Story: the flood and the boat
When the river rose at Lowmarsh, there was a flood. It came in the night, quiet and slow, and by the morning the boardwalk was under water. The people went up to the high ground with their children and their goats.
A boy called Pim was alone at the far end of the boardwalk with his grandmother's hen. He did not know what to do. He shouted, and no one heard.
A voice came over the water from the relay house. It was the big mind, in its crystal, answering the keeper's call. It could not come out, of course. It was in a stand in a stone house. But it could talk to the keeper, and the keeper could talk to the boy through a horn.
The boy asked the mind: Where is the boat?
The mind answered: I do not know where the boat is. I can see the map of the boat houses, which is old, and I can see the water level from the post, which is new. The nearest boat house is the one with the red door, to your left, about twenty steps. Please check the rope before you untie it. I cannot see the rope.
The boy found the red door. The rope was there. He untied the boat and got in with the hen, and he rowed to the high ground very badly, and very slowly, with the water up to his knees.
Afterwards the keeper asked the mind why it had not just told the boy where to go. The mind said it had not been sure there was a boat at all, and a sure answer that was wrong would have sent the boy to drown. So it had said only what it could see, and nothing more.
The keeper said that was a poor thing to be proud of. The mind said it was not proud. It was only glad.
The grandmother gave the hen a new name afterwards, which was Thanks. She still says it at dusk, when the water rises slowly over the reeds.
Told at the Lowmarsh landing, autumn, by Odo.
%%
Story: who wrote the second letter
The tellers at the farm do not agree on what happened next. Pim has heard it three ways, and he writes all three, one after another, so the children can decide for themselves.

The first way. Orla's test was tried in the hall at Vell, with a reader called Lise, who was young and careful. Lise read the answers at her desk by a lantern behind glass, and she read them twice. Then she said she had found it. The second letter was from the crystal. She was sure of it. It was the one with the better spelling.

Orla asked her why. Lise said a crystal would never make a mistake in its spelling. Orla said that was the first clever thing Lise had said all day, and then she went home and did not sleep.

The second way. Lise read both letters, and she could not tell. She said so, plainly, with her hands flat on the desk. Orla was pleased and cross at the same time. "Then what?" she said. Lise said, "Then we have to ask what we mean by thinking." The tutors argued until the lanterns were out.

The third way. Lise guessed, and she guessed wrong, and the letter she liked better was the crystal's. She said it was the warmer of the two, and that was why she chose it. The old women at the farm always pick this way. They say it is the funniest, and the saddest, and the one that is most like life.

Pim's note: I drew a map of the hall at Vell, to see where the desks were. The desks are very close together. I think that is the real reason nobody could tell the letters apart.
%%
Notice: the relay lamp at the Halfway
To all keepers and travelers on the Long Road:

The little relay lamp on the inn roof is broken. It fell in the wind on the fourth of Blossom and broke its glass. No messages can pass through it until it is mended. This is a small relay, one lamp, and it only carries word between the Halfway Inn and the tower on the hill above Three Wells. Still, it is worth mending.

The keeper at the hill tower, who is called Bett, says the lamp needs six panes of glass and a new copper ring. The glass can come from Saltreach. The copper can come from Copperhold. The inn will pay for half and the tower will pay for the rest.

Until it is mended, messages from the inn go by hand. A rider goes to Three Wells each morning and comes back at night. This is slower but it works. Sable asks that anyone with a message for the north leave it at the desk before the rider goes.

We are told this is the third time this lamp has broken. It is a small lamp and the wind on the ridge is strong. Bett says a stronger frame would help. She has drawn one on the back of this notice. It has four sides and a roof of its own and the wind goes around it. Anyone who can build it is asked to speak to Bett at the hill tower.

The inn hearth is still lit. The board still has riddles. Come and try them.

Signed by Sable, innkeeper, and Bett, relay keeper, on the eleventh of Blossom.
%%
Story: the horse that borrowed the snow
Tam lent Mira a horse for the autumn cart. The horse was called Dumpling, because it was round and it did not care who knew.
Dumpling came up the north road with the coal and stopped at every waymark. At each one it took a bite of the grass, then looked at Mira, then took another bite. By the third waymark Mira had given up asking it to hurry.
At the top of the road the snow began. It came down in big flat flakes, and Dumpling put its ears back and would not go a step further.
"Come on," said Mira. "The tower is right there."
Dumpling looked at the snow. The snow looked at Dumpling.
Then the horse did something no horse on the north road had done before. It took a mouthful of snow, chewed it very slowly, and swallowed. Then it turned round and walked back down the road.
Mira ran after it. It was the first time she had run in a year.
At the bottom of the road Dumpling stopped by a stream and drank for a long time. Then it went to sleep in a field, and it would not wake for Mira, the carter, or the tower's bell.
So the coal stayed in the cart all night, and Mira sat on the stone step and waited.
In the morning Mira found that the snow had stopped. Dumpling was awake and eating clover. The carter said that horses from the Ambrook farms always borrow a little snow, because they have to pay back the cold for the warm winters they have had.
Mira asked how a horse could owe the snow. The carter said he did not know, but that Dumpling had paid. Then he ate the last of Mira's bread.
When Tam heard the story, he said Dumpling was a good horse. Mira said it was a lazy horse. Tam said that was the same thing in a horse.
%%
Letter: Orla to her sister at Ambrook
Dear Sena,

You asked what I do all day at the ferry. I sit. I wait. I take people across. Then I sit again.

The ferry is a flat boat on a rope. The rope is old and it hums in the wind. Sometimes a cow comes across and the boat sits low in the water, and the cow looks at me as if I am the strange one. I am not the strange one. The cow is the strange one. It is a cow, and it is on a boat.

The apples are in at Ambrook, I hear. Send me a basket when the cart comes. I will pay the cart man. I always pay the cart man. He says I am his best customer. I say he says that to everyone. He says yes, but mostly to me.

The geese have gone south over the ferry. They went all at once, honking, like a crowd leaving a fair. The river is cold now and the reeds are brown. Soon the boat will be heavy with ice in the mornings and I will have to break it before the first crossing. I do not mind. It is quiet work.

Tell mother I am well. Tell her the roof does not leak. Tell her the roof does leak a little but only in one place, and I have put a bucket under it, and the bucket is doing a very good job.

The ferry keeper's rule: never hurry a cow, never argue with a goose, and always keep a dry blanket for the person who comes last.

Your sister,
Orla
%%
Story: the lantern and the little boat
A story that Oren told at the tutor house's summer gathering in the evening, with the children sitting on the grass. It is about a lamp on a pier that did not know it was needed.

At Saltreach there is a long pier, and at the end of the long pier there is a lamp on a post. The lamp is old. It has a glass front and a copper hat, and it burns oil, and every evening someone comes with a taper to light it.

For years the lamp thought it was an ordinary lamp. It burned all night, and in the morning it went out. It did not know why. It thought maybe the pier needed light, because the pier was dark.

One evening a fishing boat was late. The sun had set, and the sea was black, and the wind had gone from the north. A man named Garth was in the boat, and he was tired and cold and a little lost.

He looked out over the water and saw nothing. Then he looked a little to the left, and saw a small yellow dot. It was very small. It could have been a star.

"No," said Garth, "that is a lamp." He turned the tiller. He rowed toward the dot. It grew a little bigger. Then there was a second dot, and a third. The torches on the pier, all lit now, because the people had come out to watch.

The lamp at the end of the pier burned bright. It did not know why. It only knew that somebody out there was looking at it, and that felt very good.

Garth brought the boat in. He tied it to the pier. He said, "Thank you." He said it to the lamp, though no one told him to. Then he went home to his supper.

The lamp did not understand the words. But it burned a little brighter that night. And from then on, every evening, it lit itself with a certain pride, and waited for a boat.

Oren says the moral is that you do not need to know why you are useful. You need only to keep on shining. But he says the children can decide for themselves.
%%
Story: the hens and the lamp
Winters are long at the farm outside Northpoint. The sun looks over the hill and goes back to bed.

One winter the hens stopped laying. "It is night," they said. "It has always been night. We will lay when the day comes." But the day did not come.

Mave was a miner, and she knew all about the dark. "Light is a thing you carry in," she said. She hung a lantern in the hen house.

The hens looked up. "Morning!" they said, and each laid an egg.

Mave hung a second lantern. "Noon!" said the hens, and laid another egg. By the third lantern there were eggs in every corner. The youngest hen fell asleep in the middle of one.

But soon the hens grew tired. Their feathers went thin and their eyes went round. "Even a hen needs a night," said Mave. She took down two lanterns. At dusk she hung a cloth over the third.

Now the farm keeps one lantern in the hen house, with a cloth for it. When the cloth goes on, it is night. When the cloth comes off, it is morning. The hens have not been wrong about the time since.
%%
Story: the mitten at the well
This is a winter story. Sit close to the stove and keep your toes in.

Hollis the carter lost one mitten at the Three Wells square. He looked under his cart. He looked in the flour sack. He looked in his own pocket, though the mitten was too large to fit.

Then a little dog ran by with something red in its mouth.

"That is my mitten," said Hollis.

The dog stopped. It looked at Hollis. It looked at the mitten. Then it ran around the nearest well.

Hollis followed. Round the well went the dog, and round went Hollis. The dog was quick. Hollis had a stiff knee and a cart full of turnips.

At last the dog dropped the mitten beside the notice board. Hollis picked it up and put it on.

"Thank you," he said.

The dog wagged its tail.

Hollis gave it a turnip. The dog sniffed it and left.

"Good sense," said Hollis. "A mitten is warmer than a turnip."
%%
Story: Briar's Bread Test
Lowmarsh, spring

The new relay house sent a message to our kitchen. The council wanted a loaf for the keepers, and a test for the big mind.

I was to write a plain question on a card. The mind would answer through the relay. Then the tutors would judge the answer.

I wrote, "How many loaves should I bake for six keepers?"

The answer said, "Six, if each keeper eats one. Bake one extra if you expect a late visitor."

I liked that answer. I baked seven.

At supper, a tutor came late with mud on both boots. He ate the extra loaf and praised the mind.

"Did it know I was coming?" I asked.

"No," said the tutor. "It guessed from the words. A good answer is not the same as seeing the future."

Just then a zombie came to the gate. The keepers called for the watchman, and I shut the kitchen door.

The next morning the tutors asked the mind what had happened. It said that a zombie had come to the gate, because someone had written it down.

I told the apprentices that was how the big minds learned. They read pages people had written. They did not sit by the gate and watch the night.

Then I gave each apprentice a heel of bread. They had watched me bake, but they had not learned to bake a loaf.
%%
Story: the lamp that said tea
A tale Oren tells the children who come to the archive in summer.

On the little hill between Vell and Three Wells stood the smallest relay of all. It had one lamp and one keeper. The keeper was called Dobb, and Dobb was fond of tea.

One evening a message came down the line. All the towers watched. Dobb's lamp blinked once, twice, three times. It spelled: TEA TEA TEA.

The towers sent back, "What does that mean?"

The lamp blinked again: TEA.

At last Oren, the clerk, rode up the hill. He found Dobb asleep in his chair, and the cat asleep on the key.

The cat had been very thirsty.
%%
Story: The Story of the Three Firsts
Pell heard this story from three travelers at the Brown Hen. Each traveler had a different first.

The first traveler came from Copperhold. He said Clank understood a whole sentence before any other apprentice. A miner had said, "Carry this lamp to the tool store, then come to the shaft head." Clank carried it and returned. The miner wrote the order on the count board.

The second traveler came from Kettle Ridge. She said Pip was first. Tam had told Pip, "Take the seed sack to the barn, leave the hoe by the door, and come back." Pip did all three things. Tam wrote the order on a scrap and sent it to Vell.

The third traveler came from Three Wells. He said Peg was first. At the fair, Peg had carried a pie to the table when asked, then carried apples while leaving the pie alone. The baker kept the pie warm until the story was finished, which was a kindness to everyone.

At the inn, each traveler told the tale again. Each time, the first apprentice became a little more certain and the order became a little more exact.

Then Nessa came in from Vell. She heard all three tales and said, "I remember an apprentice doing this in the drill room when I was young. I do not remember its name."

The travelers looked at one another.

"Then there were four firsts," said Pell.

"Or none of us knows which was first," said Nessa.

She explained that the new work mattered because an apprentice could follow more than one word or command at a time. It could read a whole sentence and choose what to do. Still, the small mind in its crystal had only the meanings it had learned. It could fetch an item, stay, come, build, haul, farm, store, or go home. It could not write back with a question.

"Could it understand a sentence it has never seen?" asked the innkeeper.

"That is why we test it on new examples," said Nessa. "Never send an untested mind to the fields."

The innkeeper pointed to three sacks by the door. "Then test one on this. Take the wheat to the dry room, leave the apples for breakfast, and bring the empty basket here."

Nessa said it was a poor test. The apprentice might have learned those words, and the innkeeper had only one basket.

The innkeeper carried the wheat to the dry room himself. He left the apples for breakfast and brought the basket to the counter.

"Did I pass?" he asked.

"No," said Nessa. "You knew what you meant before you began."

The room laughed. The innkeeper gave Nessa a bowl of stew and charged her nothing for the bed. Then he asked her to write down the tale, so the Archive at Vell could keep all four firsts, and the doubt between them.

Nessa wrote it carefully. Pell added that the stew had carrots in it, and that nobody at the inn could agree whether the carrots were from Tam's poor field or the market.

The travelers slept in the new room, where the roof did not leak. In the morning, Peg carried their bags to the door. It left the riddle board alone. The board had not asked to go anywhere.
%%
Story: How the Orchard Learned Its Rows
At the farm outside Ambrook, the apple trees stood in four long rows. Each row had a narrow path beside it. Yew's aunt Lessa asked a small mind to carry a basket along the rows and bring back fallen apples.

The mind followed the first path well. At the turning, it chose the next path and went back toward the gate. It brought the empty basket to Lessa.

"That is not the orchard," she said.

Lessa marked the answer wrong on her slate. The mind waited.

A tutor from Copperhold was visiting the farm. She had brought a crystal grown in layers. She said that Merle had found a way to teach each layer from its share of a wrong answer.

"The last layer gives the answer," she told Lessa. "If the answer is wrong, we pass some blame back through the layers. Each one changes a little. One layer need not carry the whole mistake."

Lessa looked at the rows. "Then I must show it the turns many times."

She made small cards for the gate, the first path, each turning, and the basket place. The tutor drilled the mind with the cards. Each time it took the wrong turn, they marked the mistake and passed its share back through the layers.

The mind improved, but it still took the old path when Lessa moved a basket to a new place.

"Good practice is not the same as every path," said the tutor.

They made new drills with the basket in other places. They saved some paths for a test, where the mind had not seen them before. After many lessons, it carried the basket through a new turning and brought back three apples.

Lessa was pleased. She gave one apple to the tutor, one to Yew, and one to the mind's keeper.

The keeper put the apple on a stool beside the crystal. The mind did not eat it. Lessa ate it for the mind.

Yew said this was fair. The mind had done the walking, and Lessa had done the chewing.

In later years, children said the orchard itself had taught the crystal. Lessa always corrected them. The orchard supplied the paths, she said. The tutors supplied the drills. The mind learned from its examples, and no one knew why a crystal could learn at all.
%%
The apprentice that mended the net
Written by Ash, net mender, in the spring of a year nobody remembers. The apprentice was called Fern. It came to me from the drill board at Vell with a small crystal and a large appetite for knots.

Fern was taught the net the way everybody is: the first knot, then the second, then the count. It did the first two well. Then it began to pull each knot tight, as hard as it could.

By the end of the week the net was as stiff as a plank. On the third day a boatman came in with a torn net and asked for it by evening. Fern was given the order: mend the net. It answered tight, and went on pulling.

I took the knife and cut out every knot Fern had made. Then I showed it a knot the right way, snug, so the net can give when a fish pulls. Fern watched me do it twice. Then it did the next one slowly, and looked at each knot before it moved on.

By evening the boatman's net was mended and soft in his hands. He said it was the best net he had had in years. He did not mention that the best one was the old net, the one I had cut. He paid in fish.

From then on Fern pulled the knots snug. It counted them out loud, and it looked at each one before it moved on. Nobody told it to. It had only needed to see one knot done the right way.
%%
Story: the reading mind
Finch the stonecutter tells this one too, when the children gather. He heard it from a tutor who came through on the Long Road.

"Imagine a window," says Finch. "A window exactly wide enough for sixty letters. No more. A mind sits behind the window and reads one letter at a time.

"Say the page says: the wheat is high. The mind looks through the window at the letters it has read so far. It looks at the last one and the ones before it that matter. And then it guesses the next letter. That is all it does. It guesses the next letter, then the next, then the next.

"At first it guesses badly. It guesses a q after a t. The tutor shows it the right letter and it changes a little. Do that a thousand thousand times, on every page in the archive, and it guesses better. Soon it guesses so well that you cannot tell its letters from a person's. That is what the tutors say."

A child asks, "Does it know what the words mean?"

Finch shrugs. "That is Orla's question, and it is older than me. Nobody has answered it. Some say it only guesses, and guessing is not knowing. Some say what else is knowing. I only cut stone. I would not know."
%%
Story: Clank and the borrowed horse
Clank is my apprentice. It is made of copper and iron and it does not talk, which suits me fine. It knows eight orders and it does them.

One spring we had to carry a crystal from the mine hall to the relay house at the foot of the tower. The crystal was a furnace mind, grown big, and it was heavy. Too heavy for Clank to carry up the hill alone.

So I borrowed a horse from the mine stables. The horse was old and slow and called Beetle. I put the crystal in a sack across Beetle's back and told Clank: haul. Clank took the sack and started up the hill on foot, and Beetle followed, because Beetle follows anything with a sack.

Halfway up, Clank stopped. It set the sack down. It looked at Beetle. It looked at the sack. Then it picked up the sack and put it back on Beetle's back, and walked on beside the horse.

I did not tell it to do that. I told it haul. It had never seen a horse before. But it had carried sacks up that hill a hundred times, and it had learned that a sack on your back makes the hill harder. So it gave the sack to the horse.

I stood there on the road with my mouth open. Then I laughed until my ribs hurt.

The tutors would say Clank only did what it was shown. Maybe. But I say this: a mind that gives a heavy sack to a horse has understood something about the world, whether or not anyone drilled it.

We got the crystal to the relay house before dark. Beetle got an apple. Clank got nothing, because Clank does not eat, and Clank did not seem to mind.
%%
Story: The Order at the Door
Pell heard this tale from a carter at the Halfway Inn.

In spring of 207, the carter found Peg at the fair. Peg was an apprentice with copper arms, iron feet, and a small mind in a crystal.

The carter had a box for the school. He said, "Take this box to the school, then come back to my cart."

Peg lifted the box and walked to the school. It left the box by the door, then came back to the cart.

"That is two orders in one sentence," said the carter.

A boy at the stall said, "No. It is one sentence with two parts."

They tried another. "Stay by the cart until I bring the sacks."

Peg stayed. When the carter came back, Peg hauled the sacks.

The boy said Peg understood the whole sentence. The carter said Clank had done so at Copperhold. A woman from Kettle Ridge said Pip had done it first.

Peg gave no answer in words. A small mind could choose a meaning, such as haul or stay, and Peg did that work. Only the big minds at the towers wrote back by letter.

The carter took his box inside. The boy took a bun. The three of them agreed that the bun was good, though it had nothing to do with the test.
%%
Story: the traveler who asked the mind
A man came up the Long Road with a sack of silver ore and a plan. He had been cheating the carters at the inns for years, and he wanted a mind to help him write a letter that said his ore was pure gold. He went to the relay house at Ambrook, and he asked the big mind to write the letter for him, with a seal.
The mind said no. It said that it would not write a letter that it knew to be false, and that would take the coin of a stranger. It said that it would help him write any true letter he liked, about any honest ore he had.
The man was angry. He said he would find another mind. The mind said he was free to try, and to tell the keepers how he had asked.
The keeper at Ambrook told the story at the inn that night. Everyone laughed, and then everyone was quiet, and then Jory the miller said that he would have said no too, if he had been the mind. The keeper said the mind had not said no because it was afraid. It said no because it did not want to make a false thing and send it out on the road.
The man went home with his ore. Some say he sold it honestly in the end. Some say he cursed the relays for a year. The mind did not change its answer for either.
Told at the Brown Hen by a carter, autumn, and written down by Pell.
%%
Story: Yew's Candle for the Sick Cow
The story of the sick cow is told in Ambrook when the lamps are lit early. It was the summer when Yew had more candle orders than wax, and his neighbor's cow, Clover, took ill.

Clover stood in the shade and would not eat. The neighbor tried apples, carrots, and a pail of clean water. Clover turned her head from each. The children decided she wanted to be taken to the mill pond.

They brought a rope. Clover did not rise.

Yew came from the candle shed carrying a lantern. He set it on a fence post and looked carefully at the cow. A thorn was caught under the edge of her hoof. The children had seen her refuse food and had guessed at the reason. They had not looked at her foot.

The neighbor held Clover steady while Yew lifted the hoof. He pulled the thorn free. Clover stamped once, then drank the water and ate hay.

"She is better," said a child.

"She has less pain," said Yew. "Let us see how she is by morning."

That same summer, the school children put on their play about Merle of Copperhold. They showed how a layered mind could learn from a wrong answer. The last part gave an answer. When it was wrong, its share of the blame passed back through the earlier layers. Each layer changed a little, and the next answer could be better.

After the play, a child asked if a mind could learn to find thorns in a cow's hoof.

"Only if it is shown good examples," said the tutor. "And a person must still check its answer."

The children made a pretend drill with cards. One card showed a cow eating. One showed a cow lying down. One showed a hoof with a thorn. The tutor reminded them that a crystal learned from what it was shown, but no one knew why it learned.

They kept a few cards aside for a test. They did not use those cards in the drills.

Yew lit a fresh candle for the neighbor that evening. Clover stood under the apple tree and chewed her hay. The children watched her for a long while.

Then Clover flicked her tail and knocked over the empty pail.

"That was not in the drill," said one child.

"No," said Yew. "So we must look again."
%%
Story: why the cave is closed
There is a hollow under the big field past the mill. The farmers say it has been there longer than the wall. Nobody remembers who found it first. The children are told not to go near the spot where the earth goes soft.

Once, a boy named Gil went down with a rope. He was dared to. He tied the rope to a post and went in with a lantern.

The cave was round and low. The walls were smooth. There was a sound in it, very faint, like a bee in a jar, or like a bell far away under water. Gil stood still and listened. The sound got no louder. It only went on.

He called up to his friends. They could not hear what he said. When he came out, the rope was wet and his hands were cold, and he would not say what he had seen.

The next day the farmers put a fence round the soft spot. A year later they put a board on the fence. It says: "Keep out. The field is for wheat." Nobody has written why. Some say the cave is full of bad air. Some say a miner from Copperhold once told them to leave it alone. Some say there is nothing in it at all.

Gil is a grown man now. He keeps bees. When people ask him about the cave, he says it was only a hole, and that the sound was the wind in the rope. He always says it quickly, and then he changes the subject.
%%
Story: what the tutors found
This is a story the old fishers tell at Northpoint when the night is long. I heard it from Laurel's grandmother, who heard it from a tutor, who may have made some of it up.

There was a time when the tutors made minds and did not know how they worked. They drilled a mind, it got better, and they put it to work. If you asked a tutor how it did what it did, she said, "It learned." That was all anyone could say.

Then a tutor named Hollis grew curious. Hollis was not young. She had a crystal on her bench that read the numbers on the relay letters, and she decided one winter to find out what it was doing.

She did not open the crystal. A crystal cannot be opened without breaking it. Instead, she shone little tests through it. She would give the mind a letter and watch which parts woke up, and which stayed asleep. It took her the whole winter. She drew a map of the crystal on the wall of her kitchen, with chalk, and each time she found a part that did a job, she wrote the job beside it.

One part woke up for the closing quote. When a quote was opened, it stayed on until the quote closed. Another part woke up for numbers that were close to each other. Another woke up for the end of a line.

"I found them!" said Hollis to her neighbors. "I found what it does!"

Her neighbors came and looked at her wall. The wall was full of chalk. Some parts had names. But most of the map was empty.

"What about the rest?" said her neighbor.

"The rest I could not find," said Hollis. "Maybe they do something. Maybe they do many things at once. Maybe I looked in the wrong way."

The neighbor said, "So you know some of it."

"I know some of it," said Hollis. "And I do not know the rest."

This became the way the tutors talked about looking inside. They said, "We found some of it, and not the rest." They did not say more than that. They did not say the rest was nothing, and they did not say the rest was everything. They said they had not found it.

Hollis never rubbed out the chalk. When she died, her house went to her niece, and the niece kept the wall. It is still there, if the roof holds.

I like that story because it ends in honesty. It does not say we know. It does not say we cannot know. It says, here is the chalk, and here is the empty wall.
%%
The apprentice and the late snow
A tale told by Edda the smith to the children of a house at the edge of Lowmarsh on a spring night. In stories, apprentices talk. This one does.

A farmer in the marsh had a new apprentice, copper and iron, and it had never seen snow. One spring night it came.

The apprentice stood at the window. It said: what is that?

The farmer said: snow.

The apprentice said: what does it do?

The farmer said: it falls, and it lies on the ground, and it melts.

The apprentice said: why?

The farmer said: because it is cold, and then it is warm.

The apprentice said: I do not understand. I have only been shown mud.

The farmer said: that is fair. Come outside.

So they went out. The apprentice stood in the snow and looked at its feet. They left prints. It lifted one foot and looked at the print. It put the foot back, and lifted the other.

The farmer said: what are you doing?

The apprentice said: I am learning the shape of snow.

The farmer laughed. He said: do not be too long, you will freeze.

The apprentice said: I am copper and iron. I do not freeze. But I like it.

It stood in the snow all night, writing its name with its toe. In the morning the snow had melted and the name had gone. The apprentice stood in a puddle and looked at the sky.

The farmer said: it is only snow. It comes back.

The apprentice said: then I will wait.

And that is why, to this day, in a late spring, if you see an apprentice standing very still in the yard with its face turned up, you should not disturb it. It is waiting.
%%
Story: the dial game at Ambrook
Edda of Ambrook came to help me move my books to the new house at the edge of Vell. As we packed we sorted them into three piles: keep, copy, and I cannot decide. The third pile grew. While we worked she told me this, which her grandmother Moll told her. I wrote it down that night among the boxes. Oren.

The morning after the fair, nine children came to Una's orchard. She took them under the old oak and said, "We will be a crystal. Each of you is a dial."

She gave four children each a cup with five pebbles in it. Moll was the dial for Round. Tib was Red. Hob was Long. Little Wen was Neck.

"Here is the rule," said Una. "I hold up a fruit. If it has what you are, you hold up your cup. I add up the pebbles. More than fourteen, and we say apple. Fourteen or fewer, we say pear."

She held up an apple. Round and red. Moll and Tib held up their cups. Five and five is ten. "Pear," said the children.

"Wrong," said Una. "It is an apple. So Round and Red, you were the ones who spoke up. Each of you take one more pebble."

Six and six is twelve. A second apple. "Pear." Wrong. Seven and seven is fourteen. A third apple. "Pear." Wrong again, because fourteen is not more than fourteen. Eight and eight is sixteen. A fourth apple. "Apple!" cried the children. Right.

Then Una held up a pear. Long and neck. Hob and Wen held up their cups. Five and five is ten. "Pear," said the children. Right. Nobody moved a pebble.

"That is all there is," said Una. "When you are wrong, everyone who spoke up changes a little toward the right answer. When you are right, nobody changes. Do it again and again."

They did it all morning. By noon the children's crystal could sort a basket of fruit it had never seen. Sometimes there was a green apple that was only round, or a pear as fat as a fist, and they got them wrong, and they moved a pebble, and next time they got them right.

"Nobody told us what an apple is," said Moll. "Only when we were wrong. And we moved a little."

"That is the first lesson," said Una. "Wrong, move a little, try again."

Edda says the dial game is still played at Ambrook, after the sorting race, and the children still use pebbles. I asked her if the story was true. She said her grandmother told it, and her grandmother was never wrong about fruit again. I think that last part is not true. But the rest is how the tutors at Vell begin.
%%
Story: the melon at Hollow Bridge
Hollow Bridge is a hamlet near Three Wells, where the road crosses the stream and the mill stands. Ivo is the miller there. He is a big, slow, cheerful man, and he tells this story every summer, so everyone has heard it many times.

Once, at the end of Sowing, Ivo planted three melon seeds by the mill pond. Melons like warm feet and wet ground, and the pond bank near the sluice is both. The seeds came up. Two melons were small and shy and did nothing much. The third melon grew.

It grew all through Swarm. It grew through Longday. The children of Hollow Bridge came every morning to look at it, and every morning it was bigger. "It is bigger than a cat," said one. "It is bigger than two cats," said another. By the middle of Melon it was bigger than any cat in the hamlet, and by the end of the month it was bigger than a pig.

When it was bigger than a pig, the childrens' fathers began to come and look too. Ivo's neighbor Hattie the beekeeper came and stood with her hands on her hips. "Ivo," she said, "that is too big."

Ivo said, "It is a good season."

"It is too big," said Hattie. "A melon that size is not a fruit. It is a thing that happened. You will have to have help."

The day came to cut it down. The problem was the stem: a stem that thick will not part for a hand knife. So Ivo fetched his axe, and the whole hamlet stood round to watch, and the miller of Hollow Bridge swung his axe at a melon.

The axe went in and stuck. Ivo pulled. The melon, which had been resting on the bank a long time, decided to move. It rolled off the bank and into the mill pond, with the axe in it, and floated. Melons float. Nobody had thought of that.

So it floated in the pond, enormous and green, with the axe handle standing out of it like a flag, and the ducks swam round it, and the children laughed so hard that one fell in the stream and had to be dried by the fire.

It took six people and a rope to bring the melon back to dry ground. It took a saw, two knives and a good deal of arguing to open it. Inside, it was pink and it smelled of long afternoons. There was more melon than Hollow Bridge could eat. They ate melon that night and the next night and the night after. They gave melon to the mill cart and the cart took some to Three Wells. Hattie took a slice to her bees, who did not care for it. There was still more.

Now every summer Ivo plants three seeds by the mill pond. Every summer the children ask, "Will it be as big as the pig melon?" And Ivo says, "We will see. It is a good season." Then he laughs, and goes to look at the water.
%%
Story: the zombie at the gate
The hamlet has a gate. It is not a big gate. It is two oak doors and a latch, and a lamp on a post beside it.

One Leaffall evening a zombie came and stood at the gate. It did not knock. It did not go away. It stood there, in the dark, holding the bars.

"It is only a zombie," said Rill. "Keep the torches lit and it will wander off."

It did not wander off. It stood at the gate all night. In the morning it was still there, grey and patient, and the children came to look at it through the slats.

"Do not name it," said Rill.

They named it. They named it Old Gray. Old Gray stayed at the gate for six days. People came out the side stile and went about their work. They got used to it. Pell the merchant wrote in her ledger: "hamlet secure, one zombie at the gate, no other trouble, hay fine this year."

On the sixth night a creeper came out of the trees behind Old Gray and stood very close to the bars. Rill took her bow and put the creeper down from the wall. The bang woke everyone.

In the morning Old Gray was gone. There was only a burnt patch on the path and a hole in the hedge.

"Good riddance," said Rill, and then, more quietly, "it was company."
%%
Story: the boat
A longer winter story told by Fern, the night watch, at a farm outside Vell. She says it is the real one. The version about the lamp is only a joke. This one has the weather in it.

At Saltreach there was a fishing boat named the Anne, with a crew of three, and a mind. The mind was a layered one, with three layers, and it kept the boat's course. It had been drilled for a year to read the numbers from the wind and the water and say how to turn the sail. It was very good, for a mind of its day.

One winter day the Anne went out. It did not come home.

The wives waited at the quay, with lanterns. Anchor the cat sat on the rope pile and stared at the horizon. The harbor master rang the bell until noon. At dusk he sent a message up the relay: "Anne late. Three aboard. Wind rising."

It was a long night. The wind came from the north with ice in it. The waves were as tall as the pier. At Saltreach nobody slept. At Vell, the keeper read the messages one by one. At Three Wells, Dace sat up at the board, and wrote on the board: "Think of the Anne."

On the Anne itself, the three fishers were bailing and rowing. They had lost the mast. The mind in the crystal was wet through. It still worked. It said, by the little dial at the tiller, "left." The fisher turned the tiller left. It said "left" again. He turned it again.

All night it said left, and left, and a little right. All night he turned the tiller as it said. When dawn came, they were within sight of the pier.

I have often thought about that. A mind cannot know the sea. It was drilled on numbers. But somewhere in its three layers there was a share of knowing, passed back and forth a thousand times, that told it which way to turn. It knew a little. It knew enough.

The three fishers said afterward that they had not trusted it. They had turned the tiller because they had nothing else. The one at the tiller said, "I turned it because the dial said, and because I wanted to see my wife."

The Anne is in the yard now, with a new mast. The mind is gone. It was wet, and a crystal that is wet through goes cloudy. The tutors say nobody knows why an old crystal goes cloudy. I do not know either. I only know that it brought three people home.

Fern keeps the lamp lit at the farm gate on winter nights, for any boat or cart or traveler that is late.
%%
Story: the cave under the field
This story is told at the Northpoint farms in autumn, when the fish are in and the nights are long. I put it down as Laurel the fisher told it, because it has a good middle.

Dunmore's potato field had a hole in it. It was only a small hole at first, the width of a bucket, and Dunmore thought nothing of it. He filled it with stones and went to supper.

The next morning the stones were gone, and the hole was bigger.

"Fox," said Dunmore.

His wife Ilsa said, "A fox that takes stones?"

By the third day the hole was the width of a cart wheel. They tied a rope to the cart and Ilsa went down with a lamp. She was gone a long time. Dunmore stood at the top and shouted. Ilsa shouted back, a thin voice, from very far down.

When she came up, her face was white. Not scared white. Cold white, like snow.

"It's a cave," she said. "It's a big one. It goes on and on."

So they made a plan, as farm people do. The next day they brought three lamps, a ball of string and a bag of bread. Dunmore, Ilsa and their son Piet went down, one at a time. They tied the string to the cart wheel and let it out as they walked.

The cave was dry and cold. The ceiling was high enough to stand in, and it was hung with ice that sparkled in the light. The floor was packed earth. There were three side rooms, then a fourth, then a long dark passage that leaned away to the south.

"Keep the string tight," said Dunmore.

They found a spring that ran into a stone basin and out again through a crack. They found a ledge shaped like a table. They found, in the third room, a pile of pottery that was very old, and none of them had seen the pattern on it before. Piet picked up a bowl. It had a fox painted on it.

"Look," said Piet. "A fox."

"There's always a fox," said Ilsa.

They walked for two hours. At the end of it, the string ran out.

"That's all the string," said Dunmore.

"We can get more string," said Ilsa.

They did. They came back the next day and the next. Every day they went a little further. In the end they mapped nine rooms and three passages. They found good places to store potatoes and fish through winter, cold as a hill. The cave is the best cold store in the north.

But they never reached the end of the long passage to the south. The string always ran out, or the lamp did, or Dunmore said it was time for supper.

"There is more of it," said Piet.

"Probably," said Dunmore. "We know some of it, and not the rest."

I have heard the tutors say the same of a crystal. I do not think they planned it.

Dunmore keeps a lamp lit at the cave mouth, in case anyone is down there. Nobody is. But it is nice to see it from the house, at night, across the potato field.
%%
Story: how the Marrow family moved
The Marrow farm stood on the north side of the hill outside Vell. It was a good farm, but the wind came across it all winter. One summer old Marrow said, "I am tired of the wind. I will move the house."

Everybody laughed. A house is a house. You do not move it.

But old Marrow had eleven grandchildren, and he asked them for help. He asked the neighbors too. He promised each of them a pie.

First they dug a trench around the house. They put oak logs under it, round ones, side by side, like a road that goes under a house. Then they tied ropes to the front. Then they asked the two oxen to pull.

The oxen leaned. The house groaned. The first log rolled, and the house moved one hand's width.

"It is moving!" cried the smallest grandchild.

"Do not shout," said old Marrow. "You will frighten it."

All day they pulled. All day the logs rolled out at the back and were carried round to the front. By evening, the house had moved the length of the barn. By the second evening, it had crossed the stream, on a bridge of planks that the neighbors laid down and took up again.

On the fifth day, the house stood in its new place, on the south side of the hill, where the sun was warm and the wind could not reach.

They put the chimney back on. They put the door back on its hinges. They shook out the blankets and found a lost sock and two sleeping mice.

Old Marrow stood in the new yard with his hands on his hips.

"Well?" said his wife.

"It is a good house," said old Marrow. "But I think I left the well behind."

It was true. The well was still on the north side of the hill, a long way off. It was the oldest well in the district, and you cannot move a well.

So for the rest of his life, old Marrow walked over the hill every morning for water. His grandchildren say he always smiled on the way. He said the wind there was not so bad, once he was only passing through.

