Euphemistically Yours

Arriving back home again, after talking to Brawn, the lights were out and the house was quiet. In fact, the front door was barred, so I had to knock to be let in. Luckily, Constance had waited up for me, though she had changed into her nightclothes.

When I opened my mouth to speak, she covered her lips with her finger. In other words, the children were asleep so we would need to whisper.

“What did Brawn want?” Apparently, she had seen right through his act.

“He gave me some good advice. Nothing we can do right now, so I’ll explain it all to you in the morning.”

Together, we made our way through the main hall, back through the hallway to our bedroom. Unfortunately, there was someone already there, sound asleep.

“I put Swift in our bed for tonight,” she explained.

“Why? Oh…”

“There was a table blocking the front door to her bedroom.”

“Is it still there?”

“I didn’t move it. I wanted to hear the whole story first.”

“Right! What about Progress? Did you check on her?”

“She’s in her room, but I don’t think she’s asleep yet. She’s still brushing her hair.”

“Was it that bad?”

“No… not really, but she’s still imagining things that aren’t there.”

“You could take her to the baths again tomorrow.”

“... or I could wash her hair in a bucket. No reason to waste money if we don’t need to.”

“Right. Good thinking.”

At the end of the discussion, I found myself eyeing Swift’s sleeping body in our bed. For some reason, she’d pivoted around the center until her body was lying horizontally across the mattress. Her head was on Constance’s pillow, while her feet were on mine.

“Progress says she kicks in the night.” I watched her toes as she twitched.

“Would you like to sleep on the floor?”

I considered the option. It’s true that Swift was too old to be sleeping in the same bed as her father. But, it was MY bed, not hers. “I could pick her up and carry her back to her bedroom.”

“She might wake up.”

“She’ll go right back to sleep.”

“The table is in the way. You’ll need to move that first.”

I nodded and made my way back down the hallway. However, when I arrived, I noticed that although the table was still in position, the door was strangely ajar. Peering inside, the room was pitch dark since the wooden shutters were closed. Despite that, I could see that the bed was empty. In other words, Euphemism was missing.

I sighed to myself. “Now what?”

First, I stopped to listen, but there was no sound louder than my own breathing. The front door was barred. The back door would be the same. Unless she’d gone out a window, she was still in the house. Progress was in her own room, and I hadn’t heard any sound of a struggle. Likewise, I couldn’t imagine her sneaking into Grit’s room. That left the store rooms, the kitchen, or the dining hall … the leftover sweetcakes!

To better sneak across the house, I removed my shoes and tiptoed barefoot down the hallway. When I reached the doorway to the dining hall, I slowly brought one eye around the frame of the door and waited for my eyes to adjust to the lighting.

There was no movement, no sound, but I noticed that while the plate of sweetcakes was still present, the covering cloth was flat down against the plate. So, my guess was correct. She was right back to her sweetcake stealing ways!

The next question was where she had gone after that. Obviously, she’d taken the prize with her. There was no way she could devour a whole family’s share of sweetcakes that quickly, but where would she go? Would she hide them somewhere?

Just as I was preparing to turn and continue the search, I heard the soft smack of someone chewing with their mouth open. This was followed by a soft murmur. “Mmmm!”

Focusing on the sound, I located the source directly in front of me. She was hiding right there underneath the dining table!

This time, I’d caught her red-handed. Perhaps the better analogy was that I’d caught her with cake on her face? No, I think that’s eggs… whatever.

Regardless, it was time to put a little fear into her. Without further ado, I walked into the room. In fact, I felt like a monologue. It fit my feelings at the moment, so I described my prior thoughts, “Now where is Eu? She wasn’t in her room. And what happened to the sweetcakes?”

The furtive sounds of chewing ceased. I could guess that she was holding her breath while watching my knees. After all, I couldn’t see her face, and she couldn’t see mine. But, that was about to change.

Using both hands, I grabbed my end of the dining table and tilted it up into the air. Naturally, Eu was revealed, her eyes wide, a pile of sweetcakes held in both hands.

“I FoUnD YoU!” I gave her an evil smile.

“Eeeeee!” She skittered sideways out from under the table, headed toward the kitchen door at my left. Some of her stack of sweetcakes fell to the floor, but she kept a grip on two of them.

“YoU CaN’t GeT aWaY!” Unfortunately, that wasn’t true. I had to set the table back down carefully, or it would slam into the floor. Even though she was making enough noise now to wake up the whole house, I didn’t want to break anything.

In a moment of clarity, I wondered why I was chasing her. The easy answer? Because she ran.

