I Will Work Hard Ch. 01

Sasha went on without any reaction to Hulda's expression. "Now that you have a husband, you'll have to take good care of him, so he can take good care of you. When he's had a filthy day, wash and groom him. When he's ripped his clothes, patch them up. When his muscles are sore, give him a massage. He'll be glad to help you in return. You're companions, after all."

Whatever.

This was life now.

Hulda didn't like it, but she accepted it, because there was no other option.

***

Located in a place called Korelanda Village, the family's house was bigger than Hulda had imagined. It was tall, wide, and there were additions on both sides. The roof was thatched. The walls were of mud and wood. There was a simple wooden fence and a gate. Similar houses were all around. There were many fields in the neighborhood. Some centaurs were pulling plows. Women, leashed to the centaurs, were behind, guiding the plows. Other centaurs were planting seeds, guiding animals about, or leaving the community with many goods belted to their bodies, as if they wanted to go to a marketplace.

Yann pulled the curtain covering the tall entrance aside and he entered. Ehlov followed right behind him.

Inside the common room, there was a dirt floor, which was exactly what peasants' homes had in Hulda's homeland. She had grown up walking in nothing but earth and grass.

There were still differences in this centaur's house to note, though.

Instead of several straw filled mattresses rolled out onto the bare earth, there was a tall, large bed with a wooden frame in the center of the room with many ordinary pillows and blankets. Grooves were in the thick frame of the bed, which seemed to be meant for a woman to put the balls of her feet into so she could climb up. Still, Hulda imagined she could probably jump up and get onto the bed without using the grooves, if she really wanted to. All around the bed, on the floor, there were piles of straw. Hulda guessed that the centaurs slept near or on that straw.

There was smoke.

To one side of the room, there were many crates, boxes, spinning wheels, butter churns, tools, furniture, and other things. To another side, a young boy centaur wearing a gray apron was tending to vegetables, which were impaled on skewers and balanced on a large clay brazier. That was where the smoke came from. He looked similar to the older centaurs, golden brown and blond.

Near the boy, there was a crude cradle filled with more straw, and a babbling baby girl was there, her feet kicking. When the baby suddenly made a sound like a cry, the boy centaur looked at her, and he said with his youthful voice, "Nothing's wrong with you. You're just wanting attention." Hulda thought he might have been ten years old.

When he noticed the arrival of Yann and Ehlov, and the women on their backs, he smiled up at them. "Is that your wife, Uncle Ehlov?"

Ehlov nodded down at him. "Yeah. Her name's Hulda. She's a foreigner. She's pretty hurt in the heart."

Yann added, "She needs time to learn how things are done."

She was told to get off of her husband and remove her harness. After she obeyed, she was left alone with the boy and the baby, because the older centaurs, and the old woman, had work outside to do.

"My name's Johnan," the boy said as he put cooked vegetables onto a wooden plate, which was then placed on a simple table that seemed unusually tall to Hulda. "The baby's Dagny. She's my cousin by my older uncle, and you're my aunt." He took more vegetables from a box, which had been in a stack of other boxes. As he started putting these raw vegetables onto skewers, he said with a very gentle, pleading tone, "So, Auntie Hulda, would you please, please put your eyes on Dagny? It'll be much easier for me to cook if you do."

His eyes were brown, but they were warm, and his teeth were a bit crooked. He had a charm to him.

Hulda's fingers tangled and twisted together, but she stepped over to the cradle and looked down at the child. She was plump and pink, but she seemed too small to hold her head up.

She looked after the baby as she watched Johnan cook food. At one point, he put a metal grate over the brazier, and then he put a pot of water on top. "On the left of the house, there's a chicken coop," he said very calmly. "Would you please go and find a few eggs for me, Auntie Hulda, and gather up any fresh ones too? Oh, and if the first hen closest to the curtain, the one that's black with a white face and throat, doesn't have any eggs, let me know."

Assuming that particular hen hadn't been laying eggs in a while, Hulda told the boy she'd go to the chickens. Once she was certain that the baby didn't need anything, she went to a curtain on the left of the house. She pulled it aside and went into the room, which was honestly a large chicken coop. A partially full basket was waiting on the floor. It seemed that someone had looked for eggs earlier in the morning. Hulda gripped the handle and went for a quick egg hunt. The hen Johnan had mentioned earlier certainly hadn't laid anything.

