Cascades (Wine of the Gods Book 24)

by Pam Uphoff

  A sputtering laugh. "Never? Stuck up Never has to make shampoo to make ends meet? And hair dye, skin tighteners . . . " Tressa reached out and grabbed one of the Never Any Question sacks, and started adding bottles.

  "The Beautiful Woman. Old Gods, you have your own labels . . . I hate to say this, but you actually may be a competent business manager."

  "Thank you?" Leanna stiffened her shoulders as Tressa laughed and walked back to the front.

  "An honest manager! Who would have thought it!"

  One of the customers accosted her.

  "Tressa! How nice to see you again. Did you have a good voyage?"

  Ungrateful wretch. It's my lotions that will keep that gorgeous complexion looking young!

  Tressa glanced at Leanna, and grinned. "Why yes, I've enjoyed every bit of my vacation . . . and in fact I think I'll get right back to it. Once I've collected a few more lotions and dyes."

  Fortunately the girl went off with Franz to get her hair cut.

  Leanna followed Tressa as she swept through the shop, touching everything. "These chairs are getting old, you should replace them. Why are all the new accents pink? Do you have a fetish, Leanna, Dear?"

  All in poisonous tones.

  But she said she was going away again. Leanna smiled and watched her tongue.

  "I've done well by you! I earned my salary."

  Tressa grinned. In a rather snarky way. "Indeed. You've actually impressed me. Keep up the good work."

  She turned and walked out the door.

  Leanna stared through the glass as she hailed a taxi and disappeared. Her knees were quivering, and she turned away and walked steadily into the back room.

  And sat down on a box to have a mild, lady like bit of hysterics.

  She came back. "Keep up the good work" she said. In front of everyone. I'm safe. I'm . . . the business manager of The Beautiful Woman. And I'm going to go home and . . . have a proper fit of vapors where the staff can't see me fall apart.

  But at home she found a new sort of problem. One of the dogs had had puppies. Very odd puppies. White with pink spots. Or purple stripes.

  Leanna thought about all the ladies at the shop. Their silly dogs. That they paid hundreds of royals for.

  "Rusty, I'm going to get rich selling your puppies. Let's get you some meat . . . and a better bed for those cute little things . . . "

  She didn't need a fit of vapors, she was too busy to have vapors. Too successful.

  Magic Trash

  Chapter One

  Fall 1397

  Grantown, Three Rivers Province

  Ericka of Westerly Farm stared into the mirror and a hard lived thirty-eight years stared back. It bore a strong resemblance to fifty years. Possibly more.

  "I need a drink."

  Neille and Nabelle nodded agreement, but Nabelle added a sneer. "Doubt your Mom left any."

  Ericka checked all her mother's hiding places and found nothing. Out in the front room her mother had a box half full of 'magic potions' that she hadn't washed out yet. She also had a big jug she dumped the contents of the pretty bottles into when she emptied and cleaned them to sell.

  Ericka pulled the plug on the jug and sniffed. "Not too bad." For a mix of a couple of dozen 'magic potions'.

  Nabelle grabbed a gold painted goblet and held it out. "After the fair, I'll drink anything. I think I blew more guards to get them to leave me alone than I had customers." She took a sip, and licked her lips. "Not bad. Not bad at all. Fill 'er up."

  Neille was a bit more cautious. She pulled out a couple of the little bottles. "La dy Hes per. Do you suppose the witch that made the potions was trying to help or hurt the ladies whose names are on these? Lord Gero."

  Ericka pulled out a pretty twisted spiral of glass. She didn't even try to decipher the name. "It's too pretty for a curse. I'll bet it's an Elixir of Youth." She pulled the cork and took a sip.

  It was more like drinking syrupy milk than ale, and not enough alcohol for a kick. Ericka plugged the bottle and tossed it back in the box. Neille looked at several more bottles. "Here. Lady Jani. She sounds nice." She drained it.

  Her brother Dare snickered as he walked downstairs. "But what if the witch doesn't like nice women?" The only good thing about Dare was that he looked worse than she did. Aging fag.

  Ericka took the other bottle from Neille. "Here, try Lord Gero, maybe he wanted to be a girl."

