She recalled that first interaction often, how wonderful it had felt to finally belong to something . . . a community, however strange it might seem to those on the outside.
“Ye hang the memories on the pegs, facing out, so may-let patrons be intrigued enough to stop,” Crony had told her when they’d first arrived at her booth. Stain’s job was to fill the lower pegs, as she was too short to reach the higher. Luce took care of those.
She’d hung only a few of the sparkling glass tokens before noticing people shuffled by without stopping. They veered to the shops selling enchanted potions and ensorcelled weapons—completely overlooking how magical memories could be. Having lost her own, Stain had wanted to make patrons stop. To make them understand.
She couldn’t shout and tell them what they were missing like other shopkeepers did. And Crony and Luce seemed too busy stocking the shelves to notice.
She’d had some flowers in her pocket that day, having plucked them from the garden before they came. She liked keeping bouquets hidden on her person for their gentle, pretty fragrance. She might look grimy and unkempt, but there was no reason she should smell the part. The flowers were also a reminder that the burning in her fingertips yielded beautiful results, making the recurrent pain more bearable.
Taking out five wilting blossoms, she crawled up on the booth’s counter beneath their sign: NOSTALGIA RETOLD: BENEFICIAL MEMORIES FOR THE CURSED & BROKEN. She glued the fragile flowers in place between the slabs of wood with squishy mud.
Luce and Crony stopped stocking to watch, and soon, others paused, too—for a moment. Then they turned again and went shopping elsewhere.
“It be a good try, wee one,” Crony encouraged her, patting her fuzzy head. The witch’s murky eyes held a soft twinkle. It was the light of affection, but Stain wanted more. Although the old witch’s smile had the power to wilt plants and inspire fear, Stain had grown rather fond of it.
“A very good idea indeed,” Luce agreed. He offered a sly glance to Crony, one Stain had seen pass between them when they were teaching her things about the world outside their ravine. “Perhaps you simply need to think bigger. Say this stall were a kingdom. Would a wise monarch bestow attention and wealth upon only the palace?” He pointed to the sign. “Or would they spread it all around every corner in the vicinage, so it could be seen even from a distance, to catch the eyes of other kingdoms, possibly lure away their own populace with the desire to be part of something so powerful, beautiful, and unified?”
Stain considered his insight, and at closing time, after all the other shopkeepers and patrons had left, she shared a plan with her guardians.
Crony wrinkled her brown forehead upon hearing it. “Aye, that be a big undertaking with some painful sacrifice. Ye up for it?”
Stain nodded, and Luce grinned in approval before shrinking to his fox form. He kept watch around the abandoned market, running in and out of the trees and booths to be sure no one witnessed Stain using her gold fingertips to feed the mud she’d spread all across the booth. The fiery burn was worth it, for the blooms took root. Not only that, by opening time the next day they’d multiplied—a riot of red, fuchsia, blue, and apricot petals covering the skeletal booth from top to bottom. Their sweet perfume overpowered the usual funk of decay permeating the marketplace.
Crony had record sales that day; patrons crowded around her memory booth, as it couldn’t be missed. If a patron didn’t see the blanket of bright colors, they smelled the enticing scent. Everyone was captivated by the enchanting flowers they assumed the witch had conjured, asking to buy them. When she said they weren’t for sale, they instead bought everything else lining her shelves, even her chimes for “kinder sleep.” The long cylinders of glass—strung together with wire to hang over one’s bed—were captured memories of bedtime stories and lullabies. In the past, they’d been shunned by the jaded criminals. However, something about seeing the flowers flourishing in a wasteland—strong in spite of their frailties—softened even the hardest heart that day, making everyone nostalgic for gentler times.
Soon it became a competition to see who could have the most colorful and eye-catching booth; to see who could draw the most patrons. Even now, none had beat Crony’s record, but their attempts made for a much prettier hub, and in return, happier shopkeepers and patrons. And the best reward of all had been Crony’s smile. It wilted an entire line of flowers on their booth that day, but it had been worth it for the memory.
