The next day, Michaela and Theodore went out on some delivery errands in Fullgreens.
She still had her cap on, but she wore a light cotton dress with a shorter skirt that showed her ankles and wispy sleeves that bared her arms like the rest of the New England residents. Her exposed arms particularly showed how frail and childlike her figure was, compared to the busty women of the neighborhood.
Feeling as if she was swimming in the hot, humid air, she felt Theodore’s soft white fur slightly sticking to her damp arm, his little pink tongue sticking out as if he was thirsty after the twenty minute of walk.
“We’ll hurry up, okay?” She tried to comfort her little son now that she completed her out of apothecary chores.
However, despite her intentions, a particular sight captured her attention, stopping her at her steps. A throng of young people were gathered in front of the butcher shop Carmine used to own. There was an unusual flurry of excitement–a lighthearted, giddy type of energy– at the butcher stall where especially girls verging on womanhood gathered around in either coy reservation or upbeat vitality.
Michaela wasn’t the only one interested in the crowd, as the older people of Fullgreens were also not used to the butcher stall being the honey comb of youthful attraction.
“It must be because of the new butcher lad,” snorted a peddler in his forties.
Out of curiosity, she narrowed her eyes and craned her neck to peer into the new butcher, who is the center of this exuberant attention. A tall boy was blocking her sight, but when he turned left, she was able to understand and justify the reason for such sensational response from the young girls.
He was tall enough to have his head and neck pocking out from the crowd of girls, and when Michaela saw his face, she could hardly believe that this boy could handle work like slaughter livestock.
His dreamy looks project the assumption that he definitely must do something that doesn’t involve a taint of blood or violence; rather there was an air of innocence and beguiling mischief in his marble-pale face and dark curly hair. His angular jawline set a contrast with his long neck, and even from the distance she can see, his dark eyes were framed with thick fluttering lashes.
She didn’t expect to hear his voice because of the sheer number of talkative girls and boys at the stall, so she was about to turn away.
But then his eyes that were smiling down at a girl flung wide open to her direction.
‘Oh, he saw me staring at him like he was a piece of fruit,’ the thought caused her to blush at her own impunity so she was about to turn away.
But then the boy who looked surprised at first soon made a gentle, bright smile as if she was his old childhood friend he has just discovered. Raising his right hand, he beckoned her to come forward, causing a few frilly bonnet clad girls to turn sharply backward to see the object of their new idol’s attention.
But before she could really hear what he was about to say, she quickly turned, her face stiff and impassive and disappeared. The only thing she could remember of him is that when he smiled, she noticed how he had evenly proportioned white teeth.
***
When she stepped inside the apothecary, she overheard shouting from upstairs in Gale’s private study. The tension filled back and forth conversation Octavia had earlier with Gale seemed to have blown into a huge fight that threatened to engulf everybody else in this feud. Somehow Michaela felt disheartened to see them fight like that. Even Gale was raising his voice, something she never saw even when he was dealing with the most difficult customers. His brooding anger conjured a different sort of fear from Octavia’s hysterics and screaming that made her look like an overheated globe of glass about to explode.
Earlier, when Gale opened his store after taking down the black curtains, her eyes flared up as if he just slapped her, and in retaliation she launched into a fiery interrogation over his motives for even having an apothecary. Michaela wondered if Gale became the target of her unleashed anger over Ulda’s death because of the sensitive issue she always had with her brother–the fact that he helps those who would sooner take him and his race down. Gale didn’t want to start on that route of conversation, it seemed.
At first Gale tried to patiently bear his sister’s misdirected wrath, but he also had a temper so it was a matter of time till sparks fly between the equally hot blooded brother and sister. It turned out that Gale is perfectly capable of saying things that keep the heart bleeding without offering respite.
Standing still at the bottom of the stairs, she and Theodore could hear Karl trying to calm them down, but Octavia was already yelling and crying and Gale was taking his time to form words, his priority no longer placed in abating the heat of argument but in engorging in her wreaked heart. Michaela could empathize, having had eight siblings.
