Traders' Coming (Pt.2)
As if by some miracle, the traders came that very evening–and that ensured, of course, that no one was looking at me anymore.
Everyone was now focused on the little caravan–or rather what, to me, back then, was a very big one–of wagons slowly trailing into the village and setting up show right in the middle of the free space of mud ‘square’ in between the huts, in between the village head’s bigass stone house and the smaller one that framed it from the other side. The one those two Elders owned who were whispered to be Snake believers, with that carved eye on their door. They were the only ones who rarely even came out for the traders. Maybe because the husband was rumored to be a trader himself and rarely at home at all. No idea what his wife did the whole time. It wasn’t as if they were important to me at the time, you see, little as they ever showed up in my life. So I didn’t even ask. The Snake thing… even that is one I only learned later, I think. The one thing I had learned rather soon was that I wasn’t supposed to stand at their door for long, trailing the carvings with my grubby little fingers. Had got a good lesson from Ma about that, like I got about other things so often, my butt still remembering for quite a while, so I never went there anymore.
It was how I get stuck with Ferrick, other than his connection to Anur who’d been a friend to me first–if I wanted to trace carvings, there I could. His family didn’t mind a lick if I stuck around for a bit, happy enough that Ferrick brought any friend home at all instead of just running around in the mud with Anur the whole time. Especially if it meant he showed interest in his family’s main occupation, and carving very much belonged to that. His father was a woodworker and carpenter, after all. He made anything for the village, from huts and the wooden stuff inside the huts right down to helping with the boats. Ferrick’s family were the only ones who could, too, it seemed. So his father rather much tried to get Ferrick interested in that, which wasn’t always easy. But carving? Carving Ferrick had always liked well enough, especially when he found it would get him admiration from the other kids if he made little figurines, no matter how badly. Or carved pictures into wooden boards that his father would proudly use for doorways or tables, telling everyone about how his youngest had done that, and didn’t he do it well already? Look bright, he’d make a good carpenter one day, after all. I think he was a little worried about Ferrick and how he rather liked mud flinging and blowing up stuff a bit too much. Even going as far as meddling in kitchens–not really to help, but to find out how to make stink bombs…
As expected, Ferrick was pestering the traders again about anything they might have that one could use for further experiments and tinkering. He, too, was counting in fish these days. He’d learned from the former years that the traders weren’t much interested in the big stuff his family made that they would’ve had to lug around back through the Deep Forest. Unless it was crates or an additional barrel. They wanted most of their space for the fish barrels and vats, and little else. Jannai was a bit luckier that way–even the traders could appreciate some of the smith’s stuff. I wondered if there were places full of woodworkers, where carpentry wasn’t as rare as it was in our fishing village. I mean, we were a village mostly full of fishers. The axe people seemed to be all woodcutters, mostly. It stood to reason, there would be more villages focused on other trades, right? I wondered if the traders all came from the same village, too. Had to be a really strange village. Traders had to travel a lot, after all. It would mean they were rarely ever at home. So was their village a ghost town, most of the year? Bern had a few stories about ghosts that weren’t too bad. Though Uhland had better ones, of course. I wondered if Bern wanted to apprentice to Uhland. Though I don’t think his father would ever let him. He expected his sons to take over fishing, one he got too old. Feed the family. It was a bit of a conundrum. Theoretically, we were all free to choose whatever interested us, and what we could find a teacher for. The latter was more of a problem.
