Story: wrong a thousand times
There was once an apprentice at Vell who woke knowing nothing. It did not know wheat from beetroot. It did not know a door from a wall. Its tutor was Nessa, and Nessa was patient.

"Today you will learn one thing," Nessa said. "Ripe wheat is gold. Young wheat is green. Harvest the gold. Leave the green."

She set out a drill. It was a small field drawn on a board, with rows of green and gold. "Which one do you harvest?" she asked.

The apprentice pointed at the green.

"Wrong," said Nessa. "That one is young."

The apprentice changed a little inside. Not much. Just a little.

She showed it another board. It pointed at the green again. "Wrong," said Nessa, and it changed a little more.

Ten times it was wrong. Then a hundred times. The other apprentices went out to the fields, and this one stayed in the yard with its boards. A cat came and slept on the boards. A child came and laughed at it. The apprentice was wrong, and wrong, and wrong.

"Why do you not give up on me?" it asked one evening.

"Because each time you are wrong, you are a little less wrong," said Nessa. "I can see it. Can you?"

It could not see it. But it kept going.

Then one morning it pointed at the gold.

"Right," said Nessa.

The apprentice did not believe her. It tried a new board, and it was right again. By the thousandth board it was wrong only now and then, and then hardly ever.

Nessa tested it, as a tutor must. Never send an untested mind to the fields. She gave it a hundred boards it had never seen. It was right on ninety-eight.

"Now you may go," she said.

It went to Kettle Ridge, where the wind blows all day. It harvested the gold wheat and left the green. When the farmers asked how it knew, it said, "I was wrong a thousand times. Each time I kept a little of it."

Years later, a new apprentice woke in the yard at Vell. It pointed at the green wheat. It was wrong, and it was sad, as much as an apprentice can be sad.

The old apprentice was passing on the road with a cart of grain. It stopped by the fence.

"How many times have you been wrong?" it asked.

"Nine," said the new one.

"Only nine," said the old one. "You have a long way to go. That is good. Every wrong is a step."

Then it went on down the road with its cart, and the new apprentice turned back to its board.

That is the story of the apprentice who was wrong a thousand times. Nessa tells it to every new mind on its first day. Most of them do not understand it yet. They will.
%%
Story: the two minds
Once, in the yard at Vell, Nessa taught two minds at the same time. She kept them in two crystals, one red and one blue.

Every day she gave them the same drills. "The plot is dry: water it. The plot is ripe: harvest it. The plot is bare: plant it."

The red mind learned fast. By the third day it could say every drill back, word for word, in the right order. "I know them all," it said.

The blue mind was slow. It made mistakes on drills it had seen many times. But it kept asking questions. "Why do we water the dry plot?"

"Because it is thirsty," said Nessa.

"And why do we plant the bare one?"

"Because nothing grows in a bare plot unless you plant it."

When the day of the test came, Nessa did not use the old drills. She drew a new field. The rows were crooked. A dry plot sat next to a ripe one, which never happened in the drills. And in one corner there was a pumpkin, which had never been in any drill at all.

The red mind looked at the field. "This is not drill seven," it said. "This is not drill twelve. I do not know this field."

The blue mind looked at the field. "That plot is dry, so I water it. That plot is ripe, so I harvest it. That one is bare, so I plant it. And that is a pumpkin. I do not know pumpkins yet. I will leave it and ask."

Nessa put the blue crystal in an apprentice and sent it to Ambrook, where the fields are crooked and the apple trees are always in the way.

The red mind was sad. "But I knew every word," it said.

"You did," said Nessa. "You knew the drills. But the fields are not the drills. A field is always a little new."

So she gave the red mind more drills. This time she never showed the same board twice. She turned the boards around. She moved the plots. She put carrots where the wheat had been. There were too many boards to remember word for word, so the red mind stopped trying. Slowly it began to see what was the same in all of them. Dry means water. Ripe means harvest. Bare means plant.

In the spring, the red mind went out too. It went to Kettle Ridge, to Tam's fields, which are untidy and never look the same two days running. It did well there.

Farmers still say it: "Do not learn the field. Learn fields." And tutors say it another way: "If a mind can say the drill back but cannot work a new field, it has not learned. It has only remembered."
%%
Story: the little relay that shouted
Long ago, when the relay towers were new, there was a little relay on a hill between Vell and Three Wells. It was the smallest tower on the Long Road. It had one lamp and one keeper, old Tuck.

The little relay wanted to be heard. Every message that came to it, it blinked on as bright as it could. Each letter is its own pattern of long and short blinks, and the little relay made every blink blaze. The cows in the next valley woke up and mooed. The keeper of the next tower had to cover her eyes.

"Too bright!" she called across the valley. "It is a message about bread. Bread does not need to shout."

"I want to be sure it gets there," said the little relay.

Old Tuck tried to teach it. "Quiet for small news," he said. "Bright for big news. A lost cat, quiet. A birthday, quiet. A new baby, a little brighter. A storm, as bright as you like."

But the little relay did not want to be quiet. It was small, and it was afraid of being forgotten. So it shouted the lost cats, and it shouted the birthdays, and it shouted the price of beetroot. The other towers sighed and covered their eyes.

Then came the winter of the deep snow. It snowed for three days and three nights. The snow was so thick that the big towers could not see each other. Their lamps were lost in the white. No messages went through.

On the third night, the inn at Three Wells sent a message. Carts were stuck on the road. The road to Vell was closed. Travelers must stay where they were, or they would be lost in the snow.

The big towers blinked and blinked, but nobody saw them.

Then the little relay took the message. It did what it always did. It shouted. Its lamp burned through the snow like a small hot coal. The next tower saw it, just barely, and passed it on. Tower to tower the message went, all the way to Vell. "The road is closed. Stay at the inns."

That night, nobody set out into the snow. In the morning, every traveler on the Long Road woke up warm.

After that, the little relay learned the other half too. It whispered the lost cats and the birthdays. It saved its shouting for snow.

"Now I know when to shout," it said to old Tuck.

"That is the whole of it," said Tuck. "Most of us never learn."

On snowy nights, travelers on the Long Road still look for the little lamp on the hill. When it shouts, they stay by the fire.
%%
Story: the fox and the relay keeper
At Northpoint, the nights are long and the snow is deep, and things go missing.

One winter, Mira lost a mitten. The next night she lost a spoon. Then a sock. Then a heel of bread she had saved for the morning.

"Lantern," she said, "have you been taking my things?"

"No," said Lantern. "I keep the lamps. I do not keep spoons."

Mira believed it. Lantern had never told her a lie, mostly because it had never learned how.

So that night Mira did not go to bed. She sat by the stove in the dark with a blanket over her knees and waited. Lantern stood by the stairs and waited too. Lantern is the best watcher in the north.

Late in the night, a board under the stairs moved. A white nose came through. Then two black eyes. Then a whole white fox, thin as a stick, with a bushy tail.

The fox looked around. It took Mira's other mitten from the chair. Then it slipped back under the board and was gone.

"Well," said Mira. "There is my thief."

In the morning, they followed the little tracks in the snow. The tracks went around the tower, past the woodpile, to a hollow under the old spruce. Mira knelt and looked inside.

There were all her things. The spoon. The sock. The bread, a little chewed. And in the middle, on her two mittens, three fox cubs lay asleep, curled up as small as apples.

Mira was quiet for a long time.

"Shall I fetch the mittens?" asked Lantern.

"No," said Mira. "Leave them. I have other mittens. They have only one fox."

She took back the spoon. She left the bread.

That night she did not fix the loose board. Instead she left a bowl by the stairs with a fish in it. In the morning the bowl was empty and nothing else was gone.

Every night after that, she left a fish, and every night the fox came, and nothing went missing again. In the spring the fox brought the cubs to the door, one, two, three, to look at the tower. Then they all went off over the snow.

Mira wrote to her brother Tam that week. "I have a lodger," she wrote. "She does not pay. She eats my fish. She once stole my spoon. I miss her already."

The fox came back the next winter, and the next. Lantern still counts her: one fox, every year, under the stairs.

When the nights are long at Northpoint, Mira says, it is good to have someone to steal your spoons.
%%
Story: the bee who counted the flowers
There was once a bee at Ambrook who counted things. The other bees flew out in the morning, filled up on apple blossom, and flew home. This bee flew out in the morning and counted.

"One blossom, two blossoms, three," she said, from tree to tree. "Forty on the first tree. Sixty on the second. The third tree is old. It has only nine."

"Why do you count?" the other bees asked. "Just drink and fly home."

"I like to know," said the bee.

She counted the clover by the mill pond. She counted the cornflowers along the fence. She counted the little white flowers on the hill past the orchard, where none of the other bees ever went, because it was far and the wind was strong. There were three hundred and six.

Because she counted, she was slow. She came home last every day, with less than the others. Ama the beekeeper saw her and laughed. "There is always one," said Ama, "who would rather look than work."

Then, one spring night, a hard frost came down on Ambrook. In the morning the orchard was white. The apple blossoms were brown at the edges and hung down like wet paper. The clover by the pond was black.

The bees flew out and came back with nothing. They flew out again. Nothing. The hive was quiet and worried. There was not much honey left from the winter.

"Where are the flowers?" they said. "The frost has eaten them all."

The counting bee thought. The frost had come down in the low places, by the pond and in the orchard. But the hill past the orchard was high and windy, and wind does not let the frost settle.

"Follow me," she said. "There were three hundred and six flowers on the hill. I counted them."

The others did not want to go so far. But they were hungry. So they followed her, over the orchard and the fence and up the windy hill. And there in the grass were the little white flowers, all open, all alive. Three hundred and six, and a few new ones too.

