Black Water, White Dragon (part 1)

The Water, chapter 1, part 2

Apple Hill was a prosperous farm, with thick stone walls and coarse dwarven glass covering the windows. The fields produced willingly so they always had enough to sell to the neighbours, the dwarves dwelling deep in the northern mountains. Roots and rye, barley and oats, as well as salted meats, were swapped with all that the dwarves created in their mines. The dwarves made good tools, such as knives and axes for the farm, as well as pure iron for nails and horseshoes. They shaped clay and stone to plates and crockery, and they had Gifted; magicians who could enchant coal to glow through the night and baskets to keep food fresh longer.

Mum’s favourites were still the blue and purple minerals she used to colour her weaving yarn. She had set ten year old Ansil to wash the porridge pot, while she sat concentrated and bent over a tapestry she was planning to sell at the great autumn feast. Birds and beasts in brown and red and black frolicked among vines of green leaves and blue berries, and around them she wove a frame of purple decked in small yellow stars.

“Mum,” said Etin.

The tight grey-brown hairknot rose from the loom. “You got all of it?”

“Yes, but there was a Tsik.” She held up the chicken which writhed in her arms. “Can we have it for dinner?” Please?

Mum stroked it with a finger, lifted the wing. The hen pecked after her and she grabbed it across the back. “No, this one is still lively enough.”

Grandma had managed to putter over from the bench to the rocking chair by the fireplace. She was gobbling porridge with a spoon and few teeth. “Don’t you wish to treat us to a nice chicken soup, Emerie?” She said with her mouth full of porridge.

“I wish you all the best in the world, but the winter has barely started and it’s a long time until we get new chicks.”

Grandma growled. “And if it dies on its own? Then you’ve wasted a good meal!”

Mum checked over the chicken again, but shook her head. “It will be fine. Look, the rift is small and no longer bleeding.”

Etin looked more closely. It wasn’t as bad as she had first thought. Maybe it had just had a shock from the attacking Tsik. “OK,” she said, a bit disappointed. “I’ll take it down to the coop again.”

“Can you water the glass house too?” Mum’s glass house was a tiny dwarven building along the south wall. It contained a rare and tender Ekne-bush from the mild valleys in the far south.

Etin bowed her head, embarrassed. Always something she forgot or missed, something that showed she wasn’t an adult yet. “Sorry, I forgot in the middle of everything. I was so worried about the Tsik-bird. I’ll go water now. They weren’t very ripe yesterday, so we can probably wait a few days with picking them.”

“All right. As long as they are jarred by the autumn feast. I have to sell them then.” She gave her daughter a serious look. “And no eating. They are far too valuable. The dwarves will buy them.”

“Scrooges,” grandma muttered into her breakfast. “They’ll never pay you what you put into the bushes.”

Mum rolled her eyes. “Etin. The berries. And we get better paid by the dwarves than any others at the feast.”

Etin took the small bucket of water that had warmed up from being inside.

When she got back, Ansil had finished cleaning the pot and gran’s bowl and spoon. He had scraped the leftovers into a bowl for Etin, and she gratefully ate while cleaning the eggs. One by one, she took them out, checked for cracks, wiped the dirt, and then put them back in the basket for the midday meal. Then she quickly cleaned her bowl - before mum said anything - and found her belt-loom to make ribbons for belts and edgings. Some for sale, some for her own future bridal chest. Ansil had brought their smallest brother - seven year old Nerath - to the best place before the fire to play a game of stones, so Etin found the other chair instead.

“Did you kill the pest,” asked grandma.

Etin looked at her. She was crooked, wrinkled and grey, but still spun the pile of wool in her lap into beautiful, thin yarn. Yarn that mum later would dye and weave or knit. “No,” said Etin. “I threw a couple of old apples at it. It flew away.”

“Bah,” said grandma. “They don’t scare that easy. No, I remember a story from the Swiftstream farms. A girl there they found torn apart below the Swift Cliffs. Swear it was the birds that got her.”

Mum sighed and shook her head. “A Tsik can’t carry a whole child. Maybe a tiny infant, but nothing bigger. I’m sure she climbed and fell, and they came to eat on the dead body.”

With her loom tied around her waist, Etin let her fingers do their familiar dance. Through, turn, beat, through, turn, beat. It let her thoughts wander and she was reminded of something her eldest brother had whispered to her one late evening. “Grandma, Anbar said you’d told him of someone who was hanged for killing a Tsik-bird.”

“Mother in Law!” Mum sat up straight and looked angrily at them both. “What sort of stories are you feeding the children? Noone here gets hanged, Etin, and certainly not for that. Maybe fined a cow.”

Nerath stared at them with big, round eyes. “Brookstone has Tsik-wings over their door,” he said with awe. “Did they have to pay a whole cow?”

Mum bent over the loom again. “No, just a ewe. The judge said it was self defence.”

Grandma grinned. “The critter tore apart the fencing he’d built. Mister Brookstone emptied a dwarfish Repairwand to fix it. Those wands be expensive - your dad can’t afford one. Brookstone got fed up and grabbed his axe.” She chuckled and continued. “Don’t think Brookstone can afford another one either.”

Etin could see Ansil think carefully. He was so adult for his age, and loved all creatures. “The priest at the winter school says the Tsik are People,” he said. “We aren’t allowed to kill them.”

Grandma spat into the flames. “Bah. If one starts on our coop or the lambs, your dad will find his axe too. You’ll see.”

Mum frowned. “I don’t know…”

“Yes, he would, girl. And you’d happily pay a pregnant ewe to get rid of those pests.”