Always After

It is nearly the next year and fully winter; December has once more lain claim to the Realm of Raisón and all who in her dwell, and is almost gone. The Castle of the Raisón, cloaked in fluffy, icy white, is cold to the bones. The meadow and fields, long-buried, are a glacial wasteland. Any who would venture into them in this season would assure themselves of a bad time and risk not returning at all, but neither Goodman nor the Master have been so daft. They have stayed warm inside their stone home, mending aching hearts for nigh three fortnights now, cozy near the fires of the kitchen and the hearth, and each other. The Siren’s Wine has flowed, the bread all baked and bacon too. Of truth, the phrase “wanted for nothing” comes to mind, such has been their contentment and their peace inside the castle, safe from winter’s mean embrace beyond the walls of their abode.

It is a thing of considerable surprise, then, what next occurs to Goodman on this terribly cold night.

“Master.”

The Master is seated like some kind of monk, feet folded beneath him, swaddled in a throng of at least thirty bed-blankets in his high-back upholstered chair before the fireplace. He looks like a large cloth egg, all swallowed up and chair too. He is up to his chin in quilted comfort and he can barely turn his head, which he attempts to do. He looks quite silly doing it. “What is it, my friend.”

Goodman stifles a chuckle. “It has just occurred to me that I would very much like to—“

“Wait!” the Master says, wriggling in distress. “No. Stop.”

“Stop what?”

“I know what you are going to say. Don’t even think about it.” The Master’s eyes are wild. His blanket nest threatens to unravel.

Goodman’s eyes widen. “How do you know what I am going to say?”

“Goodman, you do this every year.”

“Do what?”

The Master grunts and wriggles some more, apparently trying to re-situate himself. “Every year, when it’s finally cold as arse outside, and already dark, and we’re all settled in, you interrupt a perfectly lovely evening by suggesting—“

“Aw! You think this night is lovely?”

“Don’t change the subject. You interrupt a perfectly lovely evening by the fire by first suggesting and then insisting we trade our blessed blanketry for coats and gloves and hats and take a ‘merry’ stroll through Town.”

Goodman smiles.

“No.”

“What! Why not?”

“Why not? Why not?” The Master gestures with his face and eyes at all the blankets he is wrapped in, as if they’ll somehow chime in and back him up. They do not.

Goodman puts his hands on his hips and makes a very childish pouty face.

“Goodman…” the Master says with a rising pitch. “Do not make your pouty face.”

Goodman pouts even more childishly. He knows the Master will break soon.

“I will not break soon.”

Goodman tilts his head and smiles a wily smile. Slowly, he begins nodding. His face is alien and maniacal, like a papyrus merchant trying to prove he can listen. At the sight of it, the Master cannot help but finally break and laugh. Goodman chortles. “Goddammit Goodman!” The Master says, slamming his fists into the cushioning to no effect. In a fit and with a roar, he gyrates wildly and all his impressive bedding spills over the chair and onto the floor like a plate of butter noodles. He sighs, defeated. “I’ll be needing my earmuffs.”

As with many castles, the Castle of the Raisón has a town that is near it, inside which live and labor a few hundred or so peasants. Overwhelmingly, they tend to be engaged in various lines of thoroughly menial work and find habitat in various stages of abject poverty, distress, and oppression. They do try their best, though, to keep their filthy heads above that threshold of sadness, which, sorrily, grips a few too tightly from time to time.

The town that is near the Castle of the Raisón is called Town. On any given day it has three alcohol shops, seven corrals for horses, (of which they currently have none due to having eaten them all), and one tired doctor, who, unimportantly, is named Merek, but during the month of December, and especially in the days surrounding the Anniversary of the Charlatan’s Birth, which has just passed, it has something else: unmerited hope. Of truth, near the end of each year, when the crops are dead and the febrile illnesses are in full swing, the peasants of Town light far too many candles, place them on murdered trees, and give each other meager gifts that only make their plights look more pitiful, a thing the Master never thinks possible, year over year. Why on earth Goodman insists they take a stroll through Town each winter, or why he never fails to find it “nice,” the Master can hardly ever guess.

