The Kindness Curse

with it. The girl winked at Merrigan as she put the tray down on a little side table she pulled up next to her chair.
"Flora, do you know how to read?" She put her sewing down in her lap. If that chat earlier had done her good, she would have regular chats with the serving girls whenever she could.
"Enough to read the road markers walking to Potzwheel, or Grimblpotz, and get the right papers from the judge's desk when he's already out in his carriage and needs something." She rolled her eyes, with a smile. Merrigan guessed the judge was rather disorganized and sent his servants back multiple times for things he had forgotten—and too lazy to get out and fetch them himself.
"Would you like me to help you read better?"
Flora's eyes got big and sudden tears made them glisten. "Oh, Mistress Mara, that would be so wonderful. But how would you have the time?" She gestured at the bolts of cloth and spools of thread and all the other supplies for the judge's new wardrobe.
"In the evening, after your chores are done, you can come in here and read to me, and when you come to words you don't understand, we'll figure them out together."
Merrigan didn't quite understand the warmth in her chest when the girl accepted with delight and then scurried out to tend to her duties. She rather liked the sensation. While of course her first motive had been to have some company, she found she didn't mind the thought of helping the girl improve herself. After all, once she could read, maybe she could find some place better to work. Wouldn't that serve Judge Brimble a bit more justice, losing another handy, downtrodden servant?
On second thought, maybe she should offer to teach Fauna and the stable boys—Rosco and Oscar, yes, she could remember their names too. If Judge Brimble was helping to cheat other people besides the baker, he deserved to lose more servants. Merrigan rather hoped the next people he hired were servants he deserved.
That evening, the seneschal brought her supper tray and a curious contraption of iron rods, a framework that stood over a fat candle with four wicks. He nodded to her and put the framework and candle down at the far end of the table, next to the piles of papers. He returned perhaps ten minutes later with a small pitcher, a covered pot, and a handful of narrow brushes, which he also put down by the frame and candle and left again, all without speaking to her. Merrigan didn't know if she should consider that odd or not. While the seneschal had been polite to her, the extent of their conversations thus far had been to make sure she had everything she needed, nothing more.
When she finished her dinner, she got up and went to investigate the materials. The pitcher held water, and the covered pot fit perfectly into the frame sitting over the candle. Merrigan lifted the covering, which was a bit of hide held in place with some cord wrapped around the lip of the pot. The smell of the yellowy-brown substance in the pot was vaguely familiar. Merrigan touched it with the tip of her finger. It felt somewhat sticky, but a dry sticky that didn't come off on her finger. She put the pot over the flames of the candle. Common sense said the water was to go in the pot, perhaps when the flame had heated the contents enough to melt?
"Dunderhead," she muttered, smiling, as the pieces came together.
The pot held glue, with brushes to spread it on the binding of the book, to hold the pages in place. She hadn't gotten that far in deciding what to do after sewing the separate piles into bundles, and then somehow affix everything back into the binding. The excited little thrumming in her chest spread to put a smile on her face she could actually feel. She sat down to arrange the first pile of sorted pages into some kind of order. If only whoever wrote this book had taken the time to number the pages, that would have made the task so much easier. Of course, Merrigan admitted, the writer had never anticipated someone would come along and desecrate the book by tearing out all the pages, soaking it in water, and treading on it. Still, the job wouldn't be that bad, since she did have clues, starting with the headings on the pages. The headings were all at the outer edges, on the right edge on one side of the page and the left edge on the other side. It was the only way she could tell which side was the right facing page or the left. Unlike newer bound books, the outer edges were as uneven as the inner edges where they had been torn out of the book.
Now came the tedious part. Reading the last full sentence on the bottom of the left facing page to try to match it with the first sentence at the top of the right facing page. In several places she was lucky, because whoever wrote the book, or perhaps more accurately, the journal, ran out of room at the bottom of the page and split the word, to continue on the next page. Merrigan tried not to pay attention to what the sentences were actually saying, because she didn't want to ruin the fun of reading the book when it was finally assembled. She couldn't stand people who would flip through books, reading a paragraph here, a paragraph there, the start of a chapter and the end of the chapter, and then read the entire last chapter before they started reading from the beginning. What fun was that?
When Flora came to retrieve the dishes, Merrigan asked her if Fauna would care to practice her reading as well. That earned her another wide-eyed gasp of gratitude. Honestly, the girl was pretty, with that flush in her cheeks and her