((neatly penned in Lumi-kieli))
It is embarrassing to think of how much of a scene I made in the inn last night. I worry that too much of this will make me lose this job. People do not come to the inn to see their serving-girl with tears on her cheeks. They want a relaxing night and a drink and company and maybe a meal. Mister Butterbur already has encouraged me to improve my abilities as a cook (there was a time when it seemed a woman named Aleid was to teach me, but that was a misunderstanding, but it still turns out that he would like me to learn more). So perhaps he might already be less than pleased with me.
But it was a hard day. It had started normally. I found biscuits and sausage and butter in the market, and Mister Butterbur said that he could make a dish called sausage gravy with biscuits. (People are so eager for fresh fruit and vegetables, but it is scarcely spring and the farmers are only readying the fields for planting. Perhaps in summer and autumn they will be more likely to eat meals at the inn. Taking cooking lessons from Mister Egfor during summer might be well timed.) Then I burned my finger making Mister Dem's coffee, but only a little. Perhaps that was a warning from the water-spirits.
Things have been difficult in the inn a few days now because of a fight between, I think, Miss Syllea (and thus Dem and Egfor), and Nathan, and I have been trying to not be involved, not take sides. I was sitting with Syllea on my night off working, and then Dem and Egfor joined us, and Nathan sat far away and was alone. I made sure to go say hello to him, and goodbye, so perhaps he would think I was not taking sides. But he is so quick to become angry and snap at people, and then when people are wary of him he seems not to remember and to think it is a problem with them. He has lashed out at me a few times, but the next time we talked it was as if nothing had ever happened. Like when we talked about him calling me Fawn. But just because his anger burns off fast, and he forgets it, does not mean others do. People are cautious not knowing when he might bite, and then he seems to be irritated by that as well, feeling it is without cause.
I think his snappishness, and Miss Syllea being very sensitive, are the makings of an avalanche, and like an avalanche, no one snowflake is to blame. The difference between what he means and how he says it is great; a small irritation becomes a huge bellow of anger. And the difference between what Miss Syllea hears and how it affects her is also great; a small whisper of anger would sound to her like a crash. Put them together, and a few falling bits of ice become larger and then larger again and finally turns into the tumbling down of half a mountain. My father was good at helping people like this, whose voices and ears are so out of tune with one another, find concord, but I do not have his gifts. I wish I did. I do not like to see them all angry and hurt at one another, and also, I do not like that I will probably lose a friend in this feud no matter how hard I try not to take sides.
And speaking of avalanches, another icicle broke and set off an avalanche for me, or within me. A pretty woman called Beri was acting shy around me, and the dark-haired woman said Beri had a crush on me, so we got to speaking. She wanted to go for a walk with me after working. And then she asked my age and when I told her I am coming into my twentieth summer, she was no longer interested and indeed did not much even want to speak to me anymore, and left immediately. Maybe I look older than I am, at least to Bree-väki eyes? Or just hers? I do not know why this should make me no longer of interest. It was a minor thing, more like a brief but shocking blast of cold wind than like a deep freeze of winter. But after she had left, I could not help but think more of Mister Baraque also withdrawing his interest, and that had my thoughts and feelings prone to melancholy. Time and again I tried to turn them other ways, but everything led back. For example, a harper playing his music made me remember how much I miss playing the harp; I had been without it for most of a year, then only had it for a fortnight, and now being without it makes me sad again.
Then, just after Mister Godwin came down (reminding me also of feeling foolish and incapable, for how unhelpful I had been when his injury was being treated and I was fighting off becoming
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people have tried to offer me a harp, and I have tried to explain how I feel, and perhaps this is just me being foolish but the feeling feels very strong like an intuition or like the voice of a spirit in my mind. But the harp that sits hidden away in my room was a gift, and the gift turned sour when Mister Baraque cast me aside, and now the voice of the harp sounds sour in my hands. If someone else gives me a harp, does that mean that I will lose them as a friend in the same way? No, that is foolish, though the thought, once I think it, does not let go. What will happen, though, is when the friendship ends because of my own foolishness or for whatever other reasons that Baraque lost interest, that harp's voice will also always sing sour. My new harp must be solely, and completely, mine, bonded to my voice and my heart, and no one else's. If I had the skill, it would be best if I made it with my own hands. But lacking that, if I trade for it with my own work, and choose it myself, then there will be no way that its voice will ever be soured because of a falling out with someone
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my strength was gone. I could not stay in the private dining room crying for very long as I was still working, and Mister Godwin had just come out and I wanted to see if he needed anything, and I did not want Mister Butterbur to think of me as unreliable, so I tried to clean up and go back out and pretend all was well, but it did not work. In fact, Aleid made up a lie about a red basket just to get me into the kitchen to speak to me about it, and encourage me, though I think she does not understand what truly haunts me.
There is one hope that I find myself clinging to. There was that one day when the murderer gave me that gold penny to play a jape on Furley, a gold penny that probably had been earned with evil deeds. Why did she give so great a treasure to me for so little an act? I wonder if it was not passing along a curse. Perhaps my thoughts are too fanciful here, to think it was a deliberate act, but whether it was or no, it is ever since that day that all these troubles have started. That day started the events that led to Baraque casting me aside. There is no doubt about that. Perhaps the other bits of ill fortune and my own failings are being made stronger by whatever cloud of evil intent hangs on this penny. I explained to Mister Godwin the Lumi-väki teaching, that a treasure that came by evil will only bring evil, unless it be cleansed by being selflessly given away to those of greater misfortune for no gain. Every other Bree-väki has scoffed at the idea, but Mister Godwin took it seriously and is investigating a possibility for how I can give the penny away charitably. Perhaps this will help free me from my ill fortune.
Though it will not free me from myself. Just be yourself, only not as much. I must remind myself of this every day.
