Hammer & Air Read online

  I went to the doorway, cautiously, it were true, and opened the door a wee bit to see what were there.

  A bear stood there, seven feet tall, pawing softly at the door.

  I gasped and slammed the door shut. Hammer stood from the front room and came into the kitchen, and as I leaned against the door and gasped like a fish on a dock, he looked at me in shock.

  “What is it?”

  “It’s a bear!”

  “A what?”

  “A bear!”

  “Well, what’s it doing out there?”

  I blinked and thought a minute.

  “Knocking.”

  And now Hammer were the one gaping like a fish on a dock.

  “WHAT?”

  I shrugged, baffled, and not as afraid as I should have been. “Well, it were standing on its hindquarters and batting at the door to get our attention. What does that sound like to you?”

  Hammer’s lake-blue eyes were as large as I’d ever seen.

  “It sounds like knocking,” he said, setting back with a puzzled frown. “I’m thinking we let it knock!”

  I grunted, unhappy. “I’m thinking…” I muttered to myself, reasoning. “The thing is,” I said, turning to Hammer, “why would it be knocking? If it were going to attack, it would have. But this cottage… it’s a good place. It’s seeming like a creature—even a furry one with teeth—that would be knocking at a door like this one, well, it would not be an enemy. You hear me on this, Hammer?”

  Hammer let out a huff of air. “Aye,” he muttered, because it were the old word, and then, as though remembering himself. “Yeah. Yeah yeah. But I’m not liking it, Eirn. When you and I are shredded bits o’ bear dinner, you make sure….”

  I grinned at him. He were not accustomed to uncertainty, nor to taking my lead. On impulse I leaned in and kissed his cheek roughly. “I’ll be sure to write it in blood, that it were my thick idea. In the meantime, even if we’re food for bears…”

  “At least we’ll be together,” he finished cheekily, and I grinned again, mostly to hide my fear.

  Then I opened the door.

  The bear gave an affronted grunt and then shook himself, all over, the snow throwing off him in chunks of ice and pebbles big and hard enough to make Hammer and I duck and fend them off with our arms.

  “Bloody animal!” Hammer swore. “Big lummoxy oaf! Get your snow off in the out of doors, dammit!”

  The bear made a sound that I could only classify as apology and backed up. This time he shook the snow off on the porch instead of on us. When he’d gotten as much as he could (which were nowhere near all!) he made that little growl/moan in his throat again and looked at us questioningly.

  “Yeah,” I sighed. “Come on in. But stay in the kitchen until we get the worst of that off you, right?”

  “Get it off with what?” Hammer wanted to know. He scowled at the creature standing in our kitchen with some resentment. (Yes, rather presumptuous, but the cottage felt like ours, and so did the kitchen. What of it?)

  “Uhm…” I grimaced. “The rake. You get the rake, I’ll get the broom, and we’ll get him fit to…”

  “To roam the house?” Hammer asked, still in disbelief, and I shrugged.

  “Everywhere but the bedroom,” I said firmly, and he rolled his eyes, apparently mollified.

  “Good. I’d hate to have to take that thing up the arse. When they said hung like a bear, they weren’t kidding, were they?”

  I got a look at the bear’s tackle, hanging low from near its back end, and whistled lowly. “No thank you!” I muttered, and then winked at Hammer. “You’re quite enough for me, you bloody bugger. Here, let me go fetch the rake.”

  The bear looked at Hammer sideways and growled.

  “I’ll go get it,” Hammer said with ill temper. “It’s clear he likes you better.”

  He did actually seem to like me better. Hammer and I cleaned him off with rake and broom, and the bear groaned in pleasure as we managed to scratch itches he probably didn’t know he had. I noticed that when I got a little rough he simply twitched away from me, but when Hammer were anything but gentle and genteel with his rake, the bear would growl like a menace. I told the damned thing to pipe down—if it weren’t for Hammer’s good graces, I would have left him outside to become the world’s fuzziest snow-covered hill, and then what would he do? He gave an affronted grunt and I scratched him between the eyes with the broom. That seemed to soothe him—he flopped on his bottom, and I told him he were probably clean enough to go sleep on the animal fur rug in front of the fire.

