They knocked on Gropply’s door after no time at all. At first Root thought her knock nearly shook the panel from its hinges, until she looked again and realized there were no hinges.
Partially webbed fingers reached through the gaps between the door and frame on both sides and pushed the whole thing to the side. It hit the wall with a thlank. Root watched the way the rest of the shack shuddered from the collision.
“Hu-llo,” said a pitiful voice from a pitiful creature as he appeared in the open door.
“Hi,” said Root. “It’s Gropply, right?”
“What is?”
“Well, your name I suppose?”
“Yarp.”
“We came from Grelga’s.”
Gropply blinked at her with big eyes. “Came from Grelga’s what?”
“Um, her… house? Her company?”
“She owns a company now?”
Root scratched her head. “I don’t know. Maybe. Could be cakes or something… Not the point. Grelga’s having some roofing issues, sent us on an errand over here. She said you have cookies that she’d like to use to patch it.”
“Patch what?”
“The roof.”
“Oh. Come in.”
Root had to duck under the doorframe; she was getting rather tired of these short spirits and having to look out for her head at every stop. Inside, she could stand upright, assuming she picked the right spot so that her head wound up between ceiling slats. The outside breeze tickled her scalp.
The others followed her into the single room.
“Close the door behind you,” Gropply said to Vit, the last to enter.
Vit sized up the door, leaning against the exterior wall. “Do I just sort of… pick it up and…?”
“Yeah, however it works out.”
Vit carefully maneuvered the door back into place.
The spirit Gropply resembled a balloon that resembled an upright frog. He was round and lumpy on two long, spindly legs, and had arms to match. His fingers and toes had an amphibiously ambiguous amount of webbing between them. As he walked around the small interior of the shack, he did so with a sort of lunging, bobbing motion like he was performing his own homemade exercises for muscles unique to his particular shape. His eyes seemed to rattle around in their sockets as he moved so he always came back up looking dizzy.
“Cookies?” he asked once Vit stopped fiddling with the door.
“Oh, no, we just had some, thank you though,” said Vit without looking, still assessing the crookedness of the door.
“What they mean by that,” said Azriah, “is yes, we are here for cookies. Wafer cookies, Grelga said. She requested vanilla.”
“Oh.”
“You have some, yes?”
Gropply ducked into a low cabinet and reemerged with a box in hand. He placed it on the table at the center of the room. “Here they are.”
Azriah picked up the box and looked it over. He shook it; the box went crihshihshihshih with the sounds of cookies. “Excellent,” he said, holding the cookies in a grip just a smidge too tight.
Gropply wrung his little hands. He looked at the floor.
Root watched as four words peeled their way off of Azriah’s tongue with immense force, and only in the wake of a stark battle of emotions raging in plain view on his face.
“Can we… have them?”
“Well…”
Azriah’s grip on the cookie box tightened ever so slightly.
“We can pay for them,” said Root.
“Well…”
They waited anxiously for the continuation of the sentence. It seemed quite at home in Gropply’s mouth.
“I just don’t think I can part with them. Then what would I eat?”
“Well, technically you don’t have to eat, right?” said Root. “Because you’re a spirit.”
Gropply looked affronted. Beel leveled a stern, stubby finger (toe?) at her.
“That was not very considerate,” he said with a look of equal offense.
Root threw up her hands; they nearly hit the ceiling. “Hey, I’m just saying! Right? It’s not like you’ll die.”
“How about I stab you several times in the leg, then?” said Beel. “It’s not like you’ll die.”
“But—”
“We feel pain, you know. Physical and emotional. Say you’re sorry.”
“I’m sorry, Gropply,” grumbled Root.
“You just ignore her,” said Beel, turning to Gropply. “She’s not very kind.”
“I said I was sorry!”
Gropply made a sad sighing noise that was remarkably reminiscent of Beel. They needed to get out of there quick before the pair started whimpering in harmony.
“Listen, Gropply,” started Root, “if we buy the cookies from you, you’ll be able to go buy some other food, yeah? More food, even. We’ll pay for the cookies plus extra for your time. You could get any food.”
“Oh.”
“What do you say?” asked Azriah.
“Um…”
“You take a second to think,” said Beel. He patted Gropply on the arm.
“Ummmm… hm.” Gropply began to pace the floor, his gait bouncing him up and down and dragging Root’s eyes in zigzags around the room. He muttered to himself as he went.
“Excuse me,” said Vit, turning aside from where they’d been peering out through the gaps in the walls to the area behind Gropply’s shack. “What is that bog out there made of? It smells like—”
“Pudding,” said Gropply without breaking his stride.
Root snapped her fingers. An excited spark lit between them before being promptly snuffed out. “You could eat the pudding, then, right?”
“I don’t like pudding.”
Root and Azriah sighed.
Vit returned to the door. They reached for it, then hesitated, looking the panel up and down. They seemed to come to some kind of conclusion, and then their eyes glowed and they began to shrink until they were reduced to spider form. Gropply’s attention snapped to them in an instant, eyes locked and tongue at the ready.
“No, hey.” Azriah stepped between Gropply and spider Vit as Vit squirmed their way between two of the boards. Through the gaps, Root saw them regain their usual form.
“I wasn’t going to eat,” said Gropply. “Ew.”
“Ah. Well, good. You just looked… interested.”
“In retrospect, that was probably my fault,” said Vit from outside. “I just didn’t want to bother with the door. Didn’t think about the whole bug-frog thing.”
Gropply sidled around Azriah and sat down at the table, laying his head atop it. “Buy food,” he muttered quietly to himself. “Buying food. No cookies.”
