Chapter Eleven - Burnt Bread

-Summer-

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Her legs were beginning to go soft and tired, so she started wading towards the shore and the big rock her son and their guest were sitting on. Kaion’s golden eyes followed her, watching her carry the boy out of the water. He watched as she settled on the rock, Eefim in her lap, and Belbet smiled at the ram man, tilting her head.

“Children need a lot of reassurance when things are so uncertain. Do not judge him.” She squeezed her nephew in her arms and felt him tuck his nose into her neck.

“You are a good mother,” Kaion stated, and Belbet felt heat rise on her cheeks again.

“I’m trying to make up for the way our tribe raised them,” Belbet admitted, brushing a hand over her nephew's streaming wet hair. The boy huffed, and she resettled him gently, allowing him the time to recover himself. Mohniit patted Eefim’s shoulder wetly from his own place in Kaion’s lap.

“...How did your tribe raise them?” He asked, curiosity tilting his head. Belbet wondered if the weight of his horns ever gave him headaches.

Belbet sighed, “Well, after we gave birth… we fed the child until they could walk, and then… we passed them over to the elders. The elderly were supposed to teach them to gather and make baskets and rope and other things, to teach them how to be useful to the tribe. But… most of the elderly were so hands-off, so angry at being forced to do so, that they basically ignored or hit them if they got annoying.”

Kaion’s frown told Belbet a lot about how he was raised. She continued, “For a long time… I thought it was normal. Until I decided that’s not what I wanted for my babies. ...I was exiled from my previous clan.”

He had a right to know. He needed to know what she would do for her children, and worse, he needed to know for his own safety. “I killed a woman, by accident. Because she was hurting my daughter. I jumped on her to try and get her away from Dahnei… but she hit her head on a rock, and died.”

“You did the right thing,” Kaion growled. She was startled to hear it, a rocky rumbling sound deep in his throat, that made his words sound odd. “Anyone who harms a child is unfit to be in a tribe.”

Her chest eased, the invisible squeeze of worry replaced by easy breathing. It was so nice to know that her views here were welcome. To know that the tribe Belbet was raised by was an outlier, and not something all people in this time and place believed, was an immense relief.

Eefim squirmed, and Belbet chuckled, amused at how long her nephew’s manly pride had lasted against her hold. She let him down, which prompted Mohniit to immediately take his place in her lap and demand cuddles as well. She laughed, wrapping her arms around her baby boy and blowing a raspberry into his cheek.

“I… overheard. You are pregnant?” Kaion asked, picking up the bowl and beginning to pour cool water over himself again.

“Yes. Only a little along, but… yes.” She smiled, brushing Mohniit’s hair out of his face. “...Admittedly, I am worried. I have miscarried before, and I’m afraid with the stress and lack of nutrition, it’s likely I will again.”

Kaion frowned, “What are those words? I’ve never heard them before.”

Belbet sighed, realizing that she was, again, having to define something for those with limited understanding. “Stress is when bad things happen, and the body has to do special things to survive it. Nutrition is diversity in food. The body needs good nutrition to survive, and to grow. Babies, when they’re in here-” She patted her lower tummy, “need a lot of nutrition to survive and grow healthily. I need to put on some weight, too. I’m too skinny to feed the baby properly.”

Kaion nodded along with her explanation, eyes narrowed. She wondered if that was just his thinking face, that deep frown and narrowed eyes that looked regally menacing. It was a good look when combined with his horns and hair. She realized she’d been staring when he looked back to her, and raised an eyebrow.

“Ahah, that’s why I built the smoker, which will preserve meat we catch. And why we’ve planted every seed we can find.” She explained, “If we grow the seeds here, we don’t have to wander out to find them, and sometimes if plants are taken care of, they’ll grow faster and produce more than the ones in the wild.”

“And is that why you keep that chicken too?” He asked, referring to the one Mohniit had fed that morning.

“Yes, of course. Chickens lay eggs, and if you take away the egg before it hatches, the chicken will think it got eaten, and lay another one. So long as the chicken is fed and safe, it is a source of eggs without having to climb a tree.” Belbet grinned, “The idea is to work smarter, not harder.”

Kaion nodded again and shifted over as Dahnei flopped herself unceremoniously across the rock they were sharing. She sighed, laying out on her belly so that the sun warmed her back, and Belbet reached over to pet her hair. Eefim joined them, leaning against his aunt’s side. “I think it’s time to get out. We should all have a nap, and then we can get back to work.”

