Her mother stood up and stretched her back, giving a wince. Walking over to her daughter, she held her hand out for the basket. "What have I said about hanging out with those subhumans? Go in and get warmed up! We've got work to do tonight before dinner."
Gansel looked down, shamed. Pale cheeks shining bright red in the cold air, she whispered, "Yes, Mama."
She ran through the gate and into the house, slamming the door behind her while holding back her tears. She put more coal into the stove and once she felt the warmth flowing back into her fingers, the tears began to fall.
She reached up and pulled her shawl over her face and let out a little scream, it was so unfair! She had no human friends to speak of anyway! No human kids wanted to hang around with the wash woman's daughter. Not in this neighborhood anyway.
They were all stuck-up merchants’ kids who would throw rags at her when she walked through the streets to collect the washing. Mocking her, their voices would ring out, alerting the others, "Here wash-a-girl! Catch wash-a-girl! Make sure you get that stain out wash-a-girl, I made it just for you!"
Then they'd laugh and run off to their schools. That's what stung the most, she wanted to go too. Maybe not with them, but to some sort of school. To learn something more than her mother’s herbs and how to get bloodstains out of underclothes.
She heard the door latch lift and wiped her tears away, returning to her chores. She needed to wash her hands and get the water boiling so her mom could do her evening washing and Gansel could learn her potions.
✽✽✽
As supper simmered on the fire, Gansel inspected a reddish tincture under her mom’s watchful gaze. She couldn't remember the ingredients her mother had put in it. Usually, it was her mother that labeled the jars, and she would do so before the extracts were concocted. But this was her lesson for today.
Two moons ago, her mother had her watch as she had cut, measured, and mixed the ingredients for this recipe, explaining each step of the process as she worked. Once the aqua vitae was poured over the mixture inside the cheesecloth sachets, her mother sealed the glass jars with waxed parchment to steep the various herbs and roots.
Tonight, Gansel sat at the kitchen table, a blanket wrapped around her to ward off the evening chill, failing to compare the qualities of the unlabeled elixirs with the detailed descriptions written in her family's herbalism book.
Her mother had opened up the old book to the section titled, Fore Those Wyth Childe. The first pages of the book were written in the old tongue, the trennung, back when the first tribes were as one and spoke a common language.
It was slow going. Gansel had to read each description, color, ingredients, what part of the plants were used, whether they were fresh or dried, where they should be harvested from, how much aqua vitae to add, and the recommended dosage; all the while trying to remember what her mother had done two months ago! She concentrated hard, trying to decipher the recipe.
Her temples ached from reading and she was cold. As if sensing her daughter’s discomfort, Lore poured a hot cup of tea for her, "Here Ganny, you'll be able to concentrate better if you have something warm in you and dinner will be ready once we're done."
She went back to the stove and continued scrubbing stains out of rich people's underwear.
Gansel took the warm mug in her hands and brought the tea to her nose. She sniffed the warm steam rising off of the liquid and smelled the fruity smell of red summer raspberries. A smile came to her face as she sipped her favorite tea. She returned to the book feeling more comfortable.
As she scanned the lines, she recognized a phrase, for a strong womb?
Taking another sip of the red raspberry tea, it dawned on her. Laughing, she choked on her tea.
"No hints Mama!” she chided her mother and pointed at the liquid in the jar. "This recipe is for an Elixir of Red Raspberry!"
Her mother gave her a wry smile, "Oh? And when should it be administered?"
Gansel looked back at the almanac, searching for the prescription. "Um. It should be...” She ran her fingertip over the page. "I've seen you label this before."
Her mother nodded, waiting for the answer.
‘Where was it?’ Gansel thought. There! She saw the prescribed use, usually found at the end, in a footnote. She read out loud, "Do not use after the third moon, it could end the gestation."
Her mother nodded, then explained, "Now, this is one of those cases where Great Grandmama Krautspender didn't give us everything we need. It provides an excellent recipe, but she didn't know what we know."
