“Och, Mac, yer not being a superstitious old bag, are ye?” McKale asked him.
The man’s cheeks reddened. “Certainly not. As I said, I’m just no’ accustomed to seein’ a female here, is all.” Mac huffed and gave me a polite nod before disappearing into the Shoe House.
When I looked back at McKale he was totally staring at my legs. In a good way, not the giraffe way. Which gave me a nice feeling.
“Sorry,” I said, making his eyes jump up to mine. “I didn’t know I wasn’t supposed to come here. I was curious about where you worked.”
He shrugged. “’Tis no rule against it. Just habit or tradition, I suppose. Did ye want to look inside?”
“Oh, no. I don’t know.” I smoothed the hair back on my ponytail, nervous and embarrassed by my apparent faux pas. “I don’t want to get you in trouble. Or curse the Shoe House with my girliness.”
He kept a polite expression while his clear hazel eyes studied my face. I hoped he knew I was joking.
“Ye don’t look like bad luck to me,” he said in a soft voice. “Come on. In we go.”
I bit my lip and followed him into the open building to the far side with the gigantic drum barrel on its side. Next to it was a ladder. Without thinking I covered my nose against the strange smell permeating the area—not rotten exactly, but definitely unpleasant. When McKale turned I dropped my hand.
“Does it smell bad to ye?” he asked.
“A little,” I admitted.
A tiny grin traced his mouth. “Ye should get a whiff of the main tanning house. It’s kept clear on the other side o’ the property. That’s where the lads do the slaughter and skinning and soaking—” He broke off when he saw the grimace on my face. “Aye. My apologies. Here we extract the essential oils from flower petals usin’ steam to make tanning liquor.” He pointed at some barrels and contraptions around the room. He went on to explain the process with words like “thinned, dried, conditioned, and buffed” but I was lost to it all.
“You guys kill… cows?”
“Deer,” he said. “And naught goes to waste.”
I wasn’t a vegetarian, but the thought of all that “fresh meat” on the premises was still unsettling.
Little men were starting to trickle in now. Some gawked and nudged each other when they saw McKale and me. I sent McKale a worried glance, and he bent his head toward the drum barrel for me to follow. On the other side of it we were out of sight from the men. McKale led me forward and stood behind me, pointing at the parts. On top was the opening. We could both reach it, but the little men would have to use the ladder.
“The skins soak in the tanning liquor and we crank the barrel… here, give it a go.”
I couldn’t get it to move at first, so I threw my weight into it until it gained momentum. Once it got going it was kind of fun. I got a bit carried away until I wondered what McKale must have been thinking. I became suddenly aware of his presence close behind me. I felt my ponytail lift and I stopped cranking. A slow turn of my head caught McKale letting the hair fall from his hand. He’d been smelling my hair. And now he wore an expression like a boy who’d been caught with his hand in the cookie jar.
It probably should’ve been creepy, but the small gesture of intimacy made my scalp tingle in a not-at-all creepy way.
He stepped away, his cheekbones pink. “I… yer hair… how do ye get the scent into it?”
I had to smile. “It’s this stuff called shampoo. It’s liquid soap and it’s scented.”
“Ah.” He looked confused.
I remembered now the bar of soap in our bathroom had been unscented, but I assumed they knew how to make scented soap if they’d wanted. A little man came around the corner and gasped out loud. He jumped back and shouted something in Gaelic when he saw me, then skittered away. McKale’s eyebrows went up.
“I should go,” I said.
“I’ll show ye the back way out.”
He led me the opposite direction from where I came in, and we stopped at the door. My heart gave a nervous sputter as we faced each other. He held my eyes and scratched his cheek.
“Robyn?”
Oh, my. The way he said my name…
“Yeah?”
He didn’t respond. His eyes dropped and roamed the ground as if he were struggling for words. And then with a forward rush of air he said, “Ye should know… a forced binding is not the way of our people.”
Okay…? Thoughts stuttered through my mind. “It’s not the usual way of my people either,” I said. “At least not the forced part.”
Magical boys and girls were usually given a chance to get to know one another, starting from childhood, before any sort of agreement was made by their parents. What we had was different. I wondered if he had any idea we’d been set up by a Faerie.
I wanted to assure him I wasn’t a fan of our exact predicament either, but the words wouldn’t come. We were still strangers, and I couldn’t read him yet.
He finally looked at me again, a plea in his light eyes. Sudden panic struck my chest. Did he want out of this? If McKale didn’t want to go through with the binding, would the Fae still come after my family? I would do anything in my power to keep them safe, but if he refused, what could I do? He needed to know what we were up against.
“Look, McKale, I understand how you feel, but a Faerie claimed me to bind with you when I was a baby. It’s not something that we—I—can easily back out of.”