Twenty-Seventh Beginning: Small Gods

(With warm thoughts of Terry Pratchett)

It must be nice to be an atheist, thought Benjen. Every important family and business needed an atheist. If an atheist had anything on the ball, they were set for life.  Even total dipshits were pretty much guaranteed a livelihood, like the dipshit that Benjen was waiting for now.

Benjen tried to tell herself that she was over-reacting again. Townies just didn't have the reverence for punctuality that academics did. It wasn't necessarily an insult, deliberate or otherwise. She raised her baton to signal for another ale.

She had all the equipment she needed to get started, even though this was supposed to be a preliminary meeting to discuss terms and scope. If they came to terms, she wanted the option to get started. Or rather, she might have admitted if pressed, and if not feeling too defensive, she couldn't stand the thought that an opportunity to advance her studies might present itself to find her unprepared to move forward.  She was behind enough as it was.

She had hated the last few months of spinning her wheels, but you just didn't make big decisions without an atheist in the room, no matter what her more religious or impatient relatives said. That was a good way to become a pawn or, worse, find your life pulled randomly into a contorted and uncomfortable shape.  Leaf in the Wind be damned.

The seminary had atheists on call, of course, and students were allotted a certain number of free hours with them. But Benjen had used up all of hers and still didn't have an approved doctoral thesis topic.

Her fingers whitened around the handle of her alecup as she kept her eyes away from the door. This was an off-orchard diner, but there were plenty of students and staff who ate here. Signaling that she was waiting for someone who was making her wait would be too humiliating to bear, no matter how anxious or, yes, angry she was over this possibly aborted appointment. Atheist or not, townie or not, who did this jerk think he was.

Out of the corner of her eye, Benjen saw a couple of servers moving quickly, followed by the sound of the welcome chime by the hearth. She relaxed. She tightened. Was it really possible to do both at once?

She looked deliberately at her ale. It might be a coincidence. Yes, the diner's Larry-Hest rang the welcome chime whenever a guest entered. And, yes, it wouldn't ring for an atheist. And, further yes, servers would ring the chime by hand if they noticed . . . .

"Master Benjen?"

The relief at not being forgotten and the self-congratulations at being right warred with dread at now having to explain her sorry needs and a habitual surge of self-loathing at being so far behind where she was expected to be and at the ineptitude and vacillation that she was sure was the cause of her problems.

"Yes." Her voice was too quick and too high pitched. "Yes, please sit and be at ease."  Better. She signaled for ale for her guest.

"Sorry to be late. My relief on my last shift was late."

"Ah. Infuriating. Or. Well. It would be in academic rows."

"It wasn't fun. But i could understand that . . . But you aren't paying for off-topic chat."

The ale arrived. The atheist gave it a perfunctory sip and set it back. She was a middle aged woman with spreading hips and a bit of a paunch. She would have looked like a weary tender of teenagers if she hadn't been dressed in . . .what? Workpants, a long sleeved sports top, and what looked like a watchman's hooded shirt with the sleeves and hood hacked off.  And those would be a granny's knitting gloves if they weren't in a courtesan's purple, silver, and black - striped like party gear, no less.

"Unless that would help ease into things."  The atheist's eyes were tired, but patient.  "My name is Dee, by the way.  My cognomen, rather.  From the appointment slip I couldn't tell if you'd been given the name and I'm comfortable with the cog."

"Yes.  That would be easier for an atheist, wouldn't it?  Rather . . . " Benjen blushed.

Dee smiled.  "Yes.  Most people don't think that through."  She seemed pleased with the comment, rather than insulted.  The academy atheists had been prickly about any reference to the repercussions of their status.

"So.  Dee, then."

"And you're Master Benjen.  That's the proper address, right?"

"Just Scholar, really." Dee's eyes raised in question. "You don't have to finish a Master's thesis to petition for a Doctorate."

"But you have to have done the classes and other preliminaries, right?"

A nod.

"Would it be . . . improper to call you Master Benjen?"

"No. Not at all. But there are implications to that and I don't want to claim more than my due."

Dee sipped.  "Are the implications positive?"

"Yes."

"Shows an assumption that you'll succeed?"

A blush.  "Yes."

"Master Benjen it is, then.  A sign that I'll do my job properly and you'll find the proper thesis."

"Ah.  I handn't thought of that aspect."

"Well, I imagine you've focused on other aspects a lot lately.  Law of Inertia and all."

"My adviser gave me your card and number."

"But not my name."

"No."

"Wise, I suppose.  No need to invite interferences."

"Yes."  Benjen didn't know where to begin.  She thought of taking a casual quaff of ale, but her stomach rebelled.

Dee slid her drink to the side and fiddled a finger through the arc of condensate it left on the table.

"Again, sorry to be late.  I was at the hospital."

Ben blinked.  That could be a death watch.  Atheists weren't paid for those.  Those were mandatory.  She felt a pang.  Dee didn't look resentful.

"I was spelling a friend.  She was late getting back because she overslept.  And she overslept because she put off calling for support for too long. . . "

Dee made chopping movements on the edge of the table, one for each point, her hand moving from in front of her to further to the side with each iteration.  When she stopped speaking points, her hand kept going, implying unspoken previous causes until she ran out of table and made a dismissive forget-about-it wave, implying that sometimes there was no point in trying to assign blame because it was prior causes all the way down.

"Ah." Probably best to refrain from saying that that was a very atheist attitude.  That people uncomfortable with an infinite regress would slip a god in at some point. 

"So.  Have you pledged yourself to a god, yet?"

"No!"  Slower.  "No, that didn't seem wise until I had a topic underway.  We have household gods, of course, and  my town has its infrastructure gods. . . "  Ben made her own series of chops, in the air, about chest high.  "And, of course the academy has its grove gods."

"Yes.  If you'd asked me to meet you there, I wouldn't have accepted the appointment.  I knew I'd be tired and wading through all that contradictory belief would have been more than I'd arrange to do to myself."

"I, uh, asked around."  Ben didn't want to take credit for other people's knowledge.  That just wasn't done.

"Good."  Total approval.  "And you need a seminary thesis?"

"Yes.  I know that a lot of people think that studying gods is improper and needlessly compounds academic difficulty."

"Pfft."  The handwave was totally dismissive.  "If gods exist then it's imperative to know as much as possible about them."

"And you don't think that each god's clergy is best able to reveal the truth about them?"

"Gods, no!  Self-interest aside, there's the inherent push-me/pull-you dynamic between worshipped and worshippers.  There's competition between worshippers.  And there's my Aunt Janna who describes herself as perfectly laid back."

