Chapter 7 - Honeydew
Time poured forth…
For Mr. Grey-
To be frank, time poured forth in a dull way with Mr. Grey. Not dull for Mr. Grey himself. After all, how could time pass dully when one is caught between the twin interests of fiddling and pencil-pushery? Mr. Grey spent his fiddling time practicing scales, and playing many accidental notes, and playing some intentional ones. He spent his pushery time correcting tax forms. This is all to say that the way Mr. Grey spent his time makes for a boring story.
We’ll skip Mr. Grey’s training. He isn’t running up steps, or flowing through the ornate and delicate stages of a dance. Mr. Grey is running over the same notes, and flowing through the ornate and delicate pages of Pots’ Deductions Declaration.
“But wait!” you may say, reader who has persisted thus far. “Am I expected to lay this account back on the shelf from which I took it? To wait until sufficient time has passed for Mr. Grey to finish his training and Pots’ taxes?”
No.
Through perspective, we take flight from Mr. Grey’s angular shoulder. Our view hurtles through Pot’s portrait door and up the long darkness of the Oh Well. It hurtles with such speed that only one clapping cycle of the flightless old raven taps against our ears, before we leave that tunnel-king alone in his tunnel-castle. The rugged ridges and discarded treasure slide by unseen in the dark. We jump from the Oh Well’s marble mouth, back into light - but a glowering light it is! - and the unfurled air of a stormcloud day. We soar into the sky. We glide in reverse over the landscape’s tablecloth of four-leafed-lilies, striated by vintage veins. We pass lumpy hills of chicktails and gorse. We pass polka-dot lakes of pinot grigio and pinot noir. Finally, the thatched roofs and stretched leather walls of Toscamo sprout into view below. Our perspective plummets, and we land unceremoniously upon a new shoulder.
Honeydew’s.
Honeydew swatted a fat water globule which attacked her shoulder after massing on the pigskin umbrella-hat. With shrewd eyes she surveyed the hosts of raindrops swarming over Toscamo.
The Wind that Smelled like Rain had dredged this downpour from many pools of wine, separating the water from the alcohol. The Wind had carried the rain in her clouds and - being of a flighty character, with shifting fancies - had abandoned it. Now the rainclouds loomed over Toscamo.
Endless ranks of liquid-glass soldiers formed ranks as sleepy sheets of water. Some of the water landed in bowls and buckets and pots. The fallen-soldier raindrops would later be consumed or used in robe washing. Some of it crashed against reed-umbrellas floating above the pedestrian’s heads. Most of the water simply splashed onto the roofs and roads. All of it would eventually flow down and out and away from Toscamo. It would slip beneath the surface of ponds and rivers and lakes. It would ferment with coral candy. In the end, once again, it would be wine.
Honeydew searched between the swarms of falling raindrops. She looked past the drifting tops of the reed umbrellas. Her shining, oil-spill eyes - still carrying that hot sunlight reflection despite the overcast day - settled on her quarry.
An empty wheelbarrow-cart plied the pedestrian traffic, defended from the rain by a large reed roof. A burly man with muscly arms (and a stoat-ish set of sideburns) pushed it.
Honeydew flagged the cart pusher. She climbed into the upholstered tray of the wheelbarrow, took off and folded her pigskin hat, and wrapped her arms around her knees.
“Where you riding, miss?” asked the cart-pusher when Honeydew had wriggled herself comfortable.
“That’s a fair question. Got a busy day to host,” she said. She spoke the local dialect, having learned it in a few days. “Start with Where-the-Foxes-Skulk. Can your legs push fast?”
“Faster than a swooping bird,” said the enthusiastic cart-pusher. He stated the cost. The moment Honeydew transferred the handful of shiny pebbles from her own purse to his, the man heaved to. He entered the hissing rain and flowing traffic like a war galley into a fleet of canoes. His pumping quads moved like pistons. His cart rolled wildly, weaving through pedestrians, heedless of the road’s watery slick.
Honeydew and the cart pushers traveled to the tune of falling rain and the occasional rattle of the barrow’s wheel across a stony section of road.
“Been in town long, miss?” asked the driver.
“For a few days now,” answered Honeydew.
“I thought ‘that’s the case’, when I saw you standing there. Your robe betrayed you.”