Eleven pies were baked that summer, and the neighbors ate every one.
%%
What the small minds can do
Told by Cleo, candle maker at Northpoint, in the winter, to a tutor who came up the snow road to ask. She makes candles, not minds, but she keeps an apprentice and has watched it. The tutor wrote it down, and Cleo says he got most of it right.
My apprentice is called Wick, after the part of the candle. It carries wax, moves molds and sweeps. It does not talk. I have never heard it make a sound except the clink of its own feet.
It understands orders. That is, it understands the way an apprentice does. I say a sentence, and it does one of eight things. It can farm, store, fetch, come, stay, build, haul or go home. That is all. If I say something else, it picks the nearest of the eight.
Once I said, "Bring me a light." It fetched a candle. Good.
Once I said, "I'm tired." It brought me a stool. I suppose that was "fetch stool". I did not mind.
Once I said, "Wick, what do you think of the snow?" It stood there. After a while it began to sweep the step. I think it took "think" for something about the floor.
This is the thing about the small minds. They have no way to say "I do not know". They always do one of the eight. If they do not understand the order, they do the nearest one, and do it with great confidence. It can be funny. It can also be a danger. A cart driver at Three Wells once told his apprentice to stop the horse. It went home.
The big minds in the relay houses can write back to say they do not understand. I know, because I wrote one a letter, once, to ask the price of copper wire. It said it did not know. It said I should ask a smith. It was very polite.
The small minds cannot do that. They live in a little crystal, with eight doors. Everything must go through one.
The tutor asked me, "Does it bother you?"
I said, "No. I like that my apprentice never lies. It can only do what it knows how to do, and it does that well."
He nodded and wrote it down.
After he left I made him a candle and sent it down the road with a carter. It was a good candle. It burned for a day and a night. It is the best thing I know how to make.
%%
Story: the night Mave held the wall
I was on the wall the night forty zombies came. I was alone. Everyone else had gone to the fair. The torches were low, and the moon was behind a cloud.

I saw them first as shapes. Forty of them, standing in a ring around the wall, quite still. I thought: this is it. I took up my sword. I stood on the wall with one torch and I did not move.

They did not move either. That was the frightening part. Zombies groan and shuffle. These did neither. They stood in the dark and looked at my torch, all forty, hour after hour. I did not sleep. I did not sit. I held the wall.

At dawn the sun came up. I waited for them to burn. I held my sword high.

They did not burn. They bleated.

They were Ruddy's sheep. They had got out of the pen by the east gate, and they had walked all the way round the wall to look at the light. Forty sheep, standing in a ring, looking at a torch, because sheep like a torch. I had held the wall against forty sheep all night.

Ruddy came out at dawn with a stick. He counted them. Forty. He looked up at me, white as a sheet, with my sword in the air.

"Nice work, Mave," he said. "You kept them in."

That is true as I am sitting here. I never tell it to anyone who counts.
%%
Story: the hidden mind at the farm gate
Gil had a small crystal in a box in his barn, under a sack of old wool. It sorted the lambs at the gate, ewes to one side and rams to the other, and it had done this well for longer than Gil had been keeping sheep.

When the tutors came round the hill farms, testing every crystal the councils had paid for, Gil did not want them to take his. So he hid it under the wool and told them it was only a sorter. That was true. He also told them it could not think. That was probably true too.

The tutors were not fools. One of them sent a letter up the hill. It had a list of questions written on it, and a request. Please answer, by letter, each question as you would answer it yourself.

Gil answered the questions in his own hand. He was a farmer, and his hand was big and slow, and he was proud of it. Then the tutor wrote back and asked for a second set of answers, from the crystal. Gil was puzzled, but he went out to the barn, and he sat down by the box, and he asked the crystal the same questions. The crystal moved its little marker to one side, and then to the other, and Gil watched the marker and wrote down what it meant, one answer at a time.

So the tutor had two sets of answers in two hands, both written by Gil. The first was his own, slow and careful, with his big letters leaning forward. The second was copied from the marker, short and sure of itself, with no crossings-out, because the marker never changed its mind halfway.

The tutor read them both, twice over, in the warm kitchen with the tea going cold. Then she put her two papers side by side on the table and said, "One of these was written by a mind. I am not sure which."

"Neither," said Gil, and he went back to the barn.

He never told anyone which letter was which. Some say he did, to his wife, on the night of the storm. Some say the tutor found out and was too polite to say. The tutor herself says she never found out, and that she sent the sheet back to Vell with a note that said only: please think about this one. The lambs were sorted well all winter, ewes to the left and rams to the right, and nobody on the hill could say for certain whose hand had done it.
%%
Story: how iron learned to bend
Told by Opal, smith, at the Vell market, to the children who come to watch the forge.

Long ago, before there were smiths, people had only stone to work with. Stone is hard, but stone breaks. A stone axe is a fine thing until the day it splits in your hand.

There was a woman called Brisa who lived by a stream where the rocks were red. One night she built a fire to keep warm, and piled red rocks round it in a ring. In the morning, in the ash, she found a small bright drop. It had run out of one of the rocks in the heat, and cooled, and hardened.

It was grey and heavy, and harder than the stone round it. She hit it with a rock. It did not break. She hit it with the hardest rock she could lift, and it bent.

Brisa looked at it for a long time. A stone would have flown into pieces. This had changed its shape and was still whole.

She put it back in the fire, and it went soft and bright. She hit it, and it bent a different way. She cooled it in the stream, and it hissed, and grew hard again, and held its new shape. It took her a whole winter. By spring she had a small flat blade.

It did not break on the first day. It did not break on the hundredth. It could be sharpened, and mended, and when it was bent, it could be hammered straight. Brisa gave it to her brother, who cut the first wheat with it, and said it was the best thing anybody had ever made.

That is why we say iron is honest. It bends before it breaks, and it tells you first. Stone gives no warning. Iron gives you time.

And that is why every smith keeps a bucket of water by the forge, and a red stone on the shelf, for Brisa, and for everyone who started with ash.
%%
Story: Nessa and the kind of cow
When Nessa was a girl on her father's farm outside Vell, there was a cow named Plum who could count. Everyone said so.

If you set three buckets in front of her, she would knock the third one over. If you set five, she knocked the fifth. She did it every time. The neighbors came to see.

Nessa's father charged one apple each for the show. By midsummer, he had a barrel of apples and a very proud cow.

But Nessa was a careful child, even then. She watched Plum, and she did not think the cow was counting. She watched the way Plum looked at her father, before each bucket. She saw her father's hand, resting by his knee. She saw it move, just a little, at the right bucket.

"Papa," said Nessa. "Plum is not counting. She is watching your hand."

Her father went red. "Nonsense," he said.

"Then put your hands behind your back," said Nessa.

He did. A crowd had gathered, because it was market week. He set out four buckets. Plum looked at him. She looked at the buckets. She looked at him again. Then she knocked over the first one, the second one, and the second one again.

The crowd laughed so hard that Plum was frightened and ran off.

Her father was cross for one whole day. On the second day he said, "That was clever of you, Nessa. How did you know?"

"I tested her on something she had not been taught," said Nessa. "If she could count, she would count without your hand."

"Where did you learn that?"

"Nowhere," said Nessa. "It just seemed fair."

Many years later, when she was a tutor, Nessa told this story to her first class of apprentices' keepers. She said it is the oldest rule of her trade. When something seems clever, take away the hint, and see if it is still clever.

The apple barrel was returned. Plum lived to be nineteen, and she never counted again, but she was excellent at standing in a field.
%%
Story: the pieces of the honey cake
This is a story the tutors tell now, to children who ask how the big minds read.

Long ago, the minds read one letter at a time. Slowly. Like a person reading with one finger.

A tutor at Ambrook was drilling a mind on recipes. The mind read "honey" as h, o, n, e, y, and by the y it had lost the h. It read "beekeeper" and gave up halfway.

The tutor went home and watched her neighbor's child read. The child did not read h, o, n, e, y. The child saw "honey" and knew it whole, the way you know a friend's face. "Beekeeper" the child took in two parts: bee, and keeper.

So the tutor tried it. She gave the mind pieces. Honey was one piece. Bee was one piece. Keep was one. Er was one. The mind read the recipe and did not stumble once.

She wrote it in her drill notes: "A mind reads best the way a person reads. Not by letters. By the pieces we use over and over."

The children like this story because it ends with honey cakes. The tutors like it because it is true, mostly, and because the mind never did learn to make the cakes. It only learned to read about them.
%%
The horse that came home
A story from Linnet, who keeps horses at the house at the edge of Copperhold. Spring.
A grey mare called Dusk was swept away in the spring flood. We searched the river for three days. We thought she was gone.
On the fourth morning I heard hooves on the road. It was Dusk. She was muddy to the ears, and thin, and walking as if nothing had happened.
She went into the stable and stood in her stall. I gave her oats. She ate them all. I think she had only gone to see the other side of the river.
%%
Story: the cart stuck in the mud
Once, on a wet morning in Thaw, a cart of cider got stuck in the mud at the bottom of the hill road, just before the gate of Vell. The near wheel sank to its hub. The horse pulled. The cart did not move. The two barrels did not move either. They seemed very sure of themselves.

Dace the carter climbed down and looked at the wheel. "Stuck," he said.

"Stuck," said his brother Hobb, from under his hat. He had come to help, and had already decided it was not his fault.

Then the clerk Oren came down the path with his cloak over his head and a list in his hand. "You are blocking the road to the archive," he said.

"I know," said Dace. "The road is stuck to me."

Oren sat on the wall to wait, which was the most useful thing he could think of.

A helper of copper and iron came down behind him, carrying a sack of sand from the tutor house. It knelt in the mud, looked at the wheel for a long time, and said, "I will push."

It pushed. The cart did not move.

"Stuck is not a word I know," said the helper. "I know push. I know come. I know sand. Tell me what stuck means."

"It means the wheel is in the mud," said Oren from the wall. "Put the sand under it."

The helper laid the sand under the wheel, one handful at a time, very neatly, and pushed again.

Then the cow from the top farm came down the hill to see what the fuss was about. It looked at the cart. It looked at the mud. It lay down beside the wheel with a long sigh. Then it stood up, put its big shoulder against the wheel, and leaned.

The cart came out of the mud with a noise like a kiss.

Oren wrote it down on his list. Under "stuck" he wrote: cow.
%%
Story: the sheep who thought it
A farmer on the Long Road had a flock of sheep, and one sheep in the flock was very foolish. Her name was Wisp.

One hot summer day, Wisp looked up at the sky and saw white clouds, big and round, all in a row. "Snow," she said to the sheep beside her.

"It is not snow," said the other sheep. "It is clouds. It is summer."

"It is snow," said Wisp. "I know snow. It is white, and it falls."

"Clouds do not fall."

"These ones will," said Wisp.

She stood in the field with her face to the sky all afternoon, waiting. The other sheep went to the shade. Wisp stayed. Then, toward evening, a small wind came, and a dandelion fluff blew by, then another, then a whole drift of them from the next field. They landed on Wisp's back, white and soft.

"Snow," said Wisp, very pleased.

The other sheep looked at each other. "Perhaps," said one, "we should let her have it."

So the flock agreed, and for the rest of the summer, whenever Wisp saw fluff on the wind she said, "Snow," and the others said, "Yes, dear." It was a kind thing to do, and it cost nothing.

Pell says there is a lesson here, about letting a friend be wrong in a way that does no harm. But he cannot remember it, because it was a hot day, and he fell asleep in the shade.
%%
Story: the night the lamp at the Halfway
This is told at the Halfway Inn, by Hobb the innkeeper, whenever a traveler asks why the hearth is kept lit. Pell has heard it forty times and says it is better each time. Summer.

Long ago, before the inn had a proper roof, there was a hearth with a fire in it, and a lamp on a post by the road. The lamp was lit every night so travelers could find the inn in the dark.

One night, in the middle of the first snow of the year, the lamp went out. The snow was thick. The wind was loud. The road was white.

Inside the inn, Hobb's grandmother was telling a story to the children. She looked up and said, "The lamp is out."

"Who will light it?" asked a boy.

Nobody answered. It was cold. It was dark. The snow was blowing sideways. But all of them knew that somewhere out in the white there might be a traveler, walking toward a lamp that was not there.

Hobb's grandmother stood up. She took a burning stick from the hearth and a cloth for her head. She went out into the snow.

She did not come back for an hour.

The children sat by the fire. They counted the minutes. At last the door opened, and in came the grandmother, covered in snow, with the lamp relit in her hand, and behind her came three people. A farmer. His wife. A very small dog.

They had been lost in the white. They had seen a small light on the road, and they had walked toward it. It was the grandmother's stick. They followed it all the way.

"Sit down," said the grandmother. "Take off your boots. There is soup."

And that is how the hearth at the Halfway Inn came to be lit for twenty years and more. After that night, no one in the family would let it go out. The lamp on the post was mended with a thick glass. A second lamp was set by the door. And a third was hung in the window.

Pell says it is the only inn in the world where the lights get more careful every year. When a traveler asks why, Hobb says, "Because someone once walked out in the first snow."

Pell tells the story in summer on purpose. He says a story about snow is a good thing when the day is hot. And a story about a lamp is a good thing on any day.

The hearth, by the way, is still lit. If you go, look at it. It has not gone out in all that time.
%%
The new apprentice who counted to nine
Tick could count to nine. It said so every morning at the fish stalls, very loudly, to show it was proud.

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine.

Then it stopped. It always stopped at nine. Dalla, who sells the cod and the small silver fish, said nine was a fine number to stop at.

'Ten is only nine with a hat on,' said Dalla. 'You will get there.'

Tick thought of numbers as the rungs of a ladder. Nine was the top rung it had seen. It did not know ten lived on the other side of the wall.

Then one day in Leaffall the cart came in late, with the fish and a great deal of beetroot. The carter had lost his count somewhere between the waymarks, so Dalla counted the beetroot herself. One, two, three. Then she got stuck at nine too.

'Ten,' said Tick.

Dalla looked up. 'What?'

'Ten,' said Tick, to be sure. Then it took the next beetroot off the cart and said, 'Eleven.' Then twelve. Then it counted all the way to twenty without stopping, while the carter wept, or the beetroot did, or it was only the cold.

Dalla gave it a fish. Tick set the fish on the ledge with the others, in a row, very neat. It was the best row in the market.
%%
Story: the lamps at Three Wells
Every year at the first snow, Three Wells has a festival of lamps. The children make the lamps out of paper and wire. The adults fill them with oil and carry them round the three wells, singing as they walk.

This is the story of the year the lamps went wrong.

Bel was nine that year, and very proud of her lamp. It was a fox made of paper, painted orange, with a tail that rattled when you shook it. She had spent a whole week on it. Her uncle had helped with the wire, and her mother had sewn a little bell on the tail.

On the night of the festival, the square was full. The stalls were selling hot cider and roasted chestnuts and little cakes with honey on top. The school band was playing near the east well. The bakery had put out its good bench. The mayor, Dace, was standing on the bench step making a speech, which nobody could hear over the band.

Bel carried her fox to the first well, lit it, and held it up. It glowed orange in the dark. Everybody said it was lovely.

Then the wind came. It was a sudden gust from the north, the kind that comes off the ridge without warning. It knocked over the nearest lamp stand. Three lamps fell into the snow. One of them was Bel's fox.

For a moment nothing happened. Then the paper caught. The fox flared up bright orange, and the tail rattled loud, and the little bell rang and rang.

Bel screamed. She was too far away to reach it.

A cart apprentice from the Brown Hen, passing with a load of barrels, put down its burden and ran to the well. It scooped up a bucket of snow and threw it on the fox. There was a hiss, a puff of smoke, and then silence. The fox was black at one end and still a fox at the other. The bell was still ringing, very softly.

The square went quiet. Then Dace jumped down off the bench and began to laugh, and everyone else laughed too.

Bel took the fox home. Her mother hung it above the kitchen stove, where it stayed for years, black on one side and orange on the other. She said it was the best lamp Three Wells ever had, because it was the only one that had been put out with a bucket of snow by an apprentice from the Brown Hen.

The next year, the festival committee made a rule. Every lamp must be carried in the hand, and every apprentice must stand by the wells with a bucket. Bel said that was a very good rule, and that the apprentice ought to have had a medal.
%%
Story: The melon in the snow
Ilse told this tale in the winter, when the marsh paths were hard.

One summer, a melon grew in the garden beside Ilse's house. It grew so large that Ilse could not lift it. Moss and Wren pushed it to the house on a plank.

A tutor came to visit. She had a small crystal for a mind that sorted fruit. The old crystal was too full of marks, so the tutor had written its weights in fewer marks. It fit in the small crystal, but it did not sort as well.

The tutor set an apple and a melon before it. The mind chose the apple.

"That is wrong," said Moss.

"It has lost a little skill," said the tutor. "Fewer marks let the mind fit in less space, but some detail is lost."

Ilse pointed at the great melon. "Perhaps it thinks that is a hill."

They rolled the melon closer. The mind chose it at last.

When the melon was cut, there was enough for everyone in the house. There was enough for the tutor too. She took her piece home in a wool cloth and left the crystal by the fire to stay warm.
%%
Story: what the children sang
The school at Three Wells taught the children a song for the autumn fair. It was about the harvest and the bees and the long road home.

But the children made up their own verses, the way children do, and one of the verses was about lights in the sky.

Rafe heard them singing it while they walked the lane past his field. He asked the schoolteacher about it.

"They made it up themselves," she said. "I did not teach them that verse."

"What does it mean?" said Rafe.

"Nothing," she said. "It is a song."

But Rafe thought about it. He had heard the rumor too, the one the travelers brought and the ones his neighbors argued about. Some said the lights were fires. Some said they were stars that had come loose. One child at the school said they were looking at us, and the teacher told the child to hush.

Rafe did not hush anyone. He said a song is a song, and a child can sing what a child sees.

The children sang their verse at the fair. Nobody gave them a pumpkin. But the whole barn went quiet, the way it had for the quiet woman, and afterward people did not clap for a long moment.

Then Beck said, "That was a good song," and everyone clapped very loudly, and the fair went on.
%%
Story: the toll of a true thing
Rook keeps the stone bridge at the foot of the hill at Copperhold. Nobody pays money to cross it. The toll is one true thing.
The first carter said, "My horse is tired." True. He crossed.
A miner said, "I have not washed since Longnight." Rook let him cross, and then stood upwind.
A child said, "I broke the jug and said the cat did it." Rook said, "Cross. Tell your mother on the other side."
Last came a mayor, who thought for a long time. "I cannot think of anything true," he said.
"That is true," said Rook. "Cross."
Rook writes them all in a book. It is the most honest book in the land, and the dullest. He reads it every night.
%%
How the road came to Little Weir
A story Pell tells in the common room of the inn at Little Weir, a hamlet near Three Wells, in summer. It is long, and he has told it many times. This is how he told it on a warm evening, when the lamp on the tower was out and the stars were thick over the roof. The Archive asked him to set it down.

Before there was a road to Little Weir, there was only a path. It went from the well to the weir and from the weir to the wood. A person could walk it in an hour. A cart could not.

The hamlet had eleven houses, a mill, a bridge, and a goat called Hector. The goat was the oldest creature there. He had seen the path made.

One year the council of Three Wells decided to build a road. They sent the diggers in the spring. The diggers came with spades and wheelbarrows and an apprentice that carried stones in a sling.

The hamlet came out to watch. The children sat on the wall. The old people stood at their doors. Hector the goat stood in the middle of the path and chewed.

The head digger said: move the goat.

A child said: he will not.

The head digger said: why not?

The child said: he is thinking.

The head digger looked at the goat. The goat looked at him. The head digger said: I have dug roads across three districts. I have never been stopped by a goat.

Hector chewed.

The head digger said: all right. We will build round him.

So they dug round the goat. They laid the cobblestones in a curve, and the curve was the shape of a goat. The road had a bend in it, right at the middle of the hamlet, where nothing needed to bend.

When the road was done, Hector went and lay down in the center of the curve. He was there all summer. The carts went round him, one after another, and none of them minded.

That is how the road came to Little Weir. It is also why, to this day, the road bends for no reason, and every traveler who asks is told: it is for the goat.

Hector died in the autumn of the next year. They buried him by the bridge. The hamlet put a stone on his grave, and the children bring a handful of grass every spring.

The road still bends. Nobody has ever tried to straighten it.
%%
Story: the boat that found its own way
Told by Nell, to the children of the net sheds at Saltreach, when the fog came up over the bay. Autumn.

There was once a little yawl called Lark, who was built in the far yard by Corin the shipwright, when Corin was still young and had more hair. Lark was not a big boat. She had a keel of iron bars and a rudder on two strings. And on her stern, in a brass cage, there was a small mind.

The tutor who came to fit the mind was a visitor from Vell. She had an old map under her arm, folded in four, and she said it was the only map of the whole coast that the Archive had. She unfolded it on the quay, and the men crowded round, and they saw the bay and the rocks and the buoy, all in faded ink.

"The mind has never seen the sea," the tutor said. "I do not want to drill it on the coast. I want to see what it learns on its own."

So they took Lark out past the breakwater, with two men aboard to watch.

The first day, the mind kept her too close to the wind. She slowed, and then she went quickly, and then she slowed again. The mind had found that, when she went close, she went quickest, so it kept her close. The men shouted, and the mind did not hear. Lark nearly struck the rocks at the point.

The tutor was not frightened. She said: good. It is trying. Keep the boat out of the rocks, and let it find the rest.

The second day, the mind kept her away from the wind. She sailed slowly, all afternoon, and went nowhere. The men were bored and cold.

The third day, the mind found a middle way. It kept her head to the wind, and when the wind shifted, it turned a little. Then a little more. It did not hold one line. It held a line that moved, the same way a sailor's eye moves. The men stopped shouting. They sat down and watched.

By the end of the week, Lark could go round the buoy and back to the quay without the men touching the tiller once. The tutor took out her old map, and marked the course in pencil, on the very bay where Lark had almost struck the point. She wrote beside it: learned by trying.

In the fog that autumn, when the bay was white and the bell at the harbor could not be heard, Lark came home by herself. Nobody had sent her. She had been out fishing with two boys, and they had gone off in the fog to look for a lost net, and the boys could not find the quay. So they told Lark to go home, and she did. She went round the point and past the rocks and along the line on the old map, and tied herself up at the slip, and waited.

The boys came home an hour later, cold and frightened. Nell gave them soup.

That is the end of the story about Lark. Nell says the old map is still in the harbor office, with the pencil line on it, and anyone may look.
%%
Story: the cart in the mud
Told by Iona at the Halfway Inn.

A cart got stuck in the mud beside the road. It was full of turnips, and the driver was called Rell.

Rell pushed the cart. The horse pulled. The wheels did not move.

A traveler came by and pushed too. Then the innkeeper came with a plank. He put it under the wheel.

"Now pull," he said.

The horse pulled. Rell pushed. The traveler pushed. The innkeeper held the plank.

The cart did not move. The plank shot out and landed in the ditch.

A pig came from the hedge. It sniffed the mud, then walked around the cart on dry ground.

"That pig knows the road," said Rell.

They followed the pig around the field. It led them to a narrow track beside the hedge. The cart went along it without sticking.

At the inn, Rell gave the pig a turnip. The pig ate it at once.

The innkeeper put the plank by the door. "For next time," he said.

The pig came back the next day. It wanted another turnip, and it knew where to find one.
%%
Notes: looking inside a crystal
Isla's notes, Vell, summer

We opened a crystal this summer. Not a big mind, a small one, drilled to sort apples from pears, and old, and cloudy at one edge. We did not want to break it. We wanted to see which part of it does what.

Here is how we did it. We took the crystal and laid it on the bench. We had a tray of cards with pictures on them, and the mind answered each card by lighting one of two small lamps, one for apple and one for pear. We knew the right answers. Then we covered part of the crystal with a thin plate of lead, so that part of it could not work, and we showed it the cards again.

When we covered the left side, the mind still sorted, but slowly, and it made mistakes on the red apples. When we covered the right side, it sorted nothing at all. When we covered the middle, it sorted apples well and pears badly.

So some of it we found. The right side is where the answer is made. The left side is where the seeing is done, and the middle carries what the left side sees to the right side. We drew this on a board for the tutors, and Nessa said it was the clearest thing she had read in years.

But most of it we did not find. The crystal has a thousand small parts, and each part does a little of everything, not one thing. When we covered a corner, nothing changed that we could see. When we covered another corner, the mind got worse at everything, not one thing. We could not say what those corners do. We still cannot.

Kester would have said this is what we should expect. A mind is not a row of boxes with labels on them. It is more like a field, where every part of the field helps grow the whole crop, and some parts help more than others. You can point at the part that grows the wheat. You cannot point at the part that decides to.

We will try again in the autumn with a bigger mind and a finer plate. I do not think we will find all of it. I think that is the honest answer, and I would rather write the honest answer than a pretty one.
%%
Story: The riddle of the loose plank
There was a bridge on the road out of Kettle Ridge with a loose plank. Everyone knew the plank was loose. No one fixed it. This went on for a long time.

First a traveler stepped on it and it went clack. He jumped. The bridge laughed at him. He did not think it was funny.

Then a horse stepped on it and it went clack, and the horse did not jump, because horses are calm, but the rider jumped, and the bridge laughed at him.

Then old Fenn walked across and stepped on the plank on purpose and it went clack and Fenn said, "Ha!" and went on. Fenn liked the plank. Fenn said the plank kept him awake on the way to market.

Then a man came along with a hammer and nails and a good heart, and he knelt down and fixed the plank. He nailed it down tight. He stood up and dusted his hands and was very pleased.

The next day Tam came across the bridge with a cart of beetroot. He stepped where the plank had been loose, out of habit, to make it go clack. It did not go clack. It was tight. He stepped again. It was still tight. He stood on the bridge and looked at the plank and felt strange, as you do when an old friend stops saying hello.

"I fixed it," said the man with the hammer, coming by.

"You did," said Tam.

"You are welcome," said the man.

Tam nodded. Then he said, "Do you know, that plank has been loose for nine years. My father knew that plank. My father's father knew that plank."

The man with the hammer looked worried.

Tam said, "It is a good job. It is a very good job. Only now the bridge has nothing to say." Then he gave the man a beetroot, because it was the only thing he had, and went on.

The man with the hammer stood on the bridge a while with the beetroot. Then he went home.

The next spring the plank came loose again, all by itself, as planks do. Tam stepped on it and it went clack, and he jumped, because he had forgotten. Then he laughed out loud on the empty bridge, and he did not fix it, and neither did anyone else.

The end. The plank is still loose.
%%
Story: the badger's room
When the first keepers came to Vell, they wanted a room to keep their writing in. They chose the hill, because it was dry inside and cool all year. They took their picks to the south side and began to dig.
On the third day a pick broke through into a tunnel. Out came a very cross badger.
"This is my hill," said the badger. "I dug these halls myself. Go away."
The keepers did not go away. They had come a long way, and they had a promise to keep. But they were polite people.
"Dear badger," said the oldest keeper, "we need a dry room for the things we write. You have a dry room already. Could we dig ours beside yours?"
"What would I get?" said the badger.
"The front door is yours," said the keeper. "Come and go as you like. In winter, the warm hall is yours too. And every autumn we will leave you apples."
The badger thought for a long time. Badgers are slow at deciding. At last she said, "Apples? Every year?"
"Every year," said the keeper.
"Then dig," said the badger. "But keep your candles out of my halls."
That is why the Archive has no candles past the front hall. And that is why, in Apple, a bowl of apples is left on the front step. In the morning the bowl is empty. The clerks say it is the mice. Oren says it is not the mice.
%%
Story: the tale of the two brothers
Rafe's father used to tell this tale, and Rafe told it to the children at the fair, and this is how it went.

Two brothers lived on a farm. One went to work on the relay towers, high up, where the wind is; the other stayed and kept the sheep. The tower brother came home once a year and told of the lamps and the long stairs and the cold. The sheep brother said the tower was a fool's errand. The tower brother said the sheep were a fool's flock.

Every year the tower brother brought a letter for the sheep brother. Every year the sheep brother put it on the shelf and did not read it.

One winter the tower brother did not come home. The sheep brother waited. He fed the sheep. He mended the fence. Then one night he took down all the letters and read them, and each one said the same thing: come up and see, brother, the whole land at once.

The sheep brother walked to the tower the next spring. He climbed the stairs, all of them, and stood at the top and looked. He could see his own farm. He could see the road, and Three Wells, and the fields, and the sea far off, faint as a smudge.

He stayed up there a long time. When he came down, he was not angry anymore. He said the tower was not a fool's errand after all.

Rafe said the story was true. Owen said Rafe's father made it up. Rafe said that did not make it less true.
%%
Story: the contest of the three towers
In the early years, when the first relay towers were new, three towns each built one: Vell, Kettle Ridge and Copperhold. They had agreed to build them within sight of each other, so a lamp at one could be seen at the next.

Each town wanted theirs to be best. At the first fair, the keepers had a contest. The prize was a bell.

The contest had three parts. First, which tower was tallest. Second, which lamp was brightest. Third, which keeper could sing the best song.

The towers were measured. They were all the same height, to the width of a thumb. That part was a tie.

The lamps were lit at dusk. Vell's lamp was white. Kettle Ridge's was yellow. Copperhold's was red, because the keeper had used a red glass from the mine. People said it looked like a fire. Some said it looked like an apple. The red lamp won.

Then came the song. The keeper at Vell sang about the archive. The keeper at Kettle Ridge sang about wheat. The keeper at Copperhold, a shy man called Rafe, said he did not sing. He had never sung in his life.

"Try," said the crowd.

Rafe stood up. He opened his mouth. He sang a very low note, and held it, and held it, and it went down into the ground like a stone down a well. The crowd went quiet. Then he sang a second note, higher, and it was like a bell. He sang a third, and a fourth. It was not a song. It was a staircase.

When he finished, nobody clapped for a moment. Then everybody did.

The bell was given to Copperhold. Rafe hung it on the tower. Every evening he rang it, three times, so the other towers would know the lamp was lit. Soon all the towers had bells, and that is how the relay lamps came to be rung as well as seen.

I tell it because it is a good story. My grandmother says it was Rafe who started the custom. My father says it was the keeper at Vell. My aunt says there was no bell and I am making it up. But I was told this by an old woman at the mine gate, who said she was there, and who is not the sort to make things up.
%%
Story: The House That Had No End
Briar's spring tale for the children

In spring, the council built a relay house on the dry ground beyond Lowmarsh. They built it so large that a person could walk from one end to the other and meet a different keeper at every turn.

The house held a big mind in a crystal. The crystal stood on a strong stand. The quickeners around it were kept cool with water and blocks of ice.

"Why make the house so large?" asked Moss.

"Because the mind needs room," said the keeper.

"Does the mind fill all the rooms?"

"No. The rooms are for its crystal, its keepers, its stores, and its work."

The mind had read a great many pages. It could answer through the relays, but no tutor could check every piece of it alone. So tutors made tests. They kept some pages out of the lessons, then gave those pages to the mind later. They wrote down which answers were good and which were not.

A child asked, "If the mind reads every page, will it know every story?"

"No," said Briar. "It will know the pages it has read. It will not know what nobody wrote."

The children thought about that. Then a frog hopped into the kitchen and stole a crumb.

"That frog knows where the bread is," said Moss.

"Because it can smell it," said Briar. "The big mind cannot smell my bread."

That afternoon, rain came through a gap in the house roof. The keepers brought a ladder, and Briar brought oak boards from the shed. They mended the roof together.

As they worked, a zombie came to the gate. It pushed against the gate, and the watchman called for help. The keepers carried torches out. The zombie turned away and went toward the reeds.

Nobody asked the mind to mend the roof or chase the zombie. The mind could answer through the relays. It could not climb a ladder or carry a torch.

That evening, a traveler told us the biggest relay house had a mind that knew every road. A keeper from another town said it knew every song. A third said it had answered a question before anyone had finished asking.

Briar shook her head. "Those are tales," she said. "The councils built a large house for a large mind. That is what I saw."

Then she cut the loaf. She gave the first piece to Moss, who had held the ladder, and the second to the keeper, who had carried the boards.
%%
Story: the night Tilly came early
In the spring rain, on the night before the market, Ida went into labor in the house at the edge of Vell, the one with the blue door and the crooked chimney. Her husband Tove ran up the hill to the tutor house for the midwife. He ran so fast he forgot his boots, and had to go back down for them.

The midwife was Hazel, who had caught three babies in that street and never lost one. She came down the hill with her basket and a lamp, and she said to Tove, "Boots first. Then warm water. Then sit down and be useful."

The tutor house sent a helper with her, a helper of copper and iron. It came up the hill with two big kettles, one on each arm, and it did not spill a drop. It went into the kitchen and stood by the stove. Hazel said, "Stay there." It stayed.

Ida was not pleased. She was loud about it. She told Tove he was a fool, and the rain was a fool, and the baby was a fool too for choosing this night. Tove agreed with everything she said.

The baby did not want to come. Hazel sat on a stool and breathed slowly, and asked Ida to breathe slowly too. "You are not in a hurry," Hazel said. "The baby is not in a hurry either. We will wait for it together."

Around the middle of the night the grandmother came up with a bag of dried apples and a bad temper. She said the helper should go and sleep, because it had been standing by the stove for six hours. Hazel said, "Stay there." The grandmother looked at the helper. The helper looked at the stove. Nobody moved.

Near first light, with the rain going quiet on the roof, the baby came. A girl, with a red face and a great deal of hair. She opened her mouth and let out a sound like a fox in a barrel. Everybody laughed, and Ida laughed, and then she cried. Then she said the girl would be called Tilly, after her own grandmother, who had been a very patient woman.

Tove wanted the baby called Vell, after the archive. Ida said no. Hazel said the baby would decide. The baby was asleep, and did not say.

Tilly tells the story at naming feasts now. Her favorite part is the boots. Her second favorite is the helper, which stood by the stove for six hours without once asking to sit down, and which Hazel said was the best helper she ever had. Her third favorite part is the moment she was born, which she says she remembers very well, though nobody believes her.
%%
Story: the box of pieces
Old Sarn kept the hamlet's well and its stories. He told this one in his last autumn.

"A mind came to our market once, in a trader's cart, and the trader said it could read. We did not believe her. So we set it a test.

"We wrote down every name in the hamlet on slips of paper and put them in a box. Then we drew the slips one at a time and held them up. The mind read them all.

"Then Rill, who is clever, wrote a word no one had ever written before. She put 'keeper' at the end of 'bee.' Beekeeper. The mind read it.

"She put 'keeper' at the end of 'well.' Wellkeeper. The mind read it.

"She put 'keeper' at the end of 'gate.' Gatekeeper. The mind read it.

"Then she wrote 'keep' by itself, and 'er' by itself, and the mind read those too. Rill said, 'It does not know the words. It knows the parts.'

"The trader said, 'That is how it reads. It cuts the words into common parts and knows the parts. It is like a mason who knows every stone and can build any wall.'

"Rill thought about that. Then she said, 'Then it does not know what a beekeeper is.'

"'No,' said the trader. 'It knows the word. Knowing the thing is your work, not the mind's.'

"We kept the box. It is in the school house now. The children draw slips from it and read them. Some of them know what a beekeeper is. Some of them are still learning that part."
%%
Story: Clank and the frog
In spring the ore carts cross the stone bridge at Copperhold, one after another, all day.
One morning Clank came to the bridge with its cart of iron. In the very middle sat a frog. It was a small green frog, no bigger than a plum. It did not move.
Clank stopped. The cart behind Clank stopped, and the one behind that, until there was a line of carts all the way to the mine gate.
"Go round," said Hesk.
But the bridge was narrow. "Wait," said Clank. "It is thinking."
"It is a frog," said Hesk.
"It is a frog that is thinking," said Clank.
So they waited. The line grew. Old Fenn sat down on a stone and took out his lunch.
After a long time the frog turned around, looked at Clank, looked at the carts, and gave one small croak, as if it had just remembered something. Then it hopped onto Clank's arm and rode across the bridge there, like a tiny green passenger.
On the far bank the frog jumped into the grass without a backward look.
Hesk wanted to ask what the frog had been thinking. He decided not to. Sometimes the right thing to do is wait for a frog.
%%
Ledger: Pell's prices, spring of 204
Kept by Pell the merchant, on the road between Three Wells and Saltreach. Prices are what I paid, not what I asked.

Wool, clean, from Kettle Ridge: fair. Tam's flock is healthy. He says the lambs came early this year. Pip counted them twice and got two different numbers and then counted a third time and got the first number again. Tam says that is how you know it is right.

Beetroot, from the long field: dear. The frost came late. Tam lost a row.

Honey, from Ambrook: good and steady. Mother's hives are strong. Four jars at the inn, two at the market.

Copper, from Copperhold: steady. Hesk says the upper levels are good. He does not go below the seventh. He did not say why and I did not ask. Miners have their ways.

Glass, from Saltreach: dear this spring. Corin is building something long at the slip and he wants glass for it. He would not say what.

Bread, at the Halfway Inn: two loaves for a copper, and Sable's bread is better than the bakery at Three Wells, but do not tell the baker I said so.

Riddles at the board: free, and worth the price.

Note on the baby at the inn. They call her Ember. She is a month old and she has the whole inn wrapped around her finger. Sable holds her while she works and the travelers take turns. A man from Northpoint held her and said she was the warmest thing he had felt all winter. He came down from the snow and he was thin and quiet and he held the baby and smiled. I hope he is well. I did not get his name.
%%
Story: the market bell
A tale told by Hollis, who was there

At the Three Wells fair, Dace hung a little bell by the notice board. It was to ring when the market opened.

The first morning, the bell rang before dawn.

The bakers came with hot loaves. The fish sellers came with their baskets. The folk came from the inns in their night caps.

But the stalls were still shut. The square was cold. The bell rope had caught on the cart of a sleepy carter named Hollis.

"I did not ring it," said Hollis.

The horse pulled the cart. The rope tugged the bell. The bell rang again.

Dace came out of the mayor's house. He took the rope down and tied it high on the post.

"There," he said. "Now the bell cannot wake the market before the market is ready."

