Freyas Saga Ch. 13

"What are you talking about?" said Five, scared.

"You'll find out, you fucking ..." said Dannel, and he tried to find the word and couldn't, and instead he just struggled to his feet and came up to Five and slapped him in the face and then turned and limped off, crying.

Five stood there, feeling scared and guilty and miserable, and bent down and started to put on his breeches.

***

Three days after they left the carwan, they forded a river which swept in a broad bend southwards, leaving a large, shallow pool which had made the land around it bloom enough for a handy glade of trees to have grown there.

It had been a difficult morning, one of those strange ones when nothing seemed quite right. Freya was in a bad mood and so was Five. They'd been hungry but the cold meat from last night had been dry and tasteless and Freya had got impatient when Five took too long trying to wash the pots and pans. They'd saddled up and ridden in hostile silence.

But as they came within sight of the pool, Freya looked behind her at Five and gestured, a twisting-hand motion she'd evolved to signify 'wash', and then stepped off the road and headed down the slope towards the glade.

Five was reluctant. He felt terrible, one of his times when he just didn't want to do anything and was impatient with the lady's silence and with travelling and with everything else.

It was a hot day, and at any other time Five would have been glad of the chance for a cooling swim, but not today. Freya dismounted and put down her pack and started to undress, unashamed as ever, and when she was naked she walked swiftly into the river and dived forward, surfacing sleekly a little further on and gasping.

Five secured the horses and reluctantly undressed and stepped across the muddy river's edge into the chilly water. But once he was in, he felt immediately better and after he'd ducked beneath the surface and come up, shivering, and was washing the road dirt out of his short hair and off his skin, he looked at Freya and she was standing ten yards away, up to her waist, sleek and wet and clean, and she turned and looked at him and smiled.

He smiled back and ducked under again, and then came up and shivered. Then he looked down and saw it.

The blood on his thighs.

Oh god, of all the fucking times.

Dannel's curse.

He should have known. He had all the signs, feeling crap, bad mood, short temper. But it had to come now, of all times, when he was naked in the water with the lady.

Five quickly swirled the water to try and dilute the blood but it was bad today. He sloshed water on his crotch but it wasn't easy to disguise it. He turned his back on Freya and desperately tried to wash it off himself, but then he heard her approaching.

She tapped him on the shoulder. She had the cloth and the almond oil and she wanted him to wash her back. He very reluctantly turned and handed it to her and she turned her back and he poured some on her shoulders and back and rubbed her. In the meantime he looked down and saw that the water was at least washing some of the blood away.

He was all set to believe that he'd gotten away with it when she turned around and looked down absently and took the cloth and oil off him, and was just about to anoint herself when she paused, staring down, and then slowly lifted her head and looked at him.

He looked down and saw the fresh blood coming away from him, a dark slick on the water.

"Oh," he said, "that."

She looked at him, frowning.

Don't make me explain it, he begged her with his thoughts. It's embarrassing enough.

"It's just this thing that happened to me," he said. "It's nothing, I swear."

Freya's brows knitted together and, to his mortification, she crouched down in the water and stared hard at his misshapen, stunted cock and balls.

"Yeah," he said, crimson with embarrassment. "They're small, I know. They've always been that way. I'm a bit ... I don't like showing them off, normally."

To his increasing hideous embarrassment, she reached out and looked up at him questioningly.

"What?" he said.

She gestured in the direction of his wound. He guessed that she wanted a closer look at it.

"It's just a ... sort of a wound," he said. "It don't heal. This kid gave it to me, long time ago. He said it would never heal and he was right. It just bleeds a bit now and then. It don't mean anything."

She very gently lifted his stump of a cock between thumb and forefinger and examined the wound.

It occurred to him that maybe she would be able to get a cure, and he felt a bit better, a bit less of a freak. Her grey eyes narrowed as she looked at him, inspecting the most private and shameful bit of his body, the reason why he hated to undress in front of people. To have a beautiful naked woman in front of him, looking at him there, was just about as humiliating as it could get, but she'd seen it now, so there was no pretending she hadn't.

