XVI. You decide to bring up the pig hunt idea with Hafdold again. He’s a bit more receptive this time. It’s been a hot and dry summer, so the cliffs are not very muddy and the likelihood of cave-dwelling bandits is low. He’s game. You both grab your bows, quivers, and various other supplies and head to the valley. On the way, you ask Hafdold about your apparent “war daughters-in-law”—like, where did they come from? How did he meet them? Why haven’t they learned a single word of your language in the months they’ve lived in the hovel? Hafdold is annoyed at your questions. “You just want to know why your grandson has dark skin,” he says. You realize that he’s not completely wrong, but probably doesn’t want to talk. Best not to talk. You’re almost at the first ridge when the Shire Reeve shows up, just in time. He announces to you that the valley has been claimed by Undercount Xxallamatrymkeznakim, Count Xxrtlempywll’s favorite nephew. You ask him to repeat what the hell he just said, noting that the Shire Reeve has yet another new tunic, this one far more elaborate and bearing gold and precious stones the likes of which you have never seen. He repeats, slowly, what he just said, saying curtly and with obvious annoyance afterward, “You can’t hunt the idiot pigs of the valley. They belong to a lord and that is the end of it. Should you be caught poaching, you will face far more severe punishment than you would have seen under Lord Grimdram, Heaven curse his name!” The Shire Reeve then gallops off whither he came, which is apparently the forest, but it’s impossible to ride in there. Baffled, you and Hafdold begin the walk back, but as you do, you see one of those stupid pigs having seemingly gotten out of the valley. You look at each other, draw arrows, and shoot the thing dead. Tonight will be an absolute feast, and legal, too.

XVII. The day of the festival in Dribblewick has come! You saddle your asses and the horses that survived the epidemic of Hoof Crumble that swept the land in the winter with goods to trade and provisions for the journey and stay. You have to pack a great deal, because, lo and behold: all of your daughters reappeared the day of a festival. You pretend to be shocked, though you are very happy to see that they haven’t obviously fallen into prostitution. The journey will not be an easy one. The proper roads haven’t been maintained since the whatever-their-name-is New Rulers conquered the realm. You set out and immediately one of your wagon axles breaks. You let a long, defeated sigh, and kneel down to take a look. This isn’t the axle you installed. This is a bunch of wheat stalks pressed into the shape of an axle. You turn toward Hafdold in fury, “What have you done with the axle, son?” you demand. Hafdold is genuinely shocked and perplexed, but his “war wives” are laughing and whispering in whatever thieves cant of a tongue they speak. “Demand of them the truth!” you yell to Hafdold, which he does, though begrudgingly. He gives them a puzzled look which he returns to you, saying, “They say, ‘look in the well.’” Your mouth half-open, you run to the well, throwing off the stone cover. There, at the bottom, you can just see what looks like a log, bobbing up and down in the water, knocking gently against the walls. You collapse beside the well, leaning against it. Hafdold runs up to you, “They say it was only a joke! It is something they do in their land. They are sorry.” You look over Hafdold’s shoulder and see his “war wives” laughing hysterically. “Where will we get another axle, Hafdold?” you ask, half-choking on the words. “Do not worry, father. I shall fish the axle from the well!”

XVIII. One evening your fourth daughter whose name you’ve forgotten because women’s names are kind of whatever is chopping a turnip for what one could perhaps call a stew when the knife slips and she cuts her finger. She yelps and you run over to see what is the matter. She covers it in a bit of rag and tells you that she has cut herself, nothing more. You relax. This is not the first time she has done so. She is the clumsiest of all seven daughters and you wonder for a moment why she is the one being made to cut the turnip before you remember that five are missing and the other has gone out to pick mushrooms. A few days later, your fourth daughter, whose name you now remember is Gelanthym, or maybe Delanthym, is complaining of aches and a fever. Her blood has clearly been poisoned. You call out to Hafdold who is having a screaming fight with his “war wives” in a mixture of your language and the junk that falls out of his “war wives’” maws. He can’t hear you. You have to take matters into your own hands. You run out into the southwest grove where the turnips grow and tear them all out, one by one, to find the culprit. Eventually, you pull one out which has a face and speaks, “Not I! Not me! It was not I! Please, not me!” But Delanadim must live, so you plunge what remains of your pig iron dagger into the center of the turnip, which screams and appears to die. Suddenly, you feel a hand on your shoulder. It’s Delenathum, your daughter herself, but she is well. “What is happening, my daughter??” To which she simply asks, “Have you been eating the grey bread again? It is bad bread, father. We must get you to bed.”

XVIIII. You are awoken in your sleep to the sound of frantic knocking at your door. Your wife is snoring away undisturbed, having finished the mandrake wine all in one go despite your warning her thrice—three times—that it will addle her sleep and make her susceptible to witchcraft. Three of your daughters are sleeping in a sort of pile, also snoring away, inexplicably also undisturbed by the knocking. Hafdold and his “war wives” are behind the funny mud partition thing he made are, well, also snoring. That’s it, you realize. The snoring is so loud that no one can hear the door. So how did you hear the door? These are the Devil’s questions. You answer the door, yelling out the customary, “Who is this who has come after dark?” The response is not the proper declaration of personage and intention, but groaning and coughing. Great. A beggar at this hour? Bandits wouldn’t have bothered to knock. You open the door to see two bent female figures, almost dragging their heads on the ground. “Who are you and what do you want, women?” you demand, as they are obviously no decent class of beggar. There is a mumbling response, through which you can make out a faint, “Father…” Your heart leaps, “My sons?!” It is indeed your sons, whom you take inside to find emaciated and somewhat insane. You run to wake everyone, but the snoring is so loud that all of their senses are absolutely dulled. It will have to wait until morning.

XX. It is Sunday but the church is long abandoned. It was never the liveliest, busiest church, you think, but the same 20-something souls were always in regular attendance. But since the sole priest fled and services ended, not a single person had shown his face. Even when you went the first Sunday after the priest’s exit at the appointed time at which the congregation had met for as long as you could remember, no one was there, as if everyone had been alerted to the effective closing of the church at once, despite no one having witnessed the apparent exorcism of Hafdold. Inattendance be damned, you decide to make the half-league trek into the upland to at least pray in the church. The whole family is missing, something which has become increasingly common on Sundays, so you are not surprised, and so you walk alone. When you get within sight of the church, you are stunned to see what appears to be a Church delegation of some kind organized outside the front. Not only that, but all of the congregants are there. How is it that you missed yet another, apparently secret message? In any case, you walk up to the meeting to find that the church and its grounds are being turned into a nunnery with an attached church for the local laity, and that a new priest will be soon be arriving to resume Christian worship in the meantime. The head of the delegation—or, at least, the official most ornately-dressed—turns to you and says, “You’re late. That will be 45 Hail Marys and 67 Our Fathers.” The other parishioners look at you rather unpleasantly as you begin your walk back home.