They Can Nearly Talk by Chestnut_pod  

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Chapter 6

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Once Elquessë hired Alparenë permanently and Ulofánë was delivered of her magical foal, I found myself spending significantly more time on the coasts, visiting the smallest fishing hamlets to which previously I had been unable to tend between the larger towns.

The coast of Ránanandë is, if such a thing is possible, even lovelier than the interior. North of Alqualondë, the land sprouts thick forests of crooked cypress and everlasting redwood, broken by bright grassy meadows trailing down the slopes. Roads hug the sides of the continent as it falls spectacularly to the waves, which glint steel-gray, then ultramarine, depending on the side of Arien’s face she has turned to us below. In the cold, rich waters, kelps feed sea urchins like spiny amethysts, eaten by fierce little otters, harried in turn by seabirds of all feathers. Hardy cows make rich winter butter on diets of seaweed, while farmers grow salt-loving beets on the cliffsides and the ever-present grapes in sheltered valleys.

Those cows made up the bulk of my work out there, for there was a prestigious cheesemaking creamery on one of those rugged, beautiful points. It owned several hundred heads of milch cows who were always calving, going dry, tearing udders, and so on. I tried to time my visits so I could spend the night, because the creamery’s guest room inhabited the lighthouse on the point.

From the top, I could lean out into the stiff, cold wind which twisted the cypresses into dancing poses and stare across the Belegaer, dreaming I was an Elf of old, staring at the starlit sea before the Sun and Moon. On clear nights, as the light — a great work of Finarfin, using carefully arranged mirrors and a massive accumulation of his brother’s lamps – swept its warning across the whitecaps, I could see the Star of High Hope rise from its moorings even farther to the north.

I had timed it well the sweet November I came after ceding the inland circuit to Alparenë. The creamery ran on a split calving system to ensure milk year-round, and the autumn crop of calves was well underway when I arrived. Ilimmállë, the chief cheesemaker who also oversaw the breeding, was most concerned with the heifers. Dairy cows are particularly prone to milk fever, a sometimes-catastrophic drop in calcium right after birth, as the mother lets down her milk for the newborn calf. Before the huge leaps in alchemy and machining that followed on the heels of the war, when the kindreds of Elves mingled once more and exchanged their knowledge, it was a mystery why the best milkers, having given birth easily to healthy calves twice or even thrice, would weaken, lie down, and die, no matter what songs or charms the farmer used. When I took up my post with Elquessë, I was of the first generation of leeches to stand on the shoulders of two great innovations: the syringe, as I mentioned previously, and the isolation of calcium. I was, and am, marked by the joy my teachers expressed upon approaching a down cow, slipping a needle under her skin to let calcium salts flow into the blood, and watching the cow — dull-eyed, cold, too weak to stand — get up and nose into her hay within half an hour.

It was with similar joy, therefore, that I went among the new calves and their mothers with my gleaming needles and bulging pouches of calcium solution. Since my time in the War, I have always found a particular pleasure in those arts of the leech which require no song, no power, no special heritage — only tools that anyone could use, given the right equipment.

Ilimmállë followed me, eyes shining, as I ministered to the four or five cows who had fallen prey to milk fever, equally as touched. Her duties demanded she go before I turned to my other patients, but she pressed my shoulder before she left and insisted I eat with her family in the farmhouse that night, rather than going into the small town up the point.

Dinner was early, as nightfall came quickly so late in the year, so we had a beautiful sunset view of the small orchard of the famous Graystone apples of Ránanandë that Ilimmállë’s sister Vanimorva kept. These apples have a wonderful honeyed aroma which keeps not at all on the long journey to Tirion or Valmar — a special treat of the region which I was coming to love so well. That night the family had committed delicious sacrilege against one of their famous cheeses: the ash-rinded “Eärendil’s Drake” baked in pastry and served alongside the apples, beautifully stewed, with good country bread and more new cider to wash it down.

We spoke of apples, cows, cheeses, the market for fresh milk and the difficulties of transporting it off the point, while Arien dipped her toes into the Belegaer and gilded the orchard. Vanimorva was holding forth on the perfect composition of a Tarte Tatië when the huge brown bull who kept the cows in calf lurched into view among the trees.