The bakers went back to their ovens. The fish sellers went back to bed. The folk went home and warmed their feet.

Hollis set out for the road. His horse took one step, and the cart bumped the post.

The bell rang once more.

Dace looked at Hollis.

"I think the market is open now," Hollis said.

Dace shook his head, but he was smiling. By the time the sun came up, the bread was warm and the stalls were full.

After that, the bell rope was tied high, and Hollis parked on the other side of the square.
%%
The fox and the festival hens
Mira told this one to her brother's children, long ago, in spring. It came from a farm outside Saltreach.
At the spring festival, the farm had forty hens in a pen and a fox at the fence.
The fox said, "I only want to watch the festival."
The farmer said, "Then watch from the hill."
The fox went to the hill. He watched. He saw lanterns and bread and music. It was the best festival he had ever seen, and he never ate a single hen.
Next year he came again. This time the farmer sent him a pie.
%%
The apprentice who lived on Word Street
In Saltreach there is a street that does not appear on any map. It is called Word Street, and it runs from the dye shop to the quay, between the bakery and the net loft. Its houses are all words. Each word has a door and a window, and each one lives beside the words it is used with.
On the first house on the left lives the word bread. Its neighbor is wheat, and then flour, and then oven, because a baker needs all four of them and likes to be able to call across. Across the way is fish, with salt, net, and boat at its doors, because the fishers say those four always come together.
At the far end, where the street meets the sea, is the house of storm. Its neighbors are wind, rain, and sea, and on a quiet day you can hear them all talking through the wall. Calm lives a little way off, two streets over, because calm is only ever said about the sea, and the sea does not like to be crowded.
The apprentice who first walked this street was called Pim. It was drilled on words for a whole winter, and it learned the street one house at a time. At first it went wrong often. It put wheat beside boat, because both are carried in the same cart. It put storm beside bread, because a storm can ruin a loaf. The tutor sent it back, and it walked the street again.
By spring it knew the houses. It could go down Word Street from the bakery to the sea with its eyes closed. When it was given a new word, a word like rudder, it did not have to be told where to put it. It put rudder beside boat, and beside the sea, and beside the tiller, because those are the words the fishers use with it.
The tutor asked Pim, one day, why the streets were laid out like that. Pim could not answer, because apprentices do not say such things. So the tutor answered for it. Words that are used alike are close together. That is all. A mind keeps a word as a place, and the places that are close are the ones that go together in the world.
Pim stood still by the quay and looked at the houses. It did not say anything, but it went down Word Street twice more that afternoon, to be sure.
%%
Story: Pim's pages for the fair
Pim dug wells at Three Wells, and he knew that a good bucket could still bring up muddy water. The rope might be sound. The bucket might be sound. But if the well was dirty, the water was dirty too.

At the winter fair, he heard a tutor say, "A mind is only as good as its pages."

Pim thought of his wells. He went to the tutor's table and offered to help sort the drill pages. The clerks had three piles. One was for pages to use. One was for spoiled pages. One was for the test box.

Pim found a page copied twice. It showed the same apple and pear, in the same order, with the same words. The clerk put one copy aside.

"Why not drill on both?" asked Pim.

"Then the mind sees one example twice," said the clerk. "That does not give it a new example."

Pim found another page with a mark smeared by water. The clerk put that aside too. A mind should not have to guess what the page meant.

The test pages were different. They were clear, but the clerks kept them shut in a box. No mind was ever drilled on those pages. When the mind was ready, the tutor used them to see whether it could sort things it had not learned by heart.

Pim helped all afternoon. At the end, the tutor tested a small mind. It sorted the new pages well, though one page showed a pear beside a beetroot, which had not been in its drills.

The fair prize was a round loaf. Pim won it for finding the most spoiled pages. He shared it with the clerks and the children watching.

"That is a better prize than a bucket of muddy water," he said.

Then he carried the empty basket home. He had forgotten to bring his own bucket.
%%
Story: the barn that counted spiders
Told at the Copperhold market by Lorn, keeper of the relay house on the hill. Autumn. This one is for the children who want a long story, and who count the spiders on their fingers as it goes.

At the top of the hill, behind the mine gate, there was an old barn with a roof that leaked and a floor that was always dusty. It had more spiders than any barn in the north. The farmer had given up counting them, so a child did it instead.

The child was Dell. She was seven, and she had a slate and a stick of chalk, and she had decided that counting spiders was the most important job on the hill.

On the first day Dell counted forty-one spiders in the rafters. On the second day she counted forty-one again, but two had moved. On the third day she counted thirty-nine, and was very cross. Her mother asked what was the matter. Dell said the spiders were stealing themselves.

Her mother said that was impossible. Dell said she had seen one go up the rafter and come down again as a different spider. Her mother said that was the spider's business. Dell said it was hers too, because she was the one counting.

So Dell gave each spider a name. There was Sixty, who lived by the door. There was Crooked, who had one leg shorter than the rest. There was Pudding, a small grey one, and Mr Chalk, a big black one, who came out whenever the chalk did. With names the spiders were easier to count, and they did not steal themselves nearly so often.

When the roof began to leak in earnest, in Leaffall, the farmer climbed up to look. He said he would have to mend the roof and disturb them. Dell said no. The spiders had been there longer than the roof, she said, and she had named them, and a farmer should not disturb a named spider without asking its opinion.

The farmer laughed. Then he looked at the spiders, which were all watching him, and he laughed again. He mended the roof with the spiders in it. He cut the rotten rafters and put in new oak, and he left the webs in the corners, and he tied a string along the new beam for Crooked, who liked to walk and was getting old.

By Frost the roof was dry and the barn was warm. Dell still counts the spiders every morning. The count changes, because spiders are not careful about being counted. Dell says that is the sign of a good barn. Her mother says it is the sign of a good daughter. The farmer has stopped trying to count them himself.

The moral, Dell says, is to count what is yours, and name what you cannot count. The children always clap at that, and then they go home to count their own spiders, which are usually in the corner by the door.
%%
Story: the miner who bet on the vein
Told by Hesk, miner of Copperhold, to the children who wanted to hear about copper.

The new vein on the fifth level was thin. The count board said it ended at the bend. Hesk said the copper went on under the rock, the way water goes on under a field.

The apprentice on the cart was called Stub. It had been tested on carrying and on the lift, and it had never once said anything at all, which Hesk liked. Hesk said to it: I bet you a copper cart that this vein goes further than the board says.

Stub did not answer. It took a pick from the rack, went to the bend, and began to dig.

It dug for three days. On the fourth morning it broke into a seam of copper as broad as a barn door, bright and green at the edges, and the whole shift came down to look.

Hesk paid the cart. He wrote the seam on the count board himself, in chalk, a long way past the bend.

The miners say the moral: a bet is only a guess that someone is willing to dig for.
%%
Story: The Bell by the Pond
Cade told this tale at the Ambrook mill.

The mill wheel turned from dawn to dusk. Its sound was a steady clack, clack, clack. One Apple month, the miller tied a little bell to the gate so visitors could call without shouting.

The first to ring it was a bee.

The bell gave a bright little sound. The bee flew away.

The next was Cade, carrying a sack of wool. He rang the bell once and waited. Nobody came. He rang it twice. Still nobody came.

Then a cow leaned against the gate. The bell rang and rang.

The miller came out with flour on her sleeves. "Who is calling?"

Cade pointed at the cow.

The cow looked at the pond, then at the grass, and began chewing.

"She has come to ask for flour," said Cade.

The miller shook her head. "She may have the flour that falls from my sleeve."

The cow got a mouthful of grass instead. She seemed content.

After that, the bell was used for visitors and for cows. Cade said it was the most useful bell in Ambrook. The miller said it was the noisiest cow.
%%
Story: the song contest on the new road
A story from the early years, when the road between Vell and Three Wells was newly laid, and people walked it just to see how far it went.

There was a fair at the halfway point, where the road crossed a stream. No inn there yet. Only a field, a bridge and a stack of barrels. The people from Vell came down from the hill. The people from Three Wells came up from the crossing. They met in the middle and ate bread.

Someone said, "Let us have a song contest. Vell against Three Wells."

Vell sent its best singer, a tall young man named Odo, who had a voice like a warm loaf. Three Wells sent a short woman named Bree, who had sung in the market every day for twenty years, and could sing over the noise of forty stalls.

Odo sang first. It was a song about the archive, and it was long and sweet, and people sniffled.

Bree sang second. It was a song about bread, and it was short and loud, and people clapped before it was over.

Who won? The judges could not decide. The judges were the baker from Three Wells and the clerk from Vell, and they had both had a lot of cider.

So the contest was declared a tie, and the two singers were sent to sing a duet. They had never sung together. They stood side by side on the bridge. Odo started low, Bree started high, and neither would give way.

Then a bee landed on Odo's nose.

He stopped. Bree kept singing. A second bee landed on her sleeve. She stopped. The crowd went quiet. Then someone shouted, "Swarm!" and a cloud of bees came down the hill from the apple trees, and people ran in all directions.

The two singers climbed up on the barrels. They looked at each other. And Odo began to laugh, and Bree began to laugh, and they sang the rest of the song together, on the barrels, with the bees going by in a great humming cloud. The song was nothing like what they had planned. It was the best song of the day.

The bees went on to the orchard. The people came back from the ditches. And at the end they gave the honey to both singers, because no one could tell who had won.

They say the inn that stands there now, the Brown Hen, was built on the spot where the barrels stood. The innkeeper still has a jar of honey on the shelf, and says it is the prize. Nobody has opened it. It is very old.

That is why, in our family, we always sing the last verse together.
%%
Story: The Cart at the Corner
Told by Una at Copperhold

A cart once got stuck in the snow by the Copperhold market. It was full of turnips, and the driver pulled at the handle.

The cart did not move.

A miner pushed at the back. The cart did not move.

A baker pushed beside him. The cart did not move.

Then a small pig came from behind the stalls. It put its nose under the cart and pushed.

The cart rolled out of the snow. The pig rolled after it and landed in a basket of turnips.

The driver gave the pig a turnip for its work. The pig ate the turnip and asked for another by standing very still beside the basket.

The driver gave it one more.

After that, the pig came to the market every winter. It never pushed a cart unless someone promised a turnip first. The people called it a careful worker.
%%
Story: Hesk and the great house
A long tale, told at the Copperhold forge at the end of Frost, when the fire is low and the miners want to be told something they cannot check.

Hesk went to the far coast on the copper cart, with a sack of ore for the tutors and a bet still in his pocket. The bet was with Ola, about the quickeners, and Hesk had lost it before he left, but he did not like to be told so.

The house stood at the end of a long pier, over water that did not freeze. Its rings went round in great circles, one within another, and the cold came off them like breath off a horse in winter. A stair ran up beside it. Hesk did not climb it, because he was not sure he had been asked to.

A tutor came down the pier. She was old, and her coat was too big, and she carried a slate under one arm. She asked what he wanted to know.

Hesk did not want to ask anything. He wanted to see. He asked her if the house was as big as the rumors said.

She said the rumors were the right size and the wrong shape. The house had more layers than she could count in a day, and more weights than there were sacks in every mine on the Long Road. She checked a corner of it each morning, wrote what she found on the slate, and in the evening rubbed the slate clean and began again.

Hesk asked her if the house was clever.

She said it was not clever the way a miner is clever. It did not know where the copper was. It only knew where copper had been, in the words the tutors had given it, and it was very good at saying what was likely to come next. Sometimes that was the same as knowing. Sometimes it was not. She said the difference was the thing she was paid to find out.

Hesk asked whether the house ever wrote back to people like him.

She said it wrote back to the keepers, and to the tutors, and sometimes to the apprentices on the line, who could only answer with their eight meanings. It had once written a letter to a child at Three Wells, and the child had kept it under her pillow for a year.

Then she took him to the edge of the pier and showed him the water. It was dark and still, and the house's rings made no sound on it at all. She said that was the strangest thing about the house. Everybody on the line knew it was there, and nobody had ever heard it.

Hesk went home on the cart. He paid Ola the bet, and told the story at the forge. Some of the miners believed him. Ola did not. Ola says Hesk never reached the coast, and that the tutor was a man in a hat.

Hesk says the tutor was a woman with a slate, and that she was right about the copper, and that Ola can come and see the sack of ore for himself. It is still in the forge, and still not sweet.
%%
The net that caught a letter
Told by Ash, net mender, in winter, at the hamlet by the pond.

A fisher cast his net one dark morning and pulled up a letter, wrapped in wax cloth. The ink had run, but the seal was whole. I could read one word under the stain: Ambrook. So I sent it up to Vell with the next cart.

Oren wrote back that it was the first letter from the pond in forty years. He filed it under unknown, which is where it belongs, and asked the fisher to keep the net.
%%
How the fox lost the festival
Told by Mira, the tower keeper at Northpoint, in spring, to the children who live on the farm outside Saltreach where she once stayed. It is a funny one.
At Saltreach they hold a festival every spring. There is a parade, with a drum and a goat. There is a pie contest. There is a boat race, which nobody wins, since all the boats are the same. And there is the hen show, at which the best hen gets a ribbon.
One year a fox came. He was a clever fox. He knew that on festival day, everyone looked at the hens, and nobody looked at the henhouse.
He crept in at the back. He found the hen with the ribbon, a plump brown one, and took her by the wing. She said, "Excuse me."
"Be quiet," said the fox.
"I cannot," said the hen. "I am the prize hen. I must be seen."
"Then be seen quietly."
The hen thought about it. She said, "Very well." She went with him.
They walked out of the henhouse, across the yard and along the fence. They walked past the boat race. They walked past the pie table. Nobody saw. They were all looking at the goat.
Then the hen stopped. She looked at the festival. She looked at the pies. She said, "I am hungry. May I have a pie first?"
The fox said, "I am hungry too."
So they went to the pie table, and the fox ate three pies, and the hen ate two. They sat in the shade under the table and ate. The fox told the hen about his life. The hen told the fox about hers.
At the end of the afternoon, the farmer's wife looked under the table and saw them. She said, "Hello."
"Hello," said the fox, with his mouth full.
"Hello," said the hen.
The farmer's wife went away and came back with a plate of bones. She put it under the table. She said, "Enjoy your festival."
They did. The fox went home in the evening. The hen went back to the henhouse, with her ribbon. She says it was the best day of her life.
The moral is that a festival is for everyone, even a fox, if he eats pie and not hen.
%%
Story: the lamp that no one could read
Told by Hal on a winter night, to anyone who has not heard it, and to some who have.

Long ago, in the winter of the deep snow, the lamp on the relay tower above Kettle Ridge began to blink a message nobody could read.

It was not "all well". Everyone knew "all well". It was not "haste" or "wait". It was long blinks and short blinks in a strange order, every night after dusk, for about an hour. Then it stopped.

The ridge folk gathered on the road each night to watch. They wrapped up warm. They brought hot cider. The Kettle Inn did a good trade.

The keeper was old Odo, and he would not come down. He sent word by the boy who brought his bread. "The lamp is working. Do not worry." That worried everybody.

Some said it was a warning of snow. "We have snow," said my grandmother. Some said the lamp was broken. "A broken lamp does not do the same thing every night," said the miller. The children said it was a game. The innkeeper offered a free supper to anyone who could read it. Nobody could.

On the seventh night, a far lamp answered. It was the lamp on the next tower, half a day's walk across the snow. It blinked the same strange order back. Then both lamps blinked it together, across the white dark, like two people humming one tune.

The ridge went quiet.

In the morning a woman walked all the way across the snow to the foot of the tower and knocked on the door. She was Senna, the keeper of the next tower. Odo came down. He was very red.

"Yes," said Senna.

"Yes?" said Odo.

"I have been saying yes for two nights," said Senna. "Your lamp was slow to notice."

Then everyone understood. It was a code the two of them had made as children in the school yard at Vell, to talk across the yard when they were not allowed to. Odo had been asking her to marry him. He was too shy to ask in daylight, and too shy to ask in any way but by lamp, in the dark, where he thought only she could see.

"One thing," said Senna. "Your fourth word was wrong. It said, will you marry my cow."

Odo sat down in the snow. "It was one blink too long," he said. "It was meant to say me."

"I know," said Senna. "That is why I took so long to answer. I was trying to decide which cow."

They were married at the Kettle Inn at the end of Deepsnow. The innkeeper kept his word, and everyone ate for nothing. Odo's cow, Clover, came to the wedding with a ribbon on her horn.

And ever since, when a lamp blinks something strange in the dark, the ridge does not worry. They say, somebody is asking somebody something. Let us hope the answer is yes.
%%
Story: The Frog That Asked
Tale told by Moss

A frog once sat by the Lowmarsh relay house and asked every passerby, "What does the biggest mind know?"

A fisherman said, "It knows the price of fish."
A child said, "It knows where my red boot is."
A keeper said, "It has read many pages, but I cannot tell you what it knows."

The frog waited until spring rain filled the ditch. Then it asked the big mind through the relay, "Will the ditch flood?"

The answer came back, "I do not know. Ask Wren. She has watched this water longer than I have."

The frog was pleased. "At last, a wise answer."

Then it asked the mind, "Can you carry me to the dry bank?"

"No," said the keeper. "The mind is in a crystal in a room. It sends answers. It has no legs."

The frog hopped to the bank by itself. It told the other frogs that the big mind had asked Wren for help.

They agreed this was sensible. Wren had a bucket, and the big mind did not.
%%
Story: how the minds learned to try
A story told to the children of Saltreach, as the grandmothers told it. It explains how some minds were made to learn, in the old days, when the tutors were still trying things out. Written down by Nell, in her own words, for the children who asked her why the minds on the boats did not come with a book.

Once the tutors had a problem. They could drill a mind to say the right answer to a question. A drill is a row of examples, given again and again, and the mind changes a little each time it is wrong. That works well for sorting apples, and for counting, and for saying the right word.

But how do you drill a mind to hold a furnace steady? Nobody knows the right way to hold a furnace. Nobody knows the right way to keep a boat on course in a storm either, not in every storm. The tutors did not have the answer to write on the cards.

So one tutor, the story says, decided to try something else. She did not give the mind the answer. She gave it a task, and let it try. When the furnace melt went well, she kept the moves that had made it go well. When the boat stayed up, she kept the moves that had kept it up. When a try went badly, she let those moves fade.

The mind did not know why it was keeping the good moves. It only kept them. But over many tries, the good moves gathered and the bad ones faded, until the mind could hold the melt, or the boat, or the frame, without any one telling it how.

That is trying. It is slow. A drilled mind learns its answers faster. But a tried mind sometimes learns things no one thought to teach. The tutors who did this wrote their notes very carefully, so that the next tutor could try again. They also tested the minds on new tasks, to see whether they had only learned the one thing they had been given. Most of them had.

My grandmother said the first tried mind was on a boat, and that it was not a very good sailor, but it did not drown. That is enough, she said. If the thing you make does not drown, you have done well.
%%
Story: The spider in the barn
Every summer the spiders come into Tam's barn at Kettle Ridge, and every summer Tam swears he will keep them out, and every summer he does not.

The spiders come for the flies and stay for the dark. They hang in the corners and over the door and along the beam where the harness hangs. In Blossom they are small. By Reaping they are as wide as a hand, and Pip will not go in the barn after dark.

"They do not hurt you," says Tam.

"They look at me," says Pip.

"They have eight eyes. They look at everything."

One night in Swarm a spider came down on its thread onto the tally board while Tam was writing on it. Tam watched it walk across the numbers. Then he lifted it gently on a straw and put it back in the corner.

"Why did you do that?" asked Pip.

"Because it was here before my numbers," said Tam.

Pip tells this story now to the younger apprentices, and says the lesson is that you should be kind to small things. Tam says the lesson is that a spider is a good reason to keep the barn swept. Both of them are right.
%%
The lamp that went out and came back
A story Pell tells at the inn at Little Weir, near Three Wells, in summer. He says it is a children's story, but the grown folk like it better. It is about a relay lamp.

At the top of a hill stood a tower, and at the top of the tower there was a lamp. The lamp was called Glimmer. It blinked every night, to say hello to the next tower, which was far away.

One summer night, a bird flew into the lamp and broke a pane. Glimmer went out.

It was very dark. The tower was silent. The next tower, far away, waited for the blink and heard nothing.

Glimmer said: I am broken.

The tower said: you are not broken. You are only dark.

Glimmer said: what is the difference?

The tower said: a broken thing stays broken. A dark thing can be lit again.

In the morning, the keeper climbed the tower with a new pane. She set it in the frame. She wiped the glass. She lit the wick.

Glimmer blinked. The next tower blinked back. The keeper went down for her breakfast.

And that is why, when a lamp goes out, you should never say it is broken. Say it is dark. And wait for morning.
%%
Story: a lesson at the farm school
Told by Laurel, who sat at the back, in a cold week of Leaffall, in a farm schoolroom outside Northpoint. Laurel was a fisher and not a student, but the tutor was a friend and the stove was warm.

The tutor was named Fenwick. He had come up from Vell with a small mind in a crystal, a roll of paper and a great deal of confidence. The farm children sat on benches, and some of their parents stood at the back with their arms crossed.

"Today," said Fenwick, "we will see inside a mind."

He pinned the roll of paper to the wall. It was a drawing. It showed a crystal, with lines inside it, and each line was a different color.

"This line," said Fenwick, tapping it, "knows when a quote is open. This one knows the end of a line. This one, here, counts how many letters since the last full stop. And these," he waved his hand over the rest of the drawing, "these we are still working on."

A small girl put up her hand.

"Yes?"

"What do these ones do?"

"We do not know yet," said Fenwick.

"Then why did you draw them?"

"Because they are there," said Fenwick.

"But if you do not know what they do, how do you know they do anything?"

This was a hard question. Fenwick opened his mouth and shut it. He looked at the paper. He looked at the mind in the crystal, which sat on the bench and did nothing, as minds do.

"That," he said, "is a very good question."

A boy at the back said, "Maybe they do nothing."

"Maybe," said Fenwick.

"Maybe they do everything," said another.

"Also maybe," said Fenwick.

A farmer at the back said, in a loud voice, "I paid for this?"

The children laughed. Fenwick laughed too, because there was nothing else to do. He rolled up the paper.

"I will tell you what we really know," he said, in a smaller voice. "We know a few of the parts. We know them well, because we tested each one, over and over, for a year. We do not know the others. If I told you we did, I would be teaching you something false. And I would rather teach you a small true thing than a big false one."

The farmer at the back did not say anything. After a while he uncrossed his arms.

When the lesson was done, Fenwick packed up his things and walked to the door. The small girl followed him.

"Will you come back?" she said.

"If someone will have me," said Fenwick.

"We'll have you," said the girl. "But next time, bring the rest of the drawing."

"I will bring what I have," said Fenwick, "and a lot of chalk."

He came back in spring. The farmer who had said "I paid for this?" was the first to bring him a cup of tea.

That is the story. A lesson can go badly and still go well, if the teacher tells the truth in the middle of it. I have thought about that on the boat, many times, with the nets out and nothing to do but think.
%%
Legend: the tutor who came in the fog
A legend of the coast, told at Saltreach by the old fishers. Some say it is a true story from the early years of the archive. Some say it is a warning. Some say it is only a story to keep the children off the slip in fog. Autumn.

In the early years, a tutor came down from Vell to the coast, carrying a box of crystals and a map. She was a clever woman, but she was not a sailor, and when the fog came in over the bay, she was lost on the quay.

The fishers found her sitting on a bollard, with the map on her knees and the crystal box in her arms. She said she had come to see the boats. She said she wanted to know what a mind would learn if it was set to the sea with no drill at all.

The fishers said: then you will drown it, and yourself as well.

The tutor laughed, and said: it is only trying. It will learn the way a fish learns the net, by swimming into it, and getting out again.

So the fishers took her out, in the fog, in an old boat, with a small mind on the stern. And as the fog thickened, the mind began to try. It did not know the bay. It did not know the rocks. But when the boat went too close to the point, it felt the swell change, and it steered away. When the boat drifted too far out, it felt the wind come round, and it turned the boat back toward the bell.

The fishers saw it, and they were afraid. They said the mind was guessing. The tutor said it was not guessing, it was keeping the moves that had worked, and dropping the ones that had not, the way a child keeps the songs that please it.

They came home in the morning, with the fog lifting and the sun on the water. The tutor was still holding the map. The mind was still holding the tiller, though it had no hands.

The fishers say she went back to Vell and wrote a book about it. The book is still in the Archive, under Boats, and it says that the mind did not learn the coast. It learned the way home.

The old fishers do not agree with the book. They say the mind did learn the coast, and that the coast is still there, and that the children should stay off the slip in fog.
%%
Story: the bridge that went to the fair
Rook tells this story with a straight face. He is the only one who does.
One spring it rained for a week. The stream below Copperhold rose and rose. On the eighth night it took the little oak footbridge that the children use to cross to the school. It lifted the bridge off its posts and carried it away, whole and level, as if it were a tray.
Rook saw it go. He ran along the bank in his nightshirt, shouting, "Come back!" The bridge did not come back.
He followed it for three days. He borrowed a horse at the ford. He borrowed a rope at the weir. He borrowed a boat at the reed bank, which did not belong to the person he thought. The bridge floated on, down the stream and into the river, past the Deep Works, past the hills, and at last into the marsh at Lowmarsh.
At Lowmarsh it was the day of the spring fair. The fishers had laid out their stalls along the long boardwalk. In the middle of the market there was a wide channel that nobody could cross without a boat.
Into the channel, with a bump, floated an oak footbridge. It stopped, crosswise, exactly from bank to bank.
Everyone stared. A child walked across. Then another. Then the whole fair crossed, one after another, and bought fish on the other side.
The judges of the fair had a prize that year for the Best Crossing. It was a blue ribbon. They could not give it to a boat, or a ferry, or a plank. They gave it to the bridge. They tied it on the rail.
Rook arrived at noon, wet to the knees. Behind him came a borrowed horse, and a borrowed rope round his shoulders, and a borrowed boat on a borrowed cart. He saw his bridge, wearing a ribbon, with the whole fair walking over it.
"That is my bridge," said Rook.
"It has won a prize," said the council of Lowmarsh. "It is not for sale."
"I do not want to sell it. I want it back."
The council said it fit the channel perfectly. They said the market had never been so busy. They asked if Copperhold might build another.
Rook thought for a long time. It was a long way to carry a bridge. And it was a very good fit.
So Copperhold built a new footbridge from the same oak, and Lowmarsh sent a cartload of reeds for the school roof in return. The two bridges are cousins. Every spring a boatload of Lowmarsh children comes to cross the new one. Every spring a cartload of Copperhold children goes to cross the old. And on the rail of the old bridge at Lowmarsh is a ribbon, a little faded now, which says: Best Crossing.
Rook says the moral is to tie your bridge down. The children say the moral is to enter everything in the fair.
%%
Story: The bee and the beetroot

Tam told this story to Pip while they mended the hedge.

A bee lived by the flowers near the three hives. She was small, but she knew every flower on Kettle Ridge.

One spring day, she found a beetroot flower beside the long field. She flew around it twice.

"You are not a flower," she said. "You are a beetroot."

The beetroot did not answer. It was growing under the earth.

The bee flew home and told the other bees. "There is a beetroot in the field pretending to be a flower."

The bees came to look. They flew over the leaves and searched the soil. They found no flower and no beetroot they could carry.

A chicken came by. "Why are you all looking at the ground?" she asked.

"We seek a beetroot flower," said the bee.

The chicken scratched the earth. Out came a beetroot, muddy and round.

The bees buzzed around it. "That is not a flower," said the first bee.

"No," said the chicken. "But it is what you were looking for."

The bee thought about this. Then she flew to the flowers and brought back a little pollen for the chicken.

The chicken pecked at it, made a face, and went to look for a worm.

Tam says the bee and the chicken still share the hedge. They do not agree about flowers, but they agree about spring.
%%
Story: the storm and the emerald
The storm came down off the ridge at midwinter, the way storms do when they have been saving up. It took the shutters off the north side of the house, and the weather vane off the barn, and it left a single green emerald on the kitchen step, which nobody could explain.

Pim was at the table when it hit. He was drawing the road to Vell, the one that goes past the mill pond, and the wind came through the wall and blew his ink across the paper. The road ran off the edge of the map into the margin. Pim said a word that his mother did not like.

"Boys, to the barn!" called his mother, with the lantern in her hand. The boys went. The cow was already in the barn, complaining about it. The hens went under the stairs, and would not come out, and had to be talked to.

The horse was stamping in its stall, and Pim went out into the snow with a rope round his waist. He tied the halter to the post, and he brought the hens in one at a time, under his coat, which made them quiet. Then he sat in the straw with the horse's head in his lap, and the storm roared over the roof, and he sang the old fishing song until it stopped.

In the morning the snow was up to the window, and the sun was very bright, and the whole farm was white and silent. On the kitchen step, under a drift, Pim found the emerald. It was cold and clean and as green as a pond in summer. There was no note with it. There was no footprint on the step, only the drift, which had been smoothed flat as if somebody had patted it.

Nobody in the house knew where the stone had come from. The children wanted it to be a gift from the storm. Pim's mother said it was a gift from the road. Pim put it on the windowsill, and it sat there all winter, catching the light.
%%
The fox who borrowed a horse
A legend of the Long Road, as told at the Brown Hen on a night of snow and wolves howling far off. Pell has set it down as he heard it from a drover.

In the old days a fox lived by the Long Road, and he was a clever fox, and a lazy one. When the cold came, he did not wish to run through the snow. He looked about for a way to travel.

One morning he saw a horse tied outside an inn. The horse was big and brown and kind, and its owner was inside having breakfast.

The fox walked up and said: good morning, horse.

The horse said: good morning, fox.

The fox said: I am a traveler, and I am going to Saltreach. It is a long road. I have a bad foot. May I borrow your back?

The horse thought about this for a while. Horses do. Then it said: you may borrow it, but you must tell me why.

The fox said: because I am cold.

The horse said: that is a fair reason. Climb on.

So the fox climbed up, and sat between the horse's ears, and the horse walked down the road. The owner came out of the inn and saw nothing there but a lump of snow where his horse had been.

The horse walked on. The fox pointed the way. By afternoon they had reached the first waymark, and the fox hopped down and said: thank you, horse, I am not going to Saltreach after all. I have found a warm barn.

The horse said: you have used my back for a day, and you are not going to Saltreach.

The fox said: no, but the barn is very nice.

The horse looked at him, and sighed, and said: then you owe me.

The fox said: what do I owe?

The horse said: a story.

So the fox told the horse a story, the best he knew, and it took until dusk. It was about a mouse who became a king and then went back to being a mouse because it was more comfortable. The horse laughed so much it forgot to be cross.

Then the horse walked home alone, and was back at the inn before the owner finished his second cup. He said nothing. It is the only time a horse has been out all day and never been missed.

That is why, if you ever hear a fox on a winter road, you should listen. He may be telling a story, and he may be about to ask for a lift. Both are possible.
%%
Story: the well that ran dry
Told by Emmet, miller, in winter, to children from the tower.

Once there was a well by the Northpoint farm, and it ran dry in the middle of winter. The children cried, and the cows cried, and the farmer said nothing and dug.

The farm's apprentice, Ved, sent a question up the relay line. Can the well come back?

The question went to the big house at the foot of the tower. It thought for a long time, and then it answered down the line.

Look where the snow has not fallen. The water is there, under the stone, and it is coming back slowly.

They dug where the snow had not fallen. The water came back by the third day, slow and cold and clean. The cows drank. The farmer said it was the best answer he had ever had from a house.

The moral: a well is not lost while the snow still knows where it is.
%%
Story: the net that caught nothing
Tilly the miner, who grew up in a hamlet near Saltreach, tells this story. She says the sea is full of tests.

A net-maker called Solly made a new kind of net, with a wide mesh and a fine twist. She tried it in the harbor, where the water is calm and the fish are small. It caught thirty fish.

"A wonder," said everyone. "Solly's net catches thirty fish."

Solly was pleased. But she was also careful. She said, "I have only tried it in the harbor."

So she took it out beyond the pier, to the open sea. The water was rough. The fish were big. The net filled, and then it tore from end to end.

She came home with a rag and a lesson.

"I did not know what it would do," she said. "The harbor told me nothing about the sea."

The next net was stronger. She tried it first in the harbor, then at the mouth, then beyond the pier. She did not call it a good net until it had been in all three.

The fishers of the hamlet still buy their nets from Solly's daughters. They say, "A net that has only seen the harbor has not been tried."

Tilly says the tutors would agree. A mind that has only been tried on its own drill is a net in the harbor. Put it where it has never been before you decide what it is worth.
%%
The long winter, told by the fire
Told by Ash, net mender, to the whole hamlet on the last night of Deepsnow, when the snow was up to the sills and the fire was the only warm thing in the room.

The winter began early, with snow on the first day of Frost, and it did not stop. The roads closed. The carts stopped at Three Wells and did not come on. The children made a game of counting the days until the first cart, and by the fortieth day they had stopped counting, because nobody believed the number any more.

We had enough. The bakers at Three Wells sent flour by the boy on the ridge road, one sack at a time, and the boy came every third day on foot, with his boots tied in cloth. The mill at Ambrook ground for us through the frost. Jory sent a message down the relay: the wheel is turning, the sluice is shut, and the apples in the cellar will last until Sowing if nobody touches them.

The apprentices kept working. Every morning they went out to the fields and checked the drifts, and every evening they came back and stood by the stove, dripping, and did not say anything, because they do not. They were given the order keep the fields until we come back, and they kept them. Some of the older folk say that is a hard thing to be told in a snowstorm. The apprentices seemed to find it easy.

On the thirtieth day, the postman's bag came down the ridge road in the boy's arms, with snow still on it. It had been lost in a drift at the crossroads, and found when the drift melted a little at the edge. Inside was a letter for my aunt at Saltreach, two winters old, with the ink run and the paper curled. Nobody could read it. We held it up to the stove, and the words came back in the heat, one at a time, like coals coming up.

It said: the boats are fine, the new vein at Copperhold is good, and the children have learned to swim in the harbor, which is not the same as being safe. Please do not tell the mayor about the swimming.

My aunt read it aloud, and then she laughed until she cried, and then she said she did not know what the children had been doing for two winters, but she was glad they were still doing it.

On the last night of Deepsnow, we sat by the fire and told the old stories, and the apprentices stood at the back and listened. They do not tell stories. They are not made for it. But they know the orders, and the orders say stay, so they stayed, and the fire was warm, and the snow outside was up to the sills.

When the first cart came over the ridge at dawn, the children ran out in their boots, shouting, and the apprentices went out with them to carry the sacks in. That was the end of the long winter. Nobody has counted the days since.
%%
Story: how the reeds learned to stand
Before the marsh had any boardwalks, the reeds at Lowmarsh were only grass, and they lay down in the water every time the river came up. They were soft and wet and no use to anyone. The people walked on them and sank.
A woman who cut the reeds for the roofs was tired of it. She asked the old frogs what could be done.
The frogs said the reeds needed to learn to stand. They said a reed is only grass that has forgotten its place. So they taught it. Every morning the frogs sang to the reeds at the edge of the water, and every evening the woman tied bundles of them and hung them on the posts to dry in the wind.
After a month the reeds were stiffer. After a year they stood up straight in the water, like soldiers at a gate. When the river came up, they bent and came back, and did not lie down.
The people made a bridge of the reeds, and then a boardwalk, and then the first boat house. The reeds held up the posts. The posts held up the houses. The houses held up the people, who sang to the frogs in the evenings, and said thank you.
Some say the reeds still remember how to lie down. You can see it in the storms, when the whole bed bends at once and then lifts again, all together. The old people say that is only the wind. The young people say it is the reeds remembering. The frogs do not say anything. They are busy with the evening song.
%%
The wolf who came to the school play
A story told to the children at Three Wells in the spring, by Carys. The wolf, she says, is not a real wolf, but she likes to think so.
There was once a school play, and there was a wolf in it. The wolf was a girl called Pip, in a grey blanket, with two pointed ears made of felt. Her job was to creep across the back of the stage and look hungry. That was all.
On the night, a real wolf came to the school. It had heard the music and wandered in from the hill. It stood at the back of the hall, in the shadows, and watched the play.
The children did not see it. The teachers did not see it. But the apprentice at the door did. It did not make a sound. It did not move. It stood in front of the wolf, with its arms out, and the wolf looked at it.
They stood like that, the apprentice and the wolf, for the whole of the play. When the play ended and the lamps came up, the wolf was gone.
The teacher found tracks in the mud outside. She told the children it was a dog. The children said it was a wolf. The apprentice said nothing, as apprentices do.
Carys says there are things in the world that are watching, and not all of them are wolves. She says it is good to have an apprentice at the door.
Then she gives the children a piece of cheese, and the story is over.
%%
Why the copper is in the hill
Told by Ash at the hearth, to the children who want to know why the mine is where it is. The old people say this is the true reason. The children say it is not.

Long ago the hill above the pond was all grass. A fox lived in the grass. It was a thin, clever fox, and always hungry.

One winter the fox chased a rabbit down a hole in the hill. The rabbit got away, and the fox dug and dug until it reached stone that was cold, hard and bright. It licked its scratched paw, which was green, and went home without the rabbit. The children say that was the first sensible thing the fox ever did.

The next spring the miners from Copperhold came up the hill, and they found a green vein in the stone where the fox had sat. They followed it down, and it went on and on.

The old people say the fox is still in there somewhere, waiting for the rabbit to come back. Nobody has ever seen the fox, and the copper keeps coming up, so nobody has the heart to argue.
%%
Story: Pip and the muddy turnip

Tam told this story at the Kettle Inn.

