Munck and Trudy have a shopping episode

Vibeke and Bartel Schlagnitweit had been a pious but childless couple. As was the case with this kind of setup, they had hoped that an increase in piousness would somehow convince the gods to grant them a child. When that hadn’t worked and they were moving into their forties, they had begun to scour the woods and fields. There was bound to be a child hidden in an old tree stump, wood log, stone, flower, or suspiciously ordinary watermelon. After all, there were rules. Finally, on the fateful day, they had taken a break by the road. Dusk hat settled in and Vibeke said to her husband, “My, what a funny looking cloud. It looks almost like a baby.”

“Wonderful,” her husband had sarcasm dripping from every syllable. “Then heavens themselves mock us.”

“Why is that cloud coming nearer?”

“Eh? No, that’s just a trick of the ligh… watch out!”

But Vibeke, a passionate and pious ball player in youth, had caught the baby-shaped cloud, which in her arms turned into a baby-shaped baby.

The couple had then looked up, shouted “thanks!”, and hurried home before whichever deity was responsible could change their mind.

“What should we name her? Or him?” Bartel tried to see over his wife’s shoulder. “What is it?”

“It’s a girl!”

“She shall have a good name. Like… Aurora or Gwenaëlle.”

“Hogwash,” Vibeke had said to that. “She’ll have a good sturdy name.”

“But, love, this child clearly awaits some sort of destiny, she needs a name for that.”

“And if there’s no destiny waiting for her and she has to be a baker like we are? Gwenaëlle the baker? I don’t think so.”

Bartel, who had long accepted that his wife was the practical one in the relationship, had shrugged and consented to naming the girl after his favourite aunt.

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In the present, Ermentrude opened her eyes and shot up. She shot down again as the headache hit, landing hard on a potato.

“Good morning,” Munck tried for optimism. He flashed the woman a big smile to distract from the fact that his hands shook so much he was spilling tea all over the tray he was carrying.

“Please calm down, ma’am!” he screamed three seconds later, being chased around the ship’s deck and pelted with raw potatoes.

“That’ll teach you to kidnap old ladies!”

“I can explain!”

“Explain it in your last will and testament!”

Munck’s skinny legs were cramping, not used to physical exertion, and over the sound of his pounding heart he heard the rescuing voice of the ship steward.

“Ma’am, please… I’m sure your grandson deserves this sort of punishment, but you’re disturbing the other passengers!”

Trudy pointed an accusing tuber at Hungerford. “He’s not my grandson! This wizard man has kidnapped me from my hometown and is taking me to the capital against my will!”

Hungerford was struck by an idea as the last potato sailed past him and into an open scuttle from which mild protest could be heard. “Grandma, we talked about this,” he said, putting on a smile he thought looked innocent. “We’re bringing you back to the old folks’ home, remember? I’m sorry, sir, she gets like that sometimes.”

“I understand, I have an old aunt myself,” the steward nodded.

“Will no one listen to me? That’s not my relative!”

“Come along, grandma.”

The young wizard linked his arm under her elbow and complimented her away to the deck chairs. Trudy finally had a chance to see her surroundings instead of a red mist of pure septuagenarian rage. He had, some way or another, gotten her on a ship, and apparently no one had tried to stop him. If all people she’d meet were as unreasonable unhelpful as the steward, she was in for a bad time.

And the boy couldn’t have gotten her a nice cabin to be unconscious in, either.

“And where am I? Why am I on a boat?”

“It’s the river ferry to Hunchbridge, now if you’d let me finish…”

“I’m taking the next boat back!”

Munck took hold of the woman’s hands. “Mistress, please, I beg you, I beseech you, I need your help with this.”

“No!”

“Hear me out. Please. Please?” It wasn’t the first time in his life Hungerford dropped to his knees, and he looked as pathetic as ever. “Please!”

“Alright, alright, stop begging, you remind me of my late husband!”

“Just hear what I have to say… you don’t have any more potatoes, do you? Nevermind. See, my old mentor was like a father to me. Also like an uncle. And a grandpa. He was the closest I ever had to family, and I promised I would see this through, bringing the Children of the Sky to the capital. Please, if you help me find the other two, I’ll… well, I don’t have money to offer… or property… uh… would you accept servitude?”

“What?”

“I’ll work in your shop, for free, forever.”

Granny Trudy raised a sceptical eyebrow at him. “Can I get that in writing?”

“Oh, uh, certainly, let me see…”

Trudy observed Hungerford as he dug around his big bag for paper and a pen. The boy… well, was a boy. Barely in his twenties, and seemed unable to grow a beard, which for a wizard might be pretty embarrassing. He trembled in robes two sizes too big, and the wooden staff with the gold fittings he was carrying had likely belonged to someone who could lift more weight than a teapot. Worst of all, he seemed sincere about his master and his search. Against her will, Trudy found herself softening.

“There we are,” Hungerford jotted down lines. “I, Hungerford Munck, pledge my services to the bakery of … fill in your full name here, please … in perpetuity. See?”

Big, pleading, insecure brown eyes looked down on Trudy and put her in mind of a kicked puppy. And worse, of little Herby, who would be six this summer.

