Penlyn and Leanna shuffled through the slim passageway, rough cave walls like half-bitten fingernails running across their backs and chests, the squelch of their shoes sounding as loud as gunshots in the dank, still air, and Penlyn tried very hard not to lose her shit while Leanna shuffled stalwartly forward. Thankfully, the pair soon reached a widening section of the tunnel and were eventually able to walk forwards rather than shuffling sideways. 

Penlyn worked very hard to remind herself that the ominous swishing sounds filling up the small space were a product of Leanna’s cloak brushing against the ground and not, in fact, the slide of carnivorous, serpentine bodies slithering across the floor, shrouded in the shadows.

Gradually, the tunnel widened far enough that the two women could walk shoulder to shoulder. Penlyn took a full breath for the first time since entering the passageway.

She glanced over at Leanna, whose face looked as if it was carved from the surrounding stone. In the shadows, her dark, dual-colored eyes became glittering craters, and the spaces below her sharp cheekbones were steep valleys.

Penlyn had a cousin, Bronwin, who was a cartographer. His fascination with maps and landscapes had started early; Penlyn had always taken it as evidence of his exceptional dullness when all Bronwin’s child-sized brain could think to ask for as gifts during the holidays were maps and swaths of paper, ink and quills and all manner of increasingly complex protractors. Penlyn herself had been plenty happy with her candies and boots and, later, gardening supplies and books. 

But now, she was looking at the peaks and valleys of Leanna’s face flickering in the light of the orb, and wondering how it would feel to run the pad of a finger over them, to map out the landscape her skin by touch. She considered whether the woman’s eyes would flutter shut, whether she would shiver…and, well, Penlyn thought that maybe she understood some of what all Bronwin’s fussing was about.

Then she genuinely considered the merits of smacking herself on the forehead, because, what.

To distract herself from the nonsensical—and somewhat embarrassing—direction of her thoughts, as well as the damp chill that was creeping across her skin due to the combination of the plasma goo and clammy cave air, Penlyn shifted into her default setting: asking probing questions.

“So, Leanna,” Penlyn said.

“Yes?”

“You seem like a pretty stand-up kind of gal. A bit intense with the whole dark-and-mysterious-sorcerer vibe, but I get it. Everything’s about marketing these days. The brand means more than the people, you know? I respect the commitment to the hustle.”

Looking utterly baffled, Leanna just blinked at her.

“What I mean to say is, you don’t exactly seem to be the type of person to inspire angry mobs. So what was up with that scene back there in the forest?”

Leanna opened her mouth, then closed it. After a suspiciously long moment of hesitation, she finally said, “Just a bit of a business disagreement.”

“Hmm,” Penlyn said, nodding. “What kind of business?”

“Just some sorcery business.”

“Okay,” Penlyn said, drawing out the second syllable. “So what was the disagreement?”

“They were unsatisfied with the way that I carried out their request.”

“And what exactly was their request?”

“Just some low-level spiritwork, pretty standard.”

“What was low-level about the spiritwork?”

“That it was standard.”

“I swear on every spirit that has ever passed through the veil in this Empress-forsaken cave, and I’m sure there are quite a few of them, that if you don’t just answer the question then at least one of us is not making it out of here. Either me, because I threw myself into a wall out of boredom, or the both of us, because I took you down with me.”  

“They wanted me to exorcise a pumpkin patch.”

Penlyn scanned Leanna’s face, looking for any sign that she was screwing with her, and found none. The sorcerer refused to look her in the eye.

“Why in the five kingdoms would they ask you to exorcise a pumpkin patch? Can pumpkins even be haunted? Or possessed, or whatever? Are exorcisms gourd-specific, or are other branches of the plant kingdom susceptible to the rancor of the spirit world?”

Penlyn thought that it was rather stoic of her to not be absolutely cackling over this information.

Leanna brought one of her heavily bejeweled hands up to pinch the bridge of her nose. “No, a pumpkin patch cannot be possessed. But try telling that to a family of pumpkin farmers facing a bad crop season.”

“So what did you do?”

Shrugging, Leanna said, “What else could I do? I performed the exorcism.”

Penlyn placed a hand over her mouth, eyes sparkling. “Oh, you didn’t.”

“Oh, but I did.”

Now Penlyn really did cackle, imagining this stoic statue of a woman incantating nonsense over a field of unenthusiastic gourds.

“If you did what they asked, why the angry mob?” she asked, gasping a little.

Leanna scratched the back of her neck. “Well, I couldn’t just take the money knowing that I wasn’t actually doing anything to help them. It just wouldn’t be professional. So on a hunch I asked around to see if there were any competing farms nearby.” She paused, glancing up at Penlyn. Penlyn couldn’t be sure, but she almost looked…embarrassed. She wasn’t sure why Leanna would feel that way, but Penlyn nodded at her encouragingly anyways.

“There was this man, Nevin, I think his name was,” Leanna said. “Moved to town just within the past few years and started up his own farm. Apparently, his big crop venture that year was butternut squash. But see, the pumpkin family, the Liggins, were a bit of a dynasty. They had been known across this province for their pumpkin crop for decades. The Liggins had apparently supplied pumpkins through all kinds of times, through droughts and floods, even. 

"So for this crop to suddenly fail…well, it seemed suspicious. To me, at least. So I go to visit Nevin, the butternut squash man, just to feel him out a little bit and see if…”

“To see if he seemed prone to gourd-related sabotage?” Penlyn supplied. 

Leanna nodded, smiling a little. “Just to do my due diligence. And he did not exactly take my questioning well.”

Penlyn grimaced.

“He scuttled back to the Liggins family and somehow convinced them that not only had I faked an exorcism of their pumpkins in order to swindle them out of some cash, but I had also been the one to curse the pumpkins in the first place, and that I had tried to do the same to his squash. Of course, it didn’t matter that I hadn’t actually been in town when the pumpkin crop had started failing. What mattered was that they had someone to raise their pitchforks against. Someone at whose feet they could lay the weight of their misfortune.”  

Penlyn, no longer feeling particularly amused, took a moment to look at Leanna. The sorcerer spoke in the same casually straightforward way that she had earlier, when she said that Penlyn obviously wouldn’t have come with her through the portal on purpose. Leanna spoke as if the villagers’ judgements and hateful assumptions were nothing, just a fact of life, and Penlyn didn’t like it.  

She caught Leanna's eye. “I’m sorry. They had no right to treat you that way.”

Leanna glanced away. “I don’t really blame them. It’s not the first time, and it won’t be the last.”

“Well, I do,” Penlyn said. “I blame them quite a bit.”

The only response she got from the sorcerer was the continued swishing of her cloak against the cave floor.