Warm candlelight dances off wet cobblestones but the coolness of the moonlight prevails. Humble homes of stone and shanties of wood perch along Main Street like birds on a wire, bunched up in a line as if there isn’t enough room. Or they are like teeth in a jaw too small, competing for their place, every other one jutting out at a different dutch angle, unhappily but inadvertently askew. Anyway, Town is ugly and it is late. Of truth, every last one of Town’s dwellers have gone inside their crooked homes for the evening to escape the bitter cold, the only thing about Town of which the Master is currently—or ever—jealous.

“Goodman why must we be out at this hour?” he says, shivering. “It isn’t even the Anniversary of the Charlatan’s Birth. Any festive spirit that might have existed in this terrible place is long gone until next year. Look.” The Master gestures at the quiet, empty street around them and the enviable fire-glow that flickers behind the few windows that remain lit. “See? Even the peasants know where to be this late at night. And in the dead of winter!”

Goodman shrugs and sighs. “Oh, I don’t know, Master. I find it nice.”

“Nice!” The Master is appalled. “In what universe is—“

But Goodman shushes him with a quickly raised finger. He freezes. “Wait,” he whispers. “Did you hear that?”

The Master shakes his head. “Hear wh—“

“Shh! That. I heard it again.”

The Master gives his familiar a perplexed look. “Goodman I don’t—“

Goodman whips around and hunches down. He points. “That way.” He signals for the Master to follow.

Furtively, Goodman and the Master creep down the street until they both hear it, a sound like the scratching of a rat, but more intermittent, like a rat being very careful with his scratches, doing them one at a time and with great concentration. The Master can’t believe it. At the idea of pursuing a rodent, he rolls his eyes, and is about to place a hand on Goodman’s shoulder to silently stop him when suddenly, Goodman gasps and dashes away, kneeling. The Master is startled. “Goodman! What—“ but then he sees her too, the smallest little thing you ever saw.

All curled up and shivering something fierce is a tiny little girl with no shoes and no cap. Clutched in her frail and sooted hands is a box of sulfur sticks, just opened. The scratching sound, the Master thinks. The little girl had been lighting matches, presumably—or, obviously—to stay some kind of warm. He goes to her too and kneels beside Goodman.

“Little girl,” Goodman says, reaching for her frost-nipped hands. “Why are you out here in this cold? Where is your family?”

The little girl’s eyes are wide and she looks at Goodman, no comprehension in her face.

“Little girl,” Goodman says again. “Your family. Where are they? Why are you not at home?”

“Min familie?” she says. Her voice is like a bird.

“Ja. Din familie. Hvor er de?”

The little girl glances at the Master and then at the matchbox in her hands before returning her gaze to Goodman. “De er hjemme, men jeg kan ikke tage hjem. Jeg har endu ikke tjent en cent.”

“Mmm,” Goodman says, pointing at the matchbox. “Sælger du tændstikker?”

“Ja.”

Goodman nods. “I see…og ikke en cent?”

“Ingen. ikke en.”

“Og hvad sker der, hvis du vender tomhændet hjem?”

The girl bows her head. “De vil slå mig.”

“Oh my,” Goodman says, shaking his head. “Har de slået dig før?”

The girl hesitates, and then nods, visibly ashamed.

Goodman sighs sadly and turns to the Master with grave concern on his face. “Sire this is not good.”

“It doesn’t sound good,” the Master says with all the sarcasm he can muster. He has never been more lost.

Goodman purses his lips and turns back to the girl. He thinks a moment before speaking again. “Kunne du tænke dig at komme hjem med os? Vi vil aldrig slå dig, og du vil aldrig have noget som helst.”

At this, the girl’s face brightens considerably, as if it were itself a lit match. “Virkelig? Mener du det virkelig?”

Goodman nods and his shoulders relax like a ponderous weight has been lifted from them. “Ja.”

The girl then leaps up and throws her tiny arms around Goodman’s neck, the box of matches still clutched in one hand. “Tak hr! Tak skal du have!” Embracing her, Goodman stands, lifting her up. “You’re very welcome, little one,” he says. He turns to the Master with a face that is somehow both a smile and shrug. The Master can’t believe it.

