Toad Words

by T. Kingfisher

  The queen spoke very little. If she smelled the rotting heart, she did not show it. Occasionally she would stroke the lid of the box as if it were a cat. But she also did not ask the mirror if she was the fairest in the kingdom.

  She was troubled.

  I do not want you to believe, my readers, that what the queen felt was remorse. When witchblood breaks good, it makes saints, but when it breaks bad, it makes monsters.

  No, what troubled the queen was this. Sooner or later, the king would return. He would return with a new bride, most likely (the queen had no illusions about his feelings), and the new woman would be installed in the castle. The king would want to know where Snow was, because any heirs his new wife might beget would find an older daughter an inconvenience. And the steward and perhaps the huntsman would tell him, and then…

  “Hmm,” said the queen to the mirror.

  On the other hand, removing the steward and the huntsman might prove difficult. The huntsman could be executed, but the queen was aware, however dimly, that when the steward took to his bed with a fever, the household ground to a halt.

  The mirror yawned. Spring made it sleepy, and there was enough magic in the old sow’s heart that the smell of it rotting left trails like fingerprints across its glass. “Yes, my queen?” it asked.

  “It occurs to me that the king might not be pleased that Snow is dead,” said the queen.

  “Possibly,” agreed the mirror. “There is a very large difference between an inconvenient daughter having a convenient accident, and an heir being murdered.” It yawned again. “Particularly if one is already looking for a reason to shed one’s current wife, O queen.”

  “We think the same thoughts,” said the queen. She pulled her brush through her hair again.

  “I very much doubt that,” said the mirror, and sank back into slumber.

  When the peddler came, Snow’s worst suspicions were confirmed immediately.

  He was a slovenly man, not neat in his manner, and his donkey looked ill-used and tired. He came with a dozen bulging sacks of potatoes and threw them down on the ground at Greatspot’s feet.

  “Here,” he said. “Twelve sacks of potatoes for twelve truffles.”

  The sow snuffled at them. “Good clean potatoes,” she said. “Not rotted. But we thought, maybe this year, we might get a little more—”

  “What?” asked the peddler. “One for one, as agreed! Or don’t you have the truffles?”

  “They’ve got plenty of truffles,” said Snow, coming out from behind a tree. “They just don’t plan to trade them for potatoes—or not just for potatoes.”

  The peddler scowled when he saw her, and something uneasy moved in his eyes. “What? You’re no pig!”

  “Very true,” said Snow. “Although I begin to think that’s no great thing.”

  He glared at her. Snow had been the target of many glares before, but not from strangers, and part of her wanted to sink back and become quiet and biddable and agreeable.

  The other part, the stubborn part that climbed apple trees, said No. He’s stealing from the boars, or as good as. You can’t let him keep doing that. They deserve better.

  She put a hand on Greatspot’s back, and found it hot and solid in the cold air.

  “We have an agreement,” said the peddler. “Them and me. It’s nothing you need to concern yourself with.” He turned back to Greatspot. “Do we have a deal or not?”

  Greatspot scuffled her feet and looked at Snow.

  “Not,” said Snow firmly.

  The peddler drew a deep breath through his nose. “Come on,” he said, turning to Snow, “I’m trying to make an honest living here.”

  “An honest living wouldn’t involve trading potatoes for truffles worth their weight in gold.” Snow folded her arms over her chest.

  She had been looking forward to seeing another human face. Now she simply wished that he would leave. He looked strange to her after a winter of looking at boars—too flat, too tall, too smooth-skinned.

  The peddler took a step toward her, and then Hoofblack rumbled behind her and he thought better of taking another one.

  “It’s value for value,” he whined. “They can’t grow potatoes, and I’m the only one who will come into the forest to deal with them. I deserve to make something extra for my time!”

  “I wouldn’t begrudge you an honest broker’s fee,” said Snow, thinking of the men who sold rare forest herbs to the midwife, “but this is beyond robbery. I’ll give you two truffles—two! And not the largest!—for your potatoes, and if you don’t like that, you may take them and leave, and I’ll find another buyer myself.”

