“It’s a beautiful night, isn’t it?” Brinn signed as we sat by the lakeshore. Well, she tried to sign, at least. She wasn’t very good at it, her gesticulating habit always getting in the way. But after nearly three years of lessons, I expected her to be further along.

Of course, I didn’t tell her that. She didn’t have to learn sign language in the first place. So I wasn’t going to jeopardize our friendship by saying something stupid like, “Why can’t you be better at sign language?” On the other hand, lousy sign language is better than no sign language at all. And it made it possible to talk with her at night.

“I guess,” I said as I peeled calluses off my fingers.

“I can’t stay long tonight. People need to have their bread early in the morning. Bastard forbid fresh bread in the afternoon.”

“Ask Heimee if he’ll hire you next time you visit.”

“I already have. I ask every time I visit. He says he doesn’t want to quarrel with my aunt, then offers me his condolences.”

“That does sound like him. Well, I’m pretty sure tomorrow I won’t leave late. Tomorrow’s all about bottling. That never takes too long. I don’t think Heimee likes it. He gets too attached to the casks; having to empty them feels like he is killing a pet or something. Aren’t you afraid Era will wander away?”

Brinn considered her aunt’s ekkuh. Slender, her dark brown feathers glistening in the moonlight, big eyes, pupils the size and shape of an egg. “We have an understanding, her and I. She knows I’m her getaway pass from aunt-villainy.” To this, Era bent her legs and lay down next to us.

“Can I ask you a weird question?”

“I hate when you don’t. Please, weird away.”

I considered my question while taking a deep breath, watching the lantern-swillows blinking their chest green while flying high among the stars, migrating north. It was a beautiful night. “Do you believe mountains are alive?” I asked.

“Alive?”

“Yes, do you think they can move? Think, have a will?”

“Sure. Look at the moon.”

I looked at it, so full and bright it could be the sun warming spring into summer. “The moon?”

“Yes, think about it. She moves across the sky, never stops, never rests, keeps going and going, and has phases like moods. What else can she be if not a flying mountain? Dead things don’t move or fly. Not as far as I’m aware.”

I played with the thought in my head. “That’s nonsense.”

“Why? Did you know the moon tugs on the world? That’s how the tides form. Which means she is also magical. Can dead things use magic?”

“I suppose not.”

Brinn smiled with smugness known only to those who pull a meaningful analogy out of their bums. “Why do you ask?”

My eyes sank back into my callouses. My hands had gotten so rough I barely recognized them. “One murdered my family.”

“What, a moon?”

I picked up a pebble and tossed it into the lake, watching the ripples spread through the surface. “No, silly, a mountain. Aureberg.”

“Oh, you mean the Collapse?”

“The mountain didn’t collapse. People keep saying that, but it’s not true. It rose from the ground as if it had legs to walk on and tore the world apart.”

Brinn waited for me to continue, and before I knew it, I’d told her my whole story. It was the first time I shared it with anyone. I told her about my father, the refugee camp, and how my mother joined him in the Bliss. “And that’s when Heimee saved me,” I concluded. “I have to find the mountain. I have to. I need to know why I had to become an orphan. But how can I leave Heimee? I owe him so much.”

Brinn laid a hand on my shoulder. “Mere men butchered my parents. If I found them, I would do much more than ask them why. So much more. I can think of a thousand different ways I’d drain their bodies out of their pathetic little lives.” Brinn’s eye lit up with fury as she signed. Then the anger faded, and she smiled. “Talk to Heimee. Tell him you need a vacation or something.”

“He’ll say I’m nuts.” I gazed at the moon again. Could the moon be a living mountain?

“I’ll tell you this much. If you decide to go, I’ll go with you.”

“Don’t be silly,” I said.

“I’m not. Every day I live with my aunt is pure agony,” Brinn explained. “I hate her, and I hate bread. Can’t stand the smell, can’t stand the way flour brushes against my hands or swooshes against the marble. Can’t even eat it, so sick of it I am. Why do you think I’m always at your place even though it is so far away from me?”

“I like to think it’s because I’m there.”

Brinn laughed. “That too. But mostly to get away from her. You’re just a perk.”

