Thirty-Sixth Beginning: Daffith's Egg 02

[Continued from here.]

By the time the sun was fully risen, Daffith had been shooed out of both of Hawesbeck's hiring stables.  He was sitting in an alley, leaning against a wall next to his loaded barrow, and fighting a rising sense of panic.  There were so many ways that his plan could fail and her he was, completely unable to get started.

Mother used to say "first things first."  But the first thing, here, was getting a job in a stable, and he'd failed to do that.  Father would say something like "keep at the job 'til it's done."  But getting tossed out of a stable instead of shooed out wouldn't help things much.  Uncle Ures would say . . . Daffith frowned.  He didn't want to think about what Uncle Ures would say, but the though sneaked in anyway.

Uncle Ures would say something like: " It's all a matter of presentation.  Think of what the other fellow wants, what he wants to hear.  Then describe the deal from his point of view.  It's not lying, boy!  Don't you ever say that again!  It's just that any fellow you meet is going to be more interested in his own point of view than in yours.  If you remember to lay things out from his point of view, you've got more chance of convincing him that you both want the same thing for different reasons."

Daffith slouched back against a shop wall.  He should have thought of that sooner, but he'd been set on thinking of the whole thing from a farming view and now his chances were ruined.  He needed to get a job in a stable and now  . . . or did he need a job in a stable?  How about a job in a place with a stable, like a nobleman's house or - - an inn!  Daffith straightened.  An inn would be perfect.  But he'd have to think things through first, this time.  He'd have to think about what he could offer an innkeeper in return for the things he'd need to hatch the egg.

Daffith's stomach rumbled.  Too bad.  This was more important.  Maybe looking over a few inns would give him an idea.  Maybe just for today he could work in an inn in return for dinner.  Well, first things first and keep at the job 'til it's done.  Daffith rose and dusted off his seat.  Time to go study an innkeeper's point of view.

Two days later, Daffith trundled his wheelbarrow out of the city gates with the first light of dawn, ready to make his first true attempt at employment.  He had picked his inn carefully and he knew that he would feel deeply disappointed if he failed.  It wouldn't be the first test of his presentation, though.  He had tried it at other inns, inns he had known wouldn't hire him, but actual inns anyway, with actual innkeepers.  He had learned a few things about innkeepers and had gotten a few meals and slept in a few stables.

Innkeepers, he had learned, never trusted anybody.  They were always looking to be cheated.  That had made a disaster of most of the first day.  He had been drinking with cupped hands out of a rain barrel in the gathering evening and pondering that when he had remembered something else that Uncle Ures had said.  "When someone thinks you're out to cheat them, you have to explain things from your point of view.  You have to explain to them what you think you're going to get out of them, so that they can trust that you're serving your own self interests well enough not to have to bother plotting to cheat them."

It had seemed stupid and distrustful at the time, but that was before he had talked to so many innkeepers.  He could see why they'd get that way.  They'd do business with strangers and riffraff often enough to make them suspicious of normal folk, too.

So he had added an explanation of what he wanted out of the deal to his presentation.  He couldn't mention the egg, of course.  What he'd ended up doing is explaining about the farm and about his uncle and aunt and about how he wanted to do something like farming again.  It settled them, knowing that there was something he was after, something they wouldn't mind him getting.

He had also learned that innkeepers were more likely to give you a job if you'd worked at an inn before, even only overnight, and if you could name an innkeeper that they knew that could say that you worked hard.  There were also some rivalries between inns.  Uncle Ures had spoken about rivalries, about how one rival would buy something just because he couldn't stand the other having something he didn't have.  That part still seemed a little dishonest, but he wouldn't be lying and the egg needed to be nested down soon.  

Daffith stopped in the street in front of the inn and looked at it, gathering his final thoughts.  According to the old cooks and barmen and maids he'd talked to, the inns outside the city gates were once considered dangerous dives.  The idea being that only a criminal who couldn't risk being recognized by the gate guards would want to stay outside the safety of the city walls.  But as shops and houses and more inns began to sprout outside the walls, the idea of danger and impropriety waned.  Still, it was the inns within the city that could charge the higher rates and the inns outside that yearned to catch up, to shed their unfortunate past and stand as solid establishments.

The Pelican was an inn that considered itself to be rising competition to the inner inns.  It was not merely whitewashed, but painted in pelican light greys and browns.  The rippled glass of its yellow and orange patchwork stained glass windows were washed every morning and its grounds were kept spotless.  Being outside the walls, its grounds were large enough to allow a stable and a new, though at present unfortunately underused coach house.  It was the stable and the grounds that held Daffith's interest.  He circled the inn slowly, considering the possibilities, on his way to part his wheelbarrow by the kitchen door.

