In the House with Chicken Feet (2)

She wasn't what he had been expecting.

The long man, Tua had hauled Hin along like a puppy, spidery, callused fingers at the scruff of his neck. Now that Hin could see him clearly, or as clearly as one could see out of the corner of one's eye, the man wasn't much older than Hin himself. Maybe twenty or so at most. But even lanky with youth, the man had the most serious face Hin had ever seen. Nothing seemed to shake the placid frown and slightly narrowed eyes. Certainly nothing Hin did.

Not that he was trying to do much of anything. As the man dragged him into the house and marched him down the hallway that was certainly far too long for the outside of the house, Hin concentrated on becoming invisible, or at the very least, being as completely unobtrusive and innocent as possible.

He'd lost count of the doors they passed, all painted with gaudy colors - designs of flowers and animals and mosaics and polka dots - when Tua abruptly stopped. The door looked like all the other doors, small and wooden, with an eye-scorching bright mural of a smiling sun spilling over the door frames, but Tua knocked three times and bowed his head respectfully. His serious expression didn't change, even when he closed his eyes. Hin ran his dry tongue over chapped lips and tried not to faint.

He didn't hear any response, but Tua seemed to have received some sort of permission because he abruptly straightened and opened the door, shoving Hin through. He followed and released Hin's neck, but Hin suddenly wished he hadn't, if only to help him stay upright.

"M - Baba Mayuko," he stammered.

She wasn't at all what he had been expecting.

She wasn't old, for one thing. Everyone knew that babas were old. It was how they had so much power, because they had lived so long. But Mayuko wasn't. She looked no more than thirty, her skin still smooth and her hair still dark.

She was pretty, for another. Everyone knew that babas were ugly. It came with being so old, and for dabbling in dark magic. Being young wasn't necessarily a guarantee for beauty, but Baba Mayuko was... Her hair... and her eyes... and... the rest of her. He hadn't known a woman could have such a tiny waist. Or long neck. She was like a statue or a painting, with her long, old-fashioned robes and lightly tinged cheeks.

And lastly, everyone knew that babas were grouchy, dangerous folk. They had tempers. One could guarantee that the wrong word would cause their ugly face to split with a curse. But she was smiling. More than smiling; it was a crinkly-faced grin, pulling at her flawless skin and revealing clean white teeth. She had one hand on her hip as it jutted out to the side with the curve of her spine and the comb in her hair was shaped like a goggly-eyed giraffe. For all her beauty and the aura of grace that rippled off her, she looked like a laundry girl in the middle of playing a good prank.

Tua's hand was abruptly at Hin's neck, shoving his head down, and Hin realized that he had been staring and he hadn't bowed and now he was going to die. He dropped to his hands and knees, pressing his forehead to the shag carpet that covered the floor.

"Elmo caught him outside," Tua's voice was unexpectedly soft. It was like a singer's voice and for some reason that made Hin flinch.

"A thief?" The baba's voice was low and it rasped like a chain-smoking elder's.

"No!" Hin protested, raising his head in a panic, only to have Tua press it back down. The baba must have made some gesture though, because just as suddenly, Hin's head was free again and the baba was speaking.

"Care to explain your presence in my house then, Hin Langoleer?"

He didn't even bother to ask how she knew his name. He was obscenely aware that he still only had one sandal and his clothes were covered in dust and cobwebs and pine needles from his scramble through the forest. He didn't dare lift his face again, just raised his head enough that his mouth was free of the carpet fibers.

"Please, your magnificence-"

"Don't try to compliment me." She still sounded as if she were smiling, but he flinched and stammered all the harder.

"P-please-"

"Stop begging. Just say what you need to say." She even laughed that time. Tua didn't say anything. Hin could see the other man's toes out of the corner of his eye, but they remained still. He swallowed.

"I-I-"

"Don't stammer either." She sounded like his great-aunt, if his great-aunt knew how to smile.

"Uh-"

"You're not very good at this, are you, my little thief?"

"I'm not a thief!" His head came up again, desperate. The baba was reclining in an armchair he didn't remember seeing before and hold something up for inspection in a delicate hand.

"Then how do you explain this?" she asked, chin propped in the other hand.

It was a bowl, white porcelain and painted with blue cranes. It dangled carelessly from the baba's fingers. Hin blinked.

"I don't-"

"Seems the vender in the village is looking for this. I heard it was the boy with the frog toes." Hin curled his toes into themselves in panic, but it didn't seem like the baba even needed to see his feet. She swung the bowl from three fingers as if it were a yo-yo. She blinked languidly and her eyelids had been painted white with pupils, so that they looked like open eyes. "Well, how about it?"

"I didn't-" He'd never seen that bowl before in his life. He had been framed for the theft from the beginning, but who would believe the cursed boy over the elder's own son?

"And then you disturb poor Elmo while trying to steal from me as well."

Tua's calf muscle clenched. Hin buried his face in the carpet again.

"Please, I didn't- There must be some sort of mistake..."

The baba was silent and he cringed. When he dared to try and glance up at her, she was tapping her thumb against her lips, the bowl hanging down like a great round, blue-and-white beard. It only made her look more elegant.

"Hmm, seems to me you need to be punished for your misdeeds."

"Your grace-"

"Mmm," she continued and his jaw snapped shut, "I think I have just the thing."

She stood up from her chair and pointed a finger at Hin, the hand with the bowl falling to her side.

"I think I shall be merciful. Death would perhaps be too hasty? After all, Elmo did keep him from stealing anything, right? Faithful guard that she is."

Hin could see the tendons in Tua's feet tightening and he closed his eyes, mashing his face into the soft fibers of the carpet. It smelled like incense and fish.

"Hin Langoleer," the baba said, her voice booming through the room, filling the corners and leaking through the cracks in the panels of the ceiling. He didn't dare raise his head, but Tua reached down and grabbed him by the collar, hauling him to his feet.

"From this day forward, you will serve the house of Kure." Mayuko's voice honestly sounded as if she were trying to suppress giggles. If Hin hadn't been trying to keep from sobbing out loud, he might have wondered about it.

"Right, now that's taken care of. I do hate conflicts like this." She abruptly flopped back into her chair, flicking her hair back over a smooth shoulder. "Nu, Mo, where are you?"

And then suddenly there were two women creeping out from behind the wooden panels and silk curtains along the walls. They looked more like babas than Mayuko herself, with faint crow's feet and less-than-tiny waists, but even they couldn't have been more than forty. And they were identical. Only the fact that one was wearing red and the other gold kept Hin from thinking he was seeing double.

"Ah, there you are," the baba said, flapping her hand to wave them over like an impatient child. They glided in like furtive dancers and made tiny bows to the baba before stationing themselves at the two back corners of her chair.

"This," Mayuko said proudly, as if showing off a new toy, "is Hin. Get him some clean clothes and set him to work on the firewood, would you?"

The two women looked at Hin, still dangling from Tua's grip, with narrowed eyes and synchronized disdainful sniffs. Hin just covered his face with his hands.

None of this was what he had been expecting at all.