“Nappp…” Mohniit declared, as his word turned into a yawn. Belbet laughed, nodding.

“Eefim, can you carry Mohniit, so that I can help Kaion?” With a nod, the young boy agreed, and took up his little cousin, who was leaning heavily on him, halfway to napping already.

Belbet helped Kaion get to his hooves, the injured one in the air the whole while. She then helped him hop out of the shallow water and onto the shore. She settled him in his lean-to, and then pressed another bowl of willow tea into his hand. “Drink it while it’s hot.”

Then, she moved to settle her littlest in their bed, watching Dahnei settle as well, holding her baby brother like a teddy bear. He didn’t seem to mind, which gained them both a snicker from their mother.

Belbet checked on the charcoal, looking in the holes at the bottom, not seeing any signs of actual flame yet, and so moving on. She checked on the smoker, which had solidified quite nicely. Eefim had the workings of a lid for it, which was quite well done. She lit another fire in the smoker, and then settled the lid on it, to let the adobe cure into hardness.

Then, she checked on the sundial. Sure enough, the shadow had moved two whole sticks. She grinned, tying two knots and three knots to each stick respectively. She now knew when noon was, when one was, and when two in the afternoon was. As it was currently a little after two in the afternoon, she was expecting Deenat to come back close to four or five.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

While Deenat could eat out in the wilds, she would worry about what Belbet was making, and would come to taste it. Belbet hadn’t stopped smiling all afternoon, she realized, and now she realized it was because of her family. She sighed happily, picking up one of the extra baskets, and heading a little ways off, just far enough into the treeline that they haven’t cleared out the plants.

Belbet was looking for a way to diversify some of their diet, which meant finding flour. She knew the Mayans used corn, maize specifically, to make cornmeal, and the English used wheat. But she also knew that pioneers used other things. The plant she was looking for now should be coming into harvest season right about this time of year.

Amaranth was a beautiful plant, depending on the variety, and the seeds made an ancient grain that was both healthy and easily ground up. And those bright red seed clusters were easily spotted even this close to their camp.

She smiled, bending whole heads and then pulling clumps of the seeds off into her basket. She didn’t bend all of them, since they needed this plant to be able to reseed itself next year, but she did take enough to fill up the hand-deep basket she’d brought. She knew it would be a ridiculously small amount of flour, but it should be enough for one or two meals. Plus, they’d be able to plant some in the garden.

Taking the seeds back to camp, she set half of them aside in the small food storage they had in the hut. Then, she started setting out the amaranth seeds on one of their big skins, gently blowing away the husks and detritus. This would be so much easier with a fan, but she didn’t even have a hand-fan, at this point.

She left the seeds to dry in the sun, and pondered what they might need next that she could do easily. She really wanted to figure out the trick for soap, honestly, but they didn’t have enough animal fat for that. She’d need to render some, at some point, but right now they were dealing with a severe shortage of big game. If she could teach Eefim how to use snares, so that he could focus on hunting bigger things, rather than going after small things to make sure they had meat, that would be good.

The problem was, Victoria had never studied snares. She knew basics, but she didn’t trust that she could actually put one together that would work. She wondered how she could pass it along to her brilliant nephew in a way that meant they didn’t spend eons before they had a working rabbit snare.

Well, that wasn’t going to be possible to do right now. But, it gave her an idea. She grabbed some sticks from their pile of collected sticks, and set about making a loom. The basics of a loom was just two rows of sticks with the fiber stretched between them. However, belbet was enterprising, and she was going to make a stick at the back of the loom that could be pulled and released with a rope. This way, she wouldn’t have to get up to switch rows.

Now, Victoria didn’t know all the names of the parts, but she did know the basics of weaving, and in this case, she knew that since they didn’t have any yarn to spin into the fabric, she was going to need to spin something into yarn. Tree-fibre or grass was going to be her best bet at the moment. It was early evening by the time she’d gathered enough and had settled down by the fire to start spinning it.

This was about the time Deenat came out of the dense trees, her basket full to bursting and several long sticks balanced over her shoulders. Belbet let her be as she began to unburden herself, glad to see the bamboo she’d brought back. Deenat revealed a huge clump of echinacea plants, roots and all, and lots of strips of willow bark too. Belbet winced, realizing she’d never taught her sister the proper ways to forage without damaging the plant beyond what the plant could bear. Ah well, a lesson for later.

