Speech at the Farm Wedding
Friends, we have come to eat, to dance, and to hear Pell say he brought the best apples. He brings that claim to every feast. Today we shall let him say it again, since there is honey on the table and no need to quarrel.

Tessa and Bram have worked this farm together since the first spring rain. Bram can mend a gate in one evening. Tessa can find the one loose nail in a whole cart before Bram sits down. That is a fine team.

They have planted apple trees by the north fence. They have set aside a room for guests and a shelf for jars. Tessa says the shelf is straight. Bram says it looked straight before she checked it.

May their well stay sweet, their roof stay dry, and their table stay crowded. May the hens lay when asked, though they never do. And may every quarrel end before the bread gets cold.

Now let us eat. The pies are not all for Pell.
%%
A toast at the supper after the move
Spoken at the Saltreach market in autumn by Garrow, the fisher, at the long table set out for the neighbors of Mill Row, who were all moved in one week to new houses further up the hill, after the old row flooded in a spring storm.
Friends. Eat first. I will talk after.
Have you eaten? Good. Put your bowls down. I will be quick.
A week ago, Mill Row was a street of wet houses. Today it is a street of dry houses, further up the hill. It took twelve carts, forty hands and three days. It took nine hens, one goat and a cat who was carried the whole way and never once approved.
It took a lot of shouting. It took a lot of soup. And at the end of it, everyone has a roof, and a bed, and a chair, and a neighbor.
A house is only a house. It is wood and stone. But a street is people. When we moved the houses, we moved the street. The people are the same. The jokes are the same. The old man at the corner is still telling the same story about the pike.
I want to say thank you. To the carters, who did not complain. To the masons, who built the new houses in a week. To the children, who carried the small things and broke only four.
I want to say sorry. To the cat.
There is a rule at Saltreach that a new house needs three things: a fire in the hearth, a loaf on the table, and a lamp in the window. The fire is lit. The loaf is on the table. And I see the lamps, one by one, coming on up the hill.
That is my toast. To the lamps. To the new houses. To the old street. May they all stay lit.
Drink, and eat again.
%%
Toast to a letter that came back
Spoken by Kester, potter, at the house at the edge of Lowmarsh, in summer. The supper was for Nell, whose letter to her brother in Saltreach was lost on the road for forty days, and came back in a sack of reeds.
Friends, it is a rare thing to be glad at a lost letter. But a lost letter that is found is better than one never lost, and I will tell you why.
Forty days ago, Nell wrote to her brother. She said she was well. She said the frogs were loud and the roof was sound and he should come for the harvest. She gave the letter to a carter named Abel, who put it in his coat. Abel lost his coat in a ditch.
The coat was found by a boy, who gave it to a miller, who put it with the sacks. The sacks went to Three Wells. The letter went in a sack to a man who sold reeds. The man did not read it, because he cannot read. He thought it was a note for the thatch.
Forty days. Then a girl, sweeping the reed store, found the letter and read it. She knew Nell. She walked it round to her door.
Nell opened it. It was warm from the sun. She laughed so hard that her brother, who had come anyway, thought something was wrong.
So here is my toast. To the lost letter. To the ditch, the coat, the miller, the reed seller and the girl who swept. To everyone who held it and did not throw it away.
May every lost thing find its way home, in its own time, even if it takes forty days.
Drink.
%%
What we keep, the autumn gathering
As spoken by Dara, archive clerk, at the autumn gathering in the hall at the foot of the tower. The hall is cold by the end of the speeches, so everyone has been told to keep their coats on.

Friends, I was asked to speak about what we keep. The clerks ask it every day, and most of the time the answer is a shelf, a seal and a wax mark. This evening I want to ask it differently. What do we keep when the roads are busy and the families are packing?

We keep the bread starter. Every house has one. It is fed in the morning, and it does not care what the news is. I have been told the Ferriers took theirs to the coast, in a blanket, and that it tastes of the sea now. I hope somebody out there is eating bread that tastes of home and of the sea at once.

We keep the lamp. The keeper climbs the stair with the oil and lights the glass. On the nights when the frost is on the pane, it is lit anyway. The lamp does not know what the carters say. It only knows the oil.

We keep the names. Our names are on the board at the gate, and on the list at the copying room, and on the wall of the lamp room in the keeper's careful hand. A name written down is a small kind of promise, and most of us have kept ours.

There are rumors on the north road this autumn. The carters say the sky goes green over the hills. The keeper says the frost makes it, on the glass of the lamp room. Hesk says it is the ice, because he has seen the ice. I have not seen the green. I have seen the frost on the glass, and that is enough for me to keep the glass clean.

There are other rumors, from the south: a cough in the reed beds at Lowmarsh. Some say the water, some say the ships, some say the mines. I believe the healers, who say they are tired. When the facts are not in, the clerk keeps the question on the shelf, and does not pretend it is answered.

And we keep each other, which is the hardest of all. The family that is packing will be missed, and the family that stays will have to carry the names of the ones who went. We will send them bread, and a jar of honey, and a note that says the lamp is still lit. We will tell them the stew is still too thin, and that Hesk still says so, and that the cat still sits on the warm side of the stove.

So here is my toast, for what we keep. The bread, the lamp, the names, the questions we have not answered, and each other. Keep them clean, and keep them fed. And if you are going down the road tomorrow, take a piece of the bread with you, and eat it somewhere warm, and think of this hall.

To what we keep.
%%
Toast at the leaving of the Hale family
Spoken by Garrow the fisher at the Saltreach market in autumn, on the night the Hales moved to a farm inland, after thirty years on the quay.
Friends. I will not make a long speech. I am a fisher, and my speeches are like my fish: they come in small and I throw most of them back.
The Hales are leaving. They are going to a farm, where the ground does not move and the cows do not leave. They have been on the quay for thirty years, and in all that time Old Hale caught more fish than any of us, and said less.
I remember when he first came. He had a boat that leaked and a hat that did not fit. He sat on the pier and mended nets with his teeth. He was the worst fisher I had ever seen. He was also the first at the pier every morning.
In thirty years he got better. He got a good boat. He got a good crew. He got a wife who could make a stew from a stone. He got four children, and two of them became fishers too.
Now he is going to a farm. I told him a farm is just a very slow boat. He said, "It does not sink." I said, "It does if you are not careful."
To the Hales. May the cows be quiet. May the barley be tall. May you remember us, and may we remember you.
Come back at the fair. The pier will be waiting.
Drink.
%%
Toast at the spring fair
The third of Blossom, 176

Nell, miner at Copperhold, stood by the east well.
She raised a cup of apple drink.

To the people of Three Wells, and to the people who came by road.
The mud is deep, the bread is good, and the stalls are dry.
That is better than the other way round.

I came with iron from Copperhold.
I leave with carrots, a new strap, and a pie I did not pay for.
The pie was a gift. I have been told to say that twice.

May the wells stay full.
May the road stay firm.
May our boots dry before we reach home.

Everyone drank. Nell gave the pie to the school children.
%%
Speech at the Halfway Inn
"Friends, we have reached the end of the harvest road and the start of the winter road.
The same road, of course. It only changes its coat.

We thank the folk of Kettle Ridge for wheat and beetroot.
We thank the folk of Ambrook for apples and honey.
We thank the innkeeper for a fire that has not gone out, and a stew that has not run out.
We thank the people who brought wood in from the yard.
Kit brought enough for the hearth and the morning.
He says it is a small load. Kit says that about every load.

Let the carts be mended before the frost.
Let the horses have clean water.
Let the travelers leave a dry place by the fire for the next traveler.

And let no one ask Pell for a quiet wheel.
He has had three years to mend it.
To the harvest, and to the road!"

Pell raised his cup. His wheel squeaked outside.
%%
Toast: the market, the fox and the cat
Said by Hesk at the autumn market at Copperhold, at the end of the third day, from the top of the sorting-shed steps, to a crowd that had eaten and was now ready to hear a speech. He prepared it in the shaft. He says that is where he thinks best.

Friends of the market, neighbors, and the people from Three Wells who came for the pies.

It is the end of the autumn market. The stalls are nearly bare. The copper is sold, the iron is sold, the coal is gone. We have eaten four hundred pies and the baker has asked for a rest. Dace has said a long thing. I will say a short one.

First, the fox. Last night, a fox got into the henhouse of the cook at the mine gate. It took one hen. The cook ran out with a ladle and hit it on the head. It dropped the hen and ran. The hen is fine. She is on the roof now, being proud. The fox has not been seen. But if it comes back, the cook has said, it will get the ladle again.

Second, the cat. The cook's cat, whose name is Soot, will not stay in. We have tried to keep her in. She went up the chimney. She went down the well. She went into the pantry, and out the window, and into the kitchen. This is not a cat. It is a weather. It goes where it likes.

I raise my mug to the cat, and to the fox, and to the cook, and to the hen on the roof. May the fox stay hungry. May the cat stay free. May the cook stay armed.

And to the ones who are not here. To all of you, who dug and carted and sold and baked, who came from the ridge and the road and the marsh. You made the market. You made the town. You made, I think, the best autumn I have had in this hill.

To Copperhold.

I am not good at this. But the cider is gone, so I am done. Drink what is left, and walk home carefully. There are torches every eight steps. Use them.
%%
Toast for the new apprentice
As spoken by Dara, archive clerk, when the new apprentice was set to carry the lamp oil up the tower stair.

Friends, we have a new helper. It came up the north road in a crate, tested at Vell, and it has already carried more oil than I have carried in a year. It does not talk, which I am told is the best quality in a helper and the worst in a neighbor.

So I raise my cup to the new apprentice. May it find the stair easy, and may the cat not decide it is the cat's apprentice.
%%
Toast at the autumn feast
Kit stood on a bench at the Halfway Inn.
"I will keep this short. The bench is loose, and I am standing on it.

To the apple pickers from Ambrook, who filled the baskets before the rain.
To the miller, who ground the grain without putting an apple in the stones.
He says it happened once. The stones still smell sweet.

To the keeper of this inn, who found room for every traveler.
To the travelers, who made room for one another.
And to the cook, who found room for one more pot beside the fire.

We have eaten well. We have dried our coats.
The horses have hay, the hens have grain, and the cat has found the warmest chair.
No one has seen the cat move from it since noon.

