No one calls for the Pedegrim, but he is summoned all the same.
His arrival is not heralded by fog nor nightfall, but by a slow rot that creeps through the corners of a home. First, the beams over the hearth darken with damp, though the fire still burns. Then, flour grows sour overnight, and the milk curdles though the pail was fresh. At last, the house feels heavier, as though the walls lean inward, and that is when he is already inside.
The Pedegrim is not seen entering. He is simply there.
He stands in the dimmest part of the room, where the light from the window cannot quite reach. His cloak, stiff with age and dirt, drapes over his twisted frame. His face is wrong, like a mask of human skin stretched over something that did not know how faces worked. His eyes are glassy and damp, too small for their sockets. His mouth never quite closes.
He carries no blade, no threat of force. He carries burdens.
A sack, stitched from skin, slumps at his side, but it is not his to carry. It is yours.
He will not speak first. He will wait until you ask what he wants, because you will. His presence gnaws at the mind, pulling words from you like teeth from a jaw.
And when you ask, he will smile.
“I am here to give you what you can bear.”
That is his gift, the weight you didn’t know you were missing.
A limp in your leg that was not there the day before.
A dull ache in your back that will never fully leave.
A sickness in your child that doctors cannot name.
The burden is never deadly, that is not his art.
It is simply enough to bend you lower, to make every day harder, to add just enough weight that you wonder how much more you can take.
And that is his joy: watching you endure.
He does not take pleasure in death. He revels in survival.
He delights in the creak of joints as you push through the pain, in the knowledge that you will wake again tomorrow, and the next day, to carry what he has given you.
Some say he feeds on struggle, that every wince, every grunt as you lift, nourishes him. Others believe he tests the limits of human strength, curious to see how much can be endured before something snaps.
No one knows how to make him leave. He leaves when he is done.
Some burdens last weeks, others years.
But when he finally departs, you will find his mark scorched into the wood or stone of your home: A spiral, tight and small like the coiled back of a creature ready to strike again.
No herb banishes the Pedegrim.
No root can keep him out.
But those who carry Peppermint, bright and sharp, say it gives them just enough breath to stand tall when he arrives. It does not stop his burden, but it keeps the spirit from breaking under it.
Mothers tuck peppermint leaves into their apron pockets.
Laborers chew it when their backs ache beyond bearing.
Those who know the Pedegrim’s spiral mark plant peppermint by their door, not as a shield, but as a challenge.
You can come, Burdenmaker.
But I will bear it.
If your steps grow heavy in your own home
If your ceiling seems lower
If a shadow stands where no one should
He has come.
Straighten your back.
Chew the leaf.
Bear it.
Because the Pedegrim loves those who endure, and he is always watching for his favorites.
