Misconstrued, p.22
Misconstrued, page 22
“Mina!” Tybalt snapped. I looked up at him in surprise. They didn’t often raise their voices at me. As I blinked, I realized it wasn’t the first time he had said my name. “Go see Erika!”
That got me to stand up. “Did something happen?” I demanded. Then my brain caught up and added, “Did something else happen?”
“She is moping, too,” Iago called from the other room.
“I’m not moping!” I protested. Except that I kind of was, I admitted to myself, so I took Romeo and Tybalt and went to check on Erika, who hadn’t been over for breakfast that morning.
I let myself into her house. None of the doors locked, but most people respected a closed door these days. Me just walking in like I owned the place made Romeo uncomfortable, but he didn’t actually stop me. It didn’t occur to me until later that it must have been too much like Erika walking in on us in the shower.
Erika was definitely moping; she was curled up in a puppy pile with her three. Lucky’s hand was still bandaged. Her face was red like she had been crying. Before I would have asked if she was okay, but now that seemed like a stupid question.
“Room in bed for one more?”
Rosencrantz got up and left, and my two went with him. As I was kicking off my shoes and crawling into bed, Guildenstern joined them.
“It was really scary. They just jumped him,” she admitted quietly.
“Lucky got hurt. Did you?”
She shook her head. “They tried to keep me out of it, but I couldn’t just let them hurt Mac.”
“Thank you,” I whispered.
She hugged me. We both had a little cry. Lucky watched in obvious distress, but didn’t get involved.
“How’s your hand?” I asked.
He smiled shyly and shrugged. “How’s Mac?”
“I don’t know. He’s drugged. The medic cleaned up his neck, at least.”
Erika nodded. “I tried to get him to go to the medic. He said no.”
“He is medic,” Lucky rumbled.
“That’s what he kept saying,” Erika agreed.
I shook my head. “Yeah. He tried that on me, too. I put my foot down. I have no time for that crap.”
Erika laughed. Lucky looked appalled. “You … kick him?”
I blinked. “What? No! It means I insisted.”
“Huh. Erika … insisted they leave him,” Lucky tried, cautiously.
“No, baby. I kicked them,” she laughed. Lucky was clearly still confused. “I’ll explain later,” Erika added.
“I hate this,” I grumbled. “I was just starting to believe the guys when they told me they weren’t violent. Then this happened.”
“Not hurt you,” Lucky corrected, gently.
“Attacking my family is hurting me!” I growled. Lucky just looked ridiculously pleased with that. I fought the urge to slap him. “What?” I demanded.
Still grinning, he explained, “You have orc family now! Happy for them!”
I gave Erika a pointed look, but she just snuggled a little tighter against him.
“I don’t know what to do with myself today,” I admitted.
“I would say go home and make him feel better, but it doesn’t sound like he’s up to that kind of comfort.” She smirked. “And from what I hear, you might not be either.”
I snorted half a laugh. That was about as much as that joke warranted.
“Mina?” Erika asked. “If we were going to live somewhere else, where would you go?”
I had to think about that.
“That place they’re building for Miriam, you have to see it. It’s one house on a whole block. That would give lots of space to garden and keep some chickens or rabbits. If people have a little space and a little help, that would go a long way to us growing better food than whatever sludge they’re serving.”
Erika shuddered. “I don’t think I could kill a chicken, but eggs would be nice.”
I nodded. I hadn’t thought I would be able to either. I got over it, but that wasn’t the right thing to say in the moment.
“We build you a house,” Lucky offered.
Erika smiled and patted his shoulder. “You’re hurt,” she pointed out, “and Miriam needs one more than I do. I’m living here, she’s living in a tent.”
“We need to rebuild the cities,” I mused. “Or start over and build a little town. We need a way to take care of ourselves, instead of living in a schoolyard.”
Erika nodded. Lucky just looked thoughtful about that.
- - - -
It had been a few weeks since Mac had been attacked. He was up and about in a matter of days, but things were still not back to their before-status in our family. No one had even tried to enter my room since that night. They were all back to being standoffish.
To be honest, so was I. I had quickly gotten used to one of them sleeping next to me, but that had completely ended when there was a risk of them getting killed for it. Screw telling kids they’ll grow hair on their palms, having someone threatening the lives of the people you care about is a really effective method of encouraging celibacy.
Apparently something had happened, and the food in the camp was better. Jo and I spent some time talking about that. Neither of us could point to a single incident that would have changed that. It seemed like it could have been a hundred little things instead.
