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“BUBBLITSILKTHORNBONEWEBMOTHBLOSSOM
ShadowkingFishnetDarkstarIresineStarsisters
NicotianaMotherofthymeFangfeltplantFleabane
SneezepeaBubblitSilkthornBoneweb
MothblossomShadowkingFishnetDarkstar
IresineStarsistersNicotianaMotherofthyme
FangfeltplantFleabaneSneezepeaBubblit
SilkthornBonewebMothblossomShadowking
FishnetDarkstarIresineStarsistersNicotiana
MotherofthymeFangfeltplantFleabane
SneezepeaBubblitSilkthornBoneweb
MothblossomShadowkingFishnetDarkstar
IresineStarsistersNicotianaMotherofthyme
FangfeltplantFleabaneSneezepea
BubBubbubublit.”
“What have you done to him?”
“Make it sto-oop!”
“How long’s it been going on?”
“Since you left! Make it stop.”
“At least it’s a change.”
“For the first thousand clicks, it was a change. Now it’s making me want to tear my ears off and stuff the speaker with them.”
“Is Nev here?” shouted Sari.
Fluppit couldn’t Air-sense nor smell anyone, and the room was full. It was mayhem.
“Yes Mother,” said Nev, using Sari’s honorific as a midwife.
Fluppit wondered if, despite his practical brilliance with systems, Nev might have had some more Folksy Bridge-folk background. Everything was so bundled together here in whatever their new fragile town was it was difficult to tell where one culture stopped and another started. Certainly, in tales told of her own birth, there had been a midwife.
“Did you re-instate that ‘making it less loud device’?” asked Sari.
“The volume knob?” said Nev. “No, but it won’t take a hundred clicks.”
“Can you then, please?” said Sari.
“As you wish.”
Fluppit had never heard Nev give that degree of deference to anyone either—rather the opposite. She guessed his view on the world, from the sewers up, could gift that to a person. You might rule the world as we know it, but you can still block a drain. And if I don’t fix it, you’re in trouble. She wondered whether all grown-ups felt that level of security about where they fit in the scheme of things. For herself, she tended to breeze along and take stuff as it came, and thus far it had suited her fine. It was just recently things had gotten more- exciting.
She heard booted feet outside the Sanctuary and a loud bang at the door. She was starting to get a headache. The door opened and the smell of sweat crept in. Tuf, the de-facto leader of what passed for their militia, was a difficult person to miss—nearly as wide as he was tall with a firm but kind sort of world-weariness that some veterans seemed to have. He scuttled off for a curt mutter with Dun, Padg and Amber, by which Fluppit judged that things outside were serious. She wouldn’t have been able to hear a war had one started outside, it was so loud in the chamber.
“—eabubblitsilkthornbonewebm—”
Then it wasn’t. A brief moment of silence was followed by a much-attenuated babble. Fluppit felt the room unclench.
“Racta and hubous?” Dun announced to the room.
A loud cheer went up.
Fluppit wondered what was going on outside and whether the racta delivery was a distraction or a morale-raising exercise. The smell of hot bread with some edge of something ever sweeter, stopped that reverie in its tracks and her hindbrain took over, making drooling her highest priority. Amber brought the massive tray in with great ceremony, somehow balancing all the houbous—which seemed to Fluppit’s Air-sense to be a massive mound—a massive stack of wooden beakers and a huge metal found thing jug of racta.
“How did you carry all of that?” said Fluppit.
“Oh, you spend long enough as a servant and you learn a trick or two to make your life easier!” Amber chuckled.
Fluppit was still confused about the idea of servant. Brought up in the loose basket of ideas that Bridge-folk and Collective parenting had brought, everyone just mucked in and it seemed to work fine. Sure, there were work-shy folks, but gentle ribbing from friends, colleagues and relatives usually brought them round. Direct orders from a leader of a particular team were a rarely used last resort and no-one seemed to get carried away since the leaders were picked for individual tasks and the leader was finished when the job was. The only semi-permanent leadership team was the loose affiliation of Amber, Dun, Padg, Nev, and a variety of representatives from the three Duchies and the Tinkralas. It was kind of an emergency cabinet of necessity that Amber had wound up as de facto leader of the Overfolk It worried her as much as it did the rest of the ramshackle committee. Not least the fact that both the Red Duchy and the Grey had not attended the last few meetings. That was one of those things that the grown-ups spent their waking moments worrying about and their non-work span moments trying to keep from the pups. It had never worked with Fluppit, or she suspected, at all, though her group of friends by choice and association was adults. The pups from other families and the ‘loudness’ of pups that congregated in and around Gantrytown just didn’t seem to ‘get’ life the way she did. Was the fact she was the child of important members of the Folk, something that skewed her world? Or was she just paying more attention? She still found it weird that everyone she liked was eons older than her. It would be nice to find a friend who was both her own age and who got it.
