As Judith drags him into the midst of the flurry of activity, Daryl scours the bustling Kingdom for Carol's face among the many booths, but it's hard to make out much. They pass a fencepost with cardboard sings pointing in various directions: Crafts & Games, Meade & Wine, Tournament Arena, Banquet Hall. He's just pointed in the direction of the Meade & Wine sign – maybe a buzz will make this festival bearable - when Judith tugs him down a dirt path through the gardens in the direction of the Crafts & Games instead. "Shame Enid's been teachin' ya to read," he mutters.
They pass a booth where Nabila has lain out some colorful hand sewn scarfs, and Judith stops abruptly to look at them. "Ooooh. Pretty!" The little girl slides one off the table and wraps it around her neck, thrusting her head back and flipping her long, blonde hair like a model.
"Would you like to purchase one for the little girl?" Nabila asks.
"Uh…how?" Daryl asks. "With what?"
"I'll accept chocolate in trade. Coffee grounds. Or tea bags."
"How about a kiss?" says Jerry, who has come to a stop beside them at the booth.
Nabila smiles. "I can get those for free from you anytime I like."
Jerry grins. "Javelin tournament in forty minutes. You're coming to watch me?"
"I'll be there," she replies.
Jerry nods, smiles down at Judith, and walks on.
"Pleassse, my Daryl?" Judith asks as Jerry leaves. She strokes the soft fabric against her neck. "It's so so very pretty!"
Daryl looks at Nabila. "All I got is hand-rolled cigarettes."
"Well, I don't smoke, but I'm sure I can trade those to someone else for chocolate and tea. Two cigarettes for the scarf."
"Only got one on me," Daryl lies. He has three, but he doesn't want to give them up, not for a piece of fabric, and not if he's going to have to stay here all night. He's going to need a smoke. Besides, he can get Judith a scarf on the next supply run. Hell, he can get her a hundred.
"Well…." Nabila smiles at Judith. "It's hard to say no to that face. I'll take a single cigarette."
Daryl reluctantly fishes a cigarette out of the front pocket of his dark brown, button-down shirt – the clean shirt he put on because…well, not because he's going to see Carol. That's not why he cut his hair and that's not why he picked out this shirt. This just happened to be the fourth shirt he pulled out of the chest at the foot of his cot.
Nabila takes the cigarette from his hands with a smile, and Judith skips on down the walkway. "Didn't know this festival was gonna cost nothin'," he mutters before following.
At the next booth, Judith is delighted by the handmade jewelry. Daryl grumbles, "Get ya some necklaces on my next run."
"But they won't look like this!" Judith protests. "These are so, so, SO pretty!"
"Lots of pretty necklaces at the Pawn Shop. Get ya twenty."
"But those are FAKE necklaces. These are REAL!"
"They ain't fake. Made from gold and silver and shit. Some even got diamonds."
"I want a REAL necklace. Please? Oh pretty please? Please, please, my Daryl?"
Why's she got to call him that? My Daryl. It does weird things to his heart. It isn't fair. Reluctantly, he relinquishes a second cigarette, and Judith skips away happily with her new necklace swinging across her chest.
The next booth is hocking art – sculptures made from junk and metal. Daryl nods to the woman behind the table. "Hey, Anne." He still wants to say Jadis. He can't quite get used to the very normal name. Daryl holds no grudge against her for having once sided with the Saviors, but he's never quite learned to trust her either. She immigrated to the Kingdom after the War with the Whisperers.
Judith looks at the sculptures with a crinkled nose, as if she finds them distasteful.
"Would you like a cat?" Anne asks her, indicating something that only vaguely resembles a cat to Daryl.
"Uh…no thank you," Judith says and skips on.
Daryl, glad not to have sacrificed another cigarette, catches up to her and takes her hand to keep her from running out of sight. But he's the one who slows to a stop at the next booth. Judith, clearly uninterested in the wares, tugs on his hand, but Daryl doesn't budge. In fact, he lets go of her hand.
"'S cool," he mutters, looking at the intricate patterns carved onto the lower and upper limbs of a longbow. He picks it up and feels the grip. "Solid. Ain't likely to slip none."
