Big Trouble

by Andrew Seiple

  And then, in a flash, the solution came to her.

  INT+1

  Chase scooped up the first stick before it could go past her rock, knelt to steady herself, and poked it toward the animal.

  The first few sticks collided with the creature, jarring it loose, and Chase jabbed the stick, wobbling it around. “Come on!” She pleaded. “Grab hold!”

  The creature twitched again, and she thought it tried to move, but she couldn’t tell. On the third jab she lifted it a bit, straining to get the animal free of the water—

  And promptly fell into the river.

  I’m going to die, Chase knew. She closed her eyes, tried not to breathe water. She grabbed out blindly, dropped the stick, grabbed a handful of fur—

  —and felt herself jerk to a stop, as her blouse constricted around her neck.

  Greta pulled Chase out of the river, wading through the shallows, muscles straining. She dumped her sister on the muddy shore and collapsed next to her, panting.

  Chase coughed and spluttered, eyes shut. “Is... is it alive?”

  Silence for a bit. Then Greta laughed. “No.” She laughed!

  Chase opened her eyes, shocked. “What... how could... could you find this funny! What’s wrong with you?”

  Greta kept laughing and just pointed at the creature her sister had grabbed.

  Chase looked to her hand, and blinked in surprise.

  It looked like a fox.

  It wasn’t.

  A torn mess of red-and-white cloth with black little ears and legs and a single glittery yellow glass eye. Stuffing hung from torn fur.

  “It’s a toy. Just a toy,” Chase said.

  She’d nearly died over a broken toy.

  “The current must have made it look like it was moving,” Greta said, her laughter winding down. “But I wonder where it came from?”

  “Probably one of the Gooli sisters. Playing upstream or something,” Chase said, trying to push her temper down. I almost drowned over a toy!

  “This is about as far out as anyone goes. The only thing upstream is...” Greta looked up, and up. Toward the dark eye, the forbidden cave.

  “Don’t be ridiculous. There’s plenty of streams that feed into this river. This is just one of them.” Chase sighed. “You were the one who didn’t want to tempt fate, remember?”

  “Well. We don’t have any kindling, our clothes are wet and muddy, and the fox you saved was just a toy. But hey, look on the bright side,” Greta said, climbing to her feet.

  “And that is?”

  “At least we’re not being pursued by zombies.”

  Chase dropped the fox, grabbed mud, and threw it at Greta as her sister laughed and laughed.

  Then they spent a good few minutes scrambling and struggling on the riverbank, trying to jam mud down each other’s blouses and ducking each other into the water, because at that point there was nothing to lose. Greta won, like she always did. Chase yielded and led the way out of the shallows, scooping up the fox as she went.

  “Come on. We’re in for it when we get back. Might as well get it over with.”

  “Yeah,” Greta sighed. “We’re going to get grounded. Maybe right even through the festival. This is going to be horrible.”

  “Maybe. Let me do the talking.”

  Greta simply gave her a look.

  “It’s not going to be like the pie incident.”

  Greta kept on giving her the look.

  “We were trying to be good!”

  Greta’s look didn’t waver, up until the point Chase caught her arm. “Tree.”

  “Hm? Oh.” Greta looked around, and nearly put her nose against the bark of a very large tree, directly in her path. “Uh, thanks.”

  “No problem. Wow, maybe it’s a good thing you popped intelligence before I ran you through the zombie pursuit game. You’d have lost for certain. Zombies would’ve eaten you.”

  Greta laughed, and Chase grinned.

  And neither of them noticed as the ragged remnants of the fox toy twitched and shut its remaining eye in a slow squeeze, before opening it again.

  Then it was back through the thinning trees, past the old stumps that had given the settlers their wood, so long ago. Through to where the hills evened out and the fields started, filled with cut stalks, the remnants of the harvest that the village had worked so hard to gather. Past scarecrows and the outer farmhouses, sod over wooden frames seeming to rise from the ground itself and grass and plants studding their sides. The roots soaked up water, kept the soil firm and tight against the wood. These were halven homes; warm in winter, cool in summer, and as small as the folk who lived in them.

