Chapter 2 The Endless Cycle
The market was three alleys over, past the burnt-out pawn shop and the makeshift shrine where city drunks lit gutter candles for luck. Daisy ducked through the crowd, early risers, petty thieves, and mothers bargaining for wilted root vegetables. The stalls were little more than rain-soaked tents, stitched together from sailcloth and tarpaper, but the vendors guarded them with the ferocity of starving wolves.
Daisy eyed the apothecary’s booth from a distance. The jars lined up on warped shelves glimmered with colored syrup, dried herbs, even dried fruits, and things pickled in brine she couldn’t identify. Every jar had a neat tag, price written bold, no room for haggling. The apothecary himself was a round man in a brocade vest, with hands so clean they shone even in the morning gloom. The blue ring on his thumb glimmered as he rearranged his stock, muttering preservation spells that made Daisy’s meager magic crawl in her veins.
She waited until a rich woman in a red fox fur finished buying a handful of cough candies with real honey, judging by the gold coin she flashed. Daisy stepped up and placed her copper coins on the counter.
“One vial of motherwort. And a pinch of willow bark, please.”
The apothecary glanced at her, then at the coins. “Prices have gone up.”
“Since yesterday?” Daisy tried to keep her voice even. She couldn’t believe what he had said. Not again, she wanted to spit, scream, do something, but had to remain calm.
He shrugged. “Inflation. Or supply. Or maybe I don’t like your face.” He plucked up the coins and held them in his palm like a bad smell. “You can have a single willow splinter, if you’re that desperate.”
Daisy swallowed the spike of anger. “That won’t last a day.”
“Neither will most of your kind.” He grinned, all teeth, and slid the single sliver of bark across the counter. “These herbs don’t grow themselves, girl. And neither does charity.”
A faint green aura licked around his fingers as he sealed the jar, and Daisy felt the bitterness in her mouth. With real magic, he could cure half the slum’s sickness in a night. But he would rather let them die slowly, coin by coin.
She took the sliver, pocketed it, and left without another word. Behind her, the fox-furred woman watched with a smile that had nothing to do with kindness. The rich found the poor a sad little joke, something to mock. She wished, for once, she had the power to fight back, to make them feel as she did, but nothing came again.
Daisy threaded her way back through the market, passing stalls where well-fed children pointed at sugar-glazed buns and candied apples. A few paces away, a noble’s daughter in plush turquoise velvet shrieked with delight as her mother bought her a sky-blue parasol, oblivious to the mud spattering her hem.
Home was a tenement at the edge of the canal, third floor, room nine. The steps were slick with mold. Daisy’s boots left prints all the way up. Not that it would matter, the nud never left.
Inside, the single room was thick with the smell of boiled cabbage, old socks, human must, sweat, and old cloth. Her siblings were huddled around the stove, sharing a story from a tattered picture book. The book she had found on her rat hunts; none of them knew what the words were, but the pictures were pretty to look at. Their faces were smudged with coal and hope. Daisy scanned the shadows for her mother and found her on the cot, back to the wall, coughing hard into a rag.
Maribel Smithson was a skeleton wrapped in patchwork. Her hair hung in dark ropes, her face sharp and gray, but her eyes still flashed when Daisy entered. She hid the bloodstained rag behind her thigh and smiled.
“Did you get it?” she asked.
Daisy nodded, showing the willow splinter. “Had to wring the market dry, but got enough for today. Tomorrow we’ll try the garden again.”
Maribel’s hand trembled as she reached for Daisy’s. “You’re a wonder, my girl.” Then the cough retook her. The dry one at first, then wet, then silent as she pressed her fist to her lips.
Daisy held her mother’s hand and didn’t look away. The younger ones crowded around, hungry for attention, news, and scraps. The eldest, a boy barely twelve, stirred the pot of soup. It was thin as rainwater, but he ladled it with a flourish.
“Tonight we eat like nobles,” he said, grinning.
“Only if nobles like potato skins,” Daisy shot back, earning a chorus of giggles.
She doled out the soup, saved a double portion for her mother, and sat on the bare floor. As her siblings recited stories and the wind rattled the glass, Daisy watched Maribel’s breathing slow, then even out. When she was sure the others weren’t watching, Daisy checked the rag under her mother’s hand, scarlet, vivid, impossible to ignore.
Hope and hunger. That was all they had left. The little hope kept them alive, but she had to find an answer to this endless cycle.
She sat back, hugged her knees, and stared at the patch of gray sky beyond the window. Tomorrow, she promised herself. Tomorrow she’d do better.