They Deal in Pieces

Ch. 1

I turned my face upwards towards the sun, basking in its glow as I lounged on a mossy log. The sun had just risen to midday and small crowds of smiling villagers were milling about the dusty streets, enjoying lunch and gossip between the quaint storefronts. The pleasure of avoiding my chores and slacking off all day was beginning to wear off as the streets became more and more crowded. The people around me were too perfect for my tastes. Too perfect and too irritatingly happy. Men and women in light cotton clothing dyed bright colors and decorated with ridiculous amounts of frills all attempting to impress one another while dirt-covered children weave between their legs, enjoying their break from class. The corners of my mouth began to turn down as the tittering and gossiping grew louder, carrying through the clear air. How can they be so joyous when they know that they're all frauds?
Everyone knows that you don't sell your soul to a demon. It doesn't matter what he's willing to offer you, you just don't do it. But, what most people don't know is that demons deal in halves and portions. Pieces, I guess you could say. Beauty goes for a quarter of a soul, luck for an eighth, power for a half, and so on. The bigger the prize, the bigger the portion, right? Sort of... Each "gift" from a demon comes with a curse as well. The larger the "gift", the sooner, and more spectacularly, it goes wrong. That's why you never sell your whole soul, you would be annihilated.
I live in a small village in the middle of nowhere named Brightwyn, with a population of around 100. It's a nice place, full of hard workers and good people. Our town consists of one big road with a town hall at one end and farms, including my family's, at the other. The rest of the street is surrounded by multistoried buildings that look like they've been cobbled together over the years to hold more people, with each story being newer than the last. Each family typically lives in an apartment above their business, except for the farmers who live in cottages near their land. All in all, it's a good little life that we have.
However, it is a well-known fact that our town has a longstanding "entanglement" with the lord of the demons himself. Stupid, right? One would think, but everyone who has made a deal with him states that he's a pretty nice guy. And when I say everyone, I mean nearly the entire population of Brightwyn.
My town was founded 400 years ago, in a time where the humans warred with the demon race. They were angry that demons extracted a deadly price from their deals beyond the soul they had sold. At that time, no one had realized they could deal in parts and mankind refused to accept the consequences of their actions, choosing violence instead. Humans had just won the war and sent the demons back into the infernal plane, and a man named Andrew Bright had chosen to take his family far away from the city of Ironcoast. Ironcoast, capital of the Ocril Kingdom, was where the devastation of the war was felt most heavily, and Andrew wanted a chance at a new life. They say that Andrew had never agreed with the banishment of the demon race from our plane and believed that our races could live in peace if only humans accepted the terms of any deals they made. A few days after he had created his homestead, now our town hall, he was approached by a young child. He soon realized that the child was the son of the dead demon king after the child had (poorly) attempted to convince him to sell his soul. Andrew took pity on the small demon and made a deal to give him half his soul in exchange for luck in starting a small village with his family. That fateful choice 400 years ago began a tradition of demonic deals in Brightwyn.
Nowadays, You can usually tell who has bartered for what when you see beautiful young women flouncing down the dusty road, heroic-looking young men at their elbows, or large men with fat purses riding by in their useless golden carriages. Don't they know that everything in town is within walking distance? Granted, there are others whose gifts are less apparent, like the school kids who tell the best jokes, the matriarchs with the best gardens, or the artisans that dominate their trades.
There is only one person in our village that hasn't made a deal with the demon, and I am proud to say that I plan to uphold my record. It's not that I'm very religious, or self-confident, or moral, I just don't see the point. Why bother making a deal if it will just go wrong in a few years. And even if it is small enough to last your whole life, is it influential enough to even make a difference? I don't think so. I have been this way since I can remember; cynical, empty, snide, and generally the most gloomy person in the village. My family tells me that, when I was young, I was the happiest baby they had ever seen. I never cried, never fought, and was never angry. They tell me that I changed on the day of my fifth birthday. I had wandered out of the woods after playing with my friends and when I got home I was... different? But, that's neither here nor there.
My mother's shrill call interrupted my thoughts, "Blythe! You better get yourself home before your father shows up!"
I sighed, standing slowly from the log I had been lounging on. My musings must have lasted far longer than I anticipated, as per usual.
