“Fresh veg! Fresh veg! Get your fresh veg! Very cheap, very tasty, very veg,” I called into the vacuum of the market square. Bloody pointless.

I couldn’t really tell you if Braxus’ market was typical or atypical, because it was the only one I’d ever seen. What I could say — and with some authority — was that this seemed like a proper waste of time. We live in a hamlet. It has one pub, one smithy, one general store, and a whole bunch of freeholdings. That means that every peasant who can work a spade has a little plot of land where they can grow their spuds, carrots, spinach, beets, whatever. Yet, every third month, we all pitch up an awning over a dilapidated counter, slap-bang in the middle of the muddy little square, and try and sell each other those very same spuds, carrots, spinach, beets and whatever. To make matters even dafter, the market was barter only! What this meant was that in two years of helping out my aunt, I’d made a horseshoe, a hemp sack, three candles, and received more carrots for spuds and spuds for carrots than I could ever eat or shift. Ridiculous.

A squat man who swayed with every step nosed at my stall: Mr. Gosker.

“How about you, sir? You look like you could use a turnip or two, am I right?” I patted his belly with my eyes.

He scoffed, moving along at a slightly faster waddle.

“Exercise is good too, but you need a balanced diet!” I said, and was rewarded with a decidedly grouchy shake of the head. “Just trying to help.”

Don’t get me wrong — I’m not uneducated — I know why we have the market. I just don’t know why we still have it. Years ago, before I was born, there was a drought that wracked the whole of Tythia. Details of the how and why aside, it was a bad one, and a long one. The result was widespread famine and death. Lots of famine. Lots and lots of death. The cities scalped the villages and towns for every edible morsel they could get their hands on, which fixed their problems in the short-term and quadrupled ours. This inevitably doubled both our problems in the long run. With the trust broken, the rural areas closed their doors to the urban folk — as best you can to people who wear swords at the dinner table ­— and became insular.

The local markets were set up as a communal thing, where neighbours could feed neighbours in exchange for whatever little they had to offer. Local law still dictates that you’re not supposed to reject a barter for food, even if you are, literally, being offered dog turd for your goods. Full bellies first. Riches later. It was a reasonably sensible measure in response to a period of great disaster.

Roll forward the wheel a few turns and I’m standing behind a battalion of beets, staring down Gracie McGail — hemmed in by her palisade of pulses. I could take this whole cart down the road to Gadra and earn some actual copper for my back-breaking days over a trowel, but the elders and the local reeve — dad — won’t allow it. Why? Because the old folk are so afraid of going hungry again that they’d rather throw away half a crop than share with the townies.

I perched my butt against the stall, facing away from the square, and tried to fish an Ibixon Duck feather from my hair. I thought I’d got them all, but yet another had snuck its way into my peripheral. I swear they were multiplying.

I kept my hair shoulder-length in the hopes of keeping it manageable — I grew tired of eating the flipping stuff every time we had soup — yet somehow it still looked like I used it to mop the stables. The colour didn’t help with the image, either. My brother, Dane, sweetly dubbed it ‘soiled hay’. It was not a palette you would ask to have your house painted in, but it was catchy enough that his friends — otherwise known as my prospective suitors — had decided to make the name stick.

“Tell me you don’t want to be here without telling me you don’t want to be here,” Aunt Alicia said, replenishing the barely touched potato pile from a mound cradled in her frock.

“I could just tell you.”

“You’re spirited, Mel, I’ll give you that. A good quality in a wench; not so great in a wife,” she said through strawberry lips that matched her strawberry hair — a grossly unfair combination.

“I won’t marry a man who doesn’t want to marry me.”

“Not always as simple as that. Sometimes they think they do. Then they get tired of that same spirit that excited them in the first place, and they get a mind to beat it out of you.” Alicia had a way of telling you not to be yourself that didn’t feel unkind. You had to do the work to spot she was telling you that you’re an unlovable ingrate.

“Take care, Aunty. People might think you’re out to besmirch Uncle Iffan’s good name.”

She slowly placed the last potato on top of the pyramid. “You’ve a dark sense of humour, Mel. One that could offend even those who love you most dearly.”

That surge of anger washed over me that I often find when I’m looking for remorse. “Sorry, Alicia.”

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

She waved a hand dismissively, but I could see my words still stung. “It’s true that I was lucky with your uncle. In almost every way,” she added. “That doesn’t mean I don’t know a thing or two. Ladies chat, you’ll no doubt have noticed, and they have much to teach us that can help us help ourselves.”

“Are you saying I’m not a lady?”

“You’re incorrigible, Mel! You’d find offence in a gift of gold.”

“I’m more partial to silver,” I said, and this time remembered to smile to show I was joking.

She smiled back. “Come, this harvest won’t barter itself. What’s the take so far?”

I did a quick mental calculation. “Three side-eyes, two nose-wrinkles, and Mr. Gosker exchanged a grumble for a fat joke.”

She barked a quick laugh that was gloriously unladylike. “Well, he really should lay off the pork and eat a turnip once in a while.”

“That’s what I said!”