She could hear Octavia yelling, “Coward! Sycophant! You might think that you overcame everything, Ulda’s death, the day of “Betiding” but you are just trying to run away. That was all you were ever worth, Gale, run run run! Foxie, run, run, run! Oh, and another thing! Playing with fire with a burnt hand–that is what you do!”
As if struck on the cheek, he was silent for a moment, but before Octave could either relish in her victory or pause in swift regret, he said in a cold voice that gradually sped up into burning fury, “Now I see what kind of game you’re playing. I am surprised by how long it took for me to realize it coming. If you want to be the victim, go ahead, but you are overstaying my patience this time, again.”
“Victim? You are calling me the victim? You don’t have the rights to say that I cause myself unnecessary pain, while you, you spend your life rotting in this humanly pretense. You really think I came all the way from England so I will see you like this? Why do you even do this? After all we’ve been through!”
Gale thought his sister’s pitiable fragility was contemptible because in his mind, she was unnecessarily inflicting herself further pain and trying to drag others.
For once, he couldn’t conceal his frustration, “Then go ahead with that idiotic mind game that you play! I hate your self-delusional attempt to fit everything in your own victimizing narrative. I should even be getting used to how often you do this, but you are just insufferable!”
In an authoritative voice, she said, her ominous eyes holding Gale still, “We have to root for each other, Gale. If one of us is hurting, you should always stay by the hulder’s side. No questions need to be asked. It’s blood over matter. After the “Betiding,” all of us deserve unwarranted aid and love. That is the least we could have after what they took from us.”
Through gritted teeth, he spat out as in contempt, “You think that you can demand others to act out your kind of ‘sympathy’ and ‘justice’ but you can’t always churn out that kind of response from me! I am not going to leave behind what I made on my own because of this.”
Michaela moved to the living room to avoid eavesdropping on the sibling’s feud, but her effort to give them privacy became unnecessary as Octavia stomped down the stairs and quickly put on her hat and shawl to leave.
She could see a glimmer that looked like tears in her turquoise eyes, as she murmured through trembling lips, “But…but I thought I did my best as your sister. If something like that happened to you, how can I live…why can’t you see that?” And she turned the door knob, and Gale was struck still, somehow her murmuring hurting him ten times fold her taunting insults about how he shrivels himself before humanity. Her last words were like knifes that dug deep into his chest and twisted mercilessly, shaking his entire body.
“Octave, please…” Gale begged but she already slammed the door on his face, causing even those who anticipated the sound to flinch.
***
After Octavia left, Gale busied himself doing one thing that brings extraordinary happiness and for the rest of the time causing much dismay to everyone. First of all, he offered to read children’s stories out loud to Theodore but cry during parts where the villains cast away the ill-fated heroes and took too much time checking on his health for his liking. Then he smoked some ordinary pipe with Karl in his porch that oversees the forest, which he gladly accepted, but spent too much time debating what he should do with his tail: leave it on a coat hanger or keep it invisible to mortal eyes as always?
Karl, in a tone of exasperation, said “You should keep it invisible to mortal eyes the way you always did.”
“But it is undeniable that I feel most at home when I keep my tail as it is. I could also just leave my tail in my study room.”
“That is kind of risky. What I do is that I like to sometimes carry out my tail like an extra belt,” As Karl said that, his long grey donkey tail making an idle swap as if it was chasing away flies buzzing. “What does your sister do?”
“Octave doesn’t even cast a spell. She just wears an oversized outfit that fits like a giant cloak.”
Karl was soon getting tired of talking about Gale’s dilemma over what to do with his lush red tail that is in his words, “beautiful but burdensome,” so he left his house, saying “I don’t want to fancy your vanity even if it means smoking free pipe.”
Then he did something that his apprentice viewed as extremely disconcerting and out of character: organizing his apothecary. With lipid eyes and calm expression, she viewed him finally sort out his laboratory and private office. She was pleased of course but was worried at the same time.
After he was done, she wondered if he would revert back to his careless ways but he spent the rest of the evening chopping a large amount of burdock root with a tool that looked like a miniature guillotine. Then, after having some dinner she prepared with Karl, who came back with a fish he caught in the nearby mountain river, Gale left the house.
