I try to hide my reflexive shiver. Fear snaps at me, but I kick it away and stand my ground. The fact that we’re communicating at all is a good sign since a true monster would attack without hesitation. “Be that as it may, I am no burglar. The way was open.”
“You split hairs because you’re afraid of what will happen when we stop talking.”
“Perhaps,” I admit. “That’s surely reasonable.”
“You still haven’t answered. What are you doing here?”
Some imp of mischief prods me to be recalcitrant, like the mules who refused to climb farther. “I’m eating. Would you like some soup?”
“You’re stealing supplies.” That grim tone sends sheer terror spiraling through me.
It’s unnerving to converse with someone I can’t see, and I can’t sense where he is. All the candles I’ve lit work against me, creating a sea of shadows just beyond the light. He could be quite close, and I’d never spot him until it’s too late. The beast is probably quick. Surprisingly, he’s also better spoken than I’d imagined. As a child, I pictured him as a snarling monster, unable to communicate in the human tongue.
Swiftly, I address the charge. “Hardly. Stealing implies that I intend to remove the food from the premises and flee. Do I not seem comfortable?” That’s an exaggeration, but the point stands. “The town of Bitterburn has sent me as tribute. We can spare nothing from our larders, so I have come to work. I can cook well, and I’ve learned some of the brewing art from my father. My ale is passable, at least. From what I’ve seen so far, I could work my fingers to the bone and still not set this place to rights before I die of old age.”
“Oh hell.” He sounds shocked, if such is truly possible.
Briefly I take pleasure in startling the monster. “Then I’ll take it that you have no objections. Please have some soup and bread. I’ll be fine in the room off the kitchen. I think it must’ve been the cook’s before, and I suppose that’s my job now.”
Along with everything else.
“Get out,” he says, too quietly.
“I’ve nowhere to go. My family can’t afford to feed me for another winter, and my beau died.” I plant my hands on my hips and feign a boldness I don’t feel. “See here, sir, you’ll let me work or kill me where I stand, for I won’t go of my own volition. Now which will it be?”
2.
In the deepest corner of my heart, I can’t believe I’m challenging the beast like this, but it’s true that I cannot go home. And there’s nowhere else for me, a half-trained brewer’s assistant. It’s not as though I can travel hundreds of miles alone to Kerkhof and find employment. The other towns between here and there are too poor for me to make a living, and it’s unlikely they’d hire a single woman anyway. With Owen gone, I’m unwilling to barter myself in marriage, assuming anyone else would wed me. Most likely, considering my reputation in the village, I’d be given to some old man.
The silence builds, tightening my skin over my bones, until I fear I might snap like lute strings adjusted by unskilled hands. Finally, the raspy voice speaks again, “You will avoid the east wing entirely. Do not even approach. If it pleases you to tend to the rest of the keep, so be it.”
“Then I can stay?” I ask cautiously.
“Your kinfolk must be dreadful indeed if you prefer to bide here.”
It’s a personal admission to someone I just met, but maybe it will make him feel sorry for me if I tell the truth. “Not dreadful, just . . . indifferent.”
Perhaps that is worse, though, because I could hate Da if he’d ever truly mistreated me instead of morosely stealing my childhood. He imbued me with the sense that he loves me a little, only . . . not enough. Not enough to see me instead of my dead mother.
“I see.”
“What should I call you?” I ask.
“We won’t interact enough for that to become an issue.”
“That’s most discourteous. I’ve given you my name politely. You can’t do the same? If you choose not to, I’ll resolve the matter, and I promise you don’t want that. I named our pet rat Brave Sir Reginald.”
Pathetic amount of good that did me too. My stepmother found the little animal and promptly broke its neck, shrieking all the while about disease. I got a whipping because I upset my stepmother and cried silently for two days, not just for the rat.
“Njål,” the beast says finally. “In another life, I was known as Njål.”
“Pleased to meet you, Sir Njål.”
“Just Njål. I am owed no honorifics.”
“I see,” I say, although I truly don’t.
It seems too intimate to go straight to first names, though he doesn’t seem to own a second. How long has the monster lived here alone in darkness? A memory scrabbles at the back of my mind, some scrap left from the stories I heard on some old grandmam’s knee as a little one. “Njål means ‘giant,’ doesn’t it?”
But there’s no answer. Instead, I hear quiet footfalls moving off, scrapes of soft soles on stone. Oddly, it’s a comforting noise; I’m not hearing cloven hooves or the scrabble of inhuman claws. He’s deft at staying in the shadows because I didn’t get a glimpse of him, not even an outline.
After that strange encounter, it seems so prosaic, but there’s work to be done. I store the soup in the pantry, which is cold enough to prevent spoilage. The entire keep radiates an unnatural chill, barely beaten back by the fire crackling in the hearth, and I pause before it to warm up before I set about scrubbing the kitchen from top to bottom. In time, I’ll tackle a few other rooms, but for now, for the first day, this is where I’ll focus my efforts.
The mysterious Njål