Belbet got up, and took the plants in hand, tying them to the drying racks after washing them in boiled water. Pesticides may not be a thing out here, but god only knows what rubbed up against those in the wild, and always better safe than sorry. Belbet spotted her sister staring at the spread of seeds, frowning.

“Those are for dinner.” Belbet said, a little mischief in her eyes. “I’m going to make something you’ll really like.”

Deenat nodded, going to check on the children, which left Belbet enough time to begin stone-grinding the seeds into flour. She knew that this wasn’t the best way to grind food, considering the stone powder that came with the flour would probably end up with all of them losing their teeth far too early, but it was what she had access to at the time. She could make a decent mortar and pestle later.

Deenat came out of the hut, carrying several vegetables for dinner, along with a rabbit carcass. She set these up to cook, chopping the vegetables roughly, and simply roasting the rabbit over the fire. Belbet admired how far along her cooking skills had come, even as she asked Deenat to pull one of their eating eggs out of the storage too.

This, added to the back-breaking flour Belbet had ground up, when combined with water, turned into a doughy substance that Deenat stared at. Belbet set these on a rock and pushed it close to the cooking fire. She didn’t have a spatula, so she couldn’t turn them without breaking them, so she just let them cook through.

The smell of food summoned their children, and soon, Mohniit was staring in drooly awe at the food. Eefim went over to check out the lid and how it was doing on the smoker. Dahnei, of course, was asking her mother questions about how she’d made the strange cakes.

“I crushed up seeds. Some of the seeds in this world are edible, and these ones are especially so. I crushed them up into a powder with a rock, and then mixed an egg and water, and rolled it until it was sticky. Then, I spread the sticky dough out on a rock and cooked it. Next time I’ll let you do it.”

“Okay.” Dahnei said, before grinning up at her mother. “It’s going to be tasty!”

Belbet snorted, amused at what this child’s definition of tasty was. She couldn’t wait until she had access to a full kitchen’s worth of spices. How nice would that be?

She served up the food once it was ready, and watched as everyone enjoyed the humble meal. It was a revelation to see their faces as they bit into the bread. No one in the tribe had been intrepid enough to grind up seeds and make bread, so this was a new experience for them. She was glad to see they weren’t turning up their noses.

Her own tastebuds informed her the bread was burnt on one side, and sorely lacking any sort of salt or sugar. She figured next time she should add some herbs and honey, which might help the taste. Overall, it was a good meal.

Kaion blinked, and devoured the food, before praising it, “It’s very filling. Good food. And you think you’ll be able to eat like this all winter?”

“Well, if we collect enough of the amaranth seeds now while they’re blooming, we can grind it up and store the flour. Flour keeps for a very long time if we can keep bugs out of it. We can eat bread all winter since all that's needed to make it is water and flour. And we can make flour out of other things too, like acorns, wheat, and other things.” Belbet lectured, “But we need to finish up the storage shed before we can do that, as well as make more baskets. I set up a loom, so hopefully, we can put down some mats in the storage area too, that way bugs will have a harder time getting in.”

The man nodded, “I can help, weaving baskets while I heal. I should be better in a few days.”

Belbet snorted, “No. No, with an infection like that, you’ll need at least two weeks to heal. You shouldn’t walk on it for at least a week. After that, we’ll see about you walking around.”

Kaion frowned, raising an eyebrow, “I can’t be idle for that long. That’s no way to join a tribe.”

Belbet snorted, “We can discuss you joining the tribe after you’re better. For now, you’re a patient, and patients don’t have to work.” Belbet knew there were little eyes watching her every action, and she wanted to teach these children compassion. “It’s only right to help those who are hurt, and to make sure that they rest while they’re healing.”

“Fine. But I can weave baskets, at least. And grind the flour.” He declared, “And I can make the tea, while I’m sitting around.”

Belbet smiled, “We’ll move the herb rack closer so that you can. It’d help a lot, actually. I’ll teach you how to make berry-water too, that way we all have something nice to drink while we’re working.”

Kaion agreed, and dinner was finished up. Eefim helped move some of the logs closer to Kaion’s lean-to, so that he could keep warm during the night. Dahnei made sure Kaion had water nearby, and then headed for the sticks, pulling some to weave a door for the hut. After checking the charcoal and sealing up the holes at the bottom, Belbet supervised Mohniit picking up the chicken (which was surprisingly docile with the boy) and take it into the hut.

“Good night, Kaion.” Belbet called from the warm door of their hut, listening for his response.

“Goodnight, Belbet.”

She smiled into the dark, and then closed the little woven-stick door.

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