Owena’s house was finally starting to look like a proper shop again. The floors were swept, tables were put back in place, rugs laid down. Sareva set the broom by the wall.
“I was thinking of giving the cat a brave name,” came Owena’s voice. Sareva tapped her chin, looking down at the drowsy feline, Owena’s new housemate.
“What would you consider brave?”
“Maybe ... Gallant? Is that a silly name for a cat?”
Sareva couldn’t help but chuckle. “I don't think so. Besides, I don't think cats have naming traditions.”
Owena laughed. “Good. Then it is settled! So, did you have something to show me?”
“Nothing all that special. I just brought some of those spices for those wax balls. Aaaand…” Sareva walked back to the table and pulled out a bottle of wine from the basket she had brought, turning around with it in hand and a grin. “For you. I thought you could use something to lift your spirits if need be.”
With a giddy squeak, the baker and hugged Sareva. “I love wine! Too much really. Should we open it now?”
Sareva chuckled, her grin widening. “Up to you. A friend gave this one to me; it's very sweet and fruity.”
Owena plucked the bottle from her hand, pouring two cups out. “I love it a bit sweet! My Ma is a big wine lover and made me into one too. Would you like to take a seat? We can drink wine and make our defense spices!”
“Best not to have too much while we work, though. Will we need bowls or anything?”
Owena plopped a crate down on the table. “Oh, we need all these things.” She began pulling objects from the crate: spices, bowls, gloves, masks, and the like inside. “Here we go. First you need gloves so not to get it on you.”
She opted first to put on a mask, then the gloves, not wanting those to get in the way of her securing it. She began leading her through the steps, crushing certain spices, combining them, mixing. Just as they had combined the spices and mustard, there was a frantic knock on the door. Owena, understandably cautious, approached and called through the door. “Who is there?”
Suddenly, the door burst inward along with a man covered in a rawhide blanket. His fake hunchback straightened. As he did and Owena screamed, backing against the wall opposite Sareva. “Get out!” She cried, “You are not welcome here!”
The door slammed shut behind the man, whom she could only assume was the man who had wrecked the shop, the thief Wulfthrud. “Quit you, or else it'll be a blood bath instead of a bakery.” He had a hatchet in one hand, threatening Owena, and so had not yet noticed the unplanned presence of the tailor. Dipping her gloved hand into the spice paste, scooping some up in her fingers, she snuck up behind the hulking monster, tugging the mask off with her other hand. She saw Owena cover her mouth, clearly fighting herself not to scream, and in that instant Sareva leapt on the man’s back, smearing her hand over his face, especially his eyes. He roared, stumbling about and blindly trying to grab at her. She tried to slip away from him, but his left hand managed to grab her sleeve by her shoulder. However, she couldn’t let him bring her around in front of him, or she would be at his mercy. Her right hand clung to his right side, grabbing a fistful of tunic to anchor herself behind the raging beast as he blundered about.
Always be wary, always protect yourself…
Pain exploded in her chest when Wulfthrud launched himself backward, crushing her between himself and a support pillar. She cried out, the pain in her ribs like a fire through her whole torso. Past the pain, she reached into a pocket in her skirt, withdrawing the scissors she always kept there and pressing the point against his side. “You brutish oaf!” She yelled. “Heel you dog!” Wulfthrud wildly hit over his shoulder, shouting “You bitch!” and though she ducked, she could not escape all the blows, focusing all her might on pushing on the scissors even when she felt something warm and wet slickening her grip on them. As he blundered around again, swatting at her, she tried her best to keep up, but her shaky legs tripped one too many times over his erratic steps and collapsed beneath her, leaving her splayed over the counter and some crates by it. The intruder wheeled around to face Owena, shouting something at her, but Sareva could hardly hear him or Owena over the ringing in her own ears.
Shouting and clanging, a banging on the door…
She was hanging onto the hem of his tunic, trying to keep him from Owena, but she was only pulled along stumblingly herself. One of his hands seemed to hang injured at his side, her scissors protruding from his other side while he held Owena by the throat. She tried to jam her fingers into his eyes. “Kick! Claw! Do whatever you have to Ownea!”
“Shut up you whore!” he roared, flinging Owena’s flailing body at her, hitting her with blunt force. She hit a wall, catching herself and tried to stumble around his defense, her feet dragging and hunched over, all the while shouting encouragements to the weeping, imperiled baker. Finally, Owena got in a good kick, and in anger and pain, was thrown to the floor. The thief advanced on the baker, once again with hatchet in hand. A weak kick to the back of his knees caused him to buckle briefly, but earned her a fierce backhand that propelled her into the table…
“Quickly, get under the table.”
