The Story Peddler

by Lindsay A. Franklin

  The guardsman’s calm finally shattered. “You insolent—”

  I stepped between the two of them and curtsied low. “Sir, please, forgive Farmer Bradwir’s son. The harvest’s been poor, and he’s hungry. Growing lads with no food are often temperamental.” I ignored the look of utter indignation darkening Brac’s already red face. “We’re just simple country folk.”

  The guardsman’s lip curled. “Your lass here is smarter than you are, Bo-Bradwir.” Before I knew what was happening, his dagger was unsheathed in one hand and he had me around the waist with the other. The steel of his blade tingled cold against my skin. “Maybe you’ll learn to show some respect if your lass’s life depends upon it.”

  Brac’s face froze. His work-hardened muscles flexed, but there wasn’t a thing he could do, and we all three knew it.

  The soldier laughed. “Not so tough as you were a moment ago, eh, Bo-Bradwir?” He slipped a gloved finger across my neck and under the leather cord I always wore.

  My hand instinctively flew to the necklace, and I nearly sliced my fingers on the man’s blade. “Please, sir! It’s not worth anything.”

  The guardsman snorted. “Yes, I see that.” He studied the little knot of wrought silver that served as a charm. Then he turned back to Brac. “Do you not have anything else sharp to say, now that my dagger’s at your lass’s pretty throat?”

  “I’m not his lass, sir.”

  The soldier glanced down at me. “Oh?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Not yet, maybe,” Brac interjected. The frown he fired at me couldn’t have been any deeper or more annoyed.

  The guardsman’s grip on me slackened, and I turned to face him. My eyes grazed over his face. Though he knew Brac’s name, I didn’t think I’d seen him around here before, so maybe he was from the capital. Only one way to find out. “Are you from Urian, sir?”

  “Urian?” His face screwed up in apparent confusion. “No. I’m from Afon.”

  I tried not to let my disappointment show. Afon was a town not far across the river. Not even off the Peninsula.

  “But have you been to Urian?” I pressed.

  “Once.” He sheathed his dagger. Apparently, the game was only fun if Brac and I were afraid, and I didn’t aim to be. “When I was commissioned for the guard. But I had a tutor who lived in the palace for a time.”

  My mind sorted through his statement. If he had a tutor once, it meant he came from a wealthy family. I supposed his appointment to the guard was enough proof of that anyway. But if he’d only been to Urian once, it wasn’t likely—

  Brac’s harsh voice interrupted my musings. “Why don’t you leave us be now?”

  The guardsman laughed. “I’m in fine humor today, so I’ll let your impudence slide.” He swung a leg up over his horse and clanked back into place. He winked at me before replacing his helmet and directing his horse to nearly trample Brac as he left us. “Mind yourself, Bo-Bradwir, lest you cross me on a less agreeable day.”

  When the hoofbeats became too distant to be heard, I slapped Brac on the arm. “What’s gotten into you?”

  His mouth dropped open. “Me? What’s gotten into me?”

  “Are you trying to get yourself hanged?” I shook my head and stomped toward Farmer Bradwir’s house.

  “And what about you?” He grabbed my arm and forced me back around. “He pulls his knife on you, then you act like you’re not bothered? You were almost flirting with him!” Steam might start pouring from his ears any moment. “You trying to land a king’s guard husband or something? Is that what’s wrong with me? I don’t wear enough metal for you?”

  I rolled my eyes. “I was trying to get him to settle down—and it worked, didn’t it?”

  But inside, I knew he had a right to be irritated. I’d never let a country boy treat me the way that soldier had. And Brac had witnessed me suffer more than a few leers and advances from the guardsmen after they’d been at their ale.

  But Brac didn’t understand. Getting close to a soldier—or a knight, better yet—might be the quickest way to the capital. The quickest way for me to gain an audience with King Gareth, and that’s what I needed. How would I ever manage that if I didn’t have connections in His Majesty’s court?

  “Tannie!” Brac was nearly shouting. “You listening? I thought you was a different kind of girl than that. I don’t think there’s much you wouldn’t let those louts do, if they’d only get you to Urian.”