Honeydew glanced at her robe, patterned in sunflower-eyes, cut in the longer, sleeker Starharbor style. “I’ll buy a local one soon. I’m keen on your style.”
“That your mission in this wet?”
“I’m on a job prowl. Any chance you know of work?”
The pusher veered around a puddle. Honeydew held tight to the barrow’s rim and grimaced. The pusher apologized, then said, “You don’t mean that though! You don’t look a hard-up sort.”
“It’s not for me - click,” she said snappishly.
The cart pusher sensed he’d asked something irritating. He let the rest of the trip pass without conversation. He knew to walk on eggshells for a patron with a busy day.
Honeydew felt that every street they entered ran thick with traffic. Her cart twisted through alleys crowded with idling strollers and playing children, or slugged up sloping byways in a snail-race with other cart pushers.
The wheelbarrow whispered to Honeydew when they reached Where-the-Foxes-Skulk. It let her know by the way the wheel rolled softly over pliant grass, instead of jolting her through the thin upholstery at every pothole. Here, the most opulent homes and shops in Toscamo - fabricated from the richest stretched leather and poetree wood, and roofed in clay shingles instead of thatch - crowded in idyllic harmony. True, the distinction between these homes and the surrounding boroughs was lesser than between Starharbor’s stilt-houses and its slums. Honeydew’s eyes, wide notwithstanding, climbed the pagoda-like homes; where the rain dropped in boisterous cataracts from sloping roof onto sloping roof.
Her eyes jumped next to warmly glowing, lantern-lit storefronts. Tailors displayed fine silk and velvet robes. Chocolateries unleashed clouds of sweet, syrupy thickness on innocent passersby.
Honeydew willed her eyes away at each juncture. These enticements appealed to her tastes. But they had to be earned. Honeydew only wanted fine things when they resulted from worthy effort. Honeydew’s priority now was making treasure. For herself. And for Mr. Grey.
Honeydew waited until they reached the front of a lavish Toscamo hotel. Then she had the cart pusher halt. The sliding windows and doorways of the building shed a comfortable glow into the sodden day. It sat atop a wooden platform. This in turn sat atop a small hill, surrounded by a moat of mixed water-and-wine. An arching bridge of curly, filigreed wood gave access to a wooden pair of doors, carved with symbols of pillows and laced in ivy. Honeydew told the obliging cart pusher to wait. She donned her pigskin hat and prowled across the bridge.
The pusher wasn’t long under the rain. Only two other wheelbarrows rolled by him - with secret signs of the trade shared at each passing - before the sunflower robe and its wearer reappeared in the hotel’s doorway. The rain bounced off her umbrella hat as Honeydew returned to the cart.
“What’s the order, miss?” asked the cart pusher. He rubbed his calves.
Honeydew pulled some shiny pebbles from her treasure purse and grumbled. “No fortune in there. Take me Where-the-Banner-Rests. It’s my next target.”
“A feather then, miss. Streets are congested today.”
Honeydew grumbled but returned the pebbles to her purse and drew a feather. “Take the faster routes; I’ll find scenes on my own time.”
“Faster than cattle,” said the cart pusher. (The cart pusher considered all creatures with an amble faster than his own to be a species of rocket.)
They shuttled on once more, through a rain so thick they might have gone by butterfly stroke. Honeydew called out course correction from her hunched seat in the bucket. The pusher had an irritating habit of traveling the roads most congested with slow-moving grandfathers, or mother geese crossing the street with adolescent gaggles.
“So what were your chiefest gripes? Back at that hotel?” asked the cart pusher. He spoke in a jovial tone. Neither the rain nor Honeydew’s reproach upset his mood.
“They wanted a chef,” said Honeydew curtly.
“Not one for cooking?”
“There’s no bean dishes. It’s all gummies or toffee.”
“Our candy’s not for all kinds.” The man laughed at some private joke. Honeydew gave a single, keen, terse click. They resumed a steady silence.
Twice more the driver deposited Honeydew before sites of potential employment. The first was a crumbling tower of worm-eaten wood and ragged leather walls. The roof leaked, and the residents hid behind low-lit doors. Honeydew walked away from that job as well. Not because of the dilapidated conditions, but because the tower’s industry was licorice stretching. The second time the driver stopped Honeydew didn’t bother disembarking. She’d come to a burg named ‘Where-the-Iron-Hooks’. She’d expected a meatpacking district. Honeydew did not quiver at hard labor. The cart pusher, however, had taken her to the wharf. She sat before a coral-candy farm, a fishery abutting one of the long wooden docks stretching into the pale lake of wine.