A puzzled look formed on Gansel's face, "What do you mean?"
"What I mean is that not every medicine is for every," she paused, "creature.”
Gansel's confused expression remained and her mother tried to explain it another way.
"You see, long ago, when your great grandmama wrote the second half of the book. She only worked with the pure humans back in Gasthausmund. She never had froggos and rock-eaters as patients."
Gansel's heart sunk, she always enjoyed hearing stories about Grandmama, but she hated when her mother talked like this. It always felt wrong.
"Gasthausmund, to this day, still only has humans and this book was written as a useful guide for helping just them. But after I came to Port Myskatol, I found that many of its details weren't accurate enough. This was before I was forced to deal with these impure breeds."
"Mama," Gansel said, embarrassed. She wanted to hear anything else but this. The events of that afternoon crept back into her mind and she worried about what had happened to her friends. What could happen?
"What? That's what they are! I don't care if the Duke says we gots to deal with them. The Assembly is right! They ain't pure like us Ganny!"
Gansel stayed quiet. Her mother was wrong and she knew it. Dwarves, goblins, bugbears, even the cobolds were still people like them. No matter what the Assembly said. Even if she was too afraid to stand up for them!
But she was afraid to say so. She didn't want to make her mother mad. Life was already hard enough. She knew that her mother had already lost so much and blamed it all on the Duke's laws.
Gansel began to cry. The past few years had been so hard for them. The winters were the worst. They were usually prepared enough for the first week of Winterdark. But only just. Usually only with enough fuel and food to last the Long Night and nothing more. Then her mother would have to go out in the freezing winds, begging for odd jobs and food. It seemed the hard days never stopped.
Her mother came across the kitchen and gave her a weak hug, “Now, now, Ganny, it's alright, Mama's a little tired that's all! Let's have some soup."
Gansel nodded and went to the cupboard to get bowls and spoons. She ladled out the steaming fish soup, the smell of the ocean wafted through the small room. Her thoughts stayed with her friends. If only her mother didn't hate their kinds so much. And for no reason! If only she could see them as she did. She swore a quiet promise to herself that she'd never grow up to be like that. No, she didn't want to be like any human in Port Myskatol.
✽✽✽
Snow clouds crowded back in over the town. As Gansel lay in bed, huddled deep under heavy blankets, she gazed at the softly glowing night sky through the window and listened to her mother humming to herself downstairs as she darned holes in rich men's stockings.
Gansel's wrists still ached from landing open palmed on the ice. So she stuck her hands under her armpits to keep them warm and still.
She was so tired, but her mind refused to settle down. The day's events kept running around in her head like a mouse dodging a broom. Whenever she closed her eyes, she kept seeing Tar'dur lying motionless on the ground. She hated seeing it happen and now she kept reliving it behind her eyes when she was on the verge of sleep.
So, she lay in the dark, trying her best to think of something else. But all she could think of was her friends in trouble in a city that hated their kind or, just as miserably, how much she wanted to get a real education and someho
w have the wherewithal to escape Port Myskatol. To be able to do anything but live the rest of her life out as a wash woman.
Her mind felt like a wagon wheel about to fly off a cart, so she stared out the window into the sky. Focusing on the ghostly green and yellow tendrils of the astral clouds standing out against the blackness of the night. Depending on the month, you could see red and blue at night too. She felt fortunate to see this awesome display every winter and missed seeing them in the summertime when the sun hovered on the horizon.
Peace, at last, fell over her and she felt sleep coming like a friend. That was until she heard footsteps crunching on the snow outside. There was a knock on the door downstairs. Her eyes popped open and she heard her mother go silent.
Gansel heard a chair move away from the table as her mother got up to answer the door, "Who is it?"
‘It can't be anything or anyone good,’ she thought, ‘no one comes around at this hour.’
She heard someone outside answer her mother and she unlatched the door, "Warden Wulfgust! Won't you and your men come in?"