He hoped that she'd stop frowning and lose interest, but she didn't. She kept looking at it, and finally she let him go, stood up, frowning, folded her arms over her chest and indicated with her head for him to go on.

"What," he said, "how I got it?"

She nodded. Oh, god. He thought. Here goes.

"Well," he said, "like I said, this bloke, when I was a squire, he used to ... he used to be, uh, well, he was a right cunt."

He swallowed. Just thinking about it made him know for sure that he'd have nightmares about it tonight. He deliberately didn't think about it most of the time because it was just bloody horrible and shameful and private, but if he was going to tell anyone, it may as well be her. He was pretty sure she wouldn't mock him for it.

"He was always trying to get me to ... play with him, you know. Do things with him. And I always said no. Didn't want to. And he was a bit puny and I was quite strong, so I could, you know. Fight him off, up to a point. But then he got mean and, um, and he made me do what he wanted."

Five felt his throat tightening and controlled himself with a great effort.

"Anyway, one time, I dunno what happened, but he got dead fucked off with me, and he said he were gonna curse me. He said that cause I didn't want it from him, as punishment I'd always bleed there."

Freya knelt and looked at him again, and Five flushed crimson with the shame of it, and she looked up at him with the most piercing, questioning look.

"And he was right," said Five miserably. "I have. To this day."

Freya stared up at him, locking his gaze. Five was blazing with shame, but he made himself look back at her.

"So, you know," he said, "I've learned to not trust meself. I shouldn't have got upset. Or maybe I should have given 'im what he wanted."

Freya was staring at him with an expression he'd never seen on anyone's face before; a complicated mixture of wonder and pity and consternation.

"Look, I don't want pity," he said angrily. "It was my fault and I'm paying for it. When I've finished paying for it, it'll close up and I'll be normal again."

Freya rubbed her forehead with her hand and closed her eyes. She opened them again, stood up, stepped back and looked him up and down. He stood there, his whole body red with shame. He wanted to be invisible, to die. Anything rather than have his ridiculous body looked at like this.

"What?" he said.

She reached out and touched his chin, pushing up, looking at his throat. He raised his face, mystified. She let go and he lowered his face.

"What is it?" he said, beginning to get anxious in case she'd seen something wrong with him.

She put her hands over her mouth, shaking her head slowly, and she looked down, as if actually unable to look him in the eye.

Then she took her hands away and cleared her throat.

"Who told you," she whispered, "that you were a boy?"

He looked at her for a long moment.

His ears were filling up with the sound of the blood rushing in his head.

"What you mean?" he said. "I've always known."

She looked at him for a long moment.

Then she shook her head no.

"What?" he said, mystified. "Of course I'm a boy. How could I not be a boy? I've got a cock."

Freya shook her head no again.

"Wait," he said, with a sense of approaching dread. "How do you know? What are you talking about? What makes you think I'm not a boy?"

Freya pointed to the blood in the water, the bumps on Five's chest that he'd always thought were just him not being very fit; then to Five's throat.

Five felt his own throat. There wasn't anything unusual about it; it was smooth like everyone else's.

No, that wasn't right. Not everyone's throat was smooth. Freya reached out and gently stroked Five's cheek. Five felt her hand on her smooth, faintly downy face.

I don't have a beard. Well, not every man has a beard.

No.

No.

It can't be. It can't bloody be true.

I'm not.

"I've got a fucking cock," he said, and his own voice sounded stupidly shrill in his ears. "What about that?"

She shrugged, as if it made no difference, and indicated his body. The body he'd always thought was flabby and lacking in tone.

But he couldn't say that now. He had walked a lot of miles since he started being her squire, and carried a lot of bags, and done a lot of training that she had made him take, that had never been offered him while he was a soldier of the king, and he had had fewer and smaller meals, and all the flab had melted off him.

