Chapter 9 - Wine Do
From within a country home constructed in the round shape of an old wood-stove, there came the happy jangle of a bicycle bell. Mr. Grey withdrew his dry right hand from the fraying door rope. A rosy-cheeked sun shone from behind, warming his spine. It cast his thin shadow and Tom’s round one upon the flaking paint of the front door.
“Isn’t the time late?” asked Mr. Grey. On the door, the head of the thin shadow turned to face the round one. “I won’t have sight of the strings…”
The round shadow shrugged. “The best ceremonies are. That is to say, late. Stars enhance the dish.”
The Grey shadow faced the door, its arms forming two hard lines at its sides. One arm held the shadow of a violin coffin.
The head of the round shadow turned, glancing back at its caster. “Where’s Honeydew at?” Tom asked as if just noticing her absence.
“She’s working tonight, I think?”
The door swung open. The two shadows twisted over the uneven, raisiney surface of a fragile elder woman.
“Well, well, well, what splendid young men you dearies look!” said the old woman. She offered her left hand for a shake.
Mr. Grey quickly set his coffin on the stoop and used that hand for a proper shake. He said, “I hope the day’s not too late?”
“Too late! Such a wit. You’re practically premature.”
She smiled and clapped each of them on a shoulder. Mr. Grey noticed Tom shifting a confused face between Mr. Grey and the elderly homeowner. A moment later he realized that the old woman had spoken without a local accent. Tom was struggling with her words. Mr. Grey thought this odd. He had no chance to question the elder, however, as she ushered them inside.
Unlike the workers’ prisons and rundown houses of Starharbor - which clung eagerly to damp and chill, and always seemed airier, emptier, and larger on the inside - the stove-shaped country house just outside of Toscamo defined the word ‘cozy’. Not a stamp-sized spot of wall could Mr. Grey see. Every available surface served in the display of family drawing. These showed the artistic evolution of the woman’s children and grandchildren. The artwork gradually changed from the wonderfully-atrocious crayon-and-marker work of childhood, to the equally-wonderfully-atrocious pen-and-pencil work of adolescence. Neither was there much floor to be seen, or walked upon. An astounding array of furniture and decorations covered it; every piece loved to dilapidation; as though the old woman regularly hosted gatherings of hundreds. Dining tables, end tables, nightstands, dining chairs and lawn chairs and office chairs, sofas, divans, lazyboys, dressers and robe racks and floor-lamps; from this furnished wilderness, flickering parchment lanterns hanging from the ceiling sent shadows cavorting. A fire hummed in one corner, inside of a wood stove, the perfect miniature of the house itself. The fire lent the atmosphere a warm, dry, sunset haze.
“Miss, how many will attend?” asked Mr. Grey. He repeatedly fastened and unfastened one clasp of the violin coffin.
The old homeowner noticed his eyes passing over her furniture. “Dearie, dearie, dearie; ease up that heartrate. This is a Free-and-Easy Wine Do! Just me and the gals. But I never throw out something that’s got use left. When a grandkid’s missing some needed piece of chattel, they can give me a visit.”
Mr. Grey looked again over the diverse chairs and tables and leather screens and bookshelves; all covered in dust, and half-devoured by moths or worms or termites. He thought it likely that many a grandkid had lacked a piece of chattel, and not come calling.
“We’ll have our Do up in the garden,” she explained. “It’s our lunar tradition. Follow me if you please.”
The woman led Mr. Grey and Tom up steps of split wood. The boards creaked in agony under the slightest weight. They wound round and round the inside of the curving stove-house wall. Many of the steps held stacks of books, or piles of laundry, or the husks of potted plants, withered in the dry heat.
Presently they summited the stairs, where an open trapdoor waited. The old woman had mounted the steps with crawling tirelessness, with Mr. Grey marching stonily behind, and Tom huffing at the rear. They now emerged into a rooftop garden. Bean shoots ordered themselves in militant rows across the roof. On one end, a raised and covered porch leaned over the side. It offered a view of both the ordered bean columns, and the setting horizon.