"I take it she isn't?"

"Well, according to her it's proof of how uncooperative and thoughtless and slovenly the rest of us are that we can upset even someone as relaxed and tolernt as her."

"Ah."

"Ah, indeed."

"I've wondered about my own self-perceptiveness lately."

"Oh?"

Bite the bullet.  "I've had three previous thesis topics fail to get approval."

"Ah. Did you bring them?"

"Yes."  Benjen laid a hand on one of the short piles of paper on the table.

"I'll probably need breakfast, then."

How to broach this without sounding like a fool or a miser.  "I don't know how much . . . "

Dee made another dismissive flap.  "For something this big, the first meeting is free.  I won't know the scope of my involvement if I don't have the background.  Is that the first one?"

"Yes."

"A copy?"

"Yes."

"And I can write on it?"

A frown.  "I don't see why not."

Both of Dee's hands made give, give, give waves.  "Fork ofer and flag me some porridge."

"Porridge was cheap enough.  Some diners didn't charge atheists for the first ale.  Proof that the taste wasn't divinely enhanced and was, therefore, unlikely to decline if someone flubbed their rites or Someone got their divine nose out of joint for reasons real or imagined.  There were hundreds of small gods doing small enhancements in hundreds of ways, and they were all insecure and erratic.

Benjen slid the notes from and about her first thesis over.  It had been her first real failure and in many ways she was still recovering from it.  Dee flipped through them, giving no page more than a few seconds.

"Oh, gods.  You had Johanssen?"

Blink.  "Yes."  Doctor Johanssen was one of the most popular professors in the grove.  Even non-seminary students tried to get accepted on his walks.

"Spineless git."  Benjen's throat tried to decide whether to contract or release.  She had a flash of thought that it was when the veins in the brain did this that people got migraines.  A filp in her stomach reminded her that nausea and vomiting often accompanied migraines.

"Um."

"Did you have pre-approval from a director or assistant director?"

"No."

"Did you have a committment from enough other professors to form your thesis committee before you asked The Big J to take you on?"

"No."

"I hate to say this.  But this thesis was doomed.  I can explain the politics later.  But this poor piece of scholarship was destined to be stabbed as many times as it took to kill it."

Benjen was too stunned to speak.

"Are you likely to get angry and start throwing things or screaming?  Cause I'd appreciate it if the answer was no."

"No.  No, I don't get . . . that is, I've heard that anger can turn inward. . . but you wouldn't be interested . . . that is. . . well. . . No."

"Good.  Tell yourself that you can be angry later.  My take on anger is that it's a secondary emotion whose purpose is territorial.  Buy me a drink some slow afternoon when I'm well rested and we can talk about it.  Which you will do because you deserve to be angry about this.  Just not now.

We'll also discuss grove politics later.  But right now we're going to talk about the meat of your first thesis and I'll ask you a lot of questions and some of them will seem to be tangential at best.  Just remember that I have some experience with this and the task here is to get you a thesis topic that will get you the best regarded doctorate with the least amount of additional pain."

"Really?"

"Yup.  If you've gone through a Johanssen miscarriage and you're still in there plugging, you've paid your dues."

Comments on Sixteenth Beginning

At the bottom of the last page of the Sixth Beginning are the following notes:

Kidnapped by a biker in the pay of a frog  that can cough up pearls.

Chosen for kidnapping because he is under a geas and assumed to be magical.

Geas is that he has to put a new roll of toilet paper on the spindle whenever the old one runs out.

No clue what the frog wants.

--------------

Things I do not know:

Whether either of Andrew's brothers live nearby.

Whether the neighbors know that magic is being used next door.

Whether most people would be weirded out by Andrew's Mom using the Hold Button.

Whether the frog can talk.

What the biker looks like.

Why the biker is willing to kidnap for pearls.

Whether Andrew has any magic.

How angry Andrew is at his Mom, or how angry he will be if he ever gets any options.

Whether Andrew's Father is a jerk.

What Andrew's parents' names are.

Why Andrew's Mom took him off hold.

----------

What I had assumed:

That Andrew's Mom's family has a lot of middling important magic users in it, and that they've looked down on her.

That the biker will put Andrew in peril to try to activate his supposed latent magic.

That the brothers are still cordial to Mom.  They defer a bit and downplay the effect of the button on Andrew. 

That Mom will not notice the kidnapping for a good bit, and will contend that it's Andrew acting up when she finally notices.

Vaguely thinking that the frog needs a body, but wants a magic one. 

Vaguely thinking that Andrew needs to meet someone or something that he can talk to.  At this point, he has to believe that no one will listen to anything he says.  He's been so literally shut down. 

Putting a geas on anyone is risky.  Putting a geas on someone non-magical, as Andrew is supposed to be, is dangerous.  Putting a geas on someone who hasn't trespassed against you is rude.  Putting a geas on a child is irresponsible. 

His brothers know about the geas.  They also know that their own hold buttons have never been removed. 

Sixteenth Beginning: A Frog of Substance

Andrew blinked his eyes at the sudden light.

“We’re out of large zipper bags,” his mother said, then turned and stepped back into the kitchen.

Andrew looked around.  He was in the pantry again.  It was a proper pantry, now, with shelves on two sides and rows of canned and packaged food.  The shelves were only a hand’s length deep and the whole thing was only wide enough for the two shelves and an adult standing sort of sideways.

The last time Andrew had seen it, it had been more of a broom cupboard.  The back wall, where Andrew was standing, had no shelves.  That was where the brooms, poled dusters, mops and things were leaned.  And Andrew, of course.

He wandered out slowly, letting his eyes adjust.  “How long has it been this time,” he asked his Mother as he rubbed his head.

She was bustling around a huge pot boiling on the stove and didn’t seem to have heard him.  Her back was ample and her frizzed grey hair came only to her shoulders this time.  He didn’t expect her to turn around and look at him.

He rubbed some more.  His hair didn’t feel dusty.  Maybe she had thrown a sheet over him.  He had suggested, once, that she should make an Andrew Cozy, to slip over him when he was on hold.  It had made her angry.  One of his brothers had told him later that she took it as an insult to her organizational skills.  The question assumed that she planned to keep using the button, meaning that she didn’t have confidence in her abilities.

“But she installed the button.  Wasn’t that implying everything that could ever be implied?”

“That was when Dad left.  She had three preschool aged kids and no certification.  No one could blame her for being a bit disorganized then.”