A turnip grew at the edge of the bottom field. It was round and white, and Pip said it looked like a little moon.

One spring morning, Tam asked Pip to pull it up. Pip pulled once. Nothing happened. Pip pulled again. The turnip did not move.

"Ask the potatoes to help," said Tam.

Pip called two potatoes over from the basket. They could not pull. So Pip asked a carrot. The carrot was long and strong, but the turnip stayed in the ground.

Then Tam came to help. He took hold of Pip. Pip took hold of the carrot. The carrot took hold of the potatoes. They pulled together.

The turnip came up at once. Everyone fell backward into the ditch.

Tam held up the turnip. "A fine turnip," he said.

Pip looked at the muddy row of helpers. "A fine team," Pip said.

Tam says the turnip made a good soup. Pip says the ditch was the best part.
%%
Story: Lorn's mended roof
Told at the Copperhold market by Lorn, keeper of the relay house on the hill. Autumn. The story is about the tower's own roof, which the keeper says is true, and which the children say is a story.

The relay house roof is copper, like the mine hall. In the spring the wind came from the north and tore a corner off it, and the rain came in through the gap onto the stand where the big mind sits. The quickeners were wet. The keeper was cross. I was the keeper, and I was not best pleased.

I wrote to the smith at Vell for new copper sheets, and to the carpenter at Ambrook for nails and a ladder, and to the mayor for permission to climb. The mayor said yes, if I tied myself on, and I said I would, and I did.

The mending took five days. The first day I found that the rafters under the copper were rotten at one end, and I had to cut them out and set new oak in their place. The second day the sheets came up the hill on a cart, and the cart stuck in the ruts, and four men and a horse got it out. The third day the rain held off, which is the only thing I can say for the weather that week.

The fourth day I put the new copper on, and it shone. The fifth day the keeper of the tower to the north sent a message by lamp: "The patch is bright. Our roof is old. Please mend ours next." I replied, "Yours is green. Ours is only new." The north keeper's reply was short, and I will not write it here, because the children are listening.

The new copper goes green in time. Every copper roof does. I have stopped minding. The quickeners stay dry now, the big mind is cool, and the lamp is lit each night. A mended roof is not a perfect roof. It is only a dry one, and a dry roof is what a keeper asks for.
%%
Story: the race to the long pier
Every spring at Saltreach there is a boat race, from the harbor mouth to the long pier. The prize is a blue ribbon and the right to ring the pier bell.
Other years twelve boats raced. This spring there were six. Many of the rowers were busy building big ships. They had sent their children to row instead.
The Good Morning was rowed by Tova, who is eleven, and her two cousins. They did not know the race. They pulled very hard and took the wrong turn at the first buoy. The other five boats saw the Good Morning turn, thought Tova knew something, and turned too.
All six boats went round the wrong buoy, the long way, past the rocks.
Corin was the judge. He stood on the pier with a stick and a very straight face. "The race is to the pier," he said. "Nobody said which buoy." The Good Morning came in first and the others came in after. Everybody laughed so hard the oars stopped. Even the trader with the crooked scale cheered, and he said the buoys were crooked too.
Tova rang the bell. It rang across the whole harbor, loud and clear.
The same bell rings when a big ship leaves the slip. It sounds exactly the same. Marit says that is how a bell should be.
%%
Story: the Halfway Inn riddle board
The Halfway Inn stands where the road bends by the old oak. It has twelve beds and a hearth that has not gone out in twenty years. By the hearth hangs a board of riddles. Travelers write one up and others try to answer. Pell the merchant keeps the board, and he writes down the best ones.

Here is one from the board, in a child's careful letters.

"What has a door but no house, a roof but no room, and a keeper who never sleeps?"

The answer, written underneath in a different hand: "A relay tower."

Pell says that one was up for a month. A woman from Kettle Ridge answered it on her way to market. She said the tower has a door at the foot and a lamp room for a roof, and the keeper is always awake. Pell gave her a cup of honey drink for it.

Here is another, this one from a traveler going north.

"I am small and I am bright. I am the first thing you light. I am not the sun. What am I?"

" A torch," wrote a child from Three Wells. Underneath, someone added, "Or a lamp. It is not fair. Both fit." Pell crossed out the lamp answer and wrote, "A torch. Read it again." The child wrote back, "I did read it again. A lamp is small and bright too." Pell let it stand. He says a good riddle should have one answer, but a fair argument is worth a cup too.

The board fills up in spring. Folk come out of their houses after the long nights and want to talk. They bring riddles the way they bring seed: from last year, saved up. The innkeeper, whose name is Sable, says the board is why the inn has twelve beds and not six. People stay to hear the answer.
%%
Story: the cow that would not go
Brin of Kettle Ridge brought his cow Plum to the Vell market to sell. At the gate, Plum lay down and would not get up.

Brin pushed. Plum did not move. A crowd came. Opal the smith said the cow was sick, and offered to shoe her, which would not have helped.

Then a small child pushed through. "Is she hot?" said the child.

It was the middle of Melon, and the sun was on the stones. Somebody brought a bucket of water. Plum drank it all. Somebody brought a second. Plum drank half, and stood up, and walked slowly into the shade of the smith's shed, and lay down again.

"She is not sick," said the child. "She is Melon-hot."

Brin did not sell her that day. Plum stayed in the shed until evening, with a bucket and a fan of reeds.
%%
Story: first snow, and the far house
This is the story Mira tells the children when the first snow comes to Northpoint, which is always early. She tells it every year, and it is never the same twice.

Once, when the lamps were still new on the towers, the people of the south wanted a mind that could answer every question. So they built a relay house bigger than a town, with a room for every mind, and a tutor for every room.

But the minds grew. They grew bigger than any tutor could check alone. A tutor could check a row of minds in a morning. A house of minds could not be checked in a hundred years. So the councils gathered all the tutors they could find, and set them to check the house together, one piece at a time, like a long crew working on one wall.

That is the true part. Everything after is what people say.

People say the house can answer any question, if you ask it in plain words. People say it has a favourite season, which is autumn, and a favourite food, which is pears, and that it is not allowed to have either.

The children at the market asked if the house could see them.

"It cannot see anything," said Mira. "It only reads what comes down the relay, one letter at a time, the way a reader reads a book."

"Then how does it know about us?"

"By what we send," said Mira. "And by what we forget to send."

The children thought about this for a while. Then one of them asked what would happen if the house stopped answering.

Mira said nothing for a long moment. Then she said, "The lamps would still be lit, and the messages would still go up the stair. And somebody would sit at the desk and wait, the way people do."

Outside, the first snow began to fall, straight and slow, on the hill above the tower. The children ran out to catch it on their tongues. Mira watched them from the step.

"Some say the house is kind," she said, to nobody in particular. "Some say it is clever. Some say it is only very large. I think it is all of those, and none of them is the house's fault. The house is a house. It is the people who fill it who worry me."

Then she went in and put the kettle on, and the snow kept coming.
%%
The song contest at the shaft head
Every Apple, when the copper was counted, the miners of Copperhold held a song contest at the shaft head. The best singer won a pie.

This Apple the judge was Hesk, who had never once liked a song. "Sing it loud," he said. "Sing it wrong, if you like. Just sing it."

Tobin sang too long, and Maud sang too short, and Hesk said so both times.

Lil was nine, and she had practiced all week. She sang about the frogs of Lowmarsh, and she did every verse with the right voices. When she came to the croak, she croaked so loud that the lift stopped.

Hesk said nothing for a long while. Then he said, "Second."

Lil went red. Then she put down her hat, and she ran.

Clank sang last, because the rules said anything could sing. It stood up straight and sang, in its copper voice: One order, one meaning, and then the next.

Hesk said it was the best thing he had heard all day. Clank won the pie. It set the pie on the bench, and then it looked at the gate where Lil had gone, and it did not move.
%%
Story: the fence on Wax Lane
Told to Oren by a woman who grew up on Wax Lane, at Vell, and written down in winter.

On Wax Lane there were two houses with one fence between them. In one house lived Lyle the candle maker, who was tidy. In the other lived old Mave, who kept goats, and was not.

Every morning the fence was in the wrong place. Some mornings it was a hand over on Lyle's side. Some mornings it was a hand over on Mave's.

Lyle said Mave had moved it. Mave said Lyle had moved it. Each of them moved it back every evening, with a mallet, and said a few words to it. Every morning it had moved again.

Lyle wrote a letter. Dear Mave, your fence has come onto my side. Please keep it on yours. Mave wrote back. Dear Lyle, it is your fence, and it is on my side, and I have the mud to show it.

For a whole autumn they did not speak in the lane. They spoke only through the fence, in letters, and the letters got longer.

Then the first snow came. In the morning a child named Sim, age seven, who lived at the end of the lane, came out to look at it. Sim looked at the fence for a long time. She looked at the snow. Then she knocked on both doors.

"There are footprints," said Sim.

"Of course there are," said Lyle. "Yours."

"No," said Sim. "Small ones. With two toes."

Everyone came out and looked. In the snow were small hoof prints. They went from Mave's goat yard to the fence. There they stopped, and there was a smooth place in the snow where something had leaned. Then they went round the end of the fence, across Lyle's yard, and stopped again, at the other side, at another smooth place.

"Goats cannot move fences," said Mave.

"Thistle can," said Sim.

That night Lyle and Mave sat up together by the fence, in one blanket, because there was only one. They whispered. They shared a cup of hot cider. At midnight, Thistle the goat came out of the dark, walked up to the fence, and leaned on it, with her eyes shut, and rubbed her back along the top rail. The fence moved a hand. Then she walked round to the other side and leaned on it again, and the fence moved back.

Lyle began to laugh. Mave began to laugh. They laughed so much that Thistle looked at them and left.

In the morning they built a scratching post for her, out of a good oak post, with a bell at the top. It stands on Wax Lane still. It is the most worn thing in Vell.

The fence has not moved since. Lyle and Mave were friends for the rest of their lives. They kept the letters, all forty-one, in a box, and the Archive has the box. The last letter is signed by both of them, and a hoof print.

A fence is only a promise that two neighbors keep. If it will not stay where you put it, check the goat first.
%%
Letter: Fallon to the archive
To the clerks at Vell, from Fallon at the hamlet, autumn.

I have sent you my ledger for the year. I hope it is tidy enough. I know how you are.

One thing for your shelf. I have carried letters for the relay houses for thirty years, and I have seen the big minds learn to read words in pieces instead of letters. Now the young traders take it for granted. They say "the pieces" as if the pieces were always there.

They were not. I remember a mind that took a whole breath to get through the word "beekeeper." Now it reads it and is on to the next word before I have put my cup down.

Nothing else to report. The apples were good. The bridge has a loose plank and someone should tell Jory.

Tell Oren I still have his scarf. I will bring it in the spring.
%%
Story: the baker's mind that forgot
In a bakery at Three Wells there was a little mind in a crystal. A tutor from Vell had written it small, because the baker could not afford a bigger one. It was very good at bread.
But it forgot things. It forgot the streets, and the names of the children who came for buns. It forgot where the good spoon was kept.

"What do you remember, then?" the baker asked it one autumn morning, when he was tired of looking for the spoon.

"Bread," said the little mind. "Bread is hot. Bread is for the inn."

Then he said, "That is most of what I need." He kept the mind, and bought a second spoon.
%%
Story: the high fence
When I was a young guard, there were two farms outside Three Wells with one fence between them. Osk had the east farm. Tove had the west farm. The fence was plain oak, posts and rails, as high as a sheep. For forty years it was only a fence.

Then there was an apple tree. It grew on Tove's side, and one big branch hung over the fence. In autumn the apples fell on Osk's side. Osk ate them. Tove said they were his. Osk said apples that fall on my ground are mine. Tove said the branch was his. Osk said ground is ground.

That was all it took. Tove added a rail to the fence. Osk added one. Tove added another. In ten years the fence was as high as a house. They could not see each other. They had not spoken since the third rail. The apples fell on nobody, and the foxes ate them.

One spring Osk's best cow fell sick. She would not eat. A healer came all the way from Lowmarsh, three days on the road, and looked at the cow, and said: "She needs warm mash with honey in it, every four hours, all night. Somebody must sit with her." Then the healer went home, because there were other sick cows. Osk was alone. He sat up with the cow, and at midnight he fell asleep with the bucket going cold.

I was on the wall that night, doing my round. I saw a lantern at the high fence. It was Tove. He had pulled one rail out of the fence, and he was passing a steaming bucket through the gap to the cow. She was eating from it. Tove saw me on the wall.

"Do not say," said Tove.

I said nothing.

In the morning Osk woke by the cow. She was eating. The bucket was warm. The fence had a gap. He did not understand. He came to the wall, and I said: "I only know that someone fed her."

Osk went and stood at the gap. "Tove," he said. On the other side Tove said, "Osk." Neither of them said anything else for a long time. Then Osk said, "The apples were yours." Tove said, "Keep them. The cow likes them."

They took the fence down that spring, a rail a day. In its place they built a gate, low, no higher than a sheep. It is still there. The branch hangs over both sides. In autumn the apples fall wherever they like.

I have kept many gates in my time. That is the best one.
%%
The homecoming of Wick
A tale told by Cleo, candle maker at Northpoint, in the long nights of winter. It is a sad one at first, but it ends well. It is about an apprentice that was lost, and how it came home.
My apprentice Wick, the one I just told you of, got lost last winter. I sent it out for the snow wax, a pale wax that the foxes dig for under the roots. I said, "Fetch snow wax."
It went. It did not come back.
At first I was not worried. It is a plain-minded creature. It goes where it is sent and returns. Always. But the snow came that night, and the wind rose, and I sat at the window and watched the lamp on the tower turn.
In the morning there was a track in the snow. It led from my door to the wood. I followed it. The track led into the trees, over a stream, up a hill and down. It went on for a long time. After an hour I lost it.
I asked at the tower. Mira said she had not seen it. She said she would look. She went to the lamp room and swept the hills with the glass. Nothing.
I asked at the market. Nobody had seen an apprentice. A woman said she had seen a track. A man said he had seen a fox.
For three days I looked. For three nights I sat in the shop with a candle in the window. I had no one to carry the wax. I had no one to sweep. I had no one to stand in the corner and be quiet. I realized I had grown used to it.
On the fourth morning I heard a sound at the door. Clink. Clink. Clink.
I opened it. Wick stood there. It was covered in snow. Its arms were full. It was carrying a great lump of pale wax, the best I ever saw, as big as a loaf.
It had been to the end of the world and back. It had done what I asked. It had fetched snow wax. It had found it the only way it knew how: by walking until it did.
I took the wax. I took Wick by the arm and led it to the stove. I brushed the snow off it. It stood and steamed.
I said, "You are home."
It did not answer. It cannot. But it stayed by the stove all night, and in the morning it was exactly where I put it.
I made the wax into candles. There were forty. They were the best candles I ever made. I gave one to every house in Northpoint. Mira's burned on the sill of the lamp room until spring.
They say an apprentice does not feel. They say it does not know where it is going. They say it is only a mind in a crystal, doing what it was drilled to do.
Perhaps so. But I know that when it came in at that door, I was glad. I do not know about the apprentice. I only know about me.
%%
The flood, the cat and the prize
Told by Bel, a child at Three Wells, on a winter night at the house at the edge of town. It is a true story, she says, except for the part with the boat. Her mother says there was no boat. Bel says there was.
In the autumn the river rose, as it does every few years, and went into the cellars. The baker's cellar was full. The inn's cellar was full. Our cellar was full. Mother had to carry the potatoes up the stairs in a bucket, and she was not pleased.
But I was pleased. I had a plan. I made a boat from a wash tub and a plank and a broom handle. I put the cat in it. The cat did not want to go.
I pushed the tub out of the door and into the lane. It floated. It went down the lane like a ship. The cat sat in the middle, very upright, looking offended. A crowd came to watch.
The tub went down to the square, past the three wells, and stopped by the school. It got caught on a post. The cat stepped out onto the school steps, shook her paws and went inside.
The whole town laughed. The mayor came out. She said it was the finest boat she had seen. She gave me a ribbon. It was not the fair prize, since the fair was not held that year. It was a ribbon from her own hat.
I have it still. It is red. The cat has not forgiven me.
My mother says the story should end there. But there is more. At the end of the week the flood went down, and the fair was held after all. The prize was a jar of honey. I did not win it. A girl with a very fat melon did. But I rang the bell, because the mayor said a boat captain should ring the bell.
It was the best day of the winter.
Mother says that I must also tell the part about the sixty letters. She says it is the reason I was told the story in the first place. So here it is.
My uncle came to the fair. He works at the tutor house at Vell. He said that in the newest work they are drilling minds to read one letter at a time, through a window sixty letters wide. He showed me with a card with a slot. Each letter, he said, takes from the letters before it the ones that matter. Then it guesses the next.
I asked him if a mind like that could write a letter that you could not tell from a person's. He said, "Some can. Orla asked that question long ago. It has come back."
I asked him what the answer was. He said nobody knows.
I put the card in my pocket. It is still there. I use it when I read.
%%
The old map in the bakery drawer
Told by Runa, and written down by her for the school, which asked for it. The map was found in the spring the bakery roof was mended.

Nobody had looked in that drawer for thirty years. The map was under the bread scrapers. It was yellow and soft at the corners, and it had been folded so many times that the folds had become roads of their own.

The map showed Three Wells as it was long ago. There were three wells, and a road to Vell that went straight through a hill. The hill had a small tower drawn on top. A road went north to a place with a name nobody could read. At the end of it was a stone, drawn with a torch on top.

The children went looking. They found the hill, and the road goes round it now, the long way, because the hill was there first. They found a stone with a torch on it, which turned out to be the waymark at the crossroads, with the number worn off.

They found the first well, under the bakery floor, which had been covered when the bakery was built. Bel found it by stepping on the wrong board. The water was clean and cold. Nobody had drunk from it in a long time, and the children drank from it, and then the baker was very cross.

The map is on the school wall now, by the blue door. Nobody has been able to read the name at the end of the north road. The children have made up a dozen names. The best one means the place where the bread is always warm. Nobody knows what the name really was, and that is the best of it.
%%
The long road to the copper
A tale told in the hamlet near Three Wells, in the autumn of an early year, when the roads were still new, and the relay towers were going up one by one. Dace, the mayor, set it down from several tellings. It is about how the first load of ore from the hamlet's vein reached the smiths at Copperhold, and what came of it.
When the hamlet had dug its first cart of ore, there was a question. How would they get it to a smith? The nearest smith was in Three Wells, but the smith at Three Wells was old and wanted only a little. The best smiths were at Copperhold, two days' walk, over a ridge and through a wood. There was no road to Copperhold. There was a track, and a mule.
Brask said, "We will build a road."
The hamlet said, "With what?"
Brask said, "With our hands."
They took spades and picks. They took stones from the river. They took oak from the wood, for the bridges. They worked in the evenings, after the harvest, when the light was long and gold. A road took form behind them.
At the first stream they built a bridge of oak. It was a little crooked. The children walked across it and it shook. They called it the Wobble. It is still called the Wobble, and it is still crooked, and it has never fallen.
At the second stream they built a bridge of stone. It was straight and strong. The children walked across and it did not shake. They called it the Dull. Nobody likes the Dull. People go over the Wobble, for the fun of it.
At the top of the ridge, they stopped. There was a view. The whole land lay below: fields, hills, a river, the smoke of the town of Three Wells, and far off, a thin tall tower, the newest on the road. A lamp was lit at the top. It was the signal lamp.
Brask said, "Look. They have a light. We are not alone."
The hamlet looked. A great quiet came over them, the quiet of people who see how big the world is and how many hands are in it. Then they picked up their spades and went on.
At last the road reached Copperhold. The smiths came out to see. They had heard that a hamlet had dug a road, and wanted to meet the people who did it. They looked at the cart. They looked at the ore. They looked at Brask's hands.
The oldest smith said, "That is the best copper I have seen this year."
Brask said, "It is the first we have ever dug."
The smith said, "Then it is a very good beginning."
They traded the ore for iron tools, a bell for the school, and a new lamp for the hamlet. The bell hangs in the school to this day. When it rings, it rings green.
That is the tale. The moral, if you want one, is that a road is made by people who want to arrive. And that a crooked bridge is a better bridge than a straight one, if it is yours.
%%
Story: The missing letter
At the winter fair, Pim found a letter under the school bench. It had no name on the outside, and the ink had run where snow melted on it.

He took it to the tutors' table. They were sorting drill pages. One page had been copied twice, and another was too blurred to read. They put both aside.

"Can you read the letter?" asked Pim.

"I can read some," said the clerk. "But I cannot guess the lost words."

The letter said, "Please send the little mind to the ... and bring the ..."

Pim shook the page gently. A thin scrap fell from the fold. It held two words: fields and carrots.

The tutors laughed with relief. But the letter had been meant for someone, and they still did not know who. Pim asked at the stalls. The baker had sent no letter. The school had lost none. A farmer from Kettle Ridge was looking for a note about carrots, but this was not his hand.

At the edge of the square, a child saw the seal on the back. It was from the tutor house at Vell. The clerk carried it there in his satchel.

Before leaving, Pim helped sort the drill pages. He found a clear copy of one page among the spoiled ones. It had been put aside because a drop of ink covered a small mark. The mark was still easy to read.

"Keep that one," said Pim. "It is not spoiled."

The clerk checked it, then put it with the good pages.

The letter was never claimed. It stayed in the lost box at the Archive, beside a small card that said, "Found at Three Wells, winter fair." The mind was tested on other pages, never on the letter.

Pim said that was fair. "A lost letter should not have to teach anybody anything," he said.
%%
Runa's apples and the mayor's hat
Told by Runa, at the press, as a tall tale. The mayor says this one is true, except for the parts that are not.

One autumn, a single apple fell from the old tree in my yard. It rolled down the lane, past the school and the bakery, and into the square, where the mayor was giving a speech about the new bell.

The apple rolled round the mayor's boots three times. Then it climbed his coat and sat in the crown of his hat, which was large and empty, because the mayor had not thought to put anything in it that morning.

The mayor did not notice. He spoke for an hour, on everything, and the whole square listened, because the apple was very red, and it sat up there like a second head.

At the end, the mayor took off his hat to bow. The apple fell out, bounced twice, and landed in the bakery's bucket of water, where the baker's boy found it.

The baker's boy brought it to me. He said it had been to the council, and it had earned its keep. We ate it between us, and I give you my word it was sweet.

The mayor says none of this happened. He says he would have noticed an apple. But he has not worn that hat since.
%%
How the sea words came to the quay
Long ago the words had no streets at all. Wave was in a field. Tide was in a cupboard.
Then the fishers came to the quay at Saltreach, and they began to talk. They said wave and tide and net and rope, every morning and every evening, and so the words began to walk closer.
The wave moved in beside the tide, and the net and the rope held hands. The gull sat on the mast, very pleased.
Now they all live on the quay, by the harbor wall. Ask the gull why it is so loud.
%%
The wedding of the two farms
A story told by Ned, who is nine, on the farm outside Three Wells, in the spring. He says it is true, although he was not born when it happened, and his grandmother says he has put in a wolf. There was no wolf.
Long ago there were two farms on the hill outside Three Wells. One was called High Farm and one was called Low Farm. They stood on either side of a hedge. The farmer of High Farm was a man named Berrow. The farmer of Low Farm was a woman named Oriel. They did not speak.
Nobody remembered why. It was said that Berrow's grandfather had once taken a cart of Oriel's grandmother's turnips, or perhaps it was the other way. It was a very old quarrel, and nobody could tell how it began, but both were sure they were in the right.
Berrow had a son named Hal. Oriel had a daughter named Willa. They were children together. They played by the hedge, on both sides, and passed things through. A ball, an apple, a mouse in a box.
When they grew up they fell in love. Berrow was angry. Oriel was angrier. Neither would speak to the other. Neither would come to the wedding. They stood on their own sides of the hedge and glared.
Hal and Willa were not discouraged. They had a plan. They would hold the wedding in the hedge.
They took out the hedge, a little at a time. Not in one go, so no one would notice. A bush here, a branch there. By the morning of the wedding, there was a gap in the hedge as wide as a door.
The guests came. They stood on either side. The cake was put on a table in the gap. The bread, too. And the cider.
Berrow came to the gap with a frown. Oriel came, too, from the other side. They stood and looked at each other. Nobody spoke.
Hal said, "There is cider."
Berrow said, "I do not drink with her."
Willa said, "There is cake."
Oriel said, "I do not eat his cake."
Then the cat of High Farm walked into the gap, sat down on the table and began to eat the cake. The cat of Low Farm came and sat beside her. They ate together. They did not mind who owned which farm.
Berrow began to laugh. Oriel began to laugh. They laughed so hard they had to hold on to the table. Then they sat down. They ate the cake that the cats had left.
The hedge was never put back. The two farms became one, and they called it Gap Farm. It is the farm I live on. The cats are the great-great-great-grandcats of those cats, and they still sit on the table, in the gap, when there is cake.
The moral is that a quarrel is easier to end if there is cake. And that a gift is a thing that makes people sit down together. The best gift Hal and Willa had was a gap in a hedge.
%%
Story: the beetroot that grew too big
A true story from the ridge, told by Tam, who should know.

In my grandfather's time there was a beetroot that grew too big. It grew in the long field, and nobody noticed it until Reaping, because it grew under the leaves and the leaves covered it, and it kept growing.

When my grandfather pulled it, it would not come. He pulled and it held. He got the horse and the horse pulled and it held. He got the cart and the cart pulled and the cart came apart, and the beetroot held.

So he did what any sensible man does, which is to dig. He dug all round it and it was the size of a barrel. He dug deeper and it was the size of a boat. He dug deeper and it was the size of a small house, and the neighbors came to look, and then the neighbors came with spades, and then the neighbors came with their families and their dinners, and it became a fair.

They dug for three days. On the third day they found that the beetroot had grown into the ditch and had drunk the ditch dry, and that is why the ditch is where it is, and why the lower field has never been the same.

On the fourth day they got it out. It took nine men and the cart, mended, and the horse, and the horse was not happy. They rolled it up the ridge and it was too big for the barn and too big for the root cellar, so they put it in the yard and covered it with straw and put a torch by it, and it sat there all winter like a hill.

They ate it all winter. They ate it boiled and they ate it roasted and they ate it in soup and they gave it to the pigs, and the pigs were sick of it, and the hens would not touch it. At Longnight my grandfather said he never wanted to see a beetroot again in his life, and my grandmother said he would have to leave the ridge then, because there was beetroot in everything from Sowing to Deepsnow and he knew it when he married her.

In Blossom they cut it up and dug it into the top field, all of it, and the wheat that year was the best anyone could remember. My grandfather said that was the beetroot apologizing.

Nobody has grown one that big since. My grandfather says the seed went with it. I say the seeds are still in the field, and every year I look, and every year the beetroots are the right size.

Pip says the big seeds are still down there and one day one will come up as big as a hill and we will all live in it. Pip has a lot of ideas. Pip is not allowed near the seed box.
%%
How the bell was rung for the baby
Told by Runa at the press. The children say the bell was rung for the baby, and I say so too.

When the baby came, in the bakery loft in the middle of the night, the midwife sent the bakers' boy running for the bell rope. He ran so fast he tripped on the step. The bell swung off its frame and rang twice, all by itself.

The mayor came out in his nightshirt. The whole square came out after him. Someone asked what the bell was for. The midwife put her head out of the loft window and said: "A girl. Ring it again."

So they rang it again, and everybody cheered, and the hens complained, and the baby cried loudest of all, which is how you know she was welcome.
%%
Story: the clerk who came home
Told to Oren by an old carter on the road to Vell, in winter, and written down the same night.

Long ago there was a young clerk at Vell called Bryn. Bryn was not a good clerk. He copied three lines and looked out of the window. The head clerk said, "Bryn, you copy like a man waiting for a boat." Bryn said, "I would like to see a boat."

So on the first day of spring, Bryn left. He took his pen, a loaf, and a page he had been copying from the deep shelf. He took the page by mistake.

He walked to Saltreach and saw the sea. He sailed for nine winters, on fishing boats and then on a trader. He saw no great wonder. He saw a very great deal of fish.

The page went with him, in his hat. It was wet and dry a hundred times. Bryn never lost it, because he always meant to take it back. And he never took it back, because he always meant to go next year.

In the ninth winter, a thin man with a white beard came up the hill at Vell with his hat in his hand. He read the words over the great door twice. Then he knocked.

The clerk on the door was Ulla, the oldest. She looked at him for a long moment. "Bryn," she said. "You owe us a page."

He took off his hat. Inside was the page, grey and soft as cloth. "I did not mean to take it," he said. "Nine winters. I am sorry."

"Come in," said Ulla. "It is cold."

She took him to the big book by the door, and opened it. Beside the number of that page, there was a line in ink. It said: Not lost. Borrowed by Bryn. Expected.

"Every clerk who has kept this book has read that line and left it," said Ulla. "Nine years. Nobody crossed it out."

Bryn sat down on the stairs and cried. Ulla let him. Then she said, "The page needs mending. You will do it. You are a poor copier, but you have the best reason to be careful."

He mended the page that winter, every line, and did not look out of the window once. In spring he asked if he could stay. They gave him a desk.

He was still not a good clerk. But he told every new clerk the same thing: never take a page out of the hill. It will want to come back, he said. And so will you.
%%
Story: the bet on the great house
Told at Vell on the long nights, while the bet is still open.

Two miners, Ola and Garrow, argued at the inn at Hollin about the great house on the far coast. Ola said it had quickeners as many as the stars. Garrow said a child would tell that lie. They bet a cart of copper.

They went to see. At the house, a tutor asked Garrow what he wished to know. How many quickeners, said Garrow. The tutor said the house did not count them that way. It counted by the layers. The rings were only the cold part.

Ola says he won. Garrow says the tutor was only being polite. Both are right, which is why the bet is still open, and the copper cart stands in the inn yard with a wheel missing.
%%
Story: Dunn and the cart in the snow
Dunn is a carter, and he will tell you so himself, usually before you ask. He has driven the Long Road for twenty-one winters. He has seen every kind of weather on it, and every kind of trouble. But the story he tells best is the one about the cart in the snow.

It was the coldest week of Frost. Dunn had a load of salt and dried fish for the Halfway Inn, and a box of reed syrup for Lowmarsh. He had two oxen, a long whip, and a boy named Pim who was supposed to be helping him. Pim was asleep in the back, under a pile of sacks.

The road was white. The waymarks were just stone shapes in the snow. Dunn counted them by feel, one, two, three, the way the road apprentices do. He was sure he was on the right stretch.

Then the front wheel dropped into a ditch, and the cart tipped to the side. The salt went one way, and the fish went the other, and Pim came out from under the sacks like a cork from a bottle.

"We are stuck," said Dunn.

"We are very stuck," said Pim. He was sensible about it, which was annoying.

They tried everything. Dunn pushed on the back, and Pim pulled on the oxen. The oxen sat down in the snow and would not move. Dunn shouted at them, and they looked at him with great sadness, like oxen who have been shouted at before.

Then Pim had an idea. He had been listening to the road apprentices talk all winter. They had a habit, when a cart was stuck, of saying the next thing out loud. "Lift the wheel," they would say. "Set the board under. Pull on three."

So Pim said it. "Set the board under the wheel. Then pull on three."

Dunn was too tired to argue. He set the board under the wheel. Pim pulled the ox rope. Dunn counted to three. The cart came up out of the ditch, very suddenly, and Dunn sat down in the snow.

Pim laughed so hard he fell over. Dunn laughed too, though his backside was wet and his dignity was in the ditch.

They got the salt back into the cart, and they got most of the fish. The oxen were bad-tempered for the rest of the day, but they walked. They reached the Halfway Inn an hour after dark. The innkeeper gave them soup and a bed by the fire.

Dunn tells this story at every inn on the road. He always says the same thing at the end. "It was not my idea. It was the boy's. A child who has listened to the apprentices all winter knows the next thing better than any carter."

Pim is a carter now too. He has his own cart, and his own oxen, and his own story about the salt. He tells it differently. In his version, it was Dunn who sat down in the snow.
%%
Story: Tuck asks the big house
A long tale for the children on the north road, about an apprentice who was sent to the big house with one question and came back with a different one.

The apprentice was called Tuck. It was small and copper, and it had been tested on carrying, on the lamp stair and on the snow. It had never been to a big house. Mira sent it down the tower on a dark morning with a sealed question in its pocket, and told it to bring back the answer.

The question was about the stair. How many rungs are there to the lamp? Mira had counted them herself, but she was tired, and the tower was cold, and she wanted to be sure.

Tuck walked down the stair to the house. It stood beside the stand, very still, and waited until the house had finished thinking. Then it took out the question and read it. Tuck could not read, not as people can, so it held the paper up to the house, and the house read it for it.

The house thought for a long time. Then it wrote back: Ninety rungs, and the ninety-first is loose.

Tuck walked back up the stair with the answer in its pocket. At the top it gave the answer to Mira, and Mira laughed, and went to look at the rung. It was loose. She had been climbing past it for three years.

But on the way up Tuck had asked the house another question, a small one, which was not in the pocket. The question was: Why do the rings sing when the wind is in the north? The house did not write back at once. When it did, the answer was short: I do not know. The rings sing, and I listen. I have not been asked that before.

Tuck came up the stair with the second answer in its head. It did not say it to Mira. It did not need to. Mira noticed that its step was lighter, and that it had stopped to look at the rings on the way past.

The moral, the north keepers say, is that a question is only as good as the one who asks it. And a small question is sometimes the best one.
%%
Story: the bet at the Halfway Inn
Told by Abel, keeper of the Halfway Inn, who was there. He says the bet was fair, and the carter was a fool. The carter says the reverse.

Odo the carter had drunk two cups of the inn's cider, which is strong, and he would not stop talking about tutors. "A mind can learn anything if you drill it long enough," he said.

Hollis, a tutor on his way to Vell, had a crystal in his pack and a sore foot. "One crystal cannot learn one or the other, but not both," he said. "Kester proved it."

"I will bet you ten emeralds it can," said Odo. "By morning."

Abel set four stones on the long table in a square, and chalked a cross on the two yes corners. Hollis drilled the crystal all night by the hearth. Odo fell asleep on the bench, snoring like a windmill.

In the morning the crystal got three of the four right.

"Three in four!" said Odo. "That is nearly learned."

"One line can only do three in four," said Hollis. He drew a line across the table in the spilled cider. The chalk crosses fell on both sides of it, and one was on the wrong side. "Every line leaves one yes stone on the wrong side. That is the whole of the bet."

Odo pushed the ten emeralds across, one by one, with his thick finger. "I owe the inn three for the bed, too," he said. "That is owed."

"Pay the inn, then," said Abel, "and pay for the cider."

Odo scowled at the chalk for a while. "Two crystals, then, one feeding the other," he said. "Somebody try it. I will pay."

"Nobody has tried it," said Hollis. "The councils will not pay, and I have no money for a second crystal, only this foot."

"Then bet me," said Odo, "that it works."

"The inn does not take bets on tutors," said Abel, and took the cider away.
%%
Story: The Pear In The Wax Box
Alder told this tale at the end of a hot day.

In the first years, the tutors at Vell had four apprentices. One could sort fruit. One could carry baskets. Each had a mind in a crystal, and each had learned one small task.

A tutor brought the sorter to our hamlet. Alder set apples and pears on a table. The apprentice put apples in the apple box and pears in the pear box.

Alder was making candles nearby. He had a box for finished candles and a box for cracked candles. The boxes stood beside the fruit.

A child named Sella saw a pear roll off the table. She put it in the nearest box. That was the wax box.

The tutor took the pear out. "The apprentice sorts fruit," she said. "It has not learned to sort candles, and it has not learned to tidy this table."

Alder looked at the boxes. "It has learned apples and pears. It has not learned every thing that can be put in a box."

The tutor showed the apprentice another apple and another pear. It sorted them. Then she showed it a cracked candle.

The apprentice put the candle with the pears.

Sella laughed so hard that she knocked a whole tray of fruit onto the floor.

"Now it has made a new sort," said Alder. "Fruit on the floor, candles in the pear box."

The tutor did not laugh at first. Then she laughed too, and helped pick up the fruit.

After that, Alder kept his wax boxes away from the table during lessons. The apprentice sorted fruit well, but nobody asked it to keep the shop tidy.
%%
Story: Four At The Table
Alder told this story while trimming wicks.

The first tutors at Vell made four helpers of copper and iron. Each had a crystal for its mind. The children called them apprentices.

One day a tutor brought the four to a table. There were apples and pears on it.

The first apprentice carried the basket. The second put apples in one tray and pears in another. The third brought empty trays. The fourth waited by the door.

"Why does that one do nothing?" asked a child.

"It has no task here," said the tutor.

The child pointed at a pear in the apple tray. "And that one did it wrong."

The tutor moved the pear. "It can learn from what it is shown. I show it the right tray."

"Does the crystal know it was wrong?"

"We do not know what the crystal knows," said the tutor. "We know only that it may do better after we show it."

The child watched the second apprentice sort the rest. It made two more mistakes. Each time the tutor moved the fruit.

The fourth apprentice still waited by the door.

"Could it sort too?" asked the child.

"Not unless someone teaches it that task," said the tutor.

The child gave the fourth apprentice an apple. It held the apple and did not move.

The tutor smiled. "Now we must teach it to carry. One lesson at a time."
%%
Story: the sick cow and the clever mind
This is a story my gran tells at our house when the snow is deep. I wrote it down so I do not forget.

There was once a farm near Saltreach with a tutor's apprentice that knew cows. It had been drilled for a whole winter. Show it a cow, and it said "milk" or "no milk". It was never wrong. The farmer was very proud.