I myself had basically given up on learning anything but fishing in my life at the ripe age of five. There was no one who would even teach me cooking, you see. I had tried once. Ma never let me near the kitchen again after that, rattling on about what a mess I had made, whenever Da brought it back up. These days, he didn’t even try anymore either. So I was squarely stuck with nets. Truth be told, I wasn’t really that much interested in working a household anyway. The stuff Ma did looked rather boring. The one good thing was that she rarely seemed as occupied as anyone else. Had a lot more time fiddling her thumbs, other than carrying around Feréll, it seemed to me, what with all the things she had us others do. But what did I know… Anyway, if it meant having to do the cleaning, too, I wasn’t sure that was a good trade at all. I hated cleaning. It was the one thing she sometimes made me do, despite the mess I made and no matter how I coughed. Clean out the fireplace. I guess she just didn’t like doing it herself, either. Well, there was one thing I couldn’t blame her for. Though I quietly very much grumbled about having to do it in her stead, even though I hated seeing anything of Ma in myself, like the grumbling. But I grumbled more in my head. That didn’t quite count, did it? I never grumbled out loud at people. Not since I’d seen what reactions that caused. So I didn’t grumble about the nets either, though I had come to hate those, too, ever since the big one broke apart and I had to sit with it for days, bleeding fingers or not. But Ma was now slowly starting to hand responsibility for my little brother over to me, too, sometimes. The one good thing about that was that it got me away from our hut. Ma didn’t care much where I took him, long as she got her hands free. Less nets. Yay! But I always had to get back to them soon enough. Not yay so much.
Bern and his older brother Bertram on the other hand could very well have gotten into the woodcutters’ trade, if you asked me. They were only a few years older than us, but already really strong. I could imagine them apprenticing to Jannai’s father, too. Didn’t think he’d be loath about some more help in the smithy. He always had a lot to do and rarely even came around for the axe people’s visits–though he didn’t need to either. They all came to him in the evenings, anyway, you see. Because he had one more passion besides smithing: He brewed a very strong, dark beer. Cutting Ale, people had come to call it, and sometimes Hackney. What they meant was that it hacked the feet right out from under people, sooner or later—mostly sooner—even the woodcutters’, as if someone had made one clean cut. Somehow, they still loved it despite that. Praised it a lot, did the axe people. Maybe because it helped em get funny. They liked being funny. And since none of them got mad when they drank, like some of ours did, why not?
We’d snuck away some of the Cutting last year for ourselves, or rather Jannai and Tay did. Tay, of all people! Can you imagine? I have no idea how Jannai talked him into that, but she did. If anyone could talk someone into stuff it was Jannai. Even when it came to our almost prissily virtuous Tay. That had been one of the few times he didn’t take responsibility for what we’d done afterwards. Couldn’t, you see. He’d been happily snoring in a corner at that point, while most of us others were… in varying states of disarry or outright violently sick like I’d been. Jannai’s Da had just shook his head and softly laughed when he found us like that. “Hope that’ll be a lesson to y’all,” was all he’d said. Implication obvious: Keep your grubby hands away from adults’ stuff.
I’d sworn back then that I would NEVER drink beer again. Not ever.
Anur had joined me in that, back then. But he’d violated the vow almost right away, when Ferrick had started teasing him about it just a few days later, slowly sipping from the milder beer his mum had at the inn.
They also seemed to have all forgotten about last year’s incident by now, because I’d caught them planning another trip into the smithy’s basement just yesterday. They apparently went through with it, too. I don’t know if Bern or Bert or some of the woodcutters had set them up to do it, but Anur still looked quite green today whenever he saw someone waving around a likely tankard or horn—some of the axe people used the horns of the animals some of their village kept at home, according to rumors Jannai had brought to us, as drinking tools; made me wonder how they were carved out, or if they were naturally hollow once cut off, but even Ferrick didn’t know.
Ferrick wasn’t all too talkative today, either. And later than he’d ever been to a Traders’ Coming, not even counting that he hadn’t been all too enthusiastic about the latest mud flinging; which probably saved me from some harm, considering, what with my own conundrum. Not as green around the nose and all queasy as Anur was, surprisingly—since I’d wager he must’ve drunk more than the other boy; Ferrick always tried to out-do anyone in just about everything, if a wager was involved, after all. But maybe there hadn’t been; though it was hard to think there hadn’t, since if Jannai didn’t put one up, it was usually Ferrick who did, and more so wherever Anur was involved. It was a whole thing with them. Seemed to be their way of expressing friendship, I guess, as strange as that seemed to me. It seemed they had either not invited Tay this time around—because Tay was already ruffling through the traders’ stock with a vengeance, as if he meant to empty his father’s coffers in revenge for the latest slight—or Tay had politely declined. But since Jannai had said nothing of it, and she would usually have invited me, no matter my vow, if that had been the case, as she invited me to just about anything… I guess they’d kept it between the two of them.
