Page 10 of The Heartless Archer

Noora’s shoulders stiffened but she quickly carried on past stands filled with stuffed pastries, fresh tomatoes, and glittering patterns of cloth.

A rule one had to know about the market was that you could trust no one. The vendors were like wolves, stalking their prey efficiently until they could pounce at the right moment.

Noora had to learn this the hard way.

She couldn’t count the times she had been betrayed or been paid too little for her findings but she knew better now. She travelled past all the first stands most people stopped at, those were the most expensive. Wedged between a table of freshly baked bread and marinated lobster clamps was a fairly rugged looking stand. The awning was stitched together with various materials, and a few new holes made their way into it since the last time Noora was here. The table beneath was filled with bits and pieces, looking rotten and used. A pair of crooked glasseslay beside a pot that had green moss of the forest stuck to its handles and inside, looking like a witch had been brewing something.

“Who’s interrupting my midday knitting?” An old woman appeared from nowhere, a frumpy look on her face.

Her gray hair was wound into a tight knot at the back of her head; a few strands escaped and lay on her hunched shoulders. She was dressed in a gown that was freakishly similar to the yellow, green, and red-stitched awning. In her hands, she carried large knitting needles, a greenish something hanging from them. The colour reminded Noora of a pond located in the forest.

“Oh, it is you.” Madam van Dijk’s face fell as she squinted up at Noora before her eyes wandered over the pelt.

“I have no desire for a dead fox today, Gal.” Noora tried to not roll her eyes at the name she had used for months. She heaved the basket filled with the wolf’s insides on the table, making a few rotten spoons clatter against each other.

“This,” she took the pelt off her shoulders, “is not a fox, Madam. It’s a wolf and you know that you are going to get a good deal with me coming to you first. So why don’t we speed up the process where you act like I am a stranger.”

She raised a pale eyebrow, making the old hag glare at her condemningly.

“You should hold your tongue before someone cuts it out, Noora,” she tutted her, laying the needles aside to peer into the basket.

“Hmm.” She stroked her chin and Noora noticed a hair growing out of it. It took everything in her not to visibly shudder.

“This looks indeed very good,” she went on to consider the pelt while Noora couldn’t help but eavesdrop on a few customers walking past.

“The land is dying, I tell you, Daphne. Richard said the Farmer’s couple did not spare a single sprout, Azrael said the forest was almost empty of any deer.”

“You always listen to what everyone says, Matilda, I told you…” The voices drowned out as they passed the stand and carried on without sparing a look at Madam Van Dijk’s stand.

“Now, I can spare you twenty Gulls for both.” An old gnarly hand snipped in front of her face. Noora focused back on the Madam. “Do you want to sell it or not? I don’t have all day.”

“Yeah, I can see that you are flooded with customers,” Noora said, before shaking her head. “Twenty is too little and you know it. How many hunters do you know that sell you a wolf this intact and not just the scattered insides already devoured half by another predator. ” She crossed her arms in front of her.

The madam narrowed her uncanny-looking eyes.

“Twenty-five.”

“Seventy Gulls,” Noora said with a straight face. The Madam started to laugh right in her face. Spit landed on her cheek and she quickly got rid of it before she felt too tempted to hit an old woman.

“Thirty.”

“Sixty.”

They both stared at each other and Noora knew she just had to push a little further until she got what she wanted.

“Thirty-five.”

“Fifty and you tell me what these women were talking about. That’s my last offer, Madam, or I will go to Jan.”

The woman gasped so hard that Noora feared she was having a stroke. “You would not dare, you foolish child!”

Noora just arched a brow and the Madam grumbled under her breath while reaching beneath her dress. She pulled out a small lilac sack that she let fall into the girl’s hand, whoseeyes were bright with arrogance. “What makes you think I know what these women were talking about?”

Noora weighed the sack in her hand before attaching it to her belt. “You know everything about everyone.”

Now it was the old woman’s turn to arch her brow. She lured her in closer with her finger as she lowered her voice to a scratchy whisper.

“It is rumored that the lands of Oy Frossen haven’t been fruitful anymore, the trees are dying the farmers are out of harvest and even the animals are starving to death. I am surprised you found a wolf this well-fed, they are rarely seen anymore.”

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