229. Training for She-Worm's Egg Day

 

229. Training for She-Worm’s Egg Day

A few days went by and I became a master tailor, for I had made three piece suits and cassocks and coats and could even have found work among the armed forces sewing uniforms, if it weren’t for the fact that we have no such thing as organized armies, only some warlike people and/or enthusiastic collectors of military outfits and weapons and other martial stuff. That includes those who collect tin or lead toy soldiers that represent the warriors of the mortal world.

I had also learned to make beds, even the short sheet bed prank. And how to fry an egg. And how to bake a sans rival cake with meringue and almonds and buttercream. That was worth learning. So good it was!

But what seemed to be of the greatest importance to my lady grandmother was to learn how to embroider runes and other protective symbols on vests made of a material called notleather. This kind of vests were more useful than bulletproof vests, according to her. Which is why she taught me to handle notleather and why under her supervisión I made protective vests that met with her complete approval. One for Alpin and one for me.

“You might lose a leg or an arm, but with this thing on, no one can get to your chest,” she said.

And then she told me I was going to need it, as well as a helmet that she drew out of a trunk and gifted me with.

“´Tis a pity I haven’t had time to teach you how to manufacture helmets like this one. It will protect you from any stone cast at your head, no matter its size. This Sunday is She-worm’s Egg Day, so I am giving you this one. If I don’t get to teach you how to make these helmets, tell your uncle Brightfire I said he has to teach you how to make them. He owes me that, because I taught him.”

She-worm’s Egg Day turned out to be a nightmare, at least for me. It so happens that at the upmost tip of the mountains my uncles stare at all day, there live some female worms of heroic proportions. Every year, in February, one of them lays an egg. Only one worm and one egg. The rest of the she-worms just stand there watching. Then, from somewhere else, I am not sure where, maybe from the centre of the earth, a multimillenial male worm drags itself up there and charges the egg, and then sits on it for a month or so and come spring the egg explodes and out of it burst little he and she worms. The new male worms are rapidly exterminated by their father, unless one of them manages to best him, which is higly unlikely, since they are very tiny worms and he is monstruous big. But the new she-worms are allowed to live and they remain up in the mountains in case one of them will one day lay an egg. Nobody knows which of the she-worms in existence will lay the egg. This happens randomly. And no one knows why they lay the egg either. Or for what purpose.

The problem my uncles have with this egg is that they need to control the population of she-worms, because if their number gets out of hand, one or more might turn vicious and come down and perturb the peace. It seems that a couple of thousand years ago, fairies just chased annoying worms into the mortal world, where they were expected to fight for their lives with the mortals. But this isn’t done anymore. What is done now is to destroy the egg before the male worm gets to it. The firmament knows and tells keen observers when the male worm will show up, so one can control this.

Destroying the egg is no easy business. First, one has to kidnap it. And to make things more difficult, since its shell is made of fine gold and the egg weighs like eighty pounds, there are senseless miscreants who dream of stealing it, and they have to be dissuaded from this. My uncles don’t keep the gold when they manage to sequester the egg. They take the egg home and crack it there and separate the yolk from the white. Then they make an omelette with the white, which is supposed to have lots of wholesome properties, and somebody eats it or it is fed to the cattle. Then my uncles take the trouble, and trouble indeed it is, for the she-worms are really sore and affronted about the seizure of the egg, to return the shell of gold as well as the yolk, which turns into liquid gold when the sun hits it, to its owners.

My uncles believe that this egg hunt is necessary to protect the environment and that they are more ecological than anyone else and therefore, one morning, after breakfast, they didn’t head for the petrified wood table but headed for a  field there is behind the castle that is full of gigantic rocks.

My lady grandmother forced her sons to take Alpin and me with them, though, to judge from the faces they made, they didn’t seem to think we had what it takes to kidnap worms’ eggs.

“I’m sorry, but you are going to have to be nannies,” Grandma told her sons. She gave Alpin a helmet like the one she had given me and left us in their hands.

Grandfa said he wasn’t going to participate in the hunt because it was unnatural. She-worms had a right to be born from the egg and try to murder each other and anyone else, just like everybody. He carried a box to the petrified wood table and placed it there and drew from it gouges, chisels, files, rasps and other wood carving tools and said he would entertain himself with that.

Our two married uncles tried to get their wives to look after us, but these women flatly refused and were the first to trudge and clump throug the mounds of snow in the backyard and dig up and lift the gigantic rocks there with their bare hands and cast them to a good distance. By the way, the names of these ladies are Nagore and Oihana.

“We have a couple of hours to train a bit,” said Uncle Euric to us. He was the only one to speak to us at all, a few words. “Warm up, you know. Well, choose a stone and cast it.”

I studied those enormous boulders that were the size of a car and then looked at Alpin for help. When had I ever had to carry something that size? I remembered that when I had, prior to moving it, I had shrunk the object in question till it could fit in the palm of my hand. But it didn’t look like that was the way they wanted things done here.

“Don’t you know any spells to lift heavy stuff?” Alpin said. “I have forgotten them. If I ever knew them, which I much doubt.”

I took him by the shoulder and drew him away from the spots where the massive stones my uncles and aunts were casting were landing.

“Stooooop!” one or another of them would shout when there were no stones nearby to cast. Then these people would huff and puff and all crowd together in a corner and Uncle Henry would whistle so the stones would return from wherever they had landed. And when the boulders had, everyone would start casting these stones again.

Fortunately, I managed to recall how to lift heavy objects magically without shrinking them. Very nervous, because I was afraid the stone I had made to float in the air before me might think on its own and decide to fall on someone, I said to Alpin, “It looks like I can lift them. The problem is I have no idea how to cast them.”

“Probably just like tossing a ball,” said Alpin.

“I don’t know,” I said, unwilling to try. “I toss balls with my hands, not with a spell.”

“Well, then between us, we will maybe manage to do this, because I, well, I don’t know how to lift rocks like you have, but I always fling balls with a spell. I don’t bother to use my hands.”

Watching our antics, my uncles were eyeing each other, but they made no comments.

Well, maybe Uncle Bertram did. I think I heard him murmur, “Look what we´ve come to!”

“Don’t these people know catapults have been invented?” Alpin asked me. “Better skill than strength, you primordials!”

I got him to shut up in case someone might feel offended. We had trouble enough already.

It was with some relief that I saw how between us both Alpin and I were able to cast my stone further off than anyone else.

But Alpin again began to jibe.

“If they make the stones return with a spell, which they obviously do, why can’t they cast them with one too? Hey, these women are scaring me. Would you stick one of these in your home? All day seated on their arses doing nothing and then when they get up they begin to cast boulders.”

“I was thinking of doing just that one of these days,” I muttered. “Maybe tomorrow. Look here, Alpin, let’s concentrate on getting these things to land where they should. The goal or the bull’s eye or whatever it’s called. I don’t think this is just a question of moving the stones around without worrying about where they should land.”