“Do lock the door because I don’t know when I’ll be back.” He gave her that instruction as he put on his thick, brown gloves that he wears during his wild outdoor ramblings. Then he tightened his waterproof cloak that he prepared for unexpected rainy days and hail before making his departure. Wearing those clothes, he looked like an average hunter. She handed him a portable glass holder with a candle as he was about to leave the door still. His smile seemed a bit sad and bitter, as he thanked her and finally disappeared.
Standing behind Michaela who stared at the direction he went, Karl smiled and also said that it was time for him to leave.
“Shouldn’t you spend the night here?”
He looked rather surprised by the little seemingly apathetic woman’s inquiry, but he smiled and tapped lightly on his broad chest with his fist.
“Ms, I am a hulder. And a wanderer. Any boulder can be my pillow, and I would rather rub my back against a tree bough than shuffle inside these walls. I appreciate your offer though.”
“But the wolves…When they’re emboldened by hunger, you should watch where they strike.” She spoke in a rather low pitch and her clear eyes carefully bore into his light blue grey ones.
At this, Karl laughed and swayed his hand, “I spent seven years wandering everywhere and I never needed to spend my copper on inns. And not even bears are our match, so I’ll be fine.”
“Do you think…Gale will be okay?”
For a minute, Karl wondered if she didn’t understand hulders’ unbelievable physical strength, but he soon picked up what she really meant.
“Oh, yes. Please don’t worry. He usually goes back to his old self after acting as an anxious busy body.” Before he set his feet out into the dark, he turned briefly and made a mysterious smile, “Maybe it is not my place to say such thing but if I haven’t known your relationship with Gale, I would’ve thought you were his hidden younger sister. Or someone closer even.”
She frowned as he laughed silently and disappeared into the night.
After closing the door, she put on the lock as Gale bid her to and turned to see Theodore gnawing a ball of yarn that Gale uses to bind brown paper packages. Approaching his side, she picked him up like a puppy dog and tapped on his tiny pink nose and told him “no.” He looked surprised at her sternness but his ears flopped downward as he hid his eyes with his front paws, “But mom…I can’t help it. It was just…lying there, you know?”
At this, she pursed her lips, determined to not let him use his endearing cuteness as a weapon. After a long talk telling him that he should be careful of Gale’s belongings, especially since they both owe him so much, she went upstairs to give him some slices of kudzu root that she dried under the sun during the day.
As she tucked him to bed in their dimly lit bedroom, telling him “Next time, when you need to chew on something, just tell me or” she paused a bit, but she rubbed his belly, smiling, “Just tell me, okay?”
Soon Theodore fell into deep sleep, and overwhelmed by a wave of tenderness, she buried her nose in the blanket and closed her eyes, whispering “I love you.” Then she picked up her candle stand that was on the desk next to the bed and left the room, gently closing the door as to not wake him.
Holding up the candle holder, she headed to Gale’s private study where he kept his own library. She approached the wide window, lighting up some nearby candles, and she could see his room–a humbly sized room with a wide vandyke brown desk with accents of exquisite botanical carvings and two large book shelves of different heights: the leather bound books arranged by different colors: hooker green, chestnut brown, and burnt carmine red.
Feeling suddenly that she saw something move at the edge of her vision, she turned abruptly but what she saw was his huge dictionary with a leather bind of her favorite color; dark blue on his desk. The desk also had a ink pot with a quilt pen sticking out, a stand he uses to prop up his in progress manuscripts, some dirt-covered roots and leaves on a handkerchief. It was every bit a scholar’s room except that on his desk, he also kept a tiny crystal bottle.
She knew that she probably shouldn’t ever touch the pretty bottle. Suddenly looking side to side and also out of the window, she did hesitate for a moment before picking up the tiny opaque white vial and taking off the top. When she gently placed her nose to the rim, she knew what the solution was: lily and tea tree water. She detected a similar scent from a number of young male customers before, but something about the bottle felt different. For a while, she forgot that human men liked perfume as much as women, but since Gale likes to wash daily, she thought he would never be interested in donning himself with whiffs of cool mint.
