I lost track of time sitting with my back against that tree. You might wonder how someone who’s just been through something terrible and traumatic would be able to drift off so easily. All I can say is that I’ve spent entire days laying among my crops in the fertile soil without noticing the time pass.
What drew me out was a near-heart attack.
“Lance,” a voice whispered directly into my ear.
I screamed, high and shrill like an offended ostrich, flying to my feet and looking around wildly. There was nobody there in the woods with me. At least that I could see.
I quickly considered the various responses at my disposal: running and screaming until I was back at my farm, crying and screaming until I was back at my farm, or asking who the hell the invisible monster was that just whispered in my ear.
Just as my feet twitched to begin my panicked flight back to my land, a twig cracked to my right. I whirled toward the sound.
“By the Emperor’s taint, don’t piss yourself,” Marilyn Rambow said, emerging from the trees.
“Gods above, Marilyn, how the hell did you do that?” I cried, incensed at the indignity of such a fright. I resisted the urge to knock the stupid pointy hat from her stupid pointy head.
“Just a little spell,” she said with a shrug. “I knew your scream of terror would help me find you out here.”
I stopped resisting the urge. I flung my arm up, sending that stupid hat plummeting to the forest floor. She let me do it, looking at the hat on the ground with tired acceptance.
“I deserved that,” she admitted.
“Yes you did. You set fire to an imperial soldier in my house.”
“Would it help if I said I’m sorry?”
“No.”
“That’s fair.” Marilyn sighed. “Anyway, I thought I’d come find you and let you know that you’ve got a bounty on your head now, and that more soldiers are on their way here to detain and likely hang you.”
“Oh, how lovely,” I said in a mocking tone, “Have you also come to tell me that potatoes have gone extinct and that you’ve dropped my favorite shirt down the privy?”
“Oh, come on, Lance. Don’t get snappy with me for simply telling you what’s what.”
“This is all your fault!” I shouted, gesturing to my newly-ruined world at large. “I have every right to tell you to go fuck a cow!”
Marilyn’s eyes flared with anger, but after a moment’s thought, she clearly realized I was right. Because I was.
Marilyn sighed. “Alright. You’re right. I’m sorry for how all this has played out. But I’m here to help you, and hopefully make up for it. Okay?”
I glared at her, hands on my hips. “How exactly do you plan on making up for any of this?”
Marilyn smiled, then bent and picked up her now-dirty hat. Leaves clung to the brim.
“By saving your life, you blockheaded old man.”
**
“I should’ve guessed you had a derelict cabin in the woods.”
Marilyn shot me a glare as she unlocked the door and pushed it open with a rusty squeak of its hinges.
“Is this where you lure the children to cook and eat them?”
“Keep it up and I’ll barbecue your brains, Lance.”
“So you do cook and eat people.”
Marilyn sighed as she pointed a finger at a dusty, cracked chandelier hanging from the center of the small cabin. It lit a moment later, a tiny, less deadly version of the spell she’d used on the soldier.
“You know,” I said, “It really does chap my ass that you pretended you weren’t a wizard for so long.” I dropped into the nearest chair that didn’t have too much termite damage. My knees popped like wet wood in a campfire. “It hurts me that you think I’m that stupid.”
“I think you’re much stupider than that,” Marilyn responded, blowing a heavy layer of dust off the woodstove set against one wall. “If I’d confirmed I could access the Weave, you would’ve been asking me for all sorts of favors. So would everyone. I know how people are.”
I glowered at her. “ ‘Stupider’ isn’t a word.”
She lit the logs in the stove with a single gesture. The cabin filled instantly with a comfortable heat. Sensing that it was no longer in immediate, life-threatening danger, my stomach chose that moment to growl like a jungle cat.
Marilyn’s eyebrows went up. “Didn’t you just eat a huge dinner?”
I straightened up, placing a protective hand around my round belly. “It takes a lot to fuel the Empire’s best potato farmer.”
Marilyn went to the crates stacked in the corner and began rifling through their contents. “Well, I hope you like year-old jerky and nuts.”
I watched as she began pulling sacks of food out and lining them up on the floor.
“Why do you have a panic cabin in the woods, anyway?” I asked. “Are you some secret criminal on the run from the Empire?”
“You already said it,” she answered, still bent over. “Panic cabin. In case I need to panic.”
“Does that happen often?”
“Only when I save the lives of blockheaded potato farmers.”