  Dare shrugged and took a mouthful.

  "Or maybe a toad." He sprayed it across the room and glared at her. "Tastes worse than what Ma usually drinks." He handed her the bottle and wandered out to the back garden. "Lizard needs to weed it again. Except I'm tired of vegetables."

  "I was thinking about getting a goat." Neille abandoned her potion too. "But then I'd have to get up early and milk it."

  "I ought to have a cow." Ericka said. "Mortimer promised me a cow if I'd get up and do the morning milking for his Mother. But I work late, so I just couldn't get out of bed early enough. Every time I got there, Aunt Elma had already done it all."

  Her cousins nodded their understanding.

  Ericka yawned. "Well, I'm going back to bed right now. The Fair was hard work, and I didn't get hardly any sleep."

  "At least you didn't get beat up." Dare started poking around at the shelves of junk.

  "Ah, let me see! I'll kiss it and make it better." She giggled. He really had been cute when he was younger.

  Nabelle staggered a bit. "You know, I think that stuff may have had a bit of a kick after all. I feel pretty soused."

  They all started laughing and migrated up stairs to Dare's room.

  They undressed him and checked him over for bruises and scrapes, kissing them to make them better, getting undressed themselves somewhere in the process, and getting really friendly with each other, and Dare got a hard on and got it into Neille which had them all laughing all over again, as he humped like a bunny.

  "Hey, if Dare can act like a man, so can I." Nabelle rolled Ericka over and shoved in between her legs.

  "Hey, you remind of a lot of my customers. They can't get it up either." They howled with laughter, and pretty much carried on, playing and sleeping and playing again for the rest of the day, and off and on all night.

  Around dawn Ericka crawled out of bed and down to the privy.

  She felt pretty good for having so little sleep last night. And old gods! What had gotten into Nabelle and Dare? Maybe there was something to those potions after all.

  Nabelle, she'd drunk the from the jug-of-everything. And Dare had drunk part of . . . she pulled the box out and tried to read the labels. "Lord Guh, guh, Gee ro? Yeah. This is it."

  She took it away and hid it in her room. She could make a hell of a lot of money with this. Later. Right now she felt grubby, and waffled between the creek and heating water for a proper bath. It was summer. The creek won. She grabbed a clean shift, and looked around the room. Yuck. She bundled up all the dirty clothes and took them along too. She and the clothes got a brisk scrub, and she draped the clothes all over the bushes to dry, and pulled on the shift before walking back to the farmhouse.

  She smelled fresh bread coming from Aunt Elma's and decided to go mooch as soon as she'd brushed her hair. She got a glimpse of herself in the mirror, wet tendrils of hair all over the place. Her complexion looked good though.

  Several someones were snoring in Dare's room. She snickered. It was nice with her brother Tyrone and now her sister Marylu married and living in town. Her youngest brother, Lanz, and her own little boys, well they were both pretty big, now, shared the attic. Her mother kept the downstairs bedroom, and these two were Dare's and hers. She brushed her hair and tied her favorite sash around her waist. She'd doubled up the material and left a few spots in the seam unsewn, so she could hide money from Tyrone. Not that she ever had much. But this way she kept at least some of what she earned.

  Even with all the predawn industry, she was still in time to help milk the cows. and then eat the sweet rolls fresh from the
oven. They were delicious, and Elma even told her she looked good. Thank the old gods for one nice aunt out of the whole family. She even sent Ericka off with rolls for home.

  Her 'kids,' Heso was sixteen and Lizard was twelve, were the first up. They inhaled rolls and then hunted around the yard for where the hens had hidden their eggs. She scrambled all they found for the rest of the family, including Nabelle and Neille when they woke up and showed up to be fed.

  Then she dressed for town, taking Lord Gero's potion with her.

  She didn't have any problem finding Hilleri. "I've got something for you, but it'll cost you ten royals."

  Hilleri frowned. "I doubt you have anything of the least bit of interest to me."

  "You sure have got stuck up since you married Airy the fairy. How much did his dad pay you to try and pretend he was a real man?"

  Hilleri's eyes flashed. Then teared.

