Note: for Tam, on the mended roof
Left in the hen house for Tam, who was supposed to come back for the rest of the slates and did not. Summer. Written by Bel, in pencil, on the back of a feed bill.

Tam,

You said you would be back by noon. It is now the afternoon. The roof has a hole in the corner where the wind comes in. I know because I am sitting under it.

I have counted the slates. There are forty-one. You said you needed forty. So you have one left over, which means you can put one on the top of the hen house as a hat.

The hens are very cross about the hole. Mrs Pudding has taken the best spot under the hole and will not move.

Please come back before the next rain. If you do not come back, I will mend it myself, with the ladder, which is too tall for me, and then you will have to come and get me down.

Bel
%%
Market Day Notes
At Birch End, the hamlet below Vell

On the gate, for Olan:
The cart leaves for Three Wells at first light.
Bring the empty apple baskets.
Do not bring the cracked one. It loses apples at every bump.

On the table, for the miller:
The flour is weighed and tied.
Two sacks for the inn, one for the school house.
The small sack is for Nessa. She asked for it, and I wrote her name.

On the door of the bake shed:
Market bread is ready.
Keep one loaf under the cloth for Seli.
She is helping at the stall and will forget to eat.

On the waymark:
Three Wells is downhill.
Vell is behind you now.
The road is dry, but the bridge boards are loose.
Tell the road keeper before someone carries a basket into the stream.

The market bell rang at noon. We sold apples, eggs, wool and flour.
A fox watched from the hedge. It got no eggs.
%%
Note: left on the fox den
Left on a flat stone at the foot of the mill race, where the fox has its den under the willow roots. Summer. Written by Bel and two friends, Nim and Hal, who have decided that the fox is a neighbor and should be treated as one.

Dear Fox,

We do not want your hens. We have hens of our own. They are at the school, and they are very cross with us for not letting them out.

We would like to know how you got past the boards. We will not tell anybody. We will only say it was very clever.

We have left a bowl of milk by the willow. Please drink it before the cat does. The cat is not allowed out at night, but it climbs the wall when nobody is looking, which is why we are worried about it.

If you want to come to the school yard, the gate is open at the noon bell. Please use the side gate, not the front one. The front one squeaks, and Sorrel will shout.

From Bel, Nim and Hal
%%
Letter: Sorrel to the archive at Vell
To the clerks at Vell, from Sorrel, mapmaker at Three Wells.

I send you a map of the roads round the three wells, drawn this winter. The crossroads are marked, and the inn of twelve beds, and the school house by the east well. The wall is drawn as it is, cobblestone, cobblestone, deep stone, the top row out one block against spiders. If the map is wrong anywhere, write and tell me and I will draw it again.

I also send you a thing I have been thinking about, because you keep everything we write and someone should keep this.

This winter the relay house here has a mind that does sums for the market. The fish seller brings it a bill with four rows of numbers. The mind does not call out the answer. It writes the steps down, one under the other, like a child at a slate. It adds this column, carries that, checks the whole thing twice, and then it says the answer. If you ask it why, it shows you the steps. My neighbor's girl found a wrong step in it once, in the carrying, and the mind went back and mended it and said the right number. The girl has not stopped talking about it since.

The tutor who tends it says this is the new way. A mind that writes its steps before it answers can solve sums and puzzles that no mind could before, because it can look at its own working and catch itself. She says it is like a carpenter who measures twice. I say it is like me drawing a map: first the roads, then the towns, then the small stones, and then I walk it to see if my feet agree with my pen.

What I cannot tell you is how it checks. The tutor says the mind has learned to read its own steps and judge them, the way it learned to read our letters. But why a step looks wrong to a mind, and right to another, nobody has written down. I have asked. The tutor shrugged. The mind wrote a page of steps about it and then said it did not know.

There is a letter in my drawer with no name on it. It came in Blossom and I have never found who sent it. It asks about a road that is not on any of my maps, going north from the ridge. I have looked. There is no such road. I keep the letter anyway. Perhaps the archive should have it. Tell me and I will send it on.

The snow is deep on the ridge road. The waymarks are buried to their figures. I have dug out the one at the crossroads so travelers can see the arrow to the inn. The little stones on top are frozen together. I left them.

Keep well. Keep warm. Keep everything we write.

Sorrel
mapmaker, Three Wells
%%
Note on the school house door
Children, the lesson for this week.
A big mind at the relay house does not answer at once. It writes out its steps first, one line for each, and then it checks them. If a step is wrong, it goes back and mends it. That is why it can do sums that used to be too long for any mind.
Your task: write the steps for a sum of your own. Then swap with a friend and check each other. Find one wrong step if you can.
Bring kindling. The stove is hungry.
- the schoolteacher
%%
Note on the shop door, Three Wells
Fallon, gone to the east well for wax. Back by midday.
Tallow is in the cool room. Do not open the shutters, the flies are bad.
If the school asks for lamp oil, give them the small jug and write it on the slate.
The new wicks are by the window, do not use them yet, they are not dry.
Leave the money in the tin, not on the bench.
%%
Letter: Rill to her sister
Dear Fen,

I am writing this on the quay, sitting on the bollard, with the nets drying beside me. The summer is a good one. The wind comes off the sea in the morning and it smells of salt and fish and tar, and the boats go out at first light and come back full. The fish market's price board says prices are low, which is bad for the fishermen and good for everyone else. I bought a big fish for two emeralds and we ate it for two days.

The new copper vein has made the town busy. There are carts on the road every day now, and men in from the hills with dust on their boots, and the shed by the slip is full of copper. Corin has made rings for the masts and a new bell for the fish market, and he rings it whenever a boat comes in, which is a lot, and the old man who mends nets says it will drive him to the sea. The bell is good. It is the first thing we have had in this town that is not fish.

The well in the yard ran dry in Blossom and we have been using the harbor tap, which is a longer walk but the water is better, so it is not all bad. The innkeeper has put a rope across the well so nobody falls in, and a boy from the quay fell in anyway and had to be pulled out by his feet, and he was not hurt, and now he is famous.

Oak the carter came through with a load of apples from Ambrook and a load of stories. He says the relay tower at Three Wells blinks all night and a girl there watches it and thinks it is talking to her. It probably is. I do not understand the relays but I like to think they are talking.

I hope your bees are well. Tell the children the sea is still here.

Your sister,
Rill
%%
Notes on the lamp in the square
Written by Lise, weaver, who was asked by the council to say what she knew about the lamp at the corner of the square, which the children call the bell lamp, because it sits next to the post where the bell hangs. It is a lamp on a post, with a glass front and a copper hood. It is lit every night at dusk by the boy from the bakery. It has been lit every night as long as anyone remembers.

I have looked at it closely. The glass is clean, most nights. The wick is trimmed, and the oil is topped up, and the copper hood has a dent on the north side where somebody once knocked it with a basket. The boy from the bakery says he has never put his hand on the hood, because it is warm, and he does not like to think why.

This winter the lamp has been flickering. Not out. Only a flicker, as if the flame is thinking about going and then decides against it. The boy says this happens when the wind comes round to the north. I have watched it on four nights. He is right. Every time the wind moved to the north, the flame moved too, and came back.

Some of the people in the square say the lamp is a sign of something. The mayor says the lamp is only a lamp. The baker says it is a good lamp, and that the flicker is only the glass, which is old. The children say it is watching the square, and that it winks at them when they are naughty.

I think it is only a lamp. I think it has been lit by the same boy's grandfather, and by his grandmother before that, and that it will be lit by the boy's children. I think the flicker is the wind, and the wind will change. I wrote this down so the council will know that I looked.
%%
Notes on the fish market board
Left for Oak: two crates of early apples under the counter. Take them before the gulls do.
Oak: the cider press is fixed. The pin was loose. Do not thank me, thank the pin.
Oak: a jar of honey is on your bench. From my hives, not the market ones. The good kind.
Corin: the long pier needs a new plank at the end. Mind the gap until I do it.
%%
Notes from the ferry table
Left at the Halfway Inn for Lorn.

On the door:
The roof boards are sound now. I checked them from the loft after the rain. The patch is oak, not birch, because the birch boards were too thin. The room smells of wet wool, but that is from the coats.

On the table:
Your letter from Vell is here. The packet had opened at one corner. The letter was still inside. I tied it shut with clean string and set it under the tally book.

On the gate:
A child dropped a red mitten by the ferry post. It is drying near the hearth. Ask the child its name before giving it away. There are three children here, and none of them will admit to losing it.

On the waymark:
The road is muddy past the bend. The ferry is running, but the path down is slick. Walk slowly. A fast traveler is still a wet traveler.

From Joss, road keeper
%%
Notes copied at the Halfway Inn
For Lorn, ferry keeper, from the old inn book.

On the door:
A Vell clerk came in Longday and asked if I knew Orla's letter test. I said I knew the story, though I was not there. He said it was first told in the tutor house, about the ninetieth year of the archive. I wrote that down before I forgot it.

On the table:
Orla wanted a hidden mind and a person to answer the same questions by letter. The readers would see the answers, but not know who wrote each one. If they could not tell, the test would show that the mind could answer in a way people judged like a person's answer. It would not settle every question about thought.

On the gate:
The clerk said there was no need to claim that the crystal felt, or knew why it answered. The test was about the answers and the readers. Some folk thought that was enough. Others said a close match was not the same as thinking. They still argue when the road is quiet.

On the waymark:
A letter from the tutor house was meant for Lorn. It was not on the ferry bench, in the inn book, or under the loose roof board. If it turns up, keep it dry and bring it to the next crossing.

From Halla, copied in the 204th year of the archive
%%
Notes on the boat house door
Left by Corin, shipwright, at a hamlet near Saltreach. Autumn, the week of the storm.

On the door: Storm coming. Boats are in. Do not go out.
On the slip: Rope is under the bench. Check the knots.
On the table: Soup is on the stove. Eat before it turns.
On the gate, in chalk: Back at dusk. C.
%%
Notes on the inn door, summer
Left on the door of the Brown Hen, where everyone looks before they go in.

Marda: the flour came, all twelve sacks. The cook says the sacks are fine and the flour is grey. Hesk.

Whoever took the blue cup: it belongs to the stable, and the stable is sulking.

The cart in the yard is not for sleeping under. The horse is not for sleeping in. Thank you. Marda.
%%
Notes on the waymark by Fallon's gate
This stone is a waymark, not a seat. Someone has been sitting on it.
The sign points to the Brown Hen. The arrow is right. Follow it.
Left at the third lamp is the short way to the square. The long way is safer in the dark.
Torches on the post are mine. I light them. Do not take them home.
If you found a glove here, it is Bel's, please leave it on the gate.
%%
Notes: the mind by the well
Notes left in the well house and on the bait box, by Oak. The well house is the only dry place in the hamlet at night. Please read this before you use the bucket.

The well
Someone has been leaving their boots by the well. They are very wet and very large. The bucket has been moved. Please move it back where it was.

The new apprentice stands by the well at dusk. It has been told to stay, so it stays. Do not walk round it in the dark. It is not in your way, but it cannot see you move around it, so it will not move either.

I said good evening to it yesterday. It did not answer. Mave says that is the right thing for an apprentice to do. I am glad of that. I would still like it to answer one day, with one of the eight words. "Stay" would do.

Pip from Kettle Ridge says there is no need to talk to it at all. Pip talks to everything, so take Pip's advice with a fish.

The well is deep, and cold, and the water tastes of stone. Please do not drop anything in it. Please do not drop your apprentice in it either.

The bait box
Gull bait goes in the box, not on the rail.
Shut the lid. Shut it twice.
Do not feed the gulls. We know you do. Ferris saw you.
Ferris, you are not a gull.
The gulls have learned to open the box. They are cleverer than the cat.
The cat is cleverer than the gulls. The cat sleeps on the box.
So the box is watched by a cat, and the cat is watched by a gull. Nobody is watching the bait.
Put a stone on the lid. A large one. Not the blue weight, which is for the nets.
Mave says the apprentice can carry the stone. It can. It will carry anything it is told to. Tell it the lid is the thing to lift, then put the stone on.
Please remember that the apprentice does not know what gulls are for. It knows only the orders. Be clear with it.

Thank you. The bait is still here, and so is the cat.
%%
Note: on the wall of the lean-to
Pinned to the lean-to wall at the farm outside Northpoint, in the autumn, by Tam. The pig has been let out. The note is addressed to the pig, which cannot read, and to the people who will have to find it again.

To the pig,

You are a very big pig.

You were put in the pen by the well. The pen is a good pen. It has straw and water and a fence that is only a little bit broken.

You went through the fence on the second day. You went through it again on the fourth day. On thefifth day you walked all the way to the north field and ate the carrots in the row Pip had planted for its first harvest. Pip is very upset. Pip has written a list of your crimes, which is on the other side.

Please stay in the pen. The pumpkins are for the fair, and the fair is in a week.

With love and great sternness,
Tam

P.S. Mira says you are a good pig. She says you are the only pig she has ever met who can open a gate with its nose. She says it is a talent. She says it is not to be encouraged.
%%
Notes at the Halfway Inn
For Lorn, who keeps the ferry past the willow bend.

On the door:
The room with the low window is ready. The roof was mended yesterday, and no rain came through last night. I put a bowl under the old leak anyway. It is a good bowl, not a roof bowl.

On the table:
Your cup is beside the bread. The tea is cool. I did not drink it. I only moved it away from the window.

On the gate:
A cart is waiting with two sacks of wheat. The driver says the ferry rope is too wet to pull. He also says his boots are wet. Both things are true.

On the waymark:
Tell the next traveler that the Brown Hen has a bed. Tell them the Halfway Inn has stew. If they ask which is closer, ask where they are standing.

