Heyna's Tale - Chapter 10 (cont.)
Debts to Pay
She worked the metal all morning and into the afternoon. Heyna reminded herself over and over, this is not about me. This is about paying a debt. This is about helping someone who helped me save Xico and the others. This is about doing something that I already know I can do.
She moved the billet back and forth in the furnace and let the trance take her over as she worked. She willed herself to stop thinking. She focused on the metal. She held the face of the Kelpie in her mind, the one who needed the piece. She imagined that she was that Kelpie, that this piece was for herself. She imagined how it would feel as it replaced part of her face.
She was in the fire with the metal. She felt the hammer blows that moved the molecules. She felt the metal was herself moving as the blows became more and more gentle and precise. She let herself feel the heating and cooling of the metal as she worked. Everyone else was silent, and she was glad of it. The steel had to fit the face. Tap, tap, tap, tap with the smallest hammer, the face began to fit.
Finally, Jakintu said it was time for the quench. She heated the piece one last time, never losing focus, not too hot, not too cold.
“Into the oil!” Jakintu said.
Heyna plunged the hot piece into a vat of oil, listening and feeling for the telltale crackles that would indicate a bad quench, the metal cracking or warping. She heard only the shoosh of hot metal in cold oil. She pulled the piece out and set it on a cooling rack. She carefully wiped it off and placed it on the sculpture. It fit perfectly. Heyna heaved a sigh of relief and allowed herself to smile.
“Good job!” Jakintu said. “Now the polish. We want to make this as smooth as a jewel. Come to the grinder.”
In another part of the forge, there was a belt sander operated by a foot pedal and gears. Jakintu took a piece of scrap metal and demonstrated how it worked. Heyna was already familiar with the device and began working the Kelpie piece. She let the trance guide her until it was a smooth piece of Gryphish armor in the shape of a Kelpie beak.
When she put the piece down, everyone congratulated her, but she felt faint.
“I need to sit,” she said.
When she sat down a great weariness came over her. She lay down on the floor of the forge, took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and fell fast asleep.
She was in the ocean. She could breath underwater. She had fins, not arms. Her tail was long and feathery. Kelpie swam all about her. They were singing, not in words, in something like leviathan song. Notes of sweet musicality vibrated in her body and soothed her. She looked at her hands. They were Kelpie hands. She felt her face. Her beak was covered with a steel mask. It was sharp and it felt wonderful.
An overwhelming emotion flooded her being. Gratitude.
*
She awoke in her hammock. It was morning. It was raining. She was chilled, but she was happy. Across the room, breakfast was lively. Tooly was singing, and Beetah was harmonizing with him. Sronban couldn’t stop talking about the forging of the day before. Everybody was eating heartily. Jakintu was in and out of the cottage carrying small bundles to a table near the hearth. She took a seat at the table.
“Hey, sleepy head!” Sronban said.
“Fine job you did yesterday,” Jakintu said, caressing the Kelpie mask. “That’s one task down. The next one doesn’t require any special skills. Maybe a bit of luck.”
“What’s that?” Heyna asked.
“Eat your breakfast,” she said.
When everyone had eaten their fill, Jakintu held out a large canvas bucket. Heyna figured it held five or six gallons.
“I need something in exchange for helping at the forge. Fill this with ursa shite.”
Everyone stopped eating, or singing or talking and looked at the old Gryph.
“What, now?” Sronban asked.
“Need it for something very special. It has to be fresh, so it may be tricky to gather enough.”
“Tricky? Are you mad?” Heyna said. “We’ve nearly been eaten twice by those things. How are we going to gather that much… stuff?”
“We could let one eat you and just stand behind it with the bag!”
“Don’t be daft. This is a serious task. Where do we even find so much?”
“I’m not going to sugar coat this,” Jakintu said. “It will be tricky and dangerous, but you can do it. There’s a valley a couple of leagues to the North. Just follow the stream. The ursae use the stream to ah… wash themselves. The shite flows downhill. You just have to get close enough to catch it before it dissolves, and far enough away and downwind so the ursae don’t catch your scent.”
