Free Words Like Coins by Robin Hobb

Words Like Coins 
     
    Robin Hobb 
     
    “First came drought. Then rats. Now it’s pecksies.” Jami spoke into the darkness of the bedroom.
    “And that’s why you’re afraid to get out of the bed to get a drink of water?” Mirrifen asked. Her sister-in-law’s restless tossing in the bed they now shared had wakened the older woman.
    “No,” Jami said, with a strangled laugh. “It’s why I’m afraid to get out of bed and go to the backhouse.” She shivered. “I can hear rats squeaking in the kitchen. Where rats go, pecksies follow.”
    “I’ve never even seen a pecksie.”
    “Well, I have! Lots of them, when I was little. And I saw one today. It was under the front steps, staring at me with its horrid yellow eyes. But when I crouched down to see it, it was gone!”
    Mirrifen sighed. “I’ll light a lamp, and go with you.”
    Swinging her feet out of the bed and onto the floor in the dark still put a shiver up her spine. Mirrifen wasn’t sure she believed in pecksies but she did, emphatically, believe in rats. She tiptoed out to the banked fire in the kitchen hearth and lit the lamp from its embers. The moving flame painted shifting rat-shadows in every corner. The night before last, Jami had stepped on a rat when she got out of bed for water. Jami’s feet were already swollen from her pregnancy. A rat bite could have crippled her. Mirrifen hurried back to the bedroom. “Come on. I’ll walk you to the backhouse.”
    “Mirrifen, you are too good to me,” Jami apologized. 
    Privately, Mirrifen agreed, but she only grumbled, “Why Drake and Edric had to take the dog with them, I don’t know.” 
    “To protect them when they camp! All sorts of men are on the roads looking for work. I wish they’d all stayed home. I’d feel safer.” Jami sighed as she touched her stretched belly. “I wish I could have one solid night’s sleep. Did your hedge-witch ever teach you how to make a sleep charm? If you could make one for me—”
    “No, dear heart, I couldn’t.” They moved slowly through the darkened house. “My training only included simple things. Sleep charms are complicated. They have to be precisely keyed to the user. Even so, they’re dangerous. Witch Chorly once knew a foolish hedge-witch who tried to make a sleep charm for herself; she finished it, fell asleep and starved to death before she ever awoke.”
    Jami shuddered. “A pleasant tale to sleep on!”
    The kitchen door slapped shut behind them. Overhead, the light of the waxing moon watered the parched fields. Mirrifen inspected the outhouse to make sure no rats lurked inside, and then gave Jami the lantern. Mirrifen waited outside. The clear, starry sky offered no hope of rain. By this time of year, the crops usually stood tall in the fields. Without them, the wide plains of Tilth stretched endlessly to a distant, dark horizon.
    No one could recall a worse drought. Thrice the men had planted; thrice the seeds had sprouted and withered. With no hope of a crop, the two brothers had left them, going off in hopes of finding paying work. They needed to be able to buy more seed grain in the hopes that next spring would be kinder. Mirrifen reflected sourly that their husbands would probably have to go all the way to Buck to find work. 
    Jami emerged from the backhouse. As they shuffled back toward the farmhouse, Jami spoke her darkest fear. “What if they never come back?”
    “They’ll come back.” Mirrifen spoke with false confidence. “Where else would they go? They both grew up on this farm: it’s all they know.”
    “Maybe away from it, they might find easier ways to live than farming. And prettier girls. Ones that haven’t been pregnant forever.”
    “You’re being silly. Drake is very excited about the baby. And your ‘forever’ is nearly over. The full moon will bring your baby.” Mirrifen stepped barefoot on a pebble and winced.
    “Is that something the hedge-witch taught you?”
    Mirrifen snorted. “No. What Chorly