Miriam’s house wasn’t done, but it was closer. There were more orcs helping build now, which helped with the heavier jobs. That felt a lot safer than watching a collection of malnourished humans trying to build on their own. I wondered, again, how long this would have taken before. In the meantime, Jo was right: this was good for my mental health. I felt like I had a purpose again; I felt stronger.
I kind of wanted to build one of these for myself. I liked that Miriam was getting to help plan how it would look. Nicoli was up to his elbows in the construction process and looking so proud of how it was going. It was nice working with my guys, even if they were skeptical of the whole thing.
Tonight, I was joining the other workers in a picnic on the construction site. It had the sort of real food I had grown used to eating with the orcs for the last couple of months. Erika was still helping build some mornings, but she was increasingly focused on just organizing the house where she was living. Still, she had come for the morning and was staying for lunch.
It was her and her guys, me and mine, and Jo sitting in a group. The three of us humans were in the centre with the orcs forming a concentric circle around us. Normally, Jo would be talking about the project and the next project she wanted to work on and how the competing builds were going. Today, she looked straight at Mac and asked, “How are you feeling these days?”
He leaned away from her. “Why do you ask?”
I winced at the rudeness. “He’s okay. We’re all trying to figure out what happens now, though. It kind of, um, derailed us a little.”
Jo nodded cautiously as she admitted, “Warden was asking about you.”
I felt a little sick. “Did he say why?”
She shrugged. “I was talking about how that fight really changed how we understand them. They’re big and scary, and that showed how they’re an extra bit violent. He wasn’t happy with me saying that.”
“Are you okay?” I countered.
She shrugged. “I haven’t been allowed to sleep in the compound since I started this project. They set up a tiny bedroom for me in what’s effectively the stationery closet or coat room or something off of his office. It’s been weird, but it is warmer and quieter and I certainly can’t complain about the food.”
Erika and I nodded in agreement, to the end part of that at least.
“Honestly, though, some of the problems he has to deal with take me right back to what it was like running a daycare. Individually, people are lovely. As a group, we’re a bunch of idiots. And so are they.”
That made Mac laugh. Romeo was just smiling politely. Tybalt looked offended, but I couldn’t tell if he was offended that she thought orcs were idiots or that she thought people were. Or maybe both. It was hard to tell with him sometimes.
Iago, however, was watching her with a sort of creepy intensity that suggested he was waiting for the other shoe to drop. That just got me interested.
“Any interesting examples you can share?” I asked.
Jo just shrugged. “They found an enclave of preppers or something a few weeks back. It caused a huge uproar and there were a ton of meetings. In the end, he decided to just keep an eye on them to make sure everyone was okay. Except it turns out orcs are like helicopter parents, so they sent in, like, orc ninjas to put up surveillance cameras all over to watch and make sure no one is being abused.”
“Ew!” Erika blurted out. “That’s gross.”
“A total invasion of privacy,” I agreed.
Jo nodded. “I’m not entirely sure they have the same concept of privacy as we do, but regardless, this isn’t like spying. The only one watching is a computer algorithm.”
“Oh, come on!” I protested. “That can’t be real.”
The orcs were all nodding that. “Then no one falls asleep and misses crime,” Iago explained. “People are boring. The watchers stop paying attention. Things get missed.”
I was horrified as I asked, “Are there surveillance cameras in our house?”
“No,” Jo said firmly. “I asked. They know we don’t like that. Your guys all watch each other.”
“And no cloth to block the windows,” Mac added.
I shared a look with Erika. I knew she also got dressed in her bathroom, so she wasn’t putting on a show for whoever was walking by.
“My room has a camera watching the door to see if anyone is trying to get in,” Jo admitted, “but none inside.”
“If the warden is telling the truth,” Erika pointed out.
Jo hesitated before she agreed with that. “I think they really do want us to be safe and happy. They just aren’t good at figuring out how to do that.”
The guys all nodded along with that last bit.
Then Jo ambushed me with, “What do you want, Mina?”
I blinked. “What?” I asked oh so intelligently.
“Well, Erika’s getting herself all set up. Miriam’s getting a house. I’m getting a project and I get to research, which I’ve always enjoyed. What do you want?”
I frowned at my lunch. “I don’t know. I guess I want a community. I like having something to do, so coming here to work is sort of getting me both of those things.”
Jo nodded. “You’re always welcome to help with construction. At least you ask questions instead of just doing it and getting it wrong.” We shared a glance over at the guy who had bullied his team into installing the roof truss he was working on. They had somehow managed to make it fit backwards, which had been a pain in the ass to fix. I still wasn’t sure how they hadn’t noticed it was the only one that didn’t match the roof pitch. She gave a disgruntled sigh. “Anyway. If there’s something you would rather be doing, let me know. I’m trying to organize a list of things people can do so that we can start taking care of ourselves more.”
