The bag of gold grows heavier for each step Casper takes. He suspects the eggs are multiplying when he’s not looking, but the bag’s contents remain decidedly inanimate. There’s five eggs the first time Casper counts them. There’s still five eggs on the twelfth, most recent counting. Heavens knows where the extra weight is coming from. May as well chalk it up to magics and call it a day. It’d save him a headache.
He pauses mid-stride, rewinding his train of thought back to-
Magic. Not coin tricks and sleight of hand that entertains and distracts small children and possible marks alike. Real, inexplicable, impossible-
Magic. The stuff of legends. The stuff that turns eggs into gold.
Magic. The trade of witches... Or witchmen.
Casper has a sinking feeling all of a sudden. The bag of gold weighing on him is reduced to a small part of his apprehensions. He knows who the Glenholm witchman is. He shares a roof with him.
The bag falls. It strikes the earth with a hard thud, sending chunks of the gravel path flying. Casper doesn’t want to touch it, but it’s too late, isn’t it? He knows what’s in the bag. He’s touched them, even run his fingers all over their cold, dead shells. And now he knows where they came from. He can’t take the knowledge back. He knows what he knows. What he wouldn’t give to unknow it.
Why can’t life be simple and easy? It doesn’t have to be both at the same time. He’s not picky. He can bargain. Either one of them is better than what he’s got now.
Casper has his pity party. He wastes more time than he should, than he has, wallowing in his self-indulgence. Then, when he’s good and done and drained from his nerves running him ragged (again), he bends down and picks up the bag. He holds it warily by the drawstrings, but holds it nonetheless. He follows the downwards spiral of the path before of him, as if he didn’t have a minor meltdown, as if nothing happened. He’s still got a job to do.
There can’t be many things worse than sharing a roof with a witchman from who knows what heathen hellscapes. Sharing a roof with a witchman who you’ve pissed off with your inability to perform simple tasks is one of those few worse things. Casper doesn’t want to see worse. He vividly remembers Balor’s reckoning yesterday. He remembers how the man’s wrath made him grow ever larger to heights Casper thought impossible for a human being. Except he’s no mere mortal, is he?
The gold weighs on Casper. Those eggs were alive once upon a time, perhaps not long ago. They were once little lives that could’ve hatched to fly and sing in the sky with the other birds. Now they’re objects. Assets. Things to be bought, bartered, and sold, with no other value save their carat and weight. This could just as easily be Casper’s fate.
He can see it so clearly in his head. He goes running his mouth again, smart enough to know better, too stupid to stop himself. Balor decides he has more use in twenty carats than as an errand boy. The next thing you know, he’s thrown alive and squirming into a boiling cauldron of bat spleens and comes out shiny and golden. He’d be tucked away in the coatroom for storage, left to gather cobwebs and dust with the broom. Or maybe he’d be smelted down to ingots.
Casper swallows back the bitter taste in his throat. He picks up his pace to better distance himself from the object of his fears. He tries to clear his head with the sensation of the earth beneath the soles of his shoes, of the air moving against his face. Before you know it, he’s running down the hill, half tripping the way over his too big footwear. His haste reclaims the time he lost earlier and then some. He’s within sight of the town flushed, panting, and early.
A group of boys intercepts him before he can set foot into Glenholm town proper. It’s all so familiar, right down to a few of the faces he recognizes. The boys Casper’s seen before light up at the sight of him. Casper smiles back. The unidentified boys quickly follow suit, warming up to him too. They all crowd him, just like they did during their first meeting. Casper doesn’t mind how close they are this time around. The proximity with people, normal, real people, soothes him like a balm.
Then he starts listening to what the boys are gibbering.
“Blimey! The hell you been?”
“It’s been ages since-”
“Guys, pipe down,” calls one of the older boys.
“-days ago! That’s, like, forever!”
“Who’re you?”
“Nevermind that, look at where he’s-” This boy, one of the more collected ones, points to the path Casper came from.
“-in no man’s land to boot! Are you mad?”
“GUYS! SHUT YOUR TRAPS! THAT’S AN ORDER!” The older boy yells. The crowd goes silent. “‘Bout time, you idiots. Can’t hear meself think while you lot are howling like wolves in the night.”
More than a few boys chuckle embarrassedly, most of them the excitable youngsters of the group.
“Right. Anywho.” The boy sergeant continues. “I don’t think we properly met the first time, what with Mr. Sourpants McFancysuit dragging you off.” He holds out a friendly hand. “I’m Davis.”
For once in his life, Casper knows what to say. He takes Davis’ hand and shakes. “Casper.”
And just like that, the dam holding back the other boys breaks. Their voices flood over him as they yell out their names too. They’re so eager, every one of them. They want to know him.
During ensuing chaos, Davis gives Casper a quick once over, gaze alighting on the drawstring bag before moving elsewhere. Thank goodness he lacks the sense to ask. Casper carefully exhales. He doesn’t want to show how nervous the attention makes him while he’s got compromising goods. Taking care of business comes before leisure, assuming leisure comes at all. Being here in town, being away from the manor at all, definitely counts as a well deserved holiday, even if he is getting bombarded by the company at hand.
