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“Sticks, you came all this way?”
Belle is in the planting rows today. She sits back on her heels, conscious that the overseer has his back turned, and squints up at Sticks. The sunshine makes the girl’s wild hair as white as cobwebs.
“Helping,” Stick says, rattling the empty bucket in her hand. “I just watered a row. I amn’t slacking.”
Belle nods. “Alright. Is everything alright? I did not see Frog last night.”
“He went to see Russandol.”
Of course he did. Frog is absolutely fascinated by Russandol. He even pets his own hair now, muttering, red, red, which is endearing and heart-wrenching all at once.
Russandol is also both those things.
Belle drags the tip of her tongue against the raised scar that runs along the inside of her cheek. It is an old habit, from when the wound was still closing. When it still rightly hurt. “You’d better refill your bucket,” Belle suggests. “Before they catch notice.”
“He used to be happy,” Sticks says, still lingering.
“What?”
“Russandol. His mouth wants to smile sometimes, and laugh, when he talks to us. Then he remembers.” Sticks sighs.
“I am glad that you and Frog are kind to him,” Belle says carefully, keeping her half-gaze on the soil and roots before her. “It helps him heal.”
“He shouldn’t have to heal.” Sticks scrubs at her cheek with a grimy fist. “He shouldn’t have to. Fucking shame.”
Belle is startled, but what good is it, to reprimand a child for profanity here? “Yes, it is. But you mustn’t talk like that, Sticks. Someone might hear. We have to keep our heads down.”
(As if she was able to do that, before boldness ruined her. As if Russandol was treated well when he was meek, or pardoned when he dared defiance, for the sake of earlier meekness.)
Sticks goes to replenish her bucket, and Belle is left with her thoughts.
It is a dangerous duty, to care for a man like that. Belle searches for beauty like a miner would for gems—there, the graceful fingers, bruised but unbent—there, the hollow of his throat, unscarred on only one side.
She longed, secretly, to touch him wherever he was whole, but that would be the same cruelty that shaped them both.
Belle pushes her hair back from her forehead. The other women are talking in low voices, and ordinarily, she would join them. They pity her, but they trust her. That was the most she could hope for, before Gwindor.
Before Russandol, her mind suggests, but she knows that is not true.
She hears Frog’s rustle before she sees him. Casts about a worried glance, for he is usually canny enough to keep hidden by day.
His little face is streaked with mud and tears—
And red.
Belle drops her hoe. Darts, praying that she not be seen, to join the child in the thicket.
“Frog, what is it?”
“Dead,” Frog sobs, shaking violently from head to toe. “Dead, dead, dead.”