"You can't put that there.  Be off with you, farm boy!  Tend to your turnips."

Daffith was surprised and a bit cowed.  The girl standing with her hands on her hips and scorn on her face sounded so sure and in charge.  Still, this was his best chance and he couldn't just give up.  

"Are you Innkeeper Greenford's daughter, miss?"

"If I were, would I be dressed like this, fool?"

"Are you his wife, then?"

"No, idiot, of course not.  Off with you!"

"Then who are you to be running off people who have business with the innkeeper?"

The girl was older and taller than Daffith, with dark braids and darker eyes.

"I'm Lillian, and you can call me the scullery maid if you want, but I'm the one who sees the kitchen runs properly and I'm the one who shoos away fools who try to sell wilted extra vegetables and questionable meat at the back door.  Now get!"

"Since I haven't any vegetables in my barrow or any interest in your kitchen, I'd appreciate it if you'd tell Innkeeper Greenford that there is someone come to speak to him about a job tending to the stables and to the grounds.  You may tell him that I have worked with Sill, the gardener at the Golden Rings, if you think that would be of interest to him."

Daffith held his ground as the girl stared down at him angrily.  He tried to guess her age and ended in thinking her about seventeen.  Finally she made a disgusted noise and flounced toward the door, turning once to yell, "And get that thing out of the way of the door."

From her pointed finger, he guessed she meant him to head more toward the stables.  So he lifted the handles of his barrow and trundled off.

Breakfast was clearly underway, and several folks had collected their horses and left, when Daffith decided that the girl had not passed his message on to the innkeeper.  The thought made him angry.  He had purposely come early knowing that, though dawn was the time of greatest activity for the kitchen, it was sometimes the quietest part of an innkeeper's day.  Then or the time just after breakfast were the best times to speak to them about jobs.  To have missed the best time to talk to Greenford just because some kitchen girl felt snooty and above herself was infuriating.

A stableboy, well, man, maybe, was leading another horse out into the yard.  Daffith left his barrow and walked over, not entirely sue how to begin.

"Nice horse, sir."  In his ear it seemed a lame start, but it was all he could think of.

"Be nicer if it was mine."  The russet haired maybe-man looked down at him.  Up close, Daffith could see the beginnings of a mustache.  He couldn't decide whether this person was older than the snotty scullery or not.  Looking closer, Daffith saw eyes crinkled with impatience.  "I wouldn't order it saddled up immediately and then order breakfast in the next breath."

"Always smile at the customer," Daffith smiled, "even if he's obviously got a head full of manure.  It's what's in his pockets that matter."

"I see you've worked at an inn."

"Only for the last couple of days."  Should he start his presentation now, sort of a practice run before talking to Greenford?  "Actually, I'm sort of looking for a position now.  Sort of stables and grounds, both."  No.  This was not going well.  He was forgetting things and rushing things.

"In that case, how about you hold this horse while I get a few others saddled?  That way you can say you've already lent a hand.  Innkeepers like that, you know.  And if that fool does come out "immediately" his horse will be waiting just where he ordered."

"Could I walk it back and forth a bit?  Horses like that better than just standing still."

The stableman looked at him and seemed to see him a little more clearly this time.  He nodded, than began to walk away, talking to Daffith sideways as he went.  "Sure.  Good idea.  I'll be back soon.  And thanks."

Thirty-Sixth Beginning: Daffith's Egg

Daffith dropped himself down into the leaf litter, under the trees, exhausted.  He sniffed twice, wetly, wiped his nose on his sleeve, and sniffed again.  Such sniffs were as close as the boy would come to crying since his parents had died, nearly a season ago.

But Daffith wasn't thinking about that, refused to think about that ever again.  Instead, Daffith ran his hands over an egg too large for him to lift one-handed, worried that the jolt of his collapse might have cracked it.  Once reassured that the egg was whole, he worried that he wasn't far enough into the woods to be hidden, or that someone had seen him running from the fields.  As time passed and nothing moved nearby but insects and small birds, he worried . . . but there were too many worries waiting for their turn, so he worried about the egg again.  Was it too cool?

Daffith scooped needleleaf litter around the egg, flicking a hand every time one of the newer needles pricked him.  Shiff--scoop--flick--sniff.  He couldn't sit on the egg or even lie across it.  He was too afraid of breaking it.  So he curled awkwardly over the mound, trying to keep his weight off of it.

This wasn't a dragonman egg.  Everyone knew that dragonmen came from dragon eggs and dragon eggs had to be bigger than this, didn't they?  And he wasn't a vile and wicked boy to be wasting good time trying to hatch a dragonman like the one that had killed his parents, even if they were fools.  He wasn't.  Uncle Ures was wrong.  Uncle Ures had to be wrong.  Anyone who could call DAffith's solid farmer parents fools was likely to be wrong about anything.