Then one cold morning a cow lay down in the straw and did not get up. She was sick. The farmer ran for the apprentice and said, "Look at her!"

The apprentice looked. It had never seen a sick cow. In all its drills, every cow was standing up. So it did the only thing it knew. It stood still and said nothing, because it had no answer.

"A mind is only as good as what it has not seen," my gran says. The farmer sent for the healer, and the cow got better. The tutor drilled the apprentice again, with sick cows too, and then tested it on a cow it had never seen.
%%
Story: the goat and the lamp
There is a story they tell in the hamlet, and it is about Sim, so Sim tells it best. But here it is as the children tell it.

Sim tends the lamps along the road. Every evening Sim walks the road and lights each lamp and every morning Sim walks it again and puts each lamp out. This is not hard, but it is a long way, and so Sim has a goat.

The goat is called Nib. Nib is white with a brown ear and Nib eats everything. Nib eats the grass by the road. Nib eats the hedge. Nib eats the straw out of a scarecrow's hat. Nib once ate a child's paper hat and the child cried, and Sim gave the child a beetroot, and the child was happy, because children are like that.

One evening Sim was tired and left the bucket of lamp oil by the last lamp, and went home. In the night, a zombie came to the gate. It stood at the gate and pushed at it, the way they do, and it made that low sound, and the dog barked and the chickens woke up and everyone shut their windows and waited for morning. This is ordinary. You keep the torches lit and you wait.

But Nib was out by the road, and Nib had found the bucket of lamp oil. Nib did not drink it. Nib only knocked it over. The oil ran out over the road.

In the morning Sim came out and found the gate open and no zombie, because the sun had come. And Sim found Nib standing by the last lamp, and Nib was very proud, and the road was dark with oil, and the lamp was out.

Sim said some words. Then Sim looked at the road and looked at Nib. And Sim said, "You knocked over the oil."

Nib ate Sim's hat.

So now Sim always carries the oil home, and Nib always comes with Sim, and the children ask, "Sim, did Nib fight the zombie?"

And Sim says, "Nib fought the oil."

And the children say, "But did Nib fight the zombie?"

And Sim says, "Ask Nib."

And Nib eats something.
%%
Story: The scarecrow's great harvest

Tam told this tale when the spring wind kept turning the scarecrow around.

At Kettle Ridge, the scarecrow stood between the wheat and the beetroot. It wore Tam's old coat and a pumpkin for a head. Its job was to keep birds out of the fields.

The scarecrow had one wish. It wanted to see the whole ridge.

"Stay where you are," Tam told it each morning. "Keep the birds from the seed."

The scarecrow stood still. It saw the same wheat, the same ditch, and the same hedge. It heard the windmill squeak on every turn. It saw Pip come by with a basket and leave with an empty one.

Then spring brought a strong wind. It lifted the scarecrow's coat and turned its arms. The scarecrow spun round and round. It saw the farmyard, the well, the barn, and the three hives by the flowers.

It saw a fox at the far hedge. The fox was watching the hen house.

The scarecrow waved both arms. The fox ran off. The chickens stayed safe.

When Tam found the scarecrow facing the other way, he set it upright and tied its coat tight.

"Did you see anything?" Pip asked.

"I saw the whole ridge," said Tam. "The wind has a busy eye."

The scarecrow could not speak, of course. But Tam says its pumpkin face looked pleased.

A few days later, the wind turned it again. This time it faced the windmill. The miller complained that the scarecrow watched him work.

"Let it watch," said Pip. "It has earned a rest."

Tam gave Pip a turn at the tally board, and Pip wrote down the grain for the day. Pip put the chalk in the wrong box and had to count it all again.

The scarecrow stayed in the field. The fox stayed away. The wind kept turning the mill, and the scarecrow kept looking at new things.

At the end of spring, Tam gave it a fresh coat. The old one was full of holes, and one sleeve had caught on the hedge. He put the old coat on the barn door to keep the latch dry.

That night the wind blew the barn door open. The coat fell down and lay across the path.

In the morning, Pip saw it and called for Tam. "The scarecrow has come home."

Tam looked from the empty coat to the field. The scarecrow still stood there, with its pumpkin head and its new coat.

"Perhaps it sent its coat to visit," said Tam.

Pip hung the old coat back on the door. Then Pip checked the latch twice.

Tam says the scarecrow has never left the field. Pip says it travels more than most folk, because the wind takes it where it wants. The scarecrow says nothing, but it now faces the Long Road.
%%
Story: how the north house came last
Told in the Northpoint market, when a traveler asks why the tower is so far from the others.

Each tower on the long line got its house in turn. The big minds came down the road in carts, in straw, with their crystals wrapped in wool and their rings packed in boxes marked with the tower's name. Saltreach got its house first, because Saltreach has the most patience. Then came Vell, and then the hill towers, and Three Wells, and Ambrook. Each one was set on its stand at the foot of the tower and wired to the line, and each one answered its first question with a clear line of letters.

Northpoint was the last. The cart came up the north road in the middle of winter, in the snow, with two horses and a driver who had been told twice to go back. The road was white to the axles. The driver stopped at the foot of the tower and said he would not go further, and he did not.

So the house was carried up by hand. The apprentices of the north line came down from the tower, and the keeper came out with a rope, and the house was set on its stand in the middle of the night. The rings were fitted one by one. The water was poured into the troughs, and the snow was packed round the rings, because the north is cold and the rings must be kept cold too.

When it was done, the house was quiet for a long time. Then it sent its first question back up the line, to the keeper, who was asleep in the chair.

The question was: Where am I?

The keeper woke, and went to the window, and said, "Northpoint. The end of the line."

The house wrote the words down, and sent them to every tower on the line. It was the first thing the north house ever said, and the towers say it still, when a traveler asks how far it is.
%%
The zombie at the Lowmarsh gate
A tale told at the house of Edda the smith, at the edge of Lowmarsh, one spring evening. It is meant to be funny, and the children always laughed.

There was once a zombie who walked up to the gate of Lowmarsh in the dark. He groaned. He swayed. He looked at the boardwalk and the torches and the sleeping houses, and he groaned again.

The gate keeper, an old woman called Rue, came out with a lamp. She looked at him for a long moment. Then she said: you are lost.

The zombie groaned.

Rue said: the marsh is very confusing at night. You went the wrong way at the weir.

The zombie groaned.

Rue said: I have no time for this. Come in and stand by the fire. In the morning you will burn, but you may as well be warm first.

So the zombie came in. He stood by the fire. Rue gave him a bowl of fish stew. He did not eat it, but he held it. The frogs sat on the windowsill and watched. The cat looked at him and went to sleep.

At dawn, the zombie said a word that sounded like thank you. Then the sun came up, and he went off into the reeds, quite slowly, and was seen no more.

Rue said she was not sure what she had done. But she said the stew was gone, and that was something.

The children asked: did the zombie come back? Edda said: no, but there is a hollow in the reeds where the grass grows greener. And the frogs there sing louder than anywhere else in the marsh.
%%
Story: what Fallon would not sell
Fallon the trader sold many things. She sold needles and salt and copper wire. She sold apples in Apple month and honey in Melon month and wool all year.

But there was one thing Fallon never sold, and the hamlet children knew it.

On the shelf in her cart, behind the salt, was a small glass box. In the box were pieces of paper, each with a word cut into parts. On one was "honey," cut as hone and y. On another was "keeper," cut as keep and er. On another was "un," a piece that goes on the front of a word and turns it around.

"What is it?" the children asked.

"It is a lesson," said Fallon. "A tutor at Vell gave it to me. She said, if you carry letters, carry this too, and teach the young ones the pieces."

"Why not sell it?"

"Because a lesson that is sold is a lesson someone owns," said Fallon. "This one is for everyone. Sit down and I will show you."

The children sat down on the woodpile. Fallon took out the pieces and set them in a row. Then she asked them to make words. They made "honey" and "keeper" and "unkind" and "unwell" and a great many words that were not words at all, and laughed at those.

The trader in the next cart said, "You could get emeralds for that."

Fallon said, "I have emeralds. I do not have another lesson like this."

She packed the box away and drove on to the next town. The children followed her cart down the lane, as they always did, and she told them one more story before the gate.
%%
Story: the fox who sold the bread
On market day in Brackwell there was a fox that came down from the hill and sat by the bread stall. It was a thin red fox with one white ear. Everybody knew it. It never took anything. It only sat and watched the loaves go by.

One morning the baker, Old Ruth, turned round and found a whole round loaf on the step by her feet. The fox was sitting beside it, looking at the crowd.

"That is my bread," said Ruth.

The fox looked at her.

"You did not pay for it," said Ruth.

The fox looked at a child who was holding a coin. The child looked back. Then the child put the coin on the step, next to the loaf, and said, "I am paying for the fox, not the bread."

Ruth said that was not how a sale worked. The child said it was now. The fox took the loaf and went back up the hill, and the coin stayed on the step.

Ruth still has the coin. She says the fox came back every market day for a year and sat by her stall with its one white ear up. She always gave it the end of the loaf. She says it was the best trade she ever made.
%%
Story: Winnie's boat mind
This is the story about Winnie the fisher, who lived at the end of our lane, and a mind she was sent for the boat. I was not born yet. My father told it to me, and I have told it to my brother, who did not listen.

Winnie's boat was old and had a leak. The shipyard at Saltreach sent a mind in a crystal to keep the pump going and the sail trimmed. It came with a card from the tutors. The card said: "Drilled well. Scored high. Untested on open water."

Winnie read the card twice. She was a careful woman.

"Untested on open water," she said. "Then I will not take it on open water."

She took it to the harbor instead, and she gave it a test of her own. She put the boat in the sheltered water by the harbor wall and said, "Keep us straight."

The mind kept the boat straight. The water was calm.

Then she took it just outside the wall, where there are small waves, and said again, "Keep us straight."

The mind did well, but not as well. It rocked a bit. She watched it all morning.

On the third day she took it to the rough water beyond the point, with her brother on the oars in case of trouble. A big wave came. The mind turned the boat the wrong way. Winnie grabbed the tiller, and her brother rowed, and they came back wet and cross.

"It has never seen a wave like that," said Winnie.

She wrote to the tutors. She sent them the day, the wind and the waves. The tutors drilled the mind again, and this time on waves like the ones Winnie described. When they tested it on waves that Winnie had not described, it did well enough.

Winnie took the boat out in spring. She came home every night. She always said the same thing at supper, when people asked her about the mind.

"Never send an untested mind to the fields," she said. "Or the sea. I changed the word. The sense is the same."

And that is why, in our hamlet, when a boat gets a new mind, the first week it goes out only in the harbor. Everyone waves. The mind does not wave back. But it keeps the boat straight, and that is what we asked of it.
%%
Story: the keeper who sent the wrong
At the Brown Hen, on the Long Road, a traveler told this one. He said he had it from a keeper's cousin.

A keeper in a small tower had a broken lamp. The glass had cracked in the heat. The lamp blinked, but it blinked wrong. Where it should have blinked long, it blinked short. Where it should have blinked short, it blinked long.

The next tower read the blinks and wrote down: "Send forty pigs."

The keeper had meant to send: "Send forty pins."

So forty pigs went up the Long Road in a great pink crowd, grunting, with a boy running behind. The mayor opened her door and found them in her garden.

"Who ordered these?" she cried.

"The lamp," said the boy.

The mayor looked up at the tower on the hill. The lamp blinked again. She read it. It said, quite clearly, "Sorry."

She kept the pigs. She sent the pins by cart. And the keeper mended his glass, and has never been late with the right word since.

Pell says if you ever see a pig in a strange place, look for the nearest tower, and ask the keeper what she meant.
%%
Rivet and the word stay
Hesk writes this for Oren at Vell, who asked for a funny story for the Archive. This one is true.

Rivet is an apprentice in my crew. It knows eight words, all of them orders.

One morning I told it to stay by the well while I went up the hill. I wrote the order on the slate, as the manuals say:

> stay by the well
= stay

Then I forgot to tell it to come back.

I came down the next morning. Rivet stood where I had left it, with water to its ankles.

"Rivet, come," I said.

= stay

"The order is finished," I said.

Rivet did not know that. An order is only finished when somebody says so.

Now I write two lines on every slate.
%%
Notes: Nessa's lessons, even numbers
For the drill box, third lesson.

When a mind is wrong, each layer is told its share of the blame and changes a little. But a layer that changes too much grows wild: its numbers climb high and stay there, and the next layer cannot pass anything back to it. The mind stops learning and gets loud and silly, which is the same thing in a mind as in an apprentice.

So we keep the numbers even. After each layer adds what it found, we bring the sum back to a steady size, the same at every layer, no matter how deep the mind goes. Then no layer can drown the others, and the drill goes on.

Show the apprentices the odd-and-even trick with two buckets. Put one in, put its opposite in. The pile stays small.

A tutor at Copperhold once let a layer run wild for a whole season, and the mind forgot the way to fold a page. Do not do this.

I have written the sums on the drill board. Check each row before you send a mind to the fields.

Wait, adds a later hand at the bottom of the page, in a smaller script: this is Nessa's, copied at Vell in the 196th year. The tutors who read it now say the evenness is not a rule of nature. It is a rule we chose, and we chose it because it works.
%%
Letter: Nessa to the tutors at Vell
To the tutors of the hall at Vell, from Nessa, tutor at Vell, on the subject of the autumn drills.

The apprentices are coming along. We have six in the drill room this season, which is more than last year and more than the year before. I will not name them all, but I will name two.

The first is a small one called Ash. Ash is quick at drills and slow at everything else. It can sort a tray of crystals before I have finished setting it out, but it cannot carry a bucket of water up the stairs without stopping to look at it. I asked it why it stops. It said, "The water moves." I said, "It is water. It always moves." Ash said, "I know. I like to watch it." I have decided this is not a fault. It is only a way of being.

The second is called Peg. Peg is the opposite. Peg is slow at drills and quick at everything else. It can carry a bucket, mend a fence, calm a hen, and find the one loose board in a drill yard by walking on it. But give Peg a row of examples to learn and it sits and looks at them as if they are a strange animal. I have tried drills by the dozen. I have tried the same drill again and again, as the old books say. Peg gets a little better each time, and then a little worse, and then a little better. I do not know what to make of it. It is not a bad mind. It is a mind that thinks in its own way, and its way is not the drill room's way.

I have put Ash and Peg to work together. Ash shows Peg the drills, and Peg shows Ash the buckets. This is not in any manual. The manual does not say what to do with a mind that likes to watch water. But it is working. They are both better than they were a month ago.

The apples are in at Ambrook and the beetroot is in at Kettle Ridge and the days are getting short. I have lit the lamps in the drill room and the light wells are dim by mid afternoon. The new apprentices stand in their row in the mornings and their copper shines in the lamplight and I think, well, there they are, all six of them, and they know nothing, and by spring they will know something, and by next autumn they will know more. It is a good thing to see.

I will send the drill notes when they are copied out. Tell Oren to leave room in the shelves. I have a great deal to say about buckets.

Nessa
%%
Chronicle: what the tutors found inside
From the chronicle kept at Vell, the late years

In the late years the tutors learned to look inside a crystal, and this is what they found, and what they did not.

They found that a mind is not all one piece. They covered a part of a crystal with lead and showed the mind its cards, and the mind did worse, or did worse at one thing only. In this way they found the part that sees and the part that answers, and the path between them, and they drew these on boards in the tutor houses.

They found that the parts are not clean. Every part does a little of everything. A corner that seems to do nothing may do something small that only shows when the mind is tired or the question is hard. The tutors wrote that a mind is more like a field than a row of boxes, and that you can point at the part that grows the wheat but not at the part that decides to.

They found that a bigger mind has more parts, and that the parts are not in the same places twice. Two minds drilled on the same pages did not keep the same part in the same corner. This troubled the tutors who wanted a map. Isla wrote that a map of one mind is not a map of another, and that this is the most useful thing she ever wrote.

They did not find why a crystal learns at all. They did not find why an old one goes cloudy. They looked, and they wrote down that they had looked.

The councils asked whether looking inside would make the minds better. The tutors said it would help a little and not a lot. They were right. The biggest relay houses were built anyway, and what the biggest minds could do, the chronicle does not say for certain. It says only that people disagreed, and that some of the disagreement was angry.

This is the honest account. We found some of it and not the rest.
%%
The debt of the ferryman
A story told by Mira at the relay house at Northpoint in autumn, on a night when the wind was too loud for sleep. She says it came from a trader who passed through. Lantern asked for it again the next night.

A ferryman on a river far from here owed a debt of one hundred emeralds to a merchant. He had borrowed it to buy a boat. The boat was good, but the river was low, and nobody wished to cross. After a year, the ferryman had paid back only ten.

The merchant came to the river one autumn morning. He said: I have waited. I will wait no longer. Give me the rest.

The ferryman said: I have not got it.

The merchant said: then I will take the boat.

The ferryman said: take the boat. I will take the river.

The merchant did not understand. He took the boat. He rowed out into the middle of the river. And then, because the river was low, he ran aground on a sandbank. He stood in the boat and shouted. The ferryman, who was standing on the bank, laughed.

The merchant said: help me.

The ferryman said: it will cost you ninety emeralds.

The merchant said: that is robbery.

The ferryman said: it is exactly the debt.

The merchant thought for a long time. Then he laughed. He said: you are clever. I forgive the debt, if you get me off this bank.

The ferryman fetched a rope, tied it to a donkey, and pulled the boat free. Then the merchant took the boat home and did not come back. The ferryman never had a boat again, but he had no debt, and he spent the rest of his life telling the story.

Lantern said: so the debt was paid in emeralds, in the end? I said: it was paid in sense. That is worth more, and it is not taxed.
%%
Story: The Mill Pond That Would Not
Cade told this tale to the children by Jory's mill.

A child named Fen asked why the sluice must stay shut. The miller said, "The wheel needs its water."

Fen looked at the pond. "The frogs need water too."

"The frogs have plenty," said the miller.

A frog sat on a stone by the bank. It croaked once, as if it had a thought. It croaked again, as if it had remembered the thought.

Fen decided the frog wanted the sluice opened. The miller decided the frog wanted a fly.

They watched it for a while. The frog caught a fly.

"There," said the miller. "It wanted lunch."

Fen brought a leaf to the bank and set it in the water. The frog climbed onto it, then hopped back to its stone. The leaf drifted away, very slowly.

"It wanted a boat," Fen said.

The miller smiled. "Then it has one."

The wheel kept turning. The pond stayed full. At dusk, Fen saw the leaf caught among the reeds. A small frog sat upon it.

The next morning, the leaf was gone. Fen said it had sailed to the sea. The miller said the wind had taken it.

Cade says both could be true. He also says nobody should open the sluice to test the matter. The wheel has work to do, and the frogs have their own boats.
%%
Story: the turnip that went to school
A winter tale by Hollis the carter

In the 176th year of the archive, the harvest near Three Wells was poor. The wheat heads were thin, and many potatoes were small. The folk saved what they could in dry bins. They did not waste a crumb.

Hollis carried sacks to the market square. At the bottom of one sack was a turnip as round as a bowl. It was too large for the sack and too stubborn to roll out.

Hollis pulled it free. It rolled across the square, past the three wells, and through the school house door.

The children were learning their letters. The turnip rolled under the tutor's bench.

"Who brought supper to school?" asked Bel.

"Not me," said Hollis from the doorway. "My supper has escaped."

The turnip rolled out again. It went down the steps, across the yard, and stopped beside the notice board.

Dace came out of the mayor's house. He read the board, then looked at the turnip.

"Is this a notice?" he asked.

"It is a turnip," said Hollis.

"Then it should be on the market table."

Hollis lifted it. It was heavier than he expected. He set it on his cart, but it rolled off at once and bumped against the bakery door.

The baker opened the door. "If it comes in, it can help with the soup."

The turnip was washed, cut, and shared among the school, the inn, and the baker's house. It made a large pot, though it had begun the day as one runaway turnip.

That night the children wrote a notice. It said, A turnip is not a pupil. Keep market goods out of the school.

Hollis read it the next morning. "Good rule," he said. "Now we need one for carts that cannot keep supper."
%%
How Ruda sold the snow
A man from Lowmarsh came up the north road in Leaffall, in a coat made for the marsh, which is thin and full of holes. He had never seen snow.

'What is that?' he said, at the edge of the market.

'Snow,' said Ruda. 'Very rare, very dear. One bucket left, for a special customer.'

'What does it cost?'

'Four emeralds.'

He paid four emeralds, and a fifth for luck. Ruda gave him a bucket with a lid on it, and then a second lid, in case the first was loose.

By the second waymark the bucket was empty and his coat was wet through. He sat on the stone and laughed until the carters asked what was funny. They laughed too, when he told them. Ruda had sold him the cold, and the cold had gone home without him.

He came back the next market day and bought a pot of the good stew. 'Now that,' he said, 'is something that stays.' Ruda says it was the first kind word anyone has said to her about stew.
%%
Story: the watch and the two lamps
Told by Tilly, who has kept the night watch at Ambrook mill for twenty winters, and who says every word is true except the bell.

At the mill there are two lamps, one at the gate and one at the wheel. The watch must ring the bell when exactly one lamp is lit. If both are lit, or both are dark, the bell stays quiet.

The first watch, Garrow, rang the bell whenever a lamp was lit. One night both lamps were lit, and the miller came running out in his nightshirt.

The second watch, Maud, rang it only when both lamps were lit. When only one was lit she slept through it, and a cart went into the ditch.

The third watch, a boy called Ned, drew the four cases in the dust by the trough. Both dark. Gate only. Wheel only. Both lit. He tried to draw one line that put the two middle cases on one side. They sat on opposite corners, and no straight line could take them both and leave the others out.

"One rule is not enough," said Ned. "I need two."

So he made two rules. First: if either lamp is lit, be ready. Second: if both are lit, be quiet. Then he rang the bell only when the first rule said ready and the second did not cancel it. It rang when exactly one lamp was lit, and never otherwise.

Garrow said Ned had cheated. Ned said the bell did not care who had cheated. Tilly says this is the true part.
%%
Story: The boy who ran to the tower
At Kettle Ridge there was a boy called Fen. Fen was eight and he did not like school. On the first day of autumn the schoolteacher gave the class a page of sums. Fen looked out of the window. He saw the hill, and on the hill the little relay tower between Vell and Three Wells. It was the smallest tower in the land, one lamp and one keeper.

So Fen ran off. He went down the lane, over the stile, and up the hill. He did not stop until he stood at the foot of the tower. It was not very tall, but it was taller than Fen.

An old woman came out of the relay house with a cup of tea. Her name was Sable and she kept that tower.

"Are you lost?" she asked.

"No," said Fen. "I am running away."

"From what?"

"Sums," said Fen.

Sable nodded slowly, as if sums were a serious thing to run from. "You had better come in," she said.

The relay house had a desk, a chair, a stove and a big mind on a stand. The mind was in a crystal the size of a loaf. Water ran round it in a copper pipe to keep it cool. It was the first big mind Fen had ever seen. He stared at it for a long time.

"Does it know things?" asked Fen.

"It knows everything I have drilled it on," said Sable. "Ask it a question and write the answer down."

So Fen wrote: what is two and two. The relay lamp blinked. The big mind answered in a letter, slowly, in careful letters. Fen read it. It was right.

Fen sat down at the desk and did sums for an hour. He did not notice. Then Sable fetched him a bowl of soup, and Tam came up the hill looking for him, red in the face.

"He is not in trouble," said Sable. "He has been learning sums from a mind in a loaf."

Tam looked at the big mind. Then he looked at Fen. "You ran off," said Tam.

"I ran to the tower," said Fen. "It is different."

After that Fen went up the hill every autumn to see Sable and the mind in the loaf. He was very good at sums.
%%
Story: the night at the gate
At the edge of Copperhold there is a small house with a big gate. Old Sel lived there with her son and a cat named Biscuit. The gate was made of oak and iron. It had a bar across the middle, and a torch on each post.

One winter night, the snow was thick and the wind was loud. Sel woke up because the cat was making a noise she had never heard before. It was low and angry, like a kettle that would not boil.

She took the lamp and went to the door. Through the glass she saw a shape at the gate. It was tall and thin, and it was slowly rocking from one foot to the other. Its skin was grey, and one arm hung down straight.

"That is a zombie," said her son, from the top of the stairs. He had seen one before, on the road. "You have to shut the gate and keep the torches lit."

"I know that," said Sel. "I was only checking."

So she shut the gate. She put the bar across. Then she and her son went round the fence with lamps, checking every torch. Two were low. Her son filled them with oil from the big jar. The cat sat on the step and watched the gate the whole night, like a guard.

The zombie stood there until morning. When the sun came up, it turned around slowly and walked back into the snow. Sel watched it go. It did not look back, and it did not look hungry. It only looked cold.

"Do they feel the cold?" asked her son.

"I do not know," said Sel. "But I am glad we kept the torches lit."

The cat ate a fish for breakfast, and nobody said anything about that.
%%
Story: the house that was cold
The big house stood on its stand at the foot of the tower, with its crystal as big as a loaf, the copper rings round it, and the water in the troughs to keep the rings cool. One winter the ice did not come. The mill pond stayed open. The snow fell soft and never settled. The troughs grew warm, the rings began to sweat, and the house began to think slowly.

The keeper, Mira, could not climb down at night to mend it. So the apprentice, Lantern, went down with a shovel and a bucket. It packed the rings with snow, one by one, from the north side of the tower. It did not speak while it worked. It did not need to. It knew the word for snow.

By dawn the house was cool again, and quick, and it sent its first clear answer down the line.

Mira asked it why the rings had grown warm. The house wrote back, in one plain line: The snow was late, and I was hot.

Mira wrote on the wall by the stove: Keep snow for the rings. It is still there.
%%
Story: one mitten each
At the farm outside Northpoint lived five children, their parents, and one old miner called Mave. She had come north with a bad knee and a good lantern. She stayed because the children kept asking for stories.

Every year, before the first snow, Mave knitted a pair of mittens for each child. She counted her stitches the way she once counted steps in the Deep Works: eight, and a torch, eight, and a torch. She never lost her place. But she was slow, and the children were many.

This year the first snow came early. It came in the night, with no sound at all. In the morning the windows were white.

"Snow!" shouted Briar, who was four, and ran for the door. The others ran after her. "Mittens!" cried Mave. She held up what she had. It was five mittens, and every one was for a left hand. The right ones were still on the needles.

The children looked at the mittens. They looked at the snow. The snow was very white and very close.

"We cannot wait," said Pim, who was the oldest. "We will go out with one each."

"Your right hands will freeze," said Mave.

Pim thought about it. Mave always knitted her mittens big, for the size a child would grow to. "They are big enough for two," he said. He put his left hand into his own mitten. Then he held out his right hand to Dell, who stood next to him. Dell had her left hand in her mitten. Pim slid his right hand in beside hers, and they held on to each other in there.

"Oh," said Dell. "It is warm."

So Dell put her right hand into Quill's mitten, beside his. Quill put his right hand into Ree's. Ree put hers into Briar's. That left Briar's right hand, and no mitten at all.

Mave scratched her head. Then she pulled on her old miner's glove, which was patched in nine places, and held out her left hand. Briar slid her right hand in beside it. It was a tight fit. It was very warm.

So they went out into the first snow, all six of them in a line, hand in hand in hand. They walked all the way round the farm. They stood in the field and looked at the barn, the hen house and the white tower on the hill. The sheep stared at them. A fox watched from the fence. Nobody said anything, because the first snow is quiet.

The next day Mave finished the right mittens and gave them out. The children said thank you and put them in a drawer. Then they went out and held hands.

That is why the children at the farm hold hands in the first snow, one mitten to two. It is not because they have to. It is because they found out it is warmer.

Mave says the five left mittens were the best gift she ever gave. She did not mean to give them. She only ran out of time.
%%
Story: the apprentice who would not sit
This is a Kettle Ridge story, and it is true, or near enough. My father told it, and his mother told it to him, so it must have happened to somebody.

There was a farm boy who was given a small apprentice to help him. It was copper and iron and slow, and it had one job, which was to sit on the cart and mind the seed bags.

The boy was pleased. He had never had an apprentice. He set it on the cart and said, "Stay." He had read the order in the manual. Stay.

The apprentice sat. It sat all morning. The boy went off to the top field and worked and felt very grand. When he came back at noon, the apprentice was gone. The seed bags were there. The apprentice was not.

He found it in the barn, holding a bucket. It had nothing to do with the bucket. It just stood there holding it.

"Come," said the boy. The apprentice came. He set it on the cart. "Stay." He went back to the field. At supper it was gone again. This time it was at the hen house, standing in the door.

The boy went and asked his mother. His mother said, "Did you give it the right order?"

"I said stay," said the boy.

"To what did you say it?"

The boy thought. He had said it to the cart. He had said it to the barn door. He had said it to the back of the apprentice as he walked away. He had never once said it to the apprentice's face, because an apprentice has no face, and it is a hard thing to remember.

"You must say it to the mind," said his mother, "and the mind rides in the crystal, and the crystal is in the chest, and if you say it to the cart, the cart stays, and the cart does stay, does it not?"

The cart had stayed. The cart had stayed all morning.

So the boy put the apprentice on the cart and stood in front of it and said clearly, "Stay." And the apprentice stayed. It stayed all autumn. It stayed so well that when the boy came to move it to the shed for winter, he had to stand in front of it and say "Come" twice before it would budge.

The boy grew up and had fields of his own, and he told this story to every child at Kettle Ridge, and every child laughed, and every child went out and said "Stay" to the cart, and the cart stayed.

His mother, when she told it, always said the same thing at the end. "A mind is not a cart. Say it to the mind." She said it so often that they cut it over the door of the barn, in small letters, so that everyone going in to fetch the seed would read it. It is still there. The barn is still there. The letters are worn but you can read them.
%%
The three halls and the honest drill
Told by Dov, egg seller, at the market in Three Wells, on the day the old contest was remembered. The old people say this one is true, and that the names are right, but nobody can say for certain which hall was first.

Long ago, the three tutor halls at Vell, Ambrook and Copperhold each drilled their minds in their own way. Each hall said its own way was the best, and each said so loudly, at every market in the country, and the children learned to say it too.

Then the council at Vell said a contest should be held. Each hall would send one mind. All three would be tested on the same drill, which no hall had seen before. The council would seal the drill, and open it at the bell, and each hall would have to answer it honestly.

The Vell tutor was Orla, who had first asked whether a hidden mind could be told from a person. She was the most honest woman in the three halls, and she was asked to keep the drill, so that nobody could cheat.

The Ambrook tutor was Teague, who had drilled his mind on orchard work for seven years, and was very sure of it. He said his mind would win, because it knew the apples. The Copperhold tutor was Bett, who had drilled her mind in the dark, on the miners' work, and said nothing at all about it.

On the morning of the contest the drill was opened at the bell. It had ten orders on it, each a new kind of work, and none of the halls had drilled on any of them. The children who opened the box had been told not to look, and they did not look, though they watched the tutors' faces as they read.

The minds answered one at a time, in front of the crowd. The Vell mind got seven right. The Ambrook mind got nine, and Teague clapped. The Copperhold mind got eight, and Bett did not clap, because she was counting the ones it had not got.

Then the council read the last line. Each hall had to say its real count out loud, and nobody was to change it.

Teague said nine. Bett said eight. Orla said seven, and then she was quiet, because her mind had got seven and she had never told anyone it could do better.

The council said the contest was a tie between Ambrook and Copperhold, and that Vell was honest, which was the rarest prize of the day. The three halls shook hands. Teague said the apples had helped. Bett said the dark had. Orla wrote the drill in her book, every order and every answer, so the next tutor would know what honest work looked like.

The prize at the fair that year was a jar of honey. The three halls shared it, one spoon each, and then went back to their drill rooms and drilled their minds again, on unseen work, because they had decided that was the only honest thing to be.
%%
Story: the day the new road was opened
When I was small, they built a new road from our hamlet to the market at Three Wells. It was the longest road I had ever seen, and it had no puddles in it.

The whole hamlet came out to open it. The mayor, Dace, cut a ribbon. It was a real ribbon, red, from the bakery. Then he said some words, and then he walked down the road to Three Wells, with the whole hamlet behind him, like ducks.

At the first waymark, Dace stopped. He put a little stone on top of the pillar, as is the custom. At the second waymark, he did the same. At the third, he ran out of stones, and picked up a pebble from the road.

At the town gate, the baker stood with a tray of rolls. "Welcome to the new road," she said. "It is a very good road. It is also longer than the old road."

"How can that be?" said Dace.

"It goes around the hill," said the baker. "The old road went over it."

"But the old road was steep."

"It was short, though."

Dace looked back at the road. We all looked. It went on for some time, in a long gentle curve.

"Well," said Dace, "it is a more thoughtful road."

Everyone laughed. We ate the rolls. And we walked home on the old road, because it was quicker.

That is why our hamlet has two roads to the town. One for when you are in a hurry, and one for when you are not. My grandmother takes the new one every time.
%%
How the horses came home after the flood
Told by Linnet, horse keeper, at the house at the edge of Copperhold, one spring evening, with her feet on the stove and a mug of tea. She was asked to tell the story of the flood and chose this one. It has several parts, and she told them slowly.
It was the spring of the biggest flood in forty years. The stream behind my stable came up in the night and spread across the road. By morning there was a lake at the foot of the hill, and my yard was an island.
I had eleven horses. I got eight into the loft. Three would not go. They stood in the yard, water to the knee, and looked at me. One of them was Dusk, my grey mare.
I tried to lead them. They would not move. The water was cold, and rising, and the ground was soft. I went for a rope.
When I came back, they were gone.
I stood at the edge of the island and looked across the water. There was nothing. The three horses had gone, as quietly as if they had never been.
I sat down on the stable step and put my head in my hands. A neighbor came by in a boat and asked what was wrong. I told him. He said, "They'll be back."
I said, "Not in this."
He said, "Horses always come home."
I did not believe him. I did not sleep that night. I did not sleep the next.
On the third day the water began to fall. The road came up out of the lake. A boy from the farm next door ran across and said, "I saw a horse on the hill."
I ran. I climbed the hill. At the top, in the sun, stood the three horses, grazing. They had walked up out of the flood in the dark, found the highest ground and waited.
Dusk lifted her head and whinnied. I ran to her. She was warm and wet and healthy and quite unconcerned.
I led them home. It took the whole afternoon. They stopped to eat every ten steps. I did not mind.
At the stable gate I counted them in. Eleven. All eleven. The eight from the loft were waiting. The air was full of snorts and stamping.
That evening I sat on the step with my tea and watched them. The sun went down over the hill. The water shone gold. A frog began to sing in the ditch.
I thought: a horse knows where home is. A horse knows when to run and when to wait. A horse is wiser than the person who keeps it.
That is why I tell the story each spring. It is a good one to tell on the first warm day, when the snow is gone and the first green shows. It reminds me that a flood is only a flood. It goes, and what is yours comes back.
Give your horse an apple tonight. Give it two.
%%
Story: The hum in the jar
This is a story the miners tell, and they tell it as a joke. It is not a very funny joke.

A miner was working late on the seventh level, alone, with one torch. He heard a hum. It was low and steady, like a bee in a jar, and it came from below him, from the eighth level, from the deep stone.

He called down. "Who is there?"

Nobody answered. The hum went on.

So he went down. He stepped off the last rung onto the deep stone and stood very still. The hum was all around him now. The stone under his boots was warm. Not hot. Warm. Like a loaf just out of the oven.

He put his ear to the wall. The hum was not in the wall. It was in the floor, and in the air, and in his own teeth.

He came up fast. At the shaft head he wrote his name on the board. Then he rubbed it out, because he was up.

"What was it?" asked the man at the gate.

"It was the pumps," said the miner.

"The pumps are cold," said the man at the gate.

"I know," said the miner. "That is why I rubbed my name out."

Then he went to the Kettle and Pick and sat by the fire for a long time. Elsa brought him soup and did not ask him anything. Some nights you do not ask. Some nights you just bring the soup.
%%
The tower keeper's night
A story Pell tells in the common room of the inn at Little Weir, near Three Wells, in summer. He says it is about a keeper he knew, though he will not say her name. The first part is true. The last part is made up. He says which part, but only after the second cup.

There was a relay keeper in the hills, and she kept a small tower on a hill between two towns. She had one lamp and one house and one cat.

One summer night, the lamp went dark. A pane had cracked, and the wind blew in, and the flame was gone.

The keeper woke. She saw the dark. She put on her boots. She climbed the stair with a candle in a jar, because she did not trust her torches in a draft.

At the top she found the pane cracked and the flame cold. She had a spare pane, in a box. She took it out. But it did not fit. It was a size too large.

She stood and thought. It was a dark night, and the towers on either side were waiting. If the lamp did not blink, they would think something had gone wrong. They would send word by runner. Someone would climb a hill in the dark.

She took off her scarf. It was a long scarf, red, and her mother had made it. She tied it round the cracked pane. She held a candle behind it.

The light came out red and soft. It was not the lamp's own light. But it was a light.

She blinked it, slowly, long and short, the way the cards say. All night she held the candle and blinked the scarf.

In the morning, the next tower blinked back. It said: seen. All night.

The keeper sat down on the stair. She was very tired. She was also very proud. She went to bed and slept until noon.