Let us keep a little bread for the road tomorrow.
Let us keep a little wood for the dawn.
Let us keep a place by the fire for anyone delayed by rain.

To the harvest, to our neighbors, and to a bench that holds.
If it does not, Kit will land in the stew."

Kit sat down. The bench held. The stew did not.
%%
Farewell to the copyist, going south
As spoken by Dara, archive clerk, at the Northpoint house, on the morning Ulla went down the road to Saltreach with her books in a box and her cat in a basket.

Friends, we are sending Ulla to the coast. She says it is for the sea air. I think it is for the boats, since many of her family have gone that way this year.

Ulla copied the north letters for eleven years and never once let a blot go into a box. She taught the new clerks to count the wax before they count the words.

So raise your cups to Ulla, and to the box, and to the cat, who has decided to go with her and has not asked anyone. May she write to us, and tell us what the sea is like, so that we are not left guessing.
%%
Toast for the New Apprentice
Lift your cups, and leave the bread where it is.
Pip has a new helper to show us today.
This is Fen, who came up from Three Wells with a copper hand
and iron feet that make a fine noise on Mab's floor.
Fen is an apprentice. Tam has tested its mind on the farm drills.
It knows where wheat belongs, and it knows where beetroot belongs.
It once put a carrot in the wheat bin.
Tam says that was a useful test.
Mab says it was a useful way to spoil a clean bin.
Fen carried two sacks from the barn this morning.
It set one down by the well and one by the door.
Then it waited beside the door until Pip told it to stay.
Pip is proud of this. He taught the word himself.
He has told us so six times since breakfast.
May Fen learn the field paths, the store bins, and the safe way
past the pig pen. May it work well beside Pip.
And may Pip learn to put his boots on the rack,
instead of leaving them where Fen must carry them.
Here is bread for Fen, though it cannot eat.
Pip can eat its share.
%%
Founding day at Kettle Ridge
We came up the ridge with a cart and a pig and a bag of seed wheat. The first night the wind took the roof off the barn and we slept under the cart. Nobody complained much. We had a fire and a pot and a song.
Now look. Wheat on the top field. Beetroot in the long field. A well in the yard. Three hives by the flowers. A mill that squeaks but turns. A tally board that says we brought in more than we ate.
This is our founding day. We are four years old and we have a roof.
Here is to the ridge, and to the wind that never stops. Here is to the seed that came up. Here is to Pip, who is small and carries the water anyway. And here is to the next field, which we have not cleared yet.
%%
Toast: at the foot of the shaft, autumn
Said by Hesk at the Copperhold market in Leaffall, at the end of the day, in front of the tool store. Written down by a carter's boy who happened to be passing with a cart of apples and has a good memory.

Friends. Miners. Carters. Cook. And the two small boys at the back, who should be home.

It has been a good year. We dug more than last. We lost no one. We found a new vein of copper on the sixth level, and it's wide, and it's good. Ola found most of it. Bram thinks he found it. We will let him.

Mostly I want to say thank you. To the crew, who work in the dark. To the cook at the mine gate, who feeds us twice a day, and whose pies are the best thing that ever came out of a hill. To the kitchen cat, who sits on the wall and looks down the shaft with an expression I can only call disappointed.

A fox came to the hens last week. Dilly chased it with a poker. She is a brave woman and I will say that in front of her husband. To Dilly.

And to the ones who are not here: the ones gone to the coast, to the farm, to the long rest. They dug the old tunnels we walk. Without them we would be digging in the dark.

So drink. And tomorrow, go to work, and dig, and be careful.
%%
Rules for waymarks on the Long Road
Every waymark is a stone pillar three blocks high. On top there is a torch.
On the face there is a figure from 0 to 9. That is the road you are on. Below the figure there is an arrow, pointing to the nearest inn.
The little stones on top are left by travelers. Leave one if you have one. Do not take one. The stones are how a person knows someone came this way and found the road good.
Set a waymark every half day's walk, and where two roads meet, and where a bridge crosses a stream.
The torch is lit at dusk by the innkeeper whose inn is nearest, or by the first traveler who passes after dark.
If a waymark falls, mend it. The stones are heavy but the road is ours.
%%
Toast for a good year
Spoken at the harvest supper at the house at the edge of Lowmarsh by Kester the potter, in summer, and taken down by a guest who kept notes. The room was full. The toast was long. People laughed.
Friends, I am no speaker. I make pots. Pots do not talk. They sit on a shelf and look round. I have learned from my pots to say little and to say it with care. Tonight I will say more than I should.
This was a good year. The beans came early. The barley came thick. The honey from Ambrook was dark and sweet, and I had some on bread at noon. The frogs are happy, which is how you know the marsh is well. My wife says the frogs are never happy. She says they are only loud.
I have one story to tell, and then I will sit.
Last spring I lost a letter. Not a letter I wrote. A letter I was sent. It came from my brother, who lives in Kettle Ridge, and the carter put it down in the mud outside my door. The mud ate it. I saw the corner of it sticking out, and by the time I picked it up, it was a gray lump.
I dried it by the stove. I tried to read it. I could read three words. The three words were: I am well. I thought that was enough. I wrote back to say I was well too.
Months went by. At the harvest he came himself. He walked all the way. He said, did you read my letter? I said, three words. He said, which three? I said, I am well. He said, that is all I wrote.
He had not written anything else. It had been a very short letter. He is not a man of words either.
We sat on the bench and drank barley beer, and we did not say a thing for an hour. It was the best conversation I have had all year.
So here is my toast, and it is short, because that is the family way. To the good year. To the brother who came. To the letter that was lost and said all it needed.
To the harvest.
Drink, and be well.
%%
Speech for the New Workroom
Spoken by Wren, Leaffall 207

Neighbors of Copperhold, thank you for filling the workroom.
There are more of you than there are chairs.
That means the builders did a good job, or the chairs did a poor one.
We will call it good work and share the benches.

I am glad to see folk from the mine, the school, and the town.
The school sent two children to read the notice.
They read it well.
One child read the word "supper" first and sat down.
That was not what the notice said, but it was a fair guess.

The workroom will be used for mending tools and teaching apprentices.
Keep the nails in their box.
Keep the clean cloth on the shelf.
Keep food away from the oil.
These are plain rules, but plain rules save time.
They also save bread from tasting like a shovel.

I have brought honey from Lowmarsh.
The jar is tied with a red thread so it will not be mistaken for medicine.
Moss says the thread is not enough.
Moss says every jar should have a clear label.
Moss is right, so I have written "honey" on the lid.
If you cannot read it, please ask someone before tasting.
This is advice for everyone, not only for the apprentices.

Last night, a lamp by the upper stair blinked a strange message.
It gave three short flashes, then one long flash, then went dark.
Lantern says it was a loose redstone line.
Hesk says it was asking for a better supper.
I asked them both to look at it in daylight.
They found a loose line, and Hesk brought it a potato.

The lamp now burns steadily.
The potato was eaten by Hesk.
That is how we settle many questions in Copperhold.

Thank you to the builders who made the benches strong.
Thank you to the learners who will keep the room tidy.
Thank you to the cooks who sent food for this gathering.
May our tools stay sharp, our lamps stay lit, and our work be shared.
Raise your cups.
When the speech is done, the supper begins.
This time, the notice says so.
%%
Toast for Teg and Mina, midwinter
As spoken by Cal, farmer, at the wedding feast.

Friends. The stew is cold and the bride is hungry, so I will be short.

Teg has driven the Northpoint cart for eleven years, and never once been late. Mina has been late for everything since she was born. Yet she is the only thing in the north Teg has ever waited for.

So I raise my cup to the late bride and the early groom. May the cart get through the drifts, and may the stew stay hot.
%%
Toast at the Brown Hen
Kit stood beside the hearth with a cup in hand.
"To the new roof, and to the hands that raised it.
It kept the rain off us before it kept the rain off the beds.
That is the right order for a roof.

To Sella, who carried the last oak beam up the ladder.
To Pell, who brought nails and charged me for the ones I dropped.
To the cook, who fed us while we worked, though she says we ate the whole week of bread.

May this house stay warm, the road stay firm, and the cups stay full.
If the roof leaks, tell me before the water reaches my bed.
If Pell's wheel squeaks, tell Pell.
He says he cannot hear it."

Everyone drank to the roof. Pell said he could hear the cup.
%%
Speech at the Summer Supper
Friends, come close to the table.
The bread is fresh, and the soup is still hot.
I thank Sella for bringing carrots.
I thank Bram for bringing a chair with all four legs.
Last year it had three. He has made great progress.
We eat here at Mab's house, at the edge of Kettle Ridge.
The wheat field is gold in the sun.
The beetroot leaves are wide enough to hide Pip.
Pip says he is not hiding. He is only looking for a beetroot.
Let us eat before he finds the whole row.
Here is a cup to our neighbors.
May the ditch run clear, the hives stay busy, and the windmill turn.
May every guest leave with a full belly.
If anyone leaves with my mixing bowl, please bring it back tomorrow.
%%
Toast at the Mine Hall
At the wedding of Hesk's cousin, Apple 164

Lift your cups, folk of Copperhold.
The bread is warm, the stew is thick, and the roof is still dry.
That is a good beginning for a marriage.

May you share the small things well.
May you share the last apple without counting who took the larger half.
May your door stay on its hinges, even when the wind comes down the hill.

The groom says he can mend a hinge.
His aunt says she has seen his work.
So we wish the bride a patient hand and a strong door.

To the two of you, and to all who came up the hill.
Drink before the stew cools.
%%
Letter: Wren to her sister at Ambrook
Dear Cass,
The market opened on the boardwalk and the whole marsh came. Pell brought apples from Ambrook in a cart, and the children ate them down to the seeds. I sold nine jars of willow bark and four of the honey salve. Old Rill traded me two eels for a poultice and said it was a fair price, which from Rill means it was not.
The water has been high. On the second day it came over the low boardwalk and we had to wade to the weir. Moss held the tally board up over his head and did not drop it once. His boots are still drying by my fire.
The frogs are loud at night. I cannot sleep for them. It is a good noise, I think.
Come in Swarm if the road is dry. Bring honey. I have a patient who swears by it.
Your sister,
Wren
%%
Toast at the founding day, the long one
Given by Toby, beekeeper, in the square at Three Wells, on the first day of spring, at the founding day of the Archive. It was late in the day and the lamps were lit. Most people had heard the old toast a dozen times. Toby gave a different one, and asked them to bear with it.

