They saw no more spirits that evening. The two of them walked at a normal pace, the wagon rumbling behind them. Becca cast glances all about, looking for more of the rubbery black tubes that signaled a grimworm about. They may not have any eyes, but their tendrils were very sensitive. Make too much movement near where one was prowling, and before you knew what was happening a hole would open in the dirt large enough to fall through, and before you knew it, you would be gone. Anyone watching would see a black rubber tube, its gaping maw lined with teeth, shoot out of the ground around your body, and then, quick as it came, it would submerge again. No one really knew how long a grimworm was. No one cared to find out.

“But as for thee, you foul man, who hath defiled mine house,” sang Pat. “It now shall be for all thine days to live life as a mouse!”

“Will you stop singing that?” Becca said. Pat had sung it in full three times now.

“You used to like it,” said Pat.

“Yes,” said Becca. “When I was six, and Da sang it at bedtime. And he only sang it once a night.”

“It’s my favorite,” said Pat. “And it helps me remember Da.”

“Well, Da sang other songs,” she said. “Can’t you sing one of them?”

“This is the only one I can think of right now,” he said. “Talking about Dunkin Walter made me think of it.”

“If Dunkin Walter was here, I’d ask him to turn you into a mouse,” she murmured.

“What did you say?” asked Pat. He genuinely hadn’t heard her.

“Nothing,” she said. “Forget it.”

Becca’s back and hips were singing louder than Pat had been. It had been a long day. A long day bent over, scraping in loose dirt and shale for anything that wasn’t more stone. All this for a few spare trinkets that no one would want, one helmet that might be of use to a smelter or collector, and this blasted gold glove that seemed to prefer her arm to the wagon. Strangely enough, while her right arm was half-stiff with the strain of a day of digging, scraping and loosening their salvage, her left arm felt completely relaxed. It was the only part of her not hurting in some way.

This is not right. I have to find a way to get this thing off.

She would take tomorrow and go to Flatwood, see if there was a metallurgist. It was highly doubtful; Flatwood was a trade settlement. She’d taken items found on the heath there many times, and usually found a buyer or trader for the things she brought. Did anyone go to Flatwood if they weren’t looking to buy, sell or trade?

“The dragon tracks!” shouted Pat. “We’re almost home!”

He began racing ahead, pulling the rumbling wagon behind him. The helmet and other salvage items began to crash and tinkle in the bed.

“Fucking gods, Pat!” she called after him. “Slow down! You trying to call every worm in the heath?” But he wasn’t listening to her. He had reached the tracks and was balancing on the closer steel edge. He’d never been farther than the dragon tracks before, but he loved coming here.

“Let’s stay a bit, Becca,” he said, putting one foot before the other as he balance-walked across the steel edge. “Please?”

Becca shook her head. “It’s getting dark already,” she said. “Besides, don’t you want to see if we can afford some sausages?”

“We never stay here long enough,” said Pat. He sat down on one of the large wooden beams. “How are we ever supposed to meet the dragon if we don’t stay more than five minutes?”

“We sat here for three hours, once. Remember?” They’d brought a picnic and sat within a foot of the tracks. Pat had been sure that this time the dragon would come. Becca understood his desire to see it; she even shared it. But as the years passed by, she understood that the dragon was never coming back. It was likely dead, and that was probably for the best. She knew dragons could live thousands of years, but this one had been legend for longer than that.

“Yeah, but let’s just stay a bit longer,” pleaded Pat. “It’s not full dark yet. There’s lots of time to get to market and go home.”

Becca had reached the tracks herself by now. She reached down, just as she had as a child, and held her left hand against the steel. I can feel it through the gold. She held it there, as the childhood legend said to do, waiting to feel the rumble. She kept her hand there, kneeling on the gravel that surrounded the tracks. Nothing happened.

“The dragon isn’t coming today,” she said. “It didn’t come yesterday, and it’s probably not coming tomorrow. We’re losing time, here, Pat. Let’s go.”

With a sad look, Pat stood and pulled the cart over the tracks as the two started for the settlement again.

“One day,” said Pat. “I’m gonna come here and I’m gonna stay as long as I want.”

“Maybe you can do that tomorrow,” said Becca. Poor Pat would never see that day.

The settlement had no name. It was less than half the size of Flatwood, the only other settlement Becca had been to. The little collection of huts and tents housed about sixty people, including any children. The trader’s market was set up here as well; it had to be, or the community would die. But unlike Flatwood, market here was a solemn, unkempt thing; a set of tables at the outskirts piled haphazardly with a motley collection of broken tools, old clothes and shoes, children’s toys from families that no longer had children, and salvage like the haul Becca and Pat were bringing in. But the clothes and shoes were the most costly. Hand-made and rough as they were, clothes were very hard to come by, and went for at least twenty copper shillings, and depending on how new they were, sometimes a mark. It wasn’t that the folk of the settlement didn’t know how to make clothes. It was simply that material to make them was rare, and getting more rare all the time.

