Page 16 of Mischief Maker
I walk away with haste, toward the livestock pen where the sheep are waiting to be let out for the day. Mechanically, I complete each task, and soon Kireth comes to sit on the fence and watch me.
“Will you give me a task today?” he asks, none of the usual playfulness in his voice.
“No.” I set down a pail full of milk. “There is nothing left for you to do.”
I remember the runes carved into his body, the ones that will dismiss him from my service. I can send him back to where he came from and give up this worthless, impossible farm.
There is nothing here for me. I have no choice now but to abandon this place, the home where I grew up, where my mother and father both died, where everything that could possibly go wrong has.
“You will have me do nothing?” Kireth raises his brows. “Nothing at all?”
“What are the words?” I ask.
He sounds suspicious when he answers, “Which words?”
“The words to send you away. To end this.” My heart twists as I say it, but I have no more need for a god. I will sell off the sheep and the cows and the chickens, if anyone will buy them from me. I will pack up what belongings I have and leave this place with Petal and Rye, and head for the valley. It is time to leave the old world behind and perhaps discover what I’ve been missing all this time.
“Surely you do not want to dismiss me,” Kireth says, wary. “I have only completed half of your tasks.”
“I have nothing more for you to do. There’s no reason to keep you here any longer.” I strain to keep the tears at bay, the evidence of my heartbreak. “Tell me the words, Lord. Tell me the words to send you away.”
Chapter Seven
Kireth
She wants to dismiss me. Why does this make my throat close up? My hand tighten into a fist? I still have forty-two tasks to perform for her.
Only twice have I been released early. Once because the human who summoned me died—that’s an automatic release. One moment he was tilling a field, the next moment he was dead. The other time, my master had grown tired of my antics and felt I was doing more harm than good. Sometimes I think that old woman was the wisest of everyone who’s summoned me.
There are now two mysteries to unravel, but I understand why Faela wants to see my backside. I hurt her last night, that much is clear. I wish I had done it differently, that I had explained how I wanted her to guide what happened next because the idea of lying with someone so tender troubles me. I had hoped she would use her tasks to tell me what she desired, what would please her most, instead of my own selfish passions leading the way.
And now, the mysterious illness has returned and befallen the crops. I can see in Faela’s soft hazel eyes that this has finally broken her.
I don’t want to tell her the words. Perhaps, for the first time in my existence, I don’t want to leave. Not without understanding what has happened here, what is killing her farm. There is a disease, something deeper and uglier than fallow soil or poor management. I have been caring for the crops daily, and I know that I have not made a mistake.
I cannot watch her give up, my sad girl.
“What are the words?” Faela asks again, more insistent. Her voice is stiff, her eyes red with unshed tears. “What do I need to say?”
“Perhaps you should take a few moments,” I suggest instead. “You still have many more tasks left.” I would hate for her to act rashly and then regret it.
“I don’t need them!” There’s a painful desperation in her voice, and underneath it, a simmering anger. Perhaps this is the creature I knew was lying inside her, the one hiding underneath her cowed exterior.
There is not much I can do if she truly wants to be rid of me. I can’t withhold the words from her. But perhaps I can convince her that there’s still more I can do to help.
“Are you giving up?” I ask, keeping my tone friendly, encouraging, without malice. “Are you abandoning this place?”
She turns her head away. “There’s nothing else I can do for it. The gods are trying to tell me something, that this land is not for my use. It’s pointless to try.” She sits down in the dirt, bringing the dead soil into her hand, letting the grains run down between her fingers. “It’s time for me to move on. And where I’m going, I don’t need you.”
I restrain my urge to laugh. “The gods do not care for this small plot of land. You have not earned their wrath simply by trying to exist.”
No, what’s happening here is stranger than that. It’s as if a curse has been placed upon this land, perhaps the same curse that took her mother’s life. Some sort of creeping death, intent on ruining and destroying every living thing here.
“Then what else could it be?” she asks, hurling the rest of the soil in her hand to the ground. “What great sin have I committed to bring this upon myself?”
“Perhaps nothing.”
If I have found anything in all my time on this plane, it’s that the world doesn’t always make sense. Often it is merely chance, which makes it all the more frustrating for mortals who have not come to understand their place in the great chaos.