  With a mighty yawn, he did just what I asked, and Hammer watched me skeptically as I swept the dirt and dirty snow out of the kitchen to the back porch.

  “We’ll just leave him there, in the sitting room?” he asked, and I shrugged.

  “Like I said,” I answered back, “he knocked. Aren’t there rules of hospitality we’ve got to follow?”

  Hammer blinked at me with a sort of horrified blankness. We’d been bred with basic things: how to eat at a table without burying our face in like pigs at a trough, how to answer our masters when we were employed, how to help repair the orphanage, and how not to spit on the floor when there were women in the room.

  Allowing someone into our homes presupposed that we would ever have them. The most Hammer and I had ever aspired to had been a flat over the smithy. Being on the run, that wish had become a bedroll by the embers of a dying fire, but because we shared the bedroll, it seemed enough.

  But this—what we had been doing for two sennights—this were different. This were… a home. This home had a heart that seemed to beat for the things we wanted to give each other. This place were….

  Well, it were as holy as any place of worship I’d ever been dragged to as a boy. (Our town had a local pantheon. I’d chosen the god of motion, but I’d been calling on the god of magic a lot lately. They seemed to work well together, at least for Hammer and I.)

  And it were into this holy place that we’d just let an enormous beastie with long teeth and claws that could shred flesh from bones in one massive pass.

  I sighed, looking at Hammer unhappily.

  “He did everything we asked,” I told him, not sure if I were weak or strong. “And it’s wicked snowing outside, Hammer. I keep thinking, you know. The way this place works. I’m thinking that if he showed up at our door, he’s supposed to be here.”

  I shrugged and kept sweeping, more pressing at my throat, but I weren’t planning on spilling it until Hammer took the broom from me and cupped my chin in his hard fingers.

  “That’s not the whole of it,” he prompted, and I found I couldn’t look at him for this part.

  “You were sick,” I said. “Burning up in my arms. Dying. I prayed to any god listening, Hammer.” I had to stop and wipe at my cheek, and swallow. Everything burned. “This cottage showed up, and it saved your life—”

  “You saved my life.”

  I shook my head. “I couldn’t have done anything without this place. And there you would have been, dead in the snow, and I would have died with you.” His thumb came up and passed over my cheekbone, and I felt weak and stupid in front of his practicality and stoicism. No one ever accused Hammer of being sentimental and foolish. How were it his touch on my skin made me feel like the very definition of a sentimental fool?

  “We owe this place, then,” he said, seeming to read my mind for me, and I nodded in gratitude.

  “Yes,” I whispered. “Very much, yes. We owe this place, and it gave sanctuary to this creature, and the least we can do is let him stay.”

  Hammer put the broom in the closet that seemed to be made for such things. “Very well,” he said, putting his hand on the small of my back to take us back into the sitting room. “But you need to wish him his heart’s desire for breakfast. I have no idea what he wants to eat, and he already doesn’t like me.”

  I grinned at him and impulsively kissed his cheek. He turned his head at the last moment and captured my mouth inste
ad. The kiss turned sober, turned serious, turned real, and he pulled back. “That there’s an enchanted animal, Eirn. Be careful with him. If he were a man, I’d say he wants you already.”

  I shrugged him off. “Everyone knows you’re the handsome one,” I said, believing it because I’d been watching girls and boys throw themselves at Hammer since he were old enough to hold his cock in his hand to aim it to target.

  Hammer looked at me sharply, as though he were the one with something to say, but by then, we were in the living room, and the bear were watching us, and watching us carefully, listening to all that fell from our lips. Hammer glared at the creature instead of answering me, and we sat down together on the bench with the cushions, under the lamp, and I picked up the blue book again.

  “Can we hear how it ends?” he asked, a wee bit of unselfconscious eagerness sneaking back into his voice, and I smiled.

  “You want to rest your head in my lap?” Because I knew he were getting sleepy, and when he did that, I could rest the book on his shoulder, and it were comfortable for both of us.

