Page 20 of Betrothed to the Yeti

No wonder Pabu has the warmest bedroom ever! Water flows up the wall behind the headboard and disappears. I launch myself from the bed and scurry to the water. On my knees, I run my arms through the warm spray. Steam caresses my cheeks. Through a hole in the floor, the pool seems miles below me. I guess that’s how I didn’t hear them before. The water’s origin is two floors down.

Yes!I’ll bathe downstairs and take Pabu up on his offer of a gown from his treasure hoard. He doesn’t wear clothes, so taking a plain one won’t be a burden. When he comes back, he will know I’m committing to making ‘us’ work with one look.

Ku Huang’s bleats from her nest run a tremor up my spine. I won’t have time tonight to choose my dress or obsess over the Seer’s connection to Pabu. Ku Huang only makes that noise when she’s birthing kids.

Chapter 12

Jaya

“Come on, Momma,” I murmur through my clenched teeth. “You’ve done this twice today. You can birth the rest.”

After moving Ku Huang to my straw nest by the crystal hearth, we dozed for a few hours. I woke to her bleats and quickly caught two babies. The second emerged before I wiped the first, so I added another bloody splotch to my ‘house dress.’ With my acceptance of Pabu’s offer of a treasure dress, I should burn this one. After the second kid was born, they curled up in my lap and I didn’t have the heart to move them. No harm in loving them while their mother struggles with the afterbirth.

“Just a few more pushes, Momma,” I coo to the laboring goat. Her babies click their encouragement. Ku Huang’s eyes are wide with agony as she bears down. She crouches, stands, and squats in repeated succession. Her wails break my heart. She can’t find a comfortable position so she can push. Her tail swishes. I can’t allow her to struggle much more.

At her opening, a fresh amniotic sac has a protruding right angle. Could it be a third kid? I expected one lamb or maybe two since we ate well the last few months. My fingers wrap around what I assume is a limb. The sac pops. I dry-heave over my shoulder at the fowl-smelling shower.

“Definitely burning this dress after today,” I mutter.

With a few grunts and curses, I pull a third baby goat into my arms. He’s half the size of his siblings. I wipe, cuddle, and coo at him while Ku Huang delivers her placenta easily. She sits beside me with her head in my lap to lick her offspring. “I’m sorry, old girl. I should have known there was something different about the third birthing round. You suffered because of my inexperience. Imagine the number of lambs you would have if you had been fed properly all these years. Well, no more starving for you. I’ll do whatever it takes. It’s the least I can do after all you provided when I couldn’t.”

I tuck the smallest kid by Ku Huang’s top udders, so he isn’t competing with his larger siblings. The three suckle to bring down Ku Huang’s milk. While this step bonds the little family—when I plan to separate them—her milk is vital to my cheese production. In the past, lambs meant food. Not just from their milk, but in trades with Nawang. Must I break up this innocent family when I could depend on the villages’ tributes for food?

I shake my head at the absurdity. I’m getting as spoiled as Pabu.

I gather the dirty straw to dispose of it when my mind flashes back to the wedding. The dirt smelled just as foul as this straw. The mixing smells of each house’s feast above me smelled worse. The betrayal of Nawang and my sisters replays in slow motion. I’ve had time to process the events. Now, their facial expressions in the background are as clear as fusion crystals. Dronma’s smile is more of a sneer when Nawang apologizes for not picking me. Once Nima’s trouble began, Nawang’s sorrowful expression changed to a leer at Dronma’s curvaceous figure. I had assumed my status as the youngest sister was behind the choice, but now I’m not so sure.

A second shake of my head clears the scene. I can’t believe I’m imagining the worst of my family to justify keeping the lambs. Alpha isn’t the utopia that Pabu assumes it is, but not all the people are evil. They don’t deserve to starve while feeding a beast to protect them—not when the so-called beast hunts out of love…and allows half their gifts to go to waste.

With a sigh, I bury the dirty straw in a leftover bag from the rancid seeds to cover the blood smell. My arms ache and my legs are heavy as I drag the waist-high bag to the door. I’m delighted that Pabu spread fresh straw over the garden. It’s safer for me to steal the garden insulation to replace the clean bedding for the goat family than to gather more straw on my own. I can’t outrun tigers or fight off a wolf pack when I’m alert, let alone when I’m exhausted. The warnings of the Elders aren’t just tales—I’m attacked every time I step outside Pabu’s house. It’s a miracle that the Seer and I made the initial journey from Alpha without dying.

Aww, the scene by the hearth makes everything worth it, though. Mother grooms her youngest while all three kids are latched. Are the two eldest ones asleep? Their bellies’ rhythmic rise and fall are too even for them to be awake. I clutch my fist over my heart to hold together the pieces. How can I rip them apart? How can I choose who eats and who starves? Is my garden or cold storage at the temple the answer?

