Chapter 33
Mullein
Brewer’s Reputation: 993.
Dream Cutter Stone Shard Quest: 13,300/15,000 shards.
I poured the ice billy goat ale into the two goblets set in a nest of summer grass between us. The color was tawny red. The bone-white foam swelled with a hush. Tiny bubbles flew from the head. I reached for one of the goblets.
“A toast to-”
-my fingers grazed the back of Abigail’s hand. Her eyes went wide, and for a moment the world seemed quiet and easy.
“Go for it,” she said. She let go of the goblet.
“I thought you were going to grab the other one,” I said.
She grabbed the other goblet and held it aloft. “A toast,” she said.
“...To brewing the best beer that we can.”
She nodded. We drank.
When I plunked my face through the foam, it sounded like sand falling on sand. The foam was simple and held a hint of orange peel marmalade. The lager was chilled to frigid temperatures. I thought for a moment that my lips would freeze to the lip of the goblet. The first strong flavor of the beer was of royal jelly on toast. It was musky, like cedar incense. There were swirls of nutmeg and cardamom. The aftertaste was close to the flavor of orange peels soaked in mulled wine.
“I can tell that your Hop Wallop skill is at one thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine,” Abigail said. “This might be one of your best beers yet.”
“It’s not too strong?”
“Not for an ice billy goat. The only critique I have is to experiment with different Foam Cascade sub skills. See what works better for this type of lager than the Greater Classic.”
That was enough beer for the morning. After a quick sip of Drunk Defiance, we continued on with our hike. We walked in the shadow of the colossal oak for a few hours until we reached a slope of bare earth against a hill. Only a landslide could have piled still living trees at the bottom.
“Look at all the mullein,” Abigail said.
“Must have happened a few weeks ago.”
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
Tall grasses, dandelions, and cottonwood sprouts were growing from the broken earth. But mullein thrived there. Dozens of them were in full bloom. They looked like elongated corn whose kernels had popped into yellow butter flowers.
We struggled for balance as we crossed the slope of the hill. Earth crumbled down from our footsteps. I found myself often reaching out to grab hold of something to steady myself. I ended up gripping the mullein stalks. It was like touching the wings of butterflies. The leaves and flowers were as soft as shredded silk. I couldn’t remember feeling anything so soft and easy on my skin. Bees with laden pollen baskets slept in some of those buttery flowers. How could they not curl up and sleep beneath a quiet sun in the luxury of high flowers?
“We should leave a barrel of Aggravated Wild Growth here to percolate,” I said.
After brewing the attribute beer, we climbed the hill and left the barrels at the top and in the shade of trees. Ethereal beer dripped and formed minuscule rivulets down the hill and over the roots of the mullein. The spectral colors of the beer marbled the hillside.
At last, we crossed the hillside and entered the shade of full grown juniper. The trees were over 20’ high. Small berries mimicked young unripe blueberries. The foliage was truly evergreen. Sunlight played upon long spider webs. The strands were as thick as whiskers.
“We have to collect these,” Abigail breathed.
We ambled through. Some of the webs stretched as far as the trees were tall. A chipmunk, caught in a web, squealed and hissed. A black spider with glowing purple veins rushed through the air on its bobbing web toward the panicked critter. They wrestled together until the chipmunk went limp and sagged in the web. The spider stretched like a splayed hand across its kill.
“Let’s tread carefully,” I said.
Abigail clenched her jaw like I did. I kept a lookout when she snapped spider webs with her dagger and reeled them in by spinning the blade. She kept a lookout when I clipped the webs with the bit of my axe and hauled the whole web in at once.
Spiders clicked at us. The offended ones presented themselves with raised front legs that moved like marionette limbs. Their gazes followed us, and their fangs pinched the air. The more webs we cut, the more spiders skittered across the ground.
As we continued to harvest spider silk I began to feel increasingly tense. I was only looking out at first. Then my eyes were darting at every sound. Abigail’s gasps startled me. Then I began to wring the handle of my forester axe. Abigail chewed a nail when it was my turn to harvest the silk. A spider, large as a bird and with legs as hairy as a squirrel’s tale, crossed over my boot-
“-Okay we’re done,” I said.
We bolted through the juniper. Abigail held the necks of beer bottles between her fingers. When we ran straight into a web in full shade, Abigail smashed those bottles together, and a quick ball of fire bubbled around us. Two fried spiders fell from on high and thumped on the ground.
After another sprint, we were free from the den. We sat on an old log speckled with turkey tail mushrooms. The wood was decayed and wet. We faced each other and spent an hour carefully unraveling spider silk from each other’s hands. When the adrenaline wore off, we laughed back and forth. We spoke softly because we concentrated on keeping the silk intact. She turned my hand around like she could divine our future in my palm lines. She ran her fingers along mine to pull off the stubborn strands of spider silk.
I had a harder time cleaning the silk from her hands. I had to work tediously to compensate for the blindness of large fingers. I felt her eyes on me as I worked. I had to raise her hand and turn it in the sunlight to glean any last traces of silk.
“Sometimes you're a brute,” she said.
I didn’t look up, but my brows rose. “A brute?”
“The way you cook and handle things. You broke a bottle setting it down too hard just the other day.”
I stopped and lowered her hand. “Am I hurting you?”
“No. Sometimes you’re a brute. Sometimes you’re gentle.”