Page 87 of The Knucker King

“Little witch.” Trewoofe rested his palm over her hand. “Please tell me what is happening.”

First breast feeding and now I am to explain this. She bit her lip as she stood. “Let me get tidied up, and you will need a new pair of hose as we will have to wash what you are wearing.” Her cheeks burnt as she studied the blood stain on him and looked away. “There should be enough cloth left.” She pointed to the linen folded neatly on the table.

Trewoofe followed her, hunching just before he cracked his horns on the beams above their heads, and snagged her wrist. “Avice. Are you in pain? Are you injured?”

“No, no. I promise.” She gripped her pendant. “I… I am on my courses. It aches. I can be more tired and grumpier, but I am not injured.”

A line appeared between his brows. “Then why are you bleeding?”

“We get taught in church it is a punishment, for what Eve did in the garden.” The words spilled from her lips. “Because of that, women are cursed to bleed monthly, and with difficult childbirth.”

His frown deepened. “Who is Eve? Where is this garden?”

Blood dribbled down her thigh. “Lord, if I promise to explain it all, will you let me go? I am feeling very uncomfortable right now and I need to prepare something to catch the blood. Once I am resting with some willow bark tea, I will try my best to explain.”

Trewoofe whipped his hand away and dropped his chin. “Forgive me, I did not mean to make you uncomfortable.”

“Quite alright,” she replied stoically. “I need privacy, so please turn the other way while I clean up.”

“Of course!” He spun on his heel and dropped to the pallet with his hands covering his eyes.

Avice chuckled at how obedient he was. It warmed her that he did not recoil from her courses, and that he was more concerned for her wellbeing than he was repulsed by the blood.

Trewoofe may look like a man. Her eyes flicked to his horns and massive height. Nearly a man, but he is a Knucker. He has no concept of courses being filthy, or women being cursed.

Avice smiled at that – of just being able to exist around him – with no preconceived ideas of what or who she was. There was a gift of acceptance between them: pure, simple, and reciprocal.

A cramp squeezed her insides, turning her back to the task at hand.

Avice reclined on their pallet with a steaming cup of willow bark tea in her hands. Bramble had plonked his head in her lap, snoring loudly as she ran her fingers through his fur. Trewoofe sat next to her, a cloth around his hips, as he contently stitched a second pair of hose for himself. Ashling perched on his horn and occasionally let out an instructional chime.

The midwife had stuffed moss between her legs, secured in place with a complicated series of linen ties. She sipped her tea, the analgesic effect combating her dull cramps, and enjoyed the simple moment of domesticity.

Trewoofe cleared his throat. “Would you like to tell me?”

Bramble grumbled as she shifted so she was facing the King. “I have been thinking of how to explain. It is a complicated subject.”

“Before you mentioned Eve and a garden?” he prompted, his gaze following a stitch as he looped it.

“I suppose that is a good place to start.” Avice swirled her cup. “Eve, according to the church, was the first woman, made from the first man, Adam.”

A line appeared between his brows; the midwife had come to understand that was his ‘confused’ expression. “That does not make sense to me. Amongst Knuckers, females make more life. Males provide the seed, but the females do everything else.”

“I agree with you. I am simply explaining to you what I have been taught about where courses come from,” she said.

Trewoofe nodded. “Please continue.”

“Eden, it was the name of the garden, a paradise where all life came from: men, women, plants, animals—”

“But not Good Neighbours? No Faeries or Dragons or Folk?” A muscle feathered in his jaw. “If we are not considered life, then what are considered by this ‘church’?”

She placed her cup beside the pallet and laid a hand on his arm as he stitched, feeling the thick cords of tendons move beneath his bandages as he worked. “It is a cruel answer, but please know that it is not what I believe.”

His lips plucked up. “I know, little witch.”

“They teach us you are devils, demons, serpents, something evil that comes from below,” Avice explained, digging her fingers into Bramble’s fur as the words left her.

Trewoofe paused mid-stitch to look at her hand, and then to her face. “I am from below, but I am not evil, nor these ‘devils’ or ‘demons’ or ‘serpents’ that the church speak of. I have lived in Albion far longer than the humans who follow the Cross God have walked these lands, and then they come from across the sea and call me evil.”