The cataclysm t2-2

by Margaret Weis

  "You have to be reasonable about this," Ark was saying. His voice was a little too high and tight. "If you could just listen to me for a minute and think about — "

  "Shut your dung-eating trap," shouted Goodwife Filster. "You brought that wicked little monster into this good town, and look at me now! My bakery's burned down, and I've got nothing left to my name except the clothes on my back. My whole life has been a sewage pit ever since blessed Istar died, and it's all because of vermin like that kender and maggot-brained asses like yourself who feed and clothe them! You're to blame for this even more than he is. You brought him among us, and you blinded everyone to his evil nature. You let him work his evil on us, and now he's had his way, and good people like myself are destroyed! I'm ruined!" And then she called Ark some names that I'm not going to write down here, because they were awful and I don't think I could spell them correctly anyway. I might ask Ark about them tomorrow.

  When Goodwife Filster stopped for breath, I heard Widow Muffin say, "Goodie Filster, please, listen to us. You need to go back to the inn and rest for a while. If you do anything to hurt us, you'll feel terrible about it. You've had some terrible things happen to — "

  "Shut up!"

  The wall I was leaning against vibrated when Goodwife Filster yelled, and among other things she called Widow Muffin a prostitute, only she didn't use that word.

  "You can't talk to me!" Goodwife Filster finished. "You have no right to say anything to me! You deserve the same fate that the kender should have had years ago! He should have died out there, eaten by rats and wolves. It's your fault, Arskin, for dragging that demon child in among good folk."

  "He's not a demon," Ark said, his voice shaky. "You're just upset, now. He's a kender, and they're just like you and me, even if they cause a little more — "

  "The Abyss take you!" screamed Goodwife Filster. "The evil gods delivered him into your hands to destroy us!"

  "Goodie, he was just a little baby, and his mother was dead. She'd been wounded by goblins or bandits, and she'd carried him all the way through the wilderness to get him to safety. I couldn't leave him there after I buried her. If you had been me, you would have done the same. You know it!" Ark sounded like he was trying to reason with a swamp viper he'd almost stepped on.

  I was shocked to hear about my mother, because Ark had never said a word to me about her, and for a moment I couldn't think of anything else until Goodwife Filster laughed.

  "I would have known what to do to the little bastard," she said, and my insides went cold when she said it. "I would have spared us all this torment. But because of you and that kender, I lost everything I ever owned. It's only right that you should suffer as I have, just exactly as I have."

  I slowly moved around the door frame. No one was by the door, but I could look into the wall mirror nearby and see part of Goodwife Filster's back and one of her arms. She was holding a torch in one hand and had a meat-cutting knife stuck in her belt. That was bad enough, but, being so close to the door, I could also smell something like lamp oil, only it couldn't have been — or so I thought — because Ark doesn't own any oil lamps, because he says the local oil burns too fast and smells awful, like burned fish, which is what it comes from (we call them greasegills).

  Of course, my next thought was that Goodwife Filster had brought her own lamp oil, and that she meant what she said about Ark suffering exactly as she had, and suddenly all I could think about was my growing up in the shoe shop and how it was the only home I had ever known and how Ark and I, and later Widow Muffin, had always had so much fun here. I realized I had no idea how much lamp oil Goodwife Filster had brought in with her, but it smelled like enough to burn up my memories and the shoe shop and maybe some people with it.

  I stopped listening then so I'd have a chance to think. Think first, Ark always tells me, even if it's just for a moment. At first I thought I should run for help, but I didn't know if Goodwife Filster would behave herself long enough for me to find Magistrate Jarvis and get back without anyone being hurt. I carefully put down the satchel with the facts machine and looked down at the steps and thought and thought. Goodwife Filster was saying something about beasts and dragons and fires from the Abyss, and she wasn't making a lot of sense, though in a way she was, even if it was a very awful sort of logic.

  About then I remembered a trick I had once played on Ark when I was small, something I had sworn never to do again after I'd tried the trick, and Ark had broken two of his fingers, for which I'd been spanked and felt bad over for weeks. I was looking at the bottom of the door frame, where part of the frame had fallen off but left some nails sticking out, just enough to tie a string across the bottom of the door above ankle height.

