["Mother" Katherine]
The morning in the village of Winterby was a bright and quiet one, with not a single cloud to be seen in the pale sky. Frosty air bit everything it could find, making the few villagers who had already risen shiver and pull their furs tighter, the white puffs of their breaths vanishing quickly in the cold. Smoke curled lazily from chimneys, carrying the scent of burning wood and morning porridge. Roosters cried with all their might, greeting the new day like it was their last, and somewhere, a dog barked, calling for his owner.
Inside one of the houses, a woman of some thirty winters slumped at the kitchen table, her face buried in her hands as if the end of the world had come. Deep brown hair, the same shade as her eyes, escaped its bun in messy tendrils that framed her weary features. Before her sat a small cup of herbal tea—her usual morning brew to settle her nerves before the children awoke—and beside it, a plate with nothing but a few crumbs in it, the remains of her breakfast.
A soft creak of the wooden floor echoed from the hallway, and the woman sighed, her head rising from its cradle of slender fingers. A moment later, a familiar figure shuffled into the kitchen—Talia, one of the older girls in her care, her eyes barely open. "Mornin', Miss Katherine," she mumbled without looking up, her voice scratchy with sleep, and shuffled to the corner where a basket of freshly washed laundry sat waiting.
Katherine managed a smile, though it was a tired one. "Good morning, dear," she replied, reaching for her cup and taking a small sip. The tea was still hot enough to burn, but she barely noticed, her gaze fixed on the girl trying to find her old dress that simply wasn't there. It vanished into thin air, gone without a trace.
How that happened, she had absolutely no idea, other than the wind itself had taken it sometime in the night. That wouldn't be the first time, but usually it's pretty easy to find it. In a nearby tree, stuck in a fence, or sometimes as far as the roof. But not this time. What was even more strange was that there was barely any wind yesterday.
When Talia began rummaging through the pile for the third time, Katherine spoke up, "It's not there..." which made the girl stop and turn, and blink her eyes open. "It... somehow got lost in the night. I couldn't find it anywhere. Olivia's and Amelia's dresses as well, a few tunics—" she was about to list everything that the wind had taken, but the girl's happy squeak cut her off, making her grimace.
"I'm getting a new dress! Oh, my gosh, oh, my gosh, oh, my gosh!" Talia cried, jumping up and down in her nightgown, and sprinted away to the girls' bedroom to tell the others. Exactly three calming breaths later, the entire kitchen was filled with overly excited children of all ages, boys and girls, trying to figure out who was getting what, arguing, complaining, and some even crying with envy.
The entire time, Katherine just sat there in silence, sipping her tea with closed eyes while the noise raged all around her. Up until Rosy, the smallest of the bunch, whose mother died last year from black breath, came and poked her shoulder. "Mother Katherine, can I help with something?" she hushed ever so quietly, making her open her eyes and look at her. "Anything...?"
A sad smile spread over her weary features, and she reached out, ruffling the girl's blonde hair. "Sure, darling. Wanna go with me to Uncle Jonathan?" A series of furious nods was all she got in response, the girl bouncing on her toes. Katherine downed the rest of her herbal tea in one long swallow, then pushed her chair back with a soft scrape against the wooden floor that was in desperate need of some sweeping.
As she put on her heavy fur coat and boots, she called out to the rest of the noisy bunch behind her, not bothering to find the kid her words were for. "Talia, you're in charge of breakfast. Feed everyone while I'm away," she announced, receiving a loud groan from the teenager and a collective giggle from everyone else. "Away, trying to get you a new dress!" she added, receiving one happy giggle and a bunch of groans this time around. Ignoring that, Katherine then quickly helped her little helper put on a coat, and they were on their way out.
Together, the two of them left the house and began to walk through the snow, one soft crunch after another, towards the center of the village. "It wasn't wind," came a shy, barely-there whisper that made her look down. Rosy was staring back at her with those big brown eyes of hers. "I went outside to pee and saw everything, how they took it."
That made Katherine stop dead in her tracks, a frown slowly appearing on her face. "Taken? Stolen, you mean?" she asked, and the girl nodded, kicking the snow with her boot. 'For the love of gods, who would even steal from orphans?' she thought, crouching down in the snow until their faces were level. "Do you know who did it, Rosy?"
Another slight nod, followed by a nervous glance around. "...missus monster and her children! Just like from that story you told us, the one with the scary forest," Rosy whispered with a bit of lean forward, her voice no louder than a breath. "They were very sorry, though. They told me so. I think we should forgive them."