Alicia looked about the square. There were precious few people wandering the tri-pronged roads that coalesced into Braxus’ meager center. The tavern, a mud-brick two-story building, was starting to hum with the promise of life, but the few residents around — admittedly still half the village — were paying little heed to the market stalls. It was a drab affair, by anyone’s estimation. A drizzle had started, just in case the cascade of brown muck into beige brick was in danger of looking too cheerful.

“Here, why don’t you take the box around to see if you can’t rustle up any interest,” she said.

“Not to sound too defeatist, but why? We don’t need anything.”

“For propriety’s sake, that’s why. We take pride in our jobs, remember? Would you rather be working a loom, or mucking a sty right now?” I gave her a look that conveyed exactly what I thought of that. “Right, then go slap on a smile and see if you can’t garner some goodwill. Here, I fancy some peas for tomorrow’s stew; see if you can get a good deal on some. The blighters don’t grow so well on my plot,” she lied.

“Fine, fine, fine.”

I dutifully adorned myself with ‘the box’ — an undignified crate that hung at waist-height from a pair of leather straps. The infernal thing always made me feel like I was in the pillory. I dutifully did the rounds, stopping at Josef’s stall first, then Frith’s, and finally the affable Gladys’ little shop before realizing I was going to have to pay Gracie McGail a visit to bag some of these elusive peas I’d heard so much about.

Gracie McGail greeted me with a lip-peeling sneer that looked right at home between her severe, vulpine cheekbones. I greeted her with the biggest damn smile my tiny, ovular face could muster. Round one: Mel. First blood.

“Afternoon, Ms. McGail. Business booming today?”

I knew damn well it wasn’t, and she told me just as much.

“Just thought I might trade for some of your fine-looking peas. Anything in the box interest you? We had a good batch of rosemary this time around.”

She had her nose turned up before she even looked at my goods. “I’ve no stomach for rosemary. Makes everything taste like fish.”

What? “You might be using that wrong.”

“Awful stuff. No need for it.”

“Okaay.” This was all strictly ritualistic moaning. She and I both knew that she was required to trade. Alas, she also knew that there was no limit on the amount of grousing she got to do before she relented. “How about a lovely swede then. Biggest in all Braxus,” I said with exaggerated pride, waving my hand over the now famous bland-as-Gracie-McGail root vegetable.

“They are big,” she said. “Too big. It’s not natural.”

“We’re lucky on our holding; get a good bit of sun.”

She looked up at the perpetually overcast sky, and I couldn’t help but look with her. “Ain’t no sun that did that. It’s not normal.”

Like an unattended pint left on the bar, I felt my sense of humour mysteriously disappearing. “What are you insinuating, Ms. McGail?” I emphasized Ms., to remind her how unlovable she is.

There’s a moment after a challenge is issued when you can visibly see the aggrieved weighing up whether they were going to take it or leave it. Gracie planted both hands on her counter, leaned forward, and by gods she took it. “Awfully green fingers you’ve got, little one. Green fingers like your grandfather had. Green fingers like your uncle had, I’ll wager.”

“How the Glade would you know? My uncle had the good sense to be rid of this cesspool before he had to stoop so low as to hawk perfectly good swede to the miserable likes of you.” I was gripping the box hard. It rewarded me with a juicy splinter for my trouble.

“I know what they say, and I know what I’ve heard.” She folded her arms. “And I know when a swede ain’t just a swede.”

Obviously the first retort to come to mind was, ‘You’re a swede’, but I went with the far safer, if a tiny bit less satisfying, “If you don’t want to trade, that’s fine, Ms. McGail. I’ll simply let my father know. Perhaps it will become the topic of conversation for the next meeting of elders. It’s no skin off my nose.”

She snorted through the twin slits of her own snouty little nose. “Give me one of them beets.”

I slapped my facetious grin right back on, and picked out the biggest, roundest, juiciest looking beet Gracie McGail was likely to see in her whole miserable life. “There you go, Gracie. That should be enough to feed you and all your well-deserved insecurities.”

She took the gauntlet without breaking eye contact, and then threw a single pea that bounced off my chest and landed in the box. A single pea. “Pleasure doing business with you,” she said through teeth that I swear were getting pointier.

I scrunched up my face into the most saccharine smile my muscles could muster, and did a smart turn to the muttered tune of, “What a giant stalactite of fossilized, crispy—”

“Everything alright, Mel? That looked a little heated,” Aunt Alicia said.

“Hey, do you think my swede are big?”

She blushed. “Well, I wouldn’t know, dear. I’d say you have no cause to worry though.”

“What? No, no, no. The vegetables. Do you think these swede look… unnaturally large?”

Alicia barely looked. “Look like swede, love. All swede look like swede.”

“Yeah, but, you’ve got to admit these are good looking swede.”

She paused, put on a very serious face, inspected the swede, and said, “My goodness, yes. Those are handsome devils, aren’t they? Are you thinking..? No. Surely I mustn’t suggest such a thing. Are you… perhaps thinking of marrying one of these fine gentlemen?”

I couldn’t help but smile. “I mean, they are better looking than most of my options.”

“Come on, let’s call it a day. Bugger all going on anyway. Help us clear up and I’ll buy you a drink.”

I realised I was still looking at the cursed swede. “You know what? That’s probably not a bad idea.”