Natural Magic

Chapter 8 - Teatime

Chicken entered Auntie’s tent carrying a heavy earthen jar.

“Where do you want this fermented root, Auntie?” he asked, straining against the thing which was about the size of his torso. She had sent him to dig it up, noting this one was ready for the next stage of the process for the sanitization liquid it was used for. A clear, strong beer sloshed about in the sealed container.

Auntie didn’t tell him, merely pointing to a collection of pots of similar make and size.

“Put it at the back, please, Chicken. I don’t want to disrupt the order in which these have arrived.”

There were at least a dozen of the jars arranged like bowling pins. He would have to move several out of the way to place this new one. Chicken sighed, or rather would have if the weight of the jar hadn’t compressed it into a grunt on its way out. He set to the task.

Chicken liked helping his Auntie, if only for the sense of pride that came with her comments about the shortage of any real help nowadays.

As he crossed the room, he skirted the sleeping orc delicately. She had been here, sleeping, the whole of the three days since he had returned to Very Small Numbers from his excursion and the ordeal with the goblins and the mushroom. She still had that forced scowl on her face due to her tusks that so unnerved him. He had never encountered an orc himself, but he knew them to be an aggressive, short-tempered, direct kind of folk who put others at risk of doing work they didn’t particularly like or elect to do. In the brief glance he took at her as he passed, he imagined her eyes opening suddenly. Horrible gimlets struggling to support an angry, furrowed brow.

That wasn’t his imagination. Her eyes really did open. He felt pinned beneath the glare of the formerly sleeping orc, the first of however many living nightmares the stories had led him to imagine. Startled, he convulsed, flinging with sudden super-kolboldian strength the heavy earthen jar above his head. He yipped, but only heard it the instant it came back to him from across the room.

Auntie turned from her macrame to catch most of the action, involuntarily calling to Chicken to stop him from tossing the jar, which had already been tossed. It hung in the air in a perfect moment, directly above Chicken. The orc was no longer looking at Chicken, but the pot above him. The shift of its gaze dragged with it Chicken’s attention. He too was now looking up at the heavy pot hanging precariously over him in this single prolonged moment, the one before which Chicken would be squashed like a bug beneath the massive ballistic jug of primitive alcohol.

Chicken felt the impact.

It didn’t come from up above, but rather from below. And the thing that hit him didn’t shatter and splash like one would expect a clay pot of fermented root juice, but rather wrapped around him and sent him sprawling backwards.

The pot shattered on the hard dirt floor of Auntie’s hut.

Chicken looked up into the face of an orc. It was contorted into a look of concern.

“It takes three months for a batch to ferment properly,” came Auntie’s voice sullenly. “Not to mention how long it takes to make the pot.”

The orc rolled off of Chicken and got to her feet, at first hitting her head against the relatively short roof, before standing awkwardly in a half bow.

“Get up, Chicken,” Auntie said. “We need to prepare some tea for our guest. There is a pouch sewn into the wall over there in that shadow. Bring me a fistful of what’s inside.” She looked up at the menacing figure standing like an adult in a playhouse. “And you, have some sense and sit down. I don’t need a skylight in here.”

Miraculously, her words had immediate effect. The orc sat cross-legged where she had stood. Chicken was still only leaning on his elbows, half sitting up. Auntie rounded on him with the voice that commanded the orc.