“Goodman! What are you doing? What just happened?”

Goodman furrows his brow. “Of truth?”

“Yes of truth!”

“Well, Master, it appears we have ourselves the daughter you always wanted.”

The Master gasps. “What!?” His face is ghost-pale. “Goodman we can’t—!“

Goodman sighs gently and nods. “Yes we can.” The girl is already nigh asleep, her head on his shoulder. He lowers his voice. “This little angel sells matches but she hasn’t made a cent. If she goes home empty-handed, she will be beaten, like she has been beaten before.”

The Master makes to respond but cuts himself off. “Beaten? Are you sure?”

Goodman solemnly nods.

“Ashes.”

“That was precisely my reaction, my lord, and so I offered to take her home to live with us.”

“But…Goodman.” He shakes his head. “We can’t—that’s too much.”

“Too much? Too much?”

The Master shrugs. “Yes, Goodman! It’s too much!”

In an instant, Goodman narrows his eyes and quickly closes the distance between his face and the Master’s. He whispers harshly through bared teeth. “Nothing…is too much for this little match girl.”

The Master’s eyes widen and he leans back, befuddled but also a little frightened. He throws up his hands.

“Now give me your earmuffs,” Goodman says, holding out a hand. “She needs them more than you do.”

As with many castles, the Castle of the Raisón does not have a bedchamber ready to receive a small girl, much less an apparently Danish one with no shoes and no cap and a half-used box of sulphur sticks who on the fear being beaten by her parents walked right up to death’s door and proceeded to knock vigorously. Instead, there are war rooms and armory rooms. There are rooms with maps and rooms with books and some rooms with no room left in them at all. Most of the rooms are the Master’s rooms and less than six, but no more than four, are Goodman’s, but none of those, even, are fit for a frigid princess. Of truth, there is only one place in the castle, at the moment, suitable for the situation at hand, and when the Master realizes where it is, he realizes he should have realized it before.

“Goodman!” he says, a silver tray with ceramic cups of steaming cocoa in his hands. “Not my blanket throne.”

Goodman brings a finger to his mouth. “Shh,” he says. “She is still sleeping.”

The Master sets the tray down by the fire. “Well of course she is still sleeping. She only nearly perished half an hour ago.”

Goodman says nothing.

The Master looks at the girl. Her nose and cheeks have not lost their rosiness and she is nestled like a precious jewel in a marvelous feat of quilted engineering. “Excellent blanketry though, Goodman.”

“Thank you, sire.”

The Master sighs. “She does look quite beautiful, doesn’t she. And delicate.”

Goodman nods.

“It was the right thing to bring her here.”

Goodman turns to his familiar. “Thank you, my lord.”

“Although I doubt she’ll stay.”

“What?”

The Master shakes his head. “Children will always be after their parents.”

“What do you mean?”

“It is one of the oldest truths, Goodman. You do not know it?”

Goodman thinks. He looks at the girl. “I never knew my parents.”

The Master nods. “You have it better, then. Better than her, anyway.”

“What? How?”

“Better to know no parents, Goodman, than to know loathsome ones. Children of loathsome parents sometimes find themselves even more attached to them than do children of good parents.”

“…Why?”

“They’re after the love, my friend. The love they never got.” Goodman is taken aback, crestfallen. “But…why not…just search for it elsewhere?”

“What do you mean?”

“Can’t a child of a loathsome parent…just stop seeking love from them? And seek it from another?”

The Master considers it. “I suppose, Goodman.”

“You suppose?”

The Master sighs. “Yes.”

“Why?”

The Master looks at him. “Because it’s a hard thing, Goodman. And the love you get from a pretend parent just isn’t the same.” He bites his lip.

Goodman looks at the little girl. “Mine will be the same.” He shakes his head. “No. It will be better.”

The Master smiles sadly. “You may think so, Goodman.”

“You don’t?”

“Sure,” the Master says. “But she might not.”

