The Goblin's Price, page 1
The Goblin’s Price
Lidiya Foxglove
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
More Romantic Fantasy from Lidiya!
About the Author
Chapter One
Hester
* * *
“What’s for dinner?” Father asked, hanging up his hat as he came up the stairs from the mill below. He immediately started warming his hands at the fire and peered in the pot. “You can’t cook like your mother could.”
“That isn’t dinner!” I exclaimed. “That pot is dinner there!”
“Well, then what’s this slop? More of your snake oil?”
“It’s medicine,” I said. “It has to cook down for a while. And it’s not snake oil. Mrs. Spangler told me how she makes hers.”
“Mrs. Spangler,” he grumbled sarcastically. “Bloody lot she knows about medicine. Her brood looks like death warmed over.” He looked in the other pot. “Well, you still can’t cook like your mother.”
I made a sound of exasperation. “Well, you don’t have her anymore, do you, so you’ll have to eat my slop and like it!”
I stirred the pot. It was true, my cooking was bad. I’d neglected the stew in favor of the medicine. I’d been selling my herbal concoctions at the market and earning a little pin money for myself, though it wasn’t much, but I needed something, damnit. My father was so stingy. And then he was no joy to live with on top of it. I was trying my best.
“I think it’s ready,” I snapped.
“You think it’s ready, or it is ready? I don’t want tough meat like you always do, you stupid girl.”
“There isn’t enough bloody meat in there to matter!”
I filled his bowl and dropped it in front of him unceremoniously, because he expected me to serve him, and then I got mine, and we both swigged some very weak ale and ate quickly without looking at each other.
“Cold day,” he finally grunted, which in my father’s communication, was as close as I’d get to, Thank you for the meal.
“Aye,” I said. “The chilblains on my toes hurt like they’ve been half frozen off.”
“If they’d been frozen off I guess they wouldn’t hurt anymore,” he said.
“You know what I mean.”
“Hardly anyone came by today,” he said. “The town’s dying. Ever since they built that highway. Everyone’s going to the city.”
“Aye.” It wasn’t worth arguing over that either. The king built the highway five years ago. It was a paved road that connected the capital and the second largest city, and if anything, it brought more travelers to our region.
But my father was convinced that was the reason no one brought their grains to his mill anymore, and not that he’d gotten so ill-tempered and was always drinking, and people went to the mill in Riverside if they could. That mill was doing just fine, it seemed to me, but if you dared to suggest that to Father he’d bite your face off.
Oh, how I dreamed of getting out of here.
Anywhere.
I didn’t see a lot of ways out, since I had no money of my own, and I’d need that first. That was why I was so much more passionate about my herb garden and medicines than fussing over dinner. We didn’t have much land to grow crops, but my herb garden didn’t take up much space and when the herbs were made into medicine and salves they had even more value.
Father begrudged me even my small plot, however. He wanted every inch of space we had going to carrots and cabbages, things we could eat and store for the winter. He resented me having anything of my own to care about.
“You could’ve put some of your green stuff in this stew, made it taste like something instead of nothing,” he grumbled even as I was thinking it over.
“My medicines are worth more than flavoring the stew. And we need the money.”
Just to keep him pacified, I gave him half my earnings, sometimes even more. He didn’t know I kept anything. He’d never let me save money.
That left me with a few pennies every week. Their number grew so slowly that looking at my hidden stash caused me as much agony as pride. Gods, so much work for so little!
And he was right. The stew was awful. After hunger gnawed holes in my stomach all afternoon, the dismal concoction that was more boiled turnip than anything else left me feeling almost more hungry than when I started.
“Are you going to finish mending that shirt?” he asked me when I started clearing the table and thinking about my bed.
“Yes,” I said, because to say anything else would bring down his wrath.
“And make it look nice this time! None of your daydreaming and your shoddy stitches! If your mother was still alive, she’d patch it up nice.”
Yes, while you drained the life out of her, I thought.
By the dim firelight, I spent the next hour patching his shirt while he drank two more cups of ale in dead silence. I thought about my friend Mary’s house, where evening was a time for merry singing and dancing and her brother playing a handmade flute. They didn’t have much money either but at least it was jolly. Even when Mother and Susan were alive and before John joined the navy, we were never a jolly family.
My brother was one lucky fool, I thought. He got to just dash off and before long he wasn’t even sending money home anymore. I couldn’t blame him. I wouldn’t either, not when Father was just going to spend it on ale and tobacco.
Just thinking of it all, I pricked my finger and cursed.
“Don’t talk like a dockside wench, Hest, or maybe I’ll send you down there; you’d make more money that way,” Father grumbled, half-drunk.
“That isn’t funny,” I said, although some days I wondered if even the life of a dockside wench was better than this.
