Page 7 of Mischief Maker

Chapter Six

Kireth

I t’s easy to fall into a routine here. I work with the crops and Faela takes care of the animals, and in the evenings, we eat cheese and more cheese and occasionally some meat and berries.

Then she’s able to sell the tiller, and she gives me two tasks to occupy me while she goes into town.

When she returns, she has baskets filled with food.

“Things I thought you might like,” she says, spreading out fruit and bread and even a small bit of hard candy. I do not need food, but I eat it anyway because it seems to please her.

She has not tried to put her arms around me again, which I find myself regretting more and more. It had felt so good—beyond good—to be held by her, for her hands to wind around my waist and her soft breasts to press against my chest.

It was too right .

As the plants start to reach maturity, hastened enormously by my magic, it occurs to me that I’ve not so much as knocked over a pail in weeks. The idea of spilling some water or leaving a gate open hasn’t even crossed my mind, and I don’t know what to make of it. It unnerves me.

Faela, too, has gotten too comfortable. Her tasks are less and less specific now, and it’s simply that I know what she means and what it is she wants me to do.

I understand her now, I think. While her hands move slowly and precisely, her mind is quick and she’s not to be underestimated.

She has a grand plan for everything, and I’m learning my place in it.

“Kireth? Will you please hand me that knife? I need to cut this cord.” I reach for the knife without thinking twice about it and pass it to her by the handle—but I realize that I’ve been doing many small things like this for her, without even counting them.

“Fifty-six,” I say, drawing a tally in the air.

The smile on her face wavers. We’ve been working on weaving new baskets for the produce that will soon be coming.

“Th-thank you,” she says anyway, taking the knife but looking uncertain. She does not ask me for any more small favors that night.

I know she is keeping me here as long as possible, and the more time passes, the less I mind the idea. I do not feel like her servant here. If anything, she treats me like a friend, a companion.

One night, we build a fire in the pit behind the house to cook a lamb that was born this past spring. While we wait, occasionally turning the spit, Faela studies me.

“How old are you?” she asks after a long silence.

An odd question. I cock my head. “Older than time.”

“Were you here before humans were?”

“You know the right questions to ask.” I turn the spit a quarter round, then sit back down. “No. I am a plaything, just like you are. Who would call on me to perform tasks, if not for mortals?”

“True,” she says. “The world must have been different back then.”

I bark a laugh. “Oh, yes. But in many ways, still the same. Blackberries grow in the summer, and pretty women are still pretty women.” I make sure to arch an eyebrow at her as I say it.

She giggles and blushes.

The rest of the night, she asks me lots more questions about myself, what I’ve done in my long life, what I’ve seen.

I steer away from the more lecherous adventures because, for some reason, I don’t want her to know about them.

I don’t want her to think of me on top of another mortal, bringing them to that height of ecstasy.

No, I don’t want her to think of me inside anyone but her.

It’s undeniable now, and almost painful to keep to myself, how much I want her. But it feels wrong to act on it. She has a sweetness, an innocence, that I fear I would spoil with my touch.

And yet my cock hungers, more and more every day, as my hands and lips and soul do, too.

One afternoon, Faela returns from the river, wet and dripping through her clothes.

She’s been bathing, and as her hair dries, it puffs up into sleek brown waves.

I wonder if it is as soft as it looks. While she works on the house, trying to fix a collapsed back step, I find myself sidling up to her.

I stop at her backside and run my fingers through her hair, and it’s as smooth as a mink’s fur.

Faela falls still under my hand, and I realize what I’ve done. When I pull away, she turns around, her eyes wide, and I wonder if I’ve offended her by touching her.

Instead, she takes my hand in hers and brings it back up to touch the side of her head.

“I liked that,” she says quietly.

I tilt an eyebrow. She enjoyed my touch, did she? Perhaps this woman has more needs than I anticipated.

So I comb my hand through her hair again, my claws peeling apart the knots, and a small sigh escapes her lips.

Those full, wonderful lips—how I would love to take them in mine and tease them open.

Her eyes close as I draw my hand lower, running my fingers through the strands that hang down over her shoulders.

Unconsciously her body leans into me, and I know then that she feels some small portion of what I feel for her: this craving, this need, this itch that’s telling me to touch even more of her.

The bark of the dog startles us apart. I regain my footing, remembering again where I am, what I’m doing, and what this young mortal woman is to me.

I want her, yes. But she is my master, and me her servant.

As much as I want her, she is still my end point—when I have completed her tasks, I will be free to return to my long sleep.

There is nothing truly between us, as there never will be.

If I were to take her, to cradle her to my chest and slide myself inside her, I would be taking something precious, doing something irreversible.

A girl like Faela does not need such things when I inevitably finish my tasks and leave her at the end.

But once we’re inside, cooking some of the greens that have come in, I want my hands on her again.

Her slight waist and rounded hips call to me, singing my name, urging me to wrap my arms around her.

She must sense my pull because when she turns away from the counter, she rotates into me.

A gasp falls from her mouth when she collides with my chest. She reaches out to steady herself, her hand firmly against my skin, but she yanks it away when she realizes she’s touched me.

Her face is bright red, and I know then that she lusts for me, too.

