© 2012 Marvin E. Fuller
"It shrank some more. I'm sure of it!"
Ned sighed at Skady's outburst. Ever since the mink had been arrested and imprisoned a week or so ago in Pyrinth's gaol for crimes committed as a town guard, Skady continued to insist his privates were shrinking out of sight, a delusion Ned had heard called koro. The opossum resisted the temptation to smack his former fellow town guard about the ears and shout that it was all in Skady's head. No matter how much he annoyed Ned with his whining, Skady deserved it.
Ned's father, Ol' Bill, had caught Skady raping a raccoon nun kept prisoner in the gaol for crimes she hadn't committed. Enraged, Ol' Bill would have killed the mink over this breach of trust by a town guard had not a visiting wizardess known as Baksrit Winterfur not stopped him. Her own punishment for Skady had been many times more delicious to Ol' Bill and much more unsettling to Ned than his father's anger.
Using mind magic spells, she planted the seeds for the koro in Skady's mind. According to Winterfur, although the spells soon would fade, Skady would continue their legacy, becoming so convinced of his koro he effectively did it to himself. Winterfur had taken pains to point out to Ol' Bill that Skady could work off the koro in the future if he changed how he thought about it, but Ned wouldn't shed any tears if Skady never succeeded. Like his father, he had trouble forgiving the mink for his crimes.
"That bloody witch cursed me, I just know it!" the mink complained from his cell, adding a few choice epithets to his words. Ned's paw twitched, but the opossum forced himself to stay still, keeping his chair leaning back on two legs against the wall and his hat over his eyes as if he had no care in the world. Inside, he wanted to pound Skady's face in for speaking poorly of Winterfur.
Ned had liked the wizardess. Unlike the popular stereotype of stuck-up mages in love with appearing mystical and mysterious, she had been open to anyone who asked about wizardry, once explaining to Ned the layman's version on how otherwise ordinary symbols could be perverted into terrible spells. She had also taken an active role in saving Father Louie's life from an execution feebly disguised as a means to "prove" he wasn't a black witch. When a small army of undead shambled into town in the dead of night, Winterfur didn't hesitate to meet their advance, destroying nearly all of them in the process. The next day, she accompanied a group lead by Ned to seek out where the black witches responsible for the undead had held their rite. Ned had seen Winterfur shaken to the core by the sight of the bodies of several children murdered to fuel the rite, nearly to the point of an emotional breakdown. She finally lost control during the mass funeral that afternoon, when she could at last give in to her emotional and physical exhaustion.
As Ol' Bill had later remarked to Ned and his brother, for all her knowledge and skill, Winterfur was still a young ermine jill, a little naive to the nastiness in the world and unused to the cruelty people could inflict on their fellows. But she had gained strength from the experience. She left Pyrinth not long after the funeral, determined to stop the black witches from whatever they were plotting.
A creak from the gaol's door opening interrupted Skady's griping, much to Ned's relief. The opossum rocked his chair down on all four legs and doffed his hat so he could see who had entered. A female opossum two years his elder shoved the door closed with another creak and a thud, then turned towards Ned. Because most of the gaol's floor was raised a few feet above the small entry area at ground level, presumably to make it difficult for visitors to see into the cells, this meant the opossum had to look up through the bannister surrounding the entry so she could glare at Ned.
"Val," Ned greeted her, rising from his chair to meander over to the bannister. "What brings you here? Oughtn't you be at services?"
"Oh, shut up," growled Valerie. "Services were over half an hour ago. Is that son of a skatch here?"
"Which son of a skatch?" he knew exactly who Valerie referred to, but wanted to hear it from her own mouth.
"That– that Skady!" snarled Valerie. Ned ignored her anger. Valerie's snippy attitude and irritable nature had only gotten worse since she had married four years ago, and she seemed to enjoy seeking him out just to vent her spleen about whatever thing riled her that time. The death of her husband from an illness the previous winter had only made her crankier and more inclined to pester him about her problems. The tired, pinched expression that seemed to make her pointy snout seem even narrower had whittled away at whatever opossumy prettiness she might have had years ago. Some days, Ned wondered what had possessed him to develop a crush on her during his early adolescence.
"Where else would he be?" shrugged Ned. He didn't feel very inclined to be helpful. "What about him?"
"I want to talk to him!" declared Valerie. "Can I come up?"
"Depends," Ned frowned at her. He thought Valerie seemed more agitated than usual. "I do need a reason why I should let you up here."
"It's to deliver a message," Valerie shifted uneasily.
