The Root Trader (new Fiction)

Ron Koppelberger

The Root Trader

The ground tugged at Louisiana Paleos’ supply of independence and mounted concern. The crop slapped at the stallions hindquarters leaving tiny welts of conveyed direction. The sleepy waters of Wabble Morass pulled at the hooves of the horse, Trembling, prepared for the worst Louisiana feared the payment of the root trader.
He had untangled the trail that the morass had presented and near the end of the quest he had found the day, hour and age of sublime barter with the root trader. A tiny wood and plank thatched house sat like a beacon for those who ventured the Wabble wash, the intervening morass. Knot holes let the fires of candles within show through the tattered walls of the cottage. He had stifled the urge to scream as the root trader had shuffled through the front door of the ramshackle construction. The house had shifted nervously as the jabbering fortune of boogey barter and dabbling reputation moved in slow halting breaths of swamp fire toward him.
“A bit o Arrow Root fer ye sir?” he questioned. “Arrow root on tha powers of love fer yer flame?” he chuckled as he held a small leather pouch outward in tempting offer.
Louisiana pushed the image of the root trader from his mind as the horse became entrenched in the morass, wallowing and floundering in frothy fear. The trader was covered in leaking pustules his face, or rather his nose, the place where it should have been was a vacuous set of holes bubbling crimson droplets with each of his wheezing exhalations. Louisiana gagged for a moment as he returned his attentions to the leather pouch. Arrow root for his love, the magic of the root trader, but at what cost.
The mark of Louisiana’s hand was swelling and leaking water like fluid. The root trader had scratched him in a giggling frenzy of chattering, gibbering ferocity. Louisiana had grabbed the pouch from the root trader, slapping the horses flanks wildly in fear. He endeavored to free the stallion from the bog as imagined the trail back to safety, back to his love, back to life and away from the root trader. The matter of pest house madness created suspicious fingers of pain and unbound vicious welts in his hand as the root traders scratch became a myriad of leaking cuts and spider web wounds. The Wabble root trader had tried to stop the stallion and Louisiana from leaving with a cattail frond and a screeching yell. The hose nothing but truth and a ferocious fear had trampled the root trader into the damp earth.
Louisiana thought about the crunch of his frail bones and the gasping curse he had spoken. “Heap o sleep and scratchy glue, let the death of Arrow Root be on you!”
The horse became dense shrub; the scratches became sprouting leaves and roots as Louisiana evolved, revolved and resolved the traders curse. An ancient oak grew from the seedlings of the curse and the spot became the center of the morass as a marker for the trader and the curse.