  My temper flared again. “Oh, ho! I’m not virtuous enough for you now? Says the boy who kissed Celyn En-Rhys when he thought I wasn’t looking.” I brushed past him. “And you’re wrong, you know. Just because I have plans and ideas about what I want to do and where I want to go, it doesn’t mean . . . Oh, forget it. You wouldn’t understand.”

  And he didn’t. Brac could live the rest of his life in Pembrone, farming and wiling away his extra hours at the tavern and be content.

  But not me.

  And that was why I couldn’t marry him. That was one part of Princess Cariad’s tale I could grab hold of. I didn’t want a husband dictating my course, either.

  “Tannie.” I could hear Brac’s footsteps pounding the road as he ran to catch me at the end of the lane leading to his house. He caught up and planted himself in front of me. “I’m sorry.” He plucked a stalk of straw and twisted it between his fingers. “All right? I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that about the guardsmen.” He made like he might touch my hair again, but I ducked out of his way.

  And this time, I felt no regret for it.

  I donned my most arrogant smile and pretended I was a fine lady at King Gareth’s court. “Very well, peasant. You’re forgiven. But I have a suggestion for you.”

  Brac cocked an eyebrow as he chewed his stalk of straw. “Aye?”

  “I think you should join the king’s guard. It could brighten your prospects.” I patted his cheek, then stepped through the front door of his house to greet his mother.

  Just before the door closed, his retort came flying in to me. “I’d rather kiss a mountainbeast!”

  Chapter 3

  Tanwen

  It wasn’t easy to open the front door of my cottage with a bread bowl of stew in my hands and a jug of milk under one arm. But I managed. Then I pushed the door closed behind me with a bump of my rear.

  I set my stew on the scrubbed-wood table, put the jug of milk in the cold pantry, and dropped my leather sack by the river-stone hearth. “I’m home.”

  The expected silence answered me.

  The fire had dwindled to a couple of glowing embers while I’d been gone. At least it was into the second moon of spring now. The cottage was a perfect ice block in wintertime. Maybe that was why my parents didn’t seem to have made it their permanent home.

  I stoked the fire until it hopped back into flame. The glow warmed my face and cast orange light through the room—clean but shabby these days.

  The stew called to me from the table, but I hadn’t said hello to my mother and father yet. I made for Father’s study.

  Books lined every wall of the small room. The desk lay bare except for an empty ink pot and some old pens—exactly as I’d found it when I’d moved back in years ago, except with a bit of added dust.

  “Evening, Father.”

  I traced my fingers along the spines of his books and wondered again who he’d been. A tutor, maybe, to have so many volumes in his personal library. I didn’t suppose there were half as many in the rest of all Pembrone put together. And if he had been a tutor, maybe he’d been stationed with a wealthy family for the bulk of my childhood and taught me stuff when I was a tiny lass. Which would explain why I’d shown up in Pembrone as a six-year-old who could read. Unless it was Nanny who had taught me . . .

  I sighed. Most people’s lives were stories with mysterious endings. Mine was a story with a beginning I could never make sense of. It was like fifty different unrelated strands I couldn’t weave into a solid crystal.

  My gaze wandered back to th
e books. Maybe Father was a scribe?

  Farmer and Ma-Bradwir knew who my father was, but they wouldn’t talk about him, and they didn’t suffer questions about it. Always said it was better not to tread that path.

  Once I thought Father might have been a monk or something, since the temples always seemed to have books on hand. Not a priest, as they weren’t allowed to marry. But when I skimmed through Father’s titles, skipping over the real long words, I didn’t see anything about the goddesses in there. I decided he’d have made a poor monk. There was some stuff about the Creator here and there, but I’d shoved those books to the darkest corners of the shelves. That stuff was like as not to get you hanged these days. The priests called it blasphemy. Seemed the Creator and the goddesses were mixed up in a war as old as time, and who had time to sort that mess? Not me.

  Maybe Father was a merchant. Pembrone had been a proper port at one time, though now all the ships and boats had moved down the coast past Lewir to Physgot, which had better fishing. Maybe he’d run a business back in the days before Pembrone settled into its pokiness and became a village full of farmers.