“You’re joining the ceremony before you play,” said the old woman.
Mr. Grey got halfway through his polite refusal when Tom worked out the meaning of the ill-formed words. “We’d love to partake!” He said with a smile.
Mr. Grey looked to the hot-faced sun, sinking through a sky like mulberry juice. He looked to his violin. He remembered how motivated he’d been for these small jobs after Blushing-in-the-Snow’s chastisement. He remembered how that motivation met its first check in the task of getting the work. He remembered a resurgence of spirit on finding this old woman, who wanted someone to enchant while she drank wine ceremoniously. Now, confronted with the inevitability of play, Mr. Grey’s motivation vanished.
Mr. Grey wished - not for the first time - that his ticker was working. He wanted to hasten the end of what he felt would be another dismal performance.
Tom and this old ambler had other notions.
Their matron shuffled over the roof’s soft soil. She led Mr. Grey and Tom to the covered balcony. The overlook already contained three other women, all of equivalent or greater age. All four elders, including their host, wore bright, handmade robes with patterns; one with candlesticks, one with garden rakes, one with poetrees, and the homeowner’s robe came in an unnerving pattern of Sourbeak Hoppers.
From the deck railing of flaking-painted wood, Mr. Grey and Tom held the scope of a drowsy land. Forests of three-pronged poetrees sank deeper into shadow, nestling in hollows between wavy grass hills. In the distance, needle’s-eye islands seemed to float in great lakes of wine, which seemed like reservoirs of thick blood beneath the ruddy sun.
At the rooftop’s height, with such an expanse before and below him, Tom swayed dizzily. Mr. Grey felt perfectly stable. Mr. Grey had cut his balances on balloon elevators.
Turning around, Mr. Grey beheld the roof and it’s garden. He saw the dark soil, and the ordered rows of plant shoots. Though the garden had once housed diverse bloodlines of flowers, it now boarded but one family; the Beans.
“Peeking at the crop, dolly?” asked the old woman wrapped in candlesticks.
“I believe it’s a new… trend?” asked Mr. Grey.
The woman whose pattern matched the distant forests said, “The plan came from Jodee Coats. That lass made swoopsome alterations in these parts. And all I’ll say is; we ought to have more Starharbor kinds passing through. You’re all so darned helpful!”
“I understand she’s moved on. On to Glory Days.”
“Already looking for the next crowd to steer, bless her!”
“Did she give you our accent?”
“That she did m’boy,” answered the rake-robed old lady. “Let it not be said us old gals are slow on what’s new. It’s heaps easier than speaking like most folks.”
Tom, struggling to keep pace with the unfamiliar speech, said slowly, “But the smell of Rose… Of Stock, Passion, and Lilac… The perfume is gone.”
“Don’t tell me you’re a scent-fearer?” said the homeowner in her Sourbeaks. She didn’t adjust her speech for Tom, more from thoughtlessness than malice. “If us old girls aren’t worried about strange smells stuffin’ up our sniffers, you young folks shouldn’t balk.”
The old ladies then fell into a debate of who’d been bit the worst by a feral scent. And who’d been attacked most recently. And who bore it with the greatest steadfastness. Each elder felt convinced, in every case, that she herself took first place.
During this interval, Tom and Mr. Grey discussed the garden.
“Miss Coats got around the land,” said Mr. Grey. He loomed out from the balcony. “So it seems at least.”
“These plots once had bright flowers. Now they grow sullen,” said Tom, in a tone to match his words.
“I wonder what else she’s done. Off in Glory Days.”
“Better if not much. This was a change for the worse.”
Mr. Grey looked from the horizon to tom. “I can’t speak to that,” he said mildly. “I only need her writing; to fill her visa.”
“Do beans have a good flavor?”
“That depends, I guess.”
Before Tom could ask on what the flavor of beans depended, the ladies reached a conclusion in their debate. Each secretly felt herself the winner. They called Mr. Grey and Tom over and declared now the moment for the Wine-Do.
