Thanks to HalfSquirrel, guest, kristelalugo, hippiechick2112, ellie, and TheGreatHoudini for reviewing! Ellie, I try to answer your questions when they won't give spoilers; hopefully the last chapter cleared up Raven's situation. And you'll soon find out what's in store for Scott! (Not now, but soon.)
Notes: The book Charles reads from is English Fairy Tales collected by Joseph Jacobs.
Ruth wasn't like other women Charles had known.
She didn't play games. If she wanted something, she said as much. Well, if she wanted something she went after it herself, but if she wanted something from him he said as much. (The only exception was the months she spent wanting him, waiting for him to notice, and there had been some aggressive flirtation when the children were not present.)
He appreciated the straightforwardness of their relationship. So as he headed into Ororo's bedroom, he tried to sort out how exactly he had been talked into this.
He realized he had no idea what Ororo did in her spare time. Scott, of course, would have been reading. Doug put a tremendous amount of time into his studies and found his own sort of joy in everything, but what he loved best was music. Laurie liked to draw and loved to paint her nails—how she managed those little pinkie-nail-sized flowers, he would never know.
But Ororo's free time was something of a mystery. As long as she didn't get into too much trouble, Charles had seen no reason to infringe. Now he found her sitting on her bed, bouncing a quarter across her knuckles. Her hair hung loose around her face, somewhere between not long enough for a ponytail but long enough to need one.
He was relieved to see her dressed. She had invited him in, but Ororo's opinion of modesty differed some from his. Much as he tried to respect that this was simply cultural, she was growing up and it was extremely awkward when she chose to be unclothed.
Now she wore an oversized The Who t-shirt. Charles wasn't sure she cared about that band either way, but the t-shirt was clearly a castoff (or borrowed without permission) from Doug.
She placed the quarter on her nightstand. "Hi, Professor."
"Hi, Ororo."
He waited, but she had nothing else to say.
"Ruth seems to think you might feel better if someone stayed with you until you fell asleep."
Ororo shrugged. "And she made you do it."
"Well, I didn't mind!"
He did. He had argued. Ruth was better with the children and while Charles felt he had some understanding of Scott, Ororo was… well, he claimed it was because she was more like Ruth. Ruth understood more about her culture and certainly more about being a teenage girl.
Again she said nothing. This wasn't a situation either of them felt fully prepared for.
Charles was at least mildly prepared. "I brought a book," he offered.
Ororo wasn't impressed. "Scott's in the other hall."
"Just give it a go. Please—for me."
As angry as she had been lately, Ororo knew that Charles had done a lot for her. He and Ruth had taken her in, which was a big thing to do. They educated her—and Hank did, of course—and worked at a decent pace for her, so she had just about caught up to her peers in many areas. (History and science were struggles, there was a lot of background.) Mostly, though, Charles talked to her and listened to her.
So she scooted back onto her pillow and burrowed under the covers. Completely.
"Ororo?"
"It's too weird." Her voice was muffled.
"Er… all right. This story is called 'Tom Tit Tot'."
Ororo giggled—'tit'—but Charles chose to ignore that.
He read about a woman who over-baked five pies and told her daughter to put them on a shelf to cool. The daughter ate all five pies instead. When the woman found out, she went to sit outside, singing to herself: My darter ha' ate five, five pies to-day. Then, at just that moment, the king happened to be coming down the road. He asked what the woman had just said, and she lied because she was ashamed of her daughter: My darter ha' spun five, five skeins to-day.
"…'Stars o' mine!' said the king, 'I have—'"
"I have a question."
Charles looked up from his book. Most of Ororo was still hidden. Just her face poked out from beneath the covers.
"Yes, Ororo?"
"What is 'skeins'? Is it like milk?"
He chuckled. "Like milk? Where would you get that idea?"
She shrugged. "In one of Scott's books they talk about skeinning cream off the milk."
"What? Oh, skimming!" Charles realized. "One skims cream. That's removing from a liquid whatever floats to the top—and why it does so would be an excellent question for Hank. A skein is a measure of yarn."
Ororo's forehead wrinkled. "Of… stories?"
"Ah, a misunderstanding there, I'm afraid. A yarn can mean a story. It's also, well, like string but thicker. That orange cardigan you like is made of yarn."
"Oh. Okay."
She watched him for a moment, then pulled the covers back over her head. Charles took this as his cue to continue.
So he read about how the woman allowed the king to marry her daughter, as he did on the provision that she would have all she wanted for eleven months, and for the twelfth she would spin five skeins a day or have her head chopped off. (Muffled sounds of disapproval from the blankets.)
However, not only could the girl not spin five skeins of flax—"A sort of fiber, from a plant"—she couldn't spin at all! Luckily a strange creature with black skin and a tail heard her crying and made her a deal: he would take the flax every day and every day bring it back spun, and she should have five guesses as to his name. If she hadn't guessed rightly by the end of the month, she would be his.
"Professor?"
"Yes, Ororo?"
"You know the king brings her the flax and food every day and he locks her up?"
Charles answered warily, "Yes," because that was what the story said. He knew it was a quite wrong thing to do, but he was only reading.
But Ororo did not object as he expected.
Instead she asked, "Where does she pee?"
"In those days they used chamberpots, a basin kept under the bed. Mostly they were used at night. I suppose the princess—"
"Queen," Ororo corrected. "She's married the king, that makes her queen."
"It does indeed. The queen must have used a chamberpot."
"And 'impet'?"
"A sort of small, otherworldly creature—a little like a fairy, if fairies were very unpleasant."
"And 'maliceful'?"
"Malice is ill will."
She nodded. "Thank you, I think I'm caught up."
As Charles continued to read, the queen kept trying and failing to guess the creature's name. On the last night but one, the king decided to have supper with her—"Another term for dinner." "I knew that one!"—and as they ate, he told the story of a hunt. On this hunt he encountered a small, dark creature with a tail who spun and sang a strange song: Nimmy nimmy not/My name's Tom Tit Tot.
So on the final night, when the creature came to her again, the woman pretended to be frightened as she guessed once, twice, thrice what his name might be. A fourth guess and he stepped forward, reaching toward his prize… and then she sang at him: Nimmy nimmy not/Your name is Tom Tit Tot!
"Well, when that heard her, that gave an awful shriek and away that flew into the dark, and she never saw it any more," Charles finished. "The end."
Ororo said nothing for a moment. Then, still buried under the blankets, "I don't like that story."
"No?"
"The girl was stupid. She didn't do anything, and she was only lucky with what the king told her, plus she only had eleven months left to live because now the thing is gone and can't spin her flax anymore."
"I suppose that is a… rather gaping plot hole," Charles admitted. He hadn't thought of it, but the major villain really wasn't Tom Tit Tot, was it? The villain was the king, who would lop the poor girl's head off in about a year.
"And anyway it's just a stupid princess story and I don't much care for those. Why can't the girl do something fun, like Peter Pan? All she does is cry and get married. At least she could've… made a rope and climbed out of the castle. She could go find Tom Tits herself."
Charles overlooked that one more time, deciding a third go and he would comment. However, what he heard next from the covers was not an objection but a yawn.
"Yes, she should have," he agreed mildly.
Ororo shifted. Her hand snuck out and pulled the pillow under the covers with her.
"Professor?"
"Yes, Ororo?"
He expected another objection about the silliness of the story—and he had to admit, it was rather silly.
Instead she said, "Could you stay, just until I fall asleep?"
"Yes, of course I'll stay."