I had one hope to cling to. Since I’d been going to the market, now and then someone told me I should go see Old Maid Campbell. She was known to be a witch and a hermit, and if you were in bad trouble you could ask her to fix just about anything for you, although she would name her price and I had heard it was based on unknowable factors.
I just wanted someone to teach me. I couldn’t read, and didn’t have money for books anyway, so everything I’d learned about making medicines came from talking to other women at the market. What I really wanted to learn was witchcraft, and no one could tell me much about that.
I was hoping like anything that I could convince Old Maid Campbell to tell me what she knew. She was old, after all. I’d do anything in exchange. I’d haul water buckets, scrub floors, clean her chamber pot—anything, if she’d only teach me how to do some real magic. I wanted to learn a little power of my own. I wanted to be able to save people’s lives and not helplessly watch them slip away. I wanted some respect, damn it all.
Of course, Father wouldn’t let me go on a trip myself, and Old Maid Campbell lived two days away on foot, so the coins I’d been saving would have to pay for some travel expenses. I figured I’d need enough to get me there and back, although I hoped the “back” part wouldn’t be necessary.
I finally had enough, so on Saturday at the market, I was slipping off while Father was busy airing his grievances to the other older men.
Just three more days to go, I told myself. Three more days of mending shirts and cooking stew. Then I was finally doing something for myself. I was going to get Old Maid Campbell to take me on if I had to grovel at her feet. I was never coming back home.
Chapter Two
Hester
* * *
The only person I confessed my plan to was Mary, my dearest friend. She came to take over my stand at the market so that no one would steal my medicines. When Father realized I was gone, Mary would break the news. Although she didn’t tell her family in advance, her family was so lovely and sympathetic that I trusted them to talk my father down.
As long as Mary bought me enough time to get away, that was all that mattered to me.
“I will, dearest,” she said, hugging me. “You hurry and go. Take your lunch. Be very careful on the road, you know, don’t go off the main roads and stay at the Hen and Bell.”
“Thank you so much, Mary,” I said, feeling my throat clench as I jammed bits of lunch in my deep apron pockets. Mary had given me bread, cheese, an apple and a baked potato so I wouldn’t get hungry on the road, and now my clothes were sagging under their weight. Her father had passed on the tip about the Hen and Bell; he’d traveled to other towns and knew these things.
“Go and don’t look back,” she said. “Someday I’ll go to visit you when you’re an apprentice witch.”
I grinned at the thought. “Thank you.”
I started walking, and I didn’t look back, even though I wanted to. I didn’t know if I’d ever come back. Father wouldn’t know where I went.
I also knew I was giving up something else.
Marriage. Love. Men.
I wasn’t likely to attract a great match, since we were dead poor and my future husband would inherit such an arse of a father-in-law. I was the sort of girl where Mary swore I was pretty, but Mary wasn’t pretty either and I still told her she was. We were both very ordinary. I had brown hair that frizzed in the summer, and nice enough lips, and a sturdy, dependable sort of body, slightly on the short side. Nothing was particularly appealing about me, I felt, although nothing was horribly wrong either—but that wasn’t enough to snag a decent husband, and why bother?
That was why I kept all my dreams pinned on making something of my own self, not marrying up.
Now it felt so real, however. If I apprentice myself to someone named ‘Old Maid Campbell’, I’m going to be Old Maid Miller before I know it, and that’s just the way it’ll be. I’ll never know a man’s arms or a man’s kiss or a man’s…other bits. But what else am I going to do, be a dockside whore?
So I tossed it all out of my head and forced my steps right out of the market at a steady pace. My heart was thumping, half-expecting Father to see me and come running to scold and likely even thrash me.
No, he was yapping and smoking away, and I reached the bend in the road without incident. I kept walking, trying to look calm, and then I walked out of the humble gates of town, the ones that hardly looked like they could keep out a bear, much less a real enemy.
Just outside the town, the streets were busy with activity, and that continued for a little while, but as I walked that broke up and sometimes I was all alone on the road, which became more of a path as I took the north way to where Old Maid Campbell lived. I had never been alone outside of my village before.
“Gods above,” I murmured. “You’d have to be a poet to know what to say about this place.” The hills I could see in the distance from the village were close now, and taller than I thought. There were sheep halfway up them, but I didn’t even know where the sheep belonged.
The sky was so blue, and the tall grasses were golden, and the little path was lined in stones that seemed to date back to some time no one remembered. I passed the ruin of a church and a single farm and I crossed a little river.
We have such beautiful country here in Maaden, I marveled. So close to home, and I’ve never seen it before.
