Free The A'Rak by Michael Shea Page B

and draggle-fleeced near at hand than they had from afar.
    Dame Pompilla came out with us, and with her back held shut the barn doors, behind which the stampede gradually quieted. "I will thank you, my friends, to observe my directives most precisely tonight. When I'm back inside, spike shut these doors securely. My unique blend of leeching employs odorific fumes, vigorous intonations, and other somewhat clamorous procedures. Disattend utterly! Whatever the uproar, I and my little charges are secure. Dine! Repose! Leave me quite undisturbed until sunrise, I beg you. And so, good night!"
    As our hostesses led us back to their opulent cellar, Olombo and I merely agreed in undertones that amateur "barnyard leeches and rural physickers" were common enough since Squanderdabble's Agriculturalist's Index of Salubrious Fumes and Tinctures came into wide circulation, and that our widow's arrogant air of authority was typical of such dilettantes. Olombo confirmed my own odd impression: the widow's little heap of implements had included a number of quirts, riding crops, carriage whips and suchlike goads and stimuli, as well as my impression that there were scarce half a dozen gravid ewes in the whole flock. It seemed improbable that six ewes with kid could raise the sum our employer sought for the raft, but she had seemed unconcerned, and we found it easy to feel likewise.
    That this was the extent of our observations and reflections, we were soon to recall with vivid shame. Privately I concluded—with no greater perspicacity—that if our employer's present scheme, now too plainly that of an addled enthusiast, failed to yield Clummock's rent for a stern-paddle raft, I would make up the deficit from my own pocket so that we could be off on our commission, and have done with this odd, abrasive woman.
    It did not escape me that if she was seriously addled, our mission itself might be a fool's errand, concocted of bereavement and mental imbalance, and one that could well be perceived by the spidergods as impertinence, if not outright blasphemy. But as I could never consider withdrawing from a sealed contract, what was the point of brooding on what could not be helped? So I banished further thought of it.
    Had I not, the Bozzm women would quickly have done so—would have driven off any dark notion, such a sweet, savory commotion of hospitality they set going! Such a flutter of table linen, such a clatter of honeypots, bread trenchers, and cheeseknives, such a warble of chatter and laughter. So recently fed, we were soon sated with supper, and forced to decline further offerings.
    Well, they countered, in that case, then, it was time for the sweet! For the pasty, the pudding, the pie!
    It grew to a game, the rosy Bozzms, mother and daughters, vying to top one another's suggested delights, some of whose mere names watered one's mouth. Then Widow Bozzm gaped as if thunderstruck, the image of inspiration. She breathed her thought, hushed by reverence: "A Lathernog Silk Pie!"
    The way this struck her daughters speechless deeply impressed us. The silk pie was forthwith decided on, and we vowed our help in a culinary accomplishment that proved to be of no small complexity.
    Many elements exquisite in themselves flowed together in the confection of this Lathernog Silk Pie: egg-whirl marbled with momile butter, sugar-shells farced with nut-mince, momile cream and gleets cream lathered separately and then lathered together. "Help us with the churns!" cried the girls. Churns and mixers of several gauges were needed for the varying butters and lathers and froths. "Buntail! Shank! Help me churn gleets lather!" Sleeky sang.
    "Plumbone, the butterchurn's heavy, come help!" trilled Dulcetty.
    "Lackadome!" warbled the widow to me, "come help crank the whisker!"
    Merry multiple dance-tempos—jigs, frisketts and jump-ups—emerged from the chugging and sloshing of churns and beaters, the partners gripping the staffs with alternating hands. "So much more