, that's what's worrying me. If they attacked a traveler—"

"It's too early to worry about that. From the dirt on the wolf's paws, they may simply have been digging up graves. Check the paws tonight by torchlight. If they were digging around the cemetery, any phosphorescent mineral residue from decomposed remains will have seeped into the fur— it'll glow like a will-o'-the-wisp."

"Oh, is that right? Then we can wait for confirmation before jumping to conclusions. Hey, someone check the communal cemetery and the paupers' graves tomorrow afternoon!"

The young men who'd just inherited extra work grumbled. But the look in most of the villagers' eyes had shifted when they regarded Bertram. They'd only thought of him as a suspicious wandering big bear, and here he turned out to be unexpectedly sharp. The fact that he received the admiring looks without a flicker of expression was, somehow, also a point in his favor. Even Dieter was staring at Bertram with a slightly vacant expression.

Only when the doctor walked into the restaurant did Dieter come back to himself.

"Which idiot broke their ankle?"

"Me! You can put me down now, Bertram!"

Bertram carried Dieter solicitously to the doctor's side. The doctor looked at them without much enthusiasm, then gave a low whistle when Bertram set Dieter down in a corner.

"Hm. Who bandaged this?"

"I did."

"Clean work. Even if there's a break, he'll heal quick enough."

Break. Dieter flinched at the word. The doctor cackled and flicked Dieter on the forehead. The smell of cattle manure wafting from his hand made Dieter recoil in horror. In a small country village, the human doctor was also the animal doctor.

While the doctor tended to Dieter, a group of young men beckoned to Bertram.

"Have a drink with us. Cider?"

"I don't get drunk, so it will only be wasteful— but if you don't mind, then certainly."

"Didn't you drink with your comrades during the war?"

"In the latter half of the war, alcohol was scarce. We reserved it for men who were about to die."

"That must have been rough. But honestly, what's it like staying in our village?"

The young man didn't ask further about the past.

Because of it, Bertram could answer honestly without worrying about a chill settling over the group.

"Peaceful."

"Right? Our village watch is well organized, you know."

"Ah. That would explain why a woman like Anna is able to walk the roads alone at night."

"Anna is braver than most of the men around here. When we all came back after the war and found the village half in ruins— she was the one who said they should reclaim the land and turn it into a communal farm. When they were short on hands, she started taking in wanderers, feeding them and putting them to work. Bold as brass, that one."

"She does seem that way. I've known many people to flinch at the sight of me, but Anna's attitude toward me appears to be something along the lines of a thing to be fed and fattened."

Smiles spread among the young men at that.

In the easy warmth of the moment, Anna kept ferrying food out.

Anna's cooking couldn't be called extraordinary, but there was a generosity to it— fresh ingredients, held back nothing—that at least gave it a solid foundation. Add the little chatter in that bright, cheerful voice as seasoning, and a meal became a genuinely pleasant occasion.

"Chilled cider's here! And this is yesterday's pound cake—perfect right now!"

"Anna, you've really done it up. Someone'd think this was a proper feast!"

"You need your strength. You'll be back working hard at the farm tomorrow!"

"Nothing to say to that. Yes, ma'am—whatever you want!"

The laughter rippled through the room as the second round of eating began in earnest. Cider bubbles and warm spirits rising from every corner.

Meanwhile, Anna split a roll, stuffed it with ham and pickled vegetables, and held it out to Bertram.

"Have something. The pickled vegetables came out well this batch. And— I know this isn't really the right time to bring it up, but— was lunch all right earlier?"

"In what sense?"

"My mother said she thought you looked like you were forcing yourself through it, because I'd given you too much..."

"I was not forcing myself. Particularly given that I subsequently encountered a wolf and had to fight, the portion was entirely appropriate."

"Even so."

Anna glanced briefly at his midsection. The shirt fabric falling below his chest muscle gave away little of what lay beneath.

Bertram, to demonstrate he was perfectly fine, dispatched the roll in three bites and picked up a slice of pound cake with one hand.

Good enough, he thought, and looked back at Anna.

Anna was wearing the most quietly satisfied smile.

The soft curve of her cheek. The upturn at the corner of her mouth. The color the evening bonfire had brought to her face.

...All of it looked as though it would be very soft to touch.

While Bertram was suppressing the instinct to reach out and see—

With breathtaking timing, Anna reached out and took hold of his cheek herself.

"The muscles seem to work fine. Can you manage a fake smile? You're good at pleasantries but not smiling—that seems strange."

"I'll try. ...How's that?"

"...I'm so sorry. Please never attempt that again."

The face that had been sculptural in its handsomeness had in an instant become something out of a ghost story. Anna frantically waved her hands; Bertram's expression returned to its usual arrangement.

"Didn't the village chief ask why you never smile? He seems like the nosy type."

"I told him I had no feelings due to a head injury in the war."

"Ah... Wait— told him? You told him? So it isn't a head injury? There's some other—" She stopped. "I mean! You don't have to tell me. I wasn't planning on prying!"

Anna's hands flapped. Curiosity and propriety were waging a war inside her.

At this point, telling her outright that he was under a curse would only produce skepticism anyway.

Bertram said nothing. Anna settled herself down quickly; evidently 'observe proper manners' had won the internal vote, because she reached into the pound cake basket and produced a cookie from the very bottom.

"Would you like this?"

Bertram reached for it.

A third party snatched it.

"Excuse me."

Not stopping at one offense, the person then tried to wedge himself into the space between them—or rather, attempted to—which was Dieter.

Anna's voice came out in a shout.

"Dieter, don't push!"

"I—I'm not pushing—this guy won't move—"

"You did not ask me to move."

Bertram held his seat with unmovable stubbornness, and Dieter ended up with only his head wedged between them. He muttered in resentment.

"No feelings, no tact. What have you got?"

"If you treat me with basic, reasonable courtesy, I'm quite capable of reading what you want and responding accordingly. You came in without a word, so I supposed you might want to sit in my lap."

"Why would I be sitting in your lap!"

"You did seem comfortable there earlier."

"I was not!"