The Key

This is a 1,000-word challenge piece written based on an image prompt.

The metal-sense had led her to nothing more than an old brass key. Oddborg looked at it in abject disappointment.

It was a very nice key, of course! It had been nicely crafted out of brass, and its weight in her hand was pleasant, its cold metal on the fingertips cut out of her gloves reassuring as all metal was. Metal could be so nicely melted down and refashioned, even such a small amount as this. And that was the trouble of course, this key must belong to someone. Most likely an elf, from the village, and elves wanted their lost items recovered even if they had been gone fifty years or more. (Which was entirely sensible of them! Oddborg would have wanted a nice brass key like this one returned too!) And that meant she could not keep it.

Not only that, but she would have to poll the villagers to find out who’d lost it, and return it. That would take a day’s worth of time that could be spent on chores and she would have to speak to strange people. Oddborg did not consider herself shy- she did not feel shy. She just never knew what to say to strangers, and found it easiest not to look them in the eye. Particularly elves, who were so slim and soft and mild.
She stopped by the house to pack a lunch, and Nadya offered to take the key in her stead, but Oddborg refused- Nadya had her studies, which was no doubt why she was so eager to go to the village on a tedious errand, and besides it was unseemly to give one’s own tasks to a younger sister out of a desire not to do them. Then too Oddborg had found the key and her own hand ought to deliver it.

The walk in was pleasant. The air was crisp and smelled of autumn, the mild sort that pretends winter will not come- and if it should come, it will be only a minor inconvenience bringing no ice, no blizzards.
There were predictions of Fimbulwinter. At least four years- perhaps longer. Oddborg had not seen one since she was a child in the mountains and she only remembered it slightly- she remembered that she had just believed winter was the natural state of the world, and her parent’s tales of greenery a fairy tale of sorts. Plants and sun, when they came, had seemed aberrant to her. Even now the world seemed more natural to her under snowfall- yet the farm did better without snow.

The village was fairly quiet and it took her some minutes of tramping along the sidewalks before she encountered a woman and child walking along. They both noticed her at once. Oddborg had met with the paradoxical dilemma of the hermit- she had become famous for her desire to keep to herself. The villagers usually did take note of her when she appeared.

Well, and so it is for the best, she thought, then I can ask questions of everyone I meet, and it is not rude if they are looking at my face and inviting me to speak. “Good afternoon, ma’am. I’ve found something in the woods that must belong to someone, an old key. I thought someone in the village may have lost it at some time and even now may want it returned. It’s a key of very good quality.”

“A key?” the woman asked. Oddborg regretted not knowing her name, for it seemed poor manners to be so unfamiliar with one’s neighbors. “Why, let me see it.” She took it from Oddborg’s hand and examined it with bright blue eyes. She showed it to her child. “Isn’t it lovely? Now, Bobbin, don’t stare at the nice lady! This is Oddborg Bronzebit- she is a dwarf. See how strong she looks? She lives in the forest with

Nadya. You know Nadya.”

The child put his fingers in his mouth and looked solemn. Oddborg avoided his gaze, not wishing to be intimidating.

“It’s not mine I’m afraid,” said the woman, handing the key back. It never occurred to Oddborg that the woman may have known from the beginning that she was missing no key and only been curious. “Pierrick at the watch may know. It’s his job to know when people lose things- they all complain to him so he finds out whether he wants to or not!”

“Thank you for your attention and your advice. I will look for him at once,” said Oddborg, who did not want to speak to Pierrick at all. Yet it seemed it was her duty to do so.

He was there at the guard post, and was not out looking for bandits or whatever else he did. It looked as if he was filling out forms of some kind- she did not pry by trying to read them. He stood up when he saw her, and his eyes were both surprised and grateful. Perhaps he did not like reports. “Oddborg! Good to see you in one piece, still. Trouble at the farm?”

“No, sir,” she said a bit stiffly. “There has been none.” She did not tell him a witch had moved in a mile or so in to the woods. It was not the village’s land. “I’ve found something, sir, an old key, and I wondered if perhaps someone in the village might have lost it.”

“I don’t have any reports of lost keys,” he said, “but let me take a look.”

He leaned forward, reaching for the key. He towered over her. His mother had been a round-eared giant.

“It’s not the kind of thing elves make,” he grunted. “It was probably with your house. Didn’t you take your house over from frost bandits?”

Oddborg brought the key home with her and found almost at once that it matched a door in the cellar that had been locked ever since she and Nadya had moved in.

She felt incredibly stupid.