Page 4

When the clerk comes for me, he steps into my line of sight before he waves. I’m grateful for the small mercy. He points at the tent flap, then lifts his hand to show a set of steps going up, and I understand. I stand and follow him out into the open.

The bidders are standing right in front of the stage. I see them as I climb the steps. There aren’t many. Two dozen, perhaps, and they stand in a loose half-circle with nothing in their hands but wooden paddles.

One of them towers over the rest, with blue skin and a bald head that shines in the gray light. Another is massive through the chest and shoulders, with a beard so long it reaches his belt. There’s one covered in coarse brown fur from his head to his hands, and beyond him stand others I can’t make sense of, with too many joints or too few, with faces I can only look at briefly before I have to look away.

The auctioneer stands at the front of the stage. He’s a slender man in his fifties, human, with a wide, fixed smile that never changes. He turns to the crowd and begins to speak. I can see his mouth moving, but I’m too far behind him, the angle is wrong, and I can’t read a word. I know what he’s saying, or I hope I know. He’s giving them my name, my age, and telling them I can clean, sew, and cook, that I can read lips, and I’ll stay out of the way.

I shiver as I stand in the middle of an open field, and all I have is what’s in front of my eyes. I can see everything and understand none of it. The bidders shift their weight, turn their heads, and speak to one another. I don’t know why. One of them laughs, and I don’t know at what. The auctioneer lifts his hand and lets it fall. A vibration comes up through the boards into the soles of my split shoes, and I don’t know what caused it. I can’t sense anything behind me or to either side, only the stretch of field I’m looking at, and I have nowhere to hide from any of it.

The auctioneer turns and walks toward me, still smiling. He reaches up and pushes the hood back off my head. I bow my head and turn my face, so the scars are away from the crowd. It’s the only thing I know how to do. He puts one finger under my chin, and his touch isn’t rough, but it isn’t gentle either. He handles me the way he’d turn a vase to show the buyers the other side. He lifts my face toward the audience and holds it there.

The biting cold reaches my right cheek, my right eye, and the tight, ridged skin along my jaw and down my neck. Everyone can see it now. Tears fill my eyes, but I clamp my teeth together and refuse to let a single one fall. I will not cry in front of so many souls.

I look for paddles rising. I make myself keep looking, but there are none.

The monster with the beard has turned to speak to the one beside him. The one with the blue skin looks over the top of my head at the trees. Two of the ones I can’t name have their backs half-turned and are talking with their hands moving. The furred one stares at the ground, and another shifts from foot to foot, and waits for me to be taken off the stage so the next woman can be brought on. Even the ones I can barely look at have looked at me and decided I’m not worth a bid. I’m not worth the price of cleaning their floors.

So, this is how it ends. I’ll walk back to Rosemere and the bridge, wrap myself in my three blankets, and when winter comes, I’ll find out whether three blankets are enough.

From the corner of my eye, I see…

One paddle is up, near the back of the crowd.

I look at it, then I look at the man holding it. He’s looking straight at me. He says something to the auctioneer without looking away from me, but he’s too far off for me to read it. I don’t need to read it, because I understand him anyway. He’s buying me.

I can’t be sure he’s human. Some monsters look more like men than others, but he looks like a man. He’s tall and straight, about thirty, with dark hair, a neatly trimmed beard, and eyes so blue I can see the color from the stage. He wears clean, elegant clothes under a black cloak. The cloak is fastened at his shoulder with a gold pin in the shape of a harp. Gold rings shine on his fingers, and gold earrings hang from his earlobes. He looks rich, important, as though he came here from somewhere with a ceremony waiting for him. There’s a tiredness around his eyes that doesn’t match the rest of him, but everything else about him is composed.

I don’t care what he is. He raised his paddle for me.

The rest passes in pieces. The auctioneer takes my arm and guides me down the steps. The man with the harp pin is waiting at the bottom, and he motions for me to walk ahead of him toward the tent. I go. I can’t see his face, and I can’t tell if he’s speaking to me.

Inside, the clerk stands up from his table. The man reaches into his cloak and sets money in front of him. The clerk counts it, writes in his ledger, then counts out a smaller pile, which he pours into a leather pouch and holds out to me. It’s my share, and I take it with both hands.

The clerk lays a sheet of paper on the table, dips the pen and offers it to the buyer. The man bends to sign, and I watch his hand, because I always watch hands. His hand trembles just a little as the pen touches the paper. The first stroke of his name comes out uneven before he steadies it. He’s nervous, I think. Even a man like this can be nervous, buying a woman in an open field. I read the name as the letters form.

His name is Callum.

The clerk turns the paper and holds out the pen to me. I sign under his name.

Callum steps around the table and faces me squarely, standing in the light from the tent flap where I can see his mouth. He speaks slowly.

“I’ll take you to your new home,” he says. “The city is called Nivallia.”

I watch his lips through every word to be sure I have it right. Nivallia. I’ve never heard of it.

“Thank you,” I say.

“The auctioneer said you can read lips,” he says. “So, I will make sure to speak slowly.”

I feel my face grow hot. No one has said that to me. No one has made the effort before I asked for it, and I stopped asking for it.

“Thank you,” I say again.

“I don’t know sign language,” he says. “But maybe you can teach me.”

I smile at him. I feel it happen, the pull of the scar at the corner of my mouth, and I don’t try to hide it.

He leads me out of the tent and around the side, away from the stage and the crowd, to where a carriage with two horses waits at the edge of the field. There’s no one on the driver’s bench. He opens the carriage door and offers me his hand. I take it, and he helps me up the step and inside. He smiles at me through the open door. Then he closes it, and I feel the carriage rock as he climbs onto the bench outside. A moment later, it rocks again and begins to move.