Muriel Shellweave's Arc

Chapter 2 of 2

Muriel spent the next two days watching the jar and the fire pit. No one came back. She checked her records again, calculated what she could charge, and waited. On the third morning, she heard voices before she saw anyone. Two figures came through the trees. One she recognized from the shape of their shoulders, the way they moved too carefully. The other walked beside them, broader and louder. They stopped when they saw the shell-shaped building she'd built between her hut and the water's edge. She'd spent the last two days shaping it from mud and old wood, covering it with moss and vines until it looked natural. A place to meet strangers without letting them inside her home. The nervous one pointed at it, then at her. The broader one stepped forward and called out, "We need it now. My brother's dying." Muriel didn't move from where she sat on the threshold. Behind them, she could see the carriage pulled up at the edge of the clearing, two alligators waiting in their harnesses. They hadn't come alone, and they hadn't come to bargain. The broader one pulled a pouch from his belt and held it up. Moss covered the outside, bright green and wet. "We brought payment. Real coin, traced and counted. Just give us the secretion and we'll go." Muriel looked at the pouch, then at the shell building, then at the two men. She could scrape some secretion into a jar right now and send them away. Or she could make them wait. Make them understand that what she had wasn't something you demanded. The nervous one shifted his weight. "Please," he said. "I left the note. I didn't know he'd bring others. I didn't know he'd—" The broader one cut him off. "Doesn't matter. We need it. Now." Muriel slid forward until she reached the shell building's door. She opened it and gestured inside. "You wait in there," she said. "I'll decide if you get anything." The broader one's face darkened, but the nervous one grabbed his arm and pulled him toward the door. They stepped inside and she shut it behind them. She could hear them arguing through the walls. She looked at the carriage, at the alligators, at the pouch still clutched in the broader one's hand. She had control now. They had come desperate, but she had made them wait. That was the first rule of her bathhouse. No one took from her without her permission. She turned back toward her hut to gather what she needed, moving at her own pace.