  The peddler turned back to Greatspot. “You’ll let her do this? After we’ve dealt together so long, you’ll let this little—girl—upset our bargain?”

  Greatspot snorted. “I begin to think our bargain was only a bargain for you, trader-man.”

  He stamped his feet and wrung his hands, but at the end of the day, he left twelve sacks of potatoes for two good-sized truffles, and left them with a curse.

  “And even that was too good a deal for him,” said Snow, “but we were down to the dregs, and I can hardly eat acorns.”

  “There are still a few apples,” said Juniper.

  “Yes,” said Snow, who was heartily sick of these apples and would have dearly loved a taste of the fruit of her own tree in the courtyard. “Yes, there’s always the apples.”

  Arrin came two days later, which was a good thing, because Snow was going slightly mad with worry.

  “I’m second-guessing myself,” she told him, helping him unload the packs from his horse. “The peddler was taking shameful advantage of them. They know so many things—but of course they don’t know the market price of truffles, how could they? But what if I can’t find a way for them to sell truffles in town? I’ll have made trouble for them, and for no profit at all.”

  “Easy now,” said Arrin, amused. “It’s no bad thing to stop someone taking advantage of someone else, if you can.”

  Snow shoved her hands into her hair. “Gods. No. That’s not right—or it’s not wrong, but—oh, this is madness. They know when it’s going to snow hours before it does and whether it will stick and if a tree is rotten on the inside just by smelling and the name of every bird in the forest by the call. And Hoofblack built the fireplace by sticking stones in clay and building a fire on it to bake it, and he built the chimney—he’d never even seen a chimney, but Greatspot had, she used to be a regular sow on a farm, and she told him what they looked like and he figured it out and built one. With his snout and his hooves. And he designed the den, too, and it’s braced up so it won’t come down in a heavy snow. He’d never even seen a building before. I couldn’t build it. I couldn’t just invent a chimney. The only thing I know worth knowing is that truffles are worth more than potatoes.” She gave a short little bark of laughter. “That’s what my whole life has come down to, Arrin, knowing that truffles are worth more than potatoes.”

  It came to Arrin, from a little distance, that she had never used his name before, and it fell on his ears in a way that troubled him.

  “I still think you’re doing right,” he said finally. “Your—the midwife would be proud.” His smile faded. He went to the castle rarely now, and avoided the midwife’s eyes.

  “I need you to tell me where the nearest town is,” said Snow. “In fact, tell Puffball instead—he’s got the best head for directions.”

  “Town?” said Arrin blankly. “That’s Mousebury—It’s not that far, but—are you leaving? Are the boars going with you?”

  “Not for good,” said Snow. “But we have to sell these truffles.”

  Arrin’s mouth opened and closed several times. “Are you insane?”

  “Possibly?” said Snow. “Why?”

  “The Queen thinks you’re dead! You should have left last winter—you should have run as far and as fast as you could! I thought you were lying low, at least, and now you propose to go gallivanting around the neares
t town, carrying your own weight in truffles, with a talking boar in tow?”

  “It’ll work out,” said Snow. “They can’t know me. I’ve never been there. I’ll put a scarf over my hair, and anyway, everybody thinks I’m dead, don’t they? It won’t matter. I’ve got to help them, Arrin. They need me. Nobody’s ever needed me.” She shoved a hand through her pale hair, distracted, hardly aware that she had spoken a great raw truth. “Please. Tell Puffball how to get there.”

  I cannot tell you, readers, whether she convinced him, or whether it was simply the notion of the trouble that a girl and a pack of boars could get into while roaming the fields in search of a town. But he gritted his teeth and talked to Puffball, and at the end of the evening, the boar had a good notion how to get to the town of Mousebury and in a way that avoided the roads.

  They set out two days later. Puffball and Greatspot went with her, each wearing a set of panniers. One was full of truffles. The other pigs scuffled and pawed at the earth as they left.

  “Should let us all come,” muttered Hoofblack. “In case you get into trouble.”

