AND I'VE WATCHED AS IT'S BRANCHED OUT AND GROWN;
AND THEY SOARED LIKE THE DREAMS THAT WE HAD;
Otik enjoyed the tune without recognizing it. He watched Tika, her eyes shut and her arms waving in the air as she sang, and he thought with a sudden ache, "She's old enough for her own place."
Tika had lived with him for a long time; she was as close to a daughter as he would ever have. Before that, for many years, he had lived alone happily. Now he could not imagine how he had stood it.
Finally she finished, and he said, "Nicely sung. What was that?"
"That?" She blushed. "Oh, the song. It's called The Song of Elen Waiting.' I heard it last night."
"I remember." The singer had been all of twenty-three, most of his listeners fifteen. He had curly dark hair and deep blue eyes, and by his second song half the girls of Solace were around him. "Some young man sang it, didn't he?"
"You're teasing me." Tika scowled, even when Otik smiled and shook his head. "You don't take me seriously."
"Oh, but I do, I do. This young man that sang-"
"Rian." She said it softly, and the scowl went. "He wasn't so young. Do you know, he had seven gray hairs?"
"Really? Seven, exactly?"
She didn't notice the tease, but nodded vigorously, her own hair bouncing off her shoulders. "Exactly. He let three of us count them after he was done singing, and we all came up with the same number."
"Nice of him to let you."
"Oh, I think he liked it," Tika said innocently. Then she frowned. "Especially when Loriel did it."
"Which one was Loriel?" There'd been a lot of them. After Rian had sung, the young women had walked around the Inn with their heads high, thinking noble thoughts, to Otik's vast amusement. One young man, a red-haired, spindly local with wide eyes, sat in the corner afterward determinedly mouthing lyrics to himself. His friends had seemed afraid he might sing.
Tika scrubbed fiercely at one of the barrels, tipping it. Otik steadied it for her as she said casually, "Loriel? Oh, you know. Turned-up nose, too many freckles, shows her teeth when she laughs-it's a shame they're not straight-and she's the one with all that hair, you know, the yellow stuff?"
"Oh, is she the one with all that pretty blonde hair?" She was around a lot lately. She laughed too often for Otik's taste, but the boys her age seemed to like it. She also had a habit of spinning away from people so that her hair flew straight out and settled back. Otik had twice caught Tika practicing it.
"Do you think it's pretty, then?" Tika tried to look surprised. "That's nice. Poor thing, she'd be pleased." Scrub, scrub.
She began to daub her eyes. "Oh, Otik! He liked HER and not me."
"There now." Otik put an arm around her, thinking (not for the first time) that if he'd only found a wife, there'd be someone more sensitive to help the poor girl. He barely knew Tika's friends. "There, now. It's not like he's your own true love, just an older lad with a good voice. You don't want him."
Tika laughed and wiped her eyes on her arm. "That's true. But Loriel's supposed to be my friend- what does he see in HERI"
"Ah." Now he understood. "Well, she's older than you."
"Only a little. A year isn't so much." She sniffed.
"Don't cry again." He added, to get a smile from her, "You'll salt the ale." It almost worked. "You must be patient, like that woman in the song. How did it go again?"
Tika looked wistful, forgetting her own sorrow. "It's about a man who kisses his love good-bye and goes away forever, only she doesn't know that, and waits for him until she's old and lonely and she dies-"
"Birds sang where she died."
Tika sighed happily. "And all their songs were sad. Otik, am I going to end like that? Do you think I'll end up living all alone, with nobody to love or to live with, sleeping by myself and making meals for one?"
Otik looked for a long time in the mirror at the long bar's end. Finally he turned around. "Sometimes it happens. Surely not to you, though. Now go, pretty young one, and get the last cask."
He scrubbed the tun hard, perhaps harder than it needed.
It was noon, but there were no spiced potatoes cooking, no shouts for ale. Otik had hung a tankard upside down on the post at the bottom steps, so that even the unlettered would know not to climb up needlessly. Otik closed for every brewing, opening only when the alewort was made.
The brewing tun was clean and filled with spring water, waiting behind the bar for the malt syrup. The syrup was warmed and waiting. The yeast, the final addition to the alewort, was in a bowl on the bar.
But the hops had not yet arrived, and Otik was as impatient as Tika. before he heard slow, heavy steps on the stairs.
"Tika," he called, "come out." She came from the kitchen, wiping her hands on her apron as he said, "Hear that? Someone carrying a burden. Our hops have come." He cocked an ear, listening with the knowledge of long years. "Not as heavy as I thought. Did Kerwin not bring a full load?"
The Inn door flew open and a burlap bag waddled in, seemingly under its own power, and leaped to the floor before the tun. A kender, still doubled from his load, peered through his arched brows at them and grinned suddenly.