Apart from his chest. He looked down at himself, the twin bumps, the stubby mound between his legs, his smooth skin.

His body which made no sense. Unless you saw it another way. Not the body of an awkward, misshapen boy but that of a strong, sturdy but flat-chested ...

Fuck, no, it wasn't true. It just fucking wasn't. It was fucking ridiculous.

His heart pounding, his stomach churning, Five backed away from Freya. He was in a cold sweat.

"Oh, no, no," he said, his voice quavering. "No. No. I'm not."

I can't be. I just can't be. I like girls, don't I? But ...

Oh, god. Oh, god, help me.

Freya followed as Five turned and splashed out of the pool and stumbled across the muddy verge and ran out through the trees.

The sun shone. Five felt the sunshine on damp skin and didn't care about being naked, just wanted to run away from the terrifying sense that it must be true, that all these years, all this time.

Five sank to the grass, on hands and knees, and puked up.

A body came up behind and Five knelt back on heels, weeping, looking up shamefacedly to see her standing there.

"Oh god," Five sobbed, the taste of vomit still sharp, staring around helplessly. Spit. Get rid of it.

Because girls bled but weren't they supposed to bleed with the moon? He bled seldom and irregular. When people saw him naked they joked about his tiny cock.

It was a cock, surely, he pissed out of it, of course, what else was it?

But then, thinking of nights with the lads, and they'd play with themselves and the others would all spurt out of their cocks and Five would have the feeling, all right, it felt great, but nothing came out.

He would just get damp and sticky. Another sign of how fucked up he was, they all said, and he laughed but he felt ashamed, and he agreed with them, and felt like a bloody freak. And the one or two times he'd been with a girl and he'd loved it but before he could get anywhere the girls had made it clear how much they wanted to be out of there. He'd just thought: I'm ugly, I'm a freak.

No. They knew. They maybe didn't know for real because nobody had ever said it before. But they had a feel for how wrong it was.

It had taken her to point out what should have been blindingly fucking obvious. Because he was stupid. Stupid and worthless, like everyone had always said. That's how he could have missed it.

Only an idiot.

It wasn't his body. It wasn't that that he was ashamed of. Not that at all.

It was the iron crown of stupid on his head. The feeling of wrongness, of having been so wrong, having been so stupid, such an idiot, that he could spend his life thinking he was one thing when he was something else. That he could spend his life listening to his body tell him one thing, and everyone around him tell him the opposite, and he could be so weak and pathetic as to not believe his own body.

He got up again and ran, ran from the look he knew she was going to have of disappointment, the way he'd fucked up like he always fucked up, only now it was the fuck-up of all fuck-ups, to show her just how fucking stupid he could be, how wrong. I am sorry, little one. I cannot place my trust in one so foolish. I have erred.

***

Freya started after the youth, but their gear, the horses, all were still there, unguarded, they were both naked, it was foolish. She hesitated.

Damn. Damn it.

She stood for a moment, watching him fleeing, torn between the urge to run after him and the need to stay and secure the camp, feeling helpless.

And then she saw him fleeing, and she obscurely felt it, the rage and panic building in her heart, and the black mist descended over her sight and the anger of war took her and she screamed.

GET BACK HERE! GET BACK HERE NOW, YOUNG ONE! GET BACK HERE! COME BACK!

There was a shattering noise of wings, as her voice caused the birds in the trees to take to flight in terror.

***

Five ran across the field, running for the trees and the hillside to hide his shame, but then he heard Freya's shout, and it terrified him, as it had terrified entire armies before him, and it had on him the effect it had had on many men before; it filled him with fear and compelled him to flee even harder.

No, no, please, lady, please, let me go, don't come after me ...

***

Freya watched him running, her heart blazing with wrath, her body preparing itself to fight, and she started to run after him, ready to find him and punish him for leaving her, like everyone always left her, and as she ran, she opened her mouth to scream again.

