by Morgan Smith
“Why?”
“Do you know how much money we could make, when the traders come through this year? We’d be the richest folk in the village. We could go up to the fair. Stay in a proper inn, buy what we liked, for once. And with coin to spare. Why shouldn’t we? We do everything for them, and never a word of praise or thanks. They owe us.”
In the end, he found a way to make excuses, he made up a tale, he quieted the rumours and the recriminations. It wouldn’t last, he thought. Someone is bound to see through it, start asking questions, but no one said much, at least not in his hearing.
In the late summer, though, he made a deal with a trader heading south, and left her there, to continue the pretences and do what she liked. And he dropped the charm somewhere along the roadside and tried not think about it ever again.
***
Bards are always popular people in taverns.
Everyone appreciates a good song and a strong baritone, and when it’s paired with a fair countenance and good manners, well, no one wants to seem ungrateful, and Donal had not often gone to bed hungry or thirsty. His friends in the inns and taverns all over Keraine made sure of that.
And when, in winter, his cloak seemed too threadbare, or when he talked, perhaps, about moving on, the innkeep of whatever place he was at that time favouring always found some second-hand finery or a bit of coin to keep him hanging around a few more days, because Donal brought in the customers.
Eventually, though, he always moved on. He liked new faces, Donal did, and he liked telling tales of wonders he’d seen, and he knew, instinctively, that the excitement would wane, if he stayed long enough for his stories to get a second hearing.
He’d stayed longer in the town below the fortress at Glaice than he’d meant to, that year. There’d been a girl, and while Donal wasn’t one for betrothals and so on, he’d found himself momentarily toying with the idea of a settled life.
Her mother put those thoughts to rest, though, in no uncertain terms, and so, on a bright summer afternoon, Donal found himself walking along the road north, not entirely as much at peace with himself or his life as he was accustomed to being.
It wasn’t so much the girl herself, he thought, although she’d been pretty and funny and appreciative of his talents. It was that arrogant assumption that he wasn’t good enough for her that rankled. Just because his pockets weren’t filled with coin.
Although, he mused, it might be nice to have money. Lots of money. Just to show that old battle-axe of a mother that she’d missed a good chance by sending him off like that. Donal, as he walked, began to imagine the scene, not unlike one in an old ballad he knew, where a girl spurned a man because she thought him poor, but he had turned out to be the long-lost son of a king…
It was at that particular moment, just as Donal was truly enjoying the vision of the hardhearted mother realizing her grievous error in judgement, when a trader’s wagon came around a bend in the road at an injudicious pace, and nearly ran the bard over.
Only an outraged cry of warning at the very last moment alerted Donal to his peril, and he looked up, panicked, and – arms flailing – tumbled off the road and down the slope, knocking himself out cold in the process.
Donal never knew whether the wagoner had stopped or not. It was possible that, having looked over the edge and suspected that Donal was dead, the trader had fled in terror of being named in a crime. It was equally possible that the driver had not stopped at all.
Donal had no way to know, because it was a considerable time before he regained consciousness. The wagon was long gone by then, and it was well past sunset.
Fortunately, he had often spent his nights out in the open, and he did, at this point, possess a decent cloak. He sat up, gingerly fingered the tender bump on his forehead, and decided that getting back to the road was a task better left for daylight.
Still, his present location was not a good place to sleep. It was rocky and uneven, and he was reminded of another old tale, where a man benighted on the road was led astray by wandering wights, who took him down into a faerie-mound, and when he’d escaped, near a hundred years had gone past in an eyeblink…
He looked about, but in the dark, it was hard to tell if anywhere else was going to be an improvement. This was a time when those imagined riches might have come in very handy, he thought, because then he’d have been snug in some nice room at an inn, instead of marooned on the road.
It would be nice, he thought, to just find money, lying around. A little pile of faerie-gold, there for the taking. Solve all his little problems, that would.
It was then that he noticed something odd.
The rocks seemed to be glowing. No, that wasn’t right. Something in the rocks was glowing. He stood up, a little shakily, and stumbled over to where it all seemed to be coming from.
There, trapped between two big boulders, there was a glowing bead wrapped in braided twine. Donal recognized it at once.
A charm. A charm of Finding, but what was it doing in the middle of bloody nowhere?
How does someone lose a charm of Finding, anyway?
He reached down and slid his fingers into the space. The charm slipped easily from its place and rolled onto his palm.
He felt the urge to move. Over the rocks. Why? He couldn’t tell, but he wasn’t in the habit of resisting his impulses, and the whole thing was so strange, like one of the tales he recited for the credulous bumpkins in small village alehouses, he couldn’t have stopped himself even had he wanted to.
More rocks to clamber past. Bits of bushes forcing their desperate way between cracks of stony ground, all taking on the cast of the green light in his hand.
He nearly fell over the bones.
The glow of the charm was now incandescent, and what had once been a ribcage looked like green arcs of light in the night. The skull, too, like a big green stone, half-buried in the dirt, and the bits of fingerbones scattered across an old, rotting bag, like little green jewels…
And then he noticed the gold coins.
