It was no longer empty.
Taking a few long breaths, I knocked on the doorframe and poked my head into the office. “You’re Bill Rencovitch? The new team coach, right?”
“I am.” He stood and extended his hand. The man was bald with a silver-streaked dark beard and dark eyes. For a human, he was tall, coming to my chin. He looked like he’d been muscular in his youth but now those muscles were softer and accented by a bit of what the humans called a “dad bod.” There was a friendliness in his face, but also a strength that told me he could deliver a verbal beatdown if needed.
“I’m Eng.” Without asking I sat across the desk from him in a creaky chair that thankfully held my weight. “I wanted to talk to you about my employment with the Tusks.”
He nodded, sitting then steepling his fingers under his chin where they halfway vanished in his beard.
I sat for a second, unable to deliver the “I quit” words I’d rehearsed since the moment I’d been informed I would be playing hockey during my stay in the human world. Instead, something very different came out of my mouth.
“I cannot skate with even minimal proficiency. No amount of practice and lessons is going to make me skate at the level of even a toddler hockey team. It is not a skill I have.”
He nodded again. “I appreciate the honesty. What are you good at?”
Absolutely nothing.
Making the other orcs angry? Playing board games with elderly humans? Throwing puny human weapons at paper targets? Standing for hours during a royal ceremony with a placid expression on my face?
“I…I don’t know.” The confession physically hurt. I’d suffered a lot of humiliation lately. A little more wouldn’t make any difference at this point.
The coach picked up a stack of papers and began leafing through them. “Eng, huh? I’ve watched all the team’s games and made some notes. Ah, here we go.”
I slumped a bit in my chair as he read the scrawl of black ink on the page, knowing there wasn’t anything good on there.
“You spend the games standing against the boards. I guess that’s not unexpected since you said you’re not a good skater.” He put the paper down and tapped it. “You scored a point though.”
“Accidentally.”
“Still counts,” he said drily. “I wrote down that one of your teammates passed the puck to you and you slapped it into the net. Pretty impressive.”
“And not something I could ever do again,” I added. “The puck was coming straight for me. It was instinctive. There was no aiming for the net, no intention to score. I just didn’t want to get hit.”
One of the human’s eyebrows lifted and he looked up at me. “Would you mind taking a hit if we put a bunch of padding on you?”
My heart sank. “I will not play the fool. I will not allow humans to launch pucks at me so others can laugh.”
“What if they cheer?” The coach smiled. “I’d like you to try being our goalie. You don’t need to do a lot of skating. In the beginning, you’ll mostly stand in front of the net and make sure the puck doesn’t go in. Block it any way you can, then hit it back out to your teammates. We’ll work on your skating though, because I want you to get to the point where you can leave the net and move the puck around behind it as well as position yourself to pass the puck to your teammates.”
I thought about the goalies we’d played against so far, and how this job seemed a whole lot more difficult than Bill Rencovitch was making it out to be. The human teams were tricky, passing the puck back and forth with flicks of their sticks. Fast. Sneaky. The puck had usually gone into the net before our goalies had a chance to see it, let alone block it.
I’d fail and it would embarrass me, embarrass my family and my kingdom. It was better to not make an effort than risk that failure.
But not making an effort had lost me my shrew.
“The human players get very close to our goal. It will be difficult to block the puck in time,” I told the coach.
He lifted up both hands, palms forward. “Preach! I’ll focus on getting you the defense you need. This is a team sport. Scoring a goal takes more than one player to pull off, and deflecting a shot at the net also takes more than one player to accomplish. Leave the rest of it to me. All I need you to do is to do your best to keep that puck from going in our net, and to commit to both workouts and practices to improve your game.”
For the first time in my life I recognized the emotion I was feeling as fear—fear of failure, fear of embarrassment and humiliation. Me, a prince, an orc, afraid. But the alternate choice held failure, embarrassment and humiliation as well. Go home without a bride and face the consequences, or remain and risk the same. Here there was a chance of success. Here there was the possibility that I might become someone the humans cheered for and admired. Here there was a chance I might win the shrew’s heart and make her my bride.
And for that, I’d do anything.
“I’ll be the team goalie.” I’d work harder than I ever had in my life. I’d face the chance of humiliation, of failure.
“Good.” The coach slid the paper back into the stack. “Go on back to the gym after the team workout. I’ll have one of the staff help you with the pads for practice.”
36