Fluppit turned her head to the sound of the vat. She snagged two pastries and two racta from the table Amber had placed them on and then padded over to where the speaker was. Sari was crouched by Nev’s new device, twiddling it, making the noise go up and down, then tutting. Fluppit knew she’d have not had anything to drink or eat yet—typical midwife, looking after everyone else first. She nudged Sari with her foot, who reached and felt her toes as acknowledgement. Fluppit wafted the pastry, trying to get a response from Sari’s olfactory brain without shoving the bun in her face. Sari’s fingers explored the bun, took it gently, but she didn’t move from her low crouch, “There’s...something...”
“Hmm?” Fluppit proffered the racta, now she knew where Sari’s hands were.
“—something,” Sari took the racta and sipped. “Ahh, that’s good. Thank you, child.”
“You’re very welcome. What were you saying?”
“Oh, muttering to myself, like an old midwife is prone to—”
There was a massive but muted crash. Fluppit jumped and sloshed her racta. It sounded like it was a hell of a noise from a long way away. Amber strode across the room, “Tuf! Dun! Padg! With me.” Nev and Kaj stood too, grabbing things before heading towards the door. “Not you. You two stay here, help the midwife and guard the Sanctuary.”
Dun held the chamber door for the others, Tuf rushing out with an unnerving shout of “To arms!” The mass of bodies joined more in the passage outside. The door edged closed. Fluppit was following that with her Air-sense and nearly missed Dun right in front of her. He kissed her on the forehead, “Be safe.” She didn’t know what to say in reply, so hugged him. He broke the embrace first, picked up a sword-spear that he’d leaned beside the door and left.
Nev sighed and swished the volume for the vat up and down impatiently, “What are we doing about this list the vat’s saying, then?”
“BubblitSilkthornBonewebMothblossom
ShadowkingFishnetDarkstarIresine
StarsistersNicotianaMotherofthyme
FangfeltplantFleabaneSneezepeaBubblit
SilkthornBoneweb—” said the vat before Nev cut it off again.
“What did you just say?” said Sari.
“What are we doing about the vat?”
“No, before that?”
“The list?”
Sari clucked her tongue, “Of course it’s a list. You young, chap are a genius!” She took his face in both hands and kissed him.
“Err... I’m good with patterns?”
“You may have saved all of us. Get me a stylus and parchment.”
“On it,” Kaj was already back at the other sanctuary door, the slightly improvised one that led to the storage and equipment rooms Nev and Kaj still shared as their burrow.
“Would you like more racta?” Fluppit asked.
“That would be excellent,” Sari sat cross-legged on the floor as folk brought things to her. “Turn it up.”
For the next half a span, as Sari listened to the drone, scribbling and muttering, Fluppit paced from one side of the room to the other, wanting solace from the stream of words on one hand but also the sounds of shouting and gods knew what else on the stairs to the rest of the world. She got as far as the door and found the handle in her hand. Just as quick, she found Kaj’s hand on hers, “Best not, eh?”
She froze for thirty clicks exactly there, her hand on the door, Kaj’s hand on hers. Behind her, Sari made that loud clicking sound with her tongue again.
“Breakthrough with the list?” said Kaj, gently taking Fluppit’s hand in hers. They walked to where Sari was still sat. Her body had been stock still for the entire half-span. But for the scratching of the stylus, Fluppit thought she’d have escaped anyone’s notice.
Then in one fluid motion, Sari unfolded from the floor and stood, clutching the bark she’d been scratching on. The stylus fell to the floor with a metallic tinkle, “It’s not a list,” she said. “It’s a recipe.”