"Thank you," Dianne replies from behind the booth. "I put a lot of effort into my craft."
He puts the longbow down and examines the arrows next, running a finger along their smooth, well-formed length, and thinks of his own rough, ugly, handmade attempts at arrows. "Damn. Ya ever make 'em for crossbows?"
Dianne shakes her head. "Crossbows are too hard to maintain in this world. You know you'll run out of parts, eventually, right?"
"Yeah, well…" He puts the arrow down. "Ain't run out yet." His eyes are drawn to a knife with a carving on the hilt. "Hell…that a Cherokee Rose?"
"It was meant to be a daisy. I messed up on it."
He picks the knife up and feels its weight. He can't help but notice it's a little light for his comfort, but just right for Carol. He carefully touches the blade and turns it over in his hand. "What ya want for it? All I got is one more cigarette."
"I don't smoke."
"Could trade it," he suggests.
"I'll tell you what. You can have it if you set me up on a date with that good-looking friend of yours."
The only men Dianne's ever seen him hanging out with are Rick and Aaron, and everyone knows Rick is gone. So she must mean Aaron. "Ah…sorry…He don't swing that way."
She chuckles. "I meant Tara. Did she come to the festival?"
Daryl blinks. "Uh…yeah." Tara was crammed into the cart. "But I ain't….I ain't much of a matchmaker."
Dianne nods to the knife in his hand. "You can have it as long as you tell her you want her to come see the archery tournament. And when I kick your ass in it, she'll be impressed."
"When you kick my ass in it?" Daryl asks.
Dianne smiles – about as much as Daryl has ever seen her smile – and nods. "Let's face it. You're going to bomb in the longbow round."
Daryl puts the knife in its leather sheath and shoves it into the waistband of his pants. "Yeah, well, you ain't so great at the crossbow." When she was disarmed in a skirmish with the Whispers, and he was slammed from behind with a club and lost his bow, Dianne scooped it up and shot at his attacker – but she missed terribly. Thankfully, Carol was fast on the Whisperer's heels and finished him off.
"But I'm almost as good at the compound bow as I am at the longbow," she tells him.
"Yeah, well…" Daryl juts out his chin. "So 'm I. Almost as good at the compound as the crossbow."
"Bring it!" Judith shouts, which makes Daryl feel suddenly silly.
Dianne laughs. It transforms her features and makes her almost attractive. "Yeah, you bring it, Daryl," Dianne tells him. "And bring Tara. And enjoy the knife."
"Yeah." Daryl rests a hand on the hilt poking out of his waistband. "Thanks."
Daryl takes Judith's hand again. They move on past two more booths, and when they near the fresh tobacco booth, the sweet, peppery scent just about drives him mad. He stops and points to an open jar full of shredded tobacco leaves. Rolling papers are stacked next to the jar. "How much for some of that? And a couple papers? All I got is a cigarette." He fishes it out of his pocket and shows the man behind the table. It's his last one.
"Why on earth would I trade good tobacco for mediocre tobacco?" the wrinkled, gray-haired man behind the table asks.
"Yeah…'Course," Daryl mutters and slides the cigarette back into his front pocket.
The man nods to the scarf on Judith's neck. "Is that one of Nabila's?"
Daryl nods.
"The purple one," the old man says. "That's the one my wife said she wanted. I was supposed to snag it up before someone else did, but I forgot. I could give you several ounces of tobacco in exchange for it."
Daryl glances at Judith, who has just protectively put her hand on her scarf. "Yeah…uh…nevermind." He starts to walk on, but Judith plants her feet and tugs him back.
"If my Daryl wants smokes," she says, "my Daryl gets smokes." She unravels the scarf from her neck.
"Nah," he tells Judith, "ya don't – "
She slaps the scarf on the table. "Smokes," she demands. "A dozen."
The old man smiles. "Your daughter's quite the little barterer, isn't she?"
"Oh, she's not my – " He stops. "Yeah. Yeah, she drives a hard bargain."
"How about six?"
"Ten!" Judith demands.
"Seven," the old man suggest.
Judith hrmphs. "Fine."
"Would you like me to roll them for you?" the man asks Daryl.