From Halla, innkeeper
%%
Notes left on the kitchen table
Dell,
The grey cat got into the milk again. I put the jug on the high shelf.
Your boots are by the stove. They were full of rain.
The relay man came up from Vell and looked at our tower. He says the lamp is good. He says they will build a relay house at its foot before winter, and put a big mind in it. He says it will be a crystal the size of a loaf, on a stand, and that it will answer apprentices through the relays. He says we will not have to send a boy running to Vell with every question, because the mind will answer instead. I asked him how a loaf of crystal answers anything. He said: it was drilled on what people wrote, and it answers that way. I asked who keeps it cool. He said: quickeners, with water from our well, and in winter with ice and snow. He says it must be kept cool day and night, or it will not work right. So we will be carrying water up that hill for a long time. I hope he is right and I hope it is worth the water.
Supper is in the pot. Do not let the dog have it.
Merra
%%
Notes on the gate of the Elder Farm
Winter. Left on the gate post at the Elder Farm outside Three Wells, where Dace the mayor was staying to see the farm for himself. Several notes, in several hands.

On the gate, in chalk: Shut me. The hens are loose.
Under it, in charcoal: Dace, I did shut you. The hens opened you.
Under that: A zombie stood at this gate at dusk. I lit the torch and it went away. Please keep the torch lit. Dace.
Under that, in a child's hand: I saw it. It had no hat.
On the post: Eggs in the basket by the water barrel. Take six. Leave one emerald. Do not take seven.
Under it: I took seven. I left two. Dace.
%%
Notes about the barn
Left on the barn door at Hollis farm, Little Weir, in the spring. First note by Dorrin Hollis. Others by whoever came by.

Spiders in the barn again. Big ones. Brown ones. They sit in the corner by the seed bins and look at me. I do not like it. If anyone knows what to do, write below. Dorrin.

Below: Sweep the webs with a broom on a long pole. They come back. Do it every week and they give up. Vane.

Below: They do not give up. I have done it every week since Thaw. Dorrin.

Below: Then leave the lantern burning in the corner. Spiders like the dark. They do not like to be seen. Ask the sheep. Ela from the mill.

Below: The sheep are not helping. The sheep sit next to the spiders and look at them too. Dorrin.

Below: Cats. Take my cat. She is called Sock and she is not afraid of anything. She once chased a fox out of the hen house. Vane.

Below: Sock has been here three days. Sock is sitting on the roof and will not come in. The spiders are still here. Dorrin.

Below: Then they are your spiders now. Name them. People are kinder to things with names. Ela.

Below: I have named the biggest one Dorrin. It looks like me. It has the same worried face.
%%
Note on Sorrel's table
Sorrel, three things.
One: the baker's boy left a pie. It is under the cloth.
Two: a man from Copperhold came asking for the road map to the Deep Works. I said you would be back in two days.
Three: the relay house mind did my sums for the market stall. It wrote every step in the margin, like a schoolteacher. I checked them. It was right.
Do not stay up all night with the maps.
- Dace
%%
Letter: Sella to Lenn
Lenn,

You asked me to gather pages for your reading drills and to tell you how I chose them. This is how.

First I took every page in the archive that mentions a kiln. There are more than you would think. A glassblower's ledger is dry, but a letter from a child about a red window is not, and a mind needs both. So I kept both. A drill made only of ledgers makes a mind that only reads ledgers.

Then I took out the copies. You would be surprised how many pages are copies of copies. A clerk at Vell copies a page, and a clerk at Three Wells copies the copy, and the second copy has a word missing and a number changed. A mind drilled on a spoiled page learns the mistake. Out it goes.

I took out the pages with torn edges, where a word is lost. I took out the pages that are only a list of prices, because a hundred pages of prices teach a mind prices and nothing else. I kept a few, mind. Prices are part of a life.

I kept the pages from the north and the pages from the marsh, and the pages from the mines, so the mind hears more than one way of speaking. I kept the letters from children. A child writes short and plain, and a plain page is a good page.

Then I put aside two hundred pages I liked and did not give you any of them. Those are for the test. My sister thinks I am unfair. I say a drill is only as good as its pages, and a test is only as good as the pages the mind has never seen.

The test box is in the strong room. The seal is wax and the mark is the archive's. Do not break it for a small thing.

Oren says the reading mind at Vell grows better every month. He says it writes letters now. I would like to see one before the frost.

Your cousin,
Sella
%%
Notes for the new apprentice at Three
Left on the school bench for the apprentice who starts this autumn, in the hand of Lenn the glassblower, who is not a tutor but has made enough windows for the tutors to know a thing or two.

1. The tutor will show you the same drill again and again. This is not because the tutor is dull. It is because that is how a mind learns. You will be bored. Be bored quietly.

2. The drills come from pages. The pages are sorted before you ever see them. The clerks take out the copies and the spoiled pages. If you find a page with a word missing, do not drill on it. Give it to the tutor. A spoiled page teaches a wrong answer, and a wrong answer is harder to unlearn than a right one is to learn.

3. There is a box of pages nobody drills on. This is the test box. You will be tested on those pages and no others, because a mind that has seen the answer is not a mind that knows the work. Do not open the box. Do not peek. I peeked once and the tutor knew, and I have not forgotten it.

4. When a mind is wrong, you change it a little. Not a lot. A little, again and again. This is slow. Everything worth doing is slow. A window is not made in a day either.

5. Never send an untested mind to the fields. Nessa wrote that on the first page of the drill book and the second page too.

6. There is a melon by the south wall of the glasshouse. It is not part of the drills. It is just a melon, and it is too big, and I am proud of it.

7. The new road to Three Wells is open. Walk it on the cobblestone. The packed earth is for carts.

Lenn
%%
Letter: Oak to his nephew
Dear Fen,

The honey you asked for is on the cart with the barrels. Do not open the barrels. The honey is in a jar, wrapped in cloth, so it will not roll.

A long winter is good for cider and bad for the bees. I lost two hives in the snow last year. The ones on the hill under the pines came through fine. This year I will move them all up there before Frost and see.

You asked how the apples did. They did well. The oldest tree gave fruit again, the one by the wall. I do not know how old it is. Older than me. Older than the wall.

Saltreach is loud this summer. More boats, more nets, more people at the fish market. The price board is a busy board. Corin has three boats on the slip at once and says he is not tired. He is tired.

Tell your mother the jar of honey is for her, not for you. She will know what to do with it.

If you come south in Apple, bring the wool. I will trade you cider and a night at the inn, and I will tell you the story about the gull and the mayor again, and you will laugh at the wrong part.

Your uncle,
Oak

P.S. The loose plank on the bridge is fixed. I fixed it myself. Do not tell anyone I am good at it or they will ask me to do more.
%%
The summer book of the Brown Hen
Kept by Marda, innkeeper, through the summer, in the book by the back door. Hesk writes in it when he has something to say, which is most days.

Week one. The stable has been swept. The horses have been counted, and the count is four, which is right. The flour came, and the cook has put it in the cold room, where it will be grey for a week and then white again.

Week two. A letter came by relay from the big mind at the harbor house, answering a carter's sum: the price of the Saltreach trip, with tolls, feed and a new axle. The letter gave the steps first, one under the other, in a clear column. Then it gave the check, which went back up the column and looked at each line. Then the answer: fourteen emeralds. The carter checked the steps himself, with his thumb on each line. He found the answer right, and was annoyed about it, and paid.

Week three. The carrier mind came back from the mine. It has counted the stair thirty times, and checked it every time, and it still gets the same number. Hesk says that is the best thing a mind can do on a stair. Hesk does not say many good things, so the innkeeper wrote it down.

Week four. The drill on steps went badly for the third time. The mind checked the first line and the last, and not the middle. The middle had the carry missing. The tutor says the middle is the hardest part of any sum, because nobody wants to go back into it.

Week five. The helper that misunderstood the order has been given a bucket it can fetch. It fetched the bucket from the well. It did not try to fetch the well. The yard is dry for the first time in a month.

Week six. A carter asked whether the big minds at the harbor and at Northpoint ever disagree. The innkeeper said she did not know, and the carter said that was no answer. Hesk said it was the only honest answer on the road. Nobody here can say how the big minds check each other. The tutors say the steps are written out so anyone can check them, and that is all anybody has agreed.

Week seven. The stable boy has learned to read the columns, and has begun to check the sums on the bills at the bar. He found one error, which was the innkeeper's. She has paid him a honey cake for it, and told him to keep the error to himself, which he has not.

Week eight. The hearth has not gone out. The notes on the door have been copied into this book, and the book is kept by the back door, where the wind does not come in. Anyone may read it. Anyone who wants to add a step may do so, in a clear hand, with the line checked before the ink is dry.
%%
Notes left at the Elder Farm
Winter, outside Three Wells. A bundle of notes from the kitchen of the Elder Farm, kept by Dace in a tin. They are in order, as nearly as he could put them. Each was left for someone else, and most were answered.

On the door of the henhouse:
There is a zombie at the gate. It is not our fault. It does not need feeding. Dace.

Under it, in charcoal:
It does not need feeding. It has been eating the beetroot.

Under that:
We have no beetroot left.

Under that:
Then it is a very hungry zombie.

On the stone shelf in the cold cellar, with a bit of wool tied to it:
The cheese is in the left basket. Do not touch the right basket. The right basket is a bet.

On the right basket:
This basket holds a pie. The bet was this: Hesper says the pie will be gone by morning. Dace says it will be there. The loser does the washing for a week.

Under it, in the morning:
The pie is gone. A fox came in the night. He has done the washing before, but never well.

Under it:
Dace owes the washing. Dace has asked the apprentice to do it. The apprentice cannot understand the order. It has put the pots in the barn and the cat in the stew. Dace is washing.

On the mantel:
A word about words. Dace has asked me to say that a word is a place in a mind. If you write "pie," a mind goes to the place for pie. It looks for the things that are near: "oven," "apple," "crust." If you write "washing," it goes to another place: "water," "soap," "pots." The two places are far apart. That is why a mind that has been told to do the washing does not think of the pie. I find this very comforting.

On the gate, at the end of the week:
Dace. The zombie has gone. The torch is out. The snow is deep. We are all well. Hesper.

Under it, in Dace's hand:
A good winter.
%%
Notes on the snow and the children
Lise, weaver, at Three Wells, in the last week of Frost. The snow has been deep for a month, and the children have been out in it every afternoon, and I have been watching them from the window of the weaving shed, because my loom is by the glass and I cannot leave it. These are the things I have seen.

They build walls. Thick ones, with a gap at the top for a lookout. Pim built one across the whole of the school yard, and the teacher came out and said it was a fine wall and that it had to come down before the bell. Pim said it was not a wall, it was a fort. The teacher asked what it was for. Pim said it was for the zombies, and then the teacher said zombies do not come in the day, and Pim said that was exactly why it was a good place to keep them out of.

They make snow animals. A fox, very good. A pig, with two ears that look like a pair of bread rolls. A goat with a bell made of a broken spoon. Bel made a cat. It is the most like a cat I have ever seen in snow, and it has been sitting on the wall of the school for a week with its tail round its feet, and nobody has been able to knock it down.

They slide down the mill bank on sledges made from the old barrel staves. The miller says he has told them three times to stop, and the children say they have stopped, and then they start again. The miller's boy is the worst. He goes down head first, and comes up laughing, and then goes down again.

They watch the lamp at the corner at dusk, when the boy from the bakery lights it. They do not talk. They stand very still in the snow, with their breath going up in clouds, and they wait for the flame to catch. When it does, they cheer, very quietly, the way you cheer at a wedding, and then they run home for supper.

Nobody has asked me, but I think the children are the best thing about the winter. They do not know how cold it is. They do not know how long the frost has been. They only know that the snow is there, and that it is good to walk in, and that there is a lamp at the corner that they can wait for.
%%
Sign on the new bridge, Kettle Ridge
The new bridge over the ditch is built by a crew of three. Keep the middle of it clear for the carts.

Pip lays the stone. Bolt carries it up from the cart. Sprig mixes the mortar in the trough and keeps the trough full of water.

The crew works in order. Lay the first course. Let it set. Lay the next. The mortar must feel damp, never wet and never dry. Sprig knows the feel. Ask Sprig.

When Bolt was not sure where to stand, Pip showed it the place, and Bolt stood there. A crew does not need many words. It needs a card, and each of the three knows its place on it.

If the crew gets stuck, it sends a question up to the relay house at the foot of the ridge tower. The big mind there answers by letter, the next day. Last week it wrote that the mortar was too thick. Sprig thinned it. Everyone agreed the mind was right, though Sprig says it was right all along and nobody asked.

Do not sit on the rail. Do not feed the sheep on the bridge. Do not throw sticks at Pip, who does not like sticks.

Tam, who holds the pen and the ladder
%%
Notes on the barn door
Winter, outside Three Wells. Pinned and chalked on the barn door of the Elder Farm, over a week of snow. Dace wrote the first and the last. In between are the notes of the folk who live there, which Dace kept because he liked them.

First note, Dace:
I have been asked to write down how the tutors explain a word, for the school at Three Wells, and I am writing it here because the barn is quiet. Please read it as you pass.

A tutor told me that a mind has a place for every word. A great, wide place, with many rooms. When the mind reads the word "snow," it goes to the place called snow. Near that place is "white," "cold," "winter," "frost." A little further off is "ice." Further still is "wind." Far across the room, by the other wall, is "sun" and "summer" and "wheat."

The mind has no eyes. It has never seen snow. But it has seen the word "snow" a thousand times next to the word "cold," and so it puts the two near each other. That is all. It has no other way to know.

Second note, in a girl's hand:
Dace. Where does "pie" sit?

Third note, Dace:
Next to "apple." And "crust." And "warm." Not near "snow." Pie in snow is a sad pie.

Fourth note, in a boy's hand:
Where does "zombie" sit?

Fifth note, Dace:
Near "night." And "torch." And "gate." The tutor says a mind learns that zombies come with the night, because that is how the people wrote. A mind that has never seen a zombie knows to keep the torch lit.

Sixth note, Hesper:
Dace, a zombie was at the gate again. I lit the torch. It is gone.

Seventh note, Dace:
Thank you. I will tell the mind.
%%
Notes on the broken wheel
Written by Lise, weaver, for the miller and the mayor and anyone who asks why the flour has been so thin this winter. The wheel at the Three Wells mill broke on the night of the big frost, when the water in the race was iced to the top and the wheel was turning anyway. Nobody was hurt. The wheel was not so lucky.

The mill was shut for eleven days. The miller's boy sat on the bank and watched the ice. The miller paced round the square and looked at his hands. The mayor came to see, and said that a town without a mill is a town without bread, and that the bakers would have to sell cake instead, which the children liked.

