Ander - Part 4: Subchapter 4
4
frickin' sandwich! Really!?" Luke said, not so much carving the ham as stabbing it. "What do you think about all this, Vee?"
Valery didn't really know what to think, so she just calmly and quietly went about slicing the bread. She liked little tasks like this, moving the knife back and forth, sawing through the crust, making that scritchy little sound, not pressing too hard so the bread wouldn't get squashed.
"Hellooooo? Val? You in there?"
"I'm here."
"So? What do you think?"
Valery took a piece of ham her brother had so carelessly ripped loose and placed it on top of the bread slice, right in the middle, where it belonged, and she thought about the Wolf in their spare bedroom, used for the first time since it got built three years ago. Part of her still refused to believe that such things could exist, even though she had seen it with her own eyes; a big black giant Wolf, just as her brothers had described. She was so curious all of yesterday that, whenever she was absolutely sure her father and brothers were out and about someplace, she would sneak down the hallway and open the door just a teeny crack to look inside. But, even though the Wolf was unconscious, she never had the courage to actually go in, not after the horror story Luke had told her about how he got grabbed and lifted right off his feet. And then, today, just a few minutes ago, when she had opened that door and he was actually awake, with that great big solitary eye looking right at her...
She just couldn't handle it. She turned tail and ran like a scared little jackrabbit. It must have been her imagination, but the way he was looking at her, it just... It felt like...
It felt like he wanted to eat her right up.
Valery shuddered. "I think he's scary."
Luke threw his arms wide, not particularly mindful of the knife in his hand. "Thank you! Glad to hear I'm not the only one with some common sense!" He planted his hands on the counter, hoisted himself up, stuck his head out the window and yelled: "Hey, Tim! What's taking so long with the water!?"
"Screw you! This bucket's - eeergh - friggin' heavy!" Tim's voice came floating back, about halfway between the house and the well, by the sound of it.
"Yeah yeah, but what do you think about the Wolf!?"
"Me? I think - haaaaaa - I think our new 'guest' is gonna kill us all! Fooargh!"
"My thoughts exactly!" Luke yelled, his toenails clicking softly against the floorboards as he dropped back down. "Honestly, I don't know what our old man is thinking, bringing something like that under our roof. I told him it attacked me, but would he listen? Noooope. Can't think of his own godsdamned kids first..." Luke planted the knife into the ham all the way up to the hilt and gouged another piece loose.
If Valery didn't know any better, she'd say he was trying to do a bad job of it on purpose, just out of spite. Oh wait, she did know better, and yes, that's exactly what he was doing. "Dad's just being Dad," she said, neatly arranging the meat so that there weren't any white pieces of naked bread sticking out anywhere, kind of like puzzle pieces. "If a big fat two-headed ogre with horns growing out of its nostrils came running up to our house swinging a blood-soaked axe, the first thing Dad would do is roll out the welcome mat and offer it some tea. That's just the way he is."
"Yeah? 'The way he is' is gonna get us all killed, you mark my words."
The front door banged open and Timothy came waddling in with a big bucket of water sloshing between his knees. "Pitcher, pitcher, pitcher!"
Luke grabbed the big pitcher from the shelf, placed it down on the floor, and Timothy filled it up to the neck, the relief on his face gradually increasing as his burden got lighter. When he finished, the bucket was still half-full.
"You didn't have to bring so much, you dummy," Luke said and put the bucket in the corner, where it wouldn't get knocked over.
"Excuse me, but did you see the size of that monsterosity? No way I'm making two trips, nuh-uh."
While her brothers argued about what was the least amount of effort (one trip with a bucket filled to the brim, or two trips with a bucket filled only halfway), Valery took a second slice of bread and placed it neatly atop the first, with little bits of ham sticking out at evenly spaced intervals - a piece of art.
"One trip! Less walking!"
"Two trips! Less weight!"
"One trip! Saves time!"
"With that bow-legged stance of yours? I doubt it!"
Then she took some strips of salted meat and arranged them in neat little lines alongside the afore-mentioned masterpiece, going from longest to shortest.
"Next time you can go fetch the water, oh master of corner-cutting!" Timothy said and bonked the pitcher down on the counter, hard enough to make a little wave of water slosh over the lip.
Valery made a mental note to wipe that down later, and gave her work one final perusal. Sure, it looked hardy, but it was just too plain, too lacklustre. It needed something... Aha!
She reached up and retrieved a jar of sunflower seeds from the top shelf (de-shelled them herself, one by one on a rainy day not so long ago), and stuck three of them inside the bread, one at the top, one in the middle, and one at the bottom. There! Perfect! Dad said not to bother with greens, but sunflower seeds hardly qualified as greens, did they? And she seriously doubted the Wolf would even notice a touch like this. Not that she cared if he did. But even if it was for the scariest thing she's ever seen in her life, that's no excuse not to do a job properly, even if it's just a sandwich. Dad taught her that.
"Done," she said, carefully adding a bowl of soup to the tray - nice and warm, the perfect remedy to even the nastiest of ailments. "Now which one of you is going to give it to him?"
"Not me!" Luke and Tim said together, their timing so perfectly synchronised they really did sound like twins. Almost.
"Please, guys! I don't want to go in there!"
"I've already been as close to 'Mr. Wolf' as I ever intend to get," Luke huffed, his thumb pointed rigidly at his chest. "Damn thing practically slobbered all over me. Disgusting."
Valery turned to Tim next, although she didn't hold out much hope. "Tim? Don't tell me you're going to dump everything on me, too?"
"Weeell..." Tim shifted his feet uncomfortably and scratched his ear. "I suppose we could all go together, but I'm not stepping foot inside that room."
"Yeah, let Dad take it the rest of the way, since he's so keen on his new pet," Luke added.
And speak of the devil, Dad's voice came drifting down the corridor: "Kids? I don't mean to rush you, but our guest is looking rather peaked!"
"Coming, Dad!" Valery said, lifting the tray while Tim picked up the water pitcher.
Luke just shook his head and muttered, "I just know something bad is gonna happen."
As they walked down the hallway in single file, Valery had this unpleasant feeling in her gut telling her to drop everything and run away as fast as she could, but she couldn't just leave her dad alone with the very thing she felt so uneasy about. But maybe she was just being paranoid? Just because something's scary doesn't mean that it really is scary. The Wolf in Uncle Jon's letter sounded really nice, so maybe this one would be, too? Heck, they might even be one and the same. She tried to keep this in mind, but it wouldn't stick.
She didn't want to say so out loud, but she agreed with Luke. They were all alone out here in the middle of nowhere, completely cut off from the rest of the Foxes by miles and miles of wilderness. If something went wrong, they would have to deal with it themselves, and even though it had looked at her for only a single second, she had the feeling that there was something wrong with that Wolf.
Very, _very_wrong.
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