As the abandoned water mill that only yesterday seemed so frightening disappeared over Bastan's shoulder, Phanny felt a dull ache gather in her heart. She imagined other goodbyes, ones that felt like they were snatched away from her, too abrupt for her to fully absorb.
In her mind, the abandoned mill transformed into their charming farmhouse, with its gray stone walls, and the sky reflected on windowpanes that hung above white rosebushes. The White Lake turned into Wilder Lake, where Phanny always felt Mama's presence the strongest. She thought of the cow and the mare and the chickens and the dog and the cat.
In her heart, Phanny allowed herself to properly say goodbye to all of them. It's always been her belief that if you didn't say goodbye properly, you couldn't miss things properly either. You would always remember them with pain.
Before a new set of tears could well in her eyes, she tried to distract herself with conversation.
"Amelia says you've been places." She said to Wilder's shoulder.
"I have." He said, gaze unwavering on the downward mountain path.
"Where? Outside of Fantalasia, too?"
"Sometimes, yes."
Phanny pursed her lips. She was starting to learn he was incredibly vague and tight-lipped.
"Where's the farthest you've ever been?"
He thought for a second. "A small country in the east called Puhon."
"Oh, I know Puhon! Papa used to travel there often. Did you go to the smaller islands or just the mainland? Was it so very different from Wilder?"
He sighed, giving in. "Just the mainland. It was different. Their food tastes spicier, they wear lesser clothes, the way they fight is interesting. Big, curved swords. Most men are smaller than here, but when they fight, they fly around in the air and yell. Loud battle cries. They spit and crackle. It's quite something."
"Interesting." Phanny said.
Wilder's eyes moved to Phanny's face for a second. "What is?"
"It's just, the stories people tell about a place are so different. Papa used to go on and on about how they made clothes and jewelry, about how it seemed so sacred and passionate, like a kind of magic, or commune with the gods."
She smiled a hopeful smile. "It makes me wonder what I would notice, if I were to go."
Wilder was quiet. Phanny noticed that instead of moving towards the main road, or the forest path they followed yesterday, they were veering off course, deeper into the forest.
"Where are we going?"
"You'll see," he said. The vagueness was second nature with this guy.
"I thought we were going shopping. I didn't know there were places to shop deep in the forest." She tried to sound sarcastic.
"Well, you haven't really gone out much, have you?" He had a point there.
As they went in deeper where the woods were thick, it became much darker. Small animals scurried in the shadows. Phanny thought she saw a large rodent climb up a tree. Her arm tightened around Wilder's waist without her noticing.
After some time, they reached the river. Phanny heard the whispers before the rushing water, and then they were there. It was some section of the Whisperrun, wide, and Phanny didn't know how deep. Her grip tightened even more around Wilder's waist.
"Do we have to cross?" She tried to keep the worry out of her voice.
"No need to go in a panic," he said, "We're already here."
But where were they, exactly? There was nothing there but a bit of early morning sunshine falling from the gap in the trees into the rushing river, creating sparkling flecks in the water.
There were bushes and grass and a big old cave… which they were now approaching. A cave?
They rode the horse straight into the cave. It opened high above their heads even on the horse, and Phanny looked up to see narrow, jagged rocks hanging down from the entrance, it looked as if they were riding straight into the mouth of a great gray fish.
Phanny waited for the feeling of fear and foreboding that would make sense in this situation, but it didn't come. Somehow, she trusted that this stranger didn't bring her here to be the virgin sacrifice in a weird ritual.
It was dark within, but behind her, Wilder muttered some words in an unfamiliar language, and orbs of bluish light lit up on the cave walls.
Phanny opened her mouth to ask if he was some sort of sorcerer, but the words died in her mouth. She'd never seen magic in real life before.
At the end of the cave, there was nothing but the blue flames shining off the back wall. Wilder muttered some words in an unfamiliar language. Phanny waited for some new magical thing to happen, but there was nothing.
"What? Nothing happened." Her voice had come back to her.
"Brace yourself," he tightened his grip on the reins.
"For what? Mr. Wilder, Nothing's ha–" Phanny shouted in surprise and squeezed shut her eyes as the man had seemed to apparently lost his mind and started charging full speed into the solid rock wall.
She waited for the painful impact, but it didn't come even after she was sure they should have run straight into the wall. Not even when they'd slowed to a walk.
"Open your eyes," he whispered to her.
Slowly, she did as he said. Breath escaped her.
They were no longer in a cave, but a colorful, night plaza, though it couldn't be night already. In fact, Phanny wasn't sure the night sky was really the night sky, though it was dark and endless and glowed with colorful, zooming lights.
"Where are we?" She whispered, too afraid to speak the word too loud or the place might vanish before her very eyes.