Fear made her mother’s voice tight. She didn’t blame her. Gansel pulled the covers over her head, afraid of what might happen downstairs. She groaned into the quilts, it was the District Warden, and the Underkeepers from earlier were probably with him!
"Thank you, Missus Alterblum," said the winded voice of an old man.
"What brings you by this late Warden? Can I heat you some soup?" her mother offered.
"No, Lore, thank you, we shan’t be long," the old man deferred.
Gansel heard him give a harrumph, "No doubt your child has failed to tell you what transpired down by the harbor this day?"
Her stomach clenched. ‘No! No! No!’ she screamed inside her mind. Her chest was suddenly cold and hollow with fear.
Panic gripped her and she wrapped the blanket tight around herself. Her heart was pounding so hard that she was sure that everyone downstairs could hear it.
She never wanted this! She never wanted the Assembly on their doorstep. She never meant to bring trouble home!
“You mean her hanging out with that subhuman trash from Frogtown?” her mother replied, “Of course, Warden, I make sure that secrets won’t be kept in my house. Thank you very much!”
Gansel heard footsteps move across the room downstairs, closer to her mother.
“Missus Alterblum,” he paused, then said in a more familiar and apologetic tone, “as my wards, it is my sacred duty to the Pure Human Spirit to ensure the safety and purity of those entrusted to me! I only want the best for your daughter, whom you truly need to get the reins of adulthood fixed on.”
Gansel heard the clatter of empty elixir bottles. The Warden was no doubt fondling the bottles and other accouterments that were still spread over the alchemy table.
“I want what’s best for my wards, Missus Alterblum, and that means I want what’s best for you. I can’t make any guarantees, though, for your livelihood. I think the Assembly has turned a blind eye towards your superstitious artifice for long enough. Now, I’m torn as to how I should uphold the tenets of our faith. Should I put all you care for to the torch or be lenient this one last time? Besides, you already have at least one line of honest income, I daresay that this antiquated puffery is unseemly and smacks of greed.”
‘No more potions?’ Gansel thought in panic. ‘No! That’s unfair! We already have a hard enough time surviving Winterdark on what Mama earns!’
To her credit, Lore Alterblum held her tongue. It was hard enough for a widow to feed their children in Port Myskatol, they didn’t need to provoke the Assembly’s ire on top of it.
“You are indeed benevolent, Warden Wulfgust, and your point is clear.” she replied, “She’ll not be seen around those folk anymore.”
Gansel could hear her mother’s chagrin. She felt awful. She never meant for her mother to get into trouble!
“Then we are concluded.” She heard him walk across the room as the door opened, “We shall see you and your child in the Merchant’s Quarter after Winterdark? Dress warm, it will be our ward’s turn for sounding the snow banks for corpses.”
The door slammed and all was quiet downstairs. Until that is, her mother began sobbing. Gansel stared into the darkness. She resolved then that even though she knew the Assembly was wrong about everything, she could not afford to offend their ideas about Purity. She didn’t want to learn what could be done to her family in the name of the Pure Human Spirit.
2
The sun had long since disappeared behind the great, red planet, Grutule. Naked and half frozen, the elf blundered naked through the narrow, snow-filled cobblestone streets, stumbling over enormous snowdrifts piled up against houses and stretching across streets. Ameria wept, fighting back despair as she sought to escape Port Myskatol.
‘By the First Tree, I should have taken their heartseeds!’ she thought, cursing herself for dooming her crèche sisters to eternal rot.
It had been months since the survivors from her village were brought to this stinking city.
Ameria remembered that day, it had been summer in outskirts of Pahale Van forest, so warm and moist. She remembered tending to the compost heaps when human raiders in black robes and leather masks took them by surprise, somehow their usual measures of scent and camouflage hadn’t been enough.
The humans came at dawn with only one purpose, to enslave as many of the elves as possible. They came with fire and sword, cutting down any resistance met.