Ilimmállë leapt to her feet in a rattle of dishes. “How did he get in there?”

Vanimorva rose as well, squinting against Arien’s darts. “And why is he walking like that?”

He could really hardly be said to be “walking” at all. It was more like a Vanyarin reel performed by an Orc. With much crossing-over of legs, swaying side to side, and elaborate stumbles, the bull blundered about in a delirium.

Vanimorva exclaimed as he hit an apple tree hard enough to send showers of yellow leaves and fruit raining down on him. Ilimmállë was already running from the room, calling for the cowhands. Apparently vexed, the bull clumsily backed up and rammed the tree again, as though it were a young steer wanting discipline.

I followed Ilimmállë, regretting very much the plate I left behind, but already running through the possibilities in my mind. Autumn grass staggers was not out of the question, though it was far more common in cows than in bulls. The bull’s head was high; he was apart from the herd; he was treating innocent apple trees like romantic rivals; that staggering gait was entirely typical. Luckily, because grass staggers was so common in nursing cows, I had brought bags of Efsír salts alongside my solutions of calcium.

Outside, the cowhands cautiously dared the bull’s swinging horns and attached new leads to his nose ring. For all the bull shook his head and pawed at the ground, he was too unsteady on his feet to put up a fight, and submitted to being tied at last. I had the cowhands face him into a corner to remove the threat of those sharp, healthy horns, but almost had cause to regret it when the bull pitched forward into the fence.

I ran a hand over his twitching hide — muscle spasms, I thought, another hallmark of staggers. It could progress quickly and fatally, but as with milk fever, its cure could be almost miraculous. What luck that I had my salts!

I gave orders for a bucket of clean, warm water and mixed in the salts when it came. With a measure of difficulty, I got the mixture down his throat, not without some undignified splashing. Then I stood back, hands on my hips, waiting for my miracle.

The bull’s hide twitched. He tossed his head, forcing one of the cowhands to duck. He ground his teeth and bellowed. After five minutes, I began to wonder if I had not administered enough Efsír salts. After ten, the bull still bawling and twitching, staggering when he shifted his feet, I reached out to check the color of his gums, only to startle him so badly that he wrenched free of the cowhands and tossed his horns like a pair of scythes. One of the cowhands was trapped between him and the fence, liable to be gored at any moment.

Battlefield instincts rushing to the fore, I shouted a single strong note, entirely flat but sufficient for my purposes, at the same moment the other cowhand yanked hard on the remaining lead attached to the nose ring. The bull crashed to the ground, fast asleep. Panting, my throat sore, I knelt down beside him, apologizing profusely to Ilimmállë in concert with the cowhand.

“No, not at all,” she said, “He almost got Alvesko in the neck! He is never so aggressive; he is one of the gentlest bulls I have ever bred. What can be the matter with him?”

“With that staggering, I imagine it is, well, staggers — grass staggers. It is far more common to see in cows, like milk fever, but autumn is its season. Has he been out to pasture with the others?”

Ilimmállë nodded. “Yes, most of the day, with the young steers he can order around. But the grass has been so dry this year that we are feeding him seaweed already, not relying on pasturage.”

I frowned. The same minerals that leeches used as Efsír salts were found in abundance in kelp. Running my hand along the sleeping bull’s neck and shoulders, I checked his pulse — fast — and his temperature — normal. I sent a tendril of thought and will out to the bull, as I would with Quildatal, but there is not so much between a bull’s ears that I found the exercise fruitful, except to let me know that the bull had not hurt himself on his way down.

A cow with staggers might go from staggering to frothing at the mouth and dying within an hour. The bull, clearly, was not convulsing or in imminent danger of death, despite his fast pulse. I listened to the sounds of his stomach — not the deathly silence of a dying beast, but a boisterous gurgle punctuated by loud whistling noises. That was not quite what I expected, but then, I had just poured a full gallon of salts down his gullet and then done the next best thing to knocking him on the head. I scratched my jaw.

“Well,” I said reluctantly, “He seems to be in no immediate danger. Those magnesium salts work wonders, just like the calcium. I will sing him a song of health, but he seems more or less all right, now that he has calmed down.”

