The Door, The Inn, and The Innkeeper

  By A. Stargazer

  ***

  Stupid.

  He was so stupid.

  Why had he thought that the cave would be safe? Didn’t mother always tell him never to go below ground? Didn’t mother tell him that was where the evil things lurked?

  So stupid.

  “Boy!” called the goblins. “Good boy. Come here, boy. Meaty boy, good boy, come to cook pot.”

  The goblins were no bigger than he was, but they outnumbered him, and he knew that their size was deceptive. They were strong. Strong as a man, almost, and he was a boy. One of them would be enough to do him in, and there were at least ten.

  He had to run. To hide. He had to find somewhere safe.

  But he was trapped, and the way out was past the goblin horde. They knew he was down here. They knew he was trapped.

  He went deeper. Down into the depths, perhaps there was some passageway that would lead back to the surface. Back somewhere else, somewhere not blocked by the goblins. Perhaps—

  There was a door in the wall. A strong, wooden door made of cedar.

  That was strange.

  Strange was bad. He wasn’t supposed to trust strange things.

  But the goblins were looking for him, looking to put him in a cook pot and eat him.

  Maybe he could hide on the other side of the door while they went past, and they wouldn’t know he was there. Maybe they wouldn’t check.

  He opened the door, and he stepped into the quiet common room of an Inn. The door slammed shut behind him, and just like that he was either trapped, or he was saved. He wasn’t certain which.

  “Sorry, your friends aren’t welcome here,” the Innkeeper said. “One of the very few rules I have is to leave the violence at the door, and very few goblins are able to do that. Especially ones hungry for little boys. What is your name, son?”

  “I’m not your son,” the boy said defensively. He frowned. “But my name is Tanny. Short for Litany. What is this place?”

  “Oh, just a little Dream someone once had,” the Innkeeper said. “You’re hungry, dirty, your clothes are torn and ragged. I can help with all of those things, if you’d let me.”

  “Yeah?” Tanny said. “And what do you want for it?”

  “Your Story,” the Innkeeper said. “Tell me, Tanny. What’s your very first memory?”

  Tanny frowned, but answered. “Music. Mah kept me in the back of the church and I was listening to the music while she was holding mass. I remember the music.”

  “What a good memory to start a life with,” the Innkeeper said. “So. Which will it be. Food first, or a bath?”

  Tanny frowned. He looked down at himself. His shirt was torn wide open and his skin was filthy. His pants were little better, hanging at his hips by a string. He’d lost one shoe. His mother would be so upset to see her precious son looking like this.

  “I guess I’ll take the bath,” he admitted. He frowned. “But I don’t need your help with that. Just…just tell me where it is.”

  “It’s right through that door,” the Innkeeper answered. “If you leave your clothes by the door and let me know when you’re in the water, I’ll fetch them and see what I can do about mending them. Or, if you’d rather, I might have something that would fit you instead.”

  “Yeah okay,” Tanny said, and he went through the door.

  The bath tub was enormous, big enough for six or seven adults to fit in at once, and for just a minute Tanny thought of the cook pot the goblins wanted to put him in. Maybe, he thought, he hadn’t actually escaped after all.

  But that was foolish.

  He stripped down and got into the tub.

  “Okay, I’m in the water,” he called out, and the Innkeeper came in. Without even looking in the boy’s direction, he fetched the filthy and torn clothes and left without saying a word.

  A few minutes soaking in the water, and Tanny noticed something.

  His cuts and scrapes were healing themselves.

  Oh.

  So this place really was magic, he thought. He swallowed.

  He wished his mother was here, because he was much to young to be negotiating with someone who could do real magic. But he didn’t have any other option. Not when there were goblins who wanted to eat him on the other side of that door, and the only thing keeping him safe was a sturdy door and a strange magician.

  He swallowed, and began to wash, letting the water work its magic in both the traditional and non-traditional ways.

  ***

  Tanny fell asleep in the water. He wasn’t sure how long, but he woke up wrinkly. The water was still hot, so it might not have been that long.

  Or the water might have been magic and he could have slept an entire day away. He felt rested enough that just maybe he had.

  He got out of the water and dried with the towel nearby. Sitting on the chair next to the door was a change of clothes that wasn’t the clothes he’d come in with, but were just his size all the same. He dressed and sat on the chair, thinking carefully.