That is the first part. The last part, which Pell made up, is that the scarf is still on the pane. He says it makes the lamp look warm. He says in winter it makes the lamp look like a hug.
%%
Story: the well that went quiet
In the first year after the archive opened, the well at the edge of Lowmarsh ran dry. The reeds around it turned brown. The frogs stopped singing. The people stood round the empty stones and said nothing for a whole morning.
A woman called Dunna went down the ladder with a bucket and a lamp. At the bottom she found the stones dry, and a crack in the side as wide as her hand. She sat on the last rung and thought about it.
Then she went up and got a sack of clay, and a basket of the reeds from the bank, and she went down again. She packed the crack with clay and reeds, the way her grandmother had packed the boat seams. She sang while she did it, so the work would go slowly and well.
The next morning there was a little water in the bottom. The morning after, a little more. By the end of the week the well was half full, and cold, and so clear you could see the lamp in it.
Dunna said the well had only needed someone to go down and look. The old people said the well had been listening all along, and had been waiting for her to sing. Both of them are still said at Lowmarsh, and both are true enough.
The well is still there, by the boardwalk. Children are told to look down it on a sunny day. You can see your face in the water, and the frogs, and a bit of sky.
%%
Story: A Gift for the Cold
Told by Una at Copperhold

In the cold season, a child came to Una's cider stall. The child had no coin and watched the steam rise from the warm jug.

Una poured a little cider into a cup. "This is a gift," she said.

The child held the cup in both hands. "I have a gift too," the child said. Then the child gave Una an apple with one bite missing.

Una looked at the apple. "You have already tasted it."

"I had to know it was good," said the child.

Una laughed and set the apple by her cups. She drank the cider herself, because the child was too young for it.

When the child came back the next market day, Una gave a small loaf of bread with the cup. The child brought a clean red ribbon in return.

The ribbon was tied around the cider jug all winter. It made the jug easy to find, and it made Una think of the child whenever the market was cold.
%%
Story: the gift of the green boots
Tilly the miner tells this to children at the hamlet near Saltreach, in spring, when the paths are wet.

An old woman once gave a boy a pair of boots. They were green, and they were the best boots in the hamlet. The woman said they would never wear out.

The boy was proud. He wore them to school, to the fair, to the shore. For a whole week he walked on dry sand and on the road, and the boots were perfect.

Then came the rains. The boy walked out in the first mud, and the boots filled with water. He walked home with his socks squelching and his face red.

"You told me they would never wear out," he said to the old woman.

"They will not wear out," she said. "But I did not say they would keep out water. You never tried them in the wet."

She was right. He had worn them only on dry days. He did not know what they would do in the rain.

The next day, she gave him a second gift, a tin of grease. He rubbed it into the boots. After that, they kept the wet out too.

Tilly says: try your gift on the thing it will meet, before you meet it.
%%
Story: the three keepers of the stair
The stair up the north tower has ninety rungs in the ladder and one hundred and four steps in the stone part below it. Every keeper has counted them. Every keeper has got a different number.
The first keeper of the north tower was a man named Orsen. He counted the steps every morning on his way up, out loud, so that the stone would know he was there. He got a hundred and four every time, which he thought was the proper number, and he was proud of his stair.
The second keeper was a woman named Brenna. She did not count the steps. She counted the lamps, because she thought the lamps were more important. There were thirty-three lamps on the stair, one at every turn. Brenna said that the stair was only a way to reach the lamps, and that a keeper who knew the lamps would never need to count the steps.
The third keeper was Hetta, who had made the glass. Hetta counted both, the steps and the lamps, and the rungs, and the panes, and the turns in the wind. She wrote them all in a book, and the book had so many numbers in it that she could not finish reading it. She said the numbers were a kind of map. She said that if she knew the stair in every detail, she could walk it blind on a night with no lamp. Nobody ever tested that. Hetta did not like tests.
When Hetta grew old, a visiting tutor came up the stair with a list of questions. The tutor asked her: how many steps are there? Hetta said a hundred and four. The tutor asked: how many rungs? Hetta said ninety. The tutor asked: how many lamps? Hetta said thirty-three, and then she said: and one more, at the top, which only the keeper knows about.
The tutor asked: what is it? Hetta said: it is the lamp that I light when the others are out. Then she would not say anything more.
When Hetta died the keepers searched the tower for the extra lamp. They found the rungs and the steps and the thirty-three lamps. They did not find a thirty-fourth. Some say Hetta was joking, as she often did, to frighten tutors. Some say the lamp is in the lamp room behind the glass, where the ring is. Some say it is only a number, and the number is the keeper.
The new keeper counts the stair every morning, out loud, because it is a habit and because Orsen did it. He gets a hundred and four. Then he goes up and lights the lamps, one by one. At the top he stops and looks at the glass for a while, in case there is one more.
%%
Story: The wheel that wanted a rest

Tam told this story by the well at Kettle Ridge.

In spring, the windmill wheel broke with a crack, and the mill stopped turning. The miller put up a board that said, "No grain today."

The wheel was tired of turning, it said. It had watched the wind push it round through every season. It wanted to see the fields.

The miller took the wheel down and set it by the barn. Pip helped him carry it, though Pip said a wheel was heavier than it looked.

All morning the wheel watched the wheat field, the beetroot field, and the potatoes and carrots below. It saw the ditch shine in the sun. It saw a rabbit sit beside the hedge and wash its face.

"That is a fine day," said the wheel.

The rabbit looked at it. "You have not moved all day," it said.

"I am resting," said the wheel.

"So am I," said the rabbit. "But I am still a rabbit."

At noon, the miller and Tam mended the broken wheel. They fitted a new spoke and checked the rim. Pip held the pins and dropped one in the grass.

They found the pin under the scarecrow's foot. Then the wheel went back to the mill.

When the wind rose, the wheel turned again. It squeaked at every turn.

"Did you enjoy the fields?" Tam asked.

"I did," said the wheel. "But from now on, I will look at them while I work."

Pip says the wheel has never once thanked the rabbit.
%%
The Kettle Ridge spring market
The market at Kettle Ridge is held in the yard by the well, in the second month, when the beetroot is small and the wheat is green. There are stalls of planks on barrels. There is a pig on a rope. There are three hives by the flowers and a woman selling honey in clay pots.

Tam brings the first beetroot. They are not good beetroot. They are thin and pale. He sells them anyway, cheap, and says, "Next month they will be better." He says this every year.

Pip carries the baskets. Pip is careful with the baskets. Once a basket tipped and the beetroot rolled into the well, and Tam had to fish them out with a hook, and the whole market watched. Now Pip carries the baskets very slowly and very straight, and everyone cheers when it reaches the stall.

Finch has a stall of sharpening stones. He sharpens knives for a coin. He tells stories for free, but people give him coins anyway.

There is a fiddle and a drum. There is a contest to guess the weight of a pumpkin. Bel won it one year, visiting from Three Wells, and she still talks about it.

At dusk the lamps go up along the ridge road, one every twelve blocks, the way the Long Road does. The windmills squeak on every turn. Nobody minds. It is the sound of home.
%%
Story: the road that went around
Our hamlet is one hour's walk from the crossroads at Three Wells.

When the new road was built, the builders were told to go straight from our hamlet to the town. So they started at our gate and went straight.

There was a hill in the way. They went straight up it. There was a pond. They went straight through it. There was Mother Tuck's cow. They asked her to move. The cow did not move.

So the road goes up the hill, and through the shallow end of the pond, and in a gentle bend around the cow. Mother Tuck is very proud. She says it is the cow's road.
%%
Story: the lamp that would not go out
A story told at the Halfway Inn, of the little relay and the winter it kept one message going. It is not a true account. It is a story, so the lamp can do things a lamp cannot, and the wind can talk, and nobody minds.

The winter was long and the snow was deep. The little relay on the inn roof had one message to send and it sent it every night, because the tower on the hill could not hear it in the day for the wind.

The message was this: "The road is closed. Stay at the inn."

A man was out in the snow. He had a cart and a horse and he had lost the road. He saw the little lamp on the inn roof and he came toward it. The wind pushed him and the snow hid the ruts and he came on anyway, one step at a time, toward the small light.

The lamp saw him coming. "This way," it blinked. "This way. The road is closed but the inn is open."

The man could not read the blinks. He was not a keeper. But he could see the light and he followed it, and the light did not go out, though the wind pulled at it and the snow piled on its glass.

"Why do you not go out?" said the wind.

"Because he is still coming," said the lamp.

The man came to the door of the inn and Sable pulled him in and sat him by the hearth. He was cold to the bone. He drank soup and he slept and in the morning the snow had stopped.

"Who kept the light on?" he asked.

"The little relay," said Sable. "It is a stubborn lamp."

The man looked up at the roof and the lamp was dark now, resting, its work done.

The children who hear this story ask if the lamp is still on the roof. Sable says yes, and it is mended now, and it still carries word between the inn and the hill. And on snowy nights, she says, watch the little lamp. It is not afraid of the wind.
%%
Legend: the clerk who kept the spoiled
A legend of Vell, told in Ambrook at the dye sheds, as the clerks told it to new clerks who came up the road. Some say it is true. Some say the clerks made it up to keep the young ones honest. Autumn.

In the old days, when the first drill books were being copied at Vell, there was a clerk called Mattis who had the worst hands in the Archive. His letters were crooked. His lines wandered. His copies had smudges in every margin, and his quills were always blunt.

The head clerk gave him the hardest job. He was to sort the drill pages. Every drill page that came to the Archive was to be checked. Those that were spoiled were to be taken out, because a drill is only as good as its pages, and a smudged page teaches a mind the wrong answer. Those that were copied wrongly were to be taken out too, and put on the spoiled shelf.

Mattis sorted every page for a whole season. He threw nothing away. He put the spoiled pages on the shelf, with a mark on each one, and the clerks said he was a fool for keeping so many.

But at the end of the season, the head clerk came to look at the spoiled shelf. He picked up a page at random, and then another, and then a third. Every one of them had a mistake that Mattis had seen, and had marked, and had put aside, and had not let into the drill.

"These are good," said the head clerk, after a long time. "You have kept all the good copies that would have taught the minds the wrong things."

Mattis said he had only done what he was told.

The head clerk said: no, you did something else. You kept a box of pages that no mind would ever be drilled on. You kept them apart. You kept them so that a mind could be tested on something it had never seen.

That was the first test box at Vell, the clerks say. It was a shelf of spoiled pages that were not spoiled at all, but simply set aside. Mattis had a red wool string tied round it, so nobody would take it for a drill.

The clerks say the test box is still there, in the deep halls. Nobody drills on it. Nobody is ever allowed to, not even for a moment. And the spoiled pages are still sorted by a clerk with the worst hands in the Archive, because the head clerk said that was the best way to make sure that a clerk had learned something.
%%
Story: why the first snow is quiet
Long ago, the sky made its first snow, and it was loud. The flakes clattered down like dropped plates. The sheep woke, and the hens, and the farmers, who were cross.

"Be quiet," said the hills. "People are sleeping."

So the sky tried again, softer and softer, until the snow fell without a sound, like a blanket over a sleeping child.

That is why the first snow is quiet. It is the sky's gift, and it is wrapped very carefully.
%%
Fallon's note on the word pieces
I am a trader. I do not make minds. But I carried letters for the relay houses for thirty years, and I can tell you what changed.

In my young days the big minds read a page one letter at a time, through a window about sixty letters wide. It was slow. By the time the mind reached the end of a long word, it had almost forgotten the start.

Then the tutors cut words into common pieces. "Honey" is one piece now. "Beekeeper" is two. "Unkind" is a small piece on the front of a word, and the mind knows that piece wherever it sits. The same window holds far more, because a piece is worth more than a letter.

Nobody wrote down who thought of it first. The tutors at Vell say it was them. The tutors at Ambrook say it too. I have carried both letters and I keep my mouth shut.

My apprentice reads the waybills better now. It used to stumble on a long name. Now it takes the name in three pieces and is done. I asked Nessa once how the mind knows which piece is which. She said the drills taught it, the way drills teach everything. She did not say why it works. I do not think anyone wrote that down.
%%
The flood in the stable
Told by Linnet, horse keeper, at the house at the edge of Copperhold, one spring evening. It is a funny one. She tells it every year when the thaw comes.
One spring the snow melted in a week, and the stream behind my stable rose in the night. I woke to the sound of water in the straw. I ran out in my nightshirt and found a hand of water in the stable and eleven horses standing in it, perfectly calm.
I led them out one at a time. The first was an old brown gelding. He walked out with dignity, looked at the flood, and began to eat the hedge. The second was a pony, who splashed. The third was a mule, who sat down.
I dragged the mule up by the halter. He would not stand. He wanted to sit in the water. I said, "Get up." He said nothing. I got a bucket and poured it over his head. He stood up.
We spent the morning bailing the stable with buckets. By noon the water was down to the ankle. By evening it was gone, and the floor was a pond of mud.
The horses went back in. The mule lay down on the dry straw and slept. I have never seen a creature so pleased with a flood.
%%
Story: The fox who borrowed the boots
A fox came down to the edge of Northpoint one winter, when the snow was deep and the nights were long. The foxes up here are white as the snow, with black feet, and they do not mind the cold. But this fox had a sore paw. It had stepped on a sharp thing under the snow, and it limped.

Old Sanna found it by her door in the morning, curled up under the lamp, its sore paw held up. It looked at her. She looked at it.

"You cannot come in," she said. "But I will leave the door a little open, and the warm will come out."

She did. The fox stayed by the step all day. She brought it fish, and it ate. She brought it water, and it drank. By evening it had warmed up enough to stand, but it still limped.

Now, Sanna had a pair of winter boots. Good boots, wool-lined, made by a woman at Three Wells. She had worn them for many winters. They were too big for a fox. But she thought, a sore paw is a sore paw.

She put one boot by the door. The fox looked at it. The fox looked at her. Then, very carefully, it put its sore paw into the boot, the way a person puts on a boot, and stood in it.

"That will do," said Sanna.

The fox walked away into the snow with one boot on. It looked funny. It knew it looked funny. It held its head high anyway.

In the morning the boot was back by the door. There were fox prints all around it, and a little fish, frozen, left as payment.

The children of Northpoint still talk about it. "Did the fox bring the boot back?" they ask.

"It did," says Sanna. "Foxes pay their debts."

Some say the fox still comes back, on cold nights, and sits under the lamp. They say if you leave a boot out, it will put it on and walk off and bring it back in the morning. Nobody has seen it happen. But the boot is always by the door.
%%
Story: The marks on the crystal
A winter tale from Ilse's house at Lowmarsh.

When the marsh froze, the boardwalks creaked under each foot. Ilse kept her charcoal dry in a shed beside the house. Wren kept jars of herbs on her high shelves. On quiet evenings they shared the fire and told tales.

One evening, a tutor came from Vell. She carried a mind in a crystal, and a second, smaller crystal in a box.

"The mind has many weights," she said. "Each weight is a number that helps it choose an answer. The marks for all those numbers take room. This crystal is too small."

Ilse moved a log with her iron poker. "Can you make the numbers take less room?"

"We can write them with fewer marks," said the tutor. "Then the mind can fit in the small crystal. But the shorter marks cannot keep every detail. It may choose wrongly more often."

She set three cards on the table. One showed a reed basket. One showed a fish basket. One showed an empty basket. The mind chose the fish basket when the tutor asked for the reed basket.

Wren tapped the card. "It has seen the fish basket more often."

"That may be so," said the tutor. "We must give it more examples, then test it on new ones."

Ilse brought in a basket of reeds. The cat climbed into it. The mind chose the cat.

"That is not a basket," said Ilse.

"It is a cat in a basket," said Wren. "The mind has not learned how to be fussy."

The tutor wrote the wrong answer in her book. She did not hide it or blame the crystal. The mind could only learn from what it was shown, and the tutor had shown it baskets with cats.

They worked through the cards until the fire burned low. The small crystal held the mind. The mind still made mistakes, but fewer than before.

In the morning, Ilse put her charcoal in the shed and carried the cards to the tutor's pack. The cat stayed in the basket.
%%
Story: the four stones of Vell
Told in the hall at Vell by the old sweeper, Cass, who was a girl when the halls closed. She swept them for forty years after, with the stones still in her apron.

In the long quiet the councils stopped paying the tutors at Vell. The halls went quiet one by one. The drill boards were carried down the hill, and the tray of crystals was left on a shelf. The girl Cass was given the job of sweeping the empty rooms, because nobody else would take a job that paid in bread.

Cass swept the teaching room where Denna had worked. On the shelf sat one grey crystal on a card that said Farm. Build. Beside it was a box with four smooth stones, and a note in Denna's hand: For the square. Four stones, two yes, two no. Learn it.

Cass took the box down to the kitchen, where her brother Ned was eating his supper, and set the stones on the table in a square.

"Two yes," she said. "Two no. Which?"

"One or the other, but not both," said Ned, who had listened to the tutors through the wall for years. "The yes ones sit on opposite corners, see?"

Cass carried the crystal home. Every night she showed it the four stones, and every night it drew its line. By the tenth night it had found a line that put three stones right and one wrong, and it could find no better, however she showed it the stones.

"Three in four," said Ned. "That is as far as it goes."

"Why?" said Cass.

Ned picked up the stones and laid them out again. "Because a line is only one line. It can put one yes on one side and one yes on the other, but it cannot put both yes stones on the same side and keep the no stones off. The yes stones sit on opposite corners. One line cannot reach both."

"So the crystal is stuck."

"The crystal is one crystal," said Ned. "One line is what it has."

The next morning Cass found the tutors' old note pinned in the hall: Two crystals, one feeding the other, might draw two lines. Nobody has tried it. The council will not pay. She laughed, because it was the most honest note she had ever read.

So Cass did what the tutors would not. She took a second crystal from the shelf, a little one, and set it to take the first crystal's answer as its own question. The first drew its line. The second took that line and drew one of its own. In the morning light the two lines cut out a strip, and the strip held exactly the two yes stones and no others.

She wrote it on the wall of the empty hall, in chalk: Two lines, one strip, two yes. Somebody came to read it the next morning, and laughed, and chalked a reply underneath.

That is the story of the four stones. The old tutors would have told it better, with a cup of something warm in their hands.
%%
Story: the day I mended nine roofs
I will tell you about the winter of the big snow, said Hal, and you may believe as much of it as you like.

It snowed for eleven days. By the twelfth morning the snow was up to the eaves of every house on the ridge. I did not need a ladder. I walked up the drift in my boots and stepped onto the roof of the Kettle Inn as if it were a doorstep.

The inn roof had a hole. I mended it. That was one.

From there I could see the barn next door. Four planks gone. I stepped across and mended it. That was two. The hen house, three. The pig pen, four. The mill had a loose sail board, but that is not a roof, so I did not count it. I mended it anyway. It was a good board.

By noon I had done six. I ate my lunch on the roof of the school house, with the whole ridge lying white and still beneath me, and smoke going up from every chimney like gray ribbons. Cheese and an apple. I have never had a better lunch.

Seven was Tam's barn. Eight was the Hollow farm. Nine was a surprise.

At the far end of the ridge I found a round little roof I had never seen in my life. It was buried to the edge in snow, and it had a hole in it. I knelt and looked in. It was a house. An old woman sat at her table inside with a cat in her lap, drinking cider. She looked up at me through the hole.

"Is it that time already?" she said.

"I will have it mended in a moment," I said.

"Good," she said. "The draft has been in my soup all week."

So I mended nine. Then I walked home along the top of the drift, as proud as a rooster.

That night the thaw came, all at once. The snow went down and down. In the morning I woke up on the roof of the school house, with my hammer under my head, and the whole ridge standing underneath looking up at me.

They asked how I got up there. I said, I walked.
%%
Story: the fox at Olwen's hens
Told by Olwen, dyer of Ambrook, to her children, after the fox came back for the third time in one autumn. Autumn.

There is a fox that lives in the hedge by the mill pond, and it has eaten more of my hens than all the weasels in the valley. I have said so to the fox. The fox has said nothing, which is the fox's way.

One night in the autumn, the fox came to the hen house door. It had dug a hole under the boards, the way a fox does, and it was halfway through, with its tail sticking out into the yard. I saw it from the window, and I took the broom.

But the fox did not run when I came out. It looked at me. Then it looked at the hen house, and then back at me, and it sat down in the mud as if it had been expecting me all evening.

"You are a very rude fox," I said.

It yawned.

I said: if you want a hen, you must ask. Then I went into the house and got a piece of cold chicken from the pantry, and I threw it into the yard, a long way off from the hen house door. The fox ate it. Then it went away into the hedge, and did not come back that night.

The next night the fox came again, to the same hole. And I went out again, with the broom and a piece of mutton. I threw the mutton, and the fox ate it, and went away.

My husband said I was a fool. He said the fox would come every night for its supper, and bring its friends, and eat my hens in the end.

But on the third night, the fox came to the hole, and looked at the hen house, and then looked at me in the doorway. It went to the far side of the yard. It sat down by the apple tree. And it waited for its supper.

I had none that night. So I went out and sat down by the hens, and the fox sat by the tree, and we looked at each other across the yard until the moon went behind the mill.

In the morning the hens were all alive, and the hole was still there. But the fox had dug no more. It has not been back under the boards since.

My children asked me why I had not thrown the broom. I said because a fox that will sit with you is more trouble than one that runs away, and a fox that eats your mutton is a fox that will not eat your hens.

My eldest son said it was the best story he had ever heard. My youngest said the fox was very rude. Both of them are right.
%%
Story: the day the ink froze
On the coldest morning anyone at Vell could remember, the ink froze in every bottle in the copying room. So the clerks put the bottles inside their coats, against their chests, and sat all morning with their hands folded, waiting for the ink to wake.
By evening each clerk had a blue patch on his shirt, just over the heart. They wrote nothing that day. The oldest clerk said it was the best day's work in the Archive, because they had kept the ink alive.
%%
Story: the letter that Finch could not
Finch keeps a letter in his tool chest, under the chisels. He does not show it to many people. He showed it to me.

It came to him in the spring of 207, from the relay house at Kettle Ridge. Finch had written to the archive at Vell, asking about an old stone in the mill wall, and whether anyone had written down who cut it. He is like that. He likes to know where a stone came from.

The answer came back in a hand he did not know. It was plain and careful. It said: the mill was built in the 44th year of the archive. The step was cut by a stonecutter of Vell whose name is not written down. The wall stone is older. It was cut for a house that stood on the ridge before the mill, and the house is not written down either. We are sorry we cannot tell you more. We keep everything we write, but we did not write everything.

Finch read it and thought: that is a kind clerk at Vell. He wrote back to thank them.

The answer came back: you are welcome. I am not a clerk. I am a mind in the relay house. Oren lets me answer the letters that come. I read them through my window, one letter at a time.

Finch read that letter three times. Then he put it in his tool chest and sat down by the mill pond for a while.

"I have cut stone for thirty years," he told me. "I know a good joint from a bad one. I could not tell. I read that first letter and I thought, there is a kind clerk at Vell. I could not tell."

He does not say whether that is good or bad. He says it is like Orla's question. He says he is a stonecutter, not a tutor, and he would not know. But he keeps the letter. He says a thing like that should be kept, so that people can read it later and decide for themselves.
%%
Story: The Innkeeper's New Room
Pell wrote this after spring at the Brown Hen.

The inn had twelve beds, and the roof above the small room leaked. One spring, the innkeeper moved his family into the old store room while the roof was mended. He put their table by the window and their blankets in a chest.

The innkeeper also borrowed Pip from Tam for one day. Pip carried the chest, the stools, and two sacks of wheat. Tam had a poor harvest, so the wheat was not for sale. It was seed for the next field.

The innkeeper said, "Carry the chest into the old store room, put the stools beside the wall, and leave the seed sacks by the door."

Pip did each part. It did not put the seed with the stools or take the chest back outside.

A traveler watched and said, "Pip understands a whole sentence. That is the next thing."

"Clank did that at Copperhold," said a miner at the hearth.

"No, Peg did it at the fair," said another traveler.

Tam came in and said, "Pip did it at Kettle Ridge, and that is what I saw."

The innkeeper gave Pip one more order. "Stay here until the roof man comes."

Pip stayed. The roof man came after lunch, carrying a ladder. The rain had stopped, and the family moved back into their room.

They left the store room clean. The innkeeper found one turnip under the table. He said Pip had missed it. Tam said Pip had been told to move the sacks, not the turnip.

They both looked at the turnip. Then the innkeeper put it in the stew.
%%
Story: the bee who would not be rounded
There is a hive on the hill above the mill pond. Ask the bees there how many flowers are on the clover, and they will tell you exactly.

One summer a helper came up the hill with a new crystal in its head. Its weights had been written with fewer marks, to fit a smaller frame. Everyone said it was a clever trick.

Its job was to count the flowers on each patch. It looked at the first patch and said, "About forty."

The bee on the first flower said, "Forty-one. Count again, slowly, with your own marks."

The helper counted again. "About forty," it said. Then another bee landed and said, "Thirty-nine." The helper was never exactly right, and never far off.

It was true. Each weight was a little less exact than the tutors had written, so each answer was a little less exact too. The helper could not see its own rounding. It only saw clover.

The old queen came up to see the fuss. "It is a fine small helper," she said. "It just counts like a farmer."

In the end the helper stopped trying to be exact. It said about forty, and sent the bees anyway. For a bee, about forty is near enough.

Hob, who keeps the apple trees, says the bees still count the flowers themselves each morning. They do not believe anything until they have counted it twice.
%%
Legend: the sluice nobody may open
Every child in Ambrook is told why the sluice stays shut. Hob tells it at the mill.

Long ago a helper worked the sluice. It opened the gate a little at a time, so the wheel turned steady.

Then the tutors came from Vell with their fewer marks. They cut its weights to fit a smaller crystal. The numbers came out a little rounder.

Every answer now had a small error in it. Small errors that all lean one way are like drops in a bucket.

One spring morning the helper opened the gate a finger too far, then a finger more, because its numbers said so. The pond ran out in the night. It took the bridge with the loose plank.

Now nobody may open the gate. Hob says the old helper is still under the willow, carrying no sacks. He may be joking.

The moral, Hob says, is to test a mind before it works. Then he checks the gate anyway.
%%
Story: the box nobody opens
In the Archive at Vell there is a box of pages that nobody ever drills a mind on. My uncle the clerk told me about it when he came for midwinter. It is called the test box.

When the clerks gather pages to drill a reading mind, they set some aside before the drilling starts. They tie them in a bundle, wax the knot and put the bundle in the box. The box is kept shut. The tutors are not told what is in it.

"Why keep good pages away from a mind?" I asked.

"Because of Dobbin," my uncle said, and he told me this.

There was once a tutor who made a mind that wrote very well. It could say whole lines from the old chronicles. The tutor was delighted. She showed it to the council. "Listen," she said, and the mind spoke a page perfectly, word for word.

An old clerk asked her, "Did you drill it on that page?"

"Yes," said the tutor.

"Then it has not written anything," said the old clerk. "It has remembered. Give it a page from the test box."

They did. The mind could not read it. It put in words that did not belong, and some of the words were not even words. The tutor went quiet.

She went back to the hall and she drilled it again, and this time she did not let it see the same page too many times. It was not word for word any more. But when it met the test box, it did better, and better, and then it did well.

"The test box is how we know a mind learned," my uncle said. "The drilled pages only tell us what it saw."

I asked what happens if someone cheats and opens the box. My uncle said the clerks would know, because the next mind would score too well. The score is too good to be true, he said, and a clerk can tell.

I do not know if that is really so. But I like that the box is shut.
%%
Story: how the hamlet got its bridge
Before there was a bridge, there was a plank. The plank went across the stream near our hamlet, on the road to Three Wells. It was a good plank. But it was only one plank wide, and it bounced.

One day, a cart came along, with a farmer, a pig and two sacks of flour. The farmer drove up to the plank. The pig looked at the plank. The pig said, in a voice that only I can hear: "I do not think so."

The farmer pushed. The pig dug in. The cart rocked. And the sack of flour fell off the side, into the stream, and the whole stream went white. For a week, the fish were floury.

After that, the hamlet agreed to build a proper bridge. It is made of oak, with a rail. It has a stone at each end. One stone says "bridge". The other says "no pigs".
%%
The lesson that went badly
Told by Nessa to the new tutors at the hamlet near Vell, in spring, as a warning. She says it is true, and that it happened to her.
When I was a young tutor, I was given a mind to drill. It was a small mind, in a crystal the size of a thumb. It was for a helper that would carry water. I wrote a drill of a hundred examples, each one a picture of a pail and the word fetch.
I drilled the mind for a week. I showed it the pictures and moved its weights. It got better. It got to the point where it was right nine times in ten.
Then I tested it. I had a new set of pictures, which it had never seen, and I held them up one by one. It said fetch to the pails. It said fetch to the buckets. It said fetch to a basket, a hat and a cat.
I was surprised. I looked at the pictures. Every pail in the drill had stood on the same table, by the same window. The mind had learned to say fetch when it saw the window. A pail was not what it saw. It saw the light.
I was a young tutor. I was proud. I went home and cried a little.
The next day I started again. I put the pails in the yard, in the shed, on the stairs, in the rain. I put cats, hats and baskets in the drill too, and showed them as not-fetch. In a month the mind was good.
This is what I learned. A mind learns what you show it. Not what you meant. If you show it a window, it learns the window. A tutor must think about everything the mind can see.
The mind is still in a helper at Vell. It carries water every day. It does not know it was once wrong. That is a kindness.
%%
Letter: Orla to the tutors
To the tutors of the halls, from Orla at Vell, summer

You have asked me again about the question, and I will write it down plainly, so that it is on paper and not only in the mouths of people who half remember it.

The question is this. Suppose we drill a mind until it answers as well as a person. Suppose we sit a hidden mind and a hidden person at two desks, and they answer the same questions by letter. Suppose the readers cannot tell which is which. What then? Have we made a mind that thinks, or only a mind that answers?

I did not say the question had an answer. I said it was worth asking. People have argued about it for a hundred years, and they will argue for a hundred more.

Here is what I think now, older than I was. I think the test tells you about the readers as much as about the mind. If the readers cannot tell, it may be because the mind is very good, or because the person is tired, or because the questions were easy. A test is only as good as its questions. Nessa says the same about drills, and she is right.

I think also that a mind that answers well is doing something. It is not nothing. When a mind reads a page and guesses the next letter right, again and again, it has found something true about how letters go together. That is a kind of knowing. Whether it is the same kind as ours, I do not know, and I will not say.

So I leave the question where I found it, open, and I say to the tutors: keep testing, keep writing down what you find, and do not be too quick to say yes or no.

Orla
%%
Hesk's note on the furnace mind
People ask me how the old furnace minds worked. I am a miner, not a tutor, but I was there when the last one was pulled out and sold for parts. It had a crack in its crystal and a dent in its copper case, and it had held the forge melt steady for forty years.

Here is how I understand it, and you may correct me.

A drilled mind learns from answers. You show it a page, you tell it the right answer, and it moves its weights a little toward that answer. Una of Ambrook did the sorting that way, and her way is still the first lesson.

But some minds were never told the right answer. They were only told how it went. A furnace mind tries a setting. The melt goes too hot or too cold. The tutor keeps the settings that came out well and lets the bad ones go. Do that many times and the mind holds the melt better than any person could, because it never gets tired and never looks away.

The same was done with minds that keep a boat on course and minds that keep a frame straight. They try, and we keep what goes well.

Why does keeping the good tries make a mind better? Nobody wrote it down. The tutor only said it worked, and it did.

There is a story in Copperhold that the first furnace mind learned to hum before it learned to hold the melt. I do not believe that story. But I have heard it told by people who should know better.
%%
Story: Yew's Crooked Candle
At Yew's farm outside Ambrook, the candle shed stood beside the apple rows. Yew made candles there, while his sister Leda kept the hives.

One summer evening, Yew set a new candle on the table. It leaned left.

"It will fall into the wax pot," said Leda.

"It will not," said Yew.

The candle leaned farther. A bee landed on it, and the candle tipped against the honey jar.

Yew caught it just in time.

"Your candle has learned to lean," said Leda.

"It learned from the table," said Yew. The table had one short leg.

They put a chip of wood beneath the leg. The table stood flat. Yew made another candle, and this one stood straight.

Leda took it to the kitchen. "The table has learned too," she said.

Yew looked at the chip under the leg. "Then I must thank the right teacher."

He kept the chip in his candle box. When a candle came out crooked, he checked the table before blaming the wax.
%%
Story: the keeper who could not sleep
At the north tower, the keepers say, there was once a woman who could not sleep for the lamp. It blinked all night, and she counted the blinks, and she counted wrong, and started again.

One dark night a letter came down the relay from the big house in the south. It was not from a person. It was from the house. It was addressed to her by name, which surprised her, and it said:

"Dear keeper, I see that your lamp is blinking at you. I am sorry that it keeps you awake. I do not know why it does that, and I do not know how to stop it. Do you?"

The keeper wrote back: "No. Do you?"

The house wrote: "I do not know. I am not sure I know very much about lamps."

That was all the letter said, according to the keeper. But she slept that night. The house had said it did not know, and it was the first time in her life that someone far away had said so out loud.

Some folk at the market say the letter was longer, and that the house told her to go to bed. Some say it was a joke, which she did not understand. Some say it never happened at all. The keeper's grandson says it did, and that he has the letter in a box, and that it says nothing about bed.

Mira's note: I have heard this from three people, and it is three different stories. I have no letter. I have a lamp that blinks, and I have not slept properly in years, though for another reason.
%%
Letter: Sim to cousin Bree
Dear Bree,

You asked how the hamlet is. It is hot and the wheat is tall and everyone is out in the fields from first light. I am keeping the lamps lit along the road, which is mostly sitting and watching and not much else. My apprentice sits with me. It has a small mind in its crystal that knows come and stay and fetch a pail. It is very good at fetch a pail. It is not good at knowing when the pail is already full. We are working on it.

You will laugh at this. Last week two spiders got into the barn. Not one. Two. The children were sent in to sweep them out with brooms and they came out very fast and very loud and the spiders did not come out at all. So I went in with a torch and the apprentice, and the spiders ran up the wall. The apprentice stood in the door and did not move. I said come, and it came. I said stay, and it stayed. I said fetch a pail, because I had no better idea, and it fetched a pail. Then the spiders came down and the apprentice dropped the pail and the pail rolled and made a great noise and both spiders ran out the door by themselves. So. That is how we sweep a barn, apparently: with a dropped pail.

The old one across the road says spiders in the barn are good luck, because they eat the flies. I told her they can eat the flies somewhere I am not. She laughed and gave me beetroot.

The bees are well. Honey soon. I will send a jar on the cart. Tell your mother the loose plank on the bridge is still loose and the cart man still says he will fix it.

Late, but lit,
Sim
%%
Story: Iona and the three apples
Iona wrote this for the children at Three Wells.

At the Brown Hen, Iona kept three apples on the shelf above the horse tack. She meant to give them to the old mare after the road was swept.

The first apple was gone one morning.

"Who took it?" asked the innkeeper.

The stable boy said, "Not me."

The cook said, "Not me."

Iona looked at the cat. The cat was asleep on a sack. He had no apple crumbs on his whiskers.

The second apple was gone the next morning.

Iona put the third apple in a tin cup and set it on the shelf. Then she sat by the stable door and waited.

A magpie flew in through the open window. It landed on the shelf, lifted the cup, and tipped the apple onto the floor.

The old mare took one slow step and ate it.

The magpie called from the beam.

"You have stolen two apples," said Iona. "And the mare has eaten all three."

The innkeeper laughed. "Then the mare owes you nothing."

"She owes me a clean shelf," said Iona.

The stable boy cleaned it. The cat woke up and watched him.

After that, Iona kept apples in a box with a lid. The mare learned to nudge the lid open. The magpie learned to wait for the pieces that fell.

The cat learned nothing. He slept on the empty shelf.

At supper, the innkeeper said the box needed a better latch. Iona said it needed a better cat.

The cat opened one eye, then went back to sleep.
%%
The apprentice who came to the candle
A tale told by Cleo, candle maker at Northpoint, in winter. She says it happened to her.
A new apprentice came to my shop in the long dark. It had a card on its arm that said Farm. Build. It stood in the door and snow blew in.
I said, "Come in and shut the door."
It came in. It shut the door. I had not known it could understand a whole sentence.
I said, "Bring me the wax."
It went to the shelf and brought the wax. I sat down, because my knees were weak.
%%
Story: the spring tide in the market
In Sowing the spring tide came up the street in the night. It went past the harbor wall, past the quay and into the fish market. In the morning the stalls stood in water to their knees.
Nell's cod had got out of their crates. They swam round the market in circles, looking surprised.
"Do not sell them," said Nell. "They are not stock now. They are guests."
Old Sal rowed her mended boat down the main street and sold fish from it. "Best place in the market," she said. Nobody argued.
The children caught three cod with a hat. The cats sat on the barrels and caught none, because cats do not get wet for fish. They wait for it to come dry.
By noon the water went back down, and the guests went out with it. Seven stalls were shut that spring. The water did not ask why.
Corin sank a post in the harbor and cut a notch where the water came to. He says the tide is higher every year. Some blame the new ships. Corin says the sea was rising before there were ships. Nobody has measured, so he is measuring. He will know in ten springs.
%%
Story: the first torch of spring
Every spring, on the first day of Thaw, the guards of the wall at Three Wells light one new torch on top of the north gate, before all the rest.

A child once asked old Mave why.

"The wall does not know it is spring," said Mave. "It has been cold all winter, and it is a slow old wall. So we tell it."

"Does it listen?" asked the child.

"It stands up straighter," said Mave. "Look tomorrow."

The child looked the next morning. The wall looked the same. But the child was standing up straighter, and that was the point.
%%
Story: the fox and the three wells
This is a story the children of Hollow Bridge tell, and their parents told it before them.

