SSCS 02: Installment 27 of 32
How to Catch Flying Pigs, and Sea Monsters
This is Installment 27 of this year’s SSCS. If you want to start at the beginning of ‘How to Catch Flying Pigs, and Sea Monsters’, go here! If you want to know what the heck an SSCS is, go here!
Previously…
Gran-Tom had said she’d start teaching her to sing last night, and she probably had (based on the feeling when Mina tried to swallow), but Mina couldn’t remember any of it, not one note.
At that moment, a shadow loomed in the archway of Mina’s nook, resolving after a moment into gran-Tom. The priestess’ voice was raspy and old as she growled out, “That was not supposed to happen.”
…How to Catch Flying Pigs, and Sea Monsters
Installment 27: 21.0425
Mina scowled. “What wasn’t supposed to happen?” She could barely speak, and the words came out as mostly a croaky hiss.
The priestess just sighed, then nodded sharply. “Good,” she said, mostly to herself, followed by, “Go back to sleep, Mina. I’ll make Hedwin make the breakfast today.”
***
Breakfast was…not okay. Based on the selection – rice and tinned fruit and tinned eel – gran-Tom’s orders had included soft foods that wouldn’t scratch a sore throat. But Hedwin had somehow managed to squish the fruit into lumpy, sweet splatters in whatever process he’d used for removing it from the tin, the eel had obviously been burnt badly and then soaked in water to try to re-soften it – so that burned-eel juice was mixing with the fruit in her bowl – and the rice was not soft. The rice was like fine-grained, very bland gravel that had been moistened but had maybe only seen the fire from the safe distance of across the room. Mina – finally allowed up from her sleep alcove after being bizarrely confined there for the better part of the morning – ground the grains of uncooked rice against her back molars meditatively while focusing most of her attention on not gagging on the taste of wet, lightly sweetened, burned eel.
“What was it like?” Hedwin asked, shoveling the contents of his own bowl enthusiastically into his mouth. Mina made a mental note to stop throwing out any food that got burned.
“What was what like?” Mina’s voice was still a croaking whisper, not aided by the need to swallow the current bit of crushed gravel before she could speak.
“Singing the Moon and the Tides. Could you tell you were making a difference? Doesn’t it get very cold up in gran-Tom’s observatory at night? Did you actually get to sing, or were you just observing for this first time around?” Hedwin had paused in his shoveling to look up at her brightly, the horrors of yesterday’s shit-scrubbing duty – and his ill-advised hangover – apparently long forgotten. In fact, this was more focus and attention than Mina was used to from Hedwin in general, shit-scrubbing horrors or no.
“I don’t remember.” Mina looked down, poking into her bowl hopefully, but not yet actually willing to take another spoonful, even if it would give her an excuse for not talking for the next five minutes. Then the one thing she actually did remember flashed across the back of her mind – the kraken, dark and terrible and absorbing, and the feeling like wanting to twine herself into its tentacles with tentacles of her own – and the gag reflex was suddenly too strong. The little bit of terrible breakfast she’d managed to choke down so far was suddenly right back up again, making a nasty splatter on the kitchen floor. Mina coughed against the return taste and mentally sighed. She was going to have to clean that up later. Even if Hedwin tried to now, she would still know it was there – vomit of burned eel – unless the tiles were really and thoroughly scrubbed down.
***
Fortunately, pigs are always pigs and can’t be ruined by a watery, burned breakfast. They smell terrible, but it was a smell Mina knew well enough to be comfortable with, and today she was going to take what she could get. Gran-Tom loathed the smell of the pig pens (and presumably the Other One did, too), and so Mina knew that mucking out the pig pens, while odious, was always a solid way to escape safely for an hour or two. And Bunsnort always kept her company while she worked, which helped Mina forgive him the terrible smell.
However, the laws of life on the spire were apparently very badly damaged today, because just as Mina was spreading out fresh hay in the first pen, she looked up to see gran-Tom standing on the other side of the (recently mended) pig gate, her tentacles all curled up carefully around her body, but – very alarmingly – the look in her eyes one of delighted mischief.
Dread instantly dowsed Mina in icy sweat. Which one was it? Did it even matter trapped in here?
“This is perfect,” gran-Tom crowed, in weird counter-point to a whiteness tinging her tentacles that really said she wanted to be anywhere else. “Whoever it is won’t come anywhere near filth work. We can take as long as we need. Mina.” The priestess beckoned, and Mina drew reluctantly closer, the muck rake clutched – protectively? – in one hand. When she was close enough, gran-Tom reached out with one of her tentacles and curled it around Mina’s wrist in a way Mina thought was somehow supposed to be comforting. It actually was a little; gran-Tom’s claws were sharp, so a regular pat on the hand just couldn’t be anything but harsh.
“Here.” Gran-Tom held out one of those clawed hands now, one of the older, cracked tea-cups held in it. “Drink this to soothe your throat. I know now what the problem is, and I know what to do, but we have a lot of work to do to get you ready before the next moonrise. You’ll need the First, Second, and Third Hums all down perfectly.”
Warily, Mina switched hands on the muck-rake and took the cup. The tea tasted like oyster bells, because of course it did.