Page 37 of A Tale of Mirth & Magic

“Oops! Shit. Sorry!”

But he was sitting up in bed, propped against a couple of gigantic pillows and glaring out the window.

“Oh, you’re awake! Never mind, then,” I said, jumping onto the bed.

“You’re back,” he said.

“Yeah, I had to pee. And freshen up a bit.” I winked at him. He blinked back at me.

I started attacking my hair with the comb. Pulling one section apart, I worked it through in bits, painfully.

“Ow, ow, owwww. Stupid long hair,” I said. “I’m chopping it all off!”

“I love your hair,” Barra said.

I ignored the warm buzzing his words sparked in my chest and focused on hacking my way through the tangled strands. “Well, right now I hate it. I’d rather cut it than deal with this mess.”

“Come here. I’ll do it for you.” Barra opened his legs to make space and patted the coverlet.

“Really?”

“Yes. I used to do it for my sisters all the time. Let me.”

I wasn’t going to ask twice. Scooching my ass backward on the bed, I kept going until I was pressed against his crotch. Leaning back, I laid myself against his solid, bare chest and wriggled happily.

Barra chuckled. “El, you have to move forward a little for me to do this.” He tugged the comb out of my hand.

Sighing, I scooted away a bit. “Fine. But be gentle. I’m not above biting if you hurt my scalp.”

“I’ve been warned,” he said, starting to carefully move the comb through a piece of my hair.

I needn’t have bothered. He worked through each knot methodically, making sure to hold the strands so it didn’t tug painfully on my head. Whenever we got to a particularly nasty section, he distracted me with stories about all the mischief his younger sisters got up to when they were little.

“And I suppose I’m to believe that you were perfectly well-behaved?” I said, grimacing as he reached a tough tangle at the back of my head where I’d thrashed against the coverlet last night.

“I was, for the most part,” he said. “I was afraid not to be.”

“Right. Because your mas sound so strict.”

“I know, I know. But it took me a while to realize they’re such softies.” He cleared his throat, hesitating. “I grew up with my da for the first years. With the giant folk, in the mountains not far from Nepu. It was… difficult. Half-giants aren’t easily accepted among their own kind—giants or humans. My birth mother had run off when I was small. She wasn’t happy with my da. Or me.”

My chest tightened painfully, imagining this young, unhappy version of Barra. He continued, “My da cared for me, but he couldn’t be everywhere. I was much smaller than the other giants my age, and children can be cruel. When I was about six or seven, he decided that it wasn’t a healthy environment for me. I was bullied, I didn’t have any real friends, and although overall the adults treated me with kindness, I could always sense the edge of pity and distaste that most of them felt toward me.”

I touched Barra’s knee, stroking it with my thumb. He worked the comb through my hair, gentle as ever, even as he spoke about this.

“So he arranged for me to live in Nepu. Get a fresh start. Ma Reese is technically my aunt—my birth mother’s sister. She and her partner, Ma Wren, welcomed me with open arms. They’d already adopted Telen at that point, and they say that they’d always wanted a big family. Sassura and Monty came along soon after.”

“Do you still see your father at all?” I asked.

“Oh yes, of course,” Barra said. “We do a camping trip twice a year. And I try to get up to visit him at least once every month or so. It’s too hard for him to be accommodated in Nepu. He’s about seventeen feet tall,” he said, affection in his voice.

“Damn! And I thought you were tall,” I said. “Well, that’s wonderful. That you and he still have a solid relationship, despite everything.”

“It was difficult for him to let me go. But he wanted to do what was best for me. And even though I couldn’t understand it when I was little—part of me just thought he didn’t want me, like my birth mother—I realized later how untrue that was. And my mas made sure I knew how loved I was.”

He had three parents and three sisters. I barely had one, even if you counted my mother and father together.

As if he was reading my silence, Barra said, “You told me before that your ma and da didn’t get along. Were they together or did you grow up with one of them?”