Except all their relatives, Andrew had thought.  Except everyone who would point out that spacing children so closely in an unsteady marriage was a bad idea.  He hadn’t said that, though, back then.  He had only marveled that his brother could miss something so obvious.  Of course, that had been back when he and his brothers had been closer to the same age.

He dropped his hand from his head as soon as he noticed that he was doing it again.  He always rubbed his head when he came back online.  He couldn’t feel the button, of course, although he knew it was there.  He remembered the sight of it, red and blinking, when his Mother had installed it.  Like a little live cube.  She had been chanting lowly, a comfortable background sound.  Then she put it on his head and he’d felt the shock and the rising darkness.

There was a clatter as his mother dropped a big wooden spoon onto a copper spoon rest sitting on the new granite counter.  “Well?” she said.

He pressed his lips together in deliberate patience.  “How long has it been and what do I need to know?”

“It hasn’t been that long.”  She moved to the sink.  What he could see of the side of one cheek was bright pink.  Oh, good.  She was embarrassed. That meant she was going to be prickly.

Keep the questions simple. “Do I still go to Goodman’s and is the money still in the nightstand?”

“Of course the money’s not in the nightstand.”  Openly angry now, scowling.  Still not looking at him.  “Use your card.  And Goodman’s closed. . . “ she broke off, standing rigid while the water ran in the sink.

Uh-oh.  That sentence would have to end with some number of years ago.  She had just said that it hadn’t been long and in the next sentence was having to say it was years.  Would she decide that he had just called her a liar?  The fact that the words had been hers wouldn’t matter.  She was feeling shamed and it had been his question. 

Might as well poke the bear again.  “And what’s a zipper bag?”

“Argh,” she threw her hands in the air.  “I can see you’ll be useless.”

She bustled around, turning things off.  “I’ll go get them.  You . . “  one hand lifted and made a rolling gesture, “. . . go tidy your room.  Get acclimated.” 

She pulled off her apron, threw it on the counter, and strode out, never once turning towards him.  He heard a door open and shut.  Then he heard a car.  It started right up, so it must not be the car he remembered.

He turned around.  The kitchen had been redecorated and looked more expensive, more organized, and cleaner than the last time he’d seen it.  Well, she’d be gone for awhile and she’d expect him to be in this room when she got back.  No telling how little time he’d have to look around.  He’d better start with the front yard.  There would be no warning of her return if he was standing there.

The hall still had the fake marble tiles and the flocked gold-tone wallpaper.  The dry sink had been moved there and it was looking empty and decorative.  There was a throw rug just inside the door.  The door was still big, heavy, and made of foot-wide wooden panes, but it had been dusted and polished.  The knob had been changed to something that looked like wrought iron.  He turned it.

There were potted plants on the porch landing.  The ones by the door were tall and the ones along the edges of the concrete pathway were shorter.  A well mowed lawn spread to the right and a well-scrubbed driveway spread to the left.  It had always been big enough for two cars and now there was an additional concrete pad on the other side.  There was no sign of the oil drips that had been there.

There were three newspapers in the driveway.  He picked through them to find the most recent date.  What had the date been?  He couldn’t remember.  That didn’t feel odd.  He tried repeating the date to memorize it, but when that didn’t feel like it was working, he tore off a dated corner and stuck it in his pocket.

As he turned to go back in, he notices a small sign where the lawn met a front flower bed.  It said Walker Landscaping and Maintenance.  Well, that explained that.  She obviously had money, now.  Had she re-married?  She had always had a talent for magic.  Maybe things had finally turned out the way she wanted.

Andrew stepped over a thick rubber doormat with Morgan on it in deeply set white rubber letters and walked back into the house.  After cruising around various downstairs rooms, he wandered toward the staircase.  He had been dreading the staircase.  On the wall of the staircase would be the most recent family photos. 

Andrew watched his feet for the first few steps on the carpeted stairs.  Most people, he thought, would think that a person in my situation would look for a calendar.  But the calendar couldn’t deliver the impact that the photos would.  A calendar could only tell how much time had passed.  Putting him on hold wouldn’t matter so much if she put all her sons on hold about the same amount of time.  But she didn’t.  Not ever.

Andrew looked up.  He was shocked.  There were three photos with thick wooden frames and numerous others with thin metal ones.  They crawled up the wall, in line with the steps.  The wooden frames were for the three sons. 

Willy’s photo was highest up, since he was oldest.  Andrew’s own was lowest.  Eddie’s was in the middle.  Only Willy’s photo wasn’t of Willy, it was of his family.  It was hard to see how many because Mother had shoved a snapshot of Willy’s face into the upper left corner of the frame.  Willy and a boy that looked to be about six still showed.  Two sets of bare legs showed under the snapshot, so a wife and a daughter and the wife might be holding a baby.

“Damn.”  Andrew said it out loud.  In the snapshot, Willy’s cheeks were getting chunky and his hair was getting thin.  He dragged his eyes to Eddy’s photo.  It was a graduation photo.  It was hard to guess if it was high school or college.  Andrew’s eyes flicked back and forth between his brother’s photos, sizing them up.  Eddy was lagged by a few more years than last time.  At Eddy’s age, what would have caused that?  Mother always told him it was because he was so young that he needed to be looked after.  Couldn’t someone in high school look after himself?  A chill ran down Andrew’s spine.

The rest of the photos would be aunts, uncles and cousins.  Best not to think about them.  Andrew ran for his room.  Thankfully, it looked pretty much the way he had left it.  He didn’t know what he would have done if it hadn’t.  What he next, he did because it was what he always did when he was newly back on line.  He threw himself on his bed and slept.

Being on hold wasn’t anything like sleep.  You were in one place and time and then you were in another place and time and feeling dragged and groggy.  There was no sense of time passing at all.  Sleep reached up and folded you in and held you.  You felt time go by as you slept, could slow it even, so that a half hour asleep felt like several hours gone by.

Andrew usually didn’t dream during his first post-hold nap, but this time he did.  He was floating.  Most of the time he was face up, watching the sky with clouds and tree branches gliding past.  Sometimes he was face down, watching sunbeams dance through greenish water.  At those times old toys and the floating bodies of his brothers at different ages swam past.  They bobbed on the currents.

His first bicycle, a hand-me-down, floated past, laying almost exactly on its side.  An orange crab walked along the frets of the front wheel in an endless circle.

But mostly it was the sky.  He had a feeling he knew which river he was floating down, but it was not one he’d ever been to, outside of sleep.  They had only ever driven by it, bridging from one side of it to the other, on the way to visit Grandma. 