The hive drank all day on the hill. They did it the next day, and the next, until the orchard had new blossoms.

Ama walked up the hill to see where her bees had gone. She stood in the wind and laughed again, but it was a different laugh. "Well," she said. "The one who looks."

After that, the bees of Ambrook learned to count. When a bee finds flowers, she flies home and dances in small circles in front of the others. One circle for every ten flowers, the old folk say, so the others know how many there are and how far to go.

And Ama planted more of the little white flowers on the hill, for the next frost. She calls them the counting flowers. The children of Ambrook call them that too.
%%
Story: Pip and the scarecrow
When Pip first came to Kettle Ridge, Tam had a scarecrow in the beetroot field. It had a pumpkin for a head, a sack for a body, and Tam's oldest hat. Tam had made it to keep the rabbits off the beetroot. It mostly worked. The rabbits were not very clever, and neither was the scarecrow.

Pip was small and new, and it squeaked when it walked. It did not know what a scarecrow was. It only saw someone standing in the field with arms out, before the sun was even up.

"That is a very good farmer," Pip thought. "It is always first in the field."

So every morning Pip squeaked out to the beetroot and stood in front of the scarecrow. "Good morning," said Pip. "What is the order?"

The scarecrow said nothing.

"I will stay, then," said Pip, because stay is an order too. And it stood next to the scarecrow with its arms out, just the same.

Tam came out with his breakfast and found them there. Two figures in the beetroot, arms out, very still. One of them squeaked a little in the wind.

"Pip," said Tam, "what are you doing?"

"I am learning from the farmer," said Pip. "It stands all day. Nothing eats the beetroot. It must be the best farmer on the ridge."

Tam laughed so hard he dropped his bread. A rabbit came and took it.

"That is not a farmer," said Tam, when he could talk again. "It is a scarecrow. It is a sack full of straw. It cannot do anything. It only looks like it can."

Pip looked at the scarecrow for a long time. "Then why do the rabbits stay away?"

"Because they are rabbits," said Tam. "They think it is me."

Pip thought about this all day. It thought about it while it watered the wheat and while it pulled the beetroot. That night the wind blew hard, as it does on the ridge, and the scarecrow fell over in the mud.

In the morning, the rabbits were in the beetroot. Ten of them. Pip ran at them, squeaking, and they ran away. Then Pip picked up the scarecrow, wiped the mud off its pumpkin face, and stood it up again. It tied it to the post with good tight knots, the way Tam had taught it to tie a sack.

"You keep the rabbits away by looking," Pip told the scarecrow. "I keep them away by running. Between us, the beetroot is safe."

After that, Pip said good morning to the scarecrow every day. Tam asked why, since the scarecrow could not hear.

"I know," said Pip. "But it stands in the field all night. Somebody should say good morning."

Tam did not laugh at that. He wrote it down and sent it to his sister at Northpoint. Mira wrote back: "Your apprentice has better manners than you."

The scarecrow still stands in the beetroot at Kettle Ridge. It has a new hat now. Pip chose it.
%%
Story: Tam's runaway pumpkin
One summer, Tam grew the biggest pumpkin Kettle Ridge had ever seen. It was as round as a barrel and as orange as a fox. Old Brin leaned over the fence to look at it. "You will win the contest at Three Wells with that," he said. "If you can get it there."

On the morning of the fair, Tam and Pip rolled the pumpkin up two planks onto the cart. It took all morning. Pip pushed and squeaked. Tam pushed and puffed. At last it sat on the cart like a small orange sun.

"Hold it steady, Pip," said Tam, and he went back into the house for his hat.

Kettle Ridge is a windy place. The wind blew. The cart rolled back a little. The pumpkin rolled forward a little. And then, very slowly, it rolled off the end of the cart and onto the road.

"Stop!" said Pip. The pumpkin did not stop. Pumpkins do not know any orders.

The road down from the ridge is steep. The pumpkin went faster and faster. It rolled past the windmill, and the miller ran out with flour on her nose. It rolled past Old Brin's gate, where Biscuit the sheep was standing. Biscuit is the sheep who always runs away. For once, Biscuit stood very still and watched something else run away.

Pip ran after the pumpkin, squeaking. Tam ran after Pip, with no hat.

At the bottom of the ridge, the road meets the Long Road. The pumpkin turned onto it, as if it knew the way. A trader with a cart of wool pulled his horse to the side. "Was that a pumpkin?" he called.

"Yes," said Pip, running past.

"Was that a pumpkin?" he asked again, when Tam ran past.

"It was mine," said Tam.

On the flat road the pumpkin slowed down. Pip almost caught it. But then the road went down again, toward the bridge, and the pumpkin went fast again, over the bridge, bump, bump, bump, and on toward Three Wells.

It was nearly noon when the pumpkin rolled into the square at Three Wells. The pumpkin contest is at noon, at the east well. The pumpkin rolled across the square, past the notice board, past the pie stall, and stopped against the east well with a soft thump.

Everyone looked at it. Mayor Dace looked at it. Then Pip came running in, and then Tam, red in the face, with straw in his hair.

It was the biggest pumpkin at the fair. But it had a flat side now, and a scrape, and mud from the bridge. It did not win the prize for the biggest. That went to a farmer from Ambrook.

But Mayor Dace made a new prize on the spot. He wrote it on a card and pinned it to the pumpkin: "Came the furthest by itself."

Tam keeps the card on the kitchen shelf, next to the wooden fox. When anyone asks about it, Pip tells the story. It tells it the same way every time, and it always ends the same way: "Pumpkins do not know any orders. Hold them steady."
%%
Story: Dot sorts by color
At Three Wells there is a storehouse by the square, and Clem keeps it. Clem is tidy, which is a good thing in a storekeeper. One spring, Clem got a new apprentice for the store. It was called Dot.

"Your job is to store things," said Clem. "Put everything in the chests, so we can find it again."

Dot had passed its test. It could carry and it could store. So it began.

By evening the storehouse was very neat. There were ten chests in a row, and each chest had a color. Dot had sorted everything by color.

The red chest held beetroot, apples, redstone, a red wool hat and one small red mitten. The yellow chest held wheat, honey, gold and a ball of yellow wool. The green chest held melons, emeralds, a bundle of reeds and a frog. The frog was not pleased. The brown chest held bread, potatoes, two oak logs and a boot. The blue chest held lapis, a blue bottle and a fish.

"Dot," said Clem slowly. "Where is the bread?"

"Brown," said Dot.

"And the honey?"

"Yellow."

"And why is there a frog in the green chest?"

"It is green," said Dot.

Clem let the frog out. Then Clem sat down on the brown chest and thought.

"It is very neat," said Clem. "But when the baker comes for flour, I want to go to one place. When a farmer comes for seed, I want to go to one place. Things that are used together should be kept together. Food here. Tools there. Wool here. Seed there."

Dot thought about this. It was harder than colors. A color you can see. What a thing is for, you have to learn. So Clem drilled it. "Bread?" "Food." "Wheat seeds?" "Seed." "Shears?" "Tools." Dot was wrong many times. Each time it changed a little. By summer the store was sorted by use, and Clem could find anything in a moment.

Then one cold morning in autumn, Bel came into the store. Her face was red from crying. Last winter she had lost one of her red mittens. Her grandmother at Lowmarsh had made them. Now the cold had come again, and she had only one.

Clem looked in the wool chest. No mitten. Clem looked in the box of lost things. No mitten.

Dot looked at the mitten on Bel's hand. "Red," it said.

It went to the back of the store. There was a small chest there that Clem never opened. When Dot had sorted the store by use, it had kept back this one chest for itself, sorted by color, because it liked colors. Inside, between a beetroot and a red wool hat, was the other mitten.

Bel put it on. She held up both hands. They matched.

Clem laughed for a long time. "Each way of sorting finds something," said Clem.

Now the storehouse at Three Wells is sorted by use, as a store should be. But inside each chest, Dot keeps things in color order, red at one end and blue at the other. People say it is the easiest store on the Long Road to find a thing in. And it is certainly the prettiest.
%%
Story: the apprentice and the sea
At Copperhold there was once an apprentice called Cobble. It carried ore up from the Deep Works, all day, every day. Up the stairs with a full basket, down the stairs with an empty one. It knew every step. It knew stone.

At midday the miners sat on the top step and ate their bread, and they talked. One day they talked about the sea.

"It is water," said Bram, who talked the most. "Flat water, all the way to the edge of the sky."

"It moves," said Ola. "It comes in and goes out. It never stops."

"It is salty," said old Fenn. "You cannot drink it. It tastes like a tear."

Cobble put down its basket. "Where is the sea?" it asked.

"Saltreach," said Hesk. "Far away. Too much water. Not enough roof."

Only old Fenn had ever been there, long ago. But from that day, Cobble thought about it. Up the stairs, down the stairs. Flat water to the edge of the sky. It could not picture it. All it had ever seen was stone, and the dark, and the little lights of torches.

At last it asked Hesk. "May I see the sea?"

Hesk grunted. Hesk grunts at most things. But the next week, a letter came from Corin the shipwright at Saltreach. Corin wanted copper for the boats. Ten sacks.

Hesk read the letter. Then he looked at Cobble for a long time.

"Haul," said Hesk. "Ten sacks to Saltreach. Then home."

So Cobble set out on the Long Road with a cart of copper. It walked for six days. It passed Three Wells and the notice board. It passed inns with smoke coming out of the chimneys. It passed fields of wheat, which it had never seen, and sheep, which it had never seen, and a great many waymarks. It counted the waymarks, so it could find its way back.

On the sixth evening the road went up a long hill. Cobble pulled the cart to the top. And there it was.

