by Colt, K. J.
‘I’ve been giving it some thought,’ he said. ‘You can’t stay in bed here all day, so we’ve got to find a way for you to move around.’
‘I agree. Being in bed will bore me, and boredom is its own special madness, but alas, I’m too heavy for Adenine to lift. Do you have something in mind, Varago?’
‘Hmm. Well…’
‘Why are you looking at the ceiling?’ Mother laughed, and the sound chased away the dreary feel of the house.
Varago chuckled. ‘See those beams? They make for a sturdy ceiling. If we hung a rope up there, you could grab it and pull yourself up.’
‘I couldn’t lift my own weight, could I?’
‘You wouldn’t have to exactly. I’ll ask around because we might be able to engineer a suitable pulley system. And the more you use it, the stronger those feeble little arms of yours would become.’
‘Are you calling me weak?’
He laughed. ‘Indeed, I am.’
‘So essentially there’ll be a child’s play swing in my bedroom.’ She laughed, and not one inch of the house was left untouched by the beauty of it. Her mood lightened mine, and I thought Varago’s suggestion was thrilling.
‘And how will I move around without the use of my legs?’ she asked. ‘Sitting up is one thing, but getting about… It’s hopeless. Unless Adenine manages Mystoria, we’ll have no coin left within the month.’
‘I can do it. I can run the store.’
‘The apple don’t fall far from the tree, eh? Why don’t you teach Adenine to run Mystoria? I’ve seen younger girls do more.’
‘But she’s blind. What if someone gives her the wrong coin, or worse, steals right under her nose? If someone asks for fabric of a certain colour, she won’t be able to help them. I just can’t see it working out.’ Mother sounded downcast.
At this stage, I felt awful. Varago’s swing invention idea had given such a burst of hope to her, but my uselessness had made everything bad again.
‘You could be Adenine’s eyes,’ Varago said.
‘And how am I going to get down to the store and back up here every day? Shall I drag myself across the floor like a dog?’ The last of those words turned into sobs.
I had upset her by offering to help. She wanted to manage the store. She didn’t want her pitiful daughter doing it.
‘There, there, let it out,’ he said. ‘There’s much for you to grieve over, Capacia, but once it’s done, let it be final. Look to yours and Adenine’s future. I’m determined to resolve these problems. There are many crippled rich people, and I am sure one of them has created some aid to their mobility. You need to feel useful. I understand. All women do. Have faith, and we’ll find a solution.’
‘A woman needs a husband,’ Mother snapped, and the weight of Father’s death pressed on me again.
‘Get some sleep now. Take some of this. It will help to keep you in the dream state until morning.’
‘I’ve no need for sleep aids, but I am grateful anyway, Varago.’
‘As you wish. Goodnight, Adenine. I’ll return in two days.’
‘Varago, wash your hands before you go,’ I said. ‘You might carry my illness on you.’
After a long silence, Mother said, ‘Adenine, Varago is a doctor. He is always clean.’
‘That’s true, Adenine. It’s my job to bathe regularly. Twice a day. I’ll go straight home and bathe again. Does that ease your mind?’
I nodded.
‘Then good evening to you both.’ Varago left, taking all joy with him. The fire still blazed in the hearth, and I left Mother to extinguish it. The water hitting the flames made a loud hiss, a sound I took pleasure in. I returned to Mother and lay on the bed next to her, listening to the silence of the house.
‘How I wish your father were alive,’ Mother said listlessly.
‘It’s all my fault.’
‘What is?’
‘Father. His death. I de—’
‘Stop it. No more of those thoughts. What happened, happened. It was a mistake for him to kill Garrad. Learn from him and think before you act.’
‘But I made him kill his brother. If I was not here—’
‘No more.’ She pulled me closer and patted my back. ‘Sleep now. Tomorrow will bring fresh ideas. We can and will survive this.’
With my head against her chest, I listened to her heartbeat. The rhythm of it was like a soft drum that I followed all the way to sleep.
CHAPTER NINE
A CRASH STARTLED ME AWAKE. I stretched out my hand to feel the bed next to me and found it empty. ‘Mama, where are you?’