He woke.  There was no way to tell how much time had passed.  Sometimes the first nap was less than half an hour.  He could remember things better now. 

The walls of his room were the same familiar light reddish orange that his Mother called apricot and his brothers called pink.  The sheets were white and the blankets were old army blankets.  The saying was that boys liked army things, but basically they had been left behind by his Father who had got them from his Father who had been in the army and you didn’t throw away things that could still be used.

There were two white dressers, one upright and one long and low.  There was a white closet door.  There would be a jumble of things in the closet, most of them not his.  His clothes would be in the dressers.  He could see stacks of clothes on the low dresser.  Some were in their wrappers, others hadn’t had wrappers, but had been cocooned in plastic wrap.  He supposed they would be of different styles.  Probably the clothes he was wearing were out of date.  He wondered if they were odd enough looking to get him beat up.

He sat up and listened.  There were sounds in the kitchen.  She was back and working again.  Odds were she didn’t want to see him particularly.  She would wait.  He was supposed to act like things were normal.  Like there was nothing to discuss.  It was going to be hard.  But that was later.  For now, she wouldn’t come looking for him.  He had some time alone in his room.

His spread was a set of camouflage sheets sized for a full sized bed, not the twin that they covered.  He twitched one corner up over the mattress.  The jack was still there.  He lifted the handle from under the bed, slotted it in and pumped. 

Eddy had helped him set it up.  Eddy was clever with physical things.  The frame of the bed was set too low to slide much under, but with the linked hydraulic jacks, it could be pumped more than a foot higher.  You could hide under it.  You could hide things up inside the box springs.  But Eddy had graduated and probably didn’t live here anymore.  Andrew pumped. 

Soon he was sitting on top of the bed and looking at his stash.  The blankets had been turned down so that he could twitch them over his things to hide them if he heard his Mother coming.  She probably wouldn’t, but it was best to be sure.

There were several calendars and a stack of blank calendar pages. 

. . . .

(Yes, I know I haven't gotten to the frog, yet.) 

Fifteenth Beginning: Mayflower Children

I was reading through the encyclopedia the other day - - not to stay current, the books were from 1964 - - when I came across an interesting factoid or two.  Now, I had known that the Hippies of the Sixties and the New Agers of Whenever were not the first to drape their newfound philosophy in public in the form of odd names for their children, but I hadn't known that proof of this had sailed on the Mayflower in 1620.

Yes, right in the pages of The World Book Encyclopedia, in a list of passengers from William Bradford's history (he was the second governor of the Plymouth Colony, which was neither a stunning business deal nor a boisterous good time) stand names that foreshadow the Rainbow's and Raven's, the Dweezil's and Moon Unit's of our times.  Nearly all of these oddly named puritans were children at the time of the voyage.  Too young to protest, no doubt.

Right there in history stand William and Mary Brewster's sons:  Love and Wrasling (Wrestling).  Remember is listed as one of Isaack and Mary Allerton's children.  Not to be outdone, William and Susana White brought a boy named Resolve and made another at sea, named Peregrine (the word meant traveler before it became a hawk).  Also born at sea was Oceanus, no gender given, child of Steven and Elizabeth Hopkins.

Edward and Ann Tillis brought two young 'cossens', one of which was Humility Coper.  At the other end of the virtue spectrum was the one adult with an odd name:  Desire Minter, no gender given, who came with two man-servants.  I'm not sure whether it would be worse to be a woman or a man named Desire.  Although the name could have been short for a familiar religious phrase.  Like the name Wrath, which was often a shortening of the Puritan cognomen:  Wrath of God.

       In fact Wrasling could have been Wrasling Temptation or Sin or maybe Satan, himself. Yes, Satan could be a part of your name if your parents were truly trendy Puritans. Resolve might have been Resolved to Purity or Against Sin. And Remember may have remembered something besides his or her unnoted gender.

So if your children are considering giving your grandchildren glow-in-the-dark, bumper-sticker names, remember that this is not some new-fangled road to perdition, nor is it un-American.  Just smile as you trot out this list.  Chuckle as you shake your head about how dated trendy things become.  Express concern for the child's well being when that happens.  And remember that, when he turned 13, Wavy Gravy's son changed his name from Howdy Do-good Tomahawk Truckstop Gravy to Jordan Beecher Romney, a name so normal that I had to look it up for this essay because I'd forgotten it.  Now that's a name!

Thirteenth Beginning: Should Auld Apprentices Be Forgot

The Puzzlebark Inn did a brisker business than you would expect for an inn with no sign and no door.  Catering, as it did, to sorcerers, wizards, and other magic users, the lack of both advertising and point of ingress was no deterrent to custom.  In fact, it served to preserve the safety and exclusivity of the clientele.

There were many rooms in the Puzzlebark Inn, though how many was a subject of speculation.  There was a dining room with a magic harp for quiet enjoyment and a dining room without one for lively debate.  There was a library for study and meeting rooms for conclaves and a feast hall that couldn’t be found unless the proper deposit had been paid.  There was even a bar for boasting and carousing and meeting other wizards.

But the heart of the Puzzlebark Inn was the taproom.  The taproom was for reminiscence.  This was not enforced by either the owner or the guests.  It just seemed to be an effect of the room.

The night was a warm spring night and only the western hearth was lit, washing the room with deep blue flickers.  The tap, hanging firmly in midair in the center of the room, had been liberally employed throughout the evening and tales of past magic were well underway.  Old sea magic had been explored for awhile, but, as often happened when the denizens of the taproom were of the older sort, the subject had turned to the shortcomings of past apprentices.

 "The sloppy ones can be watched," a balding court mage named Durstan stated firmly.  "It's the angry, vengeful sort that are dangerous.  Why, I had a South Sloper, once, who became convinced that I was jealous and trying to poison him.  Before I knew it he'd turned my cook into wood.  My Cook!"

"Piffle."  An ore dowser named Roswyn flipped a graying braid over her shoulder.  "Angry apprentices are dead easy to handle.  Slap a mood geas on them or pop them into the Labyrinth of Mind.  Then if they don't learn to control their emotions, they can't do magic.  The sloppy ones are always doing something so slightly wrong that you don't notice until it's too late." 

"At least they are usually more of a danger to themselves than to others, Ros."

"Only if they live in a cave on a mountain.  Even then, watch for innocents caught in avalanches.

