“Funny you should mention it,” he says. “The meat in the original gum-goblins we found was definitely from Float. But yesterday we found more gum-goblins containing meat. The meat from these turned out to be from a human. He found a human hand in one, a human leg bone in another, a collection of human skin in another.”
“Sounds like the gum-goblins got him first,” Franklin says.
“Yes, it appears so,” Licorice says.
“I think you better get going,” Jujy tells Licorice.
“But I’ve only just arrived, my love,” Licorice says.
Licorice pushes her aside to continue his man-to-man discussion with Franklin.
“So, Apple,” he says. “Now that you are all better, where will you be staying?”
Jujy bursts between the two men.
“He’s staying with me,” Jujy says.
“But it’s been three days,” Licorice says. “A male and a female cannot live together for more than three days unless they are mates.”
Jujy lifts the collar on Franklin’s neck and shakes the chain. Licorice looks at the chain as if he hadn’t realized it before. His eyes scan the length of the chain all the way into the bedroom.
“What?” Licorice’s black ball eyes curl at Jujy. “He’s your mate? You told me—”
“I told you that he wasn’t claiming me as his mate,” Jujy says. “He’s not. I’m claiming him as my mate.”
Franklin looks at her with just as surprised a face as Licorice.
“But you knew I was going to claim you as my mate,” he says. “You knew about the plans I was making for our future.”
“It’s too late,” Jujy says, a satisfied smile on her face. “I’ve already chained him to my bedpost.”
Licorice pushes Franklin out of the way and peeks into the bedroom to make sure the chain is actually connected to the bedpost. Then he punches a hole in the cookie wall.
“Females don’t claim their mates,” he says. “It is males who do the claiming.”
“My mother claimed her mate,” she says. “There is no law against it.”
“I will not allow it,” he says.
“There is nothing you can do now,” she says. “You must leave.”
“I will not allow it,” he says.
“Leave,” she says, pointing at the door.
Licorice bursts through the front door and turns back to give them both an evil glare.
“This coupling will not last,” he says. “I promise you that.”
After Licorice is gone, Jujy rubs her fingers through her pink hair and closes her eyelids. Franklin stares at the candy woman. Her eyelids are so white they look like eggshells when closed. He realizes that he isn’t afraid of her anymore. He still hates her. He still plans to kill her. But he isn’t afraid of her.
When she opens her eyes, she sees him looking at her and blushes.
“We’ll have to pretend to be mates,” she says. “It is the only way you can stay here. In our culture, men and women only share a home while mating.”
“I don’t want to be your mate,” Franklin says.
His words throw her off balance, as if she has never considered the possibility of a man not wanting her as a mate.
“You don’t have a choice,” she says. “I chose you as my mate. You don’t have a say in the matter.”
“I believe I do,” he says.
“In our culture, when you want to mate with somebody all you have to do is chain that person to your bedpost. It is usually against the person’s will. All it takes is a little cunning, some persuasion, or physical force.”
“That is why you did this to me?” Franklin says. “You wanted me to be your mate?”
“In our couplings, there is a dominant and a submissive. Females are usually the submissives, but I wanted to be a dominant like my mother was with her mate. In this cave, there are no males weak enough for me to dominate. If I did not find you Licorice would have claimed me as his mate.”
“You did this to me so that you wouldn’t have to marry Licorice?”
She cocks her head at the word marry.
“It is against the law for one to claim a mate who is already coupled,” she says. “He will not be allowed to even try to claim me as long as I have you chained to my bed.”
“So how long must I stay here?” he asks.
She dodges the question. “I’m happy that it has worked out so far. Licorice has a horrible flavor. I could not bear to mate with him. He has spent the last year building a large house for us. He wanted it to be the most luxurious house in the cave. It is being made of the most exquisite truffles, pastries, and candied pears. In the backyard, he plans to put in a dulce de leche fountain and a large gelato playground for the dozens of children he wanted me to produce.”
She scratches her fingernails along her candy cane knee when she speaks about Licorice, causing a shrilling noise in Franklin’s ear hole.
“I can’t imagine how disgusting our children would be,” she says. “I could never mate with a man like him.”
“So you would rather mate with me?” Franklin asks.
“It will just be for show,” she says. “Because you are human, I do not think it is possible for us to produce offspring.”
“When will I be able to leave?” Franklin says.
Jujy’s mind leaves the room before Franklin gets an answer. Her pink eyes stare off into space as she scratches white lines into the red parts of her knee.
Beneath his new candy-coating, Franklin’s skin becomes so itchy that it burns. He tries to inhale as much fragrance from the candy woman as possible to dull the pain, but no matter how much he ingests the itchiness will not go away. It feels as if bugs are crawling beneath his sour apple skin.
His stomach is constantly upset from eating nothing but sweets. There are nuts and dried fruits in some of the candies he eats, so he does not feel completely malnourished. But the main ingredient in his diet is sugar.
“You need meat,” Jujy tells him whenever he holds his aching stomach.
“I would rather die than eat children,” he tells her. It is something he repeats often.
“There has to be a way to get you to eat meat,” she tells him.
Jujy attempts to cook a marshmallow rabbit she caught in the gumdrop forest. Franklin tries to explain how to cook meat, but as the dominant member of their coupling she does not allow him to help her prepare the food.
She skins the white fluff from the animal with one of her butterscotch fingernails. Franklin asks her to gut the animal, but she refuses.
“I will prepare the meat in the way I see fit,” she says in her high-pitched elf voice. “It is my role as the dominant.”
Her home does not have a kitchen. The closest thing she has for a kitchen is a dining room table and a rancid polka-dotted chest in the corner that is used for meat storage. She can’t build a fire in the house, because her candy walls would melt at such a high temperature. She has to build a fire behind her house and cook it on a sharpened peppermint stick.
While she is outside, the marshmallow puppy snags a piece of the rabbit’s skin from the corner of the table and pulls it down. Instead of eating the skin, the puppy rolls over onto it and then rubs his back against it in a snake-like wiggle.
Franklin misses Crabcake. He’s worried about what has happened to her. If his wives have her they are probably not taking good enough care of the kitten. They might forget to feed her or change her litter box. They might even abuse her. It is also possible that they killed Crabcake out of spite, because Franklin always cared for the cat far more than he cared about either of them. But he tries not to accept that possibility. It is too unbearable of a thought. If he ever gets out of here he promises himself that he will get Crabcake back no matter what.