Jannai was currently busy debating with Tay about some of the things they’d spotted, though I already knew she’d go for sweets with whatever amount to barter her Da had given her this time—he always did, just like she always went for sweets in the end, despite how she always ogled most everything else before going there.
That was just as well, though, because it meant no one was watching me when I did my own bit of ogling, eyeing the leathers the traders had brought, even going as far as asking them which was the sturdiest. They eyed me a bit skeptically at that. No big wonder. I didn’t usually buy much of anything from them, and certainly didn’t look the part of someone holding silver in their fist either. But I did. And I absolutely needed some strong leather to put into whatever would be left over after buying the leather. I hoped Ommá was right and they wouldn’t take too much. I don’t know that they would cheat a little kid, but who knew? Ma always claimed the traders were all cheats, and when even Da wouldn’t speak up against something Ma said… well. There was at least some chance she was right about it for once. It made me clutch the silver piece even harder. I still had no idea what to do with it, but… I just knew I had to take good care of it, and that included not wasting it. Waste not, want not, Ma always said. A wastrel will go to waste, and real quick soon.
And if I knew one thing it was that… maybe I’d need some way out some day.
Maybe this was it. Though probably not. I doubted the thing would get me taken with the traders all the way to the city. Or at least some other village. I could’ve asked the woodcutters, of course. They seemed nice enough. But what the hell was I supposed to do, once there? I still didn’t know quite enough about the actual fishing yet. Mostly just how to piece together a broken net again. And gut and scale fish. Badly. I didn’t know much about anything else either. Most people didn’t seem to appreciate much about how I was good at finding nice stones or feathers or other shiny, glittering things. They often even claimed they didn’t glitter. Only Ommá never said anything bad about it. Though she did sometimes call me her little fox. Or her little crow. I wasn’t too sure about those endearments, truth be told. Was that supposed to be a good thing or a bad thing? I never knew if it was a scolding, though it didn’t sound like one. I guess… foxes and crows collected beautiful things, too? I wouldn’t know. I didn’t know much about foxes and crows, other than that they rarely seemed to grace our village with a visit. And that people complained about them, too, anyway… So… likely not the best thing to be. I didn’t yet know how to be anything else. I did, however, already know that food would have to come from somewhere. Yet another conundrum. I had a lot of those, the older I got. And I was only five. I didn’t wanna know how many I’d have at fifty. Better not to think of it. Focus on the matter at hand, Lill. Leather. Good, strong, sturdy leather. I guess I should’ve asked the hunter. Maybe. Surely he’d have leather, from the hunting? And it likely would be cheaper than the traders’. No one said he was a crook, either. But people didn’t…
Well, you just didn’t.
So I was stuck with the traders. And no matter how they gave me those looks I probably didn’t get half of, and that the other half I couldn’t quite parse, other than that they didn’t seem all too happy about me being there–Elders never seemed quite happy about me being anywhere, my own included, so that was nothing new–or at least not so sure I’d be able to even buy it anyway, they did at least answer my questions. So I knew rather soon what kind of leather I wanted.
“How much?” I asked. Probably too timid.
The first just laughed and shook his head. The second gave me one of those sad looks that were probably meant to be kind. Or maybe not? It was a bit down his nose, after all, from what I could glimpse. But told me “You won’t be able to afford that, kid. Whaddya want with that anyway? Little kids got no reason for something like that”.
“Here”, he tapped on a different one, “If ya need shoe leather”—I had shown him my good ol trusty soles, you see, as example for what I needed; I guess he took it for me meaning I needed new soles, and that was just as well, for the moment—“You’d do better with that one.” And that was the end of that attempt.
So I was kinda stuck with the third as my last hope, unless I meant to take the shoe leather after all, because that was the last of em. I dunno, maybe I should take the shoe leather, anyway. My soles had been good enough so far. Wouldn’t that suffice? But something in my brain was now stuck on what they’d pointed out as the best one. Ommá’s gift kinda called for that. Don’t judge me, I can’t tell you why, it just did. Not the best chances for bartering, though, if you knew someone was the only one you could get something from. I should’ve sent Anur. Or at least Jannai. But… I know. I know. They were my friends, but still… I didn’t know how they’d react to what I carried. I most definitely didn’t trust them to keep their mouth shut about it, and that was the biggest problem of all.
