Chapter 79

Sapling Bound

Hawkin

I woke to the sound of heavy rain.

After a quick breakfast of nuts and burnt potatoes, I joined BarnacleEyes in the brewery. She was already hard at work in the middle of a batch. I was surprised to find her there already and we worked diligently to brew 60 gallons of spit beer.

Since she had been suspiciously quiet all morning, I thought something was the matter. So after transferring the wort to barrels and pitching the yeast in, I asked her if everything was alright. She sighed heavily.

“Thrush left this morning,” she said.

“Did he go fishing?”

“He went to go look for your cowbell root.”

I had to ask her to repeat herself because I wasn’t sure that I’d heard her correctly. She reaffirmed what she’d said.

“He told me to tell you ‘Thank you for everything you’ve done for him’. He said he wanted to give you something back so he decided he would look for the root so you didn’t have to leave. He asked me to wait to tell you so you wouldn’t try to go after him. Now he’s gone. All because of your stupid root! He said it could be months before he returns! Now I’m supposed to brew all the beer and manage deliveries and count all the money and take all the money if I wanted and who’s going to go fishing and no ones going to smoke fish and now it’s just us two and-”

“BarnacleEyes, BarnacleEyes, slow down,” I said.

I rolled over two, 5 gallon barrels and stood them on end so we could sit and talk.

“Tell me everything,” I said.

Boy did she have a lot to say, and I had a lot to be caught up on. Thrush might have been planning this since I’d first mentioned searching for the cowbell root. He’d left late last night and I knew it was too late to stop him. The speed at which he traveled was beyond me.

I worried for him. I knew I shouldn’t because he was a creature beyond my comprehension, but I couldn’t help it. It wasn’t encounters with monsters that I worried about. It was the encounters with humans he was sure to face that made me nervous.

“There’s one more thing,” BarnacleEyes said. “He took all your beer.”

She guided me by the hand with haste. I was pulled out of the brewery, through the cabin, and down into the cellar with a bent goblin-wax candle in hand. The cellar was empty. Our voices echoed as we spoke.

“He took all of it,” I said.

“I told you,” she said.

“How? How can he carry so much?”

I walked around, seeing barrels in my mind that used to sit there. Massive barrels too heavy to pick up. At least a hundred of them. The piles of waterskins were gone. My planes cutter beers were gone, save one. It stood beside beers I’d earned from quests.

“He took the planes cutter beers,” I said. “I don’t think Dellia’s going to be happy with me.”

“Well, what can you do when it comes to gods,” BarnacleEyes said. “They’re fickle, but I don’t think Thrush is going to use your planes cutter beers himself. I told him he should make someone else do it so you don’t get in trouble.”

“Thrush is going to be giving other people my planes cutter beers?”

“Uh, yeap.”

“Damn,” I muttered. “Wait, why did you tell him to do that?”

“You told him your god didn’t want him on the plane. I thought he could get someone else to hand over the root when he found it. That way he can give it to you sooner, instead of having to travel all the way back.”

“You told him that?”

“Mhm.”

“That’s really smart. Well done.”

“Smart? Me?”

BarnacleEyes was just glowing after that. She pirouetted with her candle in a spontaneous dance of delight. Then she squealed and said, “I told you I was going to be the best captain ever! I’m well on my way! Getting smart everyday! Soon I'll be smart enough to build a boat that won’t sink!”

She voiced the rest of her thoughts as I gazed upon the barren ground of the cellar. I didn’t know how to react. I didn’t know what to think. Thrush was gone, chasing an ingredient that was my burden to find. He took it upon himself and I was torn over it.

When I broke it down—which took a few hours of sitting and thinking to do—Thrush was much more apt to find the root in a fraction of the time that I could. He could survive dangers that I may not be able to survive in the same situation.

For all the thinking I did, for all the worry I had, there was nothing I could do about it but wait. It was completely out of my control. BarnacleEyes reminded me of that fact.

“What’s wrong?” She said. “Aren’t you happy?”

“I’m-I honestly don’t know how to feel.”

“Thrush said it was a gift to you. It’s out of your hands now. There’s nothing to do but kick back and brew some beer with me.”

We spent the rest of our day getting a head start on refilling the cellar with beer. When we transferred the last beer into its barrel, I realized I’d have to cooper some more. I had cooper path quests in my system log from months ago that have just been waiting to be completed, so I knew what I would be doing for the next few days.

[Quest: Sapling Bound Barrels.]

[Cooper One, 15.5 gallon barrel using hickory sapling hoops.]

[Reward: 1 bronze ranked common Cooper’s loot chest.]

Damn was it a difficult quest to complete. Cutting the staves and fitting the head together was fine, but making the sapling hoops was tremendously tricky. After trial and error, I learned that thicker hickory saplings worked best. I split the saplings on one end, pulled the halves apart, then crushed and bent each half into a loop. I fit them onto a barrel, dried them, and then gently hammered them down.

The effort took 3 days to complete, but I finally did it. I successfully coopered a sapling bound barrel. I celebrated with a bowl of squash soup on the threshold of my cabin. I took my time to enjoy watching the rain while I felt the heat of the stove rub against me like an old familiar cat.

Rain for days, I thought.

But I loved the rain. I loved the feel of it. The smell of the earth and the rocks; whose colors were brought to life when wet. There were pools of water in Thrush’s old footsteps. Pollen had collected in those pools like tree rings.

Movement caught my eye in the boughs of a tall oak. A bird—a hermit thrush. How fitting, I thought, and I couldn’t help but laugh as it whistled its tune. Its song sounded as though it came from a small glass flute. It was a sure sign that Thrush was long gone.

Sun rays beamed between parting clouds and raindrops glowed as they passed through. More birds joined the hermit thrush. Minutes later, a cardinal flew by. I observed the birds with delight as I finished my soup.

After cleaning my bowl and spending an entire day on the ethereal plane, I returned to open the contents of my newly acquired loot box. Inside were a few skill books, a cooper’s hammer, and a hoop driver. Both had evidence of years of wear.

Time to test these new tools out.