But she felt something break in her throat, and started to cough. She stopped and fell to her knees and coughed and coughed and doubled up and put her hand to her mouth and saw the flecks of blood. He had reached the trees and was lost to sight. In the time it would take her to dress and secure their gear, he could be fields away.

She doubled up, her throat in agony, and waited for the coughing fit to pass, and finally just as she thought her lungs were truly about to burst, it ended, and she was weak and breathless. She straightened up.

She stared at the treeline for a long moment, then sank to the grass.

***

Sooner or later it would have happened, Five thought, somebody would have noticed, as he ran terrified through the trees, ignoring the sharp twigs stabbing his bare feet, the underbrush scratching his flesh, but that's fate; fate lies in wait until you've just got yourself where things are good for you, and then it comes down on your head, and somebody turns to you with that look of, You bloody fool, what have you done, and the game's up and there's nothing for it but to slink back into your corner and admit that you should never have come out of it, never, ever, never, ever ...

The sound of blood was a roaring pounding din. Five ran up the hill, eyes blinded by tears, and didn't see the tree root at ankle level, and tripped and went headlong.

Everything went black.

***

Five woke up with a pain in the right side of the head.

Someone was cradling it. Five opened eyes and looked up and saw Freya's face looking down.

"Sorry," Five muttered.

Freya stroked Five's cheek.

"Did I pass out?"

Freya nodded, her face serious.

Five lay in the grass, feeling the prickly blades on naked flesh, Freya's bare thighs a pillow, Freya's

own strong body leaning over, protective.

"You must think I'm so fucking stupid," Five said quietly.

Freya shook her head no.

Five looked down at the body that had been a lifetime's burden. Tallish, boyish, broad hips, flat chest, and what was that between her legs?

It wasn't a cock and balls.

Just looked like them. Just bigger than usual, more sticking-out than usual.

There was a strange sensation of ... lightness. As if the iron crown of stupidity had been loosened and removed. You look at a cloud one way, it's a sort of blobby thing and then it just takes someone to point out how it looks like a duckling and you wonder how you didn't see it before.

Five sat up, gingerly, wincing. A hand to the brow came away with a bit of blood.

"You'll 'ave to find a new squire."

Freya looked puzzled.

"What?" Five said. "Squires are men. I'll go and work in an inn or something and you can get someone who can be a proper squire."

Freya shook her head no.

"Lady," said Five, "come on. I'm not a boy, whatever I am. I've never been a girl. I don't feel like a girl. What am I gonna do?"

Freya took Five's hand and held it up next to her own. There were the matching scars on their palms. Freya held them up in front of Five's face and pressed them together.

A blood oath. You don't break a blood oath.

"Wait," said Five, stomach fluttering, the hairs standing up on the neck. "You don't care."

Freya stared into Five's eyes and shook her head no.

"Whatever I am," said Five, voice shaking, "I'm more girl than boy. You really want someone like

me tagging along after you?"

Freya's eyes burned into Five's soul. She grabbed Five by the neck and pulled her in.

Five made a startled "MMMM!" as they kissed. It wasn't exactly a friendly peck, or even a lover's smooch. It was a fierce gesture of ownership.

Five gave in to it, dizzy as Freya held her tight.

After a long moment they separated. Freya stared at her, her dark eyes gleaming. Five was breathless.

"Lady," Five gasped, "before you do that again, something you should know."

Freya waited.

"I prefer girls to boys," Five said. "Always have."

Freya put her arms around Five and kissed her again, this time deeply and lovingly, and Five yielded, feeling Freya's arms around her, holding her tight, her hands on Five's naked body.

It was so lovely that when Freya detached herself and said something, Five didn't mind that Freya's voice was a bird calling, but just held Freya tighter, until it was all fading, and then with a start she woke up properly, this time, and found herself lying naked and cold and with a pounding headache at the foot of a tall tree in the middle of the forest.

Entirely alone.

Oh fuck, Five thought.

Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.