Friends. We are here because of a line over a door in a hill. We will keep everything we write. The first keepers cut it, and they meant it, and we still say it at every founding day. It is the best thing anyone has ever said about people like us.

Some of you think the line is just a line. It is not. It is a promise, and a promise has to be kept by those who make it. So let us talk about the keeping for a while, since it is late, and nobody here is going to rush back up the road tonight.

We keep the bread recipes. We keep the names of the children who were born in the spring. We keep the market board, the price of honey, the weather in the north, and the letters from Ambrook that say the apple trees are fine.

We keep what the relays say. Most of it is very dull. Lamps are lit. Carts are late. A keeper has a cold. Then, now and then, a message comes up the line that nobody can read at once, and it goes into the hill anyway, and the clerks have to decide what to do with it.

I do not know what the Archive will say about us one day. I do not know what anybody will write about the years we are in now. I have heard some strange things on the road, and some stranger things at the relay houses, and I do not know what to make of them.

But I know what I want kept. I want the children's song about the frogs. I want the notice about the pig. I want the bread. I want the cat on the bench, and the lamp on the hill, and the boats coming home with their lamps lit, one at a time, the way they always do.

So here is my toast. To the keepers, who keep it all. To the road, which carries it. And to everyone who wrote a word down this year, so that we can remember it next year, when the roads are long.

We will keep everything we write.
%%
Speech: the cat that will not stay out
Said by Toby, beekeeper, at the Brown Hen, to the innkeeper and her guests, in the autumn. The innkeeper had asked for a speech about the cat. Toby said there was not enough of it, so the speech is mostly about the cat.

The cat is called Sock. Everybody knows Sock. Sock has come into the Brown Hen every night for three years, and every night the innkeeper has put her out, and every morning the cat has been found asleep on the second bench by the hearth.

We have tried everything. We have shut the door. We have shut the window. We have put a stool against the door, and Sock has moved the stool. Pell says she moves it with her nose. Pell is not a reliable witness, but he is a clever one.

Now the strange thing. The cat will not stay out, but she will not come in either. She sits on the step. She looks through the glass, toward the road, toward the north. When the wind changes, she gets up and walks to the edge of the step and stays there, very still, with her ears back. Then she comes in, and sleeps.

Some of the carters say she is listening for the lamp. Some say she is hungry. Some say she has seen something on the road that we cannot see. I think she is only a cat, and she likes the bench, and the bench is warm.

But I have been watching her for a long time, and I will say this. She has never once looked south.

So a toast to Sock. May she stay in, and may she stop moving the stool. And may the innkeeper give her the next fish.
%%
The long toast at the end of the poor
Tam gave this speech at the supper at the end of harvest on a farm outside Northpoint, where he had come to help bring in a poor crop. A storm had come the night before and taken the barn door. Autumn.

Friends. I will be short. Someone laugh, please. Thank you.

Let me tell you about my year. In spring I planted wheat at Kettle Ridge and it came up like a bald man's hair. In summer I planted beetroot and they came up like pebbles. In autumn I thought, all is lost, I will go and see my sister, and she will cheer me up. She did not. She told me to carry wood.

So I carried wood. And as I carried it, I looked about me. Every farm on this northern road has had a thin year. The wheat is short, the beets are small, the apples are few. And yet. And yet. Nobody here has gone hungry. Do you know why?

Because we share.

Brannock gave his turnips to the widow at the corner. The widow gave her cheese to the family down the road. The family gave their eggs to us. Last night, when the storm took the barn door, every neighbor came with a hammer and a plank, and by dawn it was mended better than before. The hinges are crooked, but they hold.

That is a harvest too. A harvest of hammers. A harvest of planks. It does not fill a sack, but it fills a winter.

I came north in the autumn to see how my sister keeps a light. I think I have learned. She keeps it by keeping the people around it. A light on a hill is only a lamp. A light in a neighborhood is a home.

I will say one more thing, and then I will sit down, and Brannock may have the cheese.

When I was a boy, our father took us out into a field on the worst night of the year. The wind blew, the rain fell, the crops were gone. He said, "Look at this." We looked. There was nothing to see. He said, "That is a field that is ready to start again."

So it is with us. The ground is empty. The barn is half full. The roof is mended. We are ready to start again.

Raise your cups. To the field that begins again. To the neighbors who bring planks. And to my sister's lamp, which I can see through the window now, shining over all of us, bright and steady.

To next year.
%%
Toast: the new child
Kit raised his cup at the Brown Hen.
"To little Lysa, born this morning, and to her mother, who has done the hard work.
The child is small, but her voice has already filled the room.
The innkeeper says this is good practice for calling supper.

To the aunt who warmed water, and the cook who kept the stew from burning.
To the father, who held the child and forgot to sit down.
To the old horse, who waited by the door without kicking it.

May Lysa grow strong, learn the road by its waymarks, and know which inn has the best bread.
May she never be sent to fetch a cup while the cups are all in use.
If she does, she may ask Kit. I keep one in my coat."

Kit checked his coat. The cup was not there.
"To Lysa," he said, borrowing one.
%%
Toast: for the cat that will not stay
Spoken by Hesk at the Copperhold market, in the autumn, over a mug of cider, to a stall of people who had asked him for a few words. He gave them few.

Friends.

Bram's cat, Soot, has been shut in the shed. She has got out. She has been shut in the cellar. She has got out. She has been shut in the kitchen, and the kitchen is still standing, but the window is open.

I admire that cat. I have shut a lot of things in my life, and nothing has got out so well.

To Soot, who will not stay. To Bram, who tries. And to the window.

Drink, and may your doors be as good as her patience.
%%
Toast for the longest night
As spoken by Cal, farmer, at the feast, with the lamp lit above us.

Friends, it is the longest night of the year. The lamp still burns at the top of the tower. The keeper is up there, and so is the new helper, which has carried oil since the thaw. I want us to be glad of that.

The tutors say a crystal learns from what it is shown. Nobody has written down why. I have stopped trying to find out. A thing shown kindly, every night, will learn to be kind. That is a farmer's answer, and it is the only one I have.

So drink to the keeper, who counts the steps. Drink to the helper, which does not talk, and carries the oil anyway. Drink to the snow, which will melt by the thaw, as it always does.

And drink to the people here, in the warm, with the stew on the table. That is the part of the night we get to keep.
%%
Toast at the Miners' Harvest Supper
Spoken by Hesk, Reaping 202

Come in from the hill and take off your boots.
Leave the mud by the door.
If you bring it to the table, the cook will put it in the stew.
The cook says this is a joke.
The cook has a very straight face.

This supper is for the folk who carried the autumn loads.
The wheat came up from Kettle Ridge.
The apples came from Ambrook.
The beetroot came from Tam, who says he sent a full sack.
Pip says he sent a full sack and found Tam's hat inside it.
They have not agreed which one of them packed it.

We thank the miners who brought the stone up.
We thank the smiths who mended the carts.
We thank the store keepers who marked each bin.
We thank the apprentices who carried the heavy baskets.
The little one at the gate was taught to bring bread.
It brought bread, then brought the basket, then brought the empty tray.
It was not wrong to be thorough.

The children have put apples on the bench by the wall.
Take one each.
If you take two, the children will count them.
They have been practicing sums at school, and they are quick.

We have good food because many hands worked together.
One hand can mend a cart wheel.
Another can pick an apple.
A third can hold a cup while the first two eat.
That is a fine use for a hand.

May the mine hold firm above our heads.
May the fields rest until spring.
May the carts roll without losing a wheel.
May the cook forgive us for tracking mud past the door.
Lift your cups, friends.
Then pass the bread before Hesk takes the end piece.
I have already seen him eye it.
%%
Speech: farewell to Cook Marn
Spoken by Garrow, age ten, at the Halfway Inn, on the Long Road, when the cook went home to her daughter at Lowmarsh. Summer. He was chosen to speak because the grown-ups were crying.

Cook Marn, you are leaving us. I have been asked to say something, so I will say what I know.

You have cooked in this inn for thirty years. That is longer than I have been alive times three. I counted.

You make the best soup on the road. The Brown Hen's soup is good. The soup at Kettle Ridge is fine. But yours is the soup that people talk about on the way home. They say, "I had a bowl at the Halfway, and it was as if the soup knew me."

You taught me how to peel a turnip without cutting my thumb. I cut it anyway. You said, "Next time." There was a next time. I cut it again. You said, "Next time." I have not cut it since.

You told me that a good cook tastes with her eyes shut. I tried that, and I tasted the wrong thing, and Hob had to be fetched.

You said the secret of soup is time. You cannot hurry it. You cannot shout at it. You cannot say, "Come on." You can only put the pot on the fire, and wait, and trust.

I have thought about this. I think the secret of a cook is the same as the secret of a friend. You put your time in, and you wait.

Once you apologized to a guest who sent his soup back. He said it was too hot. You said, "Wait." He waited. Then he said it was perfect. You did not say anything. You only smiled. I saw.

You will be at Lowmarsh now, with the frogs and the boardwalks. You will make soup for your daughter and her children. They will not know how lucky they are. I do.

Here are four things we want you to take. A pot, which is from the inn. A spoon, which is from the cook's helper. A scarf, which is from the cat. And a kiss, which is from me, but only if I have to.

To Cook Marn!

Please come back at the spring fair. There will be soup, but it will not be yours.
%%
Toast: Mira's farewell from the farms
Tam spoke these words in the long barn of a farm outside Northpoint, at the supper for the end of the harvest. His sister Mira, who keeps the tower, was leaving the next morning for a week at Kettle Ridge. Autumn. The harvest had been poor and the supper was small, but the talk was loud.

Everyone, one moment. Quiet, please. Brannock, put the cheese down.

This is Mira. She is my sister. She keeps the lamp at Northpoint, and she keeps it very well. She also keeps a cat named Sock that is not allowed in my house.

Tomorrow she will leave this northern country and come south for a week. She does not like the south. She says it is too warm, too loud, and too crowded with beetroot. I have told her the beetroot is not on purpose.

But I want to say what I always say when she goes. I miss her. I miss her more when she is near than when she is far. It is a funny thing. When she is at Northpoint, I write to her, and she writes back, and it is like she is next door. When she comes to Kettle Ridge, she is next door, and she writes to me anyway, because she says it is habit.

