In a Weary World

Chapter XII: Rigmor Moves In

Author's Note: I made the probably stupid decision to take part in NaNoWriMo this year, so (hopefully) I'll be working on a new story all through November. I won't stop writing this story, but I won't be able to give it my full attention until December. If you're doing NaNoWriMo too, feel free to add me as a writing buddy! My username's the same as it is here.

She knew that what Marianne and her mother conjectured one moment, they believed the next: that with them, to wish was to hope, and to hope was to expect. -- Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility

Rigmor had had an unpleasant time of it since capturing Slaugh. The goblin would not be quiet. First she locked him in the closet. He screamed at the top of his lungs until her next-door neighbour banged on the wall and shouted, "What are you doing in there? Rehearsing opera?"

Then she tied a handkerchief around his mouth and put him in her wardrobe. Like clockwork, he threw himself against the doors every twenty seconds. She lay awake for hours listening to that racket, and when she finally fell asleep, her dreams were full of rhythmic thunk-thud-crashes.

After that she put him in a box, then put the box in another box, and put that box in another box, and put the laundry basket over it just for good measure. This was less of a disaster than the previous attempts, but it was hardly an unmitigated success. Slaugh's shrieks were muffled by the boxes and the clothes in the laundry basket, and the box was too small for him to throw himself against it. So far so good, but he found that by leaning all his weight against one side of the box he could move the entire thing in that direction.

Rigmor woke up the next morning to find boxes, basket and goblin stuck in the fire escape doorway. How Slaugh had managed to open the door while in a box was a riddle for the ages.

And so, when Hjalmar finally appeared on her doorstep, Rigmor's first thought was, Thank God! Her second was, Couldn't he have come sooner?

She began speaking the minute Hjalmar was in the door, without bothering to close the door or notice that he wasn't alone.

"I don't care how we manage it, but I want that thing out of my house! It's driving me mad, it's disturbing the neighbours, it's putting my life in danger, and it's -- Who's this?"

She had finally noticed the presence of a woman she had never seen before, wearing the most old-fashioned clothes and most extraordinary hat she had ever seen -- and that was including the monstrosities depicted on some of her ancestors' portraits. Rigmor looked again and realised that the woman was in fact a girl only a year or so older than she herself was, and her skin was so pale she looked ill.

"This is Solvej." Hjalmar, for some reason, looked greatly embarrassed by the girl's presence. "She's my... friend."

As many people do when faced with a situation about which they know nothing, Rigmor put two and two together. As usually happens under such circumstances, she came up with five instead of four.

"No, I'm not," Solvej said unexpectedly, and for no apparent reason.

"I beg your pardon?" Rigmor asked, confused. In the background, Hjalmar made a noise somewhere between a "What?" and an "Oh, no".

"I'm not his fiancée, wife, lover, or whatever else you might think I am," Solvej clarified. Her accent was strange, cutting short some letters and drawing out others apparently at random. "I'm just his friend. Well, friend, travelling companion, next-door neighbour, and matchmaker, if you want to be specific, but friend will do for now."

Rigmor hadn't felt so bewildered by someone since her cousin, the notorious gossip Duke Jørgen, had cornered her at a ball and spent an hour regaling her with disjointed rumours of various family members. She did as she had done then, and focused on the important part of that explanation, ignoring the rest of it.