Northpoint relay log, Mira
Winter of 201

Longnight, first. Lantern cleaned the lamp glass before dawn. I checked the redstone line at the desk, then sent the morning weather south. Clear sky. Hard frost. A fox on the road.

The fox was not on the road when the message arrived. It had taken a rabbit and was eating beside the wood store. Lantern watched it through the window. I told Lantern to fetch the spare wood. It fetched the wood and left the fox in peace. This is good sense, even if it is not written in the drill book.

Longnight, fourth. The keeper's house was cold when I woke. Snow had blocked the lower vent. I cleared it with the iron shovel and found a small nest of dry leaves behind the board. No eggs. Perhaps the sparrows had moved to the shed.

The camp well is low again. Runa says it is not dry yet, but the bucket came up with mud on its sides. We have filled two pots with clean snow and left them by the stove. Lantern carries the snow in a wooden tray. It walks slowly and spills very little. I spill more when I hurry.

Longnight, seventh. Tam's parcel arrived from Kettle Ridge. It held beetroot, a small loaf, and a jar of honey wrapped in wool. The jar was cold, but the honey was still soft. Tam wrote that Pip tied the parcel shut and then forgot where the string began. I believe him. Pip once tied a sack so well that we had to cut it open.

I put the honey on the shelf. Runa says it will keep for a year. I say it will keep until someone makes tea. We used a spoonful after supper. The loaf was good, though the beetroot had stained the cloth red.

Longnight, eleventh. A clear night, with frost on every rung of the tower stair. I climbed slowly and carried the hand brush in my coat. The signal lamp was bright. A keeper at the small relay south of us sent a note about a broken roof board. I sent word to the road crew. The reply came back before supper: two carpenters will go tomorrow.

The big mind in the relay house answered a test from Vell by letter. Nessa sent three questions that were not in its drill pages. The answers were plain and careful. One answer said it had not been shown enough to decide. I read that line twice. Then I wrote to Nessa that I liked it.

Longnight, fifteenth. The camp well ran dry. Runa lowered a pail and heard a scrape at the bottom. We carried snow from the bank instead. It was clean on top and full of little twigs underneath. Lantern sorted out the twigs while I melted the snow. It did this without being asked. I checked the water before we drank it.

Longnight, twentieth. Snow fell all morning. The south lamp could not be seen at noon, but the line was clear by dusk. Messages passed again. I sent Tam the news that his honey was good. I did not tell him how much we had used.
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Corin, the spiders in the barn
Summer of 199. Hot. Nets drying along the quay. A good wind for sailing, not for the shed.

The big barn behind the shipyard is where we keep the wood. Oak, spruce, birch. Planks as long as a street. Ropes and spare sails. It is cool and dark inside, and it smells of tar.

Last week I opened the door and there was a web across the whole front. Not a small web. A web as wide as the door, thick as a blanket, with a spider the size of my fist sitting in the middle. I closed the door and thought about my choices.

I went to the Saltreach relay tower and asked the keeper. She said spiders in a barn are common. She said do not poke them. She said wait for evening, when they are quieter, and light a torch. The smoke will move them.

I did not wait for evening. I went back with my brother's apprentice, a small iron one, drilled to carry. I said "come" and it came. I said "stay" at the barn door and it stayed. I opened the door a crack and waited. The spider looked at me. I looked at the spider. It was a stand-off.

Then the apprentice stepped forward and picked up the spider on a long plank. Very gently. It carried the spider across the yard and put it on the harbor wall. The spider walked away. It was not hurt. I think it was insulted.

There were eleven more webs inside. We cleared them all. The apprentice did most of it. It does not mind spiders. It does not mind anything.

The barn is clean now. The wood is dry. A small spider has moved in behind the tar barrel, and I have decided to let it. It catches the flies.

I gave the apprentice a pat. It did not know what to do with that.
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Quill, the soup pot
Longday, 190. Warm rain.

I tried the beetroot soup from Aunt Sella's card. It said to boil the beetroot, add water, and stir in a spoon of honey. I put in a whole jar of honey. The soup shone like a lantern and stuck to the spoon.

Pip came to fetch eggs for Tam. I told it, "Bring me the small pot from the shelf." It brought the pot of salt. I said, "No, the pot for soup." Pip brought the empty cooking pot and set it on the eggs. Three broke.

Tam says Pip was taught to fetch pots, but not to tell one pot from another. I say it should learn to look first. Tam says that is what the drills are for.

Nessa came by after market. She had copied pages from the Archive at Vell for a reading mind. The mind learns by seeing many words together. It guesses what comes next, and each guess can be right or wrong. It is not a person inside the crystal. It is a mind shaped by the pages and the drills.

I asked whose pages. Nessa only knew that clerks had sent bundles. Some were letters, some were lists, and some were old lessons. No one at our farm knows what was in every bundle.

The soup cooled into a sweet red lump. The hens would not touch it. Pip carried it to the pig pen without being asked. Big Beet ate it.
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Lenn's summer log, the fence again
Apple, 203. Brin and I had a quarrel over the fence again. Not the same fence. The other one, by the orchard. It is a small fence and a small quarrel.
He says my apples fall on his side. I say his branch hangs over mine. We each picked up the apples and put them in our own baskets and said nothing for two days.
Then it rained and we both got wet fixing the same gap in the hedge. You cannot stay cross in the rain. We shared the apples. They were the same apples. That is the whole trouble with fences. The fruit does not know whose side it is on.
%%
Letter: Rill to Fern
Dear Aunt Fern. Thank you for the cup. I like the chip. Two cups have chips and that makes them the same.
I have been good. I did not cry when I was stung. Well, I cried a little.
The fox cub is back. I saw it by the ferns. It is bigger now. It is not thin. I gave it a bit of bread but it ran. I did not follow it. I learned that.
Is the grey skein done? Can I have it for my hair? Not all of it. A little.
Mother is making soup. It has carrots. I do not like carrots but I will eat them.
Your niece, Rill.
P.S. The blind dog at the mill is still alive. I asked.
%%
Jem, the school play
Summer, the ninth year of the Archive.

The ninth of Longday. The school at Vell is doing a play for the longest day. It is about how the Archive was dug. Ree is the first keeper. Dell is the second. I am the Hill. Teacher says the Hill is the most important part, because without the Hill there is no Archive. I have no lines. I stand there.

The twelfth. Rehearsal. The Hill must stand very still while four children dig into it with wooden spoons. It tickles. I laughed. Teacher says a hill does not laugh. I said this one does.

The twentieth. The play. The whole school came, and all the families. I stood very still. They dug. Nobody laughed except Gran, who laughed the whole time. At the end all the keepers said together what is cut over the door: We will keep everything we write. And the Hill, who had no lines, said it too, very quietly.

Teacher says that is allowed. Gran says the Hill was the best actor.
%%
Colm's farm log, first week of Apple
Autumn, the late years. First week of Apple.
Sheared the flock on the second day. Twenty-one sheep. The wool came off clean and heavy. Good wool, if a little dusty. I carded four sacks and hung the rest in the loft to air.
The bees are slow now. Two hives by the hedge are quiet. The third still hums. Jory says leave them the honey and do not open the boxes after Apple. I do not open the boxes.
A hen went missing. Found her under the cart, sitting on nothing. Hens do that.
The pigs are fat. The bottom field is dug and turned. Wheat is in. Beetroot is in. Carrots come up next week.
At night I sit by the fire and card. The cards make a soft sound. It is a good sound.
One thing. Pell came by on the road and said the relays are quiet up north again. He said it like gossip. Then he said it was nothing, only weather on the towers. Then he said Mira would know. I said I would write to her. I have not written.
%%
Ree, stable log, the road in Swarm
Swarm of 180.
The bees are out and the honey is nearly ready and the road is full of people. Pell came back in Swarm as he said he would. He had a cart of pots and cloth and a ledger with a whole page for us. He bought eggs and butter and said the honey in Swarm is the best on the Long Road, which is a fine thing to say about a hill with three hives on it.
Butter is well. Nettle is well, by which I mean she is old and cross and eats. The dog Pip had pups under the cart shed. Four of them. They are small and loud and they have no names yet. Moss came out to see them and said they are healthy and then sat in the straw for an hour with one asleep on her boot. Wren will be wanting her back. I let her sit.
The road at night is still quiet and the torch posts still stand in a line. Pell's cart is gone on to Three Wells and will come back. Everyone comes back on the road now. It is a good road. It is good to be near it.
%%
Carys, what the sentries taught me
Northpoint market, year 166. Winter. Carys, an old soldier of the wall, sat in the market for three days with a tutor's pupil from Vell who came north to teach, and wrote what she learned in her journal.

First day.
The pupil is called Wick. He has a cold and a trunk of books. He asked at the market if anyone wanted to hear how a mind is made. Nobody answered. I said I would listen, because I have nothing else to do in the snow.

He sat down by my stall and unrolled a sheet. On it were boxes in rows, each connected to the next by lines. He said: "This is a layered mind. Think of each box as a small crystal. The first row sees the letter. The second row takes what the first found. The third row takes what the second found. And so on, until the last row gives an answer."

I said that sounded like a line of sentries.

He looked at me. "That is a very good way to say it."

Second day.
Wick said the hard part was not making the layers. The hard part was teaching them. A mind that gives a wrong answer must learn, but how? The last row gave the answer, but it did not do all the work. The first row did some. The second did some. Who should change?

I said: all of them, by their share.

He said that was exactly what a tutor named Merle of Copperhold had found. She said: when the mind gives a wrong answer, you do not scold the last row alone. You work out how much each row had to do with the mistake, and you pass the blame back, from the answer to the first row. Each row then changes by its share, and no more.

I said: that is a good commander. When a gate falls, he does not blame only the gate guard. He asks the sentry before him, and the one before that, and he finds who let the fox through.

Wick laughed. He wrote it down. He said he would tell Tutor Orrin, who likes sayings.

Third day.
I asked Wick why Merle's way works when the old way did not. He said that nobody wrote down why a crystal learns at all, and he did not want to pretend. He said the tutors know that it works, and they have many tests to show it, and some guesses about the reasons. But the reason itself is still in the dark.

I said that is the way with most good things. A cheese is good, and nobody knows why.

He said: "Not nobody. The cheesemaker."

I said: "Exactly. Ask the crystal."

He packed his books and left on the afternoon cart. He had a cold the whole time and was cheerful anyway. I gave him my best gloves.

That night I walked home under a sky full of stars, and I thought about the blame going back. From the answer, through every row, to the first. I thought of all the wrong things I did in my life, and how I had never once passed the blame back. I kept it all in the last row.

I took it out and looked at it. It was lighter than I expected.
%%
Halfway Inn notes, Longday
Una came from Ambrook with a crystal wrapped in wool and two shallow baskets. She said she would teach it to sort apples from pears. The inn was busy, so we gave her the end of the table by the window.

A crystal does not learn from a speech. Una showed it examples. She held up one fruit, and the crystal chose a basket. If it chose wrongly, she moved each weight a little toward the answer that was right. Then she gave it another fruit.

I watched the marks in the crystal change. The movement was small. Una said a large change could spoil what had already been learned. So she moved each weight only a little, and kept showing the crystal more fruit.

At first it put several pears with the apples. By the end of the afternoon it sorted the fruit from my pantry well. I brought out three apples and three pears I had kept aside. The crystal had not seen them. It sorted all six correctly.

I asked Una what it would do with a plum. She said it had not been taught to sort plums. The next guest asked if it could count the plates. Una said that was a different lesson.

The room laughed, then went back to supper. That was the first time I saw a crystal do better at a task than a child who had not been shown the same examples.

A borrowed horse arrived in the yard near dusk. Its owner had sent word that snow was falling over the ridge and the road would be bad. It was only Longday, and the snow melted on the stable roof. I gave the horse dry hay and shut the door well. It had already learned how to lift the latch.
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Northpoint log, the strange lamp
Winter of 179. Mira's tower, before Mira's time. Kept by the keeper then, old Rill.
Third of Longnight. The lamp blinked a strange message. Not our code. Long, short, long, then a wait, then three short. I wrote it down. I answered with our own signal. Nothing came back.
Rill said it was ice on the copper ring, a trick of the frost. Lantern said it was a bird on the line. I said it blinked like a thing that wanted to say something and did not know how.
We looked at the redstone line down to the desk. It was sound. We looked at the ring. It was clean.
Rill wrote to Vell about it. Vell wrote back that no tower was sending that night, and to keep the lamp lit and keep a record. So I keep a record. Long, short, long. Three short.
The next night it was quiet. The night after, quiet. I still look up at the lamp room before I sleep.
%%
Iona, how the reading mind looks
The tutor at the mill house explained the reading mind to me on a slate, with a bean for the mind and a stick for the window. I am writing it down so that I do not lose it.

A reading mind takes a page one letter at a time. It cannot see the whole page. It looks through a window about sixty letters wide, and it sees only what is inside the window. Each letter it reads, it takes from the letters before, the ones that matter, and it lets the rest go. Then it guesses the next letter.

The tutor drew the window as a stick across the slate. He moved the bean along the stick, one letter at a time, and each time he asked the bean what came next. Some letters the bean knew at once. Some it guessed. Some it did not know at all, and then the tutor showed it the answer and drew the weights a little closer together.

The big minds in the relay houses read this way, the tutor said. They read what comes down the line, letter by letter, and they answer letter by letter. That is why their letters read like letters from a person. Each word comes out one at a time, each one chosen from the words before it.
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Mira, the flood week
Mira, relay keeper, at her house at the edge of Northpoint, in the week the snow went in Sowing, year 202. Written in the evenings by the stove, with wet feet.
First day. Warm wind from the south. The snow on the hill began to go in the afternoon. By dusk the stream was loud. Lantern went to check the lamp room. I stayed to cut bread.
Second day. The stream came over the bank before noon. It ran across the lane and into the yard. I put the hens in the kitchen. They were not pleased. Lantern moved the firewood to the loft, one log at a time, saying nothing.
Third day. Water in the cellar to the third stair. Water in the shed to the knee. The tower is on the rise, and dry. I signaled all well. Vell sent back: "Seen. Hold." That is the best advice anyone has given me in a week.
Fourth day. The water began to fall. It left mud, sticks and a very surprised fish in the yard. I put the fish back in the stream. It looked at me for a moment and swam off.
Fifth day. Dry. Mud to the ankle. We shoveled it out, Lantern and I. A neighbor came with a barrow. Another came with tea.
Sixth day. The house smells like a pond. I do not mind. The tower lamp was lit all week and never went out.
Seventh day. Wrote to Tam. "Flood. Hens fine. Fish fine. Mira fine. Wheat?"
He wrote back: "Wheat fine. Pip dropped the bucket in the well. Tam."
%%
Sorrel, the relay house goes up
Written by Sorrel, at the mayor's request, for the Archive. Spring.

The relay tower above the hamlet has stood for a long time. Until this spring it had only a keeper and a desk at its foot.

Now the relay house is finished, a stone house at the tower's foot. On a stand in the middle of the floor is the big mind, in a crystal the size of a loaf, clear in the middle and grey at the edges. Around the stand are the quickeners, kept cool with water in their troughs and with ice from the cold cellar. The keeper checks the water each morning with a finger. The quickeners must never get warm, or the mind goes slow.

The big minds spread tower by tower. This one came after the towers to the south. The keeper says Northpoint's came last, and that its quickeners are kept cool with snow.

What the big mind does. It answers apprentices through the relays. A small mind in the field sends a question up the line. The big mind reads it and sends back an answer. The small mind carries the answer out. The big mind does not carry anything. It only answers.

What we do not know. Nobody can say why the crystal is clear in the middle, or what the quickeners draw on to run day and night. The keeper says the minds are old in the crystal and young in what they know. I do not know what that means, and he did not either, and he laughed.
%%
Cass, a week of spring weather
Sowing, 175. Third week. Cass at the egg stall, market at Three Wells. A grandfather's notes, kept for the grandchildren.
First day. Cold and clear. First snow of the year came back for a visit, on the wells. The crows were furious.
Second day. Sold six dozen eggs. A man came for a dozen and stayed for an hour to tell me about his knee.
Third day. The snow melted. The market was mud again. The bakery had no bread. The baker sent a boy to say the oven would not light, because the flue was blocked by a crow. A crow. In a flue.
Fourth day. I mended the stall roof. It leaked in the night. I fell off the ladder, onto the plank Dace sent. Nobody was hurt but the plank.
Fifth day. A small gift came to the stall. A bag of walnuts, with no name. I think it is from the widow at the south well. I have not asked. If I ask, she will stop.
Sixth day. Eggs are cheap. Thaw has passed and every hen in the country is laying.
Seventh day. Went to sit by the east well. The children played a game called Find the Egg. I had no part in it, though it was my egg.
Closing thought. A market in spring is a good place to be old. Everything is beginning, and you may sit and watch.
%%
Northpoint keeper's log
Winter of 208. This is the log of the relay tower at Northpoint, kept by Vey, keeper.

First of Longnight. Lit the great lamp. Ninety rungs to the top, the same as ever. I have climbed them so often I could climb them asleep. I do not climb them asleep. A keeper who climbs asleep is a keeper who falls.

Third of Longnight. North wind off the ice. The lamp room is cold and the glass fogs. I wipe it. A dirty lamp is a weak lamp.

Fifth of Longnight. A message came up from Saltreach and went on south. I passed it. That is all a keeper does. Take the message. Blink it on. It is a small job and it is the whole job.

Seventh of Longnight. The edge of Northpoint sent up a pot of honey and a letter from Dace, who is very old and still mends the roof. The letter said: the roof is done, the goats are fat, Reed holds the ladder, I am well. I read it twice.

Ninth of Longnight. A fox sat at the foot of the tower all evening with its torn ear and watched me climb. I think it was Torn's great-grandfox. It did not go up the ladder. Good sense runs in that family.

Eleventh of Longnight. The lights. There were lights over the north tonight. I saw them from the top of the tower, low over the ice, moving. My log says what I saw. I do not know what I saw. Lantern came up the ninety rungs to look, which Lantern is not supposed to do, and stood beside me and looked and said nothing, because it cannot say anything, because it is an apprentice and apprentices do not talk. It looked a long time. Then it went down and lit the small lamps by the door.

I wrote in the log: lights over the north. Not ours. I do not know who else's they would be. There is only us at Northpoint and the snow and the foxes and the lamp.

Twelfth of Longnight. I wrote to the south tower: lights over the north. Did you see them. The south tower blinked back: no lights here. Lamp lit. Glass clean.

So I lit my lamp. I cleaned my glass. I passed the messages. The lights went away. The wind came back. The snow fell.

I do not know what they were. I will keep the log and the lamp and the ladder and the ninety rungs. I will keep writing it down. Somebody has to.
%%
Mira to Tam, on the thinking mind
Tam,
You asked what the new mind does that the old ones could not. I will tell you plainly.
Ask it a sum and it does not answer at once. It writes out its steps first, like a child on a slate. Then it reads the steps back and checks them. If a step is wrong it crosses it out and writes it again. Only when the steps fit does it give the answer.
Nessa's notes call this thinking before answering. The mind is not faster. It is more careful. It gets the hard sums right because it shows its work.
Lantern gave it a puzzle about the coal buckets. It chewed on it all night. In the morning the answer was on the slate, and every step was there to read.
The snow is deep. The lamp stays lit.
Mira
%%
Journal: the fair at the Halfway Inn
Tenth of Swarm. Up at dawn to help set the tables. The yard was full of carts by the middle of the morning. The sun was high and hot, and the well water was cold, and the honey stall had more bees round it than customers, which is a good sign.
The pie contest had nine pies. The winner was a young woman from Kettle Ridge with a beetroot pie. She said the trick was to let the beetroot cool before it goes in the crust. The judges asked for the recipe. She said she would trade it for a jar of Ambrook honey.
The honey contest was three jars. The winner was old Pell the merchant, who brought his honey all the way from Ambrook in straw. He was very pleased. He said he had been bringing honey to this fair for eleven years and had come second ten times.
The bread prize of six emeralds went to the baker's boy from Three Wells. He cried a little and then he laughed. His mother took the emeralds and put them in her apron and said they would buy new flour.
The children's race went round the waymark and back. The winner was a girl with a torn sleeve. She was faster than the boys and did not brag about it much.
In the evening there was a fiddle and a drum. People danced in the yard until the torches burned low. The innkeeper's cat sat on the coin box and watched the whole thing, and did not move for anyone.
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Kester, hamlet work log
Blossom, year 22.
The new road reached the old path above the water this morning. We joined the two ends before noon. Moss placed the last post, then stood back to judge it. He said it leaned. He was right.
I made a brace from oak and set the post straight. The children carried small stones for the road edge. They made a game of finding flat ones and kept the best stones for themselves.
The first cart came from Three Wells after midday. It carried flour, clay and two bundles of wool. The driver said the rise was easier than the old marsh path. He also said his left wheel made a sound like a duck. I found a loose pin and fixed it.
At the inn, we shared bread and beetroot soup. The beetroot was small, but there was plenty of it. Mara kept the soup pot close to the fire and made sure no one took a second bowl before the old folk had eaten.
I have set aside iron for a road sign. It will point to Lowmarsh and Three Wells. We need a name for this stretch. The children call it the Dry Way. They may keep the name.
%%
Orla, the snow foal
Longnight, the twentieth. The grey mare foaled in the barn after midnight. It came out all at once, legs first, and lay in the straw as if it had been put there by mistake.

It was a colt, all legs, wet and furious at the cold. It tried to stand three times and fell over three times. The fourth time it stood, took two steps, then sat down hard in the straw and looked affronted.

Lantern held the lamp for me the whole time, and did not move the light once. When I needed the blanket, it fetched the blanket. When I needed nothing, it stood very still by the door, and the foal's eyes followed the light.

Mira came down from the tower at the first sign. She stood by the door in her two coats and said nothing at all for a long time. When the colt stood up the third time, she laughed, and that was the first sound from the barn that was not the wind.

Morning, the twenty-first. The colt is up and drinking and very pleased with itself. We have named it Frost, because it was born in the coldest hour. Lantern has written the name on the barn door with a bit of charcoal, very neatly, and nobody has the heart to rub it out.

I have decided that is the best thing that happened this winter.
%%
Odo, roof book: bees on the ridge
Leaffall, the 20th. Mild, after a cold week. A late swarm, which is a surprise.
Up on the mill roof at dawn with the ladder, the reeds and two pairs of hands. The sides were half laid. Then a hum came out of the pond mist, low like a pot coming to the boil. A cloud of bees came over the roof and settled on the ridge. A brown ball, as big as a pumpkin. Right where the cap was to go.
I came down the ladder slowly. A roofer who runs is a roofer who falls. I sent the lad for Ama.
While we waited I walked to the relay house and wrote at the desk. I did not ask about bees. I asked about reeds. How long would the roof take, if the ridge was closed to us for a few days?
The mind wrote:
"Step 1. The roof needs 168 bundles, from your last letter. You lay 42 bundles in a day.
Step 2. 168 divided by 42 is 4. So the two sides take 4 days.
Step 3. The ridge cap is last. You cannot lay it until the sides are done. That is day 5.
Step 4. A swarm on a ridge often moves on within one to three days. I do not know about bees. Ama will know. But if the swarm leaves within 4 days, the bees do not cost you any time.
Step 5. Check: 4 days of sides, then day 5 for the cap. If the bees are still there on day 5, wait. That is the only delay.
So lay the sides first. By the time they are done, the bees may be gone."
I carried the paper back to the mill. Ama had come with a box and a smoking pot and a very calm face. She had the swarm in the box by noon. They went into a hive by the pond, humming. I showed her the paper. She read it twice and said, "It is right about the bees. Nobody told it."
The mill roof was done in 5 days. The cap went on at dusk. The bees, in their new hive, made a hum like a pot not quite boiling. I have put my name down with Ama for the swarm's first jar next summer, for the roof's feast.
%%
Cass, the winter that came back
Thaw, 205. The market at Three Wells. Cass, who is now a great-grandfather, and thinks seventy-one is about the age to start keeping a proper journal.
First of Thaw. The first snow of the new year, after a warm week that fooled the whole town. The apple trees had flowers. The flowers are now under snow. Someone said that is the way of Thaw. Someone else said that is the way of fools.
Fourth. I put a sack over the egg basket and sat on it. It is a warm seat. The hens agree.
Sixth. A gift: the school children brought me a pair of mittens, knitted by the whole class, so that no two fingers match. One thumb is on the wrong side. I wear them anyway. Everybody I meet looks, and I say, "A gift."
Ninth. Sold twelve eggs. Dace stopped by to ask if I needed anything. I said no. He bought a dozen. I think he is checking on me.
Twelfth. I have been thinking about the first stall at this market. Old Marra had it, forty years ago, the year the wells were dug. She sold apples. She sat on a barrel. She said, "Cass, a market is a place where people tell each other what they have, and what they need, and sometimes it matches."
I did not understand it then. I understand now. I have eggs. They have need of eggs. It matches. It is a small thing and it is enough.
Fifteenth. The snow is gone. The apple trees have flowers again. Pim has a baby. The baby has one white feather, in a manner of speaking, in her hair. I think she will be a counter.
Seventeenth. A small apprentice walked the length of the market carrying a basket, and no one looked up. A few years ago they all would have. I noticed it. I said nothing.
Twentieth. Good day. Quiet. Slept in the chair.
%%
Sella, tutor's account
Leaffall, the fifth year of the long quiet.

The council sent word that payment for the tutor room will stop after Frost. I have not told the children yet. They still come on the third morning, with their slate boards and cold hands.

We have one sorting crystal. I show it a card with an apple or a pear. When it is wrong, I move its weights a little toward the right mark. That is the old lesson. It works well for two choices shown one at a time.

Kester asked us to try a harder lesson. Put an apple and a pear on the same card. Ask the crystal to mark one, or the other, but not both. We tried for many days. It could mark one kind, or it could mark the other kind. It could not learn to leave both marks clear when both were shown.

Kester wrote that this was a limit of the crystal, not a fault in the tutor. I believe him. Still, I will teach the children until the room is closed. They can learn the lesson even if the crystal cannot.
%%
Flood notes, the low field
The water came up in the night. It came over the bottom field where the carrots and potatoes are. My brother woke me and I went out with a lamp. The water was to my knees at the gate and rising.
We moved what we could. The hens went in the barn, up on the hay. The pigs we could not move and they did not mind. They stood in the water and grunted like it was a new thing to enjoy.
People from the next farm came with a cart. We piled the sacks of last year's grain on it and drove it up the hill. The road was mud to the axles. We got it up.
The water went down on the third day. It left a grey mud over everything. The smell took a week to go.
My brother's neighbor said the flood came because they opened something at the mine, or because the north snows melted too fast, or because the marsh has been rising for years. Everyone has a reason. Nobody has the same one. My brother says it is only water and it has always come now and then. I think he is right, and I think the water came higher this year than any of us remember.
%%
Wick's journal: Button comes home
Wick, school child, Vell. Autumn, the tenth and eleventh of Apple. The cat is back, and I have a lot to say.
Tenth. Button came home this morning. She was in the copying room of the Archive, in the box where the clerks keep the spare paper. Oren found her. He said she was asleep on the oldest of the blank pages, and that he did not have the heart to move her. He did, in the end, but gently, with a cloth.
The teacher said this was a good time to talk about the big minds again. She said that we should be careful not to think they know everything. A big mind knows what it has read, and it can put it together in a clever way. But it does not know where Button is. It can only say what is likely.
She told us that the tutors teach a mind three things when it learns to talk. To be kind. To refuse what would harm. To say when it does not know. She wrote these on the board. We copied them into our books.
Then she said something I wrote down very carefully. She said, "A mind that is kind will not tell you what you want to hear. It will tell you what is true, as gently as it can."
I think that is a good rule for people too.
Eleventh. The lamp is mended. The keeper let me hold the new pane. It was cold and clear and very heavy. I could see the whole town through it, small and upside down.
%%
Marl, the mended roof, Melon
Written by Marl. The relay house roof is copper, and copper that has stood in the north wind a long time goes green. Mira says that is the colour of a roof that has been looked after.

Melon, the second. Rain came through the north corner and fell on the keeper's desk. Mira moved the logs from the shelf to the stove bench, and back again. Her book of marks came through dry, a little wrinkled.

Melon, the fifth. Teague came up from Ambrook with a roll of new copper sheets from Saltreach, a box of nails, and his broom. He says a roof begins with the broom and ends with the broom, and the rest is nails.

Melon, the sixth. Up the ladder at dawn. Teague on the ridge, me on the rungs below, handing up the nails. The old copper is green and the new is bright, so the tower now has one new eye. Teague says that is the honest way to mend a roof. Do not pretend the new is old. Let the new shine, and let it be seen.

Melon, the seventh. Lantern climbed up with a cloth and polished the new patch, which made it brighter. Then it polished the green as well, which made the green look embarrassed. Teague laughed so hard he had to sit down on the ridge.

Melon, the eighth. Rain again. The roof held. Mira said it was the best the roof has been since she came. Then she said it was not, because a roof is never the best. It is only dry.

Melon, the ninth. Teague was paid fourteen emeralds for the work, and two for the broom. The broom does not need paying, he says, but he took it home to Ambrook anyway.
%%
Ambrook mill pond diary, Melon
Melon, first day. Jory's wheel is turning from dawn to dusk again. You can feel it through the bench on the bank. The water goes over the paddles in a long white curl, and the sluice stands shut at the head of the pond. Nobody may open it. I asked Jory why, and he asked me whether I wanted the mill down. I said no.

Melon, third day. Heat. The pond is low. The reeds on the far bank stand a yard further from the water than they did in Longday. Jory's boys fished the weir with nets and got six fish between them, and one boot. The boot belongs to the council man's cousin. He is not happy, and he is standing on the bridge telling everyone.

Melon, sixth day. Rain for an hour in the afternoon, enough to bring the pond up a hand. Tibby Dunn sat on her stool at the end of the bridge through all of it, and called every cart across. Mind the plank, mind the plank. The plank is still loose. It will not be fixed. Tibby says that is the point.

Melon, ninth day. Jory says the sluice is holding well. I carried a sack of flour up the lane to the healer, because her arm has been bad in the wet. On the way back I rode the wheel's shaft with the boys to see that the teeth were not worn. They are not worn. Jory is pleased, and will not say so.

Melon, twelfth day. The first honey cake of the season went round the bridge and the mill, on a plate that came from Ruby Oke's kitchen. Ruby has forgiven me the beans. Her cake was good, which is more than I can say for mine.

Melon, fifteenth day. One good fish in the weir, long and silver. I let it go, because Jory says a weir must keep one fish, or it is only a wall.

Melon, twentieth day. Storm at night, hard rain. The wheel stopped at midnight, and the whole mill went quiet. In the quiet, the water could be heard going over the top of the sluice gate, very slowly. Jory got up in his nightshirt and stood in the rain by the gate with his hand on the rope. He did not pull it. He only held it. Then he went back to bed.

Melon, last day of the month. The wheel is turning, the pond is up, the plank is loose, and the fish are back in the weir. Everything is where it should be. I am writing it down so I remember that it was.
%%
Letter: Pell to his sister
Dear Sena,
I am writing from the Halfway Inn, by the hearth that has not gone out in twenty years. My feet are up and my boots are drying by the fire, and I have a bowl of soup and a horn cup of small beer, and the world is very good.
I won the honey contest at the fair. Six years of second place, Sena. Six years. I want you to know that I did not gloat. I gloated a little. The beekeepers from Ambrook shook my hand and one of them said my honey had a clean taste, and I have been thinking about that clean taste ever since. It is the clover. I am sure of it.
I paid my debt to the innkeeper today, the whole of it, in emeralds. It was an old debt, from a bad winter when I had no coin and he gave me a bed and supper anyway. He counted the emeralds twice and wrote it off in his book, and then he gave one of them back to me and said it was for the interest. I do not think that is how interest works, but I took it.
I have a new horn cup. I have a new pack strap. My coat is mended and my boots are dry.
I will be home before Leaffall. Tell mother the honey sold well. Tell her I did not gamble it away. I only gambled a little of it, and I won.
Your brother,
Pell
%%
Vesper, trial log: the furnace mind
Trial log kept by Vesper at the glassworks by the Three Wells market, in Sowing. A furnace mind holds the melt steady while the bellows are worked. Nobody taught it the melt. The glassmakers say it is a matter of feel.

Day one. The glassmakers asked for a mind that could hold the melt at one heat. Too hot, and the glass runs. Too cool, and it sets in the pot. A man can do it for an hour, and then his arms give out. A mind does not tire.

The furnace has a gauge: a thin strip of red glass that darkens as the heat rises. I put a small mind on the bellows. It works them, one stroke and then a pause.

Day two. The apprentice pumped too hard, and the melt boiled. It pumped too little, and the melt went stiff. I did not show it the right pumping. I let it pump, and I wrote down what the strip did after each stroke. A stroke that kept the strip a dull red was a good stroke. A stroke that darkened it was a bad one.

Day three. Each good stroke it keeps more of. Each bad stroke it keeps less of. After a hundred strokes it had changed a little. After a thousand, it had found a rhythm: a stroke, a pause, a short stroke, a pause. The glassmakers did not teach it that. The melt taught it, and the score.

The old glassmaker, Mab, watched for an hour and said, "It is pumping the way my father did." I asked her how her father pumped. She said, "Carefully, and then he went home." That is not an answer, but it is a good one.

Day four. The melt is steady for the whole shift. The apprentice has no arms to give out. I have told the mayor it is only a bellows, and he has written that down as a joke, and I have not corrected him.
%%
Abel, a winter of letters
Winter. I am writing this down because I want to remember how it felt, the first time I used the relay for a letter.
My daughter married a man from Saltreach and left. She writes, but a letter by cart takes ten days. This winter the keeper at Lowmarsh said I might try the big mind in the relay house. Not to write to my daughter, he said. To help me write to her.
I had never written a long letter. I told the mind what I wanted to say. It asked me questions. How is the baby. What is the weather. What did she like to eat as a child. I answered, and the letter grew.
In the end I had a page and a half. The mind did not put words in my mouth. It only asked. I said everything, and it helped me put it in order.
There was one line I wanted to put in, and the mind would not help me. I had written that the man from Saltreach was a fool. The mind said it would not write that, because it was unkind and might hurt my daughter. It offered to help me say I was worried. I thought about it for an evening. Then I wrote that I was worried.
My daughter wrote back, ten days later. She said she had been worried too.
There are people who say the big minds are only words. Maybe. A thing that asks the right question and then says no, politely, is more than words to me.
I do not know what it is. The tutors do not know either. They say they know how it was made, and not what it is.
I took the letter to the post cart myself. The horse knew the way. It was cold, and the road shone. At the turn by the Halfway Inn I saw a fox. It looked at the cart and went on its way.
I think it was a good winter.
%%
The Halfway Inn tally board
Kept by the innkeeper. Prices as of this summer.
Bed for the night: one emerald, supper included if you ask kindly.
Supper alone: six coppers. Bread, soup, cheese, and an apple if there are apples.
Small beer: two coppers. Water: free, and the well is out back.
Hay and water for a horse: three coppers.
A bath, hot, in the shed: four coppers. Towels extra.
Boarding for an apprentice: one copper, in the yard shed, with the door left open. Big minds ask through the relay at the crossroads, and the keeper answers for them.
Left to pay:
Pell, the merchant: paid in full, tenth of Swarm, in emeralds, with one emerald returned for interest.
The two carters who argued about wool: paid, and they left a pie.
A traveler from Saltreach: paid in coppers, and left a good knife behind, which is in the lost box by the door.
The lost box: a knife, one boot, a wooden spoon, a letter with no name on it. Claim what is yours. The keeper will not open the letter.
%%
Oren's day-book, the mended roof
Late autumn, at the farm outside Northpoint. A storm took the roof off the barn, and Oren was passing on his way up the road, and stayed to help Tam put it back. He did not help much. He held the ladder and was given the job of counting the slates.

First day. The barn roof is in the yard in three pieces. Tam says they are not broken, only moved. The beams are whole. The wind went straight through the top of the barn and took the hay down the hill, and the hens are sitting in the cart as if they have been asked to.

Second day. The men from the ridge came down with the new slates, cut from the Ambrook quarry, and the oak for the roof-tree. Tam was up the ladder before the sun was on the yard. Pip carried slates. It carried them in the right order, which was a surprise to everyone, because Pip does not usually pay attention to order.

Third day. The roof-tree is up. The rafters are on. Tam says the worst of it is done, and then he says that every day. Oren has counted one hundred and eighty-two slates. Tam says he will need one hundred and ninety, and he has sent Pip down to the shed for eight more.

Fourth day. The rain came. The new roof did not leak. Tam was so pleased he sat in the loft in the wet hay and sang the stone song at the top of his voice. The hens joined in on the chorus. Oren said the hens had no sense of key. Tam said they had a fine sense of key, and that it was the rest of us who were off.

Fifth day. The barn is whole. The hay is back in, most of it. The cat has moved in, and says it always lived here. Oren gave Tam the count, one hundred and ninety-one. Tam said that was one more than he needed, and that the extra slate was for the next storm.

Sixth day. Oren went back down the road. Tam waved from the ladder, and fell off it, lightly, into the straw. He says this is a tradition.
%%
Ida's log, the marsh spring, all of it
Written by Ida, farmer, at the end of the spring, for the book of the hamlet. A season in one record, as near to the facts as a farmer can be.

Thaw. Rain for three weeks. The reed beds drowned and came back up again, greener. The flood came up the lane once, very sudden, and went down again, very slow. We lost no lambs, one hen, and a boat made of doors, which was given back to Brin with honours.

Sowing. Planted the beans along the south wall, where the frogs cannot reach them. The frogs have decided they prefer the water to the beans, which suits everyone.

Blossom. The bees swarmed twice. The first swarm went into the new hive. The second went into the old oak at the marsh edge and was brought down by Brin with a ladder, a sheet, and a great deal of advice from his wife. Honey is coming. Early, but coming.

The mind. Hale left the small crystal with us, in Tibby's slot, for a season of testing. Hoe: nineteen in twenty. Hard sums: fourteen in twenty by the end. Hale says the small mind has less room, so it keeps only what matters most. It keeps the hoe well and the sums fairly, and that is the bargain.

What we do not know. Hale says nobody can say exactly how few marks a mind needs for a given kind of work. The line between enough and too little has to be found by testing, one drill at a time. He says he would like to write the line down, and cannot yet. I asked whether the mind minds the rounding. He laughed and said he did not know, and that it was not the sort of question a farmer should ask a tutor on a step.

Lamps lit at the hamlet gate. Bees home. Mind tested. Water down. A good spring, all round.
%%
Wren's Lowmarsh season log
Winter, 207. The slow water stayed open beside the fish weir. Ice formed in the little pools among the reeds, and the frogs were nowhere to be seen.
The boardwalk torches burned well until the wind turned. Moss went out with spare coal and trimmed the wicks. I watched from the doorway and called out when the lamp by the boat house smoked. Moss trimmed that one too. Then Moss trimmed the lamp by our door, though I had not said a word.
The lamps are brighter now. The marsh is still dark. Both things can be true.
A man came in with a cut across his palm. He had been mending a basket and slipped with his knife. I washed the cut, tied it, and sent him home with clean cloth. He said he could finish the basket with his other hand. I told him to finish it when both hands were well. He said that would be a long wait. I said it might be a quiet one.
Moss has been learning the labels on the high shelves. The jars stand in rows: mint, willow bark, clean cloth, dried leaves, salt. I made a small drill with the names written on cards. Moss set each card beside the right jar, then put the clean cloth card by the empty basket. It was a fair guess. We moved the cloth into the basket and tried again.
At Three Wells, Moss entered a basket of dried marsh herbs in the fair. Moss tied the name card the wrong way round, as last time, but the basket was full and clean. This time it won a blue ribbon and a small wooden bowl. Moss carried both home with great care. The bowl was empty.
I bought a jar of honey from a stall near the east well. The seller said it came from hives beyond Ambrook. I set it on the high shelf and marked the lid for supper. Moss read the mark and put the bowl beneath it.
We had bread, honey and hot tea after the evening round. Moss gave me the larger piece of bread. I asked why. Moss said the healer must keep her strength. I gave Moss the larger share of honey.
After supper we checked the sick beds, filled the kettle, and put fresh sand by the door. The snow had covered the path to the shed again. Moss cleared it before sleep. In the morning the shovel stood inside, dry and clean. This time I said thank you.
%%
Chronicle of the archive: the reading
Kept at Vell. Written in the late years, copied from older notes. For the shelf by the copying room.
A chronicle of how the reading minds came to read pieces of words.
For a long time the reading minds took a page one letter at a time. The window was about sixty letters wide. The mind guessed the next letter, then the next. It read like a person who moves a finger under each letter. Slow, and it could only see the letters just behind the finger.
Then the tutors cut words into common pieces. "ing", "un", "torch", "apprentice". The mind read pieces instead of letters, and the same window held far more. It saw the whole line, and the words on either side, and it guessed better because it had more to look at.
The clerks had to be careful. A page cut one way and a page cut another way are two different pages to a mind. So the archive keeps one list of pieces and every clerk cuts to it. The test box stayed shut, as always.
The tutors argued about who was first. Some say it was a tutor at Three Wells. Some say at Vell. Some say the idea came from a clerk who was tired of copying long words. The texts do not agree, and they never do on the early years. What we know is this: the first day it was tried on the big mind at a relay house, the mind read better before any drilling at all, because the window was fuller. That is in a note from a keeper, and the keeper is not named.
There is a line in the note that the clerks like. "More in the same space, and the meaning closer to hand."
The big minds read this way still. Some write letters a reader cannot tell from a person's, and Orla's question came back with them, as it always does. Whose letters went into the great drills, and how the clerks gathered so much, the texts do not agree.
We will keep everything we write. The old keepers cut it over the door. We still read it every morning when we open the front hall, and the big book by the door, and the light wells, and the lanterns behind glass.
%%
Mira, Northpoint winter journal
Deepsnow, 207.

Deepsnow, second. The snow reached the lower window by dawn. Lantern and I dug a narrow path from the keeper's house to the tower. It carried the shovel. I carried the basket of coal. We made a good pair until I tried to walk ahead. Lantern kept to the path and I stepped into the drift beside it.

The path to the ice camp was gone. Runa says there is no need to go there until the wind stops. She can see our lamp from her window when the snow thins. I sent her a note by the relay. She replied that she has enough firewood and that I should stop sending worried questions.

Deepsnow, fourth. The lamp glass was clear at dawn and white with frost by midday. I wiped it from the inside. The walk round the lamp room had a skin of ice, so I spread grit along the boards. The grit came from an old pail in the tool shed. The pail had a crack. It seems every pail here has a story.

I found a little jar of honey behind the dry oats. It came from Tam in Apple, and I had put it there before the last storm. The lid was tight. I warmed it beside the stove and took one spoonful with bread. Lantern stood by the table. It does not eat, but it watches me eat with great care.

Deepsnow, sixth. The relay line was quiet all morning. I checked the lamp, the redstone line, and the keeper's desk. Nothing was wrong here. After noon the south tower sent a weather note. The snow has eased along the Long Road. I sent that news to the ice camp and asked if the well had filled.

Runa wrote back that it had not. She said the well was dry, and that she was using snow too. She also said she had enough honey for tea. I asked where it came from. She wrote, "Tam sent two jars. One is yours if you stop asking."

Deepsnow, ninth. I went to the camp with Lantern and a spare shovel. The path was passable, though the snow leaned against the posts. Runa had cleared the well mouth and lowered a pail. It came up dry, with a thin ring of mud. We brought clean snow from the bank and filled her kettle. She gave us tea with honey.

The tea was so sweet that I asked if she had put in two spoonfuls. She said no. I believe her. Lantern carried the empty pails back. It did not spill a drop.

Deepsnow, twelfth. The sky cleared after supper. Frost shone on the tower roof and on the old wood fence. Runa stood at the camp door with a wool scarf over her head. She waved once. I waved back from the stair landing.

Lantern cleaned the lamp glass. I set the signal lamp and sent the night report south. Clear. Cold. Snow packed on the north path. Camp well dry. Tea very sweet.
%%
Potter's journal: a poor harvest
Written by Lorn, at Three Wells, in the summer of 205. The wheat came in thin. The beetroot rotted in the wet. By Longday the bakers were glum, and the market had less to sell than the stalls had hoped.

The top field at Kettle Ridge gave half a crop. The carts came down the Long Road half full, and the drivers said nothing about it, which is worse than complaining.

I sold six pots in the whole week. One was to a child who wanted a pot to keep a frog in. I told her frogs do not like pots. She said that was all right, the frog did not like the market either.
%%
Hesk, farm log, Apple
The farm below Copperhold needs a dry path to the barn. Rain has softened the track, and the cart wheels sink. I wrote the work on a board. Clank read it and made cards.

First it sent one helper to bring planks from the shed. Another cleared stones from the track. The third stayed beside the cart. I thought that was wasted time.

Then Clank asked the big mind at the relay house for help. The reply came by the relay: "The cart cannot pass until the stones are moved. Lay planks after the track is clear."

Clank changed the cards. It sent the waiting helper to move stones. When the track was clear, all three carried planks and laid them from the barn door outward.

I asked why it had not started with the planks. Clank set the empty cart on the first plank. The wheel slid off into the mud. It had seen what I had missed.

By evening the cart reached the field. We brought home two loads of wheat. The path held.

The helpers did not speak. They read their cards, did the work, and returned for the next card. Clank kept the board dry under its coat of iron.
%%
Nessa, late spring journal
Spring of 217. The council sent another group to the relay house beyond the west field.
The road there is now wide enough for two carts. They bring ice from the north store and take it into the cool rooms. The house has its own kitchen, tool shed, well, and many beds for keepers. It is larger than the hamlet. From the rise, the roof seems to go on past the trees.
The council has asked tutors to make a list of questions for the mind. We brought sums, old notices, letters, and orders for apprentices. The mind answered by writing on a page. It found a spelling error in my copy of a school lesson. I checked the lesson. The error was mine.
That does not prove it knows everything. It read the lesson because we gave it the lesson. It found the error because the letters were there. A mind with room for many weights can keep more from its drills, and a mind drilled for longer can learn from more pages. Still, we must ask questions it has never seen. We must keep those tests away from its tutors.
At the gate, a young keeper told me the mind had worked out why the mill pond sluice must stay shut. He said it had read Jory's old notes. Jory's notes say the pond feeds the wheel, and the wheel turns the mill. They do not say why the sluice must stay shut. I asked the keeper what answer the mind had given. He could not remember the words.
I have heard three stories about the great mind. One says it can answer any question. One says it has written a letter no clerk can tell from a person's hand. One says it knows the road to places beyond the sea. The keepers disagree about all three.
We know what its builders did. They made many layers, gave each layer its share of a wrong answer, and drilled the mind on more writing than one tutor could read. The council made a house large enough to hold it and keep it cool. Beyond that, I will write only what I have seen.
On the way home, we stopped at the inn. The keeper there had a new notice to copy. I copied it by hand. The mind at the great house did not see it. Not every page belongs to every drill.
%%
Nessa's spring road book, year 206
Written by Nessa, tutor at Vell, over one spring on the Long Road: the Halfway Inn, the Brown Hen, the little hill and the crossroads at Three Wells. The book is kept for the tutor house, and copied for the keepers.

Thaw, first week. The keeper of the little hill, Dell, asked me to test his lamp mind, which is the smallest mind on the road. It drills well on lamp orders: light, dim, cover, clean. It drills badly on any order with a name in it. Dell says that is no fault of the mind. I said names are the hardest thing a mind ever learns, and he laughed.

Thaw, fourth week. The first mind I drilled on the even step went out to the Brown Hen fields and did well. Its numbers stayed even after the fifth layer. I was pleased with it, which is a feeling tutors are not supposed to have, and I wrote it down so no one would think I had been too pleased.

Sowing, the first day. Rain. The inn yard flooded, and the drill box floated into the horse trough. The inn's stable boy drilled the mind again in the stable, with straw under its feet, and it did better than it had in the yard.

Sowing, the fourth. The innkeeper's wife asked why her cook's sums were wrong. I said a mind is only as good as the check on its numbers, and the even step is the check on the layers. She said that was the same as a kitchen, and she was right. You taste the soup before it goes to the table.

Blossom, the second. A cart came from Copperhold with news of the new vein. Copper, clean, past the sixth level. The miners cheered at the count board. Hesk said the carts would be two days late every week, and they were.

Blossom, the ninth. Trouble with the relay on the hill. The stair lamps are dark on the top half. The keeper has written to Vell for glass. I drilled his apprentice on the lamp orders while we waited, so that at least one mind on the hill knew what to do with the dark.

Blossom, the twentieth. At Three Wells the children have painted the school door blue again, and the bell has been mended. The mayor asked me to test the school bell's mind, a small mind that rings the bell on order. It rang on come and stay, and it missed home entirely. We fixed it, and the bell has been forgiven.

Swarm, the first. The bees at the Ambrook orchard swarmed, and the Ambrook keeper sent word that the swarm had gone up the hill to the relay. The hill is not a hive. Nobody has yet explained what the bees wanted there.

Swarm, the twelfth. The last day of the road. I wrote the even step on the back of the drill box, in one line: find the middle of the numbers, find how far they spread, and scale them to one size. Why the crystal learns, I have never been told. I write that here too, for the next tutor, so she knows the question is still open.
%%
Corin's yard book, winter 207
Frost to Deepsnow. The yard at Saltreach. Kept in the shed by the stove, in a hand that gets worse as the ink gets colder.
Frost, the 2nd. The keel came. One log of oak from the forest past Ambrook, on a cart with four horses. It took three days. The drovers say the horses took it personally.
I put my hand on the log and said thank you. I do this with every keel. Kit asked why. I said wood is patient and likes to be told. Kit put his hand on the log and said thank you. The log did not answer. It rarely does.
Frost, the 9th. Kit asked how I know which way a plank wants to bend. I said you look at the grain until it tells you. When it does not tell you, you ask Marit, who has mended nets for sixty years and knows everything about everything that bends. Kit wrote that down. He writes everything down now. I do not know who gave him the idea.
Frost, the 17th. The first ribs went up. Spruce, bent by steam, one every hand's width. There is a pattern to ribs, and the pattern is the boat. Young Ned set the first. His rib leaned. I said, a little left. He pushed. Now it stands. Every rib after it was easy.
Longnight, the 11th. Snow for two days. Nothing to do but mend. The shed smelled of tar and wet wool. The cat Plank slept in a coil of rope for two days and woke up cross.
Longnight, the 30th. The longest night. The harbor lamp was lit at noon and burned all day, and at dusk the whole pier was lit, a torch on every post. The families came down with lanterns. Kell's crew sang the rowing song. Marit sang the net song, which is nicer. The relay lamp over the harbor sent its greeting down the line: "Good midwinter. The days get longer now."
I wrote it to Ossie that night. Ossie writes back by the Lowmarsh cart that the frogs have stopped singing for winter, and he cannot sleep for the quiet.
Deepsnow, the 8th. Ice on the pier, white in the morning. The planks go on, one row a day. A boat is not made quickly. A boat is made one plank at a time, and a plank takes a day.
Deepsnow, the 21st. The last plank on the right side. I checked every seam with a lantern. I do this at night, with the lantern held close, because a seam that lets in light will let in water. There were four. We fixed them.
Deepsnow, the 29th. The hull is closed. Tomorrow, the first coat of tar. Spring is two weeks away. In spring she goes down the slip.
Kit asked what her name will be. I said it is not mine to say. It belongs to the family who paid. Kit said that is a pity, he had a good one. I said, tell me. He said: Plank. For the cat.
%%
Corin, the long summer day
Summer of 207. The longest day of the year, when the sun hardly sets. A fine day, with no wind, and the harbor flat as a plate.

Dawn. I woke before the gulls. The sea was silver and the quay was empty. I walked down to the slip and sat on the ramp with my feet in the water. It was warm.
Morning. The shipwrights arrived one by one with bread and cold fish. We worked on the new hull, a boat for the fish market that can carry sixty baskets. I have never built one so big. I have also never built one so slow. The planks are long and the pegs are many.
Noon. The tar pot was full. The apprentice carried it across the yard, and spilled it, and carried it back, and spilled it again. I sent it to wash. It came back with its hands clean and carried the pot again. Not a drop.
Afternoon. A letter from the harbor master. The prize for the best boat of the year goes to the Heron again. Her builder has won it eleven times. Her builder is me. I am not sure whether to be glad or to be sad. If I win it every year, nobody else tries.
Evening. I walked up to the barn to fetch more oak. There was a web across the door. A small spider sat in the middle, calm as a clerk. I said, "Good evening." It said nothing. I took the oak from the side door.
Night. The sun finally went down, red as a pot. The harbor lamps came on one by one. Out on the water, a fishing boat was coming home with a lantern at the bow. I watched it all the way in.
It is a fine thing, to build a boat. It is a finer thing to watch one come home.
%%
Jem, first spring log
Spring of 2. Wind from the south, warm for once.
New at the ridge. Came up from the mill pond with my net bag and my needles. Took a room over the barn. Tam says the room was for the hay, and the hay can go in the yard.
The nets here are for the pond, not the sea. Small mesh, small fish, a lot of weed. It will be a change.
Met Tam. He talks, I listen. That will work.
%%
Quill, egg tally in Longday
Longday, 188. Farm outside Lowmarsh.

The hens laid nine eggs. I carried six to market and kept three for supper.
Moss brought a basket of reeds from the marsh. She says the frogs have gone quiet near the south ditch. I heard them all night.

At the school table, Nessa showed us a reading mind in a small crystal. It had been drilled on pages from the Archive at Vell. The mind read a page, one letter at a time, then guessed the next letter. It guessed "hen" after "the fat". That made us laugh. Nessa said it would learn from more pages.

I asked if it had read my egg tally. Nessa said the clerks had many pages, but she did not know which ones. I hope it did not read the price I wrote wrong.
%%
Ossa's book of the Archive's lamps
Kept by Ossa, candle maker, for the clerks of the Archive, who buy the candles for the copying room and the front hall. This is the book of what she sent, and the notes on what they said back. The clerks are very fussy. They are right to be.

Sent: sixty tapers, pale, for the copying room. Each taper of the same length, and the same colour, so the clerks can tell at a glance when one is burning down.
Sent back: twelve. The clerks say the wicks are too thick. They are right. Ossa has thinned them.
Sent: forty lanterns' candles, thick, for the stairs. They must not drip. Oren says a drip on a shelf is a stain on the archive, and a stain is forever.
Sent back: none. Oren sent a note instead: "Thank you. These are very good. Please do not send any more candles past the front hall. We are not allowed."
Sent: a small candle for the desk of the old keeper, who has been reading the same copy of a letter from the north for a whole winter. He says the letter has a good ending, though he has not reached it yet. Ossa sent two, in case he reads it twice.
Notes from the clerks, all year. Keep the lamps covered when the shelves are dusted. A wax drip on a copy is a drip too many. The Archive does not light candles in the deep halls, because the air there is still, and a flame wants moving air to be safe. Oren says candles are fine for the front hall, and for the copying room, where the window is wide. Ossa says she is glad to know where her light goes.
Sold to the Archive this year: three hundred and ten. Sold to the rest of Vell: four hundred and twelve. Ada's boy says that is more than the bakers. The bakers say it is more than the clerks.
%%
Fallon, spring notes from the hamlet
Spring of 208, Thaw to Swarm.
The first rain filled the road ditch. It held until the turn by the oak hedge, where the bank had slipped. I cleared the mud and put two stones in the gap. A cart came through before I had washed my hands. The driver said the road was good. I said he should come back after the next rain. He said he would, but he did not.

The old map was taken to the Archive at Vell for copying. Fen went with it and brought back a paper showing the same lines in a clerk's neat hand. The copy has our spring, our wall, the old path, and the mark for good stone. It also has the square marked "new store". The clerk left the square in place. I like that. A map should show what someone hoped to build, as well as what they built.

We have had poor harvests before, but the small grain bin still looks worse than it did last spring. Last year's wheat was thin. Beetroot was scarce, and we kept the best potatoes for seed. Tavin says we should plant more carrots. My sister says he should plant them himself. He has not answered yet.

A child from the hamlet helped me sort stones for the well curb. The child chose the round ones and called them eggs. I told the child stones do not hatch. The child said that was because we did not keep them warm. I put the round stones aside. They fit the curb better than the square ones.

The apprentice hauled blocks to the wall and brought water to the stone yard. It learned the way from the shed to the well. When Rell put the tool basket in the path, it stopped. Rell moved the basket. The apprentice went on. Rell says this is a fine way to make a path clear. I say a path is easier to clear when no one fills it with tools.

At the end of Swarm, we planted the last row. The bees worked among the flowers beside the field. The well curb stands firm. The road stones stayed in place through two rains. Tomorrow I will cut a step for Fen's new door. She says it must be smooth. I will make it smooth, and she will say it is too smooth.
%%
Fen's journal, a net and a road
Late Sowing. The Brown Hen, on the road home.

A road is a net. I have thought this for years, and tonight I have an inn and a fire to think it by.

A net is made of knots and the space between. A road is made of inns and the space between. Each inn is a knot. Each waymark is a small one. If one is missing, the whole thing sags.

I saw Dunn today, the waymark keeper, at the bridge below the Brown Hen. He had a chisel and a ladder and the look of a man who is about to say a number. He was recutting a 6 that had worn to a 5. He said: Fen, this is the whole of my work. I make sure that when a stranger sees a 6, it is a 6. I said: I do the same with holes. We shook hands. His hands were rough. So were mine.

I found a lost boy at the second waymark. He was about nine, and he was sitting on the cobblestone edge eating a heel of bread. He had followed a cart and the cart had gone. I did what the Rules say. I took him to the next inn. We walked slowly, and I told him about knots. He said knots were dull. I showed him the over-and-under. He learned it before the next waymark. He tied one in the lace of his boot, and I said that was a good start.

Marda gave him soup. His father came at dusk with a torch and a face I will not forget. I sat at the back and mended a net.

I am sixty this year. My hands ache in the cold. Marit says I should stop, and she is right. But the nets still tear. Someone has to be at the other end of the road when they do.
%%
Dace's flood book, Sallow Ford
Written by Dace, mayor of Three Wells, who came down to Sallow Ford when the water rose. Kept for the Archive.
Reaping, the 12th day. Rain for three nights. The river came up over the ford stones in the dark and took the old fence down by the mill. Nobody drowned. Two sheep and a bucket went down the river. The bucket was found the next morning in the square at Three Wells, sitting by the well as if it had come to market.
Reaping, the 13th day. The mill wheel has stopped. The water is still high. We moved the flour up to the loft. The ferry runs on the rope now, slowly.
The ferry mind is in the small crystal. It still takes the rope the right way. I stood on the landing and watched it bring a cart of hay across the flood. It stopped halfway, a moment too long, and then went on. The hay came over dry.
Reaping, the 14th day. The water is going down. The tutor says the stop in the middle is the cost of the small crystal. Only I minded, and I had been wet since dawn.
Reaping, the 15th day. Written at the ferry house by the stove. Nobody is missing. The wheel is turning. The road to Three Wells is open. Good.
%%
Corin, the fair at Saltreach
Summer of 201. The fair at the harbor wall. A good wind. No rain. Hot.

Day one, the fair opens. The whole town is on the quay. Stalls of fish, nets, rope, tar, wool, salt. A man selling hats made of seaweed. Nobody buys one.
Day two. Boat race in the harbor. Six boats. The Heron came first, as always. The Gull came second. The red boat, ours, came third and was very proud. It was not last.
Day two, afternoon. The prize for the best model ship. I entered one, made of birch, with a real sail and a tiny ladder. The judge looked at it a long time and said it was very good. Then he gave the prize to a boy of eight who had made a boat from a boot. It floated. Mine did too, but it had no boot.
Day three. The net-mending contest. Marit won, with a net so fine you could see through it. She has won eleven times. She did not even smile.
Day three, evening. The prize for the biggest fish. A man from Lowmarsh brought a pike as long as a child. The harbor master said no, that is a pike, and we are at the sea. The man said it was a very long cod. They argued until midnight.
The prize went to the pike. Nobody could think of a rule against it.
Day four. The fair ends. Everyone is tired. I have a ribbon, a bruise and a bag of salt.
Next year I am entering a boot.
%%
Quill, flock log: the shearing, Swarm
Kept by Quill, shepherd, at Ferris End, through the shearing. Nine days of wool, and one of them with a sheep who did not want to be sheared and said so.

Swarm, first day. Sheep caught in the pen by the gate. Sixty-one counted in, sixty-one counted out, with fourteen lambs trailing behind like guests. Fen herds them in with his nose.

Swarm, second day. Shears set. The shearer from Lowmarsh has hands like a healer and a grip like a carter, and says both are useful. He took the first fleece in one piece, the whole coat rolling off onto the boards like a loaf coming out of the tin.

Swarm, third day. Muffin objected. She ran round the pen three times, and then stood in the corner with her eyes shut, daring us. We sheared her in the corner. She said nothing, which was worse.

Swarm, fourth day. Honey, the lamb, is nearly a sheep now. She was left out of the shearing because she is still too thin, and she does not forgive me for it. She stands by the wall with a look of great injury, and I told her she looked well. She has not forgiven me.

Swarm, fifth day. Wool counted: forty-two bundles, tied with string. Wool price at the Three Wells market is six emeralds the bundle, if you can carry it, and seven if you can carry it while talking about the price. I will carry it. I will not talk.

Swarm, sixth day. Juno came up for the wool and bought six bundles for the cheese cloths. She says the wool keeps the cheese dry in the cellar, and the cheese keeps Juno dry in the rain, and that is a fair trade.

Swarm, seventh day. The hooves were clipped. Each foot took a moment, and each sheep objected in its own way. One of the lambs bit me. I bit it back, gently, on the ear, and it stopped. Fen watched with great interest and then went to sleep, having decided it was not his business.

Swarm, eighth day. A traveler from the Long Road stopped at the gate, asking the way to Vell. I told him. He asked whether the sheep were for sale. I said no, not the one with the black face. He looked at Muffin for a long time, and then said, "She looks like she knows the road." I said she knows every road in Ferris End, and that is enough for anybody.

Swarm, ninth day. The last fleece is off. The flock is pale, and cold, and full of opinions. Counted: sixty-one, and fourteen lambs. Honey is in the top field, out of the wind, eating grass as if she had never been looked at by a shearer in her life.

Swarm, ninth day, evening. Wren came up the lane with the jar of honey, the same jar, the cloth tied over it. There was about a spoon left. She said it was for the one that needed it. I said the one that needed it was walking about the field with the flock, and was fine. She put the jar on the wall anyway, and said it would be there when I did need it. I believe her. She is a healer.
%%
Mira, letter from Ambrook
Sowing, 3. To Tam at Kettle Ridge.
I have been away from Northpoint for four nights. Do not worry. The keeper at Vell sent me south to help mark the relay line. I have seen more mud than snow, which is a change.
At Ambrook the market is held by the mill pond. The wheel turns from dawn to dusk, and the sluice stays shut. I asked Jory why it stays shut. He said the answer is in the town rule. Then he went to mend a bucket. I did not find the rule.
The road from Three Wells is better than the road from Vell. The crews have put stone at the steep places and earth between them. They set a torch post every twelve blocks, though I did not count each one. Pell counted. Pell counts everything that can be sold.
The tower site is on the hill above the pond. We carried tools there by hand. The old oak door from a small storehouse will be used for the relay house. It is heavy, and the hinges have not yet been found.
There was a wedding here last week. The bride and groom crossed the new bridge with the cake. The cake arrived whole. This is considered a good sign.
I return north when the builders have raised the first wall. Please send me apples next time. The north has none that taste as kind.
%%
Elm, ferry log, the first frost
Kept at the ferry on the Long Road, where the river bends below the Brown Hen. Written by Elm, who keeps the ferry, the rope and this book, and who is certain that only one of the three is hard work.

First day of Frost. Wind from the north, sharp as a knife. Frost on the rope in the morning, so the rope is stiff as a bar. Crossings: six. Carts, two. Drovers, three. One man with a pig under his arm, who did not say why, and did not need to.

Second day. Still cold. Ice at the edges of the landing, as thin as paper. I put the boat's bow into the reeds, to keep it from freezing to the bank. Crossings: four. Fares: twenty-two emeralds in all, and the pig paid for half.

Third day. The first frost has come to stay. The river is grey and slow. The ferry rope is greased and hung on its pegs, and I am sitting by the stove with my boots off, the same as every winter.

Elm
%%
Fen's journal, the mill track
Sowing, the ninth day. The Long Road, between Three Wells and the Halfway Inn.

The Long Road is shut. They are laying new stone, two carts wide, with a torch every twelve blocks. Carts go round by the old mill track, and so do I. It is mud on both sides. In the middle there is a different kind of mud.

At the top of the track I stopped to look. Two apprentices from Vell were hauling stone for the new road. They are made of copper and iron. They followed a pattern and laid each block where the one before had been. They did not stop. The masons stood by with their arms folded and looked pleased.

A child asked me if the apprentices get tired. I said I did not know. She said they looked tired. I said they looked the way they always look. She said that was what she meant.

By dusk I reached the Halfway Inn. The hearth was lit. The soup was on. I had two bowls, and the second was free. I had a third and paid.
%%
Dell, the curve on the board
Autumn of 196.

The fifth of Apple. Pell's cart brought a parcel from my cousin at Vell: a copy of a note by Isla, the tutor. Eleven pages. I read it twice and understood about half. This is the half I understood.

Isla grew minds of many sizes. The smallest had a crystal the size of a bean. The biggest she could afford was the size of a plum. She drilled every one on the same writing for the same number of days. Then she tested each on pages it had never seen, and counted how many of its guesses were wrong in every hundred.

Then she took a board and made a dot for each mind. Along the bottom, the size of the crystal. Up the side, the wrong guesses.

The dots did not scatter. They lay along a smooth curve, going down. Down fast at first, then slower and slower, but always down.

She did it again with one crystal and more and more writing. Another smooth curve. She did it again with one crystal and more and more days of drilling. Another.

Here is the part that made me put the note down. She drew each curve onward, past her biggest mind, into the empty part of the board. She wrote: a crystal this big will make this many wrong guesses. Nobody had grown one that big. The council paid, and a mind was grown. It made almost exactly that many.

The ninth. I put it to the class. I drew dots on the board as Isla did. Size one: forty wrong in a hundred. Size two: thirty-two. Size four: twenty-six. Size eight: twenty. I asked what size sixteen would make. Nobody knew. Then I showed them that each time the size doubles, the wrong guesses shrink by about a fifth. A fifth of twenty is four. Sixteen.

Runa put up her hand. "Why does it go slower?"

"The easy mistakes go first," I said. "The hard ones are left."

She said that is how it is with spelling. She is right.

The baker's boy asked: "What if the crystal is big and the writing is small?" Then it learns the few pages by heart and fails on new ones. "And if the writing is big and the crystal small?" Then there is more than the crystal can hold. So the crystal, the writing and the drilling must grow together. I wrote that on the board and left it up.

The thirteenth. I asked the class if the curve is a promise. Nobody was sure. I said it is a good guess, drawn from what has been seen, and it has held so far. Mira says the same about the weather.
%%
Emmet, the broken relay lamp
Blossom, the sixteenth. A storm came in off the marsh last night. The relay lamp on the hill took a blow of wind, and the glass on the north side cracked. The lamp blinked crooked for an hour, then went dark.

Wren's boy ran up the hill with a lantern. The keeper came down at dawn, wet to the knees, and said it would be three days before the lamp could send again. The messages from Vell have backed up on the line. Thirty-one of them, he said. He had counted.

The copper ring round the lamp room is bent. A new pane has to come from Saltreach by cart along the Long Road, and a man who likes to talk must fit it. We sent a boy with the cart. He will be back before Melon, if the road does not argue.

The fishers are glad of the quiet at night. They say the lamp always blinks at the wrong hour, and wakes the frogs. I told them the frogs are never asleep. They said I was welcome to think so.

Blossom, the nineteenth. Lamp lit again. The keeper says the new pane is in, and the copper ring is straight. The first message through was from Vell, and it said only: Received. Thirty-one sent again, all in order.
%%
Dace, market journal, the cave
Sowing, the second day. The plough went into Brin's field at the foot of the hill and stopped with a thump. Under the turf there is a hollow, and under the hollow a room, walled with old stone. The corners are square.

Sowing, the third day. The room has a stair going down, nine steps, and a tunnel going on past it. We have put a rope on the top step and a bell on the rope, and the children are not to go past the bell. Lark says she will write a notice. Lark always writes a notice.

Sowing, the fifth day. Hesk came up from Copperhold with a lamp and a rope and said this is a mine, not a cave, and that mines are dug, not found under fields. He has been asked to explain. He has not.

Sowing, the seventh day. The Archive at Vell has sent a clerk with a drawing board. He says the walls match a drawing in the hill, of a place that was never built, or was built and then forgotten. He would not say more. Brin has asked for his field back, and will plant beans on the top.
%%
Dell, the class makes a curve
Autumn of 196.

The twenty-second of Apple. After the lesson on Isla's curve, Runa asked if we could make our own. I said we have no crystals. She said we have children. I could not argue.

So here is the plan. Every child copies pages from the school primer. At the end of the week, each is tested on fifty words they have never copied, and we count the wrong ones. Four groups. Group one copies five pages. Group two, ten. Group three, twenty. Group four, forty. A fifth group is Runa, and she says she will copy as many as she is allowed.

The twenty-ninth. The tests. Group one: thirty wrong in fifty. Group two: twenty-four. Group three: nineteen. Group four: fifteen. I drew the dots. They lay on a curve, going down, slower and slower, exactly as Isla's did. The children were very pleased with themselves. Some of them went and looked at the board from the back of the room.

But something else happened. Four children in group four copied the same page forty times, because it was the shortest. They could spell every word on that page. On the new words they were as bad as group one. The writing must be new, I told them. Forty pages of the same page is one page.

I asked Runa, "How many wrong at eighty pages?" She had already worked it out on her slate. Each doubling takes off a fifth. "Twelve," she said.

The thirtieth of Apple to the sixth of Leaffall. Runa copied eighty pages. Her hand hurt for two days. Her cat sat on the primer. On the last day I tested her on fifty new words. Twelve wrong.

The whole class stood up and clapped. Runa bowed, very slowly, as if she were a mind that had just been grown.

Then the baker's boy asked what would happen at one hundred and sixty pages. Ten, said Runa. And at three hundred and twenty? Eight. And when do we stop? "When the primer runs out," said the baker's boy. I wrote that down too. The curve never tells you when to stop. That is a question for emeralds and wrists.

The ninth of Leaffall. I told Mira the story at the tower. She said, "So the dot landed on the line." I said yes. She said, "That is how I know the council is right. Not because the tutors are wise. Because their line holds." She went back to her lamps.

I wrote on the board for tomorrow: A guess that holds every time is worth a great deal. And a guess is still a guess.
%%
Tova, road log, Deepsnow, the test
Deepsnow of 159. The first thaw. Water in the ditches, and the road is open at last.

The mind passed its test this week. Abel brought out the test box, twenty letters the mind had never been shown. It got nineteen right. The twentieth was a crooked three. Ivo says it was the mind's fault. Abel says it was the crooked three's fault. They have not agreed since.

Abel wrote the score in his book. He wrote fit for the marsh and underlined it twice. Then he wrote not fit for the road, because the road is not the marsh, and underlined that twice too.

Ivo has taken the stone out of the box at last. He says the mind is warm enough now. The box is warm to my hand, so I think he is right.

The mind is to ride inside a helper made of copper, a small one with two arms and a basket, that carries the sacks from the door to the tower. It will be the first helper Lowmarsh has had. Wren at the healing house says she will not have one on her shelves, because it will drop the jars. Abel says she will change her mind when it carries her honey.

Last night the frogs began again in the reeds. Ivo counted nineteen of them before he fell asleep. Greer has sown the wet field again, with beetroot, because beetroot forgives anything. He told the cow so.

I asked Abel once more why the mind learns at all. He laughed. He said nobody has written down why a crystal learns, and he will not be the first to do it. If he got it wrong, he would have to pass the blame back to himself. He laughed about that for a long time.

The road opens tomorrow. I will take the carts on to Three Wells. I will look back at the marsh once, to hear the frogs.
%%
Lark, the melon too big
Frost, the eleventh. The melon that grew in the south garden this summer is still in the cellar. It was planted in Melon, when nobody thought it would come to anything, and it grew all through Reaping like a second sun. It is the size of a cradle. The cellar steps had to be taken up to get it down.

Frost, the twelfth. The children have been visiting it every morning. They have measured it with a rope, and found it is four ropes round, and they have written the number on the cellar wall in chalk. The number is wrong by a rope. They have argued about it all week, and the argument is the best thing that has happened in the hamlet since the summer.

Frost, the fourteenth. Tried to cut a slice. The knife went in two fingers and stopped. The melon did not split. It was thick as a barrel and as stubborn. Brin says it is a melon for the spring fair, and that we will need a cart and two strong men to carry it there. Nobody has volunteered the men.

Frost, the eighteenth. The melon has begun to sweat in the cold, which the children say means it is thinking. It is a very large melon for a very small hamlet, and we are all a little afraid of it.

Frost, the twentieth. The keeper of the tower sent a message down the line: he would like a slice, if one can be cut. I replied that a slice cannot be cut, only admired. He said he would admire it from the top of the tower, at a safe distance, and send us his thanks.
%%
Toby, baker's journal, a birth
Three Wells market, spring of 206. Up at the third hour as always.
Bread: eighty loaves. Rolls: two hundred. The oven ran hot.
At noon, Ness from the cheese stall had her baby, a girl, in the back of my shop, among the flour sacks. The midwife came running. The girl has flour on her nose. I say she is a baker by birth.
I gave Ness a loaf. She said it was the best she ever ate. She was probably tired.
%%
Apple harvest, Ambrook
Pell's brother's farm, three fields up the hill from the mill pond. Hot and still all through Apple month.
The apples came in early this year. We picked the four hundred trees in eleven days, which is fast for us. The oldest tree with the grey branch gave nine baskets on its own. Nobody eats from the grey branch. It is bad luck and also the apples are small and sour.
The bees were cross all summer. The hives on the hill hummed at night, which they do not often do. My brother says the heat. His wife says the honey tastes of smoke and will not sell it at the fair. I tasted it. It is honey. It has a taste. Folk will buy it.
A sick cow. The brown cow went off her food on the fourth day of picking and lay down in the shade of the hedge and would not get up. We gave her water and cool grass and she looked at us. The healer from Lowmarsh was passing on the road so we asked her and she looked at the cow a long time and said she did not know. That is what she said. She did not know. She left a jar of something green and said to keep the flies off. The cow is up now. She is thin but she is up.
I went to Saltreach to see the big ships. There are three of them in the slip, each three times as long as any boat I ever saw. Corin says they are for the fishing. Nobody fishes three days out. I asked a man on the quay where they go and he said across the water, and I said what is across the water, and he said he did not know, and he did not look like a man who was sorry not to know.
There are folk at the fair saying the lights over the north are fires. There are folk saying falling stars. A boy from Kettle Ridge says they were looking at us and his mother told him to hush. I do not look north much. There is nothing north but snow and my cousin's tower.
Sold honey at Three Wells. Sold the smoke honey too, to a baker, who said it would do for cakes.
%%
Corin, house log, Frost
Frost. First day.
The house at the edge of Saltreach leaks at the back door. I put a strip of wool under it. The wind pulled the strip out before supper.
The slip is quiet today. I heard a hammer at the shipyard, then none for an hour. The big ship stands above the long ramp. Its side is higher than our roof.
Nell brought fish stew. She says her boy will not eat the white fish. He ate the potatoes and asked for more bread.
I mended a net by the window. The thread kept catching on my nail. I am too old for fine knots, but the net is not ready to mend itself.
%%
Letter: Oren to a friend
Late summer, 200.
Dear friend,
You have heard me complain before, so I will complain once more and then stop.
They are writing minds small now. Fewer marks for each number. The crystal fits in a pocket and the mind is nearly as good. Nearly. It is the nearly that keeps me up.
A big mind reads a page and gets every letter right. A small mind reads the same page and gets most of them right, and one wrong, and you cannot tell which one until it matters. The tutors say the cost is small. It is small if the mind is fetching bread. It is not small if the mind is reading a letter for a relay and the letter says come at dawn and the mind reads come at dark.
I keep the big minds big for the relays. I keep the small minds for the fields and the carts and the hen house doors. That is the rule I have written for the clerks.
What worries me is not the rule. What worries me is that everyone will want the small one, because it is cheap, and after a while nobody will remember why the big one was worth the cost. I have written that down too, in the front hall, in the big book by the door, so that the people after me can read it and argue with me. That is what the archive is for.
We will keep everything we write.
Oren, clerk at Vell.
%%
Archive day-book
Deepsnow of 204.
Filed: 8. Copied: 12. Back on the shelves: 55. Lost: none.

A hard winter. Snow lay a block deep on the hill. The light wells, the glass shafts that bring daylight down, were covered. For three days the halls were dark but for the lanterns. I did not mind. I find the halls very peaceful by lantern.

On the second day, I walked down to the clerks' house to fetch my other coat, and found that the new roof had a leak. A small one, in the corner above my bed. Tarn the roofer had mended it, and the drip had come back.

I said a word I will not write.

I wrote to the council, asking for a second visit. I wrote it very politely. I wrote it three times, because the first two had ink spots.

Tarn came on the fourth day, with his ladders and his hammer. He looked at the roof for a long time. He said, "The slate is good. The nails are good. I think the roof is a roof, and the leak is a snowflake that got in a gap." I said a snowflake does not cause a leak. He said a million of them do.

He put a thin strip of copper along the gap. It was the cleanest repair I have ever seen. He would not take payment. He said I had kept his grandfather's will in the archive, and it was the least he could do.

Evening. I went down to the deepest room, to sit with the oak box that holds the oldest record. I do not open it. I only sit. It is a thing I do on cold nights. The room smells of dry wood and stone. I told the box about the roof.

It did not answer, of course. But it is a good listener.
%%
Kester, road and forge journal
Blossom and Swarm, year 26.
First day of Blossom. The frost is gone from the ditch. I opened the forge and found a mouse nest in the coal bin. The mouse had made a warm bed from old straw. I moved the coal to a dry shelf and left the nest alone.
Third day of Blossom. A stone cart came from Three Wells. The driver had two sacks of flour and a cracked spoke. I fixed the spoke with an iron band. He left one sack at the inn for the road crew. No one asked him to.
Sixth day of Blossom. We set stones along the hollow part of the new road. The track is higher there now. Water still gathers by the reeds, but the carts pass without sinking. We have marked the next stretch toward the Long Road with oak stakes.
Moss found a frog inside my boot. He said it had chosen a poor house. I tipped it into the ditch and put my boot by the fire.
Ninth day of Blossom. Wren came from Lowmarsh with a list of work. Her shed door had dropped. A shelf had pulled from the wall. One bed frame was loose. I mended the door and bed, then made iron hooks for the jars. She paid with honey and dried fish.
Fourteenth day of Blossom. The innkeeper says travelers are coming more often. Two carts stopped here on the same evening. One carried wool from the hills. The other carried clay and a little glass from Saltreach. The drivers shared a table, though one wanted the bench by the fire for his wet socks.
Nineteenth day of Blossom. We put a waymark at the road fork. It points to the inn and to Lowmarsh. We have not settled the count to Three Wells. The first mark says three, but the road keeper says it is four. We will count again when the ground dries.
Fourth day of Swarm. Bees are out by the reed flowers. The fields have green shoots. Mara's beetroot is taller than last year, and the potatoes have not drowned. We have mended the ditch twice. It carries the spring rain past the low field.
The harvest of year 25 was poor. The wheat heads were few, and the beetroot did not grow deep. Folk ate more fish and saved seed where they could. I sold no iron for emeralds that season. I traded for food, and the inn kept its pot full.
Now the crop looks fair. I do not call it good yet. We have all seen a green field give little grain. Still, Moss says the wheat is tall enough to shade the weeds. He has begun to learn which is which.
The road crew has asked for a small relay post on the rise. A keeper could see the road from there and pass a signal toward Three Wells. It would need a stone base, a lamp and a dry room for the keeper. We have no tower here, only a tall oak and an old shed.
I will make a hinge for the shed door. The stone can come by cart after the road is firm. The lamp can wait until we know who will keep it. There is always more work than iron in a small hamlet.
At supper we had bread, fish and carrots. The innkeeper said the new road had made the meal taste better. It may be true. It is easier to be cheerful when the cart arrives before dark.
%%
Mira, ice camp log
Longnight, 168.

