The Faeries' Harp

2: Easy Come, Easy Go

“Rhys, soup’s ready!” Evelyn calls to her son, who is splitting firewood in the back yard of their small cottage. She cannot help beaming with pride at the strong and handsome man he has become.

“I’ll be right in, Ma,” Rhys replies, wiping the sweat from his brow with his discarded shirt before pulling it over his head. He’s had a long day, between the chores for his mother and the odd jobs he’s been completing in the village, trying to scrape together a few coins to pay the village apothecary for his mother’s treatments. She is often ill, and Rhys cannot keep steady employment because he has to take care of her as well as their tiny homestead.

He binds up the wood he’s split and sets it under the eave next to the cottage before stepping inside. His head nearly brushes the ceilings within. Evelyn is setting a plate of bread and a pitcher of water on their well-worn kitchen table; two place settings and two bowls of soup are already there.

“Good day today?” Evelyn asks him.

“There’ve been worse,” he says, dropping a few copper coins on the table next to her bowl of soup.

“Definitely, on an odd-job day.” She counts the coins carefully, then puts them into the leather pouch she wears on a rope around her waist. “Come, sit. Eat. You must be exhausted, all that wood chopping.”

“Better than plowing fields or mucking out stalls.” Only once he’s taken his seat at the table does Evelyn also sit and begin halfheartedly eating her supper. Rhys, on the other hand, is ravenous, and his mother cooks well, when she’s well enough to do so. The soup is thin but flavorful, with plenty of vegetables in it. Maybe someday we’ll be able to afford meat again, Rhys hopes.

“How has your work been today?” Rhys inquires. Evelyn does some mending and laundry for other women in the village, when her health permits her.

“Finished that apron for Marguerite. That an’ the soup were all I could manage today, I’m afraid.”

“It’s all right. I’m sure no one faults you—”

THUMP! THUMP! THUMP!

Evelyn is on her feet and halfway to the door before Rhys can react to the knocking that’s interrupted him. She takes a deep breath before opening it. Llewellyn Macgruder, the village apothecary, stands on the other side.

“Terribly sorry to bother you at suppertime, Mrs. O’Rourke,” Llewellyn greets her apologetically. “I thought I’d inquire after your health, as I was in the area.”

“Better’n some days, worse than others,” Evelyn answers nervously. “We do the best we can. And of course I’m so lucky to have me boy t’look after me.” Rhys takes this as his cue to rise from the table and join his mother at the door.

“Yes. Found any steady work yet, Rhys?”

“Thought the blacksmith was a good fit, but he let me go when Mother was ill last week,” Rhys answers impassively. “He wanted someone more reliable, I guess.”

“That’s too bad. He knows it ain’t your fault.”

And you knew all this before you came by, Rhys adds silently. Get to the point.

“It’s just not fair, how they treats him. All the village knows how things are for us,” Evelyn remarks sadly.

“Aye, but times is lean for all of us, Evelyn. Even apothecaries. When d’you think you’ll be able to pay me for my last visit?”

Evelyn sighs and shakes her head, then slowly pulls the copper coins Rhys had given her just moments before out of the pouch on her hip.

“This is all we got, Mr. Macgruder. All Rhys brought in today. We’ll get you the rest soon as we has it.” She gently places the coins in the apothecary’s outstretched hand. He examines them, then sighs heavily.

“This just won’t do. How long you think the two of you can survive like this?”

Evelyn and Rhys just stare at him blankly. The two of them have been barely scraping by for years now. At no point has it seemed sustainable, but things haven’t gotten better, and they haven’t gotten worse.

The apothecary shakes his head. “I’ll put in another word for you with the blacksmith, Rhys. You should talk to him again in the morning. Short o’ that, I hear they need day laborers on the road up by Lord Rioghnan’s mansion.”

“Thank you, Mr. Macgruder,” Rhys answers tightly. It’s hard to thank the man who’s taken his wages for the day to pay his mother’s debt.

“Good day to you both.” He walks away, hands in his pockets, a somber air about him. Evelyn closes and bolts the door, then slumps against it, the tears she’d held back for the apothecary’s visit streaming down her face.

“It’s all right, Ma,” Rhys assures her with confidence he doesn’t feel, putting an arm around her shoulders. “I’ll find more work tomorrow. We’ll get by, somehow.”

“It just ain’t right,” Evelyn cries, allowing her son to guide her back to the table, where their soup has grown cold waiting for them. “They knows how hard it is for us, him most of all. Why can’t they have a little mercy, a little compassion?”

“We all bear the yoke of the same merciless Lord Rioghnan, that’s my guess. They all got the same wolves howling at the door we do. Just thicker doors.”

Evelyn nods dully. Tears continue to slide down her cheeks as she forces herself to finish her soup. Her appetite has gone, but they have no way to keep leftovers, and she is loath to waste food. Who knows when they might get another meal? She goes straight to bed once she’s swallowed her last spoonful of soup, mumbling something about a headache. Rhys knows the truth; the encounter with the apothecary robbed her of what little vitality and spirit she’d had today. He washes their few dishes as quietly as possible and tidies up their little living space, as he does every night. No matter how hard he tries, how hard he works, he can never seem to make life easier for his mother. Guilt gnaws at his insides. She’s done so much for him, over the years.

Somehow, he vows, I’m going to find a way to make a life for us. There has to something we’ve missed, something we haven’t thought of. Tomorrow I’ll find a job that I can keep. Tomorrow we make a fresh start.