Strandpiel 35:
om te sien wat werklik is – to see what is really there
We're back! Taking an unexpectedly darker turn with warclouds looming – but all to set the scene for Bekki arriving in Howondaland, which will be soon. Continuing the logic of the story from the last episode which is now apparently becoming a mighty saga of interlocked family and friends on two continents, not just about Bekki. Again first imprint, will revise for typos.
A not quite full length but longer than a short to be getting on with. Embuggered today by a washing machine failure in the kitchen. The Death of Washing Machines has called here and reverent disposal of the corpse, together with selection, payment for, and installation of a new Device, had to be attended to. Ah well.
More to come! Second go, typos and odd clumsy bits tidied.
Spa Lane, Ankh-Morpork.
Johanna frowned at the sound of distant unrest elsewhere in the house. There was a definite commotion going on somewhere. She reflected that the letter she'd got from Ruth N'Kweze would have to wait, much though she wanted to read her old friend's latest news, then pushed her chair back, and went to see what was going on. It sounded like something happening in the kitchen...
The housemaid Blessing ran to her.
"Lady, come quickly!(1) A large wild bird has somehow got into the kitchen! Dorothea is angry!"
Johanna sighed. It happened, sometimes. Disorientated pigeons or starlings or the like found their way indoors, probably attracted by open windows and the nearness of a food source. And like houseflies, were utterly unable to find the way out again. In breeding season, male birds would see their own reflections in windows, then charge in to attack a perceived rival. She'd seen stunned blackbirds shaking their heads after bouncing off an unexpectedly strong rival with a hard punch, then charge back in for another go. The word bird-brained had evolved for a reason.
And when a panicked bird was flapping around in circles in an unfamiliar enclosed space and seeking a way out, even a sparrow could be misidentified as an eagle by the equally panicked human who wanted the alien thing to be removed.
"I'll deal with it." she said. The best strategy was to wait for the creature to exhaust itself, and then trap and release. But Dorothea the cook was probably chasing it around with a broom or something, and doing exactly the wrong things...
Johanna decided on tact. All employers of domestic staff knew that even though they paid the wages and met the bills, and however exalted their social rank and prestige, in some areas their staff were masters and mistresses of their own domains. This was especially so with cooks. It was tacitly understood the kitchen was Dorothea's empire. It was also the nucleus of the domestic staff's accepted space: the staff ate in here and took breaks here. And even though Claude was the butler and in charge, the kitchen was Dorothea's. It was understood. Johanna herself felt she almost had to ask her cook's permission to enter. She'd once asked Lady Sybil Ramkin if this was just her, if there was anything she was doing wrong in the Madam and Staff dynamic. Sybil had laughed delightedly and patted Johanna's arm. Then assured her that she, Sybil Ramkin, Duchess of Ankh, only went into her own main kitchen at great need and only with the tacit permission of her own head cook. And believe me, Johanna, it's easier this way. (2)
The commotion grew louder as Johanna got to the kitchen. She took in the scene. Dorothea, an amply plump middle-aged black woman and a good advertisement for her own cooking, was huffing with exertion as she chased a panicked bird around the kitchen with, yes, a besom. She was alternatively shrieking at it in her own language. Johanna again felt a twinge of guilt that she'd never really picked up too much native language. It was probably Xhosa. Bekki had picked this up effortlessly from being around the staff; Johanna had never picked up much more than the pidgin called "Kitchen Kaffir", the patois thought to be sufficient for white people to talk to the blecks. She now knew, after an early unfortunate interaction with a black Howondalandian pupil at the School(3), that this could be perceived as insulting and condescending by the people you spoke it to. She still got the occassional red flush of shame about this, usually at three in the morning when you felt these things most acutely.
Johanna assessed the bird, which was part-hopping, part-flying, around the kitchen in a cawing and terrified sort of way, dodging the flailing broom. She sighed again. Birds knew nothing of bowel control, and when panicked they tended to... Johanna winced. And that would not help her cook's temper at an intrusion into the smooth flow of her morning.
She glanced across. Her daughter Ruth was placidly sitting at the kitchen table, a look of intent concentration on her face, sketch-pad and pencil working busily. Johanna had to admit that was a very good one, albeit quickly captured, of Dorothea flailing about with the broom. And what was she drawing now...