For a few moments, there was no answer to my question, and then came laughter. Lots of laughter.
‘Here on the floor,’ Mama said joyously. ‘I cannot stay in this dreary bed nor this prison of a room for one moment longer. The blood of strong women runs through us, Adenine. Giving up is unconscionable.’
I crawled across the bed, following her voice, and when I found the edge, I held my hand out to her.
She stopped laughing and tapped it away. ‘I will not keep soiling myself. I’ve already ruined rare goose down sourced from the elite Royal Tailors Society of Bivinia. It’s the best, and what a mother I am to make you sleep in the putrid mess with me. No. I must do better. Find me a large bowl so I can void my bowels, and a chair… yes.’
Instead of a bowl, I went to the storeroom and found a pail. I counted my steps as I went. Seven to the chairs, three more to the kitchen bench. I grabbed a chair on my way back to her and listened to banging, scraping, and then came the smell that made me breathe through my mouth.
‘What relief,’ Mother said, then sighed. ‘Forgive the stench, but the bed remains clean. Pay attention, my dearest: you must take this bucket and empty it in the latrine outside. The bucket is deep, so you won’t spill any as long as you don’t fall or trip.’
Outside again? ‘Am I not sick anymore?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘People touch me, and nothing happens to them, and you don’t seem to care about me spreading the plague.’
‘Varago told me that you’re cured. It’s a mystery, but you’re well now.’
I didn’t like to doubt her, but I couldn’t help it. ‘Then I can touch people?’
‘Not without asking. If you’re to run an errand, you must take Jemely, or Varago if he’s available.’
‘Yes, Mama, but I don’t understand how I’ve healed so quickly.’
‘Enough of that now. Take this smelly bucket downstairs for me.’
I put out my hands for the container.
Mother asked, ‘Have you forgotten something?’
I thought hard, but I couldn’t imagine what she was talking about.
‘Remember your blindfold. Never forget your blindfold, Adenine. If you’re going to be a big girl and go outside, then you must wear it. Promise me.’
‘I promise.’ I rolled to the other side of the bed, found the blindfold, and tied it on quickly.
Mother pressed the bucket into my hands, and I tried not to think about the damp edges of the pail.
‘Remember how many steps,’ she said.
I carefully made my way from the room, counting and stepping. Walking down the stairs into Mystoria still filled me with the same dread and fear I’d always had.
It took great concentration to navigate the sixteen stairs while trying not to breathe in the odours rising up from the bucket. After bumping my arms a few times and stepping over obstacles, I unhooked the back door latch and sucked in a deep breath of fresh air.
The morning air was chilly, and I could sense the overcast day outside. Perhaps a storm approached. Footsteps sounded and I froze. I wasn’t alone.
‘Well met, Adenine,’ Jemely said. ‘Oh, look what you have there. Phewee! Terrible smell, ain’t it? Glad it’s you and not me. Was the bucket your idea?’
‘No. Capacia’s.’ How effective could Jemely be as a doctor’s assistant if she couldn’t tolerate the smell of Mother’s bucket?
>
‘Thank the gods your mother didn’t spoil the bed. Less work for me.’
I remembered Mother telling Jemely that I was Garrad’s daughter and so I corrected her. ‘Capacia isn’t my mother.’
‘I’m no fool, Adenine. You are your mother’s daughter, but she’s smart; this way people will see her as compassionate and forgiving for taking in her dead brother-in-law’s daughter. Your mother is a fiend, Adenine; she’s the one who made you blind.’
Why was she being so mean?
‘I spilled hot water...’ I stopped. This was none of Jemely’s business.
‘See?’ she said. ‘That night when your uncle died, your parents brought you to Varago’s house. The walls are thin, and the commotion woke me up. I heard everything. Varago helped your parents make you blind.’
‘Shut up. That’s not true!’ Tears leaked from my eyes and slid down my face. ‘They wouldn’t do that.’
