The Dragon's Price (Transference #1)(43)
“Mama, my husband found a couple of ragamuffins wandering the woods.” She glances at me sidelong. “He offered to marry them at our feast tonight. Can you help the lass get cleaned up a bit for the ceremony while I get the stone lanterns?”
The woman’s wrinkled cheeks crease with a wide smile, and she clasps her hands to her chest. “Young lovers!” she says. “A wedding! I will take care of her.” She takes my hand in hers and leads me through the smoky clearing toward a small wagon. As we pass a cook fire, she calls for another woman to help us, asking her to fetch a lamp.
The wagon is dark inside compared to the firelit clearing. It smells like tea leaves and spices, and the wooden floor groans and creaks beneath our feet. After a moment, another woman enters carrying an oil lamp, and light fills the small wagon. Dried herbs and plants hang from the wagon’s walls. There is a single, intricately carved stone chair in one corner of the wagon, and a very small bed beside it.
“Sit here, child,” the old woman says, tapping the chair. She dips a cloth in a basin of water and hands it to me. “For your hands and face,” she explains. I scrub my skin, and when the cloth comes away, it is filthy. She rinses it and hands it to me again, and I wash a second time.
Next, she takes a brush to my hair and starts humming as she quickly, but painfully, brushes the tangles from it. When that is done, she gathers the hair around my forehead and above my ears and pulls it back, braiding it behind my head so most of my hair still falls long and thick to my waist. “A traditional Satari wedding braid,” she says. “You have nice, thick hair.”
The woman who brought the lamp steps in front of me and wrinkles her nose. “Take that shirt off so we can dress you in something a little bit…less smoky,” she says. My cold, weak fingers fiddle with the buttons on my shirt. When it is off and I am wearing only my stained camisole, the woman says, “Lift your arms.” I do, and a soft, pale yellow dress is pulled over my arms and head. It has very short sleeves, so my shoulders are mostly bare, and it is too short, reaching just below the middle of my shins. “Slip that ruined skirt off,” the woman says, and I let my skirt and petticoats fall around my ankles.
Finally, the old woman places a crown of dried yellow flowers around my head, so it rests just above my eyebrows. “Beautiful. Now you look like a proper Satari bride,” she says, standing on her toes to kiss my cheek. “You don’t even look like the same girl you did when you wandered into camp.”
I smile. “Thank you…” I do not know their names.
“Call me Mama,” the elderly lady says with a smile. “I am the only living person left from the first generation of children born in the forest after Grinndoar, the stone dragon, forced my people to leave the kingdom of Satar. That makes me the oldest woman in this camp, so I am everyone’s designated grandmamma.”
“And I am Vivienne,” the other woman says, and she kisses my cheek.
Mama leads me from the wagon to the side of a fire encircled by wide, flat logs for chairs. Golmarr is already sitting. His hair is wet and has been brushed away from his clean face, and he is wearing a fresh gray shirt and pair of brown pants. As I approach, his eyes slowly travel from my makeshift leather shoes to the flowers in my hair. When his eyes meet mine, a hint of a smile softens his mouth, and I find myself blushing, so I press my hands to my cheeks.
“Food for these lovers!” Edemond bellows, walking over to us, and a moment later a child holds a carved stone plate heaped with meat, onions, and singed flatbread out to me. The plate is warm on my fingers, which have never warmed up from the caves. “We are short on plates and seats,” Edemond says when Golmarr isn’t given anything to eat. “So sit on Ornald’s lap, lass, and share that food with him.”
Before I can inform Edemond that sitting on Golmarr’s lap would most definitely not be proper, Golmarr’s hands dart up and grasp my hips, pulling me down onto his lap. I open my mouth to ask for utensils just as Golmarr’s freshly scrubbed fingers grab a slice of meat. He puts it into his mouth and his head falls forward so he is leaning against my arm and chewing as if he is so exhausted he can’t even hold his head up anymore. Licking my lips, I grab a piece of flatbread and put it into my mouth.
Tears flood my eyes as I chew the hot, salty bread, and before I can swallow, they stream down my cheeks. Using a torn piece of flatbread like a spoon, I scoop up a mound of onions and cram them and the bread into my mouth. I do not touch the fire-crisped pork. Golmarr eats silently, devouring the food so fast I wonder if he chews before he swallows it. By the time I have taken four bites, my stomach feels like it is going to burst, and I force myself to stop eating.
“Are you done?” Golmarr asks. I nod and he devours the rest of the food so quickly, with such apparent need, I wonder how he’s survived as long as he has on what little we’ve eaten. When the plate is empty, he wraps his arms around my waist and leans his head against my shoulder.
Three men sit beside the biggest fire and start playing flutes carved from pale stone. I sit in the firelit glade and listen to the music, and blush every time anyone looks at me, for it is beyond scandalous to sit on a young man’s lap.
By the time full darkness has settled over the forest, Edemond wanders over to us. He has changed into a crimson shirt and matching trousers, and has a braided cloth belt woven with gold thread at his waist. “I am ready to perform your wedding. Are you finished eating?” he asks, a knowing smile on his face. Golmarr and I both nod. “Then let us marry you!” Edemond hollers so everyone in the camp can hear. The musicians stop playing, and men start moving log seats away from the biggest fire, clearing an open space in front of it. Women bring stone oil lamps to the cleared space and place them around its edges, making a circle of light.