“You have a lot of nerve, you know that?” she grumbled and looked at the contract again. “Well … I suppose the shop’ll be alright … and the kids are grown … but you’re keeping me from my grandbabies!”

“I promise, as soon as we’re done, I’ll take you right back home.”

“And how long will that be, exactly?”

“Uh … not long … I got a good hunch on where the other two are …”

“Like your master did, you mean?”

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

“N-no, but it can’t take more than a few months. Weeks,” he corrected himself when he saw the look in the small beady eyes that promised another vegetable assault. “Say, Mistress, did you never want to go on an adventure, even in youth?” Hungerford tried an encouraging smile and came out looking like a man desperate for a straw to clutch. “I mean … this is a bit of a chance, isn’t it?”

“You prepared this speech while I was unconscious, didn’t you?” With a heavy sigh, Trudy grabbed the pen out of his hand and signed. At least the shop would get something out of it. “Fine. I accept your terms. Let’s find those two buggers. And the galley, you made me miss at least two meals. And then you’ll explain to me exactly everything you know.”

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Hungerford Munck thought he had it all under control. Of course, with his impending indentured servitude at the bakery, he had no idea what to offer the other two. It dawned on him that he would likely be dealing with two more Trudys.

It was moments like these he felt like cursing old Balgimantas’ name. And Merunas’ too, for that matter. He could at least have come along. “Oh, I don’t travel well, what with my bad leg, and you don’t want to know about the digestion,” my foot, Hungerford thought unkindly. If only his master had been successful some six or seven decades prior, he wouldn’t be in this mess now. But a solemn oath was a solemn oath.

He was picking at a sandwich as he watched Trudy, who picked at hers. She had just finished complaining about the various ways ship travel made her sick. Hungerford had at one point studied at a wizard academy and was thus used to long lectures, but even he hadn’t known how long a person could go on about a single inconvenience.

“So tell me about this master of yours,” the old woman switched subjects. “When did he die?”

“A year ago.”

“Was he very old?”

“A hundred and twenty-six,” Hungerford sighed.

“Struck down in his prime, I see,” Trudy scoffed, who had heard that wizards tended to live longer, but this was ridiculous. “And still not enough time to find his prophecy kids or what have you.”

“He was a great master of the arcane. One of the Archmages of a sanctum in his time. His mind wandered a bit towards the end.” Or all the time. He’d called Hungerford by old assistants’ names every second day and stopping him from wearing his underwear outside his robes had been a weekly challenge. “I couldn’t always keep him on track of the quests he accepted, which I suppose is why he never came to seek you out.”

Trudy sipped the weak tea she’d been served and made a face. “That prophecy of yours can’t be that important, then, if the wizard in charge of it couldn’t even get around to it. How do you get a prophecy, anyway?”

“The seers’ guild keeps an archive. Most prophecies are centuries old, see, it’s not always clear when they will start up.”

“Badly organised, I see,” Trudy was quick to judge. “Do you at least know where the other two are?”

“Pretty sure,” Munck said quickly. “I scoured all the materials my master left me and I’m pretty definite. It’ll only be a short walk from our next stop, I promise.”

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The next stop was Hunchbridge, a fishing town as charming as its smell. Battling a flock of seagulls for the remains of his sandwich, and ultimately losing, Munck lead Trudy through the crowd of sailors and dockworkers, then the crowd of merchants and tourists.

Trudy, who responded to every accidental shove from passers-by with a deliberate one, said: “So where to, boy?”

“Well … first we have to ask around …”

Trudy promptly exploded. “You don’t even know where we’re going, do you?”

“I know the general direction! I think.”

“He thinks,” Trudy scoffed and marched away.

Trudy made Munck stop in every shop until she found one for stationary, over his considerable protests. “I’m writing my children that I’m still alive, and there’s nothing you can do to stop me. Now give me a copper, I need a stamp.”

After the post office, Munck was finally allowed to focus on his own quest, which was…

“Oh, finally, a magic shop! I just need some components. Uh … please don’t touch anything in there.”

“What do I look like, a child?” Trudy grumbled.

The bell above the door chimed as they entered the quiet, dark sanctum of the arcane. Munck immediately felt at home between the books and dubious scrolls, the rows upon rows of potions, wand displays, and sundry items the meaning of which were unknown to the uninitiated. Trudy poked a stuffed parakeet experimentally.

Munck took in the gigantic cabinet of magical components behind the counter and looked around to spy the proprietor. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed Trudy sticking her nose into a jar of newt eyes. “Mistress, please, don’t touch that!”

Trudy ignored him with practiced nonchalance and tried to open a glass case that held a monkey’s paw. “Why don’t you ask the fella who runs this place about the whereabouts of your second Child? A magic fella might remember.”

Hungerford pried her hands away from the display. “Children falling out of the sky isn’t exactly news, ma’am. Blimey, I could swear every month or so you hear about a babe being found in a tree stump. That’s what makes the whole thing so bloody difficult …”

“Aye, I was found in a flower,” someone said. Munck turned towards the voice that seemed to come from the counter and saw no one.