Daffith's sniffles stilled.  His old farm-knowledge whispered to him.  There was a time before a duck or hen was ready to set when she just laid eggs, one a day, and left them hidden, unwarmed.  During that time the eggs didn't die, they just waited.  That way, when the hen or duck decided to stop laying and set, the six or ten or twelve eggs would all hatch out on the same day, as one brood.

Daffith screwed his eyes closed and tried to remember the nest.  It had been a bloody mess of scattered twigs and splintered oak branches.  There had been three eggs.  One had been splattered against the ruins of the tree trunk, another had cracked and leaked itself over the roots.  Only one egg, his egg, had survived.  He had concentrated his attention on the good egg, at the time.  Ig was hard, now, to remember the others clearly.

A stray thought of what was left of the tree finally brought the memory back.  There had been huge claw marks gouged into the trunk.  Dripping through the gouges, egg yolk had been drying in masses against the bark.

The egg probably hadn't started to grow yet, then.  Daffith flipped over onto his back.  He probed gently through the rips of his sleeves.  From the damp and the sting, his elbows had obviously been skinned badly in that last fall. He had protected the egg, though. It hadn't been easy, running with an egg that heavy.

Further exploration revealed that Daffith's knees weren't skinned, only a little bruised, that one pants knee was a bit ripped, and that his stomach was beginning to remember that this whole thing had started before breakfast. Daffith sat up and brushed needleleaves out of his hair. "First things first," Mother used to say. The egg could go without warmth for a week or more. But he was hungry now and his elbows needed washing out or the field dirt might cause an infection -- maybe even red-thread. Aunt Weaver would be worried about him and Uncle Ures would be furious, but there was nothing he could do about that, not 'til the egg was safe.

But there should be a stream nearby, if he remembered right. That would solve at least the washing problem. Daffith looked at the egg. Was it hidden well enough to be safe? Well, it would have to do. He was too tired to lug it around in search of half-remembered streams. But still . . Daffith decided to drape a couple of dead branches over the egg to discourage passing beasts from stepping on it.

The stream had no fish in it. But it had flint pebbles on its banks, which meant that Daffith could start a fire. As the fire burned itself into usable coals, Daffith scrounged about the stream for edibles. There was plenty of plowman's lettuce, a low growing leafy plant that came up early in the spring and was good for stopping the bleeding gums that sometimes came from being reduced to eating nothing but bread in the last of the winter. Daffith chewed it as he collected island-leaf roots and wolftail roots and stems. Among the wolftails he found a nest with four covered eggs in it. He took tow. That would do for a late breakfast. Even without fish, the stream had provided.

A bit later, Daffith was laying back by his egg with a full belly, watching the needleleaf branches sway over his head. He was almost feeling pleased with himself. He knew he was being disobedient, though, which made him feel bad. And he knew that he was no nearer to being able to save and hatch out his egg, which made him feel worse. But he had managed to buy himself thinking time. And not only had he known how to find himself food, he had thought to use the hollows in the island-leaf roots as containers for baking the eggs. He had never heard of anyone doing that before and it had worked out well. Even when you poked a hole in the large end of an egg, it could explode baking in camp coals.

Somehow, living with Aunt Weaver and Uncle Ures left him feeling useless. Aunt and her daughters, all of them older than Daffith and his sisters, wove brightly patterned blankets out of woolen yarn that they dyed themselves. Uncle Ures sold the blankets. He called it marketing, but Daffith couldn't understand what the difference was, except that Uncle Ures spent more of his time in the local inns than in their small shop. And while Junibeth and Mareet had fit themselves into the business from the start, one loving to mix the dyes and the other loving to keep shop and shop records, Daffith had not seemed to fit. Daffith didn't want to think about that, though. Instead he thought of the egg.

Thinking about the egg made Daffith think about his parents' farm on the outskirts of Flotsam. An egg was a farm kind of thing. Uncle Ures had sold the farm after the deaths of his wife's sister and her husband. Daffith missed it. It didn't do to mention that around Uncle Ures, though. Uncle Ures had done the best thing and it was ungrateful for certain young boys to criticize his elders. Certain young boys would be better off listening to his uncle and learning how to do business.

Daffith didn't understand doing business, either. If felt good to be out of the city and back in the woods and fields. Maybe he could get a job as a farm hand and hatch the egg on that farm, somehow. But Uncle Ures was sure to look for him. And he'd do it like marketing, talking in the taverns about his runaway nephew, making sure all the local farmers knew to look for him. Drat!

