Page 5 of Loved by the Orc (Hidden Hollow #4)

4

HARMONY

T his time I got to notice things I hadn’t when he was carrying me back and forth before. The crisp Fall weather gave me a chill since I was just wearing a thin silk button down blouse, but I liked it. I shivered in delight as a cool gust of wind rushed through the colorful treetops and swirled around my body.

“Oh—it’s actually cold!”

“Of course it is—it’s Fall. It’s almost always Fall here—fucking nice,” Tark rumbled. “It’s my favorite season. But are you cold, Babygirl? Here…”

He put one long arm around me and drew me closer to his side. I slipped my own arm around his waist, glad to get closer to him. He smelled so good and he really was warm—his big body put out heat like a furnace.

But the walk didn’t last long. We passed by several shops, including a kind of supermarket called “Kreature’s Emporium and Fine Groceries” and then Tark led me up the front steps of what looked like a sprawling Bed and Breakfast.

There was a sign out front that read, “The Red Lion Inn” and by the door was an outline of a lion’s head in red paint .

“Goody Albright runs this place,” Tark explained. “She helped me get settled when I first came to town—she can help you too, I’m sure.”

When he opened the front door, we stepped into what looked like a piece of history. There were portraits on the walls that looked hundreds of years old and lots of antique furniture. The rugs on the dark hardwood floor were well-worn but also obviously antique.

A woman—at least I thought she was a woman—came bustling up to us. She had brown, bark-like skin and the arms and legs that stuck out from her dress were almost stick-like with big, knobby elbows and knees. Her nose was long and crooked and there was a single green leaf growing from one side of it.

“Yes, how can I help you?” she asked in a businesslike way.

“We’re here to see Goodie Albright,” Tark said. “Tell her it’s Tark, calling in his favor.”

“She owes you a favor?” I asked, looking up at him as the peculiar attendant hurried away.

He nodded.

“I fixed some things for her around the inn. And she had a really big boulder she wanted moved to make way for a new cabin but it was magically rooted so she couldn’t use a spell. So I moved it for her.”

“Really? How big was it?” I asked.

Tark shrugged and held a hand up to about his eye-line.

“Oh, about this tall, I guess. And twice as big around. It wasn’t easy to shift but once I got started, it rolled pretty well.”

“Wow—you must be really strong,” I remarked. “I mean, I knew you were—you were holding me at the, uh, doctor’s office for over half an hour without even breaking a sweat. But still…”

“What? You’re light as a feather, Babygirl.” He grinned down at me, showing off his pearly white tusks. “I could hold you all day.”

“Oh, um…” I was starting to blush again when a new person entered the room.

Goody Albright had curly gray hair and she was wearing a colorful dress that might have been a dressing gown or a robe—it was hard to say. It was covered in a mint green and peacock blue paisley pattern and her cat-eyed glasses were turquoise to match.

“Well hello, Tark—what’s this I hear about you calling in your favor?” she asked, smiling at both of us. She might have been anywhere between forty-six to seventy-six—she had a kind of agelessness about her, despite the fine wrinkles at the corners of her eyes and mouth.

“Just what it sounds like. Goody Albright, this is Harmony…er—I don’t know your last name, I just realized that,” he said to me.

“Oh, Ward. I’m Harmony Ward,” I said, holding out a hand to her.

“Delighted to meet you, my dear. By the way you’re looking around, I can tell this is your first visit to Hidden Hollow,” she said, smiling graciously as she shook with me.

“Yes, it is,” I admitted. “But I’m not quite sure how I got here. Or how to get home. Or how to get back here again when I want to,” I added, casting a glance at Tark.

“Ahh, I see. Yes indeed—come with me and we’ll figure it out together.” She held out a hand to me but I hesitated.

“Er, I don’t mean to be rude, but I don’t have much time,” I told her. “Madam Healer gave me a time charm, but it’s only good for going back three hours and I’ve nearly spent that much time here already.”