“Bisuar,” I told her, in dim hopes of any likely answer being what I wanted. “Just need a scrap, really. Got any scraps you can’t use for sumthin else?”
She gave me a good long look at that, and seemed like to open her mouth for a similar answer as the last one, but at that moment Anur piped up from the side.
“Bisuar leather? What the hell you need Bisuar for?” Stopping the woman’s words dead in her throat. Probably wanted to ask the same. But Anur didn’t sound judgy. He never did. He just sounded curious. He only turned his head for a sideways glance, though, when he stuck his head into our ‘conversation’, and then his whole demeanor changed.
“Oh,” he said, pronouncing it like some revelation I had no fucking clue where he was taking it from. Oh. You mean for that.” As if it were some secret he suddenly shared. As if he’d seen me pocket Ommá’s coin and seen something more than just that. As if he could somehow intuit what it meant to me, even when I myself wasn’t sure about that. At all. I couldn’t have put into words why it was so important to keep safe. Or why it had to be Bisuar leather now, and good sole leather just wouldn’t do.
His head snapped around to the trader woman again, and he seemed to grow two heads taller, the way he pumped his chest up. “Well, it’s definitely gotta be Bisuar. Nothing else will do.”
She eyed him, too, if somehow far less skeptically than me. Maybe it was the way his clothes were better, though I didn’t understand that back then.
“Surely you’ve got some scrap you can throw in with all the stuff our inn is buying from you?” he asked, all innocently, though with something in his tone that… seemed to imply things beyond my ken.
The trader woman seemed to get what he meant, though, her arms falling down out of the crossed hold over her bosom she’d maintained so far. “Guess I can give it a look,” she replied, with that hesitation that seemed to be part of the bartering. “I won’t promise anything, though.”
“That’s alright,” Anur piped, all joyfully. “We’ll just ask one of the others then.”
As if he hadn’t heard or seen me just talking to the other two already and being sent away. Although, in all truth, he actually might not have. In hindsight, though… I guess it wouldn’t have changed much if he hadn’t. Anur was already a very good actor back then, though little did I realize it.
The demeanor of the woman, somehow, miraculously, changed as well now. “No, no. Let me have a look out back. I’m sure I can scrounge something up.”
I gave Anur a quizzical glance when she proceeded to turn back and scramble up into one of the wagons they’d all half-formed into impromptu stalls by letting down the boards on the side and back meant just for that. How the hell? I mean… she’d just said she wasn’t sure she even had any scraps. And she’d meant that. Why did she now lie about being sure she did have some? It was clear she wasn’t sure about that at all. Did she mean to take some from one of the others? I had no idea anymore what was going on. The way Anur smirked and winked at me didn’t help either.
“Just trust me,” he whispered.
Well. I guess I had to. I just hoped he wouldn’t look too closely when it was time to exchange goods… because I wasn’t buying in fish. I couldn’t.
“What’s going on with you two?” another voice interrupted my thoughts. “Found something interesting?”
Oh noes. My muscles clamped down instantly, making me want to duck. I normally very much appreciated my milk brother being around; Tay was a good sort, after all, but… right now I needed nothing less than him there.
Fuck. If he saw what I held in my hand, he might just think I stole it from somewhere. Arguably his father or Anur’s mum. Wasn’t much else where I could get coins from. Least of all silver. Fuck fuck fuck. Stag piss and cattle dung, no.
Not that I knew what made stag piss especially bad, though I did get why cattle dung was, after I had once snuck into Jannick’s barn—the only farmer we had around here, who had the only oxen I knew—but apparently that was a good swearword, too, so there it was. Gods, he’d draw a whole crowd here, if he stuck around. Our group kinda always seemed to gather into one place if more than two of us stood around one place for longer, as if that meant, there must be something interesting going on there. Sure enough, there usually was, but… Shoo! Go away! I was half tempted to make appropriate motions to go along with my thoughts. But I couldn’t very well shoo my own elder brother, even if he wasn’t my blood brother, now could I? Least of all the village head’s son. He went wherever the hell he wanted to.