Becca and Pat had realized this, or at least Becca had, when the two of them got too large for the children’s clothes they had worn since they were small. Ma had been able to make Becca a cotton dress that she had worn until a few years ago. At age fourteen it started to become too tight and too short, and by then Ma and Da both had been put to rest. Pat was able to use Da’s only pair of over-alls, which fit him like a glove, but Becca scrounged for months looking for either material to sew or enough salvage to buy a new dress, but to no avail. She finally had taken down Da’s linen butcher’s apron, which had been white when he’d first made it all those years ago, but now was a dull grey, and set to work on it with some thread she’d managed to buy. She stitched up the lower back and criss-crossed the neck straps behind to hold up the bottom portion, stitching them in place as well. On Da it had come to mid-waist, but on her it fell to the small of her back. As a shift, as she called it, enough cover was provided to pass for decency in a settlement like the one she called home, where proper clothing was whatever you could get your hands on, but her daily excursions onto the heath, where she spent most of her time bent over digging in the rock with the dull but still powerful rays of the sun baking down on her had left her back, shoulders and arms a golden brown, hence her hated nickname. Aside from her leather sandals, it was the only item of clothing she had.

Pat liked his over-alls, though they were starting to wear out, and Becca wasn’t sure where they’d get new things for him to wear. There weren’t many others Pat’s size in the settlement and travelling traders were rare. Becca often had waking nightmares of him walking around in the old things until they rotted right off of him, and then continuing to walk around naked, not even noticing that they weren’t there anymore. But surely even Pat would notice something like that.

Hester and Beanpole were the only two sitting at the tables today. Hester clucked a little as the noise of the wagon grew closer and Beanpole leered at her, as he always did. She looked away. Trying to keep inconspicuous, she drew her left arm behind her, the golden scales cold on her back. Pat smiled at both of them, and Hester smiled back while Beanpole ignored him.

“Pat, darling,” said Hester. “How’s my boy today?”

“I got to help Becca!” replied Pat, beaming.

“I see that,” she said. “Did you like it?”

“It was fun,” he said. “We found some bolts, and a big metal rod, and a helmet, and…”

“And what I think is an ox-bow piece,” said Becca before Pat could mention the gauntlet.

“Did I hear you say you found a helmet?” said Hester, sounding genuinely impressed. “Well, let’s see it, then. That should fetch a few pennies.”

Pat was headed for the back of the wagon before Becca could turn. She made sure her arm stayed hidden, while trying not to make it too obvious that she was doing so.

“Here it is,” he said, trotting happily back to the trading tables. “See? It has a gryphon on it. That means it was Ronan’s. There used to be rubies in the eyes, but we couldn’t find them. I bet we find them tomorrow. See, look at that!”

Hester was looking, and so was Beanpole. She turned it over in her hands, looking at it from the inside, from the out, appraising. Beanpole looked contemptuous.

“It stinks,” he said. “What’d you do, numbbrain, take a shit in it?”

Becca stepped forward with a growl.

“Call him that again,” she said, balling a fist.

“Geoffrey!” said Hester. “How many times must I tell you that language like that will not be tolerated? Now apologize to Becca.”

To Becca. Not to Pat. Even Hester seemed to think he was more a pet than a human being.

A disconsolate look crossed Beanpole’s face and he muttered “Sorry, Brown Becca” low enough that Becca barely heard him. It was apparently enough for Hester.

“Now, then,” she said. “This should fetch a good price. Shall we say thirty shillings?”

“Shall we say a silver mark?” replied Becca.

“A whole mark?” Hester looked as if Becca had suggested trading a wagon for a house.

“That’s whole steel, almost as good as the day it was forged,” said Becca. “The thing’s nearly intact. It can either be melted down or sold as-is, but either way, that’s quite the find.”

“It’s all rusty,” said Beanpole. “Look at it. And it’s missing a cheek guard as well as the rubies.”

“I’m not asking for a fortune,” said Becca. “Just a mark. Might be a collector will come through, but even if he doesn’t, Ruben could use steel like that. There’s barely any rust on it considering how old it is.”

“Be that as it may,” said Hester. “A mark is quite a lot. A fine salvage, to be sure, but I’m still not sure it’s worth that much. Let’s say fifty shillings.”

“Let’s say eighty.”

“Sixty.”

“Seventy.”

“Done,” said Hester. “What else is there?”

Pat unloaded the rest of it, Becca still trying to make sure her left arm was turned away from the two traders. She had nearly forgotten it when Beanpole had riled her.

The other items fetched about what she had believed they would. The next stop was Till’s market and then home. Pat’s face showed such disappointment when Becca told him that maybe there would be sausages next time that she almost thought about stealing a few, just for him. She quickly pushed that thought away. She could never bring herself to steal from people, especially for no other reason than temporary happiness. What she stole today would be food that wouldn’t go into someone else’s belly, even if they had the coin for it. Maybe even a child would go hungry, thanks to her greed. She picked out some greens, carrots and a loaf of bread, and the two of them started for home.

“They must not like your new armor,” said Pat when they were nearly at the hut. Full dark had fallen, and Pat was walking close to her, one hand in his belt sack, likely gripping his obsidian. Even in settlements the spirits would walk at night, and they would have more power in the dark. Not all spirits were as friendly or as cowardly as Stockpile had been.