  Small in many ways, Chase thought, uncharitably. Small in body, small in willpower, and small in brains.

  Not that she’d ever voice it, though. Chase was different; she’d faced her weaknesses head-on, and worked hard to overcome them. Sure, that had taken time away from traditional halven pursuits and talents, but so what? You could raise those by just slumping around the village, talking about the weather, and being boring.

  Chase didn’t want to be boring. She wanted to be fabulous and exciting, great and powerful. A hero like the old stories, or heck, maybe even a villain. Anything that didn’t end with her growing old, popping out kids, and dying in the village she’d been born into.

  She knew that staying here and doing just that sounded like paradise to most of her peers.

  And she was smart enough to know that openly scorning them for it would do absolutely no good.

  So instead she practiced hard, for the day she knew she’d leave this place. For the day she’d finally work up the courage, walk out to the high road and keep on going.

  But that day was a ways off. First came the now, and the mud and muck and mess that they were bringing home. After that, came the festival. Then she could focus on long-term goals.

  They passed through the outer houses, into the inner ring of homes. The church stood high, at a whopping two stories, easily the tallest building in the village. Wooden shops lined the flattened dirt streets, and Goody Tommels led a herd of lowing cattle down one of them, waving a switch and proudly moving among them with the assurance of a level twenty-two rancher. Other halvens moved to and fro, running errands, doing the shopping, and stopping to gab with their neighbors over the most boring things.

  And as eyes lifted up to study the incoming girls Chase knew that they’d just fed more empty words into the gossip mill. The grownup gossip mill, too! Not the careful one she’d cultivated and grown and turned into a profit engine. The gossip that fueled her freedom, one favor or bartered item or carefully-hoarded coin at a time. Her peers ate it up, and she orchestrated the whispers, dropping them with the careful precision of darts in a board.

  Fighting to keep a scowl from her face, Chase led Greta to the door of their home. The abode was one of the larger ones toward the center of the village, its roof twisted with blackberry bushes, long since ripened and harvested. Next to the round wooden door stood a square little nameplate. It stated the word “Berrymore.”

  Chase put on her best smile, pushed the door open...

  ...and entered into a ruckus.

  Dad, boring old Dad, portly, bland Dad, was standing in the kitchen doorway with a sword in his hand.

  An actual sword, sized down for halvens, with nicks on the well-oiled blade that suggested it had seen a lot of usage.

  From beyond him, she heard her mother yelling, but the words were lost on Chase as she fixed on the sleek, gleaming steel of the blade. Steel that disappeared, as he slid it into a sheath on his belt, callused hands moving with old familiarity, not even sparing a glance down as he answered his wife. “Just up to take a look around. Just to make sure all’s quiet.”

  “Oh!” Greta said behind Chase, and her Dad whipped his head around, stared at them. Then he coughed and seemed to redden.

  “Selma!” He called. “The girls are back early.”

  Silence. Then a rattling of silverware and dishes,
a fierce cacophony that filled the kitchen, pottery and metal and wood clattering and rattling together, as hard as they could be without something breaking. It was a threat and a promise all in one, and normally Chase’s father would be cringing at the sound of it.

  But today, something was different. And Chase watched in amazement as he stood there, resolute, hand on the hilt of his sword. His sword, and wasn’t that a surprise? She’d never seen him with a weapon before, other than the hurler stones he’d taught them to use.

  Her father stirred, as if he could feel her gaze. He looked back to meet her eyes, then studied her muddy form. “What happened, Sweetpea?”

  “I fell in the river. Greta pulled me out. We lost the sticks. I’m sorry.”

  He nodded. “Go get cleaned up. Give your mother about an hour then go see if she needs help.”