Tom knew the ceremony, so he joined in explaining it to Mr. Grey. They described it as a ritual of deliberate and precise motion, both in pouring and drinking the wine. They described these motions to Mr. Grey in detail, with Tom eagerly pantomiming. They suggested Mr. Grey would do best by, ‘following their lead’.
With these and a few other friendly tips, the Wine Do commenced.
The Diligent reader might suppose Mr. Grey easily performed these precise motions which the ceremony demanded. The diligent reader perhaps forgets the old adage, ‘supposing makes a-’ Oh wait, I’ve botched it. Anyway, the movements and gestures of the ceremony weren’t easy to Mr. Grey. He stumbled through awkwardly.
Nobody minded.
Throughout the ceremony, Mr. Grey applied dabs of cologne to combat the scented candles filling the air. He repeatedly shifted his violin coffin aside, as it frequently got in the way of where his arm was supposed to swing. By the conclusion of the ceremony - when the wine had been poured, aerated, and sat on the stretched leather coffee table, ready for drinking - Mr. Grey’s spirits had plunged to a previously-unexplored, abyssal depth. The ladies chose that precise moment to drink, and bid Mr. Grey begin.
The violin came forth from its coffin. It glimmered and threw a long shadow over the bean sprouts in the last beam of sunlight. Mr. Grey accidentally ran the stiff hairs of the taught bow against the string. The string squeaked out of tune. He hastily turned one of the tense pegs yet another notch tighter. All this bought him a few tocks of grace; he couldn’t tell how many precisely. Then the instrument, performer, and audience were all ready.
Mr. Grey could do nothing but play.
There lay, upon the satiny fabric of the night sky, a tinsel of stars. There lay, close by the rooftop garden of rich dark soil, a nebula of candles. The Wind never said if she flew in the high space between those distant sparks, but the candles spoke of her on the rooftop. They flickered in her breeze. The outer sky gave no smell, carried no sound, and nipped at any visitors’ skin. The rooftop air smelled like ice, and trilled with bell bugs, and filled the ceremony attendees with night’s eye-widening vigor. Like moths, they gathered their chairs around the largest candle - a veritable Mars in that lower lighted cluster - and spoke in sleepy, happy whispers.
“I don’t think a Wine Do’s ever gone so perfect, do you dolly?” Asked one old woman of another.
The other answered, “I think this young man needs to come back. And again after that. And after that. And that’s all I’ll say, dearie.”
The mars-candle-glow did not quite reach their robes. It shone only on the pleased wrinkles of the elders, and the broadly smiling face of Tom, and Mr. Grey’s face of stone. Their heads orbited round the large candle-star, disembodied.
Mr. Grey’s shoulders collapsed and quivered as they released held tension. No one saw it in the dark. “Thank you miss, and thank you miss,” His grey face nodded at the two wrinkled ones in turn. “The songs were enough?”
“Grand! Listen how he talks. Spectacular m’boy.” The candlelit face on his right beamed. A fist in the dark dealt his shoulder a surprise-blow of approval.
“Pots would be happy,” said Tom.
“Now get comfy in that wicker. share some nightcaps with us,” said one wrinkled face. The other faces nodded. Mr. Grey thought of refusing. He had noticed a coming storm. In that twinkling field of high emptiness above them, over the distant patch where the wine lakes had slipped in a bloody sunset, the stars met their end. Dense clouds left there by The Wind hid the lights from view.
But perhaps the clouds aren’t drifting this way, thought Mr. Grey. He wanted to relax. He thought it a good moment to put aside thoughts of treasure payment, and pursuits of Jodee Coats. He felt it decent to share a glass of ritual wine.
So Mr. Grey did relax, and did put aside other cares, and did share in the wine.
“Now if we want to be completely traditional,” began one old face.
“And we do!” put in another.
“Yes, we do. And under the traditional way, now’s the moment we’d trade stories.”
“And after, we’d cross our arms, and bow at each other.”
“I was getting to that! We’d bow, after the stories were done, and we’d all say, ‘We have flushed our cheeks; together under the stars; farewell till next meet.’ If we’re doing the full traditional, that is.”