Unless it was property of someone else where he really shouldn’t be, of course, but you know what I mean.
“Eh. Just a little something,” Anur saved my ass once again.
“Alright. Call me if you need help, eh? I’m sure I can arrange something.” Tay laid a gentle palm on the younger boy’s shoulder and gave me a quick little pat on the back, then sauntered over to the next stall that seemed to hold something that drew his eyes, though I really couldn’t make out what it might be. Tay didn’t exactly lack for much, materially. But maybe he was looking for a present for someone?
It made me almost miss the return of the woman. And miss in full what the heck she’d done in the back exactly. Dammit. I’d been curious about that. And now I wouldn’t ever know, would I? Unless Anur had seen.
But one look at him told me he’d more likely been feigning studied indifference, only now turning back to her as she called out.
“There. Take a look at that. Would that do for your purposes?” She still had that something in her voice that said she wondered what the hell our purpose could be. But she didn’t say it. People rarely did.
Sometimes I really wished they would. Just state what the fuck they wanted or not, you know. It would make the world a whole lot easier. Though I guess if everyone just stated what they thought… it might also make the world a lot more uncomfortable for many. At least for a while, while people adjusted. Some don’t have the nicest thoughts. That thought made me feel guilty alright. Just imagine, if she’d heard my internal cussing… yuck. She’d likely raise the price tenfold. Old people didn’t like when the younglings cussed. Even if they themselves did it the whole time, and you could hardly do anything else but pick it up along the way, too. I snuck a glance, and my eyes grew big. That… that was no scrap. That was much too large. I quietly shook my head at Anur’s sideway glance. “Too big,” I muttered as silently as I could.
Something crossed Anur’s face then, as if he were doing some quick mental calculation. “Think half or third would do?” he quietly murmured as he proceeded to fondle the goods as if he were testing quality, not even turning my way.
I nodded. More than enough, really. Then caught myself, clearing my throat a little. Of course he didn’t see that, the way he was turned. “Yes,” I whispered back.
Instead of telling her we’d take it he proceeded to shake his head in that way people did when somewhat less than happy. “Nah.” He tossed it back almost casually. “I don’t think that will do. Come one, Lili, we’ll ask the others, if they’ve got something more fitting.” And tugged on my elbow, turning me around.
“What are you doing?” I whispered back, almost panicky in my critical lack of understanding. Then sagged quite physically, when it sank in: He’d likely just found it was too big for whatever he had in mind, didn’t he? Judged the price too high, too. Though he’d never even asked and she hadn’t said anything about it yet, either. The others had already heavily implied it would be rather too much for kids, though…
“Just play along,” he whispered back, rapid-fire way, under his breath. Continuing rather too loudly, so that the woman likely couldn’t help overhearing: “Who knows, maybe they’ll have us some better price on the copper, too, you know?”
“What are you talking about?” I whispered back, totally lost now. What copper?
“My mum needs a new pot,” he said, conversationally, but rather non-sequitur—to me, that is. “One of the big ones, you know. Among other things.” A pot? That might explain ‘copper’, sure. But wouldn’t she have Jannai’s dad make that? I hadn’t seen any pots in the stalls either. Yet another mystery entirely beyond me.
“Need some help after all?” Tay chimed in from the other stand when we crossed over to him.
“Maybe,” Anur said, non-committally, but loud enough to hear the next stall over, I bet. They were standing quite near each other, you see.
“What can I do for you?” the man from before opened up for Anur in a rather cheery way quite different from the tone he had employed towards me. “You want some Bisuar, I hear? And copper? I can offer both.”
“Hey!” The woman from the stall behind us protested. “Whatever happened to not rippin’ off each other’s customers, Dorin?”
“I’m nah rippin’ off, Suni,” he replied off-handedly. “They obviously didn’t get what they want from ya, and I got it. That’s not rippin’.”
“I’ll remind you of that next stop over, just you look,” she grumbled back. But she didn’t seem really angry at all. Under the grumbling, she felt like a smile, all of all things. I understood people less than ever in that moment. Not Anur, and these Olders even less. And this one had already sent me away. I was still here, only now with Anur. What the hell was going on?