A long, tired sigh escaped Katherine at that, and she couldn't help but roll her eyes a little. "Mhm. I see..." she muttered with a nod, getting up and brushing the snow off her knees. Taking the girl's small hand into hers, she continued walking towards the well, listening to her go on about how nice and polite the monsters were, how they really, really needed those clothes, and how they weren't at all eating any babies—only naughty ones. Katherine could only nod and smile, listening only with half her mind. "Sure, darling..."
A few minutes later, the two of them stood before an old, weathered door of an equally old and weathered house in the middle of the village. Gentle knocking silenced the girl mid-sentence, and they waited, looking at each other.
It didn't take long before the door creaked open, revealing an elderly man with gray hair, a kind face, and a funny nose. He wore a loose beige tunic that he had probably slept in, reaching all the way down to his knees. No pants. He blinked at them, looking from Katherine to Rosy. "Girls, come in," he said without asking why they were there, just motioning for them to enter.
Once inside and out of furs, Rosy ran to the hearth to warm herself, and Katherine stayed with the old man. He was Jonathan, the only person in Winterby brave enough—or perhaps foolish enough—to call himself a merchant, who had seen more winters than all the kids under her care combined. He was also the village headman, the one in charge. No noble chose him, nor had anyone voted for him. It just happened that way; whenever someone needed anything done, they simply went to the man.
Sitting down at the table, Katherine took a deep breath and muttered a shy, "Sorry for the early visit," with her fingers nervously fidgeting in her lap.
The old man waved a dismissive, wrinkled hand as he lowered himself into the chair opposite her with a grunt. The wooden seat creaked under his weight, even louder than his back did. "Bah, don't be," he mumbled in that warm, grandfatherly way of his. "Been up for hours anyhow. Billy, the hunter's boy, pounded on my door before the sun even thought about rising. Asking how many prayers I know. Strange child." Jonathan shifted his position, the chair groaning again. "Anyway, what can I help you with?"
Katherine took a moment to look around the small room, at the folded furs and bags of wool piled against the walls, at the shelves filled with pots and jugs and other goods, at the old sword that hung above the hearth, at everything the old man had gathered over the years. "You see," she began, turning back to him and meeting his eyes, "we had a bit of a problem at the orphanage. Wind took some of our clothes in the night. They were hanging out in the yard to dry, and... I don't know, somehow they blew away," she explained, her brown eyes going to the girl by the hearth, poking the fire with a stick. "Can anything be spared for the children? Anything at all... please, I'll take whatever."
Jonathan gave a long, heavy sigh at that, his lips twisting into a grimace. "Ugh... didn't I just give you three tunics before winter?" he asked, and when she nodded, he sighed again. The man looked at her for a few long moments, saying nothing, then turned his gaze to the girl in the corner. "I'll ask around, but... I don't think we have any spares left in the village. But I'll ask," he said, then shook his head and continued, "If that doesn't work out, I'll make a trip to Rivercrook myself, sell some of my furs, and get what you need from the profits. Not this week though—next week perhaps, when the snow settles a bit. My knees tell me it should."
Nodding, Katherine breathed a soft, "Thank you. I really appreciate it," and reached into her pocket. Her fingertips brushed against the familiar, slightly scratchy fabric of the pouch, and she pulled it out. It felt almost empty in her palm, the few coins inside rattling softly as she set it on the table—all that the children had managed to save over the last months, helping around the village or tagging along with the hunters when they could.
Untying the knot that held the pouch closed, she poured out nine copper coins onto the table. Her eyes couldn't help but follow them as they clinked against the worn, wooden surface. "It's not much, but... it should help a little," she said with a sad smile.
Jonathan's gaze lingered on the nine scattered coppers, his weathered face twisting into a soft grimace. With another of those long sighs, he lifted his eyes back to hers and opened his lips to say something, likely to tell her to keep the coins like he always does. But before a single word could leave him, a sudden patter of small feet broke the quiet of the room.
Rosy, still clutching her straw doll to her chest, came rushing from the hearth, her small cheeks flushed from the heat, eyes wide and bright. "I almost forgot!" she blurted out and began fiddling with her doll, poking her small fingers between straws.
It took the girl an embarrassingly long time to do whatever it was she was doing, the poor doll almost falling apart in the process. Neither adult spoke nor made any move to hurry her along, their patient gazes fixed on the girl's focused work. Finally, with a triumphant little huff, Rosy extracted something from within the doll. A brown, dull lump that looked exactly like something one might scrape from the bottom of a boot after an unfortunate walk through a barnyard.