  He knew he wasn’t really safe here.

  Things like this place, they took things from you. His mother warned him to never make a deal with a faerie. The Innkeeper didn’t look like a faerie, but maybe he was one.

  The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

  Yeah, that made sense.

  It’s the only thing that made sense.

  He held out his hand and snapped his fingers, and a spark flashed above them.

  Nope. No good. Maybe in ten years he’d be half as strong as his mother, but right now he wasn’t even an acolyte. He couldn’t fight against a grown faerie in their own domain. He’d have to reason with the faerie, and try to get out without trading away his firstborn or something like that.

  He swallowed and braced himself, working up his courage and gathering his wits before he opened the door and stepped back into the common room. The Innkeeper was standing at the bar, cleaning a mug that was already clean and smiling.

  The Innkeeper was humming a song.

  A song Tanny knew well.

  It was the song from his first memory.

  Tanny felt a surge of panic. Had he traded that away without realizing it?

  But no. He still remembered it. He could still remember the way he’d been playing with blocks in the back of the church while the choir sang. Nothing had changed.

  “You’re very nervous, but you needn’t worry too much,” the Innkeeper said. “You’re right. This isn’t free. Nothing ever is. But what I take from you, you get to keep it as well. When you tell a story, do you forget that story? No, you give and you keep at the same time. That’s the magic of stories, Tanny. The oldest magic there is.”

  “You can read my mind?” the boy asked.

  “Yes, but I don’t need to. I see how nervous you are without it,” the Innkeeper said. He sighed and set his mug down. “Look, lad, I do this sort of thing a lot. Saving boys and girls, saving men and women, saving things which you don’t even have words for. If I didn’t, their story would end without ever having been told. And that’s what I get out of this. A story that would have died were it not for my intervention.”

  He threw the rag he’d been cleaning the mug with over his shoulder and went into the back room. “I’m not altruistic, though you might say I’m kind. I benefit from listening to people’s lowest moments in ways that you don’t understand. But they benefit from telling me, so am I evil? I don’t think so. But perhaps you do.”

  “I didn’t say that,” Tanny shouted to be heard. “I wasn’t thinking unkind thoughts at all.”

  The Innkeeper’s chuckle reached his ears, and Tanny cursed. He shouldn’t lie. Faeries didn’t like when you lied to them.

  “Believe me or not. But once you tell me your story, you’re free to go. I’ll put you back at the edge of your village and far from the goblins that were chasing you, and you can tell your Mother whatever lie or whatever truth you want. That’s not my business.”

  The Innkeeper came back with a plate filled with chicken, mashed potatoes, lentils and greens. Tanny’s mouth began to water.

  “I’ve told you the terms of the bargain,” the Innkeeper said. “Do you accept?”

  “You’re not tricking me?” the boy said.

  “You’re inside my domain, lad. I don’t need to trick you. But what I want from you can only be freely given, not taken. Just as I’m giving you this food, just as I healed your wounds and gave you comfort, all I ask is a Story. So. Will you indulge me?”

  Tanny, his mouth watering, looked at the plate of steaming food. “After I eat, I’ll tell you everything I know,” he promised.

  “Deal,” the Innkeeper said, setting the plate down on a table that was just the boy’s size. Tanny sat, and he began to devour the sumptuous meal.

  ***

  “So my name is Litany, like I said. Litany Jones, but everyone calls me Tanny. I’m nine years old, and my mother is a priestess. My pah is a knight. I have the spark of magic, and my pah has been training me in the sword since I was six, but I don’t know if I want to be a magic knight or go to the monastery to learn to be a priest or what I’m going to do when I’m older,” the boy said once his belly was full.

  “Being a magic knight would be fun but dangerous, and after tonight I’m thinking maybe I don’t want to live a dangerous life after all. Being a priest would be much safer, although I’d still have to deal with ghosts and demons and lost souls and such, so maybe that’s not the safest job either. I don’t know.

  “I have two brothers and a sister. Sort of. They’re my pah’s kids with his wife. They’re married and I stay with them sometimes. She doesn’t like me, his wife, but she’s not terrible to me either. Mostly I stay with them when Mah has to go to another village for some reason that’s a little bit dangerous and she doesn’t want me clinging to her skirt.

  “That’s what my brother said, at least.