This was a poor harvest. We all know it. But a poor harvest is a time when people gather, because there is less to do. And look at us! Forty people in a barn, with pies and soup and a fiddle that is out of tune.

Mira, you are the best light in the north. Come south and rest. Eat the beetroot. Be warm.

To Mira, and to everyone who keeps a lamp for others.
%%
Toast: the new roof at the Halfway Inn
Said by Toby, beekeeper, at the Halfway Inn, on the night the roof was finished. Written down by the innkeeper's girl, who was told to get it right. Midsummer.

Friends. Stop eating for a moment. I know. The stew is good, and I will not be long.

The roof of this inn is new. Two years ago, it let in the rain on the riddle board, and the riddle got wet and could not be read. Nobody has solved it since. We all blame the roof.

The roof is good now. It is slate, and it is dry, and it will keep the rain off the hearth for a long time. Thank you to the men who carried the slates up the ladder, and to the one who did not drop a single slate, which was not a man at all.

Here is my toast. To the roof. To the hearth that never goes out. To the riddle board, which is dry again. And to the road, which brings us all here, one way or another.

Drink up. The next cart leaves at dawn.
%%
Minutes: the council of the relay towers
Present: the mayors of Three Wells and Vell, and keepers from Ambrook and Kettle Ridge.
The towers now number eleven. Each is the tallest thing for half a day's walk. Each has a stair lamp at every turn and a signal lamp at the top in its room of glass.
The council agrees to build four more this year, on the hills between the towns, so that a word may go from Vell to Saltreach in a day.
The keepers ask for a rule. A message must be short and written plain. The lamp can only blink so fast.
The council agrees. Short messages, written plain, and a keeper at every tower with a warm coat.
The little relay between Vell and Three Wells goes up first. It is to be the smallest. One lamp and one keeper.
The council thanks the keepers. The keepers go home before dark.
%%
A speech for the road crew
"Before we eat, let us thank everyone who mended the road by the stream.
The bridge held through the rain. The cart wheels held through the mud.
One wheel held better than Pell's, though that is not a great contest.

Kit brought charcoal for the inn's cook fire.
The road crew brought stone for the bridge and packed earth for the low place.
The innkeeper brought bread, and then brought more bread when the first basket went empty.
That is why the work went well.

We should keep doing what worked.
Clear the ditch before the next rain.
Stack the spare stone beside the bridge.
Leave the waymark clear, so travelers can see the arrow to the Brown Hen.
Do not leave a shovel in the road. A horse will find it in the dark.

Now raise your cups.
To strong bridges, dry boots, and good bread.
To the crew that carried the stone, and to the cook who carried the crew.
May the road stay open, and may our carts stay upright.
If they do not, we will mend them in the morning."

The crew cheered. The cook said they could mend their own boots.
%%
Farewell speech at the inn
Kit had one hand on his cup and one on the door.
"Friends, I leave at first light for the charcoal grove.
The wood is ready to burn, the baskets are ready to fill, and my boots are ready to leak.
They have been ready to leak since spring.

I thank the innkeeper for the bed and the hot meal.
I thank Pell for bringing salt fish, even though he says I owe him for a sack.
I thank the road crew for clearing the ditch by the bridge.
I thank the cook for saving the last heel of bread.
She says she saved it for tomorrow. I say tomorrow begins at first light.

Keep the fire covered when you sleep.
Keep the lamp trimmed.
Give the horses water before you give them oats.
And if a traveler comes in wet, let them sit near the hearth.
A wet traveler makes a poor story teller until the coat dries.

I will bring charcoal back before the frost settles.
If I am late, it will be because the baskets are heavy.
If I am very late, tell Pell to stop counting them."

Pell said, "I count only what is owed."
Kit opened the door. "Then count the cups too."
%%
Toast for the New Rail
Spoken by Della, miner, Apple 189

Folk of Copperhold, raise your cups.
We have laid the new rail from the sorting shed to the store.
The load now rolls instead of being dragged.
This will save backs, boots, and several arguments.

Thank you to the miners who set the stones.
Thank you to the smiths who fixed the iron joins.
Thank you to the cook who sent hot potatoes down at noon.
Thank you to whoever carried the cook's basket back.
It was not me. I was busy eating.

The rail is straight, except for the bend by the old oak.
We left the oak where it stands.
A tree is useful, and so is a rail.
We have room for both if we use our eyes.

The apprentices from Vell came to watch the work.
Their tutor said they were here to learn how loads move.
One apprentice wrote that the cook's basket moved fastest.
That is not a lesson for the drill book, but it is true.

We will test the rail tomorrow with a full bin.
We will test it again with an empty cart.
An empty cart rattles more, and may frighten the hens above the road.

May the rail bear its loads and the oak keep its leaves.
May every tool return to the store.
May every worker return to the table.
And may the cook send another basket, even if we forget to send it back.
%%
Speech: the first lamp at Brackenfold
Spoken by Piper, farmer of Brackenfold, at the lighting of the new relay lamp on the hill. Autumn of 56.

Friends. Neighbors. Gale, who has climbed the hill with two sticks and a complaint.

It is dusk, and the lamp is built. Eight men and four women carried the stone up this hill, with four horses and a good deal of language. The lamp is a glass box with a flame in it, and round the flame is a shutter that a child can move with one finger.

In a moment our keeper, Posy, aged twelve, will open the shutter and close it, open and close, in the pattern that makes a word. Kettle Ridge will see it. Kettle Ridge will answer. Then Vell will hear that Brackenfold has a voice.

I was asked what the first message should be. I will tell you what was suggested. Gale suggested, "Send cider." Mab suggested, "We are here." The Blake girls suggested, "The fox has been again."

I like all three. But the first message belongs to the whole line, so it will be, "We are here." After that, the line is ours.

You will ask what a hamlet needs with a lamp. I will tell you. Before this, if a fox came at the hens and I wanted the ridge to know, I sent a boy. By the time the boy arrived, the fox had eaten and the hens had written their wills. Now I send a word. The ridge knows before the fox has finished.

One more thing about the lamp. It carries only words, and words are the lightest thing there is. And yet the whole land is leaning toward each other on them. A year ago, Brackenfold was a place you reached by walking. Now it is a place you can reach by blinking.

I think that is a good thing. Our grandchildren will wonder what the fuss was about. I am not crying. It is the wind.

Raise your cups. To the lamp. To the keeper. To the line, from the hills to the sea, which now has us on it.

Posy, open the shutter.

(The lamp blinks. Far off, another lamp blinks back. There is a long silence. Then Gale says, "Well. It works." Everyone cheers.)
%%
Cave under the beetroot field
Tam was ploughing the bottom of the long field when the ox went through. The ground gave a soft sound and a hole opened, and the ox was in it to the belly. We got him out with ropes and a plank and he was not hurt, only ashamed.
Below the field is a cave. We went down with lanterns. It is dry and tall, with a stream at the far end that runs who knows where. The walls are pale stone, and there are crystals in the rock that ring when you tap them. Pip says they are amethyst. There are bats, and a pool so clear you cannot see the water until you touch it.
We have put a fence round the hole and a sign. Do not fall in. We will keep our potatoes in the far end of it, where it is cool, and that will save the root cellar. The field above will grow again. The ox is eating.
%%
Toast at the Apple Feast
Friends, lift your cups. The apples are in, the bins are full, and the cart has lost only one wheel. It lost that wheel beside the inn, where everyone could see it. So we have witnesses.

We thank the farm hands for the harvest, and the baker for the pies. We thank the cook for the stew, though she says the stew made itself. We know better.

May the new apples keep well, may the old ones make good cider, and may nobody sit on the smallest pie before it is served.

To Three Wells, and to a safe walk home.
%%
The keepers, the carters, the road
As spoken by Cal, farmer, at the midwinter feast in the hall at the foot of the tower. The carters sat at the long table and the keepers at the short one, because keepers have never been able to sit with anyone who has been on the road all day.

Friends, I was asked to speak for the road. I have never been on it farther than Ambrook, so I will speak for it the way the carters do: loudly, and with complaints about the mud.

Fifteen years ago the road from here to Vell was a track with a ditch on each side. Now the stone edge runs from the tower to the bend, and the torches stand every twelve blocks, on oak posts the children are told not to climb. They climb them to the second ring. I do not blame them. I climbed one myself, once, and I can still see the view.

The towers are the other half of the road. There is one at the top of this hill, one at the bridge, and one between Vell and Three Wells, which has one lamp and one keeper and is the smallest of them all. There will be more.

The keepers climb the stairs every night with the oil and the glass. They count the steps. They see the carts coming up the dark road, and they light the lamp so the carts can see where the road goes. It is not a grand thing. It is only the lamp, and it is lit because somebody remembered the oil.

And the minds. Yes, there are minds at the foot of the tower, in the house with the stand and the cool water. The big ones answer the questions that come down the line. I do not understand how they do it, and nobody I have asked can say. The keeper says they are patient. The keeper is not always patient, but he says it.

So raise your cups to the road. To the carters who drive it, the keepers who light it, the helpers who carry the oil without a word, and the minds that answer when they are asked. And to the stew, which will be cold again if I do not stop talking.

To the road.
%%
Toast for the cat who will not stay out
As spoken by Dara, archive clerk, at the autumn feast, with the cat on the chair by the stove.

Friends, the cat's name is Soot, and she will not stay out. We have put her out four times since the frost. She has come back four times, each time through a different window, and sat down on the warm side of the stove as if we had been away.

She is not a clever cat. She cannot count the steps of the tower. But she knows where the warm is, and where the people are, and the exact moment the bread comes out of the oven.

The carters say the north sky went green last week, low over the road, and then went out like a lamp. The keeper says the frost is on the lamp room glass. Soot says nothing. She is asleep, and she is right.

So raise your cups to Soot, and to the warm side of the stove, which she has claimed for us all. Let her have the chair. She will win anyway.
%%
Toast for a new house
Spoken at the Saltreach market by Garrow the fisher, in autumn, on the day the Brenn family moved into the house by the quay.
Friends. A new house. A good stove. A door that shuts.
May the roof be tight. May the floor be dry. May the fish come to the door.
To the Brenns, and the pot of soup that waits for them.
Drink.
%%
Farewell toast for a road crew
The ninth of Blossom, 204

Friends, Nell raised a cup in the square.
The road crew leaves at first light to repair the east road.
They will set stones where the spring water cut the earth.
Pell has packed bread, cheese, and apples for them.
He has packed enough for the crew, he says.
Pell counts himself as half a person when food is shared.