“Piece of cake, then?” Tooly said.
“Sure. No problem,” Sronban said.
“Wait! What are you two on about? No problem? Yes problem,” Heyna said.
“I’m guessing that there’s a reason that you haven’t done this yourself,” Beetah said.
“Simple,” Jakintu said. “I’m getting a little old for shite gathering. And… you all just happen to be here.”
“Alright,” Heyna said. “We do owe you.”
“When you get back, we can talk about a price for the jewels.”
“Thank you! Really, thank you,” said Sronban, “for everything that you’ve done for us.”
“Well,” said Tooly. “We have a delectable task before us. Let’s get to it.”
*
An ursa family were congregating where Jakintu said they would be. There was a cave with a small clearing. The stream ran by it. The creatures were lounging in the water. The friends were careful to stay downwind. They worked in teams. Beetah kept her nose in the air and Tooly scanned the forest. Heyna and Sronban used the bucket like a sieve and scooped the poop.
There was a lot of poop.
“Keep the fish out!” Heyna said.
“They’re just flopping around!”
“Shhh!” Heyna looked over at Beetah, who gave her the okay sign. A poopy fish had slipped into the bucket and was wiggling and splashing the shite all over them. Heyna grabbed it and threw it back in the stream. Sronban looked at Heyna’s poop-smeared face and laughed, then grabbed her mouth with feces smeared hands. She gagged and spit, then it was Heyna’s turn to laugh, but she managed to stifle it. Beetah came over.
“You’re making too much noise!” she whispered. “Do you want to get eaten?”
“I doubt poop-covered Fennec would be very appetizing,” Heyna laughed. She reached out and wiped her hand on Sronban’s back.”
“Oh, no!” Sronban reached for Heyna.
“Stop,” Beetah said. “They may not want to eat you, but they can still tear you limb from limb. Get the shite and let’s get out of here.”
Heyna reached for Beetah’s face. Beetah ducked and ran back to Tooly. Sronban scooped some more of the excrement. Heyna bent to stop another fish from swimming into the bucket which was almost full.
“Maybe, they’ve eaten their fill of fish and won’t be interested in us if they catch our scent.”
“Trust me,” Heyna said. “There’s only one scent those monsters will get from us, and it isn’t yummy Erda flesh.”
The team worked until the bag was full and then beat a hasty retreat down the trail. Beetah and Heyna carried the bag between them and the Fennec took up the rear, watching for pursuit.
When they got back to the cottage, Jakintu stopped them at the back door. They were sweaty and aromatic.
“Don’t bring that in here!” she shouted. “Over there.” She pointed to her garden. “Spread it evenly over the ground under the tomatoes. Don’t get any on the plants!”
“Tomatoes?” Heyna said. “This is what you needed this very special ingredient for?”
“You’ve tasted my tomatoes,” Jakintu said to Heyna.
“Fair point. They are the most delicious, the biggest and juiciest.”
“And that’s because of…” said Tooly.
“Bear shite,” they said together.
*
“That we can do!” Tooly said.
“Better than gathering ursae shite in the woods,” Sronban said.
“How big an addition?” Beetah asked.
“Big enough so that the next time I have four guests, I won’t have to hang hammocks in the kitchen.”
“Let me do some drawings,” Tooly said.
“You’re going to need a new paint job, too,” Heyna said.
Everyone was excited about this last task. In exchange for the first shipment of gems, the friends would add a large wing to Jakintu’s cottage, almost doubling its footprint. Heyna looked forward to the painting the most. She had some ideas and sketched them out. She showed them to Tooly and Jakintu and got the okay.
The Heyna and Beetah figured they would need seventy logs, each at least twenty-four feet long and ten inches in diameter stripped of bark. All that yummy bark, Heyna thought. This is going to be fun.
Heyna and Beetah scouted the area for the best and straightest trees for building material. They marked those, and set about bringing them down with their teeth. Once down, Tooly and Sronban helped remove the branches with axes. The Erda used their razor sharp teeth to strip the bark, smooth the logs and cut them to length. Jakintu had a large-wheeled trolley that helped them move the logs to the building site.