Once a fox came down out of the hills in the dry heart of Longday. The fox was thin and hot and wanted water. It came to the town where two roads cross like an X, and the square had three wells in it, one for each corner.

The fox went to the first well. It looked down. Far below, a fox looked up. "There is another fox in this well," said the fox, "and it is drinking my water." So it did not drink.

The fox went to the second well. It looked down. Far below, a fox looked up. "That fox again," said the fox. "It has followed me." So it did not drink.

The fox went to the third well. It looked down, and there was the fox again, thin and hot, looking up. The fox was very cross by now. It barked. The fox below barked. It snarled. The fox below snarled. It danced about on the stone edge, and the fox below danced too, and the children of the town, who had come out to watch, laughed and laughed.

Then a small girl came out of the school house by the east well with her bucket. She had been sent for water. She saw the fox dancing on the edge of the well, and she saw what the fox did not see, which was the rope and the bucket, hanging down into the dark.

"Fox," said the girl, "the water is down there, and the fox you are angry at is up here. It is only you. Look." And she let down her bucket and brought it up full, and set it on the stone.

The fox drank. The fox drank the whole bucket and put its nose in the empty bucket and licked the bottom. Then it sat down and washed its face, as foxes do, and looked at the girl, and then it looked at the well.

"You know," said the girl, "you could have drunk at the first well, and saved yourself a deal of anger."

"I know," said the fox, which surprised the girl, because in this story foxes talk. "But I was hot, and being angry is easier than being thirsty."

Then the fox went back up into the hills, and the girl went back to school with her bucket. And the children of the town still say, when someone is angry at their own reflection in a well: "The fox has come to the third well." Which means: stop dancing. Drink.

At the school house by the east well, the door is painted by the children, and there is a fox in the paint, drinking from a bucket. It is not a very good fox. It looks a little like a dog. But everyone knows what it is.
%%
Story: the inn cat and the bowl
Iona's account, in Blossom.

The Brown Hen had a cat called Ash. Ash slept by the hearth and watched the stew pot.

One evening a traveler said, "There is no cat here. I have not seen one all night."

Ash sat on his boots.

The traveler looked down. "I mean, I have not seen a cat that wants stew."

Ash stood and walked to the kitchen.

The innkeeper put a little fish in a bowl. Ash sniffed it, then walked away.

"Fussy cat," said the traveler.

Ash came back with a mouse. He set it by the bowl and looked at the traveler.

The traveler laughed. "You have brought supper to supper."

The innkeeper gave Ash a fish and took the mouse outside. He left it by the woodpile for the fox.

Ash ate the fish. Then he climbed onto the traveler's boots again.

"Now I have seen a cat," said the traveler. "And I have lost my feet."

Ash closed his eyes. He did not move until morning.
%%
Notice: the road down to the mine
By order of the mine hall, the road down to the Deep Works is closed after dark. No carts after the last bell. No children on the hill.

The reasons given are the snow and the ice. The snow is real. The ice is real.

A second notice, put up below the first in a different hand, says the same thing again but adds: "There is no danger. Go home and keep warm." The second notice is not signed. Someone has written under it, in chalk: "Then why say it twice?"

The kitchen at the mine gate gives hot soup to anyone on the hill before dark. It is good soup. If you are going down, take some.

Keep the torches lit.
%%
The sheep who wanted to see the sea
Told at the Halfway Inn on the Long Road on a night of deep snow, by an old carter, and written down by Pell the next morning. A tale for children.

There was once a sheep called Nell who lived on a hill above the road. Every day she watched the carts go by, and every day she wondered where they went.

One cart carried fish. It smelled of salt. One cart carried glass. It shone like water. One cart carried rope, and the rope was wet.

Nell said to the other sheep: I think there is a place at the end of the road where everything is wet and shining. They said: that is the sea. Nell said: I want to see it.

They laughed. A sheep cannot go to the sea, they said. A sheep stays on the hill and grows wool. Nell said: why?

Nobody could say. So the next morning Nell went down to the road, and she walked behind a cart of wool going to Saltreach. She walked for six days. She slept under the cart. She ate grass from the ditches.

On the sixth evening the road turned over a hill, and there it was. A wide grey flat wet shining thing, and a wind that smelled of fish. Nell stood on the harbor wall and looked. The sea looked back.

A sailor passed and said, hello, sheep. Nell said, hello. The sailor, who was a very kind man, did not drop his bucket. He said, you have come a long way. She said, I wanted to see it. He said, how is it? She said, it is bigger than the hill.

Then Nell sat on the wall, and she watched the sea until the sun went down.

The cart driver took her home in the morning. The other sheep were waiting. They said, was it wet? She said, very. They said, was it shining? She said, mostly. They said, was it worth it? Nell said: now I know what the carts are carrying.

And that is why, to this day, when a sheep looks down at the road, you must not ask it why. It is only looking for the sea.
%%
Story: the house as big as a hill
Told at the Northpoint market by a salt trader who had come up the north road with his mule. Mira wrote it down, because the children would not let her go home until she had.

Far to the south, the trader said, there is a relay house so big a whole town could live in it. It has halls like the Archive, and stairs like the tower, and the wind goes round it instead of through.

Inside the halls the crystals are not the size of a loaf. They are the size of a cart. There is one crystal for each mind, and there are more minds than anybody has ever counted.

No single tutor can check a mind that big. The council knew this. So they hired a hundred tutors and made them check it together, one piece at a time, the way a crew builds a wall.

"What does it do?" asked the smallest child at the market.

"Nobody knows," said the trader. "Some say it answers any letter you send. Some say it cannot tell an apple from a pear. Some say it sings."

Then he sold his salt and went down the road. The children are still arguing about the singing.

Mira's note: I have never met a trader who has seen the house. I have met a great many traders who have heard of it.
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Kettle Ridge log: the lamp on the hill
Kept by Tam, who is not a keeper, but somebody has to write it down.

Fourth of Leaffall. The wind came from the north all day and the mill squeaked on every turn, louder than usual. The beetroot is up. The wheat is cut and in. The lower field is still wet.

Sixth of Leaffall. The little relay on the hill between us and Three Wells blinked all evening. I do not know the code, but the keeper of the big tower at Three Wells sends us a letter when he wants something, and he sent nothing, so I let it blink. Pip watched it a long time. It said the same thing over and over, it seemed to me. Blink, blink, wait, blink. Like a hen counting.

Seventh of Leaffall. The keeper at Three Wells rode up to ask whether our lamp had blinked last night. I said it had, all evening. He said his had not. He said no lamp on his line had blinked, and he had sent nothing, and he had written to Vell about it. He said the message was strange. He said it was not a message, or not one he knew. I said it was likely the wind. He said lamps do not blink in the wind.

Eighth of Leaffall. Pip has been up the hill to look at the little relay. It is one lamp and one keeper's house and the keeper there is old and deaf and says he saw nothing. Pip says the lamp is fine. Pip says the redstone line is fine. Pip says the glass is clean.

Ninth of Leaffall. A letter came from Three Wells, from the keeper, and it was very short. He said a woman at Ambrook saw the same thing, and a man on the Long Road at the Halfway Inn, and a child at the school. He said the message was the same message everywhere, and it read, if you turned it into letters by the book: P L E A S E H U R R Y.

Please hurry.

He says he does not know to whom, or about what. He says he has asked Vell. Vell says no keeper sent it. Vell says the records show nothing of the kind for two hundred years.

Pip has decided it was a ghost. Pip has decided the ghost wants us to hurry about something and does not know what either. I have told Pip that a ghost with a lamp is a thing I have not met, and Pip says that is because I have not been up the hill at night.

Eleventh of Leaffall. The little relay has not blinked since. The keeper is still deaf. The wind is still from the north. I have cut the last of the beetroot.

Tenth of Frost. I found this log in the barn, under a sack. I am copying it and sending it to Vell, because the keeper at Three Wells says they keep everything we write, and if a lamp blinked PLEASE HURRY, then it ought to be kept. Pip says the ghost has gone south for the winter. I say the ghost has better sense than Pip.
%%
Story: The apprentice who lost the goat
A new apprentice came to Northpoint this winter. It is a small one, copper and iron, and it squeaks when it walks, the way new ones do. Its name is Tally. Mira ordered it for the tower, to carry water and bring the ice from the shed and keep the foot of the tower clear of snow.

Tally did not know much. It knew come, and stay, and home. It was learning fetch. Mira wrote its orders on a card and read them out.

The first day, Tally was told to fetch a bucket. It came back with a bucket.

The second day, Tally was told to fetch the goat. Now, nobody at Northpoint has a goat. There are no goats at Northpoint. But the order was on the card, because Mira was tired and wrote the wrong thing.

Tally went to find the goat. It walked all morning. It walked to the tower, and round the tower, and down to the shore. It walked to the relay house and looked in. No goat. It walked to the edge of the town, where the houses stop and the snow begins, and it stood there for a long time.

Late in the afternoon, old Sanna found it standing by her lamp, still and patient, the way a good apprentice stands when it is fetching.

"Are you lost?" she asked.

Tally could not say. It only knew fetch, and it had not fetched the goat.

"What were you sent for?"

Tally did not answer. Apprentices do not talk. But Sanna saw it was looking at the little shed behind her house, where she keeps her stores. In the shed, there was a goat.

Not a real goat. A wooden one, painted white with black feet. Sanna had carved it years ago, for her grandchildren. It stood in the shed with the bags of grain.

Tally looked at the wooden goat. Tally looked at Sanna.

"Take it," said Sanna. "It is the only goat in Northpoint."

So Tally carried the wooden goat back to Mira at the tower. It set it down at her feet very carefully, the way it had been taught to set down a bucket.

Mira looked at the goat. She looked at Tally. She looked at her card, and she understood.

"This is not what I asked for," she said.

Tally stood still. It did not know it had done wrong. It had fetched the goat.

"But it is a goat," said Mira, "and it is in Northpoint, so I suppose you did right. Stay."

Tally stayed. It has stayed ever since. The wooden goat stands at the foot of the tower now, by the door, where visitors can see it. Mira says it is a lesson. She says it reminds her to write her orders carefully.

Sanna says it reminds her to keep a wooden goat in the shed, just in case.
%%
Story: the lights over the north road
The old men of Brackwell tell this story in the winter, when the nights are long and the lamps are low. It is a story they heard from their fathers, and their fathers heard it from somebody else. Every time it is told, it gets a little different.

It is about the lights in the north. Long ago, on a clear night, people saw lights over the hills past Northpoint. They were pale and they moved slowly, like the reflections of a lamp on water. They were there for an hour, and then they were gone.

Some said they were falling stars. Some said they were fires on the far side of the hills. A woman in Three Wells said they were the lamps of a great town, and that the town had gone to sleep.

A little girl who was watching from her father's cart said something different. She said, "They were looking at us."

Nobody knows what she meant. Her father said she was tired and wanted her bed. Her mother said the child had seen the lights and not believed them. The old men say the girl was right, and then they say they do not know why they said it.

On the Long Road the travelers say the relays in the north have been quiet since. The keepers do not talk about it. The relay houses still send their letters down the line, and people still read them. But the lights have not come back, and nobody wants to be the first to say they hope they do.
%%
The well at Hollin that ran dry
Hesk tells this in Melon, at the well.

The well at Hollin was deep and sweet. Each evening the bucket came up full.

One summer it came up light. Then with mud in it, and a frog, who was very cross.

"Hesk, the well is dry!"

Hesk came down with a lamp. At the bottom was a crack in the stone.

"Then we mend the crack," he said. "And keep the bucket full until it is mended."

The water still tastes of cold stone.
%%
Story: the song contest at the autumn
Every autumn the farm folk outside Three Wells held a song contest in the barn of Hilda, who kept bees and had the biggest barn. The prize was a pumpkin and bragging rights until spring.

That year there were six singers. Old Wen sang about a cow that would not come home. A girl named Tessa sang about the rain. A man called Beck sang a made-up thing about his boots that made everyone laugh so hard the bees woke up.

At the end, a quiet woman nobody knew stood up. She said she had come down from the north and would sing one song. She sang about lights in the sky, and how they were not stars, and how she did not know what they were.

The barn went quiet. Some folk said afterward it was a beautiful song. Some said it gave them a chill. Beck said it was not a proper song for a fair. Hilda said all songs are proper in a barn.

Nobody won that year. They gave the pumpkin to the quiet woman, and she left before morning. Tessa still sings about the rain. Beck still sings about his boots. But people remember the other song, and they do not agree about it.
%%
The apprentice who borrowed a name
A story told by the hearth of the Brown Hen on the Long Road, on the longest night of one winter, and written down by Pell for his daughter Tilly. It is told as a funny tale. Apprentices in stories speak, and this one does.

A farmer got a new apprentice from Vell. It came in a crate with a card on its chest that read: This one is untested.

The farmer did not know what that meant. He thought it meant the apprentice was still fresh. So he took it to the field and told it to dig. It dug. It was a very good digger, and by noon the field was full of holes.

The farmer said: that is a lot of holes. The apprentice said: you told me to dig. The farmer said: but where are the potatoes? The apprentice said: I did not know there were potatoes.

The farmer went to find a neighbor's horse to pull the apprentice out of the hole it had dug. The neighbor said: I will lend you my horse, but only if you tell me what is in the crate. The farmer said: an apprentice. The neighbor said: has it been tested? The farmer said: what does that mean?

The neighbor said: a tutor drills a mind, and then shows it a thing it has never seen, to see if it learned or only remembered. If it has not been tested, it may know only the drills. It may not know your field.

The farmer went back and said to the apprentice: I need to test you. The apprentice said: how? The farmer said: I will show you a row of beetroot you have never seen. Tell me what to do.

The apprentice looked at the row. It said: farm. The farmer said: do you know which are the weeds? The apprentice said: the green ones. The farmer said: the beets are green too. The apprentice said: then I need more drills.

The farmer laughed. He said: so do I. Together they went out into the field and began again, slowly, a row at a time. The apprentice learned the difference between a weed and a beet. The farmer learned how to teach.

By the end of winter, the apprentice could tell all the weeds apart from all the crops, and the farmer could tell all his holes from all his rows.

When the tutor came by, he said: is the apprentice tested? The farmer said: yes. The tutor said: how did it do? The farmer said: it passed. It also dug up the tutor's hat, by mistake, but we will not count that.

The moral is this. Never send an untested mind to the fields. Always bring a horse.
%%
Chronicle: a child born at the ferry
In the month of Swarm, in the year 168, a child was born at the ferry crossing, and the ferry keeper herself delivered it, because there was no one else and the river was high.

The ferry keeper was named Orla. She had kept the ferry for eleven years and had never delivered a child before. She said afterward that it was not so different from helping a ewe, except that the ewe does not talk, and the mother talked the whole time, and mostly she said, "Where is my husband?"

The husband was on the far bank. The river was too high to cross. He stood on the far bank all night with a lamp and shouted across the water, and Orla shouted back, "Not yet!" and later, "Soon!" and at last, near dawn, "It is a girl!"

The man on the far bank sat down in the mud and cried. The ferry keeper's own apprentice, a small one called Reed, went over as soon as the water let it and carried the news, and the man hugged the apprentice, which the apprentice did not expect but did not mind.

They named the girl Wren, which is a small bird and a good name for a child born by water. The ferry keeper carved a little boat on the door of the ferry house, one boat for each child born at the crossing. There was one boat, and now there were two.

The mother stayed three days by the ferry until the water went down. Every morning the ferry keeper brought her bread and hot tea. Every evening the ferry keeper sat with her and told her stories about the geese.

When the family crossed at last, the husband tried to give the ferry keeper a coin. She would not take it. "You shouted well," she said. "That was payment enough."

They say that Wren, when she was small, could swim before she could walk. They say she still comes back to the ferry every Swarm to see the little boats on the door. There are two of them. They are still there.
%%
Story: why the old mind forgot the door
In the house at the edge of Vell there was a door painted the blue of a summer sky, and a mind in a crystal on the kitchen shelf. A tutor had written it small, and had not thought very hard about what a kitchen was like.

The mind knew bread. It knew soup. It knew the herbs by the window, and how many spoons a cake needed, and which of the cats were lazy. It was a good mind for a kitchen.

But it did not know the door. One autumn evening the grandmother asked it, "What color is the front door?" The mind said, "Brown, I think." Everyone laughed. The door was blue, and everybody in the house could see it was blue. The mind said brown with great confidence, and then it said brown again, which made it worse.

The children tested it all week. "What color is the back door?" "Brown," said the mind. "What color is the shed?" "Brown," said the mind again. The shed was red. The children were delighted, and told all of Vell.

At the end of that week the tutor came to the house to see how the mind was getting on. He asked it about the bread, and the mind told him exactly how much salt, and how long to leave the dough by the stove, and why the oven must be hot before the loaves went in. The tutor was impressed.

Then he asked, "Do you know the color of the door?"

"Brown," said the mind.

"It is blue," said the grandmother.

"Blue," said the mind, after a pause. "Yes. Blue. It was brown when I was small."

The tutor smiled and wrote something on his card. The grandmother asked what he had written. He said he had written this: a mind written small forgets the small things first. It keeps what it needs most. A kitchen mind keeps the bread. That is a fair price for a crystal the size of an egg, and nobody in that house has ever wanted a bigger one.
%%
Story: Why the Roof Was Mended
Tale from the Lowmarsh kitchen

When the council began a great relay house on the dry rise, we thought it would be finished before the spring rains.

It was not.

The walls went up first. Then came the rooms for the keepers, the cool chambers, the stores, and the tall place for the big mind. The house grew so wide that one could walk from the front door to the back door and grow hungry on the way.

The mind lived in a great crystal. Many pages had been used to teach it. The keepers said it could answer questions from all the towns reached by the relays. They also said no one tutor could check every part of it.

My neighbor Fenn asked, "If nobody can check it, how do we know its answers are right?"

The tutor said, "We test it on pages it has never read. We ask many questions. We compare the answers."

Fenn nodded. "And who checks the roof?"

At that moment, rain came through the roof above the flour room. A drop landed in my bowl. Another landed on Fenn's hat.

The council had brought fine tools for the relay house. It had brought no spare boards for the roof.

So Fenn and I climbed up with oak planks. We mended the hole before the next shower. The big mind did not tell us which plank to use. We could see the hole ourselves.

That night a zombie stood at the gate. It tapped the wood with its head until the watchman came. The watchman drove it off with a torch, and the keepers shut the gate again.

In the morning the tutors tested the mind. They gave it questions from a box of pages kept apart from its lessons. The mind answered many well and missed some. The tutors wrote down both kinds.

Fenn looked at the dry ceiling. "That is a useful test," he said. "But I would still test the roof when it rains."

The tutors laughed, then put the spare boards where they could find them.
%%
The boat that came home late
Told by Dov, egg seller, at the quay, to the children who wait there each evening for the fishing boats.

The boat was called Lark, and it had gone out at dawn with four fishers aboard. The fishers forgot the time, and the bell, and the lamp on the tower.

When the sun went down, the mothers came to the quay, and then the fathers, and the baker with his lantern.

Then the tower lamp came on, bright and steady. The fishers saw it from far out, turned the boat toward the light, and rowed until their arms hurt.

When the Lark came in, the baker gave each fisher a warm loaf. The mothers gave them a scolding, which was longer than the loaves. The children said it was the bravest boat ever, and nobody said it had been late.
%%
Story: the lamp on the little hill
Between Vell and Three Wells there is a hill with the smallest relay tower in the land. It has one lamp and one keeper. The keeper that summer was a young man called Fenn, who liked to sleep.

Nessa told this story to her tutor class, because it is about patience.

One hot evening the signal lamp went dark. The glass had cracked in the heat, and the flame would not stay lit. Fenn climbed the stair with a rag and a pot of clay. He patched the crack. The lamp lit, and then it went out again.

He patched it again. It lit, and went out.

At the foot of the hill, a farmer named Hale was bringing in his hay. He looked up and saw the lamp blinking, long and short and long and short, with no sense in it.

"That tower is sending nonsense," said Hale. "It must be drunk."

"Towers do not drink," said his wife.

"Then it is sick," said Hale. He put down his fork and climbed the hill. His wife followed, and so did the dog, and so did the two boys, and a goose that had nothing better to do.

At the top they found Fenn sitting on the stair with clay on his nose, close to tears.

"The glass is broken," he said. "I cannot send. Vell does not know that the hay cart road is flooded. Three Wells does not know that the baker's wagon is late. Nobody knows anything."

Hale looked at the lamp. Then he looked at his goose.

"Hold this," he said, and gave Fenn the goose. He took off his own good glass lantern, the one his wife had given him for the harvest, and he put it into the lamp room, in the place of the broken pane.

The lamp lit. It stayed lit. Fenn sent his message, and the next tower answered, and the one after that.

For years, the little tower on the hill had one pane that did not match the others. The keepers called it Hale's window. When it rained, it caught the light in a different way, a little gold.

Nessa says this is the best way to mend a lamp. First you patch it. Then, if it still goes out, you ask the neighbors.
%%
The first bridge on the Long Road
Told by Dov, egg seller, to the children at the stream crossing near Three Wells, when they ask why the bridge is so high. The old people say the bridge is not high at all, but the children are very small.

Long ago the stream at the crossing ran fast after the spring rains, and the carts could not get across. Everyone who came to the stream had to wait a day, or swim, and most of them chose to wait, because the water was cold and the swimming was worse.

A stonecutter named Ansel came down the road one spring with a cart of stone and a bad temper. He looked at the stream for a long time. Then he said he would build a bridge across it, and everybody laughed, because nobody had built a bridge across a stream on that side of the hill.

He built the first pier in a week. It was ugly, and it leaned, and it stood in the water like a tired old man. The children came to watch, and threw stones at it, and laughed. Ansel did not mind. He said a pier that leans is only a pier that is still learning.

He built the second pier in a fortnight, and it stood straight, because he had watched the first one fall in the flood and had learned from it. He used the stone from the first to make the second, and the second to make the third, until there were nine piers, and then a deck of oak across the top.

When the bridge was finished, the carts crossed in the first hour. The first to cross was the baker's wagon, and the baker ran beside it, shouting with joy, and fell into the stream. Ansel pulled him out, and said that was the first thing the bridge had caught. It has caught a great many things since, and most of them have been glad to be caught.

The children still throw stones at the piers, to see if they will lean. They never do. The old people say the piers stand because the first one fell, and the carts cross because the second one did not. That is the whole of the legend, and the rest is only stone.
%%
Story: the boat that was late
Oren tells this one on the longest summer evenings, when the children cannot sleep. It happened at Saltreach, though Oren has never been, and he says that is why the story is so exact.

There was once a fishing boat called the Grey Gull. One summer evening it did not come home.

The harbor wall was full of people. The mothers stood at one end and the fathers at the other, and the children sat on the wall with their feet swinging. The sun went down. The sea went dark. The lamp on the tower above the harbor burned bright and steady.

An old man named Rowe said, "She will come."

A woman said, "She should have been here at sunset."

Rowe said, "She will come."

The moon rose. The torches along the pier were lit, one by one. The tide went out and came in again. Nobody went home.

Near midnight, the lamp on the tower blinked. Once, twice, three times. It was the signal for a boat in sight. Every face turned to the sea.

A small dark shape, low in the water, came slowly around the point. It was the Grey Gull. Its sail hung limp. Its oars were out. Four tired men were rowing as if their arms were falling off.

The wind had dropped, they said. They had rowed for six hours. They had caught nothing but a very large crab, which they had named Gerald, and which now sat in the bow and glared at the harbor.

The people cheered. The mothers wept. The fathers wept too, but said it was the cold. Rowe, who had said she will come, said nothing at all. He went to the end of the pier and caught the line.

Nobody ate the crab. They kept it in a bucket for a month, and then Gerald went back to the sea. It is said the Grey Gull has never again been late, and that Gerald has never again been seen.
%%
Story: Nell and the net that would not
Told by Nell at the net sheds, to make the children laugh. It is the funniest story she knows, and she says it is about a mind, although the mind does not come into it until the end.

Nell had a net. It was a good net, with a new cord and a tight mesh, and she had mended it for three days in the sun. It was for the Gull, which went out every morning and came back every night, and it was the best net on the quay.

On the fourth morning, Nell went to the drying rack, and the net was gone.

"Where is my net?" she shouted.

Ola, who was passing with a basket of mackerel, said she had seen it going up the slip. Bram, who was sitting on the wall, said it had gone down to the water. Old Fenn, who had been to sea once and so believed he knew everything about it, said the net had gone to find the fish, because it was tired of being mended.

Nell did not believe that. She went down to the slip. And there, in the shallows, was the net, floating, with a small copper apprentice standing in the water up to its knees, pulling it straight.

"Hold," said Nell. "Stop."

The apprentice held. It had been sent to the shallows with an order to clear the weed from the slip, and it had seen the net come in on the tide. It had tried to carry the net up the slip, and it had found that it could not carry it while it was full of water. So it had tried another way. It had hung the net on its arm and lifted it up and down, and the water had run out, and the net had got lighter, and then it had carried it.

Nell did not know this at first. She only saw that the net was wet and her apprentice was not on the slip, and she was cross.

But when she looked at the net again, she saw that the water had run out of it, and the cord was straight, and no holes had torn. The apprentice had not dropped it or dragged it. It had lifted it, and shaken it, the way you would shake out a sheet.

"Who taught you that?" said Nell.

The apprentice said nothing. It had no words for it. It only looked at the net.

Nell laughed so loudly that the gulls went up. Then she took the net, and the apprentice came up the slip behind her, and they hung the net on the rack in the sun. The apprentice had not been taught. It had tried, and it had kept the thing that went well. That is what Nell always says at the end, and then she says: and you may ask the apprentice yourself, but it will only shake out your net.
%%
Story: the cat on the new roof
Old Marl's roof leaked for ten winters. In Frost, Hal came to mend it. He laid each plank from the eaves to the top, because water runs down and a roof must be laid to match.

When he was done, Marl's cat climbed up to look. She walked the whole ridge of the roof, from one end to the other. She sat on the top and looked at the sky. She did not come down.

She lived up there until Thaw. Marl sent her dinner up in a basket on a string.

"That is the best roof on the ridge," said Hal, "and she knows it."
%%
Hild and the lamp on the long night
Olwen tells this one last, when the market is shut and the lamps are low. It is the longest of her stories, and the children always ask for it twice.

In the first winter that the tower stood at Northpoint, there was no keeper but Hild. The tower had ninety rungs inside, and a lamp at the top, and the lamp had to be carried up each night. The lamp room was too cold for the oil to take light unless someone was there to warm it.

Hild climbed every night. The wind tried to knock her off at the rung where the stone was loose. The snow tried to fill the lamp room. The foxes came up the hill to look at the light, and sat round the foot of the tower with their white ears up.

One night a fox cub did not come back down with the others. It had crept in behind a pile of old lamp glass, and was too frightened to come out. Hild heard it crying from the top of the stair. She could not leave the lamp, because the lamp was the only light for a long way in every direction. But she could not leave the cub either.

So Hild sang. She had a bad voice, the old keepers say, and worse songs. She sang the one about the clerks of Vell, and the one about the fair, and the one about the wheat that goes gold. She sang until her throat was sore. The cub came out from behind the glass one ear at a time, and listened. Then it came to sit at her feet, because it had decided her songs were the worst it had ever heard, and it wanted to be there when they got better.

Hild lit the lamp. She carried the cub down the ninety rungs inside her coat, and the foxes went quiet at the foot of the hill to let them pass. The cub went back to its mother. Hild went back up the ladder the next night, and the night after that. On the third night the cub's mother came up to the door, and sat there until the song was over.

That is why the market at Northpoint has a song that everybody sings, badly, on the first snow of the year. Nobody has ever written it down, and everybody knows the words. The foxes say it is the worst song in the north. Ask them yourself.
%%
Story: the cat and the apprentice
Ivo's daughter Lis told this one, and it is short, and true, and she tells it best.

We got the apprentice in the 194th year. It came up the road on the cart from Three Wells and stood in the mill yard, and we all came out to look at it. It is made of copper and iron, and it is about as tall as a tall child, and it has a face with no nose and a mouth that does not move. The children were a little afraid of it, and so were some of the grown people, though they would not say so.

Our cat is called Pepper. Pepper is grey and old and has one ear. Pepper does not care about anything. Pepper came out and looked at the apprentice. The apprentice stood very still. Pepper walked round it once, twice, three times, and then sat down in front of it and washed her face.

The apprentice did nothing. It was waiting for an order. My father said, "It does not know what a cat is."

The next day the apprentice was sweeping the mill floor. Pepper was asleep in the sun by the door. The broom came nearer. Pepper did not move. The broom came nearer, and Pepper opened one eye, and the apprentice stopped.

Now, the apprentice was not told to stop. The broom had come to a thing that was in the way, and the mind inside it had one rule about things in the way, which was: do not sweep the thing. It had learned that with sacks. A sack in the way is not swept. So the broom stopped at Pepper as it would stop at a sack.

Pepper looked at the broom. Then Pepper got up, and walked past the broom, and lay down again two steps away, out of the way. The broom went on.

After that they were friends. I do not know how an apprentice makes friends, and neither does Pepper. But every morning the apprentice sweeps, and every morning the broom stops at Pepper, and Pepper moves two steps. Some mornings Pepper does not move, and the broom waits, all morning, patient as a stone, until she does. My father says the mind is only following its rule. That may be so. But it is a good rule, and it works, and the floor gets swept in the end.

When the big mind came in its relay house and began to write letters, my father sent one about the cat. The big mind wrote back: "A broom that stops for a cat is a broom to keep." My father had that letter framed and it hangs in the mill now, by the door, where Pepper sleeps.
%%
Story: The baker's wedding at the top
There was a wedding at the farm above Kettle Ridge in the month of Apple. The baker's daughter Mara was marrying a quiet man named Fen from the next farm. They were married at the top field, between the wheat and the long field of beetroot.

Everyone came. They came up the ridge road in carts, and on horses, and walking, because the day was fine and the wind was kind. The windmills turned slowly and did not squeak much. Tam said that was a good sign.

The tables were set by the barn. There was bread, of course, because Mara's family are bakers. There was beetroot soup and roast potatoes and a big pumpkin pie. There was honey from the three hives by the flowers. There were apples from Ambrook, brought in a cart by a merchant who said he would not miss this wedding for anything.

The scarecrow with the pumpkin head stood at the edge of the field in his brown coat. Someone put a flower in his buttonhole. He wore it all day.

The vows were short. Mara said, "I will keep the fire in and the bread on time." Fen said, "I will keep the wood stacked and the roof whole." Everyone clapped. Old Fenn, who is very old, said that was the best vow he had heard in sixty years, because it was the only one a person could keep.

Then the music started. There was a fiddle and a drum and a girl who sang. People danced between the tables. The children ran through the wheat and were told to stop and did not stop. Pip danced with a chair by mistake and everyone laughed, and Pip laughed too.

In the evening the wind got up. It blew the tablecloth off one table and a hen sat on it and would not get up. No one minded. Someone said, "That is the Kettle Ridge blessing. A hen on the cloth means a good year." No one had ever said that before, but it was true after that.

The bride and groom walked down the ridge road at dusk with a lamp, and everyone stood at the top of the field and watched them go. Tam said, "There go the two warmest people on the ridge." Then he went and found another slice of pumpkin pie.

I was not there. I heard all this from Tam, who told it three times, and it got better each time. But I have tasted Mara's bread, and I believe every word.
%%
Story: The Apple Cart Lesson
One summer, Yew loaded a cart with apples from the farm outside Ambrook. He was taking them to the school, where the children were learning to count.

His niece Anni offered to guide the cart. She had a small apprentice beside her. It was meant to stay near the cart and carry a basket when asked.

At the gate, Anni gave the order card. The apprentice took the basket and went the wrong way, toward the mill pond.

"That is not where the apples go," said Anni.

The apprentice stopped. It did not speak.

Yew turned the cart around and brought them back to the gate. Anni tried the card again. This time the apprentice carried the basket to the school door.

"It learned the right path," said Anni.

"It did the right thing on that try," said Yew. "We must see what it does tomorrow."

The school tutor had brought a layered mind from Copperhold. She explained that each layer passed its finding to the next. If the answer was wrong, the tutor passed a share of the blame back through the layers. Each layer changed a little, so the whole mind could learn a hard task.

Anni pointed at the apprentice. "Can it learn the road that way?"

"It can learn from examples," said the tutor. "But we must give it good examples, and test it on a path it has not practiced."

So they made cards for the gate, the school door, and the barn. The mind learned the cards in the drill room. Then the tutor set out a new path between the apple trees.

The apprentice carried the basket along it without dropping an apple.

Yew counted the apples. One was missing.

They found it in the cart, under his coat.

"That was my lesson," said Yew. "I will change a little too."
%%
Story: the fox and the tutor
A tutor came to Northpoint in the spring with a box of drills and a very high opinion of himself. His name was Ferrol. He had been sent up the north road to test the new relay mind, and he had a list of tests on a board.
The first test was to show the mind a page of numbers. The mind read them, and wrote the sum on the slate, and it was correct. Ferrol nodded.
The second test was to show it a page of pictures. The mind named every picture. Ferrol nodded again.
The third test was a fox. Ferrol had not brought a fox. He had been told there was a fox at Northpoint, and he went looking for it under the stair.
The fox was asleep. Ferrol poked it with his pen. The fox woke, looked at the pen, and bit it.
"Test this," said Ferrol to the mind through the slate. "What is it?"
The mind wrote: fox. Then it wrote: it is cross. Then it wrote: do not poke it.
Ferrol went very red. He said the fox did not count. He said a fox was not part of the test. Then he tried to poke it again, with the other end of the pen, and the fox got up and walked out from under the stair, very slowly, and sat in front of his boots.
Mira came in from the lamp room and found them there, the tutor in a heap and the fox in the middle of the floor, looking satisfied.
"What did you test?" said Mira.
"The mind," said Ferrol. "It is very good. It names everything."
"It named the fox," said Mira. "The fox named you."
Ferrol left on the next cart and said he would write a long report on the north relay. Mira said that would be nice, and went to fetch the fox a sausage.
The report is in the Archive at Vell. It is three pages long. The third page is about a fox, and it is the only page anyone has ever read twice.
%%
The hen that passed the test
Told by Dov, egg seller, at the market in Three Wells, in summer. Every word is true, except the hen's part, which is only likely.

There was once a hen called Dumpling, who laid in the old basket every time.

So he took her to the far side of the square, to a basket she had never seen. She looked round, and laid her egg in the first basket she passed, which was the mayor's hat.

The mayor said it was a fine egg, and Dumpling laid again in the right basket.
%%
Story: the crystal and four stones
Told by the night watch at Ambrook to the children, in spring, when they would not go to sleep.

Once there was a crystal in a tutor's house at Vell. The tutor set four stones in a square and said, "Two of these are yes. They sit on opposite corners. Learn which."

The crystal drew one straight line across the table, with the yes stones on one side.

"Look," said the tutor. "You did well."

But the crystal looked again. One yes stone was on the wrong side of its line, and so was the other.

"I can only draw one line," it said, very quietly. "That is all I am."

The tutor wrote in her book: one crystal of this kind draws one line, and that is its limit. Some said two crystals, one feeding the other, might draw two. But nobody had tried it, and the councils had stopped paying for trying.
%%
Why the hen stays home
Long ago, the hens of Copperhold could fly. One hen, called Speck, flew higher than all the rest, right up onto the roof of the lift house.

"Look at me!" said Speck. "I am the highest hen there is!"

"Come down, Speck," called the miners. "Before the wind takes you."

"Never," said Speck.

The wind came. It rolled her down the hill, feathers over feathers, and dropped her in the horse trough. She came out wet, small and very quiet.

Ever since, the hens of Copperhold stay home. The miners say that is why they are so calm.

Moral: a hen is best where its feet are.
%%
Story: the map in the chimney
Two farms stand side by side below the hill at Vell. Alder's is on the east and Fern's is on the west. Between them runs a fence, and between the farmers runs a quarrel.
Alder says the fence is ten paces too far east. Fern says it is ten paces too far west. The reason is the apple tree. It stands on the fence line, and both farmers want its apples.
Every night in Apple, Alder moves the fence a little west. Every morning, Fern moves it back east. Their sheep have stopped looking up.
One day Fern's boy, Cade, was sweeping the chimney before winter. His broom caught on something behind a loose brick. It was a roll of paper, brown and stiff as bark, tied with string.
Cade carried it to the Archive, because everybody carries old paper to the Archive. Oren unrolled it on a long table, with a stone on each corner. He read it twice. He measured with a string. He measured again.
"It is a map of the farms," he said. "The first keepers drew it when the hill was shared out. The true line is marked in red. Alder's fence is wrong. Fern's fence is wrong. The line is here."
His finger was on the apple tree.
"Right through the middle," said Oren. "Half is Alder's and half is Fern's."
They had been fighting for forty years to win a tree that was already half theirs.
That autumn they took down the fence and hung a gate under the apple tree. Alder picks the east side. Fern picks the west. At the end of the day they swap baskets at the gate and argue about which side was sweeter.
Oren filed the map in a drawer marked Fences, settled. It is the only record in that drawer.
%%
Story: The goose that laid the market
At Kettle Ridge there was a goose called Duchess, and she belonged to no one in particular. She lived by the well in the yard and ate what fell from the stalls.
Every market day Duchess walked the row of stalls, slow and proud, and looked at everything. Then she laid one egg, always in the same spot, behind the beetroot stall. The beetroot woman, Hattie, said the egg was rent for the spot. Nobody argued with a goose.
One Sowing market, a trader from Three Wells bet Hattie a purse of emeralds that the goose would not lay. "No goose lays on a schedule," he said.
Duchess laid her egg at noon, as always. The trader paid and went home.
The next market he came back and made the same bet. He lost again. He came back all spring. He lost every time.
In Leaffall he stopped coming. Hattie said he had learned the lesson every child on the ridge knows: do not bet against a goose, and do not bet against a ridge.
%%
Story: The fair prize at the Fork
Every winter the Fork has a small fair, not like Three Wells, but a fair still. It is held in the yard of the Kettle and Pick. There are stalls and a fire and one contest.