  I felt in my robe pockets for some string, but I didn't have any. Then I remembered my once-holy symbol of Gilean, and I carefully slid its chain off my neck and knelt down by the door as quietly as I could. It took a few seconds for me to wrap the chain around the nails on either side of the doorway. It was dark, and I didn't think Goodwife Filster would see the chain until it was too late. Then I grabbed the satchel.

  I thought about calling for Goodwife Filster to come outside, but I thought she might say no and burn down our home. That left only one solution, and from the sound of things inside, I was going to have to do it now.

  "Don't set the house on fire," Ark was begging. "I don't want any of us to get hurt. Please take the torch outside."

  "I have no fear of you," cried Goodwife Filster. "I am the arm of righteousness. I am the avenger of fallen Istar."

  "Goodie, that's crazy talk!" said Widow Muffin, and right then I knew she had said the wrong thing. I leaped up the two back steps, stepped over the chain at the bottom of the doorway, and stomped into the shop as loudly as I could.

  "You — !" Goodwife Filster was starting to shout a bad word, but she stopped when I came in and turned around. When I saw her, I wondered if I had made a very bad mistake, because Goodwife Filster had a hatchet in the hand that didn't have the torch. Her eyes were shining like black stones at the bottom of a cold creek. Ark and Widow Muffin were bunched up in a corner, and Ark was holding a footstool with the widow back behind him. The place stank of burned fish. Everyone froze as I came in. The only thing I could hear was the crackling of the torch flames.

  It was time to do something, so I waved my arms and the satchel and shouted the first thing that came into my head. "Hey!" I yelled at Goodwife Filster. "Got any sugar buns?"

  I didn't know what to expect, but I certainly didn't expect that Goodwife Filster could move so fast for someone built so dumpy. She didn't say a thing, at least not that I remember, but she came at me like a wild horse, and I knew I was going to be a very sorry kender if I didn't move. I ran for the back door, and my plan to trip Goodwife Filster and hit her over the head with the satchel would have been perfect, except that I forgot about the chain at the bottom of the door in trying to get away from her and that axe and torch she had, and the chain snagged my foot, and I fell out the back door and down the steps into the dirt.

  I got up right away, and it was a good thing I did, too, because Goodwife Filster hit the chain right after I did and fell down the steps, too, but she fell right next to me, and the torch singed my hair before it stuck in the dirt and went out. I had no time to do anything with the facts-machine satchel except hold it. I had to run, so I did.

  I took off for the low place in the stone wall between Ark's place and the Salberins' property, and it was hard to see where I always came up and hoisted myself over the wall, but I could hear Goodwife Filster behind me, her thick feet thumping on the ground, and suddenly I had the idea of vaulting over the wall on my hands, so I did exactly that — the first time I ever did it — and I sailed over the wall on one hand, holding the satchel in the other, just as something struck the top of the wall by my hand and threw up sparks as it went by. It looked like her hatchet, but I didn't want to find out for sure, so I hit the ground on the other side and almost lost my balance
and the satchel, too, but I managed to keep running. I thought I could hear Ark shouting my name way back behind me, but it didn't make much difference to me right then.

  As I tore across the Salberins' flower beds and headed for the rail fence between their place and the Wylmeens' property, I heard someone scrambling over the wall behind me, screaming something like "evil spawn" over and over. For a moment, I wondered if Goodwife Filster had always been strange in that way, and if she was really crazy or was just so angry she couldn't think straight anymore, and maybe having her bakery burn down was just the last straw. She had always been mean but never really awful or strange like she was now.

  I reached the rail fence, slowing down just enough to climb over it with one hand because it was too high to vault over. I couldn't seem to get a grip on the wood for a moment, but I heard her shout, "Evil spawn!" right behind me, and in moments I was over the fence and on my back in the Wylmeens' tomato bed. I scraped my leg on a tomato post in falling over the fence and the satchel banged my nose, but none of it hurt very much and I had a lot more to think about right then than a scratch. I also thought that I didn't have the faintest idea of where I was going to go, but I just wanted to get Goodwife Filster and her torch away from Ark and Widow Muffin and our shoe shop. That was all that mattered.