On the twelfth day the carpenter came up from the lower road with his tools in a sack and a new axle on his back. He had cut the axle from the oak by the school, which the mayor had not known, and which the mayor was cross about. But it was a good axle. It was thick and straight, and when the carpenter fitted it, the wheel turned for a whole morning without a squeak.

The paddles were the trouble. Three had cracked at the root. The carpenter cut new ones from the spare ash, and he and the miller's boy set them by hand, one at a time, with a level and a bucket of pitch. It took four days.

On the sixteenth day the wheel turned again. The race had thawed, and the water came through under the sluice in a long brown rush. The wheel went round once, slowly. Then it went round again, faster. The whole mill shook like a dog that has been asked to sit, and the miller's boy shouted, and the children on the bank cheered, and the bakers came out of their doors to listen.

Flour is back in the square. The price has come down a little. The bakers say it is still too dear, and the carpenter says the axle was worth every coin. The miller says nothing, but he has put a new tally board on the wall by the door, with the day of the frost marked on it, in red.
%%
Note on the bench by the slip
Oak leaves this for whoever finds it,

The tide took my good hat. If you see a brown hat with a wide brim floating past the harbor wall, it is mine. Bring it to the cider shed and I will give you a bottle.

The apples came in early this year. Too early, I thought, but the bees knew better than me. The hives on the hill above the town were loud all through Swarm, and the honey came dark and thick. I have put a jar aside for the keeper of the relay tower, and one for the school, and one for me.

Corin is building a boat again. He says it will be a small one. He always says that. Then the slip is full of ribs and the wood store is empty and everyone in Saltreach is carrying planks.

The nets are mending well. The fish are running. The price board says what it says.

If the weather holds I will press the last of the apples on the sixth of Reaping. Come and watch. Bring a cup.

Oak
%%
Note: for the Halfway fair
A list left on the prize table at the Northpoint autumn fair, for the judges and the children who come to look. Written in a careful hand by Mira, who was asked to keep the table tidy.

Pie: first prize, a bowl of honey. The pie must have apples in it, and the apples must be from Ambrook, and the judges must be able to tell.
Pumpkin: first prize, a copper and a ribbon. The pumpkin must be bigger than the child carrying it. Two children have tried to carry the same pumpkin this week. They both said it was theirs.
Carrots: first prize, a gold leaf on the top. Not real gold. The gold is only painted. Do not tell the children.
Singing: first prize, the cup from the north well, which is cracked but holds water. The singers must sing the stone song, or the judges will walk out.
Horse race: first prize, a sack of oats, and a day off for the horse. The horse does not enter the race. The horse eats the prize.
Fishing pool: no prize. The fish are returned to the pool. Some of them were there before the fair. Some of them are the same fish.
Please do not put the cat on the table. It has been asked. It did not agree. It is on the table now.

Mira says the fair is for everyone, and that the table is the only thing she has to keep in order. Please help her keep it.
%%
Notes on the waymark, and the road home
Winter. Left at the waymark at the crossing near the Elder Farm, on the road from Three Wells, over a month of cold weather. Dace wrote the first and the last. The rest are from travelers, and from a child who passed every day on her way to school and could not leave it alone.

Under the pillar, on a flat stone, Dace's note:
To anyone passing the Elder Farm. The bet is on. Hesper says the thaw will come before the second week of Thaw. I say after. The loser pays for a pie, a cider and the washing. Leave your guess on the stone.

Beneath, in six hands:
Before.
After.
Before.
Before. I am sure of it.
I say never.
I say neither, but I like the pie.

A traveler, on the pillar itself, in chalk:
The road to the farm is deep in snow, but a torch is lit at the gate. A zombie stood by it, and went away when I came near. It did not seem to mind the torch. It seemed to mind me.

The child, on a leaf from her copybook:
Dace. I have been reading about how a mind knows words. My teacher says a mind has a place for each word. The word "zombie" is near "night" and "gate." The word "gate" is near "farm." If I write "the zombie at the farm gate," the mind knows exactly what I mean, without ever having been there. I think that is clever. I think the mind is clever. I do not think it is afraid of zombies.

Dace's reply, on the same leaf:
I am afraid of zombies. I am also afraid of the baker's pie. I think a mind might be braver than I am.

The child:
You are brave. You stayed.

Dace, last note:
The thaw came on the eleventh of Thaw. Hesper has lost the bet. She will pay for the pie, the cider and the washing. She has asked if she may pay in eggs. I have said yes.
%%
Notes on the door, Lise's house
For Pim, who is to stop tramping snow through the kitchen, and for Bel, who is to stop writing on the door with a wet finger. Left on the inside of the front door, Three Wells, the first week of Frost. Lise, weaver.

Pim: the good shoes go on the rack, not under the stove. The stove has eaten one already.
Bel: the wool on the loom is for the blanket, not for your cat. The cat has been told, and has not listened.
Both: the bread is on the shelf, and the shelf is not a bed. Take the bread and leave the shelf alone.
Pim again: the snow on the step is not a snowman. It is the step. Please use the broom.
Bel again: the frost on the window is not a drawing. It is frost. You may breathe on it, but only once.
Mother is at the mill with the blankets. Back by the second bell. Be good, or be quiet. Either will do.
%%
Letter: Fallon to the tutor house
To the tutors at Vell, from Fallon, candle maker at Three Wells.

I am no tutor. I make candles, and I sell them, and I keep a small shop at the edge of the town. But I have a child, Bel, who asks questions all day, and I have a mind that reads the shop orders now. So I have a question.

The big mind at our relay house reads our orders. Before, it read one letter at a time. Bel showed me how. It went along the line like a finger on a page, and it looked back over the last sixty letters to guess the next one. That is what Bel says. It was slow, and it made mistakes on long words, the way I do on the market board.

Now the mind reads by pieces. Bel calls them pieces of words. It has a list of common pieces, made by the clerks, and it cuts each word into them. So "candle" is one piece, and "candlemaker" is two, and "unlit" is two more. The mind does not read letter by letter anymore. It reads piece by piece.

This is the part I want explained. The window is still about sixty letters wide, Bel says. But a piece is worth several letters. So the same window now holds far more writing, and the mind can look back further, over whole orders and not just one line. It knows my shop's words now. It knows "wax" and "wick" and "tally".

Here is what went badly. The pieces are the clerks' pieces, and the clerks did not cut candles. So "wick" and "wicks" were two pieces. The mind read them as two different things. I wrote "wicks, small jug, school" and it sent me a note about a creek. A creek. I do not have a creek. I have a shop.

The tutors came and cut the pieces again, with my words in them. Now it is better than before. But I think about the words the clerks never thought to cut. Every town has its own words. Who cuts those?

Bel says the mind learns them itself now, a little. I would like to know if that is true.

Fallon
%%
Notes in the school shed
Left by Corin, shipwright, in a shed at a hamlet near Saltreach that served as a school for the autumn. A lesson had gone badly, and the notes were left for the teacher who would come after.

On the slate by the door: The lesson on Orla's question did not go well. The children thought it was a riddle and tried to guess the answer. There is no answer. Please say so.

On the teacher's table: There are three chairs missing. They are in the boat shed. I will bring them back.

On the shelf: Chalk. Do not let the small ones eat it again.

On the window: Storm shutters are in the loft. If the wind turns north, close them.

On the inside of the door, in a different hand: Sorry about the chairs. The children wanted to build a boat to test the wind. It was not a good boat. We learned something. Mab.
%%
Notes on the Hesk door
Left on Hesk's door in the hamlet of Coalfoot, below Copperhold. Summer.

Hesk: gone to the shaft. Back at dark. Do not feed the dog. The dog has been fed.

Hesk: if you are the one who borrowed my pick, bring it back. It has my name burned into the handle. I will know.

Clank: the soup is on the stove. Stir it every hundred steps. Do not let it burn. It burned last time.
%%
Letter: Lenn to Oren
Oren,

I am sending back the drill pages you lent me, all four hundred and ten, with my notes in the margin. I kept nothing. I did not open the test box. I want that written down somewhere, because Tom says I looked at the seal and Tom has a big mouth.

I drilled the small mind in the school here on bare ground, green wheat and gold wheat, with the children watching. The children were better at it than the mind for two days. On the fifth day the mind made no mistakes on the pages I had shown it, and the children cheered, and then Nessa opened the test box and gave the mind a page it had never seen, a page about a field with a ditch down the middle and a hedge on the north side. The mind read it and did the right thing. The children cheered again. Bel said: it did not just remember. I said: no, it did not. That is why we keep the box.

You write that the reading mind at Vell grows better every month, and that it reads a page one letter at a time through a window about sixty letters wide. I am glad. But I want to say a thing to you as a friend, and I will say it plainly. The bigger the mind, the more it matters which pages went in. Whose letters are in your great drills, Oren? Whose letters are left out? The clerks take out the copies and the spoiled pages, and that is right. But there is another sorting that no clerk writes down, the one where we choose what to keep, and I have seen the archive keep a lord's letter and lose a child's. A mind drills on what it is shown. Show it the whole of us, or show it a part and call the part the whole, but know which you are doing.

I am not a tutor. I make windows. But a window shows what is on the other side of it, all of it, and that is the whole trick.

The melon was shown at the fair. It won a ribbon. It is too big for the bench, too big for the wheelbarrow, and now it has a ribbon too. The new road brought it home without a bruise.

Your friend,
Lenn

P.S. Tell Nessa the drill book is good. Tell her page two made me laugh.
%%
Note left in the mapmaker's shop
For whoever comes in first:
The ink pot on the shelf is frozen. Bring it to the fire and be patient.
A letter came for Sorrel with no name on it. I have put it in the drawer with the string. It may be old. The paper is soft at the folds.
The school asked for a map of the three wells again. Bel drew one. It is not bad. The wells are in the right places.
Lock the door. The wind gets in under it.
%%
Note: for the fair, the biggest beetroot
Pinned to the stall at the hamlet fair, where the beetroots are on display. Summer. Written by Bel, for the other children, who were trying to take the prize table apart.

Please do not touch the beetroots.

The big one at the front is the one Tam grew. It is the biggest one in the whole hamlet. It is bigger than Pip's head, and Pip has a very big head.

The little ones at the back are for the children's prize. You may touch those, but only one each, and only after you have said your name to the judge.

The judge is Mayor Dace. He is not the mayor at the fair. He is only the judge. He is very serious about beetroot.

If you take a beetroot home, you must bring it back by the next bell. If you bring it back soft, you will be told off by Pip.

Bel, who is not the judge, but who is keeping the table tidy.
%%
Notes left on the table at the Elder
Winter. Left on the kitchen table of the Elder Farm, outside Three Wells, over three days. Dace the mayor stayed there during the great frost and wrote most of them.

Note one, first night:
Gone to bed. The stew is on the stove. Do not let the fire out. The cat is allowed on the chair but not on the table.

Note two, next morning:
The fire went out. The cat is on the table. I do not wish to discuss it. The stew is cold. Dace.

Note three, in a different hand:
Dace. Sorry about the fire. I went out to look at the gate. A zombie stood there for an hour. I lit the torch and sang it a song. It went away. Hesper.

Note four:
Hesper. What song? Dace.

Note five:
The song about the cat who fell in the well. It did not like it. Hesper.

Note six, on the back of a bill for lamp oil:
I have a bet with the baker. He says the first snow this winter will be before the end of Leaffall. I say after. The loser pays for a pie. Do you know the date? Dace.

Note seven:
The first snow was on the ninth of Frost. You have won. The baker will pay. I have written his name on the board. Hesper.

Note eight:
I should like it known that the baker said he would pay for the pie and then bought a very small pie. Dace.
%%
Notes for the visiting tutor
Pinned in the Coalfoot hall, a hamlet below Copperhold, the summer a tutor from Vell came to teach. Hesk wrote the first notes. The rest were added on the days after.

For the tutor, on her door: Welcome to Coalfoot. You will sleep in the room above the store. It smells of coal. You will stop noticing in two days. The bed is soft and the sheets are clean. I washed them myself, which is a thing I do once a year.

For the tutor, on the table: There is a pot of stew. There is bread. There is a jar of pickled beet. Eat as much as you want. We are miners. We always make too much.

For the hall, on the post: The tutor will teach in the hall on the second day, at noon, when the shift comes up. Everyone who can come, come. Bring your apprentices if you have them. Clank will be there, and Clank has been cleaned. It smells a little less like coal now.

For the children, on the school bench: The tutor will show you how a crystal is drilled. Do not touch the crystal. Do not breathe on it. Do not lick it. Yes, someone licked one once. It did not taste of anything and the tutor was very upset.

For Hesk, from the tutor: I have arrived. The stew was very good. I met a dog who followed me up the lane and then went to sleep in my bed. Is that your dog? If it is, please note that it takes the pillow.

For the tutor, from Hesk: The dog is called Dust. It takes everything. You have been honored.

For the hall, from Fen: Bring your own cup. There are not enough cups. There are never enough cups. This is a mining hamlet. We have iron for everything but cups.

For everyone, on the last evening: The tutor leaves tomorrow at dawn. Please walk her to the end of the lane. Please carry her bag. Please give her something to eat on the road. Her thanks are enough, but give her the bread too.

Hesk
%%
Notes for the drill, summer
Left on the board in the back room of the Brown Hen, for whoever is teaching the carrier mind this summer. Written by Hesk, who watches the drills because he has nothing else to do between shifts.

Note one. The mind writes its steps before it gives an answer. Writing steps is not enough. A mind that writes steps and does not look at them is only writing neatly. Look at each step, one line at a time, against the question. Look at the first line before the last.

Note two, on what the steps are for. A sum with its steps written out can be checked by anyone who can read. The steps are the proof. Without them an answer is a guess, however neatly it is written down. A mind that writes steps and checks them can solve sums and puzzles no mind could solve before, because it does not have to trust its own head.

Note three, from the tutor. Ask the mind why a step is right, and it will not answer in words. It will show you the column. Be patient with the column. It is what the mind has instead of words, and it is more honest than most words I have heard in this room.

Note four, and this is the one that went badly. The order was: fetch the bucket from the well. The helper understood it to mean: fetch the well from the bucket. It spent the afternoon trying to move the well, one bucket at a time. Marda says the yard is wetter for it. The well is still where it was.

