This is our monster for the month. He’s clearly a faerie who sells Arcane Connections. Stats eventually.
This recording was released through Librivox by Dale Grothmann. Thanks to Dale and his production team.
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The Vendor of Tears
By William M . Conselman
The little old man closed my library door and stepped nimbly forward. He bowed until his long
beard touched the rug, and said: “ I have something to sell you.”
“ What do you sell, good sir?” I asked courteously, for though he might be nothing more than a figment of my imagination, it is always well to be polite.
“ Tears,” he answered; “women’s tears.”
He unstrapped a flat leather case and laid it open on the table. As I peered curiously over his shoulder, he covered it with his hands, and demanded in concern:
“ You are not by any chance a poet, sir ?”
I shook my head, and he smiled with evident relief.
“I do not traffic with poets,” he said. “Although they bring me a deal of business.”
Fastened in the case were a dozen or more exquisitely tiny crystal phials, carven in various shapes, glowing and sparkling like jewels. From the slender ribbon that held it, he took a phial whose contents were a pale, translucent blue, like a bit of April sky prisoned in glass.
“Here,” he said, “are tears that a maiden wept at midnight in her chamber.” He held it to the light.
“ Pretty,” I said. “Pretty, but common. Pardon me,” I continued, “but have your baubles any practical value? Of what use are they?”
“ Practical ?” He puffed out his cheeks indignantly. “ I would have you know, young sir, that with my wares you may buy almost any unpurchasable commodity in the world. But while they are so valuable, you cannot sell them. Unless you are a poet. Poets sell them. Do you desire Love, or Knowledge, or Sorrow? You may purchase them with women’s tears. Delight and despair, madness and misery—these, too, one buys with the goods I vend.”
He replaced the first phial and took out another, of a dull, grayish-purple colour, like the bloom of a grape.
“These are the tears of a spinster for the son she never bore,” he said. He held up another tube of deepest indigo shot with canary. “An actress wept these upon discovering a gray hair.”
His bright eyes gazed a question. I shook my head.
“Well, then,” he said, “here is something pretty. Expensive, however.” He displayed a phial of beautiful, iridescent crimson, like transparent blood. “A mother’s tribute to a wayward son who
was hanged. Will you buy?”
“ I have seen nothing that interests me,” I said.
“Eh, sir, but you are hard to please,” he said testily. “What would you?”
“ Show me,” I said firmly, “the pale green tears that a woman sheds when she forgives a rival who has worsted her.”
He gave me a long, angry look. “Now you are a poet after all,” he accused, “ since none but a poet could imagine such tears as you ask for!”
And before I could offer a word of remonstrance, he vanished as suddenly
as he had appeared.
Games From Folktales 