same fate that the kender should have had years ago! He should have died out there, eaten by rats and wolves. It's your fault, Arskin, for dragging that demon child in among good folk.'
'He's not a demon,' Ark said, his voice shaky. 'You're just upset, now. He's a kender, and they're just like you and me, even if they cause a little more — '
'The Abyss take you!' screamed Goodwife Filster. 'The evil gods delivered him into your hands to destroy us!'
'Goodie, he was just a little baby, and his mother was dead. She'd been wounded by goblins or bandits, and she'd carried him all the way through the wilderness to get him to safety. I couldn't leave him there after I buried her. If you had been me, you would have done the same. You know it!' Ark sounded like he was trying to reason with a swamp viper he'd almost stepped on.
I was shocked to hear about my mother, because Ark had never said a word to me about her, and for a moment I couldn't think of anything else until Goodwife Filster laughed.
'I would have known what to do to the little bastard,' she said, and my insides went cold when she said it. 'I would have spared us all this torment. But because of you and that kender, I lost everything I ever owned. It's only right that you should suffer as I have, just exactly as I have.'
I slowly moved around the door frame. No one was by the door, but I could look into the wall mirror nearby and see part of Goodwife Filster's back and one of her arms. She was holding a torch in one hand and had a meat- cutting knife stuck in her belt. That was bad enough, but, being so close to the door, I could also smell something like lamp oil, only it couldn't have been — or so I thought — because Ark doesn't own any oil lamps, because he says the local oil burns too fast and smells awful, like burned fish, which is what it comes from (we call them greasegills).
Of course, my next thought was that Goodwife Filster had brought her own lamp oil, and that she meant what she said about Ark suffering exactly as she had, and suddenly all I could think about was my growing up in the shoe shop and how it was the only home I had ever known and how Ark and I, and later Widow Muffin, had always had so much fun here. I realized I had no idea how much lamp oil Goodwife Filster had brought in with her, but it smelled like enough to burn up my memories and the shoe shop and maybe some people with it.
I stopped listening then so I'd have a chance to think. Think first, Ark always tells me, even if it's just for a moment. At first I thought I should run for help, but I didn't know if Goodwife Filster would behave herself long enough for me to find Magistrate Jarvis and get back without anyone being hurt. I carefully put down the satchel with the facts machine and looked down at the steps and thought and thought. Goodwife Filster was saying something about beasts and dragons and fires from the Abyss, and she wasn't making a lot of sense, though in a way she was, even if it was a very awful sort of logic.
About then I remembered a trick I had once played on Ark when I was small, something I had sworn never to do again after I'd tried the trick, and Ark had broken two of his fingers, for which I'd been spanked and felt bad over for weeks. I was looking at the bottom of the door frame, where part of the frame had fallen off but left some nails sticking out, just enough to tie a string across the bottom of the door above ankle height.
I felt in my robe pockets for some string, but I didn't have any. Then I remembered my once-holy symbol of Gilean, and I carefully slid its chain off my neck and knelt down by the door as quietly as I could. It took a few seconds for me to wrap the chain around the nails on either side of the doorway. It was dark, and I didn't think Goodwife Filster would see the chain until it was too late. Then I grabbed the satchel.
I thought about calling for Goodwife Filster to come outside, but I thought she might say no and burn down our home. That left only one solution, and from the sound of things inside, I was going to have to do it now.
'Don't set the house on fire,' Ark was begging. 'I don't want any of us to get hurt. Please take the torch outside.'
'I have no fear of you,' cried Goodwife Filster. 'I am the arm of righteousness. I am the avenger of fallen Istar.'
'Goodie, that's crazy talk!' said Widow Muffin, and right then I knew she had said the wrong thing. I leaped up the two back steps, stepped over the chain at the bottom of the doorway, and stomped into the shop as loudly as I could.