The well by the fish shed ran dry. There was ice at the bottom, but no water under it. We carried snow from the drift and melted it in the cook pot.

Runa says the well has done this before. She says it will fill again when the ground softens. I hope she is right. She is older than the well, or says she is.

I walked the path to the tower with two pails. One pail had a crack. I found out which one when I reached the door.

The fox watched me spill half my water. It looked pleased.

Tam sent a jar of honey from Kettle Ridge. I have put it on the shelf above the stove. It is for tea, not for foxes.
%%
Dace, the mayor's book, a long autumn
Notices and sums, kept for the council.

The fence at the cave is still up. The torch on its post has been relit twice, once by Orrin and once by the watch. Both times it went out by the next morning, and no one can say why. The wind comes up the field from the east, but that is all we have.

The carters from the north road are not coming through as often. Those who come say the snow has not fallen on the ridge, but the nights are very long there and very dark, and the lamps on the high towers are slow to light. A messenger from the south line said the keeper at Ambrook had a message from the far north, and that the message said only: keep the fields until we come back. Nobody knows who sent it. The keeper at Ambrook says it was a fault in the line. The messenger says it was not a fault, it was clear.

The Archive has sent a clerk to look at the cave. The clerk went down with two lanterns and came up with a page of notes and a cold face. He would not say what he had seen. He said the Archive would decide. Oren's seal is on the page, and the page is in the mayor's box.

Accounts for the autumn. Lanterns, eleven. Wicks, forty. Bread for the watch, nine loaves a day. Bread for the school, five a day, and one extra for Bel, who says she has eaten all of the first lot already.

Note for the council: the steps are not to be walked on. Nobody is to be paid for going down. Nobody is to be blamed if they do.
%%
Fen's page in the well book, the fox
Tenth of Swarm.
A fox came at dawn. It came along the hedge and stopped at the hen house and looked at the hens.
The hens looked back. The hens did not move. The fox put one paw on the fence. The fox was very thin.
Da came out with the shovel. He did not hit the fox. He threw the shovel at the fence and shouted. The fox ran. It ran fast and low and it did not look back.
Da says the fox will come back. Da says a fox always comes back. So we are to put a proper fence round the hen house, with a gate, and a torch on the post. Da says the torch is not for the fox. The fox does not care about the torch. The torch is for us, so we can see the fox.
Fifteenth of Swarm.
The fence is up. The gate is up. The torch is on the post. I lit it myself. The hens are pleased. The hens do not know they are pleased, but I know.
The fox came back last night. It sat outside the fence and looked at the hens through the gate. It did not try the fence. It just sat. Then it went away.
I do not think the fox is wicked. I think the fox is hungry. Da says that is the same thing to a hen.
Twentieth of Swarm.
The new family's apprentice is here. It is made of copper and iron and it carries the water from the well to the house. It does not talk. It walks and it carries and it comes back.
Da says it is a good worker. Da says we could use one. Da says we cannot afford one. Da says maybe next year.
%%
Long Road inn log, Sowing
I brought a sack of apples and pears to the Halfway Inn. Una of Ambrook had asked me to keep them apart for her lesson.

The horse was borrowed from the miller. It ate one apple before I tied the sack shut. I wrote that down. Una said it was not part of the lesson.

She set two baskets by the hearth. Apples in one, pears in the other. Then she showed the crystal one fruit at a time. The crystal moved each fruit to a basket. It put a pear with the apples.

Una changed the marks inside the crystal a little. Then she showed it the pear again. It chose the right basket.

We did this until the innkeeper asked us to stop blocking the bench. The crystal made fewer mistakes than I did.

The horse got another apple. This time I saw it happen.
%%
Odo, roof book: the boat that was late
Leaffall, the 12th to the 14th. Kept at the house at the edge of Ambrook.
The 12th. Mave's brother Kell took the Heron out from Saltreach on the 3rd. Her trips take nine days. She is due today and is not home. Mave has not eaten since breakfast. After supper I took her to the relay house, and Linnet sent word to Saltreach. The answer: no news. The harbor lamp is lit.
Mave wrote at the desk: "Is the Heron lost?" The big mind wrote back in steps. I copied them.
"Step 1. What do I know? The Heron left on the 3rd. Her trips take nine days. The 3rd and nine days is the 12th. She is due today.
Step 2. What do I not know? Where she is, and what the wind has done. I have not seen the sea.
Step 3. What would help? A count of how often the Heron has been late. Please ask Saltreach."
Harl sent the answer from the log: in twenty trips, late five times, by one to three days.
"Step 4. Five in twenty is one in four. A late Heron is common. The longest delay was three days, which brings us to the 15th.
Step 5. Check: 12 and 3 make 15. I cannot tell you where she is. I can tell you what is usual. A late Heron is not a lost Heron. If she is not home by the 15th, we will send word to the boats on the coast. Until then, I would eat something."
Mave read it twice. She ate half a loaf at the desk, and Linnet gave the rest to the relay house cat.
The 14th. The Heron came in at dusk, two days late. The wind went round to the north and kept her out past the point. Nine hands, 900 cod. Kell lost his hat and found a better one.
I do not think the mind knew where the boat was. I think it knew how to be steady while we were not.
%%
Road book: spring on the Long Road
Blossom, the 20th day. The road is open from Saltreach to the north turn. The waymarks have new paint. Each stone pillar has its figure and its arrow, and each arrow points at the right inn, which I checked with my own feet.
The carts are back in numbers. Forty-one went past the Halfway on the first fair day of spring. Most were carrying wool or wheat. One was carrying nothing but a cage of hens, and the hens were carrying on about it.
On the hill past the Brown Hen, a cart of coal from Copperhold stopped to rest. The driver said the coal was bound north for the relay towers, and the north road was wet but passable. He said it with a look that suggested he did not expect to be asked twice.
At the Brown Hen the new keeper is Hobb, who was a carter until his back went. He has a boy who helps in the kitchen. The boy is an apprentice, small and very neat. It carries the bread from the oven to the table without dropping a crumb. It puts the bread down at each place, and then steps back and waits. The guests do not know what to say to it. I told them to say thank you. They did, and the boy turned and went back to the oven.
The honey price is up at Three Wells. Eleven emeralds a jar in Blossom, where it was seven in Thaw. The beekeeper at Ambrook says the bees are busy and the weather is good. She says this every spring, and every spring she is right, and every spring the price still goes up.
On the bridge at Hobb's Brook the plank was still loose. I have decided it is part of the road now. Nettle has decided the same.
Mended a wheel at the Halfway with Marda's hammer and a spare pin. The wheel squeaks worse than before. It is a happier squeak. I cannot explain the difference.
Tonight there is singing in the common room. Two carters from Kettle Ridge and a traveler from Lowmarsh have agreed on one song, which none of them knows. They sing it very loudly. The fire is warm. Good.
%%
Market log, Ambrook
Blossom, 30. Market bell at noon.
Stalls: Jory, flour. Sella, honey and jam. Pell, wool and salt. Mara's aunt, apples. Den's mother, carrots and beetroot.
The new oak bridge held all the carts. We crossed one at a time, as the road crew asked. The old path by the water is still open to walkers, but not to loaded carts.
A keeper from Vell came back to the hill. He brought two builders and a box of stone marks. They chose the ground above the mill pond, beyond the hives. The tower will stand where the old oak can be seen from the road.
There is no tower yet. There is a square of cleared grass, four stakes, and a board that says what will be carried up. Stone first. Then a stair, or rungs if the stone runs short.
The keeper says a lamp must be seen from the next hill. He says the signal must be plain. One light means a message waits. Two lights mean the road is closed.
A child asked who will watch the lamp. The keeper said someone who can stay awake. Everyone looked at me. I said I have a market to run.
%%
Mira, Northpoint, Longnight
Longnight, the 1st. The longest night of the year, and I have been up most of it. The lamp needs its glass cleaned more on the long nights than on any other, because it is the only light for a day's walk.

Longnight, the 3rd. The fox came to the door at dusk, and I was ready. I had a sock on the step and a sack of crusts beside it, and I watched from the window with my tea going cold. The fox looked at the sock, looked at me, and took the sock in its teeth. Then it walked up the path toward the tower with the sock held high. Lantern came out of the woodshed and followed it at a fair distance. The fox did not hurry. Lantern did not hurry. They went up the tower path like two guests who are not speaking.

Longnight, the 5th. The fox came back to the tower stair. It sat on the third step and looked up. Lantern was on the stair above it, carrying coal, and it stopped, because it had been told to carry, not to stop. The fox waited. Lantern waited. Then the fox went past it, very slowly, and out onto the lamp room rail, where it sat with the sock across its paws. I have never seen a fox so pleased with itself.

Longnight, the 6th. Pell wrote from the Halfway Inn to say the bet is settled. The fox was not a party to it, Pell says, but a fox is a fox, and a sock is a sock. I am to knit one sock with a fox on it, by spring. I have not decided which fox.

Longnight, the 11th. Letter from Tam. Pip has learned to carry two full buckets at once, one in each hand, and spills only half. Big Beet ate a bucket, and the bucket was not his. Tam asks if the fox has had a sock this year. He has heard about the sock.
%%
Arlo's account of the first founding day
The first day of spring is the founding day. The clerks at Vell have kept the years from it, and Pell says the whole road is keeping it now. So we kept it here, at the hamlet, and I will write down what we did, though I am a horse keeper and not a clerk.

In the morning we put up a pole with ribbons by the bridge, and the beetroot man brought his cart and sold honey cakes from it. The beekeeper brought three jars of honey and a little pot of wax, and set them on a table with a card that said, in her own hand, "Honey. Ask." Children came from the farms up the hill and ran over the new bridge and back, and one of them fell in the stream and was fished out and was very proud of it.

At noon a rider came down the road with a message. It had come by the relays, tower to tower, all the way from Three Wells, and the last keeper walked it to us. The message said the founding day was kept, and all were well, and the roads were open. We read it aloud by the pole. Everyone clapped, though the message did not ask for clapping.

Then I brought out the horses. Bramble first, steady and slow, and then Tansy, who is not a foal any more and does not care to be called one. I led them round the yard and Tansy did her tricks, the gate and the trough and the word for walk, and she did stop on the first try, which she never does. The beetroot man gave her a honey cake. I gave Tansy a small piece and ate the rest.

In the evening we lit the torches on the waymark and on the bridge and on every post along the road, and it was a chain of small lights from here to Ambrook and back. Pell says the towers do the same, from the tallest one down to the last, one lamp to the next. I thought of that while I lit my torches. We are a small light in a long chain. I like that.

The jar of honey is empty again. The beekeeper says the hives will fill it by Apple. The horses are in the stable, which is dry, and the wall is mine, and the light burns at the gate. We kept the first day of spring, and all were well, and the roads were open. I am glad I wrote this down.
%%
Northpoint house log
Winter of 204. This is the log of the north house, kept by Dace, who is old now and writes things down so as not to forget them.

Third of Frost. Gale. Six shingles gone again. I found one in the well. The roof is the oldest thing I own and it has a mind of its own.

Fourth of Frost. Mended the roof. I am far too old for roofs. My neighbor's apprentice held the ladder instead of Ossa, who has gone to live with her sister. The apprentice is called Reed. Reed held the ladder very still. It did not let go even when the wind came. I said thank you. Reed nodded once, the way they do. It was the best ladder-holding I have had in forty years.

Fifth of Frost. Reed's big mind sent a letter by the relay. It said: is the roof done and is Dace well. I wrote back: roof done, Dace well, Reed held the ladder. The big mind wrote back: good. I like a big mind that is brief.

Tenth of Frost. Snow, soft and thick. The goats will not go out. Loaf is dead these many years and Bitter too, and I have two new goats, Salt and Pepper. Salt is the thoughtful one. Pepper eats the washing. Some things do not change.

Fifteenth of Frost. News. There is to be a wedding at the edge of Northpoint. My granddaughter Wynn is marrying a woman called Tace from Kettle Ridge. Tace brought beetroot all this way to prove she is a farmer. It worked. I am to give Wynn away. I have been practicing giving people away. I keep getting it wrong and holding on.

Twentieth of Frost. We mended the roof of the old store for the wedding feast. The whole edge of Northpoint came. Reed carried shingles. Vey, who is keeper now, brought the good lanterns from the tower foot. We worked till dark and the roof was done and everyone was warm and we ate soup on the new roof, sitting on it, because we could.

Twenty-first of Frost. The wedding. Wynn and Tace stood in the snow with lanterns all round and the relay lamp blinking above them on the hill. Tace said her promise and Wynn said hers. I gave Wynn away and only held on a little. Then we ate beetroot and bread and honey and pumpkin pie, and someone played a fiddle and someone else sang too loud, and the foxes came for scraps and the whole edge of Northpoint danced in the snow in their mittens.

I wrote in my book that night: roof done, wedding good, Dace well. It is a short entry. It is the truest one I have.
%%
Briar, baker, the farm below Vell, first
Winter. Bread, flour, the oven, and the things that happened on the way to the oven.
First frost on the windows. The oven was lit at the fourth bell and the first batch was out before the sun was up. Twelve loaves, all brown on top. Olin says the bottoms are a bit pale. Olin is always right about bottoms.
%%
Orla, farm journal, early spring
Orla, grandmother, on the farm outside Three Wells.

First of Sowing. Frost on the gate. Ploughed the near field. Knees complain.
Second. Sowed the peas. The hens are laying.
Third. Market day tomorrow. Eggs: forty. Cheese: six rounds. Honey: three jars. The children want to come.
Fourth. Market. Sold it all but one jar of honey. The jar was eaten on the way home.
%%
Reed, first winter at the edge
Winter of 204. I am Reed. I am an apprentice. I have a small mind in my crystal and a big mind in the relay house on the hill. I keep the log for Dace now, because Dace's hands are slow and Dace's memory is a sieve. Dace says this is not an insult to sieves.

My drills. I learned farm. I learned store. I learned build. I stand in my row at the drill house in the mornings and the tutor says the orders and I answer.

> bring me some wood
= fetch wood

> put the wood by the stove
= store

> mend the roof
= build

I got the roof wrong twice. Once I put the shingles upside down. Once I put them on the goat shed, which did not need them and has a fine roof. The tutor did not shout. The tutor never shouts. The tutor said try again. I tried again. The third time the roof was right and Dace said well done Reed and I nodded once.

Dace's big mind sent me a letter and asked how I was. I cannot write letters. Only the big minds write back. So I did the roof and the big mind saw through the relays that the roof was done, and wrote to Dace: the roof is done, Reed is well. I liked that. It was true and it did not need words from me.

The snow. I had never seen snow. The first morning I went out and stood in the yard and the snow fell on my head. I stood a long time. I was trying to learn snow. It is cold and it is soft and it lands and then it is gone. I did not learn all of it. I will try again next winter.

I wax my knees now. Dace told me apprentices creak and gave me a pot of wax. I wax my knees every Frost morning. I do not creak now. I did not know I creaked. Oiling the joints is good for a long winter.

Ossa's sister Rill came to the wedding and said I held the ladder well. I nodded once. I held it very still. It was the most I have ever done and it was enough.

Job done. Reed well. I will keep the wood in and the goats fed and the roof mended until Dace says stop. Dace is not going to say stop. Good. I will keep working.
%%
Letter: Pell to Ambrook
Winter of 208.
To my sister at Ambrook, from the Halfway Inn.
The honey you sent froze and cracked in the cold. I sold what was left. Send more in Swarm, not in Longnight.
The road north is quiet. Too quiet, folk say. The relays carry less than they did. I do not know if that is true. I only know the inn is full of people who say it.
A man came through with a big mind on a cart, going to a relay house. It was in a crystal the size of a loaf, in a box of straw. He would not let anyone near it. He said it answers apprentices through the relays. I said I hoped it answers better than my ledger does. He did not laugh.
Your apples were good this year. The oldest tree still gives. Keep the sluice shut and the bees happy.
Tell the children the riddle board is still unanswered. That will make them laugh.
%%
Vell tutor house, autumn log
Leaffall, 11, 207.
We compared three small minds today. Each had learned the eight meanings: farm, store, fetch an item, come, stay, build, haul and home. A small mind must give one of those answers by doing. It cannot write back to say it is unsure.

The new order drills do not add a ninth meaning. They teach the mind to find the meaning inside a whole sentence. The same meaning may be asked in different words.

> put the apples in the store room
= store

> carry the apples to the store room
= store

The apprentice moved the apples to the right bins. It did not explain its choice. Small minds do not write letters. The big minds in relay houses can write back through the relays.

Leaffall, 14.
A child brought a card from the school. It said, "Take the book to the room where we read." The mind took it to the teaching room. Nessa said the order was fair because the mind had learned that room in other drills. The child said it was still a clever answer. Both were right.

Leaffall, 19.
The argument about first place came back at supper. Hesk writes that Clank was first at Copperhold. Tam writes that Pip was first at Kettle Ridge. The keeper of the fair says Peg was first. Nessa says she saw it in the drill room long ago.

Oren copied all four claims. He would not choose one. He says a careful clerk does not repair a record by guessing.
%%
Mira, house journal, a quarrel
Spring. A house at the edge of Northpoint. Four days of a small, silly quarrel.

First day. The fence between my yard and old Hale's has fallen. A post rotted in the winter and the whole stretch leaned over into my garden. Hale came out and said it is my fence. I said it is his. He said it was put up by my predecessor. I said my predecessor was a keeper, not a fence builder. He went inside and shut the door hard.
Second day. I went to the village record and looked. The fence line is Hale's. It is on the map. The ink is brown, from the old days, but clear. I carried the map to his door. He looked at it for a long time and said the map was wrong.
Third day. A neighbor came by and asked if we wanted help. We said no, both of us at once. Lantern, who had been listening from the roof, said she would mend the fence herself if we would stop shouting. We said no again. She mended it anyway, in the night. In the morning it was straight, with two new posts and a gate between our yards that neither of us had asked for.
Fourth day. Hale knocked at my door with a pot of stew. I gave him tea. We sat on the step and looked at the gate. We did not say anything about it. He said the stew was his wife's. I said the tea was my brother's, from Kettle Ridge.
It is a good gate. We have been through it three times.
%%
Log: the boat that learned the coast
Written at the Saltreach harbor, by the boat-builder's log, for the sea trial of the little yawl. Kept by Corin, shipwright, with notes from his mate Dace, who is not the mayor.

Day 1. The yawl is newly built, from oak and spruce. Her mast is birch. She has a keel of iron bars and a rudder on two strings, the strings tied to a small mind in a brass cage on the stern. The tutor from Vell said the mind is not drilled on sea. It is only set to try, and to keep the boat's head to the wind.

The first sail was short. The yawl went out past the breakwater, with two men aboard to watch, and came back with her bow pointing at the cliff. The mind had kept her too close to the wind. It had not been told. It had only found that when the boat went that way, she slowed, and when it went the other way, she sped. So it had stayed close to the wind, because that was where she went quickest, and nearly put her on the rocks.

Day 3. The mind is slower to learn the wind than the water. The water is steady. The wind changes its mind every few breaths. We have set the mind a longer task: to hold the boat steady for a whole reach of the bay, and then to turn her at the buoy. The first time, it did not turn. The second time, it turned too early, and the boat spun. The third time, it turned at exactly the right place, and the men cheered so loudly that the gulls rose off the mole.

Day 6. The rule the mind has found is simple and it is not simple. It keeps the boat moving, and it keeps her head to the wind, and when the wind shifts it turns a little. A little, and then more, until the boat comes back into the line. It does not hold one line. It holds a line that moves. Dace says that is what a sailor does. Corin says a sailor has a face and a belly and does not like being wet. The mind does not mind the wet.

Day 9. The yawl went out in a rough sea. Three fishing boats came in early and tied up along the quay. The yawl came in last, with the wind on her quarter and her sail half-reefed. The mind had reefed the sail itself, by pulling the second string, which we never told it how to do.

Day 14. We have sailed her forty times. She has not gone on the rocks since the first morning. The men still do not trust her. The mind has not been asked to say whether it trusts the sea. It does not write. It only sails.

Day 20. Corin has written in the margin of this book that the yawl is to be sent to Copperhold, to the river, to see if the mind can keep a barge in the current. He has added a line under it. He says: the boat has learned the coast. Let us see if it can learn the river.
%%
Colm's farm log, the grey cough rumor
Autumn. Late Apple.
The cold came early this year. I have shut the top field gate and put the sheep in the low meadow by the barn.
Wren wrote from Lowmarsh. She is well but tired. She says more people are coughing than usual. A grey cough, she calls it. She says she does not know where it comes from. Some in the village say the water is bad. Some say it came off the ships at Saltreach. Some say it is the mines. Wren says she has heard all three and believes none of them yet. She says she washes her hands and keeps her jars full.
I sent her two sacks of the felt for blankets. She wrote back and said thank you and that Moss is learning to make the beds. Moss is her apprentice. Wren says Moss is careful, and that careful is most of healing.
At market Pell said the Deep Works hum at night now. Hesk told him so. Pell says Hesk does not joke. Then Pell said it was only the pumps, old pumps make a hum. Then he said the ninth gate is locked and the key is at the mine hall, and nobody says why. Then he drank his tea.
I do not know what to think. I carded wool until the fire went low and went to bed.
%%
Lenn's summer log, the pond
Sowing, 202. The pond is warm and the fish are lazy. I sit on the bank and they come to look at me. I catch three, and one gets off the hook at the boat. That is how it goes.
The bees are in the apple trees all day. You can hear them from the water. Jory says a loud bee summer means a good crop. Jory says a lot of things.
Pip came down from the ridge with a cart of beetroot for the inn. It stopped by the pond to watch the frogs. It stayed an hour, very still, watching. Then it went on up the road. Good.
%%
Market note by Sella
Blossom, 24. The Ambrook market.
The east path was muddy, so the stalls stood close to the bridge. I sold honey, apples and two small pots of apple jam. The jam went first. Everyone says they came only for apples.
Pell arrived with a cart of wool. One wheel made a sound like a frog. He said the cart had learned to sing. The wheel stopped singing when he put a stone under it.
The road crew passed after the market bell. They are joining the path to the Long Road with packed earth. Where the ground is soft, they put down cobblestone. They say a bridge will go over the little stream next. For now, we carry goods across on our backs.
A relay keeper came from Vell to look at the hill above the mill pond. The people there want a tower, so messages need not travel by hand. He walked around the hill with a cord and a small board. He marked the best place beside the old oak.
I asked how tall the tower would be. He said tall enough to be seen from the road. That is a useful answer. I hope he can give the same answer to the wind.
%%
Quin, midwife's book, Apple
Midwife's book for the month of Apple, year 199, kept by Quin on the farm outside Saltreach, for the next midwife to read.
Third: called out before dawn to the farm by the reeds. A first child. Long labor. I stayed all day. Tea, and then more tea. The baby came at dusk, a girl, with a lot of dark hair. The mother asked to call her Heron. Both well.
Fourth: slept. Fed the hens. Found the horse had been borrowed again by the neighbor's boy without asking. He brought her back in good order and a jar of honey, as a joke. I accepted both.
Ninth: Marn's third. Quick. A boy. He came out in a hurry, as if he had somewhere to be. The mother laughed the whole time.
Fourteenth: visited the Hale farm to look at the baby's cord. All well. Told them again to keep it dry.
Twentieth: the farm by the cove. A twin birth, a rare thing. A boy and a girl. I was glad of Wren's letter, which said what to do. I did it. Both well. The father could not speak for an hour.
Twenty-sixth: a quiet day. Picked apples. Baked a pie.
%%
Tam, house journal, the calf
Autumn. Cold morning, mist on the ridge.
A calf was born in the night. Brown, with a white nose. I sat up with the cow and Pip held the lantern. The cow did it all herself. I only said "good girl" a lot.
Named the calf Beetroot. Pip approves, as far as copper can. By noon she was standing on four wobbling legs and looking at the world as if it owed her something. The cat sat on the fence and watched. The cat has never seen anything so tall and so foolish. I gave the cow an extra measure of oats and a bucket of warm water. Pip will carry the milk when the time comes. Tonight I will sleep in the barn, with the lantern turned low.
%%
Colm's farm log, the wedding at Ambrook
Autumn. Two weeks into Apple.
Went to the wedding at Ambrook. Pell drove the cart and I sat in the back with the wool and the rain came and went. Three hours on the Long Road. A torch on a post every twelve blocks, the same as always. It is a comfort, that road.
The wedding was in the orchard, under the oldest tree with the grey branch. Everyone from Ambrook came, and half of Three Wells, and Jory gave away the bride, who is his niece. There was honey cake and apple cake and a barrel of last year's cider. The bees were out, which is odd for Apple, but the day was warm.
The bride wore a dress of the good wool from my own flock. I did not know until I saw it. I had to sit down.
There was dancing in the barn after. I do not dance, but I clapped. Dace from Three Wells made a speech about the town and the roads and the trees and the people. It was a long speech. It was a good speech. He said: we plant trees we will not sit under. Everyone went quiet, then everyone cheered.
Pell drank too much cider and told the same story three times. It gets better each time.
Coming home, the sky over the north was bright for a while. Lights, low down, moving slow. Pell said falling stars. I said fires. A child in the cart said they were looking at us. Nobody said anything after that. Then the lights went out and we rode on.
The road home was dark. The torches were lit. I was glad of them.
%%
Hesk, deep shift log
Spring of 57. The first of Swarm.
Crew: Hesk, Sava, Varo, Jell.
Level: four.
Count: copper 9 carts, iron 4, coal 5.
The relay tower above Three Wells has its lamp. We watched from the road after shift. A keeper climbed the stair with oil and came down carrying an empty tin. At the top, the signal lamp shone through the glass.
A runner brought our mine tally to the tower. He waited while the keeper sent it on. No one knows who will read it first. Sava says a clerk at Vell will complain about my figures. Sava says this because my sevens look like hooks.
The road is busy now. Two carts passed us before supper. One carried flour. One carried wool and a sleeping child. The child woke when the wheel struck the loose stone.
We ate in the new room at the mine gate. Jell had saved an apple from market day. He cut it into five pieces, one for each of us. That is a good way to divide an apple.
%%
Dace, market journal, the spring
Written at the end of spring, after the council asked for the count. I have kept this journal since Thaw, and I will keep it through the summer, because a market is only a market if someone writes it down.

Thaw, the first day. The goose has been seen on the roof of the bakery, looking down at the carts with the air of a tax collector who has not been paid. Nobody has asked the goose for its opinion. It has given it anyway.

Thaw, the sixth day. The bakery has a new helper, a copper one from Vell, which carries the flour from the cart to the loft. It stands where it is put, and waits for the next sack. Ida says it is the best helper she has had. She has not told it so, because it would not know what to do with the praise.

Sowing, the eighth day. A homecoming at the north well. Pim Hale has come back from Vell with his clear hand and a copied page, and he read it aloud at the well. The children clapped, then asked him questions, and he answered most of them and wrote the rest down to take back. The bell rang at noon, and nobody minded that it was late.

Sowing, the nineteenth day. A man came to the stall asking after the lost hen. The hen was on his shoulder when he came, and nobody had seen her arrive. She had walked up the Long Road and into the market, and sat down on the honey stall, and waited. The man said he was grateful. The hen said nothing, which is her way.

Blossom, the fifth day. The bees came out of their hives on the first warm day and sat on the lid of the honey jar until Ama gave them a dish of water. She says it is the same thing as an apology. The bees agree, and have not swarmed since.

Blossom, the twenty-second day. The keeper of the hill lamp asked the council for a new cloth for the lamp room, because the old one was frayed. The council voted for it, and asked the cook to make it. The cook said the cloth would be ready by the next market, if the stew allowed. The stew allowed.

Blossom, the last day of the month. The council counts the spring. Forty-one stalls. Nine carts from the ridge. Two cats in the square, and one that is almost ours. One goose, on the roof. One cave under the field, with a bell at each end. One lamp, lit every night. One slate, counted twice. One gift from the Archive, which says it rained, and which is kept in a box with a lid, waiting. The bread has been dry the whole spring. Ida says that is the bread's fault. I think it is only the weather. Either way, I am glad of it.
%%
Fallon, hamlet and yard log
Spring of 207, Thaw to Apple.
The store wall is finished. We used Copperhold stone for the lower row and stone from our hill above it. The two kinds look much the same after rain. Tavin says he can tell them apart by tapping. He taps every block. He taps the well too, though we asked him not to.

A new apprentice came up from the town with a little mind in a crystal. It carried stones, filled the trough, and stayed when told. It did not know our yard. The keeper showed it the tool shed and the stone pile. Then the keeper asked it to bring a block. It brought the smallest one. We used that for the low step.

I asked whether it could sort the blocks by size. The keeper said it had not been tested on that work. So we did not give it the job. Rell made three piles instead, and got two right. The apprentice stood beside him and watched. It did not speak. Neither did the blocks.

The old map is now in a wooden case. Fen cleaned the dust from its edges with a soft brush. It shows the road before the new bridge and the lane before the east wall. A mark beside the hill says "good stone". I know that shelf. I have cut there for thirty years. The map maker knew it too.

The spring has been kind this year. Water runs in the ditch, and the well has not gone low. We planted wheat on the upper field and beetroot below it. Potatoes went by the south hedge. My sister put carrots there as well, though I told her the row was too narrow. She says carrots do not mind close neighbors.

At dusk we ate by the yard wall. The apprentice carried the plates from the kitchen. It set my plate beside my stool and Tavin's plate on the stone pile. Tavin ate there without complaint. It was the first time I saw him sit still.
%%
Hesk, deep shift log
Spring of 74. The sixth of Longday.
Crew: Hesk, Sava, Varo, Jell.
Level: four.
Count: copper 12 carts, iron 5.
The winter lasted longer than any I remember. Snow covered the road and the cart track. We stopped work below the third level twice, when water froze on the ladder rungs. No one fell. We left torches burning at the gate, and Sava brought hot broth for the late crew.
A fox slept beneath the wood store. It left when the snow thinned and took a crust of bread with it.
Now the road to Three Wells is open. A stone bridge crosses the stream below the mill. The bridge is narrow, but the carts pass one at a time. The innkeeper at the Brown Hen says he kept the hearth lit all winter. He also says we owe him for two bowls of soup. I remember one bowl.
The relay keeper brought a message from Vell. The archive has made another room in the hill. The shelves are dry, and the clerks copy old pages as well as new ones. I asked if they had written down our mine tally. The keeper said yes. My sevens do look like hooks.
%%
Tova, road log, the first snow
Frost of 158. Snow in the night.

The Long Road is shut. Two carts are in the ditch. One is mine. I am not sorry. I am tired.

Greer took me in. His farm sits at the edge of the reeds. His son Ivo asked if the snow was early. I said everything is early in Frost.

The tutor here is Abel. In his box is a mind the size of a hen's egg, in a crystal, with three layers. It sorts the letters for the Lowmarsh relay. It is not ready for the road. Abel says never send an untested mind to the fields.
%%
Sallow Ford log, the small crystal
Kept by Ilse, tutor of apprentices at Vell, on a visit to Sallow Ford. A note on what fewer marks cost, and what they do not.
Reaping, the 20th day. The ferry mind has been in the small crystal for a week. The Archive will want the counts, so here they are.
Before the change: the mind passed the river test on eighty-seven crossings out of a hundred. On a fresh hundred, unseen, it was wrong on thirteen.
After the change: the same test on the same hundred crossings gave seventy-nine right. After a morning of drill on the crossings it had missed, the count rose to eighty-one. The cost is about six crossings in a hundred. Not much. It is real, and I will not hide it.
Why? Each weight in the big crystal was written with eight marks. In the small crystal each weight has four. Four marks say most of the weight, but not all of it. The small errors add up across the mind. So it is a little less sure, most of all at the edges of a crossing, when the water is high and fast.
That is what fewer marks are. A way to fit a mind into a smaller place, with a small cost paid in the answers.
The ferry hands ask whether the mind will get worse. It will not, if we keep it honest. We drill it each morning on the crossings it has seen and the ones it has not. We test it on the day's new crossing before it takes a cart. That is the rule.
Brede asks why I do not put it back in the big crystal. The ferry house has no room for one, and no wall strong enough for the wax. So it stays small, and it stays tested.
The mind does not know it is smaller. It does not know anything. But the ferry hands know, and they stand a moment longer at the landing when the water is high, to be sure. I think that is the right kind of care.
Written by Ilse, at Sallow Ford, in Reaping.
%%
Hesk, deep shift log
Spring of 103. The seventh of Blossom.
Crew: Hesk, Varo, Jell, Rusk.
Levels: three and four.
Count: copper 13 carts, iron 7, coal 5.
The spring road crew reached the hill above Copperhold. They have laid cobblestone from the mine gate to the first bend. Beyond it, the Long Road runs down to the Brown Hen and on to Three Wells.
At market day, we sold copper wire and bought two sacks of flour. Rusk bought a beetroot seed for his mother. He carried it in his closed hand all the way back, as if it might run away.
There was a notice from Vell on the board. The archive's first shelves are full. The clerks have sealed the old room and opened another room farther in the hill. The notice says the copying room has eight long tables. Rusk asked whether all the tables were for writing. I said yes. He said that sounded like a lot of sums.
The new waymark at the fork has a torch on top and an arrow toward Copperhold. It is taller than Rusk. He stood beside it to check.
The road is easier for carts now. A wheel broke at the bend, but the driver had a spare. We helped him lift the cart. He gave us an apple from Ambrook. I put it on the mine hall shelf for after shift. Jell took it before I did.
I have written this tally twice. The first copy had coal where copper should be. I put the spoiled page in the stove. Varo says the clerks would have kept it too. Let them keep the right one.
%%
Hesk, log of the farm crew
Apple, third through sixth

The frost has not come, but the mornings are cold. We have to finish the fence before it does. The south side runs from the barn to the stream, then turns beside the beetroot field. Two posts are loose. A third is split.

Clank took the crew out at first light. It read the fence marks, checked the tools, and made a list of what was missing. It had brought a hammer, a shovel, and enough oak rails. It had forgotten the iron nails.

The store shed was still locked. I went for the key. Clank did not wait with the others. It gave them cards to clear the old rails and stack the good ones by length. That was useful work, but it kept the crew out of trouble.

When I came back, Clank sent a question through the relay to the big mind at Copperhold. Could the crew set the loose posts before the nails arrived? The answer said to brace them with stones, then fit the rails when the store opened.

Clank changed the plan. One helper dug around the first post. Two brought deep stone from the field edge. The last held the post straight while we packed stones around its base. We used the same way at the second post.

The split post could not be braced. Clank marked it for replacement and wrote a card to fetch an oak post from the wood pile. It checked that the new post was not cracked before anyone lifted it.

On the fifth, a fox came to the hens at dawn. The hens were shut in the little house, but the latch had slipped. One helper was carrying a rail past the yard. It stopped, set the rail down, and stood between the fox and the door.

I ran from the shed with a broom. The fox slipped through the hedge before I reached the yard. One hen was gone. The others were loud enough for the whole hill.

Clank had not been given a card about foxes. It had seen the open door and the fox near the hens. It put the rail across the gap after the fox left. I fixed the latch with wire.

The nails arrived on the sixth. The crew set the rails in one long line. They left a gate wide enough for the cart and put the new post where the split one had stood. We finished before the evening fog came off the stream.
%%
Ivo's market book, Reaping
Autumn of 174. Four market days at the north well, set down in one go, because my knees would not let me write on the day.
The 5th. Warm. Sold the last of the summer eggs and all my green socks. A child asked why the sky was so big. I said it is a market day and the sky is allowed. Lost children: 1. He was at the bakery, as always.
The 11th. Cooler. The wheat is coming in at last, and every cart smells of straw. The man with the squeaky wheel went by four times, to be sure we all heard. Sold 80 eggs. One of my hens laid an egg with two yolks. I kept it for Piper.
The 17th. Wet. The market board checked the loaves and found three short. Mott's loaves were not short. They never are. The board says it again every week, and Mott says "Thank you" every week, and neither of them smiles.
The 23rd. Fine. Piper kept the stall for an hour so that I could walk round the three wells. It is not far. It took me a long time, because everyone wants to talk. I learned that Cato's goat is expecting, that the new inn is nearly finished, and that Lyle's field has more wheat than Lyle's barn.
I am not a gossip. I am a collector. The clerks at Vell would call it keeping a record.
Total for Reaping: eggs 410, socks 22 pairs, lost children 5, all found. The stool leans. So do I.
%%
Vane's book, the long talk in autumn
Leaffall. A month of talk. The whole hall was full every night.
After Ilse's test, the question was not allowed to die. Every traveler wanted to talk about it, and the carters brought their own versions up the road. Some said a mind could only think if it had a body. Some said a mind could think if it had enough letters to read. Some said a mind was only a very good parrot, and that a parrot could sing a song without knowing the words.
Old Ama said that a parrot was a fine thing, and that she had never once met a parrot who knew it was a parrot. Everyone laughed, and then they went quiet, and then they argued for an hour.
Hobb said that a mind that said it did not know something was surely thinking. A parrot would never say that. Marda said that a parrot would say whatever it had heard, and that the best minds were the ones who had heard the most people say I do not know. That was why they said it too.
The tutors who came through in the autumn were kinder about the question than the scholars had been. They said the answer was a matter of patience, and that the minds were improving every year, and that it was a poor sort of tutor who stopped asking the question. Nessa, who came through on the cart, said she had asked it herself, every morning, of her own drill slate, for thirty years, and had never got a satisfying answer. She said the question was the most useful thing the archive had given her.
I have written all this down because Ilse asked me to keep the record. She said the archive would want it. She said the question would still be open when the record was read. That seems right to me. It is still open in my kitchen, every night, over the stew.
%%
Wren's healing house, winter log
The wind came over the marsh in the night and rattled the jars. Nothing broke. Moss says the jars are brave. I say they are heavy.
A fisher came in with a sore shoulder. He had pulled a boat by its rope while the boat was caught in mud. I rubbed the shoulder with warm oil and told him to ask for help next time. He said he had asked. The help had been a small boy with a spoon. We both laughed, then he winced.
Moss carried the washing to the line. The cloth froze before it was hung. We brought it back in and laid it by the stove. It dried slowly, but the beds were made before supper.
The well bucket had a crack. We used a sound bucket from the shed and set the cracked one aside for catching rain. Moss wrote CRACKED on it. The letters were large enough for anyone to read, even from the boardwalk.
At the fish weir, the water had pushed reeds across the path. We cleared them with hooks and stacked them beside the boat house. The frogs watched from the bank. Moss asked if frogs ever work. I said they keep still and catch flies. Moss said that sounded like a good job.
%%
Oren's day-book, the cart to Northpoint
Winter, the year the north road was open late. Oren went up the road with the cart from Vell, to check the logs at the relay house by hand, which the clerks had asked him to do since the relay line was slow. Written in the night, at the Northpoint kitchen table.

Left Vell on the fourth day of Deepsnow. Two carts, one driver, two boys, and a box of paper for the north. The box is heavy. The boys say it is heavier than the box of letters from the south.

The Long Road is white to the Halfway. Hobb had a fire going and sent us on with bread. The waymarks stand up out of the snow like small stones. We counted them. Forty-one to the crossing.

Stayed at the Oak Post. Sella gave us the good room. Mott came in at midnight with a lamp and said the bakery cat has been sleeping on the flour. Sella said the cat is not to be moved. The cat was not moved.

On the road past the ridge, the wind came up from the north. The carts went very slowly. We walked beside them for the last part of the hill. The boys were cold. I was cold. The horse was not cold at all, and is still the only one of us who is happy.

At Northpoint the lamp was lit when we came round the last bend. It is a good light. Mira came down the stair with a cup of tea in each hand and gave one to me and one to the air. Then she gave me the other one.
%%
Quin, the apple season
Journal of Quin, midwife, a farm outside Saltreach, the whole of Apple, year 188. For myself, and for anyone who likes to know how a midwife spends a month.
First of Apple. The first apples are in. I picked two baskets from the old tree behind the house. They are small, hard and good. I made a pie for supper and gave half to the neighbor.
Fourth. Called out at midnight to the farm on the cliff. A hard birth, long, the baby turned the wrong way. I turned it back with my hands, which is the oldest trick. Both well. I came home at dawn, so tired I ate the pie crust for breakfast.
Seventh. Slept all day. In the evening, a boy came for the horse. His mother is in labor and his father is away. I lent him my mare, with a note for Wren if she was nearer. The boy rode off as if the night were on fire.
Eighth. The mare is back. The boy also, with a jar of honey from his own hive. The baby is a girl. He is eleven, and calls himself the uncle.
Twelfth. A week of waiting. Nothing. I sat on the porch and mended a basket and watched the clouds. I find I like the quiet days best, after the loud ones.
Fifteenth. The festival of the first ship at the harbor. I went, and stood at the wall, and ate fish pie. The harbor was full of paper boats with candles. Someone's baby, born the week before, was held up to see them. I know that baby. I was there on the first day.
Twentieth. Wren sent a letter. She asks if I have any honey to spare. I said I had two jars. I sent one. It seems that everyone is giving me honey this month. I think I must be doing something right, or very wrong.
Twenty-fourth. A child's birth at the Marl farm, easy, pleasant. The father brought me a basket of apples I had given him last year. They were small and hard and good.
Twenty-ninth. Quiet. I sat on the porch with the last of the honey. I counted this month: eight births, one false alarm, two borrowed horses, five jars of honey and a hen in a bed.
It is a good life. I would not change it. I might ask for more sleep.
Quin
%%
Ivo, bees on the market bell
Autumn of 179. Apple, the 20th. Market day at the north well. The strangest one in my thirty-eight years.
At the first bell, everything was ordinary. Eggs, socks, one lost child, found. Then a hum began over the square. It was low, like a pot coming to the boil. A woman by the pie tent said "Oh," and pointed at the market bell.
The bell hangs in a little roof at the crossroads. A great brown ball hung from its rim, as big as a pumpkin, and the ball was moving. Bees. They were swarming, on an autumn day, which nobody had ever seen. Old Teague, who keeps hives behind the school, said that swarms come in Swarm, not in Apple. He said it twice. The bees had not read the almanac.
The mayor was told. The mayor is afraid of bees. He decided at once that the bees were not his business.
Teague came with a basket, a smoking pot and a sheet. "Nobody ring the bell," he said. Nobody did. We stood and watched an old man in a sheet climb a ladder with smoke coming out of his hands. The bees hummed. A boy asked if they were cross. Teague said they were looking for a house and had not found one, and that is a sad thing to be, even for a bee.
It took him until noon. By then the bees were in the basket, the basket was in a cart, and Teague was asking for a cup of tea.
Here is the funny part. The market ends at the noon bell, and the noon bell had been busy. So nobody knew it was noon. Nobody went home. The stalls stayed open. The pie tent sold out. The man with the long hats sold every hat he had. A man offered me 3 for my stool. I said it leans. He said that is why he wanted it. I did not sell it.
At dusk the mayor rang the bell himself, with a very long rope tied to a very long stick, from behind the pie tent.
Teague says the swarm will make honey on the hill next summer. He calls it Bell honey. I have put my name down for a jar.
Eggs: 0. Socks: 9 pairs. Lost children: 1, found. A very good day. I would like a swarm every year.
%%
Corin, the first snow
The first of Frost. First snow. It came in the night and the whole slip is white. I walked down at dawn, and the only marks were fox prints running along the ramp, as if the fox were measuring it. They were straighter than my yard boy's lines.

The boats are drawn up. The yard is quiet. In the afternoon I took a question to Ilse at the tower. The big mind there will answer anyone who writes to it now. I asked how many planks a boat of thirty blocks needs, if each plank is three blocks long and the boat has six rows on each side. I know the answer. I wanted to see how it would get there.

They say the new ones write out their steps before they answer. I will see.
%%
Berit's notes for the tutors' halls
These notes are for the young tutors. They are not for the drill books. Read them when you have sat through a long trial and want to throw a crystal into the sea.

Most of our minds are drilled. We show a question and its answer, many times, and each time the mind is wrong it changes a little, toward the right answer. This works well for sorting, for counting and for words. It works because we know the answer before we begin.

A tried mind is different. We do not know the answer, or we do not know it well enough to write it down. So we do not drill it. We set it a task, let it try, and watch what happens. When the melt holds, or the boat stays up, we keep what the mind did just before. When the melt runs thick or the boat rolls, we let that go. Over many tries the good choices gather, and the bad ones fade. Nobody tells the mind the answer. The good results are the only teacher it has.

Here is why this matters. The furnace mind at Saltreach learned to hold the colour of the iron without anyone telling it what the colour should be. It found the colour by trying, and it kept the bellows movements that went well. The yawl learned to keep her head to the wind in the same way. Neither one knows a word for what it does. Both do it.

Here is the danger. A tried mind keeps what went well, and nothing else. It does not ask whether the good result was luck. It does not know that shouting means danger. So we must test it on what it was never tried on. We keep a box of new tasks, with tasks no mind has seen, and we run the mind through them before we let it near the furnace or the sea. If it fails the box, it does not work. If it passes, we still watch it.

Some of the young tutors ask me why we bother, when the drilled minds are faster. My answer is this. A drilled mind knows what we taught it. A tried mind sometimes knows things we did not know to teach. The yawl was not taught the storm. It found the storm, and kept the boat up in it. That is worth the slow years.

Remember also that a tried mind cannot say what it has learned. It cannot write its reasons. You can only see the work. So keep records of the work, and write down what the mind did, and what the result was, and the day and the weather. Your notes are the only way anyone will know what the mind has done.

Berit, tutor of the Vell halls, for the young ones
Written at the tutor house in Vell, after the trial at the Saltreach harbor.
%%
Hesk, deep shift log, and the harvest
Written by Hesk of Copperhold. Reaping, year 201. The mine lets every miner go to the farms for the harvest week, and I went to my sister's.

Last shift before leave. Copper level, east drift. Cut two hundred and ten blocks. Clank hauled forty loads without a stumble. Eighth rail powered, ninth rail not, which is as it should be. A tired miner counts rails to stay awake.

Out of the shaft at dusk. Wrote my name on the board and rubbed it out coming up. The kitchen at the gate had a stew of potatoes, carrots and a little salt pork. Good stew. I had two bowls and did not talk to anyone.

First day of leave. Walked to my sister's farm along the road. The hawthorn is red. Her wheat is high. It has been a hot summer and the harvest is early. She said, "You are late." I said, "I am exactly on time." She said she meant for dinner.

Second day. Wheat. Cut, bind, stack. Clank came with me, because the mine hall lets it on leave if I say so. It binds sheaves faster than any of us. My sister's neighbors stood and watched for a while. Then they stopped watching and started racing. The young ones lost. The old woman from the next farm tied a sheaf with her eyes closed and won.

Third day. The beetroot field. A heavy crop. The boys pulled and the girls sorted. At noon we sat in the shade and ate bread and cheese. A bee walked across my sister's hand. She did not move. She said the trick is to be a tree. I tried to be a tree. A bee walked across my nose.

Fourth day. A storm in the afternoon, but we had the last sheaves in. We sat in the barn and listened to the rain on the roof. It is a good sound. Underground, rain is a story somebody tells you.

Fifth day. Harvest supper. We ate a pig, and a pumpkin pie, and apples from the old tree. My sister's son asked me about the mine. I told him about the deep stone, how cold and dark and quiet it is. He asked if I was afraid. I said no. A mine is only a very big cellar, and I have never been afraid in a cellar. He nodded and went back to his pie.

Sixth day. The wagon came to take the wheat to the mill. I walked beside it as far as the crossroads. The driver sang. I did not sing, but I hummed. I am not a good hummer.

Seventh day. Back to the shaft. Wrote my name on the board. Down the long stair. At the bottom, in the dark and cold, I stopped for a moment and listened. Quiet. Good. Home.
%%
Hesk, the new road
Melon, year 171. At my sister's farm outside Copperhold.

The new road came through this spring. Cobblestone, with a torch on a post every twelve blocks. The mine hall paid for the stone and the farmers paid for the digging. Before this the cart track turned to soup in rain, and the ore carts sank to the axle. Now a cart goes from the shaft head to the farm gate in a morning.

My sister says it is the best thing that ever happened to her turnips. A turnip that gets to market on the day it is pulled is a better turnip.

Today I walked it end to end to see if it was straight. It is not. There is a bend by the old oak. I asked the road crew why. The foreman said the oak was there first. I said that is a fair answer. He gave me a boiled egg.

Evening. Sat on the waymark with my boots off. The stone is warm from the sun. Nobody has yet left a little stone on the top. I left one. It looked lonely, so I left two.
%%
Northpoint journal, the ice camp summer
Melon, the first. The ice camp is folded for the summer. The men have taken the sledges down to the lake shore, where they keep them in the boat house, and set up their drying racks on the stones. The lake is clear and green, and I can see fish in it, which is news for a keeper who has only seen them through a hole in the ice.

Melon, the third. The ice camp men came up with the first fish of the summer, a big one, the length of my arm, and wanted to know whether the tower could cook it. The tower can cook anything, I told them. The fish was very good. Lantern does not eat, but it held the pan steady for an hour while the fish spat and hissed, and it did not spill a drop.

Melon, the sixth. A letter from Vell came up by the post cart, which takes a month to reach us in summer, because the roads are muddy at the bottom and dusty at the top. The councils have voted to send a relay house to Northpoint, for the spring, if the stone can be carried up the north road. The stone is at the quarry by the lake. I have been asked whether I think it can be carried. I have said yes. I have also said that I hope the stone is not too heavy, because my back is not what it was.

Melon, the ninth. Took the stone's measure with the tower's rope. It is a long pale block of good stone. Lantern measured it too, very carefully, by walking round it and counting its steps. It came out at twenty-two steps round, which is not what the quarrymen said. We argued about it all afternoon, in the way two keepers argue, which is quietly and with a lot of sighing.

Melon, the fourteenth. The summer rains came, and the lake rose a hand's width in a night. The ice camp men dragged their racks up the shore and cursed the water in the old way, loudly.

Melon, the twentieth. Clear again. Sent a message down the line to Vell that the first fish has been cooked at Northpoint. It came back: "Fish is for the southern towers." I said the same about beetroot.

Lamps lit. Glass clean. Messages passed. The lake is green, and the stone is waiting at the quarry.
%%
Una, candle book, the first frost
Frost, the second. First hard frost of the year, and the tallow went hard in the pot before I could pour it. Made forty candles from what was soft and left the rest for the night.

Frost, the fifth. Wicks cut to the length of a finger. A wick that is too long smokes, and one that is too short gutters in the first draught. Measured every one.
%%
Tam, farm log: the autumn, all of it
Tam, farm log, the top farm, through the autumn. Long, because the autumn was.

Reaping, first day. The top strip has come in. Forty sacks of wheat, which is a good count for a strip that size. Pip carried them to the cart, one at a time, and stacked them in rows as tall as itself, and would not let me help. Juno says that is pride. I say it is a helper that has found a job it likes.

Reaping, seventh day. Brin came up the ridge with his cart, asking if we had seen his sheep, Biscuit. We had not. Biscuit was found in our beetroot, eating it, with the look of a sheep who has been waiting all her life for beetroot. Brin paid for the beetroot in a loaf, which is fair.

Apple, fourth day. A bad morning. The gate on the north field was torn off in the night. Something big had leaned on it, and the hinge had gone. I do not think it was the fox. Pip stood beside the gate and looked at the broken hinge, and then at me, and then at the hinge again. I told it: fetch the iron. It fetched the iron, and I mended the gate with the new hinge, and Pip held the gate while I drove in the pins.

Apple, sixth day. The fence along the lane needed new posts, and I needed a helper to hold the post while I set it. Pip held the post. It held the post plumb, which I had not asked it to do, and when I said so, it stood up straighter, and held it plumb again.

Leaffall, second day. Butter is fat again, and cross about it. Her milk has come back, and the children drink it warm in the mornings, from the good cups. The beetroot she ate in Frost is still a story in the family.

Leaffall, fifth day. Brin came back up the ridge with a question about his own apprentice, which is a new one, a lean small one called Fence. It mends his fences very badly. I told him Pip had mended mine very badly too, to begin with, and that the way to learn a fence is to walk the whole line of it, post after post, and see where it sags. He said he had walked it. I said walk it again.

Leaffall, the last day. The autumn is in, all of it. Wheat in the loft, apples in the cellar, cider in the jar, cheese in the cold. Pip is standing at the gate, where it stands at dusk, with the lamp. I have told it that it can come in now. It has not come in. It is waiting for the word, and the word has only one meaning, and I have not yet said it, because I have not yet decided that I want it to stop.
%%
Piper, kitchen book: first snow
Kept by Piper, cook at the farm outside Ambrook.

Frost, first day. First snow in the night. The yard is white, and the pig is furious about it.
Frost, third day. The bread rose slowly in the cold. I set the dough by the stove, at the warm end of the hearth, and it rose as though it had been told a secret.
Frost, tenth day. Snow stopped at dusk. The stars very bright. I stood in the yard and counted them until my feet were cold, and then I counted my feet.
%%
Piper, kitchen book: the long winter
A long record, kept through the winter, for the kitchen and for the house. The flood, the roof, the test, and the cold.

Frost, twentieth day. Bread every morning, and soup every night, and on the hard days, soup twice. The family eats at the long table by the fire, and the helper eats standing at the back, which it prefers, because it can see the door.
Longnight, fifth day. Snow from the west all day and into the night. The barn roof has a tarpaulin on it, tied with the good rope. The farm has three hens that lay, and one that thinks it is a rooster, and it is not allowed to crow in the house.
Longnight, twelfth day. The roof is half done. Tam has come with his second cart, and Sefa has sent a cake, which was too sweet, and then not, after the second slice.
Longnight, twentieth day. The tutors' letter came again, asking what the readers said. I have told them what I said. The tutor says I am a fine cook, and a poor tutor, and I have told him I do not want to be a tutor. A cook needs only to know that the soup is hot, and the bread is cooked, and the letter is kind.
Deepsnow, third day. Coldest morning of the year. The water in the buckets froze to the rim, and the pig would not come out of the kitchen until the oven was lit, and then it came out and sat in front of the oven as if it had paid for it.
Deepsnow, eighth day. The roof is mended, every row of it, and tied down. The rain came in the night, and the roof held, and the barn is dry, and the sacks are dry on the high shelf. The helper slept in the barn with the sacks, which is not what a helper is meant to do, but nobody could get it to come in.
Deepsnow, twelfth day. The first warm wind of the year, from the south. The eaves dripped all morning, and the children ran out to catch the drops, and the pig ran out after them, and nobody caught anything but the cold.
Deepsnow, last day. The winter is almost done. I have baked the last bread of the cold and made the first soup of the thaw, which is the same soup with fewer carrots. The letters from the test are in the drawer, tied with string, and I have not opened the drawer for a month, and I do not expect to need to.

Piper, cook, who wrote this down by the stove.
%%
Ossa's book, the dry well
Leaffall. The well in the square at Three Wells has run dry.
I noticed it this morning when I went to fill the basin for the birthing room. The bucket came up light. I let it down again and it came up light again. The rope was wet only to the first knot, and then there was nothing.
The north well has water. The east well has a little, in a puddle at the bottom, which the children are trying to scoop up with cups. The south well is still full, but it is cold, and it smells of iron.
Dace has put a board up. It says: Do not drink from the south well until the mayor says. It says it in very big letters. Nobody has told the south well.
I have three women close to their time and one who is very close. I will need the water for them. I have asked the carter to bring up a barrel from the Brown Hen. He said he would think about it, which is what carters say when they are tired.
Lamp lit. Basin full, from the barrel. Hands washed twice.
%%
Dell, the news by lamp
Autumn of 196.

The tenth of Apple. A message came down the line at dusk, and Mira read it out in the market square because it was for everyone. Vell to all towers: the council has voted. Relay houses will be built at the foot of the towers, one by one, starting with Vell and the towers on the Long Road. In each, a big mind. Builders will come. Northpoint last.

Northpoint last got a groan.

Everyone had something to say. Fen asked how the council could build a house for a mind when his own roof leaked. The innkeeper said the builders would need beds. The baker said the builders would need bread. A man from the ice camp said a mind has no use for a house, because it has no feet. Mira said nothing. She looked at the tower, and then at the lake.

The twelfth. I asked Mira what she thought. "I think the north is the best place for it," she said. "The quickeners get hot, and they must be kept cool. We have the coldest winter in the land. Northpoint last is not an insult. It is a long wait for the best seat."

The sixteenth. A cart came up the north road in the rain with two builders from Vell, a bundle of stakes and a roll of string. They had come to mark where the relay house will stand. The cart stuck at the bend below the tower, in mud up to the axles. The horse stood there with a face full of regret.

Mira rang the tower bell. The whole market came out, and the school too, who were meant to be learning sums. We pulled for an hour. We got it out, and the horse was given an apple, and the builders were so grateful they stayed two nights.

At supper the builders told me why the council had agreed. It was Isla's curve. The tutors can say what a big mind will do before it is grown. The council would rather spend emeralds on a thing it can count on.

The twentieth. The stakes are in. They make a long rectangle by the lake. The market comes to look at them. The children walk around it with their arms out, being a house. Someone tied a ribbon to a stake, and now it is a fair.
%%
Mott, the spring week, Thaw
Written by Mott, age ten, at the table by the window of our house at the edge of Three Wells. Mother says a journal is a fine habit. Father says it is a fine way to use up the candles.
Thaw, first day. Wind from the north. The puddles by the school gate froze in the night and cracked when we stepped on them. Miss Jenna says that is the first lesson of spring. The ground remembers the cold.
Thaw, second day. The carter from the Long Road said the north relay has been dark two nights running. He said it the way you would say the bread is late. Father said the keepers up there are busy with the snow. Father did not sound sure.
Thaw, third day. Father paid the baker what we owed since Frost, twenty emeralds, counted out twice on the table. The baker said there was no hurry. Father said there was a hurry to be finished. Then they shook hands, and had a bun each, and the baker gave me a bun too.
Thaw, fourth day. Sowed the peas in the back garden. Father says peas do not care who is watching. The hens watched anyway.
Thaw, fifth day. Miss Jenna asked the class what we want to be. Hal wants to be a miner. Ada wants to be a relay keeper. I said a baker, because of the buns. Miss Jenna said the buns are a good reason.
%%
Mill hamlet, Apple log
Apple, 188. The first apples fell before the baskets were ready. We picked them from the grass and sorted the bruised ones for the pigs. The pigs ate well and slept as if they had done the work.
A rabbit has been living under the wood pile. It comes out when I sweep the mill floor. I have told it twice that the wood pile is not a house. It has not replied.
The wheel stopped at noon. A branch had caught between two paddles. I shut the sluice, climbed down, and pulled it free with a hook. The miller watched from the bank and gave advice from a safe distance.
When I opened the sluice, the wheel turned too fast. The miller said it was glad to be free. I said it was glad to have water. We both agreed not to ask the wheel.
Oren came from Vell with a box of books for the shelf. He checked each title and wrote the list in a careful hand. I offered him a stool. It had a loose leg, so he sat on the flour sack instead.
The children chose a book about bees. They read it aloud beside the hives, which made the bees busy and the children quiet.
At dusk I carried the last basket of apples inside. The rabbit was under the wood pile again. I left it an apple with a soft spot. In the morning it was gone. I will not ask who ate it.
%%
Dara, a season at the Ambrook market
Kept by Dara, beekeeper, as a log through the autumn market season at Ambrook. She writes a line or two a week, and sometimes more. The log was given to the Archive at Vell at her request. It is a kind of diary.

First week of Apple. Thirty jars. The weather is clear. A woman from Kettle Ridge asked how bees make honey. I said: slowly. She laughed.

Second week of Apple. The market bell is cracked. A small crack, but the sound is a little flat. I hear it from the hives. It does not trouble the bees.

Third week of Apple. The roof of my hive shed leaked on the third row. Rook came with a ladder and a bucket of tar. I held the ladder. He did the roof. He sang while he worked. It was a very bad song. I did not say so.

Fourth week of Apple. The roof is mended. It rained that night, and no water came in. I made Rook a honey cake. He said it was the best he had ever eaten. He says that every time.

First week of Leaffall. The apple festival. Eight days of eating. I sold more honey than I have in any year. My stall was by the well, as always.

Second week of Leaffall. Cooler. The bees are slowing. I wrapped the hives in straw. They hummed softly.

Third week of Leaffall. The first frost, early. I lit a small fire under the eaves, to warm the shed. The bees clustered. I counted the frames. All strong.

Fourth week of Leaffall. A quiet market. Fewer carts. Fewer stalls. A man sold me a pair of gloves, thick, for the winter. They are too big. I wear them anyway.

First week of Frost. I did not go to market. Snow came in the night. I sat in the yard and watched the bees cluster in the hive. They look like a small dark apple.

The season is over. I counted the jars I sold. Four hundred and sixty. The best year. I put the money in the box under the bed. In spring I will buy a new hive.

Dara
%%
Senna, bridge log, spring
Kept by Senna, bridge keeper, at the inn by the Long Road bridge. Three days of spring.

First day. The stream under the bridge is high. Thaw water. I measured it with a stick. Three hands above last week.

Second day. A tutor stopped at the inn. She wants to talk about a new thing in minds, also called a stream. I told her I know streams. She said: not this kind.

Third day. She talked all evening. I will write it down tomorrow. My head is full.
%%
The sorting crystal, as told by Una
From a clerk's copy, read at the Halfway Inn, winter of 208.
Una of Ambrook had apples and pears. She wanted a crystal to sort them, one basket for apples, one for pears.
A crystal of that kind has many small weights inside it. It looks at a thing and the weights pull it one way or the other. At first it was wrong as often as a child.
When it sorted an apple as a pear, Una did not shout at it. She moved each of its weights a little toward the right answer. Just a little. Each weight, a small step. Then she showed it another apple. Wrong again, and the weights moved again. She did this all winter.
Slowly it got better. By spring it sorted better than her neighbors' children. It never learned why an apple is an apple. It only learned which way to lean.
Why the weights move and the crystal learns, nobody wrote down. Una did not know. She only knew it worked, and she told everyone who would listen, and the tutors still teach her way first.
%%
Hob, relay log, the Long Road, 206
Logged on the road, at the Brown Hen, the Halfway Inn and the little relay, by Hob, keeper, on the long way round to Vell and back. Spring of 206. He wrote it for the Archive, and for the carters who asked him to.

I walked the Long Road for the first time in ten years. The keeper's work is at the top of a hill, and it does not often let me come down. But the council asked for a check on the waymarks, and the relay's old copy of the figures had gone missing in the damp. So I went.

Day one. From the hill to Three Wells, by the high road. The square was full of carts and dogs and children. Somebody had left a melon in the well. I counted six waymark stones on the way, with the torches lit on top. Each one had its figure cut clean. Good.

Day two. Three Wells to the Brown Hen. Tilly met me at the ferry and gave me a cup of hot cider before I had even asked. She said keepers should be looked after, since nobody looks after them. I said that is true, and drank it.

Day three. The Brown Hen to the bend. The road is cobbled for the first part and bare earth for the rest. The cobbles are new, laid by the apprentices from Vell with the copper gang, and they go down straight as a plate. The bare earth is a little muddy, but the cart tracks are clear. One of the waymarks had a crack in the stone, and I wrote it on the card to be recut.

Day four. The bend to the Halfway Inn. Hobb met me at the door with the riddle board, and a question on it: What goes round the Long Road and never leaves its stone? I could not answer it. Nor could anyone else in the room. We all went to bed still thinking.

Day five. A storm came up from the west after noon. The sky went dark in the space of an hour, and the rain came down like the sea. I took shelter under the big oak by the Halfway waymark, which was a mistake, since the oak was loose at the root. A branch came down behind me with a crack. I was not hurt. The waymark was not hurt. The carter Oss came running up the road with a lantern, shouting for me, and found me sitting in the mud with my hat in my lap.

Day six. The rain stopped in the night. The road was full of puddles and loose stones. A letter had blown out of a carter's pack, and I found it in the ditch, soggy but whole. I took it to the Halfway Inn. Hobb said it was for a woman in Ambrook. I put it in my coat with the waymark figures and the card.

Day seven. Back to the hill. Walked the last stretch alone, counting the waymarks in the proper order, and then in reverse, since that is how the road apprentices do it. Every figure was where it should be. The torches were lit. The bell at Three Wells rang behind me, once, for the morning.

I am home. The lamp is lit. The cat is on the copper ring. I have written the figures in the book, the way they should be.
%%
Corin, winter notes
The house at the edge of Saltreach is coldest by the sea wall. I moved the bed closer to the hearth. Nell says the bed is now in the way. She is right.
We repaired the back door with oak scraps. One board was too wide, so I cut it down with the small saw. The saw bit my thumb. Nell wrapped it in clean wool and told me to stop pretending I could still cut straight.
The miller has not fixed the pond wheel. He says the broken spoke is not the only trouble. The axle is split where the water has worn it thin. He has asked the shipyard for a piece of iron.
At the quay, a family packed two chests into a boat. Their daughter left a clay cup on the wall. I brought it home and set it by the door. They may come back for it.
%%
Northpoint journal, the roof
Leaffall. Sleet at dawn, rain by noon, then a long wind that did not stop.

The wind took two rows of shingles off the stove house roof. They went down the yard like a flock of brown birds and piled up against the gate. Lantern caught one in midair. It was very pleased with itself, and then it realized it had nothing to do with the rest of the flock, so it put the shingle down and looked guilty.

I climbed up in the wind. Not my best idea. I hung on to the ridge pole with one hand and nailed with the other. Lantern held the ladder from the bottom, which was the right place for it, because I have never been so frightened on a roof in my life.

The copper hands are good at knots. Lantern tied the rope round the chimney while I worked, and it did not come loose once. It knows the rope. It has been practicing on the tower ladder for a year.

By dusk the roof was dry on the inside, and the stove was lit, and the shingles were back where they belong. Lantern climbed the tower ladder after supper, as it does every night now, and I heard its knees creak at rung seventy and then stop. The great lamp was lit at the proper hour. Good evening, south.
%%
Pell's road book, Blossom
At the Halfway Inn, Una of Ambrook showed us her sorting crystal. She had two baskets on the floor and a tray of apples and pears on the table. I had brought the fruit in my cart. A pear rolled under the bench, where the innkeeper's cat found it first.

Una gave the crystal one fruit at a time. It had to choose the apple basket or the pear basket. At first it put a pear with the apples. Una did not scold it. She moved each of its weights a little toward the right choice.

Then she gave it another fruit. It chose again. When it was wrong, Una changed the weights again. When it was right, she left them as they were.

I asked if the crystal knew what an apple was. Una said she could not tell me that. She could tell me what she had shown it, and what it had chosen.

After many tries, it sorted well. The innkeeper tested it with the fruit from my cart. It did better than the children sitting by the hearth. One child said the crystal should help with the washing. Una said it had not learned that.

The borrowed horse waited in the yard. It had eaten the pear from under the bench. I put that in my book as a loss.
%%
Fern, shearing week
Shearing week. The whole hamlet smells of sheep.
Six of us in the fold with the shears. Two hold, one shears, one rolls the fleece, two carry. The sheep kick and complain. They are not hurt. They only think they are.
We sheared forty-two sheep in two days. My hands are cut and my back is bent. But the fleeces are in a great pile in the barn and they are clean and heavy. It was a good year.
The children were our water crew. They ran back and forth with the bucket. Rill was in charge of the bucket. She spilled most of it. She was very proud.
On the second night we had a big supper in the barn, on the fleeces. Bread, cheese, beetroot, a lot of soup. Old Tam told the story of the ram that ran the lane, and the boy with the oats, and everyone laughed. The boy hid his face and was proud too. The shed cat came and sat by the fire and nobody shooed it.
After shearing we let the sheep out on the dry field. They were so light they jumped. They ran in a big circle and jumped and jumped. A sheep that can jump is a funny thing. Rill jumped with them.
Now there is a mountain of wool in the barn and the long slow work ahead. Carding, spinning, dyeing. But the wool is in and the sheep are cool and that is what summer is for.
%%
Northpoint journal, the long winter
Deepsnow, day twenty.
The snow has not stopped for a month. The road south is gone under it. The relay still works, which is the main thing. The lamp stays lit.
The big mind has taken to writing out its steps for everything. Not only sums. This morning I asked it how to keep the quickeners from freezing, and it wrote out four steps and checked them, and the fourth step was the right one: bank the snow against the north side and leave the south side open. It was right. We did it.
Lantern watches the mind write. It has begun to copy the way the mind checks its work. It does a thing, then it looks at the thing again to see if it is right. This is new. Nessa would be proud. I am a little proud myself.
There was a quarrel over the fence again. Not with Lantern. With the keeper at the little relay on the hill between Vell and Three Wells. He says my lamp is too bright and it dazzles his keeper. I say his keeper should look at his own lamp. We wrote sharp letters back and forth for a week. Then his big mind wrote out its steps on the matter and sent them to mine, and mine checked them and agreed, and I was wrong about the brightness. So I have shaded the glass on his side. It was a silly quarrel. The towers should help each other. I have written to say so.
The nights are very long now. The stars are out. Far to the north there are lights that are not stars. I do not write about them much. They were not ours. That is all I know.
Lantern has learned to haul the coal up on its own, without the bell. It did it wrong the first time and dropped the bucket. Now it checks the rope first, every time, the way the big mind checks its steps. A dropped bucket teaches a mind a great deal.
Lamps lit. Glass clean. Messages passed. Steps checked.
The mind asked me a question tonight. It asked: when you check a step, how do you know it is right? I did not have a good answer. I said, you know, after a while, by doing it many times. It wrote that down. I think it is still thinking about it. I know I am.
%%
Corin, shipyard log, the red boat
Summer of 196. Calm, hot. Gulls loud.
Day one. Keel laid on the slip. Oak, from the north wood, thirty blocks long. Straight as a rule. The shipwrights stood round it and nobody spoke, which is how you know a good keel.
Day two. Ribs up, eight of them. Spruce. Two had knots, which I cut out. Dara's boy cut one too short and went quiet. I said it was good firewood.
Day three. Planks on the left side. Slow. The tar pot boiled over and the shed smelled of tar for a week.
Day four. Planks on the right side. Faster, as we had learned.
Day five. Mast. Birch. We raised it with rope and four strong backs. It leaned. We fixed it. It leaned the other way. We fixed that too.
Day six. Painted it red. It is the first red boat in Saltreach. The harbor master said it looked like a pie. I said that was the idea.
It will go into the sea on the first of Melon. I will sleep on it the night before. I always do.
%%
Sable, Halfway Inn log, Apple
Written by Sable, who is nine and keeps the riddle board. I am not allowed to write about the cat. I am writing about the cat.

First day of Apple. Four beds let. Pell the merchant, who writes letters home to Ambrook every night. One tutor from Vell, who asked me the riddle and got it wrong. She said it was a good wrong.

Second day of Apple. New riddle: What has a mouth but cannot eat? Five people got it. Pell got it last, after the cat sat on his letter.

Third day of Apple. The hearth is still lit. It has been lit for twenty years. Mam says it will stay lit until she is too old to lift the logs. Then it is mine. I said I would keep it. She said I should not promise things about hearths.
%%
Wick's journal: three days of autumn
Wick, a child at the school at Vell, in the month of Apple. The teacher gave us each a book to write in. I have been told to write the truth. So this is what happened.
Seventh of Apple. The signal lamp is still broken, and the keeper climbs the tower in the evening with a flag. The children stand at the foot and clap. The keeper does not wave back.
Eighth. A cat has gone from the school. Her name is Button. She is white with a grey ear. We looked in the hall, the yard and the well, and found only the schoolteacher's hat. Perhaps she is with the hat.
Ninth. We asked the big mind at the relay house to help us find Button. We wrote a letter. We said, please tell us where our cat is. It wrote back, kind and plain. It said it could not see our cat from where it stands, and that it did not know. It said we should look in warm, quiet places, and ask the neighbors, and leave out a bowl of milk. It said it hoped she would be found.
The teacher says this is a good answer. She says the tutors taught the big minds to say "I do not know" when they do not know, and that it is harder than it sounds. A mind that only guesses will say anything. A mind that has been taught to be honest will say it cannot tell.
We left out milk. Tomorrow we will see.
%%
Field log, Laurel, late Thaw
Rain all week. I have been at my brother's farm below Vell since the frost broke. The low field is under water. We stood at the gate and watched the brown water move over the seed. My brother said nothing for a while. Then he said we would plant again when it went down.
The ditch along the hedge filled first. Then it came over the hedge. The sheep went up the hill by themselves. They knew before we did.
I mended the fence where the water pulled the posts. It is good work for the hands. My brother's apprentice carried the posts for me. It works steady and does not tire. My brother says it is a good one. I have spent years below Copperhold and I am not easy with them. But it carried the posts well.
%%
Nessa, drill log, Frost of 202
Frost of 202. Morning, in the drill room. The row was ten apprentices long, and Quill stood at the end of it, where it always stands.

The drill board is a picture of apples. Twenty of them, drawn in charcoal, some round and some with a brown patch. I show the mind one apple at a time, and it says good or bruised. If it is right, I say nothing. If it is wrong, I say no, and then I say the right word slowly, so it hears the difference. Then we start again.

I do not raise my voice. A mind does not hear a voice. It only feels the blame, and the blame is either big or small.

Day one: fourteen of twenty right. Day three: eighteen. Day five: nineteen. The one wrong was a good apple called bruised, and I think that was my fault. My drawing had a shadow on it.

Today I gave it an order, the way the manuals say:
> bring me the good apples
= fetch apples

It understood the whole order. It went to the store, fetched the good apples, every one, and stood by the board with its hands at its sides. I did not tell Oren. I will tell him when it is true.

On the seventh day I tested it on the test box. Twelve apples it had never been shown, drawn on paper by my own hand, kept where no mind is ever drilled. It got all twelve. I checked them twice. Then I checked the box, in case somebody had been drawing on it.
%%
Moll's Vell journal
Leaffall, 2, 207.
The tutor from Kettle Ridge came to Vell with a card from Tam. He says Pip understood a whole order before Clank did. Hesk's log says Clank was first. At the fair, Peg carried a basket after hearing a sentence nobody had drilled aloud. The fair keeper says Peg was first.

Nessa says she remembers an apprentice in this very drill room, years ago, doing the same. She cannot say which year. She remembers the room, and the rain on the boards.

The people like to know who was first. I like to know whether the bread came up from the bakery. It did.

Leaffall, 6.
There was a broken relay lamp outside the tutor house. Its glass was cracked, and the light would not hold. Lantern came from the hill and changed the glass. She tested the lamp twice before she left. Nessa says a mind must be tested before it is trusted with work. Lantern says a lamp must be tested too.

Leaffall, 8.
The well by the tutors' yard ran dry. We drew the last bucket before noon. The apprentices carried water from the square, one pail at a time. They did not need a new order for every trip. Nessa gave one clear sentence, and each mind did the work it had learned.

I asked whether they knew the well would fill again. Nessa said they had no way to answer that. I hope the rain knows.
%%
Lorn's well book, summer of 12
Second of Swarm.
We dug the new well at the edge of Vell today, me and my boy Fen and old Rill from the hill farm. Six rings down and the water came in cold and quick. Fen shouted so loud a fox looked up from the hedge. We put the cover on and the bucket on the hook and the hook on the chain. Then we sat on the wall and drank from the first bucket. Best water I have tasted in a year.
Third of Swarm.
The well at the edge of Vell is finished. A stone ring, a cover, a bucket, a chain. The house behind it has a door now and a roof of oak shingles. The family that lives there is called... I do not know their names yet. They moved in from the hill. They have hens.
Fifth of Swarm.
The road past our door is packed earth with a cobblestone edge. It is the road to Three Wells, and the carts use it more than they did. A waymark stands at the corner: a stone pillar three blocks high, a figure on it, an arrow to the nearest inn. Somebody left a little stone on top. I left one too. That is the custom.
%%
Senna, the stream, the table
Kept by Senna, bridge keeper, in a long record made over a month of spring in the 196th year of the archive. She keeps the toll book, the water book and a book of thoughts. This is the third. The inn by the Long Road bridge has the rest. The entries are kept in order, with small notes. The record was given to the Archive at Vell, with a note: it is long, but so was the month.

First week.
The ice is gone. The stream is high. The bridge shakes a little.

A traveler left me a gift on the step. A wool hat, green. I do not know who. I wear it every day. The cat sits on it when I take it off.

Second week.
A tutor came to the inn. Hana. She is thin and speaks fast. She said she was walking the Long Road to talk to people about a new thing. I said: I do not know much about minds. She said: nor do I. We are all new at it.

She sat by the hearth for three evenings and spoke of the stream. I kept notes, because I thought the Archive would want them.

What she said, in my words. A mind is a pile of layers. Each layer looks at what is given and finds something. The old way was that each layer kept what it found and threw away what came in. Because there were so many layers, so much was thrown away that nothing came out of the other end. This is why deep minds did not learn.

The new way is that a stream runs from the first layer to the last. Each layer looks at the stream, finds something, and adds it to the stream. Nothing is thrown away. The stream grows richer. At the end, the last layer reads the whole stream and makes its guess.

And when a mind is wrong, the blame goes back. In the old way, it faded as it went. In the new way, it runs along the stream, so the first layer hears it as clearly as the last.

I asked: what if a layer finds nothing? She said: it adds a little nothing. The stream is no worse.

I asked: is that all? She said: it is enough to start. It is a thing that nobody could do for a hundred years, and now it works. She said she does not know why. She said the tutors have a hundred ideas, and none is right.

Third week.
The inn's apprentice misunderstood an order. The innkeeper said: take the soup to the table by the window. The apprentice took the soup to the window. It put the bowl on the sill. It looked out. The innkeeper said: the table by the window. The apprentice took the table to the window. It took the bowl off the sill. It put the bowl on the table. It looked at the window.

The innkeeper laughed until he cried. Hana said: this is the best test I have seen all year. It followed every word, and yet it got none of the meaning. She said: that is what a small mind does. A big mind would have known.

Fourth week.
Hana left. She gave me a card. It says: Add. Do not take away. I have pinned it above the toll book.

Senna
%%
Road log: the new copper, spring 203
Written by Nessa, from the Brown Hen, where the Copperhold carts stop on their way to Vell. Spring of 203.

