It was a thick and hurried sort of knock at the door, thap-thap-thap. The kind of knock that said ‘oh no oh dear oh hurry please’ but didn’t have the fear of life-and-death in it, and so old Scaa took her time getting up from her slab across from the ever-simmering warmth of the cauldron-pit. It was midwinter, and the cold wind was bringing in fresh rain every morning.
On the other side of her door was Gruna, and inside Gruna’s face were Gruna’s eyes, and inside Gruna’s eyes were a matchless and endless anxiety that could not be stopped or impeded by anything except the flow of words coming out of Gruna’s mouth, which Scaa could roughly parse as this:
“ohnoit’searlyhe’stooearlysomething’swrongiknowit’swrongohnononopleasedoyouhaveanythingthatcan-“
Scaa nodded and hummed and made aimless shooshing sounds with her forelimbs as she hobbled back to the cauldron-pit, took up the capped ladle, got a generous helping of roiling and angry mineralized water, jammed a carefully-selected pinch of pulverized and preserved plantlife into it, and then shook it in a prescribed manner before pouring it out into a very small and very waterproof flask.
“Make him drink this,” she said, damming the flood of words from Gruna’s mouth with as much volume as she could manage. “And everything will be fine.”
“Are you sure? Are you sure? It’s our first litter and-”
Scaa put the flask in Gruna’s talons and closed the door on her foot, then limped to her slab and tried to remember what she’d been doing before she was so rudely interrupted. Such was the brewer’s life.
Oh right.
She’d been thinking about nothing.
***
Scaa had made a pretty good start on getting back to that when the next knock on the door came.
Well, eventually came. It was preceded by a series of increasingly inchoate thundering footfalls, cursing, stumbling, and shouting. The knock itself was more like a single THUD, and carried with it a heavy flavour of fist.
“Hello,” said Numn, shouldering the door open without waiting or asking for permission or giving the latch the dignity of notice as it tore free from the wall. “Brewer. My lesser-wife is unfaithful. I need her brought to heel.”
Scaa shrugged at that. “Nothing I can brew for THAT, thank you.”
“Yes there is. Give me something that will keep those flighty feet of hers grounded. Something to deaden her energy, slacken her spirits, curb her vigour.”
“That is against the brewer’s creed,” said Scaa. “I am here to serve, not to scheme.”
Numn picked up the capped ladle from its perch and carefully bent its handle into a circle.
“Fine, fine, fine” sighed Scaa. “If you must.”
So she took the ladle back and took another small box with different seeds and leaves and made a somewhat smaller flask.
“This will solve the problem,” she said very specifically.
“Good,” said Numn, and left.
Scaa made an unforgivably blasphemous gesture out the door at her, then saw about repairing her latch.
***
The latch was set, the door was closed, and just as Scaa turned back to her slab it was shaking on its hinges again, rattling under a tiny and tremulous fist.
Scaa opened it and saw nothing. Then she looked down and saw something. Someone.
“Hello,” she said.
“’sth,” managed the chick. It was of indeterminate gender and tiny in age, in the midst of that awkward growth spurt that would take it from the size of an adult’s skull to the size of an adult entire.
“I don’t know you. Are you one of Loos’s?”
“’es.”
“Ah, right. Right. And she wants something for the night aches?”
“’es.”
Scaa sighed, long and rattly, then she took her (bent) capped ladle and put in a tiny sprig of something here and a dab of something there and a long slow stir and gave it over.
“Tell her to drink this,” she said. “And then stay quiet for the next few days. It works best when no loud noises interrupt it.”
“’es.”
“What do you say?”
“’anks.”
“You’re welcome.”
Scaa closed the door. The pepperwort wouldn’t do much more than give Loos some nice flavours, but the multiple days of quiet children might give her some relief from the nightly pains in her skull. She’d TOLD her she was too old for one more brood, but oh no, never listen to your big sister. Ugh.
***
This time the THUD came without preceding noise: just a deeply hostile silence that terminated in the door popping open. Thankfully the latch was too weakly repaired to snap off again, and merely dangled meekly.
“Brewer.”
“Hello again, Numn,” said Scaa. “What is it?”
“You lied to me.”
“I did no such thing, Numn. I am here to serve, not to scheme.”
“I forced your vial down the cringer’s throat and she belched fire into my face. I am driven from my own home at the violence of my second-wife.”
Scaa scratched at her snout. “I recall that being Tlii’s long before you married.”
“What’s hers is mine. You have betrayed my faith.”