She put down the vial, even wiping it with her apron in case he sees finger prints, muttering, “How unexpected.” She felt her face warm up a little as she felt as if she violated his sacred personal space and quickly turned her attention to the real reason she came into his study. The books.
Ever since Gale said that his apprentice should perform basic clerk works such as organizing the cheque book, a system he made for his apothecary, he drilled in reading and writing lessons everyday. At late evenings, she practiced writing and reading on the floor while he worked on his manuscript. Thanks to his rather ruthless pedagogy, she became a rather adept reader, but her handwriting would need “at least five more years of practice” in his standards.
‘But at least I know how to use the dictionary.’ she remembered that she almost said that when he made that commentary over her shoulder.
So she spent the remaining hours of the night by the light in his study, opening books, looking at strange pictures of mysterious creatures, plants, landscapes, and people. Sometimes she cracked a smile, as some of the caricatures of animals reminded her of the people in Fullgreens. For example, the image of a bear reminded her of the hard featured, obese drunkard shoe merchant and the gaunt mare the dame who always walks with a small bible and has diabetes. She quickly shut the book when she saw a page with a printed sketch of two rabbits copulating, blushing profusely as she shelved it back.
Time has passed and she was so absorbed by the grisly illustrations in a book titled “Medieval Torture in West and Central Europe” that she didn’t notice the door creaking open. When she saw a long shadow cast upon the book, she turned and saw Gale standing by the window.
His face, half shrouded in shadow, showed both relief and consternation. She looked up at him, wondering if he resented her use of his private study as an intrusion.
As she tried to think of a way to apologize, he suddenly crouched next to her, his head bowed down as he scratched the back of his neck, his other arm hanging on his bent knee. She finally noticed that he was holding an army knife. He emitted a deep sigh.
“I thought it could have been someone else.”
He removed his hand from his tense neck and rubbed his eyes and then his face, looking sideways. With deep scrutinizing eyes, she saw a slight blush suffused over his face but she tried to brush it off as an illusion of light flickering from the candle tapers.
Some time passed and Gale, noticeably more at ease, finally sat down comfortably on the hardwood floor and crossed his arms,
“Now, what brought you to my study? I wasn’t planning on training you tonight.”
For a moment, she stared at him, her lips in a tight line, but then she stared down at the book she was reading. His gaze followed hers but he flinched at the lurid illustration of an executioner about to strike down his victim’s limbs with a square axe and the black ink pools that were supposed to represent blood. He wondered for a moment where he got such a book.
Staring down at the executioner, she said, “I want to know the things that make me different from people…”
“The people?”
“Yes…and men too. Like someone like the new butcher.”
“Oh, the dead butcher’s son? Yes, I remember seeing him pass by. He’s quite handsome”
Gale said in a somewhat flippant, dismissive tone as he rose to pick up the books lying around on the floor. But his amber eyes looked carefully guarded as they turned again to her, waiting for her to continue.
“Then does it mean that the people find me ugly?” There was a tinge of melancholy in her calm question.
He almost dropped his precious volume of “The Dawn of Creatures in Norwegian Paganism” but he quickly regained his outward composure.
‘Oh no, the inevitable has come. Now or later she has to confront her racial differences. Maybe now is the time for me to confess my surprise when she turned human. But how can I tell her that…’ he shook his head and sighed, shelving his books by his preferred order.
“You shouldn’t mind those who judge those by looks.” he mentally cursed himself for willingly ignoring the complexity of her situation with such trite maxim when he was given the perfect opportunity to show his sympathy.
‘But then Michaela can be surprisingly stubborn. And I couldn’t evade this topic by flattery either.’
“I don’t mean it like that” she raised her voice, causing him to look down at her with cool, unreadable amber eyes as if he was asking “oh, yeah?”
She looked down at her hands, fidgeting, “The people here couldn’t possibly know that I wasn’t human before but a rabbit. But… I feel them putting an invisible wall between me and themselves. When I look up at them, their eyes are so cool and full of contempt, even if they are wearing smiles. And even when they speak kindly enough, I couldn’t hear the smile in their voice. And I’ve been here for two months already. But the new butcher, he…” she paused, her eyes cast down as if overcome by a feeling of shame, “I don’t understand why the people already seem so genuinely kind to him. I thought he might’ve have been someone who came home, but it wasn’t. It has been barely a day since he came.”