  I put my hands on the back of Father’s chair and pretended he was sitting there. The image of a man formed, even though I couldn’t remember what Father truly looked like. My image was tall with dark-gold hair like mine. Seastone-blue eyes like mine appeared at first, but then I remembered what Ma-Bradwir said once—my eyes were my mother’s.

  I replaced my imaginary father’s eyes with brown ones, like Brac’s.

  “Join me for supper, Father?”

  Wished he could.

  I sighed and left the study, then traipsed down the hall to my bedroom.

  “I’m home, Mother.”

  It was my room now, but it’d been Mother’s when she was a girl. Her curtains—the finest cloth I owned—still hung in the windows. But they were so thin now they hardly kept out the light.

  I didn’t mind much. All the light streaming in as the sun set lit up my crystallized stories—the first ones I’d ever made. And it helped me see the books that lined my shelves.

  Not like Father’s dry volumes full of text. Mine were storybooks that had come with me to Pembrone, full of painted pictures in all colors of the rainbow.

  Reading those books aloud was what first made me realize I had the storytelling gift. Normal lasses don’t make ribbons of light when they read their bedtime stories.

  My gaze scanned the crystallized stories. A castle, a star, a white velvet-petal flower.

  I picked up my first crystallized story and smiled at it. A tiny pink fluff-hopper, transparent as glass. Fluff-hoppers were cottony-soft, grass-eating critters Farmer Bradwir called pests. But Brac and I liked to catch them for his little siblings to pet and snuggle. They were perfectly tame unless you riled them up. Then they’d bring out their dagger-sharp teeth and hiss at you. More than one Tirian child had lost a finger to an angry fluff-hopper.

  A beloved Tirian fairytale told of the pink fluff-hopper who’d grant wishes if you caught him.

  I held up my pink crystal fluff-hopper and whispered to it. “I wish for a way out of here.”

  It hadn’t worked the other five hundred times I’d tried it, but you never know when your luck might turn. Maybe mine would tonight.

  Tears stung at my eyes.

  No. Couldn’t give in to that. Never helped.

  I forced them away as I slipped out of my peddling clothes—a white muslin dress, brown apron, and brown vest. I pulled my housedress from the wardrobe.

  The rough cloth grated against my skin. Might as well be wearing a watta-root sack. But peddling time was done, and I wasn’t about to spoil my nicest clothes by dropping grazer stew on them.

  I dismantled my upswept hair, pulled my gold waves into a simple tail, then tied it with a length of twine.

  Now I looked just like every other Pembroni peasant girl. Ordinary and poor as dirt.

  I shuffled back down the hall and plunked at the table. My stew was cold. I spooned it into my mouth anyway and tried to guess what it’d be like if I could hear Mother’s and Father’s voices around the table as we ate.

  I pretended to feel the warmth of Father’s arm around my shoulders, pretended to bask in the glow of some approving words from Mother.

  The fantasy was awfully nice. But it was just foolish imagining. The truth was the empty table before me, the dead-silent cottage all around me.

  Aye. I wished for a way out.

  I popped up in bed with a gasp. Something wasn’t right. Had I heard a noise? Felt a touch? An image of the arrogant guardsman from the day before flashed into my head.

  The first light of dawn slanted through my threadbare curtains, but the house lay still.

  Light of dawn.

  Riwor.

  I’m late!

  I threw back my blanket and flew from bed. I stumbled over my bag, already packed and ready for the journey.

  Too bad I wasn’t.

  Dress, hair—no time for braids or curls—shoes, necklace.

  I grabbed the silver trinket I’d taken such care to rescue from the king’s guardsman the day before. It wasn’t worth much, but the silver charm—worked into a curled, flowery shape—had been my mother’s. I never left home without it.

  I slipped it over my head and down the front of my dress.

  Done?

  I patted my dress to make sure everything was in place. To make sure I hadn’t accidentally tucked the back of my skirt into the ties of my apron. Wouldn’t want to embarrass myself like that.

  Again.

