Three More Barbecues

Annie noticed that Muffy’s fast-moving shoes were different than she remembered. They were metallic and not dotted all over. They had little rhinestones and sharp toes.

Annie wondered if she was losing her memory.

A cloud of oniony smell wafted around them. Annie  watched for the sudden turn.

This time, as they went through the house, as Muffy went for the pink candle, Annie looked around desperately for any kind of water. She considered even the sink.

And there was Tarah. 

"Hi, there Annie. How’s it been."

"Oh, good but dry. Is there drinking water in here?"

Tara chuckled, but apologetically, not cruelly. "It’s all outside," she said. Her face became very grave.

Annie took a breath to apologize for maybe saying something taboo when, "ANNIE LET’S GO!" was shouted. 

Annie hurried outside and looked around for the drinks. 

On top of the onions was a heavy scent of ham and pineapple. She scanned the yard for tables or stands. There was a series of wooden barrels with food on them.

There was another delicious looking plate of cheese, cured meat and olives.  

She couldn’t resist the olives, or the pickles. They were crisp and juicy, but so salty and so bitingly acid.

There were several different kinds of skewers with different amounts of vegetables. They were all on differently shaped platters and different kinds of sticks. 

She saw a little tray on a short barrel with what appeared to be hollowed out strawberries. Taking one, she found they were full of chocolate.

It occurred to her that the barrels themselves might be full of drinks. She started checking every barrel and saw that each one’s barrel hole was roughly sawed out. Trying to be subtle, she looked at each one, and ended up beside the tent. That  barrel was covered with cups made of bacon.

They, too, looked like they were full of something too milky to be helpful.

"Oh, hey," came a friendly male voice very near to her.

She looked and saw a bearded redhead guy.

"You must be Annie. I heard you were shadowing Muffy today. I’m Matt, by the way."

Annie did an awkward bow and greeting. Every muscle stung a little, but so much  less than before.

"Psst, sorry about this," whispered Matt. "But can you move one of those Stromboli plates over to this barrel?" 

She looked where he was looking and hoped it would be obvious what was meant  by Stromboli. 

"The ring that’s half done will do," he added quietly. 

She saw there were two plates of a pastry shaped like a ring. 

She did just as he said, she had to move over a little tray of pears wrapped with prosciutto or some special kind of meat she couldn’t name.

"Thanks, a lot," he said, helping scoot over a tray of little pizzas specked with green. He apologized to the person in line, as well. 

"This stuff is so good. You must try it before I eat it all. Vanessa knew this and made three that I know of. She probably has another one or two stashed inside a barrel or something."

That was the last thing he said before going back greeting everyone in the line for the tent.   She followed his advice and took a slice. He already had a stack of little napkins held down by a brass pig-shaped paperweight. 

He was right, it was delicious. The flaky, buttery pastry was wrapped around ham, cheese and that herb that was everywhere. 

She then remembered she had one of her water bottles in her bag and she could try filling it from the sink, assuming the water was drinkable. 

She wiped the pastry flakes and the blue oil from her hands with a napkin and went to find a clear space of grass to set down her bag. 

She unzipped the side pocket and dug out the bottle. She had just put the backpack  on  when Muffy emerged from the tent and they were off. 

They walked much further this time than they had walked to any of the other houses. 

She realized half way that she must have set down her toothpick umbrella and she felt bad to have littered.

Annie had time to juggle the water bottle to the crook under her arm so she could look at her notebook. She crossed out "Tara" next to "Mike," since Tara had mentioned going home after leaving Mike’s, or the place she had assumed to be his. The third column was titled, "Matt (and Vanessa?)" She wondered about the structure of their society. 

When they reached the house, the smell was fish. She looked for a sink inside the house. She saw, disappointedly, that the kitchen sink was fitted with a cutting board. The group that was cutting onions and telling stories was logically holding court all  around it. She wouldn’t dare interrupt their story to go for the sink.

There was also someone frying fish in the kitchen, emitting a lemon, herb and fried fish smell that was stronger than that of the onions. 

They moved quickly through the house to the yard. 

She walked by a tray of salmon rolls.

One group of them was wrapped up in cucumber and held together with a very white  sauce. Another group was wrapped up in a flaky fried crust and dripping with blue oil. 

This yard was so much more crowded than the first three had been. There were numerous clusters of people talking. There was a very long line to get to the tent. Two people carried a huge bowl of onions to dump it into a big cooking vessel over a fire. Someone strode through with a tray of fried fish chips. 

Looking around, Annie had already lost track of Muffy. Even the back of the line was out of sight. She could barely see any more tables. 

She tried to find some semblance of a line of people. She tried to find a tent. 

