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Wedgewood
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The next day Achelous and Baryy, accompanied by their astrobiologist, visited Mbecca Yuletree, the preeminent sixthsense healer in Wedgewood. Her abode, a rambling two-story stone lodge, had repeatedly been added onto since the very founding of the town. The house, if it could be called that, sat well up-slope from Wedgewood proper, and a wide, thickly mulched path led to her front door. Walk-lamps hung on poles the entire way. The lodge itself housed a twelve-bed infirmary where Mbecca and her assistants treated patients. On the second floor, the newest edition, an exposed staircase rose into the reaches of a massive Ungerngerist. At the third rung of branches, an expansive observatory encircled the bole. Though the view of the night sky was largely obstructed by the living branches above it, the observatory served well as the local sensitive's den, a place of solitude, reflection, and meditation—scrying and augury. It doubled as the unofficial meeting place for the clan's emerging social group of sixthsense adepts.
Achelous and Baryy followed Mbecca up the winding staircase, through a door in the observatory, and into a cozy kitchen, or more likely a pantry with tables and chairs. It was Achelous’s turn to uphold the arrangement he’d struck with Baryy. Outish had been given strict orders to contain himself and observe. If he had questions, which Achelous was certain would spout like a fountain, Outish was to feign idiocy and put them as stupidly as he could. Otherwise, Achelous would give him the “cease and desist” signal.
The four of them sat at a corner bench in the kitchen whose walls and cupboard doors were elaborately decorated with colorful scrollwork and renditions of woodland flowers. An assistant readied a serving of tea. Immediately, counter to Achelous’s wishes, Outish started to fidget; he stood and began wandering from nook to nook peering, lifting, and otherwise inspecting anything that struck his fancy, which was everything.
Anxious that Outish would blow their careful script, Baryy said, “Outish, sit down; you’re a guest, not a chipmunk hunting for nuts.”
Mbecca laughed. She looked at Outish with the eyes of a teacher, understanding written in her gaze. She followed his movements from article to article. “He doesn’t get out much, does he?”
“No,” replied Achelous, “this is his first trade mission. I’m trying him out as a runner.”
“Oh, he’s way too intelligent for that,” she swirled her tea with a spoon. “Look at him; he’s cataloging and noting everything of interest quickly and efficiently. You really should make him a market surveyor. Send him out. He’ll tell you what people are buying, what they are using.” She looked at Achelous, “And perhaps more important, what they are not.”
Outish’s ears turned pink at the praise.
“Find anything of interest?” she asked, lifting her chin.
He held a glass jar, examining its contents of dried berries. “These. Even dried, their aroma is quite strong.” He asked, “Are you putting these in the tea?”
Mbecca turned a satisfied smile on Achelous. “Bring them here,” she said to Outish. “They’re kdel berries; we pick them in the fall.”
Achelous watched Mbecca pour them into a bowl and eat one.
“Here, have some,” she passed Achelous the bowl. “I’ll warn you, they’re an acquired taste.”
The color of amber and crinkled like a raisin, the chief inspector popped one in his mouth. The tough skin yielded to his chewing, and then an intense flavor assaulted his tongue. He almost spat it out.
Mbecca laughed. “Told you. They take some getting used to.”
The flavor reminded him of a cross between raspberries and onions, at once repulsive and yet oddly soothing. She handed him a cup of water. He drank, washing down the offending berry. Baryy and Outish each tried one. Baryy blanched, but Outish chewed his thoughtfully.
“More?” She waved the bowl at them.
Mouth firmly shut, Baryy shook his head.
“Yes, we make tea out of it. It’s better than eating the berries straight. I have a pot steeping." She stood with an effort and shuffled to a small oil-fueled cook stove. The assistant made to intervene, but Mbecca waved her away. “Oi, the vagaries of age, but by Mother’s Fortune, I still have my mind.” Mbecca was a plump woman, her coarse, black hair cropped in a vague shape. Her skin darker than most Timberkeeps: a golden oak with big dark freckles like walnut stains. She wore an unglamorous frock and a plainly embroidered vest, both in stark contrast to a woman of her obvious means. She trudged back across the floor, holding the teapot in her hands.
She poured the tea. The crockery was chipped, the handle of Achelous’s cup reattached with glue. She noticed his examination and offered, “It’s my special set. Been passed down for generations. Came with us from Whispering Bough. Many a famous Timber and other folk have partaken from these cups.”
He nodded seriously. “I’m honored,” then the aroma of the tea wafted to his nose. “Oh—,” he breathed deeply, “this is good,” the aroma’s essence going straight through his sinuses and into his brain, “How lovely.”
