Short Story: The Deal is Struck Signed Paperback

• An odd peddler.
• His enigmatic cart
• Several deals - some good, somedangerous.

Flibbet the Peddler pushed the handcart up the rough trail, bumping over roots and stones. A sparse forest of low scrubby trees spread out over the hill around him, their branches knotted and gnarled as though each limb had struggled through some hardship to grow.

“It looks a bit wizened, don’t you think?” Flibbet asked the cart as a bit of wind rustled through the paper thin leaves.

He lifted his face to feel the slight coolness of the breeze. The floppy brim of his hat kept the sun off his head, but the midday light showered down on his handcart, warming the wood and highlighting the sworls in the grain with accents of honey-gold.

It wasn’t a large cart, by any means. Just a box, like a good-sized traveling trunk, held up on the far end by two large, sturdy wheels, and on Flibbet’s end by two long, sturdy handles. The sides were painted with bits of whimsy that the peddler occasionally added to, and the bottom was ringed with a set of little drawers, each latched snugly shut. The flat lid was folded shut, jostling against its own latch at each bump in the ground.

Every line on the cart was familiar. The knot that looked like a sideways face, the long scar from the tree branch that had fallen on it during that windstorm in the lake territory. The twin worn spots on the handles, smooth from years of use.

Flibbet considered the new stand of pine trees he’d painted on the lid. They weren’t quite right. He’d had to sit on that crooked stool while he worked and the trees all leaned slightly to the left.

“We could pretend they’re blowing in a breeze,” he said.

The cart rolled on with its normal creaks and groans, seemingly content with the angle of the pines.

Flibbet’s cart was far from full. The folks in the last tiny hamlet had been in possession of so few things that three of his trades had been for mugs of homemade scarletberry wine. For the fourth, he’d traded a beaded hair band to a five-year-old girl in exchange for the story of her morning adventures.

The cart hadn’t minded, of course, since Flibbet had let the child clamber up on top of it, treating it as a stage for her story.

“Mama added dried scarletberr’s to the gruel this morn,” Pitty had said, very seriously, “and it was so rich I felt like the queen. Momma says there tisn’t no queen, but there must be one somewhere, or how’d we know about queens? But I tell you, wherever the queen is, it’s for certain she’s ettin’ scarletberr’s in her gruel.

“When the ettin’ and washin’ was sorted, I took myself to the back corner ‘round the woodshed, because of an evening’ lately the firebugs have been gathering there.” She’d wiggled her fingers through the air, drawing them down to clasp them in front of her face. “An’ for sure that must be a sign of a fairy home. Mama says there tisn’t any fairy homes, but if there’s queens, there’s fairies. Any person can see that if they just think.”

Unfortunately, there had been no sign of the fairy home behind the woodshed, but Pitty was sure she’d find it eventually, especially if she kept eating like a queen, as fairies were bound to show themselves to royalty.

“Do you think she’ll find the fairy home?” Flibbet asked his cart.

The cart made no reply.

The wide wooden wheels turned easily today, but their path had followed a slight uphill for long enough that Flibbet’s legs ached and his pace had started to lag.

A damp lock of blond hair, untouched by even a hint of grey, sagged down onto his forehead from under his hat. He knew he looked nearly the same as he had thirty years ago when he’d first met the cart, but he could feel the years nonetheless. Each one left a sort of weight behind from difficult memories or painful experiences. The good things remained too, but sometimes with so much wistfulness that they still settled into his bones the way pine needles settled on a path, covering it, pressing into it, being absorbed until they were part of it.

The curve ahead appeared to be the top of the hill, so he took a bracing breath and began humming the old skipping song about the one-legged bird, the one the children in Brecken always used to sing while they hopped over rocks and sticks.

His footsteps picked up to match the song, and the cart seemed to roll more eagerly along.

Flibbet gave the sturdy wooden contraption an amused look, and shifted to singing.



The bird had one

Hop hop hop

Leg that bounced

Hop hop hop

Like a old, fat frog

Hop hop hop

But the leg t’waint fat

Hop hop hop…



With each “hop hop hop,” Flibbet hopped on one leg, and the cart bounced forward cheerily. They rolled up to the turn, and the world ahead opened up into a wide vista. The hill dropped off sharply ahead of them, ending at a huge, winding valley. Hills rose past it again, covered with more pine than scrubby trees.

