I Will Work Hard Ch. 02

Author's Note: This chapter won't have as much cuteness. In fact, there will be a bit of violence and tragedy.

*****

The following day had just as much work as the last previous one, which was to be expected. Fertilizer had to be spread. Plants had to be maintained. The chickens, and the cow, needed their food and water. The cow's name was Zula, and she had to be milked. There was also all the shit to clean out. Cows and chickens aren't polite. At least cats bury their feces, Hulda thought, as she noticed a somewhat feral black cat lurking around the house. She was told not to give it any food. The family let the cat remain in the yard so it could hunt mice and birds.

Most of the eggs and milk had to be sold. Butter had to be churned, and most of that was sold too. Spinning had to be done at the spinning wheels. Sewing had to be done, from the creation of clothing to the repairing and patching. Baby Dagny had to be supervised. Cooking was, of course, done. Not only that, there was always something that needed to be cleaned or fixed.

One moment, as Hulda was helping Johnan prepare a meal, Placidus approached her with a stern jaw. He turned his head slightly, as if he wanted her to pay attention to the scars on his face.

"I hope you won't mind if I say something boastful," he said as his long fingers weaved together before him. "I think Lili's the best woman in the village. Her stitches are dainty. Her fingers are quick. And she has the strongest spirit. I think if you want to learn how to be a good Breden woman, you need to spend more time with Lili." He stepped back a bit. Then he snorted out some air. "I'm not saying you're a bad girl, now. You're all around a good girl, a nice girl. We're lucky to have you around. I just want to make sure that Ehlov gets what a Breden man would want to have."

Hulda was starting to worry that she might be doing something wrong.

Ehlov spoke to her some time later that day. There was a little bit of free time, and he said he wanted to have a run with her. He ran around the neighborhood with her seated on his "second back," which was what the centaurs called their horse-like backs. Hulda was timid and fearful at first, but she quickly learned that she was secure. She even had a bit of fun, especially when another man, his younger sister on his back, challenged Ehlov to a friendly race from one end of a row of houses to the other. Ehlov ended up winning.

"I'm used to running with a great load behind me," her husband had said when the race was finished. "Even with a woman on my back, that race was nothing special."

It was on the way back home when Ehlov made a request she didn't fully understand.

"Wife, if it wouldn't bother you, would you mind doing something for me?"

"I don't see why not."

He nodded. "I want you to count anything and everything. I don't care what you count. Rocks, flower petals, blades of grass. Just count. Try to count with tens, twenties, hundreds, and thousands if you can. And I want you to add and take away numbers too."

Hulda's head tilted as she looked at the back of Ehlov's cap. It was a functional, dark brown thing. "Why do you want me to do that?" Yes, farmers needed to know how to count, but Ehlov seemed oddly concerned about her counting abilities, to the point where Hulda wondered what in the world he wanted her to count in the future.

"I don't want you to focus much on the 'why,' but I do want you to keep it a secret from the family. Ma might think you're wasting your time if she finds out about it."

"But, Husband, when can I count? I'm always so busy."

She heard his breath come out of his nose. "Count as you work, silently, in your head."

Hulda reached up to tuck a bit of escaping hair under her head wrap. "Well, that doesn't sound like a mean thing to ask, but I want you to do something for me."

"Hm?" He looked back at her for only an instant. Hulda noticed that his eyebrows were a bit higher than normal. "What do you want?"

"I want you to teach me more fancy words."

"Hmmmmmm ... I don't know all the fancy words, but I know some. I'll give you one now. Mathematics. It's a big way of saying, when someone studies counting, adding, taking away, and other number stuff."

Her tongue and teeth experimented with the word. "Math ... ah ... mah ... ticks?"

"Mathematics," Ehlov repeated.

Firmly nodding, Hulda said the word again. Then she told her husband, "I like fancy words. I really do."

Ehlov's response was another, "Hmmm."

***

In the evening, the males were groomed. The ones who complained of aching muscles received a careful massage, usually on their first backs or their first shoulders. Hulda couldn't see a reason why she shouldn't climb onto her husband's second back and reach forward to stroke and rub his first shoulders. Still, her eyelids twitched and her teeth clenched every time he moaned out his approval. He didn't sound tasteless or unseemly, but Hulda still felt pops of unease.