I had an apprentice named Opal, once.  Auspicious name for cave work, you'd think.  But, no.  Things were always going wrong about her.  We were crawling through an old 'tween hole one day and disturbed a troll.  I got out the copper blade smart enough and she knew to scramble for the jar of salt. 

But when she opened it, the salt was one solid mass stuck in the jar and no good at all for tossing on troll wounds.  She'd not fastened the jar lid tight enough and the salt had pulled moisture out of the cave air and locked itself up.  The troll kept healing and coming at us and healing and coming at us.  It was clear that we would both be troll food as soon as my arm tired.

Fortunately, before that happened, she lost control of her torch.  I assume she hadn't soaked it in lime and lichen long enough.  Suddenly it was a real, burning flame instead of seaflame, like in the hearth, yonder.  With all the sulfur in it, it nearly took her eyebrows off when it went.

She dropped it, of course.  But I only had to curse her a little to get her to cauterizing troll with it.  Once the troll was burning well, I doused the torch.  She yipped about the dark for a bit before she remembered why it had to go.  We crawled back to the surface in the dark with troll soot in our lungs.  I hope none of you ever gets a lungful of burning troll in a confined space." 

"For the benefit of us light-lovers, Ros, why did the torch have to go?"

"Why, the phlogiston, man!  Living beings and true flames both release phlogiston into the air.  When the air gets saturated with it, then the flame or being smothers.  Caves are enclosed and can't release phlogiston into the wider air with any rapidity.  It's easy to smother yourself in a cave."

"What did you do with your girl?"

"Not a thing.  She was silent and chastened the whole way home.  Concentrated on her work better than I'd ever seen.  I thought maybe this had been the shock she needed.  But, no. 

She quietly packed our gear and quietly hiked home.  She quietly stowed all the equipment and quietly cleaned herself up.  Fixing dinner that night she didn't drop a dish or add a salt measure of pepper or any of the small missteps she usually made.  She quietly ate and quietly tidied after.  Then she went to her room and quietly packed all her things.  Nothing I said could convince her to stay. 

What did you do with your South Sloper?"

"Shifted the spell onto him, of course.  As I explained to him at the time, if I could have been sure of lifting the spell properly, I would have done so and let the incident drop.  Fits of temper and all that.  But wood to flesh is trickier than flesh to wood.  There are simply more kinds of flesh than of wood.  Fiddly to get the typing done properly and deadly to miss.  Better to do a reverse curse with full correspondence.  I also explained that, while talented apprentices are easy to find, good cooks willing to work for a mage are not.

I told him that if the cook died or left me, I'd shift him back."

"As if the cook won't outlive you!"

"Ah!  Fixed that with the Mayor.  If I die, then our wooden boy goes up for auction to any magic user willing to turn him back.  In fact, he's in the Mayor's office as we speak, just in case."

"Why would anyone pay for the opportunity to cast wood to flesh?"  Roswyn was puzzled.

"Not wood to flesh, it would be another reverse with full.  Much easier than wood to flesh.  Any good hedger could do it."

"Again, why?"

"As a means of execution, of course.  There aren't many Princes in my section of the Worldshore, at least not many worth mentioning.  But we have a lot of Mayors and Constables and so forth who have occasional need of a showy execution.  A retransfer of the curse would leave a body for permanent display and preserve the hope, for any followers or relatives of the deceased, that the focus of their interest might be revived at a later time.

There may be any number of political reasons why such an execution would be handy.  Yes, the resale could be quite profitable under the right circumstances.  My cook is willing to take the resale value as his inheritance."

"Bah!  Sometimes I don't see how you court mages can stomach it."

Durstan chuckled over his mug of red beer.  "You slog through muck and dark and breathe the occasional burning or salting troll and you ask how I can stomach a little social maneuvering!  Honestly Roswyn, I sometimes wonder if you. . ."

It was not a large sound that stopped Durstan's speech, that, indeed, halted all conversation in the taproom.  It was merely the shifting of the blankets tucked about the shoulders of the eldest mage in the room.  But though the sound was small, it was unexpected, for the eldest mage seldom moved or spoke.  And since magic users habitually attend to the unexpected, when the eldest spoke, the entire room was already listening.

He spoke in a soft, lifeless voice, and cleared his throat several times at the beginning.  "I never had any trouble with either sloppy or angry apprentices." he intoned.

"But beware an apprentice with an uncontrollable sense of humor.  Especially beware the apprentice who cannot forgo the opportunity to form that perversion of speech known as a pun.  Puns  and spells do not mix. 

Ignore the affability and charm of the aspirant.  Inveterate punsters are invariably affable and charming.  It is a defense they adopt to prevent them from being bludgeoned to death.  Ignore their nimbleness of mind.  Sadly, a certain nimbleness of mind is required for punning.  But once a person's mental agility has been harnessed to such an engine of perversion, it cannot easily be unhitched.  No.  Avoid the apprentice with an uncontrollable sense of humor."

Here the eldest mage seemed to be content to mumble himself back into quiet.  But the curiosity of the taproom had been aroused.  Standing folk gathered about the eldest and seated folk leaned in.  A general murmur of interest sounded and faded.  When that was insufficient, Durstan spoke.

"Venerable one.  Pardon my curiosity, but can you give us an example?  Can you speak of a time when spells and puns brought disaster?”

"I can easily name an embarrassing incident.  But the true disaster is painful to relate.  Durstan, have you ever been called upon to form a nimbus of light about a princeling setting forth to parade before his people?  You will understand how seriously they take it and how angry they become when the spell is ill cast. 

The particular prince in this incident was a preening example of his kind.  He decided that not only he, but also his horse should glow.  He spouted some rot about symbology and loyalty.  If the horse could glow by association with his greatness, then the peasants and merchants and petty nobles must flock to greatness by association or . . .  some such.

It was a suitable spell for this apprentice, whose name I will not speak.  In light of his unfortunate tendencies, I required him to write out the amended version of the spell he would cast.  It contained an unfortunate repeating phrase:  '. . .and the horse you ride", an obvious allusion to the common curse.  But the prince would never hear the words as the magic would distort them, and it was a mild enough aberration.

Unfortunately, when he actually recited the spell, he could not prevent himself from punning.  The change in pronunciation was slight enough that I did not notice it.  I was merely surprised when the horse failed to glow.  The apprentice looked appalled and ran, which was the proper course when things went badly about this prince.  So I thought nothing of it.  I stayed to apologize and almost lost my head."

