I was killing it. Box two in hand, I whizzed about town like a cabbage leaf on the wind — bad analogy. The point is, things were finally swinging towards Team Mel.

By noon I’d traded cabbages for spuds, cabbages for carrots, even cabbages for lamb! In a masterstroke of entrepreneurial wizardry, I then traded spuds for salt, salt for shoe repair, and then cabbages for more spuds. I had to make four trips back to the shop to offload goods and reload cabbages. If this keeps going much longer then I’ll need to get those shoes repaired again.

That’s not to say the girl from Braxus with her quaint barter system was always a hit. Some people laughed in my face; one guy patronisingly showed me what Magalat money looks like; others just flat out ignored me. I wasn’t fazed too much by any of this, but the ones who took poorly to me being Iffan’s niece were a challenge.

I’d made a pact with myself that I was going to tell anyone who asks the truth: I’m from Braxus; I’m new in town; Iffan was my uncle; I’ve moved into his shop, and I plan to fill it to overflowing with tasty veggies. I felt like I owed it to Iffan. Everyone abandoned him at the end. He didn’t need me doing the same. He was a great man, and I am proud to be his niece. I will declare it proudly! But, you know, quietly.

Luckily, most people didn’t ask.

Those who did ask about the mysterious girl from Braxus, and her fabulous cabbages, tended to fall into the following categories:

The first group, and by far my favourite, just didn’t care. They had only asked to be polite, and mostly didn’t hear or register the answer. They had their greedy little eyes on their supper, and that was all they were worried about. Pretty sure I could have told them I’d paid for the cabbages with child slaves. I probably would have got a disinterested, “Very savvy. The market’s good for those, at the moment.”

The second group feigned concern — I’d probably lump the chandler in this category, even if she was a bit colder than most. These people tended towards the more evangelical, and usually had a bit of scripture to back up their advice. They were well-meaning, but meddling. I promise, being told to pray at the Forge by a dozen concerned citizens does not make a person religious; it makes them irritable.

The final group were, how should I put it, volatile? I was spat at, I was chased out the door, I was threatened with a broom, I was spat at, people threw all manner of curse words at me, I was spat at — people in Magalat seem to really like spitting. In summary, I was not popular with this last faction.

The good news is that I did develop a slightly thicker skin as the day went by, but nobody is impervious to being called a monster. Weirdly, it hit me in waves, and sometimes long after the insult or a glob of spit had been hurled. I’d hightail it away from the aggressor and go about my business. Then, suddenly, after I’d met two or three nice customers since, I’d remember that someone out there hated me so much that they literally wanted me dead. Worst of all, they had an incredible power to rob you of your self-belief; I should feel the victim, but instead I felt ashamed.

It was far better for everyone when nobody asked questions.

“Cabbages? Oh, my, they are glorious! Where did you get these? Never mind, I don’t want to know. Just see that you keep getting these!” — The smith I bought tacks from.

“If these are stolen, then I never saw you, and you never saw me. Do we understand each other?” — A guy I bumped into who was selling socks. They weren’t on my list, but my feet get cold! I got a pair for Alicia and Mirra as well.

“I don’t know who you are, or who sent you, but, by the Anvil, you are always welcome in my shop.” — The second chandler I went to. You can guess which was my favourite.

I was optimistic about the future. I could make a good life for us trading here. At least good enough to survive until dad accepted us back. My plan wasn’t foolproof, though. Cabbages open a lot of doors, but unfortunately, they don’t close them. More specifically, they don’t lock them… Okay, I’m torturing this pun.

“You want me to do what now?”

“Fix the front door lock, please. I can pay,” I said.

“In cabbages?” The locksmith regarded the vegetable like it might bite. “It’s highly irregular.”

“That’s what they normally look like.”

“Sorry?”

“Sorry. Bad joke. It’s been a long day.”

The locksmith tugged at the inch of hair on his chin. There was a mournful characteristic to the way he stroked his beard; I guessed he’d recently been instructed to trim it. “I knew Iffan; he was a good man. It was a horrible business, that. I’m sorry for your loss.”

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Horrible business was a gross understatement, but it was nice to receive a shred of empathy. “Thanks. He was a good man. I’m glad someone remembers that,” I said.

The locksmith nodded. “Look, I don’t have much use for cabbages. I’d like to help, but I really only work in cash. Business, you know.”

I didn’t know. I saw no obvious reason why a silver wasn’t the same as a cabbage worth a silver. “You can sell them if you don’t want to eat them.”

“I’m a bit old to be propping up a stall at the market.” He was about forty. “Sorry— Mel, was it? I hope you have better luck elsewhere.”

“No problem. I appreciate your time.” I made to leave. “And thanks for the kind words. I’ve had so many people demonise my uncle that… I don’t know, it was just nice.”