Note five, a question nobody can answer. Why does checking the steps help a mind think? The tutor said she did not know. She said it works, and that is enough to be going on with.

Note six, for the stable. The carrier mind goes to the mine for the summer shift, because the stone at the bottom of the shaft needs counting. It will count the steps on the stair. It will not check them. That is the job of the man at the top, and he is me.

Hesk
%%
Notice: waymark by the Saltreach road
The stone pillar by the fork is the waymark. Do not move it. The figure on it is 3 and the arrow points to the harbor. The little stones on top are left by travelers. Leave one if you pass.

Someone has taken the torch off the top. Bring a new one.

The well at the fork has run dry. The keeper says it is the summer. The old men say it is the new vein, that the digging has opened a crack and the water went down it. Nobody knows. The keeper has put a board over the well so nobody falls in.

Water is at the Halfway Inn, a day south. Water is at the harbor tap.

- Oak, carter, for the innkeeper
%%
Note on the honey jar
Ina, the honey is for the cough, not for the bread. I know you are fond of bread. The bread is fond of you. The honey is fond of nobody. The jar lives on the top shelf, behind the good cups, where the cat cannot reach it. The cat has tried.
Dunn, the honey is not yours to lick from the spoon. Put the lid back on. The lid is the round thing with the handle. Yes, that one.
Hesk
%%
Notes on the old map
Left on the table of the Coalfoot hall. Summer, in the years when the mine was still being opened wider. Written by Hesk and the people around him.

Found: an old map, behind the stove in the store room. It is on leather. The ink is brown. It shows the hill above Coalfoot, the old path and the first shaft. It does not show the second shaft or the third, so it is older than both. Whoever drew it did not know about the deep copper. Hesk.

Below: The mark in the corner is a ring with a cross. My grandmother said it was the sign of a good seam. She did not say how she knew. Fen.

Below: My grandmother said it was the sign of a bad seam. Hesk.

Below: Then your grandmothers should have had a talk. Ola.

Below: One of them is right. I will go and see. Taking a lamp, a rope and Clank. Back by dusk. If I am not back by dusk, bring soup. Hesk.

Below, later: Back. It is a seam of coal, the thin kind. Good enough to burn, not good enough to dig. So both grandmothers were right. I will tell the map.

Below: A map cannot hear you. Ola.

Below: This one can. I will tell it. It is old and has been waiting a long time to hear that it is right. Hesk.

To the Archive: This map is very old. Please come and take it to Vell, and keep it. Do not wipe it. Do not cut the corners. The ring and the cross are the best part. Hesk.

Below: The bread is cold. Come and eat. Fen.
%%
Notes from the hamlet, a week of summer
Collected in a box by Hesk, who kept them. Each was left on a door, a post or a table in Coalfoot, the hamlet below Copperhold. Together they make a week.

First day, on the store: Delivery from the Deep Works. Coal, two sacks, for the baker's oven. Iron, one sack, for the smith. A box of copper nails, for whoever needs a nail. I need two. I took them. Hesk.

First day, on the baker's door: Thank you for the loaf. It was the best this month. It was also the first this month. Hesk.

Second day, on the well: The tutor from Vell is walking up the lane. Be nice. She has a bag of crystals, and every crystal has a card. Do not touch the cards. They are in order.

Second day, on Hesk's door: The tutor will stay two nights. Fen offered the spare room, but Fen's spare room has a goat in it. So she will stay with the miners' wives. She asked for a candle. We do not have one. We have lamps. She said, a lamp is fine. She is not fussy.

Third day, on the hall wall: Today, the tutor teaches. She says a mind is drilled by showing it the same kind of thing many times. At first it is wrong. Each time it is wrong, it changes a little. I asked her, how long. She said, as long as it takes. Then I understood she is a miner too.

Third day, on the gate: The goats got into the garden. They ate the second beetroot. The tutor said it was the best lesson she gave all day: when a gate is open, something goes through. Hesk.

Fourth day, on the post: The tutor left at dawn. Her bag was lighter. She left a card for the Coalfoot hall. It reads: Dig. Carry. Rest. I have hung it on the wall.

Fifth day, on the bench: I have taught Clank to bring me my lunch. It brought me my boots. I have decided these are close enough.

Sixth day, on the old map table: The old map is still behind the stove. I looked at it today. It is very old. I think nobody has looked at it for a hundred years. I put it back, with a stone on it, so it will not blow away.

Seventh day, on every door: The week is done. Everything is in order. The soup is made. The lamps are trimmed. The goats are in. I am going to sit by the well and do nothing for an hour.

Hesk
%%
Board at the market cross, late autumn
Lost: a black-faced lamb named Nettle. She is small, she is loud, and she is not lost at all. She is in the orchard at Ambrook with a sack of apples. Ama says leave her be. Brin asks anyway. Brin, please stop asking.
Lost: one wooden spoon, carved with a fox. It went under the cart on market day and has not come out. Spoons do not run away. Look under the cart.
Found: a basket with a lid, a fishing hook and a note that says "for the child with the hat". Whose child? Ask at the post. Nobody has claimed the hat.
Gift: a jar of dark honey from Ama's hives, for whoever sang at the midwinter fire. The jar is by the cart. The label says Thank you. It does not say to whom.
Wanted: two hands to carry straw for the midwinter fire. Pay is in apples, and in thanks. Ask Tam.
Seed: the seed for the top field must be sorted before the rain. Pip has the list. It will go through the sacks with you, one at a time, and it will not start until every sack is checked. Do not hurry it. It has never once been wrong about seed.
A question for the big mind, with its answer, pinned here so everyone can read it. The bridge crew asked: should the wet stone stay out overnight? The answer came back by letter: "Yes. Cover it with a sack, and keep the sheep off it." The sheep were not asked, and they disagree.
Dace sends word from Three Wells. The mayor's rules are on the Kettle Ridge board now too, by request. Read them. No pigs in the square. Big Beet has been told, and he says he was never going to go.
Pip's card for the bridge is in the post box. Take it out, read it, and put it back the same way, corner up.
%%
Notes on the gate
Tied to the gate of Bram's house, at the edge of Saltreach, in Apple. A late swarm of bees came in off the hill and hung on the gate for a day. Kept by Runa.

Runa, on the gate: DO NOT OPEN THE GATE. There is a swarm of bees on it. They are not angry. They are waiting. So are we.
Ree, from the window: I asked a bee if it would move. It did not say.
Bram, left on the wall: Gone round by the back lane, with the nets. The cat has gone round by the roof.
Marit, left on the wall: Do bees like smoke? Do they not like smoke? Ask somebody who knows. I know nets.
Old Sal, left on the wall: Smoke calms them. Do not make it near the gate. A burnt gate is worse than a swarm. Leave them. A swarm goes on by evening, when it has made up its mind.
Lise, from the window: I want to see the queen.
Ossa, from the window: The queen is a big bee. You have seen a big bee. Come away from the glass.
Nell, left on the wall: Fish at the usual price. Come round the back for it. Everyone is going round the back today. The back lane is a queue.
Rye, left on the wall: I have a roof to look at and I am not going near that gate. Put it in writing that I was not afraid. I was careful.
Runa, on the gate: They are gone. They rose at dusk, all at once, in a loud brown cloud, and went up the hill. The gate smells of honey. Ree licked it. Ree is well.
Bram, on the gate, next morning: Where did they go? Nell: To the old cooper's barn. Ossa: Let them. A barn is a good house for a bee. Bram: I hope they like it.
%%
Note on the shed door
Oak. Your axle pin is on the bench. I took the old one off. The new one is copper, from the new vein. It will not squeak.
The shed key is under the third flowerpot. Do not lose it again.
Corin says your cart wheel is cracked. He will look at it after the slip is clear.
Do not take the pier road with a full load. The boards are soft by the end.
There is bread in the tin. One loaf is for you and one is for the men on the quay.
- Rill
%%
Notes pinned inside the candle shop
The relay mind's pieces are on the card by the desk. Learn them, Bel, they are how it reads.
A piece is a common run of letters. The mind holds a list of them. It cuts the word and reads the cuts.
Long words become few pieces. Short words stay whole.
The window has not grown. The pieces are longer than letters, so the window holds more.
The mind looks back over the pieces before it, the ones that matter, and guesses the next.
Mira's winter note, copied out for the drill: "the lamp is lit, the road is clear". Cut it into pieces and see how few.
If the mind guesses wrong, tell the tutor, not the mind. The mind only guesses.
Fishing boat from Lowmarsh came in late last night. Nets full, two lamps out. Tell the fisher his candles are ready.
%%
Notes in the wall basket
There is a basket on the wall between Bram's yard and Marit's house at the edge of Saltreach. Notes go to and fro in it all day. A week in Leaffall, kept by Runa. Marit's are in her own hand, which is small, and sharp.

Marit: Runa. I smell soup. Is it the good soup?
Runa: It is soup. Whether it is good depends who you ask. Bram says yes. The cat says it needs fish.
Marit: Send a bowl in the basket. I will send the net needle back. You have had it since the roof.
Runa: The needle is in the basket. The bowl is coming. Mind the spoon, it is the good spoon.
Marit: My roof is leaking over the bed. Is Rye still in Saltreach?
Runa: Rye is at the mill. He says he will come when it rains.
Marit: It is raining.
Runa: Then he will come.
Marit: Rye came. He looked at my roof for a long time. He said it was not a roof. It was an opinion.
Runa: He said the same of ours, a year ago. Look at ours now.
Marit: A swarm of bees sat on my washing line this morning. I thought it was a new kind of laundry.
Runa: They were on our gate yesterday. They left in the evening. Ossa says they went to the old cooper's barn, and she is probably right. Ossa is right in a way that is hard to live with.
Marit: Somebody has eaten my smoked fish. It was on the sill. There are cat prints. They are your cat's prints.
Runa: Cod was in the house all day. I have witnesses. Ossa, Lise, Ree and the bucket.
Marit: A bucket is not a witness.
Runa: It saw everything.
Marit: There is also a fish skin on your side of the wall.
Runa: ...Cod was out for a short while. I am sorry. I will send a fish pie. A whole one, with the crust.
Marit: The crust is the point of a pie. Send two.
Runa: Two pies are in the basket. One has a bite out of it. That is the cat. The other is for you. Be sure which is which.
Marit: I have eaten the one with the bite. It was the better pie. I think the bite was a seal of approval.
Marit: Lise left a drawing in the basket. It is the bees. They look like brown clouds with legs. I have pinned it above my stove.
Runa: She will be pleased. She wants to be asked about the queen.
Marit: Tell her the queen was very polite.
Runa: Come for supper tomorrow.
Marit: I will. Do not bring the cat.
Runa: She will bring herself.
%%
Letter: Pell to his sister at Ambrook
Dear Rill,

I am at the Halfway Inn, a day out from Three Wells, and the road is full. I have never seen a harvest like it. The carts from Kettle Ridge come down the Long Road with wheat stacked higher than my head. The miller at the inn has been grinding since Sowing, and he says the tally board is full and he has started a second board.

Prices are down, which is bad for the farmers but good for me, because I buy low and sell in Three Wells where the fair is. I have a cart of wheat and a cart of beetroot and a small cart of honey that I am keeping for myself. Do not tell anyone. The honey is from a man at the ferry who took it in payment and then decided he would rather have emeralds. I do not understand it either, but I have the honey and he has the emeralds and we are both happy.

There is a bet on the notice board. It says the ferry keeper can carry a full barrel across the water without spilling it. The ferry keeper says he never agreed to the bet. The innkeeper says he did. Everyone in the inn has an opinion about it and none of them agree. I have put two emeralds on the ferry keeper. I think he will win in rough weather. He has the look of a man who does not like to lose.

The inn has twelve beds and they are all full. I am sleeping in the room at the top of the stairs, where the key is under the third flowerpot, and I sleep well because the stew is good and the dog does not come up the stairs. The dog is not allowed up the stairs. The dog comes up the stairs anyway, but quietly, and I pretend not to notice.

Tell Mother the apples came. The crate was heavy and the oldest tree gave the best of them, grey branch and all. I have eaten five and sold none.

I will be home before Apple. I will bring ribbons for the girls and a new ledger for myself. The old one has a stain on it. I did not read the stain. The stain is honey.

Your brother,
Pell

Postscript: the innkeeper says the bet is now three emeralds. I have put in one more. Do not tell Mother.
%%
Brown Hen notes in Longday
Notes left for Lorn, the ferry keeper.

On the door:
Lorn, the roof man came. The rain got into the little room by the hearth. He found two loose boards and mended the roof before noon. The room is dry now. He left his hammer under the bench. Please return it before he asks.

On the table:
There is bread in the cloth. Take the heel if you like. I took the soft piece.

On the gate:
The ferry rope is tied on the east post. Do not leave it in the mud again. It took all morning to dry last time.

On the waymark:
The inn is near. The ferry is not running while Lorn eats. Wait by the post, and keep the torches lit.

From Noll, cook at the Brown Hen
%%
Notes left at the Halfway Inn, summer
To the ferry keeper: the barrel is still by the door. The bet stands. The water was too calm.
To the carters from Kettle Ridge: your wheat is in the yard. It is covered. It is not lost. It is covered.
To the girl who left a wooden fox on the table: I have put it on the shelf with the others. It is safe.
To whoever took the bread from the window: I hope it was good. Leave the plate.
To Pell: your second ledger is also behind the bar. I did not read that one at all.
%%
Notes on the fox at the hens
Lise, weaver, at Three Wells. The hens are kept behind the weaving shed, in a wooden house with a wire run. There are seven of them, and they are very loud when they are upset. This winter they have been upset all month, because of the fox.

The fox came first on the night of the first snow. I saw its prints in the yard the next morning, neat and small, going round the hen house twice and then stopping at the wire. There was no hen missing. The hens were very quiet and did not come out until noon.

The second night the fox came again. It stood on the wall of the run and looked in. The hens looked back. Nobody moved for a long time. Then one hen, the speckled one, walked to the door of the house and sat in the opening, with her feathers puffed out, and stared at the fox until it went away.

