Don't Let the Fairies Eat You (31 page)

This was until she fund the Beggar Lord. Many of the city’s beggars said he was the greatest in their way of life, that he could beg a horse for its hooves and the horse would simply step out of them; that he could beg a king for his crown if he wanted and that king would hand it over happily.

Despite these rumors, the Beggar Lord lived in the same squalor as the rest, only he liked to more frequently. Art found him by chance one day when she spotted a grizzled old man sitting in a brown hooded cloak, much like her own, at the mouth of an alley, and she thought he’d like some company. They began chatting about his old life as a soldier who secretly worked as a bard, and her life of wandering the streets with her parents, whose farm had been burned down by bandits and had nowhere else to go. They knew plenty about agriculture and stories about creatures of the hills and forests, but they knew nothing of city life and quickly fell to its social bottom.

All this talking went on for quite some time before Art noticed the coins piling at the old man’s feet, and she realized he was able to pry at the sympathies of passersby with nothing more than a look from his eyes. She accused him of being the Beggar Lord right there and then, and he admitted it just as fast. He’d taken a liking to her and said he’d take her under his wing.

“I see you’re not in this life because it suits you best, as you still have all your fingers,” the Beggar Lord said, knowing that some beggars maimed themselves to better their chances on the street. “You’re here because you know nothing else, and so I will teach you to know it better than anyone.”

He began by teaching her the different kinds of city people. Most beggars saw two kinds—the rich and the poor. But the Beggar Lord showed her that there were about five kinds of rich, eight kinds of comfortable, seven kinds of poor, and then came the beggars. “A wealthy merchant is not the same as a wealthy lord’s son,” he explained.

Art bowed her head to him. “As you say, master.”

He then taught her faces, hand gestures, and looks of the eye. “There are bound to be more tricks you can perform with your eyes, being a pretty young lady, but I do not know them,” he said. “And on that subject, let them see that you’re pretty. It is how they see themselves.”

Art bowed her head to him. “As you say, master.” This went against all Art had learned from other beggars, which was to make yourself look as feeble, misshapen, or dirty as possible, in order to inspire pity. But her master commanded her, and so she obeyed, and found herself receiving more and more coins as her lessons continued.

They moved from block to block, changing streets every week. “Many find a spot they like,” the Beggar Lord said. “But it is best to wander and beg from new people.”

Art bowed her head, as always. “As you say, master.”

One night, long into her training, something that had been bothering Art for a while couldn’t stay in her head any longer, and abruptly popped out of her mouth. “I’ve been told you could beg the hooves off a horse,” she said to her master as they roasted half a chicken on a spit over a small alley fire. The day’s begging had been lucrative.

The Beggar Lord pondered Art’s statement for a few moments, and then said, “Perhaps his horseshoes, if not his hooves.”

Art grew flustered. “And they say you could beg the crown off a king’s head.”

The Beggar Lord pondered this too, and said, “Yes, but what is a crown but a piece of gold and jewels? A king could give this away and make many more, and still he’d sit on his throne, atop the rest of us.”

Art grew exasperated. “If you’re so great a beggar, why still live on the streets like the rest of us? You could live in those mansions, you could eat well every night, and have walls and a full belly to guard you against winter, rather than rags and skin.”

“I do not have those things, because I do not want those things,” said the Beggar Lord. “I wish to walk freely, without being chained to a place and time, and without people. Someday, I will wander from you as well, and I will go to faraway cities and their streets, or towns and their patches of earth. I will go to no palace. That is not my dream. Is it yours?”

“Yes,” Art said. “I dream of leaving this, of somehow having a little left at the end of a day to save for a place to live, and maybe become presentable to a man not looking for a simple leg-spreader. I want to be amid the seven kinds of poor or eight kinds of comfortable, or even the five kinds of rich. Something beyond this cursed life!”

The old man smiled and drew Art close so no one else could hear his words to her. “I believe you should find your dream, if you have one, and so we come to my final lesson. Every single person in this world, be they rich, poor, or in-between, feels no greater pity for someone than a person who they see as like themselves. I have indeed begged the crown off a king’s head, for in my own way I became a king—a downtrodden, hopeless king who’d lost his kingdom, but royal nonetheless. He saw in me one possible fate of his, and so pitying me, gave me his crown. I’m certain he had another made in its perfect likeness that night, but it fed me and others for a year. So, my dear Artania, show yourself as pretty, for most people are vain. Be simple for the uneducated, learned for scholars. Be courageous if a woman sees herself as a dangerous, be strict for a judge, and be regal for royalty—or even for nobles, for they see themselves as royalty as well. Make your mark, size him up in moments, and become him. That is the art of begging. That is to master begging.”

Art said nothing to her master at first, and could hardly believe him. The idea that he’d done this for every person he begged from was ridiculous. Hard as it was, she did believe him. He was quite old and had known many kinds of people. All his instructions and training culminated to this. When the old man was asleep, Art whispered thanks in his ear, and kissed his warm cheek before wrapping herself in rags for sleep.

The Beggar Lord’s cheek was cold in the morning. Art touched his neck, his face, his chest, his hands, but found no sign of life, as if by giving his last and most important lesson, he had passed on his will to live. His disciple sat and cried briefly for her master.

“Your gifts will not go to waste,” she whispered and then began rifling through his pockets for other gifts, as the Beggar Lord would not want anything of his left for street dogs. Art found a few coins, an extra pair of ragged gloves, and a folded paper. As with much about her master, what she read astounded her.