“Far down,” noted Ilimmállë, and I felt my cheeks heat, grateful for the darkness of my skin that would hide a blush in the day’s last glimmerings.

I sent her and the almost-gored cowhand away and waited with the other in the gathering night for the bull to wake. Someone — Vanimorva, I assumed — had hung little Fëanorian lamps like blue apples in the trees, which lit with their soft glow as the stars came out. Far away in the north, the Star of High Hope lifted into the heavens.

“Aiya Eärendil, elenion ancalima,” I whispered, and the cowhand repeated after me.

After perhaps forty minutes, the bull cracked an eye open. Gratefully, for we were growing chilled, we urged him to his feet and led him back to his nighttime stall. His staggers were gone and he carried his head very low. He seemed almost embarrassed. Halfway between the orchard and the barn, he cocked his tail and let loose a stream of loose scour, which I attributed to the magnesium.

Once he was safely stowed in the deep straw, I went back to the kitchen, where dinner was long-since cleared away. Vanimorva had saved me a piece of tarte, however, and I ate it gratefully before retiring to the lighthouse.

In the morning, I checked on Quildatal – happily communing with the creamery’s drayhorse – then proceeded to my patients.

One of the cows needed assistance with a breech labor, a sweaty, muscular job. Then there was another milk fever case, which provided a bracing glow of accomplishment, followed by an experienced milker rejecting her new calf, which provided an immense amount of frustration as I tried to sing her into temper.

By the time the bell rang for breakfast for the hands, I was already caked in muck and sore from head to toe. Before I could tuck into the workers’ breakfast of fresh-harvested oats in just-gathered cream, Vanimorva came running into the courtyard where the trestle tables stood, waving her hands.

“Doctor Heriel, Doctor Heriel, he is staggering again!” she cried.

Dropping my spoon, I followed her at a run past the tall pile of windfalls waiting to be made into cider and into the steers’ pasture. Sure enough, the bull was in the same state as the day before: head high, feet unsteady, temperament unsweet. The cowhands knew what to expect this time and had a bucket of water ready. I pulled a packet of salts from my pocket, wrestled the draught down the bull’s throat, and wasted no time singing him into a light standing drowse, having learned my lesson thoroughly.

It was not unusual for staggers to reoccur, but within a timeframe of a handful of hours, not almost fourteen. I had also watched the bull eat seaweed that very morning, which should have provided him with plenty of magnesium.

“Would you please put him back in his stall until I come to let him out again?” I requested. The bull seemed to be in no immediate danger, and I still had other patients to see.

As I stitched a long tear in an old cow’s low-hanging udder — cows are forever stepping on each other’s udders, which makes me grateful for bipedalism — I dwelled on the bull. The symptoms were archetypical grass staggers, I thought in frustration. So, why had the magnesium not worked its magical transformation the way the calcium did? Why had the bull stood around for twenty minutes the night before, faring no better and no worse, rather than recovering speedily or dying equally promptly? Why had he sickened again in the morning, right before I had eaten my beautiful porridge? My stomach rumbled, adding to my foul mood.

Out of my ingrained sense of responsibility, for which I received many commendations during the war and deserve great approbation, I checked on the bull before lunch and found him relatively alert. Once again, he hung his head, looking almost shamefaced, squinting in the light. I squinted back balefully. In the stall, another pile of liquidy dung spoke to Efsír salts’ other uses.

Warily, I opened the stall door and let the bull out. Normally, it seemed Ilimmállë let him wander about like an overgrown puppy, trusting the fences and his sweet nature to keep him out of the way of the cheesemakers, cows, and calves. I had seen little enough of that apparent docility, so I kept a careful distance between us. The fences did not seem that good, either — had he not broken into the orchard last night?

A thought flickered fleetingly like a trout in a stream.

Looking sidelong at it, and at the bull, I trailed the animal as he went plodding stolidly about the barns and dairy buildings. He was steady on his feet, but he still moved gingerly, rather like Elquessë after a night at Vercaván’s. He poked his nose into a few outbuildings. A cowhand gave him a scratch on the rump, which he followed up with a good rub on a fencepost. I began to feel ridiculous, following a bull through a creamery like a scout tailing a warg.