  “You’d look like an army,” said Snow. “The villagers would be afraid I was there to conquer the place and take their potatoes by force.”

  She was already worried that the pigs would appear too fierce. Even the breeding boars back at the castle had their eyeteeth removed before they became wicked tusks. Puffball’s tusks were small compared to Hoofblack’s, but he was still walking around with a pair of daggers in his mouth, and Greatspot’s weren’t much better.

  “It will work out,” she repeated to herself. “It will. It has to.”

  She adjusted the panniers two and three and four times, until Greatspot fixed her with a mild eye and said, “Enough, my dear, they’ll hold against anything but earthquake.”

  Snow smiled wanly and walked along beside Greatspot. Puffball scouted ahead, dropping his snout to the ground occasionally, trying to translate the directions that a human might give into the welter of smells and sounds that made sense to a pig.

  The truth was, she was nervous. Not just that Puffball and Greatspot might scare someone into a rash response, but for how to approach the villagers at all.

  Until the peddler had come along, she had very little experience with strangers. She had known almost everyone at the castle her entire life, and when newcomers came through—friends of her father, itinerant priests or jugglers, the brewer’s daughter come to live with her mother—they would either introduce themselves or they would ignore her.

  I can make any number of herbal decoctions, she thought wryly, and weed a vegetable bed and climb an apple tree and cook potatoes for a pig, but no one has ever taught me how to go up to someone I don’t know and start a conversation.

  Such a stupid thing to leave out.

  Some of the men who sold forest herbs to the midwife had done it. She’d watched one, hadn’t she? Years ago? He came up to the kitchen door, a man in patched and raggedy leathers, and said, “Pardon, mistress, but I’ve some herbs to sell and I was wondering if you might point me at someone who’d be interested.”

  I can do that. I can say that. He sold all his herbs, too. He came back regularly. I can say what he said.

  Everyone wants truffles. I can do this. They won’t care how I sound, or that I’ve got two pigs with me. It will work out.

  “I smell green corn,” said Puffball a few hours later. “Someone’s planted a field up ahead.”

  “Oh, and wouldn’t I love to go digging through that?” asked Greatspot. She cast an amused eye up at Snow. “But I suppose they wouldn’t appreciate it much.”

  “It’d put a damper on the trading, I think,” said Snow.

  “Can’t have that.”

  “This must be Mousebury,” said Snow. She fidgeted with Greatspot’s panniers again. “All right. Yes. Remember, you two, don’t talk unless you’re sure no one can hear.” She rubbed her sweaty palms on her skirts. “I’m hoping—well, maybe we can find someone who won’t be alarmed, but most people aren’t used to talking pigs.”

  Greatspot touched Snow’s leg with her snout. “I knew my share of humans, you know, back in the day. Before I was given the gift of speech.”

  “I know,” said Snow. “I shouldn’t talk like you don’t.”

  “Courage, child. I think you’re more nervous than we are. We’ll protect you, though—even if your mad queen is out and about.” She raised her snout in a smile.

  They reached the edges of the woods and looked down on Mousebury.

  To Snow’s eyes it was an enormous rambling town, twice the size of the one around the castle. There might be over a hundred souls in a town that large! And there was a little stone church and a large stone inn with a sign outside.

  There was a grinning pig on the sign, over a tankard of ale. Perhaps that was a good sign.

  The edge of the forest stretched away in a broad semi-circle around the town, sheltering three sides. There were cleared fields dotted with rows of green and a broad road that ran from the middle of the town, away from the forest. When she shaded her eyes, Snow could see the road gliding into the distance and vanishing over the hills.

  I could follow that road. I could start walking and no one would know where I had gone. No one would miss me—well, except for Arrin, I suppose, though he keeps telling me I should be going—

  Greatspot shifted under her hand. Snow took a steadying breath. And the pigs. I can’t leave them. Not without making sure that they can trade their truffles for what they need.

  “Come on,” she said. “Let’s go.”