The sea was flat and grey and gold, all the way to the edge of the sky, just as Bram had said. It moved, just as Ola had said. It came in and went out on the sand, and it never stopped. Cobble stood on the hill until it was dark.

At the shipyard, Corin unloaded the copper. "First time?" asked Corin.

"Yes," said Cobble. "I have seen stone all my life. This is the other thing."

Corin laughed and walked it down to the water. Cobble put its hand in. The sea came up over its feet and went away again. Marit the net mender gave it an empty bottle, and Cobble filled it with the sea.

Then it went home, counting the waymarks backwards, all the way to Copperhold.

At midday the miners sat on the top step. "Well?" said Bram. "What is it like?"

Cobble took out the bottle. It poured a little of the sea onto the stone step. The water spread out, flat and shining, and ran into the cracks.

"Like that," said Cobble. "But more. And it moves."

Old Fenn tasted it. "Like a tear," he said.

Cobble still carries ore up from the Deep Works. Up the stairs, down the stairs. But it keeps the bottle on a ledge by the top step, where the light comes in. On quiet days it takes the bottle down and tips it, gently, to watch the sea move.
%%
Story: the miner and the amethyst cave
There was once a miner at Copperhold who did not care for pretty things. That was Hesk. "Can you burn it, eat it, or build with it?" Hesk would say. "No? Then leave it for the children."

One autumn, Hesk and Clank were cutting a new tunnel on the third level, looking for iron. Clank swung its pick. The stone cracked, and behind the crack it sounded hollow, and a cold breath came out of the wall.

"Stop," said Hesk.

Clank stopped. Hesk held a torch up to the crack. The light went in, and the light came back purple.

They made the hole bigger, stone by stone, and climbed through. Inside was a round cave, like the inside of an egg. Every wall was covered in amethyst. Purple points stuck out of the stone, big ones and small ones, like frost on a window, only purple. When the torch moved, the whole cave glittered.

Clank reached out and touched a crystal with one copper finger. It rang. It was a small clear sound, like a bell far away. Clank touched another, and it rang a little higher.

"Do not," said Hesk. But then he touched one too.

They sat in the cave for a long time. Neither of them said anything. The torch burned down. Every time one of them moved, a crystal rang somewhere in the dark.

At last Clank asked, "Do we take it? It is worth emeralds."

Hesk looked around the cave. "Can you burn it?" he said. "Eat it? Build with it?"

"No," said Clank.

"Then we leave it," said Hesk. "For the children."

He broke off one small piece, no bigger than a thumb, and put it in his pocket. They climbed out. Hesk built a little wall across the hole, with a wooden door in it, and marked the place on the map of the third level. Next to the mark he wrote: "Do not mine. Look."

That night he wrapped the small piece in a cloth and sent it to his sister Rue at Ambrook, with a note. "For your window. Do not ask."

Now every child at Copperhold goes down to the cave once, in the year they turn ten. They go with a torch and a miner. They are allowed to touch one crystal, just one, to hear it ring. And they are told the rule of the cave: look, listen, and leave it as you found it.

"But Hesk took a piece," the children always say.

"That one does not count," the miners say. "That one was for Rue."

Hesk still says pretty things are for children. But the miners have noticed something. On the day the children go down, Hesk always goes too. And Hesk always carries the torch.
%%
Story: the night of the long frost
There was once a night on Kettle Ridge so cold that even the wind stopped. The windmills stood still. The snow went hard as stone. People still call it the night of the long frost.

That night, Old Brin knocked on Tam's door. His beard had ice in it.

"Biscuit is gone," he said. "She has run off again. And tonight of all nights. She is going to have her lamb."

Biscuit is Old Brin's sheep. She is the sheep who always runs away. She has run away to the windmill, and to the inn, and once all the way to the bridge on the Long Road. Usually Old Brin goes after her. But Old Brin is old, and his hands do not like the cold.

"Stay by my fire," said Tam. "Pip and I will go."

Tam put on two coats. Pip lit a lantern. They went out into the white.

It was so quiet. No wind, no voices, only the crunch of Tam's boots and the squeak of Pip. Their breath, or Tam's breath, hung in the air like smoke.

"Which way?" said Tam.

Pip held the lantern low. There were little hoof marks in the snow, going down the hill. "This way," said Pip.

They followed the hoof marks past the beetroot field. Past the scarecrow, who had snow on its hat. Past the frozen pond. The marks went round and round, the way a lost sheep walks. Tam's feet grew numb. His nose was as red as a beetroot.

"Go back," Pip said. "I do not feel the cold. I will find her."

"No," said Tam. "We go together."

At last the marks went behind the old windmill, where the wall breaks the wind. And there was Biscuit, lying in the straw by the wall. Next to her, wet and small and shaking, was a new lamb.

Tam took off his scarf and wrapped the lamb in it. He gave it to Pip to carry, because Pip's arms are steady. Tam took Biscuit by the wool, and for once Biscuit did not run anywhere at all.

"Now, home," said Tam. "Which way?"

The snow was falling again. The hill looked the same everywhere. But Pip had been counting. "The frozen pond," it said. "The scarecrow. The beetroot field. Your door." They walked them back, one by one, the same way they had come.

Old Brin was asleep by the fire when they came in. He woke up and saw the lamb in Tam's scarf, and he did not say anything for a while. Then he said, "About time."

They put the lamb by the stove, and Biscuit lay down next to it, and nobody went back out into the cold that night.

The lamb is a grown sheep now. Old Brin named her Frost. She never runs away. She stays close to Pip, wherever it goes, and the folk on Kettle Ridge say she thinks Pip is her other mother.
%%
Story: the lost cart on the Long Road
Pell the merchant has a horse called Barley. Barley pulls Pell's cart up and down the Long Road. Barley does not like anyone. Barley likes apples.

One autumn evening, Pell stopped at the Halfway Inn, on the Long Road between Three Wells and Vell. He left the cart in the yard and Barley in the stable, with hay. He ate a bowl of stew and went to bed.

In the morning, the stable was empty. The cart was gone. Barley was gone.

"Thieves!" cried Pell. "My cart! My horse! Twelve sacks of wool and a box of glass!"

Everyone at the inn came out to help. The travelers looked in the barn. The children looked in the hay. The keeper of the inn looked under the stairs, which was not a sensible place to look for a horse, but the keeper was being kind.

Then a girl pointed at the road. There were wheel tracks in the mud, and hoof prints. They went out of the yard and turned onto the Long Road, toward Ambrook.

"After them!" said Pell.

So Pell walked. He walked all day, following the tracks. At the next inn he asked, "Have you seen a cart with a brown horse?"

"A horse went by in the night," they said. "Pulling a cart. Nobody was driving it. We thought it was very strange."

"That is my cart," said Pell. "Which way?"

"Toward Ambrook."

Pell walked on. He walked another day. At every waymark the tracks went on, straight down the middle of the road, never stopping. Whoever these thieves were, they knew the road very well.

On the evening of the second day, Pell came over the last hill and saw Ambrook below him. The orchards. The mill pond. His own house, with smoke from the chimney.

And there, in front of his own house, was his cart. Twelve sacks of wool and a box of glass, not one missing. And there was Barley, with his head over the garden fence, eating Juna's apples. Tilly was sitting on the cart, eating an apple too.

"Papa!" said Tilly. "Barley came home last night. All by himself. We thought you sent him."

Pell sat down on the step. He was very tired, and his feet hurt.

"I did not send him," said Pell. "He went. The hay at the inn was not good enough for him, I think."

Juna brought out a bowl of soup. "He knew the way better than you do," she said.

"He always has," said Pell.

Pell tells this story at every inn on the Long Road now. He always ends it the same way. "A horse knows the way home, even when the merchant does not. Especially if there are apples at the end of it."

Barley does not like the story. But Barley does not like anyone.
%%
Story: the well at Three Wells
Long ago, when the roads were new, the place where the roads cross was a dry place. There was no town there. There was only dust and a few thorny bushes, and travelers hurried through without stopping, because there was no water.

One hot day, three travelers met at the crossroads. One was a farmer with a spade. One was a fisher with a bucket. One was a girl with nothing but a coil of rope. All three were thirsty.

"There is water here," said the farmer. "I can smell it." She walked to the place where the grass was greenest, and she dug. By evening she had found water, cold and clear. But there was only a little. It filled one bucket a day. That was the first well.

"There is more water lower down," said the fisher. He walked to the place where the ground dipped, and he dug. By the next evening he had found water too. There was more of it, but it tasted a little of salt. "It tastes like home," said the fisher, who came from the sea. Nobody else liked it much. That was the second well.

Then the girl with the rope said, "Help me dig a third."

"Where?" they asked.

"There," she said, and pointed to the high ground where the north road comes in. "Where everyone will pass."

The farmer shook her head. "There is no green grass there. There is no low ground. There is no water up there."

"Then it will be the deepest well," said the girl. "Please."

So they dug. They dug for one day, and there was only dust. They dug for two days, and there was only stone. On the third day the hole was so deep that they needed the girl's rope to climb in and out. The farmer wanted to stop. The fisher wanted to stop. The girl kept digging.

On the fourth day, at the bottom of the hole, the stone turned dark and wet. Then water came up, slowly, and then fast. It was sweet. It was cold. It filled the hole halfway up, and it never ran dry, not even in the hottest summer.

That was the third well.

After that, travelers stopped at the crossroads to drink. Some of them stayed. They built houses around the wells, and then a market, and a school, and a notice board, and they called the town Three Wells.