Casper sighs and drops the handshake. He’s tired. That he ran half the length of the hill only adds to his exhaustion. He should finish his job first. Who’s to say he’ll have energy left over to do anything else when he’s done? The workhouse shifts were never so kind. Casper doubts his current duty will be more generous to him. There has to be a reason why Balor gave him a whole day’s time. There has to be a catch. Casper refuses to believe he isn’t being tricked somehow.
He yells to be heard over the din. “As much as I’d love to stick around and catch up...” The noisy boys quiet. Casper starts from the top so they don’t miss a word. “As much as I’d like to stay and chat, I got me a job to do.” He holding up the bag. There. Now that he’s pointed out the bag himself and said what it’s for, he’s circumvented the majority of the questions that would cause him trouble. They'll put two and two together, realize it's got nothing to do with them, and stop flapping their gums.
“Wha’s in da bag?” A small, snotty boy asks.
Casper puts on an deadpan that would out do Balor. Right. The bumpkins here are completely backwards and don't know the first thing about not poking their noses in another's business. He gives the offending brat a withering stare. “What’s in it is none of your beeswax, snot-rag.”
David snorts and looks away. ‘Snot-rag’ looks mildly devastated by his new nickname. The other boys his age are already repeating it amongst themselves, giggling to the point of stupor.
Presto! One tricky question forgotten. If only it was so easy with Alicia.
Aw hell, Alicia! Casper mentally kicks himself. He forgot about her during his earlier freakout. He needs to talk housing arrangements with her, the sooner the better. But… errands.
Casper watches Snot-rag beat his puny fists against the shoulder of a slightly larger boy who’s bent over double from laughing. David is trying to force them apart, but Snot-rag is hellbent on avenging his dignity. The other members of the crowd have formed a small ring around them. Some of the onlookers are chanting “Fight, fight, fight!”
Sagely deciding that he should leave before fingers start pointing his way, Casper calmly walks away like he had nothing to do with the riot. Nobody gives him a second glance. He shakes his head and smiles at the folly, strolling past them until he reaches the main street. A quick left turn leads him to the pub and, further on, the post office and the bank. He steps past the pub (he’ll be back later) and steps into the post office instead. He has a suspicion about the mysterious Mr. Smit, but he’ll need the druggie to confirm. And that is why he’s here.
The druggie isn’t in sight. Casper props himself on top of the counter to look over it. The bugger isn’t taking another floor nap either. He drops to ground level and eyes instead the door behind the counter. The backroom. Fingers drum on the countertop. They experimentally ping the service bell. There’s no response, nobody to see. Surely a little peek wouldn’t hurt.
Fingers drum around the counter’s edge up until Casper slips behind into the employees only area. He squeaks the door open and peers inside. The storage room is small, dim, and packed. There’s a menagerie of parcels wrapped in parchment stacked on and piled at the foot of several shelves built into the enclosing walls. A few larger wooden crates lay about, most of them nailed shut, a few crowbarred open with their planks dangling loosely by the odd, intact nail. Straw stuffing spills out of the disemboweled crates, obscuring sight of the other innards. Not that Casper’s interested.
No, what’s caught his attention is the shelf on the back wall. There’s a row of somethings or others that catch the light along the lowest level. He squints in the gloom and moves closer to get a better look. A bunch of the parcels have been stacked in front of this shelf in particular. It’s no accident. Someone wanted that bottom layer hidden. That fact alone makes Casper want to unhide it. What’s hidden is often valuable.
He shoves the obscuring packages aside. It takes time. It takes effort. Why in blazes are they so heavy? He pulls a particularly unwieldy box far enough to the side that the light from the doorway behind him can graze what he’s uncovered.
To say that he's unimpressed by what he sees is an understatement. “Oh for the love of… All that work and for what? A good load of nuthin’ is what!” He kicks the shelf, disturbing the resident clutter stacked on it.
What he found is a big ass jar of glass. Glass catches the light so well it shines, but it’s by no means valuable. Plus its heavy. A jar as big as that weighs more than he does, even when empty. Which it isn’t. It’s stoppered and sealed and filled with nasty, murky gunk swirling sluggishly inside, spurred into movement by the recent disturbance. Some unidentifiable solid bits wave and shift. The silhouette of one looks disturbingly similar to a leg.
Casper squints at the cloudy glass. Try as he might, the mysterious concoction fails to looks less sinister the more he looks at it. He averts his gaze to the other dozen jars on the bottom level. One farther down the shelf and stuffed with semi-transparent goo catches his attention. Inside it, he clearly sees a slitted eye watching him with interest from its bath of amber-brown whatever-it-is.
Casper straightens up, blinks hard, and rubs his eyes harder. He takes a sorely needed steadying breath.
You know what? He’s going to leave this little post office of horrors and chalk up his experiences here today to the weird fumes floating around this place. Then he’s going to forget all that he’s seen so he doesn’t lie awake tonight with thoughts of things studying him behind thick glass walls.
That’s what he tells himself, but he knows he’ll remember everything anew when it runs on repeat as he sleeps.
Casper slams the door to the post office behind him. He leans back against it, sucking fresh air deep in his lungs in a bid to get every last fume out of him and out of his head. He closes his eyes. He tries to relax. He tries to forget dismembered parts in a row of gross glass jars. He flinches when the bag of gold bumps oh so innocently against his leg.
He laughs quietly, nervously. It’s a bitter, cheerless sound.
He can’t forget. He never forgets. His memory is too reliable to be so convenient.
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