"Don't move!" Ruth suddenly said. Even Johanna jumped. Ruth's voice had suddenly become one of command and imperative. Any passing student from the Guild School might have stopped dead in their tracks, mistaking it for Johanna's.
"Stand still! Thank you."
"Jislaik..." Johanna said, softly. She shook her head and regarded her youngest daughter. This was unexpected. Ruth was the shy, quiet, softly spoken, one of the three. Wasn't she? And hearing her own voice coming out of her youngest daughter's mouth... there had to be something of her in Ruth, there must be, but seeing and hearing it for the first time was deeply disconcerting. Something else to mention to Ponder when he got back from the University.
But everybody had indeed stopped. And was standing still. Even Dorothea had paused and the broom was lowering. The bird – Johanna had identified it as a raven by now – was perched out of reach of the broom, on a high shelf, and was looking around in mad-eyed avian distress. And there was something odd about that raven. It was hard to focus, somehow, to see what it was. And then she saw it.
"You." Johanna said to the bird. "I know you cen understand me. You will fly down here end perch on this table where I cen see you. I will elso lay out en old newspaper, so thet you do not anger my cook more than you have elready. Dorothea, stend beck. I will deal with this. Dankie."
She'd seen this bird before. Her students had also seen it, those who tended the raven colony maintained at the Animal Management Unit. (4) And Ponder had filled in some interesting information for her.
"Besides. Ravens do not usually speak the word "Caw". They croak. So do not pretend thet you do not speak Morporkian."
The raven turned its head nervously towards Dorothea, who scowled but stood back. She held the broom threateningly. But the bird hopped down to land on the newspaper that Johanna had laid out on the table as insurance against further avian incontinence.
"End only one bird I have heard of wears a seddle end stirrups." she observed. Johanna glanced over to her daughter, who was still industriously sketching. Every so often she paused and focused on an apparently empty space on the table in front of her. Johanna was now more sure of what she was dealing with. And she resolved to share the story later with Ponder. He'd be interested. She wished he was here to see this: this was his area of competence, after all.
She turned back to the raven, who was regarding her with nervous intent.
"Explain." she said. She folded her arms and gave the kind of glare that was capable of paralysing an entire classroom. If a raven could gulp nervously, this one did.
"Errr... ma'am." it began. The voice had the sort of quality you'd expect from an avian larynx speaking in human words. It was reminiscent of a well-taught parrot in many ways. But Johanna knew that even in the normal course of events, ravens were at least as intelligent as parrots, and then some.
"I know your name." Johanna said. "My husband, who is a wizard, told me. You are called Quoth, yesno?"
"That's me, ma'am!" the bird said, quickly. "Just don't ask me to..."
"The N-word. Ja. I shall not. Now. You are not a thing of megic. Enhenced by megic, possibly, but not megic or supernetural of yourself. Therefore I cen see you. Just es I might see a white horse, but not the one who rides it. The one you accompany. He is here elso, yesno?"
"Yes, ma'am." the bird said. Quoth nodded down the table. "Gettin' his portrait done. Vain little bugger. Your little girl clocked him straight off, and wanted to draw him."
Johanna looked into an empty space. The same empty space her daughter Ruth was industriously focused on as she sketched. She moved round to stand behind Ruth. Yes. There it was on the paper. A rather good pencil sketch of a skeletal rat wearing a hooded cowl and clutching an appropriately sized scythe. She shook her head slightly.
"So whet brought you here?" she demanded of the raven. "It cennot be me. The operation on my heart was some weeks ago. Thenks to Igor medical skill, I em pretty much recovered. Besides, if one of you were here for a human, it would not be you. I would expect to see – elright, to be in the presence of – Death himself. Or else Susan Sto Helit, in her other professional cepecity."
"Rats, miss." Quoth said, promptly. "Tryin' to get into your garden. Persistent buggers, rats. Them two bloody enormous buggers of cats gets around a bit up and down this street. So we come here often, know what I mean? Know our way around. Anyway, His Nibbles had to collect three or four what didn't know what an Astoria Trailing Creeper is."
The raven paused. It shuddered.
"You've got a garden out there what doesn't mess about, haven't you?"
Johanna smiled. Her colleague Davinia Bellamy had planted the garden with things like this in mind. Astoria Trailing Creeper was a ground-covering plant which might have had things like carnivorous fly-traps in its evolutionary past. But it had up-graded to bigger things and routinely tangled, ensnared and devoured hopeful rodents looking for a new home. Pyn and Smart, the resident cats, simply ignored it and trampled over it. just to make the point, Pyn pissed over it too. There were limits to what even Astoria Trailing Creeper could manage, and these were Acerian Maine Coons.