“Thanks.”

“She slapped me yesterday.” Brinn tensed at the recollection. “I left the bread in the oven too long. It wasn’t burnt, just a little darker and crispier than usual. We still sold the lot, and no one complained. But she slapped me anyway. Said the baker’s guild would give her a huge fine if she sold bad bread. But it wasn’t bad. I wanted to kill her. Grab my peel with both hands and whack her stupid head off her neck. One good swing, and I’d be free. I think I could do it. My shoulders are as thick as a man’s from all the kneading. So, in a way, you’d be saving me.”

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

“How come?”

“I wouldn’t have to become a murderer. Offer me anywhere to go, any excuse, and I’ll follow you. I just don’t want to go alone. I envy the moon, you know. She gets to see the world every day. Wouldn’t that be amazing?”

“Is it, though? She can’t come down to visit or touch or experience the world. Maybe that’s why she keeps pulling at it.”

“That’s a weird way to look at it.”

“Wasn’t that the point? To ‘weird away’?”

“I did say that. But this weird is a tad depressing. I’m not going to lie to you; I expected fun weird.”

“Would you really go with me to find Aureberg?” Even to me, it sounded absurd.

“In a heartbeat,” she said.

When I got home that evening, I found a half-drunk Heimee singing to himself in the kitchen. I wish I could hear him when he did that, but I couldn’t. I wished I could learn to play an instrument, but something told me I wouldn’t be very good at it.

“Where’s the girl?” he asked when I came in.

“Her aunt keeps her busy. I barely see her during the day anymore.”

“Pity, I was getting used to having at least one pretty face around here.”

I went to the kitchen for a glass of milk and a cheese sandwich. Heimee had bought freshly churned butter, and it always tasted best eaten on the same day. In the following days, it would develop a tang that I wasn’t so fond of.

“When are you going to tell her you like her?” Heimee asked as I sat on the wicker couch.

I almost spilled my milk.

“You’ve been her friend,” he made quotation marks with his fingers, “for how long? Two, three years? If she’s still putting up with you, it’s because she likes you.” He rubbed his chin contemplating something above me. “You know what, perhaps you’re right. Not to mention that you’re too young to have a girlfriend. Better let some older boy conquer her heart.”

A block of ice seemed to form in my stomach. “What older boy?”

“She is a little older than you, isn’t she? Girls often prefer a little maturity.” He amused himself with the expression of panic I tried and failed to conceal before continuing, “But considering the competition in Bum-hole, you still have a chance. I suggest you don’t waste it. Why don’t you take her to Guillinsbaer?”

“That’s three hours away.”

“Yes, but it’s also the only place in the region where you’ll find a reasonable market.”

“Burrow has a market.”

“Bum-hole’s market has the romantic appeal of explosive diarrhea.”

“Heimee,” I said, dropping my sandwich. “I’m eating.”

“Then why does crap keep coming out of your mouth?” Heimee wiggled a hand in front of me, warning me not to respond. “I know you think I’m old, that I belong to a completely different species, a homo-geriatric or something, but I can assure you that I know what I’m talking about.”

“Alright, suppose I take her there. Then what?”

“Buy her lunch and a gift. Girls love to shop—the more useless and shinier the object, the more they crave it. Don’t try to understand it.”

“I don’t think Brinn likes useless things.”

“She’s a girl. She likes pretty things, even if they’re useless.”

“With what money?”

Heimee filled his cup of Heims. He usually drank in moderation, but judging by how his fingers dragged, this wasn’t his second glass.

“Are we celebrating something?” I asked.

His hands opened, then closed. Opened, then closed. Opened again and closed. I waited, afraid to move like someone watching a morning bird.

Heimee drew a breath and began to sign, “I lost my wife ten years ago today.”

“I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to—”

“It’s alright. Funny, my father was against our marriage. ‘My boy, marrying a daft girl, I won’t have it,’ he’d say. He wasn’t a bad person, only ignorant.”

I shifted in my seat.