“Down here, boy.”

Trudy and Hungerford looked on as a man as tall as an average human thumb climbed a tiny ladder onto the brass cash register. The diminutive merchant nodded at them. “Now, my cousin though, you know how she came about? Her da’ cut open a bit of bamboo, and there she was!”

“Uh-huh,” said Hungerford, transfixed. Trudy trod on his foot.

“It’s rude to stare. You wanted to buy some magicky gimmicks, remember?”

“It’s not gim… never mind. Sir – where are you? – ah, there. I need a few components.” Hungerford unrolled a list and held it up for inspection, which from the proprietor’s point of view must have looked like a poster.

“Very standard,” he nodded. “I’ll have that for you in just a minute.”

For the announced minute, Hungerford was torn between watching the tiny man navigate an appropriately sized network of pulleys and platforms and stopping Trudy from touching things that could turn her into a sentient lizard.

“By any chance, would he have something for rheumatism?” she said. “I think it’s going to rain.”

“Ma’am, this is a magic shop…” Munck began, but the shopkeep beamed at them.

“Of course, I just got a fresh shipment this morning, let me fetch you a tin.”

Hungerford paid handsomely for the means to cast his more sophisticated spells and Trudy’s ointment.

When they exited the shop, Trudy looked back for a moment. “Ford, this man over there, was he tiny?”

“Yes?”

“Thank the gods, I thought I was having another stroke.”

Hungerford glanced at her worried for a moment, but Trudy had already walked on without elaborating. The wizard followed, trying not to lose the surprisingly spry woman in the afternoon crowd. “Alrighty, according to my notes, our second candidate should have retired somewhere north of where we are.”

“How did you find out about this?”

“Old newspapers and broadsheets, mostly. The master never looked into newspapers, new-fangled nonsense that anyone could make up, he called it.”

Trudy peered quizzically at a wooden menu board that was blocking her way. “New-fangled? They’ve been around since I was a child.”

“Exactly. May I remind you he was twice your age? Now, if we go…”

“We’re having tea first.”

“But…”

“If I don’t get my afternoon tea, I get cranky.”

“Is that so,” Hungerford said levelly and let himself be dragged into a tearoom.

“You go order, I need to sit down.”

By order she likely also meant pay, which was starting to seem unfair to Munck. Young wizards fresh out of apprenticeships earned exactly tuppence and had to pay taxes from that on top of it. “I don’t see why I have to pay for everything…”

“Because you dragged me out of here and didn’t think to let me bring my money purse. Sell a spell or something.”

“Still…”

“You’d let your own grandma go without her tea?” Trudy said louder than necessary. Hungerford was uncomfortably aware of a dozen disapproving stares from the other patrons.

“Not on my life,” he said through gritted teeth.

Trudy went to secure a window seat. While he might drag her on this quest of his, she was under no obligation to make it easy or comfortable for him. “And don’t forget the scones, boy!”

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“Hello, good sir, care to buy a spell or potion?”

At one point in his short life, Hungerford had briefly enjoyed, for lack of a better term, the care of an old maiden aunt. What the lady had lamented most about him, besides being obstinately freckled and thin enough to drop through a road gully, was that he had no way with money. Keeping himself and another person fed was quickly eating a whole in his purse now.

The innkeeper of The Furious Rhubarb considered the offer. “Any chance for a hair tonic?”

Hungerford looked at the shiny noggin presented to him. His reflection blinked back in confusion.

“To… make it grow, you mean?”

“No, man, I was thinking of going blonde! Of course to grow!”

“Ye-yes, certainly, I can whip you up a batch, sir. Uh … would that happen to cover the cost of a room?”

“Two rooms,” Trudy glared behind him.

“No,” the innkeeper decided. “How good are either of you at washing dishes?”

But before either could answer, a commotion from the kitchen came nearer, and a harassed looking woman burst out of the door. “It keeps burning, I don’t know what to do?”

“Well, how long did you leave it in the oven for?”

“Only an hour … or two … Look, brother, I’m no good at baking, I don’t know how mother used to do it, let’s just go to the bakery …”

“Ha! And give Gunilla, the old hag, the satisfaction?”

“Who’s Gunilla?” Trudy asked in the way of old ladies who make every bit of gossip their business.

“Our sister”, the innkeeper’s apparent other sister explained. “She’s top at her job …”

“She’s a louse, and you know what she did to my wedding china,” the innkeeper grumbled.

“… and I’ve been trying to bake a cake for Cissy, his daughter…”

“Say no more,” Trudy commanded and turned to the bald innkeeper. “I bake you a lovely cake for your girl and he brews you some potion, and you’ll give us two rooms for the night. Yes?” But before anyone could agree, Granny Trudy annexed the kitchen.

Munck at least tried to stop her. “Maybe this isn’t such a…”

“He’ll love it. And I’m not sleeping out on the street. Now get out of my kitchen!”

“Did she just lock the door?” the innkeeper’s sister who wasn’t Gunilla said shortly after Munck was roughly shoved out.

“This is going to be a disaster,” the wizard mumbled and mentally prepared himself for a fortnight of washing dishes.