  “Aye,” he said, the old word coming naturally, since I never called him on it.

  I read to him, liking the way his shoulders shook with the funny parts, or his hand gripped my thigh for the exciting ones. When we were done with that one, I moved to another one, and we forgot about sharing our cottage with the odd beastie, right up until he started to snore.

  The snore interrupted my passage and startled Hammer, and I figured we’d best be on our way to bed anyway. I set the book down, and Hammer and I made our way around him, all sprawled out on that patched fur rug, the gold light of the fire playing on the handsome sable of his coat. The ends of the sable were touched with silver, and those flickered in the firelight too. Slumbering, with those small, bright, brown eyes closed, he looked like a peaceful creature, one who wouldn’t hurt a fish, much less a blacksmith and a printer who’d been lost in the woods with him.

  Nevertheless, Hammer elbowed me sharply and looked behind us to the magic cupboard. I didn’t need to be told twice, and I wished especially hard for something to give the bear that he would crave and would make him not eat us, and then we ventured together into bed.

  We closed the door against the bear, so the darkness covered us as we huddled under the quilt that night. Every finger against my flesh felt…sacred. Like the idea I’d had of home. Finding his lips and his skin in the dark were a blessing, one I prayed for again with every kiss. There were no roughness, this night, no invasion, just each other’s cock in our palms, and our cries of completion smothered in by the other’s lips.

  Still, it left us limp and sated, and he pulled the cloth from the dresser and wiped us clean before settling me into his arms, where I’d been wont to go since he’d healed enough to do this.

  “Sometimes,” he whispered in my ear, “sometimes, I like your spend on my skin, on my stomach or in my mouth. Sometimes, I want it to stay there, like proof that you and I were together.”

  Before we’d run, I would have thought this were proof that Hammer were a coarse boy, one whose only intelligence lay with what he could touch or taste. But I’d seen him light up with the promise of stories and heard the things he had no words to say in his voice.

  “I’ll wake up with you in the morning, Hammer,” I told him, reassuring. “That’s all the proof you need.”

  He smiled against my lips in the dark and kissed me goodnight then, in a way of comfort and not of sex at all.

  Part VI

  Beastie in Our Bed

  The next morning, there were honeycomb in the cabinet, which we fed the bear on the porch when we went outside to sweep the snow off of it. We shoveled the walkway (not that anyone were coming) and shook out the tree branches we could reach so that they’d shed their burdens now, and not when they got full enough to crack over our heads.

  By the time we were done with that, the roof were starting to get o’erfull, so I went up to sweep it off. Hammer wanted to go, but I refused.

  “For one thing, you’re squat and all muscle. If either of us is going to fall through, it will be you!”

  “I’m not squat!” he complained, and I rolled my eyes.

  “You’re not, but you are all muscle, and I’m all bones, so that’s one reason I should go.”

  “Name another. I’m not convinced.”

  I took his hand from around the broom and held it, feeling it tremble some. “That’s the other,” I said soberly. “We worked hard today, and you’re not quite well. Now let me go!”

  “You hate heights!” he complained, and he were right. It were no matter. I stood atop the porch railing and used the gutter at the edge of the cottage to pull myself up to the roof. When I were there, I reached down and Hammer passed up my broom, and I got to work, being especially careful, since the roof were icy.

  I looked down once in a while and saw Hammer, staring at me with a pale face. I’d smile and wave, and he’d wave back soberly, but he tracked my movements from edge to edge of the roof, making sure I would not fall.

  Twice he had to trip over the bear, who were sprawled out on the porch to nap in the sun, but when the bear would have growled at him, Hammer swore at it, full of irritation. The first time I thought the thing were going to fell him and eat him; his roar and his glare were full of so much irritation, but then the bear heard me thumping away at the roof with the broom and calmed down. The second time, my foot slipped, and I fell on my rump on the roof, stopping my slide by digging my boots in. Hammer swore at me, and the bear actually looked up and saw what Hammer were doing and then stared at me in what seemed to be shock.