Then she saw a bumpy tall cube-like thing. It had hanging plastic noodles for a door.  Annie realized it was a tent. There was a row of three of them. The tops were piled with sprays of brightly colored grass. Folks were throwing them onto the things as  they neared the front of the line. 

That was admittedly very special.

Then, Annie saw the person standing next them. They were wearing a long orange-pink shirt and a black jacket, but then Annie saw their wrist. They had some kind of bracelet made of scalloped metal, stacked like shingles. The little leaves clinked crisply as the person moved.

Then, Annie noticed as they moved, the sunlight glinted off their tie. The tie was the same metal, but the little silvery teardrops were black and white, with a diagonal stripe pattern. 

This made Annie realize that this was the most interesting person in all of White Drop Island, and the most interesting person she had met in her whole time of being awake. 

She was drawn past her fear. She really wanted to be friends, even though it was kind of weird to wear a tie with a long shirt untucked and comfortable looking bottoms that were somewhere in the neutral zone between real pants and leggings. And the dark jacket was very thin and looked very soft, and rolled up very neatly to their elbows.

She was floating towards the person, not scared of the crush of people and weird little tables.  Then Annie bumped into someone. She felt jolted back to her original setting, anxious again.

But no one was staring at her or pointing. Whoever she bumped had just carried on, and the person by the tent turned to look at her. 

"Oh, hey. Are you Annie from Spiral?"

"Yeah, did Muffy tell you?"

"Not yet, but she will. Tarah told me." The person smiled. They had kind of weird looking teeth, but they didn’t seem to mind, and neither did anyone else.

"Sorry about the crowd," said the person. "I should have had five tents. These ones are so small."

"Um, your bracelet and tie are really cool!" sputtered Annie.

"Oh, thanks. I really should have worn only one, but I needed to take this chance."

Annie couldn’t think of anything to say, but kept listening, waiting for when the person had to go back to the people in line. 

"I had some shoes that kind of matched, but not quite, and not really my style. I gave them to Muffy, though. Seemed fitting. Heheheh." Annie really didn’t get why it was a joke, but this person was so friendly, it didn’t feel like a slight.

"I don’t think she’ll wear them. They’re not really her style, either. Matt gave her some really nice ones in her color and everything."

Annie was suddenly relieved to realize she hadn’t hallucinated the change in Muffy’s shoes. In addition to all of these new traditions, there was something about these tent people giving away shoes. 

The person wasn’t really talking, just looking wistful or some vague thoughtful way people look.

"Hey, Jaylen, you’ve got something on your face," someone broke in. It was the next person in the line."

"Oh, sorry," said Jaylen, wiping away a tiny amount of white salmon sauce. "Those rolls are pretty good, but I could only eat one."

Annie looked around at the party. Was Tarah still around? Where was Muffy? What pair of shoes was she wearing? Where was water? 

Also, was there anyone else in this whole place that wanted to talk to her besides the tent people?

This was the biggest yard so far and it had a lot of seating. She watched the people in in the yard and saw that they did sometimes sit down, but they got up quickly and walked around to talk to other people. 

There didn’t seem to be any taboo on any of the seats, unless it was taboo to stay seated for too long. She sat down and carefully wrote down as much as she could in her notebook. She listed all the foods she could see. She made a note of the shoe thing and the tents. She made a note about the onions and the stories. Then she stood up and moved around.

She half-heartedly tried to navigate the crowded yard to find water. She scanned the tables, hoping for water. She looked for a sink. She walked up a little path with no people on it, found she couldn’t walk any further, looked around and walked back. 

She found another seat and logged more information. She noted the crowd size. She regretted not recording how long she spent at each place. She looked at her watch. It hadn’t connected to anything. There wasn’t any reason why it would.

She was about to get up again, when someone dressed in black and orange plopped next to her.

"Howya doin’? I hope it’s going," the person said. 

"Oh, hi. Is it, uh, ok to sit for a long time?" Annie stammered as she turned to look at the plopper.  She saw that this person was also wearing cool accessories that were like Jaylen’s. One was a massive statement necklace and the other was a pair of anklet things. 

"Huh, oh, no problem. Were you worried about that? Oh, don’t worry. When it’s this crowded a lot of rules fly out the window."

"Oh, those are cool...um, accessories. I like the ones Jaylen has, too."

"Oh, thanks. Uh, couples don’t always have to dress alike. They’re not really supposed to, but we really love our armor stuff." 

"Armor is cool," Annie said, and couldn’t think of anything else to say. It was more than she could have hoped, to meet two people at one house willing to talk to her while wearing armor. 

The person laughed nervously and looked around. "It’s cool. We do stage combat and stuff. Well, we used to. We met that way." The person seemed to shrink. 

Annie felt like shrinking, too. She folded up her binder and started to cradle the water bottle.  The person was looking nervously at her, she suddenly a bald man appeared. 