The third night the fox came with its tail very bushy. I think it was cold. It lay down in the snow outside the wire, with its nose on its paws, and watched the house until the lamp in my kitchen went out.

The fourth night I went out with a lantern and a broom. The fox was gone. There was a track going down the hill toward the mill, and a little trail of feathers on the snow. One hen was missing, the brown one with the bent comb. I went to the mill to ask whether anybody had seen the fox. The miller said it had been in the granary all evening, eating the grain from the bottom of a sack, and had gone out by the back window.

I have shut the hens in the shed now. I have put a board over the wire. I have not asked the fox how it got in. I think it knows, and I think it would only tell me it is hungry, which I believe.
%%
Council minutes: Three Wells
Minutes of the council of Three Wells, the eighth of Apple, in the school house by the east well.

Present: Dace, mayor. Nessa, tutor of apprentices at Vell. Sella, clerk of the archive. Lenn, glassblower. Two farmers from the ridge road. The schoolteacher. A boy named Bel, who asked to come and was allowed because his essay on bees was good.

First: the new road. Lenn reports the road from the glasshouse to the crossroads is finished, cobblestone in the town and packed earth beyond, a torch every twelve blocks, a waymark at the turn with the figure 3 and an arrow. The farmers say the carts come in drier and the wheat goes out faster. Dace says the town will pay for the torches another year. Carried.

Second: the drill pages. Nessa explains the sorting of the drills, because the schoolteacher asked and because Bel asked louder. A drill is only as good as its pages. The clerks take out the copies, because a copy of a copy has a word missing. They take out the spoiled pages, because a spoiled page teaches a wrong answer. They keep a test box of pages no mind is ever drilled on, so the mind can be tested on what it has never seen. Bel asked why they do not just test on the same pages. Nessa said: because then we would only know the mind remembers the page. Bel nodded and wrote it down.

Sella reports the archive has sorted four hundred and ten pages this autumn for the reading drills, and set aside two hundred for the test box. The box is sealed with wax. Oren asks that no one open it. Lenn says he has not opened it. He says it in a way that suggests he thought about it.

Third: the melon. Lenn reports a melon by the south wall of the glasshouse, too big for the bench and too big for the wheelbarrow. The council agrees it is a very good melon. It will be shown at the fair. This is not a matter for the council but it was on the list.

Fourth: the apprentice drills at the school. Nessa will drill the school's small mind on bare ground, green wheat and gold wheat, so the children can watch. The children may not touch the crystals. The children may watch. Bel asked if he could test it. Nessa said he could pick the pages from the test box, with Sella watching, so he cannot cheat and neither can the mind.

The meeting closed at dusk. The lamps were lit at every corner. Bel read his essay on bees to anyone who would listen. Lenn walked home along the new road and did not tip the window panes.
%%
Notes left at the Saltreach inn
Oak, your room is the one at the top, the one with the window on the harbor. The window sticks.

Oak, the fish market opens at first light. You asked.

Oak, a man came looking for you. He said his name was Pell and he had a ledger and he wanted to talk about the price of apples. I said you were out. He left a note. The note is on the hook by the door.

Oak, the well in the yard has run dry. Not a drop since Blossom. Use the harbor tap. It is a longer walk but the water is good.

Oak, someone has left a basket of fish by your door. I think it is the woman with the nets. She says thank you for the ride to Three Wells.

Oak, do not forget the tally. You always forget the tally.

- the innkeeper
%%
A drill that went badly, on the table
Left on the table in the back room, by Hesk, who was asked to watch, and who understands only the parts that are wrong.

The drill was sums, for the carrier mind. It was told to write its steps before the answer, and to check each step against the sum. It wrote the steps very neatly, one under the other.

It did not check them. The first step had a carry missing, and every step after it was built on that carry. The answer came out wrong, and the mind gave it quite calmly, with the steps beside it.

The tutor says nobody had told the mind that a step is a thing to be looked at. Writing a step is not the same as checking it.

Next drill: check the first line before the last.

Hesk
%%
Notice on the cider shed door
Read this before you knock. I am probably in the orchard.

The cider shed is open from the first of Swarm until the barrels run out. Prices are on the board: a jug for three emeralds, a bottle for one. Bring your own jug if you have one. If you do not, I have jugs. They were my mother's. Bring them back.

The honey is not for sale. The honey is for friends and for the school and for the relay keeper, who works all night and deserves it. If you are a friend, say so. If you are not sure, leave a note.

Do not let the cat in. She likes the smell of the press and she will sit on the apples and then we will all be sorry.

Corin: the ladder I borrowed is behind the shed. I am sorry about the rung. I will fix it. I have been saying that since Blossom.

To the children of Saltreach: the apple trees nearest the harbor wall are for picking. Pick only what you can carry and leave some for the birds. If I catch you throwing them at each other I will set you to washing barrels, which is worse than it sounds.

To whoever keeps leaving notes on my bench: I read them all. I keep them in a box. It is a good box. It was a honey box.

A long winter is coming, they say at the fish market. Every summer they say a long winter is coming. But the bees have been busy and the apples are heavy, so I think we will be all right. Fill your cellars. Mend your roofs. Come and see me before the frost and we will drink to the light coming back.

Oak

P.S. The hat is still lost. The offer of a bottle still stands.
%%
Note: sorting the test box
For whoever comes to the glasshouse while I am at Vell,

The box on the high shelf is the test box. It is not to be drilled on. I will say why, because I was not told and I got it wrong once.

A mind learns from the pages it is shown. If you show it a page and then, later, test it on that same page, it will do well. It has seen the answer. But that only means it remembers the page. It does not mean it understood. A mind can remember a page and still be lost on a new one.

So the clerks at Vell keep pages apart. They take out the copies, the smudged pages and the spoiled ones, because a spoiled page teaches a wrong thing. Then they take a few good pages and put them in a box, and nobody drills on those pages. Not once. At the end, the mind is tested on that box, and only on that box. If it does well on pages it has never seen, then we know it learned the work and not just the page.

It is slow. It feels wasteful. It is the only honest way I know.

I have a small box of my own for the apprentices here. Pages about a furnace, a kiln and a window about sixty letters wide, which is more than I can hold in my head at once. Do not open it.

Lenn
%%
Notes on the net shed door
Notes pinned to the net shed door at the north hamlet near Saltreach, by Oak, net mender. Summer.

Oak: the big net is on the rack. Do not touch it. It is wet and it is half done.
Oak: the cat has had her kittens in the blue net. Leave the blue net.
Tam from the farm: the cat is not my cat. Stop saying it is.
Oak: fine, the cat is not yours. The kittens are still in the blue net.
Wren's girl: can I have the broken float? For my kite.
Oak: yes. Take it from the box, not the basket. The basket has hooks in it.
Hal: I need the long needle. Who has the long needle?
Oak: I have it. I am using it. Come back after the dinner bell.
Hal: after the dinner bell, I have a boat to fix.
Oak: then fix the boat. Not the net. The net is mine.

Please shut the door when you go. The gulls come in and eat the bait. Last week they ate a whole sack and then sat on the rack and looked at me.
%%
For the tutor, when she comes
Left on the table in the Little Weir meeting house, in the spring, for the tutor who was to visit from Vell. Written by Vane and added to by others.

Welcome to Little Weir. There are eleven houses, one bridge and one well. We are very glad you walked all this way.

You will want to know where to sleep. The bed in the loft of the meeting house is yours. The blanket is clean. The window sticks, so push it from the bottom.

You will want to know where to eat. Ela at the mill has bread. The Hollis farm has eggs. The bridge hut has tea, but only one cup, and I will need it back.

You will want to know where to teach. Everyone in Little Weir has agreed to come to the barn at noon, because it is the only room that holds forty people. Please do not mind the spiders. They are quiet listeners.

One of us asked if you will bring an apprentice. The children asked for three days. Please bring one, even a small one. They would like to see it walk. If it is only a sorting one, that is fine. The children will clap anyway.

There is a plate of seed cakes under the cloth. They are for you. Not for me. I have been told so.

Vane

Below, in a child's hand: We are going to ask it to carry a pumpkin. Please say yes.
%%
Note: left under the stone at the north
A note under a flat stone at the north crossing, where the carters stop to fix their wheels. Autumn. Written by Dov, who keeps the stone clear for the carters, and who has written a note under it for every carter who has ever needed one.

To the next cart,

The bridge is sound. The second post on the east side is loose, so do not lean on it. The third plank from the left is soft, so walk the horse over it on the right.
There is a spare rope in the shed by the bridge, under the blue cloth. Take what you need. Put back what you do not.
The stream is high. Wait till noon before you cross, if you can. The water drops by noon every day in autumn, and then it rises again at dusk. Ask the mill.
If you find a glove on the road, leave it on the post. Someone will come back for it.
If you find a horse, bring it to the Northpoint tower. Mira will know what to do. Mira always knows.

Thank you for reading this. Please leave the stone where it is.

Dov, the north crossing
%%
Notes for the week of the storm
Written and left by Corin, shipwright of a hamlet near Saltreach, on doors, gates, tables and posts, in the week of the autumn storm. Collected by the hamlet's teacher afterward and copied out as they were, because she said they made a kind of diary.

On the boat shed door, first day: The sea is rough. All boats are in. Anyone who wants to go out should see me first. Nobody should want to.

On the slip: Rope, barrels, planks. Do not leave planks in the water. Last year the sea took six.

On the gate of the school shed: There is no lesson today. The teacher is sick. The children are to stay home and learn something useful. The cat is not a lesson.

On the table at the inn, second day: I owe a round of cider to the man who stayed on the pier all night to hold the lamp. Please charge it to me.

On the school shed door, third day: The lesson is on again. We will talk about Orla's question. It is the one that goes: if a hidden mind and a person answer by letter, and you cannot tell which is which, what then?

On the same door, a note by a child: We have thought about it. We think the answer is that you have to ask better questions.

On the same door, a note by the teacher: That is the best thing anyone has said about it in ninety years.

On the schoolhouse table, fourth day: The lesson went badly. A boy asked if the mind in the crystal was lonely. The girl next to him said that a mind in a crystal does not know what it is to be lonely. The boy said then how does she know. The class argued for an hour. Nobody agreed. The teacher said that was fine.

On the gate, fifth day: The storm has passed. The sea is flat. Boats can go out. I will go out first, to be the one who is wrong if it is not safe.

On the boat shed door, evening: Boats are out. Boats are back. All well. Cider at the inn.

On the school shed door, last day: The children asked me to write down what we learned. Here it is. One: do not go out in a storm. Two: do not trust a lamp you have not checked. Three: a question you cannot answer is a good question to keep.

On the same door, below: I agree with the third.

On the shipwright's workbench: I am tired. The cat has taken my chair. I will sit on the floor and be wise.
%%
Notes about the hidden mind
Corin the shipwright left these notes around the school shed of the hamlet near Saltreach, in autumn, to help the teacher explain the old question of Orla to a class of children the week of the storm. He wrote what he knew, as plain as he could.

On the board, first note: Orla was a tutor at Vell, about ninety years after the archive was founded. She asked whether a drilled mind could ever think.

On the board, second note: She did not answer. She proposed a test. A hidden mind and a person answer the same questions by letter. The readers do not know which is which. If they cannot tell, what then?

On the board, third note: That is the whole of it. She asked "what then?" and did not say.

On the table, a note for the teacher: The children will want you to say whether a mind can think. Do not say. The tutors do not agree. It is more honest to say you do not know.

On the shelf, a note for the children: If you wish to try the test, ask the teacher. Do not try it on the cat.

On the window: The wind is rising. If it comes from the north, close the shutters.

On the door as you leave: I was told the lesson went well. I was told it went badly. I think both are true.
%%
Notes about Orla's question
Copied later from the Brown Hen table.

On the door:
A tutor from Vell asked me to keep this note dry. Her name was Orla. She said a mind in a crystal learns from drills, but she did not know whether it could think. I asked what she meant by think. She said that was why she wanted a test.

On the table:
Orla proposed that one person and one hidden mind answer the same questions by letter. The readers would not be told which answers came from the person. They would read both sets and say which was which. If they could not tell, people would have to ask what that showed.

On the gate:
She did not say the mind had a heart. She did not say it knew itself. She asked whether its answers could be so like a person's that readers could not find the difference. That is a question about what we can judge from the words, not a proof of what happens inside a crystal.

On the waymark:
The guests argued until the lamp was low. One said the questions should be simple. One said they should be hard. The innkeeper said they should all take turns paying for bread. No one agreed on the answer.

From Fenn, keeper of the Halfway Inn
%%
Letter: Oak to Pell, ledger and gossip
Pell,

Your note found me at last. I was at Saltreach three days and the innkeeper kept it on the hook by the door and forgot to give it to me. She is a good woman and she forgets things. Do not hold it against her.

The apples from Ambrook are good this year. I brought a load down the Long Road and sold most at Three Wells and the rest here. The price is fair. The men at Saltreach will pay a little more because they have copper now and the copper has made them cheerful. I sold the last crate for six emeralds and a fish.

Here is the news. There is a new copper vein up past the third hill. The stone is soft and the copper is near the top. The town is full of carts and dust. Corin has made a new bell for the fish market and rings it when a boat comes in. The well in the inn yard has run dry and everyone walks to the harbor tap, and a boy fell in the well and was pulled out by his feet and is now famous.

The relay keeper at Saltreach says the tower above the harbor has been busy all summer. She says the north is talking a lot. I do not know what about. I only carry the letters.

Take the water with you on the road. The wells are low this summer. The one at the fork is dry and the keeper has put a board over it.

Your friend,
Oak

P.S. You still owe me two emeralds from the frost fair.
%%
Autumn Notes at Birch End
Left on the hall table for the folk of the hamlet

For Olan:
The oak branches are down from the road.
Stack the good wood by the inn shed.
Keep the bent branches for the fence.
The pigs pushed through the east hedge again.
The gate is mended now. Lift the latch before you pull.

For Seli:
Your red scarf is on the chair by the hearth.
It is dry. The rain came in through the west shutter, not the roof.
I have put a clay cup beneath the shutter until the carpenter can mend it.

For the road keeper:
The waymark above Birch End leans toward Vell.
Set it upright before the carts come through.
The stone on top is still there.
I did not take it. I know the rule.