  I got up and started running across the tomato bed and into the cucumber vines, but it was dark and my foot caught in a bunch of vines and I fell Hat on my face and knocked all the wind out of my lungs. I still had the satchel, so I started to get up and run again, but I fell down right away because my ankle felt like someone had stuck it with a redhot iron. I heard someone scramble over the fence and land on the ground a dozen feet behind me, so I got up again but couldn't run on my bad leg or even hop on my good leg, and I fell again and said the very same bad word I'd heard the fisherman use, the very same word Ark had told me never to say again, and I said it real loud.

  And that's when I heard Mud coming.

  The Wylmeens call their dog Mud because he has the same color coat as the mud in the road after a heavy rain. He comes up almost to my shoulders and has eyes that glow white when he sees something he wants to kill, and the Wylmeens haven't been very good about teaching Mud not to kill everything that comes into his yard. He killed a wolverine one year in an hour-long battle, and the Wylmeens stuck the carcass on a post by the road, where it stayed until Mud figured out how to get it down and tore it into little pieces. I sometimes slip through the Wylmeens' garden because I figured out how to get to the other side before he could get off the back porch and catch me, and I have to confess that it was a little exciting to tease him like that, even though I knew I shouldn't if I wanted to live a long time.

  Unfortunately, I had never expected to fall down in the Wylmeens' garden, though I had long ago figured out from the number of close calls that I'd had with Mud that falling down meant I would probably not get a second chance to get out of the garden in one piece. I heard Mud coming off the back porch, and I looked up over the vines in front of my face to see him hurtling across the garden right at me, moving like a wild black shadow with white moons for eyes. I couldn't see much of him but I saw enough, so I wrapped my arms over my head and curled up and hoped the Wylmeens would be able to call him off me before I looked like that wolverine.

  Mud was on me in a rush. Then he was over and past me, and I heard a shriek that could have awakened a graveyard full of dead people. Mud was snarling and fighting, and someone was screaming, and I decided it was time to get out of there no matter what had happened to my ankle. I started to crawl away on my hands and knees as fast as I could, but as I was trying to leave I heard Goodwife Filster screaming "HELP ME!" at the top of her lungs, and I did what I had never thought I would do. I crawled back to save her.

  Humans think that because I'm a kender I am not supposed to be afraid of anything, and I guess it's true, but I must admit that my stomach turned over when I saw how big Mud was and what he was doing to Goodwife Filster on the ground. Mud wasn't paying any attention to me, so I crawled over and got up on my knees and banged him twice on his dog butt with the satchel. It was like hitting a tree stump for all the good it did, and the satchel handle broke right then anyway, and the facts machine fell out in the dirt and cucumber vines. Goodwife Filster was screaming, and Mud was about to tear her arm off, so I picked up the facts machine and threw it at Mud, and I hit him.

  I have to admit that I didn't expect the facts machine to light up like it did and shoot out little lightning bolts and make Mud Hip up into the air and spin around for a moment before he crashed back into the cucumbers and wiggled around in really bizarre ways. I found the facts machine, and it didn't seem to be broken, so I put it back in the satchel and crawled over to see what I could do for Goodwife Filster, who was groaning and holding her arms in front of her face.

  About then Ark came over the fence and all twenty of the Wylmeens came out of their house and ran over to help, too, which was a good thing, as I had never seen someone with so many cuts and bites before and I wasn't sure where to start in trying to fix them all.

  They carried Goodwife Filster into the Wylmeens' house and washed her off and wrapped up her arms and face and legs and everything else in white bandages until she almost looked like one of her own sugar buns. It seemed to me that she was going to live, though she wasn't going to be chasing people around with sharp objects and torches very much in the foreseeable future. They also wrapped up my ankle, which wasn't broken, only sprained, and made me sit off to the side out of sight while they made Goodwife Filster more comfortable. I admit that I was a little jealous of the attention she got because, after all, she was the one who had been chasing me with a knife and axe and torch and had wanted to burn down Ark's shoe shop, but I decided not to point that out. It was when I was watching everyone get Goodwife Filster fixed up that I had a funny thought, and I hopped over to ask her a question.