"Moonwick." Otik did not say the kender's name with pleasure. Among men, the short, mischievous kender were famous for practical joking and for disregarding other people's property, and Moonwick Light-finger was famous among kender. It was said, even by sober travelers, that once when Moonwick was at Crystalmir Lake, the partying crew of a small fishing boat had woken in full gear, on deck, to find their boat lodged thirty feet off the ground between two trees. The topmost tree branches bore pulley marks, but the pulleys had been removed. It took eight men two days to get the boat down.
It was further rumored, in stories possibly started by the kender himself, that Moonwick had on separate occasions stolen the tail from a cat, the blonde hair from a human woman, and, on a night of unexplained eclipse, the moonlight itself-which was how he got his name. Otik subscribed to the more popular theory that the kender's name was a flattering corruption of Moonwit.
Moonwick smiled up at Otik. "Here's your hops, and gods how I prayed a thousand times that they'd hop themselves here. Where's my reward?" He added, "Gold will do."
Otik did not smile back. "Kerwin was bringing the hops. What happened to him?"
"You paid him in advance. He had money. He wanted to gamble." The kender said earnestly, "I said we could do it for anything: buttons, rocks, things in our pockets-but he wouldn't listen. He said he felt lucky."
Otik stared at the kender. "So he gambled for money with you? Lady of Plenty, look after your witiing orphans. What happened to him?"
Moonwick looked sad. "He lost."
Otik said dryly, "I'm shocked." As Moonwick opened his mouth in protest, Otik went on, "Never mind. Why are you carrying the hops?"
Now Moonwick did look embarrassed and sincerely angry. "Kerwin said that since I had his wages, I should do his work. I said that was foolish, and we argued, and finally we agreed to gamble for who made this trip."
"Naturally you accepted. Can't pass up a game. And?" Otik suspected, but could not believe, the outcome.
The kender burst out, "He won. I can't imagine how that could have happened. He must have cheated."
"Undoubtedly. Well, you've been paid for your trip, but I'll give you ale for your trouble, and a meal if you wish." Otik knelt and opened the bag, running his hands through the hops.
"I ate on the road. I shared lunch with-well, with another traveler." The kender twiddled at the end of the short hoopak stick angled into his belt. The stick, at once the best weapon and chief musical instrument of kender, seemed to trouble him.
Years of innkeeping had made Otik alive to evasion. "What sort of traveler?"
"Human." Moonwick shrugged, grabbing again at the hoopak stick as it slipped in his belt. "This thing doesn't seem to be balancing properly."
Otik suddenly understood the kender's reluctance to speak of the fellow traveler. "Perhaps that has to do with the purse hooked onto the end of it," he observed.
"Purse?" The kender whirled around. The stick, naturally, whirled with him. "I see no purse."
"Look over your shoulder. No, the other shoulder. The drawstring is twisted over the end of your stick." Otik sighed as the kender peered this way and that in apparent disbelief that he should ever end up with another man's belongings.
"Why, look at that! A purse, just as you say. Imagine that. How could that happen?"
"Seems incredible," Otik agreed politely.
"And yet… Yes, I know exactly how it might have happened. You know how we use hoopaks?"
"Vaguely." Kender could move a hoopak stick, in combat or to make a noise, faster than men could see. Otik had once seen a drunken swordsman lose a fight with an apparently unarmed kender. At the start of the fight, the kender had been five feet from the hoopak.
"Yes. Well, I was singing, and accompanying myself by whirling my hoopak to get a high note-on a dry day with a little wind, I can get two notes at once- and I twisted it with my wrist as I spun it, and I must have caught the purse-string just as I twisted."
"Ah. That must be it."
"You can see how it would happen." Moonwick spun the hoopak over his head and, incidentally, over the bar and nearly against the back wall. "Because it's hard to see exactly where the 'pak-end moves when it twists-"
"I see that." Otik deftly retrieved the tankard which had slipped, seemingly of its own will, over the end of the stick. "Accidents will happen."
"Of course." Moonwick looked at him with insistent innocence. "Because I would never, ever, ever simply steal a purse from someone."
"Of course not."
"Especially from this man. He was so nice, and so knowledgeable." Moonwick leaned on his staff. "We shared our lunches, and traded for variety, and he told the best stories. He'd swum to the bottom of Crystalmir Lake for stonefish, and picked plants from the edge of Darken Wood. He once climbed a dead tree by moonlight, and he told the funniest story about speaking to the ghost of the grandmother that never respected him. His name was Ralf. He was on his way to see his mother, he said." The kender added thoughtfully, "She must like jewelry; he had lots of little gifts for her, and he kept mixing up her name. Said he had a powder to feed Gwendol, then Genna, then Gerria-"
"A mage?" Otik was uneasy near magic.
"Oh, no." Moonwick shook his head violently. "Just a charm vendor: potions, powders, elixirs, amulets- nothing serious. Why, this is probably quite harmless." He held the bag toward Otik. "Probably the poor man will be here any day, looking for this. Would you take-"
"No"
"Just overnight; surely you're not-"
"No."
"What possible harm could there be-"
"I have no idea what harm there could be," Otik said firmly. "I don't intend to find out. I keep away from magic."
