Hello!
If you're new here, here's how this works: in the beginning of the
month, I ask a question. I get answers from people, hopefully. I take
one of those answers and write a short story based on it, then put it
out on the last day of the month. Sometimes they're actually pretty good, and
sometimes they're a real mess. But at least every time I put some words on paper. Screen. Whatever.
Here you can find that story.
Which, for the record, I literally wrote in less than three hours on the last day. That means that while it's not very good, I'm kind of impressed with myself. Not for my procrastination, but for the fact that I managed to write 2600 almost decent words and then cut a hundred words off all within three hours.
I also read it into an audio format, if audiobooks are more your thing than actual written words.
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What's a must-do thing in October?
Building a shed for fire woods. Winter is coming, need to make the last preparations. (answer from Henni)
He was hammering one of the last boards to the roof of the shed. It was about time. The weather had shifted from cool to chilly a while ago. He didn’t think there would be snow for a few more weeks, but it was better to be prepared too early than too late. Or so he had always thought. Not that it was too early now. It was better to have the firewood somewhere sheltered from the last rains of the fall too.
He hit the nail for one last time, then straightened his back, stretching. His father always said honest, hard work was what made a good man. He had never really thought that was true. There were plenty of good men, and women, for that matter, who did things his father wouldn’t consider “honest, hard work”. It was starting to seem to him that what honest, hard work made was bodies that never stopped aching.
It took him a moment to notice the woman. Well. Woman might not be entirely accurate. She was standing below him, next to the shed, looking angry, and disappointed, and like she was looking at something that really wasn’t up to standard.
“Agatha.”
She looked up at him, and her eyes flashed. He had never seen eyes like that on anyone. At first they would only look a warm brown, but if you paid any attention, you’d immediately notice something very off about them. And then, if you spent more than a couple of seconds looking at them, it became obvious: they looked like they were on fire, flames of orange and red and yellow dancing over the background brown, sometimes almost completely hiding it from view.
“Stop looking at my shed like that,” he said. “It’s a perfectly fine shed. It doesn’t need to be the prettiest thing ever built, it just needs to work.”
He climbed down from his roof as he spoke, Agatha’s eyes following him like a cat ready to pounce on its prey. He stopped in front of her, wiped his hands on his trousers, even though there was nothing there to wipe. He looked at her and clenched his jaw.
“What do you want?” he asked.
“You betrayed me, Jonathan,” she said with a voice where nothing in particular was wrong, but that as a whole was off in a way that made his skin crawl. He would never get used to that voice.
“I don’t think I did,” he answered coolly. He had known this day would come. He had hoped it wouldn’t, but he had known that was a fool’s hope.
“You left me to rot,” she said.
“I didn’t have a choice. And I thought you’b be able to get out on your own,” he said.
“You thought I wouldn’t get out before you’re dirt in the forest,” she said. “And you thought I wouldn’t come back for your children, or their children, or their children. You thought when I found you again you wouldn’t be here anymore, building a crooked shed.”
“A good shed is what keeps our wood dry, to keep us alive and warm through the winter.”
“Is it? That’s the thing that keeps you alive? Then hear this, Jonathan. As long as I live, you don’t get to keep your shed. Not you, or anyone who has the misfortune to share your blood.”
He was so surprised he actually laughed at that.
“You’re cursing me to live shedless?”
Her lip twitched like she, too, was amused. Too late he realised it was not a good sign.
“I’m cursing your descendents to live shedless,” she simply said, and with a wave of her hand he found an iron nail the length of his finger buried in his chest, and the shed he had worked on for days engulfed in fire.
***
I shift the toddler onto the other hip and rest my wrist on the now empty side. I sigh at the wreckage. This was new, at least. I’d never seen the shed go down in a rampage, and I don’t remember hearing of anything like it either. My grandmother told me one year there had been a giant flock of woodpeckers that had torn through the walls and roof until there was practically nothing to salvage. I don’t think the woodpeckers found food in the planks (not that that would have been the first time the wood was filled with burrowing larvae). They just showed up and started pecking away.
