Марк Энтони - The Cataclysm

The town was quiet again, though I could smell some smoke, and I saw candles burning in the window at the back of the shop where I usually go in. As I got closer, I saw that the back door was open, and I could hear voices inside the shop. The light inside was flickering, and at first I thought it was the stove. As I got even closer, I could tell that one of the voices was Ark’s and one was Widow Muffin’s, and I almost stopped, but I kept going anyway, even if my face was red.

It was when I got even closer still, almost up to the doorway, that I could hear a third voice in the shop, and that voice was Goodwife Filster’s.

I stopped right then, holding the satchel and not moving a muscle. Goodwife Filster was saying something in a loud voice, growling like the Wylmeens’ mastiff when he catches scent of me walking through the garden that he thinks is his territory. After a moment, I edged up to the door on one side, so no one could see me, and I listened to them talk, though Ark had once told me to never spy on anyone, and I never have, except just then and maybe two other times.

“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.