“Why do you say that?”

“They didn’t say anything,” he said. “Usually when someone likes something new that somebody’s wearing, they say things like ‘what a nice new hat’ or ‘that’s a lovely new scarf’.” Sometimes if a travelling trader came through, they would encourage the ladies of the town by providing one or two of them with such an item “half-price”. That usually meant the item had failed to sell in Flatwood or Bonebrush, and they were trying to rid themselves of it.

“They wouldn’t have said anything like that about this thing,” she said, holding her arm up to look at it again. “This isn’t like a new hat. This isn’t like anything else.”

“Well, I like it,” said Pat. “It’s pretty.”

“Pretty,” she agreed. “But a little scary, too.”

“Why don’t you take it off, then?”

“It won’t come off,” said Becca. “Don’t you remember me trying? It’s tight, too, but it doesn’t hurt.”

“I still say Dunkin Walter could get it off,” said Pat.

“Did I just hear Pat say something about Dunkin Walter?” said a new voice.

Becca looked up. They were within sight of the house, and Uncle Gerald was staring at them with a frown on his weather-beaten face.

“Have you been telling him stories again, Becca?”

“I didn’t say anything to him about Dunkin Walter,” she said. “He’s the one who won’t shut up about it.”

“We should go see him,” said Pat. “Becca needs help, and he might know a spell that can make her better.”

Gerald glowered at them. His brow creased the way it did when he grew worried. He looked at Becca like she was a leper.

“What’s the lad talking of?” he asked.

“It’s nothing,” she said. “Just a bit of salvage that went wrong.”

Now his brow creased in a different way.

“Went wrong? How? Did someone steal it? Did you let that old bitch cheat you? Out with it, girl!”

“Good fucking gods, uncle, no!” she said. “I just…got stuck.”

“Clearly you got out fine,” he said.

“No, I didn’t get stuck in a hole,” said Becca. She held out her left arm, reluctantly.

Gerald’s eyes went wide. He opened and closed his mouth a few times, sputtering incoherently.

“Get…” he said through his teeth. “Get inside!”

Pat hurried inside, dropping the wagon where he had stood. Becca slumped after him, feeling guilty without knowing why. She had not liked the look on Uncle Gerald’s face.

She headed over the fire pit, where Pat already squatted, a hunk of bread on the end of his stick, browning it. She untied her belt and sack, and set them in the corner. Then she sat, holding the gold-clad arm before her, and waiting for her uncle as he put the wagon away.

A few minutes later he came in, creeping like a thief as though afraid someone would see him enter his own hut. He ran over to where Becca sat and grabbed her arm roughly.

“Where did you get this?” he asked. He was looking at it the same way Hester had looked at the helmet.

“Found it,” she said. “Buried in the heath.”

“You lying to me, girl?”

“Ask Pat,” she said. Pat never lied.

“Salvage, eh?” said Gerald. He was running his fingers along the golden scales. “This is gold, Becca. Did you know that?”

“Yes,” she said. “And an emerald.”

“You didn’t offer to sell it to Hester,” he muttered. She was about to protest when he continued. “You were right not to. You never would have gotten what this is worth. First thing tomorrow I’m taking it to Flatwood. You’ve made us rich, girl. Now, take it off.”

“I can’t,” she said.

“You can,” he said threateningly. “And you will.”

“No, I don’t mean that I won’t,” Becca said. “I mean I can’t. It’s stuck. I’ve been trying to take it off and it won’t budge.”

“Too tight?” said Gerald. “It’s simple, you just pull the middle finger first, then the index finger. Like this.” He pulled hard on her middle finger.

“Ow! Fuck!” shouted Becca. “Stop, Uncle. Pat and I already tried everything. It’s stuck fast.”

“That’s funny,” said her uncle, as though she hadn’t said anything. “Yes, queer thing, this. But I have a chisel. Gold is soft. I can cut it off. What made you go and do a fool think like put this on, anyway?”

“I didn’t put it on,” said Becca. “It sort of…put itself on. Opened up and climbed around my arm until it was like this.”

Gerald froze. His hand dropped away from her arm and he stood, backing away.

“It’s cursed,” he said. “You’ve brought evil into this house.”

“It doesn’t seem to be doing anything,” she said. “And it doesn’t hurt.”

“It’s full of spirits, yes,” said her uncle. “Dark, evil ones, no doubt. You got careless and didn’t ward them off. And now they’ll get in you.”

“There aren’t any spirits in it,” said Pat, his mouth full of toasted bread. “We were with a spirit when we found it. He was afraid, and said it was something that could hurt him.”

“Ayee!” wailed Gerald. “He probably possessed this thing himself, witched it to ensnare you! And you none the wiser! Oh, what do we do now? You foolish children. Why, ah, why did your idiot parents have to go and die, and leave you to torment me?” He pulled at his long grey hair and paced wildly. “We have to go and see her. Yes, that’s all we can do now. She will know what to do. Yes, it’s decided.” He stopped pacing and looked at Becca like he had never seen her before. “You, girl. Get your pack and put on your sandals. We need to go and see the mud witch.”