Stress pulsates behind my eyes. These problems are too big for me and too much for today. Would Pabu be open to discussing them, or will he insist there aren’t hunger problems in the villages? If we were mind-linked, he could talk to me on his return journey. Although I’d hate to bother him while he’s fighting wolves or tigers. No, after a successful fight, I can ask him about the lambs and discuss whether they stay or go. Would he understand my indecision when I’ve starved my entire existence and he’s never gone hungry? Could he see my memories through a mind link? Maybe he would understand my food insecurities if he saw the people of Alpha.

My stomach gurgles in response.

Did I eat? I forgot the stew!

“Dammit, dammit, dammit,” I curse as I run into the kitchen. “I can’t lecture him on wasting food while charring dinner until inedible!” The pot is less than half full after reducing for hours. Vegetables and cubes of tiger congealed into a solid with the slime that used to be broth. It smells of spices and hearty meat, making my mouth water. Pabu has salt for flavoring too! I don’t care if I have to pick at the bits and chew for hours. The cast iron pot screeches when my knife scrapes the gel from the sides. What used to be stew folds onto itself in the center but breaks apart when I pinch off a piece.

“No one will be the wiser since I plan on eating all of this,” I say around my bite of stew-leather. Pabu will eat whatever is attacking Delta, the lambs are too little to eat, and I have celery to feed Ku Huang once she’s rested. She’d eat her bedding before touching this cooked, seasoned…concoction. Wasn’t that Pabu’s point about humans ruining their resources by cooking?

If I wasn’t famished, how would I dispose of this? Bury it so the pieces decompose in hundreds of years. Its only contribution to Enceladus would be heating the ground as it breaks down. The plants can’t sprout again, and the scavengers won’t touch the meat due to the spices.

I shove a semicircular piece into my mouth and chew with vengeance. ‘Waste not, want not’ was the moral of some Earthling fable… I’ve lost the name now. No, tonight, I make my own fairy tale. I’ll eat, bathe, and put on one of those treasure dresses. Okay, I’ll eat, fill the pot with snow to soak overnight, bathe, and then…I’ll work up the courage to select a dress. The last piece of stew gel was a little big, but after a few gulps, coughs, and fist pounds to my chest, it goes down.

My belly groans with the stretch of too many meals too close together. What used to last me a week is now a nightly meal. The bloat pushes on my bottom ribs and belly button. Will it pop out? Without my sisters to take the biggest shares, I’m full too soon. My vision goes glassy as I stare at the remains in the pot—waste unless I do something. I’m too tired for generating ideas. Maybe a compromise, like picking out the vegetables. A yawn cuts off my train of thought. My nails pick the soft cubes from their gel enclosure. I force myself to eat them—good thing they mush on the roof of my mouth. I haven’t the strength to chew.

A bath for the pot and a much warmer bath for me. Stress, tension, and goat guts are sucked into the rock crevice of the bathing pool. I must thank Pabu for showing me how to bathe and where he hides his towels and soap. While their herbal scents gave away their hiding place, I would have never thought to look behind the waterfall. The grey one I select doesn’t look the prettiest but smells like summertime when the grasses over the mine release their perfumed pollen. It glides over my skin with little foam, leaving the scent behind.

“I smell much better,” I say to hear my echo over the crashing falls. The bathing room is a lonely cavern without Pabu. The pool itself is imposing with its murky depths and jagged edges. If he found me here, he would jump in—perhaps to repeat our splashing fight from our first bath together. The memory of how he lookedunderthe water heats my face. When I decided to commit to Pabu, I considered his gentle demeanor, optimistic attitude, and genuine interest in providing for me. I never considered the consummation part.

The tiny barbs on his penis ruffles give me nightmares. I should have dared to touch them when I had the chance. He keeps his mating parts tucked in his body, like a dagger in its sheath, but in the bathing pool, he releases his sex. If he rams inside me, his size will damage my most sensitive parts.Great, I’m twice as scared as before…when I focused on the barbs.Will the ruffles move inside me? Will the barbs scrape my insides?

I glide the soap over my folds, making arbitrary measurements with my fingers. There’s no way…unless I’m made of the most elastic material on Enceladus. I wish I were made of grass, not bones. We stretch and bend the grasses into thread and weave it into baskets and clothes. If I was more pliable than grass, how would I stand upright? Will my pelvis yield to Pabu or shatter?

Pabu wouldn’t force his way inside me…unless he ruts like a goat. Ku Huang bucked off more than one ‘enthusiastic’ ram in her past. There’s no way I could fight off a Yeti if he was frenzied with lust. I’d ask how nature could make mating painful when a species’ survival depends on it, but life is hard on Enceladus. I could bleed to death before his senses cleared...

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