We passed the late hours of the night in this fashion, inspecting and gathering supplies she’d been storing in here ‘just in case’. She called me an overweight idiot, I called her a child-cannibal with bad breath. Our usual routine, only this time we had an audience of spiders and mice.
Once we were reasonably assured that we wouldn’t starve, at least for a few days, Marilyn threw a moth-eaten blanket at my face.
“Get comfortable,” she told me, “We’ll be here for a bit.”
“Why?” I asked. “How long are you expecting me to stay here? I need to get back to my babies. They’ll be ready to pop any day now.”
“Please stop anthropomorphizing your potatoes,” she chided, “And, as long as it takes. We need the heat around you to go down. They’ll be at your place today, looking for you. They’ll probably search the surrounding woods and post guards. It’ll take them at least three days to give up and try to look somewhere else.”
I looked at her, incredulous. “And what am I supposed to do after that? I should’ve just turned myself in,” I lamented, “They would’ve understood what happened if I’d just tried to explain—”
“After that,” Marilyn cut in, “We’ll make a quick raid of your place for your things and any more supplies. Then we’ll be off.”
I sputtered. “What—Where—Off where?”
“I have some friends who can take you in. I’ll sneak into Heaverstad tomorrow and send them a note telling them I’m coming.”
“ ‘Some friends’? Should I even ask?”
“No.”
First light was breaking over the trees. I yawned, terribly homesick for my bed and quilt. Marilyn offered for me to sleep on the singular bed roll on the cabin’s floor, but one look at that thing told me I’d wake up with bugs in my nose.
I stretched out on the cleanest spot of the floor planks, wrapping the blanket around myself and imagining fourteen different ways to kill Marilyn. Eight of them involved the use of potatoes in various forms.
Eventually, I fell asleep.
**
We passed those few days in the exact fashion you’d expect. Snapping at one another like territorial snakes, complaining about the other’s body odor and processes, the usual. She tried to explain magic to me, and I tried to explain the difference in soil acidity needs between a russet and a golden potato.
Neither of us had a good time.
Finally, by whatever mysterious factors she used to determine it, Marilyn decided that it was probably safe to run by my house and gather my things for our journey. I didn’t tell her that my own plan was slightly different: namely, in that I wouldn’t be going on any sort of journey. The moment she turned her back, I was going to book it for Heaverstad and beg mercy from the constable.
At least that way, I’d have a chance of seeing the babies through harvest. A small chance, but still something.
The trek back to my land took half the day, as it was much more difficult going with the late-summer sun beating down on our necks, not to mention the sacks of nuts and jerky Marilyn had forced me to help carry.
But once we approached the northern edge of my land, a terrible feeling fell over me.
Not because I was having some sort of spooky premonition, but because I could see a fat column of coal-black smoke rising into the sky.
“That had better be Heaverstad burning to the ground,” I told Marilyn.
It wasn’t.
**
I stood beside Marilyn as we both stared at the scene before us.
My house, small and humble though it was, contained all of my worldly comforts, few though they were. Now, it melted before my eyes as the flames ate at the wood and cloth hungrily, blackening and shriveling the walls, roof tiles, curtains, everything.
They had even set the privy alight, which was quite an inconvenience. I’d been looking forward to a nice, uninterrupted shit in the privacy of my own commode for days. All the jerky and nuts had nearly shriveled my intestines, so I hadn’t been able to relax enough to unload the entire time I’d spent at Marilyn’s child-cooking panic cabin.
It also stank to hell and back as it burned.
“Well,” Marilyn said with her hands on her hips, “I guess that’s the end of that.”
I sighed, but held onto my optimism. I could build another house. Once I went to the constable and got myself exonerated and my bounty removed, I would get straight to work on the new frame. And I’d make Marilyn use her magic to help. She owed me at least that much.
“At least the ashes will be great fertilizer for next year’s crop,” I said. “I’m going to check on the babies.”
I left Marilyn standing there, walking around the side of the house where my field lay.
As my feet rose and fell on the soil, something felt off. Strange. Like the soil was coarser than before. More like sand than the perfect womb for my babies.
It was also far too light of a shade than it should’ve been.
I bent down with a grunt, confused, and grabbed a pinch of it between my fingers. I lifted the soil to my mouth and placed it on my tongue.
And that was the moment that I swore I would kill Marilyn Rambow if it was the last thing I ever did (and it probably would be).
Salt.
Not only had they burned down my home and my shitter, they’d salted my field.
Next chapter drops July 10th, 2026
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