Maybe he could somehow go far away to a farm that wasn't anywhere near the city of Hawesbeck. But he didn't know how to do that safely. And he sure didn't know how to do it safely and keep the egg hidden or how to explain the egg. The egg worried people. And the journey would take longer than a week. Heck, if he didn't even know how to hatch an egg this big on a farm, he couldn't possibly hatch it in . . . in whatever he'd have to be in to be traveling.

So think of a way to hatch the egg first. Maybe think about getting food to eat while thinking, too. The stream wouldn't feed him for much more that another meal. Then he'd have to follow it deeper into the woods or find other woodsfood. Or steal from the fields. He wouldn't like to steal from farmers, though.

Daffith considered. It was mid-spring and time to thin some crops. Sometimes farmers would let a helper thin for a day or two just for the thinnings. A thinner could come away with sacks of baby lettuce or cabbage or turnips or beets or carrots. He was too close to the old farm now, though, and folks would recognize him.

But if he walked a score or so miles, he'd probably be able to find a couple of days work before word spread. He'd travel tonight and ask for work early in the morning. It was easy to think while thinning. After a bit, your hands and arms, back and legs, just fell into the continuous motion, leaving your mind to its own business.

If he planned to travel tonight and work all tomorrow, he'd better rest now. Daffith yawned. It had been a stressful morning. It would be good to rest. There were plenty of roasted wolftail roots for dinner. They were stringier and chewier than roast carrots, but sweeter, too, and definitely filling. It would be good to be on a farm again. Good to feel the familiar motions, see the familiar sights. Daffith yawned again and curled down into the dry needles, thinking of farms. The sounds of farms were good sounds. Daffith began to hear them as he fell asleep.

Daffith woke with a start. His fingers and toes tingled, as if he'd been struck with an illusionist's lightning bolt. He felt a strong half-awake sense of urgency. There was something he had to do, had to start now. But he didn't know what it was.

The egg. He needed to hatch the egg. But that wasn't urgent. That could wait. The boy ran his fingers through his hair to straighten it a bit. He must have been dreaming. This urgency must be left over from the end of the dream. Sometimes that happened if you woke up too fast, especially if you woke up before the dream was finished with you. Maybe he had been running from something.

No, not running. He remembered now. He had dreamed about the farm, about the farm in the early morning, just the way he would be seeing a farm tomorrow. Daffith looked around. It was just beginning to get dark. The air had that thick, golden color it sometimes showed just before sunset. There was plenty of time. Daffith laid back and began chewing on a cooked root.

It felt good to lay back and remember the dream. It had been of an Autumn morning. The tree and bush leaves were bright with frostburn. There were twinklings of dew ice from every surface. The goats and the mule in the barn were making their usual readiness noises -- not impatient, mind you, just wanting to remind, to be sure that the housefolk remembered that critters needed breakfast, too. Steam was rising in gossamer wisps from the compost pile. Chickens were pecking around the edges of it, seeking worms as an appetizer.

Daffith felt the tingle again. Chickens pecking around . . . Suddenly Daffith was up and running. That was the reason for the urgency. There was a way to hatch the egg, but it would take time to set it up. He had to start now to be sure that he'd be ready in time.

It was long past sunset when Daffith arrived back at his uncle's house. He went around back, past the main dye sheds to a little, leaning shed on the side. He unlatched it and peered into the dark of it. It took a minute or two to work up his nerve and go into that dark. It was a dark thing , stealing was, and it put a little darkness on you that gave the dark a bit of a claim on you.

"I'm just taking my own things," he whispered to the dark, so it would know. "Things Uncle Ures didn't want to keep anyways. The boy-sized rake and shovel and wheelbarrow that he couldn't say went with the farm. My things. And maybe some of the crop sacks from the farm, too. If those aren't mine and they want them back, I'll give them back. So it's just borrowing."

He paused for a moment, trying to think of anything he'd left out. No. Nothing he could think of. He wiped his hands down his front and slid into the darkness slowly, as if it were cold water. Even though he knew exactly where the things he wanted were, finding them took some time. Things were hard to recognize by feel with darkness pressing against him. But he found the things, one by one, and took them out into the starlight and the pinkish moonlight. He didn't look up, for fear he'd see a moon better left unseen, since Uncle would think it was stealing no matter what the technicalities were. When everything was packed into the wheelbarrow, he relatched the door and started the long walk back to get the egg. He had some thinking to do on the way.

[Continued here.]

Sent to David 11/18/1991.

Note in handwriting: I haven't changed anything yet. I'll finish the whole thing first before I start revising. I'm saving your comments 'til then.

Mom

PS Those are neat shoes.