Toad Words(34)

The peddler turned back to Greatspot. “You’ll let her do this? After we’ve dealt together so long, you’ll let this little—girl—upset our bargain?”

Greatspot snorted. “I begin to think our bargain was only a bargain for you, trader-man.”

He stamped his feet and wrung his hands, but at the end of the day, he left twelve sacks of potatoes for two good-sized truffles, and left them with a curse.

“And even that was too good a deal for him,” said Snow, “but we were down to the dregs, and I can hardly eat acorns.”

“There are still a few apples,” said Juniper.

“Yes,” said Snow, who was heartily sick of these apples and would have dearly loved a taste of the fruit of her own tree in the courtyard. “Yes, there’s always the apples.”





Arrin came two days later, which was a good thing, because Snow was going slightly mad with worry.

“I’m second-guessing myself,” she told him, helping him unload the packs from his horse. “The peddler was taking shameful advantage of them. They know so many things—but of course they don’t know the market price of truffles, how could they? But what if I can’t find a way for them to sell truffles in town? I’ll have made trouble for them, and for no profit at all.”

“Easy now,” said Arrin, amused. “It’s no bad thing to stop someone taking advantage of someone else, if you can.”

Snow shoved her hands into her hair. “Gods. No. That’s not right—or it’s not wrong, but—oh, this is madness. They know when it’s going to snow hours before it does and whether it will stick and if a tree is rotten on the inside just by smelling and the name of every bird in the forest by the call. And Hoofblack built the fireplace by sticking stones in clay and building a fire on it to bake it, and he built the chimney—he’d never even seen a chimney, but Greatspot had, she used to be a regular sow on a farm, and she told him what they looked like and he figured it out and built one. With his snout and his hooves. And he designed the den, too, and it’s braced up so it won’t come down in a heavy snow. He’d never even seen a building before. I couldn’t build it. I couldn’t just invent a chimney. The only thing I know worth knowing is that truffles are worth more than potatoes.” She gave a short little bark of laughter. “That’s what my whole life has come down to, Arrin, knowing that truffles are worth more than potatoes.”

It came to Arrin, from a little distance, that she had never used his name before, and it fell on his ears in a way that troubled him.

“I still think you’re doing right,” he said finally. “Your—the midwife would be proud.” His smile faded. He went to the castle rarely now, and avoided the midwife’s eyes.

“I need you to tell me where the nearest town is,” said Snow. “In fact, tell Puffball instead—he’s got the best head for directions.”

“Town?” said Arrin blankly. “That’s Mousebury—It’s not that far, but—are you leaving? Are the boars going with you?”

“Not for good,” said Snow. “But we have to sell these truffles.”

Arrin’s mouth opened and closed several times. “Are you insane?”

“Possibly?” said Snow. “Why?”

“The Queen thinks you’re dead! You should have left last winter—you should have run as far and as fast as you could! I thought you were lying low, at least, and now you propose to go gallivanting around the nearest town, carrying your own weight in truffles, with a talking boar in tow?”

“It’ll work out,” said Snow. “They can’t know me. I’ve never been there. I’ll put a scarf over my hair, and anyway, everybody thinks I’m dead, don’t they? It won’t matter. I’ve got to help them, Arrin. They need me. Nobody’s ever needed me.” She shoved a hand through her pale hair, distracted, hardly aware that she had spoken a great raw truth. “Please. Tell Puffball how to get there.”

I cannot tell you, readers, whether she convinced him, or whether it was simply the notion of the trouble that a girl and a pack of boars could get into while roaming the fields in search of a town. But he gritted his teeth and talked to Puffball, and at the end of the evening, the boar had a good notion how to get to the town of Mousebury and in a way that avoided the roads.

They set out two days later. Puffball and Greatspot went with her, each wearing a set of panniers. One was full of truffles. The other pigs scuffled and pawed at the earth as they left.

“Should let us all come,” muttered Hoofblack. “In case you get into trouble.”