What Comes of Attending the Commoners Ball

by Elisabeth Aimee Brown

“Gifts are how they trap you.” The Folk are not kind to humans in their debt.

“Dried folkbane. The Folk don’t like the smell, or at least that’s the wisdom of the ancestors, and I am not going to start doubting them without very good reason.”

Or would we be equally out-of-place? Am I really more refined than a hog?

I hate to waste food, but I simply don’t see how I can transport soup home in a kerchief.

All I’ve known—all I’ve been taught to know—is work and stubbornness and a bitterly proud self-reliance. I can’t change my whole worldview just because one man thinks he can solve any problem.

“People were meant to rely on each other. Life is more than bargains.”

won’t argue the point. After all, I’m not even sure that I’ve stopped believing in the Folk. But I have started believing in something greater than the Folk. Perhaps they exist, and perhaps they are treacherous and powerful; but friendship and kindness are powerful, too.