Every memory Stain had revolved around Scorch, Luce, or Crony, having lost all others to amnesia. That big gaping hole inside her and her past forced her to never take life for granted. To make each experience bigger, brighter, and bolder, so she could fill that emptiness with meaningful things.
Today something smelled meaningful on the air as Luce and Stain arrived at the break in the tree trunks that formed the market’s entrance. However, the strange, underlying scent faded beneath the aroma of fresh-baked cookies, the stench of body odor, and the sticky-spice of black-current mead.
Scorch stopped at the thicket’s edge and pawed his front hoof through the ash.
“Good day then, donkey.” Luce offered a haughty bow to the Pegasus and strode in, an unspoken summons for Stain to say her good-byes.
Scorch’s ears lay back; he looked ready to blaze the entire market down. He was always grumpiest when time to part ways.
Stain placed herself between the Pegasus and the entrance. She felt everyone’s eyes on them, aware of how odd they appeared: the puny foundling “boy” and his massive, wild companion. She barely came to Scorch’s chest, yet he had restraint enough not to tromp over her when she stood in his path. Though Scorch never wanted to speak of his past—that time before he’d found his way to this ravine—the Pegasus must have been preyed upon aplenty, for he trusted no one . . . other than her.
Stain repositioned the pouch’s strap on her shoulder and asked him the same question she did each time she left to work: If I allow you to come in this once, would you behave?
He snorted and smoke curled from his nostrils. If by behave, you mean torch the stalls to the ground, set fire to the screaming crowd, and raze their embers with my hooves, yes.
She grinned. We could stay together if you would at least pretend to be civil. It’s all about diplomacy. Luce has been teaching me—
Being civil isn’t what’s kept me alive and free, is it?
The scars upon his glossy black hide—people’s attempts to shoot him full of arrows tied to nets, or slice him with a sword to slow his canter—attested to that fact. Stain had seen the hungry way the ravine’s denizens watched him. So much fire within him, boundless and regenerative. Should someone manage to bottle it, they would bid a fortune at one of these booths. Yet somehow, he always escaped then took to the air to heal. That’s how his magic worked. The act of flight—either in the ravine where the gray-green canopy stretched highest, or over the ocean in the wide-open skies—sutured his seams. Should his wings ever be broken, it would be his downfall. No one knew his weakness but her, and she’d go to the grave with it.
She removed a glove to rub his downy muzzle. Have a good day then.
He blew a charred breath across her. The warmth spread to her toes, much like the cinnamon cider Crony made on the stormiest days, when rain managed to drizzle through the canopies.
Stay clear of the moon-bog, Stain scolded. She then spun toward the onyx walkway, about to head for Luce some ten stalls down where he strung glassy memories on pegs in Crony’s flower-coated shop.
Scorch nickered and Stain looked back.
Don’t you sense the change on the air? We should explore.
Yes, there was that meaningful scent again. Something that smelled musky like Scorch’s equestrian hide, but raw instead of roasted. Similar to the scent of rain, yet different. Starker and more brittle. She couldn’t quite place it, but now that she stopped to focus, her every sense stood on end, as if reaching for the answer.
The problem with living here, so isolated from the kingdom, was the absence of town criers. Most denizens stayed to the periphery of Eldoria if they ventured out at all, and it was rare for the ravine’s brambles to allow anyone to enter unless they had a stench of death or vice about them. As rumors were more exciting than fact, any morsel of news that made its way in had already been chewed up, spit out, and chewed again—into a tale fascinating enough to justify the telling. Once it hit the marketplace, it was as unrecognizable in its origins as a lump of masticated meat.
There are strange horses about, Scorch offered the answer without Stain even asking. From the night realm . . . the crust of ice is stale on their coats. Ten riders; three females, seven males. They may be assassins, if the oily scent of eel is anything to go by.