“I solved the problem, and I said as much,” said Scaa.
Numn picked her up by her scruff and gently but firmly took her head in her jaws.
“Fine. Fine. Fine.”
So Scaa took her capped ladle and her uncomfortably damp face and her mutterings of “eighth of this’ and ‘fifth of that’ and she picked up the flask and dropped it seven times one after another before handing it over to Numn.
“That,” she said, will work.”
“So you say,” said Numn. “If it doesn’t, I will be back.”
Scaa nodded and sighed and made a doubly blasphemous gesture with both hands as she left and then went back to reaffixing the latch.
***
This time she made it all the way back to her slab, shut her eyes, and was beginning to slip into a warm and toasty torpor when there came a firm and controlled bap-bap-bap at the door.
“Oh well,” she said, and wrenched herself back to whatever it was that she did with whoever its problems that she’d found.
It was Vrral, and it was…
“My toes,” said Vrral.
“What about them?”
“They’re coming off.”
Scaa looked at them. “Where?”
“Right there – see?”
“That’s a hangnail.”
“It’s not. It’s curling under, into the flesh. See?”
“That’s a hangnail.”
“It’s going to cut off my toe.”
Scaa brewed, and as she brewed she explained to Vrral four more times about hangnails.
“Here,” she said, as she handed over the flask. “Soak your feet in that.”
“And my toes won’t come off?”
“No, but your toenails will.”
“Bless you, brewer!” sobbed Vrral. “Bless bless and bless again!”
“Sure,” said Scaa. And she would have felt guilty about this sixty years ago, but not now. Not with her slab calling, and Vrral already the worst small-game picker in the parliament. One set of talons more or less wouldn’t change that.
***
There was no knock, but someone was shaking Scaa by her scruff. So she opened her eyes again – oh my, was that dawn in the distance through her windows? So she HAD slept after all – and looked into Numn’s.
“Brewer, you are vexing me,” she said.
“Howso?”
“I drank your brew.”
“Oh?”
“And it kept me up all night with the shits in the bushes.”
“Well. I gave it to you to fix your second-wife. Why’d YOU drink it?”
“So you wouldn’t fool me like you did last time.”
“I think,” said Scaa, “that you very much accomplished that.”
Numn moved her arm a little and Scaa felt the warmth of the cauldron-pit grow just a bit stronger.
“What do you need?” she asked.
“Something to deal with my miserable fire-belching second-wife. Something permanent. Something better than anything you’ve brewed before. And I’ll tear your legs off and leave you for the rats if you try to be clever again.”
“Well,’ said Scaa. “If you say, that it will be so.”
So she used this and that and them and those and the other and the self and the whole and the sum and the parts all in many forms and variations and when she was done brewing the flask hissed long after the cork went in it.
“Here,” she said as she handed it to Numn.
“Wonderful,” said Numn. “You drink it first.”
“All right,” said Scaa amiably.
“On second thought,” said Numn, her eyes narrowing, “I’ll drink it first.”
“Sure,” agreed Scaa.
Numn’s teeth were all showing. They all looked very strong, straight, and serrated. “On third thought, we’ll BOTH drink it. Together.”
Scaa pulled out two little stone cups, poured half in each, and offered one.
“I’ll take the other one.”
“Fine by me.
“I’ll take the first one.
“If you’d like.”
“I’ll drink from the flask.”
“By all means.”
So they drank the same brew at the same pace and finished together with the same dose.
“I can feel it working,” said Numn. “If you’ve poisoned me, brewer, then you will die as I do.”
“I haven’t poisoned you,” said Scaa. “I have given you something to deal with your second-wife. And I’ve given myself something to deal with you. And trust me on this: it’s DEFINITELY not clever.”
“Whhat do you mean?” asked Numn, and pawed at the side of her snout.
“See you when the rushh is over,” said Scaa. The colours were already creeping in through the sides of her vision. “Oh, thhere it isssss,” she realized, and fell over on her slab.
Numn had not positioned herself as carefully, and so rammed her face directly into the floor.
***
The first petitioner of the day found them both there just before noon. Scaa had almost sobered up by then, but Numn remained out cold until she was tried and exiled four days later.
“It’s the tolerance,” she said. “You build it up with exposure.”
“From handling our medicines and cures so often?” asked Loos.
“Sure,” said Scaa. “Yes, let’s say that.”
Not that she’d be doing that anytime soon. The thirsty bastard had chugged down half of her best stuff.