Whimsy loped along beside him, her earlier fear replaced by a nervous confidence. He could hear Flora's gay voice trilling with merriment as she held the full attention of Cadence Rather, alongside the slightly more tenor chuckles of Cadence's brother-in-law. His aunt had apparently married for something other than Grit. While he was a relatively intimidating man, Uncle Indulgence just didn't fit the Rather stereotype: too slim, a little bookish, and then, of course, there was the fact that he was a politician. Dalliance had often wondered if maybe Da had wished that he had become the local Headman, which was Uncle Indulgence's class. But if he really understood his father . . . Dalliance suspected . . . well, he didn't want to think about it, so never mind.
They reached the tall grass at the edge of the culvert that ran alongside the windbreak and the path to the schoolhouse. And there, as expected, Dalliance could see the cart, stopped by the fallen tree. Miss Thicket Wimple was sensibly not working on freeing the log from its stump. Dalliance could hear Earnest all the way from there, the boy’s face a mask of performative terror.
"Bandits!" he shouted, his voice ringing with theater. He pointed a trembling finger at the tree. "Stagecoach robbers! They've blocked the road! They mean to steal our lunches! And our breakfasts, too!"
Dalliance rolled his eyes and pressed forward quickly as Whimsy ducked beneath the wagon wheel. The next part had gone more smoothly in Dalliance's head. The box stayed put, sure, and it had a lid and latches. But therein lay the problem: Whimsy couldn't climb in, get her petticoats inside, and prop herself up against falling out long enough for the box to be closed and the latch engaged, all at the same time.
And so Dalliance found himself beneath the cart, stuffing her petticoats in for her as she supported her weight on her arms. Earnest repositioned himself several times, a nervous shield. Dalliance felt the urge to use his [Deflection] skill twice, doing so both times, and nothing came of it.
Miss Thicket Wimple climbed back up onto her wagon. The wagoner flipped the reins. The wagon began to move, and Dalliance saw that one of the four corner pegs holding the box was just off the ledge it was meant to slide into. All it would take was one bump.
There was nothing for it. He was under the cart, his fingers on the edge of the rough wooden box. He shoved with all his strength, his feet sliding on the mulched pathway.
And then he was in agony. With what seemed to be excruciating slowness, the wagon wheel rolled over his ankle. There were three sounds in short succession: pop, click, crack. Dalliance didn't cry out because he couldn't breathe, because it hurt so much. The wheel rolled past, and then he was out from underneath the wagon, looking up.
"Help!" he yelled. "Help, I think I've broken my ankle!"
The wagon stopped. Miss Thicket Wimple looked over the edge and shook her head sorrowfully at him. "What is it with you boys always playing beneath my wagon?"
Dalliance just shrugged. There wasn't any excuse he could give that would alleviate whatever suspicion she might be developing better than silence would. It was a principle Earnest adhered to, and one Topaz had told him first: if you don't have something smart to say, try not to say anything at all.
"Oh, dear me. You'd better get up here. Once we're at the schoolhouse, I'll have young Miss Mallow take a gander at that for you."
He gratefully let her help him onto the driver's bench beside her. The pain was a constant, screaming presence in his ankle, a white-hot thrumming that radiated up his leg with every jolt of the cart. Beneath the pain, a cold, quiet dread settled in his stomach. He was a captive audience now, and Miss Thicket Wimple had a look on her face that suggested she intended to make use of the opportunity.
For a little while, they rode in silence, broken only by the rhythmic clop-clop of the horse's hooves and the gentle creak of the wagon. The other students, sensing the gravity of the injury, were uncharacteristically quiet. Dalliance stared blankly at the passing trees, his mind a whirlwind of fear for Whimsy hidden beneath his feet, and the agonizing thrum in his leg.
"You know," Miss Wimple said at last, her voice conversational, as if they were just on a pleasant afternoon drive. "This reminds me of a time . . . when I was a young lass, I met this man. A sausage maker."
Dalliance blinked, pulled from his haze of pain. He couldn't imagine a topic less relevant to his current crisis. He said nothing, his jaw tight against a fresh wave of agony as the wheel hit a rut. His silence was all the invitation she needed.