“I see.” She nodded. “Let me see the charm please.”

I held up my arm and she tapped the golden charm wrapped around my wrist three times and nodded.

“There. That added another hour. Now please come with me—we’ll go sit on my back porch and have some tea while we talk.”

Tark and I followed her through the winding maze of the inn—which turned out to be the oldest still-standing inn in the whole country as Goodie Albright proudly informed us.

“It’s been here since the witch trials in Salem,” she told me. “That was when magical folks started congregating here in Hidden Hollow—to get away from the madness of the Human Realm. And lately more and more magic users are being drawn here—because once again, the outside world is getting very strange and scary. ”

I thought of the things I’d been seeing on the news lately and couldn’t help agreeing with her. The “Human Realm” as she called it, was getting awfully frightening of late. It was nice to think there was a cozy magical sanctuary tucked away and safe from all the craziness.

“That’s nice, but I really don’t think I have any magic,” I told Goodie Albright. “I mean, everyone keeps telling me I do, but I’ve never done anything magical or special in my life.”

“Perhaps your magic is still sleeping in your blood. Or it was, until you needed it—and needed to get away to Hidden Hollow,” she told me. “We’ll soon find out.”

We got settled at a small table on a glassed-in porch in the back of the inn. Well, Goodie Albright and I did, at any rate. She had to call for a reinforced stool for Tark to sit on—it took two brownies (that was the name of the attendants with the bark-like skin) to lug it over to the table we were sitting at.

I couldn’t help admiring the view—just outside the porch was a gorgeous garden that was somehow in full bloom despite the Fall weather. Flowers and vegetables and fruits all mingled together in a glorious tangle that didn’t appear to have any rhyme or reason but still looked amazingly well tended.

Once we were all seated, Goodie Albright called for tea and something else.

“My magic-testing kit—it’s in the second drawer in my office,” she told the brownie, who ran quickly to go get it.

The tea tray arrived with a steaming china pot and three cups as well as a plate full of delicious looking cookies. At the same time, another brownie brought what looked like a row of three test tubes standing upright in a wooden tray. One was filled with silvery dust, the second had golden glitter, and the third was empty.

“Now then, Tark would you mind pouring while I test Harmony’s magic?” she said.

“Happy to,” the big Orc rumbled. He looked down at me. “Milk and sugar, right? ”

“How did you know how I like my tea?” I asked.

He grinned at me.

“You just seem like the milk and sugar type, but wanted to be sure.”

I wasn’t sure what that meant but before I could ask anything else, Goodie Albright was asking for my hand.

“What are you going to do?” I asked nervously, because she had produced a long, extremely sharp-looking needle from somewhere.

“I’m going to test your blood to see how much magic you have,” she said simply. “I’m sure you have some—enough to get you here, anyway.” She frowned. “By the way—did a key appear for you before you came to Hidden Hollow?”

“A key? No.” I shook my head. “I thought I was going into the ladies room—the bathroom, I mean,” I corrected myself. “But instead, I wound up here.”

She raised her eyebrows in surprise.

“Hmm—so you didn’t even need a key to enter? This should be interesting.”

She pricked my index finger quickly and then held it over the empty test tube. She squeezed the tiny wound until three drops of blood had fallen into the tube and then wrapped my finger in a small strip of soft linen.

“There—that will stop the bleeding in a minute. Now, let’s see…”

She started by sprinkling a bit of the shiny silver dust from the first test tube over the blood at the bottom of the third test tube.

At once something started happening—the blood turned green, then yellow and began to glow.

“Ah—interesting!” Goodie Albright nodded to herself. “And now let’s see how it reacts with this.”

She sprinkled some of the golden glitter from the second test tube over the glowing blood and then gave a little gasp.

I gasped too and so did Tark because the reaction was swift and immediate. The golden yellow liquid turned into a kind of semi-solid foam and began to expand so fast it shot out of the top of the tube. More and more of it came shooting out—like someone squeezing a tube of toothpaste as fast as they could.

