anyone being hurt. I carefully put down the satchel with the
facts machine and looked down at the steps and thought and
thought. Goodwife Filster was saying something about
beasts and dragons and fires from the Abyss, and she wasn’t
making a lot of sense, though in a way she was, even if it
was a very awful sort of logic.
About then I remembered a trick I had once played on
Ark when I was small, something I had sworn never to do
again after I’d tried the trick, and Ark had broken two of his
fingers, for which I’d been spanked and felt bad over for
weeks. I was looking at the bottom of the door frame, where
part of the frame had fallen off but left some nails sticking
out, just enough to tie a string across the bottom of the door
above ankle height.
I felt in my robe pockets for some string, but I didn’t
have any. Then I remembered my once-holy symbol of
Gilean, and I carefully slid its chain off my neck and knelt
down by the door as quietly as I could. It took a few
seconds for me to wrap the chain around the nails on either
side of the doorway. It was dark, and I didn’t think
Goodwife Filster would see the chain until it was too late.
Then I grabbed the satchel.
I thought about calling for Goodwife Filster to come
outside, but I thought she might say no and burn down our
home. That left only one solution, and from the sound of
things inside, I was going to have to do it now.
“Don’t set the house on fire,” Ark was begging. “I don’t
want any of us to get hurt. Please take the torch outside.”
“I have no fear of you,” cried Goodwife Filster. “I am
the arm of righteousness. I am the avenger of fallen Istar.”
“Goodie, that’s crazy talk!” said Widow Muffin, and
right then I knew she had said the wrong thing. I leaped up
the two back steps, stepped over the chain at the bottom of
the doorway, and stomped into the shop as loudly as I
could.
“You – !” Goodwife Filster was starting to shout a bad
word, but she stopped when I came in and turned around.
When I saw her, I wondered if I had made a very bad
mistake, because Goodwife Filster had a hatchet in the hand
that didn’t have the torch. Her eyes were shining like black
stones at the bottom of a cold creek. Ark and Widow
Muffin were bunched up in a corner, and Ark was holding a
footstool with the widow back behind him. The place stank
of burned fish. Everyone froze as I came in. The only thing
I could hear was the crackling of the torch flames.
It was time to do something, so I waved my arms and
the satchel and shouted the first thing that came into my
head. “Hey!” I yelled at Goodwife Filster. “Got any sugar
buns?”
I didn’t know what to expect, but I certainly didn’t
expect that Goodwife Filster could move so fast for
someone built so dumpy. She didn’t say a thing, at least not
that I remember, but she came at me like a wild horse, and I
knew I was going to be a very sorry kender if I didn’t move.
I ran for the back door, and my plan to trip Goodwife Filster
and hit her over the head with the satchel would have been
perfect, except that I forgot about the chain at the bottom of
the door in trying to get away from her and that axe and
torch she had, and the chain snagged my foot, and I fell out
the back door and down the steps into the dirt.
I got up right away, and it was a good thing I did, too,
because Goodwife Filster hit the chain right after I did and
fell down the steps, too, but she fell right next to me, and
the torch singed my hair before it stuck in the dirt and went
out. I had no time to do anything with the facts-machine