She looked up at him, “I needed to know…the reason behind such different treatment.”
His eyes softened as he just leaned on his back on the book shelf, his arms crossed. But he tried to maintain a look of measured indifference, which to some people made his features a lot more alluring than his candid laugh.
He didn’t want to sound too partial, thinking ‘I was too kind to her. Much too attentive. I don’t need to be.’ He tried to tell himself that.
“So did my books help you?”
“No, they didn’t.” She stated. “Because I never needed them in the first place.”
She finally faced him, “You told me once…that things might be harder if I become human.”
“Yes, I did.” His voice sounded a bit breathy as if her words took him back to the same spot they were in, but just two months ago. Things were very different then. He saw her, a desperate widow rabbit with a son, for a strange reason ostracized from other rabbits, and he, a hulder, wanting to work with someone who can keep his identity a secret. He didn’t expect their relationship to progress like this.
“And I know…that you would’ve preferred me to look like next door, Suzanna, ” who was white, “Or like Ivory.” Her dark translucent eyes peered at him, “Please don’t look at me like that, Gale. You know I’m saying the truth, and if I were you, I would to.”
She continued, “I…still remember the shock on your face when you saw what type of human I was. Don’t worry, I’m not mad at you. I guess the only feeling I had at that time was how sorry I felt for you. You looked quite distraught that time,” her slight chuckle was light and airy as if she found that situation amusing but it subsided quickly, “but that was when I didn’t know how nobody looks like me.”
Her eyes looked at the dark sky beyond the glass pane of the window, “When I look at myself in the mirror, I see two versions of myself. The “Michaela” with her own history and life going on. And the other who the people of Fullgreens see, fear, ignore, or forget…Maybe if I vanished with Theodore.”
She had no way to know what Gale looked like at the moment when she uttered those words, because she was looking at the sky.
But she soon smiled and turned to him, but her eyes still refused to look at his face, instead resting on his neck “But even if I got it harder than the people here, I am happier to be a human. There’s food before Theodore and I don’t need to fear being killed day and night. Even if I am not the type of human that people often see. Still, I wouldn’t change my decision even if I had the chance to.”
After saying these words, she suddenly felt shy because she never really talked this much about her thoughts to Gale. She stammered, something she never does, “You…you must be tired. I’ll let you be.” She scanned the floor to see that there weren’t any books she needed to put back and she rose, turning her back.
As she headed to the door, she said, “Please keep the door a little open till I reach my bedroom. It is rather dar–”
Suddenly Gale’s hand sprung from her behind and slammed the door she was opening back shut. The sound caused her to jump and her eyes were staring at his large hand with gracefully long fingers placed firmly on the door, deterring her from getting out. The sudden presence of his entire body behind her led her to catch her breath, and when she was about to stare behind at him and ask him why, she looked to her right and saw a silky muss of copper hair tumbling on her shoulder. He was burying his forehead on her shoulder, preventing her from fully seeing his face.
The first thing she heard him say was “That is that your conclusion? That you are the problem?”
“No, I…”
“That is what you said,” she felt anger in his voice, “You talk as if you are going somewhere far away. If you’re gone, then, what, you think you’re doing some kind of noble service? Are you really the same pushy rabbit that pressured me to hire you even though I tried to discourage you? If I knew you were this amenable, then I would’ve never made that kind of suggestion.”
She was stunned, his words hurting more than the ice pelts that threatened her the evening she came home with the bloody salt. Her chest felt like it was on fire, her heart a silently scorching blackening piece of paper.
As if he felt her body heat rising, his voice became calmer, “I am sure you heard gossip about me..So people seem to naturally assume that I know answers to all things.”
She kept staring at his hand that refused to budge, but she remembered how men and women in the village corner gossiped about how he might have been exiled from his home country for black magic or diabolical experiments with the human body. People have always been fascinated with his deep learning. It is not uncommon for physicians or renown practitioners who came from distant places like England to desire having a personal conference with him. Almost all of them were deeply skeptical when he introduced himself as “Gale Hulder,” as if he wasn’t what they expected and even went to other neighbors to confirm his self identification.
