Robin Hobb: Words Like Coins

First came drought. Then rats. Now it’s pecksies. Jami spoke into the darkness of the bedroom.

And that’s why you’re afraid to get out of the bed to get a drink of water? Mirrifen asked. Her sister-in-law’s restless tossing in the bed they now shared had wakened the older woman.

No, Jami said, with a strangled laugh. It’s why I’m afraid to get out of bed and go to the backhouse. She shivered. I can hear rats squeaking in the kitchen. Where rats go, pecksies follow.

I’ve never even seen a pecksie.

Well, I have! Lots of them, when I was little. And I saw one today. It was under the front steps, staring at me with its horrid yellow eyes. But when I crouched down to see it, it was gone!

Mirrifen sighed. I’ll light a lamp, and go with you.

Swinging her feet out of the bed and onto the floor in the dark still put a shiver up her spine. Mirrifen wasn’t sure she believed in pecksies but she did, emphatically, believe in rats. She tiptoed out to the banked fire in the kitchen hearth and lit the lamp from its embers. The moving flame painted shifting rat-shadows in every corner. The night before last, Jami had stepped on a rat when she got out of bed for water. Jami’s feet were already swollen from her pregnancy. A rat bite could have crippled her. Mirrifen hurried back to the bedroom. Come on. I’ll walk you to the backhouse.

Mirrifen, you are too good to me, Jami apologized.

Privately, Mirrifen agreed, but she only grumbled, Why Drake and Edric had to take the dog with them, I don’t know.

To protect them when they camp! All sorts of men are on the roads looking for work. I wish they’d all stayed home. I’d feel safer. Jami sighed as she touched her stretched belly. I wish I could have one solid night’s sleep. Did your hedge-witch ever teach you how to make a sleep charm? If you could make one for me—

No, dear heart, I couldn’t. They moved slowly through the darkened house. My training only included simple things. Sleep charms are complicated. They have to be precisely keyed to the user. Even so, they’re dangerous. Witch Chorly once knew a foolish hedge-witch who tried to make a sleep charm for herself; she finished it, fell asleep and starved to death before she ever awoke.

Jami shuddered. A pleasant tale to sleep on!

The kitchen door slapped shut behind them. Overhead, the light of the waxing moon watered the parched fields. Mirrifen inspected the outhouse to make sure no rats lurked inside, and then gave Jami the lantern. Mirrifen waited outside. The clear, starry sky offered no hope of rain. By this time of year, the crops usually stood tall in the fields. Without them, the wide plains of Tilth stretched endlessly to a distant, dark horizon.

No one could recall a worse drought. Thrice the men had planted; thrice the seeds had sprouted and withered. With no hope of a crop, the two brothers had left them, going off in hopes of finding paying work. They needed to be able to buy more seed grain in the hopes that next spring would be kinder. Mirrifen reflected sourly that their husbands would probably have to go all the way to Buck to find work.

Jami emerged from the backhouse. As they shuffled back toward the farmhouse, Jami spoke her darkest fear. What if they never come back?

They’ll come back. Mirrifen spoke with false confidence. Where else would they go? They both grew up on this farm: it’s all they know.

Maybe away from it, they might find easier ways to live than farming. And prettier girls. Ones that haven’t been pregnant forever.

You’re being silly. Drake is very excited about the baby. And your ‘forever' is nearly over. The full moon will bring your baby. Mirrifen stepped barefoot on a pebble and winced.

Is that something the hedge-witch taught you?

Mirrifen snorted. No. What Chorly taught me was how much water to mix with her rum. And I learned six different places to hide from her when she was drunk. My apprenticeship was the most worthless thing my father ever bought. Chorly should have taught Mirrifen a hedge-witch’s skills, how to make potions and balms, how to sing spells and how to construct charms to protect crops from deer or make hens lay more eggs. Instead, the hedge-witch had treated her like a servant and taught her only the most trivial charms and tinctures. Mirrifen’s apprenticeship had been spent cleaning the old witch’s ramshackle hut and soothing her disgruntled customers. The old woman had drunk herself to death before she had completed Mirrifen’s training. Chorly’s creditors had turned Mirrifen out of the tumble-down cottage. She couldn’t flee back to her father’s house, for her brothers had filled it with wives and children. She had thought herself too old to wed, until her brother’s wife had told her of a farmer seeking a wife for his younger brother. Don’t have to be pretty, just willing to work hard, and put up with a man who’s nice enough but not too bright.

Edric was exactly as described. Nice enough, and kind, with the open face and wondering mind of a boy. Being his wife and helping on the farm had been the best year of her life, until the drought descended.

A pecksie! Jami shrieked, jostling her.

Where? Mirrifen demanded, but when Jami pointed, she saw only the swaying silhouette of a tuft of grass. It’s just a shadow, dear. Let’s go back to bed.

Rats bring pecksies, you know. They hunt rats. My mother always said, ‘Keep a clean house, for if you draw rats, pecksies will follow.'

Something rustled behind them. Mirrifen refused to look back. Come. We’d best sleep now if we are to rise early tomorrow.

But when the morning came, Mirrifen rose alone, slipping quietly from Jami’s bed. Since the men had left, she had demanded Mirrifen sleep next to her. Jami was barely nineteen, and sometimes it seemed that her pregnancy had made her more childish than womanly. The blankets mounded over her belly. It couldn’t be much longer. Mirrifen longed for the birth as much as she dreaded it. She’d never attended a birth, and the closest midwife was a half-day’s walk away. Eda, let all go well, she prayed and drew the door closed.

The rat invaders had left their mark on the kitchen. Pelleted droppings and smears of filth marked the rat trails along the base of the walls. Mirrifen seized the broom and swept the droppings out the door. She stingily damped a rag with clean water and erased the rat tracks. Jami was almost irrational about rats now.

Not that Mirrifen blamed her. The creatures besieged them. No door could be shut tightly enough to keep them out. The ravenous rats gnawed through pantry doors and chewed open flour sacks. They ate the potted preserves, wax seals and all. In the attic, they scampered along the rafters to get at the hanging hams and bacon sides, spoiling what they didn’t eat. They attacked the sleeping chickens on their roosts and stole the eggs.

Every morning, Mirrifen discovered fresh outrages. And every morning, she struggled to conceal from Jami how precarious their situation was becoming. When the men had left, Drake had quietly told her the stored food should sustain them through the summer. And by fall, Edric and I will be back, with a pocket full of coins and sacks of seed grain.

Brave words. She shook her head and let her work routine absorb her. She woke the fire and fed it. She set a pot of water to boil, filled the tea kettle and put it on the fire. She now stored the porridge grain in a big clay pot on the kitchen table, with the chairs pulled away from it. She’d weighted the pot cover with a rock. The rats hadn’t gotten into it, but they’d left their ugly traces on the table. Grimacing, she scrubbed them away with the last of the water in the bucket. She left the porridge simmering while she went to her chores.