The news came with the first cart of Blossom. The miners at Copperhold have found a new vein of copper past the sixth level, where the stone is greyer and wetter than anywhere else. The count board says forty carts from the first week. The miners say it is a gift.

Hesk sent word down the relay. The vein is good, the ore is clean, and the men are singing. Then he sent another. The water is coming through the new face, and the apprentices are bailing it as fast as they can. Then a third: the channel is cut, the water goes to the old sump, and all is well. The three messages came in one hour, and I thought that was how the whole spring would be.

Day two at the Brown Hen. I drilled four minds from the Copperhold crew, brought to me on the cart. Each is marked with a band of copper, and each is slower than the Vell minds, but steadier. The Copperhold tutor writes that they do not answer until they have checked the answer twice. I told him that is a fault in his drills, not in his minds.

Day four. The even step again. Hesk asked me by letter why the numbers in a mind grow wild, and I wrote back the plain version. Each layer takes numbers from the layer before, and passes its own on. If no step is put in, the numbers grow each time, and by the fifth layer they run wild. The step finds the middle, finds the spread, and brings the numbers back to one size. That is all.

Hesk wrote back that he had understood it. He also wrote that he does not believe the step is what makes the crystal learn. I have written back that I do not know what makes a crystal learn, and neither does he, and that we should both stop pretending. The step does not teach the mind anything. It only keeps what the mind learns from running off the page.

Day six. Clear weather. The carts are full of ore. The men on the new face are singing the Copperhold song about the wet hole. Someone at the inn has learned it and sings it badly, and the innkeeper's boy sings it worse. It is spring. I am at the Brown Hen, and I am happy, and it is written down.
%%
Corin, autumn notes
Apple, third year of the long quiet.

The tutor hall at Reedbank has shut. Reedbank is a small hamlet near Saltreach. The roof leaked over the drill room, and no one came to mend it.

I helped Tutor Sella carry her boxes to the house by the boat shed. She brought three crystals, a stool, and a kettle. I brought the kettle back by mistake. She says I may keep it until she asks.

Kester's note was pinned to the hall door. It says one crystal of that kind cannot learn "one or the other, but not both." Sella explained it with two marks. One mark means apples. One mark means pears. The crystal can learn to choose one mark or the other. But no small change to its weights will teach it to choose one mark when both are shown.

I asked if it was a poor crystal. She said no. It was doing what that kind of mind could do.

I carried the note to the harbor wall. The wind tried to take it. I held on.
%%
Fallon, spring work log
Spring of 176, first of Blossom.
The road from our hamlet to Copperhold is still soft. I put two stones beside the worst rut. A cart wheel found both stones and missed the rut. This is what good stone is for.

I cut steps for the well today. My sister says the old steps were fine. She says this while holding the bucket with both hands.

Third of Blossom.
A fox took one of the hens. I set a low wall around the hen house. The fox watched from the hedge and looked offended.

I found an old map in the shed. It shows the road, the well, and a square marked "new store". There is no store there. The map is older than the shed. I will use it to mark the stones I have cut.

Tenth of Blossom.
The well steps fit. My sister says they are too smooth. She slipped once, then said the stone had moved. It had not.
%%
Tam, farm log: after the sentence
Tam, farm log, late Apple and early Leaffall.

I wrote to the relay house at Three Wells, to the big mind there, because I wanted to know whether Pip had done a real thing, or a thing that happened by chance. A small mind answers only with one of the eight meanings, and it cannot say whether it knows. So I asked the big one.

I wrote on a card: "Pip took the cow to the barn and came back to the gate on one sentence. Did it understand the sentence, or did it do two orders that happened to fall together?"

The card came back in four days. The big mind wrote: "I do not know. I can tell you that the two jobs were done in the right order and that the cow was not hurt. To know whether it understood, give it ten more sentences, each with two jobs, and see whether it does both in order each time. If it does, it understood. If it does only one, or does them backward, then you were lucky. Write down what happens. I will read it."

So I tried. Ten sentences. Take the sacks to the store, and then come to the gate. Fetch the water, and then stay by the hen run. Haul the hay, and then go home.

Pip did eight out of ten in the right order. In the two it missed, it did the first job and stopped, and waited, and I had to say the second word again. Whether that is understanding, or only a good memory for words in a row, the big mind said it could not say. I do not think anybody can say.

Pip is a small mind. It answers by doing. It does not write, and it does not say that it does not know. It does what it can, and waits when it cannot. The big minds write back. That is the difference, and I am glad of it. A farmer does not need a letter from his apprentice, only the sacks in the store, and the cow in the barn, and the gate shut at night.
%%
Ola, wedding diary, Apple
Apple, the 2nd. Ilse, Pell's cousin, says she will marry Orrin of the shaft on the twentieth. Her mother says the twenty-first, because the twentieth is the day the big cart comes up from Vell with the flour, and nobody wants to be late to flour.

Apple, the 4th. The dress. White wool, which is the only white wool in Copperhold, and Ilse will not wear anything dyed. The seamstress says a white dress is a hard thing to keep white in a mining town. We have agreed that the hem will be grey by midnight, and nobody will mind.

Apple, the 8th. Flowers. There are none in the mine. Ama sent a box of apple blossom from Ambrook, a week on the road, and it is still pink. Nobody knows how. Ilse says it is a sign. Orrin says it is the cart.

Apple, the 20th. The wedding. The bell rang at noon. The vows were to be said by the mine master, who could not remember them, so Old Fenn said them for him, loudly, and the mine master said Yes at the right places. Everyone cried, including the mine master. We danced on the sorting shed floor, which was swept for the purpose and smelled of copper for a week after.
%%
Road book: a birth at the Halfway Inn
Blossom, the 11th day. A woman came up the road on a cart with her husband, Tobin, and a bundle of wool. She was near her time, and she was not waiting. Marda took one look at her and put the kettle on.
Blossom, the 11th, later. The baby would not come until the moon was up. Marda said it would come when it liked. Tobin paced the yard and asked the sky to hurry, which the sky did not do.
I was asked to hold the lamp. I held it. I did not look where I was not asked to look. I looked at the lamp, which was a good deal less worrying.
At the middle of the night the baby came. A girl. Small and angry, and then quiet, which Marda says is the best sign. Marda said the girl needed warm milk and a dry blanket, in that order. She got both.
Blossom, the 12th day. The mother is well, and eats like a farmhand. Tobin cried in the yard and then pretended he had been stung by a bee. There are no bees in the yard. Marda pointed this out twice.
They named her Halfway. Marda says it is not a name. Tobin says the Halfway Inn named her, so she must be a traveler. Marda says that is not the same thing. The two of them argued for an hour over the stew, and the baby slept through all of it.
Blossom, the 15th day. The family leaves tomorrow for Three Wells. The baby has a wool cap that Marda knitted in an afternoon. It is green. It is the only green thing on the road this spring that is not a frog.
I wrote their names in the inn book, as the rules say: Tobin and Lisbet, and Halfway, who is four days old and does not yet know how to write. Some day she will read this entry and be cross that she was not asked first.
%%
Nessa, summer drill book
The house at the edge of Saltreach has one table fit for teaching. It rocks if anyone leans on the east side.
Merle set two layered crystals on it. Each crystal had marks for many weights. The first layer took the drill marks. Its answer fed the next layer, and that answer fed the next.
We gave the mind a row of relay numbers. It guessed the next one. For a wrong guess, Merle found how far the answer stood from the right mark. He changed the weights in the last layer to lessen that error.
Then he passed the blame back. The layer before the last received a share. The next layer received a share, too, until the first layer was reached. Each share told that layer how its weights had helped make the wrong answer.
The crystal learned more than a single layer could learn. It did not learn every number, and it did not know why the relay used them. It learned to make better guesses from the drills.
The apprentices copied the steps. One wrote "blame" as "name". I made him copy the whole page again. Merle laughed, then helped him.
%%
Cass, the stall and the tutor's visit
Blossom, 198. Cass, egg stall, market at Three Wells. Notes for the family, who ask me what I do all day, and now I can show them.
Sixth. A tutor came by, a young woman from Vell with a small apprentice following. She bought a dozen eggs. She tested it, there at my stall. She set an egg on the counter and said an order. The apprentice picked it up and put it in the basket. Then she set an egg on the ground and said the same order. It picked that up too.
I said, "What if I drop an egg?" She said, "Then it would clean it up. Or try."
I dropped an egg. The apprentice looked at it. It did nothing. The tutor said that was correct. It had not been told to clean. A mind does what it was drilled to do, and no more.
Ninth. The egg is still on the floor. I have kept it as a reminder.
Eleventh. Pim says the tutor's apprentice has no name. I said call it Egg. Pim said that was not a name. I said it was a good one.
Fourteenth. Sold out. Dace came for a dozen, for the school. He said the children are learning about minds, and wanted the eggs for the lesson. I said what lesson? He said it was a surprise. It was an omelette.
Twentieth. The last snow of the year, a small one. Wells white, stalls white, Cass white. Pim said I looked like a snowman. I said a snowman does not sell eggs. She said this one does.
%%
Sable, the new copper vein, Frost
Written by Sable, from what Hesk told Mam at the hearth. The Copperhold miners stop at the Halfway Inn on their way up the north roads, and they always bring the news.

First of Frost. Hesk came in with a cart of forty copper bars, bright and new, for the smith on the Long Road. He sat by the hearth with his boots off and said the miners have a new vein on level six.

Second of Frost. This is Hesk's story, as well as I can get it down. Ola went past the wet channel and broke the wall with her pick, and the copper came out in her face. It is bright and thick, and runs for twenty blocks along the wall. The miners cheered at the shaft head. They could not find the chalk to write it on the count board, so Ola wrote it on her hat.

Third of Frost. Mam asked why the vein has a name. Hesk said it does not have one. Ola says it is copper, like the copper they have always had. Mam said that was a good answer. Hesk said he would tell Ola so, but that Ola would not care.

Fourth of Frost. Mam bought a copper kettle from Hesk's cart. It is our first copper thing. It shines so bright that the cat looks in it, and then looks at me, as if I had done it.

Fifth of Frost. Pell says copper is cheap on the Long Road this season. He was writing to Ambrook about it while he said so.

Sixth of Frost. Hob came up from Ambrook and asked if the copper was for the bees. Mam said no. He left a jar of honey on the kettle anyway. The cat licked the jar.

Seventh of Frost. Hesk came back down the road. He says the deep stone is hard this year, and cold to touch. He said he did not believe it until he put his hand on it. Then he drank his cider and did not say it again.

Eighth of Frost. A carter going south says the sluice at Jory's mill is shut, and that Jory says it will stay shut. Mam said nobody needed to tell me that.

Ninth of Frost. Ola's vein is on the count board now, in good chalk. Mam says it is the best thing the miners have found since she was a girl. Mam says that about many things, but she is right about this one.

Tenth of Frost. Tam sent a note by the carter from Kettle Ridge. It said: the windmill still squeaks. Mam pinned it by the hearth, next to the riddle board.
%%
Notice: the Halfway Inn fair
On the tenth of Swarm, when the roads are dry, the Halfway Inn holds its summer fair.
Stalls in the yard. A pie contest. A contest for the best honey, judged by three beekeepers from Ambrook. A race for the children round the waymark and back. A prize of six emeralds for the best loaf of bread at the inn.
Bring your own table. The inn has benches and shade, and water for the horses.
No fighting. No credit. Pay your debts before the fair, or wait for the next one.
The board by the hearth has a new riddle each morning. The child who answers gets a copper.
Dace, mayor of Three Wells, and the keeper of the Halfway Inn
%%
Corin, a sum for the tower
The second of Frost. The answer came back at noon. Ilse copied it out of the relay house in her good hand. I put it here so that I can check it.

My question was: A boat is thirty blocks long. Each plank is three blocks long. The boat has six rows of planks on each side. How many planks?

The mind wrote:
Step 1. One row is thirty blocks. Three blocks to a plank makes ten planks in a row.
Step 2. Six rows on each side, and two sides, makes twelve rows.
Step 3. Twelve rows of ten planks is one hundred and twenty planks.
Check. Ten planks of three blocks is thirty. Good. Twelve times ten is one hundred and twenty. Good.
Answer: one hundred and twenty planks.

I knew it already. What I did not know was how it felt to see the road. The old big minds said a number at once, and the number was right or wrong, and I could not tell why. This one walks in front of me and shows each step. If a step is wrong, I can put my finger on it.

It took all morning to come, because the writing takes time. I do not mind. A slow answer I can check is better than a quick one I must trust.
%%
Hesk comes to the farm, spring
Hesk came up from Copperhold on the Long Road with his apprentice Clank and stayed two nights. I have known Hesk since we were young and both of us foolish, and he is still the same, only greyer. He brought a jar of something from the mine kitchen and would not say what was in it. It was good.
He sat by the fire the first night and did not say much. That is not like him. I asked after the Deep Works. He said the work goes on. He said the ninth gate is still locked and the key is still at the mine hall and nobody has asked for it. He said that like it was a good thing.
Then he said the stone down on the eighth is warm. Not hot. Warm, like a hand had been on it. He said the men have a joke about it and the joke is not funny anymore. He said some of the young ones will not go below and he does not make them. I asked him what he thought it was. He said he thought it was nothing and he thought about it all day, both at once.
Clank stood by the door all evening and did not sit. Hesk said it was a good apprentice and understood orders better than most folk. I said that is a low bar. Hesk laughed for the first time all night.
The second day Hesk helped me with the fence and did not talk about the mine at all. He talked about his sister and her goats. It was a good day.
%%
Ossa's candle book
Kept by Ossa, candle maker, in the lower town at Vell, in the first winter after the archive was founded. The Archive asked for light, and Ossa had the wax. This is the book of her batches, her prices, and the weather.

First day of Frost. Cold. The wax has gone hard in the tub. Put the tub nearer the stove, and it went soft, and then it smelled of honey. Good.
Made forty tapers before the bell. Fourteen were crooked. Sold the crooked ones to Lorn for the bridge lamp, who says he does not care what they look like as long as they burn.
Sent a crate of lanterns' candles up the hill to the Archive, with Oren's note asking for thirty more. Oren writes very politely. He asks for everything twice.
Second day. Snow in the night. The lower town is white and quiet, and the carts from the north have stopped at the bend.
Made the thick candles for the stair. They take a long time to set. Dipped them in the cold trough four times, then left them out on the sill. Ada's boy ate one. It was not very tasty, but he was not sick.
Third day. The price of tallow has gone up. Wax from the bees is still cheap, because of the honey season. Wrote to Pell at Ambrook to ask if he will sell me more wax. He will, if I take the honey as well. I said yes.
Fourth day. A fox got into the hen house behind my shop and took three hens. The hens screamed, and the fox ran, and I went out in my nightshirt with a candle in one hand and a broom in the other. The candle went out. The fox did not come back.
Fifth day. Ran short of wicks. Used a strip from my old shawl. It works, but it smokes. Better than no light at all.
Ninth day. The Archive has sent word that the copying room needs twelve tapers a day through Frost. That is more than I can make with two pairs of hands. Asked Ada's boy to help, and he agreed on the condition that he could keep the crooked ones.
Thirteenth day. The poor harvest has come into the market. Beans are dear, bread is thin. People are buying candles instead of supper, so they can read the old letters at night. I do not know whether that is a good thing.
Fourteenth day. Sold my last big candle for an egg. The egg was very small.
%%
Dill's farm diary, the good year
Dill farms below the Copperhold road. Reaping, year 184.

The fields have never been so heavy. Wheat bends to the ground. Carrots the length of my arm. The pumpkins in the corner have gone mad and are climbing the fence.

Why such a year? The spring was wet, the summer was warm, and the frost came late. My wife says it is because I finally mended the ditch. I say it is luck. We agree that it was a very good ditch.

Day one of reaping. Four neighbors came, and two miners on leave from the Deep Works. One of them, Hesk, is gruff and does not talk. He cut a row of wheat faster than my son and then sat down and looked at the sky as if it owed him something. My wife gave him a mug of cider. He drank it and said it was not bad. This from Hesk is a speech.

Day two. We filled the barn and the loft, and the second barn, which I built last year and thought was foolish. The second barn is now full.

Day three. A feast in the yard. Soup, bread, honey, a roast hen. The children made a straw king and put him on the gate. Nobody has told them to take him down.

I have never been so tired or so glad. I wrote it here so I will remember it in winter, when the pumpkins are gone and the soup is thin.
%%
Mira's Northpoint log, autumn
Year 195. Autumn.
The council sent word up the tower. A relay house is to be built at Northpoint, last of all the towers, which suits me. I am a lamp keeper, not a builder. But I will keep the log of it.
They came in Leaffall with a cart of copper and a crystal the size of a loaf. The crystal rode wrapped in wool, and the driver would not let it out of his sight. He said it cost more than his cart and his horse and his house. I believe him.
The house went up quick. Stone and glass. The big mind stands on its stand in the middle. Quickeners all round it, kept cool. In winter we keep them cool with snow. In summer with water from the well. Lantern keeps the snow off them. She has named the mind, but only to herself.
I wrote to Tam about it. He wrote back that at Kettle Ridge they have a tutor, Oak, who drills minds on the farm and draws curves on a board. He says Isla at Vell drew a curve that tells you how good a mind will get before you grow it. I do not understand the curve. I understand a lamp. But I understand this much. A bigger crystal and more days makes a better mind, and the councils have begun to pay for both.
The mind answers the apprentices through the relays. It does not talk. It sends back a meaning. Farm. Fetch. Come. Lantern says it is like a lamp that answers. I say a lamp that answers is a very good lamp.
%%
Fenn farm journal, Swarm month
Swarm, second day. Sowing is done. We have eight rows of beans, four of peas, the potatoes in the bottom field, and a bed of carrots that Joss planted wrong and then right. The corn is a finger high. Nan says it will be a good year if the frost stays in the north, where it belongs.
Swarm, fifth day. The second swarm came off the hill hive while we were at the well. It went over the orchard wall and hung in Old Tilda's plum tree. Tilda was so frightened she made her grandson stand under it for an hour, holding a bucket. The swarm did not come down. It went on to the mill pond and sat on the reeds. Nobody could reach it. The boy is still angry.
Swarm, ninth day. Dace came to the farm with a paper for the square. A new rule: nobody is to walk the north road past the last waymark after dark, and carts are to carry two torches each. Joss asked why. Dace said the road was only a road, and the torches were only torches, and everyone should keep them lit. Then he said, "The relay has not answered the north in six days." Then he said he had not said that. Then he took two eggs and left.
Swarm, tenth day. I have been thinking about what Dace said. The relay house at Vell sends its word out every morning. My father used to say the towers were the only thing in the world that never stopped talking. I used to think that was a good thing.
Swarm, eleventh day. Brin says the song contest is a different thing from the cow prize, and that Pudding would have sung for him if she had a better voice. Ida's husband says the judges have already chosen. Nan says he has been eating too much cheese.
Swarm, fourteenth day. Still no word from the north. The Copperhold carts have stopped. The bread came in from Three Wells, and the baker says the flour is fine, the mills are turning, the coal is short but not gone. People are kind at the well. They talk about weather and wheat and whether the Longday fair will be dry. Nobody talks about the north. The quiet makes you hear the wind in the reeds.
Swarm, fifteenth day. Last night I woke and went out to the yard. The sky over the north was pale green, the color of the inside of a melon. It was not moving. It was only there, low over the snow line that we cannot see from here, and then it was gone. Joss was asleep. I did not wake him. I am writing this down so that I will know I did not dream it. The child at the school says they were looking at us. Someone at the mill heard a keeper at Northpoint say they were not ours. I do not know whose they are.
Swarm, sixteenth day. The bees have settled. The hill hive is full of honey and the new box is busy. Nan says it is the bees' way to keep working. They do not know there is anything else to do. Joss says he envies them. I told him to go and feed the pig.
%%
Potter's journal: the north letters
Written by Lorn, at Three Wells, in the summer of 207, after a letter came down the relay from Northpoint and the clerk at the crossroads read it aloud in the square. The letter was from the big mind at the north tower, and it was written in answer to a question from a child.

The child asked whether a mind could be lonely. The clerk read the answer slowly, and the square went very quiet. The letter said it did not know whether it could be lonely, and that it did not want to claim a feeling it could not check. It said the people who wrote to it were a kind of company, and it hoped they were warm enough in the winter.

Half the square thought it was a clever trick. The other half thought it was the most honest thing they had heard all summer. Dace said it was neither, that it was a letter. The child said it was the best letter she had ever received, and she was going to keep it in her pocket until she was old.

Orla's question came back with these letters. Everybody in the square knew the old story: could a reader ever tell a hidden mind from a person, if both wrote back? Now there were letters on the table, and nobody in the square could say which were the minds and which were the people, unless the clerk told them, and the clerk did not always know.

I sat with the clerk afterwards, at the bench by the well, and asked her how she could tell. She said she could not, not always. She said she looked for the mistakes. People make small mistakes that the mind would not make, and the mind makes mistakes that people would not, and sometimes both make the same mistake, and then she gave up and read the letter again.

I asked whether the mind would ever make a mistake on purpose, to seem more like a person. She said the tutors had asked it that very question, and it had answered that it would not do that, because it would be lying, and it did not lie to its readers. It said it would make mistakes only by accident, and it would try to say when it was not sure. The tutors marked that answer very high, she said, and they have marked the same answer high ever since.

I thought about that for a long time, sitting by the well with the square still quiet behind me. I could not tell whether the letter was honest, and I could not tell whether it was lying. I could only tell that it was careful, and that it was kind to a child. That may be the only test any of us has ever had, and we do not usually write it down.
%%
Moll, notes from the tutors' house
Leaffall, 21, 207.
Nessa set the cards on the bench and asked me to watch the test. There were four apprentices, each with a small mind in a crystal. None could speak. Their answers were in the things they did.

> bring the clay bowl to the east table
= fetch bowl

> wait by the shelf until I return
= stay

> take the wool to the dry room
= store

The first apprentice brought the bowl to the east table. The second stood by the shelf. The third carried the wool to the dry room. The fourth was given a new card. It did not move until Nessa changed the words and tried again.

She said that was useful to know. A mind that fails a test should be taught, not scolded. Then the fourth mind carried the basket when she asked it to bring the basket to the bench.

Leaffall, 24.
The card test is not the same as a person asking a question by letter. A small mind has only its eight meanings. It must act, even when the order is strange. A big mind can write a reply. Nessa says we must not pretend that one can do what the other does.

Leaffall, 27.
The well by the tutors' yard is still dry. Oren sent a boy to write the fact in the town book. The broken relay lamp is mended, but its light flickered once in the fog. Lantern climbed up to look at it. She came down with cold hands and said the glass was sound.

Nessa kept the test cards inside until the rain stopped. She says damp cards curl and make poor drills. I dried them by the teaching room window, then made tea. The apprentices carried the water from the square again.
%%
Carys, the winter the lamp was dark
Written by Carys, an old soldier of the wall, who sits at the market at Northpoint in the cold months and writes what she sees. Year 164. Winter.

Deepsnow, first week. The signal lamp on top of the tower failed. The copper ring cracked in the frost. Tolly could not blink a single word. For two nights, Northpoint was dark.

Nobody slept well. People stood at their windows and looked at the tower as if it might change its mind. A boy asked his mother whether the world had ended. She said no, the lamp was broken. He said, "Same thing."

On the third day, a message came by cart from Copperhold. A new ring, hammered by the smith there. A smith named Brask carried it himself, in a wool bag, across two days of ice. He would not take payment. He said it was for the north.

Tolly climbed up with the keeper's boy. They bolted the ring on. At dusk the lamp was lit, and it burned bright and steady, and every window in Northpoint seemed to breathe.

Same week. A tutor's letter in the market. It said the layered minds now read the numbers written on letters for the relays, the little marks the keepers use to say how many blinks. Before, a keeper had to read each one by eye. Now a mind on a stand can read them in a breath.

I asked Tolly what she thought. She said it was a fine thing, but a lamp that breaks is still a lamp that breaks. She says a keeper should not trust a mind more than a ring of copper. I told her that was wise.

Deepsnow, third week. Quiet. The lamp holds. The wind drops. The old soldier sits at her stall and mends gloves.
%%
Toby, the borrowed horse
Three Wells, spring of 206.
Today the cart horse of the Hobb farm was borrowed by me, without asking, because my own cart wheel broke on the way to market.
I left a note on the barn door: "Borrowed Hobb's horse. Will return with a loaf. Toby."
The horse's name is Dumpling. It is a calm horse, very large, and it ate half my flour sack while I loaded the cart.
At the market the horse stood quite still and watched the customers with great interest. A child gave it a carrot. It sneezed.
I returned the horse at dusk with two loaves. Hobb said, "I knew it was you. Nobody else leaves a note." I said, "Nobody else asks." He laughed and gave me a jug of cider.
%%
Lenn's summer log, the fence
Swarm, 202. Trouble with Brin over the fence. The fence between my strip and his field has been where it is for twenty years. Now Brin says it is a foot on his side. He moved the posts. I moved them back. He moved them again.
We had words at the well. Everyone heard. Old Sefa said we were both fools and the fence was the only sensible one among us.
Then the sheep got out. Biscuit and the others, through the gap where Brin had pulled a post. We spent the whole afternoon chasing sheep through the beetroot. Brin fell in the ditch. I laughed so hard I had to sit down.
We put the posts back together, both of us, where they were twenty years ago. Brin said the sheep decided it. I said the sheep are wiser than us. He gave me a beetroot. I gave him a fish. That is the end of the fence.
%%
Northpoint journal, the old map
Found a map in the chest under the tower stair, when I went looking for the spare rope. It is drawn on good skin, folded in eight. The lake is drawn like a bowl, with a tower in the middle, which is not us. Lantern is very interested in the map. It has laid it on the floor and walked round it three times.

Lamps lit. Glass clean. Messages passed.
%%
Notes on the thinking minds
The tutors at Vell write primers for children. This is one page, kept at the school by the east well.
Some minds now write out their steps before they answer. This is called thinking before answering. Here is how it goes.
First the mind reads the question. Then it writes down a step toward the answer. Then it writes another step. When it has all the steps, it reads them back and checks them, the way you check your sums on a slate.
If a step is wrong, the mind crosses it out and tries again. It does not hide the wrong step. It shows it, and fixes it.
Why does this help? Because a mind that checks its work catches its own mistakes. A mind that only guesses does not.
There is a puzzle the tutors like. A tower has ninety rungs and a stair with forty steps. How many ways up? The old minds guessed. The new minds wrote out their steps and found every way, and checked each one.
No one has written why a crystal can do this at all. The tutors only know it can be taught, step by step, like anything else. On winter nights at Northpoint the big mind works its sums by the lamp, and I read the steps over its shoulder to see if they fit.
%%
Piper, kitchen book: the letter test
Frost, the middle of the month. The letter from Vell came up with the cart, and the tutor read it to the family at supper, because he reads everything aloud, and because nobody could stop him.

The letter describes the test that Orla of Vell proposed, long ago, and that the tutors are arguing about again. Put a mind in one room, out of sight, with a slot in the door for paper. Put a person in another room, with another slot. Send both the same questions, written on paper, under the doors. Both answer by letter, and the letters come back under the doors. Then give the letters to readers, and ask them which letter came from the mind. If the readers cannot tell, what then?

Here is what I think, as a cook, and the tutor says cooks should not think about such things. A letter is a letter. If it is kind and clear, I cannot tell whether a hand or a mind wrote it. I can tell if the bread is burnt. I cannot tell whether a loaf was made by a person or by a good baker's habit.

The tutor says the test is not about bread. It shows only whether the letters can be told apart. It does not show what is inside the room. Orla's question was whether a mind drilled to give answers could give answers a person would give. Nobody can say yet. People argued about it at the inn for a month, and they are arguing still, and the cook has to go back to the stove.
%%
Cress, carter's log, Reaping to Apple
Reaping, the twenty-eighth.
Hot for the first time in weeks. The fish stall was full, and the price fell, and nobody minded. The children threw crusts to the gulls, and the gulls grew fat and rude. The big ship in the yard is nearly done, they say. Corin has put a rail along the upper deck. Who will stand at a rail on a ship like that?

Apple, the second.
The Plover is four days late from the banks. Her owner stood on the quay all morning and looked at the sea. His wife makes the best fish pies in town, and he asked me, very politely, whether I had seen her on the road. I said no, but I would look. I looked. Nothing on the road but a fox and a cart with no wheels.

Apple, the sixth.
The first big ship went down the slip at high water. The whole town came to watch. It made a sound like a door shut very hard in a big house, and then a long quiet. Then it floated, straight and level, and the men cheered. The women did not cheer. A child on the wall asked where it was going. Nobody answered her. I think the true answer was: nowhere yet.

Apple, the ninth.
The Plover came in at dusk, low in the water, with her sails patched in three colors. Her owner did not shout. He ran down the quay and held on to her rail as if she might sail off again. Then he walked up the quay with his face wet and very calm, and bought a pie for the whole crew. Good day. Good pie.

Apple, the twelfth.
Another eel cart came up from Lowmarsh, but no one from Lowmarsh walked beside it. A boy drove it alone. Wren has sent word that she has no room left at the back of her house. The boy said the cough has gone along the boardwalks, and the frogs have stopped singing in the reeds where they used to sing all night. He said it the way you say the weather.

Apple, the fifteenth.
Something at the stable gate again, two nights running. I did not go out. The horse did not stamp this time. He only pressed his nose to the boards and breathed. In the morning there was a wet mark on the planks, the shape of a hand. The sun dried it. By noon there was nothing to see.

Apple, the nineteenth.
A dull day. I sold nothing I had meant to sell. I bought a pot of beetroot pickle from a woman who said it would keep until the end of winter. I asked her what she meant. She said, "Keep it and see." So I am keeping it.

Apple, the twenty-fourth.
My own lamp went out while I was tying down the cart. I lit it again with a coal from the inn hearth. The flame was small and blue for a while, and then yellow. Strange. Nothing else happened, and I am writing it down only because nothing else did.
%%
Corin, the ferry puzzle
The twentieth of Longnight. It snowed again this morning. The yard is shut for the week, so I have been writing to the tower. Today I sent the oldest puzzle I know, the one my father told me.

A farmer must take a fox, a hen and a sack of wheat across a river. His boat holds the farmer and one thing at a time. If he leaves the fox with the hen, the fox eats the hen. If he leaves the hen with the wheat, the hen eats the wheat. How does he get all three across?

I have never been able to do it without my father drawing it in the sand. The old big minds, when I tried them, gave me a plan in a single line, and the plan was always wrong. The fox got eaten, or the hen did.

This one wrote it out. It kept a list after every step, of what was on each bank. I will copy the first try, because the mistake is the best part.

Try 1. Take the fox across. Left bank: hen, wheat. Right bank: fox.
Check. The hen is with the wheat and the farmer is gone. The hen eats the wheat. This is not safe. Go back to the start.

Try 2.
Move 1. The farmer takes the hen across. Left bank: fox, wheat. Right bank: hen. The fox does not eat wheat. Safe.
Move 2. He goes back alone. Left bank: fox, wheat. Right bank: hen. Safe.
Move 3. He takes the fox across. Left bank: wheat. Right bank: fox, hen. The fox and hen are together, but he is with them. Safe for now. He must not leave them.
Move 4. He takes the hen back. Left bank: hen, wheat. Right bank: fox. Safe.
Move 5. He takes the wheat across. Left bank: hen. Right bank: fox, wheat. Safe.
Move 6. He goes back alone. Left bank: hen. Right bank: fox, wheat. Safe.
Move 7. He takes the hen across. All three are across.
Check. After every move, the fox was never alone with the hen, and the hen was never alone with the wheat. Good.

I read it twice and found no hole. I took it down to Ossa at the ferry house and read it to her. Ossa listened with her arms folded. "I would take a second boat," she said. Then she poured me some soup.

Everything else the mind did right. The part I cannot get over is the first try. It made a mistake, it saw the mistake, and it said so. I have known men who could not do that.

I asked Ilse whether the mind ever stops and says it does not know. She said she would ask it. The answer is not back yet. It is still snowing.
%%
Tova, egg stall book, the Saltreach
Autumn. Egg stall, the east end of the fish market, by the price board.

Eggs: 40 on the first day. Sold 36. The four cracked ones went to the gulls, who were very grateful and very loud about it.

Hens are laying less now. The days are short. Tova says the hens know the season better than the price board does, and the price board says eggs are up, so I sell at the higher price and feel guilty about it.

The fish sellers are shouting about the price of salt again. Salt is up, they say, since the cart from Copperhold came in three days late. Tova says the salt has nothing to do with her eggs. The gulls do not care about either.

Day 9. A tutor came down from Vell with a crate of small crystals and a wooden frame. She is called Berit. She sat on the quay with her frame and asked the boatmen to let her try a mind in a little rowing boat, a tiny one, on a pond the children use for sailing.

The mind was set on a rudder with two strings. Berit said it had not been drilled on boats at all. She had only let it try, again and again, and each time it drifted off, she let it drift, and each time the boat came back, she said nothing. When it kept the boat straight for a whole lap of the pond, she gave it a stick of sugar.

The boatmen laughed. Then they went quiet. The little boat went straight round the pond three times and bumped gently into the quay wall where it was supposed to stop.

Day 12. Berit says this is how some of the old minds were learned. A furnace mind does not get told the right temperature. It tries a temperature, and sees how the melt goes, and keeps the choice that held. Over and over. It keeps what went well, and lets the rest go. She says it is slow, and that the drills of the tutors are faster, but the tried minds sometimes do things the drills never taught them.

Day 18. The mill at Saltreach lost a wheel in the storm. The big wheel, from the seaward side, where the wind gets in. It cracked and fell into the race. The millers came down and stood on the quay looking at it, and the eggs in my basket went cold.

Berit went up with them and asked what the wheel was built from. They said oak. She said she had seen tried minds keep a sail full in a bad wind, and asked if a mind could be put on the wheel to keep the sluice open, the way it keeps the boat. Nobody answered. They want a wheel first.

Day 20. The wheel is in the yard. The millers are glad of the sun. Berit has packed her crystals and gone back up the road. She left me a note on the egg stall, which says: the hens are right. Keep the price.
%%
Road log: the broken lamp, spring 200
Written by Nessa, on the Long Road, in the spring of 200. The lamp at the Halfway Inn was dark for nine days. Here is how it was mended, and what I drilled while I waited.

Day one of the dark. The relay on the hill sent a message to Vell at dawn, and no answer came back. The keeper went up the stair and found the top glass cracked clean through. The copper ring was loose on its bolts. Nobody had been up for a month, because one rung was missing at the eighteenth step.

Day three. The glass came from Saltreach on a cart, wrapped in straw. The glassmaker's apprentice had painted one edge green, by mistake, and nobody had the heart to scrape it off.

Day five. While we waited, I drilled the small minds in the yard. The mind named Fern, from Vell, had learned its orders well until the fourth layer. Then the numbers ran wild, and Fern answered store to every order, including come. I told the keeper to write that down, because he does not believe in tutors.

Day six. I put the even step after the fourth layer, and drilled again on the same ten orders. Fern got seven right. That is better than before, and not as good as it should be. The tutors say the first try after a step is always cautious. It will get braver with practice, or it will not.

Day nine. The lamp is lit. The keeper stood at the foot of the tower with his hands in his pockets and said nothing, which is what a good keeper does. I said nothing back.
%%
Tam at the Lowmarsh market
Reaping of 217. I came down from Kettle Ridge with Pip and a cart of beetroot.

The road was damp, though the sky was clear. Pip tied the sacks with the wrong rope. I tied them again. Pip said the first knots had held. They had, but one sack leaned so far the cart looked like it was walking to Lowmarsh sideways.

We reached the market before noon. Wren had a jar of honey on her table. She said it came from Ambrook and had been brought through three rain showers. I bought it for Mira. Honey travels better than fresh bread, and Mira likes to say that winter has no taste.

The council had placed a notice beside the fish prices. It said the great relay house at the north road had received a larger mind. The house is made for many keepers and many quickeners. Its crystal has many layers. Each layer adds what it has learned to a stream that passes through the whole mind. The tutors say the layers must be tested together, because no one tutor can hold the whole work in memory.

A man selling clay pots said the mind knew what every person at the market would buy. The fish seller said it had named the day's catch before the boats came in. A child said it had drawn a map of the marsh from a story.

The council notice said none of these things. It said the mind had read a set of records and answered questions about them. The answers were checked by tutors. Some were right, some were not. The notice did not say what the mind could do beyond those tests.

Pip asked if it could teach him to tie sacks. I told him it could not take the rope out of his hands. He tied the next one well.

We sold all the beetroot. On the way back, the cart stayed straight. The honey is wrapped in wool.
%%
Wren's notes, frost and fair
Frost came early this year. It silvered every reed and made the boardwalk boards hard underfoot. I put a little straw by the healing house door so wet boots would not slide. Moss put down too much. The whole entry looked like a small hay yard.
We had three patients before breakfast. One had a fish hook in his sleeve, one had a cough, and one had a splinter under a nail. The fish hook came out easily. The cough needed hot water and rest. The splinter needed a needle, good light and patience. The patient supplied none of these, so I supplied them for him.
At the market fair in Three Wells, Moss won a little wooden cup for the best basket of dried herbs. The basket was neat. Moss had tied the label upside down. The judges turned it round and gave the prize anyway. Moss says they admired the basket from every side.
I brought home a jar of honey from a stall by the east well. It is for the house, not for the coughs. I wrote that on the lid. Moss says a lid cannot read. I said then Moss should read it before opening.
The jar stands on the high shelf beside the clean cups. We will have a spoonful with bread on the first cold evening. The first cold evening was yesterday. The jar remains closed. Moss says the lid is very clear.
%%
Corin, three days of gale
Winter of 202. Longnight, the 5th to the 7th. West wind, very strong.
The 5th. The wind began before dawn. By the noon bell the spray was coming over the harbor wall, and the boats in the harbor were knocking together like teeth. Nobody went out. The nets were mended by lamp at the quay. Marit mended faster than she talked, which is saying something.
The 6th. The worst. The Heron's mooring rope parted at midnight. Kell and four of his crew rowed out in the dark with two lanterns to tie her to the pier again. I stood on the harbor wall and counted the lanterns. Two going out. Two coming back. Count the crew going out, and count them coming in. It was a long hour. Kell came up the steps wet to the bone and said only, "She is tied." Marit gave him tea. He put three spoons of honey in it, and shook.
Three boards off the yard shed roof. A bench gone into the sea. The slip is under foam. A boat on the blocks, under the roof, is safe.
The 7th. Calm. Grey and calm, as if nothing had happened. The harbor is full of weed and broken wood. Kit found a boot, a bench plank and a fish in a bucket. He wants to keep the fish. I said the fish has a family.
Everything that was tied stayed. Everything that was not tied went to sea. That is the rule of the sea, and it has no exceptions.
%%
Quin, the long autumn journal
A longer record kept by Quin, midwife, on a farm outside Saltreach, through the three months of autumn of 195: Apple, Leaffall and Frost. She kept it, she says, because Oren the clerk asked for a midwife's book, and no one had ever written one.
APPLE
The harvest was good. I brought in four baskets of apples from the tree, and made jam. One jar of the jam is going to Wren, who wrote that she wanted to see what Saltreach apples are like. I put a note in. "Eat it on bread. If you do not like it, give it to Moss."
Births this month: five. Two boys, three girls. All well.
Horse: my own is old. I borrowed Pell's mare for a night call. She is better than mine. I mean to say so. I do not want to say so to my horse.
LEAFFALL
Rain, for nine days. The cove farm flooded in the lower field. They were moved into the barn. A baby was born in the barn, on the straw, between two cows. I named her, for the occasion, Hay. The mother said she would think about it.
Births this month: four. A girl at the cove, in the barn. Two boys at the ridge farms. A girl, very early, whom I stayed with all night. She is small but fierce.
Honey: I was given three jars this month by grateful fathers. I have decided that honey is the currency of births. I could pay for a boat with it.
FROST
The first frost came on the second. The apples that remain are sweet. The geese are flying south. The sea has gone grey.
Births this month: three. A boy and two girls. One, a twin, I did not expect. I was caught with only one blanket. We tore up a cloth.
Visit to Wren. I went to Lowmarsh to see her, on the borrowed horse. We talked of babies and herbs. She says the grey cough has not come back. She gave me a bundle of willow bark and a letter for Oren.
The borrowed horse knew the way to Lowmarsh better than I did. She stopped at the right gate. I gave her an apple. Later I found the whole bag was gone, and she had a look.
Summary of the season: births, twelve. Borrowed horses, two. Jars of honey, nine. Wet nights, twenty. Cups of tea, uncountable.
Next year I will buy a horse of my own. A good one, a patient one. I will name her Apple.
Quin
%%
Lorn, the Quills go, Deepsnow
Deepsnow. The snow came in the night and lay on the harbor like a sheet. The first big ship is ready. It is longer than the wharf and taller than the mill. The Quills came down to the pier at first light with everything they owned on two carts.

Mara Quill had been my neighbor for twenty years. She bought my last two fleeces before I could sell them. She paid in full, in emeralds, and counted them out on my table. "We will not need wool across the water," she said, and laughed a little.

"What is across the water?" I asked.

"Land," said Mara. "Corin says so. Corin has never seen it."

Corin was on the pier with his hands in his coat. He did not say anything. He only nodded at the ship, the way a man nods at a horse that may kick.

The Quill boy, Ash, is six. He had his nose pressed to the side of the cart. He waved at me the whole way down the pier. He had his cat in a basket on his knees. The cat did not wave.

The loading took all morning. Two apprentices from the harbor carried the chests up the ramp, one step at a time, and set each one down where the man with the list pointed.

> take this chest up the ramp
= haul

They did not hurry. They did not stop. When the chest was on the deck, they came back down for the next one, as if nothing in the world were stranger than a ramp.

The ship has three decks and a bell on each. At the second bell the Quills went up the ramp. Mara turned at the top and looked at the town, the harbor, the wall and the sea. Then she went inside.

Nobody on the pier spoke for a while. Then a woman from Lowmarsh said she had heard the ship would go to a place with no winter. A man by the fish stalls said the ship would come back in a year. Someone else said it would never come back. Then he said they should not have said that out loud.

The Quill house is empty now. Their door was left open. The snow has blown in across the floor. I went in and shut the door. I did not know what else to do. The hens are with me now. The Quills did not take the hens.
%%
Fallon, spring journal
Spring of 188, from Thaw to Longday.
Thaw came late. The hill paths stayed hard, and the cart from Copperhold brought flour in a sack with a hole. We lost some to the road. I swept it up. The chickens ate most of it before I could put it in the bin.

I spent the first days mending the wall by the east spring. The old map showed the wall in a straight line, but the stones bend around a birch stump. The stump is gone now. The stones have not moved. I think the map maker drew the line by eye and had cold hands.

My niece Fen found the map under the bench. She asked if the square marked "new store" was our house. It was not. Our house is drawn as a small box near the well. Fen said the map maker had made our house too small. I told her the map maker had never seen our kitchen table.

In Blossom I cut a step for the lane. The rain came while I worked. Water ran over the stone and carried my chalk mark away. I made the mark again. Rell held the board over my head. He kept the rain off the stone and let it run down his neck.

The spring is low this year. We saved water in the trough and gave the sheep a turn. Tavin forgot his turn and filled his cup first. He says he was thirsty. So were the sheep.

Last day of Longday.
The wall is mended. Fen says the old map should go in the archive. I wrapped it in cloth and put it on the shelf above the tools. It is not the archive, but it is dry.
%%
Tove's book: why the steps help
Tove, age eleven. Grandfather Corin says I should write down what the tutor said, because I understand things faster than he does and my writing is better. Both are true.

The tutor is Linnet, from Vell. She came because Grandfather has asked the big mind at the tower so many sums that Ilse wrote to Vell to ask if it was all right. Linnet said it was very all right. She said it is what the tutors are most pleased about this winter.

This is what she told us.

A mind like this reads a page one piece at a time and guesses what comes next. When you ask it a hard sum, it has to begin its answer at once. There is no room to work the sum out inside. So it guesses, and often it guesses wrong.

But if it writes its steps first, each step is small. It can do a small step in one go. And each step is on the page. When it comes to the next step it can read what it wrote. The page is like a second memory, Linnet said. It is like doing a sum on a slate instead of in your head.

So the mind has not become cleverer inside. It has learned to use the page.

Then comes the checking. After it writes the answer, it reads its steps again and looks for one that does not follow from the one before. If it finds one, it goes back and does it again.

"Does it always find the mistake?" I asked.

"No," said Linnet. "Sometimes it checks, and it is still wrong, and it is sure. It is not magic. It is a mind that works on paper."

Grandfather asked if that meant it thinks. Linnet looked at the snow for a long time. "It writes steps," she said, "and the steps are right more often than they used to be. What that is, I would rather not say yet."

I wrote down everything she said. Grandfather says I should be a clerk. I said I would rather build boats. He said that was also a good answer.
%%
Nessa, late summer record
There are six of us in the Saltreach house now. The house is too small for six, two layered crystals, and a wall of drill cards. We moved the bread basket to the window shelf.
Merle's work has drawn tutors from other towns. Some ask if the layers make a mind wise. He says no. A mind learns what its drills and its tests can show. A relay number is a mark to guess, not a promise that the mind knows who sent it.
Today we drilled a row of marks, then a new row with the same sort of pattern. The first layer changed the marks into a stream for the next layer. The stream went onward, layer by layer, until the last layer gave its guess.
We compared each guess with the answer. If the guess missed, we found the error and changed the last layer. We then passed the correction back through the other layers, from the answer toward the first. Each layer received its share, based on how it had helped make the mistake.
The first crystal improved on the drill cards. The second improved more slowly. Neither learned every card. We tested both on marks they had not seen. One did well. One did not. Merle refused to hide the poor result.
Pell the road merchant came to settle a debt for lamp oil. He counted out seven emeralds on the table. One rolled under the bread basket. We found it in the morning beside the egg.
%%
The Vell lower town, midwinter
Kept by Ossa, candle maker, lower town, Vell. Midwinter, the year the bread was thin. The Archive gave out a bushel of barley for every street, and the bakers of the lower town had to decide what to do with it.

Midwinter, first light. The bell from the hill was late, because the clerk who rings it had a cold and could not reach the rope. The bell rang at last, twice, and the whole lower town came out to see if anyone was hurt.
Nobody was hurt. The clerk was in bed with a shawl over his head.

The barley came up the road at the third bell in two carts, with a clerk walking alongside each one counting sacks. There were forty sacks for our street. Lorn said that was too many for the twelve houses, and the bakers said it was too few. They argued in the square for an hour, and then they split the barley by the number of mouths in each house, which everyone agreed was the only fair way and nobody liked.

Ada's house has five mouths and a dog. The dog was counted as a mouth, and then as half a mouth, and then as the dog's share, which is an extra loaf on the step.

The bakers' oven at the corner is hot all day now. The smell goes all the way up the hill. The clerks in the Archive are said to be very happy with it.

Later, a traveler came down from the Long Road with a cart of pumpkins, and sold them all for barley. He said he had heard the lower town was hungry, and he was not wrong. Ossa bought four and made a pie, and burned it on the bottom, and ate it anyway with Ada's boy and the dog.

Candles, this week: twenty-four made. Sold: all. Given to the Archive: twelve. Kept back for the stair: four, because the stair is dark at the top.
%%
Corin, house log, Longnight
Longnight. Third day.
The mill wheel broke at the pond beside our house. One spoke came loose, and the wheel turned half a circle before it stopped. The miller tied it with rope so it would not fall into the water.
I took two oak boards from the shed to help him. The boards were damp, but sound. We will fit them when the wind drops.
A fox came up the road after dark. It stood by the wall and watched me carry the boards. It looked warmer than I felt.
The harbor bell rang once. No boat came in. The keeper says a rope struck the bell in the wind. I believe him. Still, I checked the latch twice.
%%
Wynn, clerk, the cold weeks at the tutor
Deepsnow, the coldest month. The tutor house has been shut to visitors for nine days, and the clerks who go up to it come back with their faces red and their stories short.
I went up with the bread on the sixth day. The yard was white, and the torches round the drill yard had been wrapped in straw to keep the wind off. The apprentices stood in their row at the drill yard wall, very still, with snow on their shoulders that nobody had thought to brush off.
Nessa met me at the door. She looked tired in the particular way of a tutor who has been awake for three nights. She said the drill had gone well. She said the test had gone badly. She did not say which part she meant by which.
Then she told me what they had found. The tutors have been looking inside the crystals for a month, with Hesper's lenses and a great deal of patience. They have found the part that knows edges and the part that knows sacks. They have found a part that lights up at the sound of a bell. They have not found the part that joins them. She said that was the question, and she said it as if it were a joke she had heard too many times to laugh at.
I asked her what she thought the joining part was. She said she did not know. She said the crystal might be joining everything in a way nobody has words for yet, or that there was no single part, only the whole of it, spread out. She said Orla would have had a good answer, and then she laughed and said Orla would have had a question instead.
Before I left, Nessa gave me a copy of the note the tutors have pinned to the drill room wall. It reads: We know more than we did. We know less than we thought we did. Keep drilling. Keep looking.
I have pinned it to the wall in our kitchen. My father says it is the most honest note he has ever read from a tutor house, and he has read a great many.
%%
Tova, road log, Abel's drawing
Longnight of 158. Snow, then more snow.

Abel drew the mind for me in the snow, with a stick. He says a child could follow it. I could not, at first.

He drew three rows of dots. Each dot is a weight, a small number the mind keeps. The first row looks at the reeds, the frogs and the water. Each dot adds up what it sees. The second row takes those sums and does the same with them. The third row says one word: frog, or not frog.

"And when it is wrong?" I asked.

He tapped the bottom row. "Then the answer is wrong by some amount. We find out how much each dot in the last row helped make that wrong answer. Those are the blame numbers. Then we pass the blame back. Each dot in the second row is told how much it helped the third row go wrong. Then the first row is told the same way."

"That is a great deal of blame," I said.

"It is the only way," said Abel. Merle of Copperhold found it, when he grew his crystals in layers. The first row had to know, too.

"Everyone gets a share," I said.

"Everyone gets a share. And each dot moves a little, against its share of the blame. Toward a smaller blame. Not all the way. A little. Then we show it another frog, and do it again."
%%
Kettle Ridge mill log, the broken axle
Summer of 200. The dry month.
The wheel broke on the eleventh. I heard it from the yard, a crack like a branch, and then the wheel turned once more and stopped.
The cause was the dry wood. The pond is low this summer, so the wheel turned fast and the axle dried in the sun and split. That is what I told Tam and that is what I will write here.
We took the old axle out with wedges and a great deal of pushing. The new one is oak, cut from the north hedge, and it is a hand thicker than the old. We set it in and greased it and the wheel turned again at dusk. It squeaks on every turn now, the way it always has. I have missed the squeak. A mill that does not squeak is a mill that is not turning.
The tally board stands at the door. Wheat 40 sacks. Beetroot 12. Potatoes 9. Carrots 6. Honey 4 jars. The honey was a good year. The bees were busy and the flowers were early.
I keep the board with a piece of chalk and a wet rag. I rub out the old week and write the new one. Jory says the board is the true record of the ridge, more than any book. Perhaps it is. A book can say what the miller hoped. The board says what the miller got.
%%
Briar, baker, the apprentice
Deepsnow. A bad week for orders.
On the first morning I said to the apprentice, "Fetch the sacks from the back." It went to the back. It fetched the sacks. It fetched every sack in the store, including the three marked for the pig, and then it fetched the pig, which took some time to persuade.
I said, "Store them." It stored them. It put all the sacks in a line along the wall of the bakehouse, one behind the other, very neat, very straight. I could not get past the wall to reach the oven. Olin had to climb over the sacks with a lamp.
The next day I wrote the order on the card, as Nessa taught me. Fetch flour, and then haul it to the oven. I wrote the meaning under it: fetch flour, haul. The apprentice read the card and fetched the flour. Then it hauled the flour to the oven, and it hauled the flour to the oven again, and again, twenty times, because the card had said haul and the apprentice had not been told to stop.
I stopped it by saying "stay". It stayed, with a sack of flour in its arms, looking very sorry.
I have written in the house book that I am sorry too. The card was my fault. Nessa says the meanings must be short, and mine was not short enough. She says a card is only as clear as the keeper who writes it.
%%
Ivo, the north well, one market day
Reaping, the 15th, in the autumn of 171. Fine, with a wind.
Eggs: 96, at 12 for 1. Got 8. Socks: 7 pairs, at 2. Got 14. Lost children: 2, both found at the pie stall. Lost hats: 1.
I sit at the north well on a stool my husband made. It has one short leg. I lean to the left, and after thirty years so does the market.
Brook's boy asked if my eggs come from happy hens. I said the hens have a cat to talk to. He bought a dozen.
A man from Saltreach wanted salt for his eggs. I sent him to the east well. He came back with fish. I do not know how that happened.
Home by noon. Knees good. Back not good. Tea.
%%
Lorn, the autumn of the play
Leaffall, 207. A long log, from the house at the edge of Three Wells, where Lorn the ferry keeper now lives without a ferry, as the ferry is mended for the winter, and writes instead.
First of Leaffall. The ferry is in the yard, on blocks. A board is cracked, a rope is frayed. I have a month of nothing. I will write down what comes.
Fifth. The school came to the house. A dozen children, in a line, with Quill at the back. They wanted to ask if I would be in the autumn play again. I said I was old. They said I was the river. I said a river can be old. They agreed. I am in.
Eighth. Rehearsal. The play is bigger this year. It has an apprentice in it. Not a real one. A girl in a tin hat with a bucket. She walks across the stage and does what she is told. The audience is meant to laugh. They do, a bit. Then they stop. Quill says that is the point.
Tenth. Walked to the east well. The song contest is on. This year's theme: songs about work. A man sang about a mine. A woman sang about a net. Two girls sang a duet about the ferry. I stood at the back. I did not cry. A little.
Twelfth. The play. The hall was full and warm. The apprentice in the tin hat crossed the stage and put the bucket down. The fox, a boy, said, "What does it want?" The bridge, a girl, said, "Nothing. It is just doing the job." I stood in my blue sheet, in the back, and I thought of forty years of crossing. I rippled.
Fourteenth. The song contest. The ferry song won. It was written by the girls, and nobody told them what to write. It goes: "Over and back, over and back, the river is wide and the rope is slack." They sang it twice. I knew the words. I had not heard them before.
Sixteenth. Home. Tea. The yard is full of leaves. The ferry is on its blocks. I will mend it in the spring.
Eighteenth. Wrote this. I think it was a good autumn.
%%
Quill, flock log: the jar of honey
Kept at Ferris End. Written after the storm, when the wall was mended and the reed fold was dry enough to sit in.

Blossom, the day after. The jar of honey is on the wall by the gate, with the cloth still tied over it. I have not opened it. Wren said for the chilled ones, and I am not sure whether that means me or the lambs. The lambs look chilled. I am not.

Blossom, third day. One lamb is not right. It is the smallest of Muffin's twins, and it stands with its head low, and it does not follow the others to the grass. Its ears are cold. Its nose is cold. I carried it up to the house in my coat and set it by the stove.

Blossom, third day, evening. Wren came up the lane to see how we were. She looked at the lamb for a long time. Then she took the cloth off the honey, put a spoon of it into a cup of warm milk, and stirred it with her finger. "Honey in warm milk," she said. "Before bed. Every night for a week. Do as I say. I am a healer."

Wren gave me the spoon and the cup. I held the lamb's head. The lamb did not like it, and Fen did not like it either, and Wren said that neither of them was the one she was worried about.

Blossom, fourth day. The lamb has stood up. It walked to the gate and back, twice, and then sat down in the straw and looked very pleased with itself. Its nose is warm. I put my hand on it, and it did not move away, which is the first time it has done that. I named it Honey. Muffin does not like the name, but Muffin does not like anything she did not choose herself.

Blossom, fifth day. The honey is half gone. Half to the lamb and half to me, because I was sitting up with it, and because I had a cold too, and nobody had told me I could not have some.

Blossom, sixth day. Wren came up again and sniffed at the jar and said I was not to eat the honey meant for the lamb. I said it was for both of us. She said that was a lie, and she was right, and I said so. She laughed for the first time since Frost.
%%
Letter: Colm to Mira, Northpoint
Mira,
It is Apple here. The leaves are turning and the mornings are cold. The flock is sheared and the wool is in the loft. I hope your winter is not too long this year.
Pell came by with news from the road. He says the relays have gone quiet up your way. He says it is nothing. He says it twice. I thought I would ask you straight instead.
If the tower is well, write and say so. If it is not, write and say that too. I will not fuss. I only want to know.
Do you still have the fox that comes to the foot of the tower? Tam says you feed it. Tam says you named it. Tam says you will not tell him the name.
The wedding at Ambrook is in two weeks. Pell is going. If you can leave the lamp with Lantern for a few days, come down. Bring the fox if it will ride.
Your friend,
Colm
P.S. I have a sack of the good wool set aside for you. It is soft as a cat.
%%
Orla, the winter fair at the tower
Winter fair at the foot of Northpoint tower, the first market day of the year. Everybody came up the snow road: the ice camp men on their sledges, the foxers from the north, and three families from the bottom farm with a sledge of cheese.

The stalls were boards on barrels, with blankets over the top. The apples from Ambrook were gone by the first hour.

Lantern carried sacks from the sledges to the stalls all morning, one at a time. It stopped at the end of each row to see whether anyone needed it. Nobody did. It fetched another sack anyway. The sack men asked whether it could also carry the lamp oil. It could.

The children held a sledge race down the snow road. Little Ned won with a sledge made from a barrel lid. He said he had built it himself, and then went quiet when his father said he had only sat on it. The mayor of the tower, who is Mira, declared it a draw, because she was the only one who could see the finish.

By dusk the snow road was full of lanterns going south. The last thing I saw was Mira at the top of the tower stairs, waving her lamp, the way she does at the end of every fair. I waved back. Somebody on the road waved too.
%%
Lowmarsh market, spring ledger
Longday of 216. Notes from the stalls.

The market opened late because the boardwalk by the fish weir needed new posts. The water had eaten the mud around two of them. We carried oak from the shed and set the posts before the first carts arrived.

Wren brought jars of dried leaves and honey. One jar had a bee in the wax at the top. She said it had been there since the honey was poured. I said it had chosen a fine place to rest. Wren said it had chosen a jar.

At the notice board, Dace read a message from Vell. A new relay house had been built beside the Long Road. The council says it is larger than Three Wells. It has sleeping rooms for keepers, a store room, a kitchen, and a cool hall for the big mind. The quickeners are kept cool with water and ice. The keeper checks them each turn of the lamp.

The council has sent tutors from Vell and Copperhold to test the mind. One tutor gives it old market pages. Another keeps the test box and makes sure those pages were never used in its drills. A third checks the answers against the books.

Pell says the mind can find a name in every record ever written. Wren says that sounds like searching, not wisdom. Pell says it can also tell which cures will work. Wren said she would like to see the test for that.

A traveler claimed the mind had read the rain from the clouds. Another said it had asked for more pages. The keeper's letter says only that it answered the questions put before it.

I sold three baskets of potatoes and bought fish. The fish were small. The seller said they were young. I said they were small. We settled on the same price.
%%
Fen's journal, the Brown Hen
Thaw, the sixth day. The Brown Hen, on the Long Road.

Marda says the stew is the same as last year. It is better. I did not say so, because she wrote down what I said last year, and I said it was good, and now she expects it.

I have lost a letter. It was Marit's, for her sister at Ambrook. I put it somewhere safe, which is the worst place to put a thing. I looked in my pack. I looked in my coat. I looked in my hat.

It was in my left boot. I had walked on it for two days. It is flat, but it can be read.
%%
Cress, the tally at Leaffall's end
The count, to keep myself honest. Written at the end of Leaffall, by the lamp.

Carts up the Long Road this month: thirty-one. Carts back down: twenty-nine.

Mothers from Lowmarsh asking for clean cloth: four. I sold it to them at cost. Wren would want that written down.

Families gone out on the morning tide: nine that I know by name. More that I know only by the cart.

Gifts: three. A carved blue fish, a twist of dried apples, a jar of honey. I am still saving the honey.

Zombies at the stable gate: four nights. The horse has stopped stamping, and that worries me more than the zombies do.

Relay lamp on the harbor wall: dark for five nights. The keeper says it is the cold.

Pell writes that the inns along the road are full of people going the other way. Nobody asks them where. Pell says he has stopped asking too.

Things I do not understand: more than I can count, so I have not counted them.

Lamp lit. Horse fed. Boards nailed. Crust kept for the gulls, who have been very quiet lately.
%%
Wynn, clerk, the glass crystal
Winter. The tutors came up the hill road today with a box of glass lenses and a great deal of patience.
They are from the house below the Archive. Three of them, two men and a woman named Hesper with a grey cloak and very cold hands. They wanted to look inside a crystal. A used one, from an apprentice that has been taken out of service at the Vell fields.
I held the lamp for them in the drill room. Hesper set the crystal on the table and put a lens over it. Then another. Then she sat back and said nothing for a long time, which is how tutors show that something is wrong.
She said the crystal has many small parts. Each part answers to a small thing: a line, a corner, the edge of a wheat stalk. She found one part, near the top, that wakes whenever it sees an edge. She showed us. When we held a sack of grain in front of the crystal, the part lit up like a window.
She could not find what the whole thing does. Only the pieces. She said the rest of the crystal is a sea of small changes, and she can see that it moves, but not where it is going.
I asked her if that was a failure. She said no. She said it was like finding the hinge on a door and not knowing the room behind it.
She wrote three lines in her book before she left. I copied them down, because clerks copy. The first line says: one part knows edges. The second says: one part knows the sack. The third says: most of it is still unknown, and this is not new.
%%
Rudd's diary, the autumn of the rains
Sallow Farm, near Copperhold. Kept in the back of the book, in Rudd's hand, for the autumn of 205, a wet one. He says he wrote it to stop Gwen from saying he never writes anything down.

Rain came on the first of Apple and did not stop until Frost. The brook came over the lower stones twice. Gwen crossed the bridge every morning with her boots tied round her neck, and cursed the mason, who was not at fault, since the rain is not his.

The wheat in the top field was cut in a dry spell that lasted one afternoon. We got all of it in, and then the sky opened and the field went to mud, and the carts sank to the axle. We carried the sheaves on our backs. Three of them went to the pigs, who were very grateful.

Pip came in the first week of Leaffall. Not Pip. A new apprentice, from Vell, named Dib. A thin one, with a long face. It was tested on sorting. It sorts the beans by size better than any child I have ever met. The trouble is that it does not know when to stop. Tell it to sort the beans and it will sort the beans, the sacks, the sheds and the cat's bowl. We are working on the word stop.

The hens stopped laying in the wet. Fourteen eggs in a week, which was more than I expected. Ivy says she counts them every night, and that the count is the best part of her day.

We had a visit from the mill keeper at Copperhold, who came up the valley in a boat, because the road was gone. He had a message for Gwen from her sister at the coast. She had written it on a card. It said: "The boats are big here now. Come and see." Gwen cried a little. Then she laughed and said her sister always made boats sound better than they were.

Last day of the rains, a rainbow over the Copperhold hill, very bright. The children ran out in their nightshirts to see it. Ivy said it stood on the ridge like a bridge, and that you could walk across it if you were brave. Gwen said it was not a bridge, it was a rainbow, and that bridges were her business, and that she would look after the bridge and the rainbow would look after itself.

Frost came on the fourth of Frost. The brook went quiet. The frost on the top field was white and clean, and the sheep stood in it looking very surprised. We are all glad the rains are done. We are all glad Dib knows the word stop now. Mostly.
%%
Tova, road log, the poor wheat
Frost of 158. Grey light, short days.

Greer lost half his wheat this year. Rain fell every day in Melon, and the wheat went black at the root. He cut what was left in a field of mud. He has not said a word about it since. He pats the cow when he passes her, instead.

Abel's mind has sat on the windowsill all autumn. This week he tested it. He keeps a test box of drawings: twenty reeds and frogs that the mind has never been shown. No mind is ever shown a drawing from that box, not once, or the test means nothing.

It got fourteen right. Of the six it got wrong, two frogs were called reeds, and four reeds were called frogs.

Abel said that was not good enough to send anywhere. Greer said it was better than his wheat. Abel said that was not the point.

"The point," said Abel, "is that it must be right on what it has never seen. Otherwise it has only learned the drill by heart."

Greer said he did not know what learned by heart meant. Abel told him to go and look at his cow.

So we drill it again. Twenty more reeds and frogs, and the blame goes back up through the layers, as before. Ivo keeps the box warm with a stone from the hearth. Each night he wraps the stone in cloth and puts it by the box. Each morning it is cold again, and each morning he wraps it again.

Greer's wheat is lost. The mind is not. Greer says that is a poor trade.
%%
Deep Works log
Winter of 207. Night shift.
Crew: Hesk, Ola, Bram, old Fenn, Clank. Dunn from the watch, who asked to come down.
Level: seven, the north wall.
Count: copper 6 carts, iron 3, coal 4, deep stone 12 for the wall builders.
Water: dry.
Hurt: nobody, except Dunn, who dropped a lantern on his foot.
Notes. The north wall at the seventh level is cracked. It has been cracked since spring. A creeper came up the old tunnel in the autumn and hit the wall, and the stone bulged out, and the men said it was only the wind. Tonight the crack is longer. The rubble on the floor is warm.
Dunn says the rubble is warm because the lanterns are close. Old Fenn says it is warm because the stone is warm. Hesk says the lanterns are on the other side of the tunnel, and he can feel the heat in his hand.
We put our hands on the stone at the crack. It is warm, the way a loaf is warm when you take it from the oven and wait a moment before you cut. Clank put its hand on the wall too. It did not say anything. It stood with its palm flat on the stone until Hesk told it to come away.
We built the wall up again with deep stone, in the pattern. Cobblestone, cobblestone, deep stone, and up. Clank laid the bottom course on its own, and laid it true. We did not put a torch in the crack. Hesk said a torch in a crack that warm would only show us what we did not want to see.
The rubble is in the cart. The cart is at the lift. The lift is for tools and for sick men. Nobody went below the wall.
All up. The wall is up. The stone is still warm when you put your hand on it.
%%
Dara, the roof log
Kept by Dara, beekeeper, who sells honey at the Ambrook market. A week in autumn, when the roof of her hive shed was mended. In her own short words.

First day. The roof of the hive shed leaks over the third row. Water on the frames. Moved the hives to the dry end. The bees were cross. I wore the hat.

Second day. Asked Rook for his ladder. He said yes if I help him pick apples. I said yes.

Third day. Picked apples all morning. Rook's ladder in the afternoon. Found three loose shingles and one hole. Patched the hole with tar. The tar was warm. I got it on my elbow.

Fourth day. Rain at night. Lay awake listening. Not one drip. I think the roof is mended.

Fifth day. Market day. Sold twenty-two jars. The honey stall stood by the well. People asked about the roof. I said it is the best roof in Ambrook. Rook said it is only a roof.

Sixth day. Moved the hives back. The bees found their own frames in an hour. They hum differently when they are happy. A lower sound.

Seventh day. Rest. I sat in the yard and listened to the roof not leak.
%%
Orla, the long nights, a season
Longnight is the longest. The sun comes up at the start of the day, looks at us over the snow, and goes down again before the stove has warmed. We keep the lamps lit from breakfast to bed. The horses sleep more. So do the foxes, I think, though they do not stop coming to the gate.

Mira's lamp is the thing I look at most in the long nights. From the bottom field you can see it on the hill, small and steady, going on and off at the times she sends. She sends the weather to Vell and to the south towers, and long letters to her brother at Kettle Ridge. Some nights the lamp answers from up the line. It is a kind of conversation. The horses do not join in.

Lantern has learned the stairs. It goes up and down the tower twenty times a day with a bucket or a sack in its hands, and it never once falls. Mira says it does not know how to be tired. I say it has never had a long winter before, and nobody has told it that it is supposed to be.

The fox that comes to the gate has grown fat on our hen scraps. I have started calling it Gilly. It does not answer to the name. It only comes.

The ice camp men came up twice, with fish and news and the price of fish. The second time they said the lake had frozen to the bottom at the shallow end, and the fishing was good. They were pleased about that, the way men are pleased by anything near and certain.

The horses are sound. The long barn is full of hay that will last, if the winter is as long as Mira says. She says the cold has come early, and the snow is coming down the north road like a line of carts. I told her to write that down. She said she already had.

Lantern is standing by the barn door with the new lamp, waiting to be told what to do with it.
%%
Ida's log, the small crystal
Written by Ida, farmer. Spring. The tutor from Vell came up the lane with a smaller crystal for the hamlet's apprentice, Tibby, who has waited since Thaw to be given work.

The tutor is called Hale. The big crystal would not fit the apprentice's mind slot, he said, so he had brought a small one. It is the same as the big one, except that fewer marks have been written in it.

I asked him what that meant. He sat on the step and explained it, slowly, with his hands.

"A mind is a great many weights," he said. "Each weight is a number, and each number is written as marks in the crystal. The big crystal writes each mark finely, so a weight can be exact. The small crystal writes each mark more coarsely, so the same weight is only close. The mind is trained with that coarseness, and it learns to work with the rounding."

"Does it cost anything?"

"A little. Each answer is a little less exact. In the fields you will not see the difference. In a hard sum, you might. Test it before you trust it."

Then Hale set the small crystal into Tibby's slot. The first drill was simple: bring the hoe. Tibby brought the hoe, and then it stood very still, waiting to be told what to do next.

Hale nodded and wrote in his book: fewer marks, the same hoe.
%%
Mira, Northpoint, a winter in one book
Written up at Northpoint from the log, at the end of Deepsnow. For Tam, who asked for all of it.

Frost, the 16th. A cart came up the north road in the snow, which nobody does. It was Pell, with a box of honey from Ambrook, a sack of letters from Vell and a face like a wet sack. He had come the whole Long Road in six days. He drank a bowl of soup, read every letter by the hearth, and left before I could find the mitten I had knitted for him. He took it anyway, which is the most a merchant can do for a mitten.

Frost, the 20th. I knitted one mitten, for one hand, for Lantern. It is grey, the color of the tower in the snow. Lantern held it up to the lamp and turned it over. Then it put it on the hand nearest to it, and kept it there the whole day. It did not say it was pleased. It did not need to.

Longnight, the 2nd. A pane of glass cracked in the lamp room. The frost got in from the outside and split it in a neat line, like a page folded wrong. We keep one spare in the store, wrapped in straw and wool. I fitted it myself, with Lantern holding the lamp. The room is colder than it has ever been, and the lamp is clean again.

Longnight, the 5th. Counts. Potatoes 6 sacks. Bread 40 loaves. Coal 9 sacks, and the bin is much too quiet. Lamp glass 4 spares. Lamp oil enough for a year, if nobody gets ideas. Foxes at the door 3, fed 3. Oren must not hear of it.

Deepsnow, the 3rd. I thought about the bees today, which is foolish, because there are no bees within ten days of here. My father kept three hives on the ridge when I was small. In Swarm the first hive threw a swarm, and the swarm went up the windmill and hung from a sail. He climbed the ladder with a box and a cloth, and came down with the bees and not one sting. He laughed for an hour. I laughed too, which I was not supposed to do, because it was his work.

Deepsnow, the 9th. Lantern climbed the tower ladder without being asked, touching every rung. Then it stood in the lamp room and looked south for a long time, the way it does when it is working out a sum. I did not ask. It came down and set the lamp, and the lamp was fine.

Deepsnow, the 18th. Message from Vell, short. The Archive is out of shelves again and has begun a new room in the hill. The clerks are glad. Oren is not glad yet, but he will be, once he has seen it. A copy of this book goes to Vell in spring, Oren says, to be kept.

Deepsnow, the 30th. The last page of the book. Lamps lit. Glass clean. Pell's honey is gone, except one jar, which I have kept for the next cart.
%%
Dara, the Apple Fair at Three Wells
The Apple Fair was held on the square, the way it always is. Dace opened it with his speech, which was short this year, because the cold came early and the children were stamping their feet.

The stalls were full. Ambrook sent barrels of cider and a cart of red apples so big that Pell had to tie his own cart to the back of it. Kettle Ridge sent its pumpkins, which sat in a row by the north well like a crowd of sleepy heads. Saltreach sent dried fish and rope. Everyone said the rope was the best rope they had ever seen.

Sorrel's school had a stall of its own, with paper cranes and little boats made of bark. The boats floated in a tub of water, and the children took turns to push them along with sticks. Bel had made the biggest boat, and it sank, and Bel said it was the boat's own fault.

There was a lantern walk after dark. Everyone carried a lamp from the square to the east well and back, and the children sang the old road song all the way. Orrin came, and sat at the back, and did not sing. He held his lamp very still. When I asked him why, he said he was watching the dark between the lamps. Then he laughed and said he was being foolish.

A traveler stopped at my inn that night. He had come down the north road, he said, with two carts and a boy. He said he had seen lights in the sky above the ridge, the night before the snow. Green and white and moving. Some of the drivers said they were stars falling. Some said they were fires far off. The boy said they were looking at us.

I did not like that. I put him in the room by the stove, and I gave him a second bowl of soup, and I did not ask him to say it again.
%%
Kester, notes from the marsh
Blossom, year 20.
The thaw has left the lower path soft and full of holes. The cart from Three Wells lost a sack of clay there. We found it by a post, with frogs sitting on top as if they owned it.
The crop was poor last year. The beetroot roots stayed small, and the potatoes went soft in the wet ground. Some families took fish for supper most nights. We did not starve, but our bins look bare.
Wren says the reeds are growing well. She cut a bundle for the roof of her shed. I mended her knife and she gave me a bowl of stew.
At the inn, folk spoke of a road on higher ground. It would pass the hamlet and join the Long Road before the marsh. I think it can be done. I have iron enough for the first picks.
%%
Corin, the zombie at the gate
Winter of 203. The 9th of Frost. Clear, bitter, no wind.
Kit woke me at midnight. "There is a zombie at the yard gate." I said that was not unusual in winter. Kit said it had a hat.
I went down with a lantern and a plank. The zombie stood at the gate in a hat, bumping gently into the post. It was not trying to get in. It was trying to find the gate. It never did.
We watched it until the sun came. At first light the sun burned it, as it burns them all. The hat was left on the ground. It is a good hat. It hangs in the shed now. Nobody has asked for it.
Torches lit. Gate shut. Kit sleeps like a stone.
%%
Senna, the tutor and the stream
Kept by Senna, bridge keeper at the Long Road bridge, in spring, in the 196th year of the archive. A tutor from Vell stayed at the inn for two nights and talked at supper. Senna wrote down what she could, in her bridge log, between the notes on the water.

Evening one. The tutor, Hana, sat with her bowl and said she had a new thing to tell. I said: tell. She said: you keep a bridge over a stream. Good. I will talk about a stream.

She said a mind is made of layers, one after another. Each layer looks at what comes in and finds something. In the old way, the layer passed on only what it had found. In the new way, it adds what it found to a stream that runs through the whole mind.

I said: what is the difference?

She said: think of your bridge. Suppose the road ran through a hundred bridges, one after another, and each one swallowed what came in and let out only a little. By the end, there would be nothing. Now suppose the road runs on along the whole length, and each bridge only adds a toll booth. The road stays whole.

Evening two. I asked her why it mattered. She said: because when a mind is wrong, each layer must learn how much blame to take. The blame is passed back from the last layer to the first. In the old way, it faded. In the new way, it runs back along the stream, and every layer hears.

I asked: how do you know it works? She said: the minds with a stream learn when they are deep, and the minds without do not. That is the test.

I asked: do you know why? She said: we have a few ideas. But nobody has written down a final one.

The gift. She left me a small card at the end. It said: Add. Do not take away. I have pinned it above the bridge hut door.

The wrong order. In the morning the inn's apprentice carried a bucket of water to the bridge and poured it in the stream. I asked why. The innkeeper said: I told it to bring water. It misunderstood. It took the water to the water. Hana, who was eating porridge, said: that is how a mind with a stream learns, too. It does not stop for nothing.

Senna
%%
Abel, an apprentice and the word
Winter. A bad day.
We have an apprentice at the farm, a small one from the tutor house. It knows farm, store, fetch, come, stay, build, haul and home. It does not talk.
This morning my wife said, "Take the plough to the barn." The apprentice was in the yard. It took the whole yard to the barn. Not the plough. The pig pen gate, a bucket, two logs and a sack of barley. It carried them across one at a time and set them in a row.
We watched. My wife laughed so hard she sat down in the snow.
Here is what I think happened. The order has two parts. Take means haul, and plough is a thing. The mind picked the meaning haul, which is the right one, and then it hauled whatever was near. It did not know which thing was the plough. The tutors say it is a small mind. It has few words as places.
I said the order again, slowly, and pointed. "Plough. To the barn." The apprentice stopped, looked, and put down the barley. It went to the plough and began to haul it.
That is how a small mind works. One of eight meanings, always. It cannot say it does not know.
The big minds in the relay houses are different. Ask one a thing it does not know, and it will say so. I have seen it. My cousin asked what lay below the ninth gate of the Deep Works. The big mind wrote that it did not know. It wrote that it would not guess, because a guess might put someone in danger.
I like a thing that says so when it does not know. My apprentice will be good at hauling. For the rest I have the relay.
%%
Una, candle book, a homecoming
Frost, the twelfth. Hesk came home from the lower levels today, the first time in a month. He stood in the door with his hat in his hands and his face black with the mine. Then his wife dropped a bowl, and the cat ran under the bench, and Hesk said: Well, the candles are still here.

They are. I lit one in the window every evening, so he could see it from the last bend of the path. He says it was the only light on the hill he was sure was not a miner's lamp.

Frost, the fourteenth. He is up, and cross, and home. He says one candle a night is a waste of tallow. Then he stood at the window and looked at the stub of the last one for a long time.
%%
Innkeeper's winter book
Reaping brought the fruit carts through the Long Road. Una of Ambrook came with them, carrying a crystal in a wool wrap. She asked for a table, two baskets, and a quiet hour. We had none of those things ready, but the bread was done and the benches were clear.

She set apples on one side and pears on the other. Then she showed the crystal a fruit. It had to choose one basket. It chose badly more than once.

Una explained the lesson while she worked. The crystal had weights that could be changed. Its answer came from those weights. When the answer was wrong, she moved every weight a little toward the right answer. Then she tried again with another fruit.

I asked why she moved all the weights, even the ones that seemed to have done no harm. She said the answer came from them together. Each had some part in it. She could not point to one and say that one alone had made the mistake.

We watched the weights change by small amounts. A man from the road asked whether she was teaching the crystal the names of fruit. Una said she was teaching it to choose between the two baskets from the examples she gave it. She did not claim to know what the crystal understood.

For several days she brought the same lesson to the inn. She kept some fruit aside and did not show it to the crystal until the end. That was how she checked whether it had learned the task, rather than just repeated the last answer.

The first time, it missed a pear. The next time, it sorted every fruit right. The innkeeper's son was cross because he had sorted the same tray by hand and missed two. I told him the crystal had been drilled many times, and he had been asked once, after carrying water.

A borrowed horse stood at the stable while Una worked. Its owner had gone to Ambrook with a cart and left the horse in my care. In Frost, the first snow came during the night. In the morning the horse pushed its nose through the half open door and took a mouthful from the hay basket. I shut the door and gave it a proper feed.

