Beers and Beards-Chapter 28Book 4: : Maple Syrup

The day rose on putting my plans into motion. If this went well, I’d have the King of the elves wrapped around my little finger, and be the darling of every sapient creature on this planet.

Unfortunately, the first step, like all things in this bloody world, involved throwing myself into danger.

Namely, by going on a short walk outside my inn. Thrilling.

“I admit it Balin, I’m nervous.” I grumbled as we made our way down the hill towards the tree line. We gave a nearby Timbit mound a wide berth, the little terrors on the mound turning to watch us while we passed. One of them shook itself, white dust fountaining into the air around it, and I twitched.

“Nothin’ to worry about!” Raysdotter said, a big grin on her face. She poked me in the side. “And you want to head even further in!? Ha! You wouldn’t last a day somewhere like Greentree!”

I rolled my eyes and swatted her hand away. “Obviously not, I’m not an adventurer! I’m a brewer!”

“[Bartender], technically,” Balin put in. “Nothin’ so fancy as a [Brewer].”

I ignored him.

“It’ll be fine, Pete.” Starshine said cheerily. “The worst thing in The Vineyards are the Keggers, and you have to purposefully set them off. Honestly, this is probably going to be one of the most popular beginner dungeons once it’s fully open. I hope you’re ready for the deluge of adventurers you’re gonna get.”

I nodded; between us and the Herders, we were still doing fine with just the Kinshasa and Tree crowd. But once we started getting Adventurers too, it was going to get tight. “Speaking of which, how much longer until you beat the Goooose, do you think?”

“Stupid name…” Muttered Flowerpott.

“We should have it done by the end of the month,” Starshine said, confidently. “We’ve mapped out its territory, as well as the route it takes when it grazes.”

“What does it eat?” I asked.

“The entire tops of trees. Thankfully it doesn’t ever come near the outskirts of the forest, and that’s where most of your ‘maples’ are. Further in it’s mostly evergreens.”

“Cedar,” I said, nodding. “They have lots of uses too, though I honestly don’t know most of ‘em.”

“So, what’s the big deal?” Raysdotter asked, pointing at what I was carrying. “And why such a secret?”

I grinned. “You see, I’m planning on upending a monopoly. And that should always stay secret.”

“Ooooh, sounds exciting!” Aishablue the gnomess said, her eyes twinkling. “Will there be corporate combat? Do we need a team?”

“No,” I said firmly. “No [Ninjas]. Just pure deliciousness. With a twist.” I held up a spigot and gave it a twist. Raydotter rolled her eyes.

“Aww…” Aishablue moped.

“If the Goooose won’t be an issue, is there anything I should be worried about?” I asked, changing the subject.

“Punkeys!” Aishablue said brightly. Raysdotter slapped a hand over her mouth but it was too late.

“The what!?” I gasped, turning to look at her. “You never mentioned punkeys, Balin!”

“Never was gonna,” Balin growled, giving Aishablue the stink eye. “They just like to sit in the trees and sling shit. Nothin’ to worry about.”

“They shout stupid puns at you! They’re hilarious!” Flowerpott chimed. “My favourite was when they all started calling Balin, ‘Ballin’ and then grabbed and shook their - “

“ANYWAYS!” Starshine interrupted, turning red. “There’s nothing really threatening until we get deeper in though. Just those weird yellow mushfolk, the Beers, and the occasional, ugh, punkey.”

“They called him ‘Ballin’? Did they understand what they were doing? Are they sentient?” I asked, cocking my head to the side.

“Nah, they just repeat stuff, and then twist it to annoy you.” Flowerpott sighed. “They’re essentially parrots. Monsters aren’t sentient.”

I thought back to the Kobolds we’d fought down at the riverside and frowned. They’d seemed pretty sentient to me. But I hadn’t exactly been fighting them for thousands of years.

“We’re here!” Starshine said, a note of relief in her voice.

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I looked up to see that we were, indeed, here. The forest lay in front of me, a sea of green and red as maples mixed with cedars and pines. I took a deep breath in through my nose and closed my eyes. The scent of wet dirt and maple. Of sea and cedar. The smell of Beautiful British Columbia.

“Okieday, here’s the deal.” I said, pulling a dozen spigots from my bag. Each had a long screw on the end, and a hose attached to the outflow. “I’m going to screw these into the maple trees at roughly neck height, and then attach the hoses to them. The sap is going to pour out and fill the buckets Manny is carrying.” I pointed at the glass golem, which was pretty much festooned in wooden buckets. “It’ll take a day for the sap to flow, so we’ll set them up today, then come back tomorrow.”

“So, what are we making?” Raydotter asked, looking at the spigots. “Can you finally tell us?”

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I grinned. “Maple Syrup. Let’s finish this up, then head back. Tomorrow morning golden treasure awaits!”

—

I stared in abject horror at the mess we found the next morning. Fully half the buckets and spigots were either missing or strewn about, gently dripping maple sap all over the ground. All that hard work drinking while we waited for sap to drip down a tube, wasted.