Root motioned to Azriah. He stepped closer, and she leaned up to his ear and whispered.
“Bad idea to take them and just fucking run for it?”
“He knows where we’re going. Grelga told us to fix her roof, he would have time to catch up. And they’re neighbors—could be friends.”
“Ugh,” Root groaned. She leaned back against the wall. The wall leaned back with her—it even copied her groan.
The door rattled and Vit entered, using their extra arms to hold something in front of them as they pulled the door back into place. They turned to the others, assessing the scene, and ate a spoonful of whatever they held.
“No verdict yet?” they asked, nodding at Gropply, deflated across the top of the table and muttering about budgets.
“No,” said Beel, looking perfectly content in the corner.
“What is that?” asked Azriah.
“Pudding,” said Vit, holding up a mug. It seemed they had scooped up a glob of the bog; chocolate pudding oozed over the lip and down the side. A crust of darker brown—dirt?—covered the top. Something moved in the sludge.
“Are those… gummy worms?” asked Root.
“Yep.” Vit pulled one out. It wriggled between their fingers, gelatinous red and yellow and slick with pudding. It kept writhing as they slurped it down.
“Is that the kind of spirit worm you raised, Root?” asked Beel.
“No. Ours were bigger. And not made of candy.”
“How do you know?” asked Vit.
“I guess I don’t really. Some huge spirit did eat them, though—you can go ask if you want to know for sure, assuming it’s still out there.”
“It’s a spirit,” said Vit nonchalantly. “Every spirit is still out there, somewhere.”
As soon as Root had said it, she realized the error. Why hadn’t it ever occurred to her? For some reason, in her mind, that spirit—the one that ate her family’s worms, their farm, their home, her sister Eshra—it had lumbered off into the jungle and died, or simply popped out of existence, like a personal curse; her problem, not a being all of its own. To her, it had been a force, like a monsoon or a forest fire. A natural disaster. But no, it was a creature—an unkillable spirit. Even if it died, it came right back. It was out there still, somewhere; maybe in the jungle of Zhaen-or-Daijia, maybe back in Atnaterra somewhere near the shores of Yg Balta, or maybe terrorizing some other family in a new corner of the worlds. No matter where it was or what had happened to it over the past several months, one thing was for certain: the spirit that had ruined her family’s life was still out there, alive and well.
And it always will be, thought Root. There’s no way to kill a spirit forever.
Even as she thought it, another thought wormed its way in, a faint whisper of contradiction. A pulsing sensation radiated from the bag across her back.
“Anyway,” said Root, swallowing down the hole that had just formed in her gut. “Uh, Gropply. How do you feel about gummy worms?”
“I feel very poorly about them.”
“What don’t you feel poorly about?”
Gropply sat up. He eyed Root with the look of a sudden realization. “You said I could get… any food?”
“Money is flexible like that, yeah.”
“Money is hard,” said Gropply.
“My mistake.”
“There is a food I want,” said Gropply proudly. “Cocktail bratwurst and beans cocktail.”
“What the fuck is that?”
“Little beans,” said Gropply, holding up his fingers, “and sausages—little sausages…”
“Cocktail sausages,” guessed Azriah.
“Yes. Canned together in a sweet preservative liquid.”
“That sounds fucking vile.” Root regained her composure; learning about cocktail bratwurst and beans cocktail had really set her on edge. “But you’ll be able to buy plenty of… that with money.” She gestured to Azriah. He fished around for the pouch of coins from Syrus and drew it out. He had a look of thinly veiled desperation.
“I don’t want to go to the store. You go buy some for me. We will trade.”
Azriah put both hands on his head and pulled at his head wrap. “Why does everyone in these damn woods need to trade? Don’t any of you people just want money?”
“No,” said Gropply.
“Where do you get the beans and bratwurst?” asked Vit, polishing off the last of their pudding mud.
“There’s a sausage store in Flagollet, north of here. You have to be careful, though, buying beans around here. Make sure you know what sort they are and don’t go taking anyone’s word on what some beans do or don’t do. Lots of bean charlatans around. Real epidemic.”
“Right,” said Azriah. “Vit, can you get the door?”
“Why do I keep having to manage the door?”
“I mean, you’re the one who decided to step out for some worms.”
“Fine.” They waddled the door aside.
“Ugh, more walking?” whined Beel.
“I hate walking,” said Gropply.
“You have no idea how much walking I’ve done lately. Just a few weeks ago we were in the Shundrens.”
Gropply whimpered. “That’s a lot of walking.”
“Too much walking.”
“That’s why I can’t take the money. Then I would have to walk to town to buy food.”
Beel scowled at Gropply. It seemed that their pathetic choir of whining had hit a discordant note.
Let’s recap. The four of them were headed to Flagollet to get cocktail bratwurst and beans cocktail.
They needed the beans to trade to Gropply for wafer cookies.
They needed the wafer cookies to patch Grelga’s roof so she’d repay them in frosting.
They needed frosting to deliver to Rette in Lasting so she could make them some dallywill-shembulgart cream.
They needed dallywill-shembulgart cream (and salacious sage—obtained—and toe of trout and the smock as damp as tears—still at large) to bring back to Pag in Lallslatt so she could make them a quostress potion.
They needed the quostress potion to trade to Betrum for the top-secret delivery he had for Syrus.
And they needed to return the delivery to Syrus in Midden so that he would tell them what he knew about the mote periapts.
A piece of cake, really.
(Which, by the way, was also something that Vit had just stepped in.)