The Kindness Curse

her half across his shoulders and strode down the road a few steps. She landed with a thud and a squeak on the back end of the wagon. "What are you doing way out here by yourself?"
"Here?" She looked down the road ahead of her. "Where am I?"
"You're on the main trade road between Schoebern and Wyndalbern."
"Where?" She shook her head when the big man frowned at her like she was an idiot. "What kingdom is this?"
"Bern-Lyceum."
"That's—that's on the other side of the world!"
"What do you mean, other side?"
"Bern-Lyceum is on the western continent. Armorica is the center of the world."
"If you say so." He spat, barely turning his head. Laughter bubbled up behind her, and she turned enough to see four rough, bearded male faces, all of them tanned and dirty, with dirty hair and sloppy caps. Peasants, of the lowest sort.
"I know so."
"Yeah, and if you're so smart, why didn't you know what road you almost fell off of into the ditch?"
"I need to get to the nearest port. Dratted majjians! How dare they interfere? How dare they send me flying across the world? The inconvenience. The lack of respect!" Merrigan muffled an unqueenly shriek. She wished he stood closer to her, despite the peasant aroma. She wanted to kick this sneering, filthy man. All the trees she had struggled past. Especially Clara.
She would like to kick Leffisand, for going to war with a magic apple tree and getting himself killed, so she had to deal with all these inconveniences and indignities.
"The nearest port, eh? That's a long walk, Granny. Heading in the wrong direction, too."
"Oh, what do you know?"
"More than you." He grinned, revealing several dark teeth.
"You will take me to the port."
"I will, eh? And why should I?"
"Because I am the queen of Carlion, and I must return to my kingdom immediately."
"Should take you to a healer. Addlepated crone."
"I am not talking nonsense." She pulled herself upright and gave him her most queenly glare of disapproval. "You will take me to the nearest port. Immediately."
The idiot laughed, bending down with the effort, and putting his face in her reach. She slapped him. His laughter stopped short and he rubbed his cheek, visually measuring her head to foot.
"Should slap some sense into you, but one as ancient as you would probably break in half, turn to dust." He took another step back. "Probably some faerie trick. Push us hard until we do something rude, then slap a curse on me and mine." He turned, glaring at the entire forest. "Won't fall for it, that I won't! The word's getting around. You faerie folk are too big for your britches. Day's coming, you get judged like you been judging all of us."
Merrigan shivered, remembering angry old women, shouting at her mother on the steps of the palace of Avylyn. She remembered the things Nanny Tulip had said in the quiet of dusk, and the things she learned from the dark, old books her nanny put under her pillow, to fill her dreams and teach her while she slept. She agreed entirely. The faerie folk and other magical-gifted folk—the majjians—were unforgivably cruel, judgmental, and arrogant.
The man caught Merrigan around her waist and set her back down on the rough road with a thump. "I won't be falling for no tricks and judgment from faerie folk. Ain't going to give you the last of my food and water, and ain't going to curse you, even if you do sound half-mad. Just going to leave you where I found you."
"But I am the queen of Carlion. I order you to help me!"
"Keep telling that tale." He stomped to the front of his wagon. "You'll get a ride to the madhouse." He climbed up onto the driver's bench and clucked to his massive, muddy horses.
The old man with him stood up enough for Merrigan to see his hunched back and bald head. He muttered something, and the young men with him guffawed.
"Great-grand says you aren't even pretty enough for him!" one of them called, as the wagon started forward.
"How dare you!" Merrigan ran after the wagon a dozen steps, though she wasn't quite sure what she wanted to do.
"Just a wrinkled old crone. Not enough of you for tinder," he called. More guffaws rang out, bouncing off the trees and mud.
Merrigan stopped, her knees threatening to fold. She trembled so, she feared if she sat down she would never get up again.
"I'm not," she whispered, as the wagon bumped down the road and faded into the distance. "I'm tall and raven-haired, with gray eyes and roses in my cheeks and I can dance all night and all day until the musicians beg for mercy." She shuddered, fearing those brute peasants had been speaking the truth. The clothes she wore were certainly fit for a crone.
After thinking until her head hurt, Merrigan turned and made her way up the road in the opposite direction. She certainly didn't need to meet those brutes in the next town and have them laughing at her and pointing fingers. Half an hour later, a family of farmers in a much cleaner wagon, pulled by two smaller horses with flowers woven into their manes, approached from behind her. A man with a cheerful voice called out greeting to her and offered her a ride before she could even think to ask. The farmer and his sturdy wife and three daughters, all of them browned by the sun and almost unbearably cheerful, addressed her as Granny, with some respect. That confirmed, but in a nicer way, what the brutes had said. The girls adjusted the sacks of cotton and fleece filling the wagon, which they were taking to town to sell, to make a soft seat for her. They offered her a cool drink of water from a clay jug and included her in their unbearably cheerful chatter about all the things they wanted to do when they were in town.
Merrigan was still smarting badly from the mockery of