Chapter 53

Personal Effects

Brewer’s Reputation: 638.

Dream Cutter Stone Shard Quest: 13,300/15,000 shards.

Last night’s rain clung to the poppies, the marigolds, the asters, and the goldenrods in our clearing. As we moved Abigail’s things into my cabin, we became soaked from the knees down after bumping into drenched flowers. Early morning light was a mix of blue and yellow rays. Birds were only starting to stir. The cocoon-laden forest was taking its first breaths of the new day’s air.

I held Abigail’s bedding above the wet flowers. She led me through the flowers to my cabin. Inside, I dropped her bedding on my cot. She pinched each layer of my bedding between her thumb and forefinger.

“Let’s keep your comforter, and let’s use my sheets,” said Abigail.

I felt the softness of each layer. “This will be an upgrade for me.”

We threw the extra sheets into a barrel filled with hot water and a ladle of bouncing bet derived soap. Using Brewer’s Bubble, I churned the water. The smell of sweet cream and sweet orchid steamed up from the barrel.

“Let’s switch the stoves,” I said.

I foolishly proposed that we roll her stove on logs. Abigail simply popped open two bottles of Third hand attribute lagers. The root-beer-colored hands clutched her stove, removed the stovepipe from the ceiling, picked the whole thing up, and followed Abigail through the rows of flowers. Wet ash dripped as she went. Switching the stoves went without a hitch. We put my smaller old one in her old cabin.

“Hawkin?” said Abigail, as I crouched to inspect the new stove.

“My stove…it was the reason Thrush and I met. The day my life changed.”

“I should visit Hiccup soon and summon Thrush.”

“I’m fond of the monster.”

“I’m sure he’ll come back to put his smoker back to use.”

“I miss the smell.”

“Let’s smoke some fish together. Maybe he’ll smell it.”

We smiled at each other with our eyes, and I couldn’t help but chuckle.

Soon I was blessed with Abigail’s delighted chuckles as she went through her trove of clothing. She remarked her favorite articles; and in the burgeoning light of the day, she held garments up to her collar bone, draped the lengths down her body, and pivoted this way and that. I knew she would need storage for her clothes, so I wove ethereal forged labels into chimeric colored baskets. I focused on my task while quietly reveling in her simple joy. Basket after basket was filled with splendid sundresses, deeply dyed tunics, thick linen pants, and dark weighty cloaks. I slid each color-throwing basket beneath the cot.

“Will they all fit?” she said.

“Your twelve baskets next to my two?”

For each piece of clothing Abigail had, she had collected ten times as many dried flowers. Empty bottles of beer, vases, glassware, and gourds held bouquets of dried flowers in her cabin. And she was right: they were so lovely! She wrung her hands as we talked about what to do with them. She seemed nervous when she said, “We don’t really need all these dead flowers, do we?”

I hugged her from behind, kissed behind her ear, and began loading my inventory with all her dried flowers. She went from nervous to beaming with sparkles in her eyes.

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“Let’s find a place for all of these,” I said.

“All of them?”

“All of them. And you can teach me the best way to dry flowers. We’ll fill our home with them.”

“Hawkin,” Abigail said when I stepped over the threshold of her cabin. I turned to her and put a hand up to block the rising sun. “I’ve never made a home with anyone.”

She came to me. I took her hand. We strolled through the waking flowers to my cabin and spent the morning putting high shelves around the perimeter of my cabin. I put my axe to work to plane those shelves. We stuffed them with dried flowers from wall to wall. Dozens of powdery scents fell from the rustling flowers. Zinnias dropped their scent of dried toothpaste, peonies wafted their cinnamon and lime zest fragrance, the honey-musk of yarrow drifted to the floor of the cabin like floating pollen.

I was simply astonished. How could this woman find so much joy in arranging an overflow of dried flowers? She wasn’t asking for anything; she just wanted flowers. It was such a delicate joy that it broke my heart. I could not explain the feeling any other way.