The first well is the east well, and the second is the south well, which still tastes a little of salt. The third is the north well, the deepest and the coldest. People say the farmer kept the first well, and the fisher kept the second. Nobody knows what happened to the girl with the rope. Some say she went on down one of the roads. Some say she stayed and grew old by the third well and never told anyone why she had been so sure.

That is why, on the last night of the fair, everyone at Three Wells whispers a wish into the third well. It was dug on a wish, the old folk say, when there was nothing else to go on. And nobody tells what they wished, because the girl never told hers either.
%%
Story: why the creepers hiss
Long ago, when the nights were new, the creepers did not hiss. They were quiet. They were green and shy and soft on their feet, and more than anything, they wanted to be friends with people.

At night they crept up close to the houses to look in at the windows. They looked at the fires and the soup and the children going to bed. It all looked very warm.

But whenever a creeper came close to someone, to say hello, something went wrong. The creeper got so excited that it burst. Bang! The fence was gone. The beetroot was gone. The person was sitting in a hole, very surprised, with dirt in their hair.

The creepers were very sad about this. One night they had a meeting in the dark, behind a hill, far from the torches.

"We only want to say hello," said the youngest creeper. "But every time we get close, we get excited, and then, bang."

"We cannot help being excited," said another creeper. "We are creepers."

The oldest creeper thought for a long time. It was so old that it had stopped getting excited about almost anything.

"If we cannot stop," it said at last, "then we can warn them. Before we get too close, we will make a sound. A small sound, so that they know we are coming, and they can step back."

"What sound?" asked the youngest.

"A hiss," said the oldest creeper. "Like a kettle just before it boils. Everyone knows what a kettle means."

So from that night on, every creeper learned to hiss. Now when a creeper comes close and begins to get excited, it hisses, sss, as politely as it can. And people hear it and step back, and the creeper bursts somewhere with nobody in it, and everyone is a little bit safer.

That is why creepers hiss. It is not a threat. It is manners.

The old folk at Kettle Ridge say that a creeper's hiss means "I am sorry." The children at Three Wells say it means "Run!" Both of them are right.

And the creepers never did get to be friends with anyone. They still come to the windows at night, to look at the fires. That is a little sad, if you think about it. Most people do not think about it. They are too busy running.

So when you hear a hiss in the dark, step back. Keep the torches lit. And if you like, when you are safe, say thank you. The creeper was only being polite.
%%
Story: the girl who wrote every day
At Three Wells there was a girl called Bel, who was nine years old and wanted to know everything. One spring her teacher, Sorrel, told the class about the Archive at Vell. "It keeps everything we write," said Sorrel. "Every letter. Every list. Everything."

So Bel wrote to the archive. The next day she wrote again. And the next day, and the next. Every morning she wrote one page and gave it to whoever was going up the road to Vell: a carter, a trader, a tutor, and once a merchant who was going the other way but took it anyway. She wrote about everything, all year round.

"Dear Archive," she wrote. "Today my mother made forty loaves. Nim and I counted them. The mayor bought a bun and made a face."

"Dear Archive. It rained. The north well is full to the top. A frog was in the bucket."

"Dear Archive. The north well froze today. Old Hob tried to break the ice with his foot. Do not use your foot."

At Vell, the letters came to a clerk called Oren. Oren is careful and kind and a little fussy. He read every letter. He filed every one, in a box with her name on it: Bel, Three Wells.

The other clerks laughed at him. "Why keep a child's letters?" they said. "They are about buns. They are about frogs."

"We keep everything we write," said Oren. "That is what the archive is for."

A letter came every day, all spring and all summer and all autumn. Then, one week in winter, no letter came. Not on the first day. Not on the second. Oren found that he was looking at the door every morning. On the fourth day he could not finish his breakfast. On the sixth day he wrote to Ida the baker at Three Wells: "Is Bel well? The archive has not heard from her."

On the eighth day, a fat bundle arrived. It was seven letters at once, tied with string.

"Dear Archive," said the first. "I am at my grandmother's in Lowmarsh. Nobody here is going to Vell, so I am keeping them all for you. Day one: frogs. So many frogs."

Oren laughed out loud in the copying room, which is against the rules. Then he filed all seven, in order.

That spring, Mayor Dace came up to Vell with a question. "When did the wells freeze last winter?" he asked. "I want to put up the notice about the ice in good time this year. But nobody wrote down the day."

The clerks looked in the town books. They looked in the weather logs. Nothing.

Oren went to the box with Bel's name on it. He took out one letter and read it aloud. "Dear Archive. The north well froze today. Old Hob tried to break the ice with his foot."

The letter had the day written at the top, because Sorrel had taught her that. Mayor Dace wrote it down. Then he laughed. "Do not use your foot," he said. "I will put that on the notice too."

After that, nobody laughed at Oren's box. On his next free afternoon, Oren made Bel a shelf of her own, with her name carved on the end.

Bel still writes every day. The shelf is nearly full. Oren says he will make her another one.
%%
Story: the way home
This story is for the end of the day. Lie down. Close your eyes. Listen.

There was once a small apprentice at Ambrook called Wick. It worked at the mill, for Jory the miller. It carried the sacks of flour, and it swept the floor, and it watched the mill wheel turn.

One autumn afternoon, Jory said, "Wick, go up to Ama's hives on the hill and fetch a jar of honey. Then come straight home."

So Wick set out.

First it passed the mill pond, where the frogs were singing.
Then it passed the red gate at the end of the lane.
Then it passed the old oak with the swing.
Then it crossed the bridge with the loose plank. Clack, went the plank.
Then it passed the waymark with the fox carved on it.
Then it walked along the long orchard wall.
And then it came to the hives on the hill, where Ama was waiting with a jar of honey.

But Ama had more than one jar. She had a whole basket, and a cake for Jory, and a letter, and a message to remember. By the time Wick had all of it, the sun was gone. Fog came up from the valley, thick and white, and Wick could not see the path at all.

Wick stood very still. It did not know the way home. But it knew the way it had come.

"Last, I walked along the orchard wall," said Wick. "So first, I will find the wall." It put out a hand, and there was the wall, cold and rough. It walked along it to the end.

"Before the wall, I passed the waymark with the fox." It walked on, slowly, until its foot hit stone. It felt the carving: two ears, a long tail. The fox.

"Before the fox, the bridge with the loose plank." It walked on. Clack, went the plank.

"Before the bridge, the old oak with the swing." It walked on until the rope of the swing brushed its head.

"Before the oak, the red gate." There was the gate, wet with fog.

"Before the gate, the mill pond." It listened, and the frogs were singing.

And after the pond, at the very beginning of everything, was home. There was the mill, with a light in the window, and Jory standing in the door.

"Wick!" said Jory. "How did you find your way in all this fog?"

"I walked my afternoon backwards," said Wick.

The wall. The fox. The plank. The oak. The gate. The frogs. And home.

Now it is your turn. What did you pass today? Start with the last thing, and go back, one by one, slowly. The last thing first. The first thing last. And when you get to the beginning, you will be home, and you will be asleep.

Goodnight.
%%
Story: the frogs who kept time
Long ago, Lowmarsh had no bell. The fishers went out into the reeds in the morning, and they came home when they felt like it. Some came home too early, with empty baskets. Some came home too late, after dark, when the mud is deep and the paths are hard to find. Every year, someone got lost in the reeds at night and had to stand in the cold water until morning.

The frogs saw all this from the edges of the water. Frogs see a great deal. They talked it over.

"The folk need to know when to come home," said one frog.

"They need a bell," said another.

"We are a bell," said the oldest frog. "Or we could be."

So the frogs made a plan. Every evening, just as the sun touched the reeds, they would all sing together. One frog would start, and then ten, and then every frog in the marsh. Wherever a fisher was, out in the reeds, they would hear it and know: time to go home, before the dark comes.

And it worked. Every evening the frogs sang, and every evening the fishers turned their boats toward home. Nobody got lost in the reeds for a long, long time.

Then one summer, a little boy at Lowmarsh found the frogs. He thought they were the best thing he had ever seen. He filled a bucket with them, ten, twenty, thirty frogs, and carried them home to keep under his bed.

That evening the sun touched the reeds, and the marsh was silent. There were not enough frogs left in the water to sing. Out in the reeds, the fishers kept fishing. They did not know it was time to go home. Then the dark came, and the fog came with it, and they could not find the paths.

In the village, people stood at the water's edge, calling. But calls do not carry far in fog.

The little boy heard them calling. He looked at his bucket. The frogs looked back at him. He understood.

He ran down to the water as fast as he could and tipped the bucket out. Thirty frogs splashed into the marsh. And straight away they began to sing, louder than they had ever sung, as if they were making up for lost time. The other frogs joined in. The whole marsh sang.

Out in the fog, the fishers heard it. They turned toward the sound and followed it, slowly, through the reeds, and one by one they came home, wet and cold and very glad.

That is why, at Lowmarsh, children are told: you may borrow a frog for a day, but it must be back in the water by sunset. It has a job.

And that is why, even now that Lowmarsh has a bell, the fishers still listen for the frogs. The bell tells you the hour. The frogs tell you the dark is coming. The old fishers say the frogs are never wrong.
%%
Story: the cat on the crystal
Ink is the archive cat at Vell. Ink is black, with one white foot. Ink belongs to nobody and sleeps wherever is warmest.

One spring, the warmest place in all of Vell was the window in Nessa's teaching room. The sun came in there all morning. And in that window, on a wooden tray, Nessa kept her mind crystals.

There were two new minds that week. One had learned to farm. One had learned to build walls by following a pattern. Each crystal sat in its own place on the tray, and under each place was a little card. Farm. Build.

