Chapter 18: Not Even the Mad

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The lad waits for us where the dirt path meets The Path of the World downhill from Fearsmere. As we walk down toward him, the old woman tries to walk away but he pulls her back tight.

The peddler walks up to him, but I fall back. The lad is near a full grown man and the scar across his face lends him a fierce aspect.

The old woman tries to walk away from him, again, pulling in a different direction, stepping onto the broken shells of the road and howling in pain.

The lad jerks her back.

“You have something for me,” the peddler says.

“This isn’t my fault,” the lad says. “You, who are you?”

“I’m Bessil, sir,” I say.

“I want to be useful,” the old woman croaks toward me. Then she turns her head and calls out something I think is “Need to be useful.”

“And you,” the lad says to the peddler. “You’re the one to take her?”

“We’ll take her,” the peddler says. “Headman says you have something for me.”

He looks furtively between the two of us, back and forth.

“She’s not my kin,” he says. “It’s not my fault.”

The old woman is sitting on the ground, running her hands over her feet, brushing off the shards. Her feet are calloused, like a peasant’s, but she feels the pain of stepping on the path. She’s humming a little song, throwing in a word, here and there. Then she shouts, “Good Ale!”

“She’s your burden,” says the peddler. “Come and show me.”

The lad opens a pouch. I’m behind the peddler, but I know that shells are changing hands.

“The headman says I can trust you,” he says, handing the peddler a carved stick. “You won’t let her stray off and fall off the world. You wouldn’t do that.”

“I’m true to my word,” he says. “And nobody deserves that, not even the mad.”

He has the lad wait while he opens both our packs and transfers the last of what I had been carrying since we met again at an overseer’s cottage between Lake Town and here. He gathers his remaining wares into his basket. Mine empty, he perches it on top of his, leaning it forward to rest on his head.

I’m not sure what the peddler traded in Beshof or with the overseers since. Something scary. Something adult.

“All right, pesca,” he says to me. “This old goat is your pack.”

“I’m to carry her?” I ask, looking at her empty sockets as she turns her head back and forth as if to hear something.

He shoves the rope at me. “You’re to lead her.”

I can’t walk on the path since the woman can’t walk on it unshod. I think to walk on the edge of the path and lead her with my weak hand, keeping her off, but she’s too wild. She darts this way and that and won’t keep straight for too long.

So I walk a few paces off the path, where the land rises and falls, and the old woman stumbles along after me.

I get a better look at her as we walk. Her skin droops down her face, her empty eye sockets nearly lost in her wrinkles. The skin on her face and forearms is weathered, but sometimes she lifts her arms and the skin of her upper arms is unblemished. She has only a few strands of hair and it falls every direction.

Sometimes she smiles, but not from pleasure, as far as I can tell. It’s a pained smile that shows her four remaining teeth, rotted and dirty.

She stinks when I stand too close to her, so I keep a distance ahead of her.

I know it’s no good, since she’s as deaf as deaf can be, but I call to her as I pull on the lead. “Come along, aunty,” I say. “Come along. Mind the ground. It’s rough here. Come along and mind the ground.”

She follows for a few steps and then wanders off to the left or to the right and so I pull her true.

Once, she stops for a moment. I think, for a moment, she is sniffing for something or listening as she turns her head.

Then she bolts.

“Get her, boy,” the peddler shouts. “Catch her up and drag her back.”

I run after her, panting soon as she pumps her legs as I didn’t think a frail old woman might. I’m near to catching her, but I feel at my belt and my hood is gone.

I stop and look around. It’s on the ground behind me and I look back and forth, not sure whether to run down aunty or not.

I bolt back to where my hood lays and grab it up, then turn to run after her. Her burst of health is subsiding and now she just trudges along, back the way we came and up the slope.

“Come back,” I shout, uselessly.

When I catch her, finally, she sits on the ground panting and crying, shaking with sobs. I take firm hold of the lead in my weak hand. She’d torn the skin on my other when she ripped the lead out of my hand.

I don’t know whether I’m to punish her, like a peasant, or just lead her back. I sit and pant as she sobs and I can’t bring myself to slap her down.

“Come on, aunty,” I say, finally. “Let’s go.”

Submitted: June 22, 2023

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