Page 5 of Boats, Moats, & Root Beer Floats

I’d chased it around the small stable for the better part of the last hour, covering my trousers in mud, straw and God alone knew what else, all because I refused to bend down and study the contents of the soil sullying the unsavable hems of my pants.

Gripping the battered pail that earned itself a few new dents in the last fifteen minutes, I planted the milking stool—I hoped that was the seat’s purpose—and placed the bucket beside it. Backing off with care, I held out my hands.

“Cow. You will do damage to your innards if you aren’t milked. I do not have the time nor the constitution to continue chasing you sober, nor do you want me yanking on your udders six sheets plus to the wind.” Outside the stables said gale picked up blasting us both with a fresh layer of sleet and sludge. I fixed the cow with a steady eye that promised no quarter. “So, please. For both my sanity and yours, will you do me the honor ofallowing me to milk you?” I planted my behind carefully on the stool, set my hands on my knees, and waited.

The cow, short in stature but not in stubbornness shot me a coy look, tossed her head and trotted over, standing exactly where she needed to be.

Barely daring to breathe, I reached under the foreboding animal and gripped a teat with firm hands, prayed I didn’t hurt the beast and tugged. It took a few minutes, two kicks that upset the pail, but I managed to get a rhythm going. After a not too-short period, the bucket began to fill. Oddly enough the manual labor, after enough time bent over books and scratching my notes in margins in the tower locked away from the world and despite the weather, provided its own reward.

“That was impressive,” my crazy-haired lady whispered in my ear.

“Fuck me,” I shouted into the cow’s side. The animal, who took offence at being yelled at, kicked over my nearly full milk pail, and cantered off. Or loped.

Whatever cows did when cows were yelled at.

I swiveled on my stool and glared at my crazy lady with enough venom to level a small country.

She grinned back. “That was awesome. Do it again?”

Apparently I was losing my touch.

“For the third time, what the hell do you want apart from ruining my holiday?” My hand rose to pinch the bridge of my nose, but she batted my fingers away.

“Don’t do that. You should wash first. Bacteria,” she reproved me.

I stared at her as she berated me, my eyebrows hiked so far into my hairline I feared they might reside there forever. Righting the bucket I slapped the muddy, dented metal into her chest. “Tomorrow it’s your job. And for every other day you’re here.” Several things that shouldn’t have cracked as Irose and stalked away, managing not to grimace at the pain that reverberated through my joints from maintaining the too low position for someone my height.

That whiskey was destined for a short shelf life.

“You don’t want to do turn about?” she offered cheerily.

I pivoted on my heel, ready to snap back at her and found the woman cuddled up to the damn cow that ate something out of her hand, nuzzling to her middle. Without so much as another word, she hooked one leg around the stool, plopped down onto it, and started to milk the beast like she’d been doing it all her life.

“No thank you,” I muttered, giving both the cow and my co-castellan for the season my back.

“Enjoy your…books!” she called cheerfully.

The woman, not the cow. Though as I shoved my way through the castle’s back door, I realized that in this mad place, I couldn’t be entirely sure it wasn’t the cow that spoke to me after all.

CHAPTER THREE

LINDY

Sweating in weather that wasn’t conducive to any form of salt upon skin other than the sort that came from the sea, I managed to reclaim my underwear and luggage from the front door. Towing the tenuous, overstuffed mass through the castle to locate the bedroom designated for my usage for the duration of my stay was a whole ‘nother effort. I slumped over my case just inside the doorway to my room once I located it after discovering innumerable but incorrect hallways, able to see my bed but not reach it due to legs that no longer worked like they should.

“This is the worst form of torture,” I groused to the threadbare carpet. Pink glitter glinted at me from one corner that looked as though either it most recently hosted a hen’s party or a drag queen event.

Either way, the prior party probably had a whole lot more fun than me.

Buttercup the cow seemed to be the least of the castle’s worries. California was a damn long way from the top of the Scottish lochs and it only took two and a half miles of winding stone staircases, eleven lefts, fourteen rights and thirty-six corridors for me to feel homesick.

Not that I have anything to feel homesick about.

Shutting that thought away I shoved myself upright with the last of my strength and pushed my suitcase across the thin carpet.

Its wheels, duct-taped together with a cache I seconded from the kitchen, warbled along the carpet, tipped over and sat spinning on alone.

I plopped onto the floor a foot inside the door and leaned forward until my forehead bumped the ground.

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