I was putting my newly purchased goods away when the door swung open and in trudged Mawna, her short legs drumming against the floorboards. Today her auburn hair was braided into twin plaits, and her sun-drenched skin contrasted with the bright yellow frock that went down to her calves. She even had a little flower in her hair, and despite her ever-grumpy expression, all of it suited her. She looked positively adorable, though I would have never told her that, for fear she’d wollop me over the head.

“Well, at least you know to make yourself useful!” she muttered, still sore about the fact that I hadn’t visited home before my father’s passing. “Suppose you’ll be wanting to raid the garden for some fresh produce, won’t you?”

“Good morning, Mawna,” I greeted her slowly, putting away the last of the fresh rolls in the bread box. “I think I’ll have to bring in what I can. I’ll need to take stock of the farm, too. Has Kasir been taking care of everything while I was away?”

Mawna shrugged, climbing on top of a chair and then onto the kitchen table. “That stubborn gnome isn’t getting paid for nothing!” She sat at the edge of the well-worn wooden table, letting her legs dangle back and forth over the side. “Seems to me that the farm is running the same as it always has. Only, we haven’t sold anything, of course. That’s not for us to do.”

“Right,” I said, pulling out a chair and sitting down. “I’ll have to get on that. Does the produce go to waste?”

“We don’t let anything go to waste in this household, and you know that well,” she said with a huff. “All of the milk is turned into cheese, so it can be stored for long periods of time. The cellar’s overflowing with wheels of all kinds of cheeses – there’s no room to stand in there! And all of the rainbow wool’s been put aside, along with those pesky quills from the quill-cows. Not many places to store it, so I think you’ll find the attic’s a bit stuffed at the moment.”

“To my deep misfortune,” came a familiar voice from a nearby mirror. “You’d think they’d have enough decency to leave my space alone!”

I glanced over at the mirror that hung beside the kitchen door. There was no reflection there, no shape, but I knew that was where the voice was coming from. “Espel,” I said with a smile. “It’s good to see you again!”

There was a sniff. “Yes, well, I would believe you, Brieuc, but you didn’t exactly look for me when you got home, did you?” Espel’s disembodied voice asked. “Didn’t even look for me this morning before you headed out. I’ve been in this house since it was built, and this is the kind of disrespect I have to deal with. I’m practically an ancestor. You should be ashamed of yourself!”

“I am sorry, Espel,” I said quietly, fighting the urge to grin widely. “I have been a bit preoccupied, my friend. I really did miss you.”

A figure stepped into the mirror – vague and undefined, only a shade of a shadow. “Well, now that you’re here, you can do something about the nightmare of a mess your hobgoblin has left in my attic, hm?” Espel demanded. “It’s bad enough that I’ve been stuck with only her company for the past two months! Do you have any idea the kind of foul mouth she’s got on her?”

“Come now, Espel,” I said, glancing over at Mawna. She didn’t seem perturbed in the slightest, focused instead on smoothing out the wrinkles in her yellow dress. “I’m sure we can deal with the things in the attic. We can sell them right away, can’t we, Mawna?”

“I’d say you’d better,” Mawna replied. “You smell like you haven’t got a single penny to your name.”

I stood, rolling up my sleeves. “Well, you’re not wrong,” I said, fully aware that she wasn’t referring to my body odor. Hobgoblins had a nose for money, and she could sense that I was flat out broke. “We should waste no time getting started, then. We can begin by taking inventory and seeing if my father’s clients are interested in purchasing any of that iridescent wool and those quills. That should bring in a pretty penny on its own, I suppose.”

“You’re going to have to sell a lot more than that to keep yourself afloat here,” Mawna said, but she jumped off the table and landed on the tiled floor with a loud thud. “But it’s a better start than nothing. No time to waste!” She sighed and waved for me to follow her.

🍃

My father’s study, bursting at the seams with shelves of books and scrolls, was completely untouched. I could feel his presence here, lingering in the air. The papers that he’d left on his desk, the stack of books he’d been reading, the letters he’d been responding to, the quills he’d been using – everything was as it was. I half-expected him to pop up behind me, pat me on the back, and ask me where I’ve been all this time. A shiver ran down my spine.

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“Well, what are you waiting for?” Mawna demanded, standing beside my father’s desk. She was just about a few inches taller than the table, and she ducked underneath it to climb onto his creaky wooden chair. It wasn’t long before her head popped up from behind the desk, and she leaned over the surface, rifling through the papers. “He’s got the ledgers here somewhere, I think,” she muttered. “Or was it one of those books?”

She reached out and tapped on the cover of one of the leather-bound notebooks my father liked to use. He had countless of them – most filled to the brim with notes on various plants, animals, and bits and pieces of interest. There was no rhyme or reason to any of them, so whenever he wanted to find something he’d written again, he would always spend time going through each of their contents one by one.

“Contents, please,” Mawna ordered. She wasn’t speaking to me.

The book shook slightly, its pages bending to form the vague form of a mouth. “Oh,” it said, clearly disappointed. “It’s you. Well, sorry to disappoint, but you’ll have to read his chicken scratch yourself, hobgoblin,” it replied. “You’d think a grown man would at least take the time to improve his handwriting!”