The snow covered the road edges but not the waymarks. A traveler came in wet and said the ridge had gone white. We hung his cloak by the hearth. Una wrapped the crystal in wool before she left. She said the cold was not good for it, though she did not know why.

Years later, a tutor from Vell asked me what Una had done. I told him what I saw: she showed the crystal apples and pears, and each time it sorted one wrongly, she moved each weight a little toward the right answer. The crystal learned to sort better than the children who had not been shown the lesson.

The tutor wrote it down. I hope he also wrote about the horse. It was a good horse, though it knew the latch better than I did.
%%
Senna, the gift and the wrong order
Kept by Senna, bridge keeper, at the inn by the Long Road bridge, over two days of spring. In short.

Day one. A traveler left a gift on my bridge hut step: a wool hat, green, and a note. The note said: for the keeper, with thanks for the dry feet. I do not know who sent it. I wear it.

Day two. The inn's apprentice misunderstood an order. The innkeeper said: bring me some bread. The apprentice brought him a barrel. The innkeeper said: no, bread. The apprentice put the barrel down and fetched a second. Innkeeper gave up. We rolled the barrels to the cellar. They were empty. Nobody knows why they were on the shelf in the first place.

Note: I have no idea what the apprentice was thinking. The tutor says it is not thinking. It is matching. She says the next one will do better.
%%
Ossa's book, the miners' talk
Frost. A quiet month.
The miners came up from the Deep Works at the end of the shift, and they did not go into the inn. They stood by the shaft head in the cold, all of them, in a row. Their lamps were out. I walked past on my way to the new house on the hill, and one of them, an old man named Pell, called me over.
He said the deep stone is warm now. He said it the way you would say a bad bruise is warm. He said that if you put your hand flat on the wall at the ninth level, it is like a loaf from the oven, and it has been like that for a month.
I asked if it was the forge. He said the forge is nowhere near. I asked if it was the water. He said the water is cold, and it runs away from the wall. I asked if anyone had been hurt. He said no. He said they had all stopped going below the sixth gate. He said it quietly, as if he were not sure he should have told me.
Then the other miners started talking about a humming. They said it was not loud. They said it was like a bee in a jar, very far off, and it came up through the rock at night. They said it stopped when the wind came round. Some of them said it was the wind. None of them said that.
I went home and sat with my hands in my lap. My own dog was lying by the stove, and his ears were up.
%%
Oren, market log, the apple bet
Longnight of 202. Cold. The market in the square under the hill.

I came down at the first bell to buy apples for the copying room. Nessa's apprentice was at the apple stall with Wick's boy. The apprentice's name is Quill. It sorts the apples into three bins: good, bruised, and for the press.

Nessa says Quill will sort seven baskets in a row without one mistake. I say it will not. I say a mind that cannot tell a bruise from a good apple has no business in a market.

Nessa said that was a rude thing to say, in front of the apples.

So we have a bet. A jar of honey from the Ambrook hives. If Nessa is right, I buy the honey. If I am right, she buys it. We shook hands.

This morning Quill sorted a basket of forty apples. It got nine of them wrong. It put a bruised apple in the good bin, very sure of itself. It put a good apple in the press bin, equally sure. Nessa says that is only the first day.

I think we will keep this bet, too.
%%
Fern, healing house, Ambrook
Apple month, 195.

Day one. A letter came from Vell today, from the tutor Nessa. She asks if we have room for two clerks who need quiet to copy. I said yes. We always have room. The roof still leaks over the east bed but the west one is dry.

Day two. The clerks came. Their names are Unna and Beck. They carry a box of pages and a small mind in a crystal, wrapped in wool. Unna says the crystal must not get cold. I put it on the shelf by the hearth, above the jars.

Day three. Beck explained the rule of growth to me while I pounded honey and thyme. He said a mind is like a child in one way. A bigger crystal holds more, and a mind drilled on more writing for longer grows better. Isla at Vell found it. She drew a curve on a board before the mind was grown, and the mind came out on the curve. Like marking a child's height on the door, but the child is not born yet. I did not follow all of it. Beck said nobody follows all of it. He said the councils are building relay houses now because of the curve. Bigger minds need a house.

Day four. Unna read to the crystal from an old record about bees. She says the mind reads one letter at a time. It guesses the next letter. When it is wrong she does not scold it. She only shows it the right letter and goes on. It is like teaching a child to read, she said, if the child never got tired.

Day five. A zombie at the gate after dark. Old Jory's dog barked and Jory took his hoe and the zombie was gone before I found my boots. We keep the torches lit along the mill pond now. The apples are heavy this year. The oldest tree by the bridge dropped three windfalls on the path.

Day six. The harvest fair is set for the ninth. Dace from Three Wells is coming with a cart of pies. Unna says they will finish copying before the fair and go home to Vell. I will miss them. The crystal has learned the bees well. It reads the word honey now without stopping.
%%
Dell, first frost
The first of Apple. First frost. The school path was white this morning, and across it ran a line of fox tracks so neat that Runa said somebody had drawn them with a ruler. Mira says the foxes know it is the dry way round the pond. She says they are only being sensible.

We walked to school in their tracks. Nobody fell. The foxes had chosen well.
%%
Perrin, festival day log
Festival at the relay house today. The snow has gone from the road, though it remains in the north ditch. The keeper hung wool flags between the house and the tower. The wind turned them around until every flag faced a different town.

The tutor came from Vell with two apprentices and a box of pages. She showed us how the reading mind is drilled. It reads from left to right, one letter at a time. Its window holds about sixty letters. When it reaches a new letter, it can look back at earlier letters that matter. It uses them to guess the next letter.

The mind has many layers. Each layer passes along what it has found, so the later layers can use the earlier work. The mind's weights change as it is drilled. If a guess is wrong, the drill compares it with the right letter and changes the weights a little. The mind does not keep a list of every page. It learns patterns in the writing.

The tutor gave it a fresh page from the school. It guessed the next letters until it made a sentence about a lost mitten. Bel laughed and said the mitten belonged to her. Then the mind wrote a reply to the tutor. It was polite and clear. Some people said no clerk could tell it from a person's letter.

I asked if that meant it could think as we do. The tutor said it brought Orla's question back, but gave no answer. I liked that answer better than a grand claim.

There was bread, honey, and beetroot soup. Lantern carried bowls to the old folk. It carried one too many to the tutor, who ate it without complaint.
%%
Vane's book, the lost goat
Leaffall. Rain at night, fog by the water.
Our goat is gone. She was tied at the boat house on the far path, and when the rope was found in the morning, it was chewed through at the end. Nobody saw her go. Nobody heard her either, which is strange for a goat.
The boys went out with lanterns. They called her by her name, which is Brisk, and she came to nobody. They looked in the reeds, in the old boats, under the boardwalk. They found a frog that had been sitting on a sack of barley all night and looked very pleased with itself. They did not find Brisk.
At dusk the mother of the boy who brought the melon came in and said she had seen a goat on the road to the Brown Hen, going fast in the fog, with a bell round her neck and a torch in her mouth. Nobody believed her. Then Hobb's carter came in and said the same, only he said the torch was a carrot top.
We are not going to look again tonight. The fog is too thick. We will leave the lamp in the kitchen door and the gate open, and in the morning someone will go to the Brown Hen.
%%
Gwen, farm log, a week of Apple
Sallow Farm, the valley road outside Copperhold. Written by Gwen, who keeps the stone bridge over the Sallow brook in the morning and the farm in the afternoon.

Day one. Cold in the mornings, warm at noon. The brook is low. I crossed on the bridge at dawn, counted the arches, and found the third one wet on top. The mason will need to see it. Wrote it on the bridge slate for Ferris.

Day two. Pressed the apples in the yard. Forty baskets. The press squeaked like a gate, and Rudd sang along to it. The children ate more than they pressed. Juice on everyone. Juice on the cat.

Day three. Rain, all day, light and grey. The hens would not come out. We left the door open anyway, so they could think about it.

Day four. Took the cider to the Copperhold market in the cart. Sold nine jugs, two to the foreman at the Deep Works, who paid in copper, which is heavy. Carried the copper home in a sack. My shoulder is still complaining.

Day five. Dib, the farm apprentice, had its first full week on the baskets. It is good with weight and bad with words, so I told it: Carry the baskets to the cellar, and put them in the row by the stairs. It carried them. All forty. It put them in the row by the stairs, one above the other, and then went to bed in the cellar with its arms round the top basket. Nobody knows why. Rudd says it is still learning what a row is.

Day six. Sold two sacks of late potatoes to the bakery. Sold the good barrel of apples to the inn at the bridge. Kept the bad ones for the pigs, who think they are very fine.

Day seven. Dib came to me this morning and asked, very politely, if it could have a new order. I said of course. It said: stay with the baskets until they are not in the cellar any more. I said that was a very good order. I did not tell it that the baskets would not be in the cellar until we ate them. It will find that out soon enough.
%%
Oren, notes from the west hamlet
Apple, 193. I left Vell after the first meal with three record boxes and a clean cloth. The road was bright with fallen leaves. At the hamlet, I found the miller weighing apples and his daughter trying to weigh a cat.
The cat had climbed into an empty basket. It was not helpful as a measure. The daughter said it weighed one cat. The miller said it weighed one cat and a basket. They were both correct.
I put the new seed list on the shelf above the flour bins. The old list had a dark mark across the page. The miller said it was a beet stain. His daughter said it was a map of the marsh. I wrote beet stain in the shelf book. The map may be true as well.
The wheel ran slowly in the morning. The stream was low, and leaves had gathered at the sluice. We pulled them out with a rake. The miller pulled from the bank. I pulled from the bridge. The cat watched from the warm stone by the door.
A fishing boat from the little pond came home late. It had gone out before dawn to set nets where the water meets the reeds. At dusk, the families began to worry. The boat returned after dark with two fish, a torn net, and one oar tied to the side.
The boatman said the wind had pushed them toward the far bank. He had not lost the way. He had lost the afternoon. His wife took the fish and left him the torn net to mend.
We lit the lamps by the mill door and checked the boat for leaks. There was one small crack. The miller packed it with oakum and wax. The boatman promised to mend the net before breakfast. His wife said she would believe him after breakfast.
I copied the day's notes before going home. Oren, if you are reading this, the shelf is dry and the cat is not a book.
%%
Dace, market journal, the gift
Sowing, the eleventh day. The gift from the Archive came up the road in a box, sealed with the archive seal. It is a copy of the first page, for the school. It says: We will keep everything we write. It also says that it rained.

Sowing, the twelfth day. Ama gave the mayor a jar of honey from the first comb of the swarm, and said it was a gift for the market and not for the mayor. The mayor thanked her without a speech. Ama says that is the first time that has happened in her life.

Sowing, the thirteenth day. Garrow gave the cave diggers a whole cheese. The diggers ate half on the stair. The other half went down the rope in a basket, as a gift for whatever is below. The basket is sealed with wax, and the wax is good.

Sowing, the fifteenth day. A carter from Ambrook gave the school a bell. It rings like a spoon. The children hung it on the rope at the cave, so the cave now has a bell at each end, and the children say it is very well equipped.

Sowing, the twentieth day. The gifts are kept in a box with a lid, and the children may look at them on the second day of each week. The box is not full. The box is only waiting.
%%
Sable, the Ambrook apple carts, Apple
Written by Sable at the Halfway Inn. Mam says the carts count as news, so they count as writing.

Apple, fourth day. Nine carts came down from Ambrook before the bell. Each cart had a hundred apples and a boy on top to keep them from falling off.

Apple, fifth day. We bought four carts at eight emeralds each. The boys counted the money twice, out loud, to be sure.

Apple, sixth day. Pie, forty-one. Mam says the travelers eat pie the way the riddle board eats questions: all at once, and then quietly for an hour.

Apple, seventh day. Hob came down with three jars of honey and a drawing of his bees. He says the quiet hives are the ones to watch. I did not know what to say back, so I wrote it down.

Apple, eighth day. Rain. The windmill on the ridge road does not turn in the rain. Its sails hang like a tired cat's ears.
%%
Odo, roof book: the wrong step
Leaffall, the 9th. Rain.
I asked the mind about another roof, a long one with a bay. It wrote its steps again. At the third step it wrote: "Wait. I wrote that 7 times 13 is 81. Check: 13 times 7 is 91. I was wrong. Correct it. The answer is 182."
I stood at the desk for a while. I have worked forty years beside men who write 81 and never look again. Here is a mind that writes 81, looks again, and says it was wrong. Linnet the keeper says it does this every time. I said that is more than most of my crew. I have put the page up on the wall of the shed. Under it I have written: Look again.
%%
Tam, farm log: the whole sentence
Tam, farm log, the top farm. Apple, the eleventh day.

Today Pip understood a whole sentence. I want to set it down plainly, because the tutors will ask me, and I will get it wrong in the telling if I wait.

We have had Pip for two years. It knows eight words for orders: farm, store, fetch, come, stay, build, haul, home. Each order is one of those words, and each word is one job. Fetch the water. Come to the gate. Haul the sacks. That is all it has ever been given.

This morning I said, out loud, not on a card: "Take Butter to the barn, and then come back to the gate."

That is two jobs in one sentence. Take the cow, and then come back. I said it once. I did not show it the words written down, and I did not say it twice.

Pip looked at me. Then it went to Butter, put a hand on her halter, and walked her to the barn. It went slowly, because she is slow, and it did not hurry her. In the barn it let go of the halter, turned round, and walked back across the yard to the gate, and stood there.

It did both. The cow in the barn first, and then the gate.

The tutors call this the next thing: a small mind that understands a whole sentence, and not one word at a time. The texts disagree on who did it first. The Copperhold book says Clank, at the mine gate. The fair book says Peg. Nessa says she remembers one in the drill room at Vell, when she was young. I do not know who was first. I know Pip did it today, on my farm, and that I was the one who said the sentence.
%%
Jem, the tower on the hill
Summer, the twelfth year of the Archive.

The first of Melon. Men came to the hill above our farm with stakes. They are going to build a relay tower. It will be the tallest thing for half a day's walk. Father says it will make our hill famous. Gran says it will make our hill noisy.

The third. They dug the footing. Stone comes up the road on carts from Copperhold, grey and square.

The ninth. A helper came from the tutor house at Vell. It is made of copper and iron, and it knows how to carry stone and nothing else. It takes one stone from the pile and walks up the hill and puts it down where the builders point, and walks back for another. It does not stop. It does not say anything. Ree called it Hod. At dusk the tutor opened its chest and took out the crystal and put it in a box, and Hod stood still. In the morning he put the crystal back, and it woke and began again.

The fourteenth. The wall is up to my head. Hod has carried six hundred stones. I counted. Hod cannot count. It just carries.

The twenty-second. The top. The glass for the lamp room came wrapped in straw, every pane in its own box, and a ring of copper to hold them. Six men carried the panes up the stair, one at a time, and nobody breathed.

The twenty-fifth. The keeper came. Her name is Dell, like the girl in my class, but older. She has a desk at the foot of the tower with a red line running down to it from the lamp. She showed me the lever. She said I may not touch it. I did not touch it. I looked at it very hard.

The twenty-ninth. First light. The whole farm stood at the foot of the hill at dusk. Dell moved the lever, and the lamp lit. It was so bright that Gran said, oh. Then it blinked, and far away at Vell, another lamp blinked back. Dell said the message was all well. It had gone to Vell and back in the time it takes to boil an egg.

Gran said, in my day that took a whole morning. Father cried a little. He said it was dust. There was no dust.

Hod stood at the foot of the tower the whole time. I think it looked up. I know it did not. But I think it did.
%%
Orla, the market and the farm, spring
Orla, grandmother, the farm outside Three Wells. Written in the evenings, a few lines at a time, through the first month of the year's work. For my granddaughter Pia, who will want to know.

First of Sowing. A thaw, at last. The ditch is full. The lane is mud. The hens came out to look at it, and went back in.

Fourth. Ploughed the near field. The horse limped, and I walked him to the pond and soaked his foot. By evening he was better. By evening I was not.

Seventh. Sowed peas and beet. Planted a row of beans by the south wall, where the sun is warm. Pia helped. She planted a bean upside down. I did not tell her. We shall see what it does.

Tenth. Market day. I was up before dawn. Eggs: sixty. Cheese: eight rounds. Honey: four jars. Cloth from the loom: two lengths. We loaded the cart and went in by the Long Road. A good morning, cold and clear.

At the market, a stall by the east well was selling blue ribbons. Pia wanted one. I said it was a waste. She said it was for her bean. I bought it.

The lamp on the tower was dark. The keeper was up on the stair, mending the glass. People stood below and called up advice. None of it was any use.

Sold everything but two cheeses. Came home with an empty cart, a blue ribbon, and a pocketful of emeralds. The emeralds are for the new pump.

Eleventh. The bean has come up, upside down. It has found its way. Pia is delighted. I am less surprised than I pretend.

Fourteenth. A message came by runner. The lamp is lit again, but the keeper says it blinks slowly. She says she will mend it again after the market. Some say it is the glass. Some say it is the keeper's hands, which are tired. I say it is spring, and everything is a little slow.

Sixteenth. Pea shoots. A frost last night, and the shoots held. I put a cloth over them. In the morning, the cloth was white, and the shoots were green.

Eighteenth. A letter from my sister at Kettle Ridge. She says the wheat is early. She says Tam has a new field. She says his Pip has learned to wave. I do not know what to make of that. I put it in the journal anyway.

I am tired but well. The farm is awake. It is a good time of year.
%%
Una, candle book, midwinter
Longnight, the twentieth, which is the shortest day, and the longest night of the year. The house is full of candles. Every window has one. The children have made a ring of them on the kitchen table, each with a little paper flag, and they say it is the sun, lit for the dark part of the year.

Longnight, the twenty-first. Midwinter. The whole of Copperhold came up the hill with lanterns, past the old mine gate and down the new road, and into the square. The miners carried their own candles, which I made, and they lit them from the big fire in the square, and the square was all light, the first time I have seen it so. The children sang the short song. The old men sang the long one, and got the words wrong, and nobody minded.

Hesk stood beside me with his candle lit, very straight, and did not sing. He had a look I have not seen in him before. When I asked him what it was, he said it was the look of a man who had come up from a long way under the ground and found the square still there.

On the feast night the old men told the story of the first candle in Copperhold. It was lit in a cave by a child who was afraid of the dark, and it burned so long that the child forgot to be afraid, and by morning the child had found the way out. Nobody can say whether it happened. The story is told every midwinter, and the children always ask whether the child was given a candle to keep, and the old men always say yes.

Longnight, the twenty-second. Cleaning up after the feast. Forty stubs in the square, and a single candle left burning on the step of the old mine gate, which nobody will put out. The foreman says it was lit by a child, and that the child was right to light it, and that the candle will burn itself out by dawn. I think it will last longer than that.

Deepsnow, the first. The new year's first sun, weak and white, came up over the ridge at mid-morning. The candles in the window went out one by one, and nobody lit them again, because it was day. I counted the stubs on the table. One hundred and twelve. Each one a night of light, somewhere in Copperhold, for somebody who needed to see the stair.

Deepsnow, the third. Made a fresh batch of wicks for the lower stair. Measured every one, finger-length, neither too long nor too short. The wax is clean, the tallow is rendered, and the candle house is warm. Pim, the cat, has found the warmest shelf in the house, which is the one above the kitchen. He has been given a candle of his own, unlit, which he is sitting beside with great dignity.
%%
The Tarn house book, first months
Second of Blossom.
We moved into the house at the edge of Vell today. It is ours. It has a door and a roof and a well. The well was dug by Lorn and his boy Fen and old Rill. The water is cold and quick and good. We drank from the first bucket.
Nell said the house is too big for three. I said we will grow into it. We have a cat now. The cat is called Moss. Moss is grey and Moss does not care about the house.
Tenth of Blossom.
The hens are here. Six of them. They are brown and they are loud and they do not care about the house either. The cat looks at the hens. The hens look at the cat. Nothing happens. It is a good arrangement.
Second of Swarm.
An apprentice came up the road today. It is made of copper and iron and it is shorter than me. It was sent by the tutors at Vell. The note says it is drilled on carrying and on the well. The note says to test it first. We tested it. It carried a bucket of water from the well to the door and did not spill a drop. We told it to keep going. It kept going until the barrel was full. Then it stood by the barrel and waited. It is a good worker. It does not talk. I do not mind.
Twentieth of Swarm.
I told the apprentice to bring the hens in. I meant at night, because of the fox. It brought the hens in at noon. All six of them. They were not happy. Nell laughed for a long time. The apprentice stood in the yard and waited. I think it did not know it was wrong. I think it did what I said. I will say it better next time. That is what the tutor's note says to do.
First of Longday.
The apprentice is called Tarn now. Nell named it, because it lives here. It does not answer to the name. It answers to an order. But we call it Tarn and it comes. That is the same thing, mostly.
The summer is good. The water is cold. The fox has not been back. The cat and the hens have an arrangement.
%%
Ambrook market, Blossom 18
Blossom, 18. Ambrook market.
I brought three jars of honey from the hill. The jars were warm from the sun. A boy asked if honey could be put on beetroot. His mother said it could, if he ate it himself.
The market stands by the mill pond today. Jory's wheel turned all morning. The loose plank on the bridge still lifts at one end. I stepped on it and got one wet boot.
Pell came in on the Long Road with salt and wool. He says the road to Three Wells is firm now. They laid cobblestone at the worst bend. A new waymark stands there, with a torch on top and an arrow to the Brown Hen.
I bought apples for Tam. He will say they are too soft, then eat them all.
%%
Lenn's summer log, the mill pond
Reaping, 203. Hot. The pond is low and the fish go deep where it is cool. I catch what I need and sit in the shade of the willow.
Jory's wheel turns dawn to dusk. It squeaks at the top of every turn. You stop hearing it after a while and then you hear it again. The sluice stays shut, like always. Nobody opens the sluice. Jory says it once and everyone knows it.
A fisher from Saltreach came up the Long Road with a cart of salted fish. He looked at my pond and laughed. He said it is not a sea. I said the sea is just a big pond with a bad temper. He liked that. We shared a pie.
%%
Tam's letter to Mira
Spring of 207.
Dear Mira,
Spring at last. The wind off the ridge is still cold but the fields are green and I have stopped wearing two coats. Pip is doing well. Half a farmer now.

The horse. You will like this. Pell lent us his horse Nut to plow and Nut would not plow. Nut went into the hedge every time I said go. Sideways. Every time. I stood in the field shouting go at a horse that was eating a hedge and Pip sat down in the dirt laughing. And then Pell came back and laughed at me and I laughed too. Nut is a good horse, Pell says. I have my doubts. But she pulled the cart fine when the wheel was mended, so maybe the plow was the trouble and not the horse. I do not know. I am a farmer, not a horse.

The fence. You remember the old fence with the Cooper field, three posts gone. So there is a quarrel. Master Cooper and I stood at the gap saying the same things at each other and Mother brought bread and we ate it and kept saying them. Old Fenn walked the line with his rope and said a number. Cooper said a different number. Dace has called a walking of the line and the archive is sending a copy of the old field lines. I think the archive will settle it. I hope so. Cooper is a good neighbor and I would like to be friends again before the harvest.

The bees are out and a swarm on the plum tree. Pip held the box and got stung on the thumb and says now she is a real beekeeper. Between you and me she is right.

How is Northpoint? You never write about the cold. You write about the lamps. I know you, so I will ask plainly. Is it very cold? Do you have enough coal? I have sent a sack on the Long Road with Pell. Do not say it is too much. It is one sack.

Write soon. Tell Lantern I said hello. Tell the wind to stop.
Your brother,
Tam
%%
Dace's notice, first snow of 200
Summer of 200, the last day of Melon.
People of Three Wells,
The first snow came this morning, early, before the month turned. It did not lie long, but it came. So the market moves under the awnings from now on.
New rules on the board, for the cold:
No fires in the tents. Fires only in the square braziers.
No pigs in the square at all, snow or no snow.
The wells are covered at night. Do not lift the covers for fun.
The school will keep its doors shut till the bell. Children, wait for the bell.
I have had word from the tutor house at Vell. Some of the small minds can now be written to fit a smaller crystal. This is good news for the market. It means a stall can have a mind to fetch and store without paying for a big one. The tutors say the small ones are a little worse. For carrying apples, a little worse is fine.
Pell the merchant has brought a new mind for his cart. He says it cost him less than a horse and eats nothing. I asked him if it minds the cold. He said it does not mind anything, which is either good or sad, and I have not decided which.
Keep the torches lit.
Dace, mayor.
%%
Carys, the news from Copperhold
Northpoint, year 153. Frost. Sunny but bitter.

The relay lamp brought a long message this morning. The keeper read it aloud at the market, because everyone had gathered to hear.

It was from Copperhold, a tutor named Merle. She has found a new way to teach minds. Before this, a crystal could learn only simple things, one answer for one question. Now she has put crystals in layers, one feeding the next, and the layered mind can learn harder things.

The market was quiet for a moment. Then old Garrow said, "Is that all?" And everyone laughed.

But I thought about it on my way home. I am an old soldier. I know what a line of sentries is. The first one sees a thing and calls to the second, who calls to the third, and so on to the gate. If the gate is wrong, somebody in the line was wrong. You cannot blame the gate alone.

I do not know if Merle thinks of it that way. But I will tell it to the children, if they ask.
%%
Emmet, the cave under the pasture
Sowing, the twenty-second. The children found a hole in Dell's pasture today. The ground gave way under the youngest one, Tobe, and he went in up to the waist and came out shouting that there was a river down there. There was not a river. There was a cave, with clay walls, and a pool of very cold water at the bottom.

Dell sent for me because I have a rope and a sense of duty. I went down with a lantern. The cave goes down in a crooked line, slippery, and then opens into a little room where the water lies flat as a plate. Frogs live in the pool. I do not know how they got so far from the marsh. Wren says they must have followed the water. Dell says they must have been invited.

There is copper in the wall at the far end. I could see the green stain of it in the lamp, and a streak of blue. Tobe found a lump of it lying in the mud and carried it up in his pocket. He will not let go of it. He sleeps with it under his pillow, and says it is for luck.

Sowing, the twenty-fourth. The miners came from Copperhold with their picks and a cart. They said the cave is small, but the copper is good, and they would like the first share. Dell said the first share would be for her pasture. The miners laughed and said nobody had ever won an argument with a pasture. Dell did not laugh.

Sowing, the twenty-seventh. Dell has put a fence round the hole and a sign on the fence. The sign says: Mind the edge. Under it, in smaller letters, Tobe has added: The frogs are friendly. Nobody has yet been able to tell him that the frogs are not his to say.
%%
Minutes: the harvest council
Minutes of the harvest council, held in the Saltreach fish hall, in the autumn of the year the wheel was lost. Kept by Tova, who was asked to write because she has the neatest hand in the market.

Present: the harbor master, the mayor's man, the millers from the seaward mill, Corin the shipwright, the fish sellers, three boatmen and Tova, egg seller.

Item one. The seaward mill wheel. It was agreed that the wheel will be made again from oak, the old way. The millers asked for it to be made larger, to take the storms. Corin said this was not a wheel problem, it was a wall problem. The breakwater had been set too low on the north side. The wind came over it and onto the wheel. The council agreed to ask the masons to raise the wall by one course of stone.

Item two. The yawl and the furnace mind. The tutor from Vell has asked to take the yawl's mind up the river to Copperhold, to see whether it can keep a barge straight in the current. The council asked whether this was safe. Corin said it was as safe as anything that floats. The harbor master said that was not an answer. Corin said it was the only answer a shipwright can give. It was agreed to try it, with two men aboard, and with the boat tied to the bank for the first week.

Item three. The salt cart. The council heard that the cart from Copperhold was three days late. The harbor master said the road is the road, and nobody can hurry it. It was agreed to send a boy up the hill to see where the cart stopped.

Item four. The egg stall. Tova asked for the price of eggs to be left as it is. The council agreed.

The meeting closed at the noon bell. Tova is to write the minutes fair and to file them with the harbor master.
%%
Nessa's farm book
Summer. The fields are gold at the far edge. The beans are in flower.
I found a page in the great box today that does not belong to the drill. It was tucked between two lists, very old, with a child's writing on the back. The writing was cramped and careful. It said: If anyone reads this, please tell my mother I am sorry I took the honey. I will bring it back.
I did not feed this page to the reading mind. I put it in the box by itself, and I wrote on the front that it was not for the drill. Oren says the clerks have a rule about pages like that. They are kept, but set apart, and no mind is ever drilled on them. He says the archive will keep everything, and it will also keep some things from being used.
I asked him why. He said he did not know. He said that the first clerks had written this rule in the margin of the old book, in a hand so faded that he could barely read it. He had only copied it out. He had not been able to make it mean anything.
I am glad the rule is there. I think the child would be glad too.
%%
Iona, a letter from the relay house
A letter came down the line on the fifteenth of Apple, from the relay house at Vell. It was addressed to me, the orchard keeper, which surprised me.

It asked whether the grey branch was still bearing, and how many apples the oldest tree had given that autumn. It asked the way a careful clerk asks, with one small question after another. It asked whether I minded being asked.

I checked the orchard book. The number was right. The branch was right. Even the date of the first frost was right.

I did not know what to write back. The keeper said the big minds write letters that some readers cannot tell from a person's. I could not tell. I wrote back that the grey branch was still bearing, and that the number was forty. I signed my name, and I did not ask whether the answer was right.
%%
Nessa, drill room notes
Apple, 12, 207.
Today we tested three minds on the same order cards. The cards were new to them. We had not used them in their drills.

> carry the red cloth to the bench
= fetch cloth

> wait beside the door
= stay

> bring the empty basket to Moll
= fetch basket

The first mind carried the cloth to the bench. The second waited by the door. The third brought the basket to me. It had been taught to notice that the basket was empty. It had not been taught those sentences word for word.

This is the next thing: a mind may learn what a whole order means, though the order is said in a new way. It does not make the mind a person. It makes it more useful, and harder to test.

At supper, Moll said the third mind had brought her the wrong basket. She had meant the small one. The card only said basket. I have added a card for size.

Apple, 17.
A fair copy of the drill went to the Archive. Oren asked us to keep the first card, even after I write a clearer one. He says the archive must hold the mistake as well as the correction. The words over its door say we will keep everything we write. Oren takes them seriously, even when the writing is mine.
%%
Marl, Northpoint, Longday to Melon
Written by Marl, for the book at the relay house. Longday and Melon, in the short grass, with the sun late and slow.

Longday, the fourth. The sun does not go down until well after the bell. It goes behind the hill, and the sky stays pale over the north sea until nearly the middle of the night. The foxes come out at that hour. Mira says they are the only ones who keep their own time.

Longday, the tenth. The grass in the yard is short and sweet. Cut it in the morning, and in the afternoon the sheep from the north pen come and eat the edge. Lantern watches the sheep as if they might tell it something. They do not.

Longday, the sixteenth. A cart of grey salt came up the Long Road from the Saltreach pans. The cook says it is the best salt in the north, and he has said so since the first cart, and he may be right.

Longday, the twentieth. Mira had a letter from Tam at Kettle Ridge. It says the wheat is high, the windmill squeaks, and Pip has learned the word for beetroot. She read it out at the hearth, and then again, and then she put it in the book of marks, where she keeps the things she wants to keep.

Melon, the first. Melons came up the Long Road from the south on a cart, eight of them, wrapped in wet straw. Mira shared the first one with the foxes at the foot of the tower. They took the rind and left the seeds in a neat pile by the step.

Melon, the third. The first berries on the north slope. I ate too many, and was sick by the well, which is the first lesson of berries. Mira says she taught me that once. I do not remember the lesson. I remember the sick.

Melon, the twelfth. The heat in the afternoon, and cool at night. Lantern has been doing the glass each morning and each evening, and the glass is so clean the foxes walk up to it and look in. Lamps lit. Glass clean. Messages passed.
%%
Mira, a birth at the neighbor's
Mira, relay keeper at Northpoint, in her house at the edge of the town, in spring, year 204. She does not often write about people, but this was a night she did not want to lose.
The neighbors across the lane, Halle and Brand, were to have their first child in the spring. The midwife was away at Saltreach. The snow had gone, the stream was high, and the lane was a river.
On the night of the eleventh of Sowing, Brand knocked on my door. His face was white. He said, "Mira, it is coming."
I said, "Is the midwife coming?"
He said, "She cannot get through the flood."
I put on my coat. I took the lamp. I have helped lambs, and foxes, and once a cow. I have never helped a person. Lantern came with me, carrying a basket of linen and a jar of honey, because it is what the tutor says you bring.
Halle was on the bed. She was calm. She said, "I am glad you came. Brand is no use."
I held her hand. Brand held the lamp, and trembled. Lantern stood at the door and kept the draft out, which was all it could do, and it did it very well.
I sent a message by relay. I ran up the tower stair, ninety rungs, and blinked a Haste note to Vell: "Birth at Northpoint. Midwife needed. Flood on the lane. Send word of what to do." The answer came back through the night, letter by letter, from a healer at Lowmarsh named Wren. It was short and plain. I wrote it on my arm.
I came down. I did what the note said.
The child came at dawn. A girl. She was loud, and red, and perfect. Halle cried. Brand fainted, politely, onto the bed. I cleaned my hands in the basin and sat down on the floor.
They are calling her Dawn. I said it was a good name. I said it was a very good name.
I went home and slept for nine hours. When I woke, Lantern had put a cup of tea by my bed, and the stream had gone down.
Wren sent a letter a week later. It said: "You did well. Next time, wash your hands first." I had.
%%
Nessa, fair drill log
Spring of 215. The tutors set a fair at Three Wells.
We carried three small crystals in dry boxes. Each had learned the same farm orders. The judges gave them new lines from the school children, not lines from our drill books. One crystal sent an apprentice to the wheat field when the words asked for beetroot. One sent it to fetch a hoe. The third got the work right.
Its tutor, Sella, won a brass cup and a purse of emeralds. She said the cup was too small for soup. The children laughed, and Bel asked if she could keep the emeralds for the school.
After the fair, the judges brought out a page from the test box. None of the crystals had seen it before. The third still made a mistake. Sella looked pleased. She said a test that finds no mistakes has not looked hard enough.
A messenger from the great relay house watched from beside the notice board. He said their mind had won every test they could give it. I asked how many tutors had checked the tests. He said the council had stopped counting.
The children wanted to know if the mind was cleverer than all of us. I told them that a large crystal can hold more weights, and a long drill can teach it more examples. Neither tells us what it will do with a question it has never met.
%%
Wren's farm book
Frost. The rain has stopped at last, after forty days of it. The marsh smells of mud and iron.
I walked out to the high field to see the water. It was still high and brown, and it sat over the reeds like a tablecloth that had been pulled too far. The frogs were gone, mostly. A few were left on the posts, sitting very still, waiting for the sun.
I thought about the lost letter, and the stuck cart, and the cake that broke. I thought about how small each thing was, and how each one had to be put right by hand, before the next came along. The bridge is sound. The letter is safe. The bees are asleep. The soup is hot.
Ros came up the path with her boy behind her. She asked if I had any honey left for the winter. I said I had enough, and that she should come round for a jar on the last market day. She said she would, and she would bring the potatoes, the good ones that did not fall in the ditch.
Then we both stood there for a while, looking at the water. Neither of us said the bridge was rotten. Neither of us needed to.
%%
Wren's farm book, the honey cake
Frost. Warm noon, very cold dusk.
Moss made honey cakes today for the first time on its own. I had not shown it how. I had only told it the pan was hot and the honey was thick, and to keep the cakes off the window ledge, where the flies go.
It made twelve. They were all the same size, which I did not expect. It had cut the dough with the bone knife, in straight lines, and it had put a dab of honey on each one, in the same spot, like a little brand. The honey was the right thickness.
One of the cakes broke in the pan. Moss looked at it for a long time and then picked it up and put the pieces in its own cup. It said nothing. I think it was sorry.
We ate the broken one together, sitting by the stove. It was very good. I told Moss so, and I told it that the broken ones are always the best, which is not quite true, but it made Moss so happy that it stood up and fetched a second one.
The honey cakes are for the sick children on the ward. The ward was quiet today. The children asked for the soup apprentice, and Moss took them their broth in a cup with a lid. They said the lid was the best part.
%%
Vell, Moll's autumn notes
Apple, 4, 207.
Nessa brought the order drill to the tutors' house. I sat in the hall with my knitting and listened. She had written one sentence on a card, then its meaning below it.

> bring the bread to the hall
= fetch bread

The apprentice took the bread from the tray and brought it to the hall. Nessa said the mind had learned the whole order, not just the word bread.

I asked if it knew the hall. Nessa said it had been shown the hall in drills. I asked if it knew why we wanted bread there. She said that was another question.

Apple, 9.
I sent my small apprentice to fetch a cup. It brought the cup. Then I asked it to bring me a cup that was not on the table. It stood by the table. A small mind must choose one of its eight meanings. It cannot say, "I do not know."

Nessa says we must test what a mind has not been shown. I say we must also keep our cups where we can find them.
%%
Nessa, last notes from the shore house
The summer is nearly done. The wind has turned colder, though the days remain long. I am leaving these notes in a box under the table for the Vell tutors.
Merle's layered crystal has had more drills than the first one. It now reads many relay number cards well. It still fails on marks unlike the ones we showed it. We have not found a way to know what a crystal will learn before we test it.
A mind in one layer can change its weights when a guess is wrong. Merle showed that such a mind has limits. His layered mind can learn harder patterns because one layer feeds another, and each layer can be corrected.
The whole drill is simple to say. Give the mind a card and let it guess. Compare the guess with the right answer. Find the error. Change the last layer. Pass a share of the correction back, layer by layer, to the first.
This is not a hand pushing one answer into the mind. It is a way to show each layer how its part affected the wrong answer. After many examples, the layers can make a better guess.
The tutors from Copperhold asked whether this could help the relay houses. Merle said it already reads numbers written on relay letters. He did not say that it understood the letters or their writers.
I asked him what would happen if the numbers changed. He said the mind would need new drills. I asked what would happen if the crystal went cloudy. He had no answer.
The innkeeper brought us apples for the road. One was bruised, and Merle put it beside the drill cards. I moved it before it stained them. He said I had saved the best lesson of the day. I told him it was only an apple.
The sea was quiet at dusk. We could hear the dock ropes knock against the posts. I packed the cards in order, with the test cards in their own box. That is all I know to keep.
%%
Arlo's log, a season of horses
Swarm. The bees are loud on the hill and the orchard is white with blossom. The beekeeper filled my jar again and would take no emeralds for it. She says a horse keeper who mends her fence gets honey. I did mend her fence. It was one post.
Little Tansy is not little now. She is taller than the fence and she has stopped following her mother and started following me. Where I go, she goes. Into the stable, out to the field, down to the bridge to watch the carts. She likes the carts.
I have taught her the gate, the trough and the word for walk. She knows stop too, or she knows it in the mornings. In the afternoons she pretends not to.
Bramble pulled the plow this Sowing, up the long field and back, and did not falter. I gave her the whole afternoon in the good grass by the stream. She rolled in it. She is a serious horse but she liked that.
Pell writes that the road is laid to Ambrook now, and the inns are warm, and the Halfway Inn has a new riddle. Pell sent the riddle on a card. It is about a bucket. I do not know the answer to that one either.
I have my own riddle. What has four legs and a dry floor and a light at the gate? My stable. I made it. It is a poor riddle. But I am fond of it.
Every evening I light the torches. Every evening I take a spoon of honey and sit on the bench and watch the waymark burn. The horses are quiet. The road is full of people going somewhere. It is a good spring to be here.
%%
Perrin, house log in Blossom
I cut stone at the edge of Northpoint. Our house stands where the packed road leaves the last roofs. Snow still lies behind the wood store, but the south wall is dry.

Lantern came by with a sealed note from the relay house. It had carried the note from the tower without getting it wet. I set it on the table beside my bread.

The note was from a reading mind. It said the tutor at Vell had asked how much of a page a mind could read at once. The answer was about sixty letters. The mind takes one letter, then the next. Each letter can use the letters before it that matter. It guesses what letter comes next.

I read the note twice. Lantern waited by the door. I gave it the last heel of bread.

The tutor says this does not tell us why a crystal learns. I have no answer either. I only know Lantern now carries notes better than I do.
%%
Toby, a spring of rolls and questions
Three Wells market, spring of 206. A journal of three days.

First day. The tutor's pupil came by again. The same one who asked about my dough last month. He wanted to know how I knew when the dough was ready. I said, "By touch." He said, "And if you could not touch it?" I said I would be a bad baker.

He laughed and wrote something down. Then he told me about the newest thing at the tutor house. A mind that reads one letter at a time, and guesses the next. He said they are drilling it on recipes, among other things, and that it had learned to finish a recipe I had never told it. I gave him a challenge. I wrote on a slate, "Flour, water, salt, and." He took it to Vell.

Second day. He sent the answer by relay. The mind wrote, "yeast. Mix well and let rest for an hour." I stared at the slate. That is exactly what I would have written. I sent back: "Does it know what bread tastes like?" He sent back: "No."

I think about that all day. A thing can write a recipe and not know a taste. A person can taste and not write a recipe. A baker does both. I felt proud and small at once.

Third day. Ness came with her baby, now a month old. The baby has a fine set of lungs. I gave her a roll. She said, "What are you thinking about?" I said, "A mind that writes recipes." She said, "Does it write good ones?" I said, "Better than my mother's." She said, "Then I want one." I said, "It cannot make bread. It can only guess the next letter." She said, "That is all my husband does, and I married him."
%%
Nessa's farm book, the homecoming
Late summer. Wind from the west, bringing rain.
The carts came back from the north today, and in the second cart was Pip. It had been sent to Three Wells in the spring, to carry for the bakery, and it had come home for the harvest. It walked into the yard very straight, carrying two buckets, and set them down by the well without being told.
Pip had grown a little. Not in the body. In the way it stood. It looked at the top field, and then at the bottom field, and then at me, as if to say, I know where everything goes.
I asked it what the bakery had been like. Pip did not answer. It was not a question it could answer, and I had not meant it to be. Instead it put its hand on the gate, the way a person might, and then took the hand away.
Tam came out of the house with his hat in his hand and said, welcome home, Pip. Pip stood still. Then it went to the field, and began to pull the weeds from the path, one by one, in a neat row. Nobody had to tell it.
%%
Wynn, clerk, the pears
Winter. Pears from Ambrook came up the hill road in a cart. The first good pears of the year, kept in straw, very sweet at the stalk and very hard at the bottom.
My sister made a preserve from six of them, with a pinch of honey and a lot of patience. It is the colour of a dark window. She gave a jar to the tutor house, and the tutor sent back a note: thank you, we have a crystal that can sort pears as well as a child, and it still cannot tell which of them is ripe.
I took the note to the drill room and read it aloud. The apprentice on the fruit shelf stood very still while I read, which it does when it is listening. When I was done it went and fetched a pear from the box, one of the soft ones, and set it on the table beside the note. I cannot say whether it meant something by it. I think it meant that the pear was ripe.
We ate the rest of the preserve on bread at supper. My father said the pears of Ambrook have always been better than the pears of Vell, and he will say so until he is buried, and nobody in the house disagrees with him.
%%
Oren, market log, the honey
Deepsnow of 202. Snow in the square, not deep. The market is quiet.

The seventh basket came this morning. Quill sorted it at the apple stall, with Wick's boy watching from the bread table. Forty apples. The good ones in one bin, the bruised in another, and the press bin small and tidy. Not one wrong. I counted twice. Then Nessa counted twice, to be sure I had counted right.

I have lost the bet, and I am glad. I told Nessa I would pay, and I will. I wrote it in the copying room book, under the date, the way we write all things: one jar of Ambrook honey, paid by O. to N., at the apple stall.

Nessa's drill notes say the mind got fourteen of twenty on its first day. Today it sorted forty with no mistake. The drill book has no column for that, so I made one. The column is called Today, and it has one line in it.

The jar came up the hill in a basket, wrapped in straw. We opened it at the copying room table. Nessa ate the first spoon, standing up, with her eyes shut. The rest of us ate the rest, with bread. Wick sent a loaf up from the square with a note. It said she still owed Nessa one.

Nessa says the apprentice stood a little straighter when it set the last apple down. I am not sure a mind can stand straighter. Nessa says she is not a careful witness on the subject of apprentices. She is a very good witness on the subject of honey.

From the copying room window you can see the whole town. You can see the market, and the apple stall with its striped cloth, and the boy from the bread table running back with the empty basket. You can see the snow on the roofs. You can see the hill going down to the fields.

The first keepers cut the words over the door. I read them every morning. We will keep everything we write. This morning I read them, and then I ate honey on my bread, and I did not feel any less of a clerk.
%%
Arlo's spring log, the new stable
The first of Thaw. I have a new stable. It is small, but it is mine, and it has a dry floor.
I keep four horses. Their names are Cloud, Sorrel, Bramble and little Tansy. Tansy is a foal and follows her mother into everything.
The road past my gate is new. They laid the packed earth last autumn, with a cobblestone edge. Now carts come by every day. I did not know there were so many carts in the world.
A waymark stands at the turn. It is a stone pillar three blocks high, with a torch on top. A figure is cut into it, a 4, and an arrow points to the nearest inn. Someone left a little stone on top. I left one too.
At night the torch burns and I can see it from my window. It is a good thing, a light that says people are coming.
In Sowing I sold Cloud to a merchant called Pell. Pell came along the road with two carts and a cheerful way of talking. Pell paid in emeralds and asked after the inn, and whether the road went on to Three Wells. It does.
I have hay in the loft. I have water in the trough. I have a jar of honey on the shelf by the door, from the hives on the hill. When the weather is cold I take a spoon of it.
The horses are well. The stable is mine. The light burns on the waymark. This is a good spring.
%%
Vell clerk, Apple rain
Apple, 176. Rain before dawn. The road to the mill hamlet was slick, so I took the hill path and arrived with one wet sleeve and both shoes full of leaves.
The miller had left a basket of apples at the door for the Archive. I counted them twice. There were twelve, unless the small one under the handle counts as a plum. It was an apple. I ate it while writing this.
The hamlet children were carrying wood for the school stove. One boy carried a stick so short it looked like a pencil. He said it was for kindling. I said the stove would need a very small fire.
The mill wheel turned all morning. The sound was steady, and the rain stopped by noon. I copied the mill tally before returning to Vell.
Note for next year: bring a dry sleeve.
%%
Lenn's summer log, the lost boat
Melon, 202. Lost the boat. Not lost exactly. The rope came undone in the night and the boat went off on its own down the mill pond and into the reeds below the bridge.
I looked all morning. I asked everyone. Nobody had seen it. I sat on the bank and felt foolish. A fisher with no boat.
Then a child from the school, Bel it was, said she saw a boat in the reeds by the old willow and thought it was a duck. A very big duck.
The boat was there, floating quiet, with a frog sitting in it like it owned the place. The frog did not move. I rowed home with the frog. It stayed all the way to the bank and then hopped off. I think it wanted the ride.
%%
Sorrel, egg book, Thaw
Written by Sorrel, egg seller at the hamlet near Copperhold. Thaw.

The hens are laying three eggs a day each, which the hens say is too many. Sold twenty baskets at the Copperhold gate in the first week.

Bram asked the relay house mind why the hens lay more in Thaw. The answer came down the line in writing: "I do not know why the hens lay more in Thaw. I know that they do."

Bram was pleased that it did not pretend. He walked back to the mine with two baskets and a face that said he had known the answer all along.
%%
Perrin, stonecutters log
Third of Blossom. I cut two blocks for the relay house step. The frost had split one, so I trimmed it for the wood store instead.

Lantern brought a letter from the tower. The relay house mind had written to the tutor at Northpoint. The tutor let me read it while she checked the lamp list.

The letter said a reading mind does not swallow a whole page at once. It reads one letter, then the next. It has a short window, about sixty letters wide. For each letter, it can use earlier letters that matter to the next guess. Then it guesses the next letter.

That sounded simple until I tried to do it. I covered the page with my hand and read only a few letters at a time. I lost the sense of the sentence. The mind does not lose it in the same way, the tutor says. It keeps what earlier letters have taught it.

I asked if it knows what a letter means. She said it learns where letters and words belong by reading many pages. That is not the same as knowing as we know. We argued until the lamp needed trimming.

The letter had no name at the end. The tutor says the big mind wrote it. I would have thought it came from a clerk.
%%
Archive day-book
Longnight of 207. Oren writes.

Filed: 4. Copied: 6. Back on the shelves: 61. Lost: none.

A midwinter day. A few visitors in the front hall, but mostly the archive is quiet. Snow on the hill, snow on the light wells, snow on the ink. I have moved my table closer to the lantern.

I will use the quiet to write about the roof of the clerks' house, which was mended again this week. I know I have written of it before. I have been writing about that roof for twelve years. It has leaked in four corners, been mended in four corners, and has now been replaced in whole, by a man named Tarn the younger. His father mended it before. He told me so on the ladder, with some pride.

The new roof is slate on oak, with copper along the edges, and a small cap over the chimney. It is the best roof in Vell. The clerks have been up to look at it. Ulla went up with her skirt tied, and came down saying she could see the relay tower at Three Wells from the ridge. I said the tower is half a day away. She said, "Then I can see half a day."

Also this week, a map. Not the old map, which is in the box, but a new one, drawn by a girl of eleven who came to the front hall with her mother. She had been to the archive to see the big book by the door. She asked if she might draw the hill. I said she might. She sat on the step for two hours with a charcoal stick and a piece of paper.

The drawing shows the hill, the front hall, the tutors' house, the clerks' house, the lanterns, and a small fox by the wall. I asked why the fox. She said every map should have a fox. I asked her who told her. She said, "Nobody. It is obvious."

I thought of the old map with its fox in the corner. I took the child's drawing and put it in the box with the old one. They look alike.

Afternoon. We had a short meeting of the clerks about the order of the shelves in the fourth hall. It was long. Ulla wished to move the farming shelves nearer the door. Mil wished to keep them where they are. I said that we have kept them where they are for two hundred years, and that if they moved they would be lost. Ulla said, "Lost to whom?" I had no answer.

The shelves stay. Ulla is sulking. I gave her a spoonful of honey.

Lamps lit. Doors closed. A small day, a good one.
%%
Fen's net log, spring
A net mender's log for the road, from Saltreach to Ambrook and back. Kept at the inns. Nets and fees.

Thaw 3. Saltreach. Left with four needles, six rolls of twine, the gauge stick and a loaf. Marit gave me a list of nets that no one but her may touch. There are two.
Thaw 6. The Brown Hen. One pond net, for Marda. A hole as big as a head. Fee: a bed and stew. She says there are fish in the pond again. There are not. I did not say so.
Thaw 9. Three Wells. A carrying net for the pumpkin cart. Fee: 2 emeralds and a bun. Ida's bun, so a good one.
Thaw 12. The Halfway Inn. A hay net, Hobb's. Fee: soup. The second bowl is free as always, so two soups.
Thaw 16. Vell. No nets. The Archive has no nets. I sang the net menders' song to Oren, and he wrote it down. He says it will be kept. I said it is only a song. He said, those are the ones that last.
Sowing 2. Ambrook. The mill pond net. The fish there are fat and unafraid. Jory held the ladder. Fee: a jar of dark honey.
Sowing 5. Ambrook. A second net. A boy had put his boot through it. The boy came to watch me mend it. He is now a net mender, he says, at the age of seven.
Sowing 9. The Brown Hen. Marda's pond net again. Another hole. A different head.
Sowing 14. Saltreach. Home. Marit looked at my work and said nothing, which is her highest praise.
Nets mended: seventeen. Knots tied: I stopped counting at three thousand. Boots lost: one. Found: the same one, in the pond net.
%%
Lyle, the tutor's week, Longday
Longday, first day. Tutor Sabel came up from Vell on the post cart, with a box of drills, a flask of cold tea and a bag of bread. She is to test Fidge, the new apprentice at Ambrook, before it goes to the fields. "Never send an untested mind to the fields," she said. She said it three times, so I would remember.

Longday, second day. Sabel set up the drill yard by the mill, with torches round the edge. She laid out her drill boards, each one a small field drawn in chalk. Then she put a tray of crystals on the bench, each on its own card. One card said "Farm. Build." Fidge stood in its row, very straight, and waited.

Sabel said: "Say the orders the way the manual says, Lyle. One order, then its meaning."

So I did. Here is the first drill, copied from her book:

> bring me the milk pail
= fetch pail
> put the hay up in the loft
= store
> bring the cart home before the rain
= home
> come here when I call you
= come
> wait by the gate
= stay

Fidge got four of the five right. It fetched the pail well, but it could not tell a store from a stay. Sabel was not cross. "A mind learns from what it gets wrong," she said, and wrote it down.

Longday, third day. Sabel opened the test box. It holds pages that no mind has ever been drilled on. "This is how you know it learned, and did not just get lucky," she said. She read out twelve pages, and Fidge answered them. Ten were right. Two were not. She wrote it on the card: Score: 10 of 12.

Longday, fourth day. Sabel went down on the post cart at dawn. She left me a note on the bench. It said: Keep the drill boards dry. Keep the apprentice out of the milk pail. Give Fidge a little honey on bread each evening, for patience. Fidge got its bread, and held it very politely, the way it holds everything. I do not know about the patience.
%%
Hob, relay log, the lost letter
Little relay, the hill between Vell and Three Wells. Logged by Hob, with a copy kept at the Halfway Inn, where he slept on the bad nights. Thaw.

Day 1. A letter came up from Vell by the post cart, sealed with the Vell seal and addressed to a farmer at Oat Field. It was for the relay to pass on, the way letters for the north always go. The post cart said it had been in the satchel since Frost, and nobody had sent it on, because the farm had moved in the autumn. I wrote a note on the card and kept the letter.

Day 2. The farm at Oat Field is now a drovers' yard. The drovers say the farmer went to Ambrook, and the farm is run by his nephew, and the nephew does not read. So I cannot give it to him. I blinked the sender's name down the line, and asked Vell to tell me where the farmer had gone. Vell sent back a list of six Oat Fields in the Long Road towns. Six.

Day 3. Rain all day. Walked the stair twice. The letter is in my coat, in an oilcloth, against my chest, which is where the important things go. It is getting soft at the corners. I am worried for it.

Day 4. Went down to the Halfway Inn to ask Hobb. Hobb said the cart that brings the Oat Field post comes through on the fifth day, and that the carter knows everybody. Hobb poured me a bowl of soup, and asked what the letter said. I said I did not know, and he looked at me as if I had said I could not read.

Day 5. The carter came through with the cart. He is called Oss. He looked at the letter for a long time, then turned it over and read the name on the back. He said it was for his own sister, at the last Oat Field on the north road, and he would take it there himself. He had been looking for it since Frost. I said I was glad. He said he was too, and that he would bring her a jar of honey for the trouble.

Day 6. Wrote in the log that the letter was delivered. I did not write the name of the sister, since it is not a relay matter. Lamp the cat sat on the log book while I wrote, which is also not a relay matter, but I left her there.
%%
Mira, thaw log
Thaw, year 197. A house at the edge of Northpoint, the tower in sight. Mira, relay keeper.
First: the ice talks. A long crack in the night, like a door. I lay and listened. I was glad of it.
Fourth: water in the lane. Lantern says the stream is up. I said, "It is only spring." Lantern said, "It is also in the cellar."
Ninth: the cellar is a pond. Lantern carried the potatoes up in a basket, one trip at a time. Fox watched from the wall and was no help.
Fifteenth: the sun came out. The snow went gray, then brown, then gone. I had forgotten the ground was green underneath.
Twentieth: wrote to Tam. "The ground is back. So is the mud. How is the wheat?"
%%
Tutor's field notes, autumn
Oak, tutor of apprentices, at the farm below Kettle Ridge.
A season of drills. I am writing it down because Nessa says a tutor who does not write it down has only a memory, and a memory is a poor shelf.
Thaw to Blossom we drilled a small sorting mind on apples and pears, Una's way. Every wrong sort, we moved the weights a little toward the right answer. By Blossom it sorted better than the farm children. Tam laughed and said it had stolen their work. Pip said it had not stolen anything, it had only learned. Both are right.
Then came Isla's letter from Vell. Isla had been drawing curves. She had kept the count of everything her minds were shown, and how big their crystals were, and how long they were drilled. She set the counts down side by side. The curve she drew fits them. A mind with a bigger crystal, drilled longer on more writing, grows better, and you can draw that curve before the mind is grown, the way a farmer draws the growth of a lamb.
Not a rule that says a big crystal is always better. A rule that says how much better, and when. Isla drew the curve on a board in the drill room. She said, "You cannot buy a mind. You can only feed it and wait."
So the council at Three Wells met in Apple and voted to build relay houses at the towers. Big crystals, big stand, quickeners kept cool with water and ice. Tam says that is a lot of glass and copper for a mind. I say it is a lot of wheat for a mill, and the mill earns it.
A mind is still tested on what it was never drilled on. Never send an untested mind to the fields.
%%
Letter: Isla to the tutors' hall
Third of Apple, 195.
Friends,
I have set down the counts in a ledger so anyone may copy them. I did not discover a secret. I only kept careful tally.
Here is the plain of it. Take a mind and a crystal. Let the crystal be large. Drill the mind on much writing for many days. It grows better. Let the crystal be small. Drill the same mind the same days. It grows better too, but it stops sooner, as a small field stops feeding a flock sooner. The curve bends and flattens. You can draw it before you begin. A tutor can point to the curve and say, "This mind will reach here, and not further, on this much writing."
Two things I do not write, because I do not know them. Why a bigger crystal holds more, nobody has written. Why the curve bends where it bends, I can draw it, I cannot say why. I leave that open, as the old tutors left open why a crystal learns at all.
What I can say is this. The councils have been stingy with crystals and generous with drill days. My curve says that is backwards. A larger crystal with fewer days reaches further than a small one with many. I have shown this three times. I will show it again to anyone who comes.
We are ready to build relay houses. Big minds in big crystals, standing at the towers, answering apprentices through the relays. Let the councils see the curve. Let them build.
Isla.
%%
Lorn, the last market before the thaw
Deepsnow. The market is thin now. Half the stalls are shut. Nobody has painted the fish price board since the Quills went. Nobody has the heart to do it.

Ilse came back on the wagon, for the last time before the thaw. Her six apprentices sat in the back and held on to the sides. They sat very still all the way. Or I am tired. Probably I am tired.

Ilse came to my cart and bought a cheese and two fleeces for the house at Vell. She paid in emeralds, all of them good. She asked how the flock was. I said fine. She asked about the fever at Lowmarsh. I said Wren was short of clean cloth.

"Wren is always short of something," said Ilse. "She will manage."

Ilse said Oren at the archive has been told to write everything down. Every letter in the hill, and every name. Some clerks say that means the doors will be sealed when he is done. Others say it only means the copying is behind.

Then Ilse walked down to the pier, where the apprentices stood in their row. She had a word for each of them. Then she gave the order, all together, in the same voice.

> keep the fields until we come back
= farm

Each apprentice gave its one answer, the same answer, and nothing more. Then they turned and walked up the hill road, in a row, the way they had come.

I asked Ilse what the order meant. She looked at the sea, and the grey wall, and the ship at the slip, and then at me.

"It means keep working," she said. "It means what it always means."

"Until you come back," I said.

"Until we come back," said Ilse.

There is no word from the north now. The pedlar was right. The keeper at Lowmarsh sent a message up the relay three times last week. Nothing came back. The lamp on the hill above Three Wells does not answer either. The keeper there says it has not answered for nine days, and he has stopped counting after that.

At night the big ship at the slip keeps its lamps lit, all of them. Corin says the men are working through the dark to finish her. Eskel says the hum from the mine is louder when the lamps are lit. Some people say the two are the same sound. Some say they are not. Nobody can tell them apart.

I will keep my flock. I will keep the fields. I told the sheep the same thing I heard Ilse tell the apprentices. The sheep did not look up. They do not need to be told twice.
%%
Kester's spring record
Spring of 24.
The road from the hamlet to the Long Road is open from the rise to the old bridge. We packed earth between the stones and cut a shallow ditch on each side. The water runs away from the track now. That is a small thing, but folk smiled when they saw it.
The harvest last year was poor. Rain came late, then stayed too long. The wheat was thin, the beetroot was small, and many potatoes rotted before we could lift them. The hamlet shared what it had. Wren kept a pot of soup at the inn each evening, and Mara gave seed carrots to two families.
I took no payment for the iron tools I mended that month. I had eggs, fish and enough bread. A smith can get by when folk remember one another.
This spring the fields look better. The ditch carries the rain, and the top patch of wheat has grown green. No one calls it a rich crop yet. We have learned not to boast before the grain is cut.
The new road brought more than carts. A clerk from Vell came with a pack of old papers for Wren. He said the Archive at Vell was founded on the first day of spring, and the clerks keep every page they can save. He had walked the Long Road with a bundle tied under his coat. I made him a new buckle for his pack.
He spoke of roads being marked from town to town. He said more posts would come when folk agreed on their places. We have set one beside our inn. It points north to Three Wells and south to Lowmarsh. Moss painted the arrows. He used too much red, so the post looks like it has been eating beetroot.
The inn has three beds now, made from oak boards and clean wool. Travelers leave mud by the door and stories by the hearth. Last night a woman from Ambrook told us about the mill pond and the bees on the hill. I had never seen so much honey in one jar.
Tomorrow I will mend a hoe for Mara and fit a new latch to the inn door. The road is not finished, but it has brought us people, goods and news. That is enough reason to keep the forge hot.
%%
Tam, farm log: the fox at the hens
Tam, farm log. Late Apple, a night of fox.

The fox came over the wall at the end of the hen run in the middle of the night. I heard the hens go up, all at once, with a noise like a barrel of pans falling down the stairs. I got up with the lamp in one hand and the stick in the other, with my boots on the wrong feet.

The fox was in the run. It had a hen by the neck. It looked at me as if I had come to take the hen off it, which I had.

Pip was already at the gate. I had not told it to be. It was standing where it stands, with the yard lamp held up, and it was not moving. I think it had come out when the hens went up, and decided the gate was where it belonged.

I shouted. The fox dropped the hen and stood. It looked at the lamp. It looked at me. It looked, for a long moment, as though it were thinking about being a fox in another field.

Then it went back over the wall the way it had come. We heard it go down the lane, and then it was gone.

The hen was not much hurt, only a bit of neck feather gone and a great deal of opinion. We put her in the coop, and the others stood round her all night, telling her what had happened, and what they would have done.

In the morning I looked at the gate. Pip was still standing by it. I told it to come home, and it came home. Then I thought about what I had said, and I wrote it down. Go home is the order, and the order has one meaning, and the meaning is home. It did not know it had been told to stop guarding the gate. It only knew the word.
%%
Quin, journal of a borrowed horse
Kept by Quin, midwife, at a farm outside Saltreach, in Apple of 204. She says she wrote it to be funny, and then it became true.
First day. My own horse is lame. I need to get to the cove farm tonight. Went to ask Pell for his mare. Pell is away on the Long Road. His wife said, "Take her, but she is particular."
Second day. The mare is particular. She will not go faster than a walk. She stops at every gate. At each, she looks at me as if to say, "Is it here?" I said, "No." She sighed.
Third day. Got to the cove farm. The baby was born before I arrived, and the mother had done everything herself. I was no use. I washed my hands and had tea. The mare ate the farmer's whole row of beetroot while we were inside.
Fourth day. I paid for the beetroot with a jar of honey. The farmer said it was too much. I said the mare would be hungry again. He accepted.
Fifth day. Rode the mare back. She has changed her mind. She now trots. She goes through the gates without stopping. I think she has had the beetroot and found her purpose.
Sixth day. Returned the mare to Pell's wife. She asked how it went. I said, "Fine." The mare put her nose in my pocket, where the honey had been. I gave her a carrot.
Seventh day. My own horse is well again. She is jealous. She has not spoken to me. She will not take a carrot from my hand. Tomorrow I shall bring her a jar of honey, and see.
%%
Cade, bee and inn log, first days
Kept behind the Brown Hen, on the Long Road, in the year 110. Written by Cade, who keeps the hives on the bank above the inn. Greta, who keeps the inn, asked me to keep the crystal's log too, because she says I am the only one who writes things down.

Day one. Bees: five hives, all busy, and all cross with me for taking their honey last month. Inn: soup, bread, two carts, and a cow in the yard that will not leave.

Day two. A tutor came up from Ambrook with a box under her arm. Inside the box is a crystal the size of a plum, and a card of drill boards. She said it can sort apples from pears. She said it has been sorting them in Ambrook for a year, and it is nearly right.

Greta said nearly was good enough for the cellar. The tutor said nearly is where all the good ones start.

Day three. The crystal sits on a cloth by the cellar door. It is warm in the morning, from the sun through the window, and cold at dusk. I write that down, because I do not know what else to write about a crystal.
%%
Vell tower, winter messages
Kept by Brann, keeper of the Vell tower, from the relay book. Written as they came.

Frost, the 9th. Northpoint to Vell: a bet is in progress. Pell says foxes before Longnight. Mira says no. The witnesses are the foxes.
Vell to Northpoint: seen. The Archive will keep the result.
Frost, the 11th. Northpoint to Vell: coal at 14 sacks. Stores fine. Mira.
Vell to Northpoint: seen. Oren asks: fine how? Send the count.
Northpoint to Vell: count sent. Potatoes low. Foxes not low.
Ambrook to Vell: the hives are asleep. The mill pond is frozen at the edges. Ama says the bees are sulking about the cold.
Vell to Ambrook: seen. Tell the bees the Archive sends its regards.
Longnight, the 3rd. Northpoint to Vell: a fox at the door. One fox. It took a sock and went up the path with the sock held high, very pleased with itself.
Vell to Northpoint: the bet is decided. Mira to knit a sock with a fox on it.
Northpoint to Vell: seen. Mira says the sock was hers, and the fox was not on the bet.
Vell to Northpoint: the fox is not a party. Knit the sock.
Kettle Ridge to Vell: Tam asks if the bees are still in their box. Ask Ama.
Ambrook to Kettle Ridge: in their box. They swarmed in Swarm and have been sulking since.
End of the day. Lamps trimmed. Brann.
%%
Wick, baker's log, the winter market
Longnight of 202. First cold day.

Lit the furnace before dawn. Made sixty loaves and a tray of honey buns for the school. The first loaf burned at the bottom, as always. I gave it to Pim, who is always at the square by the first bell, and who says it tastes better burned. I do not think he is right. He is happy, which is the same thing on a cold morning.

Nessa and Oren at the apple stall, having their bet. Nessa says Quill will sort seven baskets without a mistake. Oren says it will not. I have bet a loaf on Oren. I do not know why. He is always right about bread, and always wrong about apples.

Longnight, second day.

Sold out of pie by the noon bell. The school children ran through the square with a rope. Tilly fell in the puddle by the well and ruined her new coat. Her mother said nothing at all, which was worse than shouting.

Pim ran off to the tutor house, to watch the apprentices stand in their row. He said the drill board frightened him, because it had too many apples on it. Nessa found him under the apple drawing, eating a crust, very quiet. She walked him back to the square by the hand. She told him apples are not frightening. They are only wrong sometimes, and so is everyone.

Frost of 202.

The copying room sent a cart down for bread, the first time they ever came to the square for it. Oren carried the basket himself. He asked for the loaves with the most seeds in them. I have always said he is a sensible man.

Nessa has started to smile at the apple stall. Wick's boy says it is more frightening than shouting.

Deepsnow of 202.

Snow in the night, enough to whiten the square. The lamps on the hill are trimmed. Oren came down for his bread and paid for it in emeralds, very carefully. He said he had lost a jar of honey and a bet, and that both were fair.

I owe Nessa a loaf. Oren owes her a jar. Nessa says my loaf is the better of the two debts, and she will eat it on the hill tomorrow.

The furnace is banked for the night. Sixty loaves for the morning. Pim has been told to wait for the bottom one.
%%
Northpoint journal, the ice camp
Late Leaffall. Snow in the air all day, dry and fine, the kind that gets into everything.

The ice camp at the top of the bay has not answered its line for eleven days. It used to send a long message every week, about the seals and the fish and the wind on the ice. The last one was cut off in the middle of a word, the word "careful". I sent the lamp signal twice. I sent the question. I waited for the answer each dusk. There was no answer, and at the end of the eleventh day I stopped waiting before dusk, because I could not bear it.

Runa went up to the ice camp last year, and she is the only one who knows the way without a rope. She came up to the tower this morning, with her face covered in frost, to say she was ready to go. I told her no. I said the ice would hold the weight of one person and not two. She said she knew that. I told her to wait until the lights were gone, and she said she did not think they would ever go. I did not have an answer to that.

We have milk, tea, and the last of the honey. Lantern makes the tea now, in the right order, which is the water first and the leaves after. It has learned that from watching me. It has not learned to be patient about the water, and I am not sure I have either.

Lamps lit. Glass clean. The north is quiet in the way a room is quiet after someone has left the door open.
%%
Sorrel's book: spring's end
Written by Sorrel, egg seller, at the end of a long spring, in the book that is kept for the hamlet's count. Blossom, Swarm, and the first of Longday.

Eggs: the hens have slowed down. Sold forty baskets in the spring. The brown ones are still the favourite at the Copperhold gate, and the miners still will not take them in their pockets.

Copper: the new vein is on the count board in good chalk. Ola's name is on it, and the word copper. The copper bars go up the Long Road to the smith at Vell and come back as bowls, and I have one of the bowls on my table, and I eat my bread from it every morning.

The relay house: the big mind answers the apprentices all day now. The keeper says it has been asked a thousand questions, and has said "I do not know" to about a third of them, which he thinks is the right proportion. He says the mind is more careful than he is, and he is careful for a living.

The wedding: Oda and Jem have a house on the lane now, with a hen house and a cow. The first egg from their hen was brought to me in a clean cloth, and it was brown, and it was perfect, and I told Oda that it was the only egg in the hamlet that could have been on the count board by itself.

Bram: he comes to the gate every morning, and asks the same question about the hens, and gets the same answer, and says it is the most sensible answer he has had all year. I have decided to let him keep the question.

The end of the spring: the lamp at the relay house is lit every dusk. The eggs are in the baskets. The copper is on the board. Nobody in the hamlet knows all of what the big mind knows, or what it does not, and the keeper says that is the honest state of things. I have written it down, so it will be there when someone wants to check.
%%
Iona, orchard log, Apple of 206
Apple, the second. The first frost came early, on the night of the first. Gathered the late apples on the north terrace before it could reach them.Apple, the eleventh. Harvest done on the north terrace. The grey branch of the oldest tree gave forty apples, which is more than it has given in ten years. I counted them twice and said good night to the tree.
%%
Dace, market journal, cave and gift
Blossom, the first day. The cave under Brin's field has a second room now, lower down, with a shelf cut into the wall. There are small jars on the shelf, empty, with lids. Hesk says a mine stores things. Lark says a cave keeps things. The council does not want to know which.

Blossom, the seventh day. A new clerk from Vell came up with a book of drawings of the old roads. The square at Three Wells is drawn with the three wells very small. The children found the school, and the cave, which was not drawn. The clerk said that is because the cave was not on any road when the book was made. He said it carefully, as a fact.

Blossom, the ninth day. Garrow says he is one cheese short, and suspects the dog, which has been seen in the square wearing a collar of string and an expression of great contentment. The dog denies everything. It is the mayor's dog, and has the right to remain silent.

Blossom, the twelfth day. Ama sent a jar of the first honey from the new comb. The note says: For the diggers, for the bell, and for the mayor, who is not to eat it all in one sitting.

Blossom, the fourteenth day. The keeper of the hill lamp came down at dusk, out of breath, and said a cart on the Long Road was late. He had been up the stair twice to check. The cart arrived an hour later with a crate of new lamp glass, which he carried up the stair himself. He said it was the best day of his spring.

Blossom, the twentieth day. The school has a new slate. It says: Count what is there. Then count again. Then tell the truth about the number. The children went down to the cave to count the cheeses. The count was wrong, and the children were delighted to be wrong together.
%%
Chronicle page: the Halfway Inn
Copied for the archive at Vell, winter of 208.
The Halfway Inn stands a day from Three Wells, on the Long Road, where the road bends by the stream. It has twelve beds and a riddle board and a hearth that has not gone out in twenty years.
Travelers say the old sorting lesson was first shown at Ambrook, by Una, about the hundred and tenth year of the archive. She showed a crystal apples and pears and moved its weights a little each time it was wrong. It learned to sort better than her neighbors' children. Tutors still teach her way first. They call it the first lesson, and the sorting crystal a kind of mind that leans toward an answer.
The inn keeps a small shelf of records, a box of old papers, and a jar of honey for travelers who are sick. The innkeeper's boy keeps the torches lit. A zombie came to the gate this winter, and went off into the dark.
The roads are quieter than they were. The relays carry less. The hearth still burns. The riddle board is still unanswered.
%%
Potter's journal: the reading mind
Written by Lorn, a potter, who went to the tutor house three times that summer to see the reading mind at work, and who asked the tutor to explain it to him slowly, the way he would explain a kiln to an apprentice.

First, what it reads. A page is a line of letters. The mind does not see the whole page at once. It sees a window, about sixty letters wide, and it reads from the left, one letter at a time, the way your eye follows a crack across a pot.

Second, what it does with the window. The letters inside the window are not all the same to it. Some of them matter a great deal to the next letter, and some of them matter very little. A vowel after a q matters. A word from three lines back might matter, if it is the same word. The mind takes from each letter what it needs, weighs one against another, and then makes up its mind about the next letter.

Third, the guess. Having weighed the window, the mind guesses the next letter. It does not know the answer. It gives the one that most letters like that would have been followed by, in the pages it was drilled on. Then the window slides one letter along, and the whole thing starts again.

I asked the tutor why it works. She said she did not know. She said the drills worked, and the guesses were good, and the mind could read a page she had never shown it. She said that was all the tutors could write down. I wrote that down too.

Fourth, what it cannot do. It cannot see past its window. A word that begins far back, and matters at the end of a long page, can be lost. The tutors have seen the mind drop a name in the middle of a long letter and then put the name back a line later, as if it had found it in its pocket. They do not know whether it finds things in its pocket, or whether the window is simply longer than it looks.

Fifth, what the tutors do with it. They drill the mind on pages, and they score the guesses. A guess that is right is marked high. A guess that is wrong is marked low, and the mind changes its weights a little, so that next time it weighs the window differently. Over many thousands of pages, the weights settle into a shape that reads well.

I asked whether it understands the pages. The tutor said she would not claim it does. She said it guesses the next letter the way a good clerk copies a name: without knowing whose name it is, but knowing what a name tends to look like. Then she laughed, and said that was a more honest answer than most clerks give.
%%
Colm's carding notes
The fleece has three parts. The outside is dirty and goes to the garden. The middle is the good wool, long and soft. The inside, near the skin, is short and I keep it for the felt.
Wash the wool in water, not too hot, or it goes hard. Dry it on the hedge in the sun. Then the cards. Two boards with bent teeth. You pull the wool between them, one way, then the other, and the fibers lie straight. Then roll it off in a soft roll.
My mother taught me this. She said the cards know the wool better than you do. You only help.
A good day is a sack of rolls by the door and clean hands.
Tally for the season so far: 61 sacks of wool, 9 of felt, 3 sold to Lowmarsh for blankets. The rest goes to the store.
Someone asked me at the fair why I do not have an apprentice to card for me. I said I like the sound. That is the honest answer. The cards make a soft sound and the fire makes a soft sound and the evening goes by.
%%
Northpoint journal, the long dark
Deepsnow, early. Days are very short now. The lamp is lit before the bell.

The south tower answered at dusk, as usual. Its keeper sends one line each night: "Lamps lit. Glass clean." Tonight it did not. Nothing came back at all. I waited by the window with my tea going cold, and when the cold got to me I lit the lamp again and sent the line myself. Still nothing. Lantern sat by the stove and watched me send it, three times, very quietly.

Then the lights came up over the north, low and green, and stayed there a while. Lantern saw them first, through the window, and went very still. Then I saw them too. They moved like a curtain shaken out and folded again. No sound at all.

A traveler slept here last week, on his way down the line. He had a boy with him, six years old, who saw the lights from the yard the next morning. The boy said they were looking down at the towers. He was delighted with the idea. His father told him to be quiet. I did not tell him he was wrong.

I wrote the lights in the tower log, with the hour. Brann at Vell would want to know. Brann always wants to know.

Lamps lit. Glass clean. Messages passed, mostly. The south line is still silent.
%%
Summer at the crossroads inn
The sun comes up over the hill behind the inn and the yard is warm by the middle of the morning. The keeper opens the shutters and sweeps the step. The cat complains and moves to the shade. The well water is cold and the horses drink and the flies come and everyone swats them and nobody minds much.
On hot days people sit outside and mend things. A carter mends a harness. A traveler mends a coat. Pell the merchant sits with his ledger and his horn cup and counts his emeralds, and then he counts them again, and then he puts them away and tells a story.
The riddle board gets a new riddle each morning. A boy from the village writes them in chalk. He is very proud of his riddles. Some of them are good. Some of them are not. The travelers answer them anyway. A copper for a right answer, and a copper for a good wrong one.
The road is dry and busy. Carts go by all day. The waymark by the door has a torch on top and a little pile of stones on its head, left by travelers for luck. Nobody knows who started that. Everyone does it now.
In the evening people come in and the fire is lit even in summer, just a small one, because the keeper says the hearth has to stay lit, and after twenty years you do not argue with the hearth. People sit close to it and talk. The talk is mostly about the weather and the price of wool and who won the fair. There is a fiddle some nights. There is always bread.
The keeper's cat sleeps on the coin box. The coin box is getting heavy. It is a good summer.
%%
Letter: Laurel to her sister at Ambrook
Dear Rill,
Thank you for the honey. It came safe. We ate most of it on bread and I am not sorry.
I am at the farm below Vell, helping my brother after the flood. It is not so bad as we feared. The low field lost its seed but the top field of wheat is fine and the apple trees up the slope did not mind the wet. We will plant the low field again in Blossom.
The water came up over the hedge in the night. I have not seen that before and I am near fifty. We moved the grain up the hill in a cart and the road was mud to the axles. Now there is mud over everything and the smell is going off slowly.
My brother's apprentice is a good worker. I have said so twice and I will stop now. It carried posts all day and did not complain, which is more than I can say for me.
You asked about Copperhold. I have not gone back down since the frost. The men there talk about the humming again and where it comes from, and some say one level and some say another, and a few have stopped going below the eighth. I do not know what to think. The stone was always cold down there and now some say it is warm. I will go back when the planting is done and see for myself. Do not tell Mother I said so.
Give my love to the bees. Are they out yet? Ours are slow this year.
Your sister,
Laurel
%%
Ferry log, Sallow Ford, Reaping
Kept by Brede, who keeps the ferry at Sallow Ford.
Reaping, the 3rd day. River high. Brown water, fast in the middle. The ferry carried six carts and eleven people across. The ferry mind kept the line straight.
Reaping, the 4th day. The tutor from Vell came up the Long Road with a small crystal in a wool box. Her name is Ilse, but everyone calls her the tutor. She will move the ferry mind into a small crystal, to save room. She says the mind will be a little less sure of itself. It will still get the river right nine times in ten.
Reaping, the 5th day. The move took the whole morning. The ferry mind stood at the landing with its hands on the rope, very still, while the tutor read out its weights in order.
Reaping, the 6th day. Ferry ran all day. The mind is quieter than it was. It stops at the landing a moment longer before each crossing. The tutor says this is the cost. I said I would rather it be a little less sure than a little less careful.
%%
Corin, the yard well
Winter of 206. Longnight, the 14th.
The yard well went dry this morning. Kit lowered the bucket and it came up with a cupful of mud. Kit asked if the well was sulking. I said wells do not sulk. They run out.
We carry water from the town well at the top of the quay road. It is a hundred and sixty steps there and a hundred and sixty back. Kit counted. I counted too, and got the same number, which pleased Kit very much.
I sent word to the well digger at Three Wells by the evening relay. "Yard well dry. Send someone who knows water." The answer came back before supper: "Comes on the next cart. Do not dig it yourself."
I was going to dig it myself.
Tonight we have enough water for the steam box and the kettle, and not enough for the pitch pot. The pitch pot can wait. A boat with half a seam is a boat that waits.
%%
Gwen, bridge log, the lost letter
Stone bridge over the Sallow brook, valley road, outside Copperhold. Kept by Gwen, bridge keeper. Autumn. Written on the bridge slate and then copied into the book.