“Every job relates to food,” Honeydew complained. She told her driver to move on, after paying a fourth, and still greater, fare. “It’s all for candy.”
The cart pusher said, “We’ll be serving beans soonish.” He veered the cart into a herd of wine cows before Honeydew could direct him otherwise.
She clicked long and slow, like a resigned sigh, and leaned back in the bucket. “How long is ‘soonish’?”
“Just planted ‘em recently. But they’ll shoot up fast, that’s what Miss Coats said.”
“Who?” asked Honeydew. She sat up suddenly and twisted in the bucket to face the pusher. He wrinkled his brow and shrugged, tilting the barrow. “Who said they’d grow fast?” she elaborated.
“Why, Jodee Coats, Miss.”
“How’d you chance upon that name?”
“Same chance as others. She’s famous around these parts! Came through epochs back, and changed tradition.”
“Which ‘tradition’ did she change?”
“Wasn’t enough food, but she solved the issue’s heart. Motivated folks. We dug our gardens, and traded flowers for beans. Now we’ll have plenty.”
Honeydew faced forward. She let off half a quiet click - confusion. It astounded her that Mr. Grey’s ‘vacation job’ - his weird obsession, she’d thought - had made actual waves since fleeing Starharbor.
“It’s not all perfect,” the cart pusher went on. “The city don’t smell as nice. There’s more odor bites. But in general, I’m for the extra bean meals.”
“Where’s Jodee Coats now?” asked Honeydew.
“Fields and seas away…”
Honeydew glanced to the tall bronze mirror. Her eyes met the reflected ones of the tailor. “What?” she asked.
The tailor stared at Honeydew from below a pincushion-hat brimming with needles. Her mirrored face showed no trace of understanding. Honeydew click-sighed. She switched to the local accent. “What was that you asked?”
“Didn’t ask nothing dearie,” said the tailor. She plunged a needle into the fabric a grapeskin away from Honeydew’s neck. “You’re distracted’s all. You haven’t said seven words. Not since you came in.”
“I told you what I wanted. This pattern, your style. What more do you need?” Honeydew twisted her arm instinctively to display the sunflowers on her robe. The tailor just managed to pull her needle away before an awkward stick.
“Yeesh, forget I asked,” said the tailor, with a moody tone and a roll of her eyes. They fell silent.
This was a problem for Honeydew.
She’d turned to the tailor’s shop after day upon day of failed interviewing. The shop itself, Stitches-of-the-Times, came recommended by one of those interviewers who’d told her they’d, “Let her know,” Honeydew had abandoned the search for a job. In Honeydew’s defense, she’d put supreme effort into her hunt; spent every waking hour applying, traveling, and interviewing. She only surrendered the search when there seemed not one position available. That is, not one available outside of candy producery.
She felt like a quitter.
Honeydew felt that she owed something to Mr. Grey. After all, Wine Medo would be only a half-fermented idea if it hadn’t been for his invitation. Without Mr. Grey, there wouldn’t be any new tailored robes, new plays to attend, new magazines to browse. Honeydew wanted to solve Mr. Grey’s treasure dilemma herself, while finding out what Toscamo had to offer.
But she’d failed, and she’d come to a tailor seeking comfort. And who has not fought failure in one part of existence with failure in another? The factory-worker, returning home from a day of much-berating, argues with her family. The marble-throwing giant, after forgetting to dislodge a traveler before compressing a marble, cheats on his diet.
Honeydew, after failing to find an income, bought a tailored robe.
On the one hand; if Honeydew were giving in to this impulse, she wanted a well-tailored robe. She realized that putting herself on the tailor’s bad side gave worse odds of meeting that end.
On the other hand; Honeydew knew she was in the right. Such entitlement from this tailor, expecting garrulous, gabblesome, gossipy chit-chat! Had Honeydew not already given, as down payment, the pinch of paprika and two calcified bugs? If she chose to brood during the fitting, that was her right as a paying patron.
Honeydew wanted a nice new robe. But she wouldn’t apologize when she’d done no wrong.
So what to do?
