Of Beer and Battle Strategy
FOUR WEEKS LATER
“When can I have some?”
“Were you always this impatient?”
“It’s been four weeks. A friend of mine could make moonshine in three days.”
“Believe it or not, I want to live past fifty. Poison hooch seems like a step in the wrong direction.” Lilith approaches the first bottle. “Besides, this recipe’s been perfected over hundreds of years.”
“Given how things turned out, I’m not sure anything was perfected before the incident.”
“Trust me on this.” Lilith pops the cork and passes it to Juno. “Smell that? Hoppy perfection.”
“It smells...alcoholic. Which is exactly what I’d hoped for.”
“Philistine.” Lilith pours the cider into two cups. “This recipe came straight from George Washington.”
“An old general with slaves and a funny wig? That’s the guy you want to trust on this stuff?”
“He’s not just any general, Juno. He had guts. He did what he had to do to win the war.”
“I assume you’re about to bore me with the details.”
“Heck yeah I am. Talk about cold blood. When he heard that Hessian spies surrounded his troops in the woods, he let hundreds of them die so the rest of the army could escape. And the ones he left behind didn’t just die, they were brutalized, their blood running like a river to the Gowanus Canal. His veins were made of pure steel, kiddo.”
“Is that why we’re drinking his beer? Nostalgia for the taste of murder and wasteful death?”
“Are you saying a general can’t be more than a general? Everyone’s got layers.”
“Sure they do.”
“You think I was always a self-sufficiency enthusiast living on the top of a hill?”
“Well no, but--.”
“But what? I was another person before I came here, and that person will always be part of me.” Lilith waits, not for the first time, for Juno to ask her, well, anything about her past. She doesn’t. “But now I’m someone else. Not the old me.” She waits again. Nothing, again.
“Ain’t that the truth.” Juno slices into a bright purple carrot. “Come on, let’s finish dinner so we can celebrate.”
“What’s the rush! We’ve got nothing but time, Juno. We can take a moment to do other things.”
“Like what?”
“Like talk.”
Juno sighs and puts the knife down. “What would you like to talk about?”
“I don’t know a damned thing about you, and you don’t know anything about me. Doesn’t that bother you?”
“Well it seems to bother you. I’m fine with it.”
“Fine, fine.” Lilith snatches a pair of tin plates from the cupboard. “Have it your way. Two strangers, living in the same place, staying strange.” Very strange.
“Look.” Juno turns to Lilith. “I...what you need to know about me is that this is me. This is who I am now. Who I was before...I’d like to forget.”
“You’re too young to need to forget.” Lilith’s heart breaks a little when she sees the look of sadness in Juno’s eyes. She pulls her into a hug. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have pushed.”
“I can’t just...open up.” Juno lets go of Lilith’s embrace and returns to the half-chopped vegetables on the counter.
Lilith warms a pot on the stove. “Well like I said, we have all the time in the world. When you’re ready, I’m here. Like literally, I’m stuck here.”
“What happens if you’re found?”
Death by the most unkindest cut. Thousands of cuts, probably. “Not an issue. If we just keep our heads down and don’t change our routine, we’ll be fine.”
“You’re cocky.”
“Because we’re careful.” Lilith shakes some food from the pot to the plates. “You’ve been here for how many months, and the villagers don’t even know you’re here. And as for me, I hardly think they’re going to bite the hand that almost literally feeds them.”
Juno thumbs at a bookmark that sits about ¾ through The Encyclopedia of Country Living, Farming and Self-Sufficiency. “What happens when you’ve taught them everything that’s in the book?”
“There’s plenty of human knowledge left to be reinvented.” Lilith hands Juno a couple of bottles. “Or we’ll just get them all drunk on my super-delicious beer.”
Lilith nudges Juno forward so she can’t see her face. She doesn’t tell Juno about how, lately, she’ll wake up in the middle of the night and hear soft voices snaking in through the windows. She doesn’t tell her about the dark, mischievous smile she spotted on the girl who skipped away after dropping off their weekly basket of food. And more than anything, she doesn’t tell her that she’s just as afraid of being forced to face her past life as Juno is.