The kender looked pityingly. "You miss a lot of ex citement that way."
"Long ago I took a vow. I'm devoting my life to missing a lot of excitement."
"All right, then." Moonwick bounced the bag on his palm. "I'll return it myself. Someday."
"Good of you. In the meantime, I'm sorry you don't need a meal. Why don't you take-" With a quick wrist movement, Otik caught Moonwick's arm as it flashed across the bar-"a mug of ale, for your throat."
"Good idea." The kender grabbed a mug. "Maybe I could stay here the night," he said wistfully.
"No." Otik sighed. "I'm still replacing forks from the last time."
Moonwick waved a hand. "Surely you don't blame me Wasn't that a cry from the kitchen?"
It was. It sounded like a buried cook. Otik grunted. "Pantry shelf's fallen again." He trotted for the kitchen door, then whirled. "Touch nothing without invitation while I'm gone."
"Sound advice," the kender murmured. As Otik disappeared through the door, the kender held his lips still.
The tap on the counter-keg said in a squeaky voice, "Have a refill, Moonwick."
"I will," the kender said happily, "and thank you for the invitation." While he drank, for practice he made the buried-cook sound come from one of the packs at his side.
He stuck his hoopak straight out and spun it, balancing the purse on the end. When the drawstrings came undone he caught the purse neatly, then smelted it. "What an odd odor." He opened it and tilted it sideways. A pinch of powder like cinnamon drifted tothe floor. He made a face. "It's a charm. Something terrible, too icky-sweet and spice-filled. It's not even labeled; it could be anything. How does Ralf expect people who find his purse by accident to know what to do with it?" He sighed. "Magicians are so untrustworthy."
Moonwick poked the purse itself. "Nice bag, though." He looked behind the bar for a place to empty out the useless dust, then saw the loose-lidded tun of alewort. He grinned, lifted the lid and emptied the contents of the pouch inside.
When Otik came back, he checked the bar carefully. Nothing seemed to be missing. He eyed Moonwick, who smiled innocently at him. "Nice ale," the kender said.
"It's my own recipe." The innkeeper added, "Thanks to your contribution, this batch will be even better."
The kender choked. Otik stooped to pat his back, then retrieved an empty purse from the floor. "What's this?"
"Mine." The kender deftly plucked it from the innkeeper's hands. "I hope to fill it someday."
"Not in my inn." Otik added, as the kender rose to leave, "My thanks, Moonwick. Leave the door open, so the brew smell will air out. Come back next full moon, if you wish to taste what you carried."
"Best I hurry on," Moonwick said regretfully. Which was true-sooner or later Ralf might come looking for him. "I do hope I can return to sample that batch." He shook hands with Otik, who checked his ring after-ward.
Otik listened to the reassuring thump of the ken-der's departure down the stairs, and sighed. He said to himself, "There's one source of trouble gone, and no harm done. Now to heat the alewort." He walked to the back, looking for Tika.
While he was away, two fire swallows, a male and a female, flew in the open door and pecked at the fine spicy powder spilled from the purse. The two of them flew out in circles, squawking, billing, and frenziedly pressing against each other's bodies.
After pouring the hops in the tun, Otik cleaned the stream rounded heating stones and scrubbed the iron tongs he used on them. The whole Inn grew warm as he built up the fire and opened a wind-vent to blow the coals. The stones he laid on a flat clean slab of the hearth; as each stone heated he lowered it with the tongs into the wort. Soon he was sweating freely from the heat. He set the tongs down to wipe his forehead.
Without being asked, Tika picked them up, re moved several stones from the tun and swung heated ones in, lowering them gently to avoid splashing. Otik puffed and watched, proud of her. When he was younger, he would have needed no rest. For that matter, when Tika was younger, he would not have let her spell him at the heating.
As the tun began steaming, Otik thought again to himself, "She's old enough for her own place." He shook his head, cast the problem from his mind, and tried to think only of the new ale.
After the heating, Tika and Otik poured off the ale into smaller casks. Otik took care to fill each cask only four-fifths full, because the alewort bubbled as it worked, and a full cask could explode. Once, when Otik was young, he had overfilled one; it had taken weeks to get the smell out of the Inn.
Each cask they finished they rolled carefully against the tree and set upright where it would be in sunlight but away from outside walls. For the first seven days, the casks would be warm and working, and the yeast would be settling out of it. After that,they would move the casks, as gently as possible, into the store room with the stone floor, and give them until the next full moon to age in cool and quiet. If they had extra casks by then, and if they had the energy, Otik and Tika would pour the beer into freshlywashed containers for its final aging. Often, Otik cast about for ex cuses to avoid that stage; scrubbing twice for each batch, and repouring half-done beer, seemed an awful lot of work for a pleasant drink.
For now, though, the hard part of the brewing process was over, and it seemed to them both that the alewort already smelled delicious. Tika, her troubles forgotten, or at least submerged, sang another verse to 'The Song of Elen Waiting':