“What do you think, Foss?” said someone, carefully including me.
“I think they’re trouble,” I said. “And I wish they would take their trouble elsewhere, rather than bringing it to us.”
I stomped back to the shop and home.
There was no escaping him. All people could talk about for days afterward was the sorcerer, how handsome he was and how grand, how eldritch his eyes had been and how tall he was, whether he would come back, whether he was different from the ladies or just like them.
The menfolk got a taste of what it was like for the women after the sorceresses left, and they went about glowering, with caps pulled low to muffle the chatter of their wives and daughters and sweethearts.He’s long gone. Just shut up about it, won’t you?they told the women. But the women wouldn’t, and they didn’t.
They drooped about during the days, minds a mile off, and sighed in their beds at night, probably diddling themselves under the covers. Some of the men too, I was sure. I thought about it, thought maybe that would help to fix whatever the ailment was the sorcerer had given me.
Maybe if I could just twiddle my fingers about a bit and have a release and get it all over with ... But it didn’t work. It was like trying to kick a stubborn donkey over a puddle. I rubbed until my fingers were raw, until it started to chafe, but my quaint just lay there sullen and dumb and refused to help me.
What, then?
I went in search of Dav Mallet, because I couldn’t think of anything else to do. I had never exchanged more than a few words with him before he was taken, and none at all since he had come back.
There was an unspoken rule that the girls and women of the town shouldn’t talk to Dav, for fear of hearing the possibly unsavory things to which he had been subjected, so I sought him out at a time when not many other people would be around to gossip and speculate—when he was leaving the pub at closing.
He sat there every night at his table off to the side, weeping into his ale. Everyone ignored him now, too accustomed to him to even be embarrassed any longer. He had become one of the town oddities, like the man who kept ferrets and walked them on bits of string, and the mad old woman who slept with the pigs on Goodman Marrow’s farm.
Da was a hardworking man and had little time or inclination for drinking, and so he was long abed by the time I slipped out to wait for Dav. I stood in the shadows until he emerged from the pub, one of the last to do so. He had an odd, shambling walk that wasn’t due to drunkenness, but it was a kind of disorientation, strange to see in a man who had lived in the same village since his birth.
“Dav,” I said, and then, “Mr. Mallet,” because that sounded more respectful.
It took repeating his name a few times for him to stop and look about for me. His eyes were unfocused and lost.
“What do you want?” he said. “What do you want with me?” He raised his hand, perhaps to shade his eyes to see me better, but it looked like he was warding off a blow.
“It’s me, Foss Butcher,” I said. “From the shop.”
“Oh. Foss.”
“I wanted to ask you some questions.” I took a deep breath. “About the sorceress.”
He moaned a little. “I didn’t do nothing,” he said. “She took me.”
“Yes, I know she took you, Dav. I wanted to ask you about it.”
“I didn’t do nothing.”
“Right, but ... When she took you, how did you feel?”
He looked at me properly, then, as if he was really thinking about it. “It was the happiest I had ever been in my life,” he said.
“And you went with her, right? To the city?”
His eyes went blank again.
“You don’t have to tell me everything, Dav. It’s just ...” I hesitated. “I think something happened to me, when the sorcerer came the other day. I feel ... well, strange, and I think it’s something he did to me. I think I have to go and find him.”
“No.” Dav shook his head vigorously from side to side, and clasped my forearms with hands that were surprisingly bony and strong. “No, no, no. No, you mustn’t.”
I writhed in his grip. “I have to dosomething,” I said. “I feel like I’m sick. Like he made me sick, and only he can fix it.”
“Don’t go,” said Dav. “There’s nothing worse.”
He took one of my hands and guided it to his chest. I curled my fingers in, unwilling to touch him. I could smell his fishy sweat—or perhaps he had been around fish for so many years that their oils just seeped from his pores now.