  “But most of the time I live with Mah in the big church in the center of town. Everyone in town knows me and everyone is kind to me, since I’m probably going to be important in the future and everything. You’re not going to tell anyone about how you found me, are you? About how, um, how I might have had a bit of pee in my pants?”

  “Your secret is safe with me,” the Innkeeper assured him.

  “Okay. So anyway, that’s who I am. Litany Jones. As for how I got chased by goblins and ended up here, I think that’s the story you really want to hear.”

  Tanny paused, wondering how much he actually needed to tell to satisfy the bargain. Some of it was embarrassing. But the Innkeeper had already seen him at his lowest moment, so…

  “I ran away.”

  He took a drink of the juice from the glass that was half full, and had been for six drinks now.

  “You probably want to know why I ran away, don’t you?”

  “I’d like to know as much as you’re willing to tell me,” the Innkeeper answered. “That and no more. If you haven’t paid your tab by the end of the story, well, I don’t think that will be a problem.”

  “It’s my step-mother’s fault. Mother left me with my pah while she went out to seal a demon. She’s been gone for two months. And then there was a bandit raid, and my pah gathered up his men and went to put them down. So I was left alone in the house with my stepmother and my brothers and my sister.

  “I told you before that she doesn’t like me. But I thought that was just because I wasn’t her kid. But she doesn’t just not like me. She’s a witch. Witches don’t have magic in their blood like I do, but they know how to use it.

  “I started to notice that I’d fall asleep and wake up with little cuts and scratches. I didn’t remember getting them playing, and I didn’t know where they were coming from. But the cuts were getting bigger the longer I was left alone with her.

  “I knew something was wrong but I didn’t know what. I didn’t know who was cutting me, but I figured out a way to find out. It’s a little bit of magic my mother taught me. To be awake while you’re asleep. So the next time my step-mother came in to take my blood, I saw her. And when she was gone, I made myself wake up and followed her out into the woods with the blood she’d taken from me.

  “That’s where I saw her.

  “She was using my blood to try to conjure a demon.

  “I’ve never seen a demon before, but I knew that’s what it was the moment I heard it’s voice. Slithery and slimery, ugly and nasty, twisted and cruel and dirty. She was demanding power from it, but it said that it had to come into our side of the world to reward her. And that in order to come into our world, it needed my blood. All of it.

  “And she promised that she’d find a way.

  “I knew she was going to kill me. To sacrifice me to that demon.

  “So I ran away.”

  He was quiet for a moment.

  “I’ve been on my own in the woods for two weeks now. My step-mother, she sent the villagers after me. And she sent—she sent other things after me. I had to use some secrets I learned from Mah to hide from them. It’s no fun, standing in the middle of a magic circle until dawn while the shadows try to pull you out of it. While they whisper and make promises and lie.

  “I knew I had to find somewhere safe to hide tonight. Somewhere where I could put up the charms I’d made and draw the circles that keep me safe from the shadows. But the little tricks I know are only good for shadows and that sort of things. They don’t do anything against goblins.

  “And that’s how you found me. Is that enough? I have more stories if I haven’t paid, but they’re—“

  “You’ve settled the tab, Litany Jones,” the Innkeeper said formally. “You’re welcome to stay for almost as long as you want. When you want to leave, just walk through the door that brought you here.”

  “And end up in a cookpot?” the boy asked. “No thanks.”

  “The door will open near your Mah,” the Innkeeper promised. “What will happen when you tell her what you told me?”

  Tanny was quiet as he considered the outcome of his survival for the first time.

  “They’ll burn my Step-mother,” he answered.

  “Does that make you feel better?”

  “Not really,” he said. “But if she’s contracting demons, then she’s probably the reason Mah has been so busy these last few years. And everyone thought it was strange how she married my Pah so soon after she came to town. I don’t know. It’s grownups work to decide what happens. I’m just going to tell Mah the truth and what happens, happens.”

  “That’s the path to wisdom,” the Innkeeper said. “Now. You look exhausted. There’s a room there with a bed for you, and I’ll have your breakfast waiting for you in the morning.”

  “Thanks,” Tanny said. He went into the room, undressed for bed, used the chamberpot, then went to sleep, feeling safe for the first time in weeks.

  He left the next morning, opening the door to find himself in a church three towns over and his mother giving a sermon. The door closed behind him, and when he looked it was gone.