  They had finished wrapping up her head and everyone was gathering around her to talk when I came over. No one paid any attention to me, so I went right up and stood beside the cot where she lay, and I put down the satchel, which Ark had forgotten to take back from me right then but did later. Goodwife Filster looked terrible, but she was breathing and that was good, I guess.

  "Goodwife Filster?" I whispered, and when she didn't do anything, I asked again, "Goodwife Filster?"

  She groaned then and half-turned so she could look at me through all the rags that were tied over her head. Her eyes opened, but they looked like they were dead.

  "You were pretty mad at me for asking about Istar, weren't you?" I asked.

  Goodwife Filster just stared at me and didn't make any noise, but I assumed her answer was yes. No one else said anything. They all just looked at me, so I kept going.

  "I was supposed to ask that question for Astinus of Palanthas, to help out Ark," I said. "I was just thinking about it all, and I think I know the reason Astinus wanted to find out what people thought of the Cataclysm. It goes like this:

  Nobody liked Istar very much, except maybe for you and a few other people. But, then, from what I've heard, nobody really liked anybody at all very much back then, and things don't seem to have gotten much better now, because everyone down deep still hates everyone else. Asking people about Istar brings out all the worst in them and opens up all the old wounds, though I'm saying that as a metaphor and not because you have so many wounds right now, really. I think Astinus knew that would happen, and he wanted to find out just how bad things really were now, and maybe he wasn't so much interested in Istar after all. Astinus is really worried that someday something bad will happen that will need all of us to pull together and work together and maybe fight together to set things right again, and if we don't learn that being different is really okay, then we aren't going to make it in the long run and we'll be just like the Karkhovs' melons and be swept away by the ocean or whatever it is that Astinus is afraid will come at us. What do you think?"

  Goodwife Fils
ter kept staring at me while her lips moved. I had to lean close to hear her. "Astinus and you?" she asked. "You were both doing this?"

  I nodded. "Yup. See, Ark made me a field recorder, and I decided to — "

  I'm afraid I didn't get much further with my explanation, because at that point Goodwife Filster sat up on the cot and yelled out that both you and I should get together and do something that was remarkably disgusting and which I'll bet is physically impossible, but which I have to admit sounded pretty funny to me later on, though you might not think so. Then she tried to get off the cot and come after me, but the Wylmeens got to her first.

  After things calmed down a bit, Ark and Widow Muffin carried me back to the shop. On the way, we picked up Woose, the dwarf, and Cotterpin, the tinker, and Magistrate Jarvis and Kroogi and several other people who were friends of at least one of us, and when we got back to the shop, Ark closed the back door and everyone cleaned me up and fed me while Ark and the widow told the story of how I had saved them. They put fresh dirt over all the lamp oil Goodwife Filster had spilled in the shop and swept it out, but it still smelled almost as bad as the gas Ark gets from eating cheese pastries, which I guess he won't eat anymore. In the process, I heard that the Wylmeens' dog, Mud, was still alive but he wasn't the same old Mud and was actually pretty quiet now and wasn't chasing or biting anyone this evening and maybe won't do it again, or so I hope.

  Eventually everyone went home and Ark took his facts machine and satchel away from me, and the machine was a little dirty but not broken, and Ark never once asked me if I'd seen the widow's letters, and I never once brought it up. I never even asked why the widow happened to drop by the shop while I was gone or where her shoes had gone. (When I got the satchel and facts machine back just a few minutes ago to send this to you, I noticed that Ark had taken the letters out of the satchel and had hidden them somewhere else, but I won't try to find out where they are, as I don't think I could stand the shock. Widow Muffin stayed on with us tonight, but I didn't mind. She and Ark seem the happier for it.)