Harold The Healer, Chapter 14: A Trip to the Capital, Part 1
"Harold Moser, the world is not interested in your farts!" The source of this discouraging exclamation was none other than his beloved wife Leila Parsons, who was standing in the middle of the kitchen, resplendent in her pink nightgown and her half-copper, half-sliver hair still a bit disordered from having gotten out of bed only a few minutes ago. Her hands were on her hips, with a wooden spoon clutched in her left hand, and the scowl that partly shaded her bright blue eyes was a desperate attempt in a losing battle to keep from smiling at his antics, which was clearly what he wanted. It was too early in the morning, the hot water for the direly needed coffee wasn't even started, and here he was being silly. Again.
"Come on, Leila, it'll be amazing. I can catch them in empty milk bottles like this one," he said, taking it from the table that had been in the kitchen for as long as anyone could remember. "And I can cap them with a wax seal to keep them fresh! I can label them with things like 'Toots of Turnip', 'Bursts of Broccoli', or 'Memories of Chicken Dinner'! Oh, here comes one now!" He held the mouth of the bottle to his ass, made quite firm by years of walking, waggled it, made a particularly vulgar raspberry with his lips and tongue, and capped it off with a ludicrous expression of relief. "Ahh, that feels better!" Their daughter Marcie, who had been pumping water into the coffee pot, had to put it on the counter because she was laughing too hard and Leila finally lost the battle and gave him what he wanted.
To Harold at least, her smiles always seemed to light up her face and to lighten his heart. To ask her, or any woman for that matter, to smile for him was tantamount to getting on his knees and begging for a sock in the snoot, so he felt that he had to earn them. "I love you, Leila Parsons," he said, looking into her eyes with his, which were an odd shade of blue with hints of green that made some people think of the ocean on a sunny day. Their embrace was warm and loving, and Marcie basked in the feeling of love that they radiated.
"I love you, Harold Moser," she finally replied, extricating herself and grabbing the abused bottle. "Now take your farts to the privy, where they belong!" He wasn't quite fast enough to dodge the swat to his ass from her wooden spoon as he hustled to the door that led to the backyard and the stone-flagged path to the tastefully-painted privy that wasn't too far away.
"I shall return!" he announced, striking a dramatic pose as he exited, stage west, then hastened to the privy for a very necessary visit.
"Men grow older, but they don't grow up!" said Marcie with a gap-toothed grin as she deposited the coffee pot on the stove. It had been heating up from the fire that Leila had started just before her husband of a bit more than two months and lover of almost twelve years had emerged from the bedroom, yawning cavernously and stretching to get the sleep out of his joints. Five weeks had passed since Marcie's eleventh birthday party on the Solstice and she was long out of school, but she still demanded that they get up and feed her the fuel she needed to run around the town with a pack of her friends. As the official Healer of the Town of Magwitch, she still had to run her practice and he had to do what he needed to do as a Veterinary Healer nominally running Turner's Veterinary Clinic, not to mention his various mischiefs, some of which she knew about.
"We say that at least once a day, it seems," Leila replied with a smile that he hadn't needed to coax out of her as she filled a pot with water and added it to the stove top. There were strawberries in the icebox today to add to the top of the oatmeal and raisins that was a breakfast staple. Marcie dug out a fry pan from the drawer next to the stove and handed it to her Mama, who put it on the stove while she got three eggs from the icebox.
She saw Harold emerge from the privy and wander over to the garden that took up most of the backyard. He actually participated in the gardening, or 'plant herding' as he often called it, and had added a few plants of his own, including a common weed that had been discovered to store Magic drawn from the environment. It was mildly toxic on its own, but when carefully combined with a few other herbs that were already in her garden, the toxin was nullified and the mixture served as an excellent remedy for erectile dysfunction. Satisfied with its progress, which had been helped by the generous rainfall and rather more summer warmth and humidity than Leila thought necessary that were acting to promise bumper crops for the farmers, he returned to the kitchen.
"Mmm, that smells good," he said, not wanting to interfere with the cooking process. "We'll get breakfast done in time to get our beloved child to school on time."
"Papa, you know school has been out for more than a month," Marcie sighed, perhaps more dramatically than necessary as she set the table and the clock chimed seven o'clock. "We're going down to the Veterinary School again to help the people who are building it." Harold nodded and smiled at her. He didn't know what events had gotten the group of mostly older kids of which Marcie had become a part down to the building that was a significant expansion of a farmhouse just south of the town.
"Well, you and your friends have been a big help," he replied as he unwrapped the loaf of bread and put it on a cutting board. In his chats with the crew during his periodic visits, the men and women had said that the "Little Helpers" really had made a significant contribution, all the while soaking up all the knowledge that they willingly shared. "At the rate they're going, the place will be ready well before the students show up, whenever that will be." He deftly sliced off the heel, which Marcie snatched and ate as usual, then cut a slice for each of them for Leila to toast on the stove.
"When are you going to The Capital, Papa?" Marcie inquired as they continued their pre-breakfast dance of activity.
"Erm, what?" he asked, his head in the icebox as he retrieved the strawberries and shut the door.
"Ms. Dana said that you would have to go visit them to be presented to the Council, whatever that is," she replied as he was topping and slicing the berries. "I heard her say it as you were putting me to bed on the day that all the ghosts came." He and Leila exchanged a look.
"I thought that you were asleep, young lady," said Marcie's Mama as said child swiped a berry and popped it into her mouth.
"I haven't been thinking about that at all," Harold lied unconvincingly, wilting somewhat under the pressure of two basilisk stares. "I have no desire to go back to The Capital at all, let alone the Magic School." This was quite true, as the two who knew him the best could tell. During his visit to The Capital a bit more than four years ago to collect the prize for his unusual solution to the Air Sled Problem, he had discovered that Sarah Willoughby, one of his classmates and also one of the Healers who had been 'recruited' to the Carcosa Expedition, had become the School's Headmaster. Dana Magnussen, a lover from a few years before he'd graduated, had been one of the two Engineer Mages on that Expedition and had become the Dean of the Engineering Faculty as he'd discovered when she'd come to Magwitch on what turned out to be his and Leila's wedding day. He'd also discovered that she'd had a son by him named Mark, who had come with her on that fateful day, and he was going to be a student in the Magwitch School for Magical Veterinary Science. He wondered how many other of his former cronies had worked their way up in the School and was in no hurry at all to find out.
"I think that it was the last thing that I heard before I fell asleep," Marcie replied as the oatmeal and raisin combination was removed from the stove and scooped into waiting bowls by the same spoon that had swatted her Papa's ass and her Mama had hastily Cleaned after he'd gone to the privy. Brown sugar was liberally applied, followed by the strawberry halves that he artfully distributed. "I don't know why I just remembered." Just as they were seating themselves, there was a loud banging at the front door from the knocker that made all three of them jump with surprise.