It was like some kind of chemical reaction, I couldn’t help thinking. Only I guessed it was a magical reaction in this case.

“Goodness!” Goodie Albright exclaimed and then she said a word I couldn’t understand—though I felt like I should be able to for some reason—and made a hand gesture. At once, all the glowing stuff that had grown from my blood disappeared and the test tube where it had been was suddenly empty.

“What the fuck was all that?” Tark growled, raising his eyebrows.

“That was proof that your new friend has plenty of magic in her blood,” Goodie Albright said briskly. “I hope you didn’t spill the tea—did you?”

Tark hadn’t. He handed us our cups and I took a sip and sighed with pleasure. It had a sweet cinnamon flavor and the warm liquid running down my throat was soothing and delicious.

“So I really do have magic?” I said, after taking another sip. “If that’s true, how come it’s never come out before?”

“Magic works in mysterious ways,” Goodie Albright said, smiling. “Some witches don’t discover they have magic until they’re well into their later years. You’re lucky my dear—you found yours earlier than that.”

“But what good does it do me if I don’t know how to use it?” I asked. “I don’t even know how to get back home again.”

“Oh, that’s easy enough. Here.” She unpinned a broach from the lapel of her robe and handed it to me. I took it and examined it. It was shaped like a tiny silver key, about an inch long, with diamond chips imbedded in the head of it.

“I can’t take this!” I protested. “It looks really valuable.”

“Then just consider it a loan,” Goodie Albright told me. “As long as you’re wearing it, all you have to do in order to get back and forth between Hidden Hollow and the Human Realm is just draw a door in the air with your finger. The door will become solid and lead you back to the place you want to be.”

“Really?” I looked down at the tiny key cupped in my hand in surprise.

“Really,” she asserted. “And I hope you’ll be a frequent visitor, my dear. If you keep coming back, you should eventually find out what kind of magic you have.”

“Madam Healer said she thought maybe Harmony’s magic was like hers,” Tark offered. He had already drunk two cups of tea and was pouring himself a third. The china teacup looked like a toy from a child’s tea set in his big hand.

“She did, did she? And what caused her to think that, I wonder?” Goodie Albright gave me an appraising look.

“I’m not sure,” I said but Tark had an answer.

“Harmony wouldn’t drink the healing potion until she knew what was in it,” he said. “So Madam Healer explained and Harmony understood her.”

He gave me an appreciative glance that made me blush.

“Well, I mean I am studying to be a pharmacist,” I mumbled, feeling shy. “It wasn’t that hard to understand.”

“On the contrary, my dear, magical chemistry or alchemy as some call it, is an extremely difficult discipline to master,” Goodie Albright said.

“I thought alchemy was turning a base metal like lead into gold,” I said, frowning.

She waved a hand.

“Yes, that’s what it used to mean, back in the Dark Ages. But now it’s come to mean the same thing as chemistry does in the Human Realm. And as I said, it’s not easy to learn. So you may have an aptitude there.”

“How would I find out if I do?” I asked, intrigued.

“Well the person in town who knows the most about it is obviously Madam Healer,” she said, taking another sip of her tea. “She doesn’t just heal people—she also brews most of her own potions. I’d recommend you come back to town and make an appointment to talk to her.”

I liked the idea of speaking more with the snake-lady doctor. She’d been frightening at first, but after getting to know her a little, I could tell she was a very good doctor and an excellent teacher as well.

“Do you think she’d be willing to talk to me? Maybe even teach me a little?” I asked.

“Of course she would!” Goodie Albright exclaimed. “And just so you know, I’ve heard she’s still looking for an apprentice.”

“Oh, but I’m not looking for a job,” I protested. “I’m kind of stuck in the job I have now. In the, uh, Human Realm.”