---
FOUR HOURS AND MANY BOTTLES LATER
“Ok, this is probably better than Monty’s hooch.”
“Is Monty the so-called friend who tried to poison you with moonshine?”
“Hey, no one died.” Juno stifles a laugh. “Not saying no one got sick though.”
Lilith marvels at Juno’s laughter; who would have imagined, eight weeks before, that the half-dead woman on her front step would not only recover but turn into a friend?
“What did you say?”
“I didn’t say anything.” Lilith feels her face turning red. Must be the beer.
“Oh.” Juno giggles, and then stops. “Hey Lil?”
“It’s Lilith. Not Lil’. I’m not li’l.”
“Alright Lil’ Lilith.” Juno falls silent. Juno’s eyes shift from side to side, her next question coming out as barely a whisper. “How’d you find out about the Mountain Men?”
Lilith throws up her hands in mock-defeat. “Oh come on. Not with the groupie thing again.”
“I’m asking about you. You wanted me to ask about you,” Juno says with an annoyed huff. “How did you know what happened?”
“What do you mean?” Lilith’s struggling to hold up her head, let alone face Juno’s weird questions.
Juno reaches over and slaps Lilith on the shoulder, and nearly tumbles over in the process. “You said you’d been here over a year, and you never have visitors. How do you know what happens outside?”
“Most of the time, I don’t. But this was a special occasion.”
“How so?”
“The Maunon ripped 200 people from this village.” Lilith sighs. “Only 20 came back after the storm of the Mountain, but that was 20 more than expected. Called for a celebration.”
Juno begins to cough violently. After a moment, she slaps the back of her neck and takes a deep breath. “And then?”
“I taught them how to ferment apples, and in exchange they told me the whole story of the Mountain Storm.”
Lilith pauses to take a giant swig of her beer, downing what’s left. “And I gotta hand it to Lexa, she managed it without losing too many of our warriors. Guess she lost her stomach for battle after the clan wars.”
Off Juno’s silence, Lilith reaches for another bottle. “But that Sky Queen of yours. Talk about guts. Have you ever met her?”
Juno freezes. After a moment that drags like the slowest snail, she shakes her head.
“The kids out there in the village, you hear them acting out stories they’ve made up about her. They make their little brothers pretend to be Maunon and then beat them bloody with sticks. It’s delightful.”
“Maybe they’d be better off playing at peace.”
“Where’s the fun in that?”
“People died, Lilith. What we did was murder.”
“Oh, please, tell me more about the morality of the Sky People.” Lilith gets up in a rush and immediately swoons. “Sending 100 kids down to the Earth as your vanguard? Doesn’t sound too high-minded to me. Sounds like your people confused “women and children first” with a battle strategy.”
Juno gets up, swerving into Lilith’s face. “Well maybe they did that because we’re tougher,” she slurs. “After all, we did what your commander failed to do.”
Lilith shoves her away. “I thought you just said it was murder.”
“Don’t you shove me.” Juno immediately shoves back. “Did Lexa even try to rescue your people before we came along?”
“She wasn’t dumb enough to voluntarily restock the maunon’s blood bank, unlike a trail of idiots before her.” Lilith stands straight up, towering over Juno. “You’d better be careful about getting up in my face. And now you’ve gone and made me defend that bitch.”
“I didn’t make you do anything.” Juno does not back down. “All you’ve told me is that other commanders failed, but she failed to even try.”
Lilith detects a hint of bitterness in the statement, but ignores it. It’s just the alcohol talking, she thinks. “Why are we even talking about her? I don’t want to talk about her.”
“Me neither.” Juno sits back down in a huff. Then she narrows her eyes. “Wait...why don’t you want to talk about her?”
“Because she’s just not that interesting.” Lilith sits back down too. “Besides, we’ve just spent 4 weeks making fermented art, and we should talk about that, instead of banging on about the past like a pair of impotent old men.”
“I’m sorry.” Juno stares at the floor. “I didn’t mean to get so worked up. Must be the alcohol.”
“It’s cool.” But when Lilith sees Juno’s eyes, she sees something new - a hardness like granite, bright and devastating. “I think I’ve also had too much. I’m gonna turn in.”
Juno doesn’t respond.