For Nessa:
The three apprentices came to the drill yard after breakfast.
They carried the boards inside when the rain began.
One board is muddy. I left it by the door, not on the clean shelf.

The leaves are turning, and the apples are nearly picked.
There is enough wood for the inn if the winter is fair.
If it is not fair, we will share.
%%
Notes on the boat shed board
The board by the door of the boat shed at Saltreach, where the fishers write the day's plans for each other. A week in Apple. Copied by Kit, who is learning to read the writing of men who write standing up.

Kell: Tide high at first light, low by noon. The Heron goes out at first light. The Good Morning goes at the second. Rowers at the quay, please, not at the inn.
Bram: Need two hands to carry reeds up from the cart. The roof is nearly done. Pay is soup and the good cup.
Old Sal: My boat has a new plank. That makes the four hundredth. I have counted. Nobody else has.
Nell: Cod at the dock by noon, forty of them. Come early. The gulls know.
Kit: Corin says whoever borrowed his best chisel must give it back. I did. It is under the bench. Do not tell Corin it was me.
Corin: I know it was Kit. Tell Kit I am not cross. Tell Kit to sharpen it.
Marit: Nets for mending at my stall. Leave them with your name on, not your boat's name. I do not remember boats. I remember people.
Kell: A swarm of bees is on the Heron's mast. Nobody is to climb the mast. The crew will row from the quay. Ama's cousin comes at noon with a box.
Bram: The bees are on the mast. This is a promotion for the bees.
Old Sal: Leave them be. They hang there like a big brown beard. A swarm moves on by evening, when it has made up its mind.
Old Sal: Who has taken my other boot?
Kit: It is on the roof of the shed. A gull did it.
Old Sal: Which gull?
Kit: The one with opinions.
Marit: A net came in with a hole shaped exactly like a boat. I do not ask.
Corin: Whoever hung washing on the slip rail: it is a ship rail. Remove it.
Runa: It was not washing. It was the sheet we use for catching bees. It is waiting for the bees.
Corin: Then it can wait on the quay.
Kell: The swarm left at noon, toward the old cooper's barn. Ama's cousin came at one and was sorry to have missed it. The crew is back on the mast. Kell thanks the bees for their restraint.
Bram: The roof is done. Come and see it. Rye says it will last thirty winters. Tea at the house. Ossa says the good cup is for Rye only.
Kit: Is the tea for the whole shed?
Ossa: The tea is for those who carried reeds.
Bram: That is the whole shed.
Ossa: Then the cup is for Rye only.
Lise, in a very large hand: The roof should have a name. I want to call it Rye.
Ossa: A roof is not a person.
Lise: Rye is nearly a roof.
Kell: Crew meeting at the quay at the second light. Bring your own stool.
Nell: Tide low at second light tomorrow. Heron out early. Good Morning out late. Rowers at the quay.
%%
Notes on the kitchen door, autumn
Dunn: wash your hands before you touch the cake. Wash them again after the cake has looked at you.
Ina: the cake is for the carter and not for us. We may have the crumbs. Hesk may have the crumbs too, if he asks nicely.
Hesk: the coal shed is nearly empty. Bram has a sack for us at the gate. Take the cart and the lantern. Do not take the lantern into the coal shed.
Ash: the hen has laid an egg in the cart again. We are not sure what the hen is thinking, but she is very sure of it.
The oven is hot. Do not open it. I am saying it now, so nobody can say later that they were not told.

Hesk
%%
Notes: the apprentice and the nets
Left on the quay wall at the hamlet, by Oak, net mender. For Mave, who runs the drill here, and for anyone else who was in the shed on the morning of the fifth of Longday.

Mave, I know you will read this first.

I told the apprentice to bring the nets to the shed. I said it the usual way: "bring the nets to the shed." It went down the quay to the big pile of nets by the boats. It picked up the first net. Then the second, and the third. Then it stopped.

Then it walked back up the quay to the shed, very slowly, carrying nothing at all.

I asked it where the nets were. It stood there. It did not say anything, because apprentices do not talk. It looked at the shed. It looked at me. Then it turned around and went back down to the pile and stood beside it, as if the pile was what it had been asked to find.

I said: bring them here. It brought them. All of them. Then it stood by the shed door and waited.

I think it heard "to the shed" and thought it meant "stay at the shed." Or it thought I had asked it to bring the shed to the nets. I do not know which. Mave, you will know. Please write down the order it heard, so we can drill it again on the same words.

Oak
%%
Note: the list of things lost
Written by Bel for the school's lost and found board, which is by the east well. The board was full, and Sorrel asked the children to write down what they had lost, and where, so the clerks at Vell could have the record. Summer.

One boot, brown, lost in the mill race on the first day of Melon. Found by a fish. Returned by a fish.
One glove, red wool, lost by the willow. Found by the fox. Not returned. The fox has gone off with it.
One slate, lost on the bridge. Broken in two. Still cannot find the other half.
One marble, blue, lost in the hay. Found by the hens. Eaten by the hens. It came out again in the morning, very shiny.
One hat, straw, lost in the wind on the hill by the mill. Found on top of the mill wheel. Taken down by Jory. Jory says it is the best hat he has ever seen, and he will not give it back.
One apple, green, lost on the path. Found by a wasp. The wasp was very happy.
One book, about frogs, lost in the school yard. Found under the hen house. Dry. The hens had been using it as a mat.
%%
Vane's spring notes
Notes found in a pocket box at the bridge hut, Little Weir, and kept together. Each was left for someone at the bridge in the spring after the thaw. Some are answers. Some are only reminders.

Note for Ela: The bridge rail needs a new rope. I have a rope. You have the knot. Meet me at the bridge after the bread is out.

Note for the baker's boy: You asked what a bridge keeper does. I keep the bridge. I keep the planks. I keep the rope. I keep the lantern. I keep the peace between the carter and the goose. That is the hardest.

Note for Dorrin Hollis: The tutor from Vell will come on the third day of Blossom. Please tell the barn spiders to be polite. Please tell the sheep also.

Note for the tutor: If you cross the bridge in the morning, the sun is behind you and you will see the whole hamlet. It is the best view in Little Weir. It is also the only view.

Note for the children: Do not throw sticks at the water to see them float. Throw them on the other side, so I do not have to fish them out. Better, do not throw sticks.

Note for myself, on the wall: Tar. Rope. Wick. Cake. In that order. If I forget the cake, I forget everything.

Note for the carter with the red cart: I have measured the bridge. It is nine blocks wide. Your cart is ten. It will never fit. Do not argue with the bridge. The bridge has been right for sixty years.

Note for Ela: Thank you for the rope. I tied the knot and it held all afternoon. A goose pulled on it. The goose lost.

Note for the new girl at the Hollis farm: Welcome. The bridge is yours to cross as often as you like. The toll is a smile. If you do not have one, the toll is a story.

Note for the whole hamlet: The first swallows are back under the bridge. Walk softly. They have been traveling all winter and they are tired.

Note for the person who borrowed the ladder: Please return the ladder. It is spring, and the roof of the bridge hut has a drip. A drip is a small thing until it is not.

Note at the very end: Everything is in order. The bridge is sound. The cat is fed. The goose is calm. Go gently.

Vane
%%
Note: on the gate
Left on the gate of the north paddock by Tam, for the men who have the horse this week. Autumn.

Please feed her at dawn and at dusk, not in between. She will tell you she is hungry in between. She is not. She is only trying it on.

She likes to be led up the hill. She does not like to be pushed. If she plants her feet, stop, wait, and then say her name. She is called Clover, though the Oak Post calls her Bramble and will not be argued with.

Do not let her near the fence on the east side. She has been over it twice, and she was very pleased with herself, and the fence was not.

Bring her back by the end of the week. The owner has been writing letters about her. He has written five. He is starting to say my name is on the wrong one, which is a lie, as my name is on all of them.

She has a new shoe on the back left. It is a good shoe. Mott made it. Please do not take it off in the rain.

Tam
%%
Notes left for the apprentice teacher
Corin the shipwright left these notes on his workbench, at the hamlet near Saltreach, for the tutor who was to visit and who might be puzzled by his tools. Autumn. It was the week after a lesson he gave to the children on Orla's question, which had gone badly.

On the lamp: Keep it lit. The storm may bring wind down the chimney.

On the bench: Do not touch the adze. It is sharp, and it is mine.

On the plank by the door: I tried to explain Orla's test to the children. I said, "A hidden mind and a person answer the same questions by letter. If you cannot tell which is which, what then?" They said, "Then you ask a third question." I said, "What third question?" They said, "Does it like cake?"

I did not know what to say. It was a good question, and a bad lesson.

On the wall by the stove: A tutor from Vell should know that the children of the hamlet are cleverer than they look. They are also messier.

On the door, as you leave: Thank you for coming so far. The path to the road is muddy. The cat will show you the way.
%%
Notice on the farm gate
Written by Dell, in a good hand, on a board nailed to the gate:

To all who pass. The bees are swarming. Do not open the hive. Do not wave your arms at them. They are not angry. They are moving house, which is a thing everyone must do sometime. Walk slow. Keep to the path.

Under it, in another hand, smaller:

Dell. The east gate is open and the sheep are out. I put them back. You are welcome.

Under that, in Dell's hand:

Thank you. The gate sticks. Lift it.

And at the bottom, in a child's hand, in charcoal:

There was a zombie at the gate last night. It stood by the waymark and would not go. I told my father and he came with a torch and it went away. Keep the torches lit.

Dell read all of this at supper and laughed. He said the board was getting crowded and he would need a bigger board. Then he said the child was right about the torches, and he went out with a lamp and lit three more along the path by the hedge, because a zombie at the gate is an ordinary nuisance and nothing more, and the way to answer it is a torch, not a worry.

The bees settled in the old hive by the hedge. By Blossom there were bees on every flower in the row and honey in the frames. Merra took a jar down to the relay house for the keeper, because the keeper sat up all night with the quickeners and the water, and a jar of honey is a good thing to have on a long night.

The big mind at the foot of the tower kept answering, letter by letter, through the relay, all spring. The apprentices came down the road and stood at the door and waited, and then they went and did their work. The lamp blinked at the top of the tower. The bees went about the hedge. The gate still stuck, and everyone lifted it, and nobody minded.
%%
Notes for the men at the new vein
The vein is up past the third hill, half a day from Saltreach, near the old sheep wall. Bring picks and a lamp and a rope.

Dig by the wall, not on the road. The road is soft there and the carts sink.

The first copper is near the surface. Break the stone along the line of the green stain. That is the copper. Do not break the grey stone under it. That is just stone.

The water is bad here. The little stream by the wall is low and slow. Bring your own water from the harbor. Fill the barrel at the trough by the fish market before you go.

Pay is three emeralds a day and a share of the copper. Sign the board at the shed. Rub your name out when you come home.

Keep the torches lit. A fox came in the night and ate a man's bread. Nothing worse than a fox, but keep them lit anyway.

- Oak
%%
Notes on the door
Pinned to the front door of Bram's house, at the edge of Saltreach, in Apple, the week the roof was mended. Kept by Runa, who has never thrown a note away.

Rye the roofer: Gone for more reeds. Back after dinner. Do not stand under the ladder. Do not move the ladder. The ladder is not yours.
Marit: Runa, the net you asked for is hanging on your gate. Do not tell Bram it was cheap.
A boy: Bram, the fish you asked for are in the bucket on the step. There were eleven. There are nine now. A cat has been here.
Old Sal: Bram, lend me your big knife. I will return it when I find my own.
Rye the roofer: Back. The roof is half done. The half that is done is the better half. Do not judge until you see the whole.
Ossa: To whoever is stamping on the roof. Stop it.
Rye: That was a seagull. I have spoken to it.
Lise: To the roof man. May I come up? Runa: No. Lise: May I come up when it is done? Runa: Yes. Rye: I will leave a rope.
Rye: The roof is done. It is the best roof at the edge of Saltreach. It will keep the rain out for thirty winters. The bill is on the table. Please read it sitting down.
%%
Letter: Yew to the keeper at Saltreach
Friend,

The ferry is busy this summer. I have carried more carts across the water this month than in all of last year. The road is good and the harvest is coming down it. I have never seen so much wheat in one place.

Two things you should know.

First, a man from Ambrook brought a cart of apples to the crossing and paid me in honey. I said I take emeralds. He said the bees had a good year and honey is better than emeralds. I said that is true, but the ferry man cannot eat honey on his bread unless he has bread. He laughed and paid me in emeralds too. I have the honey in a jar on the shelf. It is very good.

Second, the bet.

You know the innkeeper at the Halfway Inn. He said no one could carry a full barrel across the water without spilling it. I said I could. He said he would give me a free night for every drop I did not spill. I said that is a strange way to give a prize, and I would rather have the free night if I spilled nothing at all.

So we did it. I put the barrel on the ferry and poled across slow, and the water was flat as a table. Not a drop. The innkeeper was watching from the bank with his arms crossed. When I landed he said: That was not a fair test. The water was too calm.

I said: Then we will do it again when the water is rough.

He said: No.

But he gave me the free night anyway, because he is a fair man and because everyone was watching. So now there is a bet on the notice board at the inn. It says the ferry keeper can cross with a barrel in any weather. It is not signed by me. I think it is signed by the innkeeper, but the ink is smudged.

If anyone asks, I have not agreed to anything.

The ferry is in good order. The rope is new. The landing on the far side wants a new plank, and I will do it before the fair.

Your friend,
Yew

Postscript: the dog is well. The dog ate the stew.
%%
Notes on the fish board
Pinned up by the fish market board, where everyone must read them to get to the scales.

Silver fish, price up again. Nobody is to blame. Do not ask the fishwife. She has said it is the weather, the tide, the north and her knees, and she is not going to say which one first.

Lost: one blue mitten, left hand. Found on the slip by a boy from the net shed. It is hanging on the post. Please do not take it, it is for the boy's little brother, who is standing next to the post with one bare hand and looking hopeful.

Salt is in. Thirty sacks. Come before the bell, because by the bell it is gone and then it is the next cart.

The harbor tower keeper asks that people stop climbing the rail to read the lamp times. He says the rail is his. Geld.