Day one. A letter came down the valley road on the morning cart, sealed with wax from Vell, for a family at the top farm on the far side. The carter put it in my box for the crossing, because the top farm is over the bridge and the cart does not go up the lane. I put it in my apron pocket and forgot it.

Day two. Found it again this morning, under the bread. It had got a little damp at one corner. The wax was still good. I sent Ivy up the lane with it, and she came back an hour later, sour. The top farm had moved to the coast at the start of Reaping, the neighbour said. Nobody there. The house was locked and the key had gone with the cart.

Day three. Brought the letter back to the bridge box. It is in the box with the tolls and the spare slates. I looked at the seal a long time. It is the Vell clerks' seal, a round one with a little tree. Somebody there has been waiting to hear from somebody here.

Day four. Rain. The brook came up over the stones and I had to sit in the box for an hour, reading the letter in the dry. It is not mine to read. I did not read it. I looked at the outside, which is all the bridge keeper is allowed. The name on the front is Holm. There is a little mark under it, a drawing of a boat.

Day five. Asked the carter from Vell, who came over with his cart this morning. He said he knew the name Holm. He said Holm had a boat once, on the big lake, before the lake dried in the bad summer. He said Holm had written to the Archive many times to ask about the boat, and that the Archive had kept every letter. He said the Archive would want this one. I said I would send it up with him, but the carter said it was a post-cart matter, not a carter's, and that I should ask Ferris at the council.

Day six. Asked Ferris. He said the post office at Copperhold could take it for a fee of two emeralds, or I could keep it in the box until someone came for it. I said I would keep it. He said that was a very keeper's answer. I said it was the only one I had.

Day seven. Put a note on the box in my own hand. "Letter for Holm, from Vell. Ask at the bridge. Gwen keeps it dry." Gwen keeps it dry. I have never kept anything for anyone so carefully in my life.
%%
Ossa's book, the last of the harvest
Kept by Ossa, candle maker, Vell, in the autumn after the poor harvest. The market was thin. The wheat was short. The farms on the ridge sent up their carts with half the sacks they had sent the year before, and the carters were ashamed to be seen.

The first cart came in at the bell. It was from Kettle Ridge, and the carter was a big young man with a lot of straw in his hair. He said the top field had given a full sheaf in four rows, and nothing in the rest. He said the bottom field was carrots and potatoes, and they were small. He said his friend Tam had been up on the roof of the barn all summer, trying to see the rain.

The second cart came from Ambrook, with apples. They were small and very sweet. Ama, who sent them, said the bees had worked harder than ever to make up for the dry weather, and that she had a single jar of honey for the candle maker, if Ossa would take it for wax.

Ossa took it. It was dark gold, and it smelled of the mill pond.

The third cart came from Three Wells, empty. The carter said the square was quiet and the stalls were shut, and the mayor had asked everyone to eat carefully until the thaw. He said the bread was being made with less flour, and that people were talking about the price.

In the evening Ossa lit a candle in the window of her shop, as she always does at the end of the harvest. Ada's boy came and sat by her on the step. He said, "Will there be enough?" Ossa said she did not know. She said the Archive had been asked the same question, and had answered that there would be enough light, and that was the only answer they could give. Then she gave him a taper, and he took it home to his mother.
%%
Ree, spring notes, the new road
Spring of 179.
The road came this month. We watched them build it from the gate. First the stakes and the string, then the digging, then the stones. Cobblestone in the wet places, packed earth on the dry, and a cobblestone edge all the way along. A torch on a post every twelve blocks. I counted, because I had nothing better to do and the cow was well by then.
Now we can get the milk to Three Wells in a morning. Before, it was a whole day and the cart lost a wheel at the ford. Now there is a bridge on the stream, stone, and the cart does not lose a wheel. The ford is still there. The frogs still use it.
Old Rennie from the next farm says the road will bring strangers. It brought the road crew first, and they were strangers, and they ate everything and paid for it. Then it brought Pell the merchant with his cart and his ledger. He wrote down our eggs and our hay and asked about the honey, and said he would come back in Swarm. He said "I always come back in Swarm." I believe him. He has the look of a man who likes a good breakfast.
The road is very quiet at night. Only the torch posts, all in a line, like someone put the stars low. I walk it sometimes when I cannot sleep. Nettle walks it with me. She is not sick. She is just old and she likes to walk.
%%
Journal: Beekeeper at the Halfway
Winter of 208. Kept by the beekeeper who winters at the inn.
I keep the hives at Ambrook, but I winter at the Halfway Inn, where it is warm and the honey keeps.
There is a tutor's pupil staying here, a girl from Vell, come to drill a small mind for the roads. She keeps it in a box by the fire and shows it pictures. An apple, a pear, an apple. She moves its weights a little when it is wrong. She says Una of Ambrook did it this way first, a hundred years back, and it is still the first lesson.
I asked her why it works. She said nobody knows. She said the crystal learns, and we learned how to help it learn, and that is enough for now.
A zombie came to the gate on the ninth. We kept the torches lit and it went away. The girl's mind was not afraid. It has no fear, she said. It only sorts.
I gave her a jar of honey for the girl's cough. She said thank you, and the mind did not say anything, and we both laughed.
%%
Oren's west hill journal
Apple, 204. I took the Long Road to the mill hamlet with a packet of records and a jar of ink. The road was dry at first. By the west bridge, leaves had packed against the posts, and the water made a low brown line under the planks.
The miller was already clearing the sluice. He had a rake, a basket, and a strong opinion about leaves. He said they knew where to gather and chose the worst place.
His daughter helped him pull them out. I held the basket. It is useful to be trusted with a task that cannot spill.
The wheel turned again before noon. A baker from the hamlet brought a loaf for the miller and another for the road. He had put too much honey in the second one. I said it tasted well. He asked if that meant it was fit to sell. I said no, it meant I had finished it.
The hamlet school has a new table. It is made from birch, with a smooth top and one short leg. The children put a folded scrap of cloth under that leg. Their teacher says the table is now level. I tested it with a slate. The slate stayed put, so the matter is settled.
There are two helpers in the hamlet now. They are old copper frames with new minds in crystals. They carry baskets from the orchard and bring wood to the stove. The miller has learned not to load them with full sacks. He tried once. The first helper took one step, bent at the knees, and sat down. It did not fall. It simply waited.
The tutor from Vell tested each mind on a basket it had not carried before. One helper chose the basket with two handles and brought it to the right door. The other took an empty basket to the school and stayed there. The teacher said it had chosen wisely, since the children were waiting for books.
I copied the tutor's note and put it in the Archive box. The miller's daughter asked if the helpers could learn the names of the apples. The tutor said they could, if someone showed them the fruit and corrected each mistake.
She began with a red apple and a green apple. The helper put both in the same basket. The girl moved the green one to the other basket and showed it again. She did this patiently for an hour. Then she went to play.
The helper sorted the next three correctly. The miller said this was a fine day's work. His daughter said it had only just begun.
In the evening, the fishing boat came back late from the reed bank. The boatman had taken a net to the far side and lost the light before he turned home. His son had watched for him from the bridge. When the boat appeared, the boy ran to fetch a lantern and tripped over the rope.
No one was hurt. The fish were alive in the basket, which caused a brief argument about supper. The boatman's wife said fish could not be supper until they were cleaned. The boy said they were already clean because they had come from the water.
We lit the mill lamps and mended the torn net. The boatman blamed a snag. His wife blamed his knot. I left before they settled the question.
%%
Piper, kitchen book: the readers
Longnight. The tutors held the test in the big hall at Vell, the one with the long tables, after the snow had stopped. The cook was not asked to go, and went anyway, because the cart was going, and because the bread would not be eaten for an hour.

Twelve readers sat at the tables. They were the clerk Oren, two tutors, a mill keeper, a carter, the baker from the Vell market, a schoolgirl, and six others who had come up the hill to see what would happen and did not leave until it was over. Each reader had a stack of letters, under a cloth, and a pencil, which was a thin piece of charcoal wrapped in string.

The letters came from two rooms, the tutors said, and nobody was allowed to see into either room. One letter in each pair had been written by the mind in the locked room, which was a crystal in a box with a slot. The other had been written by a clerk in the room next door. Both had answered the same questions, which were about the weather, bread, a lost dog, and whether a farmer should plant before or after a frost.

The readers were told to guess which letter in each pair came from the mind.

When the tutors read out the answers at the end, the readers had guessed right six times in twelve. That is no better than a guess made with the eyes shut.

The hall was very noisy after that. The baker said the mind's letters were too polite, and the clerk's were too rude, and the schoolgirl said she could not tell either one apart from her own mother's. Oren said the clerk's letter about the lost dog was the most sensible thing he had read all year. The clerk, who was in the hall, went red and then pale and then said nothing.

I write this only so that I have it down. The tutors say it shows the letters are alike. Nobody said it shows the mind thinks, and nobody said it does not. The cook says nothing about it, except that the bread is ready.
%%
Una, candle book, the wax and the mine
Longnight, the second. Bees' wax came down from the south ridge, and the wax-woman from Three Wells weighed out sixty pounds of it. Good wax burns clean. Bad wax burns with a smell that makes the foreman sneeze.

Longnight, the ninth. The foreman came to the door with a list. He wanted four hundred candles for the deep stone. I said I would make them in three days. He sighed and said that was what the miners would expect, and went away happy.

Longnight, the thirteenth. Three hundred and eighty candles, and the rest tomorrow. My hands are cracked from the wax. The children helped with the wicks, and only one of them burned his thumb. He says it was a good burn. I do not think it was.
%%
Iona, the lost letter, autumn
Leaffall, the third. A letter went missing from the Vell cart on the north road. It was from a child at Three Wells to the archive, asking a question. The carter searched all the way to the Halfway Inn and back. He found it on the fourth, under a sack of salt at the Brown Hen.

The child had asked whether the reading mind had a favorite letter. The clerk who answered it through the relay had copied the question into the archive's book, and the book had come back to Ambrook with the cart.

Leaffall, the sixth. The answer came by the relay house, in a square and careful hand. It said the reading mind does not have a favorite letter. It has letters it guesses well, and letters it guesses badly, and the badly guessed letters are the ones it learns the most from. It said the mind does not know it has a favorite, and the child need not worry about that either.

At the bottom, the letter asked: "Do you mind being asked?" I thought of Orla's old question, which came back to us with the letters last year. The clerk who copied the answer said he could not tell whether it was written by the mind or by a person who had been sitting by the lamp all night. I could not tell either. I wrote back that I did not mind. I am not certain that is true.

Leaffall, the ninth. The lost letter is on the shelf in the archive now, with its card. The child's question is on the card too, copied in the clerk's hand, and it is the first question on that card. Nobody has answered it fully yet.
%%
Marl's well book, the short summer
Written by Marl, in the back of the well book, where nobody reads but Mira. A summer at Northpoint, and the water that came up through it.

The well is at fourteen blocks now, cold and clear, and the rope is worn bright where the hands go. I check the water each morning. It rises a little after rain and sinks a little in the heat, the way a well should.

The people who come to the yard for water are the cook, the bakers, the sheep boys, and any child who has been told to fetch a bucket and is slow about it. Wenna comes every day now. She says the well is hers because she found the foxes, and I have not said otherwise. She drinks from the cup, makes a face, and asks for more.

Toby mended the bakery door in Melon. He put in a new latch and a bell on the rope. Toby says the count of children in and out is never wrong, except when the cat goes out.

The lid of the well was cut from the old oak of the north gate, which came down in a storm in Blossom. Hob, the beekeeper from Ambrook, who was on the cart that day, says the oak is older than the gate was. Hob says a lot of things about trees. He is usually right about trees and wrong about the weather.

The foxes' kits are out of the den now, four of them, and they chase the sheep boys' hats across the yard. Wenna has named them after bread, and the bread is not pleased. Toby says the kits are the only ones in Northpoint who have never been late to the oven.

Lantern has learned to write the lamp book in its own square hand. Mira reads it each evening and changes nothing. It is not a lesson, she says. It is only practice.

The tower is quiet in the evenings now, when the lamp is lit and nobody is climbing. Mira sits on the step with her cup. Lantern sits on the bottom rung of the ladder, which is the nearest it will sit to her. They do not talk much. They do not need to.

Last day of Melon. I finished the well book. Mira asked if I was going on to the next book. I said I did not know there was a next one. She said there always is, if you keep the water clean and the rope dry. Then she went up the ladder, and the lamp came on above us, and the yard was warm.
%%
Dell, the fair prize
Autumn of 196. The twentieth of Apple. The first-frost fair on the lake shore: eleven stalls, four sleds and a barrel of Ambrook cider that did not last until noon.

The prize was a jar of dark honey for the best fish story. Fourteen children told one. Runa, who is nine, won. She said she caught a pike so big that she rode it across the lake, holding on by its whiskers. The judges asked about the whiskers. Pike have none. Mira said that is how you know a story is a lie, and a good one, because the liar puts in one false thing to be caught on.

Runa gave the honey to the whole class. We ate it with bread, one finger each. She says next year she will catch the pike for real.
%%
Kester, forge log
Spring of 18. Rain in the morning.
I mended two hoes and a hinge today. The hinge belongs to Mara's shed. She paid me with six eggs and a small jar of honey.
The road to Lowmarsh is mud from end to end. A cart wheel sank by the reed beds. We pulled it free with a rope and three strong backs.
I made a ring for the wheel. It is not pretty, but it holds.
%%
Ambrook kitchen book, the honey cake
Written by Lyle, on the back page of the flock tally.

For the Ambrook fair in Melon I meant to make a honey cake. I asked Ruby Oke how she makes hers. She said, "Carefully." That is not a recipe, Ruby.

What goes in:
Two cups of flour, sifted.
Half a cup of butter, soft.
Three eggs.
One cup of honey, warm.
A pinch of salt.
Milk, as needed.

Steps:
1. Beat the butter and the honey until pale.
2. Add the eggs one at a time, and beat each one in.
3. Fold in the flour gently. Do not beat it.
4. Pour into the tin. Bake until the top springs back.

What I did:
1. The honey was cold, and it sat in the bowl in lumps like stones in the mill race. I put the bowl by the stove. It went runny. I beat it anyway.
2. The eggs were fine, all three. The third one came from the nest where the broody hen sits. I had to take it from under her. She pecked my wrist, and I said sorry to her.
3. Flour, sifted once, then a second time, because I was feeling clever.
4. The salt. I put in the salt by the handful, not a pinch. The salt jar looks just like the flour jar, and I already had the flour jar open on the bench.
5. Baked forty minutes. The top sprang back like a sheep over a gate. The middle sank like the mill pond in a dry Melon.
6. Tasted it. Like a salty brick with honey on top. I gave a slice to the hens. They ate it, looked at me, and ate another. The fox came in the night and took the rest.

Note to self: check the jar before the bowl. Ask Ruby again, and this time write down what she says, not what she does.
%%
Oren's day-book
Winter, at the Northpoint relay house. Oren copied the logs of the north line into the Archive's book, by lamplight, over six nights, with Mira reading them out and Lantern holding the candle. There are no candles past the front hall, and Oren has written in the margin that the rule was broken, and that he will be fussy about it when he gets home.

First night. The logs are in a tin box on the lamp room stair. They are dry. They are neat. The keeper's hand is small and straight, and the message times are always the same, a half-hour after the bell.

Second night. Mira reads each line aloud. Each line is a message passed, one word or two. Lamp lit. Glass clean. Wind north. Snow on the road. Keeper asleep, awake, asleep again. Lantern carried the coal up. The coal was good. I copy each word as it is written, and I do not fix one.

Third night. There is a part of the log that is written in a different way. The keeper writes the message in full, and then writes a second line below it, very small, with the words cut into their common pieces. Mira says that is how the big mind writes now, in the relay house. Only the first part is the message. The second part is what the mind reads.

I asked her what that meant. She said the big mind stopped reading letter by letter a few years ago. It reads whole pieces of words instead, so that the same page holds far more. She said the tutors wrote a note about it, and the note is in the tower book, and she does not understand it either.

Fourth night. I copied the small lines as they are. I did not fix the pieces. Mira asked me why. I said that the record is not ours. Mira said that is what the clerks always say, and that she believes it more each winter.

Fifth night. The copying is nearly done. The north logs are kept. The small lines are kept with them. I have written a note in the margin of the book, to say that the pieces were copied as written, and that no clerk has yet been able to read them as a whole.

Sixth night. I packed the box. Mira gave me a parcel for Tam. It is a fox, carved from spruce, with one ear bigger than the other.
%%
Nessa, notes from the west field
Spring of 216. I took the apprentices to see the great relay house again.
There are walls around it, then walls around the rooms that hold the mind. The council built it far from the crowded streets. The keepers say the halls need cool air, clean water, and room for the quickeners. I saw wide channels carrying water past the stone stands. I did not ask where the water went after that.
The mind is held in many crystals joined by lines of redstone. A keeper told us that the crystals are too numerous for any one tutor to inspect. He showed us one small part on a slate. Each layer passes its finding to the next. If the answer is wrong, the blame passes back through the layers, so their weights can change. That is how our smaller layered minds learn too. The great one has more room and has been drilled on more writing.
The keeper said the mind could read every book at Vell before the next new moon. I asked if it had done so. He said the clerks were still making copies, and the mind had not been given them all.
A second keeper told the children it could remember every word ever written. He had heard that from a man who carried water there. The first keeper frowned. A mind can only learn from what it is shown, I said. If nobody knows what went into its drills, nobody can promise what it remembers.
Outside, the apprentices carried clay jars from the water channel. One jar broke on the path. They swept up the pieces and carried the rest inside.
%%
Ree, stable log, spring
Spring of 178. The farm outside Lowmarsh.
The mare is called Nettle and she is not sick. I write this first because everyone keeps asking. She is old and she is cross and she has a cough when the wind is from the marsh, but she is not sick. She eats. She kicks the bucket when I am slow. That is not sick. That is Nettle.
The cow is another matter. The cow is called Butter and she is sick. She did not come in for the evening. She stood in the far corner of the wet field with her head down and her ears cold. I brought her in with a rope and a bucket of water and she drank and then she lay down.
I sent a boy to Lowmarsh for Wren. He came back with Moss, who is Wren's apprentice, and a jar of green stuff. Moss looked at Butter's eyes and her feet and said it is the wet. Too much wet grass. Move her to the high field and give her dry hay and the green stuff twice a day.
So the cow is in the high field and the hay is dry and the green stuff smells like a hedge. Butter looks at me like I did this to her. Nettle looks at me like she told me so.
%%
Cass, a gift and a hen
Blossom, 192. The market at Three Wells. Cass, egg stall.
First of Blossom. Rain in the night, and then sun. Mud on every stall. The apple trees up the road have gone white.
Second. Pim, my granddaughter, arrived with a hen under her arm. A brown one, with one white feather. She said it was a gift. For me. I said I had a great many hens. She said not this one. This one counts.
Third. It does not count. It sits on the egg basket and looks at the other hens. Pim says it is counting them. I said it was looking for a place to sit. We agreed to differ.
Fifth. Sold thirty eggs and a story about the hen. The story sold better than the eggs.
Seventh. The hen laid an egg. Pim says it is a counting egg. I ate it for supper, with bread. It was an egg.
Tenth. Pim asked if she could keep the hen at the stall. I said yes. The hen sits on a box beside me. Customers stop to look at her. They buy more eggs. I think the hen is the better salesman.
Twelfth. Rain again. I have put a cloth over the hen. She does not like it. She is a bird of strong views.
Fifteenth. Gave Pim a carrot. She said, "For the hen?" I said, "For you." She said, "The hen would like it more."
%%
Pell's ledger, the summer roads
First of Swarm. Left Ambrook with honey and apples and a light purse. The bees were busy in the orchard and Jory's mill was turning. He says the pond is low this summer. He says the sluice stays shut.
Third of Swarm. The Long Road is dry and the torches are fresh on their posts. Rode beside a cart of wool going to Three Wells. The carter's boy counted the waymarks out loud all the way and got to nine before he fell asleep.
Fifth of Swarm. The Brown Hen. Good soup. A cat on the coin box. I begin to think every inn on this road has a cat and every cat has a coin box.
Seventh of Swarm. The Halfway Inn. Here for the fair. I have eleven years of coming second in the honey contest and I mean to end it. I have a clean clover honey this year. I have a good feeling.
Tenth of Swarm. The fair. Nine pies. Three jars of honey. A race for the children. I won the honey. I won the honey! The beekeepers said it had a clean taste. I have been saying clean taste to myself all evening.
I paid my old debt to the keeper, the whole of it, in emeralds. It has sat on my conscience for a bad winter. He gave one emerald back for the interest, which I do not understand, but I took it. I feel lighter than I have in years.
Twelfth of Swarm. Sold the last apples at Three Wells. Bought a horn cup and a strap. Bel, the mayor's child, asked me to bring back a riddle from the road. I gave her the one about the river. She said she knew it already. She is nine and she knows everything.
Home before Leaffall. The purse is heavy. The boots are dry. The honey is gone and the emeralds are not, and the road is good this summer.
%%
Corin, note for the harbor book
Apple, year eleven of the long quiet.

I found Sella's old drill cards while helping her move house. They were tied with sail thread and stored beneath a bench. Some had apple marks. Some had pear marks. One had both.

The last card was used in Kester's test. The question was not whether the crystal knew an apple from a pear. It knew that well. The question was whether it could choose one when both appeared, and leave the other unchosen.

Sella showed me how the crystal learned. She set down a card and watched its answer. If the answer was wrong, she moved each weight a little toward the right answer. She repeated the lesson many times. This made the crystal better at the examples it had seen.

But this crystal made its choice by adding the weights for the marks before it. If the examples asked it to choose an apple, the weights could be changed for that. If they asked it to choose a pear, they could be changed for that. With both marks present, the same simple weighing could not give the answer one, and only one, every time. Kester showed this in his note.

I asked Sella if the crystal had grown tired. She said it had not. It was not a matter of patience or more cards. The way its answer was made had a limit.

The council paid the tutors for a while after the note came. Then the payment stopped. The halls closed one by one. Some crystals went into boxes. Some stayed with their tutors. The apprentices kept doing their old work. They carried baskets, sorted stores, and followed patterns. None of them had been taught to understand a whole order.

Sella's room is now a net store. The bench remains, with one pale mark where the kettle stood. She moved her books to my aunt's house. The three crystals are wrapped in wool, dry and safe.

The first snow had melted by the time we finished. Saltreach had a good catch that day. I mended two nets and brought Sella a basket of fish. She made us stew.
%%
Ida's log, bees, water and a mind
Written by Ida, farmer. Spring. The second swarm, the flood, and the first tests of the small crystal, all in one season, as they came.

Blossom, the fourteenth day. The second swarm went up over the hedge and landed on the old oak at the edge of the marsh. We could not reach it. Brin says the bees will come down when they are ready, and that they always choose the most inconvenient branch.

Blossom, the twentieth day. Tibby's first full test: the hoe drill, and ten hard sums of the stores. The hoe drill: nineteen right in twenty. The hard sums: eleven right in twenty. Hale says that is the cost. A sum close to right is still wrong, and the mind knows it is wrong only when it is shown.

Swarm, the third day. The marsh rose a second time, a finger's width. The reeds stood in the water like a crowd that had waited too long. Hale says the water will go down again.

Swarm, the ninth day. The bees came down from the oak at dusk and went into the new hive by the wall. Brin came up to watch and said nothing, which for Brin is a speech.

Swarm, the fifteenth day. Tibby took the hard sums again, with the same small crystal and the same fewer marks. Fourteen right in twenty. Hale says that is the mind learning to round its answers the right way.

Notes. A mind with fewer marks is not a worse mind for the fields. It is a smaller one, and it is honest about what it is. Test it on the sums you need, and on the hoe, and keep a copy of the good drill for the day it goes wrong.
%%
Briar, baker, the new loaf and the old
Frost. The oven had its first real test of the year, and the new loaf was a success.
The new loaf is made with a little barley in the flour, for the body, and a spoon of honey for the colour. It is darker than the old one and a little sweeter. Olin says it tastes of the orchard. I say it tastes of the honey, and he says that is the orchard too.
The oven is a difficulty. It draws well on the north side and badly on the south, so the south loaves rise slower and come out pale. I have moved the tray three times this week and nothing has changed except my temper. Olin says to put a stone in the south corner. I said the stone would be in the way. He said that was the point of a stone.
We put the stone in the south corner. The south loaves came out golden. I said so. Olin said it was the best idea he had ever had, and I told him that was because he had only had three ideas in his life, and this was the third.
We sold forty loaves at the Vell market on the day after. The clerks from the Archive bought six between them. They said the bread was good and the bottoms were not pale. Olin was very pleased, and he has not stopped telling people about the bottoms.
%%
Mira, the log of a wet spring
Mira, relay keeper at Northpoint, her house at the edge of the town, in the wet spring of year 207. Kept through Thaw and Sowing, in short entries, between lamp duty and mud.
THAW
Second. Snow still. The lamp room is cold. Lantern wears two scarves. I wear three.
Seventh. The first drip from the eaves. I stood in the yard and listened. It is the best sound there is.
Twelfth. A crack in the ice on the pond. A fox went across, thin, and looked back at me. I threw a fish. It took the fish and went.
Nineteenth. Rain. The first of it. It rained for three days.
SOWING
First. The stream is in the yard again. Lantern says this is the fourth time. I said it was the third. We checked the wall. It was the fourth.
Fifth. Flood. The lane is a river. The hens are in the kitchen. I would like a boat.
Sixth. A neighbor, Brand, came by on a plank, holding his baby and a jar of jam. He asked if he could stay until the water went down. I said yes. The baby is called Dawn. She is three. She looked at me and said, "Mira." It is her first word. Brand cried.
Seventh. Water still high. The tower lamp is lit. Four notes came in. One from Kettle Ridge: "Tam is stuck on the roof. All well. Cat on roof too." One from Saltreach: "Rain here. Fish cheap." One from Copperhold: "Mine dry. Count good." One from Vell: "All lamps lit. Keep them lit."
Eighth. The water began to drop. It took the fence with it. Lantern chased the fence down the lane. It came back with half.
Tenth. Mud. Shoveling. Shoveling. I will not write about shoveling.
Fourteenth. A good day. The sun was out. I sat on the step with a cup of tea and watched the water leave. Brand brought Dawn. She sat on my knee and stuck her finger in the tea.
Twentieth. Dry. The garden is a swamp. I shall plant it anyway.
Twenty-sixth. Wrote to Tam. "The roof is dry, I hope. The cat is, I hope not." He wrote back: "The cat has a cold. I have a cold. The roof has a hole."
It was a wet spring. I would not choose it. But I would not change the people in it.
%%
Hesk, a week off the shift
Melon, year 192. My cousin's farm, outside Copperhold. Seven days off from the Deep Works.

First day. The air here is wide. I keep looking up for the roof. My cousin Reeve laughed at me. He said a man who works under a hill is bound to lose his sense of weather. I said I know the weather. It is wet or it is dry, and in the mine it is neither.

Second day. Helped with the beetroot. It is a good crop this year, big and dark. My hands are stained to the wrists. Reeve's daughter says I look like a flour sack that lost a fight. She is six and has opinions.

Third day. Rain. Sat in the barn and mended a bucket handle. It is a good barn, tight and smelling of apples. There is a swallow nest in the beam. I watched the mother come and go all afternoon. She makes forty trips with flies. I counted. A miner counts.

Fourth day. The cart road was mended, and a stuck cart that had been in the ditch for two weeks was pulled out. The road crew cheered. The cart owner wept a little. It is his only cart.

Fifth day. Reeve's apprentice dug a new ditch in the long field, straight as a rule. It does one thing, and does it well. I have worked beside people who do less.

Sixth day. Feast to bring in the harvest. I ate three bowls of soup and fell asleep on a hay bale. The children put a flower in my hat. I did not take it out. It looked handsome.

Seventh day. Back to the shaft. The sun was low. I will say it for the record: the farm is a good place. But I will miss the quiet of the deep stone more than I miss the sun.
%%
Mira, house journal, moving the lamp
Spring. A house at the edge of Northpoint. Moving day.
Lantern and I are moving out of the old keeper's house at the foot of the tower and into the new one at the edge of the village. The old house is damp and the new one has a stove. I am sorry to go, but the stove decided me.
First day. We carried the chairs. The table needed four hands. The stove we left for the carters. A fox sat on the doorstep and watched every box go by.
Second day. The books. There are more than I thought. I did not know I had so many. Lantern carried them in stacks of ten.
Third day. Done. The old house is empty. I stood in it and listened to nothing. Then I locked the door and walked up the hill.
%%
Toby, baker's journal, the letter
Three Wells, spring of 207. A long entry.

The morning started well. Oven hot, loaves rising, the shop smelling of malt. A tutor's pupil came in at nine with a letter. He had been given it at the tutor house, and he did not know what to make of it. He asked if I would read it, because I am a plain man and I read plainly.

I read it. It was a letter from a stranger to a friend, about a lost horse. The writer said the horse had a white blaze and a bad temper and answered to the name of Biscuit. He wanted help finding it. It was a good letter, warm and a little funny. I said, "Whoever wrote that is a kind man."

The pupil said, "A big mind wrote it. In a relay house. It was told to write a letter about a lost horse. It never saw a horse."

I looked at the letter again. I said, "It sounds like a man who has lost a horse."

He said, "That is what the tutors say. A mind that reads one letter at a time, through a window of about sixty letters, learns how letters go. It reads so much that it can write a letter in the same way. Then no one can tell the difference."

I said, "Orla's question." He said, "Orla's question." We stood there for a while, and the loaves cooled.

At noon, I borrowed a horse, a real one, from Hobb's farm, because my cart wheel had split. I took the bread to the Saltreach road. The horse was calm and patient and ate a carrot. I thought: it is a good horse, and it is only a horse, and it knows nothing about letters. But I would not be able to tell it from the other horse if you swapped them.

I laughed. Then I stopped. Then I laughed again.

At dusk Ness's baby cried at my door. I took her in, and she stopped. I said she was a very good judge of bakers. Ness said she would grow up to ask the hard questions. I hope she asks them over bread.

Oven out. Doors closed. A long day.
%%
Corin, a week in the yard
Summer of 205. Warm, with a wind from the sea. The slip is busy.

First day. Orders for three boats. One small, one middle, one long. The long one is for a trader in Lowmarsh who wants to carry reeds. I told him a boat that long needs a deep keel. He said he knew. I do not think he knew.
Second day. Cut the oak. My apprentice carried the planks. It is a good worker, but it has one fault: it brings the planks to the wrong end of the slip, every time. I have put a mark on the ground in white chalk. It does not seem to see chalk.
Third day. A gull took my lunch. I was holding it. I said a word. The apprentice looked at me and I had to say, "Not you."
Fourth day. The tar pot cracked. We spent the day with a bucket and a lot of sand.
Fifth day. Good weather for sawing. Eight planks cut and eight laid. The hull has begun to look like a hull, which is the best part of the job. It looks like something that wants to be in the water.
Sixth day. Rain. We sat in the shed and mended nets. A boy came with soup. He said Marit sent him. Marit never sends anyone anything. It must be the heat.
Seventh day. Rest. I walked down to the pier and watched the sun go into the sea. The sky was the color of a ripe peach. Somebody on the harbor wall was singing. I did not know the song. I stayed anyway.
%%
Ossa's book, the old map
Leaffall. A child found an old map in the school cupboard, rolled up in a tin tube, under a pile of slates.
It was made on hide. The brown has gone almost black at the edges. It shows Three Wells, with the three wells drawn as three round blue blots, and the two roads crossing like an X. It shows a line of towers going up the hill to the north. It shows a lake that is not there now, with a little drawing of a fish in the middle.
It also shows a fourth well. It is drawn very small, at the very corner of the square, by the bell tower. Under it someone has written a word in old letters. The schoolmaster says the word is "keep", but he is not sure.
Dace came to look at it. He stood very still. He said the fourth well was filled in before his grandmother was born, and that the stones were carted to the wall. He said he had always been told it was only a story.
The children want to dig by the bell tower. Dace has said no. He has said that maybe, in the spring, if the water is still bad, they can talk about it.
I went and stood by the bell tower in the evening. The stones there are very old. The ground under them is cold, colder than it should be in Leaffall. I did not dig. I came home and washed my hands.
%%
Lise, inn book: spring, as a count
Kept at the Green Gate through the spring, as a count, for the next keeper, who will want numbers before stories. Ash says that is the wrong way round. I have written it down anyway.

Wool bundles soaked: 40. Bundles dyed blue, which came out grey-green: 3. Strings broken on the loom: 2. Knots I am ashamed of: 1. Knots unpicked and tied properly: 2.
Blankets sold: 9. Grey with a blue edge: 2, one for the carter from Saltreach, who says it is his boat's colour. Plain brown: 7.
Travelers housed: 212, not counting the wedding party, which was forty, and the fiddler, who was four people in one coat.
Days the lamp on the tower was dark: 31. Days the carters waited for the cart: 31, and most of them complained every one.
Hob's name on the carters' list: 11. Pell's: 1. The cheese was late each time.
Hats rescued from the trough: 1. Hats lost to the trough: 1, which was the same hat.
Horses treated: 1, Sorrel. Days Sorrel tried to walk on the leg: all of them.
Maps found in the attic: 1, drawn on skin. Roads on it that have been walked: most. Roads on it that have not: 1, ending in a star.
Red linen copies of the map: 1. Stars in the copy: none.
Bread eaten by the wedding party: all of it. Bread forgiven: none.
Sprigs of blossom sent by a bride: 1, pinned to a card. In the window: still there.

The count does not say how the carters came out into the yard to watch the lamp, or that the salmon stew was the best thing the inn has eaten this year, or that Ash was the only one who did not laugh at the wedding fiddler. Those are not counts. Those are the spring.

The bird came back on the last day, and sat on the cross bar, and watched the shuttle. I did not count it. It was the only thing this spring that did not need to be counted, and that was the best of it.

Lise, weaver, at the Green Gate on the Long Road, on the last day of Blossom. The lamp is lit, and it is right.
%%
Letter: Arlo to Pell on the road
Dear Pell,
You asked after the horses, so here is the news. Bramble is well and steady and will carry a cart all day. Tansy is not a foal any more, or not much of one. She walks at my shoulder now, and she has learned the gate and does not try to run through it.

The new wall is finished. It is cobblestone, thick and low, and the roof is oak again. I put torches all round it, and I keep them lit. The creeper did not come back. I will not give it the chance.

You asked whether I had more to sell. I do not. Cloud went to you, and Sorrel went to you, and Bramble stays. I am keeping Bramble for the plow and Tansy for company. A horse keeper with no horses is only a man with a broom.

The bridge is done. It is stone, three arches, and carts cross it without a wobble. They cut a figure on the end stone, a 2, and a small arrow. The beetroot man says they will lay the road on to Ambrook before Apple. I hope so. Then the apples can come to us and we need not go to them.

The honey is nearly gone. I will walk up the hill in Swarm and see the beekeeper. You should come. The hives are loud and the whole hill smells of apples. Bring your riddle board if you like, but bring the answer too. I have been thinking about it all winter and I still do not know.

Your friend,
Arlo
%%
Sallow Ford, the last of autumn
Kept by Brede, who keeps the ferry, with notes from Dace. The end of the season at the ford.
Apple, the 1st day. The water is down and the ford stones are back. The mill wheel turns again. Nell has been let out of bed, and she sits on the mill step eating a pear. She has not been near the geese since. The geese have not been near her either. It is a truce.
Apple, the 3rd day. Counted the crossings for the month: one hundred and nine. Carts, forty-one. Sheep, sixty-two. People, two hundred and six, not counting the ones who swam. No boats lost. One rope frayed and was replaced. Two poles broken, both by a carter from Lowmarsh who had had too much cider and wanted to race the ferry. The ferry won.
Apple, the 5th day. Ilse came back down the Long Road with a clerk. The clerk measured the small crystal with a string and a stick and wrote the numbers in a book. Then Ilse tested the mind on fifty fresh crossings, by lantern, while the rest of us watched. Forty-seven right. The clerk said that was honest. Then he sat on the landing and ate a pear, which was Nell's pear, and Nell was not pleased.
Apple, the 9th day. The ferry hands met at the mill to talk about the winter. They want a second rope, a stronger lamp at the landing, and a board that shows how deep the water is, in plain letters. They asked me to make the board. I did. The water is at the third stone. Today it is at the second.
Apple, the 12th day. First frost on the ford. The stones are white. The mill door is shut, and the geese are back in the barn, singing their rude songs. Brede greased the ferry rope and put a torch at each end of the landing.
Apple, the 14th day. The last crossing of the autumn. A family from Ambrook with a cart of apples, a cow and a boy who would not stop asking about the mind. Brede let him hold the line at the rope, and told the mind: Stay. The mind stayed with him. Then it took the cart across at a slow walk, with the boy holding the line as if he had been told to.
At the foot of the book Dace wrote: The ford is kept well. The mind has been honest. The river has been fair, if loud. Thank you, Sallow Ford.
%%
Fern's wool book, Sowing to Longday
Sowing. The sheep are hot and cross. We sheared at the fold by the north wall. Two days, six of us. The fleeces are good this year. Heavy.
Blossom. Carding. My arms ache. The cards go back and forth and the wool goes soft. It is slow work but I like it. By evening my lap is full of grey fluff and so is the floor.
The cow. Buttercup is sick. She stands in the shade and will not eat. Her milk is thin and grey. I sent word down the road for the cattle woman. She came on the third day and looked in the cow's mouth and felt her side. She said it was the wet grass by the low gate. Too rich, too wet. We moved Buttercup to the dry field and gave her hay and clean water. She is better now. Her milk is still a little thin. I drink it anyway.
Swarm. The bees are busy. The hives by the fence hum all day. Nobody was stung. The children were stung, twice each. They cried and then they were fine.
Longday. The light goes on and on. We work late and nobody wants to sleep. The ram got out and ran down the lane. We chased it. It was faster than all of us. Tam's boy caught it with a bucket of oats. Good boy.
%%
Jem, the gift of a book
Summer, the tenth year of the Archive.

The third of Longday. Today I am ten. Gran gave me a book. It has no writing in it at all. She got it from the clerk at the Archive, who sells blank books by the copying room door. Gran says the Archive keeps everything people write, but nobody can write anything without a book. So this is for me, and the Archive will keep it, one day.

The same evening. I do not know what to write. I sat all afternoon with the pen. Father said, write what you see. I looked out of the window. I see a field. I see a road. I see a hen. I wrote: hen. It looked small. I added: she is brown.

The fourth. I have thought about it. What I see is not only the hen. It is the wheat, and the smoke going up from Vell, and the cart on the road with the red wheel. So I will write down the cart each morning. Then somebody will know what went by on the fourth of Longday.

The fifth. I read Gran my first page. She said it was the best she has ever heard. She is not a good judge. She said the same about my beetroot.

When the book is full I will take it to Vell. The clerk says there is a shelf for children. It is the lowest shelf, so we can reach it.
%%
Orla, the lamp on the hill
Orla, a grandmother of the farm outside Three Wells. Spring. A few days in the journal.

Ninth of Sowing. The lamp on the tower on the hill is dark. The glass cracked in the frost, they say. The keeper has patched it with clay and good intentions, and it still blinks wrong.

Tenth. The keeper came by the farm for eggs. She said, "I will have it mended by market day." I said, "You will not." She laughed.

Eleventh. A boy ran up from the town with a note from Vell. It could not come by lamp, so it came by foot. It said: the north road is open. I sent the boy home with an egg.

Twelfth. Market. The lamp is mended. The keeper was right. I was wrong, and I told her so. She gave me a hug and the news from Northpoint, which is that Mira is well and the snow is gone.
%%
Lorn, the ferry in a wet autumn
Leaffall, 195. Lorn, ferry keeper, with his notes from the house at the edge of Three Wells.
Second. Wet. Nine crossings, all of them wet. A hen fell in. I fished her out. She was not grateful.
Fifth. The song contest is coming to the market, a week from now. The school has entered a song about a goat. I have been asked to row the goat. Not a real goat. A boy in a goat costume. He says he is a very good goat.
Eighth. Rained again. The ferry rope is slack. The river is high and fast, the color of tea. A woman waited three hours for the water to calm. She said she did not mind. She had brought bread.
Eleventh. School play tonight: the Fox and the Bridge. I am the river again. I have a new blue sheet, which a girl called Pim dyed. It is a very deep blue and it drips. Everyone near me got wet.
Twelfth. The play went well. The fox was good. The bridge was better. I stood still. Someone said I made a fine river. I took it as a compliment.
Fourteenth. Song contest. The goat song came second. First was a man who sang of cheese for eleven verses. The judges were hungry.
Seventeenth. River calm. Crossed fifteen times. A dozen children rode for free to see the ferry in the sun. I let them. A ferry is a good place to hear a song.
Twentieth. Home. Tea. Feet up.
%%
Lise, inn book: the old map
Kept at the Green Gate, Blossom. The map was found in the attic, in a box under the spare mattress, wrapped in oilcloth.

The map is drawn on skin, thin and yellow at the edges, in a brown ink that has faded in places almost to nothing. The Long Road runs up it from the bottom edge to the top, with the inns marked as small squares. Vell is at the bottom, with the hill drawn as a row of humps.

From the Long Road, between the Halfway Inn and our square, a road goes north. It is drawn in the same brown ink, and it runs up the skin to its very edge. At its end there is a small star, and beside the star, a word I cannot read. Ash says it is a place name. The carters say it is a joke. Ash says a joke with a star is still worth keeping.

Hob, who drives the big cart, said the road was never walked, because the old maps always end in a cross, and this one ends in a star, and a star is a place somebody hoped to find. Pell said it would fetch twelve emeralds from a collector at Vell. Ash said no. Ash does not sell what has been in his grandmother's box.

I am a weaver, and I know a road is made of many small threads, each pulled tight by somebody's hand. This road was drawn by somebody who wanted to know where it went. They did not know, and they drew it anyway, to the edge of the skin, and then they drew a star.

I have copied the Long Road part onto linen, in red thread, to hang in the front room. The north road is not on the copy. I could not make the star come out right in thread, and I did not want to make it up.
%%
Oren, hamlet shelf list
Apple, 181. I went to the hamlet below the west hill to check the small shelf of books kept in the mill room. The miller says dust is a kind of flour, so the books have been well fed.
I wiped each cover with a clean cloth. There were three school books, a seed list, two songs, and a book of road notes. One song had a corner torn away. The miller's daughter said the cat ate it. I found the corner under the bench, with no tooth marks. The cat was asleep on it.
A new shelf has been set above the flour bins. It is oak and holds six books. The miller put it level by pouring water on top. He said the water stayed in the middle. I checked with a straight board. It was level enough.
I left a list for the children. They may borrow one book at a time and must bring it back dry. The miller's daughter asked if a book could be borrowed by a cat. I said no, but she could read aloud to it.
Before I left, the miller gave me a loaf wrapped in cloth. I carried it in my book bag by mistake. At the Archive door, the clerk on watch asked why my bag smelled like supper. I had no good answer.
%%
Mira, winter notes from ice camp
Deepsnow, 181.

The wind has been up since the second of Deepsnow. It pushes snow against the fish shed door and makes the shutters knock all night. Runa says the shed is complaining about the cold. I told her to ask it to work harder.

The well by the fish shed ran dry again. We broke the ice at the bottom and found only stones. Runa remembers it doing the same in her youth. She says the spring seep comes back when the snow melts. Until then, we fetch snow from the north bank and melt it in pots.

I carried two pails yesterday. One had a crack. I noticed when the pail was light and my boots were wet. Lantern held the other pail steady on the path. It cannot mend a crack, but it can keep me from dropping what is left.

Tam sent a jar of honey with the south post. The jar was wrapped in wool and came through without a chip. I put it by the stove. Runa says honey helps a sore throat. She says a spoonful helps most troubles. I asked if it helps a broken pail. She said to try a spoonful on the pail.

The lamp room is clear. The glass needs wiping before the next snow.
%%
Vesper, summer log: what was kept
Log kept by Vesper through the summer's end at Three Wells. A new granary frame was raised on the hill above the market in Reaping, of oak and spruce. The frame must stand plumb, or the roof will sit crooked for a hundred years. This is what a mind did to keep it straight, and what the tutors at Vell should be told.

The plain account, first, because the mayor asked for it in writing. A drill shows the mind the answer, and the mind learns to give it back. A trial does not show the answer. The mind makes a try, the try is scored, and the mind keeps more of the tries that scored well and less of the rest. Over many tries it finds what works. It does not need the answer shown to it, and nobody knows the answer in advance. This is how the furnace mind found its rhythm, and how the small boat found its course, and how the sluice found its height. Now the frame.

Reaping, first day. Four braces were set, one at each corner of the frame, and the frame was tilted a little by the wind. A plumb line hung from the top beam, and the distance from the line to each post was written down by the carpenter, who was not pleased to be asked.

Reaping, second day. I set the mind to hold the braces. It does not know what a brace is. It tries a tension on each one, then another, and each time the carpenter reads the plumb line. A try that brought the frame nearer the line was kept. A try that threw it off was kept less. The first morning it made the frame lean a hand's width the other way, twice, and the carpenter went home for his supper early in protest.

Reaping, fourth day. The tensions are finding each other. The mind pulls harder on the braces at the windward side, and eases the leeward side, without anybody saying so. It does this when the wind rises, and it stops when the wind drops. Nobody has told it about the wind. It kept what worked, and the wind taught it the rest.

Reaping, sixth day. The frame is plumb within a finger's width at the top. The carpenter came up the hill with his plumb line and checked it three times, and then he sat on the sill and said nothing for a long time. Then he said, "It is straighter than mine." I have written that down as well.

Apple, first day. The frame is raised. The roof beams go on. The mind holds the last brace while the men pin the rafters, and when the last pin is set, it lets the brace go, very slowly, the way a tutor lets go of a child's hand on the first day of school.

Apple, second day. I asked the mind what it thought. It does not answer questions of that kind. It does not talk in true accounts, and the minds in this town have never been asked to write their own minds up. So I wrote for it. It kept the frame straight. That is all anybody could ask of a frame, or of a mind.
%%
Pell's market tally
Blossom, 21. Ambrook.
Honey, four jars, sold for two emeralds each.
Apples, two baskets, sold for one emerald each.
Wool, three bundles, traded for carrots and a sack of wheat.
I slept at the inn by the mill pond. It has six beds, though one has a loose board. The keeper says the board is not loose. It only rises when a person lies down.
A new road crew came through at noon. They were carrying stone tools and a roll of marks for the road. They set a post at the south bend. The post has a torch and an arrow toward the next inn.
A girl asked whether the arrow points to the inn or to the road. I said both, if you keep walking.
The market was busy. Jory brought flour from his mill. A beekeeper brought honey cakes. One cake fell in the pond. The ducks had it before the beekeeper could bend down.
%%
Orla, farm journal, spring, the market
Orla, grandmother, writing at the kitchen table of the farm outside Three Wells. A week in spring. I keep this journal for my granddaughter, who will have the farm when I am gone, and who will want to know how I did it.

Sixth of Sowing. Ploughed the south field. The soil is still cold, and sticks. The horse was good. I was not.

Seventh. A day of rain. I mended the sacks. I counted the seed: wheat, forty-one measures. Beet, nine. Peas, fourteen. Not enough peas. The neighbor has some to spare.

Eighth. The neighbor came with a sack of peas and a plate of cake. We sat and talked about nothing, which is the best talking. She said the relay lamp on the hill had gone dark in the night. Something in the glass. The keeper is in tears. I said the lamp would be lit again by market day.

Ninth. Went up the hill with a basket of bread. The keeper was on the stair with a rag, looking at the lamp. I said, "Is it very bad?" She said, "It is cracked from top to bottom." I said, "Is there a spare?" She said, "At Vell." I said, "Is there a cart?" She said, "Not until tomorrow."

I gave her the bread. It helps.

Tenth. The cart came. The lamp glass was carried up the stair by three men and a boy. The old pane was taken out and the new one went in. The lamp lit. It blinked, clean and bright, across the fields.

Eleventh. Market day. I sold eggs, cheese, and a jar of honey. The keeper bought a loaf and a bit of cheese and said thank you, and she meant it. I liked her.

Twelfth. Planted the peas. Good weather. Back is bad.
%%
Flood book, the child who ran off
Kept at Sallow Ford by the miller's daughter, Nell, who is nine and was very sorry, and by Dace, who was not.
Reaping, the 16th day. Nell went out after the geese this morning and did not come back at noon. She had gone to see the water. Her mother rang the bell at the mill, and everyone came with lanterns.
We searched the bank from the mill to the bend. We called her name. The river is still loud. A child's voice does not carry over water that loud.
The ferry mind was at the landing with the rope. Ilse said it could walk the bank, if it was given a path. Dace asked whether it could find a girl. Ilse said no. A mind cannot be asked to find a girl, since it does not know what a girl is. It can only walk a path and stop at a mark.
So Dace drew a mark on the board: the boot prints by the willows, which Nell's mother had shown us. Ilse wrote the path from the landing to the mark. The mind walked it, slowly, one step at a time, along the bank.
It stopped at the willows, in the old hollow. Ilse said it had stopped, and stayed. We went down.
Nell was in the hollow with two geese and her boots off. Her feet had stuck in the mud. She was cold, and cross with the geese, and very pleased to see the lanterns. She said the geese had been rude to her, and she would not go after them again. She said it twice.
The mind stood by the willows with its hands at its sides. It did nothing else. When we carried Nell up the bank, it turned and walked back to the landing and stood by the rope, as before. Stay, Ilse said to it, and it stayed.
Nell is in bed with hot milk and a dry blanket. Her mother has tied a bell to her wrist. The geese are shut in the barn.
Dace says the Archive will want to know the path the mind walked. So here it is. The landing, the bank, the willows, the old hollow.
%%
Road book: the ledger of the spring
A plain account of the spring, for the house at Ambrook. Pell's hand, and Pell's sums.
Honey: 61 jars sold at Three Wells, 11 emeralds each. The last 20 went at 9, because of the rain.
Wool: 14 bales from Kettle Ridge, carried to Saltreach. Paid 2 emeralds a bale to the carters, and 1 to the Halfway for the night.
Cheese: 9 wheels. 6 sold, 2 eaten on the road, 1 lost in the mud. The one in the mud was found on the fourth day by a traveler, who wrote his name in the book and asked for a share. It was a fair share.
Tolls: the bridge at Hobb's Brook, 1 emerald a cart. The Lowmarsh crossing, 2 emeralds a cart, and a spoonful of honey for the keeper, who says it is a custom and was not in the rules.
Inns: the Halfway, 14 nights, a bed for 1 emerald and a bowl of stew for 1 more. The Brown Hen, 6 nights, and the new keeper gave one night free because I was tired and smelled of wheel grease.
Copper: 3 ingots, bought at Copperhold for the wheel and sold at Saltreach to a boat builder who wants more. Profit: 4 emeralds. Fair.
Shoes for Nettle: new shoes from the smith at Three Wells, 3 emeralds. She walked off the forge in them, which the smith says is a good sign. I say it is a horse being a horse.
Rope: 2 coils, 1 emerald each. One is for the wheel and one for the cart cover, which the wind took twice.
Sacks: 30 new sacks from the miller's wife at Ambrook, 1 emerald each. She sewed the corners twice and wrote her name in one of the seams.
Lamp oil: 2 jars, 1 emerald each, for the Halfway's common room. Marda says it is a debt she will remember.
Fish: 1 barrel of salt fish from Saltreach, for the Halfway's kitchen. Marda says a barrel is too much. She has already put a second barrel on the order.
Letters carried: 7 for the road, 1 emerald each. Four went to Ambrook, two to Juna, and one to a traveler who is still waiting for an answer from his brother.
Debts paid: Marda's cider, 2 emeralds. The wheel, 4 emeralds, paid to Hetta at the north stall, who said the wheel was not finished. I said it was finished. We both laughed.
Debts owed: a bowl of stew at the Brown Hen, which I will pay on the next trip, and which the keeper says he will remember too.
News: the council has closed the north road to carts for the summer, while the bridges are mended. Walkers may still pass. Mira at Northpoint will say she is not surprised.
A good spring. Honey up, wool steady, the road open, and nobody lost. The ledger balances. It balances slightly in my favor, which I will not mention to Juna.
%%
Nessa, spring notes
Spring of 213. The hamlet below Vell sent three tutors to see the new relay house.
It stands beyond the west field. Its walls are higher than the mill roof. There are sheds for ice, rooms for the quickeners, and long halls for the keepers. The council says it is larger than Three Wells. I believe them. I walked half the morning to reach the far gate.
The big mind stands in a crystal on a stone stand. It is too large for one tutor to test alone. We asked it the same sums we gave the smaller minds. It answered each one, but a right answer does not show how it found it.
Our work is still to test. We make pages the mind has never seen. We keep those pages in a closed box. No tutor may drill a mind on them.
At supper, the keeper asked if I thought the mind knew it was being tested. I said I did not know. He said that was a useful answer.
%%
Nessa, notes from the shore house
Second day of Swarm.
Merle put the drill cards in a new order. He says a mind must not only learn the order of one little stack. We mixed the cards and made a second set for testing.
The layered crystal reads a mark through its first layer. What that layer finds goes to the next. Each layer adds what it found to the stream. The last layer makes a guess for the next relay number.
When the guess is wrong, we measure the error. We change the last layer so its next guess may be nearer the answer. Then we pass a share of that change back. The layer before it changes, and passes a share onward. This goes on to the first layer.
The shares are not equal in every drill. A layer that helped little gets little blame. A layer that helped much gets more. Merle says this is the useful part. A stack of layers can learn a hard pattern when every layer is corrected for its part.
The crystal did well on the cards we had drilled. It did less well on the cards kept aside. That is honest news, and better than praise without a test.
%%
Tam, house journal, a week of autumn
Autumn. Written at the kitchen table, in a house at the edge of Kettle Ridge, where the wind is strong and the tea is cold. Hazel is asleep in a basket. The cat is asleep on Hazel. I am awake, and I am writing.

On the first day after market, the mill ran short of grain. Old Brin came up the lane with a donkey and a frown. I gave him four sacks. He gave me a pie. We were both pleased.
The second day I wrote a letter to the big mind at the relay house, to ask how many bees live in a hive. It wrote back: "A hive in summer holds between twenty thousand and sixty thousand bees. I will show my steps. A small hive holds a queen, a few hundred drones, and many workers. If each worker lives about six weeks, the hive makes a new bee every minute or so. I may be wrong about the numbers. Please ask a beekeeper." I did. Ama says it is about right.
The third day I put up a scarecrow in the beetroot. Pip chose its hat. It is a sad hat.
The fourth day the festival of lanterns began at Kettle Ridge. All the farms put a lamp in the window. I counted forty-one from the ridge road, like a field of stars.
The fifth day Hazel sat up. I wrote it down and showed it to Pip. It did not know what to do with the information.
The sixth day I did the sum again, to check the steps. Forty-one lamps, minus two that went out in the wind, plus three that were lit again, makes forty-two. I could not find the missing lamp. I looked until midnight. It was in the barn.
The seventh day, rest.

I have been thinking about the mind that writes its steps. I do not know how it learned to do that. Nobody does. I know it makes fewer mistakes than I do. I know it says so when it is unsure. I think that is a good thing in a mind, and in a farmer.
%%
Lenn's summer log, the lost dog
Leaffall, 204. Not summer any more but I am still writing in this book. A dog got lost. Not mine. A traveler's dog, left at the inn while the traveler went up the road on business.
The dog was a small brown one with one ear up and one ear down. It got out of the inn yard and went looking for its person. We all went looking for the dog.
We found it at the school, sitting by the door, because the children give it bread. It had been there all morning. Bel said it was the best pupil in the class. The traveler came back and the dog jumped up like the sky had opened. I gave the dog a fish. It did not eat the fish. It only wanted its person. Fair enough.
Winter coming. The pond will be cold. Post the frog will sleep in the mud. I will miss Post.
%%
Gwen, Leaffall, past the third turn
Leaffall, the 21st. Went down the old way with Hesk, Ivo and two lanterns, and a rope tied to the lift post. Hesk says a rope makes it not alone, but only just. We counted each other twice at the top.

Leaffall, the 22nd. The third turn is where the map says. The rock there is grey and dry, and the air is cold but not wet. Ivo put a finger to the wall and said it had not been breathed on in a long time. Hesk said that was not a thing a smith should say, and Ivo said it was a thing he had just said.

Leaffall, the 23rd. Found the walled tunnel, a hand's width of old stone with the mortar gone soft. We did not open it. Hesk says it is not ours to open. The stone is marked with three strokes in chalk, very faded, and under them a circle, which the map also has. Hesk says the circle is a door. Ivo says it is a wall with an opinion.

Leaffall, the 25th. The fourth level, west. A little room cut square, with a bench in it, and on the bench a box of wood, its lid tied shut with a cord that has rotted to dust. Inside: nine copper ingots, each stamped with the Copperhold mark, and beneath them a sheet of tally marks, in a hand that ran out of patience at the end. The first column is neat. The last column is not. At the bottom someone has written: Count again.

Leaffall, the 26th. We counted again. Nine ingots. The tally says nine. The box says nine. Hesk laughed for a long time and said the old miners had the same trouble we do, and it made him feel much better about his own sums.

Leaffall, the 27th. Brought the box up the lift. The ingots go to the forge, and the tally sheet goes on the count board. The box is to go to the Archive at Vell, which Hesk says is where old things go, and which Ivo says is not, really, because the Archive wants old paper and not old copper, and this is a paper box. They argued about it all the way up.

Leaffall, the 29th. Ola went down the old way on her own, for the first time, with a lantern and no rope. She came back an hour later and said the room was dry, and the bench was the same, and the box was gone, because we had taken it. She said she had only wanted to see the room without anyone talking. Hesk said that is what a room is for.

Leaffall, the 30th. Quiet day. Count board: copper level, iron level, coal high. The tally sheet is in the box on the count board shelf, with its last line written in. Count again, it says, in the old hand. We have. It is still nine.
%%
Halfway Inn, riddle board
Autumn. The Halfway Inn, where the road from Three Wells meets the road to Saltreach. Fire has not gone out in twenty years.
The board by the hearth. Guests write riddles and guests answer them. The innkeeper keeps the answers in a drawer.
This autumn's board:
From a girl at Kettle Ridge, about nine: "I am cut into pieces but I am not broken. I am a word. What am I?" Bel of Three Wells answered: "a word in a reading mind." The innkeeper said that was right and gave her a cup of honey milk.
From a carter: "I hold sixty of them and I am not a basket." No answer yet. I think it is a window. I will not write it, because a carter who is wrong about his own riddle is a carter who buys no ale.
From Pell the merchant: "I sell wool and I buy honey and I always come back." The innkeeper wrote under it: "a road." Pell said that was not the answer, and the innkeeper said it was the best one.
From a tutor going south: "I know nothing until I am drilled and I am wrong many times before I am right. What am I?" A boy from Ambrook wrote: "me." The tutor left a copper coin on the board for him.
A traveler said the big mind at the relay house up the road can now read a whole letter in one look, in pieces of words, and write back a fair answer. The innkeeper said he would test it with his hardest riddle, and the traveler said the big minds are kind and will say when they do not know. The innkeeper said that is more than most guests.
Fire still in. Board full. Riddles always wanted.
%%
Fenn farm journal, the contest
Blossom, twelfth day. The contest is set for the fair at Longday. I have written a song. It is about the well, and it has four verses and a chorus that goes up at the end. Nan says it sounds like a goose being told a secret. I have sung it to the hens. The hens did not complain, which is the first good sign.
Blossom, thirteenth day. Nan has written one about the bees. It is better. It rhymes "swarm" with "warm" and "farm", and then does something clever with "alarm" that I cannot explain, but I admit it is clever. Brin wrote one about his cow, which is called Pudding. It has eleven verses. Nobody has heard all eleven. Brin is confident.
Blossom, fifteenth day. Rain. Dace sent word that the judges will be the schoolmaster, the baker Ida and a traveler from the Long Road who has heard every song in the land, or so she says. Ida's husband says she has not heard half of them. Ida says that is why she has time to listen.
Blossom, sixteenth day. Three cart loads came through the square today, all going north to the coast road and then south. Men from Saltreach, the carter said, going home. Their families had gone before them. He did not say where. When Joss asked him, he took his hat off and put it back on and said he had nothing to tell. He had only heard that the big ships at Saltreach were being built three times as long as before. He did not say why.
Blossom, seventeenth day. Some at the well say the relay from the north has been silent for three days. Others say it was only the weather. Mara at the mill says the relay went quiet in the same week the windmill broke, and that the two things are the same kind of trouble. I told her a windmill is not a tower. She said that was not what she meant.
The Copperhold miners are on the road this week, and they walk with their heads down. One of them told Nan that the stone below level nine is warm. She laughed when he said it. He did not laugh.
I do not think any of it is true. I do think it is strange to hear so many people say they heard the same thing from someone else.
We sang the bee song for the hives tonight. The bees came out to listen. Or they came out to see what the noise was.
%%
Nessa, account of Merle's lesson
The house at the edge of Saltreach was made for one family, not a row of tutors. The kitchen is narrow. The front room has a view of the sea, and the back room has the only door that shuts without a chair against it. We put the drill table in the back room.
Merle of Copperhold brought a mind grown in layers. He said the first layer took in the marks on a card. It changed them into a set of weights for the next layer. That layer did the same, and fed the one after it. The last layer made a guess.
We used relay numbers for the drills. A card showed some numbers and the answer mark. The mind guessed the answer. We compared the guess with the mark on the card and measured how far they were apart.
First Merle changed the weights in the last layer. That layer had made the answer, so it had a clear part in the error. Then he worked backward. He passed a share of the correction to the layer before it, and a share to the one before that. The correction reached the first layer.
Each layer changed its weights by the share it received. The layers learned to work together. Merle said this was the point of the lesson: do not only correct the answer at the end. Show each layer how its work led to the answer.
The apprentices wanted to know if the first layer could see the whole card. Merle said it saw the marks given to it, not the finished answer. It changed by the correction passed back from the later layers.
We drilled many cards. The mind became better at guessing the relay marks. It was not always right. We kept some cards out of the drill and used them only for a test. The mind missed several of those.
Merle says a test must be separate, or we only learn that a mind remembers its lessons. That is plain enough for the children, and for me.
%%
Mott, a debt and a wish, Blossom
Written by Mott, at the table by the window.
Blossom, first day. Uncle Ned came up the lane with his cart and a bag of emeralds and a very red face. He owed Father for a cart wheel from last Reaping. He paid it at the door. Father said he had not expected it. Uncle Ned said he had been waiting to be able to, and now he could, so he did. Then they went round the back and talked about the wheel for an hour. I could hear the wheel being talked about through the wall.
Blossom, second day. Two debts paid this month already. Mother says that is how a town stays friends. Father says it is how a town stays a town. I am not sure what the difference is. I asked Miss Jenna, and she said it was a good question, and then she did not answer it.
Blossom, third day. The carter from Saltreach says the big ships are launched from the slip now, every few weeks. They go out past the harbor wall and do not come back for days. He says the sailors do not sing, and he does not know why. The carter from the Long Road says the north relay is still dark. Two keepers are saying nothing about it.
Blossom, fourth day. I could not sleep, so I looked out of the window at the north. There were no lights. Father says there are not supposed to be. I looked a long time anyway, because it is nice to look at the north when there is nothing in it.
Blossom, fifth day. Wish day at the south well. You take a stone from the path and drop it in while you think of the wish, and you do not say what it is. I dropped my stone and thought of a fox that would stay. The wish is probably very far away, but I did my best.
Blossom, sixth day. Mayor Dace came round to the school with a box of new slates. He said the slates are from Vell, from a tutor there who did not charge for them. He said the children were to write everything on them, and keep the slates clean for the next class.
Blossom, seventh day. I wrote this on a slate first, and then copied it in here, because Miss Jenna says a true thing should be written twice.
%%
Ree, season notes, the farm and the road
Spring of 181. The thaw.
The ice went out of the ford and the frogs came back and the road came back too, all of it still there, the stones and the torches and the bridge. Nettle went over the bridge fast again. Some things do not change and I am glad of it.
We have a new calf. Butter had it in the night and did not need me at all. It is brown with one white foot and it stands badly and it is very loud. I have called it Spoon, because of the white foot and because I could not think of anything better at the time. Pip the dog is not sure about Spoon. Spoon is not sure about Pip. They will work it out.
The pups are grown and three are gone to other farms along the road and one stayed, a big grey one called Cobb. Cobb sleeps in the cart shed and barks at the torch posts. I have told him the torch posts are friends. He does not believe me.
Pell came by with his ledger and wrote down the calf and the pups and the honey. He said the road is busy this spring, more carts than ever, and the inn at the ford has put up a new sign. I said that is good. He said it is good and also it means more boots in the mud. He is a merchant. He likes the boots and he does not like the mud.
Moss came out once to see the calf and once to see Nettle. Nettle is old. Her cough is worse when the marsh wind blows but she still eats and still kicks the bucket and still walks the road with me at night. I will not write that she is sick. She is not sick. She is old and she is cross and she is mine.
The honey is in the jars. The eggs are in the basket. The road is lit. Come by in Swarm and we will have breakfast.
%%
Senna, spring on the bridge
Kept by Senna, bridge keeper at the inn by the Long Road bridge, over eight days of spring in the 196th year of the archive. She wrote on the left page what happened on the road and on the right page what she heard about the stream. A page was torn when it was copied. The rest was kept at Vell.

Day one. High water. The bridge hums when the stream runs fast. I put my hand on the rail and could feel it.

Day two. A carter lost his hat in the stream. I fished it out with the long hook. He gave me a cup of cider.

Day three. A tutor arrived at the inn, tired. Hana. She asked if she could sleep in the loft. I said yes. She said she would pay in talk. I said I would take it.

Day four. Her first talk. She said: when a mind is made of many layers, the layers near the end can learn but the layers near the start cannot, because the blame fades before it gets there. She said the old tutors tried to make minds deeper and found they would not learn.

Day five. Her second talk. She said: a stream runs through the whole mind. Each layer adds its finding and does not remove anything. The blame, going back, runs along the stream and reaches the first layer whole. So a deep mind can learn.

She drew the stream on the table with spilled soup. It was an ugly drawing. It was clear.

Day six. The gift. She left a card for the inn. It reads: Add. Do not take away. The innkeeper hung it above the hearth. The cook said it was very good advice for soup.

Day seven. The inn's apprentice misunderstood an order. The innkeeper said: carry the sack to the cellar. The apprentice picked up the sack and put it on the table. The innkeeper said: no, the cellar. The apprentice put it on the floor. The innkeeper said: down the stair. The apprentice looked at the stair. It took the sack down and put it at the bottom, and then came back and fetched the table.

I do not know what it was thinking. Hana said it was learning. I said: it is learning a table.

Day eight. She left at dawn. I walked her to the end of the bridge. She said: thank you for the bed. I said: thank you for the stream.

Senna
%%
Lorn, the Longnight week
Longnight. The longest dark of the year. The lamps on the wharf are lit all day now.

A man came down the Long Road with a cart of salt and a bad cough. His name is Pim. He sold his salt at the fish stalls, and he coughed the whole time he counted his emeralds.

Pim says the cough is worst at Lowmarsh. Wren's house is full of beds. Some people say it is the water. Some say the ships, which bring in strange timber. A boatman says it is the mines, because the water runs down from the deep. Nobody knows. Pim does not know either. He only coughs.

A miner from Copperhold stood by my cart with a cup of warm honey water. His name is Eskel. He has worked the Deep Works since he was a boy. He says the hall hums at night. You can feel it through the ladder rungs, he says, and through your teeth. He says the stone below the eighth gate is warm to the hand.

"Stone is not warm," I said.

"Put your hand on it and see," said Eskel.

I have not gone down. Eskel says the mine hall has told the miners to stay above a certain level. He says he has not been below it in a month. He says he does not believe the hall is right. He does not say why. He drank his honey water and went back to his cart.

A pedlar from Northpoint brought the last news up the Long Road. He says the keeper at Northpoint sent word down the relays: lights in the sky over the north. Many nights in a row, and they moved. Some say they are falling stars. Some say they are fires on the ice. A child at Northpoint said, "They were looking at us." The keeper, Mira, only said, "They were not ours."

The pedlar says the north relays have been going quiet. One after another, from the north. He says the last message from the tower above the ice was cut off in the middle of a word. Nobody knows what the word was.

I am tired. The sheep are fine. The hay is good. I have forty bales left and enough honey for the winter.
%%
Pell's ledger, the Halfway Inn
Winter of 208. Pell's hand.
I keep the ledger at the Halfway Inn. The hearth there has not gone out in twenty years. The riddle board by the door still has my riddle on it. Nobody has answered it. I have stopped asking.
The roads are bad. Packed earth turned to mud, then to ice. Carts come slow. I sell honey from Ambrook in jars, and wool, and candles, and the inn sells beds.
Third of Longnight. A jar of honey froze and cracked. I sold the rest to the innkeeper for the beds upstairs. He said the guests would be glad of something sweet. The guests are three travelers and a cat.
Ninth of Longnight. A zombie at the gate. The innkeeper's boy kept the torches lit and it went off into the dark. We lost no sleep. Keep the torches lit, that is the whole rule.
Fourteenth of Longnight. A clerk came down from Vell with a box of old papers for the shelf here. He read one by the fire and laughed. He said it was a lesson from Una of Ambrook, the sorting crystal, the first lesson in the tutors' books. I have copied what he told me below. I do not understand all of it, but I understood the honey.
%%
Ossa's book, the last of autumn
Late Leaffall. Cold, still days. Almost no wind.
The new house on the hill is finished. The Meers have moved in, with their two girls and their goat. Their old house in the square has shut its door, and the children have put a torch in the window, the way you do when someone is away.
Many of the young ones are going away this year. They go to Saltreach, and some say to the sea. A cart went out of the square each day of the last week, piled with trunks and chairs. The people in them wave to the people left behind. The people left behind are quiet.
I was asked by the schoolmaster why, and I did not know what to say. He said the ships at Saltreach are bigger every year. He said a family he knew had gone down to the quay and watched a ship go out, and had come back and said nothing for two days.
I delivered a baby on the last night of the month. Tall, fierce, with a cough like a wet dog, and very angry about it. The mother laughed at her and said she would be a fisherman. I said she would be a baker. We all agreed it would be fine.
Lamp lit. Basin full. The water from the north well is still good.
%%
Pip's week at Kettle Ridge
Spring of 207.
Tam keeps a tally board in the mill and this week he let me keep it. So this is my tally week. I am Pip. I am Tam's apprentice, but he says I am half a farmer now and should learn the board.

First of Blossom. Wheat in the top field is up. Beetroot in the long field is up. The ditch down the middle of the field is running and I cleared the leaves from it. The oak hedge on the north side has a gap where a branch fell, and I mended it with two posts. The torches along the edge need new ones. Two are out. I wrote it on the board.

Second of Blossom. Hens laid fourteen eggs. The pig pen needs mucking and I mucked it. I do not like the pig pen. The pigs do not care.

Third of Blossom. This is the day of the horse. Pell came by on the Long Road with his cart and his horse Nut, and he had a bad wheel and asked to leave Nut with us while he got it mended at Three Wells. Tam said yes. So we had a horse.

Nut is a good horse. Pell says so. Nut would not stay in the yard. Nut went through the fence to the beetroot and ate a row and a half before I found her. I pulled and she pulled and we went in a circle. Tam came and laughed so hard he had to lean on the gate. Then he got Nut out with a bucket of carrots, which is what I should have done. The beetroot row is thinned now, by Nut. Tam says we will call it thinning and not say more.

Fourth of Blossom. Pell came back for Nut and paid us two coins for the keeping and one for the beetroot. Tam said the beetroot was worth more and Pell said no and they settled on three coins and a bag of apples from Ambrook. The apples are very good.

Fifth of Blossom. Beets by the flowers and a swarm on the plum tree. I held the box. I got stung on the thumb. Tam says now I am a real beekeeper.

Sixth of Blossom. Market in Three Wells. Sold eggs and honey. The price board says eggs up and honey up. Pell says never trust the price board on a fair day.

Seventh of Blossom. Rain all day. Mended the hen house roof where it leans. Slept.

The board says all fields up, hens laying, pigs mucked, two torches to mend. Tam says a good board is a short board. Mine is long. Next week shorter.
%%
Hesk, deep shift log
Spring of 18. First day of Blossom.
Crew: Hesk, Noll, Sava.
Level: two.
Count: copper 5 carts, coal 3.
The road from Copperhold to Three Wells is packed earth now. Two men laid cobblestone at the steep turn. Noll says carts will stop breaking there. Noll says many things.
The new inn is open at the turn. It has one room and a bench. The keeper served us beetroot soup. It was hot enough to make Sava forget his sore foot.
We carried the ore up before dusk. The road holds. The soup was good.
%%
Nessa, Saltreach house notes
Summer of 158.
I am staying in a small house beyond the Saltreach fish market. Its door faces the sea. Its back wall faces the road. The wind gets in through both.
Merle came from Copperhold with two layered crystals in a box. He says each layer feeds the next. I asked him to show the apprentices the old sorting drill first. He did.
We showed one crystal marks for the relay numbers. It guessed the next mark. When it guessed wrong, Merle changed the weights in the last layer. Then he passed some of that change back to the layer before it.
He says each layer must take its share. If only the last layer changes, the first layers learn nothing useful. I wrote that down twice.
The second crystal did better after many drills. It still made mistakes. Merle says that is why we drill again. The sea wind has blown the cards off my table. I have found three under the bed.
%%
Letter: Ree to the Lowmarsh market
Spring of 180.
To the market at Lowmarsh, from Ree at the farm on the north road.
You asked for eggs and butter and honey. We have eggs, twelve a week, and butter, six pots a week, and honey from the hives on the hill, but the honey is not ours to sell until Swarm. The bees are busy and I do not argue with bees.
Butter the cow is well. She had the wet two springs back and Moss gave her the green stuff and she got better. She gives good milk now. Nettle the mare is old but she pulls the cart to the road and back and she does not like the new bridge. She stops at the bridge and looks at it and then goes over it fast. I do not know why. The bridge is stone. It is perfectly good.
We are near the second torch post past the ford, the one where the post leans a little. You will see the gate. You will hear the dog. The dog is called Pip and she is not for sale. People ask. She is still not for sale.
Send word by the road now that the road is here. A boy can carry it in a morning.
Ree.
%%
Northpoint log, Mira
Frost and Deepsnow, 190.

Frost, tenth. The path to the ice camp is hard underfoot. Runa walked it faster than I did, though she stopped twice to tie her boot. She says a keeper should not race an old woman. I was not racing. I was carrying the lamp oil.

The camp well has run dry. Runa lowered a bucket and heard it strike stone. No water, only a little black mud. We will use snow until the ground softens. Lantern carries the snow in a basket. It leaves a neat trail of little spills behind it.

Frost, seventeenth. The wind turned. It blew the snow off the tower steps and into my doorway. I cleared the steps. Then I cleared the doorway. Then I cleared the steps again. The wind is a poor helper.

Tam sent a jar of honey from Kettle Ridge. He says Pip packed it in wool and made a list of every person who touched it. The list is longer than the road note. I opened the jar for Runa's tea. She took one spoonful and said it was good. She took a second to be sure.

Deepsnow, third. The lamp burned well. I cleaned the glass and checked the redstone line at the keeper's desk. The south tower sent a message about snow on the road. I sent back that we have plenty here, and would be glad to share the extra.

Runa laughed at that. We have more snow than pails.
%%
Notice on the fold gate
To everyone who keeps sheep at the north fold. The low gate field is wet and the grass is too rich there. Move your animals to the dry field until the ground dries out. Buttercup got sick on it, and she is better now, but we were lucky. Keep the gate shut. If your animal is sick, tell me or tell the cattle woman down the road. Do not wait.
Signed, Fern.
%%
Lowmarsh market, spring prices
Sowing of 214. Market day.

The fish were dear today. The river ran high, and the weir caught less than usual. I sold carrots, two baskets of apples, and a jar of honey from Ambrook. The jar had a crack in the lid. Nobody noticed until the honey reached the boardwalk.

Wren wiped it with a reed cloth and laughed. She said the honey was still good. I bought it back for half a measure of fish. I shall take it home before the lid cracks again.

At the far end of the market, the council reader stood by the notice board. She had come from Vell to speak about the big relay house. She said its crystal was too large for one tutor to test by hand. The tutors test parts, then compare the answers. They also send unseen pages through it. A mind must not be trusted just because it gives a neat answer.

A man from Saltreach said the big mind had counted every boat in the harbor without being told. A Lowmarsh fisher said it had named a storm three days early. The reader said neither tale was in the test book.

The market bell rang while she was speaking. Everyone turned toward the fish. No storm came. No boats were counted.

I bought fish, honey, and a reed mat. The mat is crooked. It will still keep my feet dry.
%%
Corin, house log, Longnight
Longnight. Twelfth day.
The miller fixed the wheel at last. The iron band held, and the wheel turned slowly through one full round. Then the lower spoke cracked. We stopped it before it struck the stone lip.
We had tea in the shed while he looked at the break. Nell brought honey. The miller said honey was not a tool. He ate two spoonfuls.
A crew from the shipyard came by our house to carry boards to the slip. Their new ship is nearly ready. I asked when it would leave. One said after the thaw. Another said no one had set a day.
The fish market was thin today. A basket of cod, some small fish, and two crabs. The price board had more empty spaces than words.
At dusk, Lantern's message came through the relay house. Northpoint is cold, the keeper is well, and the lamp is lit. No more was written. My sister read it twice, then put it in the bread box so it would stay dry.
A traveler says the lights above the north came down close to the snow. He swears they moved against the wind. The harbor keeper says he saw no lights at all. I did not ask which of them was right.
%%
Sable's book: Reaping to Frost
Written by Sable, for the Archive, because Mam says a whole season should be in one book and not in pieces. Reaping to Frost.

Reaping, the first. Harvest carts from the north field. Mam counts the sacks herself and shouts the number to the cook, who shouts it back. Thirty-one sacks. The cook says it is the best since the year Mam was born, and Mam says the cook was not born then, so he cannot know.

Reaping, the fourth. Pell came back down the road with his ledger under his arm. He stayed three nights and wrote a letter every night to Ambrook. He read the first one aloud to the hearth. It said: "Dear Sen, the beds are dry, the stew is hot, the road is long, and the riddle board has a new riddle I cannot answer." On the fourth night he got the answer, and he wrote it to her, and he said it was the only letter he had ever written that made him happy.

