Chapter 122

It Was Never About The Beer

Brewer’s Reputation: 389

Oh, what a glare! Was I suddenly a hare beneath the ending fangs of a mad wolf? Would I have to fight my first human? Of course not, but that’s what the tension felt like! Ah, I had never seen someone’s face turn so mean ever before. Would the orcs blanch?

“Do you have any idea what you’ve put an old lady through?” Gertrude whispered. Flecks of spit flew from her lips. “Any idea?”

“I’m not sure I follow.”

She rummaged within her garb and withdrew one of my ethereal beers. The chimeric light reflected on her teeth and in her scleras. “Take it.” She shoved the bottle in my direction, and the liquid within tinkled. “I want nothing to do with it anymore.” She forced it into my hands.

I turned the bottle and read the label. It was one of the mausoleum beers which I had brewed and passed to Evon. Gertrude’s name was on it.

“Where did you get this?” I needed to make sure I had a firm grasp on things.

“Lavenfauvish.”

“It didn’t work?” I inspected the bottle, checking to see whether the seal had been broken. “Doesn’t seem like you've opened it yet. You should’ve been given instructions along with an ethereal plane beer.”

“All that you’ve put me through has me-” She pinched the air with a violent shake. “-this close to death! I should’ve carved you a handle for the sickle you’ve dangled over my head.”

“Slow down, slow down. What’s the matter?”

“How could you do this to me? To my daughter? Do you think this offers her any rest? Any peace? She was angry with me, but what if she’s already made her peace? What if I see her and she gets angry all over again? You brought this curse down on me! You did it! And she shouldn’t be budged from her peace!”

I had always expected sadness from folk, not anger. Was this the first time that someone was angry with me over the mausoleum beers? Had Evon been confronted with this? He never mentioned anything when we met to trade beers with ingredients.

Gah, she was upset! But who was I to expect emotions from folk when it came to the deceased? She must have her reasons, but I couldn’t help from wondering for the hundredth time if what I was doing was right. I sighed from the deep of me.

“…I thought it would give people a chance to say goodbye.”

“One goodbye isn’t enough? I have to say goodbye again? I don’t want to say goodbye again, but I can’t live through the end of my life without telling my daughter what she needed so badly to hear. What I couldn’t say then. Something important. Very important.” Gertrude turned her glare to the bottle. “I wish a great many things, young man, but what I wish above all else is that this bottle didn’t exist.”

“I can take this back if that helps.”

“You fool!” Suddenly she produced a cane from her inventory and began whacking me with it. “You fool! You fool!” The cane clattered, but her arms still swung. Her eyes were closed and tears were squeezed from them. “You…fool…”

I lowered an arm from parrying. Gertrude slumped into her hands. Her shoulders trembled; poor woman.

I retrieved her cane, but she wouldn’t come out for it. All I could offer was to come around and pat her back. She didn’t respond so I tried rubbing gently.

I tried to be soft with her. “Please, tell me how I can help you.”

She lifted her face from her snot-wet hands. “I don’t know what I’m doing here. I don’t know what I expected. I raised hell until that lavish fellow offered to transport me north.” A horrendous sob tore through her. “…I’m so afraid.”

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

“You’re still not sure if you want to see your daughter again?”

She looked at the bottle, then at me. In pained eyes I saw her humanity. She seemed shed of all her life, and she seemed like a child whose soul was woebegone. “Why did you have to make something like this? Why couldn’t you just leave it be?”

“I…I thought I was helping people.”

“Well, you’re not helping me. Why bring my daughter back if you can’t bring her back?”

“I-”

“-This is too cruel. Too cruel.”

In a burst of what felt like defiance, she scooped up her cane and rose. She tumbled forward and I rushed to catch her. Her limbs shuddered as though all her strength had let her. In my arms she wept. She wept so hard, with such gravity, that it drew tears from me as well. Her cane hit the ground once more.

In the cloth at my shoulder she said, “It’s not right…”

There was nothing I could do but bear her weight and be with her. We sat in small huddle upon the ground. When strength returned to her, she lifted her face from my shoulder. She seemed different. I could now say that I’ve witnessed someone double in age in mere minutes. Oh, how tired she looked.

Her gaze fell away for a moment. She lifted her eyebrows as though to point. “Your grandfather. What was he like?”

I turned to find that she’d been gazing at the forester axe.

My grandfather? Oh, wow. “Well, he passed away when I was a kid. He was quiet. …Maybe quiet’s not the best word. He talked with me a lot, but he was a soft talker. If you didn’t lean in to listen, you’d miss things.”

“Seems you’ve caught the important things. Your first handle might’ve failed you, but you’re still eager to carve.”

“I always had so many questions, and he never got sick of answering. I was little, but I still knew when he was making stuff up. It didn’t matter, because he told amazing stories.”

Gertrude listened deeply—raptly as I recounted stories. I must have turned wistful because I found that I could not stop talking.

What a treasure it was to revisit the days where my grandfather would amble through Lunstad parks with me. He would point out brass, mercurial cicada shells clutching bark. When I would curiously beer at insects he would nudge me and encourage me to gently pick them up. What an adventure it was to grow the nerve to pick up insects!

There were cooler days with calmer adventures too. In the spring he would lead us on walks where spring flowers brimmed path sides. Those were tasty days, because he always produced persimmons from a small knapsack in his pocket.

What a soothing soul that man was. He would plant himself on park benches and whistle—just whistle. But you had to hear him whistle, because it was with skill beyond birds. His lungs knew old songs. And of course, being such a better whistler than birds, he could mimic whichever species you mentioned. The proof was that they’d arrive in the middle of his songs. It would make him smile when I spit between my lips. “You’ll get the hang of it,” he’d say.

Ah, what a grandfather to have! My fondest memories were spent with him in our backyard garden. He would find me playing in the pebbles and arrive in a crouch with an umph. We would pick out the best pebbles and pile them together. What made them the best? Oh, this one was clear, this one shaped like an arrowhead, this one had two stripes…

And I loved to hear him talk. He had stories to tell, adventures to recount. I couldn’t remember a single one, but I didn’t think that was important. Hearing his voice was important. It was the sound of him, the gentleness of an old voice. But as life went on, I heard that voice less and less…and less….

All that I shared put a silence between us. Gertrude was looking through things. She took the bottle, touched it with her fingers and her gaze, then held it close to her chest.

“I’m sorry you came all this way,” I said.

“I’m at the end of things. Seeing my daughter for one more last time deserved a big adventure. Maybe it’s much easier for other people. But not for me.”

“We’re making our way to the sea. We’re going to build a tavern there.”

“Bah. I’m going to speak with my daughter. Then…” She gazed off into the woods. “I think I’ll let that sickle blade fall. It’s been dangling over my head for too long now.”

“You want to die?”

She gripped her cane and began to rise. I helped her up.

“I’ve been holding on to life as hard as I can. I’m ill beyond what I care to share, and the potions I’ve been taking have reached their limits. A body that is failing like mine means death, Hawkin. …And no need to make beer out of me. I’m the only one left; the useless one that got left behind.”

Just like that, the strange encounter came to a close. She waddled to the rickshaw, and the butler helped her up. The wheels creaked as the rickshaw was turned, and the wood groaned as it was pulled away.

I watched the trail of the forest where they left for longer than I could see them.

Such a journey for the sake of her daughter’s peace at a tremendous toll on herself. Ah… Was I doing the right thing? I was something I mulled over without coming to an answer.

But an understanding bloomed within me.

It had seemed at first that people were just in it for themselves. Yet, almost everyone had proven otherwise. They had come because they were willing to sacrifice so much for those they loved.