"Missus monster gave me this," Rosy muttered, getting all shy when she noticed their eyes on her. "They were sad and sorry." The girl lifted herself on her tiptoes, stretching her arm as high as she could go, and with the utmost care, placed the thing onto the table.
The old man squinted his eyes at the blob, his wrinkled hand reaching out to pick it up. "Monster?" he asked, turning the thing this way and that in the dim light of the room.
Katherine couldn't help but grimace a little, both because he touched that filthy thing and because she was about to hear all that story over again, of monsters who steal clothes in the middle of the night and don't eat well-behaved children, something that only a childish imagination could come up with. She sighed softly, already feeling the headache beginning to form behind her eyes as Rosy bounced on her toes, nodding with such enthusiasm that her cheeks jiggled a bit.
Taking a lungful of warm air, the young girl began to tell the tale once more, of how she went outside at night to pee and stumbled upon a missus monster, almost a head taller than Mother Katherine with horns instead of ears, and her children with smaller ones and eyes of fire, all stealing their clothes. How the missus monster told her that she was sorry and not to scream, how she blew warm air into her hands, and then gave her that thingy for the clothes they took, saying that Mother Katherine should be given it. And how the monsters disappeared in the blink of an eye—likely flew up in the air—and never returned.
Katherine's face found its way into her palms just halfway through the story, her fingers slowly massaging her forehead to ease that ache. She didn't even bother trying to stop Rosy, knowing full well it was pointless; the girl would continue until she ran out of breath and words.
Jonathan, on the other hand, listened to every word with some interest, much to her surprise. Every now and then, he offered a slight nod or a quiet hum of acknowledgment, sometimes even a question or two, but for the most part, he just frowned at the brown poo in his hand.
When Rosy finally finished her tale, he remained quiet, his brow furrowed, eyes fixed on the brown thing. "I'm sorry. She... she has a vivid imagination—" Katherine tried to say, lifting her face from her palms, only to get interrupted by a single finger from the old man, making her mouth snap shut. Even the girl's mouth did, standing there and looking from one adult to the other, her small chest still heaving from the long story she had to tell.
"That's..." Jonathan started to mutter, his fingers carefully rubbing the surface of the blob in his palm. "...it might be a coin. An old one at that," he added, squinting his eyes at whatever he managed to clean up. After a moment, he got up without looking at anything but his palm and moved to the nearest shelf. There, he took a small knife and carefully scraped its blade against the thing. "Look at that," he muttered under his breath, not stopping.
It made Katherine curious as well, so much so that she got up and slowly approached, with Rosy right beside her. Together, the two of them leaned closer and watched him try to scrub all the rust off the coin, piece by piece, the harsh scraping sound of metal against metal filling the entire house and making Rosy flinch with each particularly loud squeak.
Soon enough, Jonathan managed to reveal a sliver of something other than brown filth—a tiny patch of dull grey peeking through the rust at the very edge, one that didn't even gleam in the light from the window nearby. "What's that?" Katherine found herself asking, her voice hardly more than an exhale, but no answer came.
The old man was too focused to notice. He kept at it, scraping away the filth with a patience fitting his age. Little by little, until it was no longer the brown, poo-looking thing Rosy had brought, but a dirty gray, round coin with a faint outline of... a face, maybe, or a symbol of some sort. It was so weathered that it was impossible to make out what it had once been.
"Interesting," Jonathan murmured, more to himself than to the two pairs of eyes watching him. "A bit too heavy to be copper, but way too light to be gold. It might be silver..." After a bit more frowning at the coin, he turned to search his shelves. After a few heartbeats of rustling through various odds and ends, he pulled out a pair of tiny spectacles with lenses scratched even more than the coin in his hand. Perching them carefully on his nose, he took a closer look, managing to frown even deeper than before.
A nervous gulp wracked Katherine's throat, the sound loud in the quiet room. "S-silver?" she breathed over his shoulder. Silver was... well, silver was a lot, if pure enough. In villages like theirs, a lot, a lot. This coin wasn't thin at all and probably would be enough to buy dresses for every girl in her care, and tunics and pants for every boy. And if Jonathan manages to bargain well enough, it might even buy a few pairs of shoes, not just those patched-up things they passed around until the soles fell off. It made no sense. Her eyes flickered to the small girl almost right away, asking the first thought that came to mind, "Did you... did you steal this from someone?"
Rosy gulped nervously, shaking her head and clutching that doll of hers tightly.
A low chuckle rumbled from Jonathan's chest, his gray eyes still fixed on the coin between his thumb and forefinger. "If someone in this village beside me had a silver coin, Katherine, I'd know about it. Believe me," he said, humming to himself for a moment or two.