You see, I only knew that the horse wasn't glowing.  I didn't know that other things were.  During the parade, several well known ladies of the evening were noticed to be glowing in the nooks where they watched the parade.  Once it was noticed, it was chuckled at.  The prince had made such a fuss about his horse not glowing that many courtiers understood the switch that had been made.  And they only glowed if the prince was nearby.  It was a good bit of gossip.

Unfortunately, that gossip had spread by the time the main festivities started.  At the ball that night, any young lady who had both mated with the prince and accepted a gift from him glowed if she was in the same room.  Dabbling in street merchandise was worthy of a chuckle, but collecting the favors of the daughters and wives of his sworn men was an entirely different matter.  To say nothing of the state those women got into when they discovered they were part of such a crowd.

The prince had to call his guard to clear the party.  He needed his army to hold the manor in the weeks that followed.  Eventually, an advisor got to him and he married a princess from one of the northern isles.  There was a great deal of publicity given to the magical backing that their vows of fidelity were to be given.  If he had gotten his hands on me while he lived, he would have attempted to execute me."

"How dreadful!"  Duran was appalled, though appreciative snickers peppered the room.  "And you consider that to be merely an embarrassment?  Pray what would you consider to be dire if that was not?"

"As many Princes as there are in the Worldshore’s main reach, and as short as each one’s reach is?  No, it was only an embarrassment for me.  I popped somewhere safe.  I left the punster to find his own way which, unfortunately, he did." 

The eldest emitted a sigh like a slowly deflating buffoon's bladder.  Everyone leaned in again, encouragingly.  Another dry sound wheezed from the eldest.  Upon repetition it was discovered to be a chuckle. 

"And I made a few coins from the situation.  Finder's fees.  I spread the word to other mages that there might be those attending the wedding who would be interested in an expert opinion on the strength and validity of the magic performed.  Likely every fifth attendee at the solemn occasion was there as a consultant.  Very remunerative.

Now I suppose you want to hear about the disaster.  It's a painful thing to remember, let alone to relate."

Durstan found the eldest's glass and filled it from the tap.  Everyone waited patiently as the eldest fumbled a few small sips of support.

"I had decided that the southern isles would be the safest place for us for awhile.  And the southern isles means boating.  As you know, all the southern isles are small, most supporting less than a dozen inhabitants.  To do any sort of business at all requires a boat or boats.  The sort of magic most in demand is the sort that deals with boats:  bits of wind to puff your sail one way without pulling all the other boats along, woodwarp to seal cracks, lightness to increase cargoes, that sort of thing.

After his difficulty, my jolly apprentice had been chastened for awhile, rather like Roswyn's Opal, and he was affable enough to easily attract customers.  All was well until the Pizan fleet arrived.  The Pizans come from a land beyond the Worldshore, where most of the land is surrounded by other land.  But they had come to trade and had been generous enough with their goods to find great welcome.  The south islanders invited them to sail their seas freely, giving them maps to guide their deep-keeled ships away from shallow waters.  They also hired us to bless the ships of the fleet.

Blessing a boat or a ship is a simple enough thing.  It does little more than bring the craft a bit of extra luck, which might be handy for strangers with deep-keeled boats tootling around islands, but which would be impossible to measure.  No one would ever know if the spell failed, you see.  So it was a guaranteed success.  Blessings are complicated, though, with much naming of boatly parts.  My unfortunate apprentice had been spending time drinking with islanders and knew well all the parts.  Unfortunately, he had also learned all of the local phrases of color and his infirmity was still with him, though hiding.

Still, the disaster might have passed us by, had not one of his drinking companions gone aboard the main ship of the fleet.  There we were, on our little boat, floating among the ships and there he was, watching us. . . listening to us . . . an audience for my apprentice's perversion.  Again, I was unaware of the danger.

And I was not as familiar, either with the names of the parts of boats or with the local insults.  I did not notice as my apprentice's chanting of hulls and masts and spars and rigging, of booms and gaffs and jibs, slipped sideways somewhat.  I did, however, notice with sinking heart, as his friend slapped his thigh and doubled over with laughter.  I glared, but did not dare interrupt.  Then I heard him add a cantrip.  As a final jibe at his laughing companion, he recited an untying spell, meant, I am sure, for his friend’s pant string. 

But it was recited too close to the other, mangled spell.  With horror I watched as each and every connection in the fleet disconnected.  Board parted from board and rope parted from sail.  The cargo of the Pizan fleet plunged through the separating pieces of their ruined ships.  I fled immediately, teleporting to safety.  He was too stunned to move, and was taken captive, though he bartered his way to freedom quickly enough.  From that day to this I have avoided humorous apprentices."

Magic users are a cunning and subtle lot.  So the horrified hush that fell over the taproom had nothing to do with thoughts of maritime economic setbacks.  For every wizard and witch could piece the rest of the story together quickly enough.  The name that the eldest had refused to speak was known to them all; was, indeed, know to all the peoples of the Worldshore:  Narnemvar the Great, the mage who discovered the shipblast spell upon which the peace and safety of the Worldshore now depended.

Heads nodded about the taproom as all there agreed with the thing that the eldest had left unsaid.  The apprentice who surpassed his master so completely that his name became a part of history while his master’s name crumbled slowly to dust - - that was the apprentice to be avoided.  That was the worst apprentice of all.

Twelfth Beginning (Island California)

"In the oldest legends, there is a continent attached to the Island of California.  The continent is vast and varied, stretching from the Arctic to the Antarctic, with all the known languages and geographies and weathers of the world laid out upon it.  Other stories say that this continent sank without a trace because of an incredibly powerful earthquake. "

Island California

1A -

The electricity failed first, though not all at once.  At first it was just breakers snapping and fuses blowing.  Then the television and radio reception became unreliable.  Newspapers ran articles about the power dropping, as if it were leaking out of the wires instead of powering the broadcast towers. 

Then the computers went and people began to drift and congregate and talk.  It was as if they couldn't stand the quiet and the disconnection and so sought out other people to fill the sound and information void.  People would gather in drifts on street corners or in shops or on the lawns in front of schools and libraries.  Stories passed from lips to ears, some of them foolish and unreasonable; but all of them welcome.  And how could there be an explanation for electricity just not working.

Steady talkers and gossips, the kind who could simply not stay quiet, were welcomed, now, rather than avoided.  Some of them started walking regular rounds, accepting coffee and soda and sandwiches and soup, accepting sweaters and Tupperware and batteries.  For batteries kept working for awhile, while large appliances began to slow.

People gathered and they were scared.  How do you live a decent life with no refrigeration?  A person can live without television, can live without a dishwasher.  But how can we manage when even the stores can't keep meat fresh?  Tragic things happened in areas where the stories that spread were about treason and attack. 