My father always hated when I was absent from dinner when he got home from the fields. His "gift" was a green thumb of epic proportions. As the best farmer in the village, he worked quite well with my mother who was, incidentally, the best cook. How beautifully ironic, right?
Plastering on a smile, I walked into our warm cottage to give my wonderful mother a hug. She was a few inches shorter with me with a portly figure and distinctive curly hair, which I happen to have inherited, though hers was brown. My father gave me his jet black hair and green eyes to compliment it. Her face lit up as soon as I came into view, her honey brown eyes sparkling, and the grin remained as she wrapped herself in my arms. Oddly, this is the same reaction most people have in my presence. They smile, laugh, and, annoyingly, always yearn for physical contact. Maybe my acrid personality is a breath of fresh air in our overly jolly town. Whatever makes them even happier, I guess.
I looked around the kitchen, observing the huge variety of pots and pans swinging from various hooks and piled haphazardly onto dark wooden shelving. The kitchen was a fairly large room dominated by a old, roughhewn wooden table and handmade chairs. A large woodburning oven stood in the corner next to a large window overlooking the vegetable garden at the side of the house. Under the window was a large counter where my mother did most of her preparation for her cooking, and underneath my father had installed a large amount of cabinet space for storing the spices my mother had collected over the years. I soon noticed that wonderful smells were emanating from the stove.
"I made your favorite, Blythe. Roasted marinated quail with a lovely light salad and fresh cream and fruit for dessert," said my mother with a grin, noticing my attention on the stove.
"Mom, If you keep feeding me like this, I'm going to be as big as this house."
"But you're my only child and I love spoiling you!"
"Mom..." My voice turned to a whine as began to set the table. She giggled and turned to the oven to make sure her quail wouldn't burn.
We bought all our meats fresh from the town butcher who's son has the gift of hunting. His sister, Anya, was my best friend in the whole world. Hers was the gift of music. She was absolutely enchanting to all the boys in town with her straight straw-colored hair, dazzling blue eyes, olive skin that made pale old me look sickly in comparison, and she had a gorgeous voice to top it off. While some choose to specialize in a certain instrument, style, or vocal range, she chose to give half her soul to be able to produce beautiful music of any kind. We often laid on the moss in the forest for hours, her weaving the most beautiful melodies and me attempting to guess their inspiration.
I worried about her, though. Anya's passion for music came with a price and I didn't want to see her burn because of it. She is the only one who treated me like a friend and not just an oddity in the village. We met at age 16 during the final year of our formal education just before we moved to apprentice with a worker in the village. Placed in the same writing class, hitting it off immediately, and sleeping over at each other's houses constantly within weeks of knowing each other. I watched her mature into her love of music and she made me feel like a normal person. We only parted ways when she decided to apprentice with the towns music teacher and me with the archivist, where I could be alone with my thoughts.
Someone tapped on my head.
"Hello? Is my daughter in there," my father tapped me again, his work-worn hands warm against my scalp.
"Oh! You're home," I said as I stood up from where I had sat at the table to give him the expected hug. He was a large man, a whole head and a half taller than me, with broad shoulders and suntanned skin from working the fields all day. He engulfed me in his solid arms for a bone-crushing hug.
"You drifted off again it seems," he said into my bushy mane, "Where in your mind did you visit this time?"
"Nowhere I haven't been before Papa," I laughed, pulling away from him. "How was work today?"
"Fairly easy. The mule is all healed up and all I had to do was weed. Now," he stated with a clap of his hands, "What's for dinner?"
He ruffled my hair as I reclaimed my seat at the table, letting me drift off into my own little world once again. A rare smile graced my lips as I watched my parents quietly flirt and talk about their day. They were good people, full of love, kindness, and intelligence. Our family always seemed to have whatever we needed at our fingertips and had luck and happiness to spare. The people of our village often stopped by to have dinner or ask for advice when they face a problem. My parents were often playfully accused of each selling another bit of their souls for luck because the problems that were presented to us always seemed to dissolve no matter who they belonged to. I had personally harbored those suspicions myself for quite a while, but those thoughts could wait for another day. I had a family to enjoy.