“Ah, that’s a great pity.” Goody Albright sighed and shook her head. “You have so much magic in your blood, my dear—you shouldn’t waste it on the humans.”

“Hey, some of my best friends are humans,” I protested. “In fact, all of them are. And I am too, for that matter.”

“No, you’re not—you’re a witch,” she said with absolute certainty.

“I’m really not,” I said. “I don’t own a black cat or know how to do any spells or?—“

“No, no, my dear—that’s just a crude stereotype. A witch is simply any human female with magic in her blood. Just as a warlock is any human male with magic,” she said and offered me the plate of cookies. “Here—have one.”

“Oh no, I shouldn’t,” I said regretfully—they really did look delicious. “I’m on a diet.”

“A die- what?” Tark, who had been listening silently, frowned down at me.

“A di-et. I mean I’m trying to lose some weight,” I told him.

“But why?” He looked confused. “I don’t understand—why are you trying to lose your curves?”

“She’s trying because human men don’t like them,” Goodie Albright answered for me, saving me some embarrassment, for which I was grateful.

“They don’t? Well, what the fuck is wrong with them?” Tark demanded, scowling.

“Don’t ask me—I’ll never understand non-magical humans.” Goodie Albright shrugged and offered me the cookie plate once more. “Forget about those human males my dear—they’re not worth bothering about.”

“Go on, Babygirl,” Tark urged me, when I started to demure again. “You have as many as you want—your curves are fucking beautiful. Don’t lose them because those idiotic human males are too stupid to see that!”

Blushing, I took a cookie and bit into it. It really was good—buttery and rich. It melted on my tongue but I barely tasted it. I was too busy stealing glances at the huge Orc at my side.

Nobody had ever told me my curves were beautiful before. The only compliment I ever got was the one that goes something like this: “You have such a pretty face/skin/hair! If you’d just lose a little weight, you’d be a knockout!”

I’d been hearing that same thing or variations on it since junior high. Nobody had ever told me I looked good just the way I was. I wondered if Tark really meant it—but he seemed sincere. Especially when he coaxed me to take a second cookie.

We talked a little more but much sooner than I liked, my extra hour was up and it was time to leave.

“Can I go right from here?” I asked Goodie Albright, touching the tiny silver key that I had pinned to my blouse.

“Hmm, you could but it would probably be better if you come and go from Main Street,” she told me. “That way if you want to come in the middle of the night, you won’t wake anyone at the Red Lion up.”

“Oh, because I’ll come back to the place I left from?” I guessed.

“Exactly.” She smiled at me. “Do you know your way to the front door? I can have one of the brownies take you if you like. ”

“I’ll take her,” Tark said, rising. He offered me a hand and pulled me lightly from my chair. I got the idea he would have liked to swing me into his arms again, but he resisted the urge. “Come on, Babygirl,” he rumbled. “Let’s go.”

We wound our way through the Red Lion Inn again until we came out the front door onto the broad front porch. There I stopped to admire the view. I had been in Hidden Hollow for so long that the sun was sliding down behind the trees, setting the gold and crimson and vermillion leaves on fire with its dying light.

It was beautiful but there was more to see than just the sunset.

Up and down the sidewalks on either side of Main Street, I saw some of the more peculiar inhabitants of the town. An ethereally lovely fairy floated by, her wings barely waving as she went. On the other side of the street, a Centaur was clopping and beside him was a Minotaur. At least I thought it was a Minotaur—he had a man’s body and a bull’s head with a silver ring through his nose.

“Oh—this town really is magic,” I breathed, taking it all in.

“It is,” Tark agreed, grinning again. “It’s pretty special, isn’t it? That’s why I chose to move here when my Tribe kicked me out.”

“They kicked you out?” I looked up at him in surprise. “Why? I mean, if you don’t mind me asking.”

“I don’t mind.” He shrugged, his broad shoulders rolling. “It’s because I don’t kill animals or eat their meat. They say I’m too soft hearted.”

