Katherine had never held a bird or a mouse before, but she imagined it would feel much like the weight of the small glass girl in her palm. It still sat in her pocket of her dress, jolting with her steps and the jouncing of the hike down from the cemetery. In a moment of anxiety, Katherine had decided that the risk of the girl falling out of her pocket was too high, and so had resolved to hold it in her palm within the pocket.
She didn't know what exactly had changed about it, but she did know she wouldn't want to lose it before she got a chance to inspect it on her own.
What seemed like a pleasurable walk from town on the way into the forest now felt marathon length, and Katherine felt every pebble and stone through the fabric of her soft slippers. Her legs burned, even though much was downhill and the cawing of crows and the snaps of twigs caused her to jump and startle.
She had to get back to the town, but with the fading light filtering slowly through the leaves and the canopy of the trees, she couldn't go too fast. What would be worse? To arrive just after curfew, and have to beg the gate keepers to let her in, trying to convince them she was herself and not a shade? Or to fall and have to explain a wound or a tear and arrive much later than curfew?
The latter would certainly land her in a whole host of trouble, but all the same, she hurried her pace. Through the treetops and in gaps of the green and blooming foliage, she could see the roofs of the taller buildings, closest to the town wall.
These already sat in shadow, as the mountains that enclosed the town like a gaping mouth had long since swallowed the sun. The stars, with the constellations that Katherine used to know the names of but no longer did, would soon appear to light her path, as would their second moon.
If she lived in any other time, the coming of the strange man would've been an omen of good tidings, but post the burnings--
Katherine shuddered. Best not to think what would become of her if anyone discovered her conversation with Samuel.
Night sounds of the mountain and forest surrounded her as she came upon the outskirts of her town. Market day had given way to after dark preparations for the upcoming Spring equinox celebrations. As she walked up to the stone towers separating the wilds from within, men stood on rickety wooden ladders hanging yellow, lavender, and light blue pennants from across the stone streets. Some wrapped the pennants around the few trees that stood within the town green.
On a different Spring equinox eve, Katherine would be bundled with her sister by their father's forge fire, especially on the years where winter's chill had yet to dissipate. Stories of spring tidings, songs of nature and the spirits of the forest, and baking from earlier in the day kept them up until sunrise.
The glass girl in her pocket mocked her. Her gift to her sister had ended up in Katherine's pocket instead of at her graveside, but in this moment, Katherine was glad.
She would do anything to feel a connection to her sister again, and the fluttering of the glass's newly found magic made it feel almost alive. She closed her eyes for a moment, feeling its hum, but opened them as a clatter of voices arose down the street.
The sounds bounced off of the cobblestones, the cacophony traveling from further into town to her ears. Drunken revelry for Spring tidings were already underway, but Katherine flinched as a familiar tone reached her.
"Hold on, hold on-- I can pay! I always pay in the end!"
A group of men stood huddled around the door of the lower workers' preferred tavern, the Ambrose. It was the kind of place that men with nowhere to go and nowhere better to be went, not that anywhere better would take them. The clientele could be seen at all times of day, hanging onto each other and laughing loudly as they drank cheap ale and spoke glibly.
The group in the street stood in mixtures of worn, torn, and rugged drapery, their boots dirtier than the stones they stood on. In the center of their mix, a rustle of movement churned, threatening to spill.
"Lawrence, go home! Go back to your wife, go back to your failing business and the daughter you have left." One of the men shoved the first man, and Katherine froze.
Her father fell to the ground, pitching forwards and barely catching himself before collapsing to the cobblestones. His bedraggled gray streaked hair, once as red and ambered as Katherine's own, fell in his face, sticking to his cheeks with sweat and drink. His mouth opened and closed, struggling for words in the way of his that Katherine had known since childhood.
None of the men noticed her as she began to walk towards them. The men, the leader of which Katherine recognized as the barkeep, began to turn from her father, but he called out to them.
"Let me pay, I'll pay tomorrow."
"How will you pay tomorrow? Your shop is failing and you're rarely in it. How would you pay if you spend half of your time in my drink and the other half in my backrooms?"
Katherine grit her teeth, an ugly suspicion confirmed. Her walk turned more stalk than step, but she still moved at a slow pace. It would be best if they didn't see her until she was nearly to them.
"I will pay. My daughter, my daughter is a grand craftsman, that's how!"
The men laughed, the barkeep tipping his head back with a true chortle, and Katherine threw away all hopes of subtlety, she hurried towards him, nearly running. Others in the town were beginning to notice the squabble and stopped in their decorating and walks home to watch the debacle outside the Ambrose Tavern.
"You daft old man. Your daughter shouldn't be a grand craftsman, that's supposed to be you."
