CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 7

The next morning, Truck was slightly more mobile, but the ache in his lower back was somehow deeper and broader. Isha Maera started him on a small, tart, chewy, medicine-infused piece of sap. This she put into a cup of very hot water. Truck sat sipping and grimacing at the taste.

When he got to the bottom, Isha Maera said, “Eat it. You have to eat it.”

He used a fine, small two-pronged silver fork to pick it from the cup bottom before putting the softened hot glob in his teeth, grimacing even more so at the intensified flavor.

Isha Maera laughed loudly, having amused herself at his expense. Then she poured more hot water as a better option. Truck pulled the sticky mass out of his teeth with a shudder and plopped it back in the cup.

Because the day was sunny and warmer, upon her arrival, Isha Maera immediately sent Ginah on an errand to the Penrock Mill to collect several less-than-important items. This would take half the day, and it was clear by the change in her voice that Ginah had wished otherwise.

Isha Maera then ushered Fetter into the great room, and after shifting the ceiling reflector for the best light, she held up a collared tuft coat that she had just made. The tufts were vertically braided, and these were cross woven with smaller braids that gave it refinement. It was overly large, with deep, angled pockets, and was lined with one of Foster’s old tightly woven green silk shirts that peeked out at the collar and sleeves. She tucked the boy into it and fastened the three toggles at the front, before spinning him around and examining. Then, with a little effort to kneel before him, she pulled the broad collar up where it encompassed half of his head, pushing his hair up like a budding flower.

She looked into his eyes from close up. “There’s a good little boy inside there.”

He looked at her with adoration.

She tapped his nose with a finger to which he blinked heavily. “Now hang it on the rack, go find a clean bucket, take it to Hugs, and tell him I need some hot water.”

“A clean one!” she reminded, as he bolted from the room.

Fetter did as he was told. Finding a bucket but not finding Hugly, he prepared to round the tree to the rear. He took the direction he’d seen Hugly take before, where two of the outbuildings formed a narrow roofed passage that was filled with seed boxes. This, he envisioned, would put him somewhere just above where the tree met the slope of the earth to the west of the house front.

As soon has he had come free of the buildings, he was immediately halted by the lack of a path. He looked and wondered how Hugly proceeded. He would have to begin ascending a narrow set of protruding rocks at the face of the tree to an unseen point above or go down off the edge, which was no way at all, but a far drop down. He simply did not see a way to go. So he turned about and went the long way down to the road, then around and up a steep slope, straining all the while to hold the bucket so that it did not beat against his legs.

Arriving after more than a minute to what he believed was the back of the tree, where the whole ground was sparsely covered with a low dry grass, he looked up to the even higher ground that rose in an impossibly steep incline to reach the tree bark.

Out of reach above this, the tree was partially split as it was in the front, but this split was curved inward and was quite narrow. Were he even able to clamber up the slope, he would still not be able to reach the split.

Fetter looked about, wondering. “Hugly?” he called out unsurely. He did it again a bit louder.

Then he began to walk around farther, when down from above came Hugly’s voice: “You have to go around.”

Fetter looked up to see Hugly’s face bent over the bottom of the split, looking down on him and pointing his finger back in the direction Fetter had come.

He quickly went back the full way until he was facing the drop-off and the incline of rocks again. He looked the whole of it over and still could not see a way. Just then, Hugly rounded the tree atop the rocks and was looking down at Fetter. Leaning in, he stuck his hand in a hole in the bark that Fetter could not see. He swung himself in an arch until he was standing on the rocks just before Fetter.

“Isha Maera wants hot water,” said Fetter, lifting the bucket to show.

Hugly took the bucket, swung back up, set it somewhere out of sight, and then swung back down and offered his hand. As soon as Fetter reached out, Hugly took hold and swung the two of them around and up where suddenly they were both facing the raw wood of the tree upon a scrolled edge of the bark, which, at one time in the past, had been created by a bolt of lightning. It was wide enough to walk upon and nearly flat.

Fetter had landed with his foot in the bucket. He pulled free and picked it up by the alder handle, and then he uneasily looked over the side, where a misstep would lead to a long fall, and landing, where the journey and arrival would be unseen by people in the home or those passing by. A shiver went up his spine, to which Hugly responded by reaching out to him and pushing him shoulder to the wall.

