A Mischief in the Woodwork - By Harper Alexander Page 0,49
at, a blaze of animation in the room.
“Her name is Modesta,” Tanen announced, striding in.
He had a knack for appearing at certain times.
I turned, startled and annoyed. “It's a he,” I corrected him to hide my startlement.
“Oh?” he challenged
“He's too brightly colored to be a girl.”
“Well, for the record, if you were adorned in fancy bright colors, I would still think you were a girl.”
“Thank you,” I said dryly. There was an itch on my back, nagging at me to ask where he had been. I scrunched the muscles around it, resisting. I did comb him for clues, though, as he had a seat and took his boots off his seemingly aching feet. There was nothing on him that gave off any hints, but he had clearly been abroad.
“Modesto, then?” he proposed. “Or perhaps something generic? You decide; he's yours.”
The itch abruptly transferred to my fingertips, and now it wanted to touch is boots.
It was the first time an urge like that had ever taken me. What on earth did I want with his boots?
His words filtered distantly into my head. He's yours. The way he said it, like a reminder. A reminder that he had been a gift.
“Modo,” I said. It came out without any thought, for I was in a place where I didn't want to apply any.
And, well, that's what happens when things are said without any thought.
Tanen made a face halfway between sour and considerate, but it was entirely geared to humor me. “As the Lady Siren wishes.”
My thoughts came out of his boots (a ridiculous notion in and of itself). “Stop with that.”
He cocked an all too reasonably mocking brow at me as he stood to take his boots to the door. “If you can call the bird Modo, I can call you Lady Siren.”
“Am I supposed to say 'oh, yes, of course you can'?” I shot at his back. “'It's a deal'?”
“Or seal my lips,” he offered without sympathy, flashing me a smirk before disappearing into the other room.
And I, being the mindless oddity that I was these days, thought of no retort better than 'his boots are unattended on the porch'.
*
There was no justification that granted me the mission, but it seemed I didn't require any. Minutes later, I had shirked witness and sought out his boots. I sat on the porch, and ran them through my fingers.
It was mindless. I don't know what I would have done if someone had caught me. How I would have explained it.
But it was no longer one fingerprint that bore the insignia of spider silk. It was all of them.
My webbed fingerprints sifted through the particles that dusted the leather. They sorted them, mixed them, tasted them. A puff of the stuff stirred up into my face, and I choked on a vision of a dusty road, obscure from being kicked up. It faded from my mind, but there was still dust in my eyes, and as I blinked I saw snippets of other things. A slab of stone covered in powder. A pillar caked in dry mud. A doorway, traipsed by footprints.
Then it was gone.
I set the boot aside. Thank goodness no one had seen that.
But what had I seen?
The theory was that it had been wherever Tanen had been. But a dusty road, slab of stone, muddy pillar and sullied doorstep were going to be no fast indication. Those symbols were common ground in Dar'on.
I sat back, frustrated. There was a restless feeling alive in me that itched for another fix.
I shrugged it away, and pried myself up from the porch. It still hummed in my fingertips, but I flexed my fingers and took myself back inside.
Then, feeling suddenly repulsed, I headed for the kitchen and washed my hands most vigorously, feeling irrevocably scarred from the task of being so readily immersed in a man's well-used boots.
*
Tanen melted into the countryside again the next day, and then the following day as well. Each time he returned, my fingers itched. I resisted handling his boots again, but that did not mean the urge wasn't there.
Finally, since I seemed set on not simply asking him, I hatched a grand alternative notion; I would follow him. He had no business begging our sustained hospitality only to spend the days disappearing on secret errands rather than lending a hand around his newfound refuge. He owed us here at Manor Dorn. I could not rest letting him dally about his own devices without confrontation.