Room To Grow

by BlndDog

Chapter 9

Despite doing almost nothing, Gemma was quite hungry between meals. Jacob ignored her when she asked for more, and from the uneasiness in his face Gemma guessed that the unicorn had given strict orders.

Gemma had investigated her cell thoroughly. There was no shortage of cracks in the walls, but every stone was firmly mortared in place. She could only dig out a few pebbles, and as tools they barely scratched the well-built barricade. She thought about using a ceiling beam as a battering ram, but these too were firmly affixed.

The smell of spices and cooked meat was ever present. More than her freedom, Gemma wanted food. It did not help that she could see everything the boys did. She knew which barrel contained salt fish and where each vegetable was kept. Sometimes the younger boys would sneak a fish head or make an extra cake for themselves as they were cooking. In hindsight Gemma knew that they did not do it out of malice, but when she had to watch them eat Gemma hated them more than she had ever hated anything.

The unicorn spoke regularly, no more than once every other night and going no more than three nights in silence. That was the only time Gemma heard the distinctive sound of her hooves. There was a way to hang comfortably from the ceiling beams, and whenever she heard hooves Gemma would cling to the beam and press her ear to the floorboard. Whoever the unicorn was speaking to always replied softly, if he spoke at all. From all the one-sided conversations she heard Gemma got the impression that it was a trader.

“Leave it here. Jacob, Joshua, take care of it. Do you need anything else? Alright. Wait here.”

“How is your wife? That is unfortunate. These years have not been kind to anyone.”

Gemma felt her suspicions confirmed when Jacob showed up one day with a leather bundle on his back nearly as big as himself. He unpacked it by the hearth as gently as if he was handling an infant, with wild excitement in his usually stoic eyes.

It was the dressed limb of a large animal, with bones in and the entire shoulder attached. In all likelihood an elk, and much too big even for Gemma to hunt.

Taking out his small steel knife, Jacob looked up suddenly as if startled. He looked straight at Gemma, who was pressing herself to the bars of her enclosure.

“Do you want the shoulder?”

Gemma hissed at him angrily.

“I mean it,” he said, putting up his bloody hands and sidling back a little, genuinely frightened. “Mother said you can have your pick before anyone else.”

Their communication had become a mix of their two languages. Even Gemma herself found it ridiculous, but it was better than silence. It had taken her especially long to learn the word for “mother”. She had understood that it referred to the unicorn, but a part of her had refused to believe that the unicorn could be mother to anything.

“Why?” Gemma asked.

“What part do you want?” But his slight hesitation was definitive proof that he was hiding something.

“Half the shoulder,” Gemma said. Hungry though she was, she knew that it was more than she could eat. “Give me half of my portion raw, and roast the other half for me.”

To her surprise Jacob did exactly as she said, delicately cutting through the lean red meat a bit at a time until a sizable chunk came loose. It was partly frozen, and he warmed the raw portion briefly on the fire before handing it through the bars. Gemma immediately tore into the dripping brick of flesh, drooling from the corners of her mouth.

She watched Jacob carefully as he cut up the rest of the leg. It was immediately obvious that he had never butchered anything of this sort, and oftentimes he dulled his knife against the bone. He seemed to care little about tendons, and on this matter Gemma could not stay silent.

“Don’t cut like that!” She said sharply, startling the boy. “You’re breaking all the cords!”

Jacob looked at her like she was crazy.

“That’s good sinew!” Gemma said. “Don’t waste it like that!”

He did not understand most of what she just said. Gemma tied an imaginary knot and pointed at the leg. He flicked his ears and cocked his head.

“Don’t you use sinew for anything?”

“What’s ‘sinew’?”

“That!” Gemma said, pointing emphatically at the leg. She was too far away for pointing to be effective, however. “The thing you’re cutting! That part of the leg!”

She stretched out her own leg and pressed down on the back of her foot.

“This thing!”

“Oh.” Jacob blinked. “So what?”

Gemma puffed up in agitation.

“It’s useful!”

“Useful for what?”

Gemma took a few breath to calm herself.

“Cut off the whole thing carefully,” she instructed. “In one piece. Leave it above your fireplace to dry.”

Jacob did as she said. He split the rest of the meat into fifteen generous portions of roughly equal size, and laid them all on top of a big, fire-blackened iron tray. Gemma watched him salt and spice the meat. Her captors seemed to have an unending supply of spices; leftovers from the exiles, probably. Just a handful from any one of the big glass jars that Jacob was reaching into could warrant a major trade negotiation between tribes.

Fortunately Jacob had some sense of how to cook the meat. Gemma was already feeling comfortably full when he gave her the second portion on a chipped porcelain plate. The smell of cooked fat and pleasant, exotic spices had her digging in as eagerly as she had with the raw meat.

When Jacob returned Gemma was lying on her back, her half-eaten second dinner sitting on its plate just outside her cell.

“You can have the rest,” she drawled, feeling so full that she dared not breathe too deeply.

“I’m full too,” Jacob said through a yawn.

“Who killed this thing?” Gemma asked.

Jacob did not answer. It was his way of keeping secrets, but Gemma knew the answer nonetheless. She decided not to pry for the moment. The unicorn must assume her utterly ignorant.

“How much more of this meat do you have?”

“Two more legs and…” Jacob stopped himself abruptly, his teeth clicking together. He turned away from scraping the iron tray and glared at her.

“What, did you not catch the whole deer?” Gemma asked sleepily.

Jacob finished his work in silence, his tail twitching moodily. He did not say anything when he left for the night.

Gemma woke to the sound of something heavy falling over. Grit and sawdust showered down as glass shattered and metal clattered against the floor overhead. Then came a heavy, deliberate blow, a burst of splinters, and for the first time since her imprisonment Gemma saw the cold light of the moon through an inch-wide and four-inch long hole.

The axe head shone in the moonlight as its wielder raised it for another blow, and Gemma held her breath. Then came the supernatural flash of unicorn magic, searing the ragged shape of the hole into her eyes and filling her ears with sibilant whispers. She lay curled in the corner of the cell rubbing her eyes, listening intently, hopefully for the second strike of the axe. She heard only slow, stumbling hoofsteps and raspy sob-like breaths.

Author's Note:

Sorry for this not so action-packed chapter, but Chapter 10 is almost done. Rejoice, for regular updates are back.