As the carriage jostled me this way and that, I tried my best to keep away from the portly woman sitting to my side. I could not understand how she could sleep through the lurching of the carriage, but she snored away peacefully, and I envied her the ease with which she could rest.

These country roads were always quite exhausting – bumpy and full of pot-holes that shook the very bones in your body. I found myself lamenting the decision to take a common carriage. While I certainly could not afford to hire a private carriage of my own, I could have splurged just a little bit more and bought myself a horse for the journey home.

It would have destroyed any savings I had, as meager as they were, but it would have possibly made for a much more comfortable ride. If I was going to have a back-ache either way, I should have just taken that old horse I’d seen for sale near the station, I told myself with a sigh, staring out at the passing countryside in some helpless attempt to keep the growing nausea at bay.

Alas, I’d had to be very frugal with my money of late. After five years of owning my own bakery, my business had crumbled quite disgracefully when a competitor had opened a bakery and patisserie right across the street. Of course, we’d put up a good fight – dropping prices and even opening a small patisserie counter – but it simply was not to be. After all, how could I compete with stretching palmiers and whistling cream puffs? They had brought in a chef who had the most expert touch, and mine was simply no match.

Bad luck, I supposed, but at the very least everything on my side had been solved amicably. I’d been able to pay my workers their last wages, had been able to pay the last month of rent, and had even sold all the items and furniture that I could. It left with me with a small fortune of my own, but all of it had been used up quite quickly in the following months, as I tried to think of what else I could do to eke out a living in the bustling city. There weren’t many opportunities, to say the least.

With very little money left, I felt I was out of time. And so it was that I was returning to my home town, the little village I had spent my most formative years in, and the place that had helped me find my love of baking. I had wanted to bring that passion with me to the city, and I did, for a while. It was a good run, all things considered. Perhaps it was simply time for a change.

All this I told myself again and again as I watched the rolling landscape pass me by, though if I was being honest with myself, it was true that I was disappointed. I had plans – big plans – and now all of them were gone. Poof! So quickly, so decisively.

“Lisanne Station!” came the coachman’s gruff call, and almost immediately the woman to my side awakened, sat up straight, and began fixing her tight blue curls with the utmost concentration. She looked as though she had never been sleeping at all. I wondered where she was headed to. Perhaps she was visiting family, or returning from a visit. Perhaps she, too, was down on her luck and going home.

Once we had climbed out of the carriage, I took my cases from the coachman with thanks and watched until the carriage had traveled out of sight, turning back. Lisanne was a small town, but it was much bigger than the village I called home. My coach-mates were going to stay here, it seemed, but my final destination was a little ways down the valley, towards the sheer mountain that towered over the peaceful landscape of the countryside. I could walk the distance in a few hours, I supposed, so I’d better get started.

As I set off, I noticed the castle. Even from Lisanne one could see it, shimmering like a dark and foreboding mirage, perched on the edge of the sheer side of the mountain. Naturally, everyone in the region knew about the castle and its tragic history, but its residents were no more, and there was no family interested in purchasing the cursed structure that loomed over the little towns and fields in the valley below like an ever-watchful raven. Even this, I had missed.

The dirt path that led away from the station and towards the mountain was empty. Few people ventured out to the valley, so most of the traffic that this road saw came from my village – usually farmers driving their wagons to Lisanne to sell their goods or people seeking to purchase something that was not available in the small town.

A little ways down the glow-brick road to the village, a small one-horse carriage caught up with me, its wooden wheels creaking and groaning under its own weight. The coachman, an older man with deep wrinkles and a smile that presented his two missing teeth, waved me down and rattled the carriage to a stop at my side. “Headed for the village, young man?” he asked.

The horse shook its head and snorted impatiently. “Yes,” I said, taking in the state of the admittedly worn carriage. “Are you headed there yourself?”

“Hop in,” the coachman invited me. “Or scoot in next to me, if you’d rather. I’ll take you there.”

“Oh, it’s not a very long way away,” I protested politely, and then added with the smallest twinge of embarrassment, “and besides, I don’t have much money on me to pay for the ride.”

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

“Nonsense, my friend,” the man replied with a chuckle. “It’s my pleasure! This here stretch of road is one of my favourites, you see. Would be even better with some company. No fare required! So, what say you to that?”

Well, I said yes. It wasn’t even a minute that I had climbed on to the bench and taken a seat next to him when he started chattering away. It was to be expected, I supposed. In small towns like these, newcomers were a source of intrigue. Besides, I didn’t particularly mind it. “You’ve got family in the village?” he asked, eyeing me as if to spot any resemblances to someone he knew.

“Not anymore,” I replied. “My father lived here all his life, but he passed away a while back.”

“Ah, so you’re a returnee, are you?” the coachman said with a decisive nod. “Well, it’s always good to see young people who know the worth of the country. Too many of them up and leave, thinking there’s some kind of gold out in the cities!” He shook his head with a tsk. “Nothing better than life in the countryside, I’ll tell you that much! Good for the lungs, good for the heart, good for soul!”

