Author's Note: Kudos to anyone who can spot the Terry Pratchett tribute in this chapter.

6.

Breaking rocks out here on the chain gang

Breaking rocks and serving my time

Breaking rocks out here on the chain gang

Because they done convicted me of crime

Hold it steady right there while I hit it

Well, I reckon that ought to get it

Been working and working

But I still got so terribly far to go.

- Nina Simone, "The Work Song"

The next few weeks gave me a good idea of what indentured servitude felt like.

After I'd said my farewalls to Nathan - who made me promise to visit the farm whenever I could, because, as he explained amidst a lot of harrumphing and not quite looking me in the eyes, the girls would surely miss me - Master Drogan showed me to my room. It was a nice corner room, floored in wide pine planks and made bright and airy by its two big, lacy-curtained windows.

Then Drogan gave me a tour of the house.

It was a decently-sized house, though not huge. The first floor had that big gathering room in the front, a kitchen to one side, and a cozy parlor (with yet more bookshelves) to the other. The back stairs led up to the second floor, where there were four small bedrooms, including mine, and a locked door to Master Drogan's quarters at the end of the hall.

There was a stair down to the basement, too. Master Drogan said that it was his laboratory, and forbade me entry. I was glad to oblige. After seeing what Teddy could do with a crate for a workbench and a bunch of empty beer bottles for flasks, I didn't want to see what a cunning old wizard like Master Drogan could do with a full lab at his disposal. Whatever it was, it would probably permanently disfigure me.

I got to know the rest of that house very well over the next day and a half, though.

This was because Master Drogan made me clean it. All of it.

"Is this supposed to be teaching me something?" I asked skeptically when he handed me a bucket and a mop.

"All of life's a lesson, lass," he said calmly. "Now, hop to it."

I'd never had to clean before. I'd always had maids for that.

Shortly after I embarked on my new job, I decided that I hated cleaning.

Not, however, as much as I hated mucking out the barn.

I'd never done that before, either. Oh, sure, my family had had the farm outside of the city, but we hadn't mucked the horses' stalls ourselves. We'd had people for that.

"When will I actually learn something?" I demanded of my would-be teacher when he came to check up on my progress. I was hot, sweaty, tired, and smelled – literally – like shit. I'd never wanted a shower so much in my entire life.

"All in good time," he said, as benign and tranquil as a little bearded Buddha. "All in good time."

It took a herculean effort not to hit him in the face with the shovel.

Once he'd gone, I stabbed the shovel into a pile of manure and sat on a hay bale. "This is such bullshit," I muttered. I looked around. "In more ways than one," I added.

I heard a high-pitched giggle. "Hey lady!" a chirping voice called. "You look pooped!"

I craned my head back and squinted upwards. All I saw were shadows. "Who's there?" I asked.

A singsong voice drifted down to me. "I spy, with my little eye…" It paused, and then giggled again. "A pie!"

I lifted an eyebrow. "A pie?" I asked warily.

"A cow pie!" And then the whatever-it-was burst into another gale of tinkling laughter.

I rolled my eyes. "Okay," I said. "Why don't we ditch the scatological humor for a minute and you try telling me who the hell you are?"

"Tee-hee! Ask me if I am a tree!" the voice cooed.

"Huh?"

"Go ahead! Ask me if I am a tree!"

I had a sneaking suspicion that I was going to regret this. "Fine. Are you a tree?"

"No!"

I covered my face with my hands. "Forget I asked," I muttered.

Then I heard something that sounded like fluttering wings very close to my head, and I twisted to see what it was.

A little silvery-green dragon peered at me with eyes all colors of the rainbow. It was perched on the handle of my shovel. "Hi, cranky lady!" it chirped. "Would you like to play?

I stared at the thing. It really did look like a dragon, except that it was no bigger than a cat, and it had wings like a butterfly's, patterned in green and silver and pink. A mane of silvery spikes began at its head and marched down its long neck to halfway down its tail, which was tipped with a plume of brightly-colored feathers. Whenever the creature moved its head, the spikes clinked together musically. "What in god's name are you?" I yelped.