His name was Robert Sastern and the letter was from a woman, Pemla, apparently his wife. The letter mentioned children, a home, a life waiting for him when the war was over. She hoped to see him soon, whenever soon had been—Art remembered the last war of the kingdom being a few years ago. For all she knew, the Beggar Lord’s last war had been in another kingdom, and might have taken place before she was born. The paper itself was old and worn, but letters on the back said it had come from Varnistead, a town several miles away, beyond wolf-ridden woods and hills that surrounded a broken old castle.

“Maybe many years have passed and maybe only your children or children’s children remain,” Art said to her master’s body. “Nonetheless, you should wander back there, to this town and its patch of earth. Then, I’ll need to live using your lessons somewhere else. If I’m to find my future, it won’t be in this city any more for me than it was for my parents. It is time to beg abroad.”

Before starting out, Art did practice her begging a little more. From a farmer, she told of her plan to begin seeding a field and that she needed only a little wooden cart to start. A little cart was soon hers. She put her master inside, having to curl his body up so it would fit before death seized up his bones. Then she went to a tavern where she knew a barmaid worked to feed her ailing parents and begged a spare horse blanket from the place’s stables to shield her poor father from the cold. A blanket was soon hers and she covered her master in it so no animals would come nipping once death began to smell. Lastly, Art begged some bread from another tavern, where the barkeep was often miserly, and so she asked for only the cheapest half a loaf, one that the fools with money wouldn’t dare touch. The cheapest half a loaf was hers. She put it inside a pocket of her hooded robe so she wouldn’t find death herself by walking with an empty stomach.

The Beggar Lord’s final lesson seemed to be holding well for Art and she left the city that very afternoon, pulling the little cart along behind her, her arms wrapped around its handles. The wheels weren’t the best and the road was rocky, but Art made decent progress in the hours of daylight and found herself in the hills by nightfall.

“We’ll camp soon, master,” she said, more to herself than to him. “And then we’ll be in Varnistead by tomorrow.”

Her master didn’t respond, as she expected, but something else did. Howling erupted from the woods to the north, reminding Art of the feral dogs that roamed the city streets, only much louder and strengthened by many more mouths.

“Wolves,” Art whispered, and she hurried faster up one hill and down another. She didn’t believe they could have smelled the Beggar Lord from so far, but they might have been magic wolves for all she knew. Her parents used to tell her of magic and monsters of the wilderness, and they’d say how lucky she was to live in the city despite their poverty. Sometimes they seemed to believe it.

Looking ahead over the next slope, Art spotted the empty castle she knew to lie between the city and Varnistead. Its gates hung open and though its windows were only covered in black curtains rather than bars, they were too high for wolves to reach. “There’s no begging for anything from wolves,” Art said. “Perhaps you’d say differently, master, but I’ve not your skill yet. We’ll hole up safely behind walls until morning.”

Looking back, Art saw the dark spots on the grass as the wolves neared. Their jaws came snapping at her and the cart before she reached the castle’s open gateway. A couple of them even boarded the cart, but Art hauled it into the castle and shook the wheels hard enough to knock the wolves away. She then slammed the gates shut, and thought all was well until she noticed that her master’s arms were gone.

“I am sorry, master,” she said softly. “I did not wish to see any of your remains go to the dogs, but the rest of you will make it to your patch of earth.”

Before Art had a moment to catch her breath, three shadows loomed over her, and she turned around to find three trolls hunched under the castle’s low ceiling.

“How has it found us?”

“Who has found us?”

“What has found us?”

Art at first wished to scream, and then to hide, but her third desire and most important was to live. She quickly began to fidget with her coat and hood in the darkness of the room. “I found you through the open gate,” she said. “My name is … Grezzle. I’m a troll, like you.”

The three trolls looked incredulous. “How come you’re so much smaller?” asked the largest one.

“And not muscly?” asked the second largest.

“And look so much like a human?” asked the least large of the three.

“I’m a huldra,” Art said, and turned around. “My glamour keeps me looking human in the front, but don’t you see? I am hollow in the back and my ox tail hangs down.” Art had taken the hood behind her head and twisted it at the neck so that the opening where her face should have been appeared dark and hollow. She’d let one ragged end of her coat hang down between her legs so that it would resemble an ox’s tail if you looked at it in dim light and were particularly stupid.

The three trolls nodded and acted as if they’d known this all along, that they were only testing the girl. “And what of the man?”

“He was to be my husband and make me human,” Art explained, for the only way a huldra could become human was to marry a man. “Yet he held out for so long without giving me a straight answer that he died of old age. Now I’m to return him to the place he came from and then I’ll set off in search of a new man.”

“You can stay here with us,” the largest troll said, and he plucked a leg from the Beggar Lord’s body.

“Yes, we can be your husbands,” said the second largest, taking the other leg.

“Who needs men as husbands when you could have trolls?” asked the third, removing the master’s head.

Art forced herself not to vomit or cry as pieces of her master were eaten. She had no desire to share his fate, or to attract a troll-kin husband. She thought hard over what the trolls’ perspective might be—each was brutish, but in her case, eager to please, and so she decided she must beg as if eager to be pleased. Her eyes widened with feigned delight and she clasped her hands together. “What a wonderful change of fortune!” she cried. “Only, you three wouldn’t all be planning to marry me, would you? I beg you, sirs, I’ve been seeking a mortal man for too long to change my ways from theirs. Not to mention, I don’t feel any one of you would want to share me, so I beg of you, please let only the best of you have me.”