When she had a completely full basket, she carried it into the common room and showed it to the boy. "That hen doesn't have any eggs."

"Well," Johnan said, holding out the end of his apron and putting several eggs into the hammock-like space he had created, "that one's going to die. You think you can do it?"

"Of course." Hulda put another glance to the baby, who was starting to whine again.

"Dagny's the kind to lie," Johnan explained. "It's not her fault. She doesn't know any better. She'll learn though, but until then you'll have to learn when she's lying."

Hulda sighed and stroked the baby's face. "She seems fine." She put the basket of eggs on the floor so she could use her other hand to affectionately stroke the child's soft little feet.

"Then she's fine," Johnan said as he watched the water heat up. "There's a sharp knife and a table in the coop. Will you please kill that hen and bring her carcass over here when she's good and bled? I'll keep one of my eyes on Dagny, like I did before you came."

Hulda almost felt a bit of cheer as she listened to the boy. He seemed so amazingly polite, but he also seemed to be in complete control of everything. "Yes, Sir," she said with something that was nearly a smile.

It was then that a great frown grew on Johnan's face, and his young brow furrowed as he stared at the water in the pot. "Auntie! Don't call me Sir! I'm beneath you! It's not right!"

"Huh?" Hulda put her fingertips to her lips and tilted her head in pure confusion. "You're beneath me? I don't get it."

"You're a foreigner, so I guess it's fine that you didn't know." His eyes were still pointed to the water, patiently waiting. "The highest ranking man is always beneath the lowest ranking woman, because men here are big and strong. If we don't act right, we'll end up killing all the women. So, the women have to keep us acting right."

His eyes flew up only for a few seconds so he could look at her face. His fingers tightened over his apron. "I'm telling you what to do now, because Grandma told me to. She said when Uncle Ehlov comes with his new wife, I have to help the women teach her how things are, and when you know what to do, you'll be telling me what to do."

Hulda stared at him, her teeth pressing over her lower lip. Then she opened her mouth to say, "That's the strangest thing I've ever heard. In my homeland, a woman always obeys the men in her family. If she doesn't, she might get a beating, if the men are mean enough."

Johnan actually turned his whole head to gawk at her. His jaw had dropped. His eggs almost fell, but he caught them. "What the bollocks are you going on about?!" His voice, as bright and young as it was, actually broke a bit as he hollered at her. "You're joking!! That's not funny, Auntie Hulda!" One of his back legs stomped down on the earth twice, emphasizing his words. "That's not any kind of funny!"

Hulda retreated, her hands against her bosom, her head lowering. "Alright, alright. I'm going to the coop. Don't scream at me."

Something like panic had Johnan's eyes bulging. He shook his head. "No! I'm sorry. I didn't mean to yell at you. I'm so sorry."

Hulda nodded at him, lightly saying with an airy tone, "It's fine. Don't worry over me. I'm just going to get the hen for you."

The process of killing and bleeding the hen took a few minutes. When she had a dead chicken ready for plucking, she went back into the common room, and there she saw a new woman sitting on the large bed in the middle of the area. She had two flat, black moles under one of her gray eyes. A single lock of strawberry blonde hair was peeking out of her gray cap. She was holding baby Dagny close to her bosom, cooing very sweetly to the child.

Johnan introduced the woman very casually. "This is my Auntie Danuta. She's Dagny's Ma."

Danuta caressed the baby's soft little head as she asked, "You're Hulda, aren't you? Ehlov's wife?"

She couldn't think of any other way to identify herself. So, Hulda nodded and said, "Yes, Madam."

Danuta's feet curled and the toes wiggled as she seemed to groan and sigh. "There are jugs of milk in the room on the right of the house. Take those jugs and bring them here."

Hulda hurried to the extra room on the right. A cow was there, and she was a very quiet thing. There was also a great bit of straw for her to relax on top of. Four metal jugs with lids and handles were on the ground. Hulda put two on each set of fingers and carried them into the common room.

Danuta nodded at her and said, "Ehlov will be here soon. You'll go with him to sell the eggs and milk. There should be a cloth and a rope in the chicken coop. Go find it."