And more importantly, one full day was lost. I wanted to pull out my beard.

Balin scratched his head. “Sorry, Pete. I really don’t know what coulda done it. There’s no beasties near The Vineyard or The Redwood that would do somethin’ like this.”

“I found something!” Raysdotter called, and we all ran over to her. She pointed to a section of mud next to a dripping pot. “Look!”

We looked.

It was a tiny footprint, barely bigger than my hand. It had five long and widely spaced toes, with indentations between them that had to be… webs?

“Please tell me that isn’t the Goooose,” I groaned. “I thought from your description that it would be larger.”

“Bah, no. I haven’t seen these prints before.” Flowerpott said, pulling up a magnifying glass and examining the print closer. “And I’d say this looks like a mammal of some kind, not a bird.”

I considered that. I knew of two mammals that had webbed feet, and only one of them lived in Canada. The other wore a top hat and laid eggs.

“Have you ever seen any, uh, low slung animals with big wide tails and extra large front teeth?” I asked, glancing over the full buckets. They seemed fine. Could I still use them?

The team gave each other curious glances, but noone spoke up.

I tried again. “How about trees that’ve been chopped down in the woods? They’d almost look whittled. Or rivers with big piles of logs blocking them.”

“Nope.” Balin shook his head. “Should we ‘ave?”

“Mebbe… Tell me if you find anything like that. For now, these buckets will have to do.” I gestured at the remaining buckets and Manny went to collect them. “And the next time we do this, we’ll have Flowerpott keep watch with some glasseyes from inside the Inn. See if we can’t catch whatever did this in the act.

“But why only one footprint, and why did it take all Pete’s equipment?” Aishablue asked, flabbergasted.

“Maybe it flies?” Starshine mused.

“Or it covered its tracks,” Raysdotter snickered. “Because it wants to freak us out. Like the punkeys, but meaner.”

There was some grumbling at that, but it was soon back to business as we made our way up the hill with our barrels. Twenty minutes, and one Kegger attack later, and we were back in the inn.

We were greeted by Bran, who led us to the kitchen where a long steel contraption had been been set up. It held a space below it for coal, and already had a thin layer of water bubbling merrily inside it.

“What is it?” Flowerpott asked curiously.

“It’s an evaporator!” I declared, gesturing ‘tadah’. “Just go ahead and get Manny to dump the buckets in.”

The glass golem moved forward, its bug mandibles twitching as it dumped the buckets covering its body one by one into the wide trough.

“What now?” Starshine asked.

“Now we stoke the fire and slowly boil the water out. Normally I’d stir it, and we’d need to have someone keep watch to ensure that it doesn’t burn. But we get to cheat. Darrel?”

Darrel Digger gave a wide smile and snapped his fingers. A bright blue elemental came into being, and it promptly dove into the trough full of maple sap. It emerged a more brownish colour than it had entered, and it began swimming up and down the trough, like a swimmer doing laps. Every once in a while it would dive below the surface and eddies would form as it spun the syrup about with its ethereal arms.

Everyone stared in fascination.

“Is that… safe?” Aishablue asked.

“Why? What’s wrong with it?” Raysdotter asked, cleanly demonstrating the differences between the dwarven and gnomish concepts of food cleanliness.

“The elemental is nearly pure water with mana in it. It’s fine.” I said, watching the scene with no small pleasure. Bando had actually been the one to come up with it, when Bran had asked him to stir some soup for an hour. Bando had shanghai’d one of his father’s elementals instead, and Bran had nearly had a heart attack when he’d returned a while later to find an elemental swimming in his soup pot.

But it really was perfect for moments like this, when we needed something stirred for a really long time.

“Is that it?” Starshine asked, tearing her eyes away as the elemental rose above the surface squirting syrup out of its ‘lips’ and making an aquatic display that a synchronized swimmer would envy. “We’re done?”

I nodded. “Aye. We’ll need to boil it nearly all the way down. These fourty liters of sap will make around four liters of syrup. Then I’ll use [Sense Poison] on it, and we’ll have to get an [Alchemist] with [Manasight] to check for any magical issues because I can see some Mana in it. And ask them to purify it too, because I don’t know what’s involved in that step. It probably needs to be filtered, but there may be more to it.”

Raysdotter stuck her nose over the trough and sniffed. “Smells nice.”

“Tastes better.” I said, in happy reminiscence. “I’m dyin’ to have some.”

“You called it maple syrup, raight?” Aishablue asked, standing on tip toes to smell the vapours beginning to rise off the evaporator. “What is it used for?”

“Lots! But I think I’ll need to invite everyone for a most vaunted tradition. We’ll need some Unigoats too, and a paddock in the Vineyard that’s safe from monsters.”

The team looked at each other and Starshine shrugged. “Should be possible. Especially if we rope in Raptor’s Respite.”

“What’re you gonna do, Pete?” Balin asked, with only a slight hint of worry. “And will Annie be okay with it?”

“Eh, she’ll love it. We’re gonna have a Stampede Breakfast!”