The City Girl [Aaaand its a wrap!]

My dreams followed the same pattern lately.

Adobeee-a, Adobeee-a, what happened to you in the Tent of Incense Fire?

Always in the mocking, childlike tones of the black butterfly.

What happened in that one night that was ten days long? What did the greys show you, what exactly did they do to you? Shall I guess?

*

So this is what the city looks like up close. Crowded streets, crowded alleys, crowded marketplaces, crowded air heavy with voices and perfume and less pleasant odours, the odours and sounds of too many people with lives piled on top of one another. No goodtrees. Constant movement. No cabins, but buildings of adobe, stone, concrete, glazed brick and glass. Brightly lit pavilions. Quaint summer huts.

A FAIR TRADE- FINAL PART

‘Yes, it’s what I want,’ Adobea answered in steady calm. She had no reason to fret over the decision she was making, because as she saw it, she had no other choice. Perhaps she had never really belonged in the goodforest, this place that she no longer understood, with its twisting lie-lie paths and grey secrets.

‘And in return, you offer me your gift of healing,’ the Old Bat said. She was different at the Exchange Table, sombre and intense, her eyes piercing points of black, her voice low and heavy. ‘You propose to give it up entirely, to strip yourself of your identity as a healer.’

A FAIR TRADE [Part 3]

Adapted from Hans Andersen's The Little Mermaid.

The prisoner looked at me blankly, and I saw that his eyes were dark pits. His body odour was stale, a larger presence than he himself, cowering as he was in the misery of his condition. Which, an unhappy thing, was reaching out with long, desperate fingers. In its touch I sensed hunger, thirst and despair. I stepped back, swallowing the taste of stagnant rage in my mouth, sour and metallic, like blood.

A FAIR TRADE [Part 1]

Adapted from Hans Andersen's The Little Mermaid.

Somehow the boy had found his way back to the city. Messengers were sent in the morning to tell the distressed palanquin-bearers that their master’s son was safe at home, and seemingly in good health.

Adobea wondered what the greyhealers thought of the mysterious circumstances surrounding Prince’s short disappearance. Inscrutable as ever, Senna only said: ‘It’s nothing for you to worry about’ when she remarked that surely he must know what had happened with that poor , no doubt half-mad city boy and his black butterfly.

Part 5

Adapted from Hans Andersen's The Little Mermaid.

When he opened his eyes she saw bad light in them. Yellow and poisonous-looking. He had taken too much blackheart, a great deal. He was dying. He would die, if she let him, and what would she have come all this way for?

There was a mat laid out beside her, cluttered with all sorts of tools used by the goodforest people in their healing. Other things too. The lower jaw of some large animal, for instance, the bone polished smooth. A toy monkey. A glass eye. ‘Everything you need and more,’ the Old Bat had crooned. She ignored the ‘more’ and took the herbs and smooth black stones and needles that she would need. Already her hands were burning. She wanted to draw the poison out of him, but she wouldn’t rush it, she would take her time. She had almost hurt herself once, when she was eleven and overeager.

Part 5

Adapted from Hans Andersen's The Little Mermaid.

When he opened his eyes she saw bad light in them; yellow and poisonous-looking. He had taken too much blackheart, a great deal. He was dying. He would die, if she let him, and what would she have come all this way for?

There was a mat laid out beside her, cluttered with all sorts of tools used by the goodforest people in their healing. Other things too. The lower jaw of some large animal, for instance, the bone polished smooth. A toy monkey. A glass eye. ‘Everything you need and more,’ the Old Bat had crooned. She ignored the ‘more’ and took the herbs and smooth black stones and needles that she would need. Already her hands were burning. She wanted to draw the poison out of him, but she wouldn’t rush it, she would take her time. She had almost hurt herself once, when she was eleven and overeager.