Hulda hurried to find these objects. She assumed they were for covering the basket of eggs. When she returned and started tying the cloth over the basket, Danuta praised her with a breathy, tired voice. "You're a good girl. Now help Johnan with the cooking while you wait for your husband."

Hulda did just that for around five minutes, and then Ehlov arrived. He said, "Wife, we're going to the marketplace. Hang the milk on my belts, would you?" He seemed to have quite a few belts on, completely separate from his harness. That made sense. He'd have to carry around quite a few things. There was also a sickle with a very, very long handle attached to him. It had to be for self-defense, she imagined.

Hulda attached the handles of the jugs to Ehlov's belts, two on each side. Then she handed him the basket of eggs. As she put her leather harness onto her body, she heard him say, "I'll put the basket with you once you're ready."

And just as he said, when she was on his horse-like back and belted to his waist, the leash looped up, Ehlov turned to hand her the basket of eggs. She held it close to her body as the centaur carried her out of the building.

"Do you like the house?" he asked her as he trotted.

Keeping a protective hand over the covered eggs, Hulda admitted, "It's so big! I can't believe it. How can you afford such a big house?"

"You think it's big?" He turned his head back to give her an oddly soft look. Then he looked ahead to keep himself from falling or banging into something. "I guess you would think so, huh?"

"Wait ... so ... your house is normal?"

"I've been told it's small."

Hulda's free hand gripped the safety belt around her waist. "How can everyone here have such big houses?"

"We have to have big houses, Wife. Centaurs are pretty damn big, but we're also very careful about where we move. Less space means you're more likely to knock something over."

Her fingers lightly drummed on the basket of eggs. "How can one purchase so much wood?"

"Ahhhh! I don't want to give a long explanation of how much wood's worth in Breden, but I'll give you an inkling of how things are here." One of his hands crossed over so he could massage his humanoid shoulder. "I used to pull carriages, so I've seen how many different farmers work. Where you're from, you'd have to share animals with all the other families, wouldn't you?"

"Yeah. We'd all have to put a coin in a bucket to buy a new animal to pull the plows along."

"Nobody around here is stupid enough to buy a fucking animal for something like that," Ehlov said, his hooves pounding on the grass. "All you need is a strong man to do that kind of work, and your average family has several men. We can get much more work done in a day than a human farmer might be able to imagine. Most dwarves don't even use animals. They prefer to hire centaurs whenever they can. A centaur is pretty much a strong man than can do anything a horse can, and with a better brain too."

Hulda's mouth formed a plump circle, and then the circle loosened, and she made a very dumbfounded sort of noise. "Oooohhhhhhh."

She was quiet for a bit as her brain put together all the work a horse could do, and then she imagined a family with, say, four centaurs who could do all that work. The amount of stuff that could be done within a day ... the amount of products they could help produce ... the money they could make simply by helping a dwarf with something ... it all opened her thoughts into a wondrous state.

"Husband," she said after a few more moments, as the realization excited her, because she absolutely loved knowing she had figured something out. "Oh, Husband!" She wanted to bounce in place on the centaur's back, but that was a bad idea. She settled on grinning and letting her feet kick a bit. "I just thought of something!"

"Hmmm? That's good. Tell me what you thought."

"Well, when people are able to make more things and do more things, they make more money. That means that all the merchants and shopkeepers and other kinds can make more money because their customers can buy more stuff!" She took a short breath, and then she let more words tumble out. "It also means that the lords can collect more taxes, because there's more money around. So ... uhm ... the country's ... money ... life ... thing ... is probably really, really good here, right?"

"Money life thing?" Ehlov looked back at her again, and he snorted very loudly. "I think the word for that is economy."

Oh wow! What a word! She'd never heard that word before!

Hulda leaned forward only a bit as she said, "Wow, Husband! That sounds like a fancy word! Do you really know a word like that? Where did you hear it?"

"I was a Carriage Man, Wife. I was paid money to take all kinds of people around the world. When you travel like that, you can learn lots of fancy words if you pay attention."

Hulda still didn't like the idea of being married to this man. He had a horse body. She didn't want to put her woman parts anywhere near him. But ... she wasn't so stubborn that she didn't recognize that when a man knew words like economy, it was a good thing.