Mawna’s lips twitched in irritation, and I stepped in before her temper got the best of her and the books decided to clamp shut. Then where would we be? “I’ll take a look,” I said hurriedly, grabbing the book before the little hobgoblin could. “I’m sure I can figure it all out,” I added confidently.

I flipped open the book, but was met with truly the worst handwriting I’d ever laid my eyes upon. Was this my father’s handwriting? It couldn’t be… I remembered his writing being a little scribbly, a little messy, but it was never this illegible! The script was wobbly, shaky, and looked more like a toddler’s attempt at imitating writing than my father’s usual way. “Did he write in you recently?” I asked the book.

“If by recently you mean over the past year, then yes,” the book told me. “I told him none of it was legible, but of course, you humans care little for the opinions of others, don’t you?”

I frowned and rubbed the area between my brows. “Was he very ill before he passed, Mawna?”

Mawna avoided my gaze. “He wasn’t well for a while, but he always said it was nothing to worry about.”

“What do you mean, he wasn’t well?” I demanded, setting the book down in front of her. “Look at that! That’s not my father’s writing. Something must have been very, very wrong. Why didn’t anybody contact me?”

Mawna sniffed and crossed her arms. “He didn’t want to worry you, the old fool,” she said, glaring at the open notebook before her. “He kept saying it was nothing to worry about. Besides, I couldn’t very well go against his orders, could I? You know how it is for us hobgoblins.” She huffed and jumped down from the chair. “You should have come back on your own, anyway. But it seemed like you were all too happy with your new life in the city. Forgot all about us back here, didn’t you?”

“That’s--” I bit my lip. I was about to say that that wasn’t true, but that would have been a lie. I should have gone home – I knew that. It had nagged on me even while I was away in the city. Even when I had successfully opened my bakery, even when I had finally broken even and started making profit, even when I had been able to afford the chef I’d wanted – even through all of those celebrations, I knew, in the back of my mind, that I needed to go home and visit my father.

It’s strange, how life seems to pull at you in every which way. I was young and foolish, and the city was everything I’d dreamt it would be. Or, at least, that’s what I’d convinced myself of. I had allowed it to seduce me completely, to keep me from my roots and take all of my fruits. It was my fault. Mawna had every right to be angry with me. I should have been here.

I sighed, leaning against the table and covering my eyes with my hands. I should have been here.

There was only the sound of my pounding, twisting heart and my silent breathing for a moment, until at last it was accompanied, briefly, by the dull thudding of Mawna’s feet as she left the study and went off down the hall, leaving me alone with my guilt.

🍃

So it was that I found myself back at the village center, my spirits completely downtrodden. It was almost midday, and while I now had food back at the house, I didn’t want to face Mawna or Espel. I wanted to be alone – to marinate in my own misery for a little while. My stomach grumbled in protest, reminding me that my misery was all good and well, but it still needed feeding.

I still had a few coins to my purse, so I decided to go to the inn – against my better judgment, since I’d been quite resolved to save as much of my money as I could to tide me over until I could make some more through selling the farm’s produce. I was in such a foul mood, however, that it mattered little to me at that moment. I didn’t want to go home. I didn’t want to return to the house where my father had spent his last days, evidently so sick he could no longer write legibly in his beloved notebooks. I didn’t want to deal with the fact that I had failed him – and I had, no matter how I’d looked at it. For some reason, I had naively believed that my father would be there for me forever, and that he could not possible leave me so soon.

The inn was not very full at this time of day. It was just an hour or two before the general lunchtime crowd would pop by – and anyway there wouldn’t be many of them in a village this small – and so I did not pay too much attention to my surroundings. Even the cheerful inn-keeper, whose face I remembered vaguely as they had taken up their post just months before I’d left the village, must have noticed my irritation through my short, curt replies to their questions. They were good-natured enough to ignore my ill manners. I ordered something – anything – the first thing I’d laid my eyes upon – and proceeded to the table farthest into the corner of the large room, beside a window that overlooked a grassy field.

Staring at the world outside, beyond this little inn, with the sun beating down against the emerald blades of grass and the breeze ruffling them ever so gently, I felt a sense of displacement. My misery and guilt had no place there, under the stark gaze of the sun. Or perhaps there was exactly where they belonged – out in the open, to be experienced and bleached by the sunlight and warmed by the heat and lived. After all, what else was there for me to do?

There was a jug of water and an upside-down cup on the table, and I poured myself some water. Not to drink it – I wasn’t particularly thirsty – but to have something to do with my hands. Holding the cool cup of water in my hands was oddly comforting. It was only a few minutes before the inn-keeper called me – my food was ready – and I stood hurriedly to fetch my order. In my haste and my mood, I was less attentive than I should have been. Somehow, I ended up bumping into a burly man whose crooked nose – a remnant from a fight which had left it broken – was all too familiar to me.

Water poured down the front of his shirt. My food – a plate of cooked beans – splattered down alongside it, ruining not only his shirt but a good portion of his pants for good measure.

I froze. The man’s piercing gaze found mine. I couldn’t believe what was happening. Part of me was frightened. Part of me was sorry. And part of me was triumphant.

In one fell swoop, I had run into my childhood bully and poured my lunch all over him.