Alma threatened Sukie with a raised fist, shaking it for emphasis. “You clean him up!” Short and squat compared to the lithe and taller Sukie, the quakes this exclamation sent through her body greatly amused the baby that was the ‘him’ in question.
Sukie made a show of examining her nails, nearly successful in her attempt to hide her fear of the older woman. “Why should I?”
Alma placed her fists on her hips and leaned forward, giving the other woman a bulging eye. “Because you’re the one who gave him the chocolate.” As if submitting evidence, Alma pointed to the brown stains that covered the happy toddler from head-to-toe.
“Well, he was being all,” Sukie twitched and writhed spasmodically as if in an unwelcome embrace herself, “squirmy. What else was I supposed to do?”
“Show one ounce of patience? An iota of forbearance?” Alma squeezed the bridge of her nose. “With all that sugar in him, how do you think he’ll be for the Master upon his return? Do you he’ll be as smooth as pudding? Relaxed as chamomile?” She cut her hand towards the babe, already trying to crawl away. “No, he’ll be worse than a crab in the pants.”
Sukie gave her sister a smoky glare, still attempting to hide her nervousness at the prospect of the Lordship’s return. Every image of him in the house conveyed power and strength, whether it was the symbols of his office or the likeness of him in bust or painting. “I’m sure he can manage.”
“Of course he could,” Alma brought some calm to her voice trying, as ever, to be the reasonable one. “But we don’t want him to ‘manage’ it. We want him to be happy to see the little one. Grateful even.” Unable to help her stern nature, the older sister pointed an index finger, “Which will make him that much more likely to grant us a boon.”
A genuine flash of anger crossed Sukie’s gaze at this. “Why wouldn’t he pay us? We’re doing what we said we’d do.”
Alma’s chest moved as a bellows, trying to draw patience in and out with each breath. “Yes, but there’s doing a job and then there’s doing it right; down to the letter, correct in every facet.” She fixed her bulging eye on her sister again, “You know that.”
The younger sister sighed, lowering her head with her hand on her throat. “Yes. Of course.” Drawing a breath herself, she found a washcloth and, after a moment’s trembling hesitation, began to wipe the babe clean.
Returning to her own task, Alma continued in the filleting of a bog snake, stripping it out across a cutting board. “How a woman like you can disjoint a frog without a blink but recoils at cleaning a babe is beyond me.”
Sukie wrinkled her nose as she continued washing the wriggling child. “It’s just so…alive.”
“Well, that’s what the Master loves about ‘em.”
Sukie shuddered and thanked her stars that at least it was just chocolate she was wiping up and not something worse. “I don’t understand why he has to be clean before we put him in the tub.”
From the cutting board, Alma moved to slide the chunks of snake into the metal pot, causing tongue and stinger and other sacrificial components to float up. “It’s a cauldron, dear.”
See the author’s published work here.
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