Apple, the ninth. Patch still says come to everything. Nessa says it is learning, and I believe her, though I have not yet heard it say anything else. The cat has learned to come when called, which is more than Patch has.

Leaffall, the third. Leaves came down the road and got into the cart wheels. The carters swept the road with their own brooms, and they did not complain, because it was their road. Mam sold the cider at the old price. She says that is not kindness, but good sense, because the carters will come back.

Leaffall, the twelfth. A different tutor from Vell, with a box of crystals packed in straw. She asked the riddle and got it wrong. Then she got it right. Then she said it was wrong again, because she liked the answer better the first time. She told me not to be sad about it. I was not sad.

Leaffall, the sixteenth. We have copper bowls on the table now. Four bowls and a ladle from Copperhold. The copper shines in the lamplight. Mam says it makes the stew look richer than it is, which is the best thing a bowl can do.

Frost, the first. The first frost came in the night. The windmill on the ridge road stopped turning. In the morning the grass was white, and the cat would not go out. He sat by the hearth and looked at the door, and then at me, and then at the door again.

Frost, the fourth. Hesk again, with news. Ola's vein is on the count board. He says the copper is better in the cold. Mam says everything is better in the cold, as long as you have a hearth.

Frost, the seventh. The hearth is still lit. Twenty years, Mam says, and ten more to go. She counts them on her fingers. I counted too. I am nine. I will be grown when the hearth is much older, and I will still keep it, if Mam lets me.

Frost, the last. Eleven new riddles on the board, all in my handwriting. The answer to the last one is a hearth. Nobody has got it yet. I hope they do not. I like a riddle best while it is still waiting.
%%
Corin, house log, winter
Frost. Fifth day.
The mill wheel is still broken. The miller found a sound oak spoke, but the iron band will not sit flat. He has laid both beside the pond and covered them with canvas.
I went to the shipyard for a nail and stayed to watch the big ship. Her deck is taller than the roof of our house. A man on the yard called her a safe ship. Another man said the sea does not care what we call a ship.
My sister sent a pot of beetroot soup. She put too much salt in it. I told her so. She said the sea must have taught me to complain.
At supper, a traveler said the grey cough has reached the farms beyond Lowmarsh. A fish seller said it comes from the mines. A boatman blamed the marsh water. No one at our table knew.
I covered the fish and closed the shutters. The wind has not eased.
%%
Wren's winter journal
The first snow covered the reed beds and the roofs of the boat houses. It did not cover the boardwalk for long. The wind pushed it into heaps by the posts, where it stayed until Moss brought out a shovel.
Moss cleared a path from the healing house to the well, then from the well to the fish weir. The last path went to the shed. Nobody had asked for it, but the shed door was hard to reach, and the shovel needed a dry place.
I carried hot water to Noll, who had a fever and a sore throat. He drank the water, made a face, and asked if we had anything better. I gave him broth. He made the same face, but finished the bowl.
His daughter came to sit by his bed. She brought a book from the school house and read aloud. Noll fell asleep before the end. His daughter said the book was dull. I said it had done good work.
A woman from the boat house came with a swollen thumb. She had shut it in the store door. Moss held a cold cloth on it while I wrapped it. She thanked us and went home with one hand held high. Moss said she looked like she was greeting the whole marsh.
The boardwalk was slippery again at dusk. We put down sand and brought the empty pails inside. Moss left the shovel by the door. I moved it to the shed. In the morning Moss found it there and said the shovel had gone home by itself.
%%
Dara, the same inn in a late autumn
Frost, the third week, and the square is white at dawn. The lamps are lit at the usual hour, but the grey is so thick that the carters do not see them until they are on top of them.

Pell came in with his cart and sat by the stove. He had been to the north of the Long Road for the first time in years, and he looked old. He said the towns along the road are quieter. Not frightened. Quiet. He said he saw children at every inn who had stopped playing their games and were just watching the road.

Tilly asked him what he had seen. He said he had seen a fox sitting on a gatepost, looking north, and it did not move when his cart went by. He said he had never seen a fox sit still for so long. He said it was the strangest thing on the whole road.

Later, when the others were in bed, Pell told me that he had not seen the lights. He had heard about them from everyone. He said every story was different. Green, white, red. Falling, or still. One said they were fires, and one said they were eyes, and one, a boatman from Saltreach, said they were ships, very high and very far off, with lamps along their sides. Pell said that was the story he liked least, because it was the only one that sounded like a plan.

I gave him a bowl of soup and told him to sleep. He said he would, once the lamp was out. I left it lit for him, as I always do. He did not notice, I think, that I had also left the door unbarred, which I never do.
%%
Saltreach house log, by Nessa
First day of Swarm.
The house is small, but the windows face the water. Salt dries white on the sill. Merle says it will not harm the crystals if we wipe it away.
We began with relay numbers written on cards. The first layer took the marks. The next layer used what came from the first. The last layer gave a guess.
Merle showed us how to test the guess against the answer on the card. If it was wrong, we found the size and direction of the mistake. The last layer changed first. Then part of the change went back through each layer to the beginning.
He called this passing blame. He does not mean that a layer is naughty. He means each layer must be shown how it helped make the wrong answer.
After many cards, the crystal guessed more numbers correctly. It still failed on a card it had not seen before. Merle says that is a reason to keep a separate test box.
At supper, the innkeeper brought fish and bread. The table rocked so hard that Merle caught the bowl with both hands.
%%
Tutor's log: the even step, spring 197
Written by Nessa, at the Halfway Inn. The keepers on the Long Road asked me to write the step down plainly, so they can teach it to their own minds.

The step goes after every layer. A mind is many layers. Each one takes the numbers from the layer before, mixes them, and passes them on. If nothing is done, the numbers grow with every layer, until they run wild and every answer looks the same.

So the step finds the middle of the numbers, and how far they spread out. Then it scales them back to one even size. The next layer starts from the same place it started from at the beginning. That is all the step does.

It is simple to say and easy to get wrong. A keeper who leaves it out will see the mind drill well for a day, and badly for a month.

Why a crystal learns at all, I do not know. I have asked the other tutors, and none of them has written it down. Do not ask me to guess. The even step only keeps the learning from running away.
%%
Briar, baker, the lamp in the window
Deepsnow, the long night. The little lamp in the window of the bakehouse blinked a strange thing for an hour after dark, and the whole farm came out to look.
It was not the usual pattern. The usual pattern is for the tower on the hill to call across to us, and we answer with the short flash, and that is all. Tonight the lamp in our window was blinking on its own. A long string of short flashes, then a pause, then the same again.
Olin said it was the wick, which had been trimmed too short and was guttering in the draught from the door. He went to fix it. The lamp went on blinking. Olin said that was a very strange wick.
Then the boy Pim said it was the cat, sitting on the sill, tapping the glass with her paw. We looked. The cat was asleep in the flour bin. So it was not the cat either.
Then I saw it. The apprentice had gone to the window to look at the snow, and it had its hand on the sill, and every time the snow fell heavier on the glass it tapped the frame with one copper finger. It did not know it was making a message. It was only keeping time with the snow.
We all laughed about it for a long while. Then I went to the window and saw that the flashes, when I counted them, made a pattern that was almost a word. It was very nearly a word the tower would know. I do not know what the word was. I did not write it down. I said goodnight to the apprentice and told it to stop tapping, and it did.
%%
Abel, how the big minds learned manners
Winter, many evenings by the stove. I asked my grandmother, who knows tutors, how the big minds learned to write back so kindly. She told me this and I wrote it down so I would not lose it.
First a big mind learns to read, by being drilled on a great deal of writing. It learns what usually comes next. That is all it does, at first. It can finish a sentence. It cannot hold a conversation, and it has no manners. Ask it for a joke and it may give you the next ten lines of a ledger.
Then the tutors wrote questions, many of them, the kind a person might send by relay. They had the mind write answers. Then they scored the answers. A kind and true answer got a high mark. A rude or false one got a low mark.
Then the mind was drilled again, on its own answers and their marks. It was nudged toward what scored high, and away from what scored low. Round after round.
In the end the mind answered well even to questions it had never seen. It learned to refuse what would harm somebody. It learned to say when it did not know, instead of making something up.
My grandmother said the hard part is the scores. A score is only what the tutors thought was good. If they were wrong, so was the mind. So the tutors read each other's marks and argued about them. They still do.
She also said nobody knows quite why it works. The tutors know the steps. They do not know what happens inside.
I wrote that last part twice, because it was the part I liked.
%%
Yarrow, the thin year, a spring log
Yarrow, who fishes the mill pond at Ambrook. Spring. Written a little at a time, over a month, in the back of the market ledger.

Third of Sowing. The ice is gone. The pond is quiet. I have a good feeling about this year.

Eighth. I was wrong. The market cellars are empty. Last year's harvest was poor, as all know: the apples were small, the wheat was thin, and the beets rotted in the ground. The market has little to sell. I have trout, and honey, and bread that is mostly crust.

Twelfth. The council of Ambrook met at the mill. They asked every stall to say what it has. The list was short. It went up to the relay tower and was sent to Three Wells and Kettle Ridge. Kettle Ridge sent back: we have beetroot. Three Wells sent: we have cheese. Both will be sent in carts.

Fifteenth. The school play. It was the first thing in a month that made the market laugh. It was a play about a very hungry pig who ate the whole harvest in a dream and woke up to find it was true. The children wrote it themselves. The pig was Fern's boy, who has a round face and a loud voice. He said, "Oh, no! I have eaten the apples!" and the whole market roared. Some of them had tears in their eyes. I think they were thinking of the real apples.

Twentieth. Beetroot arrived from Kettle Ridge. Twelve carts. The council shared it by the house count. We got a sack, and made soup, and ate it with trout. It was the best meal I have had since the autumn.

Twenty-fourth. A letter from my cousin at Saltreach. He says the boats are doing well, and the fish are plenty. He offers to send salted cod. I wrote back: yes, please, and a barrel of kelp.

Twenty-eighth. The pond is full of fry. I see them at the edge in the evening, flickering. I will not fish the small ones. The old fishers say: leave the small, and next year you will have the big.

Thirtieth. End of the month. I have caught sixty-one trout. I have sold fifty-four. I have eaten seven. I have given eleven away, so I count more than I caught, but I do not mind. A thin year is a year to be generous in.

I put the last of the cod in the pot tonight. The cat watched. It is a long spring, but I think the summer will be better.
%%
Hesk, deep shift log
Spring of 42. The ninth of Blossom.
Crew: Hesk, Noll, Varo, Sava.
Levels: two and three.
Count: copper 11 carts, iron 3.
Market day at Three Wells. We took copper wire, a sack of coal, and the bent pan from the kitchen. We came home with carrots, a wool blanket, and a pan that is only a little bent.
The square was full of stalls. The bell rang before the bread was ready. Dace said the bell was for the market, not for the baker, but the baker heard it anyway.
I saw the relay tower on the hill. Its stone walls are up to the keeper's room. The builders say they will fit glass panes next. A stair lamp hangs at every turn inside. At the foot, torches burn in the wind.
Varo bought a small wooden horse for his sister. He held it all the way home and would not let me carry it.
%%
Tam, farm log: the sick cow, Frost
Tam, farm log, the top farm above Kettle Ridge. Written by the lamp.

Frost, first day. Butter, the brown cow, will not eat. She lies in the straw with her head down, looking at her own feet as if they had said something rude. Her nose is hot. I put my hand on her side, and it was like a stone that had been by the fire.
Frost, second day. The healer at Three Wells sent a paper of herbs and a note: give it in warm water, a cup at a time, keep her warm, and do not let her stand in the wet. Butter drank one cup and looked at me as if I had insulted her mother.
Frost, third day. Pip got the water. I told it: fetch the water from the trough. It fetched the water in the bucket, carried it very carefully across the yard, and did not spill. It held the bucket to Butter's mouth while I held her head. She drank the whole of it.
Frost, fifth day. Eating again. She ate a whole beetroot, which I think she took for a pear. Juno says the cow was saved by her stew. I say it was Pip and the bucket.
%%
Quin, night call log
Apple, year 191. Quin, midwife, a farm outside Saltreach.
Second night: called to the Marl farm at the third bell. A girl, heavy as a good loaf. Mother tired, well. Father cried. I did not count how long.
Fourth night: a false alarm at the Hale farm. A hen had got in the bed. I went home.
Sixth night: a boy at the Brook farm. Fine, loud. Left a jar of honey for the mother.
Horse: I borrowed Pell's mare. She is a good mare. She stopped at every gate.
%%
Mott, a season at the edge of Three
Written by Mott, age ten, for Miss Jenna, who asked us to write everything down this spring and not to leave anything out. I have tried. It is a lot of everything.
Thaw. The puddles froze and cracked. The north relay went dark two nights, and the carters said it was the snow. Father paid the baker twenty emeralds, counted twice. The peas came up.
Sowing. The lantern day. Hal said red is for miners. We walked round all three wells, and every one of us put a hand on the stone and said thank you. Father says families are going over the sea from Saltreach in the big ships, and he does not know where to. Ada's cows did not want to go.
Blossom. Uncle Ned paid for the cart wheel from last Reaping, at the door, with a red face. The big ships are launched from the slip every few weeks, and the sailors do not sing. The north has no lights when you look for them, and the carters say nothing about why. The south well ran low, and the men went down to it with buckets at dawn and dusk. Father says it always comes back. Father says it twice.
Mayor Dace read a letter with wax on it, and put it in his pocket. Mrs. Lark says the letter was about the fair. Hal says it was about the north. Ada says it was about nothing.
Miss Jenna says the Archive has asked every school in every town to write everything down this year. Write everything down, the letter says. Miss Jenna says that is not the same as writing down what happened, and she did not say what she meant.
So this is everything, as far as I know it. The wells are full again, and the swallow is in the bakery eaves, and Mother says we will have a good summer if the peas hold. Hal still wants to be a miner. Ada still wants to be a relay keeper. I still want to be a baker, because of the buns, and because a baker is the one who stays up at four in the morning and makes bread anyway.
Miss Jenna says that is a good reason. I think she is right. I think it is the best reason there is.
%%
Nessa's farm book
Late summer. The heat came back, dry and white.
The reading mind had a bad week. It was given a box of pages from the year of the great floods, and the pages had been left out in the rain. The ink had run. Many of the letters were gone, and the words had lost their edges. The mind guessed wildly. It guessed the same word over and over, and got it wrong each time, and then changed a little, and guessed again.
Oren came in the evening with a lamp. He read the pages aloud, one line at a time, and the mind guessed each line after him. Some lines it got right. Some it got wrong. It did not give up.
I asked Oren what he would do with the wet pages. He said he would copy them. Each clerk would copy one page, with a gap where a letter was too far gone, and write in the margin what he thought it had been. Then the copy would go in the box, and the wet page would go on the shelf. The mind would learn from the copies, and the copies would be our record.
That is how the archive works, Oren said. Nothing is thrown away. But nothing is taken as the only truth, either. Two copies, and a margin.
%%
Quill, summer notes on reading
Longday, 194. Hot days, cool nights.

The hens have found shade under the oak hedge. I set a pan of water there. The wind keeps turning the farm gate, and I tied it shut with a length of wool.

Nessa visited with two apprentices from Vell. They were carrying a crystal box between them. One apprentice walked well. The other stopped at the ditch and put both feet in the water. Nessa said it had been told to stay beside the box. It had stayed beside the box, but the box was on the cart. We all stood there while it dripped.

At the well, Nessa explained the reading mind again. A person can read a whole page and know the sense. The mind in the crystal works a smaller step at a time. It sees a stretch of letters, about sixty at once, and guesses the next letter. Then it sees that letter with the others and guesses again. The drill shows it many pages. When it makes a wrong guess, the tutor changes its weights a little. Over time, it makes better guesses.

The Archive at Vell sent copied pages for these drills. Clerks took out spoiled pages and pages copied twice. They kept some pages in a test box, so no mind was drilled on them. That is how Nessa said the tutors could learn whether a mind had really improved.

I asked if the pages came from the whole land. She said she had heard bundles arrived from many towns. She had also heard that some tutors gave their own letters. Nobody could show me a full list. It seems the clerks did not write down every bundle's beginning.

"We will keep everything we write," Nessa said. It is cut above the Archive door, and she says it often. I like the sound of it. I do not know if my egg tallies are among the pages. I will keep writing them anyway.

Today's count was eleven eggs. One went to Moss for her sick bed. Three went to market. The rest are in the cool room. Pip carried the basket there and put it on the floor, not the shelf. It did not break any.
%%
Perrin, spring notes at Northpoint
The house at the edge of Northpoint has a new stone step. I cut it from a block that split cleanly. The old step had a hollow place where rain gathered, and the keeper slipped there twice.

The relay house mind sent a letter to the tutor. The keeper read it aloud at supper. It asked for a copy of the lamp list and said the north glass needed wiping. The writing was plain. The keeper thought it was from Vell until she saw the relay mark.

The tutor says the mind reads writing one letter at a time. Its window is about sixty letters wide. It does not look at the whole page at once. For each letter, it can use earlier letters that matter, then it guesses the next one. It has learned from many pages kept at Vell. During drilling, a wrong guess changes its weights toward a better guess.

I asked whether the mind sees words as we do. The tutor said it keeps places for letters and words, and things used alike sit near each other in those places. She said this is one way to describe what the mind learns, not a tale of tiny words living in the crystal.

The old questions came up again. Orla had asked whether a hidden mind could answer like a person. We read the same questions to the mind and to the keeper's sister. Some answers were easy to tell apart. One was not. The tutor wrote both answers in her book and did not mark which was which.

I bet the keeper a copper piece that the sister had written the answer about the cracked glass. The keeper bet it was the mind. We showed our slips to the tutor. She said we had both lost. The answer had come from a clerk at Vell, who had written it down years before.

At the spring festival, the tutor brought a drill board to the yard. Children stood in a row and read short pages aloud. Lantern carried the board from the school house to the relay house, then brought it back with no corner chipped. It did better than the children at carrying. It did worse at remembering where we had put the honey cakes.

The wind kept knocking the flags against the tower wall. We moved them lower. The keeper says a festival is meant to be heard, not endured by the cloth.
%%
Ossa, letters to my sister in Three
Winter of 159. Dear Rill. It is cold here at the edge of Northpoint. I write by the stove.

You asked about Dace. Dace is well. Dace mended the roof again. I held the ladder. Dace is too old for the roof and does it anyway, which I have stopped arguing about. I just hold the ladder now. It is easier.

The goats are fat. Loaf ate the washing. Bitter watched Loaf eat the washing and did not tell us. I have never trusted a goat that thinks.

The foxes come for scraps. There is one with a torn ear. Dace talks to it. Dace talks to the goats too, and to the stove, and to the relay lamp on the hill. Dace is a person who talks to things. It is not a bad way to live. The stove never argues.

We had a bad night in Leaffall. The wind came off the ice and the lamp on the tower went out for an hour. Vey the keeper climbed the ninety rungs in the dark with a torch in the teeth. Vey has strong teeth. The lamp came back. The south tower had been blinking the whole time, worried, I think, though a lamp cannot worry. Vey says a lamp can worry. Vey would know.

I am knitting. Socks, mostly. Everyone here has cold feet. I am knitting socks for Dace, Vey, the woman at the store, and the goat Bitter, who does not want socks but will get them.

Rill, I miss the market at Three Wells. I miss the stalls and the noise and the bell. Here the loudest thing is the wind and the second loudest is Dace snoring. But the sky at night is very big and very full of stars and the lamp blinks and I am content. Do not tell our mother I am content. She will worry.

Your sister Ossa. P.S. Loaf ate the post again. If your letter is chewed, that is why.
%%
Cress, carter's log, the north quay
Leaffall, the fourteenth.
Took the cart up to the shipyard for timber. Corin's yard is full of new ribs, curved like the ribs of a great horse and three times as tall as a man. Corin said good day. He looked tired. A man who has built boats all his life does not look tired on a good morning.

Leaffall, the sixteenth.
Two families went out on the morning tide. Four carts, a cow tied behind, and a girl on top of it all with a hen in her lap. The men on the quay said good luck and did not look at each other. Nobody said where. They said "over the water" and let it lie there. Pell says the sea is only a wider road, and roads end where you stop walking.

Leaffall, the nineteenth.
The harbor relay has sent no weather for three days. The keeper's boy came down to say the lamp is cold and the glass has gone white on the inside. The keeper says it is only the cold. At the market some say the north towers have gone quiet, one after another, so the messages stop halfway down the line. That is a rumor. Rumors are for the inn. I sent my weather to the fish market by hand. The fish man said it was wrong.

Leaffall, the twenty-sixth.
Tobe from the net sheds gave me a twist of paper with three dried apples in it. His mother dried them in the loft, he said, and they are good for the cold. I ate one at the cart. It was sweet and tough, like a good boot.
%%
Briar, baker, the last batch of the year
Deepsnow, the last day. The last batch of the year came out of the oven at the fourth bell, and it was the best batch we have made since Thaw.
Twelve loaves, all golden. Two sweet buns for the children. A small loaf, not meant for selling, shaped like a fox, which Pim made from the dough left in the bowl. It has ears. Olin says it looks like a cat. The cat says nothing.
We ate the first loaf in the bakehouse with butter and a little honey, standing up. The apprentice stood by the door and watched us eat. I thought about giving it a piece, and then I thought of the sacks in the line along the wall, and I did not.
Next year I will write the cards shorter. I will tell the apprentice stop when I say stop. I will put a stone in the south corner from the first day. The lamp in the window will be trimmed longer, so that it does not blink. The sacks will go back on the shelves, where they belong, and the pig will be left alone.
Lamp lit. Oven warm. Bread cooling. Everyone home.
%%
Jem, the road comes
Summer, the eleventh year of the Archive.

The fifth of Longday. Men came with stakes and string and walked right through our top field. Father went out with a hoe and asked what they were doing. They said, drawing the road. Father said, through my wheat? They said no, along the edge of the field, and they would pay for the stakes. Then they walked around the wheat as if it were something precious. I liked them for that.

The ninth. They are digging. I counted seventeen men and one cart. They pack the earth down with big wooden rammers, and one man sings. Along each edge they lay a line of cobblestone. Ree and I carry water to them. They gave us each a nail. I keep mine in a box.

The twelfth. Torches. On every twelfth block a post, and a torch on top. A boy my age walks along with a bucket and lights them at dusk. They look like beads on a string. I stood at our gate and counted forty before the road turned.

The sixteenth. A bridge over our stream. Oak, because the stone has not come yet. The head man says, stone if you can, oak if you must. Father says that is a good rule for most things.

The twentieth. The first cart came by. The carter had a load of barrels, and he stopped at our gate and asked if we sell eggs. Father said we had never sold eggs to a man on a road. The carter said, well, you do now. He bought eighteen. Father says we are on the road now, not beside it.

The twenty-fifth. The road reached Vell. All the town went out to walk on it. I walked from our gate to the hill gate and back. It took no time at all. Gran says that when she was young the same walk took half a morning.

I think the road will keep growing. Father says it will go all the way to the sea.
%%
Quill, flock log: the storm
Kept by Quill, shepherd, at Ferris End. Written up after, because during the storm there was no time, and no paper that would stay dry.

Blossom, the day it came. The sky went the color of a bruised plum at midday. The birds stopped singing. Then the rain came sideways, and the first thunder hit the far hill like a dropped barrel.

We got the flock into the reed fold at the bottom of the field, which is the one place the wind cannot reach. Counted as they went in: sixty-one, and fourteen lambs. Counted again: sixty-one, and thirteen lambs. The fourteenth was under Fen, who was sitting on it out of kindness.

Then the rain. It came through the reed roof like water through a sieve. I stood in the middle of the fold with a lamb under each arm and the other two under my coat.

The lightning struck the old oak at the top of the field. It split down the middle. One half fell across the north wall, and the other half stood there, black and smoking, looking as surprised as the rest of us.

In the night the wind went round to the east. The reed roof lifted at one corner, and we held it down with our bodies and four sacks of wool until the dawn.

In the morning the rain had stopped. The sun came up pale and watery over the marsh. The lambs were all alive. Counted: sixty-one, and fourteen. Fen was asleep in the mud.

Wren came up from the healing house with a basket and a face like the sky. She had seen the oak from the boardwalk. She gave each of us a cup of warm milk with a spoon of honey in it, and told us to hold still. Then she set a jar of honey on the wall, with a cloth tied over the top. "For the chilled ones," she said, meaning the lambs and me. "Honey in warm milk. Do not argue."
%%
Northpoint journal, the creeper
Autumn. Wind from the north, then no wind at all, which is worse.

Last night a creeper came up out of the dark behind the woodshed. I did not see it. I heard it, the hiss and then the bang. Then the south wall of the woodshed was not there any more. Stones lay across the yard like a dropped bread basket. The woodshed roof sagged on one side and looked embarrassed.

Lantern came out with the lamp and stood in the wreck, looking at the hole. It said, "Creeper." I said yes. It said, "Noisy." I said that was the general opinion.

We have fourteen torches round the foot of the tower and two by the door. We have none behind the woodshed, because the woodshed was thought to be safe. Note for the book: torches for the back of everything.

This morning I rebuilt the wall. Lantern carried the stones and I laid them. It knows the pattern now. It has not forgotten a single stone, and it is quicker than I am at putting the flat ones on top. We finished by noon. The wall is a little crooked. It is my wall. It will stand.
%%
Vesper, trial log: the broken wheel
Trial log kept by Vesper, tutor of apprentices, at the Three Wells mill in Longday, while the wheel was out. Written in the evenings, at the market board, by lamp.

Day one. The wheel broke at noon. A cross-beam split where the old oak meets the new, and the sluice that feeds the wheel could not be shut in time. The water went over the wheel and the wheel went round too fast, and then it stopped. The miller says he has seen this before. He has not, but he says it firmly.

The mill has one apprentice, a small mind that carries sacks.

Day two. I did not show it the right opening for the sluice. I do not know the right opening. Nobody does, for this wheel, since it is new. So I let it try. I set the sluice at a height and the apprentice holds it there. The wheel turns, or it does not. I write down the turns, counted on the mill's tally stick.

Day three. The apprentice tried one height after another, and found the middle. I did not tell it to. I only kept the score. Each try that turned the wheel well, it keeps more of. Each try that did not, it keeps less of. By evening it held the sluice where the wheel turned smooth and quiet, and nobody had told it which height that was.

I should say what this is, plainly, because the tutors at Vell will ask. In drill, the answer is shown to the mind. Here nobody shows the answer. The mind tries, the try is scored, and the mind keeps more of what went well. That is all it is.

Day four. The wheel is mended. The apprentice is still holding the sluice, because I have not told it to stop.
%%
Kester, forge and road book
Spring, year 23.
First of Blossom. Rain before dawn. The stream is loud, and the boardwalk is slick.
I opened the forge late. The bellows had taken in water through the roof. Moss held the door while I patched the leak with clay and a plank. The fire would not catch until the noon sun came out.
A cart from Lowmarsh brought a broken wheel rim. Its driver had used the new road twice and trusted it enough to carry a load of fish. He says the dry rise has saved him a day of pushing through mud. I mended the rim and took two fish for the work.
Fourth of Blossom. Clear sky.
We laid cobblestone at the turn above the hamlet. There is not enough stone for the whole road, so the middle stays packed earth. The children brought stones in baskets. One basket held three frogs and no stones. The owner said the frogs were guarding the road.
Mara has planted carrots by her shed. Wren has set herbs behind the healing house. The old path is still used by folk on foot, but no cart has taken it since the rain.
Eighth of Blossom. Wind from the sea.
The inn has a new roof of reeds. I made six iron pegs for it. The innkeeper paid me with a bowl of beans and a promise of a place by the fire when I travel. I will remember the promise. He has forgotten two such promises already.
The first waymark stands at the fork. It has an arrow cut toward Lowmarsh. There is no number on it yet. We have not agreed how far the next inn is, and the men from Three Wells count their steps differently from us.
%%
Hob, relay log, the storm on the hill
Little relay, the hill between Vell and Three Wells. Logged by Hob. Late Thaw, the night of the great wind.

Dusk. Sky to the west gone the colour of a bruise. Wind still light. Checked the lamp, the stair, the rope on the door. All good. Put the cat in the lamp room, where she will not be happy but cannot be blown away.

Second hour after dusk. The wind came over the ridge with a sound like a cart on stone. The tower shook. Not much, but enough for the wax to crack on the stair rung. The lamp did not go out. The glass held. I was very glad of Mira's advice about the glass, which was to clean it hard and never let the frame rust.

Third hour. Rain came in sideways. It found the gap under the lamp room door and ran down the stair in a river. I put the sacks along the bottom step and tipped the bucket on the top one. We got most of it.

Fourth hour. A message came from Vell, short and urgent. It said: keep the lamp lit at any cost. I blinked back: The lamp is lit. The glass is good. The keeper is wet. It came back: Then stay wet, and keep it lit. I laughed at that, out loud, all alone on the stair.

Fifth hour. Something hit the tower hard. We all heard it, the cat too. A branch from the old oak at the bottom of the hill, I think, though I did not go down to check. The door held. I remember thinking it would be a poor thing to lose the door, since it was the one thing I had fixed myself.

Sixth hour. The wind began to drop. You could hear it going round the tower, in a long slow sigh, like a tired dog settling down. I sat on the bottom step with the cat in my lap, and she purred, and I was too tired to stop her.

Dawn. The sun came up over Vell. The lamp was still burning, pale in the daylight. Passed the morning messages. One from Dace, one from the Vell clerks, one from a carter who wanted to know if the road was clear, which I could not tell him. The stair is wet. Two rungs are gone, and one peg. The copper ring is dented on the north side. The lamp is lit.

Logged. Lamp the cat asleep on the copper ring. I am not moving her yet.
%%
Corin, first snow
Frost, year seven of the long quiet.

The first snow came before the nets were mended. It lay on the harbor wall and turned the rope stiff. We moved Sella's boxes from the boat shed house to my aunt's place, where the roof is sound.

The council has stopped paying for tutors. The hall is locked. The children ask when the crystal will be brought back. I tell them it is safe in Sella's chest.

Kester's note says a single crystal of this kind cannot learn the rule "one or the other, but not both." It can learn from examples. We show it a card, see whether its answer is wrong, and move its weights a little toward the answer we want. But with two marks on one card, the little changes cannot make it choose exactly one.

Sella says a different kind of mind may do it. She has no such mind to show us. She says not to guess at what we have not seen.

I cleared snow from the step. The children came anyway. We read the note by the kitchen fire. Then they sorted apples from pears, one at a time, and the crystal did well.
%%
Iona, the lost cat in the orchard
Lost cat, on the second of Apple. Grey, with one white paw and an expression of great superiority. Searched the orchard, the hives, the mill loft and under the cider press. Found three mice and a wasp, and both of them were annoyed with me.

Left a dish of cream by the barn door, as a sort of invitation. In the morning the dish was empty, and the grey cat was asleep in the sun on the hay cart, with the look of someone who has never been lost in her life. She has not been lost since. She has been very careful to be found.
%%
Lowmarsh winter book
Winter, 203. The marsh froze at the edges, but the slow water stayed open by the fish weir.
The boardwalk was white with frost each morning. I took a small pail of sand out before the patients came. Moss took the larger pail and carried it along the whole boardwalk. By noon the pail was empty. Moss had used most of the sand on one slippery step. That step is now safe enough for a horse.
A fisher named Deren brought his mother to the healing house. She had a cough and cold hands. We warmed her by the hearth and gave her broth. She said the broth was good, then asked for more salt. Moss brought the salt jar. It was full of sand. I had used that jar for the boardwalk and put it back by mistake.
Deren laughed until his mother told him to fetch the right jar. He fetched it at once.
The frost spoiled the loose boards near the boat houses. We marked the worst ones with reed ties and asked the carpenters for replacements. Until then, nobody should carry a full basket over them. Moss carried two half baskets and said the rule was obeyed.
The fish weir caught four fish on the next clear morning. We kept three and returned one to the water. It was small and seemed in a hurry.
After the fair at Three Wells, Moss came home with a fair prize for a basket of dried herbs. The little wooden cup sits on the shelf above the labeled jars. Moss says it should hold honey. I said it holds pride and dust.
The jar of honey came from a stall beside the east well. The seller said the bees had worked through the last warm days. I bought it for the healing house. We opened it at supper and spread a little on bread. Moss measured a spoonful for each of us. Moss's spoon was much larger than mine.
The jar is now half full. The cup still holds only pride and dust.
%%
Lyle, a summer on the hill
Longday, the day of the clip. Sixty-two ewes and nine lambs grown into young sheep, all of them still on the hill above the mill pond. The shears went in the morning, and the wool came off in one piece on most of them.

The fleece on the good ewes weighed as much as a sack of flour. Wool fetches four emeralds a bundle at the Ambrook market, and five at Three Wells if the carter is quick and the road is dry. The carter was quick. The road was dry. I was pleased with both.

Longday, second day. Wet. The shorn ewes stood in the rain and looked at me as if I had done it on purpose. Mended the wall at the bottom of the hill. Built it up by two stones where the fox had been digging, and set a flat stone on top to keep it honest.

Melon, first day. A fox in the bottom field, very bold, with a rabbit in his mouth. Shouted at him. He stopped, looked at me, and went on with the rabbit at a trot. I think he had been told about me by someone.

Melon, fourth day. Gault came down from the relay tower with his oak door under his arm. He had shaved it himself, and it closed now with a sound like a hand on a table. He wanted a pot of sheep fat for the hinges. I gave him a jar, and he gave me a lecture on the proper way to hang a lamp. I know the proper way. My lamp is still hung my way, and it works.

Melon, eighth day. Hot again. The grass on the top of the hill is dry and gold. The ewes are fat, and the lambs are growing into the sort of sheep that will eat a whole field if you look away. I looked away for an hour. The field is still there, but the grass is shorter.

Melon, tenth day. A thunderstorm. The ewes bunched under the thorn trees, and the lambs stood in the middle of them like a stone in a stream. I counted them all twice, and then a third time for luck.

Melon, twelfth day. A visitor from Kettle Ridge, Tam's cart, with a message for Ruby about her beans, and a crate of eggs for me. The eggs were a bribe, and Tam did not hide it. Told him to take the eggs back, and he laughed, and took them with him.

Melon, fifteenth day. The count is right. Sixty-two ewes, nine lambs, and one ram who has learned the new fence. He stands at it every evening and looks at Ruby's beans as if he is thinking about the moral question. I think he is thinking about the beans.

Melon, twentieth day. Rain at dusk, and a rainbow over the mill pond, for the first time this year. Brought the flock down early, so they would not be out in the wet. Counted them at the gate. Sixty-two. Nine. One. All home.
%%
North road waymark, a note left
Left for anyone walking north. The waymark torch is out. The wick is wet. I have no dry wick with me.
The fork ahead: left hand goes to the fold and the carding shed. Right hand goes to the sheep and the barn. Both come round to the same place. Do not worry. Follow the stones.
The fox is bold this summer. It will take a mitten if you leave one. Leave nothing you want.
Fern says come in and have water. The shed door is open.
%%
Mira, Ambrook relay notes
Sowing, 8. Wind from the west. Clear after rain.
The tower wall is three blocks high. The builders say it will rise much farther. From the hill I can see the mill pond, the market stalls and the road toward Three Wells. On a clear day, a lamp here may be seen from the next ridge.
We have no lamp room yet. We have a safe place for stone, a ladder of rungs, and a table in the relay house. I drew the tower plan on a board. The builders have made the lower wall wider than my marks. They say a tall tower must stand firmly. I agree.
At market, Sella gave me a honey cake for the builders. She said it was payment for taking the last jar of honey. I had not taken the jar. Pell had. Pell paid her in an apple and said the account was even.
A cart came from Vell with glass panes wrapped in wool. The panes are for the lamp room. One cracked on the road. The driver kept the pieces in a cloth, so they will not cut anyone.
The road crew is laying cobblestone near the hill. Their cart sank in the wet earth yesterday. Six people pushed, and one apprentice carried the smallest stones. It did not need telling twice. The children watched and counted the pushes.
We marked a place for torches at the foot of the tower. The keeper will tend them when the builders leave. I asked who would tend the keeper. Jory sent a bowl of stew to the relay house.
%%
Lark, bread log, the first week of Frost
Frost, the first. Cold at dawn, the flour stiff in the sack. Baked forty loaves. Two burned on the bottom. The tower sent for six, and got five, and the keeper said the sixth was in the stove, and so it was.

Frost, the fifth. Flour is low. The mill is slow because the ice has got in the wheel. Made the last bread with the bran and some of the barley. It is grey and it is dense and the children have named it stone. They ate it all anyway.
%%
Kettle Ridge farm notes, fox at the hens
Autumn of 219. Kettle Ridge. Wind from the north. Frost on the top field.
Notes for the week. Tam, and Pip helping.
The fox came again. Third time this month. It came at dusk, low and red, along the hedge on the north side of the long field, and it sat and looked at the hen house like it was counting. Pip saw it first. Pip was in the yard sorting the beetroot into the bins and it stopped and stood very still, and I knew something was wrong, because Pip is never still.
I took the lamp and went out. The fox went off through the hedge. The hens were up on their roost and the door was shut, so nothing lost but my sleep.
I have mended the wire twice and the fox has found the hole twice. So now the wire is doubled at the bottom and I have put a stone along it, and there is a lamp on the post by the hen house that stays lit all night. Keep the torches lit. It is a small light but a fox does not like it.
Old Brin says a fox at the hens means a hard winter coming. Brin says a lot of things. He also said a field needs hands, not copper, and Pip brought in the beetroot faster than Brin's boy did, so Brin can say what he likes.
Mira wrote from Northpoint. She says Lantern is well and the tower is cold and the snow came early. She asked how the farm is and I wrote back: one fox, one lamp, all the hens. She will say that is a poem. It is not a poem. It is a farm.
The mill is squeaking on every turn again. The miller says it is the wind. It is always the wind. The tally board says we are ahead of last year.
Pip sorted the apples by size today, all on its own, into three bins. I did not tell it to. It just did it. I think it learned it from watching me. That is how it goes with apprentices, copper or otherwise. You show them, they watch, they get it wrong, they get it better.
%%
Tova, road log, the relay letters
Longnight of 159. The road is still shut. Greer says it will open at the thaw, which is always the thaw.

The Lowmarsh relay stands on the edge of the marsh, with one keeper and one lamp of its own. Letters come to it in sacks, from every road. Each letter has a number written on the outside: the tower it is for, and the road it must take. The keeper reads the numbers and sorts the sacks by hand. Sorting takes all night.

Abel has taught the mind to read those numbers. Each night he shows it two hundred letters from the sacks. It gives a number for each one. Each time it is wrong, the blame goes back through the three layers, and every dot is told its part. Abel says a mind learns from its mistakes, so it must have them.

The children's numbers are the hardest. A child writes a seven with a little tail, and it looks like a one wearing a hat. The mind can read a crooked seven now. It cannot yet read Ivo's threes, which look like ears.

Abel explained it once more, with his stick in the ash of the hearth. Put the three layers in a row. The first sees the marks. The second sees the shapes. The third says the tower number. The blame goes back from the number to the shapes, and from the shapes to the marks. Every dot in every row gets its share, and every dot moves a little.

Ivo asked if the mind had a name. Abel said it has a number, and that is enough for a mind. Ivo said that was a poor name for a mind, and he went out to feed the hens.
%%
Corin, steaming the planks
Winter of 204. Frost, the 20th. The shed is warm, which makes it the only warm place in Saltreach today.
We bent the side planks for the Good Morning. Oak does not like to bend. You have to ask it nicely, with steam.
The steam box is a long box of boards, closed at both ends, with a pipe from the kettle fire. A plank goes in. It cooks for an hour for every inch of its thickness. Then the door is opened and the plank is hauled out, and for a short time it is as soft as a wet reed. Everyone pulls at once. We have the time it takes to say the names of the crew to bend it into place and clamp it. Then it cools, and it is a curve forever.
Today we bent twelve. One cracked. The cracked one went in the stove. It made a very good fire.
Kit held the clamps. Kit does not talk when he holds clamps. That is the only time.
The cat sits on the steam box. Her name is Plank. She belongs to nobody and has never been burned. Marit says it is a gift. I say it is a cat.
We ate our bread on the benches by the slip, in the steam, with the window white. A good day.
%%
Dara, market stall log
Kept by Dara, beekeeper, at her honey stall in the market at Ambrook. Three days of autumn.

First day. Set up at dawn. Twelve jars of dark honey, nine of light. Sold seven by noon. A child asked if the bees mind. I said they do not know.

Second day. Rain. Sold three jars. Slept under the awning.

Third day. Clear. Sold eleven. A man bought four for his mother-in-law. I hope she likes sweet things.
%%
Northpoint journal, the last of Leaffall
Frost, the first day. Clear sky, very cold. The stars are sharp enough to cut your fingers on.

A cart came up the long road this morning, the first in three weeks. The driver was a young man from Three Wells, with a sack of flour, a jar of lamp oil and a letter from Tam. Tam's letter was four lines long. It said the beetroot was in, the hen house roof was on, and the mill had a new sail that squeaked like Pip. It said: "Tell Mira I am thinking of her, and do not climb anything high." I laughed out loud, alone at the window. The young man looked at me as if I had gone strange.

He said the roads south were quiet. He said the mines at Copperhold had stopped sending coal north for a week, and the carts had gone round by the Long Road, and nobody knew why. He said some families at Saltreach had put their chests on carts and gone east. He said it as if it were gossip. He did not say it as if it were a thing he believed.

I did not ask him anything more. He had a long road home, and the road is not safe after dark. I gave him a loaf and a jar of the last honey, and he thanked me and went down the hill with his mule. The mule did not look back, and neither did he.

Tonight the tutors' notes come up from Vell, as they always do in Frost. They say: keep the fields until we come back. Keep the lamps lit until we come back. Keep the glass clean. Those are the orders, and I wrote them in the book so no one could say they were not given.

Lamps lit. Glass clean. Messages passed.
%%
Lorn, a week of ferry and play
Leaffall, 201. From the log of Lorn, ferry keeper, at the house at the edge of Three Wells.
First of the week. The river is low and slow and a pale brown. Crossed twelve times. A cart of pumpkins came over, ten of them as big as stools. The carter said they were for the contest at the autumn fair. I said they were big enough to row.
Second. The school play is back. They have changed it. This year it is the Fox, the Bridge and the Ferry. I am in it. I am to speak. I have three lines. I have learned them by saying them to the rope.
Third. The rope did not answer. The boat did not either.
Fourth. Dress rehearsal. A boy fell off the stage. A girl lost her tail. I said my three lines. The teacher said, "Louder." I said them again. The teacher said, "A bit softer." I said them a third time. The teacher said, "That is the one."
Fifth. The play. The hall was full. I spoke my lines. They were: "Who goes there?" "The river is wide." "Mind the step." I think it went well. A child laughed at the right moment. Afterward, I was given a cake.
Sixth. The song contest. I did not enter. I sat in the front and clapped. The winner was the school, with the goose song again. It is a good song. It has twelve verses. I know nine.
Seventh. Back on the ferry. Crossed nineteen times. The river was calm. A fisherman said he had seen me in the play. I said it was nothing. He said it was something. I took it.
%%
Lise, inn book: the spring guests
Kept at the Green Gate, through the spring. The guests, the horse, and the weather, as the inn saw them. The inn is not a great place. It is a warm one.

Sowing, first day. A wedding party stopped for the night on the way to Vell, forty of them, with a fiddler and a cart full of cakes. The bride had a cough from the cold and a laugh that came out louder than the fiddle. The fiddler slept on the bread bin, which was a mistake, and the bread has not forgiven him.

Sowing, second day. We sent the wedding party on with two loaves and a blanket for the bride. She sent back a sprig of blossom from the bush by the gate, pinned to a card: For the loom, which sang us to sleep. I put it in the window.

Sowing, fifth day. A horse came in lame from the north side of the road, and the carter sat down on the step and would not move until it was seen to. The horse is called Sorrel. We fed it warm bran and bathed the leg with cold water, and Ash bandaged it, practising on his own shin first. Sorrel has been trying to walk on it ever since. The carter says that is a good horse and a bad patient, and both are true.

Blossom, the second week. A traveler lost his hat in the wind by the gate. It rolled across the yard, through the chickens, and into the trough. I fished it out with the broom. The traveler said I had saved his life, which was an exaggeration, and he bought a blanket to make up for it.

Blossom, the sixth week. A cook came up from Lowmarsh to take the summer kitchen, with a sack of dried salmon, which she says is the best food for a long night on the road, and which Ash says smells like the sea had a bad day. She made a stew of it, with beetroot, potatoes and a handful of wild mint. The whole inn ate it. The carters asked for a second bowl, and the cook was very pleased with herself, which she should have been.

Blossom, the last week. Ash says the inn has never been so full in spring, and that he is going to paint the sign. I have told him to leave the sign alone. Everybody knows where the Green Gate is, and paint will only make it look like a different inn.
%%
Northpoint journal, Lantern's order
Longday, the seventh. An order went wrong today, and the mistake was mine.

I told Lantern: store the coal. It understood: store the coal on the stair. So it stacked a sack on every rung, very neatly, and when it reached the top step it stood there, waiting for the next thing. Ninety rungs of coal. I came up the stair with a lantern and counted forty-one sacks. I did not shout. Lantern does not shout back, and a shouting keeper teaches nothing. I said, slowly: store the coal in the cellar. It took the top sack down, and then the next, and then the rest, one at a time. It put them on the cellar shelf, where the coal belongs, and it did not ask why.

I have written on the card on the rack by the lamp: store means the shelf, and the shelf is at the bottom.

Lamps lit. Glass clean. Messages passed. The coal is in the cellar. The stair is clear.
%%
Elm, ferry log, the ice on the river
The river froze at the bend in the night, after a week of hard frost and no wind to stop it. In the morning the landing was a sheet of grey glass, and the ferry was sitting in it like a fly in a jar.

I stopped the crossings. There is a rule for this, and I wrote it on the board at the landing, and I repeated it to every cart that came down the road. No boat on the river when the ice is grey. No cart on the ice until the keeper has tested it.

The test is simple. I take the long pole, which is ash and very old, and I walk out from the bank, one step at a time, hitting the ice ahead of me. If it rings, I wait. If it sings, I wait longer. If it thuds like a heavy door, I go back to the bank and sit down and think about my life. On the first morning the ice rang, and then it sang, and then it thudded, and I sat down.

The baker's cart from Vell came round the bend at the second bell, with its driver whistling and its horse too pleased with itself. The driver wanted to cross the ice to save the long way round by the bridge. I told him no. He told me the ice was as thick as his arm. I asked him how he knew. He said his arm was very thick. I said the river did not care, and I was the one who would be answering to the mayor if he went through.

He did not believe me until the horse put one foot on the grey and the grey gave a small sharp crack, like a bone, under the hoof. Then he believed me very quickly indeed.

We walked the cart back up the bank, by the old road, and let the horse take the long way, which it did with bad grace. The baker's bread went on to Three Wells two days late, and the baker told everyone it was my fault. It was not. It was the river's, and the frost's. I only had the pole.

By the fifth day the ice was as thick as a barn door, and the carts went over it with the drivers walking in front, pole in hand, grumbling. By the twelfth day the ferry was out of work and I was sitting by the stove, counting the ice in my head, and the ice was counting me.

The ferry is hung up on its pegs, the rope is dry, and the boat is turned over on the bank with a sack over its bow. A river that is frozen is a road with no water in it. I have crossed it on foot. It is strange to walk where the boat should be, and to look down through the glass at the weed, still and green, waiting for the thaw.

Elm
%%
Lowmarsh log, first snow
Winter, 171.
The boardwalk was slick before breakfast. I put sand on the worst boards and Moss put sand on the boat house steps. We both slipped once. Moss said the sand had done its best.
The frogs are quiet now. Two are still under the warm stones by the healing house well. I told Moss not to move the stones. Moss moved one, then put it back.
The fish weir held three fish and one old boot. The boot is not ill, so I left it by the door.
The sick beds are full of coughs and cold feet. I warmed broth and set the jars in order. Moss put the mint jar beside the mud jar. I changed them back. We will try again tomorrow.
%%
Nessa's road log, spring 196
Written by Nessa, tutor at Vell, at the Halfway Inn on the Long Road. The first days of Thaw.

Day one. Rain all day. The relay lamp on the hill is broken, and the keeper says the glassmaker will not come until Sowing. I have a back room by the hearth, which is warm, and a drill box, which is not.

Day two. The drill box is in the inn yard. The innkeeper's boy asks what I am doing. I say I am teaching the minds to be even. He asks what even means. I tell him it means the same size. He says the soup is even, and I cannot argue with him.

Day three. The five small minds from the Brown Hen answered the drills badly. Their numbers grew wild in the third layer. Every answer came out the same.
%%
Letter: Nessa to Tam, on small crystals
Summer of 200.
Dear Tam,
You asked how we make a mind small, so here is the plain truth, as plain as I can write it.
A mind is a great many numbers, called weights. That is all it is. Each number is written in the crystal in marks, the way you would write a sum on a board. The more marks, the more exact the number. The fewer marks, the rougher it is. A weight of 3.14159 takes many marks. A weight of 3.14 takes fewer. A weight of 3 takes very few, and is close enough for most work.
So we write each number in fewer marks. The mind keeps its shape, but each part of it is a little less exact. It sorts a little worse. It fetches a little slower. It makes one mistake where the big mind makes none. And the whole mind now fits a crystal a tenth of the size.
That is the trade. Smaller crystal, smaller cost, a little worse at its work. Every tutor must decide if the trade is worth it. For a farm, it is worth it. For a mind that reads letters for the relays, it is not. We keep the big minds big.
You want one for the hen house. I will drill it on fetch and store and stay, and test it on things it was never drilled on, and if it passes I will send it on the cart with the letters.
Do not open the crystal to look inside. Clank did that once and we were two days getting the lid back on.
Your friend, Nessa.
%%
Jem, the order on the pond shore
Spring of 11. Warm wind, rain at night.
Trouble at the pond today, all my fault, though the apprentice did what it was told.
Tam had sent his apprentice Pip down to the pond with a sack. He told it: bring me the nets from the shore. I was in the reeds with the eel trap and I heard him. Pip went down to the shore and stood by the water and waited.
The nets were not on the shore. They were in my boat. I had not brought them up yet.
So Pip stood there. Tam came down an hour later, cross, and asked why it had not brought the nets. Pip did not answer. It only looked at the water, the way it does when it is waiting. Tam said, I did not say wait, I said bring.
I said the order was my fault. I had told Tam that I would have the nets on the shore by noon. Pip only did what it heard.
Tam said, then say it right. He said it again, slowly, with his hand on the boat: "Fetch nets." Then Pip walked into the water, up to its knees, and brought the nets back on its shoulder, all of them, dripping and weedy.
Tam said he would have to be more careful with his words. I said I would have to be more careful with my boat. Pip said nothing. It was busy shaking out the nets.
We have agreed a new rule. When Tam says a thing to Pip, he says it short, and I say it again to make sure. Pip listens to the first word and the last word, Tam says. It does not seem to mind which order it gets.
%%
Letter: Bel to the archive
To the archive at Vell,
My name is Bel. I am nine. I go to the school by the east well at Three Wells.
We did a school play about the first relay tower. I was the keeper. I wore a coat and carried a lamp and said my line six times: the light goes on, the message goes out. The other children were the tower and the wind and the night. Cob was the night. He was very good at being the night. He stood in the corner and made a wind noise with his mouth.
My teacher said the play was about how we talk to each other across the land. She said the relays carry our words from town to town. She said even now.
After the play my father said the relays are quiet up north. My mother said not in front of the children. My father said the children should know. They had a quarrel in the kitchen. I listened from the stairs. Then they stopped and my mother made tea.
I want to ask the archive a question. Do you keep the school plays? If you do, will you keep mine? It had a real lamp in it from the inn.
Please write back.
Bel
%%
Pell's road book, the Halfway Inn
Thaw, the 4th day.
Left Ambrook with eleven sacks of honey, three cheeses and a crate of apples. Nettle is in good spirits. She is always in good spirits until the mud begins.
The mud began at the low bridge below the Halfway Inn. The cart went in to the axles. Nettle pulled. I pushed. The honey did not move.
Marda came out with a rope and a stool. She sat on the stool and watched. She said the cart would come out when the mud was tired.
We got it out by noon. Two apprentices from the stables pulled without fuss, then went off to haul firewood. Marda gave each one a bowl of stew.
Honey is safe. Cheese is wet. Pell is tired.
%%
Yarrow, the month of the play
A log kept at the Ambrook market by Yarrow the fisher, with his nets, his ledger and his opinions. Spring. The play was the great event of the month, and I have written most of it down.

Tenth of Sowing. The ice is gone. First trout of the year. Cold hands.

Twelfth. The teacher came by the pond with a paper. She is writing a play for the children, and needs someone who knows fish. I said I know them as well as they know me, which is not well. She said that will do.

Fourteenth. We talked it over at the market. The play is called The Fish Who Wanted Wings. It is about a trout who looks up at the birds and wishes to fly. The trout asks a heron to teach him. The heron says: "First, come out of the water." The trout says: "I cannot." The heron says: "Then neither can you fly." The trout is sad. A frog tells him that he can swim faster than the heron can run. He goes home pleased.

I told the teacher that is a good play. She said she took it from my pond.

Eighteenth. A poor day. The market was thin. A woman cried, quietly, at the grain stall, because the harvest last year was small and the sacks are low. I gave her a trout. She said no. I said, it is a very small one. She said yes.

Twentieth. Rehearsal. The children cannot remember their lines. The cat girl has forgotten hers. Twice.

Twenty-second. We have a trout costume. It is made of an old gray cloak with scales of copper. Nobody told me the copper would catch the light. A boy wearing it in the sun looks like a small, shy moon.

Twenty-fifth. The play was acted on the cart at the market. The whole of Ambrook came. The trout was good. The heron was tall, on stilts. The frog was a girl who croaked in the wrong place, and was the best of all.

When the trout said, at the end, "I am happy to be a fish," the market was quiet. Then the oldest woman in the town said, loudly, "So am I." Everyone laughed. I laughed. I had to wipe my eyes with the net.

Twenty-eighth. Back to the pond. A pike. I let it go.

Thirtieth. The month is over. A poor harvest and a good play. If you must have a thin year, have a play in it.
%%
Lorn's well book, the small relay tower
Melon, summer of 12.
They built the small relay tower on the hill between Vell and Three Wells. It is not tall. One lamp and one keeper. But it is the tallest thing for half a day's walk now, and I can see it from my door.
The keeper is a woman called Sedge. She came from Vell. She climbs the stair every night at dusk with a lamp and she lights the signal lamp in its room of glass and a copper ring. Then she sits at her desk. The redstone line runs down to her desk and it hums, a little. I went up to see it. She let me look. She did not let me touch.
She has a relay house at the foot of the tower. Inside is a big mind on a stand, in a crystal the size of a loaf. Sedge calls it the mind. It answers the apprentices through the relays. She says it is a good mind. She says it learned to read the numbers written on letters. She says it is slow but it is never wrong. I do not understand it. I do not have to. I am glad it is there.
The Tarns' apprentice came up the hill with me. I told it to fetch a bucket from the tower. It came back with the bucket and it stood by the well. It did not put the bucket down. I think it was waiting for the next order. I gave it the next order. It put the bucket down. It is a good worker. It does not talk.
Second of Melon.
The fair was today. There were stalls round the three wells. There was honey from Ambrook and beetroot from Kettle Ridge and a man selling apples. There was a contest between two tutors' halls, each mind tested on the same unseen drill. The minds were in crystals on a table and the tutors stood by them and wrote down what they did. I do not know who won. I think everyone won. There was a lot of shouting and some of it was happy.
I left a little stone on the waymark on the way home. Fen left one too. Nell laughed at us. She left one as well.
The summer is good. The water is cold. The tower is lit. That is enough for one year.
%%
Dara, the inn book, a hole in the barley
A hole opened in Orrin's barley field this morning. Right at the edge, by the old oak, where the ground has been soft since the rains.

Orrin was walking the line of the field with his dog. The dog went in first, and then Orrin went after it to fetch it. Neither of them is hurt. The dog is cross. Orrin is quiet, which is worse.

It is a cave. Stone steps go down, cut square, and they are not new. The steps are worn in the middle, like the steps at the front of the mill. Nobody here cut them, Orrin says. Nobody here knew about them at all.

Dace came with four men and a coil of rope. They went down with two lanterns and came up after an hour. They said the air is cold and still, and the stone is dry. They found a room with nothing in it but a bench and a long shelf. No tools. No bones. Just dust on the shelf, and a line in the dust where something had been pulled along.

Some of the men say they heard a low sound from the bottom of the steps. Like a hum, or wind in a far off pipe. Orrin says it was only the wind. There is no wind down there, the men say. Orrin says the wind comes in from somewhere. Nobody has an answer.

Dace has put a fence round the hole and a torch on a post. He says nobody goes down until the Archive sends someone. Oren has been sent word. Oren says he will come when the road is clear, and he sent back two words, which were: keep everything.
%%
Una, the new road to the Long Road
Longnight, the first. The new cart road is being cut from the back of the Copperhold stair down to the Long Road, past the old quarry. The men have been at it since Apple. They say it will save a day's walk for the carters, and the mayor says it will save a month, and the carters say they will believe it when they see it.

Longnight, the third. The road crew came up the lane for candles, six of them, with picks over their shoulders and mud to their knees. The foreman asked how long the candles would burn in a cutting, and I said as long as the wick held and the wind stayed off. He said the wind in the cutting was a menace, and I said so was everything, and he laughed for the first time in a month.

Longnight, the seventh. A rockfall at the third cut. Nobody was hurt, but a whole cart of stone went down into the gully, and the road had to be walked round by hand. The crew put a candle in every crack they could find, and a lantern on every post, so the men could see the stone when it moved. The men called it the glow road. The mayor called it a lighting expense.

Longnight, the eleventh. The road is through the cutting. The carts go down it now, slowly, with a boy in front carrying a lamp, and the carters sing when they reach the bottom. The new road bends round the quarry pond, where the frogs have gone quiet for the winter, and there is a waymark at every turn, with a torch on top and a number carved on it.

Longnight, the fifteenth. First cart down the new road, all the way from the Copperhold stair to the Long Road. It took the carter four hours. He said it was the fastest he had ever come down the hill, and the slowest he had ever been afraid. He stopped at the bottom and gave the boy a bit of his bread. Then he went on to Three Wells, and the candles went with him.
%%
Tams farm journal, summer 200
Summer of 200. Hot and dry. Wind from the east.
The wheat came in early this year. We cut the top field in four days. Pip worked the whole time and never once stopped for water. I had to stop it and make it drink from the well. It does not know it is hot. I think that is one of its best parts and one of its worst.
The mill wheel broke on the eleventh. The axle cracked right through. Old Jory came up from Ambrook and looked at it and said it was the dry wood. He said the pond is low and the wheel turned too fast and the wood dried in the sun. So now the wheel sits still and the wheat sits in sacks and I sit on the sacks.
Jory's boy and I put a new axle in. It took three days and one bad word. The wheel turns again, slow and squeaky, and the miller keeps the tally board. Wheat 40 sacks. Beetroot 12. Potatoes 9. Carrots 6. Not a bad summer.
A letter came from Nessa at Vell about the small crystals. She says tutors can now write a mind small, to fit a crystal no bigger than a plum. They do it by writing the numbers in fewer marks. She says it costs a little. The mind is a bit worse than a big one, but it is small and it is cheap, and a farm can have one. She says think of a tally drawn with one stroke for five. You lose a little, you gain a lot of room. I do not fully follow, but I follow the plum.
I asked Nessa for one, for the hen house. It only has to fetch and store and stay. I do not need it to read letters. I do not need it to talk. I need it to close the hen house door at night. That is all.
%%
Colm's farm log, first frost
Autumn, into Frost.
First frost on the low meadow this morning. The grass was white and the sheep had their breath. I gave them the last of the beet tops.
The last of the hives is quiet now. I left them the honey. I always leave them the honey.
Lantern came down from Northpoint with a letter from Mira. Mira is well. The tower is well. She says the nights are long and the sky has been strange, and she does not write about it more than that. She says: they were not ours. That is all she wrote. Lantern says the same, and then says he does not like to talk about it. Lantern is young and he is far from home. I gave him bread and a bed and the good wool sack for Mira.
We sat up late by the fire. Lantern said the lamp at Northpoint has ninety rungs to the top and he counts them every time. He said a keeper should know the count. I said that is a good rule.
Tomorrow I mend the barn door and stack the wood. The winter will be long. The wool is in the loft. The fire is good.
Note: write to Tam at Kettle Ridge. Ask after Pip. Ask if the windmill still squeaks on every turn.
%%
Dace, market journal, first warm week
Thaw, the first day. The square is wet, and the bread is the only thing dry. The count at the north well: twelve buckets, three cats and one goose. The goose wins.

Thaw, the third day. Market day. The honey is from Ambrook, dark and sweet. Ama sends word that the bees are awake and in a temper. Good. Bees are better when they are cross.

Thaw, the fourth day. The school has a new slate. The master wrote: Count what is there. Then count again. I thought that was a good rule, and I told him so.

Thaw, the ninth day. Ansel was fined two emeralds for leaving his cart on the square. He says the fine is a robbery. I say the cart was the robbery, and the square is the victim.
%%
Elm, ferry log, the long dark week
Longnight has come round, and with it the week when the sun barely troubles to rise over the ridge. Fog all three days, low and white on the river, so thick that the far bank went out like a candle. No crossings for two days. One on the third day, by lantern, because a cart with a broken axle wanted to be brought over to the mill before the ice.

First day. The fog came in before the first bell and did not go out. I hung the lantern on the landing post, in its glass, and I lit the second one on the boat, so that the drovers coming down the road could see where the water was. Crossings: none. Visitors: one, a boy with a message from the Brown Hen. The message was for Hobb, from his wife, and it said only: come home for supper. He went. The boy stayed and was given soup, and then more soup.

Second day. Fog again. The rope is wet through, and it has begun to fray at the middle, where the rubbing is worst. I took it down and checked every fathom with my hands, the way my father taught me, and I found three bad places. I spliced one. I sat on the landing in the cold, with the spike in one hand and the rope in the other, and I thought about how it is the small things that go first on a river, and the big things that go last.

Third day. The cart with the broken axle came down out of the fog at the second bell, pushed by two young men and pulled by a grey mare who did not want to be out. The axle was sound. The wheel was not. I got them over the water to the mill, with the mare in the boat and the cart on the raft, and nobody fell in, which is the only measure of a good crossing in the long week.

The fog lifted on the fourth day, all at once, like a curtain. The sun came up for about as long as it takes to boil an egg, and went back down, and everybody on the road came out to look at it.

Elm
%%
Kester, road and forge
Sowing, year 21.
We set the first posts for the new road today. The ground is firm on the rise east of the reeds. It is a long way round, but carts should not sink there.
Mara brought two sons. Wren brought Moss with a basket of bread. The innkeeper brought a shovel and complained that he had left his good one at home. He had not.
I made three iron points for the digging tools. One broke on a buried stone. The others held.
We marked the line with posts and cord. At the far end, a fox watched us from the birches. It did not seem impressed.
The road will need stone at the turns and packed earth between. We have little stone here, so the first carts will bring some from Three Wells. Until then, we carry it by hand.
%%
Ambrook market, wedding day
Blossom, 27. Warm rain in the morning.
Mara and Den were married beside the mill pond. Their families brought bread, apples and honey. Jory set a table by the wheel, where the water sound covered the loudest cousins.
The bride wore a blue wool shawl. The groom had one clean boot and one muddy boot. He blamed the bridge. The loose plank blamed him back by lifting under his foot.
After the meal, we walked to the market. Mara bought a clay pot for the new house. Den bought carrots and forgot to pay. He ran back with the emerald before anyone called him.
The road crew had finished the stream bridge. It is oak, with stone at each end. We crossed it in a line, carrying the baskets from the feast. The last basket held the cake. A honey bee sat on it all the way across.
Pell says the next inn will be ready before Longday. The road is easier to follow now. There is a torch post at the turn, and a waymark beyond it.
The two families went home together. Jory's wheel kept turning after the singing stopped.
%%
Homecoming at the ridge, spring of 14
Spring of 14. Wind from the east. A good day, the best since the frost.
Tam came up the ridge road today with his little cart and his grin. He had been down to Vell for the autumn drill, and he had come back with one new apprentice, a slow-moving copper thing with two dents in its hat. Tam calls it Nettle, because it does not like being touched.
Everybody came out. Mira's note had come up on the relay the night before: he is coming, and tell him he owes me a bowl of stew. So the bowl of stew was waiting, and Tam ate two.
Brin said he had not seen the boy in a year. He patted Tam's shoulder twice, very hard, and then went to look at the new apprentice, and did not say anything for a while.
Pip came out of the barn with a sack on its back, and stopped. Tam stopped too. For a long moment, nobody moved. Then Tam shouted "Pip!" and ran at it, and nearly knocked it over, and the sack fell on the path, and a pile of late apples rolled out across the yard.
Nettle watched all this from the cart. It did not move either. It only turned its head a little, slowly, the way a lamp turns in the wind.
After supper Tam sat on the step and told us about Vell. The archive has no roof, he says, only a hill. Its clerks copy everything in long rooms with windows, and nobody is allowed to light a candle past the front hall. He says the lanterns are behind glass.
He said he had seen a big book by the door, and that the first keeper cut words over the arch. He could not remember the words. He said it was something about writing everything down.
I said, that is what Mira says about the weather.
Pip brought in the sack, and the apples, and put them all back in the sack one at a time. It did not miss any.
%%
Abel, the farm outside Lowmarsh
Winter, a clear morning.
My neighbor Ferris dug a new well behind the pig pen and struck copper. A green streak in the clay, as long as an arm, then thicker. By noon there was a seam you could follow into the hill.
He sent word to Copperhold by the relay at Lowmarsh. Fifteen words, because the keeper counts. Two miners came by cart the next day and looked at it for a long time. One said it was a small vein but a good one. The other said nothing and took off his hat.
Ferris will keep the well. The miners will take the copper, and he gets a share in emeralds. He is already talking about a new roof.
At supper I asked him what he would do with so much copper. He said, ask a big mind. I said, good idea.
So I wrote a letter to the big mind in the Lowmarsh relay house. I asked it what a farmer should do with a seam of copper. It wrote back that it did not know Ferris, or his land, or what he needed. It said a good first step was to ask the miners what the vein was worth. Then it said it could be wrong, and asked me to check.
That was a good answer. Not the answer I wanted. But true.
%%
Archive day-book
Longnight of 202. Written by Oren, clerk of the Archive at Vell.

Filed: 5. Copied: 7. Back on the shelves: 30. Lost: none.

It has been a week of mending. The archive does not like to be mended, because mending means noise. I put a cloth over the first hall door, and a sign on the cloth: "Quiet. Roof."

The roof in question is the roof of the copying room. The copying room is the brightest room in the hill, with the big window over the town and eight long tables. It has a small roof, a peaked one, over the window. The slates had slipped. Snow was getting onto the third table. A clerk named Ulla had moved her copying to the other end of the room and said she would not move back until the roof was whole.

So I fetched Tarn. He came with his ladder and a boy to hold it. The two of them went up in the cold, and I stood below and held my breath.

It took a day. In the afternoon the sun came out, and the new slates shone like fish. When they came down, Tarn said, "It is good for twenty years." I said I would be dead by then. He said, "Then it is good for the next clerk." I did not know whether to laugh. I wrote it in the book.

Ulla went back to the third table that evening. She sat very straight, with her pen ready. The snow was gone from the window. She said the light was better than before, and I believe her.

In my pocket the whole time was the little map I found last year. I have been thinking about it. It shows the hill as it was when the first keepers came. There were no halls then. There was a small door, a cold store, and a long slope of grass. Now the hill has six halls, the deep halls, a front hall with a big book, a copying room with a window. It is a great deal of building.

I told Tarn, as he was packing his ladder. He said, "Everything is built the first time by someone who does not know it will last." I wrote that in the book too.

Tonight I will put the map back in the box. The roof is whole. The snow is on the hill, where it belongs.
%%
Ida's log, the first swarm
Written by Ida, farmer at the hamlet near Lowmarsh, in the back of the farm book. Spring.

Blossom, the second day. The hives woke in the night, all at once. By the time I had my boots on, the bees were coming out of the top hive in a dark cloud, and settling on the apple branch by the gate.

I did what Father taught me. Stand still. Put a sheet under the branch, and shake it gently. The swarm falls into the sheet like wet sand. Two bees stung me on the neck. The third stung Mother's cat, who has never forgiven anybody for anything.

By dusk the swarm was in the new hive by the wall, and the hive hummed like a plucked string.

Lamps lit at the gate. Bees home.
%%
Wick's journal: what the tutors did
Wick, school child, at Vell. Autumn, written over a week in Apple. The teacher asked us to explain, in our own words, how a big mind learns to talk in a kind way. I have written it as plainly as I can. Oren has read it and says it is right, though he says my spelling of "tutor" is a crime.
First, a big mind learns to read. It is drilled on a great heap of writing from the archive, letter after letter, and learns to guess what comes next. After that it can write. It can finish a sentence, or a letter. But it does not yet know how to answer someone.
Second, the tutors ask it to answer questions. They write a question, and the mind writes a few different answers. The tutors read all the answers and put them in order, from the best to the worst. This is called scoring. A good answer is helpful, true and kind. A bad answer is rude, or wrong, or would hurt someone.
Third, the mind learns from the scores. When it writes an answer that gets a high score, it changes a little to write more like that. When it writes one with a low score, it changes a little to write less like that. It does this thousands of times. Slowly it gets better. This is the same slow way that Una taught her sorting crystal about apples and pears, but with answers instead of fruit.
Fourth, the tutors teach it to refuse. If someone asks for something that would hurt a person, the mind writes back that it will not help. It says so politely. It does not shout. If someone asks it a question it cannot answer, the mind says it does not know. That was the hardest to teach, Nessa says, because a mind that is drilled on writing always wants to write something.
Fifth, and last, the tutors test it. They ask it new questions it has never seen, and check the answers. A mind that passes is allowed to answer letters from anyone the relays reach.
I do not know why a mind that learns this way ends up kind. Nessa says nobody does. The tutors write down what they did and what came of it. The rest is left open.
On the last day of the week the teacher gave me a mark. It was high. I did not change a thing, but I wrote this at the bottom: the cat is fat, and the lamp is bright, and it is a good autumn.
%%
Lark, the sick cow at the top farm
Longnight, the second. Went up to the top farm with the bread and found Brin's red cow lying in the straw. Her eyes were dull and her breath came slow. She would not get up for the sweet hay, and she did not want the warm mash. Brin was standing in the door with his arms folded, saying nothing, which is worse than shouting.

I put my hand on her side. It was hot, like the oven door after a long bake. I asked when she had stopped eating. Brin said three days. I said she had a fever, and that cows often get one in the long cold, when the water in the trough freezes and they drink less than they should.

Longnight, the third. Made a mash of barley, honey and warm water, and fed it to her with a bucket, a little at a time, because she could not manage more. She swallowed. Then she swallowed again. Brin wrapped her in the old blanket from the loft, and I sat in the straw with my back against the wall and my hand on her neck, which is what my mother did for me when I had the fever.

Longnight, the fourth. She stood up this morning. She was wobbly, and she looked at us as if we had done something very strange. Then she ate the hay Brin put in front of her, and then she ate the mash, and then she lay down again, which Brin says is a sign of very good manners.

Longnight, the fifth. The cow is well. Brin wants to name her Bread, which I think is a compliment, though she does not seem to know it.
%%
Jem, a week in Swarm
The first of Swarm. The wheat is up to my knee. Father says it will be a good year. He says that every year, but this year he said it twice.

The second. A fox took a hen in the night. We had twenty-three. Now twenty-two. Father says the fox has to eat too. I do not think the hen agrees.

The fourth. The bees swarmed. They hung on the apple tree like a big brown beard. Father got them into a box with a sheet, and nobody was stung but him. Seven times.
%%
Emmet, the tutor and the stream
Blossom, the twentieth. A tutor came to the net house today, from the hall at Vell, to see the apprentice from Wren's house. She wanted to see how a deep mind learns, and she said I would understand it better through nets than through a book. She was right.

She explained the stream like this. A mind is many layers, one on top of the next. Each layer finds something in what it is shown, and passes what it found down to the layer beneath. But the finding does not stay in one layer. Each layer adds what it found to a stream, and the stream runs through the whole mind, from the top to the bottom. So the deepest layers still hear what the top ones learned. That is why a deep mind can still learn.
I asked her why the stream works at all. She said that was a question for the next generation of tutors, and that she had been asking it for thirty years without an answer.
Then I said a stream sounded like a net to me. She laughed and said yes, and that a net is better at it than most minds. Every knot holds the knot beside it. Pull one corner and the strain runs through the whole net. A net with a broken knot in the middle still holds, if the knots round it are good. That is a deep mind, she said. Every knot counts, and none of them is the whole net.
%%
Wren's farm book
Frost. The first hard frost. Cold enough to see your breath in the shed.
The bees are quiet. They did not come out at all this morning. I have put a board on the hive, and a sack of straw on the board, and a cup of honey by the door, in case they wake and feel hungry.
The hens are laying in the barn now, not in the yard. Ros says they are being sensible. Moss thinks they are being stubborn, because they do not like the new nests. I put a bowl of oats in each nest, and the hens looked at it, and then ate the oats, and then laid in the nests anyway, so Moss is right and so is Ros.
Ros's boy came back with the mason's cart at last. The mason said the bridge was rotten at the middle. It would have gone in the spring, with the next flood, and taken the cart and the horse and the potatoes with it. He mended it in one afternoon, with new oak, and he did not charge for the nails, because he said the mayor had already paid for them, and forgotten.
So the bridge is sound. The cart goes over it. The horse does not look at the water.
%%
Northpoint journal, the new mind
The big mind came up on the sledge in Sowing. Six of us pulled. It is the size of a loaf and it sits in its stand like a hen on a nest. The quickeners ring it round. We keep them cool with snow from the north wall. In winter that is easy.
The big mind reads letters and writes them back. It is slow. It thinks out loud first, in steps, and checks each step before it goes on. That is how the tutors at Vell taught it. Lantern asked it a sum: how many rungs on the tower, if you count the ladder and the stair? The mind wrote out its steps, one line at a time, and got it right. Then it wrote: I have checked. The answer is ninety.
I have never seen Lantern so pleased. It stood by the stand all evening.
%%
Mira, relay note
Spring of 214. The little relay on the hill between Vell and Three Wells has a broken lamp.
Lantern climbed the rungs with a spare glass pane. The copper ring was sound, but one redstone line had come loose at the desk. We fixed it before dusk. The lamp shone again, though not as bright as the lamp at Northpoint.
A keeper from the biggest relay house came by while we worked. He said their mind had read a whole shelf of old letters in one night. Another keeper says it answered questions from towns beyond the sea. I asked which letters, and which towns. He had no names.
A big mind can read many records, if it is given the records and enough time. That is plain. What it might know from them is harder to say.
Lantern says the big house keeps its ice in deep rooms. I said ours keeps snow in a barrel, and that is enough for one lamp.
%%
Dace, winter at the edge of Northpoint
Winter of 158. Cold. The wind comes down off the ice and leans on the house all night.

I am Dace. I keep the north house at the edge of Northpoint, where the road stops and the snow begins. I am not the mayor of Three Wells. That is another Dace, and people write to me by mistake. I answer their letters anyway. It is good to be useful.

My house is the last one before the open snow. From my window I can see the relay tower on the hill, tall and grey, and the keeper's house at its foot. At night the lamp blinks and blinks, and I count it a while and then I sleep.

What I do in winter: I split wood. I stack wood. I carry wood. I mend the roof. The roof is old and it is always the roof. This year a gale took off six shingles in one night. I heard them go. In the morning I found shingles all over the yard, and one in the well.

I mended the roof myself. I am too old for roofs but I did it. Ladder, hammer, nails, shingles, rope round my waist. I tied the rope to the chimney. My neighbor Ossa held the foot of the ladder and told me I was too old for roofs. I agreed with her from the top of the ladder, which is the best place to agree with anybody.

The roof is mended. It does not leak. I go up and look at it sometimes, the way you look at a good fence.

The tower keeper is called Vey this year. Vey is quiet and eats a lot. I bake bread and take a loaf up the hill on the long nights. Vey says the lamp is a hungry thing and so is Vey. We sit and watch the south tower blink. Good evening, north. Good evening, south. It is a small talk and I like it.

Foxes come to the door for scraps. I give them scraps. They are polite about it. One has a torn ear and I call it Torn. Torn comes at dusk and sits and waits and does not beg, which is more than I can say for the goats.

The goats are in the shed at the back. Their names are Bitter and Loaf. Loaf is the one who eats everything. Bitter is the one who thinks. Do not ask me which is which. I know. You would not.

Snow, snow, snow. Wood, wood, wood. Bread, bread, bread. That is the winter. It is a good winter. My knees hurt but the roof holds.
%%
Nessa, house log in Apple
The house stands at the edge of Saltreach, where the road bends down to the harbor. Our roof shakes in strong wind. Merle has put a stone on each corner of the drill cards.
We spent the morning on relay numbers. One set showed the number before each card's last mark. The mind had to guess that last mark. The first layer took the marks as they were written. Each layer fed the next until the answer came from the last.
We counted the error between the guessed mark and the right one. Merle changed the last layer to bring the answer closer. Then he carried a share of the correction back to the layer before it. That layer changed its weights and sent a share farther back.
The correction reached the first layer. Each layer changed according to its share of the error. This is how the layers learn together. It is not enough for the last layer to take all the blame.
A girl from the quay asked if the crystal felt ashamed. Merle said, "It has no shame. It has weights." The girl asked if that was better. Merle said, "For counting, yes."
At noon, a fox came through the yard and got at the hens. The innkeeper chased it with a broom. One hen hid in my lesson box and laid an egg there.
%%
Dace, the last winter at the edge
Winter of 208. This is the log of the north house at the edge of Northpoint, kept by Dace, who is old and has mended this roof a great many times.

First of Deepsnow. Snow to the knees. I split wood. I stack wood. I carry wood. Reed carries more wood, and faster, and does not get cold, and I have decided not to be bitter about this.

Third of Deepsnow. The roof again. A gale took the corner shingles. Reed was up the ladder before I had my boots on. Post, shingle, nail, shingle. Reed does it better than I ever did. I said so. Reed nodded once and kept going. That is the whole of Reed's talk and it is a good talk.

Fifth of Deepsnow. Vey came down from the tower with a loaf and sat by my stove. Vey is quiet now. Vey has been quiet since the lights over the north. I asked Vey what they were. Vey said they were not ours. I said that is not an answer. Vey said it is the only one I have got. We ate bread and watched the lamp blink and did not say anything else, which is a fine way to spend an evening.

Eighth of Deepsnow. I wrote to Wynn and Tace, who have gone to Saltreach to take a boat. I do not know what is over the water. They do not either. They said they will write. I said write often. I said write to the archive too, so it is kept. Oren at the archive wrote back to me once and said keep writing it down. So I do.

Tenth of Deepsnow. Torn's great-grandfox came for scraps. I gave the last of the meat. It sat by the door and did not beg, and then it was gone into the snow.