"Welcome to Leviathian's Lair, a feyground marketplace."
"Feyground marketplace," she whispered the name to herself in reverence.
"Yup, many of them sprinkled all over the country. This is one of the three in Wilder, there's even more in the capital."
They kept strolling along on the cobbled street, with shops squeezed cozily together on either side, their old shop signs hanging overhead. Wares winked from shop windows, the ordinary and the strange together. Fey creatures and humans bustled about in the crowded sidewalks.
Phanny saw Babette's Buns. On the window were familiar pies, rye breads and gingerbreads shaped into dragons and sea monsters, and strange pastries she's never seen before, purple ones shaped like cones.
"But how did we…" She looked back behind them and saw a stone archway at the end of the street. The archway was of two great serpentine sea monsters, their long, scaly bodies rising out of the ground, and dorsal fins spiking out of their spines, they curved towards each other, their maws biting down on a stone orb, which Phanny thought might be the moon, as if they were locked in an eternal battle over it.
Beyond the archway, yawned the darkness of the cave.
They kept on, passing Prospero's Potions, which displayed different-shaped glass bottles carrying odd-colored liquids and powders on the window, and Citrine & Co.: Purveyors of the Finest Gemstones since 447 BTA (Before Tamed Age), and Hours, which seemed to be the watchmaker.
"I didn't know places like this existed," she said.
"Right, because they're secret. Most humans don't know about the feygrounds."
Phanny looked up at him. "What about you, aren't you human?"
His jaw tensed.
"And what was that back there? With the lights and the entrance? Are you a sorcerer?"
He was contemplating letting her come to her own conclusions but couldn't stop himself from chuckling at the guess. "No, not a sorcerer. That was just the passphrase, the cave's already magicked."
"That's…" Wilder could see her eyes glazing over, her mind going somewhere else as she whispered, "amazing."
"Can I learn it? Will you teach me? Is the passphrase the same in every feyground? Or is it different every time?" Before even acknowledging that he heard her questions, Wilder had already stopped the horse, and was swinging off it.
"We're here." He reached up to help Phanny down, and she stared at the old, black, shopfront as her bandaged feet landed on the ground.
Goblin's Grotto: Pawnshop & All Things Shop, the faded sign said.
On the window were board games and horse saddles and vases and music boxes and paintings and even a pair of boots, so Phanny guessed that explained the "all things."
They entered through the black, windowed door into a crowded, dusty shop, with cluttered shelves and basins. Behind the counter at the front, perched a bespectacled goblin, slightly greenish complexion, silver hair, and the long pointy nose and ears that characterized their species.
"I thought I smelled Wilder scum," The goblin snarled, before his sharp gaze slid from Wilder to Phanny. He sniffed, "And what's this? A half-human?"
Phanny curled her toes in and tucked a strand of hair under her ear. She was shrinking again under his gaze. She hasn't done that in the last 24 hours since leaving her stepsisters but here she was again. She supposed she couldn't expect to change so much in so short a time, but she really wished Wilder wouldn't see this.
Luckily, he didn't seem to care or notice.
"Nice to see you, too, Gervais." Wilder marched up to the counter and rested an elbow there, as if the goblin had greeted them in a friendly, polite way.
"What have you got for me today?" Gervais asked, a sharp suspicious look pinned on Wilder.
"I'm the one buying today. Some boots and a dress for the lady." Wilder turned back to look at Phanny. "And a cloak."
"Go on, then. You know where everything is." The goblin flicked his hand in the direction of the store aisles, looking back down at the ledger on the counter in front of him, dismissing them.
Phanny released a breath of relief when Wilder led her down the store aisles close to the back, where the dresses were hung in long racks.
"I haven't gone shopping for my own clothes since I was fifteen," She chattered at Wilder's back.
"Is that when your father died?" Wilder asked, absentmindedly looking through a rack of women's dresses.
"No. Papa died when I was eighteen. He was sailing home from Puhon. But," She started scanning through dresses beside him, too, without really seeing them. "I rarely felt close to him after Mama… you know."
She looked at Wilder's profile to see his reaction, but his face was blank and uncaring as always, almost as if he hadn't heard. They browsed in silence for a while.
"The last time I felt really close to him was when we went to shop together for a ball I never got to attend… He had a lot of opinions about clothes. Other times, he felt so far away, even when he was at home." That was it, for now. She couldn't say more. She already regretted that she said so much.
Papa was a difficult topic. Most days, she pretended he died with Mama. Those last few years together didn't exist.
"What do you think of this?" Wilder pulled out a plain, brown dress made of a heavy, knitted fabric.
It looked sturdy and practical, but Phanny couldn't help but scrunch her nose at it.
"It's a little, it's kind of… plain," she said. Not to mention, a size too big for her.