She snorted. ‘The truth belongs to you. If someone did something to me, I’d want to know about it. You’ll learn about the world soon enough. Stop crying. I have to get your dinner prepared.’
Her hip bumped me as she passed. The contents of the bucket sloshed, allowing the foul stench to engulf me. I managed to stop crying and bring myself to walk to the latrine. I emptied the bucket, keeping all body parts out of the way, and counted fifteen steps to recross the backyard.
At the back door, I paused, took a deep breath, and told myself that Jemely was jealous because her parents were dead, or so I assumed. She wanted the bond I had with Mama, and told nasty lies to make us miserable so she could feel better about herself.
Inside, Jemely sung and prepared food. ‘My love is as fair as the hair on a dove…’
She asked me for help, which I gave grudgingly following our discussion downstairs. Jemely must be a bad person, I thought, but that didn’t fit either, and I made up my mind to not waste any more thoughts on her.
Jemely left an hour later, promising to return that afternoon and take me to the river with her so I could learn the way there and back.
Mother and I played word games in the bedroom to pass the time. We also sang songs and rhythmically hit our hands together. At first, I kept missing, but following the song’s pattern, I managed to find my pace.
‘There is a thick book downstairs,’ Mother said. ‘It sits on a table in the front corner of the room. Go and fetch it for me. Oh, see if there is a quill and ink, too.’
After fumbling around in Mystoria, I found what I thought to be the items she wanted and returned.
‘Oh, dear. Your hands are covered in ink.’ Mother laughed and wiped my hands on her dress. ‘Now, let me see,’ she said.
I heard her flipping through the pages of the book. Then, the bed dipped and creaked as she leaned to one side. ‘Ah, here we are.’ I heard the clinking of coins in a bag. ‘Remember a long time ago? We played with smooth stones, and we counted them. One, two, three…’
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘Good. When your father and I sold wares from our store, people gave us coin. You know how that works, don’t you?’
‘People exchange coin for market stuff. I watched people barter in the streets from my attic window before I became—’
‘Right, so you know what I’m talking about.’
‘They would get angry,’ I added.
Mother laughed. ‘Yes, but most of the time the anger isn’t genuine. When people get angry, it’s a way to manipulate the other person into accepting a bad deal. So here.’ She placed a large coin in my hand. ‘Feel the heavy one?’
The round object was as wide as my hand.
‘That is gold. Gold is always the heaviest and worth the most. One gold piece will buy you a horse. Fifty of them will buy you a small house on a modest plot of land. In a prosperous year, your father and I made about seven of these, total, each month!’ Reminiscing made Mother extremely happy, as if she valued the past more than the present.
‘Upon your father’s death, I couldn’t leave the store unmanned, so I paid extra to have my exotic wares delivered to our doorstep. Not knowing about all the new herbs, spices, and precious materials such as silks, gems, and tools on the market, I lost our edge, and our income dropped to only three gold coins a month. It was expensive to have the goods delivered, and they often sent the wrong items.’
She sighed. ‘Anyway… feel its weight. For you, the weight and size of a coin will tell you its value.’ Mother took the coin from my hand and put a lighter one in its place. ‘This is a silver coin. Ten of these are worth one of the gold coins. One of these will buy a week’s food. Understand?’
I nodded.
Mother rummaged about in the coin bag, and then she took away the silver piece and placed an even lighter coin in my hand. ‘This is a copper coin. Feel that it is smaller and lighter than the first two coins. Ten of these are worth one silver. Numbers are complicated when you’re not used to them, but one day you’ll have to use coins to buy things, and you’ll need to outwit scoundrels.’
‘Scoundrels?’ I said, confused by the term.
‘Well, don’t you use that word. It means a dishonest man or woman who only seeks to increase the coin in their pockets, often by thievery. Your father and I fought off many outlaws on our journeys. The world can be a harsh place.’
‘Like with swords?’
‘Aye,’ she said.
I ran through the different coin values in my mind. Rubbing my fingers over them, I noticed their surfaces were rough. ‘Are they carved?’
‘Each one is engraved with the picture of a king. The gold in Senya belongs to the treasury, and you can tell how old a coin is by which king is engraved on it.’