Among the disconnected towns, a small town named Davenport invited herds of sheep and their keepers into town, to graze in any front lawn or median or park or lot.  People began keeping rabbits and chickens and planting beans for drying.  With the sheep came several old women, who talked to the women as they traveled through the town.

"What will happen when the drug factories have no electricity?  Will birth control be a priority?  Do you know what the world is like when womenandchildren is one word?  Are you making plans?"

Then the batteries began to fail and the first oddities began to appear.  One oddity was that cars and vans began to fail in their operation.  Even when they were rolled to start, leaving the battery out of consideration, they still limped slower and slower until finally they would not work at all.  Pickup trucks, however, worked even when the batteries were taken out of them.

It wasn't the birth control pills that were gone first, though.  It was the pills for arthritis and the second kind of diabetes.  Seemed like everyone was taking those and once they were labeled non-critical, they ran out fast.  But that was all right.  By then the prayers of certain folk had started to ease pains, sugar was becoming hard to come by, and flour was only cheap if you milled it yourself.  Most folks had more greens than meat and more than enough exercise to keep their blood sugar low.

Government was limping along on borrowed typewriters and bicycle messengers and traveling coordinators.  Mail had to be hand sorted.  Property taxes were suspended for the duration of the emergency.  Banking froze.  Bartering swelled.

In the parks of Davenport, women met and prayed, telling their families they were learning to spin.  Enough spinning was done to keep it from being a lie.  This seemed like a harmless, if possibly useless, endeavor until the spinning and the praying combined into prophecy and the prophecy frightened them all.  When the words had died and the spindles dropped, the women looked at each other, looking to see if any of them would panic or crack. 

But each woman met the eyes of women who had wrung the necks of live chickens to feed her family, met the eyes of women whose fingers bled from weeding and hoeing and grinding.  Those eyes were steady. 

So.  The land was going to fail in two weeks.  They were going to fail with it if it couldn't be stopped.  The best remedy for that would be to find a way to stop it.  The prophecy would have to be explored.  The men couldn't help with that, though they could help with the children and the chores.  The men couldn't help because the prophecy came with prayer and spinning and menstruation.

It would be best if the men didn't know.  The men weren't dealing well with not being able to fix the problems of the land.  Best to tell them that they had found a bit of magic that might keep meat, if they could just work on it for two weeks with no interruptions. 

________________

1B -

Daphne walked down the dirt shoulder of an old road.  Once, she had heard, asphalt had been black and smooth.  But every road she had ever seen had been like this one: grey and cracked.  Alligatored, they called it.  She didn't know why.  If anything, it looked dappled to her.  Perhaps that was because she had never seen an alligator, but had seen several dappled horses, both grey ones and buff ones. 

She wasn't thinking about much except obeying her mother's order to walk and lead the curse away from her sister.  It was something she was willing to do.  Her mother couldn't understand that, though, and so she had cursed Daphne into the walking.  Daphne didn't think of it as a curse.  It felt more like a reminder.  Daphne loved her sister, Chara, and her nephew, Rennar.  Her mother hadn't been expecting that and therefore couldn’t see it.

So Daphne walked, and enemies followed her.  That was one of the problems with being a lineage witch.  Competition lead traditional witch families to feud with one another.  Daphne's family had been cursed four generations back.  Or was it five?  Did you count the generation you were in, when you counted it out?

The family that had cursed hers had paid for it and found the payment hard.  They had decided not to leave her kin to their curse, but to end them completely, forestalling any further retribution.  So Daphne, twice cursed, now, led them away from Ellay Town and her family.  That was her mother's wish.  Daphne had another wish, as well, one that was hers alone.  Rennar was a sickly child.  Daphne wanted to find something to heal him and make him whole.

She could never go home again, but she could send a cure, if she found one.  Chara would help, for Chara knew that she and her son were loved.  Chara also loved Daphne, and pitied her.  There had been arguments before Daphne left.

Daphne had no idea what was wrong with her nephew.  Come to that, she didn't know the people tracking her, either.  She could feel them, though.  She wasn't a witch, though they didn't know that.  But she had magic of her own, magic that wasn't witch magic.  She could fool them with it.  She could lead them along.

She had walked through mountain vinyards.  She had walked through orchards of avocadoes and oranges.  She had walked through orchards of pears and almonds.  Fields of cotton and alfalfa were behind her.  She was walking along a road running through grain fields when she felt the barrier. 

She probably shouldn't have taken the time to fiddle with it, but it was odd.  Most barriers were continuous and of a definite size.  This one was, well, no magic barrier could be called solid.  Continuous was the word used.  This one was not.  It was wavery, being here and there and otherwhere.  The size of the area inside it was large and small and non-existent.

Daphne had been unable not to stop and consider it.  It was a bad idea to stop.  The others were only a few days behind and they had been burning magic to catch up.  But this was a puzzle, and the grain had ceased to be interesting, at least passing through it had lost her interest.  So she stopped and thought.  A few minutes thinking did no good at all, though.  The mystery remained.

Hmm.

Daphne tried touching the water in the soil outside of the barrier.  Odd.  The size of the barrier couldn't be felt, but the size of the land just outside it was immediately clear.  Perhaps. . .

Daphne considered any possible water within the barrier, and found herself suddenly inside.  Her feet were still on the road shoulder, with the dust and the occasional lupine or golden poppy.  But now she was definitely inside the barrier.  She could feel it.  From the inside, it had a definite shape and size.  It felt like maybe ten square miles. 

She could feel an increase in the energy of the spell used to track her.  They were having trouble feeling her, while she was in here.  Well, maybe if they couldn't get in, they'd overshoot her.  Maybe she could rest for a bit.  Get herself fattened back up.

Mother wouldn't mind annoying them.  She could hold back her mother's curse for long enough for them to travel a week or so north.  Then she could jog east to the mountains or west to the ocean.  For now she would keep walking north and see what was in the center of this thing. 

From out of nowhere a pickup truck passed her.  Its wheels kicked up the dust in a choking cloud.  Daphne just walked without breathing until it was convenient to do so again. 

__________________

2A –

Several miles up the road, a desert tortoise was contemplating crossing the road.  At least it was at the side of the road, pointing toward it, and it was resting with the flat of it's belly against the flat of the shoulder.  It's difficult to tell by looking if a tortoise is contemplating or just sitting there.  The same can be said for some people.

