Free The Folly of the World by Jesse Bullington

didn’t say anything, glaring at him.
    “If anyone asks, you’re my daughter.”
    She snorted. He gave her some of the horse’s oats for breakfast and then they mounted up, riding all day in silence. That night she kicked his balls and stole his horse, and in turn he broke her nose.
    Lubbert was an arsehole after all, then, but that was all right—Jolanda had quite a bit of experience where arseholes were concerned, and he wasn’t the sandiest of the lot. After shehad come back to camp, her face aching, he had sewn up her palm with a needle and spool of white thread he kept in a little velvet-lined sewing box. The box reminded her of her mother’s needle case, which her arseling father had sold less than a year after the death of his wife despite Jolanda’s protests. It hadn’t been as fine a case as Lubbert’s, admittedly, but then her mother had been a decent, humble woman, not some show-off poot.
    The hurt of his stitching up her hand took Jolanda’s mind off her nose, which continued to leak red, runny snot for a few days until that part of her also went silent, and then all that really bothered her was her arse and crotch and legs after spending the better part of each day on Mackerel’s back, Lubbert behind her on the saddle proper. His hands never strayed from the reins, and he never removed his codpiece to better rub against her, but even so, riding a horse was pure shit.
    One thing about Lubbert was he didn’t run his mouth all day, and another was that after breaking her nose he didn’t hit her again, which was a pleasant change of pace. Still, she didn’t trust him, and if he was half as clever as he seemed, he wouldn’t trust her, either. She prodded the lily stitches crossing her mauve hand and smiled at the thought of going home one day, rich beyond dreaming, and flaunting her fortune in front of her brothers, who would still be living together in their father’s hut like the nest of shitbirds they were.
    The first thing Jolanda realized when they left the coast and began moving inland was that the world is boringly flat, sort of like the sea but with half the character and none of the vitality. They rode inland, and no sooner did they pass the last dunes than Jolanda felt a sudden and unexpected sorrow well up inside her, the dikes of her eyes nearly breeched before she pushed it back down. Scowling at the green pasturelands only occasionally cut by shallow brown canals, Lubbert’s inability to swim made a great deal more sense. One of the few things he said to her that first day away from the sea was that nobody out herewas foolish enough to make their purple the old way, that he had never before heard of anyone extracting the color from windfall sea-fruit instead of some easier method. She picked harder at the pale thread in her dark palm, and gave a prayer that his balls still hurt.
    In one of the larger towns they came to, which was walled and had locks on the river and two-story buildings with gaily painted doors and shutters and red-tiled roofs and all sorts of other things that made Jolanda gawp and smile despite her resolution not to, Lubbert insisted she be fitted for something to conceal her hair. They were already in the sheep-smelling hovel of an old widow when she figured out what he was up to, the silently nodding hag in the doorway giving Jolanda the willies.
    “No thank you,
Papa
,” Jolanda said with a sneer. “I don’t want to cover it.”
    “I won’t have it said my daughter’s a slut,” said Lubbert, smiling at the puckered biddy. “I’m in need of new hose myself, and while we’re here, fit my daughter with everything. A pelisse and bonnet if you can, or just a hood. She’ll also need a longer gown, obviously, and underwear.”
    “I don’t need any of that,” Jolanda protested.
    “You’re too old to be rubbing your slit on my horse like a bitch on her heat,” said Lubbert. “I shall return shortly.”
    This horrified Jolanda more than being sold to a