There were an awful lot of them.
He sat down, very suddenly, and did not move, because the light that had guided him was suddenly gone, dowsed out completely.
He sat, looking at the very faint glimmer of the coins in the moonlight.
A dream, he thought. I must have passed out again, and I’m dreaming this, and in the morning, I’ll still be at the bottom of the hill below the road, and everything will be exactly as it was before.
He closed his eyes. His head still hurt, which was annoying. The least the dream could do is skip the pain, he thought. It seemed unfair, since in the morning he would still be poor old Donal, who would need to find somewhere to sing for his supper.
It seemed like only moments later that he woke. The sun was shining, though, well above the horizon, he could hear birdsong, and for a moment, he couldn’t remember anything past a moment of seeing a wagon barrelling around a corner of the road and heading straight for him –
He was not at the bottom of that roadside slope.
The skeleton was still only inches away. The coins gleamed in the daylight.
The charm was still clutched in his palm.
***
Months later, when he looked at his wife’s growing belly, Donal couldn’t believe his good fortune.
Somewhere, deep inside, he’d found a streak of hard-headed peasant pragmatism he had never known he possessed. He’d bought himself a few things, sure, but when he’d gotten back to Glaice, the first thing he’d done was find the most successful and honest trader he knew, and with that woman’s sage advice, invested the bulk of his coins in goods that would bring a high return.
And then, having suddenly established himself as a shrewd and successful man of property, he’d looked around and discovered that he still rather liked that girl, and he wasted no time gloating over her mother’s chagrin, but put his efforts into convincing both of them that some bards could make good husbands.
He’d remembered, just
before turning to make his way back to the road, saying whatever he could recall of the Rites for the Dead over the bones, thanking whatever shade might still be clinging to them for his gift, and leaving the Finding Charm there in the dirt.
He’d sung too many songs about curses and greed, after all, not to heed the warning.
***
Normally, he never went near the man-places. They were dangerous, and there was little there that he wanted, and they stank of men, who had the sharp sticks that sang in the air and hurt you.
But the winter had been long and he was hungry, starving, desperate, even, and so he ventured closer than wisdom dictated, alert to every sign and scent, looking for anything that might be food.
Just at the bottom of the hill, well before he reached the long man-place, he stopped, caught by a feeling of enormous yearning. Somewhere beneath his paws, a thing knocked against him, round and hard.
Play with me.
The fox scrabbled at the stones and bones. The thing rolled out, gleaming in the moonlight.
Play with me.
He nosed at it and it moved away, a little. He pushed at it again, and this time it spun off along the slope, down into the brush. He scampered after it, back into the trees, but before he could pounce, he caught the smell of something little and lively.
There, crouched under the roots of an old oak tree.
In moments, the rodent was his. His first good meal in days.
Over the next few turns of the moon, he returned occasionally to that place. Each time, the little thing on the forest floor got him to push it about, and every time it came to rest, the fox found something good to eat.
Until one day, when he came by, not starving, quite, but still hopeful of decent prey, the thing was inexplicably gone.
###
Skin Deep
By Morgan Smith
Copyright 2017 Morgan Smith
Skin Deep
Based on an old Scandinavian folktale
This story first appeared in the anthology “Fantastic Beasts”.
In the village of Anhof, the alehouse was filled to bursting, and not one man in five could hear himself think.
The problem of the king’s eldest son was well-known, of course. The curse was held to be a famous one, although, since not a single villager here had ever ventured farther than to the yearly market held at Liffing, only five miles east, it is unclear what their definition of “famous” might have been.
This characterization, moreover, did not deter them from recounting to each other the sad tale of the king’s feckless queen, who had not seemed to be able to bear any children for some years after the marriage was solemnized and had, in the end, resorted to seeking out a certain wise woman who lived high up in the mountains, and who was known to have strange, arcane powers in such matters.
The charm’s instructions had seemed quite clear. The queen was to eat two onions, while standing in a sacred grove in the full light of the turning moon, and then walk backwards three times around the carved, hogbacked stone in the grove’s centre. After which, she was under strict instruction to make her way back to the castle, speaking to no one, and to join her husband in their bed.
In due course, the queen had given birth to twins, and that was when the stories split apart. Had she eaten the onions peeled or unpeeled, and had the witch withheld this vital detail? Had she inadvertently uttered a word, sometime between the carefully enacted ritual and her bedchamber door?
The more charitable held to the view that the witch had purposefully not said whether the onions had to be peeled or not, and that if a woman stubbed her toe and swore under her breath as she walked past the guard at the door, it would be unfair of anyone to be cursed, since she had not spoken those words to any being but herself.
The mean-minded said that it was just like the woman to have not managed a simple task without error.
It did not, in the end, matter too terribly much to anyone what exactly had gone wrong. The point was, something had.