  Ericka pulled out the bottle. "I gave this to Dare yesterday and he fucked Neille all night long."

  "His own cousin? How . . . typical."

  "Try it. If it works, you owe me ten royals."

  "If it works, I'll pay you double that."

  Then Ericka got to work. The new corridor meant that lots of customers with serious money were coming through now. The corridor came out at the edge of the road and there was a campground for the wagon trains, with woods behind it. There was a little shack back there, out of sight, where she took customers. No one seemed to be coming through, today, though.

  Sometimes you just had to go get them.

  But the only eye she caught today was that of a dirty old fellow. He followed her through, so she felt him up while kissing him and found plenty of coin. She maneuvered him into the shack and they had a great time. The old guy was quite clever about getting his coins back at the same time he kept a girl busy. Pretty fun too. He knew what a girl liked, and Ericka lost coins with every orgasm she had, and got them back during his. She figured he got four customer's worth before she decided she'd better quit while she was ahead in the count. Halfway back to the corridor he pushed her up against a tree and took her again. Backed off laughing and handed her a ten royal note. Damn. He must have lots of money.

  "Hey, marry me! Take me away from all this!"

  "I gave you magic, you can get yourself away from this—if you really want to. Hehehehe . . . " his laugh faded off as he stepped through the corridor.

  She went back to the shack and pulled the mattress away to find all the coins under it and then she pried all the coins out of the cracks she'd pressed them into, and levered out the two loose boards to pick up the ones she'd pushed all the way through. What a haul! She slipped the bill and half the coins into hidden pockets in her fancy embroidered sash and the rest in her skirt pockets. As soon as she walked into town, Tyrone took the pocket contents while she cursed him. Stupid idiot.

  A week later, a beaming Hilleri handed her twenty royals.

  Of course Tyrone swiped the two she deliberately left in her pocket, but she got away with most of it.

  "How come you're not working. Lazy slut." He jerked his chin at Vonne, Marylu and Filli on the corner. "Even they're trying harder."

  "I'm resting. It's doing wonders for my complexion." Personally she thought it was tacky that he made his wife work, but Filli didn't seem to mind.

  She walked back to the farms and hid her money, then pulled weeds in the garden and picked the runner beans and tomatoes. That elixir was doing her good. Even the skin of her hands looked better, not so dry and wrinkled. And she'd been getting cooking lessons from Aunt Elma every morning.

  She slipped into the front room and considered the box of little bottles. How was she to tell what each potion did, so she could sell it?

  Hmm, Neille had had Lady Jani's potion. There was a bit of that left.

  And Nabele had drunk from the jug. Lots of that left.

  She slipped around the corner and looked in the mirror again. Her complexion was still improving. She grabbed the spiral bottle and hid it upstairs.

  Over at Uncle Willi's Nabelle and Neille were just getting up.

  Ericka studied them both. "I think there was an elixir of youth in those bottles. Have you looked at your skin?"

  Neille stretched. Her shift was flagrantly short, but then, how else do you attract men? "We don't have a mirror." She ran her hands over her face. "Let's go over to Aunt Elma's."

  Gazing into the good mirror, they had to admit that they were all three looking a lot younger. Rache and Melodi had come over from Uncle Frank's and they frowned jealously.

  "Well, you could try a potion." Ericka said. "Maybe just a tiny bit, in case it's something bad."

  Rache got a sip of Lady Devi and Melodi chose Lady May.

  Ericka pondered the possibilities of trying potions on Vonne, Kathy and Marylu. "We shouldn't tell anyone else about this." She looked at her cousins. "I mean – our families. There's money in this, and we want it to be ours. Not Tyrone's or Erald's or Lew's, right?"

  They swapped looks and nodded.

  Nabelle scratched her scalp, and frowned at a few loose strands of hair in her hand. "I'm all itchy. My hair'd better not fall out."

  That brought on another round of inspection at the mirror, then Rache and Melodi headed for town.

  Chapter Two

  Late Fall 1397

  Grantown, Three Rivers Province

  Lizard had a problem.

  Well, if you counted his family, lots of problems.

