Chapter Three: Hand-Fasting
Three days have passed since Marmos. I’ve barely slept, have not eaten. This evening, the eve of my hand-fasting ceremony, my betrothed will join us for dinner. Mother made me piece together a makeshift bed in the living room. There, he will sleep alone tonight. We are forbade to touch until hand-fasted, so celestial law states.
Tomorrow morning, in the top field where the stone circle of our dead sleep, under the watchful eye of the village council, my betrothed and I will be wed, then he and I will return to the home in which I grew up and he will sleep in my room, with me. By tradition, consummation will occur. Tomorrow night, I will experience the pain before the bliss. I do not even know his name.
*
Mother, from her chair, hurls out commands: how I should wear my petals, how the table should be laid, what we can and can’t ask my betrothed of his wealth and background.
“Do not forget to turn the meat.” Mother’s voice, trill. “Put Alora in her prettiest frock, the white one. The short sleeves which show off her quills.”
“Stop fussing, woman,” Father says. Mother shrinks. Father pours himself an ale, pulls out his seat, head of the table, and sits.
I polish and lay out cutlery. We’ve borrowed fine porcelain from next door. Father insists we give off the impression of wealth, hoping it will beget wealth.
In the kitchen, I turn the piglet on the spit. Cooked pork tang fills the air, a smell that normally whets my palette.
I wash and dress myself and Alora and we sit and wait.
A knock at the door.
My heart bolts.
I let him in. “Hello,” I say. Here he is: broad, oxen-like. He grunts hello back, his greeting punctuated with a deep wheeze, and enters.
I muster a half-smile and guide him through our home. He walks with a thuggish limp, his left foot dragging slightly. I take his coat, careful not to brush my skin against his as he passes it to me, hang it up, and direct him to the table where my family sit.
*
I serve up the meat, the soup made from parsnips from the garden. Father fills our glasses with wine, downs his in three, fills it up again.
“Glad to have someone with grand connections taking on our daughter,” Father says. “She’s not perfect, but her skin is smooth.” Father raises his glass in my direction, swigs from it, maintaining eye contact with our guest.
“Yes.” My betrothed speaks, drawing breath loudly. “Your daughter is a fine flower—I see by the scars on her hand she works hard— ”
They discuss me as if I’m not there, am but an object. Heat rises in my belly. But fast, the conversation veers from me as our guest turns to his right and pats my sister on her petals.
“And Alora. Alora has something about her.” My betrothed pauses, looks at me again, lust dripping like honey from his tongue, then at Alora. “An innocence.” I watch on, like a pinned victim of sleep paralysis, as his eyes drink her in. “A rose with thorns.” He swigs on his wine. “Dangerous, yet beautiful, don’t you think?”
Father rests his fork, grabs at the tuft of white petals that crest his scalp, then picks up his fork again. With a wavering hand, he stabs another piece of meat from the central mound and pushes it off onto his already full plate without uttering a word.
Mother drops her knife. I pass her a clean one, enclosing the handle of the sharp silverware between her arthritic fingers, and directing her hand back to her plate,
Father grunts. “Eat.” He shovels pink meat into his mouth.
The tongue of the stranger slithers between ridges of pork. He makes primordial sounds as he feeds. Yet all the while I stare at him, disgust pulsing in my belly, he sucks and chews and stares—the white of his eyes exposed—at Alora. Still covered with spines and thorns, dolls and sea treasure her sources of joy in life, he watches her while she eats.
I blow steam from my bowl, rearrange my napkin, sip on soup I do not hunger for, find anything to do at the table except be in my head.
Bones stack like grim firewood on our guest’s plate. “Delicious,” he says and pushes his plate forward, then leans back in his seat. He strokes my sister’s quills with the back of his hand. My sister—her plump, pale arms far from adult softness, her small fingers clumsy—giggles. Her childhood spines bounce as she laughs. “Tickles,” she says.
My betrothed releases a slow sigh. Too far away to push his hand from her, I cough and kick a table leg. Cutlery and plates jump, clink. My betrothed looks across at me and removes his hand from her. My fingers flinch and move towards my meat knife. I wrap my right hand around the blade’s stone handle so tightly my knuckles shout in whiteness.
I can’t face another mouthful. “May the Celestials excuse me,” I say, and rise and take my full bowl to the sink. He follows me into the kitchen. I skirt around him like a glass chess piece on a board, I, a queen alone, all my pieces captured; him, encroaching, gearing up for checkmate. He grabs me. Firm, dirty fingers poke hard into the crook of my waist. “You are not my usual type,” he says, his hot breath a miasma of dinner and no self care, “but we will wed regardless.”
“Don’t touch me,” I say and pull myself from his grip. “You know as well as I, those betrothed must not touch before hand-fasting. What’ve you done? Get off.” My waist smarts from his aggressive grip. I brush away the kinks his forceful hand crimped into my smock and continue to brush long after my dress lies flat.
He mirrors my actions, mocking me. “Cheer up,” he says and heads back to the table.
In the kitchen, I scrape plates, wipe crumbs, contemplate a brittle marriage. A ghost pain strikes me in my side where his fingers have undoubtedly left their foul mark. I rub the area where my thorns once were to ease the discomfort and wish for the freedom of youth, quills and thorns.
Father calls me to the table. I return, squeezing Mother’s arm as I drop into my seat. She doesn’t respond. No one speaks. The rattle of my betrothed’s laboured breathing is all I hear.
“Alora, do you know the penny and handkerchief trick?” the stranger asks. He pulls a coin and dirty rag from his pocket, my sister captivated by his faux magic. Father, half-cut since sunset, offers this beast of a man something a little stronger, to which my betrothed nods and the two men head to Father’s study.
*
Alora and I sort the kitchen. Mother knits in her chair, feeling each stitch onto the needle. A grey scarf drapes and puddles onto the floor by her feet.
The click clack of her art, although hypnotic, is not enough to distract me from the anxiety in my bones. I keep busy, keep Alora busy. We do anything that keeps a wall between us and the men.
Mother calls my name. “Take me to my room,” she says. “Then put Alora to bed. You both need sleep for tomorrow.” A hollowness rings in her voice. Her eyes, catching the light of the candelabra, shine with a blank iridescence. Oil on water. I’ve never seen her look so old. I help her from her seat, her frail body a sad lightness to it, and she says nothing else. I want to express my trepidation to her, but these feelings pop like bubbles in my sternum, way before they birth into words.
*
“To bed, Alora,” I say after I’ve guided Mother to hers. I poke safe fireplace embers, then check on Father and the guest to bid them goodnight.
Father sleeps in his chair, his jaw hung open. I drape blankets over him and direct our guest to his makeshift bed. He sways as he walks loudly, knocking paintings, and swigs the remnants of Father’s sherry.
“Those are for you,” I gesture at the blanket stack, turn on a lantern for him so the room is dimly lit, and leave to get Alora ready for bed without looking him in the eye.
*
I read to Alora, brush smooth her petals, her quills. “He’s a nice man,” she says as I put down the book. “When he speaks closely though, I breathe like this.” Alora inhales and exhales through her mouth. “Remember the carcass we found on the beach? The ripped dolphin?” She mock-vomits. “He told me my thorns were beautiful though. Said he’d never felt such sharp tips.”
“He did?” Dear Celestials. “They are not his to touch, Alora.” She blushes. Pride slips from her face. “I’m sorry. Didn’t mean to raise my voice.” I pull her quilt up, and kiss her forehead. “You are gorgeous, what’s inside you is beautiful.” I point to her heart, blow another kiss, then leave. Closing her door behind me, I scurry to my room.