Honeydew twisted a shoulder and inspected the tailor’s progress in the brass mirror. “My thoughts dwelt on the wearing,” she said. The tailor plunged her needle through the air in a violent whoosh. “An age of galas; an age over the catwalks. Will this piece hold up?” Honeydew affected an air of disinterested.
The tailor hesitated, her needle halfway through a dive. “Galas and catwalks?”
Honeydew rattled off three high society shows she planned to attend wrapped in the tailor’s robe. She included details: so-and-so she’d meet, such-and-such a shop’s work she’d sported previously. She left out the extraneous details: that she’d be attending the shows as an audience member; that although she might see the so-and-so’s, she wouldn’t speak much with them from spectator seating; that such-and-such a shops were Starharbor ones, with a Wine-Medo-spin on their names.
After this short discourse, the tailor’s hand swooped with greater care. Honeydew relaxed.
Had Honeydew been the only patron, she might have slept to the pattering rain.
Rowdy discourse from two other patrons stopped her. These were men. They were being fitted by another tailor for suit-robes.
“Haven’t you noticed? How these fittings take all day? Do show some kick, dear,” said the one to the tailor at his elbow.
The other man stood by the open sliding door, watching rain drum the passing umbrellas. He continued his own narrative, heedless of his friend’s comment. “How about that new listing; At-the-Water’s-Edge? Promising prospects?”
“What was your question?” asked the impatient one. He showed his character with a hurrying wave at the needle-bearing tailor.
“The newest farm home,” said the idle one. “Worth investing the treasure?”
Honeydew angled an ear. Her tailor adjusted just in time to avoid puncturing the fidgety patron. She rolled her eyes when Honeydew shifted hers to the men.
The patron being fitted said, “How did your last returns go?”
“Not all that poorly… But farm homes are a frontier. A new treasure stake.”
Honeydew leaned forward in her chair. She unconsciously dragged the careful hands of her abused tailor with her. She listened to the businessmen’s conversation, and watched them slyly out of her golden eye’s corner. Their motions were the lazy, stretching, casual kind, of people with funds to purchase any shop they patronize from its owner. They spoke about rates of return and probabilities of success.
Honeydew’s interest grew. Her interest stemmed, not from desire to bet her own fortunes on these farm-homes, but from her special skill.
A knack for chance.
After they’d gone on loudly for some time, the impatient one checked his pocket ticker. Honeydew thought of Mr. Grey. “The stakes can’t be known,” he concluded simply. “Now can we please hurry up?” He shifted once more, dragging his tailor.
Honeydew found that conclusion intolerable. “They’re not unknowable odds,” she said with a sudden click and a snap of her fingers. Then she winced. The movement had finally caught the tailor, who’d been swooping with the needle, by surprise. The tailor apologized profusely. Honeydew paid no attention. Her eyes met the suspicious pairs of the businessmen.
“Were you eavesdropping?” asked the one by the window.
“Your farming odds are simple,” she said, ignoring the question. She went into a careful explanation of probabilities and percentages, based on what she’d overheard. Her logic was sound; her statistics, crisp. The two men listened close. All three customers sat very still during the explanation, to their tailors’ incalculable relief.
When Honeydew closed her assessment with a to-the-nearest-hundredth chance of success, and a self-certain click, the two businessmen stared at her, eyes wide, mouths slack.
“You are a Wisdom,” said the one by the window. His voice was full of awe. The other nodded agreement.
Honeydew played along. “Chance is clear to see. When you’ve got experience.”
“You come from another place?” asked the formerly-impatient gentleman.
“I’m from Starharbor. It’s where I mastered the wheels.”
“And now you work in teaching?”
Honeydew treaded the dialogue with care. “I have varying pursuits. I have taught before.”
“Will you gift us your knowledge!?” The two pleaded with her to teach them probability’s secrets.
Honeydew had no intention of tutoring these businessmen. But, she wheedled information from their enthusiasm. She learned that ‘Wisdoms’ were Wine Medo’s teachers and scholars. She learned that understanding of odds, probability, and mathematics made for a rare Wisdom in Wine Medo. She learned that such Wisdoms were prized on a local school’s staff.
Honeydew felt inspiration’s rush. She said, “I’ll work at a school!”
“I thought you were a model!” said her tailor.
“Show your ears, students. A new Wisdom has arrived! Hers are ripened words.”