Had it been those strange masks they wore that allowed them to enter the forest with impunity? Every human she had seen wore one. Strange glass eyes and metal faces, stretched and strapped to their pale heads with leather straps. Something about those masks allowed the humans to remain unaffected by the elves' veiling scent.
During their captivity, they experienced such humiliation and deprivation at their captors’ hands. It began with the harvesting belts. Stripped naked, she remembered the guards leering down at her, weapons drawn and forcing her to put the device around her waist as. It covered her abdomen and made it difficult to breathe.
The front of the belt bore a strange metal box connected to two glass containers by a series of copper tubes. Once the belt was locked in the back, the slavers inserted a key into a hole on the top of the box to wind up a mechanism within. Then they pressed a button on the device, delivering a stabbing pain deep within her belly before they tossed her roughly into a her dank cell.
She didn't know what had happened at first, but after a few hours she saw what was being done to them. The jars on the sides filled a drop at a time. The machines were drawing out their blood sap! It wasn't enough to kill, but it was obvious that the humans were harvesting their essence for some foul reason.
She woke up the next day with her throat as dry as autumn bark and a deep thirst howled from within. Looking around, she saw that every one of her sisters seemed to have aged hundreds of years overnight. Their skin was sagging, pale, and wilted. She was so thirsty!
Then the slavers came to the cell and pulled a lever outside the bars. A hole in the wall spouted a steady stream of gray water. Every elf clambered over each other to slake their thirst. She remembered the smell of the water, stagnant and foul. But they had been so sapless! So thirsty! Those that couldn't drink from the hole got down on their hands and knees to suck up what little they could from the slime-covered floor. They drank and drank until their bellies distended.
As Ameria finished lapping up the water from a shallow puddle, she came to her senses, disgusted at herself for losing control. Her stomach gurgled and shifted. At that the machine on the front of the belt came to life with a grinding of gears and another stab of pain as her blood sap was sucked out as fast as her body was able to replenish it! Soon, every belt on every elf began to whir and pump pale vital fluids into the storage jars. Some gritted their teeth under the strain, but most could do nothing but scream.
The draining continued for endless days and nights. Gone was the sun.
Gone were the sounds of the forest that was their home. What marked the passing of time was the coming and going of the slavers, the whirring and clicking of the belts, and stabs of pain from within.
"You don't step up, we'll bleed you dry, quick like!” a large, hairy human yelled at them as he swiped his knife through the throat of a sister who looked at him the wrong way. “We’ll just go out and get more of you!”
They obeyed, listening dearly to their collective instincts of self-preservation. Silently, they lined up at the bars while the humans changed out the jars and wound up the clockwork pumps. Then the cycle would begin again, drained until they passed out and dying of thirst the following morning.
Such uncontrollable thirst!
Again, the foul water and the sickening fight amongst themselves to drink from the putrid pools on the floor. Every time their thirst was satiated, the pumps would activate, extracting their sap and topping off the jars. She felt fouled and humiliated by the unending thirst and harvesting.
But, one morning, the humans didn’t come. The elves woke parched and brittle, too weak to do anything but wait. Where were they? They ached for water! She crawled to the bars closest to the lever that would dispense the awful flow. She only wanted release from the aching thirst! She stretched out, but could not reach it.
Although the humans and the water hadn’t come, the belts still activated like every other morning before. Spinning the last tension out of their springs. Sucking out their sap. Ameria panicked!
The pain was like nothing she had ever experienced. A dry ache grew behind her eyes and her fingers and toes felt dry and brittle. She looked at her hands, her fingertips were turning brown! What little color there was in the prison began to fade away as her vision grayed. Every elf that had managed to stand in hopes of water fell to the floor. No screams this time. Whimpers only. Soft cries of despair and wretched, dry weeping filled the cell. Bodies grew still. Voices silent. The belts wound down at last.
The Necrosopher’s Apprentice Page 2