When the men were taken care of, it was the women's turn. Their hair was combed. Any noticeable bugs were taken out. Their feet were wiped. Their shoulders and backs were pressed and stretched.

And Hulda was still rather quiet, because she still felt awkward about it.

In the night, she found that she was able to sleep fairly easily. Maybe it was because she had to work all day, and that familiar physical labor comforted her body and mind. Maybe it was because she had a surprisingly plush bed. It wasn't a fine, rich person's bed, but it was better than what she had in her homeland.

Maybe ... and Hulda didn't want to admit this ... but maybe all the attention from the men put them in tranquil states.

Hulda didn't want to dwell on her feelings. She didn't have the time. Sleep was coming.

Sleep was here.

And then ...

And then a woman screamed.

And a baby screamed too.

Hulda's body shot up in the darkness.

A rough man's hand was pulling her by her dress' collar. Hulda shrieked and rocked against the movement. She tried clawing at the hand that had claimed her. She felt the flesh gather under her fingernails, and she heard a man's curse of pain.

There was a tumbling, crashing noise. Then the pounding of hooves against the dirt floor, and the clopping, scraping din against the frame of the bed. Hulda's body was forcibly dragged a bit towards the edge of the bed, but after a few agonized, masculine grunts, Hulda was released.

She heard someone lighting a clay lamp. It turned out to be Sasha, leaning against Yann's barrel and second shoulder.

Johnan's perplexed, startled voice was barely heard among the violent struggling in the room. "What's going on?! Pa?! Ma?!" A second or so went on after that, and he said, his face moving towards the tiny light Sasha held. "Grandma?! Grandpa?!"

Yann's voice rang out, "Stay close to me!!"

Hulda was already close enough, but she crawled over to where Sasha was. Then she saw Lili following, her hurried crawling rocking the mattress. She called out, "Placi ... Placidus!!"

"My baby!! MY BABY!!" The was definitely Danuta.

That baby was still screaming.

There was masculine yelling, but Hulda wasn't certain which voice belonged to which man.

"Fuck you!!"

"Put her down!! Put her the fuck right down!!"

"The shit's going on here?!"

More lights, torch lights were held by two centaur neighbors, holding back the curtain at the entrance/exit and looking inside.

"That baby's gonna fall!!"

The neighbors rushed in.

"I'll get the baby!! You burn a new hole in that motherfucker!!"

Hulda covered her eyes as one of the neighbors shoved his lit torch into the side of a centaur she had never seen before. The sizzling, the tormented screaming, and all of the other violent noises that followed, chilled her heart and belly.

"GIVE ME MY FUCKING BABY!!" Danuta again.

Fear had Hulda's eyelids pressing so tightly together that her eyes hurt. It didn't matter that her hands were on her face. She didn't want any hint of sight.

When the only sounds left were the baby's howling and the men's panting, Hulda opened her eyes again. People starting searching for more lamps and candles to light. Then there was more fire to aid their eyes.

One of the neighbors held both torches with his two hands. Two unconscious centaurs were on the ground. Well ... Hulda assumed they were unconscious, but they could have been dead.

She saw Placidus, Dobromil, and Ehlov, looking bruised and bloody, all of their chests heaving from stress. The two neighbor centaurs were every bit as damaged as the other three young men. The neighbor that didn't have a torch, a stocky, black haired centaur that Hulda had seen a few times before, was clutching a struggling little Dagny to his first chest, his thick hand seeming to swallow the child's head.

"I WANT MY DAMN BABY NOW!!"

Hulda flinched and turned to look at Danuta, whose arms were outstretched towards the black haired neighbor.

The neighbor's throat bulged as he gulped down something Hulda didn't see. He carefully made his way around the unconscious men and to Danuta. Then he put the baby into Danuta's impatient arms.

"Sweetness! Darling! Oh, my perfect little water lily!" Danuta kissed and cuddled Dagny with so much desperate love that Hulda's heart seemed to wither at the sight. Danuta's husband, Dobromil, shuffled over to her, and he lowered himself so he could put his arms around both his wife and his child.

"Is she hurt?" he murmured.

