Ander - Part 6: Subchapter 24
24
Someone grabbed him from behind, by the hair. It was such an unexpected sensation it took a moment for him to register that he was still standing and not writhing on the ground in excruciating pain with his face oozing off his shattered skull.
At least until he was lifted off his feet. There was plenty of pain then.
"Ow! Ow! Ooooooww!!" he wailed, kicking his feet uselessly through the air, scratching at whatever the hell had dug its claws into his scalp.
Ander slowly lowered his fist, but didn't unclench it. "What are you doing, Nilia?"
Nilia!?
"I am preventing you from doing something you might regret later," she said, not sounding like someone on the verge of a hysterical breakdown at all. In fact, she sounded almost bored, which was even more terrifying.
"Did you hear what he said!?" Ander shouted. Mateo didn't think he'd ever seen this Wolf so angry before. He could actually feel it slamming into his face like heat from a fire.
"I heard every word, and not just the ones that poured out of this jackass's mouth, but Kiana's, too. She really, truly loves you, Ander, and that is exactly why you need to set your priorities straight." She motioned towards the closed bedroom door. "Right now she needs a caring shoulder much more than this rodent needs a black eye. Please, don't make this night even worse for her than it already is."
It was close. Very close. Ander's fist was shaking, and Mateo could tell by the look on his face that he was seriously considering tearing into him anyway, socking him where he hung like some stuffed punching bag.
In the end, it was the handkerchief, more red than blue now. Ander saw the way it was all scrunched up around his hand, and some of his anger seemed to disappear. Not much, but enough. He finally unclenched that monstrous fist, and he fixed Mateo with a stare as unyielding as the hardwood floor he wished his feet were still standing upon.
Mateo tried his very best not to burst out screaming, which was a task in itself, since it felt like the top of his head was about to rip free of his skull like an orange peel.
"Go on, Ander," Nilia said. "You take care of that mess, and I'll take care of this one." She gave Mateo a little shake and the pain seemed to shoot all the way down to the tip of his tail in nauseating waves, but that wasn't what set the alarm bells a-ringing.
Take care? What did she mean by 'take care'?
Ander narrowed his eyes, apparently thinking the same thing. "What are you going to do to him?"
"He seems to have some misconceptions about us Wolves, so I'd like to have a word with him. Set him straight."
Set me straight? This was sounding scarier and scarier by the second. Quite frankly, Mateo would much rather be punched in the face by an angry Ander than be 'set straight' by Nilia (whatever that meant). Ander was boring and predictable, but Nilia? She was crazy. She was completely off her rocker. She was a stoppered tea pot and she could explode at any second, and he didn't want to be within a mile of her when she did.
"Um, excuse me?" Mateo ventured, hoping that the pain didn't show too much on his face. "Do you think maybe you could put me down now?"
"Quiet, you." Nilia gave him another shake and the pain travelled all across his head in unpleasant little tingles. His scalp was going numb, and it was all too easy to imagine that it was literally separating from his skull.
Ander looked down at Mateo, although not nearly as far down as normal. Heck, they were almost on eye-level now. "Don't tell anyone what happened here tonight. These secrets are Kiana's to tell, not yours." He accentuated his point with a hard jab to the chest, making him swing back and forth like a busted hinge. "That goes for you, too, Nilia."
"I understand. And I apologise for entering your home without announcing myself. That was very rude of me."
Ander sighed and shook his head. "It was an unfortunate accident, that's all. Just... why did you want to see me anyway? Was there something you needed to tell me?"
Mateo heard only the briefest of hesitations, but it was definitely there, a pause just before she started speaking. "No. It was about the wall, but it's not important. It can wait until tomorrow."
Mateo almost laughed out loud, partly out of terror, but mostly out of a sense of irony.
'Wall' indeed...
Ander looked her in the eye for a second or two, a futile endeavour. In the end, he simply nodded, said, "All right. Thank you, Nilia," and went to that room in the back, with all those carvings lining the walls. Mateo caught a brief glimpse of Kiana, sitting on the edge of an oversized bed, slightly bent over and cradling her stomach like someone about to be violently ill, and then the door eased shut with a soft, but undeniably final, click.
As Mateo hung from Nilia's grasp like some living lantern, he couldn't help but think...
Did this giant wreck of a woman just save his life? Was he... going to be okay?