Then the bull lifted his head, looked about himself, and set off at a decided pace towards the farmhouse. I followed after at a trot.

We passed the buttery, a salt lick, and the steers’ pasture. The bull ignored several tempting patches of newly sprouted winter grass reaching for the sun after the season’s first rains. He went straight for the corner where the orchard met the steers’ pasture and shouldered his way through into the apple trees where I could see a plank had come loose.

“Oh, you demon,” I muttered, and broke into a run as the bull picked up the pace, fairly cantering towards the pile of apples destined for cider.

“You demon!” I shouted as he reached the pile and lowered his head, crunching the fallen fruit with foamy relish. “Get away from there! Get!” I slapped and pushed ineffectually at his shoulder. The bull paid me less mind than a gnat, chomping away at the browning windfalls at an incredible rate, releasing their sweet, fermented scent.

From the building that held the racks of aging cheeses, Ilimmállë poked her head out.

“Doctor Heriel?” she called. “What is it?”

“I need help!” I shouted, and threw my whole weight against the bull, to as little effect as if I had tried to shift Taniquetil with my shoulder.

Ilimmallë ducked back into the building and emerged a moment later divested of her clean robes and gloves. Together, we hauled the bull away from the heap of apples, much to his displeasure. He was already unsteady on his hooves, tripping around like a Man in Menegroth, I noted in disgust.

“That bull is… he’s a sot!” I exclaimed, waving my hands. Ilimmállë eyed me. “It was never staggers,” I went on in exasperation. “He keeps getting into the windfall apples, eating bushels of them, and getting himself drunk, the cursed creature!”

Ilimmállë looked at me yanking at my hair club, at the gently weaving bull, and at the tower of apples gleaming in the late autumn sunshine. Then she bent over and made a sound like a laboring cow.

I glared at her, infuriated with my own stupidity, until the Valar-damned bull gave an enormous belch perfumed with the honey of Graystone apples. Then I had to laugh as well, putting the pieces together until I had to lean against the tipsy bull, holding my ribs.

“What a great idiot I’ve been, forcing him to drink a gallon of Efsír salts a day,” I gasped. “Ilmarë, no wonder he has been scouring and falling asleep on his feet. No wonder his stomachs sounded like an orchestra.”

Ilimmállë straightened from her helpless crouch and gave me a companionable thump on the shoulder. “And you so proud of your potions and pills from across the sea, Doctor,” she said, though she was smiling as she said it.

“For milk fever–” I protested, and Ilimmállë shook her head.

“I’m only teasing,” she said, and gave one last chuckle. “My bull, drunk as Vána! I would never have imagined. So he’s getting into the orchard somehow?”

I explained about the loose board, then abruptly sobered. I peered at the bull’s eyelids and gums and pressed my ear to his belly again to hear those alarming burbles and squeaks.

“You should keep him fenced in until that board is fixed,” I told Ilimmállë. “It is funny, but it is almost the same thing as grain overload, what happens if you turn a young calf out to clean up a field of leftover wheat or beets. It isn’t staggers, but it is a kind of poisoning, and they can die of it, or more likely go terribly lame, ruin their stomachs, and then die of it.”

Ilimmállë nodded seriously. “Yes, I’ve seen that,” she said. “But is he all right now?”

“He seems to be,” I replied. “I advise keeping him from any water for the rest of the day — and, actually, magnesium might help, if injected so he does not drink anything more.”

So in the end, I did use my prized new syringe and medicines on the bull, to make him defecate all the apples he had eaten and prevent him from swelling up like a bullfrog. It was surely a less glorious victory than the milk fever cases. Even so, when Quildatal and I rode out the next day, having eaten my fill of sharp apples with gooey cheese and drunk fresh yellow milk warm from the cow in my morning tea, I could laugh about it. The memory of the bull jousting with the apple tree would make a good story to tell Elquessë over breakfast.

As we passed through the final gate, Vanimorva called out from behind me. She ran up to me and Quildatal, who stuck her nose in her hair and generally made a nuisance of herself. Vanimorva laughed and shoved her away, then handed up a large drinking gourd.

“It’s from the very first autumn pressing, ready this morning,” she said. “Drink it in good health, but keep it to yourself! Our cider is too good for the cows.”