A village pub is a strange thing. It’s a place for the locals — who just saw each other not half a turn ago — to see a bit more of each other. The only difference is that this time they have alcohol. For some reason, that seems to be enough to make them think they like each other.

Mr. Gosker was bending the ear of the blacksmith, Rudy, who he had just yesterday accused of swindling him out of a couple of fence nails; Josef, Frith and Gladys sat together, having also given up on trading for the day, and acted like they hadn’t each bickered to me about the other when I saw them just now in the square; even the grocer, Valan, was chatting merrily away with the tanner, Max, who he had last month chased down the street with a stale baguette after the latter had made a pass at his wife. All of them set aside their grey moods and leant into the muted colour of The Rut on the Square. It was a place that welcomed all — provided they could supply proof of residence — under its low ceilings and precariously wavering oil lamps.

“Evening, Alice, Mel,” Kormik said in that way that makes everyone feel special. He favoured each of us with a smile that lifted his moustache until it made a perfect black bar from cheek to cheek. “Two milds?”

“Been a bit of a day, love. We’ll take two shots of Runoff and the milds to chase,” Alicia said. Runoff was what we in the village called our local moonshine. It was basically white spirit infused with whatever fruit was on the turn at the time. Put another way, you’d never cellar it.

I gave Alicia a wide-eyed nod that I hoped conveyed, ‘Okay. We’re doing this, are we?’

If Kormik was surprised, he hid it well. He gave us two thumbs up and then set about pouring the drinks. I had to admire the skinny, slick bartender; he was always the height of professionalism. He was only about five years older than me, but he ran the place so smoothly you’d think he had been born with a towel and a tankard in hand, which I suppose was halfway true. It frustrated me sometimes to see how well put together he was. It’s hard not to compare yourself when you feel utterly directionless. The only thing I couldn’t quite grasp was why he hadn’t tried for his fortune in the cities; he certainly had the grit for it.

We took our shots at the bar, toasting, “To health, wealth, the Anvil, and Ms. McGail’s bed sores.” I couldn’t help but love Aunt Alicia.

“Ye gods. That burns like the Fires of the Furnace,” I wheezed.

I received a playfully soft slap for my faux pas. “Watch your tongue, young madam. There are those about who will not tolerate blasphemy as readily as your aunt.”

“If anyone has cause to blaspheme, I’d say it’s us. Right?” I snorted.

Alicia guided me to a quiet table on the far side of the u-shaped bar and sat me down. “I have grievances a plenty with the course my life has taken, and I know full well that you do too.” She put up both hands. “I’ll not take that away from you. Still, you’ll want to pick smaller battles than those with gods.”

This gave me pause. “Aunty, are you superstitious?”

She gave me an appraising look, and I guessed she was judging how much was prudent to say. “I’m wise enough to know when things are out of my control. You should be too.”

I took a sip of my beer, enjoying its biscuity taste before asking myself if I would even know if this were a good beer or a bad one. What frame of reference did I have? What else did I know? “I don’t agree. Lots of things are in my control! Small things, sure, but I can decide if I come to market on the next thremon, or if I don’t. I can decide if I marry or if I don’t. I can decide to tend the stupid goats tomorrow, or I can sack it all off and hide in a bush.”

“Aye, but there’ll be consequences.”

“And? That doesn’t mean you don’t have control.”

“Can you control how big your swede are?”

I had to think about that.

“I mean the vegetable,” she clarified.

“Yeah, I got that.”

“Good. Good.”

I became aware I was tugging at my fingers in that way that really annoys my mum. “No, you can’t control everything. That doesn’t mean you are powerless to make decisions, to choose a path for yourself.”

She put a hand over my hand. It was a tender gesture; a disarming one. “I know, Mel. I’m living proof of that. I made a decision to come be here with you, didn’t I? I made a decision to stick with the family I inherited. I am proud, every day, that I was able to make that decision, and that I was strong enough to know that I could. For me, that’s how I choose to keep Iffan alive. A little piece of him, that I can take into forever. But I couldn’t choose his fate. I couldn’t change what he was, anymore than you can change what you are. That’s what I mean when I say that you should know when things are out of your control.”

You’ve got a couple of options when you are the village’s worst kept secret. You can deny everything, and know that you will spend the rest of your life in denial, or you can take the little knowing outs that people give you to express yourself freely, in a quiet, constrained manner. Naturally I said, “What I am, Aunt Alicia, is a girl with big swedes.”