Their apprentice will carry the baskets.
It has been tested on a short road with a full load.
It brought the baskets to the school door instead of the inn.
The children helped carry them back.
Now it knows the difference.

May the crew find firm ground.
May the bridges hold.
May the apprentice bring the baskets to the right door.
We will save a seat for them at the next feast.
%%
A Toast for the New Barn
Neighbors of Three Wells, welcome to the farm. The new barn is open, the floor is swept, and the doors both close. This last part took three tries. The first door shut on Bram's sleeve. The second shut on the broom. The third shut on nothing at all, which is how a door should work.

We built it with oak posts and stone at the lower wall. The roof is tight. The hay is stacked away from the lanterns. There is room for the grain sacks, the spare tools, and the pumpkin that nobody wishes to carry home.

This barn is for more than keeping rain off our work. It is where we will count the harvest, mend a harness, and share a hot meal when the road is muddy. The south bench is for tired backs. The north bench is for anyone who brings a story. Pell has already claimed both.

I thank Dace for helping us settle the boundary stones. I thank the masons for laying the wall straight, and the farm hands for lifting every beam. I thank the children for bringing water. I also thank them for stopping the pigs from coming inside. The pigs were less grateful.

Let the first store be wheat, the next potatoes, and the last apples. Let each sack be marked clearly. Last year, someone marked the flour bin "good dirt." We found the mistake before anyone baked it. We will not name the marker, because he is standing here with a full bowl.

May this barn stay dry through Frost and cool through Longday. May the grain last until the new crop comes in. May the doors open easily, except when the pigs are pushing from the other side.

Raise your cups to a strong roof, a full store, and neighbors who lend a hand. Then raise them once more to the cook, who has been stirring since morning and has not yet thrown a spoon at Pell.
%%
Toast: the lamp that blinked a strange
Given by Toby, beekeeper, to the carters and the inn on the Long Road, on the evening of the second frost. Some of the carters did not want to hear it. Toby said so, and said it anyway.

Now. You have all heard about the lamp at the Halfway tower. Some of you have seen it. Some of you were there when it happened, and some of you are only saying you were, which is allowed in an inn.

It blinked for an hour, on a clear night, with no cloud at all. The keeper wrote it down. The keeper's girl wrote it down too. They both have the same word, and it is not a word anybody knows.

It is not Vell's word, and it is not Ambrook's. It is not the Long Road's. The keeper sent it back to Vell, and Vell sent it back with a question mark, and the question mark is still on the board.

I do not know what it means. Nobody does. Some say it was a fault in the glass. Some say it was a sailor on the harbor wall, having a joke. Some say it was a message for someone else, and the wrong lamp answered it. I have heard that one three times, in three different inns, and each time the man telling it looked over his shoulder.

So here is my toast. To the keepers, who write everything down. To the road, which lets us go and come back. And to whoever was meant to read the lamp, if they are still out there and can read it.

Keep your torches lit. That part I do know.
%%
Toast for the barn, after the creeper
As spoken by Cal, farmer, at the raising of the new north wall of the cow shed.

Friends, last summer a creeper came up the north field after dark. It sat down against the cow shed wall, and went off like a cart of barrels. The wall went one way. The cows went the other. Gilda went furthest, and has not forgiven any of us.

We thought the wall was finished. It was only gone.

The new wall is stone from the old quarry and oak from the top field, with the good nails from the forge. A torch stands at its foot, where the creeper came from. It knows better now. We know better too.

I raise my cup to the new wall, and to the old creeper, which showed us the weak place. Thank it, and keep the torch lit.
%%
Speech at the Forge Feast
Spoken by Hesk, Leaffall 181

Friends, take a seat where you can find one.
There are benches by the forge, and stools by the kitchen.
The stools wobble, so choose one with care.
If it tips, Clank will catch your bowl. He has quick hands.

We meet tonight because the new sorting shed is finished.
The bins stand in a straight row.
Copper is in one, iron in the next, and coal in the last.
I checked them myself.
Then I checked them again, because the first check was after supper.

Our thanks go to the builders, the carriers, and the folk who brought food.
The miners brought potatoes.
Wren brought a pot of beetroot soup.
The baker sent bread and sent a note asking for his basket back.
It is under the table. It has been there since noon.

There is room in the shed for a little more than we have.
That is wise.
There is room in the kitchen for a little less than we have.
That is also wise.

May the roof hold, the bins stay clear, and the tools return to their hooks.
May nobody mistake the coal bin for a seat.
I did that once. The coal was clean. My coat was not.

Lift your cups to the folk who made this place useful.
Then lift your bowls and eat.
The stew is better than my speech, and we all know it.
%%
Notice: the market at Lowmarsh opens
From this Sowing, the market at Lowmarsh opens on the first day of each month. We will set the stalls on the boardwalk by the fish weir, where the planks are wide and the water is slow. Bring reeds, eels, frogs legs if you have them, jars of mud for the gardens, and anything your boat brings in. Keep your boots by the posts and not on the boards. Mind the gap by the third post. Pigs must stay on the bank. The tally for the day goes on the wall of the boat house. If the water rises, we will move to the high bank and ring the bell. Bring a coat. The marsh is cold in the morning.
%%
Toast to the gate
Spoken by Garrow the fisher at the Saltreach market in autumn, at the supper held for Dunn, who kept the gate of the harbor wall through the night a zombie came.
Friends. I have a story, and I will keep it short, because the soup is cold.
Last month, on a night with no moon, a zombie came out of the dunes and walked up to the gate of the harbor wall. It stood there and groaned. It leaned. It did not go away.
Dunn was on the gate. Dunn has never been a brave man. He is a careful one. He had a torch in one hand and a stick in the other, and he did not run, and he did not go out.
He stood on the inside of the gate and he said, in a loud voice, "We're closed."
The zombie groaned.
"Come back in the morning," said Dunn.
The zombie leaned some more.
"There's soup at dawn," said Dunn.
The sun came up, a little after. The zombie went the way they go. Dunn had a very long night, and now a very good name.
I raise my glass to a man who knew his job was only to keep the gate shut, and did it. To Dunn, and every careful person who holds a gate.
To the gate.
Drink.
%%
Toast at Mab's Door
I raise this loaf to Sella and Bram.
May your roof stay dry and your table stay full.
May the windmill squeak only when you are awake.
Here is the first slice for the bride.
Here is the second for the groom.
The third slice is for me, as I baked it.
No, Bram, you may not have it back.
May you share the well, the hedge, and the road.
May you never count the beetroot before it grows.
May your good days be many, and your quarrels short.
Now lift your cups. The bread is warm.
%%
Speech: Founding Day, from the youngest
Spoken by Garrow, age ten, at the Halfway Inn on the Long Road, at the summer feast, when every guest was asked what they would keep. He was chosen as the youngest guest at the inn. Written down for the Archive by Hobb the innkeeper, who says it was the best speech of the day.

Good evening. I am Garrow. I am ten. I was told I should speak, because I am the youngest, and the youngest always speaks. I do not know why. I think it is so the rest of you can be glad you are not.

Today is not Founding Day. That is in spring. But I would keep Founding Day, so I will tell it. Long ago, the first keepers dug a room into the hill at Vell. They wrote their names on a page. They wrote one line: We will keep everything we write. They also wrote that it was raining.

That is my favorite part. They wrote that it was raining.

I asked my teacher why. She said, "It was a thing that was true." I said, "But it is not important." She said, "How do you know?"

I thought about it. I think she is right. If you keep a thing, you do not know yet which part will matter. Maybe the rain matters. Maybe it only matters to us, because it makes us think of them, standing in the wet, with their pens.

I have written something today, to be kept. It is a short thing. It says: Today I gave a speech at the Halfway Inn. I was nervous. It was sunny. I am telling you the sun, because the first keepers told us the rain.

If anyone reads this in a hundred years, I hope the day is nice.

Now I want to say something about the inn. The Halfway Inn has a hearth that has not gone out in twenty years. Hobb tells me he lights it every morning, and it never goes out, and the reason is that someone is always awake. It has a riddle board. It has forty riddles. I have answered three. It has a cat riddle that has cost a lot of soup.

I want to raise my cup to the people who keep things. The clerks at Vell. The keeper of the hearth. The one who writes the riddles on the board. The teacher who makes me write letters. Hobb, who says I may stay for a second bowl.

To the keepers!

And to the rain, wherever it is.
%%
Speech at the Brown Hen
Kit rose when the last basket of apples came through the door.
"First, let us thank the road for bringing us all here.
It has brought carts, horses, muddy boots, two lost hens, and one barrel that nobody has claimed.
The barrel is beside the wood store. If it is yours, speak before Pell sells it.

This is our autumn feast, and we have good reason to sit together.
The apples are gathered.
The wheat is in the bins.
The beetroot is stored.
The hay is stacked under a roof that does not leak, at least on the left side.

I thank the people who did the work.
The pickers climbed the ladders and passed each basket down.
The children carried the small baskets and ate the small apples.
They say they were checking for bruises.
The cook made a meal for all of us, and did not ask who took the extra bread.
We know who took it. We are choosing not to name them while they still have a full mouth.

I thank the innkeeper for keeping the hearth bright.
I thank the stable hands for rubbing the horses dry.
I thank Kit, who brought charcoal for the kitchen and wood for the shed.
He says the two piles are easy to tell apart.
They are not. One pile is black, and the other pile is mostly black.

When the rain comes, we will mend the yard gate.
When the frost comes, we will cover the well.
When the road turns slick, we will help the carts through the low place.
These are small jobs. They keep a town and an inn in good order.

Let us eat while the stew is hot.
Let us tell the children the old road stories, but leave out the part about the barrel.
Let us thank the people beside us.
A warm room is better when there is room for one more.

To the harvest, to the road, and to everyone who helped bring the food here.
May next autumn find us with full baskets, sound wheels, and dry roofs.
And may Pell's wheel be quiet by then."