A calm autumn day.
“They’ll come help us, right?”
There was blood on her hands.
“Get back!”
Humming and rocking.
“Don’t come out.”
The moon was so small that night
“What do you want?!”
The back of her head seared with pain.
Sareva could hear the swishing of blood pumping in her ears, feel the contours of the table that her hand had scraped against. She felt dizzy, like there was a great pressure building in her head as if it were a goblet being filled to the brim. Faint or fight.
Wulfthrud advanced on Owena, who lay on the floor only semiconscious. The adrenaline-fueled tailor assailed him once more now screaming as she aimed to gouge out his eyes with hooked claws. The next thing she knew, she was on the floor, flat on her back, having been flipped over his shoulder by her arm. Looming over her, the face of a wild beast, its mane matted against its face by the blood from a reopening scar and a tear over its eye. It howled. She had no breath to respond.
Sareva gasped in vain over and over until her lungs cooperated and succeeded in taking a single haggard breath. Coughing and sputtering, and aches creeping in all over, she rolled onto her side. She could do nothing, finding no more strength as Wulfthrud secured the baker. “You whoreson! You vile, putrid pitiful worm!” she croaked hoarsely, rising shakily to all fours. She couldn’t lay idle, do nothing, but her weakness gave her nothing to do but to hurl insults that fell of the predator’s back. “Are you so low that you would prey so on defenseless women?! Coward! Always, only women, only the helpless.”
“Prey?” He snarled at Sareva, pulling rope from his belt. “The baker comes with me; and you'll tell them all - watch how quick they come. But when a man is murdered in the walls of Bree - no one turns a cheek.”
Panting, Sareva scooted herself back against the door. “You're a coward,” she spat venomously, mentally begging her legs to give her some support as she tried to rise up, leaning always on the door, “that's all you are. If you really wanted to help, find the murderer. All you care about is self-satisfaction.”
Wulfthrud smiled sadistically. “I am the murderer. Bree has made no efforts to investigate the man's death - but watch them flock after the baker. I will expose their own injustice.”
Sareva leaned, barely propped up against the door only by her locked knees. She prayed desperately that he did not see how badly her legs were shaking. “You protest your own lack of incarceration?”
“There are far larger ideals at play, girl.” He barked, heaving Owena, now gaged and bound, over his shoulder. “Bree is guilty of ignoring those who suffer - much like the drunkard I hacked to death. They care not when some old, poor man dies. But when the baker is kidnapped, they will reveal who they favor.”
“How hypocritical, exposing an inequality of value for life by showing a complete lack of value for any life.”
“If there is value in life, I have been robbed of it. And now I take it all back, you should be grateful this lesson is being taught while you've still got fight in you.” He tossed the rawhide blanket over the weeping woman on his shoulder, staggering forward, still bleeding from the scissors embedded in his side. Still, he had at least enough strength to raise his hatchet as he approached the door; she didn’t want to find out how much else he had left. “I am giving you the choice to be a courier, or a crime scene.”
Sareva’s heart tore as she heard Owena’s muffled scream through her gag, yet it quelled some of the quaking in her knees as defiance welled up within her. She raised her chin to meet his eye. “Then your act will have no one to proclaim it.”
With a bloodshot, murderous gleam, the animal raised its hatchet again. To her shame, Sareva flinched, shutting her eyes tight and turning her head from the sight of her demise.
There was a thud, and Sareva had only a brief moment to register that she was still alive before she was shoved aside, colliding with the wall. Her legs crumbled beneath her limp weight as if boneless. As a final act, she threw one of the wax balls Owena had given her. The weak throw didn’t even register, as the spice filled sphere began to descend as soon as it left her hand, bouncing off his back and cracking open on the floor.
“Whether you spread the word, or stand in stubborn silence,” he growled, “I will find satisfaction.” The door slammed shut behind him.
Sareva fell into a crumpled heap. The adrenaline that had sustained her when she thought she could do no more evaporated. Panting turned into labored breathing and then into sobs. She curled up on her side despite the pain in her torso and back, unable to stop shivering. Cold. So cold and yet she sweat and sobbed until she was drenched. For she could stop them no longer.
Crashing over her like a wave, tens, dozens, scores of voices, moments disconnected in time and place fluttered and flashed before her mind’s eye like a swarm of bats storming from a cave. Eyes closed, eyes open, still there, still present, still real.
How long passed until the moment faded, she didn’t know, but long after that even she lay there. Owena was lost. The thief knew of her. The sun would soon set. She needed to be home.
She needed to be safe.