If there was anything else she liked as much as flowers, it was her books. We returned to her cabin and stowed her multitude of shelves of books into our inventories. There were sun-stained clothbound tomes, wobbly leatherbound volumes, stiff thimble-sewn journals, and a host of craft-bound books. Some smelled of paper-must, some smelled of cedar and sawdust, and the one on her only chair smelled like sunflower oil.

We took the books and her chair to my cabin. Our chairs were different—mine, rough; hers, near-polished—but they completed the table.

“Oh but we’re out of room,” Abigail said. Her gaze roved the shelves of jars that held foraged items.

“Let’s move all this to your old cabin,” I said. “That’ll be for extra storage. The cellar is always an option too.”

Within the hour, the table was crammed with jars, and the shelves each held a long book-scape. Abigail pulled out a few volumes that she’d been meaning to get into. She set a stack of three upon her pillow.

All the jars went into her old cabin where the books had been: jars of eastern hemlock needles, jars of dried gemmed puffballs, jars of dandelion root, a gourd of roasted chicory root, and on and on. We smelled of clay and root and earth by the time we were done.

For lunch, I ran back and grabbed the jar of roasted chicory root. I prepared the root in a strong black tisane for us. We smoked small fry, and shared a crisp salad of wild greens, and sliced cabbage, all with dreambon juice dressing. We talked shop while we ate, which culminated in spreading out an assortment of grains on the table to discuss.

Abigail pushed a pale, almost translucent grain of barley, across the table with the tip of a finger. “Jualsfeld glass barley. Makes one of the clearest colors of beer available.”

“Beer that looks like water?”

“Almost. If you’re brewing something light—say, a crisp ale—it will come out like murky water.”

“Murky.”

“Doesn’t sound good, does it?” said Abigail. “But that’s the reality. Some Brewers are trying their hand on making a clear double stout.”

“Something thick.”

“Can you imagine? Viscous like warmed honey.”

I picked up a few kernels of barley that were deformed. “And these ones?” Each one looked like they had been bent in a twist with pliers. The barley was wheat colored and sported a single twisted stripe of pastel green.

“Ikad spirals. Ikad is as south as Salindune, but you have to go far east. Sweet Gale is about halfway from Salindune to there. They’re grown on pastures near sand bluffs—great big cliffs that drop miles down into a cold, white sand desert. It gets so windy there that the kernels mutate in the wind. Trees are forced sideways.”

“You’ve traveled the world.”

“Oh no, not nearly; but I have traveled my fair share. I’ve apprenticed under a lot of Brewers. Grikk Oldertuff—he brews exclusively with Ikad spirals—enters the Oude Brewer’s Competitive every year with the same beer, but has never placed.”

“I’d like to try it. What is it?”

“Spontaneity Brett Ale. Supremely difficult; often his batches take other wild yeasts. He’s been cultivating brett yeast on wine grapes around his brewery for the sole purpose of the chance to brew a perfect brett spontaneity beer. He’s forcing the brett yeast to outcompete native yeasts. I think he’s going to transform the world of beer one day.”

“I would like to try his beer. Have you had it?”

“I’ve had some of the most remarkable beers in the world working at his brewery."

Fueled by Abigail’s tales, I started brewing beer right after lunch. Abigail worked on her Thewwy’s Puncheon tap quest, while I worked tirelessly on trying to brew a Golden Chapter beer. I went through batch after batch of a double crisp ale recipe.

I hit several ceilings. Brewers Chill hit level 1999, Throughout the Ages hit level 1999, and Mash Master hit level 1999. Foam Cascade hit level 1786, and the sub skill Sticky Meringue hit level 441—an improvement of only a single level.

I quaffed nearly two quarts of water before the headache of leveling came on. Information flooded my mind. The headache came on strong, and instead of celebrating a total of seven of my skills hitting the brink of gold rank, I spent most of the rest of the day lying in bed.