Page 30 of The Underachiever’s Guide to Love and Saving the World
brYCE
By early evening, Courtney had been missing for hours. A maid said she spotted her heading into the city. Having a suspicion that her whereabouts had something to do with the village girls she’d befriended, I asked a villager where the flower shop girls lived.
I found Courtney sitting on a curb, eyes fixed on a tiny, leaning house on the other side of the twilit street. She had a sword strapped to her hip, and every so often, she looked up and scanned the dimming sky.
“What are you doing out here?” I settled beside her.
She tossed a few flakes of cobblestone into the street, watching them skitter and bounce.
“You know what Amy said… about how we’d only endanger people we grow close to.
Plus, with the dragon on the loose and the kidnappings…
I wanted to make sure they were safe.” She tilted her chin toward the house.
“I don’t think I could handle it if one of them went missing next. ”
I could hear the faint ring of laughter from inside. Shapes moved within, silhouetted against the sheer curtains hanging in the windows.
Someone inside pushed the curtain away, revealing the scene of a very full kitchen.
It looked like they were all working together to bake something, with flour-dusted cheeks, rolled-up sleeves, and doughy hands.
“It looks like a Christmas commercial,” I said, and I knew I sounded a bit too wistful for someone who hated Christmas.
“Or Thanksgiving, if your family was functional and actually liked one another,” she said, her voice heavy, maybe with the weight of her own memories.
Even though she’d mentioned having a mother and a father, I wondered if she felt like I did sometimes.
Alone. Apart. Maybe they were distant in a different way than my family had been distant. Distant while present.
“When you asked Amy about where the king was earlier… You don’t think he’s the Evil One, do you?” I asked.
She shook her head. “No. Well, I did think he might be, but I don’t think so anymore.”
“You don’t have to do this alone, you know,” I said, though I didn’t know what help I’d be.
Truthfully, she seemed to have a better grasp on how to be the Chosen One than me. I’d been so busy just trying to survive that I’d been happy to leave the investigation up to the guards, while she was apparently Sherlock Holmes–ing all over the castle.
She snorted softly. “Oh, good. I feel much better about the chances of two people being able to save the entire world than I did about one.” But her sarcasm was gentle enough it held no real bite.
The door to the house banged open, spilling lamplight onto the cobblestones.
“Are you going to come in and help or not?” An older woman, who must have been the girls’ mother, stood in the doorway, her hands on her hips.
“Lavender saw you out here. She says you’re the traveler who gave her the chair. ”
A few pudgy faces peeked around her waist. “Mama!” one of the girls said. “You can’t ask them to help. They’re the Chosen…” She fell silent. To keep them safe, Courtney must have instructed her not to reveal our titles.
Courtney stood. “Of course we can help.”
Together, we followed the woman through the doorway and into a delightfully disheveled home.
Clutter covered every rickety piece of furniture in a haphazard but somehow organized way that indicated every item had its place, as chaotic as it might look.
The kitchen and dining space were all in one room, while the sitting room was separated by a door.
In the corner, a staircase wound up to what I assumed were the bedrooms.
Gathered around the worn table in the middle of the room were the rest of the family: an older man, who must be the father, and a plethora of daughters—even more than the ones who had been with Courtney earlier.
One of them bounced a baby on her knee while the others were preoccupied with the bag of coins spilling out onto the table.
“This is from selling the chair you gave us,” one said, sounding almost guilty, as though she needed to explain, as though she wasn’t allowed to have it.
The mother introduced herself only as “Mama” and the father was simply “Pop.” The girls’ introductions were a jumbled mess of laughter and squeals, but I found if I uttered a random name of a plant, I had a good chance of one of them responding.
“We’re baking tarts to sell at the market tomorrow,” Mama said, indicating the pastry mess covering the counter by the hearth.
“Maybe we cannot give our money to others in need, but if a few coins happen to slip into the batter, and if a few good people happen to find those coins in their tarts, well they might as well keep them.”
“Wait,” I said. “I’m confused. Why can’t you just give people the money?”
“It is not the way of things,” she said simply.
Courtney stepped forward. “Is that why your daughters didn’t want to accept the chair at first? They had to view it as payment before they would take it.”
Mama shrugged. “Things must be done a certain way. We are peasants. We must work to earn our keep. The soldiers must fight. The servant must serve. It is not our place to accept wealth.”
Maybe this was why Amy wanted us to stay away from the villagers.
The social infrastructure of this world seemed deeply rooted in tradition, with rules about what you could and couldn’t do, depending on what class you belonged in.
If the world ran smoothly this way, maybe Amy didn’t want us shattering the walls of decorum and tradition by telling people things could be different.
Maybe Edna Johnson, the last Chosen One, had tried to do that, and that was why it was now forbidden.
Still, it was strange these rules were just accepted, especially because people like Mama were actively trying to find ways around them.
But this was a different world . If someone from this world came into mine, they’d probably find our cultural norms senseless too.
Like the way everyone universally agrees to say big stretch when their cat stretches, or the unspoken one-urinal-buffer-zone rule, or how, if anyone says, this one time , you’re legally obligated to throw in, at band camp .
“Do you wish to help, or not?” Mama asked. “Idle hands have no place here.”
A few of the girls who knew we were the Chosen Ones cringed and offered apologetic looks, but Courtney brushed them off. “Let’s get to work.”