Mateo waited for her to put him down, but the floor didn't come any closer. Was she having another one of her 'episodes'? It would have been so much easier to tell if he could just see her face.
"Um, Nilia?" he said sheepishly. "Could you put me down now, maybe? PleeearghOOW!"
Her grip suddenly tightened and he felt her claws sink into his scalp, five little daggers cutting into his head, accompanied by the dull snapping sound of his hair being ripped out by the root.
"OW! Nilia by the gods that hurts like a son of a bitch what are you doing!? Nilia!? OW! Niliaaa!!"
She turned to face the door, and she wasn't particularly smooth about it, either. It was an incredibly bizarre feeling, having your head anchored in one place while your body was free to swing around, carried by the momentum of a single, rock hard arm. He wondered if this was what it felt like to be hanged.
"Nilia, seriously, what are you doing!? Unhand me!"
Oh wow, that sure was manly of you...
Shut up!
Seriously, though, there was something terribly wrong here. He could hear her breathing just above and behind him, could feel the hot air blowing out of her nostrils and rushing past his ears like someone who had just run a mile. Was she...?
Oh dear gods, was she exploding? Was she finally exploding!?
She reached for the doorknob and twisted it around with one hard jerk of the wrist, like someone breaking a chicken's neck, and it was with pure horror that Mateo realized she was about to take this freak show outside.
"Nilia, wait!"
Her knee loomed up beside him like a sea monster rising from the murky depths of a children's tale, and she kicked out, throwing the door wide with a loud (and attention drawing) bang.
*
Sarah was enjoying a lovely little meat and vegetable skewer (pork and tomato and beef and pepper, yum!), when Ander's front door suddenly flew open with a resounding crash, nearly giving her (and half the Foxes present, to be sure) a heart attack. And who was that standing in the threshold? Why, none other than her grumpy son and that tall Wolfess he had been talking to all night, the one with the pretty eyes. Actually, 'standing' wasn't really the right word, since Mat's feet weren't even touching the ground. For whatever reason, Miss Nilia had picked him up by the hair, and neither of them looked very happy about it. Mat thrashed and flailed while Miss Nilia held him at arm's length like the biggest, most unwieldy lantern ever conceived, the foulest grimace contorting her face.
"Let go of me, you crazy bitch!" Mat yelled, trying to pry her fingers loose. "You're not right in the head!"
Nilia stomped off down the length of the house without a word, and once Mateo realized she was headed straight for the tent at the end of the line, his screaming went in a whole different direction.
"Somebody help! Get this crazy bitch off me! She's a stoppered tea pot! She's dangerously unstable and she's gonna explode!" Amazingly, he was trying to kick her backwards, which wasn't working very well, unless he was actually trying to tickle her shins with his toes, in which case he was doing just fine. "Oh gods no, wait, Nilia! Wait! We can talk about this! Nilia! Nilia!? Oh for gods' sake, somebody! She's going to kill me! Oh gods! No seriously she's going to murder me oh gods I hate you all! You lazy drunken sons of -"
Nilia pushed Mat into the tent ahead of her, and as the flap fell shut behind them and the wind rippled the canvass, one final, muffled bid for mercy could be heard.
"No, Nilia, wait, seriously, I'm sorry, okay? I'm sorry I said those things! I'm sorry I called you a crazy bitch! No, wait wait wait - Ooof!"
And then it was quiet. The whole thing couldn't have taken more than ten seconds. All over the hill Foxes stood regarding each other with identical looks of surprise and puzzlement. Half eaten sausages grew cold on the chilly breeze, completely forgotten halfway to open mouths. Pipes, dead and unlit, hung from slack jaws. Farther back, a tankard overflowed and spilled wine all over a rickety table, the tap held down by a frozen hand.
One of Lonin's boys, Bartholomew, elbowed his brother in the ribs. "What the heck was _that_all about?"
Nicholas shrugged, and through a mouthful of bread he said: "Ahuhwoh."
Michael seemed a bit perturbed as well. "Um, honey dearest? Do you think we should at all be concerned about the rather large woman who just absconded with our son?"
Sarah looked at Nilia's cosy little tent, with its cute patchwork patterns of animal skins, and turned to her husband with a smile. "I'm just so glad to see he's finally making some new friends," she said, positively beaming.
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