Heyna realized as she grunted and sweated, and cut and trimmed, that she loved this work. For the first time in her life, she didn’t think of work as something that she was forced to do. This was work that she was made for.
Tooly and Sronban finished drafting the floor plan, and began digging the base for the new rooms. They dug a trench and filled it with stones and then sand to provide a well drained and level surface to place the first logs. They used thick stumps to tamp down and level the trenches. They then laid and leveled flat stones as a footing.
Once the footing was ready, Jakintu instructed and supervised the team in the construction of a crane out of strong saplings and logs. Then they began to work laying the logs. The Erda had notched the ends of each, so they would interlock making a very strong structure. Windows were cut on two sides to let in light. The Fennec, with Jakintu supervising, used the crane to lift and maneuver the logs into place.
Now the Erda got to work creating planks for the roof and floor. This was harder work. They used hand saws to cut and shape the wood. Heyna tried to use her teeth at first, but she couldn’t make the planks straight. Jakintu showed them how to use a jig to saw rough planks. Once they got the hang of it, the work went quickly.
The Fennec worked on the platform that would be the floor. Jakintu already had materials for this prepared. First, thick planks were laid on edge as the floor joists. Smooth boards were laid edge to edge over the joists to form a level surface.
Day by day, row on row, the addition grew. When the walls were complete it was time to construct the roof. Jakintu instructed and supervised laying the ridge line and the joists. Planks went over the joists.
“This barrel of nails came all the way from Merkataritza. Don’t waste them. This is all that I have.”
Jakintu already had cedar shingles prepared, and Heyna was glad of it. She hated the taste of cedar. The team worked together to hammer the shingles in over the planks giving the roof the look of feathers so water would spill over the eaves.
“Time to get stucco!” Jakintu said.
“That doesn’t sound good,” said Heyna. “What’s that?”
“It’s just cement, sand, white pigment, and water,” Jakintu said. “But when it dries, it’s hard as rock. We’ll use it to make the smooth surface that matches the rest of the house.”
Jakintu lead the team back out to the forge. In the same clearing was a kiln next to a large storage shed. In the shed were many sculptures, small and large. In one corner were barrels of cement and lime.
“Let’s roll these down to the house and we’ll stir up some stucco.”
The barrels were heavy and they used Jakintu’s little trolley to move them. Mixing the stucco was fun, but applying it to the cottage was hard work. They had to move fast, because the mixture dried quickly. They set up a rotating assembly line with teams mixing, carrying, and applying the stucco. It wasn’t long before the addition was covered.
Each night the team washed the day’s grime off in hot water in a tub out back.
“We’ll leave the outside for now,” Jakintu said. “Time to work on the inside.”
Jakintu set the friends to work in teams. First, they laid canvas to protect the floor boards. Then they began to plaster the walls. The plaster was harder to work than even the stucco. It hardened faster, so one team mixed and the second slapped on a rough first coat. Then each person worked to apply a smooth final coat, which was tricky. Jakintu showed them how, but their first tries were crude. Only Tooly did well on his first try. He’d been building houses on the Misty Isle for years.
When the plastering was done, they broke up into teams again. Tooly and Heyna painted the outside while Sronban and Beetah painted the inside. Heyna had an idea for a design for the exterior painting that told their collective story in symbols. Jakintu and Tooly liked the idea, so they got to work. The pattern needed to be painted on the existing cottage as well as the addition.
Beetah and Sronban finished inside before Tooly and Heyna did outside, so Jakintu had them start to sand the floor boards smooth, and finish them with a varnish.
Two and a half months the friends had worked, and the warm season was almost over.
“You know,” Heyna said, while the group lounged around an open fire in front of the cottage, “when you told us that the price of the jewels was adding a couple of rooms to your house, I thought that was a cheap price, but now…” She looked up at the finished house.
“Now,” said Tooly, “you appreciate the value of hard work well done.”
“Yes.”
“My home,” Jakintu said, “I value far above jewels. Now, with all your love and intention poured into it, I value it even more. You have my thanks, friends.”