"You're not going to a ball." He countered.
"No, I know, but I wanted something… pretty."
Wilder sighed and continued to browse.
Phanny started browsing, too, in earnest now. The dresses mostly looked similar, all in good quality, all in the current fashion, which made Phanny wonder about how things reached an… 'all things' store. These dresses seemed like clothes the twins would get for themselves.
Her hand paused on a dress with a different texture than the other dresses. It was sky blue and had a dull shine, like it was a silk or satin blend of some sort, but felt soft as cotton.
It was simple but pretty, with a sweetheart neckline, a fitted basque waist, and a gently flared skirt. Bits of lace outlined the neckline, the V-shaped waist, the fitted wrists, and right below the puffed shoulder, where it became fitted for the rest of the long sleeves. White floral embroidery also decorated the bodice.
"I like this one," She said a little shyly, pulling out the dress to show Wilder.
He looked down at it with his blank expression.
"It's too light," he finally said, "You get cold easily."
She looked longingly at the dress she was still holding up, and fingered the lace at the wrists. "But it's really pretty."
Wilder sighed.
"Fine, but I'll pick the cloak and boots," he said.
"Go try that on over there." He pointed in the direction of some changing rooms at a back corner of the store.
She rushed excitedly, almost running, which pulled a reluctant smile out of him as he watched her back– the threadbare, too-short dress, bandaged feet, and long, braided, black hair.
He looked for a suitable cloak, something heavy enough to offer warmth her "pretty" dress lacked, but still nice enough she won't scrunch her nose at it. He tried not to think about his current predicament, as he did so.
He's been debating with himself since dawn. He knew the girl would find herself in a lot of trouble if she was left to figure things out on her own. It was the wrong time to finally leave the abuse in her household and make her own way.
Trouble was brewing in Fantalasia these days, with the King on his deathbed and the Queen, with her controversial opinions, feeling bolder and bolder in her new position.
However, none of it was Bastan's problem. Not The Snatching, not Chase, that good, sickly man, too weak to sit up on bed on his own, gentle, ghostly smile on his face as he asked Bastan to stay in Wilder.
Most definitely not this girl, Phanny, helpless as she was.
Bastan shouldn't feel sorry for her. He also shouldn't bring her along all the way to the North. Maybe she'll find an appropriate situation in the Midlands. Maybe they'll stumble on an inn short on barmaids.
Then the girl emerged from the changing room, wearing her pretty blue dress, dark eyes twinkling, smiling shyly, expectantly, a fresh bloom on her cheeks. And suddenly his mind is muddled and he's thinking she shouldn't be a barmaid.
She'll trip over her feet and spill beer. Loud, drunk men will yell and complain. The innkeepers will scold her and take the spilled beer out of her salary, and she won't say anything. She'll huddle on the kitchen floor at night, next to the hearth, get her nose blackened with soot, read her fairytale book, and get cold.
He only met her yesterday, he doesn't know how he knows these things about her, but he did.
"It fits really well," she said, "And it's comfortable, and I don't think I'll have any trouble running in this skirt, if I ever need to run again."
She looked up at him expectantly, as if half-afraid he'll deny her and force her to get the ugly brown dress.
He wanted to say the fabric looked flimsy, it'll get torn from forest branches, and it looked too pretty, which was bad because they were trying to be inconspicuous travelers. But he just nodded.
"Try this," He said, draping the midnight blue cloak he found around her shoulders. It was heavy, and lined with fur on the inside.
"I like it," She said with a smile.
She also tried on the brown leather boots he found and was satisfied. They moved to the front of the store to pay for the clothes, and the rest of their purchases. Wilder also bought another bedroll, and a waterskin.
On the way to the counter, Phanny saw a dagger with a pretty, silver hilt, embedded with fake blue gemstones, and Wilder let her get it, too.
Outside, wearing her new things, and her new dagger hidden in her boot, stray feelings of guilt started to cloud her excitement.
"What's wrong?" He asked, seeing her worried face as he loaded some of the new things in the saddlebags.
"I just feel a little guilty that I'm using their money for myself."
"Their money?" He stopped what he was doing and looked down at her, temper rising unexpectedly. He tried his best to tamp it down. Released a breath. He was always getting unreasonably angry with any mention of her stepfamily.
"Didn't you say you worked for them as their maid?"
"Well," she mulled it over for a moment. "I guess you can say that."
"And they never paid you?" He asked.
She nodded her agreement.
"Then think of this as your compensation."
She thought about that, and guessed he was right.
"What're you feeling now? Still guilty?"
"No," she said. "Just ready for the journey."
"Good." He motioned for her to put her hands on his shoulders again and lifted her onto the horse.
"Where to now?" She asked when he'd come up and settled behind her.
"North."