"What am I?" the creature repeated. It giggled, its tiny jaws parting to show a set of sharp white fangs. "What a rude question the lady asks! Riisi is not a what! She is a who!" Its silvery talons bit into the shovel's wooden handle. "But Riisi does not bear a grudge. Here, she will help the rude lady with her work!"

And then the tiny creature picked up the shovel and flew away.

I jumped to my feet. "Hey!" I shouted. I ran after the retreating shovel, making a few half-hearted grabs for it. "How did you do that? It's ten times your size! Give it back!"

The shovel bobbed into the hayloft. I heard a clang. Then: "But Riisi is only helping the rude lady!" Something rustled. "Here, catch this!"

A shower of hay fell on my head. I ducked and tried to shield my head with my arms. "Hey!"

"Yes!" the creature shrieked. "Hay! Hee-hee!"

For the rest of the afternoon, I chased the shovel around the barn, dodging falling stacks of hay and the occasional clump of manure.

That evening I stalked into Master Drogan's house like the wrath of a really foul-smelling god.

The dwarf took one look at me, raised his hand to cover a smile, and suggested that I go upstairs and have a bath.

First, though, he pointed to the mop and a bucket that was mysteriously full of hot, soapy water, and directed me to clean the floor, since I'd tracked quite a mess in.

I didn't reply. I think the silent snarl on my face did all of my replying for me.

After a quiet dinner – which Drogan cooked, thankfully, though I was sure he'd deserve the consequences if he ever made the mistake of telling me to cook – Drogan gave me the rest of the night off. I decided to go down to the tavern and see what they had to drink in this burg.

The tavern had a picture of a bubbling cauldron painted on the sign over the door. I'd gotten good at guessing the names of bars from visual cues, so it wasn't hard to figure this one out.

"Welcome to the Bubbling Cauldron," the bartender confirmed my hunch. He gave me an appraising glance. "What can I get for you?"

I swung onto a stool, planted my hands on the bar, and treated my host to what was undoubtedly a very grim stare. "Something strong," I said bluntly. "And when I say strong, I mean something that can peel wallpaper at fifty paces, strong. I mean drink-it-real-quick-before-the-glass-dissolves, strong. I mean that you've got to keep it in a special case so it doesn't get out and kill all of the customers, strong." I leaned forward. "What I'm saying is, if I've still got any sinuses left after the first sip, it's not strong enough."

The barman – a burly, middle-aged man with white-streaked blonde hair and a dyspeptic scowl - gave me a look of deep skepticism. He leaned back and called over to the only other woman in the tavern. "What do you say, Delia?" he asked blandly. "Shall I give her some of your special apple brandy?"

The woman turned. She was a big, ruddy-faced woman, the sturdy mountain type that could probably hold a cow up in one hand while she milked it with the other. "That twig?" she chortled. She eyed me measuringly. "Well, if 'tis a kill or cure remedy you're after, m'dear, you've come to the right place." She gestured at the barman. "Pour it out, m'good man," she said expansively. "Let's not dally. The child looks like she needs some color in her cheeks, anyway."

An old man, also at the bar counter, snickered. He looked so cadaverous and decrepit that I couldn't help but wonder when he'd been exhumed, and why anyone had bothered. It wasn't as if he was doing much aside from holding the bar stool down. "Waste of perfectly good brandy, that is," he muttered. "Why don't you pour it over here, lad? I'll make sure it's put to good use."

Lodar took a glass down from the shelf and set it in front of me. Then he produced an unlabeled bottle from beneath the counter. Amber liquid sloshed against its sides. "Errig, I'm forty-seven," he said mildly.

"Aye. So?"

"So you can stop calling me lad." The bartender dribbled a finger or so of brandy into my glass and raised an eyebrow at me. "Well, there you go," he said. "Don't say we didn't warn you, lass."

I inclined my head mockingly and saluted him with my glass. "Don't worry," I said. "Whatever happens, you can tell the paramedics that it was all my fault."

I drank.

I lowered the glass. Slowly, I felt my eyes begin to cross. I instinctively sucked in a breath to calm the burning that simultaneously slid down my throat and erupted behind my eyeballs. This was a bad idea, because I was still swallowing at the time.