"Uh hunh," Ned wasn't convinced. "I can take it to him, you know."
"No, I'm supposed to deliver it," Valerie became antsy for a moment, then took a deep breath and looked Ned in the eye. "I need to see the son of a skatch, Ned. Please."
That surprised the male opossum. She had not looked him the eye like that since that day just before her wedding four years ago when she told him he was too young for her to marry. Something had to be going on, but he didn't know what. He drummed the fingers of one paw against the railing of the bannister, his claws clicking on the wood, before coming to a decision.
"Visitor for you, Skady!" Ned called out, motioning for the other opossum to mount the stairs to the upper level.
"Tell Val I ain't interested!" the mink spat, no doubt having already recognized Valerie's voice. It could be hard to sneak things past Skady.
"Shut up, you little lecher!" Valerie shook her clenched paw at Skady. He made a lewd gesture in return. Ned heaved another sigh and rolled his eyes.
"Mind your manners!" he firmly broke in. "Or, message or no, I'll pitch you out on your tail, Val. And Skady, you behave or I'll rip off your ears and feed them to you."
Skady immediately sat on his paws while Valerie's mouth shut with an audible click, cutting off her retort. Like his father and brother, Ned could be fairly easy-going almost to a fault, but anyone who pushed him too far quickly discovered he had also inherited his late mother's much fierier temper. They knew he would then fiercely carry out his threats with brutal efficiency.
"What's your message, Val?" Ned scratched the side of his muzzle, glad the two had calmed down so quickly. He could feel his temper simmering below the surface, and it took much of his willpower to keep it there. He'd had enough excitement the past fortnight to last for a good long while, thanks to the undead invading and Skady's shenanigans coming to light. Worse, he was running on not enough sleep thanks to a lack of enough town guards to man the gaol at all hours while Skady was there. Add Skady's complaining to the list, and Valerie's snappishness threatened to push him over the edge.
"What? Oh!" Valerie glared at Skady leaning against the bars of his cell. The mink leered disdainfully at her as she remembered what she had come to say. "The townsfolk ain't happy with you, Skady."
"There's a surprise," snorted the mink.
"Shut up, Skady," Ned said.
"A lot of us want to see you hang, until you shrivel up and die. The rest of us think you should be thrown in a prison for the rest of your life, shriveling up with old age," Valerie took a couple of steps toward Skady, her paws balled up as if she wanted to punch him in the nose. Perhaps mindful of the recent injuries Ol' Bill had literally pounded into his skull, Skady took a step back, the leer on his brown muzzle replaced with a scowl. He had caught the emphasis in her words, a blatant reference to his koro. Ned had a bad feeling about this.
"But Father Louie tells us we should do unto others as we would have others do unto us," continued Valerie. "So we think you should get a choice. You can sing from the gallows or rot away in some fetid hole."
"That's doing unto others?" Skady sneered. "I think someone needs to go back to church. You seem to be a bit fuzzy on the concept."
"We all agree that's the choice we'd want in your place," Valerie stood nearly nose to nose to Skady, her whiskers quivering with anger. The mink considered her for a moment.
"Yeah, I see what you mean," Skady said, serious this time. "Tell me, did you bring the rope?"
"What?" both Ned and Valerie started at that. The female opossum's jaw went slack from shock. Ned gave her a suspicious look.
"Wha-? How? How did you know?" Valerie tried to pull her thoughts back into order.
"Val? Is this true?" Ned grimly placed a paw on her shoulder. She didn't seem to notice.
"Hey, Ned, if you search her, can I watch?" Skady snickered at the looks on the two opossums' faces.
"Shut up, Skady," Ned pulled the unresisting Valerie back from the bars.
"Oh, please," the mink gave Ned a dismissive gesture as he headed for one of the bunks in the cell. "I may have been dumb enough to get caught by your father, but I've been a guard a lot longer than you have. See, I get the choice between a public execution and some other lousy fate. Then someone, Val here for instance, slips me a rope in hopes I'll be so desperate to 'escape' justice I do myself in. Maybe some bets are placed on whether I follow through or not. You get lured out for a while only to find me dangling in my cell when you get back. Crrikk," Skady mimed his neck getting broken by a hangman's noose.
"Then there'll be general hand-wringing and 'oh, me, oh, my, he was such a coward, tsk tsk'," Skady flopped down upon the bunk with a snort. "Everyone will be happy justice was served so neat and tidy without anyone going to the effort of getting their own paws dirty. Feh. Mama may have whipped my hide good for many things, but doing myself in because my bits are getting smaller ain't one of them."