Perhaps I can serve her in this way, after all, if she truly wants me.

I stop her with one hand on her shoulder.

“Don’t run,” I say, leaning down closer. “No, sad girl. Stay here and tell me what you want from me.”

Faela

Kireth’s clawed hand is like fire when it touches me. He runs it down my hair again, but that’s too distant, too far away from what I really want. No, I would feel that hand elsewhere, on other, more sensitive regions of my body.

“Tell me,” he says, stepping closer. “Tell me what you want me to do.”

He’s just asking me, directly, to my face.

Do I say it? My tongue feels sticky inside my mouth. Do I tell him where I want him to touch me? What might that bring along with it? I wet my lips, and his eyes dart down to them.

“Touch me again,” I say, feeling brave. I want to know what he feels like, how he would do it.

A low chuckle rumbles in his throat. He takes another step so he’s standing only inches away, then brings his clawed hand up to gently brush my arm. It’s just a teasing touch, a touch meant to urge me on.

“More.” I grow bolder as my heart beats faster, and my belly warms.

This time his hand is firm, dragging his claws up my sleeve as he reaches my shoulder. Then he strokes down again, trailing his fingers over my wrist, palming my knuckles. I extend my fingers to take his hand in mine, but he dodges them, returning to my throat.

“You did not specify what kind of touching,” he says, sliding his hand around my neck. He tightens it, and I try not to gasp.

“The good kind,” I say, swallowing hard. I know he won’t hurt me. “The kind of touch that you want, too.”

I know it’s not one-sided, not now. The way he so tenderly grazed my hair told me some of his truth. Does he long for me at all the way I’ve been longing for him?

Obediently, Kireth slides his hand away from my throat, instead tracing the curve of my collarbone.

“That’s two tasks, now,” he murmurs. “What will you have me do next?”

My heart falls.

I thought he had come to me because he wanted to, because he itches to feel more of me the way I desire him. But I would never call on his obligation just to sate this urge that I can’t seem to quell on my own. I am not one of those.

I step away and my drop my arms to my sides. This was foolish. There is nothing between us. The image I’d been building of the two of us together, joined in body of our own free wills, dissipates like smoke.

“I will not use you that way,” I whisper. Kireth’s eyebrows draw down low when I head to the stairs, like he didn’t expect me to react this way. “I will never!”

My chest aches as I head for my bedroom and shut the door firmly behind me.

I don’t know what I expected. There is no way that a god, an immortal, would ever want someone like me.

The next morning we are quiet, and I avoid looking Kireth directly in the eyes because I cannot face how silly I was yesterday. When I step outside the house, though, I freeze in my tracks.

The crops have all turned a sickly yellow. It’s as if overnight, they have begun to die, from the onions to the carrots to the wheat. I cover my mouth, unable to comprehend what I’m seeing.

Yesterday they were all fine, all green and growing. Today it looks as if these are their last breaths.

I fall to my knees in the dirt, cupping one of the dying leaves in my hand. A hopeless kind of fury takes over me, filling my body with a raging heat. I tear off the leaf and hurl it to the ground as Kireth approaches.

“What has happened?” He kneels in the soil near me to examine one of the plants.

“The same thing as before.” I am trying my hardest not to cry, seeing my salvation ripped to ragged pieces in front of me. “Every time I plant, they die, just like this. And there’s nothing I can do to save them.”

Kireth’s tail lies lifeless behind him as he takes in the field full of nothing but slow, agonizing death. What have I done to deserve this? Am I so slow, so stupid, so pathetic as to earn some greater god’s wrath?

I get to my feet, and they shake beneath me. Even Kireth cannot fix whatever blight I have called upon my land.

“I must tend to the livestock,” I say, but it comes out little more than a hushed whisper.

“Faela—” Kireth begins. But if I remain here, I will certainly cry, and I cannot expose any more of my vulnerability to him.

I walk away with haste, toward the livestock pen where the sheep are waiting to be let out for the day. Mechanically, I complete each task, and soon Kireth comes to sit on the fence and watch me.

“Will you give me a task today?” he asks, none of the usual playfulness in his voice.

“No.” I set down a pail full of milk. “There is nothing left for you to do.”

I remember the runes carved into his body, the ones that will dismiss him from my service. I can send him back to where he came from and give up this worthless, impossible farm.

There is nothing here for me. I have no choice now but to abandon this place, the home where I grew up, where my mother and father both died, where everything that could possibly go wrong has.

“You will have me do nothing?” Kireth raises his brows. “Nothing at all?”

“What are the words?” I ask.

He sounds suspicious when he answers, “Which words?”

“The words to send you away. To end this.” My heart twists as I say it, but I have no more need for a god.

I will sell off the sheep and the cows and the chickens, if anyone will buy them from me.

I will pack up what belongings I have and leave this place with Petal and Rye, and head for the valley.

It is time to leave the old world behind and perhaps discover what I’ve been missing all this time.

“Surely you do not want to dismiss me,” Kireth says, wary. “I have only completed half of your tasks.”

“I have nothing more for you to do. There’s no reason to keep you here any longer.” I strain to keep the tears at bay, the evidence of my heartbreak. “Tell me the words, Lord. Tell me the words to send you away.”