I went into an extended fit of coughing. My lungs burned. My fist pounded against the bar. Tears ran down my cheeks.

A chorus of hoots rose up all around me. "'Tis like getting hit in the snout with an apple tree, aye?" Delia called. All I could do was nod.

Errig heaved a rattling sigh. "What a waste," he said mournfully.

"I did warn you," Lodar chided me. He reached for my glass. "Here, lass. Why don't I get you something else?"

I regained my senses enough to wave him away. "No," I wheezed. "I'm all right." I blinked my streaming eyes. "Holy shit," I said. "Now that's something. What's that stuff made out of?"

"Apples," Delia said smugly. She paused thoughtfully. "Well, mainly apples." She grinned. "Good stuff, ain't it?"

It was good, actually. Once you got past the kick, it actually turned out to have a lot of structure and interesting complexity to it – as long, that is, as you liked apples.

Fortunately for me, I loved apples. I held out my glass. "Why don't you pour me another?" An evil thought occurred to me. I grinned. "Send the tab up to Master Drogan's," I added breezily. "He'll take care of it."

The rest of the night was a little blurry. I remember that Delia taught me a few songs. She had a good voice, though were some words in those songs that even I'd never heard of.

Then I played darts with some of the taverngoers. Most of them were male – crusty mountain types with hair coming out of their ears, for the most part - and a lot older than I was, but they warmed up to me after I'd lost enough rounds at darts.

Experience had taught me that it's always a mistake to be too good at those kinds of bar games. If you're too good, there's always someone who gets a bug up their ass about it and either takes your skill as a challenge or, even worse, a personal insult.

If, on the other hand, you're comically bad at it, you become the evening's entertainment, and the whole bar chips in to buy you drinks just so you can get even worse.

That was a good thing, because my aim put me solidly in the latter category.

Lodar eventually closed up shop, and Delia hauled me back home. She was as strong as Magda, and she laughed even more loudly, especially when we got to Drogan's and I couldn't seem to find the doorknob.

Eventually, I managed to locate the damned thing and tumble over the threshold. Then I crawled up the stairs and into bed.

I opened my eyes the next morning to see a scrap of parchment dangling in front of my face. There was something scribbled on it.

The parchment seemed to be attached to a hand. I blinked a few times, trying to bring it into focus. "Wazzat?" I slurred.

"Yer bar tab," Drogan's voice said. The scrap of paper vanished. "Up ye get, lass. Ye've got work to do."

Gingerly, I turned my head and squinted at the window. There was a little bit of light. Not much, though. "Nngh," I said, and tried to re-wrap myself in my blankets. "Too early."

The old dwarf said something I didn't understand, and suddenly my blankets were yanked out of my hands and off of my bed. They hit the far wall and slid down to the floor. "Up with ye, apprentice!" Drogan announced, way more loudly than he really needed to. "Ye've got a hefty tab to work off, ye know."

Something landed on the foot of my bed. "Rise and shine, sleepyhead!" it chirped. It began to sing. "Oooh, what a beautiful mooorniiing! Ooooh, what a beautiful daaaay! Come on, sing with Riisi!"

I clapped my hands over my ears and squeezed my eyes shut against the light. "What is this?" I groaned. "A really colorful form of hell?"

"No. It's a learnin' experience," Drogan replied calmly. Then he looked down at me critically, with pretty much the same expression he might use on encountering a spot of mud on his nice clean floor. "Ye might want to put some clothes on, first," he added blandly. His lips twitched. "Else ye might startle the cows."

When I wasn't cleaning, I seemed to be the dwarf's errand girl. I delivered anything from messages to meat and cheese to potions, and I often came back with whatever gifts the grateful locals had chosen to shower on the charitable old wizard.

It wasn't bad work. It made me feel like an intern again, but my status as Drogan's apprentice made me welcome just about anywhere in Hilltop. Never in my life had I met so many people who were so happy to see me.

I was on my way to deliver one such message when a white wolf trotted right into my path and let out a short, sharp 'whuff'.

I let out an equally short, sharp scream and jumped back several feet, ready to bolt.

I heard a soft chuckle. "Peace, girl," a voice said. "'Tis just Bethsheba. She means you no harm."

