The Cooper's Wife

Tharv Haggart flinched under his wife's tirade.

"You smoked? You drank their strange tea? Marrish strike me down, husband, if you do any harm to our house!"

Berta was nearly the opposite of Sophi in every way imaginable, from her stature to her hair color to the massiveness of her wrists. Years ago, during Tharv's apprenticeship, he had seen something in his master's middle daughter. Maybe, it was the way she always knew what he was thinking. Maybe, it was the way she just took him when he couldn't find the words to ask.

Whatever it was, it had long ago vanished under the weight of three children and a tendency for Kafthaian sweets.

She clapped her hands, loudly. "Are you listening to me, Tharv? Answer my questions! What did they talk about?"

His eyes traced around her knees. Bile rose in the back of his throat. "They talked about finding magic." He winced because he had mumbled.

"What did you say?" she said sternly. "Seruvus may have heard you, and the lice in your beard, but I did not, and I asked you the question."

He rolled his head up to stare at the ceiling. The rafters were quite dusty. "They talked about finding magic," he said loudly, the echos coming back to him.

Berta let this slight pass. "Magic," she repeated, exasperated. "Is that all? This secret cult meets in the middle of the night, smokes, drinks tea, and talks about magic? What did this tea do?"

Tharv's patience was waning. It frequently did around Berta. Most of the time, he could just get away. But he had made the mistake of sitting down, and she stood in front of him like a great, big bear, waiting for him to move so she could crush him in her paws. He felt heat rise up his neck and face, and started shaking.

He finally met her small, angry eyes. "The kalysut tea makes a person see this mystical fog of colored lights that dances around us all the time," he said levelly.

"And you saw this mist, did you," she harrumphed. "What a waste of time," she added. "You men, don't even know how to talk about something interesting."

Tharv clamped his mouth shut before he said anything else. This was a good sign. When she answered her own questions, she seemed to always be willing to let him go.

She turned her back on him, pacing to the hearth. Tharv leapt to his feet and made for the door.

"Tharv Haggart, I'm not done with you," she said, but he raced out the door and a sentence all in one breath, "Got work to do, a commission for the traders, will be back for supper." And blissfully escaped.

Smoothing a board for a barrel and watching the wood chips fly off it, he remembered the fog. By itself, it was something like a miracle. To know that it was always around him, even now, this object of beauty, that was as though a rainbow would appear whenever he wanted just by taking a sip of some tea. And not just any tea, but tea from a tree from his own back yard, no less. Not a mystical, special tree from far away.

Someone's throat cleared, and Tharv looked up from his work. One of Yarpelt's sons, Graut, stood there. The boy's pimply face was fairly serious.

"Graut," Tharv said. "Your father need something from me?"

The boy smiled a bit. "Nope. Weard does."

"The herbalist?"

"Yeah." The boy, who was nearly Tharv's size, flexed unconsciously, looking at the tools on the shelf.

"What does he want?" Tharv hesitated. "Is there another meeting?"

"Dunno. He wants you to come by his place tomorrow morning, before the Oper service."

"Ah." Tharv wished he knew what this was about at all, but he kept his mouth shut. "Thanks, Graut."

"Yeah. Good bye."

"Good bye." Tharv put the board down and picked up another one. He had just settled in for it, trying to ignore the questions raised in his head, when Berta appeared.

"Who was that?" she asked with no prelude.

"Graut, Yarpelt's son," Tharv answered, sweating.

"What did he want? Did you get another commission?"

"No, he wanted me to drop by the herbalist's tomorrow morning."

"That's the Oper service tomorrow. Weard and his daughter will be there, not at home."

"Well, maybe something changed," Tharv said without thinking. He heard his words and hunkered into his work a bit more. Something like that usually set his wife off.

But this time, to his surprise, she didn't scream at him. "Maybe something did," was all she said, and disappeared. Tharv wondered if this was the gossip she was looking for, but mostly he took a deep breath and felt good about himself.

*******

The guest thunga was clean. The herbalist and his daughter cleaned the thungas every night. Tharv had heard that they categorized the mud and separated out seeds, bugs and worms for future study. The whole thought sort of made him not want to clean his boots with it, but he did anyway.

He knocked on their door, and Sophi answered it.

"Well, you're presentable at least," she said shortly, ushering him inside. "You'll have to wait for me and father, though. We're not ready yet."

As if to belie that, she did not disappear to the living quarters of the house, but instead went to the table and mixed up a large bucket of thin stew. Tharv stepped inside nervously after her, noticing that she looked ready to go. Maybe her father wasn't ready, he thought.

"What's that?" he asked as she sipped the stew.

"The tea," she said shortly, in a voice that sounded as though she didn't want to talk, so Tharv kept his mouth shut and waited for Weard nervously. After a few minutes, she muttered something to herself and left the room.

Graut hadn't said anything about what to wear, but Tharv had made the decision to wear his best clothes. At the last meeting of the Perkonen, Lauf, Yarpelt and Rin all looked official, and even the mapmaker, Aussie, had appeared better prepared than the cooper. Tharv hadn't wanted to look as much out of place this time.