"Val, is this true?" Ned turned her so he could look into her silver-furred face.
"Um, yeah," Valerie mumbled, deflated by Skady having outguessed her.
"Is the rope under your skirts?" called out Skady from the bunk. "You should have brought a lady's bag or something. It would be easier to sneak the rope in."
Valerie worked her mouth, then sagged in defeat. She jiggled at her dress, sending something thumping to the floor, then stepped back out of Ned's paws. A coil of rope lay on the floor where she had stood. Ned scooped the rope up and examined it carefully. He could feel his temper threaten to bubble up, but one look at a dejected Valerie caused it to lose steam. Perhaps he still had a soft spot for her.
"Hey, that's some good rope you're wasting on my neck," jeered Skady before Ned could say anything. "Where the hell do you think I'm going to hang it from, anyway? I took out anything that could be used years ago, and there was precious little of that in the first place."
The mink waved a paw at the ceiling, drawing Valerie's attention upwards. Ned didn't need Skady to tell him what she now noticed. The ceiling had been constructed under the rafters, preventing anyone from tossing a rope over one. No windows opened into the cells nor any cross bars ran along the cell bars except for the one above the door, where a wooden panel blocked any gaps. Splotches of mortar discolored the ceiling where someone had patched it up. Back when the opossum had joined the town guards, Ned had thought Skady's precautions had been a smart move to prevent people from easily lynching a prisoner.
"Let me tell you it was a pain getting those hooks out of the ceiling," Skady informed them. "I'm pretty sure someone left them there for the same reason you brought in the rope. We couldn't have that, you know."
"But why?" Valerie asked.
"Ringers' girls," Ned guessed, glowering at the mink. "He didn't want one of his conquests hanging herself before he got to her, did he?"
Pyrinth's late magistrate, the red panda Ringers, had a reputation for trying to try to bed any female who caught his eye. Since his death at the paws of the black witches, the rumors that he often abused his position by framing people so he could pressure some reluctant female to sleep with him turned out to have a grain of truth to them. Under Ol' Bill's questioning, Skady had revealed Ringers bought his help by either giving him the magistrate's leftovers who were to simply disappear or setting things up so Skady could have his own girls to molest.
"You ain't stupid, I'll give you that, Ned. She was before your time, but one offed herself right here in this very cell," Skady gave a disgusted sound. "Didn't help her any. Ringers may have preferred them live, but Geordie didn't mind them dead."
"You're a monster!" Valerie screeched, tears in her eyes. She whirled about and fled the gaol.
"A pity, too," Skady sadly remarked. "That vixen was a real looker, too."
"Val's right. You're a monster," Ned checked the door, then settled back into his chair. A few minutes of silence passed before Skady spoke up again.
"You know what Val's problem is?" Skady said. "She's still mad at Ringers."
"He got her too, hunh?" Ned yawned. He ignored Skady's wince. A good opossum yawn tended to have that effect on other people.
"Yeah," the mink confirmed. "We brought her husband in for something or other. I forget what, but it was for a good reason. You might remember. I think you had joined by then."
"Poaching," to his surprise, Ned did remember. "He had to pay a fine."
"Sounds about right. You've got a better memory than me," Skady said without a trace of sarcasm. "As I recall, Ringers offered her a choice. She could spend a week in his bed and only have to pay a token fine, or her husband would be sentenced to some pretty harsh punishment and she wouldn't see him for years."
"Let me guess," sighed Ned. "She chose the week in his bed."
"You got it," said Skady. "Can you blame her for being angry?"
"No, I can't," grimaced Ned. "Adultery or scraping out a living as the wife of a criminal. What a choice." Ned didn't expect Skady to burst out laughing.
"Nah, Val hated her husband, as I'm sure you already knew," the mink chuckled. "I heard her talking to you enough about him. Were you anyone else, I'd bet she'd have your babies by now."
Ned thought of many of Valerie's gripes. She had rarely spoken well of her dead husband, but figured that was because their marriage had been arranged with hardly any courtship beforehand. Yet, if he thought about it, she had only started badmouthing her husband after he had been jailed and fined. Considering Skady's words, Ned realized it brought up an interesting question. Why did she seek him out so much instead of bellyaching to any of her female friends? He didn't like where that line of thought took him and immediately dismissed it.
"So, why?" Ned asked.
"She may have hated him, but everyone expected her to stand by him anyway as his wife," Skady chuckled. "She's just mad Ringers forced her to save his hide."
