Chapter 6: 6: The Hilarious Misunderstanding

Myrinna stared at the letter for a long while. Her eyes flitted back, forth, up, down, until Wren was sure she must have read it a good five or six times over.

Finally, the old woman let the hand holding the letter drop to her side, then did perhaps the last thing Wren had expected. With a wide smile, Myrinna wrapped her arms around Wren and embraced her.

“Never thought I’d actually see the day,” she said into Wren’s torso.

“Um,” said Wren.

Either she really didn’t like Dachran, or that letter wasn’t some kind of dying farewell. Come to think of it, I don’t know why I assumed it was. Should’ve read it really. Shit. Well, too late now.

Myrinna stepped back, still holding Wren’s forearms, and peered up at the younger woman’s face. “You don’t have much of a resemblance,” she muttered. “Never met your mother, of course, but looks like my boy’s genes weren’t all that strong, hm?” She reached up and patted Wren on the cheek.

“Um,” said Wren again.

“You look older than I thought you would, though,” Myrinna mused with a critical stare.

Wren couldn’t help a disbelieving scoff. “None taken.”

“Well, no matter,” Myrinna said, giving Wren a fond pat on the arms before turning and wandering towards the back of the shop, throwing the letter down on a table as she went. “Still, I’m glad to have you here, for more reasons than one…”

Wren snatched up the paper, the old woman’s words fading in her ears, and read:

Dear Mother,

I hope I haven’t disappointed you too much. I tried to make you proud, you know. I just never was quite sure how best to do it.

I want to thank you for everything you’ve done to support me throughout my life, even from a distance. I am sorry it has taken me a long time to repay you, but I hope you can understand my mistrust of unreliable couriers; I want to ensure that the money I owe you reaches you safely, and am being very diligent in finding an appropriate means of sending it your way!

I want, also, to apologise for having stayed away. Of course, I have a good life here in Din, so I hope you’ll be a pleased mother for the success of your son - even if perhaps I should have visited more often.

You may not hear from me for a while now, but I wish you well in the meantime.

Your loving son,

Dachran Mason

Then, in a much hastier hand:

On second thought, I can start repaying you now.

The woman you see before you is the daughter I’ve told you about, Wren. She’s going to work for you and pay off what I owe. She’s a true Noiser: Din born and raised, with all the mercantile aptitude you need to help around the shop.

With love,

Dachran

“Oh, come on,” Wren muttered.

Myrinna turned her head. “What was that?”

“Uuuuuuuummmm,” said Wren, yet again.

“You must stop with the umms and ahhs,” said Myrinna with an air of disapproval. “It doesn’t suit a professional lady.”

Oh, for the sake of all the gods and angels and monsters, Wren moaned internally. I don’t want to be a professional. Or a lady. Has Dachran seriously lied to his mother that a) he’s still alive, just a bit negligent about contacting her, b) I’m the daughter he’s been claiming to have for decades in this made-up life he’s got in the capital, and c) he’s sent me here to pay off his debts to her?

She almost slapped herself in the face for having got herself into the situation.

This is what you get for making promises to strangers, Wren. Especially dying ones who just spun you a total yarn. Although… the stag turned out to be real… except no, he outright told me he’s been lying to Myrinna ever since he left home. Ugh.

“Well, it’s late,” said Myrinna. “Best get some rest - have you really travelled all this way from the capital on your own?”

Wren nodded, lost for anything to actually say in response.

“We’ll start in the morning, then,” Myrinna told her, opening a door in the back of the shop; behind it was a staircase up to the second storey of the building. “I have a guest room - up the stairs, first door on the left. I keep it all made up just in case, so it’s ready for you. And the bed’s comfortable, I promise that. Go ahead now, you’ll need your sleep.” As she spoke, Myrinna herself was already halfway up the stairs. “Goodnight, Wren - goodnight, granddaughter!”

And with that, she disappeared into her own room and slammed the door shut.

If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

“The shop was open five minutes ago and you’re going to bed now?” Wren muttered in disbelief. “It’s barely even dark -”

Myrinna’s door creaked open just an inch. “What’s that down there?”

“Oh, nothing,” Wren called back. “Goodnight.”

“Quite right,” came Myrinna’s reply, and the door thudded closed again.

Wren took a deep breath, puffed out her cheeks, and exhaled. She wandered out into the main space of the store and dropped her pack on the floor, staring blankly around the interior of the Hilarious Misunderstanding without really seeing any of it.

“This woman doesn’t know her son’s dead,” she murmured, much more quietly. “She thinks I’m the granddaughter she’s never really had, she thinks her son’s still living in the capital - where he’s never actually been - and she thinks I’m here to work off… damnation knows how much money she’s been giving him over the decades.”

She groaned softly, collapsing to her knees on the hard floor, rubbing her eyes with her fingertips.

“I shouldn’t lie to her. I shouldn’t. But it shouldn’t be my place to break all this to her - her damned son should’ve done that, but I had to go and promise him I’d deliver one stupid letter, and now here I am.”

She opened her eyes and stood, stretching. Only when her arms were above her head, reaching up as high as they possibly could, did she realise the full extent of the soreness of her back and shoulders.

“I can’t do anything about it now, though,” she reasoned. “Myrinna doesn’t seem the type to take kindly to being disturbed once she’s settled in for the night. And… it’s a decent place to rest for one night. Better than any I’ve had for the last week.”