“And we are,” agreed the other three.
“I’ll start my dearies. No interrupting,” The wrinkled face which spoke first, probably the host’s, began her story.
“Once there was an old candy farmer and his children. They lived at the edge of a lake, of course, and drew up coral from under the waves. The wife no longer existed, but that’s of no importance. The coral grew in flavorful shapes, and crazy patterns, and the farmer and his children lived wealthy and happy. The children did bicker sometimes. But then, that’s to be expected.
“Well it happens my dearies that one day the farmer dove beneath the surface of the wine - and you can be sure he always held his breath so he never got too happy - and found there was no coral. The dark bottom was all sand and shiny pebbles. Shiny pebbles weren’t circulated as currency at the time either. The farmer found himself in bad straits. When he told his children, they cried. They bickered worse than ever children should.
“Now since hunger is alarming, especially when it goes for long periods of time, the farmer consulted a wise enchanter. The enchanter lived nearby, in an Oh Well, as wise enchanters always do. This enchanter told the farmer he must go to the island in the exact middle of the lake. The enchanter told him, on that island would be an old poetree. The enchanter told the farmer that one of the roots of this poetree must have grown too long, got into the wine lake, and poisoned all the coral.
“The enchanter told the farmer more; that he must swim across the wine to the island, without swallowing any wine, which was, again, poisoned. And wasn’t the farmer glad then that he had always held his breath, and hadn’t swallowed one poison drop in his earlier swimming! Well, the enchanter said that he must find a rusty axe - left on the island from the foresting days - and cut the long root of the old tree beside the lake of wine. Then the coral would again grow.
“The enchanter gave the farmer a final piece of advice. On this island, he said, lived the Ogurs called ‘Long Faces’. Kind spirits of the island forest. To see one would give the farmer good luck, but only if he heeded their words. Then the enchanter told the farmer to get gone, because his - the enchanter’s - kettle was about to boil.
“When the farmer returned home to tell the children his task he found them bickering. He tried to calm them. But they were very hungry, and very cranky. The farmer set out quite readily.
“The farmer swam across the lake. He took no gulps of wine and wasn’t poisoned. When he reached the island the forest of poetrees seemed dark and imposing. He wanted to swim away. Then he felt his stomach grumble. So he pressed on, deep into the branchy shadows of the woods. For a long time he stumbled in the thickets and the shade. Every root seemed so huge and long and prone to tripping, that he felt sure each one must be the one sought-after. The farmer couldn’t think how he’d ever find the right root.
“At one point in this search he stumbled very badly, and cut his foot. It was not a dangerous cut, but it stung. It made the farmer angry. But his anger turned to delight, for he found that he’d stumbled over a rusty axe; just the sort the old enchanter had told him he’d need. Hefting the knotty wood handle, the farmer turned on the tripping roots.
“He readied a swing, thinking to chop all of them,. Just to be on the safe side.
“But at the instant before he swung, a Long Face appeared! It swam out of the space between poetree trunks. Its face was like a person’s, but longgggeeeeerrrrrr. It looked at him, and smiled longly, and told him that he mustn’t chop all the roots, only the right root, or his family would suffer unspeakable misery and starvation.
“The farmer remembered the other thing the old enchanter had said; that he must heed the Long Faces. He set the axe back at his side. He meant to ask the long face which root was the right root, but it had vanished.
“The farmer set about circling the island, searching for a particularly old tree with particularly long roots. He found one, where the root wriggled thickly into the soil, just before the shore. He hefted the axe, but the long face appeared again, and told him that was the wrong root.
“So the farmer walked some more, and grew hungrier, and more tired. He found another root like the first, thick and burrowing at the sand. Up came the axe, out came the Long Face. Wrong root. The farmer grumbled, but went on again.
“Finally, he came to a very long root indeed. It dangled from a small cliff over the wine lake. He looked at it, and saw that it did not touch the wine. He wondered if it was the right root. The long Face appeared a final time, and told him, yes, that was the root. That root touched the wine at high tide.