  CRASH went wood against metal, and he winced, as if he’d been physically struck. “Better make it two,” he amended. Then he moved past her, and toward the door, patting Chase and Greta absentmindedly on the shoulder as he passed them.

  “Where are you going, Da?” Greta asked.

  He hesitated a second, then another. That was not one of his usual tells, Chase knew. Something was wrong. “Just out to talk with a few of the neighbors. Got to check on something. Might be out a bit late.” He glanced back at them, and smiled, but it wasn’t reassuring at all. “Mind your mother. Love you, Sweetpea. Love you, Bigpea.”

  The sisters chorused their love and out the door he went.

  “Come on,” Greta decided. “Let’s get washed and clean before Ma sees us.”

  Chase nodded and kept on staring at the closed door.

  Greta cleaned first, while Chase studied the fox toy. “You’re a bit of a mess, aren’t you?” She decided, putting it on a shelf. “Stay here for a bit. I’ll go around tomorrow and figure out who you belong to.”

  Chase was about to turn away, when something caught her eye. She picked up the toy once more, and stared into the gaping cut across its body. There was something dangling from its throat. It looked like nothing so much as a set of fine, interwoven strings. “What’s this?” Chase tugged on them gently and blinked as the fox’s muzzle opened and shut. “Weird. You’re like a puppet?”

  “I’m pretty sure I never saw that toy around here before,” Greta said from directly behind her, and Chase jumped and screamed. The fox went flying, and Chase whirled on her grinning sister.

  “Don’t you do that!”

  “Don’t Do what? Settle our bet? Okay, I’ll just keep them then,” Greta grinned, waggling a small wooden box at her.

  “What? No, you give that here.”

  After a short scuffle, Chase got her hands on the box, the fox forgotten in the fight. I’ve been waiting for this for years, Chase thought, looking inside to make sure her sister wasn’t cheating her. But no, they were there, and her breath hissed as she saw bright-colored inks on thick cardstock. She closed the wooden box, then looked her sister up and down, taking in the towel she was wearing. “You going to put more clothes on?”

  “I’m heading that way now. I got to my room to pick out new clothes and remembered our bet. They’re yours now, until I win them back.”

  “Sure, sure,” Chase grinned. She had gathered enough juicy gossip that no matter how many bets her sister won, Chase would always have something to pay her with. Without risking the precious cards.

  Greta headed back to her room, and Chase sat down, smiling. This was a box of good memories, was what these were. Gram had called them story cards, and each one had pictures, some beautiful, some bizarre, and some dark and fearful. Chase remembered laying them out at Gram’s urging, drawing them forth as she chose. Then Gram would tell a story with the cards, and Chase would help. Those had been good times, and Chase felt her eyes water.

  She opened the case, just once more, and peered in. The card on top was one of the fearful ones, but majestic in its own way, she thought. It depicted a cave, lined by stone skulls, with actual bones and skeletons scattered around it, and storms gathered overhead in dark skies. The title proclaimed the card to be “The Dungeon.”

  “Huh.” Chase felt a little disappointed that she’d drawn an eerie card. This one had always spooked her, when she was a kid. She turned back to the bathroom—

  —and stopped. The fox sat on the shelf behind her, staring down at her with its single eye.

  “I threw you. Accidentally,” Chase said, squinting at it. “Did you land there?”

  It seemed unlikely. The shelf was narrow, and above her head. It would have taken a stroke of luck to get him on there strictly by accident. Just the right angle and just the right timing.

  Halvens were lucky by nature, true, but still...

  She stared at the fox, then put the card case up next to it. Then Greta’s feet pounded down the hall. “Chase! Get clean now! Mom wants us!”

  Chase rushed off to the bathroom, the toy and the cards forgotten for the moment. They’d be there later; she could figure out what to do with them later.

  But in the morning, the fox was gone.

