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She don’t know her name nor her age neither.
In the pit, the other rascals call her a bag o’ bones. It’s not true. Jealous, them rascals are just jealous of her. Why? She eats better than half of them. And why’s that? She wins more than half of them put together.
“Hungry little thing,” is what the pit master calls her when he shows off her sharp teeth and sharper nails.
“Alys,” is what the hooded man calls her when he puts his thumb beneath her nose and lifts her upper lip to peer down at her sharpened teeth for a while longer. “Little beastly Alys.”
His thumb smells funny. Like sweat and very, very ripe things. Very, very ripe fruits from pot-shops make her sick in the belly sometimes. Very, very ripe also means rotten.
“Plain thing,” says the pit master.
“On the contrary,” says the hooded man who has a pretty face. He also speaks all pretty, in a funny way, like them knights, them lordlings. “She’s quite pretty under all this filth. I do love her eyes.”
He smiles down at her, all friendly like. He has a nice and pretty smile. He keeps staring at her face, his lips twitching like he’s sharing a secret jape with her.
He wraps some of her tangly curly hair round his fingers. Wine-dark, he calls her hair. Auburn.
His hair, a peek at it, shows her very pale strands, pale as milk. Costly and rare, is milk.
He hefts a clinking leather pouch. “If you win, you’ll get some of this in food and clothes and toys. Anything you wish.”
Milk? She’s never had that, not properly. Her mama didn’t give suck to her. They told her that her mama was just a girl, “not much older” than she is now. A pit girl, too, was her mama, but she’s been told that her mama don’t look like her at all. Her mama’s long left the pit, too.
She eyes the pouch. “Milk?”
The hooded pretty man laughs. “If you win.”
Stupid thing to tell her.
She lifts her chin and his ripe-smelling fingers fall off her curly auburn hair.
“I always win, ser.”
That makes his smile widen. He looks like a damn baby.
He gives her a little push towards the pit.
“Go on then, Beastly Alys. Show me what you got.”
*
Them rascals also call her a cheater.
Stupid.
She got sharp teeth and sharper nails, like they all do. Is not cheating to use her teeth and nails like a winner.
Fight pit, it is. She fights.
In the end, she spits out bits of ears and noses and cheeks and nails and arms and stomachs and legs and baby nipples by the man’s black boots.
He’s laughing. He looks disgusted, and he’s laughing.
When she lifts her face from the floorboards of his private room, she finds a cup held in front of her.
“Your milk,” he says. He’s still smiling like he knows just how special and costly milk is. A special treat.
She shuffles on her knees and takes the cup. She gulps from it greedily, noisily. She feels her eyes close. Oh, so good. Thick and creamy and so warm and fresh-smelling, raw-smelling.
“Slow down,” he says, roughly wiping her chin with his hooded cloak.
No slowing down. She frowns and growls. She turns away from him slightly, to be alone with her milk.
He laughs again, sits back on his chair.
“A stunted little animal, aren’t you?”
*
He’s got a way with mastering beasts, he tells her.
Pit beasts and kennel beasts and beasts greater than she is, they all end up eating from the palm of his hand. It’s his only talent, he says. That, and siring more beasts.
With one hand he feeds her milk-soaked bread. Delicious, costly bread, tasting so nice, like honey and roasted nuts.
His other hand is petting her hair.
He slips another milky, fluffy bread past her waiting teeth. His thumb digs into the inside of her bottom lip.
“If you bite me,” he begins, and then he bends down and says things into her ear.
His breath smells very, very sweet.
Ripe-fruit smell that begins to make her belly churn.
She almost forgets to swallow the milky bread already in her mouth. Her throat feels tight. This toasty room with smooth floorboards and soap-smelling sheets feels damn cold now.
In his nice voice, he keeps telling her the things that he will do to her if she bites him or claws at him, each thing even more beastly than the last.
*
He wants her to keep looking at him. He loves her eyes. Strange man.
“You don’t know how fortunate you are, having that pretty face.” His lips stretch crookedly like he’s sharing a jape with her. “Keep those pretty eyes on me.”
It makes her tired. And bored.
Very strange man.
Them rascals call her eyes “stinky mouths of wells” for being dark and roundlike and for simply being hers. Other times they call her eyes “dark wet stones” like the large pebbles that they throw at thieves and stray dogs.
Sometimes, she looks away from him, and then he throws the next piece of milky bread to the fire.
Sometimes, she looks away from him, and then he makes her pick up a piece of nose that she spat out earlier and he makes her eat it.
Disgusting.
*
When he makes her eat a chewed-out piece of rascal belly, she lets out a shriek in protest and she almost heaves her special milky bread out from her own belly.
They looks nasty, the bits of rascals littering the floor by his boots. She don’t want to eat them nasty things.
Her eyes feel itchy.
Strange, disgusting man.
He squeezes her jaw. He pushes the rascal bit in and it slides slimily, roughly across her tongue, and her throat closes up even more, and her chin becomes all wet, and her jaw is aching, and her belly is churning, and she does cry now, and he smiles and reminds her of the many things that could happen to her if she bites his hand.
She tries to keep her nice food inside.
She retches out a thick string of bile.
“I don’t like it,” she weeps.
Her voice shakes and her arms in her cotton tunic shake and she pants shakily against his cloak. She leaves patches of milky bile on his clothed knee.
“It’s your own fault,” he says lightly. He doesn’t sound angry.
But his fingers are strong. They are still knotted in her sweaty hair, pulling her head back so he can see her teary eyes, and she can’t shake off his grip now.
“I told you what will happen if you disobey me.”
*
She’s been called many names.
Girl. Best bet. Bag o’ bones. Cheater. Rascal. You.
But he calls her only one thing.
Alys.
He says it’s a good name.
He says she doesn’t know how fortunate she is to be given this name by him.
*
“What do I get when I win next time, ser?”
“When ?” He laughs shortly. Bit like a jeer from the stands. Like he hates what she said. But his eyes shine nicely, strangely, a bit frighteningly when he stops laughing and just looks at her. “Confident, are we?”
She’s just not stupid. Fight pit it is, ain’t it, so she fights. Sometimes she thinks she likes it, fighting, ‘specially when it’s rascals who annoy her or when the pot-shop women give her free soup or free fruits no matter how ripe.
Aye, when.
But she don’t say this.
She ain’t in a fighting pit now.
She’s sitting cross-legged on the narrow bed, a little ways from him. She’s holding on to his folded cloak.
She’s watching him give suck to a whore.
It’s like feeding someone with milk, he told her.
He sounds like he’s having a nice time. The whore sounds like she’s having a nice time. They sound like they’re both drinking Alys’ special milk.
But Alys is getting bored of watching. His cock is just a cock. The woman’s mouth is just a mouth.
Alys is still hungry. She wants to glance back at the table. She wants to, so bad. Milk. Bread. Milky bread. But she’s not allowed to eat nice things if he’s not feeding her. She’s not allowed to take her eyes off him.
‘Sides, she knows the bits of ears, nipples, and wrinkled stubs of rascal fingers are still there by the legs of the chair.
Sulkily, Alys stays where she is.
She licks her lips, dreaming of milk. She’s got milky breath now, and some steel-saltiness from her teeth and tongue. She doesn’t look away from him.
He’s always watching her, too.
The strange man smiles his nice, pretty smile and nods at her. “I’ll feed you some more later.”
fin