She graced me with another one of those gloriously unrestrained laughs, and hugged me. “Mel, I love you as my own blood. You know that, right?”

“I know, Aunty.”

“Please, Alicia will do fine, Mel!”

“Yeah, but I know you love it.”

She winked over the rim of her mug. “Alright, fine. I do a bit.”

“Mel? I hardly ever see you in here. Not unless I drag you myself,” Carrie said, having glided over to our table with frankly scary stealth. “Hello, Alicia.” She bobbed a curtsey.

“Carrie, always a pleasure.” Alicia raised her glass in welcome. “Would you care to join us?”

“That’s awfully kind of you, but I wouldn’t want to leave Tabby alone.” She was looking at me expectantly. It was not a subtle look.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

“I think I saw Taggard shuffling a deck of cards back there. Perhaps I’ll see if I can’t join for a couple of hands,” Alicia said, shooting me a wink.

“That sounds terribly fun!” Carrie gushed, bobbing so low that she was almost an average height. Carrie had tall parents, and had somehow still outgrown them both. She was tall, elegant and exquisite, with a braid almost as long as I was. Over time, she had politely accepted that I was only going to look her in the eye on special occasions; it was a graceful concession to my neck that I was eternally grateful for.

“Are you sure? Taggard is a rotten loser,” I said. It went against my limited sense of propriety to ditch someone who had just paid for my drink.

“I can handle him. You go have fun with the girls.”

Us ‘girls’ were all women now, but in a small community like ours there were always some ashen-haired, bent-double, timeless sorts who thought of you as an ankle-biter even after you’d had your third kid. Alicia wasn’t quite as bad as that, but I know Carrie found her a smidge condescending, even if she was too well weened to call Alicia out on it.

“Thanks, A.A. You’re the best,” I said.

“A.A.?”

“I’m trying a thing.”

“Well stop trying it. Immediately.” She kneed me under the table and I favoured her with a canine-heavy grin.

“Do you need help carrying your drink, Mel?” Carrie prompted.

“Alright, alright, I’m going. Catch you later, Alicia.” When we were halfway across the common room — Tabatha dead ahead, tucked into a corner as dark as her expression — I said, “Real subtle, Carrie.”

“You’d have been there forever otherwise! Honestly, it’s like you have no resolve.”

“Following your orders amounts to resolve these days?” I blew a lock of hair off my nose, which pendulumed right back again.

“Someone needs to look out for you. The Anvil knows, you won’t do it yourself.” Having grown out of slapping reach for most decently sized humans, Carrie had been free to develop a whole host of uniquely irritating, high-and-mighty, smug-as-a-sheikh expressions. “Besides, you are needed urgently. Poor Tabatha’s having a dreadful time of it all. I’m afraid she’s almost inconsolable.”

“I can see that.” I opted not to mention that Tabatha always looked like her damn cat had died or something; that’s apparently not a very friendly thing to point out. “You okay, Tabbie? I’ve seen bigger smiles at the abattoir.”

“My cat just died.”

Oh, whoops. Well that doesn’t feel good. “Ah. I’m sorry, Tabatha.” I searched for something reassuring to say. “He was pretty old. And fat.” Yeah, nice. Real empathetic, Mel.

“Piglet was not fat!”

Literally why he was called piglet. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that. Did he… die peacefully?”

“He was murdered.”

Oh, come on! “That is tragic. I’m really, really sorry. Who would have done such a thing?”

“Pa thinks it was a wolf.”

“I told her that’s nonsense. There aren’t any wolves around here,” Carrie informed me, very much talking about Tabatha, not to her.

“I think it was the neighbour’s dog,” Tabatha fumed. “That mutt is always barking and growling. It’s unseemly to have an animal that aggressive. It shouldn’t be allowed.” She took a prodigiously big gulp of beer. Perhaps she thought sorrow really could be drowned.

“Khan? The only thing that dog is a danger to is his own tail.” I kicked myself; I’d forgotten that Tabatha was one of those people who just wants to be told she’s right when she’s upset and is apparently offended by reason.

Sure enough, her brow dipped dangerously low. “See, Carrie? I told you she wouldn’t get it.”

Tabatha was mean when she was upset, but I’d learnt not to read too much into it. I wasn’t the sort to punish myself with crap friends; she really was the sweetest person imaginable when she was in the right mood. There are some people where you have to just take the good with the bad, and Tabatha could have chaired their committee. Honestly, once she’d stung you enough times that your emotional callouses could turn insults like a seamstress’s thumb did needles, Tabatha was worth investing in.

