fifteen, she lacked the patience for brewing.
'Better a bucket than a barrel.' Otik slapped the tun. 'The innkeeper before me thought cleaning a brewing tun each time was too much work. He just mixed the hops, malt, and sugar into an alewort inside each keg, prying the lids up and recoopering without ever cleaning.' He washed the spring water around the sides, checking for the tiniest dirt or stain.
'Well, if we couldn't do that, couldn't we at least not haul the water up?'
'I've tried other ways myself. My very first batch with this tun I made down below, at the foot of the tree.'
'Couldn't we do that?' Tika said wistfully. 'We could just roll the empty kegs out the garbage-drop with ropes tied to them so they wouldn't smash on the ground. We wouldn't have to haul any water at all, just pipe it to the foot of the tree.' She automatically patted the living vallenwood on which the bar was built. The people of Solace were more aware of growing wood than any folk alive. 'Then when the ale was all aged and ready, we could fill the kegs-' Her eyes went wide, and she put a hand to her mouth.
'That's right.' Otik was pleased that she understood. 'I made abatch at ground level, then had nothing to carry it up in but fifty weight kegs, up forty feet of stairs. Or I could run down a hundred times with empty pitchers, filling the upstairs barrels.' He rubbed his back automatically. 'I tied safety ropes on the kegs and rolled them up, one at a time. Took the yeast an extra month to settle, and I was in bed for three days with sore muscles.'
'Poor Otik.' But Tika laughed. 'I wish I'd seen it. Nothing exciting happens when we make ale.'
'Shame on you, child.' He was teasing. 'The autumn batch is always exciting. Today, a shipment of hops from the Plains of Abanasinia will arrive. I'm the only innkeeper around who sends far away for rich hops.'
'You're the only innkeeper around, in Solace.' But she added, 'And you'd be the best anyway, if there were a thousand.'
'Now, now.' Otik was pleased. He patted his belly. 'It's a labor of love, and the Inn has loved me back. Now fetch more water.'
As if in answer, there came a call from the kitchen. Otik said, 'See? The cook has hauled up more for you. That should make you happier.'
'I'm ecstatic. Thank Riga for me.' And she went.
Otik, carefully not thinking of the long day ahead, went through the necessary preparations as though they were ritual. First he cleaned a ladle thoroughly and dried it over the fire. While it cooled, he set a tallow candle into another ladle, centered in the bowl so as not to drip, and lowered it into the brewing tun, checking the sides for cracks and split seams. Ale leaking out was not so damaging as air leaking in. He did the same with each of the kegs into which he would pour the fully made wort.
Finally he put down his candle and lowered the cooled, dry ladle into the spring water and sipped, then drank deeply. 'Ah.' Forty feet below, near the base of the tree that held and shaped the Inn of the Last Home, spring water bubbled through lime rock. Some said the lime rock went down many times farther than a man could dig, and the spring channeled through it all. Otik was not a traveled man, but he knew in his heart that nowhere in the world was there water as sweet and pure as this. Finding hops and malt equal to it was difficult.
As Tika struggled back with the buckets, she panted, 'Otik? I've never asked why you named the inn-?'
'I didn't name it, child. The Inn of the Last Home was named by-'
'Why the Last Home?'
'I've never told you?' He glanced around, taking in every scar in the wood, every gouge half-polished out of the age-darkened vallenwood. 'When the people of Solace built their homes in the trees, they had nowhere left to go. The Cataclysm left no choices; starving marauders, crazed homeless folk, were destroying villages and stealing everything they could. The folk of Solace knew that if they did not defend themselves well, these trees would be their last home.'
'But they survived. Things returned to normal. They could have moved back to the ground.'
Otik lifted the barrow-handles. 'Follow me.'
At the pantry he stopped. 'The man who built this inn was Krale the Strong. They say he could tuck a barrel of ale under his arm and climb up the tree itself, one-handed. For all he knew, his inn would be in ruins in a year.' Otik tapped the store-room floor. 'You've been here a thousand times. Have you ever thought about this floor?'
Tika shrugged. 'It's just stone.' Then it hit her. 'A stone floor? But I thought the fireplace-'
'Was the only stonework. So it is. This is a single stone, set in to keep the ale cool, forty feet above the ground. Krale made a rope harness and hauled it up himself. Then he chopped this chamber out of the living wood, and laid the floor. This was his people's last home, and he built it to last forever.'
Otik stamped the floor. The edges were rounded, where the living wooden walls had flowed over the stone, a nail's-breadth a year. 'And when the danger was over and the folk of Solace could go back to the ground, they didn't. These were their last homes. In all the world, no place else can be home for them.' He finished, a little embarrassed at the speech. 'Or for me. Bring out more water, young lady.'
As they worked, Tika hummed. She had a sweet, soft voice, and Otik was glad when she finally broke into full song. The ballad was a hill tune, melodic and plaintive; Tika, with great enjoyment, sang it as sadly as she could.
By the second verse she had dropped her scrub-rag and shut her eyes, oblivious to Otik. He listened qui etly, knowing that if she remembered his presence, she would blush and fall silent. Lately, Tika had become awkward and shy around men-a bad trait for a barmaid, but at her age, quite natural. He kept patient, knowing how soon that shyness would end. Tika sang:
The tree by my door i've watched turn before
And I've watched as it's branched out and grown;
When it turns next year,
Will I still be here,
And will I be here alone?
When my love was there,
Birds sang in the air,
And they soared like the dreams that we had;
Now he's off to war,
They sing like before,
But all of their songs are sad.
My good friends, I know,
Will marry and go,
And farewell with a kiss and a tear,
With lovers to tell,
And children as well,
While I wait another year.
Their futures are bright,
They sing day and night,
And I'm happy to think them so glad…
The birds that I see still sing back to me,
But all of their songs are sad.
Otik enjoyed the tune without recognizing it. He watched Tika, her eyes shut and her arms waving in the air as she sang, and he thought with a sudden ache, 'She's old enough for her own place.'
Tika had lived with him for a long time; she was as close to a daughter as he would ever have. Before that, for many years, he had lived alone happily. Now he could not imagine how he had stood it.
Finally she finished, and he said, 'Nicely sung. What was that?'
'That?' She blushed. 'Oh, the song. It's called The Song of Elen Waiting.' I heard it last night.'
'I remember.' The singer had been all of twenty-three, most of his listeners fifteen. He had curly dark hair and deep blue eyes, and by his second song half the girls of Solace were around him. 'Some young man sang it, didn't he?'