  Hammer let loose with curses strung like overripe berries on a thread, each one splatting against my cringing shoulders, and the bear threw his head into the air and started to bark/howl/wail into the air.

  I clamped my hands against my ears, and Hammer (who were closer) did the same, and the eaves shook with the force of that distressed rumble, shedding almost as much snow as I could sweep.

  “Gods, Hammer, make him stop!” I begged, and Hammer shouted over the din, “He’s worried about you, dammit! Get down from there, and let me do it tomorrow!”

  “I’m fine!” I insisted, but as I tried to stand up, another howl sent the roof shingles shaking, and one of them slid beneath my foot. That quickly, both feet went out again, and down I went, shhwwuushing off the roof like a child sledding down a hill.

  I landed flat on my back in a thick patch of soft snow, staring up at an infinite blue sky and fighting for my next breath like I’d fought for footsteps with Hammer on my arm.

  Hammer were crouched over me in an instant, his hand easy on my chest. “Give it a minute,” he murmured anxiously. “Give it a minute, don’t fight it… the wind’ll come….”

  A breath took me then, and every muscle in my body started to hurt.

  “All right, Eirn, before you scare my shorts brown, do me a favor. Can you wiggle your toes?” I did, and he smiled a little, making me realize how truly frightened he’d been. “Now your fingers.”

  I held my hands up and said, “I’m not made of glass, Hammer, now help me up.”

  My shoulders hunched protectively and then twinged, and then Hammer slid a strong, shaking arm under them. I tried to keep the discomfort to myself until he got me upright. The bear were there, however, leaning against me, and I were in enough pain not to be nice about it.

  “Get off me, you bloody great lummoxy beastie! Your caterwauling near to killed me! Now skitter, and let Hammer get me inside.”

  The creature gave a pitiful little moan and sat down in the snow as we passed.

  “You know,” Hammer muttered, taking more of my weight as my thigh muscles went weak, “it would make a great addition to that godsawful rug.”

  “Hush.” I grabbed the porch railing and tried to salvage a bit of my pride. “Binding you up after taking out one predator were bad enough. I’ve no wish to do the same for you again, no matter how lovely the cottage.”
>
  Hammer’s sigh were eloquent. “Well, since you insist, let’s get you into the bath instead.”

  The bath were hot on my abused muscles, and my back became liquid instead of iron by the time the water began to cool. Hammer left me for minutes to put our clothes into the basket that had appeared at the corner on our second day, and to take our boots to the porch. I heard him there, yelling at the bear, but something about the animal must have gotten to him because the next thing I heard were Hammer’s curses, as he brushed off the snow.

  A few moments later, he huffed his way into the washroom with a thick towel and some sort of robe.

  I looked suspiciously at the thick white garment. “What happened to my small clothes and trousers?” I asked, sort of horrified.

  Hammer shook his head. “Don’t ask me. It were bulging out of the drawer. Someone wants you to have it!”

  Our eyes met and narrowed, and I looked out to the front room, where the bear—relieved of his burden of snow—had taken up residence on the fur rug, his head resting in his paws like a Spaniel’s. He gave me a very very innocent look, for all that he were a bloody great mass of muscle and claws, and I would have shaken my head, but the pain and stiffness held me back.

  “No!” I snapped. “No! I’m not wearing that!” And to my surprise, Hammer sighed.

  “It will be much easier than putting on your small clothes,” he murmured. “You know I’d rather have a cold box full of steaks and some jerky than that one hanging about, but he’s right. It’s warm. It’s soft. And when you go to bed, you just ease it off your shoulders, and I’ll keep you warm.”

  I looked down at my cooling bathwater and flushed. “I’m not sure I’m up to…”

  Hammer snorted. “Aye, so fucking’s out. If you were a girl, we’d still be up on the tally.”

  I looked at him and wrinkled my nose. “I don’t want to talk about girls,” I said, knowing I were sulky and not caring. Hammer’s soft laugh let me know he were teasing me, and I shook my head and suppressed a wince, because bath or no bath, it all still hurt.