Sun Kissed Innsmouth
Part Eighty
The old woman pleaded with Felecia and it sounded genuine, being in that moment felt like Nana asking for her help instead of commanding or goading, something only done when no other or better option was present. Yet unlike Nana, this wasn’t to save face or being used as an example in front of the help. Having Jacqueline ask her to do the task at hand and save her questions for later felt like a request instead of a demand and that alone had Felecia busying herself with doing what was asked of her.
Soon the water skins were all emptied save for two and the pan was a nearly overflowing object that all the animals, goats and chickens alike, clamored to be closer to at the northern edge of the corral as they all began to drink deep of their bi-weekly life support system. Felecia stepped inside the corral and collected the eggs from the chickens while Jacqueline groomed and tended to the animals trying to quickly assess any issues and solve them before the pan grew dry.
Within the hour all the animals were tended and the collection of eggs had been packed away. Jacqueline tied the pan and the largest remainder of the empty skins to herself and left Felecia to carry the two full skins, the eggs, and a collection of meadow plants and a significant roll of excess hair brushed and pulled from the goats.
They were across the meadow, Nelly the chicken keeping up with them until they reached the outskirt, before Jacqueline acknowledged all that had been done. “Thank you for doing that. I know you don’t see it, or understand it, but we’re in danger in that meadow. We need the eggs though, and the animals need the water. That’s the way it has to work. The deal that was made.”
Felecia turned after they reached the swampy woods and saw the chicken, Nelly. The bird was nervously peering at them through the trees and then looking back to the meadow and the corral. The bird had turned the event into ritual. Nervously pecking at the ground for food that wasn’t there. Calling out softly at first and then long, loud calls after the two as they continued off into the distance. Only once the chicken was sure they wouldn’t be coming back did the bird turn and trot back to the corral.
Would Nelly ever decide to keep following? Would the bird decide the corral and the food of the meadow wasn’t worth always being thirty for? Would the nervous little animal ever take that next step?
Felecia shrugged at her thoughts on the bird and continued on behind Jacqueline. The non-stop march of the day was thrown away for the slow, plod along that Felecia had come along for three nights prior.
“Ask your questions, if you want. You earned it.” They had been walking slowly in silence for a while before Felecia finally stopped thinking about the stupid chicken and turned her attention to the half mad woman. “The author of the book about mushrooms and tubers. What was her name?”
Jacqueline stopped and looked hard at Felecia as she reached over and took one of the full water skins and sipped from it. The old woman capped the skin and hung it back over Felecia’s shoulder and nodded approvingly before she kept walking.
“My grandmother’s name was Tiasa, she had no surname, none of her people did. She married your great, great grandfather Albert and became a Conway.”
Felecia didn’t need to ask much more after that. Not about the author of the book on growing mushrooms and tubers. Not about the strange meditation of the morning already had, or about the mysterious pact made between the half mad woman and whoever she had imagined out in the meadow. No. No questions save for what would welcome some level of sanity and normalcy back to Felecia’s life.
Felecia filled the long walk back to the cave with talk of what the plants gathered in the meadow would be used for, what the collection of goat wool was for, and what immediate recipes from the ancient book she most recently read could be used in conjunction with the mushrooms being farmed in the cave.
Every new question was meet with a new look of suspicious anticipation from Jacqueline before she gave her often rambling answer and the mundane line of questioning lasted for all those many hours that the old woman promised would belong to them.
By the time the two reached the ancient oak tree and turned south they were both dry of water and exhausted but Felecia still kept up with her curious questions regarding the properties of local plants and fungi and little else.