  At the end of her life, if Snow had looked back, she would have said that the greatest act of courage she ever showed was walking up to a farmer in a field—an old, weathered man, who was staring at her in absolute astonishment—and saying “Pardon, sir, but I’ve some truffles to sell and I was wondering if you might point me at someone who’d be interested.”

  She had rehearsed it so many times in her head that it came out as one long run of syllables—pardonmesirbutIvesometrufflestosell—and he was staring at the pigs with their panniers anyway.

  “Eh?” said the farmer.

  Snow took a deep breath and repeated herself, more slowly.

  “Truffles,” said the farmer. “Oh. Aye. I suppose these are truffle pigs, then?”

  “Yes,” said Snow. “Very—very fine truffle pigs. Yes.”

  Greatspot lifted her snout and smiled at the farmer. Puffball kept his head down and tried not to look like a gigantic wild boar that could tear a field apart with his tusks. This was a losing proposition.

  “Clever makin’ ‘em carry like that. Wouldn’t have thought you could stop a pig rolling. You want to go down to the middle of town,” said the farmer, pointing. “Cook at the inn’ll give you sommat for a truffle, and if you’ve any more, go over to Elias the merchant. He’ll buy ‘em to sell later, out on the road.”

  “Thank you,” said Snow gratefully.

  “Mind,” said the farmer, holding up a hand. “Go to Cook first, if you’ll hear a word of advice. Cook’ll give you a fair price. Elias won’t cheat you, but he’d milk blood from a turnip if he could. If he knows what Cook’s paying, he’ll have to match it, you hear?”

  “Yes.” Snow took a deep breath. She had haggled with the peddler—although she’d been angry, so it hardly counted. The notion of haggling with someone else, someone who could say “no” easily, that was harder.

  Still, she had come to the end of what being quiet and biddable could do for her.

  “Thank you,” she said. “That is good to know.”

  “Good luck,” said the farmer. “Keep those pigs out of my field, though, eh?”

  “I will,” said Snow. She put a hand on Greatspot and Puffball, and they walked forward, toward the town.

  The cook was easy. Even though she was very different than the cook at the castle, there is a kind of universal similarity among good cooks. She came to the door behind the inn, where Snow stood with t
he pigs.

  The cook took a truffle, rolled it between her fingers, sniffed it, and laughed out loud.

  “I’d take your whole bag,” she said. “All of them, if I had a king’s ransom lying about and could afford them.”

  Snow, who was getting very odd looks from the stableboy, said, “Will you take one, then?”

  “I will,” said the cook. “I’ll turn my husband upside down, until he coughs up the money. And I’ll give you a plate of stew while you wait, shall I?”

  Snow reached inside herself and pulled out a smile.

  “Make it three,” she said.

  They returned from Mousebury long after dark, the panniers weighted with many things—flour and potatoes and bags of salt and great harsh chunks of soap. (The pigs were somewhat bemused by the soap, but willing to go along with Snow’s whims.)

  Elias the merchant had been honest with her—there were too many truffles for him to sell in Mousebury, and he could not buy them all at anything approaching a fair price. But he bought half the sack, at only a little less than Cook had paid, and gave her the price half in gold and half in barter. Snow felt that she had not done too badly by her friends.

  “Come back in a few months,” said Elias, as she tightened the strap on a pannier and tried to balance potatoes on one side and the flour on the other side of the very patient Puffball. “Come back and bring me more, and I’ll be able to take them out to the great summer fair. Then I can buy more from you.”

  Snow nodded. She did not know what to say. Would she be here in three months? Would her father have come home? But how could she leave the boars when they needed her?

  But the cook had said something before she left that had given Snow sudden hope.

  “You know,” said the cook, scraping the last of the stew into Puffball’s bowl, “you know, if you’ve got some truffles left to sell, you might try the convent up the road.”

  “Convent?” asked Snow, surprised.

  “Aye. The Sisterhood of Saint…ah…bother. Saint something. Well, there’s only about a dozen of them, but they’re decent women. A few hours walk that way. Their honey is good, but their beer is better.”