“Yes,” Heimee said. “Gabinn was deaf. She died of some invisible sickness that made her every breath a torment. We had two boys together. Lord Louree Guilling drafted them to fight in the last war, not two months after the Bastard took her. I told the Lord that I needed them to help me in the distillery—that I didn’t have anyone else. He duly reminded me that in times of war, everyone must make sacrifices, and anyone who refuses would be considered a coward and executed. Can’t tell you how happy I was the day he died. Praised be the Bastard, for He pointed his mighty finger right down at the Lord’s head and cracked it open with a bolt of lightning. I wasn’t even religious until that day.

“Every night, I dream of them, Beneen and Horleen, that they’ll come back to me one day. But the letters stopped coming years ago. They were only sixteen and seventeen when they left. If they’re alive, they’ll be grown men now. Be happy that you’re deaf, and no one will take you to war. You’d be useless there. That’s the best kind of useless one can be.” Heimee took the glass from the table and gulped its contents down without any of his usual rituals.

He refilled the glass.

“But it’s a good thing to protect our country, isn’t it? I mean, soldiers helped us after the mountain—”

Heimee pounded his glass against the table, spilling most of the whisky. “War is a stupid, meaningless affair! It’s done only for the benefit of those in power. If we had done nothing, if we’d let things be, I’d still be a father.” Heimee clenched his jaw, and I could see how much pain those memories brought him. “And that damned refugee camp you talk about. I heard the stories. They locked you all up there, feeding you scraps, afraid you’d get away and infest their streets with beggars. I heard about the revolt and how so many died. For what? Do you know why you don’t have a mother? That’s why. That’s what soldiers do!”

I averted my eyes, and the room went still, broken only by Heimee’s shuddering breaths, hands pressed to his face. I had never seen him so fragile, so naked.

He was a beautiful man.

“I’m sorry,” he signed at last. “You didn’t have to see me like this. It’s the Heims talking. Some idiots think it numbs their pain, but that’s not true. They’re addicted to the pain—not the drink.” He took the bottle from the table and examined it. “This is how they find more of it. What am I saying? Don’t mind the rants of an old man.”

He flopped on the couch.

“Heimee,” I said, “Thank you for everything. Thank you for everything you’ve done for me.”

Heimee’s stern lips cracked, revealing the faintest smile. “Don’t go all soft on me now. One of us is enough for an evening.”

***

Heimee inspected the bottles—square, faintly green, Heims written in relief at the sides. We stenciled the labels onto the bottles. Heims. Ten years, thirteen years, fifteen years. Single malt whisky. We rolled barrels out from the cellar under the steeping room. There were over a thousand barrels there. I didn’t like going down there often. It was dark and spooky, though in the summer it was quite refreshing. We rolled the selected barrels to the bottling room.

I loved those days. I may not like whisky, but it was a magical event every time we uncorked a barrel, and the fumes inundated the room. I grew curious about each particular batch. Every barrel produced a unique whisky with different shades of amber, scents, and flavors; some casks were emptier than others, even though we always filled them with the same amount.

“See how empty it got?” Heimee asked. “Every year, as the wood contracts and expands—breathing with the seasons—part of the spirit evaporates. We call this the Bastard’s share.”

I found the thought quite amusing, imagining the Bastard drinking from the casks when no one was looking.

Also, if you’re wondering, Heimee only bought barrels made from coppiced wood. Most trees are defenseless against insects and elicit deforestation. Coppiced trees, however, are protected and well cared for. Trees lose branches all the time, and underwood is basically a vertical branch. This way, the trees produce wood and, in return, are kept alive and healthy. It’s not a bad deal.

“Here,” Heimee signed when we finished bottling for the day. He reached into his pocket, produced three coins, and tossed them to me. “You haven’t been completely useless this season.”

I caught the coins and inspected them. Smooth silver, one side read, 3 Gollings, and on the other, three stars hovered above a tall tree enclosed in a wedge shield, the nation’s coat of arms.

“Three heads,” I muttered to myself. I had never held so much money in my life.

“Have I overpaid you? Oh well… Just remember, if you spend all your money on a girl, you’re a fool. You should save some of it.”

I clutched the coins in my hand, determination flooding my eyes.

“You’re not going to save it, are you?”

I wasn’t. I knew exactly how to spend it.