Following the scroll around and up further, they reached the narrow tree split at nearly the same height of the house roof that was now unseen on the other side. Inside the split of the tree was markedly warm and humid. There were carved about thirty steps that curved downward to end in a cramped area where a greenish luminary dimly revealed a flattened landing with a low table and a few wooden boxes. This landing adjoined to a raised edge about three strides long. One stride from there to the far wall, downward, it was deep black but for the light peeking over.

When they came to the landing, Fetter could now see that in the entirety of the walls were a great many cubbies that had been chiseled out. About twenty of them contained vases or jars of various shapes and sizes.

Hugly reached up and tapped a jar. “That’s harubic. Don’t touch it. You’ll die.” He picked up a vase and pulled the top, putting it in Fetter’s face. “This is tillup weed. Isha Maera puts this on Foster’s feet cracks.”

Fetter recoiled and made a face at the acrid smell.

“This is the hot cellar,” Hugly said waving his arm at the room. He quickly dropped a rope-tied bucket over the raised edge and with a controlled slippage through his hands, he let it down into the dark. It splashed far at the bottom and then he hauled it up, hand over hand, until the bucket reappeared, full of steaming hot water. He poured this into the bucket Fetter brought.

“You can drink it, but it tastes bad.” Hugly was always excited to explain things to Fetter, who had been friends with him long enough to know that Hugly knew many things and explained them well.

Fetter picked up the luminary and shook it bright. “Why’s it green?” he asked with a grin of intrigue and his thin black eyebrows drawn up high.

“It has thistle in it. White light hurts ‘em,” he said, indicating the jars. The brightness quickly settled down to a glow.

Hugly took the luminary out of Fetter’s hand and shook it again. “It doesn’t stay,” he said, just before his eyes grew large and his mouth fell open in the light. He had just realized something. “Don’t tell anyone about the hot cellar,” he spoke this in a slow whisper, as is eyes stayed wide. “Mister Foster says don’t tell no one. Promise. Promise.” He put his hand out forming a ring with his long finger and thumb, but Fetter didn’t understand.

Hugly set the luminary down and put his hand back out. “You have to make it,” he instructed.

Fetter made the same finger ring, and Hugly linked to it.

“Make it,” he said, showing the bond. “…and don’t break it. Mamma says never break a promise,” he said this, as he fully realized that he had just broken his promise to Foster without thinking.

“I promise,” Fetter said, understanding.

“Wait here,” Hugly said, taking the full bucket, ascending the stairs, and disappearing.

After a minute or so, he reappeared at the top of the steps and called Fetter up. While still within the split, he turned Fetter around and lifted him by his waist into a dark area of the ceiling, instructing him to pull himself up.

Fetter felt around above him, finding a handhold with which he lifted himself up into a black space. All that Fetter could see was a dim spot of light in the direction he had come.

Hugly followed him up and shook a luminary that filled the small room they were in with yellow light. There was a sudden movement on the walls. Hugly reacted with a speed that startled Fetter, launching himself toward the back wall, where he palm smashed the hard bodies of two fat spiders with a double crunch. The abdomens were as large as Fetter’s head. He looked at the fallen writhing bodies and the goo marks left on the walls. Then looking about, he came to realize that in the blindingly fast motion, Hugly had set the luminary in its shiny backed cubby, stepped around a table, which he shoved against the wall to kill a first spider, before the two larger spiders he killed with his hands.

The spiders never knew what hit them. Hugly picked them up by their legs to remove them from the room. The limp abdomens were smooth and gray and bulbous. “Girls,” he informed Fetter, holding up the larger two. He dropped down out of the room with a ‘thwap’ of a landing and then returned without them. “They come inside when it’s cold.”

Fetter lurched at this, as a shiver went up his spine.

The room was round and the floor uneven. While it was much larger than the landing at the bottom of the stairs, it was much colder, given that the spring warmth bypassed it at its opening. And given also that it was at the north tree side, it would never receive direct sunlight. Wood and paper boxes were stacked against the walls—all coated in beeswax.

Fetter reached into his pocket and pulled out something round and blue, of a size that easily fit in the hand. He held it out in his palm for Hugly. “Mamma picked this… Can you…?” He couldn’t find the words in his embarrassment.

Hugly took it quickly, as a very concerned looked crossed his face. “Isha Maera’s onlong,” he said, recognizing it. “This is most important.” He looked at Fetter, who stood there hoping. “Stand firm,” Hugly said to him, knitting his brow and gripping Fetter’s shirt with a fist that moved him a bit. “I’ll do it,” he said reassuringly.