"And them cats of yours got the others." "the raven said. "So while His Nibbles was doin' the necessary, I gets smells on the wind, and I sees the open kitchen window, and, errr..."
Dorothea glared at the raven again. It winced.
"The little girl, she was sittin' here talkin' to the cook and she has her drawin' pad. His Nibbles come to find me, she sees him, and she sez, pose for me. So he does."
"It is true, madam. Miss Ruth is always welcome in this kitchen." Dorothea said. "Unlike some."
"Finished!" Ruth said, relaxing. "Want to come and see?"
"Before you do." Johanna said. "Be told thet you are not to go into the cold cebinet to steal eny cheese. Or Dorothea will get really engry. End. It would help if you revealed yourself. I know from my husband, end from my daughter who is a Witch, thet you cen choose to menifest even to those you are not here to ettend to professionelly. Even to people who have no megic. So show yourself."
Johanna tried to unfocus, in the way both Ponder and Bekki had tried to describe to her. Suspend your conscious inner critic, the part of your mind that tells you you cannot possibly be seeing this and therefore that the thing does not exist...
"Oh, end you must have heard ebout the Teatime Prize? Bear in mind I have won it five times." Johanna said, pleasantly. "I understend there is en operational plen for the inhumation of Death himself. It is kept in a very secure locked end guarded place, es so far, the Guild understends thet to destroy Death himself would not be a desirable thing. But Jonathan Teatime himself – you are eware of that name? - devised it. Which means it must be viable, for my Guild to keep it in such security. I could find out where it is kept."
There was something that was not quite a shimmering in the air, possibly a shift in reality or a slight re-adjustment of the possible, and Johanna became aware of a small figure hunched uo in a hooded cloak.
She turned to regard it. The Death of Rats looked up at her through seemingly sightless eye-holes in its skull. They glowed with a clear blue light.
"Hmmm." she said. "I em professionally interested. You are stending up on your hind legs. This is not usual for a ret. End I am puzzled es to how your bones remain etteched and how movement erticulates. When there ere no muscles. No tendons. No ligaments."
SQUEAK.
"Yes, I might es well esk how you may consume cheese with no digestive system. No epperent digestive system, enyway."
The Death of Rats shuffled uneasily. He'd never been scrutinised by a zoologist before. One who showed no fear whatsoever and in fact was displaying professional interest. A lot of clinical professional interest.
Johanna even reached down and twitched the hem of his robe aside. Death of Rats flinched slightly. This was not normal for humans. She leant forward and took a long interested look.
"I would guess that in life – if you ever hed a life – you would have been a Rattus Nothingfjordius." she said. "Thet species is distinguished by the longer length of the long bones in its hindlegs. You have thet quality."
Death of Rats politely twitched his cloak back. Johanna smiled.
"You posed for my daughter. I thenk you. Thenk him, Ruth."
"Thank you, Mr Rats." Ruth said, politely. Death of Rats nodded up to her. Then he scuttled forward to admire the sketches Ruth had made of him. The SQUEAK! conveyed harmonics of praise and approval.
"Every life model deserves a fee. Dorothea, hev you any slightly stale cheese you can spare?"
"You will be sending these – guests - on their way soon, madam?" Dorothea said, pointedly.
"I will, Dorothea. But the cheese?"
Dorothea went to check the cold cabinet. Quoth the Raven coughed, meaningfully. Johanna smiled. She looked towards a shrouded something on the kitchen worktop. Dorothea had covered it up, for now.
"I haven't drawn Mr Quoth yet, mummy." Ruth said. Johanna smiled at her daughter. Ruth had pencils and pad out, and her drawing fingers were twitching. She was impatient to get started again.
"Would you like to? I believe we cen errive et en egreement here."
She nodded to Dorothea.
"You are planning to make a muriwo nanyama for the staff? Good home cooking?"
"Yes, madam. With mopane worms and mupunga unedove." (5)
"Sounds delicious." Johanna lied. "Have you started preparing the goat's head yet?"
"No, madam."
"Then may I extrect the eyes? I believe they are not required for goat's head stew. Possibly this is whet drew Quoth here in the first place? Dankie."