His mellow voice gently pulled her from her reveries, and she could hear the note of hurt in his tone.
“But I find myself sometimes just repeating what others believe. It takes much more time to be able to apply what I learnt from my books to my surroundings. Bending to others’ wills and beliefs…it’s cowardly but it is the easy way out.”
His hand curled slightly, and she couldn’t stop thinking how pretty the structure of his hand. If she didn’t keep her mind occupied with the beauty of his hand, she couldn’t keep her nervousness over the sudden physical intimacy between them in check. She literally felt his heat emanating from the body behind her and smelt his personal scent mixed with the pine trees and perhaps dew drops.
‘I feel strange…’ her nails scratched on the brass door knob, ‘I should be…angry and scared. I am caged between him and the door. But…’ she narrowed her eyes, bidding her mind to not spiral down into further questions. She find her tendency to ask herself questions like “Why am I like this” burdensome.
He continued, “Sometimes when it’s just too hard, I just say what is common belief whether I agree or not. About you and your situation, my books have no answers, and the people are so blind that they refuse to see you as their equal. They could only see you as a protrusion in a pop-up book.”
She said “I…I never said I think I was the problem,” but the way he stood like that rooted behind her, his forehead buried on her shoulder communicated that he doesn’t buy what she said.
Then he finally raised his head and straightened his back, looking down at the back of her head. She just stood still, staring at the door where he placed his hand.
“I, I’m sorry. I wronged you,” his soft apology caused her to stir a bit, and he felt her suddenly tug on the door knob, but he wasn’t going to let her go or escape, “From the very beginning, when you just turned human, I shouldn’t have responded like that, the way I did. My surprise…it should’ve hurt you. You shouldn’t act as if you’re okay with how I responded, and you definitely should never defend it as something natural. It wasn’t. I was insensitive and stupid–the biggest fool– so just get mad at me. Yell at me. You could even hit me all you want.”
As he raised his voice, he saw her raise her other hand to clasp over her mouth. He saw a slight tremor running through her body.
He bent his elbow of the arm he used to shut the door, hovering over her back. But he was careful to not directly touch her shivering form. He was pretty sure she wasn’t sure what to do with her rage. Now all he needed to do was wait for her to turn and slap him, pummel him the way she did with the spy, or push him and run away from the study. Maybe she would even leave, but he knew he didn’t even deserve the right to ask her to stay.
In a slow, dangerously low voice, she said, “When…when I was…today, there” she tried to calm her heaving chest, as she mustered the strength to continue, “there was a flea market at the end of…the street.”
He maintained his silence, listening to her words that sounded like digressions. He was having an idea of where she was going, but now he wanted to listen.
“And…I really wanted to get something with the wages you paid me. And when I approached, there was this man…with two hunting dogs,” she started to choke, her shoulders starting to tremble even though there was plenty of heat between them in the balmy night, “They…barked at me when I tried to approach, but nobody stopped.” Now she was fighting her tears, hot tears brimming in her eyes started to burn her as her entirely body convulsed. Her cries were silent, and her voice was barely beyond a whisper, “Nobody stopped them from barking and trying to come at me. He laughed. Nobody…” She lowered her head, her sweaty forehead sticking to the door, her profuse tears smearing on the ruddy wood, “I…had Theodore inside of my arms, but…nobody,” She started to choking, sobbing silently and shuddering violently, and when Gale buried the tip of his nose into the crown of her head, his head and shoulders hung over, she kept crying, her voice echoing “They laughed. They laughed.”
In a hopeless voice he asked, “And it happened today?”
She nodded, her forehead plastered on the door, and he fought his urge to hold her petite body toward him and kept his distance.
That night, they just stood like that before the door, her crying while wishing her heart would completely disintegrate like cinders till she was incapable of knowing pain, and he letting her words and tears shake his every being–his belief in his self and knowledge of the world and humankind, his idealism, but most of all, his pride. While they stood like that like erect statues, their minds were suck into their own turmoil and they knew they had to bid each other goodnight soon, but for now, just for now, they chose to be together.
Hulder Tales 