Ah, the
sweet smell of buns and cocoa and the Market Place are like none but the lilac
and the apple blossoms in the spring. Common, yet rare and wondrous. I stop at
the little peanut shack and buy a bag, just to keep the man from losing home.
The shrieks from the next stall hurry me along though, and there is no time for
dawdling.
I cannot bear to look, but I do and
find nothing is wrong. Only a mouse has disturbed Mistress Okray, and a mouse
is nothing compared to the Spornids, or the Tapels, or the dreaded Magen.
Oh, the Magen! Powerful Magi so
overcome that they spawned a new group of evil. Glory be, the gracious Magi, to
allow the Magen to add.
Before the mouse may meet his death,
I scoop him up and dump him near the Eastern wall, then buy a square of
chocolate and a loaf of sugar bun. The cocoa and loaf are so sweet I crumble a
bit for the mice and wrap the rest up for Sani.
I continue with my shopping, buying
rice and lettuce and cloth and parchment and beans, then hurry on my way. I
want to get home to mother and little Sani, and Toku and Fahr.
The leed merchant looks so pale I
buy a packet from him just to pay. I wonder about his family and Horspurt. I
know he has one. I hope he is well.
About fifty years ago, the Orken
from the south came and brought with them many goods, the likes of which had
never been seen by our people before. One of these goods was Borkenshmitz, a meat
dish prepared with teaberries and a plant called Orn. This dish held a toxic called Pornet, which
the Orken found harmless, but my people found it deadly. It weakened everyone
who ate it and killed many. The disease, called
the Black Sickness by the people, was contagious and many caught it. Only the
Orken were immune.
Leed was a common grain, a hybrid of
barley and oats. It, mixed with water and honey, could make the Black Sickness
easier to overcome. But, a drought had come a year before and killed away many
crops. The Sickness came at a time before harvest, and not much leed was in
store.
Around that time, yet it was maybe
ten years before, all poor who needed food could take out a Horspurt. A
Horspurt was a bet made with the government that for every week you worked
without getting harmed, your family would get one bucket of rice, a square of
tea, an apple, a loaf of plum bread, a bag of corn, and a salt of beef or
horse. But, the food would not come unless nobody mentioned it for another
week. At the end of every month, the food would come. Sometimes, the government
would give more or less food than betted for.
To symbolize a Horspurt, the family
has one more mouth to feed- a Spornid. A Spornid is a creature with finger
length fangs, finger length legs, and finger length ears. The creature are very
loveable, although if treated badly use the fangs for a horrible purpose. You
see, Spornids are like vampire kittens.