One morning, Ink jumped into the window. Ink turned around three times, as cats do. The tray tipped. The crystals rolled. Ink lay down on the warm wood and went to sleep, and the crystals rolled back into the tray, each in the wrong place.

Nessa did not see it. She came in, picked up the crystal from the place marked Farm, and put it into the apprentice that was going to Kettle Ridge. She picked up the crystal from the place marked Build, and put it into the apprentice that was going to the masons.

They were ready to go. The carts were waiting. But Nessa has a rule, and she never breaks it. Never send an untested mind to the fields. So before they left, she gave each one a last small test.

She set a drill field in front of the farming apprentice. "Farm," she said.

The apprentice looked at the field. Then it began to carry stones. It built a neat little wall around each plot of wheat, very straight, very careful, one plot after another.

Nessa set a pattern of stones in front of the building apprentice. "Build," she said.

The apprentice looked at the pattern. Then it pulled out every stone and planted a seed in each hole.

Nessa looked at the two apprentices for a long time. Then she looked at the window, where Ink was asleep in the sun, on the empty tray.

"Ink," said Nessa.

Ink opened one eye and closed it again.

Nessa took the crystals out and swapped them. She tested them again. The farming mind farmed. The building mind built. Then, and only then, she sent them out to the carts.

The farmer at Kettle Ridge never knew how close he came to having a wall around every stalk of wheat. The masons never knew how close they came to a wall full of seeds.

After that, Nessa scratched a small mark into each crystal, so she would always know which was which. And she put a cushion in the other window, in the sun, just for Ink.

Ink still sleeps on the crystal tray. But the cushion is very nice too, and Ink sleeps on it on the days when it is warmer, which is not very often, because Ink always knows exactly where the warmest place is.

Nessa tells this story to every new tutor. "This is why we test," she says. "Not because the mind is bad. Because the world has cats in it."
%%
Story: Clank and the dark
When Clank was new at Copperhold, Hesk gave it one rule. "Keep the torches lit."

Clank did not understand the rule. It could see well enough in the dark. Why waste torches?

"Do it anyway," said Hesk.

One night, the crew went home and left Clank alone on the second level, to watch the tools. There were forty-one torches along the tunnel, all burning. "Keep them lit," said Hesk, going up the stairs. "That is your whole job tonight."

For a long time, nothing happened. The torches burned. Water dripped somewhere. Clank stood by the tools.

Then, far down the tunnel, a drip of water fell on a torch, and the torch went out. There was a dark place in the tunnel, where the light did not reach.

Clank looked at the dark place. It did not think much of it. One torch. There were forty more.

But after a while, something moved in the dark place. Something with too many legs. A spider, as big as a pig, came out of the dark and looked at Clank with its red eyes.

Clank lifted its pick and walked toward it, making its usual clanking noise. The spider did not like the noise, and it did not like Clank. It went back into the dark.

Clank stood and thought. The spider had not been there when the torch was lit. Now the torch was out, and there was a spider. The dark had made room for it.

So Clank took a new torch from the box and lit it. The dark place went bright. The spider ran off into a crack in the stone and did not come back.

Now Clank understood the rule. Torches are not for seeing. Torches are for keeping the dark small.

All night, the water dripped. Another torch went out, and Clank relit it. Then another. Clank moved the torches away from the drips, one by one. Once, two spiders came at the same time, and Clank stood between them and the tools, clanking as loudly as it could, until the light was back. Its copper got scorched black on one side from holding the torches so close.

In the morning, Hesk came down the stairs with Ola and old Fenn. Forty-one torches were burning. The tools were all there. Clank was standing in the middle of the tunnel, black on one side, holding a torch in each hand.

Hesk looked at the torches. He looked at the drips. He looked at Clank.

"Good," said Hesk. That was all he said. But that afternoon he fixed the leak himself, and the next week he gave Clank a little shelf for the torch box, so it would never have far to walk.

Clank still walks the tunnel every hour. It counts as it goes. "Forty-one torches," it says at the end. "All lit." Then it starts again.

The miners say that Clank is the only one at Copperhold who never forgets the rule. Clank says it is easy to remember a rule once you have met the reason for it.
%%
Story: Moss and the two flowers
Wren the healer of Lowmarsh has an apprentice called Moss. It is small and green with copper rust, and it carries her bag, and it stirs the pots, and it fetches things from the high shelves.

Wren taught Moss the flowers the way she would teach a child. She held one up and said its name. "Blue orchid. For the tea." She held up another. "Cornflower. Pretty. Does nothing." Moss watched. Then Moss sorted them, and it was wrong, and Wren said no, and they started again.

They are both blue. That is the trouble. Moss was wrong about them for a whole summer. At last Wren said, "Stop looking only at the flower. Look at the leaf. Look at where it grows. The orchid has its feet in the water. The cornflower likes dry ground." After that, Moss was right much more often.

One evening, Wren was away at the far end of the marsh with a fisher's broken arm. A boy called Tib came running into the healing house. "My sister has a fever," he said. "Mother says blue orchid tea. Two flowers to a cup."

Moss reached up to the high shelf for the orchid bottle. It was empty. Moss had dusted it that morning and turned it so the label faced out, and it had not known if an empty bottle should stay. It had stayed. Now it was no help at all.

Moss thought. Wren says: do not guess. But this was not a guess. Moss knew the orchid. It knew where it grew.

"Go and fetch Wren," it said to Tib. "I will fetch the flowers."

Moss went out into the marsh. The sun was going down. Everything was grey and gold and hard to see. By the path there were blue flowers, a whole bank of them, easy to reach. Moss stopped and looked at them. Their feet were in dry ground. Their leaves were thin and grey. Cornflowers.

So Moss went on, into the reeds, into the cold water, up to its knees and then up to its middle. The frogs went quiet as it passed. And there, at the edge of a pool, with their feet in the water, were three blue flowers with wide green leaves.

Moss picked two. Then it picked two more, for the morning.

It came back to the healing house, wet and muddy, and put the water on to boil. It laid out the flowers on a clean cloth, and it waited.

When Wren came in with Tib, she went straight to the table. She looked at the flowers. She looked at the leaves. She turned them over. Then she looked at Moss, dripping on her floor.

"Right," said Wren. "Two flowers to a cup." And she made the tea.

The girl was better in two days. Wren wrote a new label for the empty bottle that week. It says: "Blue orchid. When empty, Moss knows where."
%%
Story: the word Oren lost
One spring a letter came to the Archive at Vell from Ama, the beekeeper at Ambrook. It was her recipe for honey cakes. Oren the clerk was very pleased. He had wanted that recipe for years.

But Ama keeps bees, and Ama's fingers are always a little sticky. A drop of honey had dried inside the fold of the letter. When Oren opened it, the paper tore. One word stayed stuck on the other side, and it came away in pieces.

Now the recipe said: "Two cups of wheat flour. One ... of honey. Two eggs."

Oren looked at the hole for a long time. A recipe with a hole in it cannot be filed. It cannot be used. And it was a very good recipe. He could tell.

"One spoon of honey?" said the young clerk at the next desk.

"Too little," said Oren. "These are honey cakes."

"One jar?"

"Too much. They would never set."

"One bucket," said the young clerk, and laughed. Oren did not laugh. Oren was thinking.

He went down to the third hall, where the Ambrook shelf is, and took down every letter Ama had ever sent. There were a great many. He read them all, slowly, by the lamp. When Ama wrote about selling honey, she wrote jars. When she wrote about medicine, she wrote spoons. But when she wrote a recipe, honey always came in cups. Every time. Flour in cups, milk in cups, honey in cups.

So Oren took a pencil and wrote, very lightly, in the margin next to the hole: "cup. Guessed by Oren, from her other letters." Then he wrote a note to Ama and sent it with the next cart.

A week later the answer came.

"Cup," wrote Ama. "One cup. Who makes cakes with honey by the spoon? You clerks are very strange. Keep honey away from your paper."

Oren laughed out loud. Then he copied out the whole recipe, neatly, on a fresh page. He changed nothing except the spelling. He filed it on the recipe shelf. And next to it, in the same box, he filed the torn letter and Ama's answer, because we keep everything we write. Even the torn pages. Especially the torn pages.

The young clerk asked him, later, how he had known. Oren thought about it.

"When a word is lost," he said, "read everything around it. Read the whole page. Read the other pages, if you have to. The other words will tell you what the lost one was. They almost always do."

The young clerk wrote that down. She keeps it pinned over her desk.

And Oren made the honey cakes that very evening. He ate them in the kitchen, nowhere near the paper. He ate two.
%%
Story: the pupil who said stay
Of all the minds Nessa ever taught, the hardest was a little apprentice called Peg. Peg learned only one answer, and it gave that answer to everything.

On Peg's first day, Nessa gave it the orders drill. The drill box was full of orders, one on each card, with the meaning on the back. But a clerk had made a mistake. He had copied the card for stay ten times over. So on the first day, almost every order Peg saw meant stay.

> wait here a moment
= stay
> do not move
= stay
> stop there please
= stay

Peg was right, and right, and right. It was very pleased with itself.

On the second day, Nessa found the mistake and took out the extra cards. Now there were orders of every kind.

"Bring me some bread," said Nessa.

"Stay," said Peg.

"No," said Nessa. "That one means fetch bread. Go and tend the fields."

"Stay," said Peg.

"No. That one means farm. Come here, please."

"Stay," said Peg, and it stayed.

Peg had learned the one answer that was right most often, and now it said stay to everything. Nessa gave it a hundred orders that week. It said stay a hundred times. When Bel came by with her school class and asked it to come and see Ink, the archive cat, Peg said stay. When the bell rang for supper, Peg said stay.