She smiled. “Taste it.”
Achelous took a sip. “Hmm, sweet, yet tart, no—acerbic.” He sipped again. “There’s that raspberry-onion taste, only in the tea it’s much more tolerable, quite enjoyable.”
Her eyebrow arched, “I don’t know what a raspberry is, but I know what an onion is. And you’re right. It does have a hint of it.”
Achelous hid his consternation. That was a peril of his job, relating to a provincial an experience remembered on a different world. Low-level memories were hard to compartmentalize by planet. Where did I learn about raspberries? Earth? “How come I’ve not heard of kdel before now? I trade in herbs and spices. This is quite good. Did it come with you from the Great Latitude?” The marsh was a prodigious producer of all sorts of unique herbs, not just marsh cat, for which it was best known.
“Mmm, no,” she stared into her crock, the sediment drifting in the eddies. “It’s native here to Mount Mars. I don’t know that it grows anywhere else.”
Achelous paused, holding the crock halfway to his lips. “Nowhere else?”
She met gaze. “No, not that I know of.”
His brows began to knit, “Do you grow it or pick it wild?”
She began a grin. “Why? Are you looking to trade it? There is barely enough for those of us who can afford it.”
He swallowed and set the cup down. Baryy said the Timberkeep cancer rates were elevated in two tiers, the first tier being the long-time Wedgewood inhabitants, and the second higher incidence tier composed of families of the more affluent and well-to-do Timberkeeps. They suspected the second tier, the wealthy, had access to something not available to the general populace.
He stammered, “No, no. I wasn’t looking to trade it. But I am curious. Do you cultivate it or pick it wild?”
“Both. Although, it’s only been in the last few seasons that our cultivated plots have begun to produce in substantial quantities. It takes years for a bush to grow large enough to bear a reasonable harvest.”
Something was nagging him. It was at the edge of his consciousness. “Where do you grow them? Certainly not under the Ungerns? I wouldn’t think there’d be enough light for a bush to bear much fruit.”
She nodded as she popped one in her mouth. “True, we grow them on the terraces above the Ungerns. There’s plenty of light up there.”
“Terraces? You dug terraces?”
She shook her head and waved a hand. “Noi, they’re natural, or at least they were there before us.”
Achelous blinked. Natural terraces? Did they show on satellite imagery? Did we miss them? It was yet another reason they should mount an expedition to the mysterious peak. He filed it away.
“Were the plants, the bushes, already growing on the terraces?” Outish asked, peering out an open window. Three Tiny Tot hummingbirds, resplendent in their violet plumage, buzzed about a red cup suspended from the eves. Mbecca glanced at the runner, who appeared engrossed in the feeder. She studied him, “Why yes, that’s where we initially found them.”
Seeking to draw attention away from Outish, Baryy asked, “Mbecca, on a different subject, have you attempted to treat victims of the Timber’s Curse?”
Her happy face clouded. She picked up a spoon and stirred her tea in slow circles. After a lengthy wait, “Yes, yes, I have, but sadly to little effect.”
“What do you think is causing it?” he prodded.
She rolled her eyes. “If I knew that, I would treat it.”
Then Achelous recounted their planned fictional story of a healer managing to cure a brain tumor of a rich merchant by the name of Com. The story, while fictional on Dianis, was true in concept.
She shook her head. “What makes you think they are dying of a brain tumor?”
The Timberkeep tradition of burning their dead went hand in hand with a cultural aversion to dissecting the dead bodies. The headaches, nausea, weakness, blindness, and loss of motor control could be associated with a tumor, but you had to be trained to recognize them as such. Achelous decided to take a risk, just one of many he'd taken lately, and decided to connect the dots for the healer. “What I’ve seen and heard is the symptoms are remarkably similar. My trading firm has an account with Com," he lied smoothly, "We supply him all sorts of herbs.”
Baryy picked up the thread. “Com was not the first. The healer treated others.”
Mbecca was intrigued and probed with more questions.
Achelous sat back and listened to Baryy plant the first seeds with Mbecca on how sixthsense might be used to locate, arrest, and potentially shrink the tumors. He mused on what Mbecca shared. The coincidences are accumulating. Ruins near the top of Mount Mars, terraces, soil contamination, dramatically heightened aural sensitivity, proven Loch Norim artifacts at Lycealia, just a day’s ride away. They all coincide with the development of the Timberkeeps’ sixthsense abilities after their arrival from Whispering Bough. They have to be linked. We need to send a survey team to Mount Mars, take soil samples, map the growth zones of plants unique to this area, and, moreover, search for Loch Norim artifacts. But when? We are running out of time.