“Like what?” Erika asked.
“We have some spinners and weavers. They’re going to send us some sheep and some shepherds. People who know how to shear with, well, scissors instead of electric clippers are harder to find these days. But we should be able to make our own fabric at some point.”
“We need to grow our own food, too,” I argued.
She nodded. “Gardeners weren’t hard to find, but I need someone who can talk about how to get the seeds. We can’t just pick up a packet at the hardware store anymore.”
“What about fruit trees?” I asked. “There was an orchard where I worked.”
Jo gave me a sharp look, then ignored Erika when she asked, “What?”
“There are lots of fruit trees in the city,” Jo explained, “but it would be a yard-by-yard search to find them.”
“Yeah. Then you would have to baby them for a year before you found out if they grew a fruit that was edible, or just something decorative,” I agreed.
Jo nodded. “There was a you-pick orchard out of town. I wonder if there’s anything left. I’ll ask Warden if there’s a way to find out.”
“What is a you-pick orchard?” Iago asked politely.
“Some fruit is grown to be packed and shipped to stores. Or it was,” I added. “You-pick is where an orchard grows fruit that’s yummy, but maybe doesn’t ship so well. Then people come and pay the growers and pick the fruit for themselves.”
“You want to grow food?” Tybalt asked with a slight frown.
I just shrugged. “I like eating. I’m not an arborist or anything, but I know a little bit about how to take care of trees.” I thought for a moment. “I’m a shit gardener, though. That does mean I have accidentally let almost everything go to seed before. Radishes, lettuce, never carrots though. I bet they look like grass when they go to seed.”
Jo considered this. “I don’t know, but I read that carrots take two years to go to seed.”
“That’s a long wait,” I muttered.
“I like carrots enough to wait,” Jo countered with a shrug.
Iago was clearly still considering that. “You would need guards so people didn’t take them all the first year.”
“Maybe, maybe not,” I argued. “If people have enough to eat, they don’t necessarily just steal food for fun.”
None of them looked convinced. And really, based on how we had all behaved since they arrived, I couldn’t really blame them. It surprised me that even Jo looked skeptical though.
“I don’t know, Mina,” she disagreed. “Food insecurity tends to bring out the hoarder in everyone.”
Okay, so she had a point there.
“We have to start somewhere,” I argued. “Saying that we can’t try to be self-sufficient because people might steal is a bullshit reason.”
Jo frowned at me, but it was Erika who wasn’t going to put up with that. “That’s not what we’re saying, and you know it.”
I sagged. “Yeah, I know.” I looked over at my guys. Iago had his problem-solving face on.
Rosencrantz growled something, to which Guildenstern snickered. Lucky gave Rosencrantz a shove. While I was making a mental note to ask what he had said later, I caught Tybalt watching me.
“What?” I asked.
“You do not want for the most hardest things,” he replied. “You just say what you need to be happy. It is different.”
I blinked in confusion as Iago sighed and Romeo made an annoyed face. Jo was just watching all of us. I could see the moment where she made up her mind about something, but before I could ask what it was, she stood up and wiped her hands on her pants.
“Alright, everyone!” she announced loudly. “Time to get back to work.”
- - - -
It was hard writing about what my life was like immediately after they arrived. Part of it was not wanting to relive the chaos that happened when they first got here, and part was not wanting to endanger anyone who might be left. I had no idea if anyone was left, but I was still holding on tight to the hope that someone might be.
Part of me wanted to write about what that was like. It was hard. It was hard in ways I couldn’t even begin to explain. But the part of my life that I was currently trying to figure out was my relationship with the guys.
Finding the words to put into my journal came easier once I decided to tell that story instead. Don’t get me wrong. It’s still messy and confusing and god help whoever is trying to read my handwriting.
I was writing about how we met, but I was also thinking about what happened to Mac. He was physically better, but the mental toll of what had happened was still weighing on me. The guys were all carefully waiting for me to figure it out. That wasn’t helpful when I had no idea what to do.
Erika kept saying not to make a big deal out of it, but it felt almost insulting that her guys were laughing about how I just told my guys what I wanted. How do you go up to a guy and say, ‘I liked fucking you, but I hate that it almost got you killed’?
I set down the book and looked across the house to see them sitting at the dining room table. Here goes nothing.
“I liked sleeping with you, but I’m afraid it’s going to get you killed.”
Yeah. I just blurted that out there.
Now Mac was grinning at me, though the others looked surprised.
“It won’t,” Iago assured me.
“It very nearly did!” I protested.