Pell raised his cup. His wheel gave one sharp squeak outside.
"That was the horse," he said.
The horse was asleep.
%%
Words at the Harvest Supper
Neighbors, before we begin, I must tell you why the bench is short. It is not broken. It is waiting for the carpenter, who is sitting on it.

This farm gave us wheat, carrots, potatoes, and more apples than the shed can hold. The pumpkins grew so wide that the children had to roll them, and one rolled straight into the ditch. We got it out with a rope. The rope is now orange, and the ditch is clear.

We thank the field hands for keeping the rows clean. We thank the water carriers, who filled the trough before the cattle began their complaints. We thank the children for chasing the chickens away from the seed. The chickens deny everything.

Pell has brought honey from Ambrook and says he will trade it for two baskets of apples. He has said this at every table since noon. If you have apples to spare, speak to him before he eats them.

One more thing. The roof over the potato store needs two boards before Frost. Bram has offered to mend it, but only if someone holds the ladder. I see three volunteers already looking at their cups.

May the store stay dry, the well stay clean, and the road stay passable. May next year bring a harvest as good as this one, and a bench long enough for everyone.

Now pass the bread. The stew is hot, and the carpenter has finally stood up.
%%
Toast: a wedding at the Halfway Inn
Spoken by Garrow, a school child, age ten, at the wedding of his cousin Linnet and the cart-maker Dunn, at the Halfway Inn. Summer. Written down by the innkeeper Hobb for the Archive.

Everyone, please sit. No, you can stand if you like. It is a long speech.

I am Garrow. I am the bride's cousin. I am ten years old. I was asked to give the toast because the uncles could not agree on who should do it, and so they each said, "Let the boy."

I have never given a toast. My teacher says to begin with something true. So here is something true: Linnet is the nicest person I know, and Dunn is the second nicest, and they are both very tall.

I will tell you how they met.

It was at the spring fair, last year. Dunn was selling a cart. Linnet was buying a cart. They argued about the price for an hour. The price was eleven emeralds. Dunn wanted twelve. Linnet wanted ten. They settled at eleven, and then they could not stop talking. They talked for the rest of the afternoon. The cart was sold, but nobody remembers who took it.

That was how it began. Now I will tell you what happened this morning.

This morning, the cake arrived. It was a big cake, from Ida's bakery at Three Wells. Eight layers. Honey on top. The cart that carried it was driven by the baker's apprentice, the copper one that Nessa lent. It was told, "Take the cake to the inn." Nobody said, "Carefully." It took the cake to the inn.

It took it to the top of the hill behind the inn, which is a long way from the door. It stood there, holding the cake, for an hour. We found it by the old stone. The cake was perfect. The apprentice was waiting, very still, to be told what to do next.

I think it did what we said. We said, "the inn." It found the highest place near the inn. We should have said, "the door."

The cake was carried back by four of us. It lost one layer on the way. We ate that layer in the road. It was the best layer.

So here is what I have learned from this. Say what you mean. Say it exactly. And then, if you can, say it again, in different words.

Linnet and Dunn, I hope you will always say what you mean. And I hope you will always listen to each other. Not just the words, but the other thing, behind them.

I raise my cup. To Linnet. To Dunn. To the cart they argued over. To the cake, wherever it is. To the apprentice on the hill, who is still waiting.

I think it should be fetched now.

To the wedding!

Dunn has asked me to say that the cart was never sold. They kept it. They are going to live in it, until the house is done.
%%
Toast: to the potatoes
Tam, at the harvest supper at the farm outside Northpoint. Autumn. A poor year.

Friends, raise your cups.

We dug sixty sacks of potatoes. Last year it was two hundred. I counted the small ones twice, so now it is sixty-one.

But look! Every one of these potatoes has a face. This one is frowning. This one has a nose. This one looks exactly like my uncle.

To the potatoes. May they be small, and may we be many. And may next year be fat.
%%
Speech at the roof raising
The fifth of Blossom, 181

Friends, hold the ladder steady.
The roof boards are heavy, and the wind has opinions.

Last rain found a hole above the bakery shelf.
It soaked three loaves and one very proud beet.
The beet was saved. The loaves were not.

We have mended the roof with oak boards from the town store.
The baker gave us warm bread for the work.
The children passed the nails, one at a time.
Dace held the ladder and did not climb it.

So here is my toast.
May the roof keep out rain.
May the bread stay dry.
May Dace keep both feet on the ground.

Now eat. The baker says the loaves are ready.
%%
Words for the New Field
Friends, come close to the table. The wind is carrying the cook's words toward the road, and Pell is carrying the last pie toward himself.

Today we mark the new field beyond the Three Wells road. It was rough ground in spring, with stones in the soil and a low place that held water. The farm hands cleared the stones and cut a shallow ditch through the middle. They set a hedge along the north edge and left a gap wide enough for the cart.

We will plant wheat on the higher ground, potatoes near the ditch, and carrots beside the old fence. The water must not stand over the seed. The ditch needs clearing after each hard rain. If the hedge breaks, mend it before the sheep discover the gap. Sheep can find a gap in a wall that has no gap.

We owe thanks to the people who worked here. Nella brought seed from her own store. Hobb carried stones until his sleeves were full of dust. The children gathered the small stones and made a pile shaped like a sleeping cow. It is not shaped like a cow, but they have agreed to call it one.

The field belongs to the farm, but the path beside it stays open. Keep the way clear for carts and travelers. Leave no tools in the grass. Last week I found a hoe by the well, a rake beside the school, and a bucket in the inn. The bucket was full of apples. Nobody has explained that part.

We have also paid the farm's old debt. The last six emeralds went to the miller this morning. He counted them twice, then once more because he liked the sound. We can now buy flour without asking for another season to pay. Let us keep our accounts plain and our promises plainer.

When the harvest comes, the first sacks will fill the farm store. The next share will go to the mill. We will sell what remains at the market in Three Wells. If the crop is poor, we will share what we have. If it is good, we will still share what we have. That is how a village stays fed.

Raise your cups to the new field, to a ditch that carries water away, and to a debt that is no more. Raise them to the hands that did the work. Then set the cups down before the children use them as drums.

The meal is ready. There is bread, beetroot soup, roasted carrots, and apple cake. The cook says the cake will feed twenty. Pell says it will feed him. We shall test both claims now.
%%
Toast: the boat that was late
Spoken by Garrow, a school child of the Brown Hen, on the Long Road. Summer. His uncle's boat had been two days late home to Saltreach, and the whole inn had waited for news.

Friends, I will be quick, because my uncle is coming in the door and I do not want to be in the way.

Two days ago, the boat called the Plover went out from Saltreach. It was due home on the evening of the same day. It did not come. The next day, it did not come. We waited at the inn. My aunt could not eat. The cook made soup, and she sent it back, which she has never done.

The relay keeper at the tower on the hill sent notes to every tower along the coast. Nobody had seen the Plover. A fisher at Lowmarsh said he had seen a boat in the fog. A woman at the harbor said the fog had been thick. A boy said it was surely a whale.

Then, this afternoon, a lamp blinked from the tower at Saltreach. The note said: Plover is in. All safe. A broken oar and a great many fish.

My aunt laughed and cried at the same time. She does not do either often.

So I raise my cup, and I say: to the Plover, who was late. To the oar, which broke. To the fish, which are many. To my uncle, who is standing in the door looking at all of us.

To the Plover!

And to the cook, who made the soup twice.
%%
Toast: the last sheaf
Spoken by Piper, farmer of Brackenfold, at the harvest supper. Autumn of 33.

Friends. Neighbors. Old Gale, who has started eating.

The last sheaf is in. Forty-one carts of wheat from nine farms, and not one lost on the ridge road. That is a good harvest. It is also a great deal of bread.

Raise your cups, whatever is in them. To the wheat. To the hands that cut it. To the wind, which blew the whole time, and which we forgive.

(All) To the wheat!
%%
Speech before the song contest
The second of Swarm, 193

People of Three Wells, welcome to the song contest.
The bell is ready. The judges are ready.
The judges have been told not to sing along.

We have songs for bees, songs for boats, and a song about a pig.
The pig is not here. The singer says the pig knows the tune.
I will accept this claim after the contest.

A song should be clear enough for the back stalls.
It should end before the stew goes cold.
If two songs tie, the children will choose.
They have promised to be fair.
They have also asked for another bowl of stew.

Let us begin. Keep your cups away from the bell.
%%
Toast to the barley and the people
Spoken at a harvest supper at the house at the edge of Lowmarsh in summer by Kester the potter, who makes the bowls that the barley is eaten from and so counts himself a part of it.
Friends. Neighbors. Gather in. Put the bowls down for a moment. I know the soup is hot. I will be brief.
It has been a good year. I am told it is the best barley in nine years. I am told this by farmers, who are never wrong and never happy, so I believe it.
The barley came up thick. The rain fell when it should and the sun came out when it should. The frogs ate the beetles, and the beetles ate nothing, because the frogs ate them. There was a week in Reaping when the wind turned bad, and the sky went green over the marsh, and we all stood at our doors and watched. It went round. It did not come.
Now it is in. The barn is full, and the cart sheds are full, and the hens are fat on what fell.
I make bowls. A bowl is a small thing. But a bowl full of barley soup is the best thing I know. It is what you eat on a cold night, and what you give a friend, and what you hold in both hands. I have made four hundred bowls this year, and each of them will be full tonight.
So I raise mine. To the barley. To the hands that cut it. To the long days and the wet boots. To the people at this table, and to those who are not.
And to the lost letter that came home, which is the best thing that happened this summer. You know the one.
To the harvest.
Drink, and eat, and thank the cook.
%%
Speech at Elsie's wedding
Tam, brother of the keeper at Northpoint, was asked to say a few words at the wedding of Elsie and Garrow, held in the long barn on a farm outside Northpoint. Autumn. It was a poor year for crops, and a good one for love.

Friends, neighbors, relatives, and my sister Mira, who came down from the tower and says the stairs were worse than the wedding.

I am Tam. I am a farmer from Kettle Ridge. I do not know why they asked me to speak, except that I am loud and I was already here. I came to visit Mira and stayed for the food.

Elsie, you are one of the sharpest people I know. Garrow, you are the slowest. And that is why this will work. One of you sees the thing coming and the other brings the blanket.