  I dashed into the hallway, then to the fire. It hadn’t completely died through the night, and that was lucky. I added some wood from the pile, then stoked the fire back into flame before I ladled water from a barrel into my cooking pot. No matter how late I was, I wouldn’t make it through the day without some manner of breakfast.

  I tossed a cupful of grain into the pot, then hurried to Father’s study.

  Straighten the old pens; make sure all the books are in place.

  I paused at a particular leather-bound volume. Father’s name was branded on the cover: Yestin Bo-Arthio. It looked like a journal. But it was empty, every page blank. I’d flipped through them all a dozen times to make sure.

  I frowned. Maybe he hadn’t been much of a writer.

  A hissing noise reached me from the next room. My porridge was boiling over.

  I ran back to the hearth and stirred the gruel with a wooden spoon.

  But for some reason, I couldn’t shake the picture of Father’s journal from my mind.

  “Tanwen!”

  I started so badly, the spoon dropped into the pot. I fished it back out with a wince, then zipped through the entry toward the angry voice on the other side of the front door.

  “Tanwen, I swear I’ll leave you behind, you lazy, useless watta root of a girl!”

  “I’m coming, Riwor!” I flung the door wide.

  Riwor barely waited until the door was completely open to push past me. “We agreed on sunrise. What’s been keeping you?”

  “I overslept.”

  Riwor made a noise that sounded like an irritated grazer’s huff. Her gaze swept over my cottage. “Well, well. Quite nice for a girl who claims to be so poor.”

  I turned to scoop out the half-bowl of porridge I allowed myself for breakfast. “It was my mother’s family home once.”

  “Humph,” Riwor grunted.

  The sooner I got her out of there, the better. Didn’t want her to start pocketing my parents’ belongings.

  I inhaled my porridge, though it burned my mouth. “Ready.” Snatched my bag off the floor. “I just have to see someone before I leave.”

  Riwor’s jowls quivered. “Make it quick, or I leave without you.”

  “Brac?” I peered into the dark barn, but I didn’t see him. “You in here?”

  There was a poke in my side that made me jump. “Ho, Tannie.”

  I spun around and punched Brac in the stomach. “Yo
u scared me!”

  He just laughed at me. “Aye, that was the idea.”

  I glanced back to the road. I could tell Riwor was glaring at me, even from a distance. “I’m leaving. Be gone a fortnight across the river—Gwern, Afon, and Mynyd.”

  “I know. You told me.”

  “Aye, but . . .” I fumbled with my vest hem. “I just wanted to say good-bye.”

  He tickled me under the chin. “Is that your way of saying you want to marry me after all?”

  I swatted his hand away. “Wake up, Bo-Bradwir. You’re dreaming again.”

  His grin slipped.

  Blast.

  “Sorry, Brac. I didn’t mean it. I was teasing.”

  He let out a long breath. “Easier to tease than talk about it, I suppose.”

  Double blast.

  I bit the inside of my cheek. “There’s not much left to talk about, is there? You want a simple farm lass, and goddesses know you’d have a line of them from here to the sea if you weren’t so hung up on me.”

  My gut twisted at the thought of a line of lasses snapping for Brac’s attention. But I swallowed the sick feeling. I didn’t have any right to it. “One of those lasses will suit you for a wife just fine. She’ll want what you want, and you’ll both be happy.”

  Brac stared at me a moment, his mouth a bit open. Finally, he managed words. “Don’t you understand, Tannie, after all these years?”

  He stepped toward me, and I took an equal step back out of instinct. Closeness to his person never helped me think clearer.

  But those blasted lanky arms of his reached across the distance, and he put his hands on my shoulders. “I don’t want some lass. I don’t want any girl who’ll make a fine wife. I want you.” He pulled me closer. “All of you. The parts that drive me up one side of a wall and down the other, even.”

  Tears dribbled down my face unbidden. Drat it.

  I thought about pulling away. But instead I looked up into his eyes, full of hope over how I might respond. “Brac, I—”

  “Tanwen!” Riwor’s voice cut into the moment like a scythe. “Get a move on, girl!”

  I sighed. “I’m sorry, Brac. I have to go now.”