  But his immediate problem was Beastly. Beastly wasn't feeling well, and Lizard had a horrible suspicion that his second hero was to blame. Which meant he had to decide whether to dose the horse, like Kevi had said, or go to his first hero and tattle on Kevi. Kevi had put something in the water for the cows – and old gods! They had all acted like they were fertile for a week! The bull had had a great time. But Beastly had jumped the fence and drunk that water too.

  Lizard waffled, but the simple fact was that he had no idea how to find his cousin Mortimer. Which meant that he would have to trust Kevi.

  He pulled the cork out of the wine bottle and poured some into the rusty bucket.

  Beastly sighed and sniffed. An ear swiveled around and he stuck his nose in the bucket and sucked it all down.

  Kevi hadn't said how much . . . Lizard decided to save the rest. Mouse whistled from the orchard, so he tucked the bottle behind a bush and ran to help. There was fruit to pick and take to town in the morning—hopefully with Beastly pulling the cart, not a milk cow.

  ***

  Ericka slipped out of Aumt Elma's and looked to see what Lizard had hidden. Wine. Figured. Kid was going to be a sot just like the rest of the family. She took a sip. Good stuff, too. She took the bottle away with her when she headed home.

  She just hated to cover up her new complexion with heavy makeup, but she didn't want Tyrone to catch on yet. Preferably not at all. Nielle did the same, but Nabelle begged off, saying she felt odd wearing makeup. "It's not like I can work, anyway."

  Dare always made more money than I did. But Ericka kept that thought to herself and headed for town.

  "I don't see Dare, either." Ericka craned her neck to look up the street toward that club.

  Neille snickered. "Ericka, that elixir has cured him completely. He keeps coming over. You know?"

  "You're kidding? I mean, he's not serious is he? He's a cousin."

  "Well, he's certainly got a bad case of the hots, and he isn't chasing the others, just me." She sounded pretty smug.

  "Huh. Well, it's not illegal to marry a cousin." Ericka caught Jesso Highland's eye and popped over to see if he had any money. She was right back. "No joy until auction night. Tomorrow and the next day will be a lot more fun."

  "Me and Dare, we've been thinking we'd head for the Gold Rush Territories." Neille chewed a fingernail. "It's not like I don't know how to make plenty of money if the gold mining doesn't work out."

  "Well, yeah, but gold mining sound even harder than farming, you know?"
/>
  "If we don't strike it rich, I suppose we'll be back."

  ***

  Now Lizard was really worried.

  The cow had gotten the fruit to market, but Tyrone had seen. And come right over. "You finally knock that vicious brute on the head?"

  Jek shrugged at his nephew. "He's a little under the weather. Colic, I suppose."

  "Huh, too bad. Horses die of colic. In fact, you ought to try and get him down to the auction, get some money out of him before he dies."

  "Oh, no. I couldn't sell Mortimer's horse."

  Lizard sighed. Uncle Jek never stood up to anyone. Even cousin Mortimer, his number one hero pushed him around. He just happened to push him the right direction.

  "Well, whatever. Damned big horse to bury, unless you eat him, I suppose, but you don't want to wait until he's dead if you're going to." He reached out and Lizard ducked a slap. "Don't look at me like that. I don't have anything to do with the maniac. You're the one who's fed him something bad."

  Lizard hissed angrily, but he remembered Kevi . . .

  Tyrone rode back to the farms on the cart and walked out to look at the miserable horse. "I'll dose him up with some happy dust so he's not hurting and walk him down to the auction."

  Beastly was so miserable he barely laid his ears back when Tyrone walked up and blew powdered poppy in his nostrils. Then he staggered back, wobbled in a circle and fell down.

  "There. Give him an hour and he'll be happy as can be." Tyrone swaggered in the back door and got fed, just like everyone else. Lizard jumped up and down in frustration and finally lit out for town. He stared at the corridor. Gulped and followed a carriage through. He flinched back from the noise, and got bumped out into the street. A huge street, with wagons and horses and people everywhere. And everywhere he looked there were buildings. Stone and brick and wood. Large and small. And by the time he'd figured out how to not get killed on the street, he was also very lost.

  Everywhere, people were coming and going from corridors. Lots of corridors. And he had no idea which one was his.