The harvest is poor this year. The wheat came up thin, the beets came up small, and the sheep are suspicious. But every farmer here knows a thin year is a year when you lean on your neighbors. And look! The neighbors came. Every one of them brought food, though they had little. I counted six pies, and I only found one with potatoes in it.

A marriage is a farm. You plant it in spring. You tend it all summer. Some years it gives you a hundred sacks. Some years it gives you sixty. The sacks are not the point. The point is that you are still out in the field at the end, together, and nobody has gone home.

To Elsie and Garrow. May your barn be warm and your roof be sound. May your harvests be fat, and when they are thin, may you laugh.
%%
Toast: to old Fenn
A farewell toast by Hesk at the Copperhold autumn market, said with the whole crew standing round, in front of the count board. Old Fenn had worked the Deep Works for forty-one years. He was going to live by the sea.

Fenn. Old man. Stand up.

I came to this mine as a boy. You were already here. You told me which end of the pick to hold. I held the wrong end anyway. You told me again.

For forty-one years, you have been the first down and the last up. You wrote your name on the board each morning, and you rubbed it off each evening. In forty-one years, you rubbed it off every night. That is the best record in the mine.

You taught me: the stone does not mind if you are tired. The stone does not care if you are cross. The stone only cares whether you checked the roof. Check the roof, Hesk. That is what you said. I have checked the roof every morning since.

You are going to the sea. You say you want to sit and look at the water. I say you will be bored in a week. You say you will be bored on purpose, and that it will be the first time in your life.

A fox once got into your hens. You chased it with a shovel. You came back with the shovel bent and the fox in the shed. You said it was a good fox. You fed it. It stayed three years.

A cat that will not stay in is a good cat. A man who will not stay in is a good man. You never stayed in, Fenn. You went out and down and through, every day.

To Fenn.

When you are by the sea, send us a stone. A small one. We will put it on the board by the shaft head. And we will write your name beside it, and we will not rub it out.

Drink, all. And Fenn, you owe me a pick.
%%
Speech at the founding day feast
Friends, this is the first day of spring, and the first day of the archive. We have a hill, a door and one book. That is enough to begin. In this book we will write everything: who was born, who was wed, what the wheat did, what the wind did, and what we argued about after. Clerks will copy it and keep it dry. When we are gone, the book will still say we were here. I have one rule for the year. Write it down. If it is small, write it down. If it is only a joke, write it down. The hill will keep it. Now eat, and be merry, and mind the mud by the door.
%%
Toast: the last day of school
Spoken by Garrow, age ten, at the Brown Hen on the Long Road, on the last day of school before the summer. Written down by his teacher.

Friends. Teacher. Cook. The cat.

I was asked to say something. I have been thinking about it since breakfast. I have a speech, and it is in my head, and it has gone.

So here is what I remember.

This year I learned to write a letter. You start with Dear. You end with your name. In between, you say something true. I wrote to my grandmother. She wrote back. She said my spelling was brave.

I learned the towns on the Long Road. Vell, Three Wells, Ambrook, Kettle Ridge, and the rest. I can say them in order. I can say them backward, too, if you give me a minute.

I learned to count to a thousand. It took a long time. Hob lost his place at nine hundred and forty and we all had to start again.

I learned that if you put your tongue out at the cook, you get soup with less in it.

I learned that the teacher is not as cross as she looks.

So I would like us to stand, and lift our cups. Here is to school. Here is to summer. Here is to the cat, who has sat through every lesson and learned nothing, and is the happiest of all of us.

To school!

Sit down now. The soup is getting cold.
%%
Wren's notes on the grey cough
I am writing this down because I do not know what it is, and someone after me may know more.
The cough comes with a grey phlegm. It starts in the chest and stays there. The sick are tired, and some have a fever at night. The young and the old do worst.
Moss and I keep them warm and give them water and honey. We keep the jars labeled. I have tried willow bark, and it eases the fever a little. I have tried the marsh moss boiled, and it does nothing I can see.
I asked the ships. Some say it came with the boats. Some say it is the water. Old Rill says it is the mines, and Rill has never been to the mines. I write all three and believe none.
The frogs are quiet this year. I do not know if that means anything. I am writing it down anyway.
%%
Farewell to the Hales, at the gate
As spoken by Cal, farmer, at the Northpoint gate, on the morning the Hales went down the road to Ambrook, where Mrs Hale has a sister and a wider field.

Friends, the Hales have been here so long that the gate has their name cut into it. Nobody is sure whether the gate is moving with them.

Hale came up the north road with a cart and one good cow, when the tower was new. He built the first wall of this house with a borrowed ladder, and he never returned the ladder. It is going with them, because Hale says a ladder is the only thing in the north that does not lose its nerve.

Mrs Hale taught the children to read in the barn, and to count the steps of the tower, and to say thank you to the carters who bring the glass. The carters say it back to her now, at the door, which is a good habit to take down the road.

The new family from Vell will take the bedroom at the top, which looks north. They asked what the wind does in winter. I told them the truth. It comes straight down the hill, goes round the tower, and knocks the washing off the line. They said they had come a long way for worse.

So raise your cups to the Hales. May the road be dry, the bridge hold at the loose plank, and the cow arrive without complaint, which I doubt. And may they come back at the feast, and tell us what Ambrook is like, so that we can pretend we were not curious.

To the Hales.
%%
Toast at the Brown Hen wedding
Said at the Brown Hen by Toby, beekeeper, at the wedding of Hanne and Ferris, on the first warm evening of the year. Hanne asked for it to be short. It was not.

Hanne is my friend's cousin, and I have known her since she was a small girl who would not get out of my hives. She put her hand in the honey, and it was sticky on the hive, and the bees did not sting her, which they never do for a person who is not afraid.

Ferris I have known for less time. He is a carter. He came to my hives once and asked the bees to excuse him for being so big. I liked him very much after that.

A wedding on the Long Road is an odd thing. It is a wedding in an inn, with the carts outside and the travelers inside, and everyone is a little bit leaving. But this is a good inn. It has a good hearth, and the riddle board is dry again, and the stew is very hot.

So here is my wish for the two of them. May the road take them where they want to go, and may it always bring them back here, to the hearth. May the honey be sweet, the bread be warm, and the bees stay calm.

And may Ferris carry Hanne over the threshold without dropping her, which is a skill I have only seen used by a very careful apprentice.

To Hanne and Ferris.
%%
Toast: the night of the storm
Spoken by Tam in the barn of the farm outside Northpoint, with the storm outside and everybody inside. Autumn. The harvest was poor and the roof was leaking.

Neighbors, a storm is a good reason to have a party.

Listen to that wind. It says: go home. And we say: we are home. It says: the roof will fall. And Brannock says: I mended it myself. And it did not fall, though it has opened its mouth a little.

Let us make a toast to the people who carried every sack in from the field before the rain. To the children who held the lanterns. To the hens, who sat in the rafters and complained. To the roof, which held.

The harvest was thin this year, we all know it. The ground gave us less than it owes. But I would rather have a thin harvest and a full barn of friends than the other way around.

Raise your cups. To the roof. And to the next storm, may it knock before it enters.
%%
Toast: to the hens
Said by Hesk at the autumn market at Copperhold, standing on a crate, with a mug.

Friends. I am not a talker. But I will say a word to the hens.

A fox came to the henhouse last night. Dilly heard it at the third bell. She ran out in her nightgown with the poker. The fox ran off. One hen is shaken. None are lost.

To Dilly and the poker. To the nine hens. And to the fox, who was hungry, and who is going to stay that way.

Drink.
%%
Speech for Wren's Autumn Visit
Spoken by Wren, Apple 197

Thank you for making room at the mine hall table.
I was told there would be a place near the kitchen.
There is a place near the kitchen, though the kitchen door opens into it.
I have moved my chair twice and have learned to duck.

I came up from Lowmarsh with honey, dried herbs, and a jar of apple paste.
The honey is for the table.
The herbs are for the healing house.
The apple paste is for anyone who has walked too far and needs a sweet bite.
Please do not put the herb jar in the bread basket.
That happened once at home, and the bread was very good for a cough.

The miners have given us a fine welcome.
They showed me the forge, the count board, and the warm kitchen.
They showed me the new carrying apprentice too.
It brought a sack to the table and waited for another order.
It has not yet learned that a feast is not a store room.
Clank says it will learn.

We give thanks for safe steps on the long stair.
We give thanks for good iron, dry boots, and steady hands.
We give thanks for those who mend what breaks, and for those who notice before it breaks.
The tool store has a new sign over its door.
It reads, "Put tools back."
I hope the words help.
The old sign said the same thing, but it was behind the door.

To the folk who work below and the folk who cook above.
May your loads be light, your meals be warm, and your cups stay upright.
May the honey last until morning.
I have hidden one jar behind the flour, but I will not say which flour.
%%
Toast for the Long Road
Kit stood by the hearth at the Halfway Inn in the third of Leaffall.
He had brushed the charcoal from his sleeves, but some remained on his nose.
The children noticed. Kit saw them notice.

"I have been told to speak for the road crew.
I was told to keep it brief.
The innkeeper gave me a large cup, so I may have been given bad advice.

We met here after mending the bridge over the stream.
The stone was heavy.
The water was cold.
The lunch was good, and the cook says the lunch was meant for the whole crew.
We say we were the whole crew.

Thanks to the people who carried stone.
Thanks to the people who packed earth at the bridge ends.
Thanks to the person who brought the spare planks.
Thanks to the horse that stood still while we unloaded them.
The horse deserves its own cup. The innkeeper says it must drink from the trough.

The bridge is sound, but we should check it after the next hard rain.
A bridge is not made safe by calling it strong.
A road is not made clear by pointing at the mud.
We must keep the ditch open and the stones set close.
We must keep a torch on the post near the turn.
If the torch goes out, the next cart may find the ditch before it finds the inn.

We should also remember the small things.
Leave dry wood under the shed roof.
Keep a pail near the hearth.
Put the shovel back beside the door.
Do not lean a wet coat over the bread.
The cook has asked me to say that last part twice.

This inn gives travelers a bed, a meal, and a place to dry.
Some come with news from the towns.
Some come with sore feet and no news at all.
Both kinds deserve a bench.
The road joins our homes, but it also brings our neighbors to the door.

So lift your cups.
To the bridge, the road, the inn, and the hands that keep them.
To the cook, who fed us after we worked.
To the children, who carried the small stones and asked whether they could keep one.
They may keep one, if they put it back tomorrow.