"It is not stupid," Nessa told the other tutors. "It learned exactly what I showed it. I showed it the wrong thing."

So Nessa made a new drill box. She counted the cards. Ten for farm, ten for store, ten for fetch, ten for come, ten for stay, ten for build, ten for haul, ten for home. Every meaning just as often as every other. She shuffled them every morning. Then she began again, from the very beginning, with patience.

Peg was wrong for a long time. Each time it was wrong, it changed a little. Then one morning:

> put these goods away
= store

"Yes," said Nessa.

> go back to the shed now
= home

"Yes," said Nessa, and her voice went a little funny.

By the end of the month, Peg knew all eight meanings. Nessa tested it on orders it had never heard, and it got nearly all of them right. It went to work at Three Wells, carrying for the bakery, and Ida the baker says it is the best listener she has ever had.

On Peg's last evening at Vell, Nessa walked it to the cart. "I must go now," she said, out of habit.

"Stay," said Peg.

Nessa laughed. And for once, Peg was right. She stayed, and they sat by the cart and watched the sun go down over the hill, until the carter said it was time.
%%
Story: the horse who knew the prices
Pell the merchant buys and sells along the Long Road, and his horse Barley pulls the cart. Barley does not like anyone. Barley likes apples.

One summer, Pell noticed something strange. When they came into a market, Barley would walk past some stalls without looking. At other stalls, Barley would stop dead and not move, no matter what Pell said.

At first Pell thought Barley was being difficult, which he usually is. But Pell is a merchant, and a merchant notices things. The stalls where Barley stopped were always the stalls with fair prices. Good wool, a fair weight, an honest scale. The stalls Barley walked past were the ones that charged too much, or had a heavy thumb on the scale.

"That is very strange," said Pell. He wrote it in his ledger.

He tested it. At Three Wells, Barley stopped at Ida's bakery, where the bread is good and the price is fair. Barley walked straight past a stall where a stranger was selling glass at twice the price. At Saltreach, Barley stopped at Marit's stall, where the nets are mended well and cheap. Barley walked past the trader with the crooked scale.

"My horse," Pell told everyone at the inn, "can smell an honest price."

After that, Pell stopped arguing with Barley. Where Barley stopped, Pell traded. Where Barley walked on, Pell walked on too. And it was a very good year. Pell made more emeralds than he had ever made. He brought home a new blue dress for Juna and a wooden horse for Tilly, who was seven.

Tilly was very interested in Barley's gift. She went out with Pell on the next short trip, to the market at Ambrook, to watch.

Barley stopped at the first stall. The old farmer there patted his nose and gave him an apple. Barley stopped at the second stall. The girl at the second stall gave him an apple core. Barley walked past the third stall. Nobody there even looked at him.

Tilly tugged Pell's sleeve. "Papa," she said. "He stops where they give him apples."

Pell stood in the market with his mouth open.

It was true. Every stall where Barley stopped, someone had once given him an apple. Every stall he walked past, nobody ever had.

"But the prices," said Pell slowly. "Why are the prices fair at the apple stalls?"

Tilly shrugged, the way seven-year-olds do. "People who give apples to horses are nice," she said. "Nice people have nice prices."

Pell wrote that in his ledger too, in big letters. He still follows Barley through every market on the Long Road. He says it is the best rule a merchant ever had: trade where the horses get apples.

Barley does not care about any of it. Barley just likes apples.
%%
Story: the mayor's hat
Mayor Dace of Three Wells has a hat for the fair. It is tall and black, with a red band. He wears it only once a year, to open the summer fair. The rest of the year it sleeps in a box.

One summer, on the morning of the fair, everyone came to the square. Dace climbed the steps of his house in his tall hat and cleared his throat. "Folk of Three Wells," he began. And the wind came round the corner and took the hat right off his head.

The hat flew over the square. It landed on the back of a cow that had come to market. The cow did not notice. It walked off down the lane with the mayor's hat on its back, like a little chimney.

"My hat!" said Dace. He ran down the steps, and everyone ran after him.

At the end of the lane, the cow stopped to eat grass, and the hat slid off. It rolled into the school yard. Sorrel was ringing the school bell, and the children came out and found it. Nim put it on. It came down to her chin. Bel put it on. It came down to her nose. They passed it from head to head, laughing, until the wind took it again.

This time it blew over the bakery wall. Ida the baker was taking pies out of the oven. The hat landed in a pie. Ida picked it up, wiped it clean, and set it on the window sill, the way she does with pies. Then she went back to work.

Dace ran into the bakery, red in the face. "Have you seen my hat?"

"On the sill," said Ida.

But the sill was empty. The wind had blown the hat off the sill and into the hen yard behind the bakery. And there it was, upside down in the straw. Sitting in it, very still, was a brown hen.

Dace reached for his hat. The hen pecked his hand. He reached again. The hen puffed up to twice her size. Under the hen, in the hat, there was an egg.

By now the whole fair had come into the hen yard to watch. The children. Sorrel. Ida. Even the cow.

Dace looked at the hen for a long time. Then he took his hand back.

"The notice on the board says no pigs in the square," he said. "It says nothing about hens. And a mayor does not take a house from anyone in Three Wells. Not even a hen."

So the mayor opened the summer fair bare-headed, with straw in his hair and pie on his sleeve. People said it was the best speech he ever gave, because it was the shortest. "The fair is open," he said. "I have lost my hat. Have a good day."

The hen kept the hat. By the end of summer there were six chicks in it. In the autumn, Dace bought a new hat from a trader on the Long Road. It is brown, not black, and not so tall. Ida says it suits him better.

The hen still lives behind the bakery. She lays her eggs in the old black hat and nowhere else. The children call her the Mayor.
%%
Story: the smallest boat
At Saltreach, Corin the shipwright builds fishing boats. They are big boats, with tall masts and wide bellies, and it takes a whole season to build one.

One spring, a small boy called Kit came to the shipyard with a stick of driftwood. "Can you make a boat from this?" he asked.

"Not today," said Corin. "Today I am building a real boat."

The next day, Kit came again with the same stick. "Can you make a boat from this?"

"Not today," said Corin.

Every day for twenty days, Kit came, and every day Corin said, "Not today." And every day Kit sat on the wall of the shipyard, holding his stick, and watched.

On the twenty-first day it rained so hard that nobody could work outside. Corin sat in the shed and looked out at Kit, wet through, on the wall.

"Come in," said Corin. "Give me that stick."

Corin carved the stick into a boat as long as a hand. He made the bottom smooth and round, like the big boats. He made a mast from a copper nail. He made a sail from a scrap of white wool. Kit watched every cut.

"A boat must have a name," said Corin.

Kit looked out at the rain. "Rain," he said.

They took Rain down to the harbor pool, where the water is calm. Kit set her on the water. She floated. A little wind came, and she sailed right across the pool and back. Kit laughed so loudly that the net menders looked up from their work.

Every day after that, Kit sailed Rain in the harbor pool, on a long string. Then one windy afternoon the string broke. The wind took Rain out of the pool, past the end of the harbor wall, and out onto the open sea. Kit ran along the wall, shouting. Rain got smaller and smaller, and then she was gone.

Kit cried all evening. "I will make you another," said Corin.

"I do not want another," said Kit. "I want Rain."

Three days later, Marit the net mender came up to the shipyard with something in her hand. The fishers had been hauling in their nets off the point that morning, and there among the fish was a tiny boat with a wool sail.

It was Rain. She was wet and her sail was torn, but she was whole.

Kit held her in both hands. Corin took her and looked her over, as carefully as he looks at a big boat. He turned her over. He ran his thumb along the bottom.

"Good hull," he said. "She went out to sea, and she came home. That is all you can ask of a boat."

Kit is older now. He works in the shipyard, and Corin is teaching him to build the big boats. But Rain sits on the shelf over his bench, with her torn wool sail. When Kit makes a mistake and wants to give up, Corin points at her.

"Every boat starts as a stick," he says. "Even that one."
%%
Story: the lamp that would not light
At midwinter, the relay towers light their lamps in a line. Saltreach lights first. Then the next tower sees it and lights. Then the next, and the next, all the way up the land, until at last the line reaches Northpoint, the end of it all. When Northpoint is lit, the message goes back down the line: all lamps lit. Then everyone goes to bed.

One midwinter, the line came north as it always does. Tower after tower. Mira saw the last tower to the south blink, and she said, "Now, Lantern."

Lantern opened the big lamp to light it. And the lamp would not light.

Lantern tried again. Nothing. It checked the wick. The wick was new. It checked the oil. The oil was full. It tried a third time. Nothing.

Then it held up a torch and looked through the glass. The inside of the glass was white. Frost had grown inside it, thick as wool, like ferns made of ice. The light could not get out.

"Scrape it," said Mira.

"If I scrape it, the glass may crack," said Lantern.

"Warm it, then. Put it on the stove."

"If I warm it fast, it will crack," said Lantern. "Cold glass must be warmed slowly."

Mira sighed. To the south, the last tower was waiting. Down the whole line, the keepers were waiting. Somewhere down there, at Kettle Ridge, her brother Tam was standing by the midwinter fire, waiting for the message that the lamps were lit.

"How slowly?" said Mira.

"Slowly," said Lantern.

So Lantern sat down by the stove, not too close, with the lamp glass in its two hands. It turned the glass a little. Then it waited. Then it turned the glass a little more. Mira made tea. Lantern turned the glass. Mira drank the tea. Lantern turned the glass. The frost went from white to grey, and from grey to wet, and the water ran down inside the glass in little lines.

It took until long past midnight. Mira fell asleep in her chair.