By the time I’d reached the kitchen, she was nowhere in sight. On the other hand, there weren’t many places to hide. We had a few cupboards and shelves, but all of them were too small for her to fit. The same logic followed for the cauldrons and pots. That only left the box in the center of the room that doubled as a prep table. It was just big enough that it would block my line of sight.

I stomped my bare feet straight toward her hiding place and then leaned over, only to discover that she wasn’t there. “Huh?”

Turning around, I caught a glimpse of her form scurrying back through the open doorway into the dining hall. I had to admit, I was impressed. She’d avoided the obvious hiding place and pressed herself against the wall beside the door to avoid notice. In the dark, her clever ploy had worked perfectly.

“Wait! Come back here!” I charged after her, but she was already gone, sprinting out of the dining room into the hallway.

I rounded the corner to see her slipping between Grit’s legs. He’d probably jumped out of bed after hearing my voice. He was wearing his night clothes and rubbing his eyes, but he was holding his sword. Luckily, it was still in the sheath. Otherwise, with the speed that I ran into him, the sword I got in the gut would have impaled me.

“Father? Wha … aaagh!” Grit bowled over like a top-heavy pot and collapsed backwards, his head slamming into the wall. Of course, my own feet got caught up on his windmilling legs, so I landed on top, crushing him. This time, the pommel of his sword jammed him in the eye. “Oww!”

I didn’t have time for apologies, so I leaped back to my feet and raced after Eu as she scrambled over the table blocking the door into her bedroom. “Eeeeee!”

Down the hallway, I saw the door to Progress’s room fly open. “WHAT is this madness?” She yelled. Then, hearing my snarl, she shuffled backwards and slammed her door shut again.

By this point, I was done playing safe with the furniture. The table at Eu’s doorway was an obstacle, so it had to go. I ripped it away with one hand, while I pushed into the room with the other.

The small bedroom inside was no longer dark. There was light streaming in through the open window frame. However, the shutters were suspiciously absent. Had she jumped straight through without even pausing? When I looked outside through the opening, I could see her running barefoot in the moonlight across the grass toward the stables. And yet, even as she ran, I saw her take a bite out of one of her sweetcakes. Cheeky brat!

The window was too small for a grown man, so instead, I turned and ran through the house toward the back door. By this point, my wife was standing at the door to my bedroom, with Swift, fully awake, peering around from behind her. As I passed, I distinctly heard the word, “Amazing!”

“I’ll show YOU amazing!” Well… actually, I wouldn’t. I had to stop to unbar the back door. I couldn’t just burst through it. The outer doors were thick enough to fortify the house against the unlikely event of a rebellion by my serfs. Regardless, by the time I got outside, Eu was nowhere in sight. But, I’d seen where she was headed!

When I arrived at the stables, I slowed just outside the open doorway. She’d tricked me once before, so I looked to both sides to make sure she wasn’t hiding along the walls.

After that was cleared, unfortunately, the stable had lots of spots to conceal yourself. We had a couple of hay bales already waiting, staying dry for the coming winter. Beyond that, there were several internal walls for Honey’s stall and then more for our mules. To the side, there was also a tack stand and racks where the saddle and cloth barding were stored.

“I know you’re in here. Why don’t you come out and we can talk about it?” I guess I’d calmed down a bit. After all, Honey was looking at me as if I was stupid. There’s nothing quite like your horse mocking you to make you realize how silly you look. I don’t normally come to the stable at night, and never without my shoes, so I suppose she had the right idea.

In any case, there was no answer to my query. That meant Eu was hiding or she’d already moved on to somewhere else. On the other hand, Honey was already fully awake when I arrived, so something had obviously woken her up.

“Honey, sweety, have you seen Eu?”

“Whuff!” She waggled her big horsey lips at me, but didn’t otherwise respond.

Of course, I knew that was an act. I was all too familiar with exactly how Honey would react to a silly question like that. Acting like she’d seen nothing? That was clearly a lie! Furthermore, I could see a string of drool hanging down from her chin. In other words, she’d been bribed! With a smirk, I stepped closer to take a better look.

The stable was dark, but we had built it with open windows high up on the walls to let in the moonlight. These openings also let out rising hot air, providing ventilation. This was a standard design, common to the area. This way, it would be cooler during the summer. When winter came, we’d board up those windows to prevent drafts.

I had just enough light to see an extra pair of legs standing on the far side of Honey. Even though I was staring right at her, Eu stayed completely still. Did she think I couldn’t see her?

“Eu, I know you’re there. You can’t hide your legs.”

“Eeeee! Honey! Help!”

“Honey isn’t going to save you!”

“Honey! Here, sweetcake! Help!”

“Don't feed desserts to my horse!”