And it did seem as though something was happening, though why Schafft and the rest weren't here eluded Tharv. He looked at the bucket of tea, steaming a bit still, then glanced out the door at the kalysut. The bucket was still on it. His curiosity overcame him

Tharv stepped outside, over a plant and in between the herbs, his boots and cloak staining almost instantly. At the tree, he removed the bucket.

"Good thinking," Weard said from behind the cooper, making him jump and nearly drop the bucket, partly full of sap from the tree.

"We'll be needing that," the herbalist nodded, reaching over Tharv's shoulder to plug up the tap.

"Wh-why?" the cooper managed, staring at the pleasant old man. Weard was nearly two inches shorter than Tharv.

With a twinkle in his eyes, the grinning herbalist waggled his fingers in front of Tharv's face and said, "Magic." He took the bucket from Tharv as the man stumbled away from him.

"Magic?" Tharv said, jumping after Weard. "You ... you found it?"

Weard stopped and looked over his shoulder. "I must wait until everyone is gathered, Tharv. Sophi says I must ..." He looked inside the house, then up and down the path in front of the house, as though checking for anyone listening. "Seruvus will know, but I vow to Fraemauna I cannot keep this secret any longer."

He turned to Tharv, who stared at him wide-eyed. "Magic," Weard said. "I have found it. The Mar ... we ... can use magic." He grinned, a wonderful sight. "The gift of Marrish is ours."

"Father, where are you?" Sophi called. The old herbalist jumped up and stepped back to his stone path through the garden, the bucket tilting beside him.

"Weard, I don't ..." Tharv started, but the man wheeled on him, a finger pressed firmly to Tharv's lips.

"Shhh! If Sophi finds out I told anyone before I told everyone, she'll be angry. Besides, she doesn't trust you."

"Why shouldn't she trust me?" Tharv bridled a bit in anger.

"Because she thinks you came to the meeting because your wife told you to. Oh, don't act with me, Tharv. Everyone knows she bosses you around. You need to stand up for yourself sometime. But Sophi said Berta's sister was nagging her, and you know how women are." He sighed and clapped a hand to Tharv's shoulder. "I wish you had come to us in better circumstances."

"But, why?" Tharv asked, utterly confused. "Didn't you think I was trying to report your ..." He searched for the word.

The man's eyes glistened as he smiled. "Heresy? Disobedience to the Oper's teachings?" He laughed. "When everything we do is just a greater sacrifice than what Esgil expected?"

Sophi came outside then and scowled at Tharv. She had a container in one hand that may have been the kalysut tea. She had a cloak draped over her other arm.

"Why do you have the bucket?" she asked her father. "We don't need the bucket."

"You see what I was saying?" Weard chuckled, earning a glare from his daughter and a confused look from Tharv. "Well, off we go, us three. The rest should be there already."

"Where's there?" Tharv asked, holding open the gate for Sophi and her father. The woman nodded at him, playing at being polite he guessed. She was kind of attractive, in a mousy sort of way. But she hated him. And I'm married, he reminded himself. To Berta. Dinah incarnate, perhaps.

"Lauf's house," Sophi said shortly.

"You haven't been to a service in many months, have you?" Weard said. "Berta wouldn't come?"

"She will be there ahead of me with her sister and our son," Tharv said, following the two around a large puddle of mud. "She won't be expecting to see me there."

"She knew you were coming here, no doubt." Weard appeared to ruminate on the thought for a while. "But she knows Sophi and I attend, ah ha, religiously ..."

"Very funny, father."

"Yes, dear. Why would you be invited to our house before the service, if not to attend with us?"

"Maybe because Graut said I had to come concerning the Perkonen," Tharv said. He blushed. He hadn't wanted to say anything like that. The words just slipped out. Something like that, in that tone ... Berta would be threatening him with the thunga right now, if not outright chasing him down.

But Sophi only shook her head in understanding, and Weard nodded bemusedly. "She won't expect any of us to be there. Well," he said, letting out a breath, "it is not as though we have enemies. The Oper can do little to us by themselves. We can only show them what we have learned." He waggled his eyebrows at Sophi, who smiled sweetly back.

"Let's show them," she said.

********

Lauf Resitien was a throwback to the elders of the Hundred Tribes. He was one of the town's foremost traders, and therefore one of its greatest diplomats. He would organize meetings with the traders and diplomats of other towns, mediate between disputes, and broker agreements. He also was a respected leader of the Oper, and once every 30 days or so he opened his large complex to all of the town for a community service. While the Oper did meet regularly, sometimes multiple gatherings per day, only at these intermittent times was everyone invited to one person's home.

People milled about in the front lawn and before the house, talking in small groups. Men walked by, carrying armloads of firewood or chunks of meat for stew. Two of Yarpelt's sons rolled a barrel of fresh water around to the back of the house. Everyone came with a gift for the family. Guilt rose in Tharv like a fish on a line.

Lauf met them in the front of the house.