Then, without another word, he brought the coin to his teeth, pressing them into the dull metal with a sharp bite. A heartbeat later, he hissed in pain and pulled away, his tongue running over a tooth he had used. "Ah... youch..." He squinted at the coin again, then toward his shelf. "Silver's soft. This... ain't."
Katherine's shoulders slumped at that, her lungs emptying in a long, disappointed sigh. Of course. Of course, it was too good to be true, too nice, having a coin of silver appear out of nowhere. "But..." Jonathan continued, making her lift her gaze to him. "...I'm not sure how exactly silver rusts. Maybe it's some kind of crust that goes deeper? There aren't a lot of fools to let it." His fingers began searching through the piled goods, muttering words too low for her to understand as he did so.
After a moment, he pulled out a metal file, just a rusty piece of iron with teeth, mainly used to fix the horseshoes on his ancient mare. "Let me try to do a little nick, and then we shall see," Jonathan murmured, bringing the edge of the file to the coin. With a one tiny, careful motion up, after which he lifted the coin back to his spectacled eyes, squinting at it. "Strange..." he muttered, bringing the file back to the coin and scraping away at it once more, a bit harder this time.
Another squint, then another scrape, and another. Jonathan's aged features tightened with each attempt, the room filled with nothing but the rasping sound of metal against whatever this strange coin was made of. After a minute or two, Katherine finally found her voice again. "Need any help?" she asked hesitantly, but he didn't answer. He didn't even look at her.
Her words seemed to anger him somehow, as she watched him suddenly use all his strength to cut into the coin. His wrinkled face twisted into a scowl of effort, and his arm trembled with strain. Then, a moment later, he pulled the file away... only to see all the teeth were gone, sheared clean off, and the iron of the handle was bent from the force. "Is that... good?" she asked, blinking at the tool in his hands, then at the coin, still in one piece and not a nick anywhere to be seen.
Jonathan didn't answer, his frown deepening as he tossed the ruined file back on the shelf and moved to the corner of the room. There, he rummaged through a small crate, pulling out one item after another—some old tools, a few oddly shaped knives, a whole bunch of nails, and more. Until, finally, he pulled a pair of metal tongs from the pile, about the size of his forearm.
With a few quick steps, Jonathan returned to the table, secured the coin between the tongs, and... simply struck it with his finger, all to hear what sound would come from it. Probably the oldest way of testing coins there is.
But instead of hearing that high-pitched ting the silver might produce, or the much more delicate ring the gold would, or the dull clonk of copper, the coin made a sound unlike any of those. A continuous, deep, echoing gong rang out, filling the entire house and rattling everything around—from the pots on the shelves to the frosted windows. Girls instantly covered their ears and screamed, their faces scrunching up in pain, and yet none of them could drown out the noise. The old man's glasses cracked on his very nose, his sword rattled off the wall, and landed straight into the fire.
When it was over, when the sound finally faded away, leaving the house in a deafening silence that no one could hear because of the ringing in their ears, Katherine managed to mutter, "Wh... what in the..." Her voice sounded distant and muffled even to herself. But Jonathan said nothing back, his weathered face turned pale as the snow outside, his hands trembling so badly that it took him a few tries to take off the cracked spectacles from his face.
It took him a few long heartbeats to remember how to breathe, his lungs burned by the time he finally did. Jonathan's fingers fumbled with the tongs that held the coin, slick with sweat despite the fire being so far away, until he managed to place it onto the table next to the nine coppers with a trembling hand. "I-I... I think that's..." he started, swallowing hard enough to make his throat click. "It's... umbralit." His gaze flickered from the coin to Katherine, standing nearby, dumbfounded; the word meant nothing to her, he noticed.
Jonathan's voice was barely there, a dry rustle of leaves in the wind. "Umbralit," he repeated, the word tasting strange on his tongue. "It's used... hmm... in trade between kingdoms. Big ones. For... for important things." He gestured vaguely with a shaking hand toward the coin, then paused, taking a moment to wipe the sweat from his forehead with the back of a wrinkled palm. "Y-you could... you could buy the whole Rivercrook with it. Burn it to the ground and build it up anew. Thrice. I-I don't even know where you can exchange it for gold..."
That left her blinking at him as if he'd grown a second head, even faster when she remembered everything Rosy had said just moments ago, how those 'monsters' were sad that it wasn't enough. "Gods... how many prayers do I know?" the old man mumbled under his breath, his eyes meeting hers for a moment before dropping to the scared child clutching her doll to her chest.