I had one foot out the door when he said, “You know, I used to buy a tonic from Iffan that helped with my, uh, digestion. If you find any of that knocking around then, well, maybe I can make an exception to my cash only rule.” He looked sheepish. “My stomach hasn’t felt the same since he…”

“I’m afraid there’s not a lot left in the place that the looters didn’t steal or just smash for the fun of it. I’ll have another look, but I can’t promise anything.”

“Mm, figured that’d be the case. Go well, Mel.”

Who doesn’t like cabbages? Weirdo. Nice weirdo, but a weirdo nonetheless.

Okay, so I wasn’t likely to get the lock fixed today. Bit of a pain. I guess I can just bar the door at night. The one good chair should do it. That poor thing is putting in a lot of hours at the moment.

For interest’s sake I went to a local furniture store to see what a couple of stools would cost. It would be nice if we could all sit down and eat, rather than have two-thirds of us hovering around like distant cousins at a wedding.

Predictably, chairs were well out of my price range. It would take a lot of cabbages, and I was starting to run low. Sit-down meals remained a luxury we couldn’t afford. I did, however, have another interesting conversation.

“No, miss. I’m afraid I can’t accept a mountain of cabbages for a chair,” the cute young carpenter said. “Not that they aren’t tasty looking cabbages, but I’m not really sure where I’d put them all.

“My father’s rash has come back, though.” I didn’t like where this was going. “Iffan used to make an ointment that soothed the lumps. Father swears it’s magic.” He coughed. “Sorry. I mean that it works wonders. If you’ve got any of that then I think we can make a deal.”

Again I had to apologise and move on, but I was starting to notice a theme.

“When will you have that invigorating little elixir back in stock? I could work through the night on that stuff,” one gentleman asked.

“I’m scared I’m going to get pregnant,” a girl my age confessed. “Do you have anything that can prevent that? What? No! Of course I’ve never been with a man. Outrageous!”

And so the conversations went on.

A barber across the way wanted to renew his standing order for hair tonics. A farrier who stopped me I the street wanted drops for his eyes. The list kept growing.

Come the evening, I was standing back in Iffan’s shop, facing the nursery Mopla called her home. I scanned the rows and rows of empty pots and planters and tried to imagine how it must have looked in its prime. I liked to think it was more colourful, at any rate.

“You okay?” Mirra said, coming down the creaky stairs. She had a reed brush in one hand. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen the elderly woman rest.

“I’m okay, I guess. Just thinking how unfair it is that we have the perfect setup for growing food and those monsters didn’t leave us a single thing to plant. It’s like cooking under the sun in a lake of salt water, knowing you can’t drink a drop. We’ve got all these plants, and not one we can eat! Except maybe Mopla.” I narrowed my eyes, not entirely convinced the plant wasn’t listening.

“You did good,” Mirra said, inspecting a potato from the stack of groceries I’d procured.

“Thanks. We weren’t totally unlucky. I’m just glad we beat Eila to those cabbages!”

Mirra chuckled. “It all works out.”

“It would be nice if it worked out a little faster.” I spotted some sage in the foremost beds. It was barely recognisable, it was so dry and shrivelled. The once pungent leaves crumbled in my fingers. The neighbouring herbs were plants I didn’t recognise. “Imagine what we could have done with all this.”

“Made sage and cabbage soup,” Mirra laughed.

“You might be right. I don’t think I’d know what to do with anything else!”

I walked the rows of my petrified garden, casually perusing my inherited fossil collection.

“Hey, this one looks familiar,” I said.

“Is that so?” Mirra answered politely.

“I think I saw it in the forest, on our way here. What do you reckon? Try and picture it with red flowers, and a bit less dead.”

“Might be so.” I could tell she wasn’t interested.

“Might be so,” I echoed.

With the exception of the cooking herbs, which were so easy to grow I doubted even Magalat had a shortage, I assumed that all of the herbs and plants dotted around were exotic imports. No doubt some of them were, but here was potential proof that some of the flora was of good old local stock.

Just like that, I smelled opportunity.

“Where you going?” Mirra called after me.

I was bounding the stairs two at a time. “To read!”

I lay on my stomach stretched across my generously proportioned mattress. I’d flicked through all of Iffan’s notebooks once and was starting to lose hope. I decided to try one last time before giving it up as a lost cause.

“Well hello, beautiful.” There she was, a prickly little forest weed, dotted with red flowers. A picture of the plant downstairs in its prime. “Luxenbraid,” I read.

Unlike the mother plant, Iffan had researched this one extensively. There was a two page spread detailing how to keep the plant, where to find it, and what properties it had. He’d crammed a lot of information into those pages. I now knew that the plant tasted like liquorice, but would cause stomach cramps if it wasn’t boiled for at least half a turn and pulped into a paste.

What really got me excited was a pair of words under the subtitle “uses”. Third from the bottom, in cursive so precise it looked printed, was written: Hair Tonic.

Ka-ching.