Ophelia Skyfeather's Arc

Chapter 8 of 11

The cook worked without hurry. He poured fat from the jar into his palm and spread it along Ophelia's ribs and thighs, down her arms where the wing feathers used to be. She pulled at the cuffs until the leather cut her wrists. The spit did not move. She twisted her head toward the pot and saw the three shapes still bobbing behind the steam. She said their names, the ones she had whispered to the shells at night. She said them again louder. The cook did not look up. He pinched out the last down under her arms and dropped the tufts into a bowl. Then he took a small knife and scraped stubble from her calves. He tipped a jar of coarse salt over her belly and rubbed it in with the flat of his hand. He worked garlic and something bitter into the fat along her sides. She cried without sound, then with sound, and neither changed his pace. When he was done he wiped his hands on his apron and stood back and looked at her the way a man looks at a loaf before the oven. She begged him to cut the straps. He said nothing. He walked to the door and spoke to a goblin in the hall, and the goblin ran. She waited a long time. The fat cooled on her skin. The eggs kept bobbing. She tried to think of the nest and could not hold the picture. She tried to think of the male before Gruk Ironjaw and understood again why he had gone. A woman who could not say no was only meat waiting to be claimed by someone hungrier. The goblin came back and gave the cook a single word. The cook nodded. He crossed to the hearth and raked the coals into a long red bed under the spit rest. He came back and checked the cuffs at her wrists and ankles and the strap across her hips. He lifted one end of the spit. Another goblin lifted the other. They carried her to the forks above the coals and dropped the spit into place. The heat rose against her back. The cook took the crank handle and fit it to the end. He began to turn. Ophelia rolled once toward the coals and once toward the ceiling and once toward the coals again. The fat on her skin began to hiss. She stopped begging. There was no one left to beg. Somewhere above her the pot lid rattled where her children were already done.