"Miz Patrice! There you are," exclaimed the man cheerfully, moving to sit down.

"Well, you got through the crowd, didn’t you? Heh." Patrice noted with a matter-of-fact delivery just bordering on icy. 

The man made a noise like a ball deflating, but smiling.

Patrice motioned mechanically and stated, "We have a visitor from Spiral. This is Annie the Investigator." Annie felt called to sit up straight and motion agreement with her introduction. She made a dumb noise like, "Ho."

The man continued to deflate. Patrice turned formally to Annie, "And thanks so much for coming, by the way, Annie. This is Mr. Bingo."

"You can call me Moe," he said. Annie nodded to the best of her ability and smiled slightly.

Moe continued stooping as if to sit down. Annie folded up her binder and cradled her water bottle. Patrice looked thoughtfully at it. 

"Well, do you need a refill?" Patrice asked. Annie barely even moved in affirmation, but reflexively shifted the bottle.

"Give it here, if you want," said Patrice, and Annie did. "Well, Mr. Bing, could you put your crowd navigation skill to work for the sake of our visitor?" Patrice smiled fiercely.

"Oh, of course."

Annie watched his every move as she listened to Patrice speak.

"Heh. Bingo," Pat said as Bingo moved swiftly to a little sink in an obvious place that Annie hadn’t been able to see before. "Sure, he says folks can call him Moe," as Bingo unscrewed the lid of the bottle. "But folks themselves determine if they should," as Bingo filled the bottle up halfway.

"Is that a quote from Tescroll?" Annie asked as Bingo shook up the bottle and then dumped it out. "Oh, I guess it might have gotten dirty."

"Kind of, done up as a lame joke, I guess," said Patrice as Bingo was filling up the bottle again. "Not that I remember much, or read much to begin with."

Bingo screwed the top back on the bottle and turned back towards them.

"We don’t read much Tescroll in Spiral, either. Well, I did at one point, long ago."

By then Bingo was back.

"Oh, I know how that is," Patrice was saying. Bingo looked very hopefully at Patrice and Patrice turned attentively to Annie.

"Well, if you want to go see where Muffy is, we can hang out by the tents, or we can wait for her to come find you. She has to come talk to me before she leaves, too."

Annie was relieved, and as Bingo handed back the water bottle she drank it desperately. A whole bunch of water dripped all over her face and soaked her shirt. The water helped, a lot. It was cold and clean. 

"Whoo. Is that how folks drink in Spiral City?" said Bingo reproachfully. Said, not asked. 

Annie choked up even more water in embarrassment. She took panicked, wet breaths and grasped at ways to explain herself.

"Oh, chill, Bingo," fired off Patrice. "She came through the mountain. It took a day and a half. Right?"

Annie nodded, but her limbs were so stiff with shock that her whole body moved like a little water drinking bird. She found she couldn’t drink any more swiped her face sloppily 

"Aw, Bingo, we could use some napkins, and probably some food, too," Patrice added. Bingo shuffled off with trail of awkward, embarrassed mutters. 

"Well, he got goofy fast," said Patrice when he had left, then she turned to Annie. "Don’t apologize, though. At barbecues, only the keeper is supposed to apologize."

Annie gasped, it explained so much. She wanted to ask so many more questions, but Patrice was quick--

"I don’t care that much about the rules, but we have to hold onto what we can. Traditions can. be very comforting. So, did you at least have a whole bottle on the way through the mountain?"

"Uh," Annie grunted regretfully. "I forgot and I fell asleep. That happens a lot to three-x dreamers. Most dreamers, really, but worse for three-x."

"Oh, yeah, I heard about the dreamers. We don’t use that here, as far as I know. So, what’s so special about three-x?"

"Oh, it means they score high in three categories. Uh, color or clarity...uh...size--or--mass, really and...uh...average over one and a half dreams per shift. Really one point six or something."

"Well, that’s all cool, but what? Size of dreams? How do you weigh a dream?"

"Well, they’re...um...there’s a machine that converts them into a chemical and then gathers that into something like an egg." Annie felt thirsty again and took another sip of water. She’d never had to say it before and some of the words felt like hairs being pulled out.  For most of her time, it was just what happened. There weren’t really words for what she did automatically every day.

"Wow, they’re really chomping Tess flavor over there, aren’t they? Well, what--"

Suddenly, Muffy appeared, barking, "We’ve got to go," as though she’d caught Annie stealing.

"Oh, hey Muffy," said Patrice. "So, how about--"

"I logged all my prayers, with comments," and Muffy turned to leave, cutting a big flare through the crowd.

"Oh, Ok," Annie murmured, jumping up to follow Muffy before the hole in the mass closed behind her. She felt a big sting of regret to not even say goodbye to the nicest people she’d met so far. 

Next Chapter: Roastwork Factory