I take quick glances at the merchants’ wares just in case someone has an item I need. When nothing catches my eye, I continue on, turning right down a narrow alley. The air is filled with foul scents—human waste the most prevalent—so I make my way to the next street quickly.
I stop at Elihu’s stand, and he describes to me the tool he needs. I promise to keep an eye out before heading deeper into the market area. More people mill around, arguing over prices and offering to barter. Few people possess coins, and a good barter is happily accepted as payment. A young woman offers baskets she’s woven from dry vines to a couple with burlap sacks of grain, but she’s not having much luck with her transaction.
“I don’t need any more baskets,” the merchant tells her. “I want to help you out, but you don’t have anything I want!”
“Please!” the young woman says, her tone becoming more desperate. “I have a little brother. He got over the virus, but he’s still weak. He needs more food.”
“What would you trade for a bag of grain?” I ask the merchant.
“Something I actually need,” she says as she places her hands on her hips.
I offer her the candles from my pack along with a few other items, but she’s not interested. I glance back at the young woman with the baskets and see tears forming in her eyes. Though its value is more than the price of grain, I pull out a jar of dried herbs and hand it to the merchant.
She takes it tentatively from my hand, squinting at the label on the jar.
“What is this?” she asks. She sniffs at the bottle’s cap.
“Sage,” I tell her. “Properly dried and sealed.”
“I can find sage in the woods,” the woman says as she squints at the label once more and then hands the jar back to me.
Unless the merchant has the climbing equipment to make it over the eastern mountain crest, there is no way in hell she is going to come across sage growing wild, and she knows it. I raise an eyebrow at her, wondering if she’s just being a bitch or if she really is just this hard a sell. She squints at me again, and I grin.
“How about these?” I ask as I pull from my pack the reading glasses I found during my hunt.
She looks from the glasses in my hand to my face as her eyes widen. Tentatively, she takes the glasses from my hand and tries them on. She blinks a few times as her expression softens.
“For a bag of grain?” she says quietly.
“Three bags,” I reply with a stern look.
She takes a deep breath, nods, and then collects three bags of grain.
“That should keep you going for a while,” I say with a smile to the young woman. “I hope your brother feels better.”
She stands unmoving with her mouth hanging open.
“Do you need help carrying them?” I ask. When she doesn’t respond, I wave my hand in front of her face and chuckle. “Anyone in there?”
“I don’t understand,” she finally says.
“You said your brother was sick. He needs food, right? This should make a lot of bread or porridge or whatever you like. Should keep you going until he gets healthy again.”
“But…why? What…what do you want from me?”
“Well…” I pause, chuckling again. “I was kinda hoping for a loaf of bread if you end up with extra. I’m a terrible cook. But if you wove those baskets, you can probably weave mats too, right?”
“Yes, I can.”
“I could really use a long one that rolls up. You know, to sleep on. Could you make me one of those?”
“That’s all?” Her eyes show her skepticism.
“That’s all,” I say. “I end up sleeping on the ground quite a bit, and I need something that rolls up fairly small to carry with me.”
“I can make that. It will take a couple of days though.”
“Sweet!” I smile. “I’ll see you then.”