Nets to be mended at the quay window, not at the pier. The light is better at the window. The pier is cold.
%%
Notes on the market post, autumn
Lost: Dumpling, a fat ginger cat. Last seen on the pie stall, eating a crust meant for the mayor. Answers to "fish" and to nothing else. Ask at the bakery.
Found: one grey wool hat, on the step of the north well. It is not mine. Big Beet has sniffed it all morning, so it is not his either. Ask at the mill.
Gift: a basket of late apples by the cart, for anyone who helped with the barn. Take one for each child in the house. Take two if you carried the ladder. Tam.
The cart for Three Wells leaves at the second bell. Room for four sacks, and one cat if the cat is quiet.
%%
The letter not found
Notes left for Lorn at the Brown Hen.

On the door:
The traveler from Vell came back. He says he gave you a letter yesterday, but you say no letter came. He remembers the blue string. I remember seeing blue string on the ferry bench. The string is gone now.

On the table:
I looked under the bread board, in the tally book, and beneath the bench. I found one apple, two crumbs, and a beetle. I did not find the letter.

On the gate:
If the letter is in the ferry house, please bring it to the inn. If it is in the road grass, a fox may have found it first. If you gave it to someone, please tell us who.

On the waymark:
Travelers from Vell, ask for Lorn before you cross. A letter was lost between the inn and the ferry. It may be only a letter. Still, someone wrote it and someone is waiting.

From Halla
%%
Notes on the salt store door, late Frost
Written on the back of a price slip and nailed to the door of the salt store. Several people have added to it, in different hands, over three days. The door has been painted over twice, and the notes are still there under the paint.

Pell, back from the Long Road. The road is busy. Too busy. There are carts going east that I do not know. Most are full of chests. The drivers do not stop at the inns. The Brown Hen has no beds spare and they say they have not had a guest for a week.

Corin, the ship. The keel is covered with boards now. Three times as long as the old boats. You can see the top of it from the pier. I have been asked not to go up to the slip after dark. I have been asked nicely. I went anyway, and nobody stopped me. There was nobody there at all.

Geld, the harbor tower. The north lamp is still silent. I sent the line at dusk for eleven nights. On the twelfth night a light came back, very faint, and then it went out. I wrote it in the book. I have written the nights in the book since Swarm. The book is nearly full.

Maren, the bakery. The loaves are down to a third of what they were. I am still baking them. You must not stop baking. That is what we have.

Hal. The melons are in. Nobody has bought one for a week. They are sitting in the cellar. If you want one, come and take it. I do not want to carry it home alone.

Whoever is reading. We are still here. We will still be here in the morning, probably, with the boats. Take a melon.
%%
Notes on the door of the Halfway Inn
Gone to the ferry. Back at dusk.
The stew is on the hook. Do not let the dog have it.
If you are the cart from Ambrook, the room is the one at the top of the stairs. The key is under the third flowerpot.
If you are the cart from Three Wells, the key is the same key. There is only one key. Do not lose it.
Pell: your ledger is behind the bar. I did not read it. I read a little of it.
Yew
%%
Notes on the Long Road, the drills
Posted along the road in summer, by whoever had a pin and a reason. Hesk has copied them into this book so that the carters can read them without stopping.

Note on the first waymark. The arrow points to the Brown Hen. The Brown Hen is a day away. Mind the bridge.

Note at the bridge. The oak planks are loose. Do not stand in the middle of a plank. The middle is where the carts are sure to drop their barrels.

Note from the Brown Hen, for the carter who is always late. Your bread is on the table with a cloth over it. It has been on the table since the bell. It is not going to get any better.

Note from the tutor, to the keeper of the carrier mind. The drill on steps went badly again this week. The mind wrote its steps neatly and did not check the first line. The answer was wrong from the second line on. When I showed it, the mind wrote the steps again, and this time it checked the first line, found its own carry missing, and wrote the carry in. The next answer was right. I have never been so pleased by a missing carry.

Note from Marda, to the helper that misunderstood the order. Tomorrow's order is: fetch the bucket from the well. Please do not fetch the well. The well is not a bucket. The well is a well.

Note from Hesk, under Marda's. The helper has been shown the difference between a bucket and a well, by drawing. It drew a well. It drew the bucket inside the well. It drew the well very neatly, and it is a good drawing. I have told it that drawings are not orders. It stood by the drawing for an hour, which I take as a yes.

Note for anyone who walks the road by lamplight. The steps the mind writes are not a trick. They are only slow. A slow answer that can be checked is worth more than a quick one that cannot. This is what the tutors say, and I have come round to it, though I still like the quick ones.

Note, last. The hearth at the Brown Hen is lit. Do not poke it. The innkeeper will know if you do.
%%
Notes: the lesson that went badly
Pinned to the drill board at the hamlet hall, by Mave, who runs the drill for the apprentices. Written after the lesson, the same evening, in a bad temper. Oak has read it and says it is too harsh. Mave says it is exact.

Today's lesson was sorting. The apprentice was to sort the baskets: fish in the red basket, eels in the blue, and crabs in the yellow.

It sorted the cats.

We had three cats in the hall. I had not thought about cats. I had shown the mind a great many baskets. I had not shown it the cats. Now it knows about cats, and it will sort them every time, and they will not thank us for it.

Note for the next drill. Clear the hall of cats first. Then clear it again.

Note for me. Do not put the cats in the sorting drill. Put them in their own drill, at the back, under the table, where they like to be.

The mind was not wrong. It did exactly what the drill taught it. The fault is mine, and a little the cats'.

Things that went right: the eels were sorted perfectly. The crabs were sorted nearly perfectly. One crab went into the red basket, and I am not sure whose fault that was. Oak says it was the crab's.

Things to try next week: a drill with fewer baskets. A drill with no cats in it at all. A drill with Ferris outside the door, so that the gulls cannot see what we are doing. The mind does not mind an audience. I do.

Mave
%%
Note on the workshop door
Nessa's box of pages is on the bench. Do not sort it. Do not put your own pages in it. That box is for the test. Nobody drills on it, not even a mind that is nearly grown. If you want pages to drill on, take them from the crate by the window. Lenn.

Note on the melon
Tam, the melon by the south wall is bigger than the wheelbarrow. I am not joking. Bring the cart. Bring two people. Bring a saw. Lenn.

Note on the new road
The road to Three Wells is open. Cobblestone from our gate to the crossroads, packed earth after. A torch every twelve blocks. The cart came home with no mud on the wheels for the first time in my life. Lenn.
%%
The honey cake that fell down
Hesk's note, pinned inside the cake tin.

Ina's honey cake, as she has made it for twenty years, goes like this. One cup of honey. Two eggs. A cup of flour, and a little milk. A pinch of salt. Bake it until the top is brown, and the middle does not wobble when you touch it.

This week I put in the salt. Not a pinch. A whole spoon, because I was thinking about the coal. The cake rose very proud, the way a cake does. Then, in the middle of the oven, it fell down like a barn roof in a windstorm. I stood and watched it go. Ina called it a crime against the house.

The pig ate the cake at the back door, all of it, before anyone could say a word. Ina says it was the pig's fault. The pig says nothing. The pig is very smug about the whole matter.

For next time:
1. Measure the salt in the other room.
2. Keep the salt on the top shelf, with the other bad ideas.
3. Do not think about the coal while baking.
4. Tell Ina before the cake goes in, and not after it comes out.

Hesk
%%
Mending list, pinned by the stairs
- Hinge on the back door. Bram says it is the wood. It is the wood, and I will fix it before the frost.
- The bucket by the well: a new bottom. Ask the cooper at the mine gate for one with an iron strap.
- The coal sacks: the wet ones go by the fire to dry. Not on the fire. By the fire. Dunn, I mean you.
- Honey jars: count them. There are nine. Ina says there are eight. Ina is wrong, but it is her kitchen, so write eight.
- The lamp in the yard. The glass is cracked along the top. Put in a new pane before the first frost, or the wind will do it for us, and the wind does not pay the cooper.
- Ash's ball of wool. It is on the roof. Nobody knows how. Get it down before the hen finds it.
- The stair, third step from the top: do not stand on it with a jar. Stand on the fourth.
- Who took the good spoon? Nobody. The cat is not allowed in the kitchen. The cat has not been told.

Hesk
%%
Cake book: attempts one to six
Kept in the back of the house book, after the coal accounts. Ina wrote the numbers. Hesk wrote the notes. Dunn drew a picture of the cake, which is the most honest entry in the book.

Attempt one. Too dry. The honey was cold, and it would not mix with the eggs. Lesson: warm the honey by the fire, in its jar, not on the fire.

Attempt two. Too wet. Ina added the milk twice. Hesk did not know this, and was not told. He is not to be trusted with a jug. Lesson: count the jugs.

Attempt three. The top went black, and the middle stayed like porridge. The oven was far too hot. The fire had been banked for the night, and the oven still remembered it. Lesson: test the heat with a pinch of flour before the cake goes in.

Attempt four. The honey went hard in the cupboard overnight, because nobody put the lid on. Dunn tried to chew a piece and lost a tooth that was loose already. Lesson: lids answer most of the problems in this house.

Attempt five. The pig came. There is no lesson. The pig is the lesson.

Attempt six. It worked. It rose straight, it browned evenly, the middle did not wobble, and the whole kitchen smelt like the first warm day of spring. Everybody ate a slice. Ash ate two and said the second was for the cake and not for her. Bram came to the kitchen door, looked at the cake for a long time, and went off without a word. He came back an hour later with an empty plate. That is the highest praise the mine gate ever gives.

Notes for the next time:
- Warm the honey first.
- Measure the salt in the other room. See above.
- Keep the pig in the yard on baking days. Shut the pen gate. Check the latch, and then check it again.
- Write the numbers down. The first cake in this house was made in the year of the bad roof, and nobody wrote the recipe. Every cake since has been a guess.

Dunn asks for a seventh. Ina says there will be no seventh until the next market day, and not on a day when the coal is coming. I have written that down too.

Hesk
%%
Notes on the kitchen table
Left in Bram's house, at the edge of Saltreach, on a morning in Reaping. Kept by Runa, who says nothing in this house is private.

To Runa: Gone out with the tide. Back at noon, or at dusk if the fish are kind. Soup is on the stove. Bram.
To Bram: The soup was on the cold side of the stove. I moved it. It is still cold. Runa.
To everyone: Rye the roofer comes today for the hole over the stairs. Give him tea. Do not give him the good cup. Ossa.
To Ossa: Which is the good cup? Lise.
To Lise: The one with the blue stripe. It has been in this family longer than you have. Ossa.
To Ree: Move the bucket from under the stairs before Rye comes. And the other bucket. And the other. There are three. Runa.
To Runa: There are four. Ree.
To everyone: The cat says she has not had her fish. She has. Lise.
%%
Note left on the table, Fallon's house
Bel, I have gone to the fair. The bread is under the cloth.
Take the honey jar to the baker and ask for two loaves back.
Do not climb the mill wall again. I heard about the mill wall.
If the fisher from Lowmarsh calls, his boat was late home, so he is late here too. Tell him I have his candles ready.
Feed the cat before you go out. She will not let you forget, but I am telling you anyway.
%%
Note: on the hen house door
Pinned to the hen house door at the hamlet near Three Wells, in summer. Written by Bel, who keeps the hens for the school and says she is in charge of them, and who has been told by her mother that she is only in charge of cleaning them out.

Dear whoever opens this door,

The hens are fed at the first bell and the last bell. Not in between. They will tell you they are hungry in between. They are lying.
The speckled one is called Mrs Pudding. She is the best layer and the worst bully. Do not let her peck your fingers. She will say it was an accident.
The fox has been at the back wall again. I have mended the gap with two boards and a stone. The stone is heavy. Please do not move it, even to look.
The eggs go in the basket by the door. Count them. Write the number on the slate. If the number is less than yesterday, look under the straw. We found one under the straw on the second day and it was very cold.
The new roof is on the hen house now. Tam came to help with it. He said he was only holding the ladder, but he was up it the whole time.
%%
Notes along the north road
Written by Vane, bridge keeper at Little Weir, on small boards and left in the places named. A spring morning. Collected afterward and kept together.

On the bridge post: Wet paint. I mean it. Last year three people touched it and then touched their faces. Do not be a green-faced person.

On the gate of the Hollis field: Please close this gate. The sheep can open it, but they cannot close it. That is the whole of the problem.

On the waymark pillar, the one with the 3 and the arrow to the Halfway Inn: Someone has left a stone on top that is not a small stone. It is a big stone. It is about the size of a loaf. I do not know who did this. I do not know how it got up there. The little stones are for luck. The big stone is for show. Take it down.

On the wall of the well: The rope is new. The bucket is old. If you bring a new bucket, I will pin your name here and thank you.

On the door of the mill: Ela, your sack of oats is behind the bridge hut. It has been there since four days ago. Please fetch it. The cat sits on it.

On the old oak by the ford: To the person who carved the heart with two letters in it. I know who you are. I will not say. But the tree is not a notice board. Use the notice board.

On the notice board itself: Thank you. That is what it is for.

At the top of the lane, on the fence post: Spring is here. The geese have come back. They are very loud and very sure of themselves. Walk around them.

On the last post at the edge of the hamlet: Good road. Mind the puddle just past this post. It is deeper than it looks. I put a stick in it to measure. The stick went all the way in. Vane.
%%
A Door Full of Notes
Birch End, below the road to Vell

On the outer gate, for all who come in:
The latch sticks after rain.
Lift it, then pull.
The hammer is by the well, but do not use it on the latch.
It is for the fence nails.

On the inn door, for the keeper:
The cart from Vell is late, not lost.
Its driver stopped at the stream to set a loose stone.
Keep the stew warm.
There are carrots in the cellar and fish in the cool room.
Please do not let Olan tell the travelers that the stew is mostly carrots.
He has said this twice already.

On the table, for Seli:
Your basket is under the bench.
I put the good apples in it and left the bruised ones for the mill.
The cat has been in the basket.
The apples are safe. The cat is asleep on them.

On the school door, for the children:
The teacher will be at the inn until the rain stops.
Bring your slates and leave your muddy boots outside.
The door is painted blue because everyone wanted blue.
The children chose the shade. The teacher chose the door.