  CHAPTER 2: COOKING AND LIES

  The village of Bothernot hadn’t changed much in the centuries since it had been founded. It lay sheltered by the surrounding hills, surrounded by fields and farms and forest at the fringes. Most of its structures were halven houses, of living sod over wood that melded into the landscape. The exceptions were the shops in the village square and the old stone church that overlooked it all, the only large stone structure in the whole village.

  The church was more or less the town center. It had been here before the halvens had. They’d found it an old ruin, cleaned it up and cleared it out, and decreed it a church to Old Koss. Old Koss was the patron deity of farmers and the simple life, and it was the favorite place for the oldest members of the community to hang about on quiet days (which were every day, really) and complain about young people. About how skills made everything so easy these days. And jobs were just asking for trouble!

  They weren’t talking about regular skills and regular jobs when they said these things. They were talking about the changeover. The old folks who sat at the church and complained about society were old enough to remember a time before everyone had status screens, a time before people could “unlock” jobs and become Knights or Wizards or terribly exciting things just by accepting the devil’s bargain that the mysterious words offered.

  Jobs gave skills, which were tricks that let their users bend reality. The more they got used, the more they could do. And then there were levels, which gave the job user more power and more skills that could do bigger things... it was a horrible path that led to that most un-halvenly sin of excitement and worse yet, drama.

  Fortunately, in the land of Laraggiungere, which Bothernot nestled in like a ripe grape on a twisting vine, concerned parties had sorted that out long ago. Now there were rules, and penalties, and people with very big armies to make sure that nobody got any funny ideas.

  Of course, pragmatism being what it was, they couldn’t entirely forbid jobs. Some of the skills were just too useful.

  Which was why Chase found herself in the back of the church kitchen standing before a table groaning under the weight of dough. Behind her sat a table full of walnuts and to her left squatted a table heaped with bowls of eggs. Just to her right, sealing off any avenue of retreat, stood a table stacked with jars of honey.

  Trapped between the tables, trapped in Bothernot, trapped with an errand she couldn’t escape.

  The story of my life, Chase glared at the sheets of dough as if they were bricks in a prison’s wall.

  “Are you going to get started, here?” A nasal voice whined from beyond the tables.

  Chase glanced over at Millie Wheadle. Even for a halven, the child was short. Her red hair stuck out from under its bonnet like unruly weeds, almost obscuring her eyes with heavy bangs. Chase had a full head on the diminutive girl, who was sitting, drumming her knuckles on the back door of the church
.

  Then Chase sighed. “You could come and help me with this.”

  Millie grinned wide. “Nah. My job is to carry the cakes to Mother Bloom. That’s the deal.”

  “Maybe we can make a deal?” Chase offered. “I found a way to give people more intelligence...”

  “I don’t need any of that. If I get too smart Donny Larkpie won’t fall in love with me and marry me and then I can’t settle down and have ten babies.”

  Chase stared. “Does Donny know about this plan?”

  “Not yet.” She grinned. “I’m as smart as I need to be. Don’t need any more brains.”

  Chase felt her ears pull back. That attitude summed up so much of Bothernot and encapsulated just why she had to get the hells out of this place. But that was a matter for another day. For now...

  Chase grimaced and looked over to the stone oven set into the wall, well away from the tables. Precisely ten feet away from her spot in the center of them, as a matter of fact.

  No, there was no way around it. Chase was going to have to work.

  Nonetheless, Chase studied Millie one last time, setting her mind to clicking along the lines this could go. The only way she could handle this task and make her appointment on time was with help.

  While she thought, she put her hands to the dough, and started her task.

  Fifty years ago, everyone cooked the same way. They mixed ingredients together, put them into an oven, or some other appliance that administered heat, and waited for an appropriate amount of time.

  Chase had never known this method.

  With her mother’s insistence, she had been forced down a different path. Given a bowl of salad and a fork, she had been told to mix it until the proper words appeared. They had, she had accepted their offering, as her parents insisted, and now Chase was a Cook, with a capital “C”.

  So when Chase put her hands on the dough, and envisioned what she wanted, two things happened.