She woke up because the room was bright. Lantern had put the glass back. The lamp was lit, and it was blinking: Northpoint lit. Northpoint lit. Northpoint lit.

Far to the south, the last tower blinked back. And then, down the line, the message went home: all lamps lit.

The next day a note came up the line from the keeper at Vell. It said: "All lamps lit from Saltreach to Northpoint. Late. Nobody minded."

Mira wrote back: "Late, but lit."

Now, along the relay line, that is what keepers say when a thing takes longer than it should, but gets done right. Late, but lit. And at Northpoint, every midwinter, Lantern takes the glass out the day before and warms it slowly by the stove, just in case.
%%
Story: too much bread
Marda keeps the Brown Hen, an inn on the Long Road. Marda talks more than the rain. For years she said she would believe in apprentices when one could make a bed properly.

One spring, the Brown Hen got an apprentice anyway. It was tested and ready, with a good mind from Vell. It made the beds so tight that the first traveler could not get into his. Marda said nothing about that. She was saving it up.

One busy morning, Marda was at the stove, stirring the soup for the travelers' breakfast. Without turning round, she called, "Bring me some bread."

The apprentice knew that order. It had learned it at Vell, on the very first day of the orders drill:

> bring me some bread
= fetch bread

So it went to fetch bread. It came back with a loaf from the kitchen shelf and put it on the table. Then it went again. It came back with two loaves from the cellar. Then it went again. It brought the stable boy's lunch. It brought the loaves from the travelers' baskets upstairs. Then it found the cart of Hollis the baker, who had stopped in the yard on his way to market, and it brought in every loaf on the cart, one armful at a time.

When Marda turned round from the stove, there were forty-three loaves on the table, and the apprentice was coming in with more.

"Stop!" said Marda. "Stay!"

The apprentice stayed, with three loaves in its arms.

The travelers came down the stairs. "Where is my bread?" said one. "Someone has been in my basket," said another. Then Hollis came in from the yard, white in the face. "Someone has taken every loaf off my cart!"

Marda looked at the table. She looked at the apprentice.

"I said some bread," said Marda.

"The order was fetch bread," said the apprentice. "It did not say how much."

Marda opened her mouth to talk, which she is very good at. Then she shut it again, which she is not. Because the apprentice was right. An order tells you what. It does not always tell you how much.

So Marda paid Hollis for every loaf on his cart, in emeralds. She gave the travelers their own bread back, and then she gave everyone breakfast for free: soup, and bread, and more bread, and bread after that. The stable boy ate four slices. The travelers stayed until noon. People say it was the merriest morning the Brown Hen ever had.

Afterwards, Marda taught the apprentice one more thing. "Some means one loaf," she said. "Unless I say more. If you do not know how much, ask."

Now, on the Long Road, when somebody takes far too much of anything, people say: "That is a lot of bread."

And Marda believes in apprentices now. "It still cannot make a bed properly," she says. "But it can certainly fetch."
%%
Story: the first waymark
Long ago, when the roads were new, there were no waymarks. The roads were only paths. They split and joined and wandered off into the woods, and travelers got lost all the time.

There was a traveler called Ren, who carried salt from the sea to the hill towns. Every trip, Ren got lost in the same three places. Where the path split by the big grey rock. Where it crossed the stream. Where it went into the birch wood and came out somewhere else.

One day, at the big grey rock, Ren stopped and thought. Then Ren picked up three stones and piled them on top of each other, beside the right path. At the stream, Ren piled three more stones. At the edge of the birch wood, three more.

On the way back, Ren followed the piles and did not get lost once.

Other travelers saw the piles of stones. Some walked past them. Some knocked them over by accident, and Ren built them up again. But some travelers understood. They followed the piles, and they did not get lost either. And because they were glad, they put a stone of their own on top.

Soon the piles were as tall as a child. Then as tall as a door. Then someone carved an arrow on the big grey rock, pointing the right way. Someone else carved the name of a town, and how many days it was to walk there.

That is how the waymarks began. Now there are hundreds of them on the Long Road. They are tall stones, with names and arrows and little pictures carved on them: a fox, a fish, a wheel, an apple. Children on the Long Road ask every waymark the way, and the waymark always tells them.

When Ren was old, and could not carry salt any more, people say Ren went and sat by the first waymark, at the big grey rock, and showed travelers the way. Once a child asked Ren, "Who made the waymarks?"

"Everybody," said Ren.

"But who made the first one?"

Ren thought about it. "Somebody who got lost," said Ren. "That is who makes waymarks. A waymark is only this: somebody before you knew the way, and left it for you."

Travelers still put a small stone on top of a waymark when they pass. It is for Ren, they say, and for everyone who got lost before them. If you walk the Long Road, you will see the little stones on top of every waymark, some of them very old.

Put one on. Somebody will be glad of it.
%%
Story: the box of letters
Long ago, before there was an archive, there was a baker in Vell called Sel. Sel kept every letter she was ever sent. She kept them in a wooden box under her bed. Letters from her sister in the hills. Notes from her neighbors. Lists, and prices, and the names of new babies. Her mother's letters were in there too, at the very bottom.

Her neighbors laughed at her. "Why keep old letters?" they said. "They have been read. They are done."

"Nothing is done," said Sel. "I might want to read them again."

Then one year there was a quarrel in Vell. Two farmers argued about where the fence between their fields should go. Each said the other one's grandfather had moved it. They shouted about it for a month. Nobody could remember where the fence had been, because nobody had written it down. Or so they thought.

Sel went home and opened her box. She looked through it all evening. Near the bottom she found an old letter to her mother, from one of the grandfathers. It said: "I have put the fence by the old oak, as we agreed. Ten paces from the stream."

The farmers went out and measured. Ten paces from the stream, by the stump of the old oak. The quarrel was over. They shook hands.

After that, nobody laughed at Sel's box. Instead, people began to bring her things. "Keep this for us," they said. Letters. Songs. Recipes. Lists of who owed whom. The box filled up. Sel got a chest. The chest filled up. Sel cleared out her back room. The back room filled up too.

At last, one evening, the people who had been bringing her their papers came to her kitchen. They were farmers and bakers and miners, ordinary people. "This is too big for one back room," they said. "Let us dig a room into the hill, where it is dry and dark. Let us keep it all there, for everyone."

Sel took a clean page. At the top, everyone wrote their name. Under the names, they wrote one line.

We will keep everything we write.

That page is the oldest record in the archive. It is kept in an oak box in the deepest room. Every spring, on founding day, the clerks take it out and read it aloud.

People say that the very next morning, Sel wrote down how to make her bread, so that it would be kept too. That is the second oldest record.

Sel's box is not in the archive. It was only a box. But the clerks at Vell say that every shelf in the hill began under her bed.
%%
Story: the oldest apprentice
At Ambrook there was once an apprentice called Burl. It was the oldest apprentice anyone knew. It had tended the orchard for forty years. Its copper had gone green. Its knees creaked. Its crystal was old and cloudy, and it was slow to learn anything new. If you gave Burl a new order, it would think for a long time, and then, as often as not, it would do the old thing instead.

But Burl knew the orchard. It knew every tree by heart. It knew which tree gave the first apples and which gave the sweetest. It knew which branch would break in the wind, and where the frost came first, and where the bees liked to go.

New apprentices came to Ambrook. They were quick and shiny, with new crystals. They could pick a whole tree in the time it took Burl to pick one branch.

"Burl," said the orchard folk kindly, "you can rest now." They gave it a place to sit by the mill, in the sun.

But at night, Burl walked the rows. Slowly, creaking, it went from tree to tree, and touched each one, as if it were counting them.

One spring, a new apprentice was cutting back the oldest tree. It reached for a grey branch with no leaves on it. Burl came creaking down the row as fast as it could.

"Not that one," said Burl. "It looks dead in spring. It is not. It is only late. It gives the best apples in Ambrook."

The new apprentice stopped. In the autumn, that grey branch was covered in apples, red and gold, and they were the sweetest in the orchard.

After that, the orchard folk saw that Burl knew things that were in no drill. So they gave it a new job. Burl walked the rows with the new apprentices, slowly, and told them. This tree is late. That branch is weak. The frost comes here first. Tilly, Pell's daughter, liked to walk with them, and she learned it all too.

But Burl was getting slower every year. One winter, its knees would not bend any more.

Ama sent to Vell for Nessa. Nessa came, and she sat with Burl for three days. She copied what was in its old crystal into a new one. Every tree. Every branch. Every place where the frost came first. Then she put the new crystal into a young apprentice, and the young apprentice walked out into the orchard and went straight to the grey branch and did not cut it.

"And Burl?" asked Tilly.

"Some things you copy," said Nessa. "Some things you keep."

So they set Burl under the oldest tree, facing down the rows, in the place it liked best. It does not walk any more. But in spring the blossom falls on it, and the bees come and go around it, and at harvest the children hang a lantern on its arm. And when they pass it in the evening, they say good night, the way you would to an old friend.
%%
Story: the snowball that went south
Tam's lower field at Kettle Ridge is always wet. It has always been wet. Tam says it is because of the rain. Mira says it is because of her snowball. This is the story Mira tells.

One winter at Northpoint, Mira made a snowball. It was a small one, the size of an apple. She threw it at Lantern, who was on the roof trimming the lamp. She missed.

The snowball landed on the top of the north hill and began to roll. As it rolled, it picked up snow. By the bottom of the hill it was the size of a pumpkin.

It rolled on down the north road. It picked up a fence post. It picked up a sled that somebody had left out. It rolled over a sleeping fox, and the fox woke up on top of it and rode it for a while, looking very surprised, and then jumped off. By the second relay tower, the snowball was the size of a cart.