The voice of the school’s Chief Wisdom worked like laudanum over the skulk of students. It dragged them from gambols across the mulch floor of the classroom, into their creaky wicker seats. Some students lolled their heads against the rims of the half-moon chairs. Others rested chins in palms and elbows on their wooden writing blocks. All rolled their lidded eyes between the old growth of the Chief Wisdom in her usual robe, and the new bloom of Honeydew in the robe she’d just bought.
The Chief Wisdom went on. “She is Honeydew. A Wisdom of Augury. Show her discipline.”
The students chanted on queue. “Oh please Wisdom ours; share us your experience. Our wish is to learn.”
With no further words the Chief Wisdom strode from the cramped schoolroom. She slid the stretched-leather door shut with a clap. Honeydew faced the sea of students.
She had no instructions. The students’ expressions fell into two categories: ‘bored’ and ‘expectant’. All wore the school uniform of robes in the many-folded style, with real daisies laced around the collars and cuffs.
Honeydew laced her fingers behind her back and prowled between two parchment lanterns lighting her side of the room. The mulch crunched under her shoes. “You have eager looks,” she said. Assuming she addressed only the attentive students, this was a true statement. “But you’ll also need effort. Put your names in ink.” Honeydew felt that was a good place to start.
The students stared.
Honeydew rephrased. “Write your names down on parchment.” She sat down in her own half-moon wicker chair at the front. She picked up the wooden block, parchment, and pen from the end table to the side and wrote her name. She held up the sheet with her scratchy letters for the students to see.
The whole student body became attentive. They wore a communal look of fear. Some trembled. One student timidly said, “Oh please Wisdom Honeydew, that is a secret.”
Honeydew raised a brow. The young girl went on, “Parchment words are forbidden, at our stage of growth.”
There was some back and forth with various high voices in the student body. Honeydew learned that Starharbor’s arts - probability, making copy, drudgery, pencil pushery, shelf stockery - weren’t the subjects of Wine Medo classrooms. She learned of the wide array more commonly taught to Wine Medo children: divination and meteorology, time measurement, ceramics and other esoteric arts, expressions, geography, and flower-picking, to name a few.
In that first lesson, Honeydew learned significantly more than her pupils.
A fresh dilemma. Clearly there’d been miscommunication about her expertise, about the knowledge she had for these young minds. Honeydew wondered if teaching fit her wrongly, just like all the others jobs. She thought of going straight to the old Chief Wisdom and revealing the error - the discrepancy between what she knew, and what the students expected to learn.
“Oh please Wisdom Honeydew,” said the same young girl from before. “What’s today’s secret?”
That was a long first day. Honeydew came off as a snappish Wisdom; quick of temper, unforgiving of mistakes. When the students asked her questions about meteorology, she snarled, and said meteorology wasn’t in the cards that day. When Honeydew asked a student the chances of getting a certain number of rubies from a certain mixed amount of rubies and citrines, the student trembled, and asked what person owned so many gemstones, which vexed Honeydew. It seemed a bad beginning to her Wisdom career. The warrior raindrops fell heavier that day as they pounded her on the way to the hostel.
The sun rose the next day.
The sun, however, had played cards with his star friends after setting. They’d gotten a little too merry, and he dawdled for a long twilight before struggling into a hazy, grouchy sunrise.
Honeydew used the extra time wisely.
On this new day, when the students asked Honeydew the best muscles for expressing excitement, she showed them. When she quizzed them on the proper moments to pick morning glories for the widest bloom, she knew what answer to expect. She understood the topics. Honeydew had spent the sun’s long night pouring over scrolls purchased in a dusty shop beneath the hostel. She’d brushed up on her Wine Medo subjects.
The next day saw her even better prepared. And the next. And the next. And Honeydew watched the sun, and learned to judge its sloth. And she passed that information on to her students (with occasional secret lessons in probability).
And Mr. Grey learned to play the violin.
Mr. Grey returned on a drizzly day. The Wind’s mood at that time left all the days drizzly. With an internal joy, he met Honeydew in the street, beneath the rain at the end of a school day.
“I’ve got plenty of news to share,” said Mr. Grey. He motioned to Tom, standing nearby. “We had some strange encounters. You should have seen how far down this well went. But the big news is: I’m signed up for that contest.”
“Cool,” said Honeydew. “I’ve got something too… I found Jodee Coats.”