The path continued on to the right, hugging the top of the slope, winding its way slowly down to—

Flibbet stumbled to a stop.

Down in the valley at the end of a small town, sat a large stone house with three chimneys, each topped with a misshapen, glowering gargoyle.

“No.” Flibbet dropped the cart handles and it crashed down onto the small legs at the back. “Absolutely not.”

The cart groaned and the wheels shifted forward, dragging the legs through the dirt a few inches before stopping. Flibbet glared down at the fiendish monsters perched at the top of the chimneys. The original warm copper had turned sickly green and crusted, a color much more appropriate to their owner’s sickly and crusted disposition.

“We are not going to Pyrrenford.” He picked up the handles, and pulled back the way they’d come. The wheels stuck and the cart didn’t budge.

A small, half-overgrown path wound off to the left, and Flibbet pivoted the cart around and pushed it onto the path, merely shoving harder when the wheels caught on roots and sank into the dirt.

“There is absolutely no chance we are going to him. Not again. I know you remember last time.” The cart slammed to a stop against a rock that jutted out of the ground and Flibbet stumbled against it. “I don’t care whether you want to go!” Flibbet heaved it forward, pushing until the wheel rolled over the rock and crashed down on the other side.

The lid of the cart unlatched and bounced open, and Flibbet caught a glimpse of something shiny inside. He dropped the handles again.

“No!” His voice dropped to an angry whisper as he cracked the lid open and peered inside. “I am especially not going near him while I have that! I hid that knife away! How is it—”

But the glint had come from a small silver ring, not the blade of the knife.

Flibbet glanced around the deserted woods, and down the path that looked like it hadn’t been traveled all summer. He moved to the front of the cart, between the handles and the wheels, and lifted the lid all the way open, the hinges protesting with a long, familiar squeak, until it stood upright along the back of the cart.

Two shelves, one of which could fold out over the handles, the other above and between the wheels, blocked the sides of the interior, but Flibbet reached into the open middle. He shoved his few wares over into the corner, and lifted out the false bottom.

There was the knife, not glinting half as bright as the ring had. It was silver, but also, not silver. The dappled sunlight fell on it, but the reflection was somehow dark.

It was shoved over to one side of the secret compartment, and Flibbet reached down to straighten it out, but paused before his fingers touched it. Even this close, he felt a stir of disquiet run through him. An irritation at that rough spot on the edge of the cart. A renewed anger at the house with the looming gargoyles.

He set the cover back in place quickly, and spread his other goods back across it.

The cart didn’t like the knife there, he could tell. But there was no where else for it. The two times Flibbet had touched it, he’d felt…angry. The quick, deep sort of anger that he hadn’t felt in a very long time. The anger he’d spent years trying to purge from his heart.

“The sea,” he said to the cart. “We need to take it to the sea. To those cliffs east of Molas. Over that rocky section that no one ever goes through. We’re going straight there, and throwing this thing in the sea. I cannot possibly give it to anyone. And you can’t want to either.”

He closed the lid of the cart firmly and started pushing again. This time the wheels found easier ground, and they started to make good time, aside from the fact that the path seemed determined to wind aimlessly through the woods.

Trails branched off to the right and the left, and Flibbet chose the one leading away from the Pyrrenford at every point. Although he very quickly lost all sense of direction under the trees and, after two instances of suspecting that the path had actually doubled back on itself, merely picked the left-most path at each intersection.

The cart seemed compliant with these choices, and they made their way downhill until the sound of water started to rustle through the trees.

“Very good,” Flibbet said. “We’ll follow this downstream to the sea.”

They bounced over a large tree root and around a lazy turn. The cart rolled out into the bright sunlight again, onto the very edge of an open road running along a wide, slow-moving river.

Flibbet blinked at the light, astonished to find houses tightly packed up against the water. The closest building sported a waterwheel rolling steadily alongside a familiar mill.

“No.” Flibbet dropped the handles again, letting the cart crash to the ground.

Slowly, he lifted his eyes past the town to the house on the hill behind it, and to the ghastly faces of three sickly green gargoyles.

• 52 pages