Дэвид Нордли - How Beer Saved the World

“My name is Ninkasi, the Lady Who Fills the Mouth,” she said. “And I say that your practice is anything but lowly. Your brew is exquisite.”

Alice Mary swallowed hard, the old self-effacing habits of her pre-superhero days reasserting themselves. Praise from Ninkasi, the Sumerian goddess of brewing? “I—well—there’s not much to it.”

“Your touch is—shall we say, magical?” Ninkasi’s eyes twinkled with a private glee. “Worthy of respect in its own right. Come. We have much brewing to do tonight, and little enough time to do it.”

Alice Mary frowned. She smelled that the proportions of fruit to barley in this mix were just slightly off. “We need to add more fruit,” she told Ninkasi.

“Tell me and I will make it so,” Ninkasi responded.

Alice Mary took a deep breath, and began to recite ingredients and proportions for this particular recipe.

That night and the next morning passed in a flurry of brewing, roasting, mixing and fermenting. Alice Mary and Ninkasi worked quickly, Ninkasi’s divine touch speeding up the fermentation process (albeit with a bit of experimentation to discern just how much they could speed it up without ruining the magical mix). It seemed as if Alice Mary’s whole world was subsumed in a yeasty haze of barley, hops and fruit, nearly thick enough to make her drunk just breathing the air.

Whenever they amassed enough beer to fill the small garden courtyard with jugs, Coyote whisked it away.

“The battle goes well,” he told them at one point in the afternoon. “Keep brewing!”

They kept brewing.

Sunset and darkness approached, close to the time when the forces fighting for the Kraken would withdraw for the day. Coyote’s visits to restock the forces slowed, or so it seemed when Alice Mary scanned the results of their latest batches stacking up high in the courtyard.

Then Coyote appeared, absent-mindedly half-human, half-coyote, driving a sledge pulled by great black and tan foxhounds yoked in hunting couples. On it squatted a fat, shadowy cauldron. The nothingness that projected from it repelled Alice Mary, and even Ninkasi frowned, troubled, at it.

“Pour every bit of beer you have left into this cauldron,” Coyote said.

They scurried to fill the cauldron. Surprisingly, the vessel grew until every last drop of beer Alice Mary and Ninkasi had prepared filled it to the brim.

“Help me,” Coyote said to Ninkasi. “Don’t touch it!” he warned Alice Mary. “Superhero though you may be, you are still mortal, and this cauldron is a danger to mortals.”

“What are you going to do with this?” Alice Mary asked.

“Come and see. But no!” he cautioned as she would step up on the sledge with him and Ninkasi. “Not even this close, not for you.” He whistled again, and a black horse with white spots across its haunches appeared. “Come see.”

Recognizing Coyote’s favorite mount, Alice Mary slipped onto the Appaloosa’s back. The hounds leaned into their harness, baying as if they’d just spotted a fox. The cauldron moved slowly at first, then began to fly, lifting off of the ground as the seven couples of hounds started to gallop, their voices blending in an unearthly call to the hunt. The Appaloosa gave pursuit, pushing off gracefully from levade to capriole, then began to gallop as if he were still on the ground. Alice Mary grinned and hung on. Sky-riding the nameless Appaloosa by herself was a rare treat, something she’d only been able to do three times before. Coyote rarely shared this mount.

At last they reached the battlefield. Rather than stopping behind the lines, Coyote drove the pack through the troops.

“Make way! Make way!” he bellowed, as Ninkasi steadied the rocking cauldron and Alice Mary rode escort behind them.

At last they stopped. Alice Mary looked around, shocked at the devastation of blasted trees and ripped ground as well as the piles of bodies—more wounded and dead gods and heroes marred by the pustulant growths than of hobgoblins. On one side, Michael frowned at Coyote, the pantheon of the much-thinned ranks of surviving gods and heroes behind him. On the other, gnarled, pale-skinned creatures with big eyes, twisted limbs, and wart-like protuberances snarled. Their leader stood only slightly larger than those he led, scraggly and oily gray hair dangling down his shoulders. A cephalopodan purple and green shape glowed on the top of his helmet, sure sign that the Kraken itself controlled him.

Coyote bowed to Michael. He unhitched the pack of hounds, talking softly to each dog as he dismissed it. Then he faced the hordes of hobgoblins, unflinching when they began to throw excrescent globules at him. Coyote leapt into the cauldron, yipping defiantly. For a moment he disappeared underneath the surface and Alice Mary’s heart sank. Then his head bobbed to the surface. He laughed, treading the beer, then cupped his hands and drank deeply.

“I can outdrink your whole army!” he bellowed. “All of you are weak little babies who can’t handle a real brew! Nyah, nyah, nyah!” He drank again. “Waugh! What a fine brew this is!”

With a roar, the first line of hobs charged the cauldron. Ninkasi leapt off of the sledge and ran toward Alice Mary. The Appaloosa snorted as a squat buckskin mare appeared next to them. Ninkasi jumped onto the mare’s back.

Coyote laughed as the hobs swarmed the cauldron and dove in.

“Drink deep! Drink deep!” he challenged them, then with a twist ducked underneath the surface. The hobs dove after him. Bubbles rose to the surface. Seconds passed.

Then Coyote bobbed back to the top. “Ha, where are the rest of you? I’ve drunk them under the surface! Weaklings!”

More hobgoblins bellowed and charged the cauldron. Coyote yipped gleefully as they mobbed over the edge, plunking in, sinking under. Once again Coyote dove and the hobs followed him. Bubbles rose to the surface.

Coyote bobbed up again, laughing and yipping defiance as the hobs kept coming. By this time the Kraken leader and a handful of smaller hobs with a similar but smaller device on their helmets tried to beat back their fellows. But they were too few against the determined crowd and were swept into the cauldron with their companions.

Alice Mary watched, her hands over her mouth to keep from crying out as the hobs kept coming, kept coming, kept coming, scuttling over the edges of the cauldron in teeming masses.

And then there were no more. The surface of the beer in the cauldron roiled slightly, only half-empty. A single large bubble appeared, then popped, sounding almost as if the cauldron itself had belched. Coyote had disappeared during the last great crush. Alice Mary slipped off of the Appaloosa to run forward but Ninkasi slid off of the buckskin to hold her back.

“Wait. It is not yet done.”

Even as Ninkasi spoke, damp chills came over Alice Mary. Darkness rose from where the hobgoblins had come.

“Hold!” Michael commanded.

The sky seemed to split in front of them, and the Kraken appeared with a loud boom that echoed throughout Alice Mary’s body. Its purple and green tentacles momentarily appeared to fill the sky before they were dwarfed by a globular, gnarled purple, green and gray head with a brown beak. The tentacles writhed and twisted around each other to form a foundation, obscenely three times taller than even Michael, who stood twelve feet high in this manifestation, until the gelatinous head rested firmly on its teeming, crawling, intertwined base and assumed a humanoid shape.

“What have you done with my army?” the Kraken roared, lashing at Michael with one tentacle.

Michael brushed away the tentacle easily with his lance. “Why, they—”