The next few days are a blissful blur. The Master happily turns over possession of one of his least-used rooms for the palatial imaginations of a girl only nine years old. Where it was a dusty and long-neglected guest room before, it is soon transformed into a veritable Royal Quarters fit for a curious and curiously stalwart young lady, with a draped four-poster bed and tapestries of great historical escapades on every wall, dragged out of archival storage for the first time in seven centuries. The Master studiously practices his Danish, to Goodman and the girl’s riotous laughter and delight. Goodman and the girl take to the kitchen and make a hellacious mess of flour, powdered sugar, and jams. When they present their creations to the Master, which are sticky and ugly but delicious, they all become covered in confection, such is their glee to be three.

They dine on the finest roasts and soups the Master can concoct, and tell fantastical stories beside the fire each night, very little of which the Master understands, but it is just as well to him. The brightness and sweet joy in the little girl’s face is a warmth to surpass any pile of blankets ever assembled or any Siren’s Wine ever aged. Of truth, it is a real threat even to winter itself.

So great, then, is Goodman and the Master’s surprise, one night, to hear crying from her bedchamber. They rush in.

“What is it, dear?” Goodman says, but the girl cannot find her words. Goodman and the Master exchange worried glances. They wait.

Shaking, delicately, the girl produces something from under her blanket—a slightly crushed, half-empty box of matchsticks. She looks at the two of them, the feeling in her heart plain to see in her eyes, the pain too great to speak.

Goodman and the Master silently wipe their own eyes. “You want to go home?” Goodman says, though he knows deep down it is not a question.

The next morning they bundle up for a trip to Town. Silent is the castle in this hour.

When they reach the cobblestone street in the town’s center, the little girl leads the way, this time with boots on her feet and a very warm cap on her head. It is the middle of the morning and the last December sun is gleaming down on them, but Goodman and the Master feel colder than they did a few nights ago. When the girl’s pace slows, and she finally stops in front of what can only be her home, their hearts grow heavy, and Goodman dashes to her and picks her up, turning her around. He sets her down and the Master does the same. She hugs him so tightly that he winces. Putting her back down turns out to be one of the the hardest things he has ever done, but he does it. She will always be after her parents’ love, he knows it. Best to give it a chance while she is yet small.

Goodman kneels in front of her and holds out his hand. “Excuse me, my lady, but would you happen to have any matchsticks I could buy? It is quite cold out here and I would very much like to start a roaring fire in the hearth.”

The girl smiles and nods excitedly. "Yes. Right here." She produces the matchbox. Goodman takes it and turns to the Master. “Master, would you help me purchase matches from this wonderful little girl?”

The Master smiles at the playacting and reaches into his cloak. Kneeling, he produces a ten-pence coin and places it in the girl’s hand. It is meager but it is more than the girl has received from any single transaction, however fabricated.

Seeing it, Goodman is appalled. “Master,” he says, suddenly a little angry, but the Master raises a silent hand. “I have something else for the little one,” he says in his very best Danish, and with another reach into his cloak, produces a very small paper envelope tied up with twine. He places it into her other hand and closes her fingers over it. Leaning in, he whispers something into her ear. When he is finished with his message, he pulls back, and she nods at him. “Good,” he says. He stands up. Goodman is looking at him expectantly. “Trust me,” he says. Goodman sighs.

When the last moment has come, and they are all three in it, the little girl turns to her house and walks up the rickety wooden stairs. She knocks, and when the door finally opens, she turns back to Goodman and the Master but they have already gone.

***

It is the dead of night again when the little match girl is next alone, only minutes before the first clock-strike of the New Year, and she is not asleep. Without making a sound, she retrieves the paper pouch the Master gave her from her pocket and unties the string. Tipping it over, she lets the contents spill out onto the blanket beside her and her tiny bedroom is instantly awash in the violet iridescence of a glowing purple stone, no larger than a marble. Her surprise is great, but the light is greater. The stone burns with such a glow that it becomes brighter than daylight and the girl quickly replaces it in the envelope so she will not be found out.

Rolling onto her back, she falls asleep, knowing no one could imagine what beautiful things she has seen.