More often than not it was fire, but it never started for the same reason twice. Arson. Firebugs. A single spark from the chimney of the house. Having to chop the shed itself into firewood after the proper wood ran out.
“Oh my, what happened here?” I turn to see a woman standing at the gate. She’s smiling, her eyes dancing. I’ve never seen her before. I know everyone in town.
“One of the herds decided their migration route would go right through our yard this year instead of half a day’s travel west of here.”
“That’s unfortunate,” the woman says. I don’t like her. There’s something about her voice that makes my skin crawl.
“I’m sorry, who are you?” I ask, trying hard not to be rude.
“Merely a traveller. I once knew someone who lived in town, so I came to visit. I couldn’t find him, though. He’s been dead for a while.”
“I’m sorry you missed your friend,” I say, and turn back to the wreckage. There’s no time to do anything about it tonight. It will be dark soon. Tomorrow morning I’ll clear off what’s left of the old shed and get started on the new one. Like every. Single. October. I’ll need to fix the hole in the fence too. Usually nothing else gets damaged but the shed. I’m so tired. For a moment I wonder if the years my grandmother told they didn’t have the money to build a new one were better or worse than the ones when they had to build one. I was so done with having to keep doing this. But no. Having to build a shed was easily worth having dry firewood all winter.
“We weren’t that close,” the woman is saying from the gate. I had hoped she would take the hint of me turning away and leave. Too subtle, apparently.
“You came all the way here to see someone who you weren’t close with?”
She shrugs.
“I was passing by on my way somewhere else.”
I turn to look at her again. She doesn’t look like a traveller. She’s too clean to have spent much time on the road, at least in those clothes. My mind only spares a moment for the clothes, though. Her eyes keep tugging at my gaze. So I look at her straight in the eyes. She looks... amused? Why? I stare at her for a moment. And then I notice her eyes flickering. Not in the light. The sun is almost down, and from where we’re standing it’s already behind the trees. They flicker on their own, with an internal fire. I freeze. Then take a deep breath.
“So. Just passing by?” I then say, straining to add a layer of pleasantness into my voice. Grandmother always thought it would be me. “Where are you staying tonight, if your friend isn’t here to offer you a place?”
She shrugs again, like it’s not a concern. I suppose it wouldn’t be.
“You could stay here, if you wanted. It’s getting dark soon. It would reflect badly on the town if you had to sleep outside so close to town.”
I can see her thinking it through. Then she smiles at me, and nods.
“That would be most welcome,” she says, and I wave her in through the gate and to follow me into the house.
I clench my jaw, steel my mind. Run through everything my grandmother and father ever told me. It surprised me, but I’ve been prepared for this my entire life. I know exactly what I’m doing. I’m ready. We’ve been ready for decades.
I mentally slip the mask of a host back on and smile as I turn to keep the door open for the woman coming in after me. Well, woman might not be entirely accurate.
“May I ask who your friend was?” I ask. I know I won’t get a straight answer. “It’s not a very big place, I know everyone here. Please, do sit down.”
“Oh, I don’t think you would know him,” her voice is light, dismissive. She sits by the table.
“I’ve lived here my entire life. You can’t be much older than me.” We both know that’s not true, but I need her off her guard for as long as possible. “I must have known whoever it was.”
“I’m older than I look,” she simply says. She’s good. I set the toddler down in his chair and turn to put the last things in place. Just looking like I’m doing busywork. I sweep a bit, set the broom by the front door, and then start on the fire. I keep up a pleasant chatter the whole time. I pick my words and my questions very carefully. The kind of questions that you would ask any traveller you’ve invited into your home for the night. She does an excellent job dancing around them.
I spark the fire and mutter the words under my breath. I first learned them when I was a child. My father made me repeat them every night at bed time for a decade, and every month after that. They’re the only words of the language I know, and the words I know better than any others. The spark lights the tinder, and in a few seconds the dry wood is also on fire. I know exactly how to build a fire that starts fast and easy, if I need to.