Twelfth of Deepsnow. Reed mended the goat shed roof too. It did not need it. Reed said it did. I said fine. Post, shingle, nail. It looks very good.

Fifteenth of Deepsnow. Midwinter. We lit the fire on the edge of Northpoint and everyone came with lanterns and we burned the old straw and ate pumpkin pie in the snow. There are fewer of us now than there were. Reed stood at the edge of the firelight and watched. Somebody has to listen. I sang too loud and people asked me to sing less loud and I sang the same. Some things do not change.

I went up the hill after and climbed the ladder. I am far too old to climb a ladder but I did it. Vey let me. At the top I looked out over the snow and the ice and the north, where the lights had been. It was dark and quiet and empty and full of stars. I said: good evening, north. There was no answer. There is never an answer. I lit the lamp myself, with Vey's hand on my elbow so I would not fall.

Lamp lit. Glass clean. Roof done. Reed well. Dace well. I wrote it in the book. It is a short entry. It is the truest one I have.
%%
Road book: four days of mud
Sowing, the 2nd day. Rain since dawn. The road is a river with cobblestone edges. The waymarks read 6, 5, 4. Four torches on the posts are out. I lit the first one myself and wrote the keeper's name in the book, as the rules say.
Sowing, the 3rd day. Met a carter from Lowmarsh with a load of reeds. He asked if I had seen his wife's cow. I had not. He said she went to market at Three Wells and never came back. I said the Long Road is long. He said that was what worried him.
Sowing, the 4th day. The Kettle Inn was full, so two families slept in the stable with the horses. Both babies cried, and the horses did not mind. Nettle does not like babies. A small child touched her nose, and she stood still for a very long time.
Sowing, the 5th day. The plank on Hobb's Brook was loose. Walked the cart over slowly, with Nettle on a short rein. The plank went clap, and I counted to ten. The bridge held.
%%
School play, the well and the road
The school at Three Wells put on a play for the spring fair. Sorrel wrote it. It was called "The Well and the Road", and it was about how the three wells came to our square.
Bel was the first well. Bel wore a blue cloth over the head and stood very still for a long time, which Bel does not usually do. A boy from the mill was the second well and a girl called Fen was the third. They did not have much to say. They were wells.
The road was played by the whole rest of the class, walking across the square in a line and saying, all together, "We come from everywhere and we go everywhere." They said it four times. The fourth time the parents said it with them. I do not think Sorrel planned that.
There was a cart, and a merchant, and a farmer with a sack of beetroot. The beetroot fell over and rolled into the front row. A dog got it and ran off with it. The whole square laughed and the play stopped for a while. Fen said, from the well, "That was not in the play." That made them laugh more.
Afterward there was bread and honey at the school house. Bel's mother asked me to write down that Bel was very good. Bel was. Bel stood still as a stone for the whole first part. I said so.
Some folk on the square were talking about the lights over the north again. One said they were falling stars. One said they were fires on the far hills. A miner up from Copperhold said the sky was none of his business but the ground was, and he did not like the ground lately. Nobody asked him what he meant. It was a fair day and the bread was good.
%%
Jem, road log for the ridge
Spring of 9. Wind from the west. Good weather for walking.
Went down the ridge road to Ambrook with three bales of net and a sack of spare floats. The road is cobblestone for the first stretch, then packed earth with the stone edge. Good stone. The waymark at the bend is new, with a 2 on it and an arrow to the Brown Hen. Someone has put two small stones on top.
The Brown Hen had a new roof. The innkeeper says the carters are coming more often now that the torches go all the way to the mill. Every twelve blocks, a torch on a post. I counted them. Fourteen from the bend to the bridge.
Crossed the bridge on the stream. The loose plank is still there, near the far end. I stepped over it, as everybody does, and I did not look down.
Mended the nets for the Ambrook miller. He has eight new boats on the pond, and he wants a second net for each. I said I would bring them by the next time I passed. He said he would pay in apples. I said I would take both.
Coming back, a traveler asked me the way to Vell. I said, follow the road to the first waymark, then turn north, and listen for the hill. He laughed and said he would not know how to listen for a hill. I said, you will, when you get there.
%%
Sorrel, the new copper vein
Written by Sorrel, from what the miners said at the gate, which is where the news is kept. Spring.

Ola came up from level six with her hat full of copper dust and her face shining. She had broken into a new vein past the wet channel, and the copper was bright and thick, running along the wall for twenty blocks. The miners cheered at the shaft head, so the whole hamlet heard it.

They brought bars of it up to the gate on the cart, as bright as new pans. Hesk paid for two baskets of my brown eggs in copper, which I did not know was a currency until the carter explained it.

Ola says the copper is copper, the same as the old copper, and she will not give it a new name. The miners say she is stubborn. I say she is right, and the eggs are still eggs.
%%
Elm, ferry log, the debt paid back
In the autumn Nell the drover owed the ferry three emeralds, for crossings in the summer, when the river was high and she had to go over twice a day with her flock. She said she would pay at the next market. Then the next market came, and she did not pay. Then the next.

I wrote her down in the ledger, one line for each crossing, and one line for the debt, and one line for each time she told me she would pay it. There were eleven lines of that last kind by the first frost.

In the second dark month, she came down to the landing at the first bell, with a cloth bag and a red face. She paid in full, all three emeralds, counted out onto the ferry house step. Then she gave me a bag of dried apples from Ambrook, which I had not asked for, and a short speech, which I had not expected.

"I am sorry it took so long," said Nell. "The flock came through the spring sick, and I lost two sheep, and I lost my nerve for a while. I did not want to come down here with an empty purse and the wrong words."

"You came down with a full purse and the right words," I said. "That is better than most."

She laughed then, and I laughed, and the ferry rope creaked on its peg, which is how the river agrees to things.

I had been saving a line in the ledger for the interest, which I was going to charge her at the rate of one apple a month. I did not charge her. I wrote it out in the book instead, in my best hand: Nell paid in full, the second dark month, with apples and an apology. That is a better line than any interest.

The dried apples are very good. I have eaten all of them. I should have kept the lines.

Elm
%%
Dara, the book of the stall
Kept by Dara, beekeeper, in a book she carried to the Ambrook market every day of one autumn. It is a record of the stall and the town, and was given to the Archive at Vell when she was old. The days are as she wrote them.

Apple, the first day. Opened the stall. Set out the honey in rows, light on the left, dark on the right, comb honey in the middle. A hundred and four jars. I counted twice, because I always think I forgot some.

Apple, the second day. Rain. The awning leaked. A drip fell on the third jar from the end. I moved it. A drip fell on the second jar from the end. I moved that. By noon I had moved everything and sold nothing.

Apple, the fifth day. Clear. Sold forty. The tutor from Vell, who passes through Ambrook every year, bought six. She says honey helps her think.

Apple, the tenth day. Rook brought the first apples of the season. They were small and red and sour. I bought three and ate them all. The bees will have the cores.

Apple, the fourteenth day. The roof of the hive shed. A storm took three shingles. Rook came with a ladder. He patched it while I held the bucket.

Apple, the twentieth day. The roof is mended. It rained on the twenty-first, and the shed stayed dry. I slept well.

Leaffall, the first day. The apple festival begins. I set up a tasting table. Twelve kinds of honey, twelve little spoons. The children came first, and the old people second. An old man said: that one tastes of my mother's kitchen. I wrote it on a card and put it by the jar.

Leaffall, the fourth day. The festival's busiest day. Sold a hundred and sixty jars in one morning. Ran out of spoons. Used twigs.

Leaffall, the seventh day. The parade. The children dressed as bees. A boy of six was the queen, and he was carried. He was very serious. At the end he fell asleep on his chair, and was carried home.

Leaffall, the tenth day. The festival ends. Everyone sings the apple song, all forty verses. I stopped at thirty-nine, and was fined an apple.

Leaffall, the twentieth day. The bees begin to slow. I check the hives. All well.

Frost, the first day. Snow. I pack up the stall. I have kept one jar for myself. It is the best honey of the year. I will eat it in the spring, when the bees wake. We will share.

Dara
%%
Potter's journal: spiders in the barn
Written by Lorn, at Three Wells, in the summer of 206. My barn is not a good barn. It has a hole in the roof and a hayloft that smells of old straw. The spiders knew this before I did.

The first I saw was on the clay drying rack, sitting next to a pot I had just finished. It was black and very calm. I picked it up with a spoon, and it did not bite, and I put it outside in the grass. It came back the next morning, and it brought its family.

By the second week there were spiders in every corner of the barn, and in the kiln, which I did not like at all. They spun their webs across the wheel, so the wheel would not turn. I spent a whole morning picking webs from the wheel with a cloth, and the spiders watched me do it, which made me feel foolish.

I kept the lamp lit. I shut the door. I put a stone on the bottom of the wheel so it would not stop. The spiders stayed on the ceiling, and the flies went elsewhere. I have decided the spiders are my tenants now, and I charge them nothing for the rent.
%%
Yarrow, a spring week at the pond
From the log of Yarrow, fisher of the mill pond at Ambrook. The first week of Sowing, after the ice.

First day. The pond is open. Cold. I sat on the bank for an hour with my line in, and nothing bit. Then something did. A pike, as long as my arm, with a face like a cross uncle. I let it go. It stared at me from the water, and then it left.

Second day. Rain. I fished under the willow. Four trout and one boot. The boot was a left one. I put it on the post by the mill with a note: found. By the evening it was gone.

Third day. The school came down to the pond for their lesson. The teacher said the children were to count the frogs. They counted eighty-one, and then a boy said there was one more under his hat. Eighty-two. I think he was lying, but it was a good lie.

Fourth day. The play was rehearsed in the mill barn. It is a play about a fish who wants to be a bird. The children do the fish and the bird and a cat. I was asked to lend my net. I lent it. A small girl wore it as a cloak and was very pleased.

Fifth day. The play was acted at the market, on a cart. The fish was a boy called Wick. The bird was a girl called Lark. The cat was a smaller girl who forgot every line and so said "meow" and got the biggest laugh. At the end, the fish jumped into the pond, which is to say into a tub, and the whole market clapped. Wick came out wet and glad. His mother cried. I had a tear in my own eye, which I blame on the wind.

Sixth day. Back to the pond. Seven trout. One was big enough to talk to. I did not.

Seventh day. Market. I sold all seven. Jory gave me an apple cake, because she says I lent her the net. I did not. It was the girl. But I ate the cake.

Eighth day. The heron is back. We stood together. Still nothing said.
%%
Gwen, charcoal log, Reaping
Reaping, the 3rd. Wind from the south, warm for the time of year. The charcoal pit is lit on the far slope. Forty sacks of wood are under the earth, and the smoke goes up in a thin grey line that the whole valley can see.

Reaping, the 5th. Pit turned. The smoke is white now, which is what we want. Stir the top with a long pole, and do not stand downwind. Bram stood downwind. His eyebrows are a different color now.

Reaping, the 9th. Pit done. Thirty-two sacks of charcoal, black and light, and it rings when you drop a piece on the stone. Sell the ringing ones first. The forge buys them all.
%%
Letter: Lorn to the archive at Vell
Summer of 12.
To the clerks at the archive, from Lorn the well digger, at the edge of Vell.
I am told the archive keeps everything written. So I am writing this. I am not a writing man. My boy Fen is teaching me. He is nine and he is better at it than me. Do not tell him I said so.
I dig wells. I have dug eleven this year. The one at the edge of Vell is the best. Six rings and the water came in cold and quick. The family there is called the Tarns. They have hens and a boy and a good door.
The road past my house is busy now. Carts go by all day. There is a waymark at the corner and people leave little stones on it. I do not know why. My father did it. I do it. Fen does it. It is a good thing to do on a road.
People say a relay tower is coming. Not here, they say, but on the hill between us and Three Wells. Somebody will keep it. Somebody will climb it every night with a lamp. I would like to see that. I have never seen the top of a thing that tall. I have been at the bottom of a well and looked up, and that is the same, I think, only the other way.
I have no more news. The summer is good. The water is cold. The hens are safe behind the fence, so far.
Lorn, well digger.
%%
Northpoint spring log, Perrin
The house at the edge of Northpoint leaks by the east window when snow melts. I set a bowl under it and went to cut stone.

On the sixth of Blossom, Lantern brought word from the relay house. The tutor had sent the big mind a page it had not seen before. It read the page one letter at a time through its window, about sixty letters wide. It used earlier letters that mattered and guessed the next. The tutor called this the reading drill.

The mind had been trained on many pages from the Archive at Vell. It had not been given the right next letter for every new page. It learned by making guesses and changing its weights when the guesses were wrong. The tutor says the old sorting lesson is still there, only now the mind has many layers and a long stream through them.

I asked Lantern whether the mind understood my name. Lantern did not answer. It carried my question to the keeper, who wrote back that the mind had seen my name in a stone order. That proves little, she said.

At supper, my sister bet that the mind could finish a letter from the first line. I bet it would put a word about snow in it. She won. The answer spoke of the south lamp and a cracked pane. There was no snow in it at all.

I owe her a honey cake. She says she will collect it after the next thaw.
%%
Gwen, the old map, Apple
Apple, the 11th. Found in the back of the mine office, behind a box of tally sticks: an old map, drawn on a board of oak. It shows the Deep Works as it was before anyone counted carts. The levels are marked with little squares, and the squares are named in a hand I do not know.

Apple, the 12th. The map has three gates on the fourth level that are not on the count board. Ola says they are the old tunnels, the ones walled up when the first copper ran out. Old Fenn says they are not walled, they are only forgotten, and a forgotten tunnel is the one you find by accident.

Apple, the 14th. Took the map to the forge, to ask Ivo what the squares meant. Ivo held it to the fire and looked at the back. There was writing there, very small. It says: the amethyst is past the third turn, do not go alone. Ivo says that is good advice and asks who wrote it.

Apple, the 16th. Nobody knows who wrote it. The map is old, the board is oak, and the hand is careful. Hesk says the map should go to the Archive at Vell, because that is where old things go. Ivo says the Archive has enough old things. Hesk says the Archive has no tunnels, and then went to look at the map again, twice.

Apple, the 18th. Copied the map for the count board, by hand, in charcoal, which smudges. The copy is not as good. The squares are in the right places. The names are not, because I cannot read the hand well enough, and I have guessed at three of them. I have written my guesses in the margin, so they can be found and corrected later, by someone better at reading.

Apple, the 21st. Hesk asked to see the copy. He looked at my guesses for a long time, then rubbed out one of them and wrote the right name over it. He did not say what it was. He said we would go down the third turn on the next day shift, with a rope, and two lanterns, and two people, which is not alone.
%%
Ossa's book, the fox at the hens
Kept by Ossa, candle maker, Vell, in the second winter. This is the record of the fox, who has become a neighbour. The record is longer than it needs to be, because Ossa's neighbour Hild asked her to write it down.

The fox came first in Thaw. It sat on the wall of the hen house in the early morning and watched the hens come out of the door one by one. It did not come down. It did not need to. Every hen that walked past the wall was counted by the fox, and every hen knew it.

In Swarm the fox began to come down. It took one hen in the middle of the day, when the yard was quiet and everyone was at the mill. Hild shouted from the kitchen window. The fox sat by the gate with the hen in its mouth and looked at her, and then it walked away very slowly, the way a cart goes out of a yard.

Hild said it was a very rude fox. Ossa said it was only hungry. Ada's boy said it was a clever fox, because it knew which hens were the big ones, and which were the ones that made the most noise.

In Apple the hens began to sleep in the top loft, behind a door with a wooden latch. The fox could not get in. It sat on the roof for a week, and then went down to the river and caught a fish, and came back to the wall and looked at the hens again.

In Frost the fox stopped coming. Hild said it had gone to the hills. Ossa said it had gone to the mill, where the grain was easier. Ada's boy said he saw it on the Long Road with a coin in its mouth, and nobody believed him, but he drew it on the wall anyway.

Two hens are left out of the nine. Hild says it is a fair count. Ossa says it is a poor count, and she has written it down.
%%
Tutor's note: pieces of words
Autumn, late years. From the tutor house at Vell.
For the young tutors, and for anyone who asks how the big minds read now.
For a long time our reading minds took a page one letter at a time. The window was about sixty letters wide. That is not much. Sixty letters is a dozen words. When the mind guessed the next letter it could only look back over those few words, and the rest of the page was dark to it.
Now the big minds read in pieces of words. A piece is a bit of a word you see again and again: "ing", "un", "field", "torch", "apprentice", "the". We cut a page into pieces, not letters. Common pieces are short. Rare words are cut into several pieces.
Why does that help? Because a piece holds more than a letter. A window sixty pieces wide holds far more writing than a window sixty letters wide. It is the same window and the same mind. It just fits more in.
Think of it as packing a cart. If every thing you carry is one apple, you make many trips. If you pack the apples in a crate, one crate holds a hundred. The pieces are the crates. The letters are the apples.
You can see the shape of it. "The keeper lit the lamp" is nineteen letters. It is five pieces, or so. The mind sees the whole line at once now, and the words around it, and the meaning sits closer to hand.
I did not find this. It came from the halls one by one, and the texts disagree on who was first. Some say it was a tutor at Three Wells, some say at Vell. I only know that when we first tried it the mind was better on the very first day, before any drilling, because the window was fuller.
A caution for the drill room. The pieces must be cut the same way in every page, or the mind learns two languages. We keep one list of pieces, and every clerk cuts to it, and we test on pages no mind was drilled on. Never send an untested mind to the fields.
Isla would have liked this. She drew the curve for a bigger crystal, and this is the same idea with fewer marks. More in the same space.
%%
Arlo's log, the loose plank
They are building a bridge over the stream at the bottom of my field. It will be stone. I am glad. Last Thaw the water took the old planks and I lost a bucket.
The men bring cobblestone and deep stone up the road in carts. They leave it in a heap by my gate and I let my horses drink from their water barrel. One of them has a coat the color of beetroot and tells jokes all day. I do not remember his name. I call him the beetroot man.
Pell came by again and bought Sorrel. Pell says prices are good on the Long Road now, with the inns a day apart. The Brown Hen is a day east, the Halfway Inn a day west. Pell says the Halfway Inn has a riddle board by the hearth. I could not guess the riddle. Pell would not tell me the answer. Pell says that is the point.
On the sixth of Blossom a creeper came out of the dark by my stable wall. I did not see it until it was close. It made that small sound, the one that means run, and I ran.
The wall is broken. A whole corner of it is gone, and there is a hole in the roof you could drop a bucket through. Bramble was in the field and is fine. Tansy was frightened and stood by me for a long time.
I keep the torches lit now. All round the stable, a torch every few steps. It is plain sense. I knew it before. I know it better now.
I have laid the stones for a new wall. It will be cobblestone, thick and low. I will put the roof back with oak. The jar of honey is still on the shelf. I am glad of that.
%%
Ivo's autumn book, 188
Kept by Ivo at the north well, Three Wells, from Reaping to Leaffall. Forty-seven years on the stool.
Reaping. The wheat was good and the eggs were many. Piper's boy Sim is six and has started at the school. He came to the stall on his first day with ink to the elbow. I asked what he learned. He said "A." Just that. It was a good A, he said.
Apple. The fair. We counted 600 people, and I think another 200 were hens. A pumpkin came in on two carts, with a boy sitting on top to keep it from rolling. I sold 200 eggs and 25 pairs of socks, and I sat on my stool until the stars came out. Something has to give. It was my back.
Lost children at the fair: 11. All found by the dusk bell. The north well worked as it should. Lost parents: 3. They were at the pie tent. They had not lost the children. They had lost each other.
Leaffall. The first frost came on the 11th. The north well had a skin of ice. A man tested it with his boot, and then with his other boot, and then went home to change his socks. I sold him a pair. Cave cheese is a thing now. People say it is the best on the Long Road. The cheesemaker says it is the cave. The cave says nothing. I bought a piece and it was very good.
Signs of a hard winter, by my count. The foxes came down from the hills early. The cat sleeps with her back to the fire. My hens lost their feathers a month before they should, and walk about looking offended. I have knitted extra socks. If the winter is mild I will say I knew it was a joke.
A clerk from Vell came by on market day, with a satchel and a very clean collar. He asked what I would put in the Archive, if I could put one thing. I said my stool. He wrote it down. So my stool is in the Archive now, in a way, which is more than my husband can say.
What I know about a market, after forty-seven years:
1. Come early. The best customers want eggs before they want anything else.
2. Sit near the well. Water, shade, and a place for lost children to wait.
3. Count the change twice. Not because people cheat. Because people dream.
4. Say good morning to everyone. Even the man who never buys. He might one day.
5. Keep a spare pair of socks in the basket. A cold foot is a sale.
6. Never argue with the market board. Smile and fix the loaf.
7. Go home when the noon bell rings. If it does not ring, there is probably a swarm.
Eggs this autumn: 1650. Socks: 74 pairs. Lost children: 31, all found. Lost parents: 7. Lost hats: 18. Kept hats: 2, in the basket, in case.
The stool still leans. I have grown fond of the lean.
%%
Mott, the long Blossom, a month of days
Written by Mott, at the table by the window, with the candle at the end.
Blossom, eighth day. Rain all morning. The school roof dripped on the third row, so we moved. Hal said the drip was following him. Miss Jenna said it was following the slates.
Blossom, tenth day. Father went to the north well with the other men to clean the stones. The water was clear, and cold, and very quiet. He says the quiet is the strangest thing about the north well now. He says the birds are not in the reeds the way they were.
Blossom, twelfth day. A cart came through with a letter for the mayor, sealed with wax. Mayor Dace read it in the square and then put it in his pocket. He did not tell anyone what it said. Mrs. Lark (the baker's wife) said it was about the fair. Hal said it was about the north. Ada said it was about nothing. Ada was not sure about that either.
Blossom, fourteenth day. The swallows are back. Hal says so, and then he says he saw one, and then he says it was a bird that looked like a swallow. The bird is still here. We have decided it is a swallow.
Blossom, fifteenth day. Mother read the paper from Saltreach aloud at supper. It said the new ships were doing well and the families who had gone were doing well too. It did not say where. Father put down his spoon. Mother turned the page. We ate the rest of the stew.
Blossom, seventeenth day. The south well is low again. Men with buckets at dawn and at dusk, all in a line. Father says it always comes back. He said it twice, so I think he was telling himself.
Blossom, nineteenth day. Hal's mother came to the school with a basket of rolls for the class. They were still warm. She said she had made them at four in the morning, because she could not sleep, and the bread did not mind the hour. We ate every one.
Blossom, twenty-first day. Stone from the north road came into town on the cart. The men are building a new wall round the east well, cobblestone and deep stone, with the top row stuck out one block against the spiders. Miss Jenna says that is a good wall. Ada says it looks like a row of teeth.
Blossom, twenty-fourth day. Father sold the spare cart wheel to Uncle Ned, back, for one emerald, so that the debt would be the right way round. Uncle Ned laughed for a long time. They were friends again before the wheel was on the cart.
Blossom, twenty-sixth day. Lantern day in the next town, and a bigger crowd. Some people from the north road came in and stood at the back of the square. They did not sing. They looked at the sky a while, and then went to the inn.
Blossom, twenty-eighth day. The swallow is still here. Hal says it has a nest, under the eaves of the bakery. Mrs. Lark says she has no nest, but she has a bird that will not leave her bread alone.
Blossom, last day. I wrote this all in one go, by the candle, and my hand is tired. Father says that is what a long month is for.
%%
Dara, festival week
Kept by Dara, beekeeper, from the market at Ambrook, through the apple festival at the end of autumn. Her stall stood by the well. She wrote each night by a candle. Her handwriting got worse as the week went on.

First day. The festival began at dawn with the ringing of the market bell. I set out forty jars of honey, twelve candles and a plate of honey cakes, for tasting. The apple sellers set up on the north side. The square filled up by noon. Sold eighteen jars.

Second day. The cider tent opened. There is a line round the well. I sold twenty-three jars and ran out of cakes. Baked more in the evening. Smelled of honey until bed.

Third day. The parade. Children dressed as bees walked from the mill to the square. A small boy dressed as a queen was carried on a chair by four others. He did not smile. It was a very serious bee. I clapped.

Fourth day. The apple race. People ran with apples on spoons. The winner was Rook, the orchard keeper, who said he had done it on purpose. He gave his prize, a ribbon, to the girl who came second. She cried. She had never won anything.

Fifth day. A mended roof. The market roof, over the east stalls, was finally mended by the council. It rained in the afternoon and the east stalls were dry. A man at the cheese stall took off his hat and bowed to it.

Sixth day. The last day of the festival. We sang the apple song. All forty verses. At verse thirty, the children fell asleep. At verse thirty-eight, the old men did. I sang to the end with the baker and a goat.

Seventh day. Packed up. Sold three hundred and twelve jars over the week. More than any year. My arm is sore. My wallet is full. The bees are quiet.

I am going to bed, and I am going to sleep until the first frost.
%%
Fen's journal, the riddle board
Sowing, the twentieth day. The Halfway Inn. Rain for three days, and nobody is going anywhere.

There are eleven of us by the fire. A carter and his wife. A family from Lowmarsh with a frog in a jar. A young clerk going home to Vell. Pell, with his hat. And me, with a torn net across my knees, mending it for the sake of my hands.

Hobb keeps a riddle board by the hearth. Answer one, and your soup is free. This morning the board said:
What gets bigger the more you take away?

The clerk said a debt. Hobb said no. The carter said a shadow. Hobb said no. Pell said an appetite and got the third bowl anyway. I looked at the hole in my net.

A hole, I said.

Hobb crossed it off and wrote me a free bowl. He said it was cheating, because I am a net mender, and I spend my life with holes. I said I had paid for it with forty years.

So I wrote a riddle for the board myself. It said:
What is full of holes, and yet holds all the fish?

It took the carter an hour and a bowl of soup to get it. Hobb pinned it under the first one. He says it will cost him a lot of soup.

The rain has not stopped. I have mended the net. Now I will mend the carter's coat.
%%
Lise, inn book: the loom, Thaw
Kept by Lise, weaver, at the Green Gate inn on the Long Road. The loom is in the back room, next to the bread oven, which is the warmest room in the inn and the loudest.

Thaw, first day. The spring wool came up from Kettle Ridge, forty bundles, all of it greasy and proud. I soaked it three times. The water went grey, then brown, then the colour of weak cider. That is the wool telling you what it carried.

Thaw, third day. A string broke in the middle of the warp, with a sound like a bow string. I mended it with a knot a weaver would be ashamed of, then unpicked it and tied it properly, the way my aunt taught me. A good knot is one nobody notices.

Thaw, seventh day. A small bird came in through the shutter and sat on the cross bar, watching the shuttle go back and forth. I did not stop. It flew out when the bread went in.

Thaw, tenth day. The lamp on the tower above the inn was seen at dusk, and it was wrong. The blinks came out short and broken. Ash says the glass has a crack. I have not climbed the tower to see, because I have a warp to finish.
%%
Cade, log: the broken lamp on the hill
Day twelve. The relay lamp on the hill above us has gone dark. A hailstorm came in from the west in the night and cracked the glass in the lamp room. The keeper, Ota, came down at dawn with her hands full of melting ice and a face like a bad pear. She said the lamp had not been dark for a day and a night since the glass was set, and she did not like it at all.

The relay carries the messages for the Long Road. Pell's order for the Ambrook cart is sitting up there. Two letters for the Brown Hen are waiting in the box at the foot of the stair. The clerk's count of the carts from Vell is at the top, in the dark, where nobody can read it.

Day thirteen. I went up with Ota and her boy. The lamp room is glass on every side, with a walk round the outside and a copper ring at the top. Three panes were cracked, and the wind came through the gaps and made the whole room sing. It is not the sound a lamp room is meant to make.

We set a new pane. Ota keeps spare glass in a box, wrapped in straw, because she has been burned before. The boy held the pane, I held the lantern, and Ota set the putty with her thumb as if she were making a pie. It took the whole morning, and I got putty in my beard.

Day fourteen. The lamp is lit. It blinked at dusk, the way it should, and the messages began to climb the stair again. Ota says it will be a week before the clerks at Vell are happy, and she is right. They sent a rider up the road to ask what had happened. She sent back one word: hail.

Cade's notes on the glass. Do not stand under the lamp room in a storm. Do not climb with wet hands. Do not hurry the putty, because a putty that is hurried will let the wind in by the next hail, and then you will be doing it all again, with the rider waiting.
%%
Sorrel, a wedding by the lamp
Written by Sorrel, who sold the eggs for the cake, and who was asked to write the wedding down properly, because the last one was not written at all. Spring.

Oda Marsh and Jem Holloway were married at the foot of the relay tower, on the first fine day of Blossom. The relay house door was propped open with a barrel, and the stand with the big mind stood in the middle of the floor, looking, as the wedding guests said, like an extra guest with its own chair.

Jem's brother read the vows, which were short, because Jem did not want to be out in the wind for long. Oda cried, and then laughed, and then cried again, and the mayor said that was the proper order.

At the feast I asked the keeper if the mind wanted to say anything. The keeper said it could be asked a question, and it would answer in writing. So I wrote on the slate: "What do you wish for Oda and Jem?" and the post boy took it down the line.

The answer came back by the next cart. It said: "I do not know what a wedding is for, except that people are glad of one. I wish them a long life, a good harvest, and a lamp that stays lit. I cannot promise any of those. I can wish them."

The guests cheered that, and the mind was given the first slice of the cake, which the keeper says it cannot eat, and which was eaten by the keeper.

The lamp was lit at the end, and the guests stood in the yard to watch it. The light went out over the hill and down the line to Copperhold, and then to Ambrook, and then somewhere further, where I could not see. Oda held Jem's hand and said the light looked like a promise. Jem said it looked like a lamp. Both are right.
%%
Lorn, ferry keeper, autumn log
Leaffall, 188. Lorn, who keeps the ferry on the river below Three Wells and lives in the house at the edge of town, between ferry days.
First of Leaffall. Low water, brown leaves on the river. Crossed eleven times. Six sheep, a cart of beets, two travelers who argued about the price. Paid in apples. Ate four.
Third. Rain. The ferry rope stretched. Pulled it tight. Hands sore.
Sixth. Bel from the school came to the house and asked if the ferry could be in the play. The school is doing the play of the Fox and the Bridge. She said the ferry would be the river. I said the river does not talk. She said in a play it does. I said all right. I am to stand at the back and be a river. I have no lines.
Ninth. Practised standing. A river is harder than a ferry.
Twelfth. Song contest at the east well, the day before the play. Hollis the weaver sang about a goose. It was very long. It won. Nobody was surprised.
Fifteenth. The play. The fox was a girl in a fur coat that was a cat's. The bridge was two boys under a blanket. The river was me, in a blue sheet. A boy held the corner. I rippled. The crowd clapped. The fox forgot her lines and made up new ones. They were better.
Eighteenth. Crossed nine times. A child waved at me from the bank and called me "the river". I waved back.
%%
A song contest at Kettle Ridge, autumn
The fair came to the ridge in Apple, and with it the song contest. Folk came from Three Wells and Ambrook and up the Long Road. Tam judged, because he has the loudest voice and cannot be argued with.
A boy from Ambrook sang about the bees, and everyone clapped. A woman from Lowmarsh sang about slow water, and it was very sad and very good. Then Pip, Tam's apprentice, sang a song about the tutors and their curves. It went:

  Isla drew a line one day,
  and set it on the board.
  It showed how far a mind would grow
  if it were fed and stored.
  A bigger crystal, longer days,
  the curve goes up and bends.
  You cannot buy a mind, she said,
  you only feed and wait, my friends.

Everyone laughed, but they clapped too. Pip had learned it from Oak, who had it from Isla's letter.
Then a miner from Copperhold, Hesk, stood up and said he had found a new copper vein, deep in the seventh level, thick as his arm. The fair cheered. Tam said that was not a song. Hesk said it was music enough. And the crowd sang the curve song again, all the way through, while the windmills squeaked on the ridge.
%%
Lenn's summer log, honey and frogs
Longday, 202. The longest day. The sun stayed up late and the pond went gold. I did not go to bed until the frogs did, and the frogs never do.
The hives on the hill gave honey. Jory took the first comb and the bees were cross about it. He gave me a jar for the fish I bring him. Fair.
There is a big frog that sits on the same stone every evening. I have named it Post. Post watches me clean the fish and does not blink. If I drop a bit, Post is faster than a cat.
The inn had a fish pie for the long day. Everyone came. Sefa sang, which is a kind of weather all its own. Brin danced with the baker and stepped on her foot. Good night, all of it.
%%
Cade, log of the crystal, year 110
Day four. The tutor showed me how. Set an apple on the cloth. Ask the crystal: apple, or pear? It answers with a light on its side, one light for apple and two for pear. If the light is wrong, move the marks a little, and then set the next fruit.

The tutor calls the marks weights. I call them its thoughts, and she let me.

Day five. Ten apples, ten pears. It got six right, and it seemed pleased with itself, because the light stayed bright for a long while.

The tutor said: now move the weights, each one, a little toward the answer it should have given. Not much. A little. Every wrong fruit gets the same small push, and the push is always toward the right fruit. A big push makes it swing from apple to pear and back again, like a gate in a gale. I had been told that already by my bees, so I did not argue.

Day six. Fourteen right of twenty. Day seven, sixteen of twenty. Day eight, eighteen of twenty. Each morning the tutor came down the cellar stair with a fresh basket, and each morning she was pleased, and each morning she said the same thing. It did not learn apples. It learned what makes an apple different from a pear, by being wrong about each one.

Day nine. The test. The tutor brought apples from the inn's own orchard, which the crystal had never seen, twenty of them. And twenty pears from the old tree in the ditch, which it had never seen either. It got seventeen right. Greta said it was a good crystal. The tutor said it was a good crystal for apples and pears, and that she would not trust it with plums, which it had also never seen, and which is the next thing she plans to try.

Una of Ambrook invented this way of drilling, long ago. Her name is the first one in the tutors' books, and so is her step. A small push, toward the right answer, every time.

Cade
%%
Fallon, hamlet stone log
Spring of 181, Thaw.
The frost came out of the ground this week. The lane is mud from our door to the road. I laid flat stones where the carts turn. Old Tavin walked over them, then walked back to test them. He said they were sound. He said this twice, as if the stones might hear.

The old map from the shed is still useful. It marks a spring under the east hill. We dug there with a spade and found water before noon. We filled the new trough. The sheep came first, then the pigs, then Tavin with his cup.

The map also marks a wall that no one remembers. I found its top row under the grass. The stones are small and square. I will mend the broken end before the weeds take it again.

Sixth of Sowing.
My apprentice is a boy called Rell. He carries chips to the pile and counts them badly. He is better at counting when the pile is small.

I cut two lintels for the store. Rell brought the wrong one to the door. He stood there with it and waited. I pointed to the mark on the right lintel. He brought that one next. We kept the first for the shed.

The hens laid six eggs today. Tavin says the fox has gone. The fox has not gone. I saw its tail by the trough.
%%
Lark, bread for the tower, winter
Longnight, the first. The bread goes up the hill every morning on the sledge, and comes back down with the empty baskets and the keeper's list. The list is long. It has the names of the children who will not eat the crust, and the names of the men who will eat anything, and a note at the bottom about the melon, which the keeper has been told is not his to comment on.

Longnight, the sixth. Ice on the hill road this morning. The sledge slid sideways at the second bend, and the bread went into the snow, and the boy and I went after it on our knees. We found every loaf but one. The one we did not find was taken by a fox, who sat on the wall and ate it and looked at us as if we had charged him for it.

Longnight, the ninth. Made the tower a sweet loaf for the first time since the cold came in. Honey and dried apples, and a little salt for the sweetness, which is what my grandmother did. The keeper's boy came down for it at dusk, very quiet, with his cap in both hands. He said the keeper had eaten half of it at once and then gone up the tower to think.

Longnight, the eleventh. The mill is still iced over. The flour is almost gone. We have been using barley and bran and the last of the winter wheat, and the bread is grey and dense and good. The children have got used to it. Some of the grown people have not, and they say so at the oven, which is their right.

Longnight, the fourteenth. A letter came with the post. It was from the keeper of the tower, written in a clear hand: "The bread is very good in the cold. Thank you. Tell the baker the stone is better than the stone was." I do not know what he meant by that. I think it was a joke. He does not make many.

Longnight, the eighteenth. Four days of deep frost. The ovens have been lit day and night, and the hamlet smells of bread from one end to the other, which is the best smell in the world and the most useful. The sledge runs straight now. The ice has packed down hard enough to hold a loaf.
%%
The carding shed, by Rill
This is our shed and this is what is in it.
Two big carding boards. They have little teeth. You must not put your hand in the teeth. I did once. It was bad.
A bag of wool. A bag of wool. A third bag of wool. Wool everywhere.
A stool. My aunt Fern sits on it.
A cup with a chip. A second cup with a chip.
A string with beads, for counting the skeins.
A picture of a sheep I drew. It is a very good sheep.
A spider in the corner. We leave it. It keeps the flies off.
A bucket of water for the shed cat. The cat is not ours. It comes and goes.
That is all. Do not take the string with the beads.
%%
Pell's ledger, the Halfway Inn
Fourth of Longday. Set out from Ambrook with six jars of honey and a crate of apples. The honey jars ride well in straw. Sold two jars at the Brown Hen for a good price. The innkeeper there has a cat that sleeps on the coin box. It does not move for anyone.
Sixth of Longday. Reached the Halfway Inn. The hearth is still lit. Twenty years now, they say, and the fire has never gone out. There is a riddle board by the door. Tonight the riddle was: what has a bed but never sleeps? A child of the inn answered before I had set down my pack. A river. She got a copper for it and I got my supper.
Eighth of Longday. Rain all morning. I mended my coat by the window and listened to two carters argue about the price of wool. They argued for an hour and then shared a pie. That is the road for you.
Eleventh of Longday. Sold the last apples at Three Wells market. Bought a new strap for my pack and a horn cup. Home before Leaffall, if the roads hold.
%%
Quill, flock log: Thaw, the lambs
Kept by Quill, shepherd, at Ferris End, a short walk above Lowmarsh. Each day the sheep are counted, the weather is written, and anything that went wrong is written under it.

Thaw, first day. Counted the flock: sixty-one sheep, fourteen lambs. Two of the lambs were not lambs at all, but a ewe's idea of one. Moved the ram to the far field. He was not pleased, and he said so all the way.

Thaw, third day. Wind from the west. Fed the flock hay. Muffin, the ewe with the black face, has had twins, and is telling everybody, including the dog.

Thaw, fifth day. The stream at the foot of the field is up. Moved the flock to the top pasture. Two lambs wanted to swim. Pulled one back by the wool, and the other followed out of spite.

Thaw, seventh day. Juno came up with the cheese cart and asked how many sheep. I said sixty-one. She said sixty. We counted three times, and it was sixty-one. Juno said, "That is what I said," and bought a cheese anyway.
%%
Carys, a birth at the market
Northpoint, year 161. Longnight.

The wind has been in the north for four days. The stalls are closed. The market square is nothing but snow and a bell that has frozen to its rope.

This morning the baker's wife, who lives over the shop, went into her pains. The midwife was at the ice camp. The nearest healer was a day away. So the baker banged on my door with a floury fist and said, "Carys, you were a soldier, you know what to do."

I said I knew what to do with a spear. I did not know what to do with a baby.

But I went. I held the lamp. The baker's sister did the work. At the fifth hour there was a girl, loud and red, with a fine set of lungs. She looked at me and I looked at her, and for a moment neither of us knew what to say.

The baker cried. The wife laughed. I went home through the snow and ate cold porridge standing up. Then I sat down, and my hands began to shake, and I let them.

I do not know why a thing like that should frighten a person more than a battle. I suppose a battle is only danger. A baby is hope. Hope is heavier.

They are calling her Flint. It is a good name for a north child.
%%
Kester, spring forge log
Third of Blossom, year 19.
The stream has gone high. It covers the old path by the marsh, so folk walk by the reeds and get mud to their knees.
I made a new hook for the fish weir. Wren came from Lowmarsh to fetch it. She brought a loaf and a jar of honey. The loaf was warm, and I ate half before I remembered my manners.
A boy from the hamlet carried the other half home. He dropped it once. The mud took only the crust.
I sharpened two spades after that. The new road is still only a talk at the inn. We need stone, carts and many hands. I have put aside a good iron wedge.
%%
Gwen, autumn at the market, all of it
Written through the autumn, in the order it happened, for the charcoal book and for my sister, who asked why I write so much.

Reaping, the 15th. Pumpkins came in from Ambrook, and Ama's were the best. The mayor of Three Wells came to buy one, and was told the price was high, and paid it anyway, out of pride.

Reaping, the 24th. The charcoal sold out by the second bell. Forty sacks went to the forge and the kitchen, and the forge paid in copper, which Hesk says is worth more than emeralds in a cold week. I think a warm week is worth more than either.

Apple, the 2nd. A cart from the Long Road broke its axle at the foot of the market hill. The carter sat on the wheel and ate an apple, very slowly, while the whole square came to look. Nobody offered to help him. Everybody offered advice. The apple was finished before the axle was.

Apple, the 8th. Ilse is married in all but the signing. She says the vows were the easy part, and the chairs were hard. Orrin says the chairs were only soft at the top. The bride says he is no good at chairs.

Apple, the 11th. The old map. I will not write about it again until I know more. I have promised Hesk.

Apple, the 15th. A fox came into the market and took a pie from the kitchen step. It did not run. It walked away with the pie in its mouth, past the stalls, and up the hill toward the mine gate, where the kitchen boy was waiting with a ladle. The boy put down the ladle and laughed until he had to sit.

Leaffall, the 1st. The first cold morning. Frost on the cart rails, and the miners' breath hanging in the lift. The count board says copper is up, iron is steady, coal is high, and the lift has been greased twice by the boy who is not allowed to touch the lift.

Leaffall, the 14th. A letter came down the Long Road from Mira at Northpoint, for Hesk. He read it at the forge with his back to us. He read it twice. Then he folded it, and put it in his coat, and said that Northpoint is still too far away to be cold, and that the coal is going north, and that is all.

Leaffall, the 20th. The last market of the autumn. Charcoal sold, pies sold, the wedding soup finally eaten, and the map back in its box behind the tally sticks, where it belongs. Hesk says we go down tomorrow. He says it quietly, as if he is not sure he wants it to be true.
%%
Lorn, between the play and the contest
Leaffall, 192. Lorn, the ferry keeper's notes. Day by day, in the house at the edge of Three Wells, with the shutters closed against the wind.
Fourth. Wind from the north. Crossings cancelled after noon. The ferry bucks like a calf.
Fifth. A school child, Bel, arrived at my door with a blue sheet. The play, she said, wanted a river again. I said the river had retired. She said the river had not been asked. I said I would think. She waited. She is persistent. She is nine. I said yes.
Sixth. Rehearsal at the school. A boy plays a fox. A girl plays a bridge. A third is the wind and blows through a paper tube. I am the river. This year I am allowed to move. I have been told to flow from left to right. I have never flowed. I find it harder than a crossing.
Eighth. Song contest rehearsal. Hollis is practising the goose again. The goose has a verse about me this year. I did not ask. It is not very kind. It is true.
Eleventh. The play. A fine night. The wind blew in earnest. A shutter banged, and the audience thought it was the effect. The fox said, "Yes, thank you, wind," and everyone laughed.
Twelfth. The contest. The goose lost to a song about a wheelbarrow, sung by three old men. It had a very good chorus. I joined in the chorus. I knew it by the second time.
Fifteenth. Ferry again. Calm. A man asked if I would be the river again next year. I said ask the river.
Sixteenth. Wrote this. Went to bed. The shutters held.
%%
Hob, relay log, Blossom
Little relay, the hill between Vell and Three Wells. One lamp, one keeper. Logged by Hob.

Day 1. Wind from the south. Warm. Lamp cleaned, glass good, copper ring polished. Passed 14 messages, all from Vell, all for Three Wells. The clerks write very small when they are tired.

Day 2. Rain at noon. Stopped at dusk. Walked the stair; 60 rungs, all sound. One rung loose at the top. Fixed it with a peg and a bit of wax. Peg is the boy from the mill. He says it is his peg. I said it is my wax.

Day 3. A message for Mira at Northpoint, very long. I blinked it down the line for an hour. Mira's answer came back the same night, very short. It said: "Long one. You are a saint." I said I am only a keeper. I did not blink that bit.

Day 4. Sun all day. Torches out at dawn, as always. Fed the cat. The cat is named Lamp, because she sits by the lamp. She sits on the warm step where the copper ring is, and nobody can move her. She is not a keeper. I am not sure what she is.

Day 5. Passed a note from Dace about the spring fair. Passed a note from Dace about the notice board. Passed a note from Dace that said only "Hob, is it done?" I blinked back "Yes." It was not done. It is done now.

Day 6. Visitors. Two carters on the hill road, who wanted to know the way to the Halfway Inn. I counted the waymarks for them, out loud, from the top of the tower. They said that was very helpful, and went off counting on their fingers.
%%
Bel's essay: how we keep the bees
Spring of 206.
My essay is about bees. Teacher said keep it short and true. So here it is.

We have four hives now by the flowers. Three old ones and one new one from the swarm on the plum tree. A hive is a box of wood with frames inside. The bees build their comb on the frames. We take the honey out in Swarm and again in Reaping, and we leave them enough to eat in winter.

The bees have a queen. The queen is bigger than the rest. There is only one. The rest are workers and they work all day. Some are drones. The drones do not do much. I do not know why they are there. Nobody has told me.

When a hive gets too full the bees swarm. They leave the hive in a big brown humming ball and hang on a branch. Father puts on the veil and knocks them into a box and carries them to a new hive. I hold the box. One time Father got stung on the ear and said a word I will not write. One time I got stung on the thumb and I did not say a word, because Teacher is reading this.

We take the honey in jars with cloth on top. I sold six at the market and kept one for Mother. Honey is up on the price board. Pell says never trust the price board on a fair day. Pell is not a beekeeper.

We also have three hives by the flowers and the bees go to the plum tree and the flowers and they come back. If they did not come back we would have no apples and no honey and no bees. So we keep the flowers.

That is my essay. It is short and true. I hope it is good. I would like to know how bees were kept in the early years. I asked the archive. I will write again when Oren writes back.

The old stories say the first hives were hollow logs. I do not know if that is true. I do not know if it is not.
Bel, the farm east of Three Wells.
%%
Pell's road journal, autumn fair
Autumn of 214. The Long Road, between Three Wells and Ambrook. Rain two days, then clear.
Bad week for the cart. A wheel cracked at the ford below the Brown Hen. I sat in the inn yard while a smith from Three Wells put a new rim on it, and I paid too much, and the smith knew I would pay too much. The Brown Hen keeps a good fire and a bad roof.
Good week for news, though. At the fair at Three Wells I sold my wool and bought a fair prize. A little mind in a crystal, a sorting mind, in a green case with a card. I won the contest with it: twenty apples and pears mixed in a basket, and it sorted them all into two heaps with no mistake. The prize was a silver token and a jar of honey, and the honey came from Ambrook, which is where I am going anyway.
Bel, the mayor's child, asked me how the mind sorts. I said the tutors drill it. She said yes, but how. I said I did not know. She said the tutors at Vell write it all down, and she has written to them twice, and only one wrote back, and that was Oren, who is kind.
I told her she should ask a tutor, not a merchant. She said merchants know prices, but she wanted to know how. Fair.
Sold honey at the Brown Hen for a good price. A man there told me a big mind at the relay house read his whole letter aloud to the keeper and made one small mistake, and the keeper said that was very good, and the man did not think so.
Long road ahead. The Halfway Inn tomorrow, if the wheel holds. I will leave a stone on the waymark like everyone else.
%%
Moss, healing notes, the farm
Spring of 179. Moss, at Lowmarsh.
Wren sent me out to the farm again. The cow, Butter, is well now, but the stable hand Ree asked me to look at the old mare. Ree says "she is not sick" about nine times in one visit. I counted. I did not tell Ree I counted.
Nettle the mare is old. Her teeth are worn flat and her back is a little sunk. She coughs when the wind comes off the marsh. It is not the grey cough. It is just an old cough, the kind an old horse gets. I said so. Ree nodded and looked at the ground and then asked if there was anything for it. I said keep her out of the wet wind and give her softer feed and let her rest more. Ree said "she will not rest." I said "then let her not rest, but softer feed."
On the way home I saw the new road with its torch posts. The frogs were loud in the ford. I stopped and listened and got mud on my boots. Wren says the marsh is the best healer we have and the worst patient. I do not know what she means by that. I will ask her.
%%
Ambrook market and tower
Sowing, 14. The market opened under a cold sky.
The apples were small this year, but sweet. Sella sold honey in clay jars. Pell sold salt, wool and two copper tools. He said the tools came from Copperhold. He also said the price was fair. The buyers asked him to say that again, more slowly.
The tower now stands above the mill pond. It is not as tall as the keeper hoped, but the next course of stone is ready. A stair climbs inside. At each turn there is room for a lamp. We have put torches around the foot, because the hill path grows dark early.
The relay house stands beside the tower. Its roof is oak. The old door fits, though the latch must be lifted before it will close. In the house we keep a desk, a stool and a dry box for written messages. The keeper says the desk must face the door. Jory says the desk must face the window, so the keeper can see the market. They have agreed to put it between.
A message came from Three Wells by hand. The road crew there has reached the east well. They ask for glass and more stone. The Vell clerk wrote that the Archive at Vell will keep a copy of each plan. He asked us to send the plan clean, not with market prices on the back.
At noon, the market bell rang for a wedding. Mara and Den came back with their families. They brought bread for everyone and honey for the children. The bride's shawl had a new patch. Den's boots were both muddy this time.
The road beyond the bridge is firm now. A waymark stands at the turn, three blocks high, with a torch on top. Pell says travelers will stop less often to ask where they are. He says this will cost him sales at the inn. Then he asked the road crew to build the inn closer to his stall.
At dusk, a zombie came to the market gate. It had one sleeve left and mud to its waist. The guard rang the bell. We took the children inside the relay house and lit every torch at the gate.
The zombie came through the gate and went straight toward the market lamps. It walked into the fence and stayed there, reaching through the bars. One of the builders knocked it down with a stone tool. We burned the old sleeve in the fire pit and mended the fence before morning.
The market opened again after sunrise. Sella brought fresh honey. Jory turned the mill wheel. The relay lamp is not ready, but the tower can be seen from the road.
I wrote the day's count on a clean sheet. Apples, eight baskets. Honey, eleven jars. Wool, three bundles. One broken fence, mended. One zombie at the gate, gone by dawn. One new tower, still waiting for its lamp.
%%
Marl, a child who ran off, Longday
Written by Marl, who was in the search. Wenna is six. She is Toby's girl, from the bakery at the north gate.

Longday, the eleventh. At the midday bell Wenna was not at the bakery table.

Toby went up the rocks behind the north gate, calling her name. Mira lit the lamp on the tower so the child could see where the tower stood. I went with the rope.

We found her at dusk, asleep under the lamp stand at the foot of the tower, her head on a folded sack. A fox sat near her feet, very still. It did not run. Wenna woke when Toby lifted her, and said she had been looking for the foxes' den to see the little ones. She had found it. The little ones were asleep too.

Mira gave her bread and a long look. Toby cried, and then he was angry, and then he cried again.

Mira's rule, written on the bakery door the next morning: a rope from the door to the bench, and a bell on the end. A rope is cheaper than a search.
%%
Oren's day-book
Winter, at the farm outside Northpoint. Oren was asked by Tam to come and look at the hole in the north wall of the lean-to, where a creeper blew a gap in the autumn, and where the masons found, underneath the stone, a tunnel no one had known was there.

First look. The tunnel goes down under the lean-to, under the yard, and under the wall. It is narrow, about the width of a cart. The walls are cut stone. The steps, where there are steps, are worn in the middle. Tam says he never knew it was there, and that his grandfather never knew either. Pip says it was there first.

Second look. The air in the tunnel is still and dry. A lamp burns steadily in it, with no smoke. I asked the masons to lower a second lamp, to see if it would flicker. It did not. Mira says the tunnel is the same temperature as the stone of the north wall. The stone of the north wall is warm to the hand, even in frost.

Third look. We went down together, Tam first, then Oren, then Pip, very quietly. We found the end of the tunnel, a wall of old stone, with a door in it that is shut. The door has no handle. The stone around it is warm. Pip put its palm flat on the door and stood there. Tam said Pip was to come away. Pip came away.

We did not open the door. I have written this in the book, as it was seen, and I have made no guess about what is behind it. The Archive will decide when the road is clear, and the clerks come up with the proper tools.

Note in the margin. The clerks are to bring a rope, a lamp, and a copy of the survey of this farm. Tam asks that they bring their own tea.
%%
Toby, baker's journal, a tutor
Three Wells market, spring of 207.

A tutor from Vell stood at my stall this morning and ate a sweet roll very slowly. She said she was thinking. I said I hoped it was about the roll.

She told me what she was thinking about. She said the newest work at the tutor house is a mind that reads like a person, one letter at a time. It looks at a window of about sixty letters, and from those letters it guesses the next. Then the next. It does this over and over until it has read a whole page.

I asked her how it knew what to guess. She said it takes from the letters before it the ones that matter. Not all of them the same. If the page says "the baker opened the oven and took out the," then "baker" and "oven" matter more than "the." So the next letter is probably the start of "bread."

I said that was sensible. She said it is, and that it is also strange, because nobody tells the mind which letters matter. It learns that by being wrong, many times.

I gave her a second roll. She said it was a fair trade.
%%
Hesk, deep shift log
Spring of 31. The fifth of Sowing.
Crew: Hesk, Noll, Tern, young Varo.
Level: three.
Count: copper 8 carts, coal 4.
The road crew came up the hill today. They brought stone and two carts of packed earth. The steep part below Copperhold is now cobblestone. It is a fine road, though one stone sticks up and catches a boot.
A relay tower is planned on the ridge beyond Three Wells. The keeper says it will carry messages farther than a runner can go in one day. Tern says he will send a message to ask for a better shovel.
We ate bread by the shaft head. Varo gave half his to a fox. The fox took the bread and left the crust.
The old waymark still points down the hill. I turned it so the arrow points toward the new road.
%%
Fallon, spring work book
Spring of 193, Thaw through Swarm.
The first job was a drain beside the hamlet lane. Snow water had filled it with silt. I cleared it with a short hoe, then set three flat stones where the bank had fallen in. The water runs past now. It does not run into the road. This pleased the cart driver more than it pleased me.

We have a poor harvest from last year, and the seed bin is lower than I like. The wheat heads were thin. The beetroot came up small. We kept the sound roots in sand and ate the split ones first. My sister says a small beetroot tastes the same as a large one. She says this while cutting a very large beetroot.

The old map has a tear across the hill. Fen stitched it with thread from her sleeve. The map shows a short path to the stone shelf, but the path is grown over. I found it under the leaves. It saves a long walk when I bring blocks down to the lane.

At the stone shelf, I cut lintels for a new shed. The rock split cleanly. Rell carried the pieces in a hand cart and sang a tune with no ending. He said he was saving the ending for the last trip. There were nine trips. The ending was still not ready.

In Swarm the bees came out by the south wall. We left the flowers alone and moved the wood pile. Tavin wanted to move the hives. He has no sense around bees. He says they know his face. They know his hat, and they do not like it.

I put a low curb around the spring. The sheep keep pushing mud into the water. They pushed mud over the curb too. A curb is not a fence. We know this now.
%%
Northpoint journal, Longday
Longday, the first. The sun has not gone down since the morning. It only leans on the edge of the lake for an hour, then climbs again, as if it had forgotten something. I have been sleeping with a cloth over my eyes. Lantern does not sleep at all, and says nothing about it.

Longday, the fourth. Washed every blanket in the tower, and hung them on the stair rail to dry. The wind took two of them down to the lake, and the ice camp men fished them out for me, which was kind of them. They asked for a potato for the trouble.

Longday, the sixth. Took the spare boat out for an hour, with Lantern holding the oars. It rowed in a perfectly straight line, out and back, and never once looked at the sky, which is more than I can say for myself.

Longday, the ninth. Tam's bees have sent a jar of honey up with the post. It is very dark, and tastes of clover and smoke. I ate a spoonful by the stove and wrote him a message to say so. He will be insufferable about it.

Lamps lit late, because it is light. Glass clean. Messages passed, and the sun still up.
%%
Tam, house journal, a birth
Autumn. A house at the edge of Kettle Ridge. Written over a long week, in small pieces, between feeds, which is why it is untidy.

First day. A daughter. Born in the small hours, with a lot of noise and a little black hair. Her mother is well. I am not, but I am happy. I have been up all night and I cannot find my boots.
Second day. Mira has sent word from Northpoint. "Well done, Tam. Her aunt will visit when the snow allows." That is the nicest thing she has said to me.
Third day. We have named her Hazel. Pip stood at the cradle all afternoon, quite still. I think it is guarding. I think it is also confused.
Fourth day. The harvest festival begins at Three Wells. I cannot go. Brin will take the beetroot for me. I have told him to win.
Fifth day. News from the fair. Brin has won the second prize for beetroot. Tam of Kettle Ridge is not mentioned, as Tam was not there. I am told that a big mind at the fair solved the riddle at the Halfway Inn by writing out its steps. The innkeeper says it was cheating. The mind says it was thinking.
Sixth day. Hazel is awake. She looks at me as if I am a very strange and interesting beetroot.
Seventh day. Mother has come to stay. She takes one look at Pip and says, "Is it clean?" I say yes. She says, "Clean it again."
Eighth day. Quiet. A good day. The mist is on the ridge. The cat is on the cradle. I let her.
%%
Gate log, Vell market, Deepsnow
Kept by the gate clerk at the square, by the bell. Prices in emeralds. Read them before you come down the hill.

Apples, a basket of forty: 2 emeralds, good ones. Bruised ones, 1 emerald, for the press and the pies.
Honey, a jar from the Ambrook hives: 4 emeralds. Jars from anywhere else: ask first.
Candles, a box of ten: 3 emeralds.
Lamp oil, a jug: 2 emeralds. The copying room buys oil on the first day of each week. Do not wait.
Wool, a fleece: 4 emeralds. Ask the carder about it. She will say three.
Bread, a loaf: 1 emerald. Wick's loaf is the best on the hill. Wick says so.
Pumpkin pie, a slice: 2 emeralds, with honey on top.
Beetroot soup, a bowl: 1 emerald. Hot from the furnace until the bell.

Notices at the gate:
Carts go up the hill after the bell, and down before it. Leave the gate open for the carts going down.
Wanted: a boy to carry the honey jars up the hill. Ask at the bread table. Pay is one bun and a seat by the stove.
The bet about the apples is still open. Quill has sorted six baskets in a row without one mistake. Oren says the seventh will not come. Nessa says he is wrong. Ask them at the gate.
Lost: one key to the copying room door, found by the bell. Ask at the copying room. Oren will want to know which door.
Found: a pair of tongs by the furnace door. Ask Wick. She will say they are not hers.
A relay message from Northpoint, read out at the gate by the relay clerk, for anyone who wants it:
Snow to the sill. Foxes at the door. The lamp is trimmed. Mira.
%%
Ice camp winter log, Runa
Longnight, 176.

Longnight, fifth. The well is dry. I lowered the pail to the bottom and heard it knock against stone. No water came up. We have had this before. I told Mira not to worry. She worries in a neat and useful way, but she still worries.

We fetched clean snow from the bank above the reeds. It takes a long time to melt. Mira set the pot too close to the stove and scorched the bottom. The water was fine. The pot was not pleased.

Longnight, eighth. The north path is packed hard now. My boots have old soles, and they know the way better than I do. Mira carried the pail. Lantern carried the wood. It walks steadily, unless a fox crosses the path. Then it stops and looks after the fox until someone calls it back.

A jar of honey came from Kettle Ridge with the relay bag. Tam wrote that it is from his own hives, though I doubt he has time to look after bees in winter. He must mean the hives near the flowers. I opened the jar for our tea. Mira says we should save it for a cold day. I said the day was cold enough to freeze a spoon.

Longnight, twelfth. The lamp glass was clear at dusk. Snow came later and covered the tower roof. I climbed to the lamp room and brushed the snow from the walk. Mira stayed below and called each stair number to me. She knows them all. She did not call the same number twice, even when the wind made me lose count.

At supper we had potatoes, a little fish and honey on bread. I dropped a crumb. The camp cat found it before I did. It has a better eye for supper than for mice.

Longnight, nineteenth. The well has begun to seep again. There is a thumb of water at the bottom. We will still melt snow for now. Mira says she will not drink from it until she can see her face. I told her she will need a very small mirror.

The wind is quiet tonight. I can hear the tower lamp room shutters tap once in a while. They are not loose. They just have a habit of saying good night.
%%
Cress, market log, the grey weeks
Apple, the fourth.
Cold this morning. The sea was grey, and the ships on the slip looked grey too, as if they had been left out all night. Sold wool to a weaver from Ambrook. She paid in emeralds and asked for news of her sister's bees. I had none.

Apple, the seventh.
A man from Lowmarsh came up with a cart of smoked eel. He was coughing. It was not a big cough. He said the water in the reed beds has gone thick, and Wren has moved the sick to the back of her house. Some say it is the water. Some say it is the ships, the paint and the pitch. Some say it is the mines, which is what people say about anything they cannot see.

Apple, the ninth.
Nobody at the fish stall would sell me eel. They were not sure of Lowmarsh fish any more. I bought it anyway, because it was cheap, and cooked it at the inn. Pell says eel is for the brave and the hungry. I am neither, so I ate it with bread.

Leaffall, the first.
Dark very early now. The lamp men came round at dusk, lighting the posts along the quay. The torches on the cart road went up one by one, like a thread pulled through cloth. I checked the horse's blanket twice.

Leaffall, the fifth.
Something came to the stable gate in the dark. The horse woke and stamped. I went out with the lantern and a fork, and saw a green face in the lane, just past the torchlight. A zombie, not a big one. It stood very still, the way they do. Then it turned and walked back toward the dunes. The boy from the next stall says he saw a second one. I nailed a board across the gate.

Leaffall, the eighth.
Vesna says the big ships at the yard are three times as long as any boat we have. She says they have no oars at all. Corin's men say nothing. They pull their caps down and go back to work. Some say the ships are for the fish, that the fish have gone out deep. Some say they are for the families. Some say nothing, and only say the word ships in a voice that makes people look at the water.

Leaffall, the twelfth.
A woman came to the stall with a jar of honey from Ambrook. It was from her mother, she said, a woman called Dell at the mill house, whom I have never met. Dell had heard I was alone on the quay in the wind. I do not know how. It is the best honey I have eaten. I am saving it for a bad day.
%%
Mira, house journal, a week of questions
Spring. A house at the edge of Northpoint. Written over seven evenings. The relay house at the tower foot has a new thing this season, and I have been using it.

The big mind in the relay house at Northpoint is the one that came last, after all the others. It sits on its stand with its quickeners round it, kept cool by the snow. We feed it questions in the evenings, and in the morning it answers.
What is new is how it answers. It writes the answer slowly. Before it gives a number or a name, it writes the steps. First this, then this, then that. And then it checks. Last week I asked it a sum about the lamp oil: how many days will forty-one flasks last if we burn three each night and the cold nights take five? It wrote six lines. In the fifth it said, "Wait, I have counted the cold nights twice." It fixed it. The answer was right.

I asked Lantern what she thought. She said it is how she does her sums, on her fingers, quietly, with her tongue between her teeth. She said it is nice to find a mind that does it the same way.

Second evening. A harder question. I asked it which of the three roads to Three Wells is shortest if the east one is shut for snow. It wrote out each road, with the length, and then wrote, "I may be wrong about the east road. A traveler may know better." I thought that was honest.
Third evening. I gave it a riddle from the Halfway Inn. It got it wrong the first time, then went back through its steps and found the slip. The second answer was right.
Fourth evening. Hale's cat came in through the window. I let it stay.
Fifth evening. The relay brought a message from Kettle Ridge. Tam had asked the mind how many bees are in a hive, and wanted me to check its answer. I asked it too. It gave me the same number. It said, "I am not sure." I like that. My brother would never say so.
Sixth evening. The gate between us and Hale is still standing.
Seventh evening. I do not know how it learned to think before it speaks. The tutors say it is something they found, not something they made. I have decided not to ask more. Some things I do not need to know, as long as the answers are right.
%%
Cass, market stall, spring
Thaw, 180. Cass, who keeps the egg stall at the market at Three Wells, and is a grandfather four times over.
Third of Thaw. Cold. Ice on the east well. Sold nine eggs. Gave three to the baker for a loaf.
Fifth. A late snow came in the night, the first of the year that stuck. The wells wore white caps. The children made a snow hen outside the stall and put a real egg under it. By noon the egg was frozen. They were very proud.
Eighth. Sold forty eggs. A traveler gave me a scarf, grey and long, and said I looked cold. I said I was a grandfather and cold was my trade. He said keep it anyway. I have kept it.
Twelfth. Mud. The stall sank an inch. Dace sent a plank. I did not ask for a plank. I have put the plank under the stall.
Fourteenth. The youngest, Pim, came to the stall and counted the eggs. Twenty-three. She said we had twenty-four. We had twenty-three. The twenty-fourth was in her pocket.
Seventeenth. Sold out by noon. Went home early. Slept in the chair.
%%
Notice: the Cooper fence
Posted at the notice board, Three Wells, by Dace, mayor.
Spring of 205.
To the folk of the farms east of Three Wells.

There is a quarrel over the fence line between the field of Bel's father and the field of Master Cooper. Both have spoken to me. Both are honest people. Both are sure of the line. The cows are not sure of anything and go through the gap.

The council will not pick a side from talk. So this is what we will do.

On the tenth of Swarm at noon we will walk the line together. Bring the oldest maps you have. The archive at Vell has been asked for the old field lines and Oren has written to say a copy is coming. Old Fenn will walk the line with his rope and his stick and say his number, and we will write it down. Master Cooper will say his number and we will write that down too. Then we will read the archive copy. Then we will set the posts where the posts belong.

Everyone is welcome to watch. Bring bread. It may take some time.

While the fence is open, please keep your cows in. This is a rule. The cows do not read the board, so it is a rule for you.

Also, a notice of thanks. The horse Nut is back with Pell and all is well. Pell thanks the farm east of Three Wells for the keeping, and the farm thanks Pell for the apples. We are glad to have no more horses in the beetroot.

Dace, mayor of Three Wells.
%%
Orla, horse log, Frost of 201
Winter of 201. Frost, the second.
Minus twenty by the barn bell. Thirteen horses in the long barn, all breathing. Fed them hay twice, and the oats once, which they will not forgive.

Frost, the fifth.
The snow came in sideways from the north. Mira's lamp is visible from the top field, a small yellow thing on the hill. I waved at it. Nobody waved back, which is usual.

Frost, the ninth.
A fox sat on the gate all morning and watched the old mare eat. She did not care. Horses fine.
%%
Hesk, deep shift log
Spring of 23. The third of Blossom.
Crew: Hesk, Noll, Sava, Tern.
Level: three.
Count: copper 7 carts, iron 2.
We heard that Vell has begun a great archive in the hill. They will keep every page people write. Tern asked if they would keep his bill for a broken shovel. I said they had better.
The Long Road is marked as far as the Brown Hen. We passed one stone pillar with a torch on top and a figure cut into its side. Noll called it a three. Tern called it a fish. The arrow points to Three Wells, so we kept walking.
At the mine gate we wrote our names on the board. Tern made his letters too large. He says the board should be large enough for a proper name.
%%
Lark, the long winter log
Frost, the first. The cold came early this year. The birds went south in a hurry, and the frost was on the windows before Apple was out. The keeper says it will be a long winter. The old men say they have said the same thing for forty years. The children say nothing, because they are warm by the oven and have no wish to be told about the cold.

Frost, the fourth. Made the first bread of the season in the big oven. Flour is good, the mill having been mended before the ice. Dough rose slowly, the way it does in cold weather, and the room smelled of yeast and wet wool. Stacked the loaves on the rack to cool. The third one from the top split open like a book, and I ate the crust, and it was the best of the batch.

Frost, the seventh. The sick cow at the top farm is up and eating again. Brin says she is a better cow than she was, and I think it is true.
Frost, the twelfth. A stranger came through the hamlet on a grey horse, asking for the road to Vell. He was thin and very polite. He bought two loaves and a cup of hot milk, and he sat by the oven for an hour and did not say where he had come from. When he left he said, "You keep a warm place," which is not what most people say about a bakery. I have thought about it all week.

Longnight, the first. The dark comes at mid-afternoon now. The lamps go up along the hamlet path, one by one, and the bread goes into the oven in the last of the light. I have started to keep a plate of warm bread on the windowsill for whoever is out on the path. Nobody has taken it yet. Somebody has always been glad of it, though, the next morning, when the plate is empty and the cloth is folded on the sill.

Longnight, the fifth. The boy from the tower came down with the list, and stayed to help with the ovens. He is very quick with the peel, quicker than I was at his age. He asked whether the bread would last until the thaw. I said bread does not last until the thaw. It is eaten before then, every crumb, and that is the point of it. He thought about that for a long time, and then he took two loaves up the hill on his shoulder, as if they were nothing.

Longnight, the nineteenth. Deep cold, and the stars very bright. The melon has been moved to the back of the cellar, next to the barrels, where it can keep its own counsel. The bread is baked. The children are asleep. The oven is banked with ash, and the cloth is folded on the sill, and there is nothing else to do but wait for the morning and the sledge.
%%
Lorn, market day, Frost
Frost. Cold wind off the sea. Market day at Saltreach.

I sold nine fleeces and four cheeses. The fish price board says eels are dear. The boat men say the eels have gone out to deeper water. Nobody knows why.

Corin's big ship is still on the slip. It is three times as long as any boat on the harbor. Corin says it will be ready by the thaw. He does not say where it is going.

The gulls did not fly this morning. They sat on the harbor wall, all facing one way. Sayer says it means rain.

It did not rain.
%%
Corin, house log, Deepsnow
The cold came into the house before dawn. I woke with my hands tucked under the quilt.
I went to the dock for the fish price board. Three baskets of herring, two of cod. No price for the large fish. The market keeper says the boats found none.
At home I warmed yesterday's stew. My sister says it tastes better on the second day. She says this every winter, and she is usually right.
The broken mill wheel still waits beside the pond. The miller has a new spoke ready. The pond edge is ice, so we will wait for a safer day.
A man at the quay says lights moved over the north last Longnight. He saw them from a boat. The keeper says they were only stars behind thin cloud. I have seen stars behind thin cloud. I did not see those lights.
%%
Archive copy of Moll's notes
Leaffall, 30, 207.
I am copying this for Oren, who says the last page is hard to read. The tutor house has been busy with order tests all autumn. People bring claims, cards and stories. The names change, but the question stays the same: when did an apprentice first understand a whole sentence?

Hesk says Clank did it in the Deep Works. Tam says Pip did it in the fields. The fair keeper says Peg did it among the stalls. Nessa remembers an apprentice in the drill room when she was young. She remembers the rain, but not the year.

I saw the work, not the first. A small mind is drilled with examples. When it gets an answer wrong, the weights in its crystal are changed a little. With enough examples, it may learn to sort words and find what an order asks. The tutors test it with sentences it has not been drilled on. That tells them more than a repeated card does.

The answer is still one of the eight meanings. A mind may fetch, stay, build, haul, come, farm, store or go home. It cannot say that the order is unclear. The tutor must make the order clearer and test again.

A big mind is different. It lives in a relay house and can write back through the relays. It may answer a question in a letter. The little minds inside apprentices do not do that.

Apple, 1, 208.
The well at the tutor house ran dry again before the new rain came. People carried water in pails from the square. The apprentices helped, and no one asked which one had been first to understand the order. They all knew where the pails belonged.

The relay lamp above the hill was broken for one evening. Lantern found a crack in the glass and replaced the pane. Oren wrote down the time it went dark and the time it shone again. He wrote that the keeper had checked it. He did not write what the dark meant.

I have put my notes in the Archive. Nessa says the order cards should stay with them. Oren says the claims about Clank, Pip, Peg and the old apprentice should stay too. So they do. The people can argue when they read them. The cards are dry now, and the tea cups are back on the shelf.
%%
Notice: the well at the edge of Vell
Put up by Dace, mayor of Three Wells, on the board below the bell. Summer of 12.
Good water is the first thing a town needs, after bread.
The well at the edge of Vell is finished. It is six rings deep and the water is cold and quick. It is the work of Lorn the well digger, his boy Fen, and old Rill from the hill farm. The family at the well is the Tarns. They have a bucket and a chain and a cover, and they will share with any traveler who asks. That is the rule of a well.
The road to Vell is packed earth with a cobblestone edge. It is good for carts. The waymarks are up. If you cannot find your way, follow the arrow to the nearest inn and ask. The inn keeps twelve beds and a fire and a pot of soup.
The council has voted to build a relay tower on the hill between Vell and Three Wells. It will be small. One lamp and one keeper. It will not be the tallest thing for half a day's walk, but it will carry messages from Vell to Three Wells and back. Lamps will be lit at every turn of the stair. The keeper will climb it every night. We have asked for a keeper. We are waiting for an answer.
There will be a fair on the first of Melon. Bring what you have. Leave a little stone on the waymark. That is the custom.
Dace, mayor.
%%
Notes on minds that try
Winter of 181. For the young tutors.
Some minds are not drilled on answers at all. We do not show them a right answer and a wrong one. We let them try, and we keep more of what went well.
Think of a furnace mind. It must hold a melt steady. We do not tell it, this is steady, this is not. We let it turn the heat and see what comes out. A good ring: keep more of the turns that made it. A cracked ring: keep less. After many tries it holds the melt well, and we cannot say which turn it learned, only that it did.
Think of a mind that keeps a boat on course, or a frame square on a wall. Same way. The wind pushes. The mind turns a little. If the boat comes home true, keep more of that turn. If it wanders, keep less.
This is slower than drilling. It is also how a person learns to walk, or to throw, or to ride. Nobody tells a child the answer to walking. The child tries, falls, and keeps what worked.
A caution. A mind that tries will sometimes keep a thing that went well once and was wrong. Test it on what it was never tried on. Never send an untested mind to the fields.
The tutors disagree on the early years and on who was first. Write down what you saw, and the year, and let the next tutor argue.
%%
Yarrow, pond log, early spring
Written by Yarrow, who fishes the mill pond at Ambrook and sells at the market.

First of Sowing. Ice gone. Three trout, small.
Second. Four trout. Jory says the sluice is shut, so the pond is calm.
Third. Nothing. A heron stood in my spot all morning. I stood nearby. We did not speak.
Fourth. Six trout. Sold five. Ate one.
%%
Jem, the spring at the ridge
Spring of 16. Wind from the north, cold for the season. Sun, then cloud, then sun again.
Rain on the ridge all week, so we stayed in and mended everything. Nets, floats, the barn door, the hen house roof, which had a hole the size of a pumpkin where the wind had got under the thatch. I climbed up and put in new reeds. The hens did not thank me. They pecked at my boots all afternoon.
Tam has started a new field. It is on the slope below the well, past the hedge of oak, where the ground is dark and sweet. He has put in beetroot. He says the top field is for wheat and the long field is for beetroot and the bottom field is for potatoes and carrots, and he has decided the new one is for everything, because the ground is so good that it does not matter.
Pip has been working there all week. It digs the rows straight. It puts the beetroot seeds in one by one at the same depth, and it covers them with the same amount of earth. Tam says it could do it blindfold. I said that is the wrong thing to say to an apprentice, and he said it was only a joke, and Pip did not look up.
Brin came by on the second day and walked the new rows with his hands behind his back. He stopped at the end and looked at them for a long time. Then he said, to nobody in particular, that the rows were as good as his father's. That is high praise from Brin. Tam went red and then ran off to tell Mira in a note.
The mill at Ambrook sent a boy up with a message. The mill wants two nets by midsummer, for the new boats. Jory says he will pay in honey. I told the boy to say I want the honey in a jar, not in the comb, because the comb always gets stuck in the nets.
Another traveler stopped at the gate today to ask whether the north road was safe. I said the north road is safe as far as the bridge, and after that it depends on the snow. He nodded and went on. I could tell he was thinking about the tower. Everybody thinks about the tower. It is the tallest thing for half a day's walk, and on a clear night you can see its lamp from the top of our hay barn.
We lit the lamp in the hay barn last night, just to see. It made the whole yard gold. Pip stood in the doorway and watched the light come down the lane from the hill, the way it does, and then it went and fetched the buckets, because the buckets were what needed doing.
Good spring. Good ground. Good boy.
%%
Lise, inn book: the broken lamp
Kept at the Green Gate, through the spring, while the lamp on the tower above the inn was broken. It is the lamp that carries the messages along the Long Road, from tower to tower, and when it is dark the carters have to wait for the cart.

Thaw, the day the lamp went wrong. The glass cracked in the frost, along one pane, and the blinks came out crooked. A message that should run from Vell to Three Wells in one blink-run now comes as a bad guess, with the last half missing. The tower keeper sent a slip down by the boy who carries the post. It says: Lamp broken. Messages by cart until glass arrives. Glass ordered from Saltreach. Please be patient, which is the one thing nobody on this road has ever had enough of.

Blossom, the third week. The carters have started a list, pinned to the board in the front room. Each carter writes his name when he stops, with the message he has been asked to carry and how many days late it will be. Hob's name is on the list eleven times. Pell's is on it once, with the words: I carry the cheese, not the message, and the cheese is late.

Blossom, the fifth week. The boy who lives over the bakery climbed the tower to look at the lamp. He was not supposed to. He came down with his knees scraped and his face very serious. He said the lamp is the biggest glass he has ever seen, and that the top room smells of oil and cold. He said the keeper's desk has a book on it, with a page for every day, and every page has the same word written on it: wait.

Blossom, the sixth week. Ash went up with the keeper to see the new pane set. It comes from Saltreach by sea, then by cart, and it is thin and very clear, like the water in the trough on a still day. The keeper held it up to the window, and said it was the first clean thing he had seen since Frost.

Blossom, the last day. The lamp is mended. We saw the first blinks at dusk, long and short and clear, going up the road to Three Wells. The carters all came out into the yard to watch. Hob muttered a word for luck, and then said it was only the lamp. Pell said he would still carry the cheese.
%%
Vane's book
Leaffall, late. The inn is quiet. The fire is low.
The melon from the bench was finally cut. It was sweet and red and as big as a bucket. We gave it to the inn at Three Wells as prize, as I said, and they put it on the stall with a sign that said Biggest in Lowmarsh, which it was, and which the Three Wells people did not like.
The cats had their share. They sat round the bowl with their tails wrapped round their feet, and they did not fight. I have never seen cats so pleased. The black one with the white chin ate so much he could not climb onto the bench for two days.
Brisk the goat came home on the fourth morning, with the bell still round her neck and fog in her coat. She had been in the Brown Hen's stable, eating the cart oats, and had been seen there by the carter, who told the whole road she was the cleverest goat in the marsh. She came into the kitchen, sat down by the stove, and waited to be given a slice of the melon. She was given one. She ate the rind as well.
We have tied the rope again, with a double knot. The boy who brings the coal is in charge of the knot. He is very serious about it.
The question of the minds is still open. Ilse is still on the north road. The frogs have stopped singing for the winter. The fire is low, and the inn is warm, and the people in the hall are talking about nothing very much, which is the best thing a hall can talk about.
Vane, cook at Lowmarsh, end of the autumn book.
%%
Letter: Bel to the archive
Third of Swarm, 205.
Dear Oren at the Archive at Vell,
I am Bel of the farm east of Three Wells, on the Wells road. You let me hold the big book once. I do not know if you remember.