I felt I was getting closer to my own self, the witch I wanted to be, with every step. I could smell magic in the way the late autumn sun hit the grass, and in the winter that rode in on the wind. I started feeling quite poetic myself, but the only poems I’d heard were when the carnival troupe came to town and told rhymes to children, and then naughty ones when the children were put to bed later on, so I didn’t know how to write a nice poem.
But I’ll learn that too, see if I don’t! I bet Old Maid Campbell would teach me to read once I show her how serious I am.
I reached the Hen and Bell comfortably before nightfall and secured myself a bed, and in the morning when I looked out the window I could see hills in the distance that stretched as far as the eye could see, covered in sweeping shades of gold and brown. In spring they would bloom. The world looked so big, as big as I’d ever dreamed.
The young man working at the Hen and Bell was quite handsome, too.
“You sure you’re leaving already?” he asked me in the morning.
“Aye, I must. I’m going to learn witchcraft from Old Maid Campbell,” I declared.
“Old Maid Campbell?” He leaned on the counter. “Oh, lass, have you spoken to her about that? She’s the meanest old cuss I’ve ever seen, and I had to ask her for medicine for the goats once. My Ma made me go and ask her.”
“Well, I suppose she has to be a little standoffish so people don’t hound her, eh?”
“The goats died, no thanks to her,” he said. “What good’s being a witch if you’re not going to give any medicine?”
“Well, I plan on being a good witch and making medicine,” I said. “I have some with me now. My own special blend.”
“Do you, now?”
“Aye, in my bag. I’m going to show her. I’ve raised all the herbs myself. I’m a hard worker. Whatever she wants done, I’ll do it.”
“Oof,” he said. “Just stay here. You’re a pretty maid. Shouldn’t be traveling alone anyhow.” He gave me a blue-eyed look that made me fidget, and then he added, “You have extra of that medicine? I’ll give you back three pence of your stay for some.”
“Yes, I do!” I would happily take back that three pence. I only charged two for a bottle at the market.
He took the bottle and flipped the coins before putting them right into my palm. “If you have any trouble, come back to me.”
“Thank you,” I said, but I had no intention of coming back. He was a friendly fellow, but I could tell I’d be worked to the bone at that inn and never learn anything more than I already knew. I could see a girl who was surely his sister running around behind him, and she yelled at him to come help with the chickens as I was leaving.
No, sir, I don’t need any boys, I thought firmly. My mind is made up. I’ll work hard to learn witchcraft and nothing else.
I walked all day, passing almost no signs of life anymore, just a few oddly placed stones left by wizards of olden days, and sometimes used for rituals, and hills that I suspected could be gateways to the fae realms or to goblin dens. I kept up a brisk pace, lest my imagination start running away with me.
The witch’s cottage was easy enough to spot, once I finally came upon it, as there was nothing else around within an hour’s walk, and the chimney was putting out a steady line of smoke that drew me like a beacon.
As I grew closer, I became more and more excited. My heart was beating faster as I fell in love with the cottage from a distance.
A little fence, painted green, hemmed in the wild tangle of herbs and the chickens trotting around with puffs of feathers at their heads and tawny speckled coats. A few talismans hung in the fruit trees that surrounded the house, apples and pears and quince that must be fifty years old. I imagined the witch planting them as a lovely young woman and picking their fruit with her slender hands. She didn’t need boys then, just like I didn’t need them now.
And now she would be old, and a little sour, in need of someone to help her in life. I would be quiet and good and work very hard to please her. I expected her to be prickly at first, nevertheless, so I stood up straight and fussed at my hair, trying to look well-mannered and clean and friendly, like the sort of girl anyone would want as an apprentice.
The gate was latched. “Hello there, good evening, Maid Campbell!” I called out, trying not to let my accent slip into too much of a country mess. “May I come into your garden? It’s very beautiful!”
I heard nothing except the unbothered clucking of chickens who kept doing their chicken business.
The curtains in the house were drawn, but I knew someone was in there. Maybe she was hard of hearing.
I slowly reached down to unlatch the gate. My fingers closed on the hook. I carefully began to lift it and—
The door flew open and a tiny, gnarled, ancient looking woman glared at me with black beady eyes and pointed a twisted finger at me.
“What do you want so late?”
“It’s not dark yet.”
“I’m old! I was heading to bed!”
“I’m very sorry,” I said, although I put my small pack down. My hands crept to my hips. “I’ve never heard of anyone going to sleep before dark. I beg your pardon!”
“Now you’ve heard of it,” she said. “But that’s good. You have time to walk back to the village.”
“No, no…” I clutched my hands together. “I came here to help you. I want to be a witch. I want to learn magic. I love your cottage and your herb garden and I’ll do anything you ask me to do. I’m quick and I’ll be quiet—”
“I doubt that,” the woman interjected. “Just looking at you, I highly doubt that you are quiet.”