Maybe he'd teach her some of those words? It would be so wonderful to use them.

***

The marketplace they visited was pretty much the same as the marketplace Hulda had known in her homeland. The main difference was how everything was built to suit a centaur. There were dwarves, though, and they didn't seem fazed at all about adjusting to everything.

Their goods were soon sold. Those matters were quick and easy. Ehlov put the money in a pouch near his front, where Hulda imagined it was the most secure. Then, he went to a fishmonger to purchase a few nice river fish. After that, he went to a shepherd and purchased some raw wool. The most stressful part about the trip, though, was how men who apparently knew Ehlov would approach and ask about her.

Beforehand, Ehlov had told her that a man who wasn't part of the family wasn't allowed to speak to her unless she had been introduced, or if she had decided to speak to the hypothetical man first. Still, she was discouraged from such behavior, because according to the culture here, a woman was supposed to seem unapproachable and aloof to men she did not know, unless she was highly infatuated with one. The coldness was meant to encourage respectful behavior towards the women.

And so, Hulda kept herself in a quiet, reserved state whenever a man approached.

At the family home, Yann, and two younger centaurs, were pulling plows with women behind them. One of the women was Danuta.

Ehlov went inside the house and left the purchased goods with Johnan, who was apparently meant to deal with them. Then Ehlov went back outside to seek out Yann's attention. He handed the leftover cash to his father, and then he asked, "Do you have the seeds?"

Yann handed him a great bag of seeds and said, "We'll have the whole field ready in a few minutes."

Hulda was still amazed at how quickly that seemed to be. In her homeland, it might take most of the day to plow a field the same size of this family's field.

Ehlov turned back to snort and ask, "Would you mind getting off of me? We need to finish sowing the wheat."

That seemed reasonable to her.

Hulda dismounted and unwound the looped leash so she could have room to walk around. Then, she helped her new husband to sow the wheat seeds. It seemed that he had started doing this earlier in the day, but he hadn't finished. Eventually, the other centaurs finished pulling their plows, and with their wives' assistance, they too began scattering the seeds.

By the time they had finished everything with that field, Johnan had peeked his head out of the house and called out, "Food's ready!"

There was a community well nearby, but there was also a river for when the line at the well was too long. They always had water nearby. Not only that, but there was always cheap ale to sip. Everyone had plenty to drink.

The food was similar to what Hulda had grown up eating. For most of her life, her diet consisted of vegetables, bread, porridge and gruel, beans, eggs, occasional nuts and cheese, and whenever a hen was too old the meat from that creature was available. The main difference with her new life was the quantity of food given to her, plus the serving of fish. Hulda actually stared at her plate for a moment, wondering if there was a mistake. She was new here. Certainly, she wasn't meant to have so much food.

She looked over to Johnan, who had given everyone their servings. "Johnan, is this the mistress' plate?" She held her plate up a bit to make sure he knew what she was talking about.

Shaking his head, Johnan replied, "No, Auntie Hulda. That's your plate. You'd better eat it up, or Grandma's going to be sore at you."

As she sat with the other women on the large bed in the common room, Hulda took a moment to glance at everyone's plates. The women's plates were all the same, really. It seemed that no matter what your rank was, you ate as well as everyone else. The centaurs all had the same plates too, except they were all bigger than the women's. They also had sides of literal grass. They seemed to eat so much more than a woman ever hoped to. Later on, as Hulda was shyly finishing up her meal, she noticed that the men tended to save the grass for last, because they liked to chew it for as long as possible before swallowing.

When everyone was finished eating, Sasha and her eldest daughter-in-law, who was named Lili, worked at spinning wheels. Danuta and Hulda were expected to brush all the men's coats with what Hulda believed were horse brushes. They also had to comb their hair and tails. Danuta had to explain the proper methods of brushing and combing to Hulda. Thankfully, none of it was difficult to learn.

Each woman started with her husband. Then, Hulda went to grooming Yann while Danuta went to Lili's husband, Placidus.

Lili was a woman with two different colored eyes, brown on her right and green on her left. Some of her hairline was visible, peeking out from her cap. She seemed to be a blonde. She also seemed a bit impatient, but otherwise easy to tolerate. What amused Hulda the most about her was how her nostrils flared whenever something or someone irritated her.