'You — !' Goodwife Filster was starting to shout a bad word, but she stopped when I came in and turned around. When I saw her, I wondered if I had made a very bad mistake, because Goodwife Filster had a hatchet in the hand that didn't have the torch. Her eyes were shining like black stones at the bottom of a cold creek. Ark and Widow Muffin were bunched up in a corner, and Ark was holding a footstool with the widow back behind him. The place stank of burned fish. Everyone froze as I came in. The only thing I could hear was the crackling of the torch flames.
It was time to do something, so I waved my arms and the satchel and shouted the first thing that came into my head. 'Hey!' I yelled at Goodwife Filster. 'Got any sugar buns?'
I didn't know what to expect, but I certainly didn't expect that Goodwife Filster could move so fast for someone built so dumpy. She didn't say a thing, at least not that I remember, but she came at me like a wild horse, and I knew I was going to be a very sorry kender if I didn't move. I ran for the back door, and my plan to trip Goodwife Filster and hit her over the head with the satchel would have been perfect, except that I forgot about the chain at the bottom of the door in trying to get away from her and that axe and torch she had, and the chain snagged my foot, and I fell out the back door and down the steps into the dirt.
I got up right away, and it was a good thing I did, too, because Goodwife Filster hit the chain right after I did and fell down the steps, too, but she fell right next to me, and the torch singed my hair before it stuck in the dirt and went out. I had no time to do anything with the facts-machine satchel except hold it. I had to run, so I did.
I took off for the low place in the stone wall between Ark's place and the Salberins' property, and it was hard to see where I always came up and hoisted myself over the wall, but I could hear Goodwife Filster behind me, her thick feet thumping on the ground, and suddenly I had the idea of vaulting over the wall on my hands, so I did exactly that — the first time I ever did it — and I sailed over the wall on one hand, holding the satchel in the other, just as something struck the top of the wall by my hand and threw up sparks as it went by. It looked like her hatchet, but I didn't want to find out for sure, so I hit the ground on the other side and almost lost my balance and the satchel, too, but I managed to keep running. I thought I could hear Ark shouting my name way back behind me, but it didn't make much difference to me right then.
As I tore across the Salberins' flower beds and headed for the rail fence between their place and the Wylmeens' property, I heard someone scrambling over the wall behind me, screaming something like 'evil spawn' over and over. For a moment, I wondered if Goodwife Filster had always been strange in that way, and if she was really crazy or was just so angry she couldn't think straight anymore, and maybe having her bakery burn down was just the last straw. She had always been mean but never really awful or strange like she was now.
I reached the rail fence, slowing down just enough to climb over it with one hand because it was too high to vault over. I couldn't seem to get a grip on the wood for a moment, but I heard her shout, 'Evil spawn!' right behind me, and in moments I was over the fence and on my back in the Wylmeens' tomato bed. I scraped my leg on a tomato post in falling over the fence and the satchel banged my nose, but none of it hurt very much and I had a lot more to think about right then than a scratch. I also thought that I didn't have the faintest idea of where I was going to go, but I just wanted to get Goodwife Filster and her torch away from Ark and Widow Muffin and our shoe shop. That was all that mattered.
I got up and started running across the tomato bed and into the cucumber vines, but it was dark and my foot caught in a bunch of vines and I fell Hat on my face and knocked all the wind out of my lungs. I still had the satchel, so I started to get up and run again, but I fell down right away because my ankle felt like someone had stuck it with a redhot iron. I heard someone scramble over the fence and land on the ground a dozen feet behind me, so I got up again but couldn't run on my bad leg or even hop on my good leg, and I fell again and said the very same bad word I'd heard the fisherman use, the very same word Ark had told me never to say again, and I said it real loud.
And that's when I heard Mud coming.
The Wylmeens call their dog Mud because he has the same color coat as the mud in the road after a heavy rain. He comes up almost to my shoulders and has eyes that glow white when he sees something he wants to kill, and the Wylmeens haven't been very good about teaching Mud not to kill everything that comes into his yard. He killed a wolverine one year in an hour-long battle, and the Wylmeens stuck the carcass on a post by the road, where it stayed until Mud figured out how to get it down and tore it into little pieces. I sometimes slip through the