“Actually, Mel, we had a bit of an idea.”

This can’t be good. I thought about where this was going. “This can’t be good,” I decided.

“You’re always so sceptical, Mel!” Carrie went full hand-on-chest mock aghast. “We just thought that maybe the three of us could do a little digging. An investigation, of sorts. Sounds exciting, doesn’t it?”

Carrie was born for the theatre. I felt confident in saying that, even though I had never been to a theatre. Every action, every smile, every glint of the eye: all of it was perfectly rehearsed for an invisible audience. Too bad she grew potatoes, just like the rest of us.

I measured my response. This was getting uncomfortable. “What you mean is: you want me to have a look.”

“What I want is for you and I to be good friends to dear Tabbie. If we happen to get to the bottom of a juicy mystery, then all the better.” Her eyebrows did their own little curtsey.

I knew what she was after. She wanted to see if I could intuit anything about how little Piglet the cat had met his untimely end. I’d never outright told the girls — see there I go doing it as well — about my… condition? Affliction? However you want to describe it. Still, they’d known me since birth — mine for Carrie’s, Tabatha’s for me — and, lest I forget it, I am Braxus’ worst kept secret.

“She doesn’t have to help if she doesn’t want to, Carrie,” Tabatha said in such a genuine and thoughtful way that it can only have been ruthless manipulation.

I glowered at them like they were Larry and Graham. Carrie, all pale skin, brown hair and baroness elegance, gave me a smile so sweet that it made me diabetic. Tabatha, her complexion the same hazelnut as mine but with rich purplish-black hair to match — so that, unlike me, she didn’t look like she’d been upended in a cheese fountain — sighed like she already knew I was going to let her down. My friends really were a piece of work.

“Fine,” I relented. “We will take a look. As a couple of friends with a healthy, not at all loaded, interest in our friend’s dead cat.”

Tabatha didn’t much like the dead cat bit, but Carrie was already gleefully clapping over any objections.

“Yes! I love you!” our resident diva said. “Now, why don’t you get us a couple of drinks to celebrate. We should wait until things quieten down a bit before getting our investigation underway.”

“Why do I have to get the drinks?”

“You’re so dramatic! It’s on my tab, silly. I’ll happily go instead, of course. Only, then it will just be you here to offer Tabatha kind words of loving support.”

I personally own a fiddle that has never been played so well. “Alright, I’ll go.”

“Love you!” Carrie crooned.

“You suck,” I said.

I had Kormik refill our mugs with some more of his, probably awesome, possibly awful, dark mild. While I waited I painted swirls in a wet patch on the counter, trying desperately to avoid my dad’s eye.

“Not going overboard, I hope?”

I had failed. “No, dad. It’s just a few drinks.”

“Nothing wrong with a few drinks,” he said in that way that suggests he thinks there’s a lot wrong with a few drinks.

“I’m glad we agree.” I clinked my tankard against his, which gave him a start; he was busy watching Alicia accuse Gerhart of deliberately forgetting what three-of-a-kind was.

“As long as it’s only a few.”

Dad’s distaste for Alicia’s free-spirited nature was a frequent topic at the dinner table. He felt that it was unbecoming of a widower to be seen enjoying herself, let alone drinking and gambling with the menfolk. He often beseeched mum to rein in her sister-in-law’s behaviour. Mum’s heart was never in it, even if she had dutifully broached the topic on occasion. Personally, I couldn’t see why it bothered dad. Alicia wasn’t blood. She wasn’t even married in on his side of the family. Still, once a reeve, always a reeve.

“Hey.” I rubbed his bald head. “It’s just cards.”

“Mmm,” he grumbled from his volcanic depths.

“We had a good day at market today. Alicia and I, I mean.”

“You did?” Now I was talking his language. It was a barefaced lie, but at least it was his language.

“Yeah. She’s always showing me new ways to stack the vegetables so they look extra enticing.” I was making myself cringe now.

“Right.” Alright, I might have pushed that one a bit far. “Just make sure you don’t learn too much from her. Remember, nobody wants to court a woman who’s deep in her cups.”

He walked off, affording me a view of the table of young men my age — one of whom would probably soon be my husband. They were playing a game where you had to dodge the person next to you’s slap, else drink a shot of Runnoff if you failed. It looked like they’d been playing a good, good, good long while.

By Glade, I hate double standards.