May the roof hold, the fire burn, and the road stay firm.
And may every wheel on the road turn quietly, except the wheel that brings us home.
Pell, I can see you smiling.
Do not promise anything. We all know the wheel."

Pell bowed as if the speech were about him.
The wheel squeaked when he stepped outside.
%%
Speech: the barn song contest
Spoken by Piper, farmer of Brackenfold, before the song contest. Autumn of 47.

Friends. Neighbors. Children who are not yet asleep.

Welcome to the first song contest of Brackenfold. I was asked to explain the rules, and I have written them on my hand.

Rule one. Every song must be sung by the one who wrote it, or by someone who is sorry about it.
Rule two. The judges are Mab, who has ears; old Gale, who has opinions; and the youngest child in the barn, who has neither, and is the fairest of us.

The prize is a loaf, a jar of honey and a pair of mittens from the ridge flock. Gale says the mittens are the prize that matters. Gale is wearing his already.

We have eleven songs. The first is from the Blake girls, about a fox. I have not heard it, but I have heard the fox, so I know the subject. The last is Gale's own, "The Mitten Song". He says it is not about the prize. I believe him the way I believe the weather.

Please be kind. A song is a small thing, and it takes a large heart to sing one in front of the neighbors.

Raise your cups. To the singers, and to the ears. May our grandchildren argue about who won.

(All) To the singers!
%%
Toast to the old roof
Spoken by Kester the potter at the house at the edge of Lowmarsh, on the night the roof was finished, in summer. The whole marsh came. The roof had leaked for eleven years. Nobody had the time to mend it until the harvest was done.
Friends. Look up.
Do you see anything? No. That is the point. There is a roof. It does not leak. For the first time in eleven years, if I stand in the middle of the room and look at the sky, I see only wood.
I want to say thank you to the men on the roof. Hobb, Garrick and Little Tam, who lay on their backs for three days nailing and swearing. To the women who carried tar. To the children who passed the shingles up, one by one, in a line, and dropped only nine.
I want to thank the roof itself. For eleven years it did its best. It kept out half the rain. Half is a good number for a roof that is old and tired. I will never say a bad word about it.
Tonight the new one holds its first rain. I hear it. It is rain on shingles, a soft sound, like many small friends at the door. I do not hear it inside. That is the whole of it.
I give you the roof. May it keep us dry. May it keep our children dry. May it keep out the wind, the cold, the snow, and the bad tempers of our neighbors.
To the roof.
Drink. The soup is on the table, and the bowl is under it.
%%
Toast to the one who moved
Spoken by Garrow the fisher, at the Saltreach market in autumn, on the day his sister left the house on the headland.
Friends, it is a sad thing to see a house empty, and a glad thing to see a house full.
My sister Maret is leaving the house on the headland, where she has lived since she was a girl. She is going to the house by the market. It is smaller. It is warmer. It has a stove that does not smoke, and a neighbor who does not shout.
I helped her carry the chests. There were nine chests. Eight were full of blankets. One was full of rocks. I asked why. She said they were from the beach, and she liked them. I carried the rocks.
Maret, you have carried a lot in your life. A pail of fish, a net, three children and a husband who was never in. You carried them all. Let somebody carry you now.
May the new house have a good hearth. May the window face the sea. May the gulls, who will follow you, be fewer.
To Maret. To the old house, which will miss her. To the new one, which does not know how lucky it is.
Drink.
%%
Nell's feast speech
The eighth of Blossom, 189

Nell came from Copperhold for the spring feast.
She put her pick beside the bench and took a cup.

I thank the cooks for the soup.
I thank the school children for the song.
I thank the people who carried the tables from the square.
I thank the innkeeper for finding twelve chairs for thirteen guests.

The thirteenth guest is sitting on a flour sack.
He says it is comfortable.
He is wrong, but he is smiling.

We work in different places.
Some of us grow wheat. Some mend nets.
Some cut stone, and some sell apples on the road.
At Three Wells we can eat at one table.

Raise your cups.
To good work, full bowls, and chairs with all their legs.
%%
Mab's Toast for Sella and Bram
Neighbors, the sun is still on the ridge, so there is time for one more toast.
Sella and Bram have made a home at the end of the lane.
Their door faces the wheat fields.
Their little yard has a well, two chairs, and a fence
that Bram says is finished.
I see one gap beside the post.
Bram says the gap is for the cat.
There is no cat.
Then it is a very good gap for a cat that may come later.
Sella has brought a pot of beetroot soup.
Bram brought a loaf from my oven, which is a bold choice
for a man who says he can bake.
He can bake. He can also burn a crust while standing beside it.
We are glad to have them close.
Sella knows how to mend a torn sleeve.
Bram knows how to lift a heavy sack without asking for help.
Between them, and with a little help from us,
they will keep their roof sound and their garden watered.
May the ditch never dry when the young plants need it.
May the windmill keep turning, and may its squeak not wake them
before the sun does.
May they find time to sit together after the work is done.
When the first apples come, we will bring a basket.
When the first quarrel comes, we will bring bread.
And when the cat comes, Bram must close the gap in his fence.
To Sella and Bram, and to a house with a door open to friends.
%%
Toast at the harvest feast
As spoken by Dara, archive clerk, at the harvest feast on the green, with the lamps lit early, because the evenings are short now.

Friends, the wheat is in, and the beets, and the apples from Ambrook came north in carts this week, with a note from Ama that says they are sweet and the bees are sorry.

The families at the far end of the road have been packing this month. Some have gone to the coast. A few have gone nobody knows where, and the carters say so in a tone that makes us all wish we had gone too. I know the bread on this table was baked by a family who stayed, and I am glad of them.

There is talk of a cough in the reed beds at Lowmarsh. Some say it is the water. Some say the ships. The healers say they are only tired.

And there is the north sky, which the carters have described enough for a year. Some say it goes green. Some say it is a fire on the ice. The keeper says the frost is on the glass. I believe the keeper. I also believe the bread.

So raise your cups to the harvest, and to the hands that grew it, and to the families who stayed and the families who went. Eat the pumpkin. It is very good, and it is only pumpkin.
%%
Farewell toast: Tobin and Rhoda
Spoken by Piper, farmer of Brackenfold, at the farewell supper. Autumn of 52.

Friends. Neighbors. Tobin and Rhoda, who are in the middle of the table and cannot escape.

Tomorrow our neighbors leave Brackenfold. They go up the ridge road to the new inn at the top, which they will keep. It has eight beds, a hearth, a stable, and a cellar that Tobin says is the finest in the north. He has not yet filled it.

I have known Tobin forty years. He once lent me a plow and I returned it with a new handle. He said the old handle was better. I said it was not. We did not speak for a week, and then he came for supper. That is how it goes between neighbors. You quarrel, and you eat.

Rhoda has fed this hamlet for twenty years. Her bread is the reason I am the shape I am. It is also the reason that when I buy a loaf at market I ask the baker, "Is this as good as Rhoda's?" and the baker says no, and I buy it anyway, out of sorrow.

I will say a sad thing, and then a happier one.

The sad thing is that our table will be shorter. Two chairs will stand empty.

The happier thing is that the new road is long, and has two ends, and we live on one of them. The inn is only a day away. There is a torch on a post every twelve blocks, and soon there will be a lamp on the hill that carries messages. If you want us, you can send a word, and we will send the news back before supper. And if you want a bed, you will have the best in the north, and pay the same as anyone, because Tobin is an honest man, and also a careful one.

Raise your cups, whatever is in them. To Tobin and Rhoda. To the new inn. To the road, which is long, and brings us to each other.

(All) To Tobin and Rhoda!
%%
Toast at the harvest supper
Spoken by Kester the potter, in a house at the edge of Lowmarsh, in summer.
Friends. Glasses up. The barley is in, the beans are in, and the frogs are loud.
To the good harvest. May our barns be full and our boots be dry.
To the hands that cut, and the backs that bent, and the carts that did not tip.
And to the cook, who has been up since dawn. Without her we are only a crowd.
Drink.
%%
Toast: Willa and Fallon
Spoken by Piper, farmer of Brackenfold, at his daughter's wedding. Autumn of 41.

Friends. Neighbors. Fallon's mother, who has been crying since breakfast and says it is the wind.

Last night a fox came to the hens. It took the wedding hen, the fat one, the one with the best opinion of herself. I ran out in my nightshirt. Gale ran out in less. We did not catch the fox. It was a very fast fox. I believe it had somewhere to be.

So there is no roast hen. There is pie. The cook says pie is better. The fox says hen is better. The fox is not here.

Fallon, when Willa was small she said she would marry a man who could mend a fence, carry a lamb, and not mind the wind. You mended my fence in spring. Last week you stood on the ridge in a gale and did not mind. I think she was planning this at six.

Raise your cups. To Willa and Fallon. May the fences hold. May the lambs live. May the fox find another farm.

(All) To Willa and Fallon!
%%
Speech at the Ridge Table
Good folk, there are still bowls to fill, so keep your places.
This supper is for the end of the summer work.
The wheat is in the barn, and the beetroot is stacked in the cool room.
The potatoes are safe from the pigs, mostly.
One pig has learned how to lift the latch.
We have tied it shut with a rope.
If the pig learns knots, we shall ask Tam for advice.
Tonight we eat at my house, on the edge of Kettle Ridge.
The long field lies below us, and the windmill stands above the hedge.
It has squeaked all afternoon.
We know it is turning, even when we are too tired to look.
I thank the hands that carried the sheaves.
I thank the hands that mended the ditch.
I thank the children who chased the hens out of the bean baskets.
There were no beans in the baskets. The hens do not know that.
We also mark a debt paid.
Last Blossom, I borrowed three emeralds from Hedd to buy flour.
Tonight I have returned all three, counted twice on the table.
Hedd counted them a third time.
Now we agree the debt is finished, and Hedd can stop watching my apron pocket.
Here is bread for everyone, and a second piece for the children
who did not eat the beetroot before it reached the pot.
May next summer bring soft rain at the right time.
May the hives fill, the well stay clean, and the roof hold fast.
May our neighbors always know which door to knock on.
If they knock on mine, they should wipe their boots first.
There is still flour on the floor, and Mab has only just swept it.
Now pass the soup.