"But she is-- you'll see. She's as great as the fae, talented enough to make glass look like gems and to trick the cleverest eye." He still sat on the ground, barely coming to their knees, but now one of them bent towards him, coming face to face and eye to eye with her father.
"Perhaps she'd be better off serving a different man, then. Someone who will use her skills better."
"I use my skills perfectly well on my own, thank you very much," Katherine snapped, coming up to them and hauling her father up as she spat the words. The man closest to her unfolded, a sly grin uncurling on his face, cutting in the torch-light.
"Is that so?"
"Yes," Katherine insisted, now struggling to get her father to stand. "I can make whatever I like--"
"May they be jewels for a king or kingdoms of glass or sight-seeing glass!" Her father cut her off, and Katherine held back a scowl. "You wait and see. One day, you'll see." His words slurred and Katherine huffed, trying to keep him upright.
The men laughed in their faces and Katherine's own burned with shame and frustration. She turned away to drag her father back to their home and their forge, quite a walk aways.
"Wait, let me help."
One of the men, the youngest and closest to her age, stepped forwards. Katherine looked away, recognizing another face. This one was Richard, a scraggly boy turned a floppy-haired and bird-limbed man that was two years her elder. He'd never struck her as a cruel boy or even an ill-tempered man, so she said nothing as he took her father's other side. The rest of the men filed back into the tavern, their fun done for the evening.
Katherine and Richard shuffled in silence as they pulled and tugged her father down the streets. Her neighbors and townsfolk watched as they walked, whispering behind hands and torn fans, and Katherine's chest clenched. Every inch of her burned-- with anger, with anxiety, with shame.
"Will they let him back?" She bit this out to Richard, and she could tell he was reluctant to answer, glancing away and looking instead at his own feet.
"Yes. If not tomorrow, then some other day." Katherine clenched her jaw, unable to respond. Her father would always return to drink, if not at the tavern then in the stores of it he kept hidden from her mother. "You should be careful, Katherine."
Katherine's head snapped up, this time meeting Richard's eyes. "Yes, well, I can't very well keep him from drink."
"No, I mean his claims." His head turned up towards the sky, towards the stars and the mountain range that protected them but also held so many secrets. "I know of every mother has old wives tales, and I'm not sure what you've been taught, but claims like that, of that kind of power..." he trailed off, and they both watched as the watching townsfolk from earlier began to shut themselves in their homes for the night.
Pennant flags fluttered in a breeze from the mountains, and the dual moons hung low in the sky, kissing the peaks but casting eery shadows and light rays over them. They were not far now from Katherine's home, but they felt farther than when they'd started. Richard kept looking at her, as if debating saying more and she dreaded it, even as she knew he had a point.
"Look, all I'm saying is that you never know who is listening, and even if your father is a bit difficult, I don't think that means you deserve to be punished for what he says."
Perhaps Katherine had not given Richard enough credit when they were kids.
"Thank you, Richard." He shook his head.
"Don't thank me. Just watch out for yourself, and maybe watch out for what he says."
They walked the rest of the way to her home in thoughtful, if tense silence, with her father half-asleep and dead weight between them. Her arms ached from holding him up, but Katherine was grateful for the help. She would've gotten him home, but it would've taken much longer and even if the town gates were now closed, keeping out the outside world in much the way the mountains did, that didn't mean she was any safer inside the town walls than she was outside of them.
When they reached the door to the slumped house beside the still lit forge and the make-shift shop beside it, Richard said his quiet goodnights. He didn't bother to look back as he walked back the way they came, and Katherine shut the door just as he and his two shadows disappeared from sight.
She locked the door behind her, and released a long, low sigh as she faced her father, now slumped against one of the walls in their small front room. He snored in blissful unawareness and she at once pitied him and envied his clueless sleep.
On another night, she would've attempted to put him into bed, but the rickety door to her parents' room was already shut. Grimacing, Katherine lifted and tugged her father into a spot by the dwindling hearth, placing a blanket around him and a pillow for his head.
He slept through it all, and she shook her head before retreating up through the dust-filled rafters on the ladder to the loft. Shaking off her shoes and her sparse shawl, she fell into her own bed, but flinched at a sharp pain in her side.
Groaning, she flopped over and took the glass girl from her pocket. She almost dropped the figurine as her eyes widened.
In cased in a green-lit glow, the glass girl had gained two delicate hair-thin wings, sprouting from her back in sheer sheets. Both shone in the moonlight from her window, defiantly glistening on the beams and cobwebs on the underside of the roof.
Katherine's stomach filled with dread and her mouth dried, her mind conjuring the worst. Richard had been right.
The fae were listening, and they wanted her to know.
-o-0-o-
Dun dun dun! Thank you for reading Chapter Two of Glass Maker! What do you think will happen next?
Next chapter coming Saturday! Don't forget to vote if you liked the chapter!