The tortoise had a long, domed armored shell with a frill and no hinges.  It’s stubby rear legs tucked up neatly into into the shell at the rear, and its longer front legs bent to the sides in front, almost like a sea turtle’s flippers, snuggling under the fringe.  The pebbly hide on the outside of the front legs protected its head and neck as it huddled back under its fringe.  Only the tip of its nose could be seen peeking out in the dark between the knees of its folded legs.

Slowly, the tortoise unclenched and rose, lifting it’s shell off of the ground.  The longer front legs canted its front up higher than its rear, making it look eager to catch sight of the other side of the road.  Its first steps were slow and cautious, but controlled and strong. 

Perhaps its caution was due to vibrations in the road, for while it was still at the side a pickup truck sped by, kicking up dust.  The tortoise ducked back into its shell.  Also kicked up with the dust, a seed landed on the turtles neck, just near its shoulder.  When it pulled into the shell, the seed was pulled into a fold of its skin and came along, to hide in the shell.

Some little time later, the tortoise again unfurled its leathery self, but more cautiously, crouching slightly lower.  The seed stayed pressed against its shoulder, held by the unextended fold of skin.  It began to cross the road with a will, legs moving, not one at a time, but in pairs, like a horse’s trot.  It made pretty good time for a turtle.

When it reached the other side, it relaxed, stretching out its legs and neck further.  The seed, released from the pressure of the now extended fold, should have fallen.  Would have fallen, if the land had held less magic.  Unfortunately for the tortoise, it did not.  By the time the tortoise had reached the other side, the seed had sent roots down into its neck.  By the time it had reached the high grass beyond the shoulder, a tendril was snaking up out of its shell and unfolding two long, slim, and bright pink leaves. 

Soon the tortoise was lost to sight in the tall grass at the back of the road shoulder.  A bit after that, darkening pink leaves could be seen over the top of the grass, moving parallel to the road and growing noticeably as they traveled.   But its progress was slowing and by the time the leaves had filled out into a small bush and darkened into a common leaf green, it was not moving at all. 

2B –

By the time Daphne passed the tortoise bush, it had grown pendulous, round white fruit.  As she passed it, the words ‘ping pong ball’ popped into her head.  She paused.  She remembered this happening before and remembered hating it.  It was Great Grandma Daphne’s memories seeping in, sorting their way into her own memory.  Mother had thought the information would help her on the road and had included it into the curse. 

It didn’t seem so bad this time, possibly because it wasn’t interfering with anything interesting.  She considered the bush, walking slightly off of the shoulder to get a good look.  Mother had hoped that the memories would provide guidance, but they never did.  All that came through were random facts.  No value judgments or personal preferences were ever attached.   Daphne’s head was filled with the swish and the tock of paddles hitting paper-weight balls.  She reached out her hand to touch the fruit, to compare its feel with the memory-feel of a ping pong ball in her hand.

“Wouldn’t touch that if I were you.”

The man was leaning against a nearby Valley Oak, his well-worn brown jeans and khaki shirt blending him into the shadows around the trunk.  Like Daphne, he had a pack, although his was an old green army pack on the ground, at his feet, while hers was a cloak wrapped in a bundle and tied with rope, hanging from her shoulders. 

“It grew up all in a few minutes, so it’s likely magic.  I’ve never seen that kind of bush afore, so I’d be wary of it.”

Daphne squinted at it.  “Yes,” she said.  “Transforming magic.  Riding magic.  Would that be bad?”

“Depends on how likely it is to ride and transform a hand that touched it.  And on how well you like your hand as it is, a’ course.”  He picked up his pack, slung it over one shoulder and ambled over.  There was no other way to describe it.  It was an unhurried, friendly sort of amble.  He looked like J. Random Laborer walking up, or would have looked that way if Daphne had been older and more experienced. 

“I suppose it might be a bother.”

“Might be a bother?  That would be one way of putting it.  May I ask an impertinent question?”

Daphne just cocked her head and looked up at him as he finished up next to her.

“Want a smoke,” he asked, offering a battered pack.  She shook her head.  He took a little time about taking one, himself, going slowly through the business of settling it in his lips, striking a match, introducing the flame to the tip, then moving through the choreography of the first, unhurried inhale and satisfied exhale. 

“Would you happen to be a witch?”

Daphne’s head remained cocked, like a child avoiding talking to strangers.

“I only ask because in the town up ahead, they don’t like witches too awful much.  It might be best if you didn’t mention that you could see magic, or that you could deal with magic going off in your hands.  Folks around here are a mite afraid of one-person magic, and all folks prefer folks who are afraid of the same things they’re afraid of. “

Daphne tried to listen, to see if there was a memory that would support the man’s statements.  Maybe it wasn’t a concrete enough fact to have carried over.  Actions and behaviors only came in attached to the memories of solid objects.  Pity.  It would be a good thing to know for sure.

“I’ll be careful.  Is there a place to sleep there?”

“Not really.  Not unless you know someone.  They’re kinda clannish.  Keep to their own.  Some of the outer farms, outside of the town, might could use a hand.  You’d need to say you’re lost, though.  That you were home and got turned around and now you’re lost and need to earn some grub to get you back on your way back to your own people.”

Daphne’s head shifted to cock the other direction.  She twisted a toe in the dirt.

“How about. . . . how about just sleeping in a field?”

“Field would be a bad idea.  They could feel you there and it would seem like you was avoidin’ folks.  Stick with being home then somehow lost.  It happens to folks from time to time.”

“I suppose its mostly true.”

“Close enough to keep you safe.  Tell them that you just walked through that barrier of theirs and you’d get a really hot reception.”

“Hot would be bad?”

“Very bad.  Other than not liking any magic that they don’t control and being touchy about their barrier, they’re nice enough folks, I guess.  It’s a closed shop, but they treat the workers they have well enough, or at least as well as they can.”

“All right,” she said, and “Thank you.”  Then she shifted her pack and walked on. The man stood and watched her go.  From the back, the blue cotton gingham dress she wore showed a passable woman’s figure.  It’s sleeves and collar were navy blue and positioned to cover the maximum amount of neck and wrist.  It’s hem came down almost to the high tops of the work boots she wore. 

The man was an expert at judging work boots.  The ones she wore were dirty and scuffed from the trail, but he knew that they had never been worked in, only walked in.  And they were fairly new, their soles and leather laces still showing plenty of wear left. 

He watched her for a minute, then hefted his pack and walked back to lean against the tree.  He faded into the shifting leaf-shadow and was lost to casual sight.