“Well, I think you’re wonderful ,” I said and then blushed—should I not have said that?

But looking up at Tark’s face, I was reassured. His own cheeks had gone a darker green which let me know that he was blushing too.

“Thanks, Babygirl,” he rumbled and reached for my hand again. Raising it, he leaned down and placed a gentle kiss on the backs of my fingers. “I think you’re pretty fucking wonderful too.”

“Thank you,” I whispered. My heart was suddenly pounding and I wished I dared to kiss him. If he wasn’t so far away, I would have done it. Then I realized we were standing on the steps. “Hey…go down a few steps—would you?” I asked, nodding at them.

“Why?” he asked, even as he did it.

“Because…because I want to kiss you,” I told him in a rush. “If…I mean, if you want me to.”

His golden eyes blazed.

“Fuck, Babygirl—of course I want you to!”

He went down three full steps before I could reach him and even then I had to lean forward, but I did it.

Tark leaned towards me too and when our lips met, I felt it all the way down to my toes. I mean that—it was like a tingle of pure pleasure ran through my entire body and suddenly my nipples were tight and my pussy was hot and wet. In fact, I felt right on the edge of orgasm!

“Wow!” I breathed, when the kiss broke at last. “That was… intense .”

“For me too, Babygirl.” His golden eyes were half-lidded as he looked at me. “Never felt anything like that before.”

“Me either,” I confessed. I hadn’t even noticed his tusks—maybe because he’d been being careful not to cut me with them.

We stood there for a minute longer, looking at each other, and all I wanted to do was lean forward and kiss him some more. But I was afraid if we started up again, I would never stop and I was going to be late if I didn’t get back to work soon.

“Well…I guess I’d better, uh, draw a door,” I said at last.

“Guess you should,” Tark acknowledged, though he didn’t sound happy about it.

I stepped down off the porch and went to the middle of Main Street. I felt self-conscious about doing magic right in the middle of the road, but nobody seemed to be paying attention. All the humans and Creatures just kept passing by on the sidewalks and since I didn’t see a single car, I supposed the middle of the road was as safe as anywhere to draw my magic door .

Leaning down, I used my index finger like a pencil and began to drag it upward from the road.

I gasped in surprise when a glowing red line appeared as I was drawing and Tark let out a bellow of laughter.

“Hey, what’s so funny?” I demanded, freezing with my finger in mid-air.

“You—you look so surprised!” He grinned at me good-naturedly. “Sorry, I shouldn’t laugh. I know it’s probably the first time you’ve ever done magic.”

“It is,” I said, smiling a little. It was hard to stay mad at him, even when he was laughing at me. Maybe because I could tell there was no cruelty in his laughter—no malicious intent. He was just tickled at the expression on my face.

“Well, keep going.” He made a motion with his hand. “Even I know that once you start a spell you need to finish it, and I don’t have any magic at all.”

“What? But you’re an Orc,” I protested. “How can you not have magic?”

“Because I am magic,” he explained. “Humans are the ones who are magic wielders. The rest of us magical folk are just Creatures—we don’t have magic because we are magic.”

This seemed confusing to me, but I didn’t have time to get into a long discussion about it. I finished drawing the door and saw that it had grown a doorknob I could turn. I reached for it but before I could grab it, Tark turned me towards him. He cupped my cheek in one big hand and stroked it gently with his thumb. “There’s something special about you, Babygirl—and it’s not just your magic,” he rumbled. “Will you promise to come back and see me again?”

“Sure.” I felt my cheeks heating and my heart pounding as I looked up into his golden eyes. “Uh, when were you thinking?”

“How about tomorrow?” he suggested. “Same time as today? Or even a little later—we could have dinner together. I’ll cook you a vegetarian feast. ”

“That sounds wonderful,” I said, smiling. “I’ll be here.”

“I’ll be waiting,” he told me, dropping his hand at last. “Can’t wait to see you again.”

I couldn’t wait to see him again, either.