Uncle Swansea was the family member in charge of the house’s wine stores. He knew the way down better than anyone. He could navigate the stairs and ladders in the dark, if need be. But, if electricity and candles failed, he could also light his way with bottled, bioluminescent fungus. Down, down, past ancient portraits, long-forgotten tapestries, and meticulously maintained urns.
The electricity was working that day, even so shortly after the last hurricane. So many homes drowned in the rising waters, but Singeorge Manor had remained above the waters on its hill. Uncle Swansea and the boy Churchill had flown kites during the grand storm, hoping to recreate Ben Franklin’s infamous experiment chaining the heathen power of Thor just as the Father of Wolves was bound by Thor’s brother Týr.
Their kites induced no lightning. The hurricane was a complete failure, other than the body count along the shore. Three had joined Blackbeard at Ocracoke, which required a wine toast led by Stephen.
“You tend the cellars?”
Swansea turned his chin over the black burlap of his shoulder. Lynn Odisha had followed him downstairs. She was new to the Manor, having arrived the previous Halloween from Africa. The pale maid, Menesta, peeked around Odisha’s dark and skeptical face.
“I am the master of the cellars,” Swansea asserted. He struggled to straighten his hunch bank.
“Why,” cousin Lynn said, strutting into the cellars with her hips swaying conspicuously left and right, “would the death of this woman send you to the wine cellar?”
Swansea shuddered. Lynn Odisha was a second cousin, well within his grasp in the familial practice. The global House of the Ghost Dragon, in which the Singeorges found their place, recognized intermarriage as a respectable path to maintaining their tradition. Rendered relatively easy, given the diverse range of the House, having families on every continent save Antarctica.
Lynn Odisha leaned forward, peering at the racks of wine bottles, hands cupped between her thighs and breasts crushed between her forearms. The maid Menesta waited at the bottom of the stairs, dainty fingers on the doorframe.
“Well,” Swansea stuttered, “there are vintages dating back to the Revolution, only to be corked on July 4th. A major celebration here at Singeorge Manor, complete with explosions and Tories hanged and burned in effigy.”
“Oh yes,” Odisha said. “I witnessed that, earlier this year.”
“There are vintages dating to the War of 1812,” Swansea went on, “only to be corked on Flag Day. Not as important but, as you know, the Singeorges still grill up bison and alligator and grizzly bear on the lawn under the Star-Spangled Banner.”
“Yes, I saw that, too,” she said. Her smile was like a burning hearth in the cool of the wine cellar.
Swansea stumbled forward: “There are vintages dating to the Civil War, only to be corked on Juneteenth, as you remember.”
She shook her black coils of hair. “I do not remember, as you should remember. I was away that weekend.”
“Ah yes,” he said. “Despite being so soon after Flag Day, this is a major holiday here, commemorating the victory of anxious liberty over the constraints of certain slavery.”
Lynn Odisha nodded with open eyes.
Swansea waved to the racks. “Much wine is poured on each of these summer holidays.”
“That must be quite hard to replace,” she said with a wink. Menesta moved cautiously into the cellar behind her, cautious fingers resting on her lady’s shoulders.
“Oh yes,” Swansea said, shaking. “I have to keep acquaintances with several vintners.”
“And,” Menesta spoke in a whisper. Lynn nodded at her over the red silk of her shoulder. The maid grimaced and went on: “What about the dead Japanese lady?”
Swansea cleared his throat, a sound like a locomotive setting out from some dusty outpost.
“There is a special rack,” he said, waving to a comb of wood painted black recently at the child Varga’s insistence in her Rudramsa body. “In this rack are vintages dating back slightly more than a century. These bottles must only be uncorked once no living human being is alive when the wine had been bottled.”
“Intriguing,” cousin Odisha said.
Swansea shuffled back-and-forth along the rack, suddenly enrapt in his familial duties. The bottles were organized by date, but he couldn’t resist drawing them out one-by-one to see how many bottles had been freed by the recent death. Four bottles this time! Swansea rocked on the balls of his feet.
“See you soon, Miyazawa Nahoko,” he said as he scooped the bottles into his armpits.