“With a single mighty blow, the farmer severed the root. He thanked the Long Face. Leaving the axe on the island, the farmer returned to his farm. When he arrived, the coral candy had regrown, and his children had stopped their bickering. And the farmer and his family were rich and full forever afterwards.”
The old woman’s story worked in tandem with the ritual wine on the Mr. Grey’s senses. The central candle burned higher and wider, the smoke it sent up gathered in the dark on the edge of Mr. Grey’s sight, and the wax flowed in honey waterfalls. Thoughts of his payment melted from Mr. Grey in that mire. Thoughts of Jodee Coats remained. Mr. Grey wondered about the land of Glory Days. He wondered if Jodee Coats had changed it, as she’d changed Wine Medo. He wondered which words could convince her to fill out her parchmentwork. He wondered what would happen if she refused. He wondered if she’d come home.
“You’re turn, mister-master-enchanter!”
Mr. Grey focused on the blurry circle of floating faces, trying to discern which was the master-enchanter who’s turn it was to tell a story. Mr. Grey’s senses sharpened when he realized every face had its eyes fixed on him.
“I reallytruly couldn’t,” said Mr. Grey in a blanched voice of fluctuating tempo.
“Oh yes you can!” said one of the women.
“I’m not much for it. Telling tales and that business.”
“Was mine overly eloquent, dearie? Just tell us a fun memory.”
“I… don’t have a story.”
“You have several, just in our time together,” said Tom.
Scanning his muddy mind, Mr. Grey supposed he did have one or two encounters he’d survived since arriving in Wine Medo. He thought he could frame one of those as a story. At the same time the wine loosened his mind - the brisk night air filled him with energy.
In an unusual turn of events, Mr. Grey agreed to talk at length. He told them about his trip on the road of many branches, his robbery by Gourd, his rescue by Tom.
Since that story has already seen form in a preceding chapter, it needn’t be retold here. It is sufficient to say that - although he’d been ill-treated by Gourd and his bandits - Mr. Grey made an effort to condemn no one in his telling. Not being an accomplished skald, Mr. Grey’s version lacked some elements others might have added. He included no jocular descriptions of attacks and fighting maneuvers, such as Tom would’ve given had it been his turn. Nor did he include elaborate schemes or hidden motives, the kind certain to appear in any tale of Honeydew’s.
But Mr. Grey told a story. And in his own way. That was enough.
Another old woman went after that.
When she finished, Tom told one. Tom’s told a story of when he and his Mallet Master spent 12 days in the otherworld of the giant spiders, which to them seemed like 12 epochs. He said this master had stopped existing recently, and had been very wise, and taught Tom all he knew of Mallet combat. Tom told them he was glad to carry on this master’s legacy.
Then another old woman went.
The circle of faces traded stories long into the smoky, candlelit night. Mr. Grey worry not a pebble about treasure, or violin-playing, or cologne, or travel plans. He warmed himself by the candles, drank the wine, and enjoyed the stars… And the company.
But eventually the faces began to yawn louder and longer. Tom’s face rose to Tom’s full height. He said, “We have flushed our cheeks; together under the stars; farewell till next meet.” Mr. Grey repeated this, then the ladies.
Before any awkwardness arose from them requesting their payment, the homeowner beckoned Mr. Grey and Tome to wait a moment. She bustled for her treasure purse in the dark. A moment later she stuck her hand into the light of the low-burning candle. In it, she held their payment for the job.
Four feathers.
“Now you treat yourselves to a nice gondola-ride, dearie,” she said sweetly.
Mr. Grey promised they would. He accepted the payment, and he and Tom bid farewell to the old ladies. As Mr. Grey and Tom turned, their faces vanished from the light shed by the Mars candle. As they walked away, into the dark, Mr. Grey considered their payment.
Four feathers.
Enough to buy a candy meal for two. Maybe three.
Mr. Grey realized they’d never reach Glory Days. Not by working for small pay; not at small venues.