Johanna did some deft work with the right sort of knife. A zoologist and an Assassin, extracting two intact eyeballs was something she could do with her eyes closed. Ravens do not drool, but Quoth was making a pretty good attempt.
"Here is the deal." Johanna said. "You will leave this kitchen via the beck door. My daughter will go upstairs to her studio – her bedroom – end open her window wide. Should you wish to eat this cheese end these eyeballs, they will be in her room on a plate. But, Mr Quoth, you will pose for drawings for Ruth, end you will be her life-model. You will remain until she is setisfied with your input to her work. You will earn these eyeballs. I hope thet is understood. Now. Before Dorothea becomes really engry. Time for us ell to depart, I think."
Johanna waited until Raven, Death of Rats, and daughter, had left. Then she rolled her sleeves up.
"Dorothea, while you cook, I should, I think, essist in cleaning up efter thet raven. Bird droppings are not good to have in a kitchen."
Dorothea smiled, placated now.
"As you wish, madam." she said. "The cleaning things are in this cupboard here."
Johanna got to work, relegated to cleaner, for the moment. She sighed. Ruth's letter from Howondaland, from the older Ruth, could wait a little longer. And she phrased, in her head, what to say to Ponder. Our daughter Ruth has enough magic to be able to see Death automatically. But she is an artist. She is gifted, or cursed, with the ability to see further than most and to see what is really there. How do we deal with this? She decided to mention it to Rebecka, too. if Ruth has any witch-stuff, best her older sister is made aware. Let's get her opinion as well.
(1) Blessing, a girl brought over from Howondaland to be a house-girl to white employers, had never been able to completely shake off the learnt habit of calling a white employer ~Baas-lady". Johanna had understood this and tolerated it. Johanna's elevation to the nobility and the title of Dame had meant Blessing now had the alternative of My Lady. Her maid had somehow settled on the compromise halfway term of Lady. Johanna understood this too.
(2) The head cook at Ramkin Manor, however, did graciously allow Sybil use of a smaller sub-kitchen for those occasions where the Duchess felt personally compelled to prepare the Duke the classic breakfasts he loved so much. She even saw to it that it was stocked with the sort of ingredients that would not be out of place for an All-Day Morporkian at Harga's House of Ribs.
(3) Now Crown Princess Precious Jewel N'Khazi, the current Chief Assassin in the Zulu Empire. It had been a seriously big blunder, when Johanna had been new to both Ankh-Morpork and teaching. The back-story is in my tale The Graduation Class, which introduces a much younger Johanna, then aged nineteen-twenty. Johanna had learnt a lesson and taken much greater care with Precious Jewel's younger half-sister, Ruth N'Kweze.
(4) Shameless plug for my Discworld Tarot short on Death, which is set in the AMU.
(5) All valid and probably tasty dishes in Zimbabwe, or in this context, Smith-Rhodesia.
The Notes Dump:
The place where ideas and concepts go to stay fresh in the fridge whilst awaiting the audition call.
Had this idea for a spin-off, where one of THOSE magical accidents moves Bekki, Famke and Ruth through time and space to Pasadena, California. After a series of amusing misunderstandings (I see Famke going Tykebomb in the face of menace by typical high school age would-be bullies), the girls run into Leonard and Penny. Penny says she's sure she's met you somewhere before but can't place it. "You look kinda familiar, sweetie."
They see photographs. It dawns on Bekki, with horror, that there is a very good chance that she and her sisters are likely to run into their own parents. As they were when they were much younger, unmarried, and a long time before they started having kids. The potential for paradox is immense. Humour happens as they miss encountering their own much younger (and blissfully unaware) future-parents, by mere inches. Leonard, Penny and HEX get them back to the Discworld after a couple of close calls. Before having her mind bleached by HEX, Penny says to Johanna: "I've got a feeling you're gonna be one Hell of a good mom, sweetie."
Probably won't do this as it will make an already very dense story still more complex. But I present this as an idea of the sort of random direction my brain takes.
Zimbabwean food. Yes, goat's head soup is a thing. and not just a Rolling Stones' LP title. Mopane worms are a real foodstuff. Apparently tasty. All Jolson probably sells them at the Howondalandian Food Emporium. Mupunga unedove is a tasty-looking combination of peanut butter and rice. Looks interesting! In this world they would, of course, belong to Smith-Rhodesia.