Black Mould - Thirty-Two - Cleaver Dealings Leading to Inflating Profits

“Here you go,” I said as I raised the skewer up to my last client of the day.

Last, because I was all out of mushrooms. For that matter, I was nearly out of skewers too. Halfway through the morning, I realised that I was going to run out long before the day was up. I came up with a last-minute plan based on something I’d seen back on Earth.

I sold the mushrooms for one price, and the skewer for another. If they returned the skewer, they got the halfpenny they paid for it back. I recalled a few pubs doing that with their mugs.

The morning wasn’t even done before I had some clever boy—who was about three years older than me—running around and picking up discarded skewers to bring them back to me for the few coins they were worth.

I had come to one of the nicer markets in the slums. It was run by a middle-aged guy with a bit of a belly and a peg-leg. He said that he owned the entire warehouse the market was housed in, and the two guys working security both worked for him directly.

The place cost me two shillings just for the right to set up my little stall, but I had come early enough that I got to pick more or less where I’d set it up. I placed my table next to one of the entrances, where the wind from the city would blow the smell of my cooking inwards.

If someone didn’t like the smell of cooking butter and garlic, then they were out of luck.

“‘Scuse me,” someone said.

I glanced up at the man standing before my table. Scruffy fellow, with a knit cap flopped on his head. There were more folk behind him, forming an orderly line.

“Oh, uh, I’m sorry sirs, ma’ams,” I said. “But I’m fresh out of mushrooms, and oil… and butter.” The last few I’d cooked I’d scraped along the surface of the pan just to get them a bit wet. I was out of nearly everything except for a small jar of finely chopped garlic which I closed up before they could start to go bad.

“Damn,” the man said. “I could pay twice as much.”

“I’m really out,” I said.

“Sorry mate,” Stew said. He had stood behind me all morning. Though he wasn’t really standing, but was rather perched on a stool with one of Debra’s blankets draped over his shoulders. He managed to look somewhat intimidating, all thin and scrawny as he was. It helped that I couldn’t tell at a glance that he was missing some bits. “Little lady’s all out. We’ll be back tomorrow, alright?”

“Oh, okay,” the guy said.

The line dispersed with a few disappointed looks, but no other reprisals.

“Thanks,” I said.

Stew nodded. “Good day? Or about what you expected?”

What I expected was for everything to be an absolute flop. I had a purse filled with a few hundred pence. I’d likely made a couple of pounds.

My dad made five shillings (or about sixty pence) a day. Mom made two a day. I’d just earned more in a single morning than my family made in half a month. I shook my head and stuffed the purse deep into my satchel. “I’ll be giving you your part once we’re back at the farm,” I said.

Stew nodded. “No worries,” he said. “And you don’t need to worry about me robbing you. I can think ahead, you know? You don’t kill the one who lays golden eggs. Or golden mushrooms.”

I laughed. I felt a little light, even as I ran the numbers in my head. The oil had cost two shilling for the day. The butter was a couple of pence. I needed a lot more of both to run all day though. Or I could just focus on doing half-days. Noon would be busier, but I noticed a few others setting out to sell food, and some of them were giving me dirty looks.

So, mornings only. No stepping on anyone’s toes.

I was selling a skewer for a halfpenny and the mushrooms on the skewer for the same amount. A pence for both, with a halfpenny returned if they bothered to bring the skewer back. About as cheap as I could go.

I took a deep breath. I needed more raw materials brought with me. I could do that. Could I grow enough mushrooms to keep up with the demand though?

I… didn’t think I could.

So, I’d have to start either growing more for the express purpose of selling here, or I could expand the farm. I held back a chuckle. I might actually be able to afford to do that.

I couldn’t rely on this all year round though. And maybe the novelty of what I was selling helped on my first day.

Nodding to myself, I tempered my expectations. Growth would happen as it happened. I’d be happy for myself once everything went well. No counting those chickens before they hatched.

Stew and I packed everything up, and we left the market in a hurry. The place was a bit cleaner than our part of the slums, a tiny bit classier. Not to say that it wasn’t dirty, it was just… well, there was no stratification quite like the one found near the bottom, I found.

That night, when I got home, I revealed my winnings to my parents. Not all of it, of course. I’d stashed away enough that if I needed to, I could buy a new burner and all the materials to basically restart my entire enterprise.

We had a bit of a party that night, especially since I stopped by a grocer and splurged on a can of meat paste and some bread that was a little more fresh than our usual fare. I even got a bottle of beer for Dad, since he liked that stuff, and some candy… because candy.

Mom and Dad danced together while I clapped a beat, and I went to sleep that night with the hunger a distant memory, buried under laughs and a light head.

I spent the next week preparing for my second outing.

As I predicted, the second outing wasn’t quite as great as the first, though it wasn’t bad by any means. I sold nearly all of my stock before the morning was up, and the few skewers I had left at the end I split between a few people. I gave a couple to Stew, then one to the old guy who owned the place and one to each of his guards.

Of course, I kicked up my cute innocent act as much as I could while doing that. Big eyes, bigger smile, lots of thanks and praise and laughter when they thanked me.

Stew shook his head when we were leaving, but he didn’t comment on my acting.

The following months started a bit of a routine for me. It took about three weeks for my mushrooms to regrow, but I had enough planted that it only took about a third of my food-yield to head out to the market. It didn’t exactly work out; mushrooms didn’t care about the date on the calendar, so they sometimes took longer to grow, or came in sooner than expected.

Mostly I got to harvest enough [Brown Horse Heads] to hit the market every week and a half or so. The amount I made varied, and over the spring and summer, the amount I had to spend to keep things going shifted too. On my seventh outing, my burner broke an hour into the morning. I had to cut things off early that day.

I bought a new burner with the money I’d saved up, and got the guy that sold me my first one to fix it, with a few minor improvements.

Once, one of my table’s legs snapped right off. I was lucky that the client before me had good reflexes and he caught the corner of it. Another merchant found a few chunks of wood I could use to hold the table up for the rest of the day (she earned herself a couple of free skewers for that).

When I complained to my dad, he insisted that he could make something better. It took a few days, which he spent downing beers while muttering at what he was working on, but in the end I got a nicer table with folding legs which had a couple of handles for easier transportation. It looked much cleaner, too.

Things progressed nicely until fall swept in and things got real cold. The last couple of trips to the market had me huddled close to my burner for warmth. I ended up buying some thick yarn from one of the other stalls, and I knit myself a thick green sweater.

Winter was coming, and with it, I was going to be turning six.

Soon I’d be about old enough, and rich enough, to start plotting the next step of my plan to become financially independent before hitting my double digits!

***