"Sure."
Daryl leaves the table with seven new cigarettes in his front pocket – far more than he started with. As they walk away, he holds his hand up. "That's my Little Ask Kicker!"
Judith high fives him with a smack and cries, "Hell yeah!"
They reach the end of the craft booths and find themselves at the games. Judith is eager to play the first one she can find – a shooting gallery using B.B. guns. Judith takes aim at a target set at close range for little kids, but the rifle is a little too big for her arms to be comfortable. She can just reach the trigger, and she's all over the white of the paper and off it onto the backboard.
"Pull it into yer shoulder." Daryl crouches down beside her to help her reposition her grip. "See that white dot? Ya want to see it through these…" He points to the two metal sights. "'N put it on yer target."
Judith closes one eye and squeezes again. This time she gets within the third ring from the bullseye. "I did it!" she shouts. "I won!"
"Well," the man running the game says. "You have to get a bullseye to – "
Daryl glares at him.
"You won!" the man says. "You won." He opens a cooler and says, "Pick your ice pop." Inside are green, yellow, blue, red, and orange ice pops in thin, clear plastic – the kind Daryl's mama used to buy down at the gas station in bundles of fifty and freeze for summer. There were days when he ate three for lunch, because there was nothing else to eat. He supposes he shouldn't be surprised they've lasted this long, since there's not one natural thing in them.
Judith picks up a yellow one but puts it back. Then she does the same with a red. Finally, she settles on the blue. Daryl uses his pocket knife to cut it open for her, and she pushes it up and sucks happily on the ice, but then asks, "What is it?"
"'S a popsicle. Like…frozen sugar 'n water. 'N food colorin'."
"But what flavor is it?"
"Blue raspberry."
"There are BLUE razz-bear-ees?" Raspberries grow wild just outside the hilltop, so she's had plenty.
"Nah. No. Not 'n nature."
She looks suspiciously at the pop, shrugs, and then pushes it up some more and proceeds to devour it before tossing the wrapper in the trash can between two booths.
"Next game," she demands, and she promptly vanishes.
Daryl looks around frantically and finds her across the dirt walkway, staring down into a brown barrel full of cold, dirty water. Little rubber ducks float atop the surface.
"Pick one and turn it over," the woman behind the table says. "And if there's a red dot on the bottom, that's a winner."
"What do I win?" Judith asks.
The woman points to a nearby table and Judith gasps when she sees the small, caramel-coated apples on a platter – each with a stick in the center.
Immediately, Judith seizes a duck and turns it over. "I won! I won!"
"Um….that's a blue dot," the woman says. "It has to be a red dot."
Judith throws the duck back into the barrel and turns over four more until she finds a red dot, and then she shoves it toward the woman's face. "See! I won."
"You can only pick one, honey."
Judith frowns and sets the duck back down.
Daryl plucks it up and turns it over and shows it to the woman. "Look. I won."
"My Daryl won!"
The woman shakes her head but gives Daryl one of the apples, which Daryl hands to Judith, who gnaws on it with an "Mhm…mhmmm….mhmmm…." as they browse the other game booths. They pass the dunking booth just as Enid's ball smacks the center of the dunking lever and her Kingdom boyfriend Liam plunges into the water below, before rising and cursing and shaking his head. Glenn, Jr. who is sitting on the ground and watching, cackles.
Liam smooths back his dark brown hair and resets the dunking bar before climbing back onto it. "It's COLD," he says. "How many times are you going to keep dunking me?"
Judith looks at the bucket full of balls. "What do I win if I make him fall?" she asks Enid.
"Just the pleasure of watching him make a fool of himself," Enid tells her.
Judith scrunches up her face. "Dumb game." She takes Daryl's hand and tugs him on.
Daryl tries to win her another prize – homemade hard sugar candy - by tossing rings over the necks of glass bottles, but he fails with the first three rings, muttering, "This game's rigged."
"Three more chances," the man behind the booth says sympathetically, and he hands Daryl three more rings.
Daryl curses when the first two miss. He's ever so carefully aiming the third when Judith's shout makes him drop it short.
"Carol!" the little girl cries. "I see Carol!"