I sensed a lecture coming, and in my desperation I grasped at the first question I could think of to change the subject. “Do you make the trip to the village often? You live in Lisanne, don’t you?”

“That I do,” he said proudly. “Small little house with a one-horse stable my father made himself. Been making the trip to the village almost every week now, even when there’s no reason to go! I like this road. I always feel – well, I always come back home feeling in high spirits, is all,” he said, scratching his stubbly jaw with a sheepish smile. “Suppose it’s a bit strange, when all the roads here are practically the same old country roads!”

There was a lull in the conversation, but it didn’t last too long. “Tell you the truth, lad, the reason I made the trip – the first time – was that castle up there,” he said, nodding at the dark mass on top of the mountain. “It’s been empty as long as I’ve lived in Lisanne, but one night – oh, about five months ago now – I saw lights! Lights, in the windows! Could hardly believe my eyes. Say, you haven’t heard anything about any new tenants up there or anything of the sort, have you?”

I shook my head apologetically. “Regrettably, I haven’t kept up with the news from home much, and with my father gone… Well, there’s nobody to keep me up to date, in any case. Perhaps you could ask the villagers? They would know better.”

“Well, I did, and it’s the strangest thing!” the coachman replied as the village drew nearer. “I did ask. Asked as many people as I could. Nobody knew a single thing about it, but I’m sure – I’m sure I saw lights up there. If only someone could take a look-see…”

“That is strange,” I agreed, but thought nothing much more of it. To be fair, strange things often happened in the countryside. Some of it was simply a trick of the eyes, and some of it was real, but most of it was better left alone. If this man thought he’d seen lights up in the castle – well, then he either had or he hadn’t. I wasn’t about to go traipsing up to the castle to check if someone lived there. It was none of my business, and I wasn’t about to get myself involved.

🍃

The coachman let me off at the village square. From there, I eagerly walked to my father’s farm. I was happy to be home, regardless of the circumstances that had made it happen. I should have come home a long time ago, to visit, but ever since the death of my father, I had not felt myself prepared for such a step. Now, I found myself in a situation wherein I had no other choice but to face it. Surprisingly, it was a more welcome sight than I had imagined.

Despite my father’s passing, the farmhouse looked well taken care of, and I had a very good idea as to why that was. I opened the front gate and strolled up the beige cobblestone path, up the terracotta-tiled stairs, and knocked on the front door. At first, there was no response. I knocked again.

The tiny patter of quick footsteps on the wooden floors sounded through the door, and in a short moment, it was unlocked and swung open to reveal Mawna. I smiled down at her, hoping she might remember me, and she stared up at me unmoved, her earth-brown eyes scrutinizing my face.

“Hello, Mawna,” I greeted her. “It’s me. Brieuc.”

She tilted her head to one side, and all at once recognition animated her expression. “Brieuc! You look all grown!” the hobgoblin exclaimed.

“I was grown before I left, Mawna,” I said with a chuckle, then gestured to my bags. “It’s a bit late, but I’ve come home.”

“Come in, come in,” she said, pulling me through the door and ushering me into my family home. “How good it is to see you again! If only your father was here to see you – oh, how he’d have loved that!” She crossed her arms, tapping her bare foot on the wooden planks of the floor. “It’s disgraceful, you know, going away for so long and not even coming by to visit. Your own father, no less! I’d understand if it was your stepmother or that brat of hers – but your father, Brieuc! How could you neglect him so?”

It was a well-deserved scolding. All of it was true. But it didn’t make me feel any less horrible. I cleared my throat. “I know, Mawna,” I said quietly. “I really made a mess of things there, and it’s too late to put it right.”

Mawna, ever the stubborn hobgoblin, seemed reluctant to concede. Finally, she sighed and shook her head. “Well, as long as you know,” she said, ushering me into the kitchen and guiding me into a seat at the table. “Good of you to have made the funeral arrangements, anyway,” she continued as she swept into a flurry of activity, pulling out various pots and pans and vegetables and a chopping board about the size of her whole body. She climbed onto a chair, brandished a knife I hadn’t noticed her taking out of the kitchen drawers, and began chopping some spiral carrots quite aggressively. “Would have been better if you’d actually attended, of course, but it was good of you all the same, I suppose,” she muttered, a final barbed stab.

“Mawna, please,” I said helplessly. “I did have other responsibilities, you know. I had a job and people working for me and rent to pay and a life--”

“You had a life back here just the same,” she said, waving the knife at me. “You should have been here, and there’s no excuse you can make for not making it happen.”

I sighed in defeat. “You’re right, of course,” I said. “But let’s not have any more of that now, all right? I am tired, and I do miss him terribly, and I do regret not coming home sooner, and you are a sight for sore eyes – as is everything here,” I added, taking in the kitchen that hadn’t changed a bit since I’d left for the city. “You’ve no idea how good it is to be home.”

“’Course I do,” she replied, scrunching up her bulbous nose. “Why else would I be home all the time? It’s fools like you that don’t know any better until it’s too late.”

I exhaled again, and she shrugged her little shoulders.