"No! She's perfect!" Danuta was still half crying as she spoke.

But there was yelling and running outside of the building. Hulda heard it. So did everyone else.

The neighbors rushed to the exit and pulled the curtain away, looking outside.

"Shit," one of them cursed, "there are more of them! They're taking away everyone's females!"

Ehlov started to run to help, but the black haired neighbor stopped him, shaking his head. "All of you have females to protect. We don't. We'll go and help the other single men save everyone."

***

According to what Hulda was told, the last time something like this had happened, Yann's father wasn't even in his mother's belly. So, it made sense that the people of Korelanda had gotten a bit too comfortable in the night.

The identities of the Prowlers, as these sorts of kidnappers were called, were never discovered, because nobody in Korelanda could identify them. Nobody knew what village they came from, but most people agreed that they either came from the north or the east. There wasn't that many of them. They had apparently thought it was best to try to have a small, stealthy group than a large, noisier group. Unfortunately for those Prowlers, every single one of them were killed in the night. Their bodies were taken to the woods for animals to eat.

The good news was that the men were successful in keeping all their young females from being taken from the village.

The absolutely horrifying news was that one of those females died before she could ever be taken from the village. She was only five years old.

It was an accident, truly. Not even her kidnapper wanted her dead. But, as another man tried to get her away from the Prowler, the girl twisted and fell, and a hoof ended up stomping on her head.

From a slightly colder point of view, one might say the whole tragedy was a miracle in disguise, because the Korelandans had an overwhelming victory against their attackers. None of their men died, and none of the females were taken away. Honestly, realistically, there should have been a few more accidental deaths, or a few more successful kidnappings.

And for a few, short-lived moments, that was what Hulda thought. She thought it was a miracle that this community didn't suffer more from this.

But, as she looked out a tiny window of the house and watched a mother sprint out of her home, too upset to tether herself to her husband ... as she watched the mother fall to her knees before the tiny corpse, throw her head back to the night sky, open her mouth wide, and burst with a roar of bereavement and emotional destruction ... Hulda realized that her thoughts were disgusting.

Anyone who looks at an event where the innocent are unnecessarily harmed or killed and says, "Oh, it's a miracle," simply because it wasn't worse than it was ... Hulda decided on that night that a person like that is selfish and illogical.

This wasn't a miracle.

And Hulda felt like a cunt-faced piece of slime for ever thinking that it was.

***

On the evening after the death of the innocent child, the oldest men in the village, with their gray haired wives on their backs, gathered in a place roughly in the center of Korelanda Village. Some of the younger ones went there too, and Ehlov was among them, with Hulda sitting on his back, weakly rubbing her palms together.

"First," one old woman said, her arms outstretched and her hand on her husband's first shoulders, "a fix for now needs to be done, and a then a fix for later."

Basically, a short-term solution, and then a long-term solution were needed.

One old man suggested, "Why don't we all buy little bells and hang them in our doorways, inside our curtains, so that whenever anyone enters or exits, everyone will hear it? Then, instead of having an autumn festival this year, we can use all that money to build a tall wall."

"That's a good idea," another old man said between his great chewing. He had grass in his mouth.

Ehlov raised his hand high. Then he waved it back and forth, and he said something that surprised Hulda.

"Why don't we just buy some wood and make some doors with locks?!"

Everyone gawked at him, Hulda included.

In Hulda's homeland, most peasants didn't have doors. A good piece of lumber for building an adequate door could be rather expensive. She hadn't seen any doors in Korelandan houses either. When one considered that the centaurs needed all the wood they could get for building larger houses, it sort of made sense that they didn't bother with doors.

But ... this country was fairly well off, wasn't it? Maybe the people hadn't bothered getting doors because they didn't think they needed them? Maybe they thought that since there was always more males than females, and that men usually slept surrounding the females, that they were safe enough?

Still, considering how badly the men wanted to protect their females ... Hulda honestly thought they should have invested in doors a long time ago.

An old man with an eyepatch asked, "Does anyone here even know how to make a door for a house?"

A bit of buzzing went around the men as they tried to figure out if anyone had the required knowledge. Ehlov spoke up again. "We could simply hire the local carpenters and blacksmiths."