I looked around wildly. My eyes settled on a wiry, middle-aged man with longish dark hair and slightly startling yellow-green eyes. "You mean that thing is tame?" I asked shrilly.

He raised an eyebrow. "Tame?" he asked. "No. She is quite wild." He smiled more with his eyes than with his lips, which quirked upwards only slightly, and only at the corners. He seemed very careful not to show his teeth. "But I can vouch for her trustworthiness. As long as she senses no threat to me, she will treat you as gently as she would her own pups."

I looked at the wolf. It – or rather, she – blinked her ruby eyes at me. "Oh. Uh. Good doggie," I said weakly. The wolf's long red tongue lolled out in a canine grin, and her snowy tail thumped against the ground. It might just have been my imagination, but I could have sworn that she was laughing at me.

Then I looked back at the man. He was carrying a bundle of plants. I thought I recognized the shape of those leaves. "Having trouble sleeping?" I asked.

The man glanced down at the flowers. "Not personally," he said. He had a very calm voice, quiet and smooth. It was the kind of voice that made you want to lie down on a couch and tell him all about your childhood. "But yes. Some of my customers do. I like to keep a good stock on hand." He cocked his head at me. "Are you familiar with the use of medicinal herbs?" he asked curiously.

I shrugged. "Sort of," I said. "A friend taught me how to recognize them, although I, uh…don't know what those plants are called." I pointed. "I just know what they do. You use the roots, right?"

The man smiled in that tight-lipped way of his and raised the bundle. "'Tis called 'valerian'," he said. "And yes. That is correct." He paused. Then he inclined his head towards a nearby hut and beckoned to me. "Come," he said. "I will show you some others. Perhaps I can give names to anything else you recognize."

And so began my association with Farghan.

That afternoon, the herbalist gave me names for some of the plants which Harry had already taught me the use of, and introduced me to a few others he had around his shop.

A few days later, he offered to let me accompany him on one of his periodic herb-collecting expeditions around the valley, so that he could teach me about the local flora. The climate was different here in the mountains than it had been in the forest where Harry and I had wandered, and there were lots of plants growing in the vicinity that I didn't know anything about.

Funnily enough, when I broached the subject of our expedition to Master Drogan, he didn't object to losing his muck-raker and errand girl for a few hours. He just smiled and told me to have a good time.

The pine forests were deep and cool, and the meadows spilled, sun-bright, down to the crystal blue sweep of the Rauvin river. The air had the crispness and clarity of fall, and rang with the gentle clank of cowbells.

After a time or two, I even got used to having Bethsheba around on those trips – although the wolf seemed to delight in popping out of the meadow grass right when I least expected it. I think she did it just to see how far she could make me jump.

In some ways, though, the peace and isolation of the mountains only made me more homesick, not less. I wanted noise. I wanted excitement. I wanted strange food and loud music and people, people all around me so I could get lost in the living, breathing chaos of a city.

Instead, I was stuck in this sleepy little town, feeling twitchy and restless and gnawed by the niggling worry that I'd end up getting stuck here forever. The prospect of growing old and dying in such a dull place, without so much as a change of scenery, pissed me off even more than the fact that the place was in the wrong world.

"Aren't there any real cities around here?" I lamented to Master Drogan one night over dinner. I pushed some buttered beets around on my plate. "I mean, where do you go to get your ingredients? And books?" I groped. "And…I don't know. What about that port we had the other night? I know you didn't get that from Lodar-"

Drogan chuckled. "Ye would know that," he said drily. "Ye've already convinced him to give ye a guided tour of his cellar."

I shrugged. "He just wanted to show off," I said dismissively. "He'd do that for anyone who asked."

"Lodar? He's never done it before, that I'm aware. Then again, he's never had a customer who's so willin' to talk spirits with him until all hours of the evenin'. The two of ye are frightenin', the way ye go on." Drogan stroked his beard thoughtfully. "I do have a few errands to run in Silverymoon," he mused then. "It may not be a city such as ye're accustomed to, from what ye've told me, but I promise it's worth seein'." He smiled at me, his eyes dancing. "What do ye say, lass?" he asked. "Would ye like to come with me?"

I couldn't agree quickly enough.