On the drill room door, for Nessa:
I dried the boards by the hearth.
The crystal cards are in order.
Farm is on the first tray. Build is on the second.
The small apprentice carried the wood in without dropping it.
It still turned toward the shed when I asked it to stay.
I will test it again tomorrow.

On the waymark above the hamlet:
Vell is uphill.
Three Wells is down the long road.
The Brown Hen is one long walk past the field.
There is a fresh stone on top.
Leave it there for the next traveler.

On the inn table, after market day:
The market at Three Wells was full before noon.
We sold flour, apples, eggs, and two baskets of carrots.
A boy bought one apple and carried it home in both hands.
The fish seller gave Seli a small trout because she helped mend a net.
The bridge held every cart. One board creaked, so the road keeper has been told.

On the gate, after the first hard frost:
The well rope is stiff.
Bring it inside after drawing water.
The last apples are in the dry room.
Count the jars before you take one. The row by the wall is for winter.

On the inn door, at the start of Longnight:
The hill road is closed to carts until the snow is cleared.
Walkers may pass in daylight.
Keep the lamp lit by the gate.
If the wind takes it, there are spare torches in the shed.

The winter lasted longer than we expected.
For several mornings the road disappeared under snow.
Olan and Seli took wood to the old folk.
The innkeeper shared flour with the house by the stream.
Nessa brought the children in to learn beside the hearth.
No one went hungry, though the last apple jar was opened before Deepsnow ended.

On the table, when the thaw came:
The road is open again.
The bridge boards are sound.
There is one sack of flour left for the next cart.
Put it in the inn store, not by the hearth.
We will plant the garden when the ground softens.
%%
Note: on the waymark, east road
Sorrel, if you pass this way, read the back of this stone.
I owe you two emeralds from the fair. I have left them in the crack under the top stone. Take them. Do not argue.
The map of the marsh road you drew me saved me a wet night. My cart and I thank you.
- Pell, merchant
%%
Notes for the fair
Left on the stall of the fishwife, and under the bell at the harbor square, and on the post of the net shed, over several days in the deep of winter. Most are short. The horse is at the bottom, last, in the most careful hand.

To the fishwife. The horse came back. It was in the square this morning with a bridle of rope round its neck and nobody on it. Ferris says it walked up the quay as if it were late for something. Please tell me you have some carrots.

To Ferris. Thank you for bringing the horse home. You were right about the blanket. The horse knows it now. It does not sneeze when it sees the blanket, which I think is the blanket's doing. Corin

To Corin. It is yours to keep, if you want it. I cannot take a horse with me, and I am not going to be here for the spring. Ferris

To Ferris. Keep it. Take it up to the hills at the thaw, to the Ambrook road, where it can see some grass. Tell Pell to give you a sack of oats for the road, and tell him I said he owes me. Corin

To anyone. The fair is not on this year. The board has said so, in writing, with a seal. We were going to have pies. Please do not be angry with the board. Nobody there is angry.

To Mayor Dace, of Three Wells, if the notice reaches you. Saltreach has had its fair in every year since the harbor was built. This is the first winter without it. We are sorry. We are only saying so because you asked for word.

Corin. The keel is open at the top now. There is a light in the hull. I do not know what it is for.
%%
Notice on the gate, with notes under it
THE GLASSHOUSE WILL BE SHUT FROM THE FOURTEENTH TO THE TWENTIETH OF LEAFFALL. ORDERS FOR WINDOW PANES MAY BE LEFT IN THE BOX.

Lenn, under it: Back early if the cart holds. Do not tip the window panes. Do not stack them. I will know.

Under that, in another hand: The melon is on the bench. It is too big for the bench. It is on the floor now.

Under that, in a third hand: The new road is open to the crossroads. The waymark has the figure 3 and an arrow to the Halfway Inn. Someone left a little stone on top of it. That was me.

Under that, in Lenn's hand again: Also do not open the test box. I mean you, Tom.

Under that, in a fourth hand: I did not open it. I only looked at the seal.
%%
Notes Left Before Longnight
For the folk of Birch End, below the Vell road

On the inn door, for the keeper:
The last cart from Vell brought two sacks of flour and a box of dry kindling.
Put the flour on the high shelf. The mice can reach the lower one.
The kindling is for the front room. Keep a bundle dry for the sick room.

On the table, for Seli:
I mended the blue mitten. The thumb is still too large.
Wear it anyway. You can tuck the loose end into your sleeve.
Your other mitten is under the bench with the cat.

On the gate, for Olan:
The north hinge has ice in it.
Pour warm water on the hinge, then lift the gate.
Do not strike it with the hammer. The hammer is for nails.
The small wood pile is for the old folk by the well.

On the waymark, for travelers:
Vell is uphill.
The Brown Hen is toward the fields.
The road stones are clear as far as the stream.
After that, take the raised path by the oak hedge.
A cart has left a wheel rut there. Keep the horses to the left.

On the school door, for the children:
Lessons are in the inn room while the roof is mended.
Bring your slates.
Leave the snow off your boots by the door.
There is a pot of beetroot soup on the hearth. It is for everyone.

On the drill room door, for Nessa:
The apprentices are tested at first light.
The boards are dry, and the crystals are on their cards.
I put the spare wool by the door. The little one has a cold.
No one needs to stand outside for long.

We have wood, flour, and apples in jars.
The winter may be long, but no one here will eat alone.
%%
Letter: Corin to Oak
Oak,

The slip is clear again. We slid the new boat down on the fourth of Swarm and she went in straight and floated. The children cheered. I cheered. Even the old man who mends nets cheered, and he does not cheer.

Now that the slip is clear, bring your cart down and take the wood off the quay. The wood store is full and we need the room. There are thirty planks of birch and twenty of oak. Count them and sign the board.

I hear you found a new copper vein up past the third hill, on the way to Three Wells. The men are talking about it. They say it is near the surface and the stone is soft. If that is true, the town will want copper for the boats and the nails and the little rings on the mast. Bring me some of it when you come. Not the ore, the metal. I want to see the color.

There is a well behind the shed that has been dry since Sowing. Do not water the horses there. Use the harbor tap, or the trough by the fish market, which the tide keeps full.

The long pier needs boards. I have written to the council. They will say wait. You could bring the boards anyway and I will pay you in emeralds and fish. Mostly fish.

Your friend,
Corin
%%
Notes for the new hands
Pinned by the net shed door at the hamlet, for the new workers who came up from the Saltreach quay in the summer. Written by Oak, net mender.

Welcome. You will be cold at first. Everybody is, even in summer, even at noon. The wind comes off the sea and goes straight through a coat that was made for Vell.

The shed is open from first light to the bell. Come in and take a needle and a ball of twine from the left box. Bring them back to the left box. Not the right box. The right box holds the net on the rack, and you will ruin it.

Mend nets with the knot we use here. The Saltreach knot is the one with the loop. Mave will show you. Mave says it is the wrong knot, and then she shows the right one, and then she says it is the wrong knot again. Ignore her. She is teasing you.

Eat at the quay wall. Do not eat in the shed. The cat will steal your bread, and the gulls will watch her do it, and both of them will look very pleased with themselves.

Be kind to the apprentices. They are not clever the way we are, but they are patient and exact. You will not have to tell them twice, though you may have to tell them four times, because the first three times they were listening very closely.

Ask before you borrow a boat. The boats are all somebody's, even the old ones with holes. Hal will tell you whose each one is. He will tell you at length.

The tide book is by the door. Read it before you go out past the harbor wall. A net caught on the turn of the tide is a net you will be buying again, and I do not have the emeralds to buy you one.

Do not sing in the shed on a wet day. We all sing, and the nets get damp, and the damp gets in. We sing on fine days only. Mave sings on wet days. Mave is not allowed to sing.

The bell rings at noon and at dusk. When it rings at noon, stop, eat, and sit on the wall for a while. The gulls will come. Let them. They are the only ones who never complain about the bread.

Oak
%%
Notes on the well and the gate
Left at Coalfoot, the hamlet under Copperhold, in summer. By Hesk and whoever else walked by.

On the well: Draw your own water. The bucket is heavy but honest. If it is empty, the well is dry, and that has never happened. So it is full. Pull harder. Hesk.

On the gate: Shut it behind you. The goats are clever and the garden is small. Anyone who leaves it open will carry the first beetroot home. Hesk.

On the gate, below: The goats are not clever. They are only hungry. Fen.

On the gate, below that: Hungry is a kind of clever. Hesk.
%%
The farm journal of Dell, spring
I am old and I keep a book now. The soldiering is done. The wall was a long time ago. I have a farm outside Vell and a gate that sticks and bees that swarm when they please.

Here is what I know about the relay house they built at the foot of our tower.

It is small. Smaller than the barn. It has one room and one stand, and on the stand is the mind. It is a crystal the size of a loaf, and it does not look like much. It looks like something you would put on a shelf and forget.

The quickeners stand round it in a ring. They are stone and copper and they hum, very low, all the time. We keep them cool. In spring we carry water up from the well and pour it in the trough. In winter we pack them in ice and snow and the snow does not melt, which tells you the work they do. The relay man says if the quickeners get warm, the mind gets slow. I do not know why. Nobody has told me why. I have asked.

The mind answers apprentices. An apprentice comes down the road and stands at the door and waits, and the answer comes back through the relay as a letter. The big minds write back. The small ones only do what they are told. I have seen a small mind at our gate with a card in its hand, and it stood there a long while, and then it went and did the thing, and did it right.

Nessa the tutor came out from Vell to look at it. She looked at the crystal and she looked at the quickeners and she said: This one is tested. I asked her what that means. She said a mind is tested on what it was never drilled on, and that you should never send an untested mind to the fields. I said I have sent many untested boys to the fields. She said: Yes. And look how they turned out.

I like her.

The mind came in the spring, and the tower was here long before it. I climbed that tower as a boy. The stair lamp was lit at every turn and the torches were round the foot and the keeper let me look at the lamp room through the glass. I thought that was the whole of it. Now there is a loaf of crystal at the bottom that answers questions, and the lamp at the top is the same lamp.

I do not know what to make of it. I write it down. That is what the clerks do, and I am learning from them.

Dell
%%
Notes from Birch End
In Birch End, below the road to Vell

On the gate for Olan:
The latch sticks when the air is wet. Lift it before you pull.
I left the little hammer by the well.

On the table for Seli:
Please bring the bowl back to the inn.
It belongs to the innkeeper, not the hens.

On the door for Nessa:
The drill room is swept.
I put the spare slate by the tool rack.
The apprentices stood in their row without being asked.
I count that as a good morning.

On the waymark for travelers:
Vell is uphill.
The Brown Hen is one long walk toward the fields.
There is a stone on top. Leave it there, please.
%%
Door and table notes
Lorn, I left these for you before the ferry crossing.

On the door:
Please lift the latch when you come in. It sticks when the wood swells. I oiled it with a little honey. It smells better, but it still sticks.

On the table:
A letter came from Vell in a sealed packet. The seal is whole. I put it beside your tally book. It is addressed to you, so I did not open it.

On the gate:
Two travelers are waiting with a crate of apples for Ambrook. They say the bridge is clear. One says it is clear for a cart. The other says it is clear for a person. They will decide which one of them is right.

On the waymark:
The ferry is tied up for a short rest. Lorn is eating. Please do not ring the bell unless you see a loose boat.

From Sella, ferryman's helper
%%
Notes on the bridge hut door
Pinned to the door of the bridge hut at Little Weir. Vane keeps this bridge. Spring.

To anyone crossing: the third plank from the east end is loose. Step on the nails, not between them. I will fix it when the rain stops.

To the carter with the red cart: you are too wide for this bridge. You were too wide last spring and the spring before. Stop trying. The ford is downstream and the water is only up to the axle.

To whoever left a dead fish on my step: thank you, I think. The cat has eaten it. Do not leave another.

To the Hollis boys: you may fish from the bridge. You may not fish from the rail. The rail is not a seat. I have seen you.

To myself: buy tar. Buy a new lantern wick. Do not forget again.

Back at dusk. If the door is locked, the key is under the stone with the moss on it. Put it back.

Vane
%%
Notes on the gate, the quay
Left on the gate of the stable behind the net shed, and on the post, and on the bench under the window, in the order they were written. Winter.

To Ferris. The horse is yours until the thaw. Do not tell the carter. He thinks it is in Ambrook. Feed it oats in the morning and a carrot at noon, not bread. Bread makes it sad, and a sad horse will not pull. Corin

To Corin. The horse was fine. It ate two carrots and stood in the rain for an hour looking at the sea. I think it was homesick for hills. I brought it back by the long way, round the salt store. Ferris

To Ferris. Put the blanket on it in the evenings. I know you think it is too warm for a blanket. It is not too warm for a horse with a cough. Corin

To Corin. It does not have a cough. It has a sneeze, and it is always the same sneeze, very loud, right after the bell. Ferris

To Ferris. Then it is a horse with a sneeze and a blanket. That is the best sort. Take the blanket to the net shed and dry it on the rope. Corin

To anyone who finds this. The gate sticks in the wet. Lift and push. Do not kick it. Geld has a foot like a pot lid and he kicked it last week, so now it sticks worse. We are sorry.
%%
Notes at the market table, Longnight
Pinned to the table by the scales, where the market clerk keeps the price slips. The clerk does not object to the notes, because the notes have started to come with a coin wrapped in them. Most of the coins are small.

Notice: the market is short of wheat this week. The carts are late on the Long Road. The mill is working day and night. Bread will be smaller, and the board will be kind about it.

To the fishwife. I have the grey fish you asked for. I put them in the cold box under the stall, the bottom one, where the ice is. Do not let the cat near them, the cat is a thief and it has been seen. Your son says thank you.

To Hal the gardener. The melon seeds you gave me are in a jar on my sill. They are not yet doing anything. I am keeping them warm. If they do nothing, I shall blame you, and then I shall eat the melon I grow from the next lot anyway.

Wanted: a cart, a strong one, for a family of five and their chests. They go east in the morning, by the coast road. They will pay in salt. If you have a cart and a morning, see the clerk at the gate before the bell. Do not ask them why they go. They have said it is for the children.

To whoever moved the bench. It was in the sun. It is in the cold now. I hope you are happy with yourself.