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"Now, this sausage maker was a clever man," she continued, a wistful note in her voice. "Good with his hands, confident. Smelled a bit ripe to the nose, mind you, but what can you do? When he asked me to . . . a dance,"—the hesitation was slight, but Dalliance caught it, a flicker of something she was choosing not to say—"I went willingly. We spun around the maypole, and I wore ribbons for him, in my hair."
He considered, for a fleeting moment, using [Prediction] to see what she'd almost said instead of 'a dance,' but the thought felt intrusive, disrespectful. He let it go.
"My mother told me," Miss Wimple went on, oblivious to his waffling, "'Thicket,' she said, 'you look at his parents. That’s who he’s going to grow into'." She gave a small, self-deprecating sigh. "I thought nothing of it. He was handsome, you see. He wanted to go walking out with me, and I said yes. We looked at the high meadows, the rye and sorrel, and the heather in bloom. He asked me for a kiss, and I said yes. I shouldn't have done that."
Dalliance stared at her profile, at the fine lines etched around her eyes. His own anxieties momentarily forgotten, he was deeply, profoundly confused as to why she was telling him this.
"So my Ma says to me, she says, 'Now Thicket, you know I said to look at the man’s parents.' And I told her yes, but I hadn't done it. Well, he asked me to eat a pie with him on the Green. I said yes, and we did just that. And I met his Pa."
She shuddered, a subtle tremor that ran through her shoulders. The memory was clearly still vivid. "The man was . . . rank. Smelly. Didn't wash his hands, his teeth were like mossy stones. And his eyes . . . oh, he was just rotten, right to the core. The pie made me sick to my stomach. And Ma said, 'You see who he's gonna be by his father, don't you? Don't you wish you'd checked earlier?' I never spoke to him again. Woebegone's father, as it happens."
The revelation landed with a thud. It felt gossipy, inappropriate, and yet . . . there was a purpose to it. He could feel it. The pain in his ankle seemed to recede, replaced by a sharp, focused curiosity. "What's the point you're getting at, Miss Wimple?" he asked, his voice quiet.
She finally turned to look at him, her eyes surprisingly kind and piercingly direct. "Well, I have eyes, you know. I see the way young Miss Charity and Miss Effluvia look at you. The way you all sit together. I just thought you might want to acquaint yourselves with . . . you know. One another’s parents." Her voice dropped, becoming serious, her words meant for him alone. "Let them see who you'll be. Learn who they'll be."
The words hit Dalliance like a physical blow, harder than the fall, more painful than the break in his ankle.
The story wasn't about the sausage maker. And it wasn't about Woebegone's father, or Charity, or Effluvia, either.
It was about him. Becoming Cadence.
He thought of his father's cold silver eyes, his calculated cruelty, the chilling pride he took in violence. He thought of the man's hands, capable of both building a farm and crushing the breath from a child. That's who they worried he was going to grow into. The thought was a shard of ice in his gut, a terror far colder and deeper than any fear of a monster in the woods.
No.
The cart rattled on, each creak of the wheels a small, insignificant sound against the roaring silence in his head. The pain in his ankle was a distant, unimportant thing. In the quiet space of his own mind, surrounded by the gentle sounds of the countryside, Dalliance Rather made a solemn, silent vow.
He made an oath to whatever gods wanted to hold him to it.
He would not become that man.
He would tread his own path, or he would die trying. He would be anything, anything else.
As the final words of his vow settled in his soul, a chime, clearer and more resonant than any earthly bell, echoed in his mind. A line of stark, silver text burned itself into his vision.
[For the Rescue of Your Sister and the Assumption of Her Care, you have been Granted the Crone's Bequest.]
[As thine sister finds thy favor, so shalt thou findan in those thou trēowe as she trēowt thee, and ?fre ?nig ōeer]
Dalliance stared at the words, his breath catching in his throat. The Crone. She had heard.
He looked up. As if in response, a single, perfect snowflake floated past his face and landed on the rough wood of the cart, lasting for a long second before it melted. Then another.
He looked up. The sky, which had been a clear, crisp blue, was now a soft, uniform grey. It began to snow.
Miss Thicket Wimple