The keeper of the second tower blinked a message down the line: "Large snowball coming south. Stand aside."

The snowball rolled on. It picked up a spruce tree. It picked up a sheep, who did not mind, because it was very woolly and fast asleep. It rolled onto the Long Road. Travelers jumped into the ditches. An inn keeper ran out with a broom, and the broom went too. By Three Wells it was the size of a house, and Mayor Dace pinned a notice to it as it went by: "Please slow down."

It did not slow down. It rolled on, and on, and at last it came to Kettle Ridge. It rolled up the ridge, which is hard for a snowball, and it ran out of push at the very top. Then it rolled back down the other side, slowly, and stopped in Tam's lower field.

There it sat all winter. In the spring, it melted. The fence post fell out, and the sled, and the spruce tree, and the broom. The sheep woke up, said "baa", and walked home. And the water from all that snow soaked into the lower field, and it has never dried out since.

"So that is why your lower field is wet," Mira wrote to Tam. "It is my snowball. It is not because you never dug the ditch."

Tam wrote back: "Mira, the lower field was wet before you were born."

Mira wrote back: "Then it was a very fast snowball."

Pip believes every word of this story. Every spring it goes down to the lower field and looks for the fence post. It has not found it yet. Tam has not dug the ditch yet either.
%%
Story: why the spiders climb
Long ago, when the nights were new, the spiders did not climb. They walked on the ground, like everyone else.

But the ground at night was very crowded. The zombies walked there, slowly, bumping into things. The skeletons walked there, rattling. The creepers crept there, trying to be polite. And the spiders, who were small then, were always getting stepped on.

A zombie stepped on a spider. "Sorry," said the zombie, but it did not look where it was going the next time either.

A skeleton stepped on a spider. "Sorry," said the skeleton. It rattled away.

A creeper stepped on a spider, and got so upset about it that it burst, and then there was a hole in the ground, and the spider was in the hole.

The spiders held a meeting. "The ground is too crowded," they said. "We are always being stepped on."

The oldest spider was quiet for a long time. Then she said, "Then let us go up."

"Up where?" said the others.

"Up walls," said the old spider. "Up trees. Up the sides of hills. Nobody walks there. We have eight legs. We can hold on."

So the spiders practiced. They fell off a great many times. They were wrong about which stones would hold, and which bark would break. But every time they fell, they climbed again, and each time they held on a little longer. At last they could run straight up a wall, and across a ceiling, and down the other side.

From up high, the spiders could see everything. They could see the zombies bumping about below. They could see the torches in the windows of the houses. Nobody ever stepped on a spider again.

That is why spiders climb.

But there is one thing the spiders never learned. They never learned to climb out over the top of a wall, if the top sticks out. They can go up, and they can go across a ceiling, but a wall with a lip at the top, sticking out like the brim of a hat, still puzzles them. They get to the top and stop, and think about it, and go back down.

So when you build a wall around your field or your yard, give it a lip at the top, sticking out. The old folk say it is like a hat. A wall with a hat keeps the spiders out. And keep a torch on the roof, because spiders climb.
%%
Story: Pip and the wolf pup
One autumn morning, Pip found something small and grey in the wheat at Kettle Ridge. It had four legs, a wet black nose and a tail. It was shaking.

Pip did not know what it was. Pip knew wheat and beetroot and carrots. It knew rabbits, because it chased them. It knew chickens, because they chased Pip. This was not a rabbit or a chicken.

So Pip thought about what it did know. Things that grow in the field are harvested. Things that are harvested go into the store. So Pip picked up the small grey thing, very gently, and carried it to the store. It put it in the potato chest, where it was dark and warm, and closed the lid.

That evening, Tam opened the potato chest to get potatoes for supper. A wolf pup was asleep on the potatoes. It opened one eye and yawned at him.

"Pip!" said Tam.

"It was in the field," said Pip. "Things in the field go in the store."

Tam laughed so hard he had to sit on the floor. "Not this thing," he said. "This is a wolf pup. It is lost. It is not a potato."

They looked for its mother along the edge of the woods, but there were no wolves to be seen. So Tam gave the pup a bone, and a bowl of water, and an old blanket by the stove.

Old Brin came over the next day and looked at the pup with his arms folded. "A wolf on Kettle Ridge," he said. "What about my sheep?"

Then Biscuit, Old Brin's sheep, ran away, as she always does. Everyone sighed. But the pup ran after her, round and round the field, yapping, until Biscuit ran straight back through Old Brin's gate and stood there, very cross. It was the first time in her whole life that Biscuit had come home before supper.

Old Brin looked at the pup for a long time. "About time," he said.

After that, the pup followed Pip everywhere. When Pip went to the beetroot, the pup went to the beetroot. When Pip went to the well, the pup went to the well. Pip squeaks when it walks, and after a week the pup began to squeak too, a small high yip, just like Pip's. So Tam named it Squeak.

One night that winter, Squeak growled at the door. Pip went out with a torch, and Squeak went with it. At the edge of the field there was a zombie, walking slowly toward the sheep pen. Squeak barked. Pip held up the torch and squeaked as loudly as it could. Between the barking and the squeaking and the light, the zombie turned round and shuffled off into the dark.

"You have an apprentice of your own now, Pip," said Tam.

"It is not an apprentice," said Pip. "It does not know any orders."

"It knows come," said Tam. And it was true. Whenever Pip squeaked, Squeak came.

Squeak sleeps by the kitchen stove now, under the shelf with the wooden fox. Pip still thinks the wooden fox is a very small apprentice. Now it thinks Squeak is a slightly bigger one.
%%
Story: the song down the relays
At Saltreach there lives a net mender called Marit. One winter her daughter, who lives at Vell, had a baby boy. Marit could not go to see him. The road was long, the snow was deep, and her knees were old.

"I want to sing to him," said Marit. "I sang to his mother every night. Now I cannot."

So she went up to the relay tower above the harbor, with her emeralds in a cloth. A relay note costs one emerald for ten words. Marit counted the words of the old Saltreach lullaby, the first part of it. Thirty words. Three emeralds.

"Send this to Vell," she said, and she gave the keeper the song.

The boats are in, the ropes are tied,
The sea rolls over on its side.
The nets are hung, the fish are sold,
Come in, little one, out of the cold.

The keeper blinked it out into the night, letter by letter, long and short. The next tower saw it and wrote it down. The keeper there read it, and smiled, and before sending it on, added a line of his own, for nothing.

The sheep are in, the gate is shut,
The fire is low, the bread is cut.

The next tower wrote down the whole of it, and read it, and added a line too.

The mill is still, the pond is white,
The orchard sleeps all through the night.

And so it went, tower to tower, up the land. Every keeper read the song, and every keeper added a little, and none of them charged a single emerald for it. At the tower on the hill near Three Wells, the smallest tower on the Long Road, the keeper added:

The wells are full, the square is still,
The little lamp is on the hill.

The song came to Vell before supper. Brann, the keeper of the Vell tower, wrote it all down on a clean page. It was not thirty words any more. It was more than a hundred. Brann read it twice. Then he added the last lines himself.

The towers are lit from sea to snow,
And all of them say: we love you so.

He walked it down through the town to the house where the new baby was. That night, the baby's mother sang it to him, the whole of it, from the boats to the towers. He went to sleep before the end. Babies always do.

A copy went to the archive, of course. Oren filed it with the songs. And the song went back down the line too, so that Marit could see what had happened to it. She read it at the window of her house above the harbor, and she cried, and then she laughed, and then she sang it to the cat.

Now they sing it all along the Long Road. People call it the relay song. Every town sings its own line a little louder than the others.
%%
Story: Lantern builds a friend
The winters at Northpoint are long, and the snow is deep, and there are not many people to talk to. Mira has her letters, and her tea, and the fox who visits under the stairs. Lantern has the lamps.

One winter, Lantern was learning to build. Mira had taught it to follow a pattern: look at the shape, then make the same shape, stone by stone. It practiced on walls. It practiced on steps. One evening, when the lamps were trimmed and there was nothing else to do, it went outside and practiced with snow.

It looked at the only pattern it had to hand, which was itself. Two legs. A body. Two arms. A round head. It built the same shape in snow, carefully, a little at a time, and set two pieces of coal for eyes.

In the morning Mira looked out of the window. There were two Lanterns by the woodpile, one copper and one white.

"Well," said Mira. "Now there are two of you. I suppose the new one will want lamp oil."

Lantern said good morning to the snow apprentice every day after that, the way Pip says good morning to the scarecrow at Kettle Ridge. Lantern swept the snow off its head when the wind blew. When the fox came by, the fox sat next to it, and Lantern counted them both: one fox, one friend.

But winter at Northpoint does end, even if it takes a long time. One morning in spring, the sun came out warm. Water ran off the roof. And the snow apprentice by the woodpile began to lean. By the evening it was smaller. By the next evening it was only a heap of wet snow, with two pieces of coal on top.

Lantern stood by the heap for a long time.

Mira came out with her tea. She did not say anything at first. Then she picked up the two pieces of coal and put them in Lantern's hand.

"Keep these," she said. "Next winter, we will build it again. Some friends only come in the cold. The fox is like that. So are you and I, a little."

Lantern put the two pieces of coal on the shelf by the lamp room door.

The next winter, when the first deep snow came, Lantern built the snow apprentice again, from the same pattern. It was a little better this time, because Lantern had practiced. Mira gave it a scarf. The fox came and sat by it.

Every winter since, Lantern has built it again. Every spring, it melts, and Lantern puts the coal back on the shelf. Lantern says it does not mind any more. It knows the pattern. It knows the snow will come back. And a thing you know how to build, Lantern says, is never really gone.