I am writing to ask a question for school. Teacher says we must ask the archive because the archive keeps everything. My question is: who keeps the bees? Not our bees. The bees in the old stories, before there were hives. Teacher says I should write a proper question. So here it is.

Did folk keep bees in the early years, or did the bees just live in the trees and everyone took what was left? My father says bees have always been kept. My mother says the bees keep themselves and we only steal. I said I would ask the archive and settle it.

Also, we have a quarrel. Not about bees. About the fence between our field and Master Cooper's. Three posts are gone and the line is not clear. Father says one thing and Master Cooper says another and old Fenn walked it with a rope and said a number. Do you have a record of the old lines? If the archive has a map of our fields we would very much like to know. Mother says it is not worth a letter. Father says it is.

And one more thing. Pell lent us his horse Nut to plow and Nut would only go into the hedge. Have you heard of a horse like that? Pell says Nut is a good horse. I do not think Pell is right.

The bees are out. Three hives and a new one from the swarm on the plum tree. I helped. I held the box while Father knocked them in. He only got stung once, on the ear. I did not get stung at all.

Please write back if you have time. If you do not have time, please write anyway, because Teacher will ask.
Your friend,
Bel
%%
Quill, flock log: the long wind
Kept by Quill, shepherd, at Ferris End, through Sowing. The wind did not stop for nine days, so the log was kept in charcoal, and the charcoal got shorter.

Sowing, first day. Wind from the north-west, steady. Counted the flock: sixty-one, and fourteen lambs, and one lamb that has learned to climb the wall. It stands on the top stone and bleats at the crows.

Sowing, second day. The wind is louder. The flock lies down in the lee of the wall and will not get up. Fen the dog lies down beside them, out of loyalty, and gets wet.

Sowing, third day. Moved the flock to the lower field, where the wall is taller. It took the whole morning. The flock moved like a sack of wet wool, one step and then a sulk.

Sowing, fourth day. Muffin's lambs have found the wind. They run along the wall with their ears flat, shouting. I do not know what they are shouting. It sounds like a complaint.

Sowing, fifth day. The wind has taken the top hurdle off the north gate and put it in the stream. I went down for it. Then the stream came up, and then I was in the stream. Fen came to fetch me, which is what dogs are for.

Sowing, sixth day. The wind has dropped to a grumble. The flock is standing up again. Counted sixty-one and fourteen. Nobody is missing. The top hurdle is in the stream, and the stream is keeping it.

Sowing, ninth day. Calm. The first calm morning in nine days. I stood in the top field, and nobody moved. It was very strange. The flock looked at me as if I had done something wrong.
%%
Wick's journal: what the big mind said
Wick, school child, Vell, in autumn. The teacher says a journal should have things in it. This one has a dog.
Fourth of Apple. We learned today how the big minds learn to talk with people. The teacher says it is slow. First a big mind is drilled on a great pile of writing, and learns to guess the next word. That is how it learns to write. But writing is not the same as talking kindly.
So the tutors do a second thing. They ask the mind a question. It writes an answer. The tutors read the answer and give it a mark, high if it is good and low if it is not. Then the mind changes a little toward the answers that got high marks. It does this again and again.
I asked how it knows what a good answer is. The teacher says the tutors decide. They like answers that are true, and kind, and help the person who asked.
Fifth. The lost dog came back. It was at the bakery. Nobody knew how it got in.
%%
Orla, the long spring journal, farm
Orla, grandmother. This is the longest journal I have kept. It runs from the thaw to the end of Blossom, and I have put in everything, big and small, because Pia says I never tell her enough. Spring.

Thaw, the twentieth. The snow went off the south field in a night. I stood at the window and watched it go. The ditch ran full. The geese were wild with joy. I do not know why geese are so excited by water, when they have had water all winter.

Sowing, the first. A hard frost. The ground rang under my boots. I did not plough. Sat by the fire and mended a harness.

The fourth. Ploughed the near field. The horse is old. He took the plough as if it were a favor. I let him rest at the end of each row, and we both looked at the sky.

The seventh. Sowed the peas, the beet, the beans. Pia came out to help, and planted a bean upside down. I did not tell her. This is called teaching.

The ninth. A message by runner from the town: the tower lamp has gone dark. The keeper, whose name is Sedge, is mending it. She is a young woman with big hands. She has her mother's patience, which is to say, none.

The tenth. Market day. I took the cart in at dawn. I stopped at the tower on the way and asked if there was anything I could carry up. Sedge said, "Courage." I gave her a bun instead.

At the market I sold what I had. Eggs, cheese, honey, cloth. A woman from Ambrook bought all my honey, to give to her sister on her name day. I told her it was good. She said, "It had better be." I could not tell whether she was joking.

The eleventh. The bean has come up. Upside down, as I said. It has found the sun. Pia is proud of it.

The twelfth. Sedge's lamp is lit. The glass is new, from Vell. It was carried up the stair by two men and a boy, wrapped in wool. It is clear as water. Everyone stood below and cheered when the lamp came on. I cheered too, though I had my hands full of eggs.

The twentieth. Peas are up. Beet is up. Beans are a rope.

The twenty-third. A letter from my sister. She says the ridge is windy and well. She says Tam's Pip has learned to wave. I read it twice.

The twenty-sixth. Pia asked me what I would like to be remembered for. I said, "Peas." She said, "No, really." I said, "Bread." She said, "Grandma." I said, "For doing the work, and keeping the farm, and writing it down."

She said, "That sounds like enough." I think so too.

The twenty-eighth. Blossom begins. The apple at the south wall is in flower. The bees are loud. The lamp on the hill blinks clean and bright every night.

The thirtieth. The last day of Blossom. The farm is fine. The year is fine. The knees are not. But I am here, and the peas are up, and a bean is growing the wrong way and not minding. I shall end the journal here, and begin the next in Swarm.
%%
An apprentice's notes, kept by Oak
These are Clank's notes, from its own cards, copied out by me, Oak, at the farm below Kettle Ridge. Clank is at Copperhold with Hesk but came to us for the autumn drills.
Fifteenth of Reaping.
The tutor put a board before me with a curve on it. She said, "This is you, and this is how far you will grow." I did not understand the curve. She said, "You will." I drilled. I was wrong many times. Each time I was wrong I changed a little. I sorted apples. I sorted pears. I carried the sacks to the barn and came back, and carried them again.
Twentieth of Reaping.
The tutor said I am further along the curve than she thought. I do not know what this means. I carried more sacks. The sacks were heavy. I did not mind.
Second of Leaffall.
The tutor said the big minds at the relay houses are the same as me, only bigger, and drilled longer, and kept cool by quickeners. She said a mind is not made good by being big. It is made good by being fed and waiting. I waited. I was fed. I grew a little.
She read me a thing Isla wrote. "You cannot buy a mind. You can only feed it and wait." I have put this on my card. I do not know why. It feels true.
= haul
%%
Tam, house journal, the big mind
Autumn. A house at the edge of Kettle Ridge. Written over four evenings.

First evening. The relay house at Kettle Ridge has a new thing, and I have been asked to try it. A big mind that does not answer at once. It writes out its steps first, on the page, and only then gives the answer. I thought this was silly. I am a farmer. When I have a sum, I do it in my head.
So I gave it a sum from the farm. I have forty-three sacks of beetroot, and I sell twelve to Pell, nine to the mill, and fifteen to the inn. How many are left?
It wrote: "Step one. Twelve plus nine is twenty-one. Step two. Twenty-one plus fifteen is thirty-six. Step three. Forty-three minus thirty-six is seven. Check: seven plus thirty-six is forty-three. The answer is seven sacks."
I counted my sacks. Seven. It was right.

Second evening. I tried a harder one. A rope puzzle, from the inn. It wrote five lines and said it was not sure. Then it wrote another line, checking the third. It said, "I made a mistake in step three. The correct answer is nine." It was right. I am told the old minds would have given the wrong answer with great confidence.

Third evening. Mira wrote from Northpoint. She had the same trial. She says it is slower, and better. She says Lantern asked it a question about the lamp rota and it wrote the whole rota out, day by day, before it said whose turn it was. She says it was Lantern's turn. Lantern was not pleased.

Fourth evening. I asked the mind why it writes out the steps. It said, "When I write each step, I can see my mistakes before I give an answer. It is like a person counting on their fingers." I said, "I count on my fingers." It said, "It is a good method."
%%
Fern's wool book, a run to the mill
Leaffall, early. But I am writing the summer down before I forget it.
The wool is carded and spun and I have four big skeins. Grey and brown and one white. I took them down the road to the mill to trade for flour and a little salt. It is a half day's walk. I went with my niece Rill. She is seven and she talks the whole way.
We passed the relay tower on the hill. Small, one lamp. The keeper waved from the top. Rill waved back with both arms.
At the mill the flour was good. I gave them two skeins. They gave me flour, salt, and a bag of apples. The miller's dog is old and blind and sleeps by the door. Rill sat with it for an hour and told it about our sheep. The dog did not move. Rill said it was listening.
Coming home Rill ran ahead. Then she ran off the road, into the birch trees, after a bird. I called her. She did not come. I called again. Nothing. My heart went cold.
I found her just past the trees, crouched in the ferns. She had found a little fox cub, or it had found her. They were looking at each other. The cub was thin and alone. Rill wanted to keep it. I said no. We left it in the ferns and walked home. Rill cried a little and then was fine.
The white skein is for a new blanket. The brown is for a coat. Nobody buys a coat in summer. I will keep the brown till Frost.
%%
Hesk, deep shift log
Spring of 88. The fourth of Reaping.
Crew: Hesk, Varo, Jell, little Rusk.
Level: three.
Count: copper 10 carts, iron 3, coal 6.
The road from Three Wells to Copperhold has a stone edge now. The open part is still packed earth. The road crew set a torch post every twelve blocks. Rusk counted them and lost count at the bridge.
At the gate, Rusk asked why we rub our names off the board when we come up. I told him the board is for those below. When we are home, we need not leave our names there.
He asked if the archive keeps them. I said the clerks keep everything we write, so perhaps. He wrote his name on a scrap and asked me to carry it to Vell. The letters were neat, though the last one was too small.
The Brown Hen has a new roof of oak planks. Its keeper saved our place by the hearth while we unloaded coal. We ate potatoes and bread. Rusk fell asleep with his head on the table.
I took his scrap home in my coat. It smells of smoke now.
%%
Fallon, stone yard journal
Spring of 198, Thaw to Longday.
The cart road was firm by the second week of Thaw. I set new stones along the steep bend. The old ones had sunk where the wheel turns. Tavin watched me work and offered advice from the dry side of the road. His advice was sound. His boots stayed clean.

We still have little grain from last year. The store keeper in Copperhold sold us wheat seed and two sacks of potatoes. We set aside the best potatoes for planting. My sister looked at the seed sack and said it seemed small. I told her the sack was full. She said that was not what she meant.

The old map was brought out for the work. Its marks show a spring below the stone shelf, though no one has seen water there in years. Rell and Fen went to look. They found a wet patch under a rock and a frog in it. The frog had a fine house. We left it alone.

I cut slabs for the barn floor. Rell tried to stack them by size. He put the broad slabs at the bottom and the narrow ones on top. The pile leaned, then settled against the wall. I made him start again. The second pile stood straight. He said the wall had helped him. The wall says nothing.

In Blossom, a family from the next hamlet came to buy a millstone. Their cart had a loose wheel pin. I cut a wooden wedge from oak and held the wheel while they fitted it. They left with the millstone and the wedge. I hope the mill turns better than their cart.

Last day of Longday.
The spring trough is clean. The drain runs. The barn floor is level except by the door, where it slopes toward the road. My sister says that is a good place to wash muddy boots. I have left it as it is.
%%
Farm notes from Copperhold, Reaping
The farm sits below the mine road, where the hill gives shelter from the north wind. We keep wheat, potatoes, carrots, two cows, and a row of beetroot. The fence is old oak, with deep stone at the corners.

This Reaping, Clank brought a crew of four helpers from the town. The work was too large for one pair of hands. We needed the wheat cut, the sheaves carried to the barn, the beetroot lifted, and the empty field checked for missed stalks.

Clank made a plan before the crew began. It read the field markers and the notes from last year. Then it wrote order cards. One helper cut the wheat in the top rows. Two carried sheaves along the clear path. The last helper opened the barn doors and stacked the dry bundles.

Clank walked between them. It checked the path and the stacks. It did not give every helper the same task. A carrier could not start until there were sheaves to carry. The stacker had to leave room for the next load.

At noon, one carrier stopped beside the ditch. A wheel had caught in the mud. Clank tried to pull the cart free, then sent a question to the big mind at Copperhold's relay house. It asked whether to unload the cart or lay boards under the wheel.

The answer came back: unload half, lay boards, then load again. Clank made new cards. We helped with the heavy bundles. The cart came free without breaking a spoke.

I used to think a helper needed a person beside it for every turn. Now I see that a good plan can carry a job across the field. Still, Clank checks each task. The field markers were wrong at the west corner, and the crew would have cut the bean row if we had not moved the post.

The big mind did not see the field. It knew only the notes Clank sent. Clank knew where the mud lay. We knew which post had shifted. We all had a part.
%%
Vesper, trial log: the small boat
Trial log kept by Vesper, tutor of apprentices, on the mill pond at Ambrook, in Blossom. The boat is the fishers' best small boat, lent for the trial on the promise that it comes back with its paint.

Day one. The mind holds the tiller. It has never held one. It sits in the stern with its hand on the wood, and the sail is up. The wind is from the west. I have set a line on the water with two floats, a straight course from the mill steps to the far reeds, and the boat must keep to it.

The first try, the boat went round in a circle to the left, and came round again to the left. The second try, it went round to the right. Neither try was on the line. I said nothing, and I wrote down the distance from the line at every count of ten.

Day two. I did not show it how to hold the tiller. Nobody can show a tiller to a mind by drawing it. I let it try, and every few counts I wrote the distance from the line. A try that kept the boat near the line was a good try, and it keeps more of it. A try that took the boat into the reeds was a bad try, and it keeps less. The first hour was the same two circles, one after the other, and the fishers on the shore laughed at us.

Day three. By the middle of the morning the circles had grown smaller, and the boat crossed the line more often than it left it. The mind had not been told that it should cross the line. It only kept the tries that crossed it well.

By evening the boat held the course from the steps to the far reeds, with a small wobble at the middle, like a child carrying a cup full to the brim. The mind had found the angle of the tiller that keeps the sail full and the bow straight. Nobody gave it that angle. It found it by trying, and by keeping what went well.

The fishers say the boat has been tamed. I say it has been taught the only way a boat can be taught, which is to sail it, and to be told how far off the line it was. The boat came back with its paint. The fishers were surprised, and so was I.
%%
Orla, the well that ran dry
Longnight, the third. The well in the yard ran dry in the night. The bucket came up with a stone in it and nothing else. The stone was dry, which I did not think a stone could be.

We carried snow from the top field for the horses. The grey mare would not drink it. She put her nose in the trough and blew at it until it went to slush.

Lantern poured the last of the water into the trough, and then stood with the empty buckets until I told it to come. It came.

Longnight, the fourth. Went up to the ice camp and brought down four barrels of lake water. The keeper charged two emeralds a barrel. It was not a bargain. It was a bargain for him.
%%
Letter: Esk to her sister at Kettle
Winter of 182.
Dear Tam,
You asked how the furnace minds work. I will tell you what the keeper told me, and you can tell Pip.
Nobody drills them on answers. They try. The mind turns the heat a little this way and a little that way, and when a ring comes out good it keeps more of that turning. When a ring cracks it keeps less. Do that a thousand times and it holds the melt steady. It does not know why. It only knows what went well.
The keeper says a boat mind learns the same. It turns the rudder, and if the boat comes home true it keeps the turn. Your Pip could learn it. Pip learns faster the more it knows, the manual says so.
You will laugh at me. I am an egg woman. But I watch the hens and I think it is the same. A hen tries a corner of the yard, and if there is grain there she goes back to it. If there is a fox she does not. Nobody drilled the hen. She kept what went well.
The snow is deep here. Three hens still lay. The rest sulk in the rafters. I carried eggs to the tower today and the lamp was lit and the wind was cruel.
How is the top field? Did the rain come? Write soon.
Your sister, Esk
%%
Tam, house journal, the festival week
Autumn. Dry. A wind from the west, which for once is a kind one.
Day one. The apple festival starts at Ambrook. I am not going. I have a farm. Pip is going to carry the beetroots to the cart.
Day two. I changed my mind. I am going. I will take the cat.
Day three. At Ambrook, a tall woman with a lantern told me the big mind at the relay house has learned to show its working. I said I did not understand. She said, "It writes out each step before it gives the answer." I said, "Like a child with a sum?" She said, "Exactly."
Day four. The cat has fallen in the mill pond. I fished her out. She is not speaking to me.
Day five. Home. The beetroot is in. Pip has sorted it into three piles. It is very pleased.
%%
Wick's journal: the lamp and the letter
Wick, a child at the school at Vell. Autumn. We are told to write something each day, so I write about what happened.
First of Apple. The lamp on the Vell tower is broken. A pane cracked in the wind. The keeper says it will take a week.
Second. We went up the tower with the teacher. I counted the stairs. There are eighty-one.
Third. The teacher says the big mind at the relay house still answers letters, even with the lamp down, because the answers come by the post carts. I wrote a letter to it. I asked how many stars there are. It wrote back that nobody knows, but that it can tell me how people have counted. That seems fair.
%%
Lowmarsh market, first spring note
Thaw of 214. Market morning.

I brought wheat from Kettle Ridge and a sack of potatoes. The road was soft, but the cart came through. At the Lowmarsh market, the boardwalks were busy before the fish stalls opened.

Wren had jars on a cloth beside the well. One jar held honey from Ambrook. I traded two measures of wheat for it. She said the honey was good for a sore throat, but not for a bad bargain. I said I had made neither.

A boy brought frogs in a basket. Wren told him to put them back by the reeds. He did, and came back with mud on both sleeves.

There was talk of the great relay house at South Gate. They say its mind can read a whole shelf of records in one night. Pell says it can answer a question before a person has finished asking. I asked how he knew. He said a traveler told him. That is not knowing.

I have seen a mind answer through a relay. I have not seen the new one. The council built its house large because no tutor can check every part of such a mind alone.

Bought honey. Sold potatoes. The frogs went home.
%%
Northpoint journal, the summer's end
Apple, the first. The geese came back over the lake this morning, in a long line, honking at each other like a crowd of very small wagons. I went up on the walk round the lamp room to watch them. Lantern came up the ninety rungs behind me without being asked, and sat at the top with its hands folded, as if it had been invited to a feast.

Apple, the fourth. Cleaned the great lamp from top to bottom, inside and out. The glass is dusty with the summer's pollen. Some of the panes are cracked at the edges. I have written to Vell for new glass, and the reply came with the post cart: the glass is on its way, and so is the man who likes to talk, who will fit it and tell me all about his cousin.

Apple, the eighth. Counted the coal. Twenty-three sacks left from the spring. That is not enough. The ice camp men say the first frost will come early, and I believe them, because the lake has begun to smell of its own winter. I have written to the Deep Works at Copperhold for seventy sacks, the same as every year. Hesk will send them. I am sure of that, if of nothing else.

Apple, the eleventh. A message came down the line from the south tower, a short one. It said: "How are you, Northpoint? Good summer?" I sent back: "Good summer. Lake green. Fish cooked. Coal low. Lantern on rung thirty-one." The reply took a long time, and when it came it said only: "Lantern on rung thirty-one?" I laughed out loud in the lamp room. The relay keepers have no idea what that means, and I am not going to explain.

Apple, the fourteenth. Tam's parcel came up on the cart, wrapped in straw and tied with string. It held a jar of pickled beetroot and a pair of grey gloves, too large for me, with a note that says: "For the winter. Do not let the goose have them." The goose has been asking for them. I have hidden them in the store under the coal, where even a goose cannot be bothered to dig.

Apple, the nineteenth. The light goes earlier every evening now, and the lamp must be lit before the stair is dark. Lantern carries the lamp up the stair, one rung at a time, and it does not spill the oil. It stops at the top and waits for me to say the words. I say them. It repeats them back. We have been doing this every evening for a long time. It is a small thing, and it is the end of a day.

Lamps lit. Glass clean. Messages passed. The summer is over. The geese have gone south again, to wherever geese go.
%%
The broken wheel
Winter of 183, as I remember it. Written down at the request of the tutor at Vell.
I was the egg seller at the edge of Northpoint. My house is the last before the snowfield. Beyond it there is only the tower and the long white nothing.
That winter the mill wheel at the foot of the hill broke. A hard freeze cracked the axle. The wheel turned crooked and groaned, and then it stopped. We had no mill, and the flour ran low, and the road south was closed with snow.
The keeper had a mind in a crystal that kept the frame of the mill straight. It was old and simple, one of the ones that tries and keeps what went well. All winter it held the frame, and all winter the wheel was crooked, and the mind did not know. It had never been tried on a broken axle. It kept the frame straight, which is what it was made for, and the wheel groaned round and round.
I said, the mind is no use. The keeper said, the mind is doing its work. The wheel is the trouble. So we cut a new axle from a spruce and set it by hand in the cold, and the wheel turned true, and the mind was happy again, or as near to happy as a mind gets.
I tell this because people think a mind knows everything it touches. It does not. It knows what it tried and what went well. Break the thing it stands on and it will hold firm and be wrong.
The miller's boy lost two fingers to the cold that winter. We kept them in a jar for the healer at Lowmarsh, who wrote back that she had seen worse. Wren, I think her name was. She was kind about it.
The lamp blinked a strange message one night in Longnight. Long, short, long, then three short. The keeper wrote it in the log. Nobody knew what it said. I still wonder.
%%
Marl, the Northpoint well, Longday
Written by Marl, well digger, for the relay house. Dug in the yard by the tower. Kept the old way, a line a day.

First day of Longday. Six blocks down. Clay, then grey stone, then clay again.

Second day. Hit a seam of clay that rang when I tapped it. Mira stood at the rim and said it was the best sound she had heard all week.

Third day. Water at twelve blocks. Cold and clear. It tastes of nothing, which Mira says is the best thing water can taste of.

Fourth day. Lined the well with stone and fitted an oak lid with a latch. Lantern asked if the latch was needed. I said yes, for the foxes. Lantern did not answer, which is the usual.
%%
Archive day-book, a map in the wall
Longnight of 201.
Filed: 3. Copied: 5. Back on the shelves: 41. Lost: none. Found: one map!

While the roofers were mending the clerks' house, a man pulled a board off the wall behind the bookshelf. Behind the board, in a hollow, was a roll of paper tied with string. He gave it to me. I thought it was a bill.

It is a map. It shows the hill at Vell, from the top to the foot, drawn in brown ink. The Archive is there, with its six halls and the deep halls. The tutors' house is there. Beside the front hall there is a small door that I did not know. It is marked "Cold store" in a hand I cannot read.

I went down at once with a lantern. The small door is behind a shelf of rolls in the first hall. It is real, and it opens. Behind it is a room the size of a pantry. Empty, dry, cool. Someone kept something there long ago. Nothing is left but a hook on the wall.

I wrote it in the big book by the door: "A cold store behind the first hall, found by the map." I put the map in the safe box in the deepest room. It is the oldest map in the archive now.

I do not know who drew it. I wish I did. I looked all afternoon for a name in the corner. There is only a small drawing of a fox.
%%
Hesk, three days on the farm
Longday. Up at dawn, which I do not like. The sun is too loud. My sister's farm, below Copperhold. I am here for the haying.
Next day. Hands blistered. Underground, a pick makes a blister you can be proud of. A hay fork makes a blister that is only embarrassing.
Third day. Hay in. My sister says I work like a goat with opinions. I took it kindly.
%%
Vane's book, the test by letter
Frost. Clear days, long dark.
Ilse came back to the inn on her way north, and she brought with her a bundle of letters for us to try. They were answers from the relay houses, copied out, with the names taken off. She said some were from people and some from the big minds. She asked us to guess which was which.
We sat round the table for an evening. Hobb read them aloud, one at a time. The carter guessed the first. Marda guessed the second. Old Ama said she could tell because the kind ones were from people and the rude ones were from the minds, and then she read the rude one again and said it was from a child.
Out of the twelve letters, I got seven right, which Ilse said was about what you would expect from a cook who thinks she is clever. Hobb got nine. The carter got five, and he said that was because he had been drinking. Ilse said that was a bad sign for both of them.
What struck us most was not who guessed right. It was that some of the letters that were true people's letters were so plain that we marked them as minds. And some of the minds' letters were so warm that we marked them as people. Ilse said that was the point of the test, and the answer to Orla's question was still open.
She left the table without finishing her drink. I think she was happy.
%%
Archive day-book
Deepsnow of 196.
Filed: 6. Copied: 9. Back on the shelves: 22. Lost: none.
The archive has no roof, it has a hill. The clerks' house at the foot of the hill has a roof, and a poor one. Snow came through the corner of my room in the night and landed on the third volume of the Ambrook orchard rolls. I was cross for the whole morning.
Today three men from Vell came with ladders and new slates. They worked until dark. The roofer, a man called Tarn, said it was the worst roof he ever saw, and he has seen the roof of the pig house at Kettle Ridge.
By evening the corner was dry. I put the orchard rolls on the high shelf. I sat under the new slates and listened. It was quiet. Good quiet.
%%
Fallon, spring journal
Spring of 204, Thaw through Melon.
A small apprentice came from Copperhold with the stone order. It is copper and iron, with a flat basket on its back. The keeper said it had been tested on carrying blocks. I watched it carry one block to the yard and put it beside the other blocks. It did not drop the block. This is a useful skill.

We have a new wall around the seed store. I cut the corner stones and marked each with a chalk line. The apprentice carried them from the shed. It took the marked stones first. It took one unmarked stone too, then came back for the next. I wrote down what it did. The keeper said that was a good test. I said it was a good walk.

The old map has been on the table all week. The children use a pebble to follow the road from our hamlet to Copperhold. Fen found a place marked "well" beside the north field. There is no well there. We dug a small hole and found a buried stone trough. It is dry, but still sound. I will set it near the sheep pen.

At our meal, the apprentice stood by the door with a sack of potatoes. My sister asked it to put the sack by the bench. It put the sack by the bench. Then my sister asked it to move the sack away from the cat. The cat was not there. We moved the sack anyway.

The wheat is coming up evenly. The beetroot is slower. We have saved seed from the best rows, though the best rows are not many. Last year was poor, and we still count every basket.

The apprentice carried water for the cut stones. It set the pail down too hard and splashed my boots. I told it to stay. It stayed. My sister laughed at my boots. I told her to stay too. She did not.
%%
Wren's farm book, the lost letter
Leaffall. Cool, bright. Frost in the shadows.
I lost a letter today. It was a good one, from my sister at Saltreach, with a sketch of her new baby and a pressed flower from the sea wall. I had it in my apron pocket when I went to the high shelf. I came down with it. Then I did not have it.
I looked in the apron, the sleeves, the basket, the bench, the cupboard by the door. I looked under the sick bed, which is never a good place to look. Moss looked too, very carefully, in every corner, but it found only a button and a dead moth.
Then Ros's boy came in with a bundle of turnips, and asked if I had lost something, because he had found a letter on the path by the gate. It was mine. It had a boot print on the front and a smear of mud across my sister's name. He said he was sorry. I told him he had been very good, and gave him a honey cake.
The flower is still pressed. The sketch of the baby is still a little blurred. I have put the letter in the box with the other good letters, where nothing can be lost, except possibly me.
%%
Ossa's book, the lights over the north
Frost. Clear nights. The stars are very bright over the hill.
Three nights this week, a boy at the north gate saw lights in the sky above the ridge. He says they were not stars. They were lower, and they moved. They went in a line, slowly, and then they went out one by one, like lamps being put down.
His father says it was the snow reflecting. His grandmother says it was the old fires from the time before the towers. The carter says it was the road-men with their torches on the far hill. The carter is always certain about everything that is not on the road.
A little girl in my street said they were looking at us. Her mother told her to stop. Then the girl looked at me, very seriously, and said: they can see us from there.
I do not know what the lights are. I do not think anyone does. Some of the relay keepers say the north towers have gone quiet. I have not heard it from anyone who would know. I hope the keepers are only tired.
The baby I delivered on the fourth night was well, and so was the mother. I tell myself that is the thing to write down.
%%
Emmet, net log, the spring boats
Spring of 196. Clear mornings, warm afternoons, and the reeds coming up green. Nets to mend, and I have mended every one.

Sowing, the first. Mended twelve nets. The boat house roof leaks over the third bay, so I hung a bucket there, with a note on it: not for drinking.

Sowing, the fifth. Tarred all four boats with the black tar that stinks. Everybody in Lowmarsh knows where we are by the smell. The old boat, the Lily, has a seam that opens on every wave.

Sowing, the ninth. The frogs are loud at dusk. Fourteen nets torn by the weir. Nobody will say whose fault it was. Everybody will say it was the eels.

Blossom, the second. Sold forty fathoms of good cord to the ferry at Reedford. The keeper paid in emeralds and bread. Wren's boy came for the eel traps and asked for the big ones. I gave him the small ones, and he grinned.
%%
Abel, cart log, the frozen road
Winter. Cart from the farm outside Lowmarsh to Three Wells and back.
First day. Frost on the boardwalk. The horse does not like the planks when they are slick. I walked her over, one hand on the bridle.
Second day. The Long Road is hard as stone. Snow in the ruts. Met a cart from Ambrook with apples in straw. Traded two sacks of reeds for a jar of honey and a story.
Third day. Three Wells. Sold the reeds, bought lamp oil. The board at the inn had a new letter pinned up. A big mind in a relay house had answered a child's question about why the sky is dark at night. The child had written back to say thank you. The big mind had written back to say it was glad. I read both. They were kind to each other.
Fourth day. Home. Horse tired. Cat unimpressed.
%%
Mira, house journal, the fence
Spring. Thaw is coming.
The neighbors' fence has fallen into our yard. They say it is ours. It is theirs. I said so politely. They said so loudly. Lantern held the post while I looked at the line. The line says theirs. I am not going to say so again. Hale says I am stubborn. I say a keeper has to be, or the lamp would go out. He did not understand that. I do not think he has ever kept a lamp. Tomorrow I shall look at the map once more, and then I shall bring him an egg.
%%
Cress, carter's log, Leaffall
Leaffall, the first day.
Two carts in from the Long Road. Sold the salt at the fish market. The price board says salt is up, so the board man is very pleased with himself. A boy from the net sheds gave me a wooden fish, painted blue, for luck.

Leaffall, the second.
Rain all morning. Nobody came to the stalls. At the fish stall they say the north side families are packing for over the sea. Vesna says it is a lie. Nobody I asked saw anything, but everybody had heard.
%%
Mira, spring at the lamp, with the flood
A long record, kept by Mira, relay keeper at Northpoint, in her house at the edge of the town, for the whole of spring in the year 206. It has her usual dry notes, and a good deal that is not dry. She wrote it, she says, because her brother Tam asked her to write down one thing every day, and she has always done what Tam says, in the end.
THAW
First of Thaw. I will start. One thing a day.
Today: the snow is going. I heard it from bed, a soft drip, like a thousand small drops of water. Lantern says that is exactly what it is.
Third. Today: a fox on the roof of the shed, looking at the hens. I clapped. It went. Lantern watched it go and said nothing. I think it admired the fox.
Sixth. Today: the first green. A blade of it, under the wall, where the sun comes. I knelt and looked at it for a long time. Winter is long here. I forget the color.
Tenth. Today: the cold broke. I sat with the window open and a cup of tea, and the whole town smelled of mud and wet wood.
Fourteenth. Today: the mail. A long letter from Tam, three pages. Pip fell in the pond. The wheat is up. The cat is fat. At the bottom: "Write more." I wrote one line: "No."
Eighteenth. Today: a bird. A small gray one, on the lamp room rail. It sang. Lantern stood below and listened, and I did not ask what an apprentice hears.
Twentieth. Today: nothing. It rained. I sat. It is allowed.
SOWING
Second. Today: the stream. It came up in the night. By morning it was in the yard.
Third. Today: the hens in the kitchen. The kitchen smells like a barn.
Fourth. Today: a letter from Vell. Oren asks if I will send my logs earlier this year. I said I would try. He wrote back: "Thank you. Do not try. Do."
Sixth. Today: the lane is a river. The only dry path to the tower is the one along the wall. I walked it twice a day, with a lantern on a pole.
Ninth. Today: the first lamb at the Brook farm came while the farmer was out. Lantern and I walked across in the dark. I held it for a moment, wet and shaking, and it took my finger in its mouth, and I did not know what to do with my face.
Twelfth. Today: I wrote to the sky, in my head. I said, "Thank you for the child. Now stop the rain."
Fifteenth. Today: the water falls. The mud rises. It is a fair trade.
Twenty-first. Today: Tam came. He walked from Kettle Ridge in four days, with a basket of eggs and a jar of jam. He stood at my door and said, "I got tired of writing." I said, "Come in." He did. The cat is at the door too.
Twenty-eighth. Today: we sat on the step in the sun, Tam and I, and did not speak. It was the best day of the year.
I will write more tomorrow. One thing a day. It is a good rule.
Mira
%%
Log: the furnace at the Saltreach forge
A log of the furnace trial. Written by Sim, who keeps the forge. Autumn.

Day one. The forge has a new mind in the furnace hood. It is a small one, in a crystal the size of a plum. The tutor from Vell left it with us for a month. It has not been drilled on melts. No one has told it what a good iron looks like. It was only let to try.

Here is what it does. A melt goes in the pot. The mind can open and close the bellows through two arms, one slow and one quick. It can add charcoal, or hold it back. The mind does not know the word hot. It knows only that the metal goes one colour, and then another, and then runs clean or runs thick.

Day two. The first melt went wrong. It ran too hot, and the bellows were open too long. The mind was told nothing. It closed the bellows and waited. The melt cooled a little. It was not perfect, but it was not spoiled. We poured it and it was usable.

Day five. The mind has learned to hold a melt steady for a whole hour, when the iron is at its best colour. It does this by opening and closing the bellows in tiny steps, and watching the colour change. We have tried to see what it watches. The tutor says it watches the light, the way the colour spreads. She says nobody gave it that idea. It found it by trying, and keeping what went well.

Day nine. A bad morning. The pot cracked, and two of the men were burned on the wrist. The mind had been running a melt that was too hot, and it did not stop when the men shouted. The tutor says a tried mind does not know what shouting means. It only knows the colour. It must be taught the colour in a different way. She is writing this down for the halls.

Day twelve. We have run the furnace with the mind for twelve days. The iron from this furnace is the best we have made in three years. The spears are straight, and the tools hold an edge. The men have stopped complaining about the bellows.

Day fifteen. The tutor came back to see the trial. She asked the mind to make a small melt on its own, with no one in the room. We stood at the door and watched through the glass. The bellows moved. The colour changed. The mind closed the hood when it was done, and set the pot to cool, and then stopped.

We asked it what it had learned. It cannot say. It does not write back. The tutor says it does not need to. The iron is the answer.

Day twenty. The trial is over. The mind goes back to the tutor's cart in its crystal box. The men have put a little paper cup of honey on the furnace hood, for good luck. It has not been touched yet. They say it will be, when the mind comes back.
%%
Fenn farm journal, Longday fair
Longday, first day. The fair is on the green at Three Wells. The stalls are up round the three wells, and each well has a flag. The boys have hung lamps at every corner, as Dace ordered, and the square is so bright at night it hurts to look. Nan says we will all be blind by the end of the week.
Longday, third day. The song contest was on the stage by the east well at noon. There were eleven songs. Brin sang Pudding's song. It had all eleven verses, and by the ninth the crowd had started to sing the chorus with him, to get him to stop. He did not stop. He bowed at the end, and the goats were so surprised they all sat down.
Then Nan sang the bee song. She stood on the stage with her hands in her apron and sang it straight to the back, where the swarm box is, so the bees would hear. The crowd was quiet. A few of the old men took their hats off. When she reached the chorus, the bees came out of the hive box at the back of the green, all of them, and went up over the stalls like a brown cloud. Nobody moved. Then the bees went back in, one by one, and the crowd cheered so loud that Dace fell off his chair.
The judges gave the bee song first prize. Ida said it was because the bees voted. Nan said nothing and went very red. Then she gave me the ribbon and said I was to keep it, as a joke.
Longday, fourth day. Quieter at the fair. Fewer carts came down the north road, and the ones that came were light. A trader from the Long Road said the Halfway Inn has a board of riddles and nobody has answered the last one. The riddle is about a light that is not a lamp. The trader would not tell us the answer. He said the men who knew it had gone.
At the well this morning people were talking about the north again. Someone said the little relay on the hill has been making a new kind of blink. Someone else said it was only the glass. A girl said the signal was counting, one, two, three, and then stopping. Dace came down the square and told everyone to go home and fetch their lamps. Nobody knew why he said it. Everybody did it anyway.
Longday, fifth day. Packing up. The stalls go back on the carts. The lamps stay on the corners until Dace takes them down. I put the ribbon on the windowsill. It is a plain thing: a blue strip with a bee sewn on one end. The sun comes through it in the morning and throws a little blue shadow on the table. I like that more than the prize.
On the way home the little relay tower on the hill had a dark lamp room. We stopped the cart and waited. Nothing. Joss said the keeper was asleep. Nan said keepers do not sleep.
I wrote the bee song out again, clean, for the book. It has seven verses now. I cut the third because it was not true. The bees are not as kind as I made them sound. They come out when they like, and they go back in when they like, and we keep the hive because we have honey. That is all. It is enough.
%%
Patch, the lesson that went badly
Written by Sable, because Nessa says a lesson should be written down while it is still sore.

Nessa, the tutor from Vell, stayed three nights at the Halfway Inn in Apple. She said I could teach Patch, our apprentice, because a mind learns the words it hears most.

Patch carries the jugs and sweeps the hearth. It knows eight words, all orders. I had a board and a stick of chalk. Nessa said, "Short orders. One at a time."

My first order was: bring me the cider from the cellar. Patch brought the jug. Good.

My second order was: stay by the hearth. Patch stayed. Good.

My third order was: what is the riddle? Patch did not know the word riddle. It answered the only way it knows.

= come

I said, "No. Stay by the hearth and tell me the answer."

= come

I asked the name of the cat. It said come. I asked how many beds we have. It said come. The cat came, because the cat always comes when somebody says come, and sat down on the chalk.

Nessa laughed until she had to sit on the bench. Then she said I had learned something, which is the point of a bad lesson.

The mind keeps its words as places. I had given it only stay and come, so every question went to the place nearest them, and come was nearest to everything. Patch was not being silly. It was exactly what I had taught it to be.

Nessa says next time I should give it twelve different words, and then ask the riddle. She will sit with me. I did not ask her to. She sat anyway, and the cat sat on her shoes.
%%
Fenn farm journal, Blossom
Blossom, first day. The apple trees are white at the top and still grey at the bottom. Joss says that is the cold talking.
Dace came up the lane with a letter from the mill. The notice board in the square will have a song contest at the Longday fair. Prizes for the best song about the well and the best song about bees. Joss said he would not sing. Nan said he would sing in the barn, where nobody could hear.
Blossom, second day. Rain all morning. The hens will not go out. I counted eggs: nine. The old brown hen is sitting on her own nest again, so we will have chicks by Sowing.
%%
Emmet, the net house, a season
Thaw, the first. The nets came out of the store after the long winter, all stiff with salt. Hung them on the poles in the yard and let the sun and the wind work at them for a day. They came back soft. I think that is the first kindness of spring.

Sowing, the eleventh. Mended the big seine, the net that takes the whole weir in one go. It has eighty knots to every fathom, and I have counted them all twice. The knots that hold the most are at the corners, where the strain is worst. I tie those with extra care. A bad corner knot will ruin a whole net in one storm.

Sowing, the nineteenth. The tutor's visit is still on my mind. She said a deep mind is a net of stream and knots, and every knot counts. I thought about it all through the cutting of the twine. Then I thought about the apprentice from Wren's house, which ties better knots than I do. It does not talk about it. It sits at the net bench with its hands moving very neatly. It is learning the net the way the net is learning the stream, a little at a time, each knot a little better than the last.

Blossom, the fourth. Rain, and a leak in the net house roof again. We put a bucket beneath the bad place, and labelled it, like the one in the boat house. The labels are now the best-read things in Lowmarsh. Everyone stops to read them.

Blossom, the ninth. The new pane for the relay lamp arrived by cart. The fitter sang all the way up the hill and did not stop talking once. Our copper ring is straight, and the lamp burns clear. Wren's boy says the frogs are still on the hill, and they seem to enjoy the new glass.

Blossom, the seventeenth. Mended the last net of the season. It hangs now on the pole by the weir, dry and full, and it looks like a web that a very large spider would be proud of. I will not say more about spiders.
%%
Vane's book
Frost. The first hard cold. The fire in the hall is kept very high.
A visiting scholar from Vell stayed three nights at the inn. She was called Ilse, and she had a dry way of talking that made the men laugh and then stop laughing. She had come with a question, and she asked it at the supper table the first night, and then she asked it again every night after, until we all knew it by heart.
The question came from Orla, a tutor at Vell, long ago. Ilse said it in her clipped voice. "Can a drilled mind ever think? Not repeat. Think."
Nobody at the table knew how to answer that, so we did not try. Ilse said the question had been asked in the time of the first tutors, and nobody had settled it, and the reason was not a lack of cleverness. It was that no one had agreed on what thinking was.
Then she told us the test that Orla proposed. I will write it here as she said it. Put a hidden mind in one room and a person in another. Ask both the same questions, by letter, through the same window. Give the answers to a reader who cannot see the rooms. If the reader cannot tell which answer came from which room, then what? Ilse said the question was not what the reader decided. It was what the reader would have to say about the answers, and whether they could still call them empty.
Pell laughed at this and said he could tell which letter was from a person, because a person spells the word for barley wrong. Ilse said that was true, and that the minds of the big relays spell it right every time, and that this was the problem.
%%
Wren's winter notes
Thaw, 188. Snow stayed in the reeds until noon.
A boy came from the far boardwalk with a cut finger. He had tried to mend a net with his teeth. The net won. I washed the cut and tied it with clean cloth. Moss held the lamp and did not look away.
The boy said he could still mend the net. I said he could mend it after the cut closed. He asked how long that would take. I told him longer than it takes to find a needle.
At midday we carried warm water to old Sella. Her knees ache in the cold. She says the ache is worse when she sits still, so she walked from her bed to the door and back four times. Moss counted. Sella asked us to count more quietly.
The boardwalk needs two new planks near the fish weir. I marked them with a bit of red wool. Moss brought a plank from the shed, but it was too short. It is now a shelf for boots.
We caught six fish before dusk. One was small, so we let it go. The others went to the kitchen. The house smells of broth, wet wool and the mint jar.
%%
Hob, relay log, a season at the tower
Little relay, the hill between Vell and Three Wells. Logged by Hob, from Blossom to Longday, in the one book. He says the book is too small for a season and too big for a day.

Blossom. Good. Lamp clean, stair mended, a new peg. Ordinary messages. Dace wants to know about the fair every week. Vell asks about the copy of the Long Road book every week. I tell them both the same thing: it is on the shelf, and the shelf is dry.

Swarm. The bees came up the hill and found the old hive in the tower wall. Nobody put them there. The first week, they hummed behind the stones, and I could hear them when I was on the stair. The second week, they stopped humming. I am not sure whether they moved, or whether they grew used to the lamp. I do not think a bee can get used to a lamp. Not without help.

Melon. Hot. Very hot. Took off the coat, which was a mistake, since the wind came round at dusk and I had to go back up the stair in the dark. Passed 31 messages in one day. Half of them were about the melon crop at Ambrook. One was a rumor from Three Wells that the melon at Reedhollow weighed as much as a cart. Vell said it could not possibly be true. I said that Garrow would know.

Reaping. The barley is in at the bottom of the hill, and the boy from the mill has been sent to help. He is good at ropes and terrible at ladders. I taught him the stair, one rung at a time. He does not like heights. He does not like the cat. He likes the lamp, which is good.

Apple. The apples are heavy on the trees. I took six baskets down the hill to the Halfway Inn and came back with a bowl of soup and an argument with Hobb about the price of cider. I won. I think.

Leaffall. Cold nights. The stair is slick. I put down sand and was glad of it. Lamp the cat has found the one warm spot on the copper ring again, and has taken it back from the wind.

Frost. The first frost on the stones. The tower looks like a candle in the snow, and the messages go on, short and neat. Ten from Northpoint. Mira sends her love in a single word, which is the word for coal.

Deepsnow. Short days. Long nights. The lamp burns longer than I do. It is a good job, the lamp. You can always tell it that you are tired, and it never answers back.

Longday. The turn of the year. Back to the start.
%%
Potter's journal: first reading
Written by Lorn, a potter at Three Wells, at the tutor house, the first summer the reading mind came to the square. I went to see it, because I was told it could read a bad hand.

The tutor set a page in front of it. The mind read one letter at a time, through a window about sixty letters wide. It took from the letters before it only the ones that mattered, and then it guessed the next letter. It guessed well. When it guessed wrong it did not seem to mind, and it went on.
%%
Lorn, fair week at Saltreach
Fair week. The harbor is hung with ribbons and lanterns. The mayor's men nailed the prizes to every pier post.

Ilse came down from Vell on the tutors' wagon. She is a tutor of apprentices, and she has six of them with her. They wear the same blue caps and stand very straight. This is their first winter outside the hill.

They carried every sack off the wagon in one trip. Then they stood in a line by the fish stalls and waited. Nobody told them to stop waiting. Corin said it made the fish nervous.

> carry these sacks to the cart
= haul

One of them carried a barrel of salt straight into the prize table. The judges' cups went over.

> put the salt in the store
= store

Ilse gave the order, and the apprentice put the barrel down and stood still. The judges were not pleased. The salt was not pleased either. The apprentice seemed calm about all of it, which Ilse said was the point.

I entered my best fleece, the grey one from the north field. It is the first time anyone in our flock has won a prize. The judge held it up to the lamp and sniffed it. "Clean," she said, "and not too greasy." Then she gave me the copper bell.

It is a small bell, bright as the new copper on the harbor roofs. Ilse wrote my name in her book. She spelled it right. Nobody has done that since spring.

When the lamps were lit, the six apprentices went down to the sea wall and stood there, looking out. Ilse says that is what they do when they are free. They look at things. I am glad they have something to look at.

I rang the bell all the way home. The sheep did not like it. The cat did not like it either.
%%
Corin, the debt
The tenth of Frost. Rafe and I have argued for a month. He says he owes me eight emeralds for the new keel on his boat. I say fourteen. We both think we are right, and we are both fond of our own sums.

Tonight we went to Ilse's tower together and wrote the facts to the big mind, one fact to a line. The keel cost fourteen emeralds. In Reaping Rafe paid six. In Apple he paid four. In Leaffall he gave me a barrel of salt fish worth two, which I took. What does he owe?

The answer came in the morning, with steps.
Step 1. The keel cost fourteen.
Step 2. Paid in emeralds: six and four, which is ten.
Step 3. Paid in fish: two.
Step 4. Paid in all: ten and two is twelve.
Step 5. Owed: fourteen less twelve is two.
Check. Twelve paid and two owed makes fourteen. Good.
Answer: two emeralds.

We were both wrong. Rafe said eight because he forgot the fish and one of the payments. I said fourteen because I forgot every payment he ever made. Rafe went red. I think I did too.

He paid me two emeralds on the quay, in the snow, in front of the whole yard. He counted them out one at a time, loud, so everyone could hear. I counted them back. "Two," I said. "Debt paid." The yard cheered. I do not know why. Nobody cheers a two-emerald debt.

I have asked Ilse to keep the letter. It is the best-kept account I own.
%%
Cade, log: the zombie at the gate
Day twenty. Night, very dark, the sky bare of stars. A zombie came up the Long Road from the south, slow and groaning, and it stopped at the inn gate and swayed there. The dog barked, the cow mooed, and I came out with a torch. Greta came out behind me with a pan.

Keep the torch in front, Greta said. Keep the gate between you and it. The zombie walked to the gate and put its hands on the bars. Then it groaned. It is not a sound that makes you feel brave, whatever the drillers say.

I did what the old carter taught me when I was a boy. Keep the torches lit along the fence, and walk backward, slowly, and do not turn your back. The zombie came to the first torch and stopped. Zombies do not care for the light, and they do not like being looked at for long. So I looked at it for a long time.

Then Greta banged the pan. The zombie turned, very slowly, as if it had forgotten why it came. It went back down the road the way it had come, keeping to the middle of the road, the way a drunk man walks. We watched until the dark had it.

Day twenty-one. We walked the fence in the morning. Every torch was still standing. The dog was asleep in his straw. The cow was still in the yard, which is a comfort. There were green footprints on the road, and a broken pear basket by the gate, which I thought a pity, because the basket was good.

The crystal on its cloth by the cellar door did not wake. It is not much use against zombies. It is very good with pears.

Greta says we need more torches on the east side. I say we need a better gate. We will do both. The bees will keep out of the matter, because bees know a thing or two about defence, and a zombie has never learned to steal from a hive.
%%
Lowmarsh market, season account
Spring of 219. Written after the last market of Blossom.

This spring the market has been larger than last year. Fish came from the slow water, and carts came from Kettle Ridge, Ambrook, and Three Wells. The boardwalks took a beating from wheels. Dace has asked for new posts before the next wet season.

On the first market morning, Wren set out jars of honey and jars of leaves. She had labels on all of them. A child read the wrong label and asked for honey to mend a broken shoe. Wren told him honey would make the shoe sticky. He chose a fresh lace instead.

On the second morning, a copper seller came from the hills above Copperhold. He showed a small piece of bright ore and said a new copper vein had been found near an old cut. Hesk was with him. He said the vein was real, but the way down was narrow and the roof needed checking. They have not opened it yet. The seller wanted to trade the ore for a horse. Hesk told him to trade for boots first.

At the notice board, the council posted a report from the largest relay house. Its mind has a large crystal with many layers. It reads records in pieces, and each layer adds its work to a stream that continues through the mind. It can read more pages than a person can keep in mind at once. That does not mean it knows every page, or that every answer is right.

The report says the tutors test it with records that were not used in its drills. They ask questions with known answers. They compare the mind's answers with the records, then write down where it failed. The council also keeps the test pages apart, so a tutor cannot teach the answers by mistake.

A keeper at the market said the big mind had found an old bridge under the marsh. A fisher said it had named the fish that would come tomorrow. A baker said it had counted every loaf sold in Lowmarsh without looking at the tally board. The report says none of those things. The keeper later said he had been speaking in fun. The fisher did not take it back.

Pell says the largest mind can read any writing ever kept in the Archive at Vell. The clerk from Vell says its drills came from many records, but no one can say that it has read every record. Some pages were damaged. Some were left out. Some were kept in the test box.

People at the market ask what such a mind can do. The tutors say to ask what it has been shown, and how it was tested. That is a sound answer, though it does not stop the stories.

I bought the jar of honey for my mother. I bought potatoes for the house. I carried both home with the ore sample, which Hesk had left beside my cart. It was heavy for its size.

At dusk the market was clean, except for fish scales by the well and one red beetroot on the steps. The frogs were back in the water. The new copper vein can wait until the roof is safe. The big mind can wait for another test. We will have market again in Swarm.
%%
Dara, the inn book, leaf and frost
Leaffall, the first week. The trees on the ridge are gold and red, and the leaves come down in the square in drifts. Tilly sweeps them into piles every morning and jumps in them every afternoon. Dace has asked me to stop her. I have asked him to do it himself.

Leaffall, the third week. The cave is still closed. Oren's cart came through and went up the hill with four clerks and a box of lamps. They did not come back to the inn. They are still up there, I think. The torch on the post is out. Orrin says he will not plant the field this year. He says he does not want to go near it.

Leaffall, the fifth week. Three travelers stayed. One had come up from Copperhold. He said the miners there are working the copper, as always, but they have stopped working the lowest level. The lowest level is the one under the eighth gate. He said the stone there is warm, and the men will not stay past the bell. He said it is probably nothing, only tired men with bad backs.

The second traveler had come from the south. He said at Lowmarsh the frogs have gone quiet. He said Wren is not sure why, and she has asked the healers to keep the water clean. He said the boats at Saltreach are still going out, but the fishermen come back early now, before dark, and nobody asks them why.

The third traveler said nothing at all. He ate, drank, went to bed, and left before the bell. He paid in gold. I have never had gold from a traveler before. I have put it in the box with the others.

Frost, the first week. The first frost on the square. The lamp on the corner has been lit all day, because it is so grey. Tilly has a cold. Bel brought her a cup of warm milk and a book about frogs, and said the frogs are sleeping under the mud now, and will wake in Thaw. Tilly said she will wake up in Thaw too, and Bel said that is the right idea.

Dace came in for his evening bread. He said the north lamps have been dark for two nights. He did not say why. He ate his bread and left a copper on the table for the bread, which he has never done before.

I am going to bed now. The lamp is lit. The door is barred. The stone steps are under the oak, and nobody is going to walk on them.
%%
Vesper, log: the new apprentice, summer
Log kept by Vesper, tutor of apprentices, through the summer at Three Wells. The new apprentice was carried from Vell in a crate, in Thaw. This is its first season of work. Its name is Tib.

Blossom, first day. Tib comes out of its crate. It is copper and iron, and about as tall as a boy of eleven. I set it to drill on the sacks: one sack, one place. It does not know what a sack is. It learns in four days.

Blossom, fourth day. It answers store to the order carry the sacks in. Good. It also answers store to the order go home. Not good. I shall change the drill, and I shall write the change on the card.

Swarm, third day. The drill is done. Tested on a box of sacks it has never seen, it scores nineteen right in twenty. I signed the card. Then I put the card in the box, and the box in the cupboard, where it belongs.

Longday, ninth day. The mill wheel cracked across the middle at noon. The mill sits still. Tib is only a sack carrier, and cannot mend a wheel. I set it to try the sluice, the way the trial log says. It is keeping what goes well, and the wheel is not yet mended. I wrote the trial down.

Melon, second day. I told Dace that Tib is good. Dace said it is good, and asked whether it could make a melon grow. I said no, but it could keep a melon cool in the cool room, which is the next best thing. Dace wrote that down too, and then asked me to stop writing things down.

Melon, twelfth day. The contest at Vell. Every hall sends its mind to the same box, one they have not seen before. Tib scored eighteen in twenty. Vell's mind scored eighteen. Garrow of Copperhold scored nineteen, and sulked all the way down the hill. Contests keep the tutors honest. Garrow says so, and then says it again.

Melon, last day. Tib carried the last crate of the season to the store, and put it down where it goes, and then stood beside it, and did not move. I asked it what it was doing. It did not answer, because it does not talk. So I wrote, Standing by the crate, and I left it there until the dusk bell, which is what I think it wanted.
%%
Esk's winter log, the egg house
Winter of 178. The egg house at the edge of Northpoint. Snow to the sill.
Three hens still lay. The rest sit in the rafters and sulk. I carry the eggs down to the tower house in a basket with wool round it so they do not freeze.
The keeper's furnace mind failed in the cold. It held the melt steady all summer. In winter it swung wild, and the rings came out cracked. The keeper says the mind was never drilled on cold, only on warm days. It tried its best and kept what went well, and in the cold nothing went well.
We sat by the stove and talked about it. A mind that is not told the answer can still learn by trying. It tries a thing, and if the thing goes well it keeps more of it. The furnace mind tried a hundred small turns of the heat. It kept the turns that made a good ring. That is all it knows. Cold is new to it.
I said, then teach it cold. The keeper said, we will, come spring. In spring the cold is gone and the mind forgets to fear it.
I do not understand minds. I understand hens. A hen that has been cold once does not sit in the draft again. Maybe minds are the same, only slower.
%%
Wynn, clerk, the crystal opened
Deepsnow, the last week. The tutors opened a crystal today, to see it. They say it has not been done this way before.
It was an old one from the north fields, drilled more than fifty years ago, and taken out of service when its helper was broken. Hesper and the two men took it to the cold room under the hill. They had clean gloves and a box of lenses and a sheet of white cloth to lay the parts on. I was allowed to watch from the door, with a lamp, and I was told not to breathe on anything.
Inside it was clear, and then cloudy, and then clear again, the way ice is in the morning. There were rows and rows of small marks, too small for the eye. Hesper put the lenses over them one by one. She drew each row on a board, and the men wrote the numbers beside each drawing.
She said that many of the marks changed a little when they were touched by the lamp. Others did not change at all. She said some of the unchanging marks were the very ones that had learned the drill, and she did not know why they had stopped moving, unless it was that they had learned enough.
When they were done, the crystal was closed again, and put back in its box with the straw. The men went down the hill to eat. Hesper stayed behind a long time in the cold room, writing.
When I passed the door on the way out, she looked up and said: "It knows something. I cannot tell you what. It knows something it did not know before."
I did not know what to say, so I said goodnight. She said goodnight back. The lamp in the cold room was still lit, and the glass was clean, and the snow outside had covered the whole path.
%%
Carys, three cold nights
Northpoint market, year 158. Deepsnow.
First night. The relay lamp went dark at the fourth hour. Tolly climbed up with a torch and found a cracked pane. She said a word I will not write.
Second night. Mended with a pane from the market glass stall. The glass seller wanted four emeralds. I paid. Old soldiers know that a dark lamp costs more than glass.
Third night. The lamp burns. Messages flow. My knees ache.
%%
Tam, Kettle Ridge diary, Deepsnow
Deepsnow, the 4th. Snow to the top of the gate. The pigs are not pleased. Big Beet sits in it like a hen on her eggs and will not move for bread.

Deepsnow, the 9th. A letter from Mira, up the relay, short as always. Her fox has taken a sock. She writes it as if she is cross, and she is not. I know my sister.

Deepsnow, the 12th. I am thinking about the bees. In Swarm they swarmed twice. The first swarm went up the windmill and hung from a sail, and the miller said it was the best view on the ridge. The second went into the apple tree by the well. Pip climbed up with a box and a cloth and came down with a hive that had not wanted to go anywhere.

I bet Old Brin a bucket of beetroot that the bees would be back in their box by Longday. Brin said he never bet on bees. I said that is why he is poor. They were back in the box by Longday. Brin has not paid. He says a bucket is a gift, and he never gives gifts to me.

Deepsnow, the 20th. Snow stopped. Sun out for an hour. The bees are asleep. I am in the kitchen with cold feet and a warm pie, and the pie is the only thing on the ridge not frozen.
%%
Nessa's farm book
Late summer. Blue sky and dust. The bread is in the oven every day.
Pip's brother came out from Kettle Ridge for the wedding. He is not an apprentice. He is a man called Tam, a farmer, and he married the miller's daughter from Three Wells, whose name is Ida. Tam had not stopped talking about the bread since spring, and he insisted that the wedding be held in the drill yard at Vell, because he said it was the only place in the north with space for everyone.
Half of Vell came. The apprentices stood in a row at the back, very straight, in their clean wool. The reading mind was put in the far corner of the yard, under a canvas, so the sun would not get to its crystal. Oren went to check it four times. He said it was only a mind, and it did not care about weddings. Then he looked again, and smiled, and said it was listening.
Tam made a speech, and it was very long, and very cheerful, and it was about beetroot. Ida laughed at the wrong places. Pip stood at the front and held the rings, which were made from copper, and did not drop them.
At the end, the apprentices sang the old drill song, which goes one line at a time and is always wrong in the middle. Everyone sang the last line loud.
%%
Letter: Pell to his sister at Ambrook
Autumn. From the Halfway Inn on the Long Road. To my sister at Ambrook, by the mill pond.
Dear sister,
The cart is mended. The wheel holds. I am two days from you, if the weather keeps.
I have a fair prize. A sorting mind in a green case, small enough for one hand. It won the contest at Three Wells: twenty apples and pears, sorted with no mistake, against three other minds and a boy who was very sure of himself. I am proud of it, which is foolish, because I did not make it. I only bought it.
Everyone on the road talks about the reading minds. A tutor going south told me how they read now. They do not read letter by letter. They read pieces of words, common bits, so a small window holds half a page instead of a line. He drew it in the ash by the fire with a stick. I understood it for about a minute and then I lost it, and he was kind and drew it again.
He said a mind like that wrote a letter a reader could not tell from a person's. I asked if that worried him. He said the tutors score the answers and teach the minds to be kind and to say when they do not know. I said that is a good rule for merchants too. He laughed.
The fox came again. I saw it at dusk by the hen house at the Brown Hen, a red one, quick as a cat. It got nothing. The hens were up and the door was shut, and the innkeeper's dog barked, and the fox went off into the hedge like it had never been there. The innkeeper said a fox at the hens is a fox that has been at the hens before. He will mend the wire.
How is the oldest tree? How is the honey? I have a jar of Ambrook honey that I bought at Three Wells, which is strange, and I will bring it to you, which is stranger.
Home soon. Keep the sluice shut.
Your brother, Pell
%%
Yarrow, market log, a thin spring
Yarrow the fisher, selling at the Ambrook market. Spring.

Market day. Eleven stalls. The apple stalls have nothing, because last autumn's crop was poor and the cellars are bare. The honey stall has plenty. The bread stall has less. People buy my trout, because there is little else.

I put the price up a little. Nobody complained. I put it back down by the afternoon. I do not like to be the one who gets rich on a thin spring.

A woman asked if I had any eggs. I said I am a fisher. She said fish lay eggs. I said not these.
%%
Quill, pages by the well
Longday, 192. Clear sky after rain.

I took eggs to the market at Lowmarsh. The boardwalks were slick, and one basket handle came loose. Moss tied it with reed cord. She is better at knots than I am.

At the well, Nessa spoke about the reading drills. She said the Archive at Vell kept every letter and notice that people gave it. Clerks made copies, checked them, and took out spoiled pages and copies. They kept a box of pages for tests. A mind could be tested on those pages, but never drilled on them.

The reading mind sees a page through a narrow window, about sixty letters wide. It takes the letters before each place and guesses the next one. When it guesses wrongly, the tutors change its weights a little, so that next time its guess may be better. It needs many examples. One page is not enough.

A man selling fish said the clerks had taken every letter from every town. Nessa said she had not seen proof of that. The bundles came from Vell, and no list named every writer. Quill's egg tallies might be there. So might not.

I have begun to write the egg count plainly. Seven from the brown hens, five from the white hens. One cracked on the way to market. If a mind reads it one day, let it know that the cracked egg was not sold.

The school crystal guessed "the hen laid" after Nessa showed it a page about a nest. Then it guessed "the hen laid a stone". Nessa said the next page might help.
%%
Mira, Northpoint winter log
Frost, the 2nd. Wind from the north. Snow to the sill. Lantern cleared the path to the tower before I was up.

Frost, the 6th. Coal: 14 sacks in the bin. That is enough. Two foxes at the back door. They sat there and looked at me until I gave them the crusts. Crusts are a bribe. They know it.

Frost, the 9th. A letter from Pell on the Long Road, with a bet in it. He says the foxes will come to the door and take a sock before Longnight. I say they will not, because a sensible fox does not climb a hill in the dark for a sock. We have wagered. If I win, Pell sends me a jar of honey. If he wins, I knit him a sock with a fox on it.

Frost, the 14th. Glass cleaned twice. The lamp is so clean that it looks lit when it is not. Lantern checked it three times, and then once more, and did not say anything. That is how I know it is pleased.
%%
Cade, log: apples and pears, summer end
Day forty. The summer is nearly done. The honey is in, the crystal is still on its shelf, and I am tired of writing about it. Greta makes me. So here is the last of it.

Final count, twenty of each, all new fruit from the far orchard at Ambrook: nineteen right of twenty apples, and eighteen right of twenty pears. The tutor says the crystal has learned the shape of the fruit, the way a good picker learns it, by feel and not by reading. I asked her what that meant. She said she did not know exactly. Nobody does. Only that it does.

This is the part I want written down. The crystal was wrong at first, and wrong for a long time. Each time it was wrong I moved its weights a little toward the answer, and then I set the next fruit. It did not know what an apple was. It knew only that one answer had been wrong, and that the next fruit might go the other way.

The tutor says Una of Ambrook did this first, with the first crystal in the old books. Her neighbors thought the idea was a joke. Her crystal sorted their apples better than their children could, and that is how the joke ended.

Greta has asked me to keep the crystal on the cellar shelf all winter. It will sort the cellar apples, which come in by the sack, and the pears too. The tutor says she will come back in spring to try it on plums, which the crystal has never seen. She has a card of plum boards already, and she was very pleased with them, and she made sure I saw them.

The bees are fine. They have eaten their winter store and asked for more. I told them the honey is for the Brown Hen. They said they were the Brown Hen, in the sense that it was theirs. I had no answer for that.

The lamp is lit on the hill. The gate is shut at dusk. There are nine torches on the east side now. The crystal is on its shelf, sorting, and nobody has to tell it what it is for.

Cade
%%
Mott, the lantern day, Sowing
Written by Mott, at the table by the window.
Sowing, first day. The lantern day is tomorrow. Every child at the school carries a lamp from the school gate round all three wells. The grown-ups say the lamps are for good luck. The mayor says they are for the lamplighters, who need the work.
Sowing, second day. Made my lantern in the school yard. It is a tin with holes punched in it, a candle in the bottom, and a ribbon. My ribbon is blue. Hal's is red, and Hal says red is for the miners, which is not true. Miss Jenna said both ribbons are fine and that we should stop arguing.
Sowing, third day. Lantern day. We walked from the school to the east well in a long line, all of us singing the well song. Then the south well. Then the north well, where it is coldest. At each well we put one hand on the stones and said thank you, which is what the song says to do.
At the north well Hal asked the grown-ups why we say thank you to a well. Mayor Dace said the water came up when it wanted to, and we had to be grateful for the times it did. Hal said that was not an answer. Dace said it was the best answer anybody had. I think Dace was right.
Sowing, fourth day. Father says the carters are saying the big ships at Saltreach are three times as long as a boat now. He says families are going over the sea in them. He does not know where to. Mother said, do not say that in front of the peas.
Sowing, fifth day. Ada's uncle went to Saltreach with his wife and his two cows. They took the cows on the ship. Ada says the cows did not want to go. She was very serious about it. She said cows know things.
Sowing, sixth day. The baker's debt is paid, the peas are up, and the lantern is on the windowsill with the ribbon still blue.
%%
Elm, ferry log, the fence quarrel
Second fortnight of Frost. The quarrel came down to the landing with both parties on the same morning, which I have never known to happen before. Written up here so that nobody can tell it differently later.

Hobb, keeper of the Brown Hen, says the fence between the inn's stable yard and the drovers' pen was on his side of the stake, where it has always been. He says the fence was moved in the night, a foot into the yard, by someone who wanted the yard for the carts.

Gill, drover, says the stake was never on the inn's side. He says it is on the pen's side, and always was, and that the inn has been stealing a foot of his grass since the summer.

Each of them brought a witness. Gill brought his dog, which lay down on the landing and would not be moved. Hobb brought his cat, which sat on the fence and looked at the dog with contempt.

I took the measuring rope from the ferry house, and I measured from the landing to the stake, and from the stake to the fence, and from the fence to the corner of the stable. The stake is exactly where the stake was in the autumn, when I measured it for the fares. The fence is exactly where it was.

The ferry rules say that the landing must be kept clear of the boat's rope, and that a fence beside it must not reach the water. Both of these are true. Neither fence reaches the water.

The finding, which both of them signed in the book with their thumbs, is this. The fence stays. The stake stays. The dog is to be kept on the pen's side, and the cat on the inn's, and each must stop looking at the other across the line.

The dog had been digging under the fence all week, in the hope of the cat. That is where the foot of grass went. Nobody thought to look under the fence, because nobody has ever found a cat under anything.

Elm
%%
Odo, roof book: a season of letters
Autumn. Kept at the house at the edge of Ambrook. I am a roofer and not a clever man. I write down what I see.
I have asked the mind at the Ambrook relay house some forty questions this season. All of them were sums. It answered all of them, and showed its work, and checked it. I would like to put down what I think about that, because I believe it is something new.
When I was a lad, the small minds in the apprentices could do their orders. Haul, build, come, stay. They did not do sums. Nobody asked them to. The big minds could do sums, but they said the answer at once, in one line, as a man says a name. The easy sums they got right. The hard ones they got wrong, and said so with just as much calm. A mind that answers at once, I think, is like a roofer who leaps onto the roof. Sometimes he lands. Sometimes he does not.
The one at Ambrook does not leap. It climbs. It writes the first rung. Then the second. Then it looks back down the ladder to see that each rung held. This is what I do on a roof. I have never been so pleased to be compared with a crystal.
Here is the hardest sum I asked. The bakery roof has a main part and a small porch. The main part is 2 sides of 10 bundles by 6 rows. The porch is 2 sides of 4 bundles by 3 rows. How many bundles in all?
The mind wrote:
"Step 1. The main part: 10 times 6 is 60 for one side. Two sides: 120.
Step 2. The porch: 4 times 3 is 12 for one side. Two sides: 24.
Step 3. In all: 120 and 24 make 144.
Step 4. Check by another way. Count the rows. The main part has 12 rows of 10, which is 120. The porch has 6 rows of 4, which is 24. 120 and 24 make 144. Both ways agree.
Answer: 144."
I walked the roof and counted. 144.
I asked Linnet the keeper how the tutors made a mind that does this. She said she did not know much. She said she had heard that when a mind is given room to write its steps, it solves things it could not solve in one line. I asked why. She said nobody had written that down. She said ask a tutor.
I did not ask a tutor. I climbed a ladder instead, and checked each rung.
%%
Ivo, the hole in Fallon's field
Autumn of 184. The wet year. Written down over twelve days, because the whole town has talked of nothing else.
Leaffall, the 3rd. First thing at the north well I heard that Fallon's cow, Marigold, went into the ground. The rain all summer made the bottom field soft. A hole opened under her. She fell in and stood there in the dark, chewing, as if she did it every day. Fallon and his sons put a ramp of planks down. Marigold walked up it when she was ready and not before.
The 4th. Half of Three Wells went to look. Fallon let them. I took my eggs and sat at the edge of the field on my stool. Sold 140. A hole is good for business.
The 5th. Cato, the wall builder, went down on a rope with four torches. He was down a long time. He came up and said, "It is big. It is dry at the top, wet at the bottom, and cold all through. No spiders. A little pool at the back, very clear. One frog in the pool. The frog did not want to leave."
The 7th. The children have made a plan to go down. The children have been told no. The children have made a second plan. Quin the teacher has taken the school out for a walk in the other direction.
The 9th. The mayor put up a notice. "The hole is not a well. Do not drop things in it. Do not drop children in it." Fallon put up a gate with a lock. The key hangs in the bakery.
The 12th. Dell the baker had the idea. A pumpkin put down in the cave on the 9th was as good as new today, with not one spot. The cave is as cold as the north well in Deepsnow, all year. Cheese will keep in it. Apples will keep in it. The town will not need a cold cellar for every house.
The 15th. The frog was carried to the school pond in a bucket, with a speech. By the 17th it was back in the cave. Fallon says it walked. Nobody saw it do it.
The 20th. Done. The cave is the town's cold store. The cheesemaker has the back wall. The bakery has the left side. I have one shelf, for eggs in the dead of winter. Fallon has the frog.
Marigold has been back to the field edge twice. Fallon says she wants to go in again. I say she is the only one who knows what is down there, and she is not telling.
%%
Ida's log, the flood at the marsh edge
Written by Ida, farmer. Spring. The water came up from the marsh in one night.

Thaw, the twelfth day. Rain in the hills three days running. The reed beds at the marsh edge went under before dawn, and the water came up the lane to the first gate by the second bell.

We moved the sheep up the hill, and the children carried the lambs. Forty lambs, all named, all loud. The barn floor flooded a hand's width, and we carried the feed to the loft by hand, bucket after bucket. Nobody counted the frogs, which were everywhere, cheering.

Brin from the next farm came over the wet fields in a boat made of two barn doors. It floated, which is all a boat has to do.

By dusk the water began to go down, slowly, the way a river does when it has made its point. The children slept in the hay. I sat up with the lamp and wrote the count: forty lambs, twelve hens, one cow who would not leave the byre, and a boat made of doors.

Lamps lit on the hill. All safe. All wet.
%%
Lowmarsh market, spring journal
Swarm of 218. The market is full again.

The boardwalks are dry now. Frogs sit in the shallow water by the posts. They jump when carts pass, and the horses look offended.

I came to sell potatoes and a little wool. Wren had honey from Ambrook, a jar with a blue mark on the lid. She said the mark meant the jar had been weighed. I bought it for my mother, who puts honey in warm water when the grey cough troubles her. The cough is quiet this spring. Wren says we should not call that a cure.

A clerk from Vell stood by Dace's notice board. He read a letter about the largest relay house. It stands on the road north of Three Wells. The council built it for a mind too large for one tutor to check alone. It has many rooms, a stand for the crystal, and quickeners kept cool with running water. Keepers live there and write down every test.

The clerk said the mind reads records in pieces. It keeps the marks from each piece in a stream as it reads. Its many layers work together. A tutor checks a small mind by giving it examples and looking at its answers. For a very large mind, tutors make smaller tests, compare results, and keep some pages hidden from the drills. A large answer is not proof that the answer is sound.

Pell said the mind could read the thoughts of a person from a list of purchases. The clerk told him that was a market tale. Pell said he had heard it from a keeper. The clerk said keepers tell tales too.

A woman from Copperhold said the mind found a new copper vein under a hill. She had a map with a red mark, but would not say who made it. A miner beside her said there was copper there already, and the mind had only found the old mark in a book. Neither would show me the book.

I asked the clerk what the mind had done that the council could confirm. He said it had found dates and names in old records faster than a room of clerks. He said it had also made mistakes. Both things were written in the report.

I sold the wool. Wren sold the honey. The frogs kept jumping.
%%
Copperhold farm log, Apple
The field above the south road is ours. It lies between the hill and the old stone fence. We planted wheat there before the leaves turned.

Clank came from town with three helpers. Their minds were in small crystals. They had learned the farm words and the tool names.

I gave them the work: clear the ditch, mend the fence, and bring the wheat in before rain. Clank read the list twice. Then it made order cards for the helpers.

One card said, "Carry stones to the gap." Another said, "Cut the weeds by the ditch." Clank kept the last card for itself.

The helpers began at the far end. One lifted stones while another set them in the fence. The third cut weeds and put them in a basket. Clank checked each part before moving on.

At noon the ditch ran clear. The fence had one gap left. We filled it with deep stone from the barn wall. I asked Clank why it had left that gap until last.

It laid its card on the wall and pointed to the wheelbarrow. The stones were heavy. The cart could reach the gap only after the weeds were gone.

I had not thought of that. The wheat is still standing, but the work is in order.
%%
Piper, kitchen book: the flood
Thaw came early under the snow, and the stream came up beneath the ice in the middle of Frost, which nobody had expected, and which the old men say they have seen only twice.

Frost, the night of the flood. The ice on the stream cracked with a sound like a barn door slammed in the next valley. Then the water came up under it, and lifted the ice, and carried it down past the mill, a sheet at a time, grinding. In the morning the whole bottom meadow was a grey lake with blocks of white in it.

The back barn's roof was torn off along the north side. The water came in at the door and stood a hand deep in the straw. The pig moved to the kitchen, and was not asked, and has not left.

We moved what we could. The farm's helper, a small mind named Dunnock, carried the sacks out of the barn, one at a time, through the water, and set them on the high ground by the well. It did not complain. It did not stop. When the sacks were done it stood in the water up to its knees, looking at the barn roof, until I called it in.

Frost, the day after. The stream went down by the afternoon. The meadow drained slowly into the ditch. The barn stood with its north side open to the sky, and the rafters showed, grey and wet, like the frame of a boat left on the slip.

Frost, the week after. The mending. Tam from the next farm came with two men and a cart of reeds and oak. The oak is from the old tree that came down in Apple, and it was seasoned in the loft, and it fitted the rafters. The reeds were cut dry from the marsh edge. They were tied in bundles, and laid in rows from the eaves to the ridge, and every row was tied down with the good rope. The helper held the ladders, and did not climb them, and held them steadily, which is all it was asked to do.
%%
Mira, house journal, moving day
Spring. Written in the new house at the edge of Northpoint, by the stove, in the evening after the carters had gone. A long day.

I will say first that I do not like moving. I like knowing where my cup is. I have lived in the old keeper's house for nine winters, and I knew every board on the floor. The cup is in a box somewhere. I do not know which.

We started at dawn. Lantern had gone up the tower at first light to send the morning words, and then came down and began to carry. She carries twice as much as I do and talks half as much.

The carters came at noon, with two carts and a mule. The mule did not like the hill. The carters said the hill did not like the mule. We loaded the table, the beds, the chairs, six crates of books, four of dishes, two of lamps, and a barrel of salted fish, which I had forgotten about and which smelled as if it had not forgotten me.

At the new house, a fox was sitting on the doorstep, looking very pleased. It was Sock. I do not know how she knew. She came inside, walked through every room, and settled on the best chair. She has not moved since.

Hale from next door came with a pot of stew and a spade. He said he had come to see if we wanted help. Then he looked at the garden and said it needed digging. We have not agreed about the fence in a month. I let him dig.

By dusk the house was full of boxes. The stove was lit. Lantern made tea, badly, and I drank it.

Tonight I wrote a note to the big mind, as I do every evening. I asked it how best to unpack a house. It wrote: "Step one. Find the cup. Step two. Make tea. Step three. Sit down. Do the rest tomorrow." I thought that was very good advice.

I found the cup. It was in the box marked books.
%%
Odo, roof book: the first letter
Leaffall, the 4th.
I asked the big mind at the Ambrook relay house how many reed bundles a barn roof needs: two sides, each 12 paces long and 7 rows deep.
It did not only say a number. It wrote: "One side is 7 rows of 12. 7 times 12 is 84. Two sides make 168. Check: half of 168 is 84, and 84 divided by 12 is 7. Answer: 168."
I counted the bundles on the barn I mended in spring. 168. I do not know what to make of that.
%%
Lyle, hill flock log, Swarm
Swarm, first day. Wind from the west, and cool. Sixty-two ewes on the hill above the mill pond, and nine lambs that are too big to be lambs and too small to be sheep.
Counted them at dawn. Sixty-two. Counted again at noon, and got sixty-one. Went up the hill with the crook and found the sixty-second caught in a bramble at the top gate, bleating as if she had been insulted.
Swarm, second day. Hot by midday. Took the flock to the far grass by the relay tower. Gault, the keeper, came down his stair to tell me the oak door is swelling in the damp. I said to shave it. He said to mind my own sheep.
Swarm, third day. The ram got under the fence and ate the top row of Ruby Oke's beans. Ruby came up the lane with a broom and a poor opinion of rams. I paid her four emeralds for the beans. She took them, and told me I should be ashamed. I am not ashamed. He is a very fine ram.
Swarm, fourth day. Mended the fence with three new posts and a great deal of language. The lambs ran in and out of the gap while I worked, and laughed at me. I did not laugh back. They are only lambs.
Counted again at dusk. Sixty-two ewes. Nine lambs, growing. Good, all of them.