Wren nodded. It was settled.

“I stay here tonight,” she told herself. “In the morning, I’ll… settle it. Somehow.”

Her fingers skimmed the edge of a table; she realised she’d started wandering around the Hilarious Misunderstanding, absorbing its layout, situating herself within its geometry and in the context of the many, many things it held.

“Wouldn’t be the worst place to work, if I had to,” she muttered. “It’s got a vibe to it, if nothing else.”

With that thought, Wren decided there was nothing else for it but to turn in. An early night, perhaps, but there wasn’t much else she could do and a good night’s sleep was desperately overdue.

So she trundled up the stairs, then immediately turned around and trundled back down the stairs to go and lock the door. It felt like the right thing to do. And, before she went up again, she kicked her boots off and left them by the bottom step.

Back up the stairs, Wren found the room to which Myrinna had directed her, and flumped down on the bed, expecting to spend an hour or so just lying there and thinking about everything with the muffled ringing of the Saint Auspicious bells in her ears.

In fact, she fell asleep almost instantly.

It really was a very comfortable guest bed.

~~~

Wren awoke to the sounds of activity downstairs: clanging and clattering, as if a lot of objects of various materials and weights were all being moved around and thumped down in different places. The morning was still dark, only a faint grey light coming through the window; she found a small lantern and a box of matches on a table beside her bed and sat up, shaking her head in an effort to wake herself up.

I really hope that’s Myrinna and we’re not being robbed. I mean she’s not.

Wren eased open the door and tiptoed down the stairs, just in case she was in fact about to stumble across a ruthless and terrifying thief of some kind. At the bottom of the stairs, after briefly registering that her boots weren’t where she’d left them, she poked her head around the door to look out at the shop floor.

The Hilarious Misunderstanding was bathed in the same soft glow as the night before, but the scene illuminated by the light was quite different. The neat rows of knick-knacks and whatnots and doodads were no more, replaced by messily mishmashed piles of assorted this-that-and-the-other. Wren caught a glimpse of Myrinna’s head somewhere amidst the carnage and sighed heavily.

“Morning,” she called.

A horned helmet flew up from Myrinna’s rough vicinity and landed on top of a heap of miscellaneous bits and bobs.

“Ah, you’re awake!” Myrinna crashed out of the mess, knocking things over as she went.

“What’s, er…” Wren gestured vaguely around at the scene. “What’s going on?”

“Remerchandising,” said Myrinna with a wicked grin. “I do it every week. Keeps things fresh.”

Wren nodded slowly, taking in the chaos. “Fresh,” she repeated.

“I know, I know.” Myrinna waved a hand. “It looks a mess now, but it’s worth it.”

Wren tried to look curious rather than sceptical. “What exactly are we…?”

Myrinna gave her a funny look. “What, you don’t do this in your fancy boutiques in Din?”

“I didn’t really do… er, this bit,” Wren said, which was true. “You know, there were a lot of people doing a couple of specific tasks each.”

“Ah.” Myrinna nodded as if that made perfect sense to her, which was something of a relief to Wren. “Well, here, there aren’t a lot of people, so we all have to do all the things.” She put her hands on her hips and made a thoughtful humming sound for a few moments. “You just watch and learn.”

So, for the next half an hour or so (after conducting a few necessary morning activities including finding the bathroom and changing into fresher clothes), Wren watched and learned as Myrinna whizzed around the shop like a woman possessed, snatching things up from their place in the display and throwing them either into new spots or piles with mysterious purposes. Then she went diving into the piles, tossing some of the heaped-up things out and back onto tables or shelves in some order that made no sense to Wren but felt almost as if it might have been divinely inspired: Myrinna moved with no obvious rhyme or reason, yet everything she placed seemed to fall into the spot that was meant for it.

Then the older woman swept whole mounds of things up into her arms, somehow balancing them as she zoomed through the shop and through a door Wren hadn’t noticed, emerging with armfuls of completely different items that went out on display in place of the old ones.

“Stockroom’s back there,” Myrinna informed Wren as she tore around the space, indicating the door through which some things had disappeared and others had emerged.

A few more minutes of that, and Myrinna stood back with a satisfied sigh.

“Perfect,” she said.

Somehow, Wren couldn’t find it in herself to disagree. Nothing seemed to have any obvious order to it, yet it all just looked as if it were right where it ought to be.

Myrinna clapped Wren on the shoulder. “Right,” she said, “I have to go and sort a few things, but you’ll be fine on your own for the morning, I would think - if you’re hungry, there’s a little kitchen in the back of the stockroom - oh, and I took the liberty of throwing your boots away, they were a terrible choice for walking all the way from Din in the cold, and you hadn’t taken care of them at all, but I’ll get you some from Generosity’s shop and the price’ll come out of your wages, so no need to worry about that, and I’m sure you can find some spare slippers somewhere in the meantime. Until later!”

And with that, almost before the last word was out of her mouth, Myrinna had already left the shop and closed the door behind her.

Wren stood there slack-jawed, only at the moment of Myrinna’s disappearance remembering that she needed to tell the old woman that she wasn’t who Dachran had claimed her to be and neither was she planning to stay and work in the shop. But the old woman had disposed of her boots, so… for the time being, at least, she was somewhat stuck there.

Only a few seconds later, the door swung open again. Wren prepared herself to get all the necessary words out as quickly as possible, but it wasn’t Myrinna who entered.