I turn to look at my guest. There is shock and surprise on her face. She can feel it.
“Now, Agatha,” I say, all friendliness gone from my voice. There’s no sense pretending anymore that she’s fooling me. She doesn’t show any surprise that I know her name. Her eyes are on fire, cold and angry. “I need you to lift the curse.”
She smiles in a way that’s too sweet to be pleasant, that never reaches her eyes.
“And why would I do that?” she asks.
“Because we are tired of building a new shed every October,” I simply say. As if that would convince her. “And because I won’t let you out before you do.”
“You think I can’t hurt you?” she asks, amused now. I dig out the amulet I always carry around my neck. One that everyone in my family has carried with them ever since grandmother got her hands on them. Her eyes widen a fraction at the sight of it.
“We knew you’d come back,” I say. “Your kind always checks up on their curses eventually. We didn’t know when, but we knew you would. The entire family has prepared for this for generations. Don’t think I’m as easy a target as my great grandfather was.”
She’s silent for a while. I sense that she’s impressed, but there’s a good chance I’m imagining it.
“I could wait you out,” she says. “I could wait your toddler out. Time will take you well before it comes for me. I can definitely wait out the fire. You can’t keep it burning forever. I might not be able to hurt you directly, but once the fire goes out, there’s nothing you can do to stop me from doing anything else.”
She’s angry. Good. I laugh.
“You think in the last decades we haven’t found a way to kill you?” I ask. “That I would let you leave if you don’t lift the curse?”
That stops her in her tracks. She knows there’s a way. She knows it’s possible. She’s trying to decide whether I’m bluffing. I’m not.
“Your great grandfather deserved it,” she says. I shrug.
“Maybe. I didn’t know him. Maybe he was a terrible person. From what my grandmother has told me, it doesn’t sound like it, but she was five when you killed him. She wouldn’t know.”
She looks at me, like she’s trying to hide the fact she didn’t think I’d concede.
“It doesn’t matter if he deserved it. Because *we* don’t deserve it.”
“You say as you have literally trapped me in your home.”
“I would have asked nicely first if I had thought it had any chance of working.”
She’s quiet again, thinking.
“You’re saying if I reverse the curse you’ll let me go?”
“I’m saying you reverse the curse and swear to three things. One, you won’t put the curse or any other curse back on or do any other kind of damage here after I let you go. Two, never come after my family again with curses or anything else because of the feud between you and my great grandfather or you and me. If someone in the future does something stupid and gets involved with you again that’s their problem. And three, never send or let anyone else come after us with curses or anything else because of said feuds. I will let you go, we will go our separate ways and never see eachother again. The consequences of my great grandfather’s actions end here, and there will be no other consequences from my actions than the lifting of the curse.”
The terms have been hammered into me since I was a child. You can’t be too precise with the wording. My voice is stern, demanding. Matter-of-fact. This is what will happen, and there’s no room for negotiation. I’ve never been as certain of anything in my entire life.
“Very well,” she says after a long silence. “But only because I’m in a good mood, and I can respect the strength you’ve shown here. Don’t doubt for a moment that if you killed me, I could take you and half the village with me. You got lucky. The curse is lifted.”
“Good.”
I spread the wood in the fireplace so they’ll stop burning. I move the broom, scratch some paint off of the door frame and the floor.
The moment the bonds stop holding, Agatha disappears.
I have to sit down for a while. This has been an overwhelming day. A day my family has been preparing for for generations.
The toddler starts fussing. I lift him into my lap. He will never know what it’s like to prepare for winter every year by building a new shed. I don’t know what to think about that. It’s good. Leaves time for other winter preparations. But at this point, it’s also tradition, and as much as I hated doing it, losing that makes me a little sad.
Tomorrow I’ll build the last shed for hopefully many years to come.