Everyone else stared at each other with wide eyes and drooping shoulders, as if they were all silently asking, "Why in the ever loving fuck didn't we do this years ago?"

And it was decided. The community all voted and agreed that they wouldn't have an autumn festival. Instead, they'd invest in doors and locks.

Early in the morning after the meeting, several of the elders went to the marketplace to find a few carpenters and blacksmiths that would assist them. Most of them were so moved by the elders' pleas that they only asked for enough money to cover the materials and labor. In the meantime, every family in the village purchased little bells and ropes, and they made loosely tangled curtains out of them. Some men tied broken farming tools and cooking utensils to the curtains so that the noise would be even louder and less melodic.

As everyone worked later in the day, a few carpenters visited all the houses so they could measure the doorways. Later, those carpenters would ask blacksmiths to make hinges, handles, and sliding locks.

Within a month, the carpenters were starting to go from house to house, fitting doors to the buildings and attaching the important metal pieces to them. It took them a few more days to get every single house done.

But even when the doors were in place, the messy ropes, bells, and such were still hanging inside the buildings.

There wouldn't be an autumn festival this year. They'd simply work more on that day.

Quite a few people were rather happy with Ehlov. Hulda was always with her husband when she wasn't inside the house. So, she couldn't help but notice all the people approaching and congratulating Ehlov. The men would slap his first shoulders and grin at him. The women would give them almost ... flirty looks, batting their eyelashes and making little smiles. They often spoke to Ehlov with the neediest voices, as if they wanted nothing more than to have him speak to them. Ehlov's reactions to these interactions were amazingly wholesome. He'd humbly say something like, "Oh, my wife wanted to go this way," or "My wife needs something, excuse me."

The village felt rather safe, all things considered.

Even so, there was a bit of fear in every family. In the house Hulda lived in, for example, Danuta seemed a bit traumatized. She was nowhere near as traumatized as the poor mother whose child had died, but that didn't mean she wasn't in need of comfort.

On the morning after the Prowlers had tried to steal females away, Danuta refused to put Dagny down. She held the baby for what seemed to be hours, and she wouldn't even leave the bed. Her gray eyes were bloodshot and wide. In order to coax her back to a state of normalcy, Dobromil had to cuddle with her for a long time, letting his voice gently rumble against her shoulders, throat, and ear. Hulda didn't linger and listen. It seemed to be an affectionate, intimate exchange.

Danuta did eventually return to her normal way of living, but sometimes there was still something close to terror bubbling in her gaze, and as soon as she was finished with a task, she would say, "Where's Dagny?" Then she'd hurry inside to look at her baby. The cute little thing could roll over and hold her head up at this point, and she'd often smile at her mother.

Hulda was afraid too. She didn't want anyone to know she was. So, she kept on with her work and tried not to worry. It was a good thing that Ehlov had asked her to count things. Counting helped her to keep her mind away from bad thoughts. Work didn't do that, because she had worked all her life. Work wasn't enough, but counting was just fine.

There were also the lovely new words her husband whispered to her.

He didn't give too many. He said he was afraid of running out of them. Regardless, Hulda was pleased with what he gave her.

Currency. That meant money, usually when talking about how much a country's money is worth.

Elegant. That meant fancy, but in a way that was pretty and stylish, even dignified.

One word that had her thinking was retaliate. Retaliate basically meant to fight back.

On a fairly cool afternoon, once the bulk of the day's work was done, Ehlov took Hulda out for another little ride. Hulda had figured out that the men in Korelanda considered running to be the most natural way to have fun, and carrying the women and girls was the most natural way to socialize with them.

When Ehlov wanted a rest, he went to a commonly favored hill where a few other centaurs where relaxing. The few women and girls there were walking as far as their leashes allowed, picking wild flowers or singing to themselves. On top of the hill, there was a great tree that provided ample shade. It seemed to be a favored tree. It might never be chopped down.

Ehlov rested his horse-like body and helped Hulda to unwind the loop of her leash. A neighbor girl of perhaps thirteen years approached fairly quickly and offered her a tiny flower. A few moments of idle playfulness went on, and when Hulda had a garland she put it over her head wrap, because she couldn't think of anything else to do with it.