"Big surprise in store, you said, Weard?" he laughed. "Well, you would have told us of your discovery if it was anything really important, so I'm not too worried."

"Glad to see you, too, you old bear," the herbalist said.

"And you, Sophi, daughter of this raggedy old man, it is always a pleasure to have beauty such as yours grace the doorstep of my humble abode. You'll note, I'm sure, that the following young men are here ..."

She blushed to the roots of her hair. "Stop it, Lauf."

He laughed.

She handed him the tea. "You know what to do with this."

"Yes, yes of course." He eyed Weard. "You didn't, did you? You would have told me if you had, right?" Weard smiled cryptically. Lauf shook his head, glancing at Tharv.

"And you, good cooper. Tharv Haggart. After seeing you the other night, of course I should have expected you here. Berta will be surprised. I have a suspicion she did not expect any of you three to show up."

Tharv shrugged uncomfortably. "I am sorry I did not bring anything," he said. "I did not understand."

Lauf grinned. "If everyone brought something, I'd never have to worry about food again. But not everyone does. You are excused, my good man."

"Am I late?" Schafft appeared, thrusting a bag loaded with greens at Lauf. He was sweating and out of breath. "Where is it?"

"What are these?" Lauf asked, staring at the leaves in his hand.

"Where is what?" Weard asked, smiling.

Schafft opened his mouth, head waving back and forth between the two men. Weard waved his hand at the man. "No, no, I haven't done anything yet. Be ready, though."

"No one will eat these, they'll fall a part in the stew," Lauf said.

"It's called spinach," Schafft said. "I'm trying it out as a substitute for lettuce."

"We're making stew, Schafft," Lauf complained, then shrugged. "Someone will find a use for it."

"Lauf, who has the pulpit today?" Weard asked.

"Hugrit," Lauf said. "He earned the draw. Well, I say he earned it, but he asked for it."

Weard nodded. Tharv wasn't sure what Lauf was talking about, draws and asking for it. He remembered the pulpit was where someone stood to lead some discussion.

The herbalist made his way down the hall toward the back yard, the main meeting area for the group. Sophi had vanished some place else, doing the mysterious things women did. The cooper felt lost. Lauf smiled briefly at him.

"Well, Tharv, you are a welcome sight here, always, always. Marrish would find us wanting otherwise. You will share in our soup." It was more a command, to Tharv's ears, and he hunched up a bit. "You probably want to catch up to Berta. Good luck." He shook the cooper's hand firmly and went out front to welcome new guests.

Tharv wandered down the hallway, staring through the doorways into the rooms beyond. Mostly, they seemed to be storerooms, holding the trade goods of the town or the excess of things Lauf had acquired, which would be distributed in times of dire need or celebration. In one room, Tharv found a box of candles, highly sought after trade goods in Marrishland.

The cooper picked one up to stare at it. It was white and smooth and greasy. The wick hung off the top like excess. He knew it would burn a clear and smoke-free flame, unlike the oil lamps most people had to work with. Candles were marvelous inventions. Berta had always wanted to have one.

He frowned, thinking about how he had treated his wife the past few days. She never seemed satisified with him. Maybe, Tharv thought, I'm just not trying hard enough. Maybe it isn't her. It probably isn't her. It's usually me, in any case.

Without thinking about anything but pleasing his wife, Tharv put the candle in his pocket and left the room. He had married the woman, in the end. She had only had to nag him for a few days. If he really thought about it, he did love her. Something about this community, too, reminded him of it. The way they helped each other, and the ways they talked to one another. Whatever it was they were talking about.

Maybe, he would try to listen to her more. Maybe, he would quit thinking about leaving her.

"Tharv Haggart, what are you doing here?"

He winced. She put that twist on her "you" that compared him to a ferret. But he straightened, looked around until he saw her, and smiled.

"I was invited," he said, calmly.

"Of course you were, you're always invited. But you never come. What brings you here this time?" Berta reached him, her solid frame blocking his view of the house behind them. She leaned close to him. "Weren't you supposed to go to the herbalist's? What news of their cult?"

Tharv found himself shrinking inward. "What are you talking about?" he hissed back at her. "Lauf is one of them!"

She waved it off. "The rumors are Weard is going to show us something today."

"How did you hear that?"

Berta grimaced at him, fists on her hips. "You never listen, Tharv. I'm trying to teach your son to listen, to be less like you and more like a real Mar. Now, come on. We've got to get good seats if we're going to see what Weard is going to say." She turned her back on him.

"I thought this service was about community and friendship," Tharv mumbled as he followed her.

"Hogwash! It's about catching up on what your neighbors have been doing all week!" And she did just that, stopping at every other person and holding whispered discussions with them, occasionally grunting in some level of agreement or throwing her head back and laughing. She always talked to women. Tharv felt like a little boy, hanging on to his mother's skirts and unaware of anything that was being said.

He touched the candle in his pocket, a physical reminder of his promise to be better for her. Well, he thought, I can start right now.

Copyright 2005-2007 Eric Zawadzki and Matthew Schick. All Rights Reserved.
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