One of the boys was pronounced as everything a king’s son should be. He was utterly unblemished, had the requisite number of fingers and toes, and he looked out upon the world, from the very first, with a clear and untroubled gaze of lambent blue.
The other, the elder – well, for a long time, the adage “least said, soonest mended” was held to be the wisest course, especially if one wanted to avoid arrest and consignment to a dungeon.
But people will talk. Late at night, in the alehouses, a traveling tinker might mutter a word or three. A couple of shepherd boys might murmur to each other what that tinker had said. And down by the river, when they went to do the washing in the spring, the women might relay what little they knew.
A monstrosity. Scaled and serpentine; fanged and taloned; and dangerous, most of all. It demanded raw flesh at every mealtime – no, not merely raw: living flesh. A Great Wyrm, some whispered, but wingless, and with legs, able to walk and to speak.
And to kill: his strength was almost immediately legendary.
Not a man, and yet with a man’s clear intelligence, and, as the years went by, with a man’s desires, apparently.
At first, it had been sorrowfully hoped that the aberration would not long survive. After all, babes with deformities did not frequently live much past the first months, even when they were not an utter abomination. Later on, it was merely an existence to be carefully ignored, both out of kindness and self-preservation.
And then, just as the king had concluded a very worthy betrothal for his younger son, the problem had reared its scaly head and demanded that the rule of law be respected. It was not to be born, said the elder royal offspring, that the ancient statute requiring the younger son remain single until the elder had been safely married off be set aside. He would not countenance this. He could not.
He demanded his bride.
And so, where once the tale had been a slightly pleasurable if somewhat terrifying matter for discreet gossip, it now formed a material and immediate problem for every merchant, farmer, or craftsman in the country.
***
In a well-appointed throne room, decorated with embroidered hangings depicting various hunting scenes, and laid with a floor of alternating black and grey slate flagging, the king was harassing his counselors for an answer to this most pressing dilemma.
Strewn about the floor was a veritable snowfall of parchment sheets. All of them had been copied out in perfect, ornate hands, and all of them bore impressive seals and ribbons.
And all of them, in the most polite and courteous of words and impressive phrases, couched amid expressions of sincere but heartfelt regret, contained at their hub, a simple word.
No.
No, they would not, for any amount of gold plate or trade concessions, send their royal daughters to be wedded to the eldest son of King Ranwulf. Nor would they allow the child of any prince, duke or earl to be sacrificed in this endeavor. Indeed, or so the king saw, reading between the lines, they would not attempt to suborn any lesser or especially impoverished member of their nobility or gentry to immolate their daughters in this cause.
Just, no.
“Well,” said one counselor, clearing his throat, “Well, we shall have to think of something else.”
There was a moment of uncomfortable silence, while everyone tried to think of what “something else” might consist of.
“Perhaps,” said the queen, diffidently, “someone might be found among our own people? Oh, I know,” she said, catching her husband’s impatient glare, “We can’t expect any of the nobility to reconsider. But it might be that some of the – er – less well-to-do might attempt it? For a price?”
Ranwulf opened his mouth to object, and then snapped it closed again.
She was right, really, and he knew it. What place had family pride in this? Prince Lind certainly did not care. He had never placed even the slightest value on his family’s honour or ancestors.
From the start, Ranwulf had known that his son�
��s demand for a wife had been born of bitterness, resentment and malice, and the outrage that was his eldest son had, moreover, made it plain to all of them that his enormous strength and stamina, not to mention his poisonous fangs, would be put to terrible use should he be thwarted. He had said a great many things, some of which had been naked threats, but the one thing he had not said was that he expected a royal bride.
Just a bride.
Two days later, the proclamation went out.
***
In Anhof, as elsewhere, the king’s words were greeted with disbelief.
The queen’s original suggestion had, as was to be expected, been modified by unanimous consent to form more than a request.
It was, in fact, more of a decree than a proclamation. Having come to the sticking point, the wise counselors had transformed her idea into an edict requiring each and every community to forward, with haste, one eligible, unmarried female to the capital, there to be presented to His Royal Highness for inspection as a prospective bride.
The wording was careful, but not a single villager in Anhof, at least, was in any doubt. Theirs was not to reason why. Theirs was to sacrifice some girl – any girl – on the altar of the kingdom’s future.
And there wasn’t a cursed thing they could do about it.
The proclamation did not spell out any details of the retribution in store, should they fail in this endeavor. It was unnecessary to do so, since the villagers’ imaginations could supply prospects far more terrifying than any open words could have done.
It had induced consternation, of course, and fury, and no little anguish.
How could they send a child of theirs into certain and horrific death?
How could they not?
And, in a scene repeated in every corner of the realm, names were slyly, or diffidently, or ruthlessly offered up.
All of which, in Anhof, had the natural effect of causing more discord and heartache than any other local dispute ever had. The tanner was accused of trying to settle old scores. The blacksmith claimed that Weaver Elspeth was merely trying to clear the field for her own daughter to marry the reeve’s son, by suggesting that the smith’s eldest was admirably suited for a life at court.