‘King Erageo is the king, isn’t he?’
‘Yes, son of The Wicked King.’
‘And would ten coppers be worth a week’s worth of food because ten coppers equal one silver?’
‘That’s right.’
I did some more sums in my head. ‘So ten silvers could buy a horse?’
‘Precisely.’ She clapped her hands. ‘You listen well.’
‘Mrs. Moferbury never taught me about counting and figures, she said I had no need for them. Will I ever see her again?’
Mother said nothing.
‘It’s fine. I was just asking.’
‘I think you are past that now.’
How could I be past it when there was still so much to learn about the world? Now that I was allowed to leave the house, it seemed more important than ever.
We sat for a few more hours, talking about the prices of different objects. I learned that because we resold our merchandise, we didn’t need a farm to keep us fed like most people did. We could buy food from the village markets. According to Mother, we were richer than most, but we weren’t considered nobles because only noble people owned the land in the town. Uncle Garrad owned his farm, but it was self-made and far away, so it didn’t count. While we had long-term rights to our house, we still paid rent to the Borrelia Council.
‘You’re going to need shoes. Your feet are as black as night. A well-tailored pair of boots would fix that. I wish I could get you something pretty, because to be taken seriously as a merchant, you will need better clothes.’ She moved around, entangling her fingers in my hair and holding up my arms. ‘Hmm, reds or purples would suit you.’ Mother placed a coin in my hand.
‘Silver,’ I stated.
‘Very good. Ask Jemely to take you to the bootmaker’s, but you must come straight home afterwards, you hear me?’
‘Yes.’ I’d never felt more proud. I was going out, on my own, into the market square to spend coin. How many times had I dreamed about such a thing? And yet I knew the people in town would mock my blindness and wag their tongues about Father.
I kept focused on the good. A new outfit, some market food, and maybe a treat for Mother would settle my nerves.
‘Mama, you said to Varago that being blind means I’ll make mistakes in trade. What if I take too little, or give
the wrong item?’
‘We could train a boy to help us. Maybe you could run up here to me when you make a sale…’
That idea exhausted me. I had a hard enough time getting around blind just on the main floor, let alone taking the flight of stairs a hundred times a day. Thieves would take advantage of my absence. Maybe we could hire a strong man to carry Mother up and down the stairs—once in the morning, once at night. But Mother wouldn’t agree to anything so undignified. And what if he tried to hurt Mother like my uncle had hurt me, or if he dropped her?
Once again, the thrill of an original idea died in the face of reality. Out of boredom and misery, I left Mother and went to explore downstairs. If I was to help Mother run Mystoria, I needed to know every corner, every crack.
‘Adenine, I’m going to wash clothes,’ Jemely shouted from the kitchen. ‘Come along and help me.’
I did need to go outside, and yet going to the river scared me because I still felt unsure about Jemely. What if she was mean to me again? Even if I could learn the route to the river, how was I supposed to see the stains on clothes to scrub them off?
Mother insisted Jemely stop at the bootmaker’s before we left for the river so my feet were protected. Jemely said new boots would cost fifteen copper, and I was pleased with myself when, in the bootmaker’s shop, I was accurate in predicting I would receive five copper and boots in exchange for the two silver in my hand.
‘Who’s your friend?’ the bootmaker asked Jemely while he measured my feet.
‘This is Garrad’s girl.’
‘Garrad’s girl, eh? Seems a bit too pretty to have come from ‘im. S’pose the mother was pedigree, eh? Was she a strumpet?’ He laughed.
‘Dunno,’ Jemely replied, unimpressed.
‘What’s your name, little one?’ the man asked.
Little? I was thirteen. I pressed my lips together, determined to remain silent to such a rude man. How dare he call Mother a strumpet… whatever that meant.
‘Got an attitude, this one; the quiet ones always do. All right, then. I got some already made in your exact size.’ He huffed and handed me the boots. ‘This’ll protect those delicate feet of yours. I got a son, about your age, too. You got any friends?’