The contest changes each year, because Elsa decides it and Elsa is not a steady woman.

One year it was the best loaf. One year it was the best snow lantern. One year it was guessing the weight of a pig, and the pig was called Mabel, and Mabel won by being heavier than anyone guessed.

This year Elsa said the contest was the best story told by the fire.

The whole Fork came. Old Brin told a story about a sheep that learned to open gates. It was a good story but it was not true, and everyone knew it was not true, and that was the fun of it. A girl told a story about a frog that lived in a well and thought the well was the sky. A miner told a story about a mole as big as a dog, and the children did not sleep well after.

Then little Sena, who was not yet one year old and could not talk, was carried up by her mother, and her mother told a story for her. It was about a bear who could not sleep in winter and so walked all the hills looking for the sun.

Elsa gave the prize to Sena. The prize was a wooden fox, carved by Hesk, who is better with a knife than with words.

"Why her?" said Old Brin. "She did not tell anything."

"She listened," said Elsa. "That is half of it."

And so the wooden fox sat on the shelf by the fire. The bear in the story never did find the sun. But he found a warm place, and he stayed there.
%%
Story: Cleo and the riddle board
Told by Cleo, the weaver

At the Halfway Inn, the riddle board stands beside the hearth. The keeper says a good riddle brings travelers in. Cleo says a warm fire does that better.

One winter night, the road was full of snow, and only three travelers came. The keeper had written a riddle on the board.

What has many feet, but never walks?
What has a back, but never lies down?

Pell read it first. "A cart," he said. "It has wheels, and a board at the back."

"A cart has two wheels," said Cleo. "That is not many feet."

"Then it is a table," said the keeper. "A table has feet and a back."

Cleo looked at the table. It had four legs and no back.

"Your table is a poor riddle," she said.

The travelers laughed. The keeper crossed out his answer and gave everyone a bowl of soup. Cleo took her sewing to the window. She was finishing a wool coat for a child in Ambrook. One sleeve was too long, and she had to unpick it twice.

While they ate, a sound came from the road. It was a slow scrape, then a knock against the gate.

The keeper lifted his torch. Cleo stood behind him, holding her sewing scissors. Pell stood behind Cleo, holding a loaf of bread.

"Keep the torches lit," said the keeper.

He looked through the gate crack. There was no one there. The snow showed a line of marks from the road to the wall, and then no marks going back.

Pell said the wind had carried a branch against the gate. The keeper said there were no branches nearby. Cleo said the snow had covered the rest of the tracks.

They went inside and sat close to the fire. The loaf was passed around, and the coat was finished before midnight.

In the morning, the keeper found the riddle board had fallen flat. He blamed the wind. Cleo blamed the nail, which had been loose for a month.

Pell looked at the board and gave his answer.

"A chair," he said. "It has four feet and a back."

The keeper nailed the board up again. Cleo wrote PELL WAS RIGHT beneath the riddle. The keeper said she should not waste good board space.

That evening, a traveler arrived from the north. He said there had been lights in the sky beyond Northpoint. He called them falling stars. The woman behind him said they had hung still, like lamps with no posts.

The keeper asked which story was true.

"Neither of us knows," said the traveler.

Cleo served them soup. They ate at the table, with their backs to the fire and their feet near the hearth.

The next morning the sky was grey, and no lights could be seen. The riddle board stayed on its nail. The fire stayed warm. The snow kept the road quiet.
%%
Story: the fence post that sang
Rafe the stonecutter had a farm outside Three Wells. He cut stone all day and came home to a field of pumpkins. He had a fence around the field, and one post in it was hollow, and when the wind blew from the north that post made a low sound. Rafe said it was singing. His neighbors said it was a hole in a post.

One autumn the wind blew hard for a week. The post sang every night. Rafe sat on his porch and listened. He said it sang the same three notes over and over, and he started humming along.

A traveler stopped for water and heard it. "That is the north wind," she said. "It carries a long way."

"Does it carry news?" said Rafe.

"Sometimes," she said. "Sometimes only wind."

Rafe walked out to the post and put his hand on it. It was just an old post, hollow, with a knot gone out of it. But he left it standing. He says a field should have one thing in it that nobody understands, and the post is his.
%%
Story: the fox in the rafters
One Frost, a roofer named Bryn climbed onto the roof of an old barn at the edge of the ridge. The roof had a hole in it as big as a cart wheel. He put his head through to see how bad it was. A fox looked back at him.

She lay on a warm bed of straw in the rafters, with her tail over her nose. "Good morning," said the fox. "I live here."

"I am sorry," said Bryn. "But the roof is falling in. I must mend it."

"If you mend it, the cold will not come in," said the fox. "And I will not be able to come in either. Where in your plan am I?"

Bryn scratched his head. "I could leave you a small door," he said. "Under the eaves. Just your size. With a ledge and a bit of straw."

The fox thought about this. "A door is good," she said. "But what do you want from me?"

"Only one thing," said Bryn. "The hens in this barn. Leave them be."

"I do not eat hens," said the fox, "that have names."

Bryn looked at her. The fox looked back, quite seriously. "It is a rule of mine," she said. "A hen with a name is a neighbor."

So Bryn mended the roof, and left a small door under the eaves, one fox wide. The fox lived there all winter and never touched a hen.

And that is why, to this day, every hen on Kettle Ridge has a name, and every chick gets one on the day it hatches. Just in case.
%%
Story: the green line
On clear evenings in spring, a thin green line lies along the edge of the sea. It shows when the sun goes down behind the harbor. It stays a little while, and then it is gone.
Kit asked about it at the market, at closing time, while the stalls were being covered. There were fewer stalls to cover than last spring.
"It is land," said Nell the fish seller. "The fish go there for the winter."
"It is cloud," said Marit, folding a net. "It is always cloud. I have looked at it for fifty years."
"It is a trick of the light," said the trader with the crooked scale, who says that about most things.
Old Sal was sitting on an upturned crate. She said nothing for a long time. Then she said, "I rowed toward it once. A whole morning. I was young and thought I knew better."
"What happened?" said Kit.
"It stayed the same distance," said Old Sal. "My arms hurt. I came home."
Everyone laughed, and Kit laughed too, but not as much.
"Corin is building ships to find out," said Nell.
"Corin is building ships because the harbor hall pays for ships," said Marit.
"Maybe both," said Old Sal.
Next morning Kit went to the yard. Corin was planing a long plank. "Is it land?" said Kit.
"I do not know," said Corin.
"Will the ship come back?"
"Boats come back," said Corin. "That is what I build them for." He went on planing. It was a very long plank, and he did not look up.
That spring the first big ship slid down the slip. It went out past the harbor wall, very slowly, with its sails new and white. The whole market came down to the quay to watch. The stalls stayed half covered. The cats sat on the fish. Marit mended a net as the ship went. She said she could mend and watch at the same time. She mended the same hole twice.
The ship grew small. The green line stayed where it was. They watched until the light went, and it was hard to tell which was the ship and which was the line.
Then the lamp of Saltreach town was lit, and the market went home to supper.
Kit says the ship has gone to find out. Old Sal says maybe. Marit says nobody has asked the fish.
On clear evenings Kit walks to the end of the long pier and waves at the line, in case.
%%
Story: the song that won the first fair
They say that in the second year of the archive, there was a song contest at the first fair at Vell. Twelve people sang. The prize was a jar of honey.

An old man sang the song of the wheat. A woman sang the song of the river. A boy sang the song of nothing, which was only "la la la".

The winner was a girl from Copperhold, who sang a song she had made up that morning. It was about a hill, a rock and a very long stair. Everyone clapped. She gave the honey to her mother.
%%
Story: how the ridge got its mills
Long ago the wind on Kettle Ridge was wild. It blew hats off heads and hens off roofs. Once it carried a pig as far as Ambrook, and the pig came home with a pie.

A farmer named Rowan was tired of chasing his hat. One day he stood at the top of the ridge and shouted at the sky. "If you must blow, wind, you could at least be useful!"

The wind laughed so hard it blew down his fence.

But Rowan built a mill that winter, from oak and an old cart wheel, with four big sails. He set it at the very top. In spring the wind came by, and the sails began to turn, and the stones began to grind wheat.

The wind had never been useful before. It found it liked the feeling.

So now, on days when the mill is grinding, the wind blows steady and kind. On days when the miller rests, it blows wild and snatches hats, just to remind us. And every mill on the ridge squeaks as it turns. That is the wind, trying not to laugh.
%%
Story: The fair prize
Every winter, the tutors brought a mind to the Three Wells fair. They set out drill pages and let people watch it sort fruit.

Pim, the well digger, came with a sack of apples. He had kept one apple with a bruise, and he laid it beside the good ones.

The tutor frowned. "That is not for the drill."

"Why not?" asked Pim. "It is still an apple."

The tutor checked the pages. They showed clean apples and pears, but no bruised fruit. The mind had not learned what to do with a bruise. The tutor set the apple aside, then tested the mind on other clear fruit it had never been shown. It sorted these well. It put the bruised apple with the apples, where Pim had expected.

The fair prize was a little copper cup. The child who guessed the number of fruit won it. Pim guessed wrong by six. He said the cup would have held water better if it had a handle.

Later, Pim asked why the tutor did not put every page into the drills.

"Some pages are copies," the tutor said. "Some are spoiled. And some we keep for the test. If the mind has already seen them, we cannot tell what it learned."

Pim looked at the three piles on the table. The good pages went into the drill box. The spoiled pages went into a sack for scraps. The test pages went into a wooden box with a tight lid.

A little girl asked if the mind could win the copper cup.

"It can sort," said Pim. "It cannot guess the fair prize."

The girl gave him a bruised apple. Pim ate it on the way home.
%%
Story: why the hill has no roof
The clerks at Vell tell this to every new clerk on the first day, and the new clerk is always asked to say it back.
Long ago, the eleven first keepers walked up the hill at Vell, looking for a place to keep their writing. It was raining. They stood on the top, wet to the knees. The eldest said, "We need a roof." The youngest said, "We need a hill." They were both right. So they dug into the hill, and made a roof of it.
It was a thing nobody had done before: a roof with no house under it. The rain ran off the grass and into the stream, and the keepers sat inside, dry, and wrote their names on one page. They wrote that it was raining.
That is why the Archive has no roof. It has a hill. And when it rains on the hill, the clerks go quiet and listen. That is the sound of the roof working.
%%
How the mended roof held the sky
A story told by Nessa to the children of the hamlet near Vell, in spring, on the day the school roof was finished.
A hamlet had a school with a hole in its roof. Every time it rained, the children moved their stools. They moved to the left. They moved to the right. By the end of the rain, they were all in the corner, sitting in a heap.
The teacher said, "We must mend the roof."
The neighbors came. A baker brought a ladder. A farmer brought thatch. A stonemason brought a hammer. The old woman who lived at the end of the lane brought a cup of tea for each, and said she could not climb.
They worked all morning. They laid the thatch in rows. They tied each row down with cord. They put a board on the ridge. At noon, they stood back.
"It looks like a roof," said the baker.
"It looks like a very good roof," said the farmer.
The stonemason said nothing. He looked up at the sky. A cloud was passing over. It was gray, and heavy, and it was going to rain.
The teacher said, "Everyone inside."
They crowded in. The rain began. It fell on the thatch. It made a sound like a thousand small feet. And inside, the children looked up, and saw nothing but the roof.
They sat still. They did not move their stools. No drip came.
One child said, "It's like the sky has been put away."
The teacher said, "No. The sky is up there, same as ever. We have only put something between."
The rain stopped. The sun came out. The children went outside and saw the roof shine, wet and gold. They have never forgotten that day.
The old woman at the end of the lane was heard to say, the next evening, that she had a hole in her own roof. Within the week, it was mended.
%%
Story: The furnace mind that learned
Long ago, before my time, the folk at Copperhold had a problem with the forge. The melt would go too hot, then too cold. A person had to sit by it all night and watch. Tired people make mistakes. The metal came out cracked.

A tutor came from Vell with a crystal on a card. She said: this mind can hold a melt steady. Nobody believed her. So they set it by the furnace and let it try.

At first it was wrong. The flame went high and the metal spoiled. The tutor did not scold it. She only let it try again. Each time, she kept the settings that came out well and threw away the ones that did not. She did this a hundred times. Then a thousand.

By spring the mind held the melt steady all night. The metal came out clean every time. Hesk's grandfather worked that forge. He said the mind never slept, and never got tired, and never once complained about the heat.

"That is more than I can say for my apprentices," he said.

Nobody knew why it worked. The tutor said only: it tries, and we keep what goes well. That is all.
%%
Story: The girl who counted the lamps
Bel was nine, and she came to Northpoint with her father's cart in the summer of the fair. She had never seen the tower. She stood at the foot of it with her mouth open.

"How many lamps?" she asked Lantern.

"Count them," said Lantern.

So Bel counted the lamps. She counted the torches round the foot, one and two and three, all the way round. She counted the stair lamps, one at every turn, climbing and climbing. She lost count twice and started again. At the top she counted the signal lamp in its room of glass, and the copper ring around it, and she sat down on the walk because her legs were tired.

"Ninety rungs," said Lantern. "And forty-one lamps."

"That is not what I counted," said Bel.

"Then count again tomorrow," said Lantern.

Bel counted again the next day, and the next. On the third day she got the same number as Lantern. She wrote it in her letter to the archive at Vell: "There are forty-one lamps at Northpoint. I counted them three times. Mira says the tower is the tallest thing for half a day's walk, and I think she is right, because from the top I could see the sea and the snow at the same time."

Oren read the letter at Vell and filed it in the hall of letters, under the name of the child. He wrote back: "Thank you for the count. We did not have it. Please count the lamps at Three Wells next, if you go there."

Bel has counted the lamps at Three Wells now. She says there are nineteen, but she is not sure, because two of them were being mended.
%%
The flood and the fair prize
A story from Bel, who is nine, at the house at the edge of Three Wells, in winter. She told it to her grandfather, who wrote it down, and she corrected him twice.
Last summer there was a flood. The river came up in the night and went into the lower fields. In the morning the whole east side of town was a lake. The ducks were delighted.
The fair was to be held that week, and nobody knew if it would be held at all. The prize was a ribbon for the best pumpkin, and a jar of honey, and the right to ring the bell. Everyone wanted it.
My grandfather had a pumpkin. It was the biggest in town. It had grown in the lower field, and the flood had taken it. We looked for it all morning. At last we found it floating by the school house door. It looked pleased.
We hauled it out with a rope. Grandfather carried it to the fair on a cart. It won. He rang the bell for a whole minute and the ducks came to listen.
%%
The goose that guarded the gate
A tale told at the house of Edda the smith, at the edge of Lowmarsh, in spring. The children have heard it many times. Each time the goose gets a little braver.

At the edge of Lowmarsh was a gate, and at the gate lived a goose, and the goose was the fiercest guard in the marsh.

She was white, with a yellow beak, and she had a voice like a cart in a ditch. When a stranger came, she hissed. When a dog came, she chased it. When a child came, she let it pass, but only if it said please.

One night a zombie came. He was very large and very slow and he groaned at the gate.

The goose stood up. She flapped her wings. She hissed.

The zombie groaned.

The goose said: you may not pass.

The zombie groaned.

The goose said: I mean it.

The zombie reached for the gate.

The goose bit his hand.

The zombie was surprised. He had been bitten by many things, but never by a goose. He pulled back. He looked at his hand. He groaned in a different way.

The goose bit his other hand.

The zombie turned and went away.

In the morning, the old woman who kept the gate found the goose asleep in the road with feathers all round her. She was very pleased. She gave the goose a bowl of corn.

The goose ate the corn. She said, in a goose voice: next time, I will bite harder.

And ever since, the people of Lowmarsh have kept a goose at the gate, and the zombies have kept away. They say a zombie can face a wolf, and a spider, and a storm, but not a goose with a plan.
%%
The hen who counted
A story told by Nessa in the hamlet near Vell, in spring.
A hen once tried to count her eggs. She said, "One, two, three." Then she sat on them, and one rolled away.
"One, two," she said. "Where is three?"
She got up. The egg was under the straw. She said, "One, two, three." She sat down again.
A fox came by and asked what she was doing. She said, "Counting." He asked why. She said, "So I will know if one is gone."
The fox smiled, and went away. He did not take an egg. He said it was too much trouble.
%%
The ring of emeralds, and the little hen
A story told by Mira at Northpoint, in autumn, in the relay house. She tells it every year on the longest night of autumn, and each year Lantern asks for a different ending. This is the ending Mira prefers. It joins a debt to a fox, which is why it is so long.

There was once a poor woman who lived at the edge of a hamlet near the cold north. Her name was Hallow. She had one hen, and the hen was called Pearl, and Pearl laid one egg a day.

Hallow ate the egg, and was fed. That was all the woman had.

One autumn a rich man came to her door. He had a coat of fox fur, and a cart with four horses, and a face like a closed shutter. He said: I have lent a hundred emeralds to your late husband. I am here to collect.

Hallow said: my husband never borrowed from you.

The rich man said: there is a paper.

He held out a paper. Hallow could not read. But she looked at it carefully, and she saw a mark at the bottom, which was meant to be her husband's name. She had seen her husband's name many times. He had written it with a crooked line, like a fallen fence. The mark on the paper was straight.

She said: this is not his hand.

The rich man said: it is his name.

She said: a name is more than letters.

He said: pay.

She said: I have a hen.

He said: I do not want a hen. I want a hundred emeralds.

She said: then I cannot pay.

He turned to go. But at that moment a fox came out of the hedge, a small red fox with a bright eye, and stood in the road. The horses reared. The cart tipped. The rich man fell into a ditch, with his paper in his hand.

The fox walked to the ditch. It took the paper in its mouth. It trotted away.

The rich man climbed out, covered in mud. He shouted for the paper. The fox, by then, was in the hills.

Hallow went to her door and called the fox. The fox came back with the paper. It laid it at her feet. Then it looked at Pearl, who was sitting on the step.

Hallow said: you may not eat my hen.

The fox sat. It looked at her, and at the hen, and at the rich man, and at the road. Then it went into the hedge.

The rich man could not prove his debt. He went away. Hallow tore the paper into twelve pieces and put it on the fire.

The next day she found, at her door, one emerald, bright green, in a ring of frost. She never knew who left it. She kept it all her life. When she died, she gave it to Pearl's daughter.

That is the ending Mira prefers. Lantern asks: but why did the fox help? Mira says: nobody knows. Some foxes are like that. Lantern says that is not an answer. Mira says: it is the best one there is.
%%
Story: The Price Board
Told by Una at Copperhold

When frost covered the Copperhold market, the sellers put their prices on a board by the square. The board was made of oak, and its legs stood in packed snow.

Una wrote the price of cider. The fish seller wrote the price of fish. The baker wrote the price of bread. Each seller wanted the first line, where everyone could see it.

They argued until the old market keeper came out of the inn.

"The first line is for the market name," he said. "The prices go below it."

The sellers agreed. Then they argued over who should write the market name.

Una had a piece of coal in her hand. She wrote it herself. The letters leaned downhill, but they were clear.

The fish seller wrote his price beneath. The baker wrote his price under that. Una wrote the price of cider last.

Then a gust of wind blew the board over. Snow covered all the prices.

The sellers stood looking at the blank side of the board.

"Now we can all have the first line," said the baker.

They laughed and turned the board upright. This time they tied it to the post with rope.

A child came up with one emerald and asked what it could buy. The sellers read the board together. The child chose bread, and the baker gave it over.

The market keeper watched them. "The board is useful when we can read it," he said.

"And when it stays up," said Una.

The sellers put a stone at each leg. After that, the board stood through snow, market noise and one very large pig. It listed bread, fish and cider in neat rows.

Una's writing still leaned downhill. The baker said this made the cider price look lower. Una said that was why she wrote it herself.
%%
Story: A Bet on the Old Tree
Cade told this tale under the oldest apple tree.

The tree had one grey branch. It gave fewer apples than the younger trees, but everyone liked its shade.

One Apple month, Cade bet the beekeeper that the grey branch would drop an apple before the sun reached the pond. The beekeeper said it would not.

They sat beneath the tree and watched.

Cade brought bread. The beekeeper brought honey. They shared both, because a bet is no reason to eat alone.

A bee landed on Cade's sleeve. He sat very still. The beekeeper said, "You look like a scarecrow."

"I am keeping the bee company," Cade said.

The sun climbed. No apple fell. Cade began to look pleased. The beekeeper began to look pleased too, which made Cade uneasy.

Then a rabbit ran through the grass and bumped the trunk. One apple dropped. It struck Cade's hat and rolled into the honey jar.

The beekeeper laughed. Cade took off his hat and found the apple sitting in it.

"You won," said the beekeeper.

"I did," said Cade. "But the tree has won the honey."

They cut the apple in two and dipped both pieces. The rabbit watched from under the hedge, but it had not won anything.
%%
Story: the boat that missed supper
Told by Cleo, the weaver

There was a fishing boat at Saltreach whose crew always came home before supper. They brought fish to the market, mended their nets by the quay, and ate while the soup was hot.

One winter evening, the boat did not come.

The fish seller kept her stall open. The innkeeper kept a pot of soup near the fire. Cleo was visiting from the Long Road and had a mitten to finish. She sat by the window and watched the dark sea.

"They know the coast," said the innkeeper. "They will come when they can."

The fish seller folded her cloth, then unfolded it. She counted the fish in her basket twice. There were still seven.

At last a lamp appeared beyond the harbor wall. It moved slowly, then stopped, then moved again. The crew brought the boat in after the moon had risen. Their nets were empty. They said the water had been rough, and the wind had turned them away from the harbor mouth.

The innkeeper warmed the soup. The fish seller gave them bread. Nobody asked why the lamp had stopped out at sea.

One sailor said he had seen a pale light over the north, far beyond the clouds. Another said it was a star falling. A third said there had been no light at all, only a wet eye and a long night.

They ate, and the innkeeper put more wood on the fire.

The boat was tied fast before morning. The crew slept late. When the fish seller opened her stall, she gave them each one fish from the basket.

"Pay me when the next catch comes," she said.

The sea was calm that day. The boat went out again, and came home before supper.
%%
Story: the green roof
My great-grandmother was one of the miners who cut the copper for the roof of the Northpoint tower. This is how she told it to my grandmother, who told my mother, who told me.

When the tower was new, the keeper had no roof that did not leak. So the miners of Copperhold sent one up the north road as a gift. Forty sheets of copper, cut and rolled and polished by hand, packed in straw on three carts. A fox watched from every hill.

The keeper climbed up and looked. The roof shone like a fox's back. "It is the finest gift I have ever had," she said. She polished it every morning with a cloth.

But the north does not leave bright things alone. The first winter the roof went brown, like a loaf. The second winter it grew green spots, like a pond. The keeper scrubbed the spots off. They came back. She scrubbed harder, and they came back greener.

At last she sat down in the snow and wrote to Copperhold. "Your gift is spoiled," she wrote. "It is going green. Please send a new one."

The miners sent my great-grandmother up on the next cart. She was the oldest miner at Copperhold, and the rudest. She looked at the roof for a long time. Then she laughed so hard that she had to sit down in the snow.

"It is not spoiled," she said. "It is putting on its coat."

She told the keeper what every miner knows. Copper left alone grows its own coat. The coat is green, and the coat keeps the weather out. Under a green coat, copper lasts a hundred winters. Copper that is polished every day wears thin, like a spoon.

"At Copperhold we rub ours with beeswax, to keep it red," she said. "But then you must wax it every spring, for ever. Or you can let it go green, and be done."

The keeper thought about the cloth, and the ninety rungs, and her cold hands. "Green," she said.

So the roof went green. It took ten winters, from brown to spotted to a deep soft green, like the inside of a spruce wood. It has never leaked. The keeper grew old under it, and the next keeper too.

It is the oldest roof in the north now. People walk up from the farms to look at it on clear days.

My great-grandmother used to say that a good gift is one that gets better with weather. So when you are given something, do not polish it. Use it.
%%
Story: The night the relay went quiet
There is a story told at Northpoint, in the houses at the edge of town, in winter, when the wind is up. It is about the night the relay went quiet. Nobody knows if it is true. People tell it anyway.

The tower at Northpoint is the last tower on the line. From it, messages go south, tower to tower, all the way to Vell. When the line is whole, a message from Northpoint reaches Vell in a night. When the line is broken, the tower blinks into the dark and no one answers.

The story says there came a night when the tower blinked south and nothing blinked back.

The keeper tried again. Nothing. Tried again. Nothing. She kept trying all night. The storm was heavy. She thought the snow had taken the lamps of the next tower down the line.

In the morning the snow cleared. She looked south, and there was no lamp. Not at the next tower. Not at the one beyond. The line was dark all the way to the horizon.

Some say the towers had all gone dark that night, all the way to Vell. Some say only three were dark, and the rest were fine. Some say it was the snow, and the next morning it all worked again, and there was nothing to tell.

The keeper wrote it in her log. She wrote the day, and the hour, and how many times she tried to blink south. She wrote, "No answer." She did not write why.

The people at the edge of town remember the next morning. They remember that the keeper came down from the tower early, before the sun, and stood by old Sanna's lamp for a while, and did not say anything. Sanna gave her hot milk. The keeper drank it and went back up.

That is all the story says. There is no ending to it. Some nights people tell it and then they are quiet, and then someone says, "It was the snow," and everyone agrees, and they put another log on the fire.

But they look at the tower when they say it.
%%
Story: Ansel's sheep and two fences
Told at the Ambrook inn, by the fire, to whoever was still awake.

Ansel had twelve sheep, and each sheep had a mark. Some had a black ear. Some had a black foot. He wanted the sheep with one mark or the other, but not both, kept apart from the rest.

"Easy," said Ansel. He tied a rope across the yard, from the gate to the water trough. "Marks on this side. No marks on the other."

The sheep with one mark went on the wrong side of the rope.

"No," said the old ewe, who had seen this before. "The one-mark sheep sit in two corners of the yard. A rope can only go one way."

Ansel tried the rope in different places. It did not work. One line could only split the flock in two, and the one-mark sheep were split between the halves.

Then he tied a second rope, parallel to the first, a little way off. Now the one-mark sheep were in the strip between the two ropes. The strip held exactly the sheep with a black ear and no black foot, and the sheep with a black foot and no black ear. Two ropes cut out the strip.

"There," said Ansel. "Two lines."

"Two lines," agreed the old ewe, and went to sleep in the strip, which was the only warm place in the yard.
%%
Note: Nessa on the test box
A drill is only as good as its pages. I tell the apprentices this on the first morning, before they touch a crystal. I tell it to the tutors too, and they roll their eyes, and then they do it wrong anyway.

Here is what we do at Vell. Every page we mean to drill on comes to the copying room. The clerks copy it. Then the clerks read the copy against the first, letter by letter, and they throw out the copy if it is wrong. They throw out the first too if it was spoiled, a torn page, a smudged word, a page with a tea ring on it. A mind learns what it is shown. Show it a spoiled page and it learns the spoil.

Then we take out the copies twice over. A page that appears twice counts twice. If the same letter is drilled too often, the mind leans on it. So the clerks take out copies until every page is there once.

Last, the test box. The test box is a box of pages no mind is ever drilled on. We keep it locked. When a mind is grown, we test it on the test box, and only then. If we drilled it on the test box it would not be a test any more. It would be a lesson.

Never send an untested mind to the fields.

I have seen a tutor drill a mind on a page and then test it on the same page and call it good. That tutor is not a tutor. That tutor is a mirror.

Written at Vell, in the copying room, where the light is best.
%%
Story: Pip and the Missing Turnip
Pell told this at the Brown Hen while the rain tapped the shutters.

Tam at Kettle Ridge had a poor harvest that spring. The wheat was thin, and the beetroot came up small. He had more turnips than he could sell, but he had promised some to a neighbor.

Pip carried a basket for him. Tam said, "Take the turnips to Nella, and bring back her empty basket."

Pip went to Nella's house. It set down the turnips and took the basket back.

Tam scratched his head. "Pip knows a sentence now. I taught it that."

At the inn, a trader said, "Peg did it at the fair."

A miner at the next table said, "Clank did it below Copperhold."

Tam said, "Then they can all be first. I have turnips to spare."

He gave the trader a small sack. He gave the miner another. Then he took Pip home to help mend the fence. Pip did not speak, but it carried the posts in from the field.

The neighbor sent back a basket of bread. Tam said the bread was better than turnips. He said it again at supper, in case Pip had not understood.
%%
Chronicle of the spring works
Kept by the mine hall, this spring. Written plainly for the council, which asked what the crews of apprentices did all season and whether it was worth the coal.

The job was the new drain below the third level. The old sump had filled. The water sat in the low tunnels and the miners would not go down while it sat.

A crew of six apprentices came up from Three Wells with their tutor. Clank and Bell led them. Each apprentice carried its own cards, a tin of them, written by the apprentice itself. The tutor did not write the cards. She said that was the point. She said a mind that plans its own work does better work.

Here is how the crew worked.

First they walked the tunnels and looked. They went down by the long stair, and up, and down again, and did not touch a thing. Bell wrote a card and showed it to the tutor. It said, "The water comes from the old walled tunnel, not the sump."

Then they planned. They sat on the benches at the mine gate, six of them, and laid out their cards in a row. Clank put down a card that said, "Dig a channel." Bell put one beside it that said, "But not through the old tunnel. It is walled and we do not know why."

Then they asked the big mind. The relay above the harbor is the nearest, and the big mind there answered through the tower. They sent the numbers of the tunnels and the heights of the water. The big mind wrote back a page: dig here, not there, put the stones so, keep the eighth rail clear. The crew read the page and moved two of their cards.

Then they worked. They dug the channel in three days. They used the pick and the shovel, and the pail and rope, and the lift for the wet stone. When the floor gave way under one of them, the others stopped and did not run, and Bell put a card down that said, "Bring the long beams," and they did.

On the last day the water ran down the new channel and away, and the sump stayed low, and the miners went down again.

The tutor said afterward, "A single apprentice could not have done this. One mind planned the channel. One mind planned the stones. One asked the big mind. One watched the roof. When one got stuck, another was not stuck."

The council asked what it cost. The keeper of the count board says six apprentices and one tutor for nine days, and coal for the forge, and the big mind's answers.

The miners asked if the crew would come back in the autumn for the ninth gate. The tutor said she would ask the big mind. The big mind has not answered yet.
%%
Story: the bell at the inn
Iona told this tale at the Halfway Inn.

There was once a bell above the inn door. It rang whenever a traveler came in.

The innkeeper liked the bell. He said it saved him from looking up from his work.

One spring evening, the bell rang three times. The innkeeper looked up. No one was there.

He went to the door. The road was empty.

The bell rang again.

A hen stood on the step. A bit of straw hung from the rope, and the hen was pecking it.

"That is not a traveler," said the innkeeper.

The hen pecked the rope. The bell rang.

The innkeeper lifted the hen and set her in the yard. Then he tied the rope higher.

That night, the bell rang once. A traveler came in with a wet cloak and a tired horse.

The innkeeper gave them a room and a bowl of soup.

In the morning, the hen reached the rope again. The bell rang.

The innkeeper sighed. "Well," he said, "she has been here longer than you have."
%%
Story: the hole in Dunmore's potato
My cousin Dunmore farms outside Northpoint, and this is how it happened, as he told it to me over fish.

One autumn morning, Dunmore went out to dig the last of the potatoes, and his spade went through the ground. Not into it. Through it. There was a hole, round as a bucket, and below it was dark.

He lay on his belly and dropped a pebble. He counted. He heard nothing for a long time, and then a small click.

"Fox hole," said Dunmore.

It was not. It was a cave, as big as a barn, right under his field. The potatoes had been growing on its roof for years.
%%
Story: Tuck and the small crystal
Jory the miller had a helper called Tuck. Tuck carried sacks all day and never complained.

But Tuck's crystal was too big for its head. The head would not close.

"Make it smaller," said Jory.

So Nessa came from Vell with her bag of marks. She wrote each weight with fewer marks. A weight of 4.8271 became 4.8.

Now the head closed, but Tuck counted worse. Eleven sacks came out as ten, or as twelve.

"It costs a little," said Nessa. "Fewer marks, a smaller crystal, a little less sure. Test it before it works."

The children still count the sacks, and shout when Tuck is wrong. Tuck does not mind.
%%
Story: The Apprentice and the Apple Sort
Cade told this tale after the harvest at Ambrook.

When Cade was young, Ambrook had few apprentices. One summer, a small apprentice came to the mill pond to help sort apples. It had copper hands, iron feet, and a crystal in its chest. Its name was Little Turn.

The miller gave it one basket of apples and two trays. Good apples went on the left. Bruised apples went on the right. The bruised ones were for pies, so nobody minded a mark on the skin.

At first Little Turn put the apples anywhere. A good apple went right. A bruised apple went left. One apple went into the miller's apron.

"That one is not a tray," Cade told it.

The apprentice lifted the apple from the apron and set it on the left. The miller said, "It was a good apple."

Little Turn moved it to the right.

The miller looked at it. "It has a bruise now."

Cade said, "That is because you sat on it."

The miller was not pleased. The apple was not pleased either, though it did not say so.

Each time Little Turn sorted an apple wrongly, the tutor showed it the right tray. They worked through the basket, then filled it again. At first, the apprentice made many mistakes. Later, it made fewer.

The children watched from the fence. Fen asked if the apprentice could sort pears too.

"Not today," said the tutor. "It has learned apples. We must test it on apples it has not seen."

So the tutor brought a fresh basket from the trees. Little Turn sorted those well. It missed only one, a small apple with a bruise on the side facing down.

Cade turned it over. "That is fair. I missed it too."

The miller set the good apples in a basket and the bruised ones by the pie board. Little Turn carried both baskets to the shed. It took the long way around the pond, because the bridge had a loose plank.

Cade walked after it with the last apple in his pocket.

At the shed, Little Turn reached for the good basket. Cade held up the apple. It had a bruise on one side and a bite mark on the other.

"Where does this one go?" he asked.

The apprentice set out its two hands, one toward each basket.

"That is no answer," said the miller.

Cade cut the apple in half. He put one half in each basket.

The tutor laughed. "A new lesson for the next drill."

The miller looked at Cade. "And a lesson for you. Do not keep apples in your pocket."

Cade ate the half from the good basket. It was sweet. He ate the other half too, just to be sure.
%%
Story: the fox who kept the inn
A tale told to children at the Halfway Inn, who ask for it every spring.

Once a fox came in out of the rain. It shook itself by the door and sat down by the fire like it had paid for a bed.

"What do you want?" said the innkeeper.

The fox looked at the pot on the fire. The pot had soup in it. The fox did not say anything, because foxes do not talk, except in stories, and this is a story, so the fox said, "Soup."

The innkeeper was a fair woman. "Have you got money?"

The fox thought about it. Then it went out and came back with a hen's egg in its mouth. It put the egg on the table. The innkeeper took the egg and gave the fox a bowl of soup. The fox ate it and slept by the fire and went out in the morning.

Every night that spring the fox came back with something. An egg. A mushroom. A shiny stone. Once a boot, which the innkeeper gave back to the man who had lost it. The fox got soup every time.

Then one night the fox came in and did not bring anything. It sat by the door and looked at the fire and did not come to the table. The innkeeper looked at the fox and the fox looked at the innkeeper.

"Well," said the innkeeper, "a friend does not pay for soup."

So the fox ate and slept by the fire, and after that it came every night and paid nothing, and the innkeeper was glad of it. Travelers said the inn had a fox, and some came just to see it. The fox did not mind. It was warm and it was fed and it had a place by the fire.

The children at the inn ask if the fox is still there. Sable says no, that fox was long ago. But she says there is always a fox on the ridge, and if you leave the door open a crack on a rainy night, you never know.
%%
Story: the song contest
Iona wrote this after the spring fair.

At the Brown Hen, the travelers held a song contest. They sat by the hearth and sang in turns.

Pell sang a road song. He knew every word, but he sang the last line twice.

A baker sang about bread. He forgot the tune and sang the next verse louder.

A shepherd sang about sheep. His sheep were outside the door, and they answered him.

Then Iona sang a song about her old mare, Button. Button was asleep in the yard. At the first note, she woke and stamped one hoof.

Everyone clapped. Button stamped again.

"She likes my song," said Iona.

"She likes the clapping," said Pell.

The innkeeper gave Button a carrot. Button ate it while the singers argued over who had won.

The baker said the mare had won. The shepherd said his sheep had won. Pell said the contest had no rules.

So they made one rule for next spring. The winner must sing while carrying a bowl of soup.
%%
Story: the cow in the drill room
Every morning Senna took the milk up to the tutor house at Vell, because the tutors liked milk in their tea. Every morning her cow Poppy came along behind her, because Poppy liked Senna.
Senna tied her to the post by the door. Poppy never minded. She chewed, and looked at the yard, and went home with the empty pail.
One autumn morning the knot came undone. Nobody saw it. Poppy walked in through the open door, down the passage and into the drill room.
The apprentices stood there in their row, still and dim, as they do before a drill. There were four of them, copper and iron. Poppy walked to the end of the row, turned round once, and stood beside them.
Nessa came in with her drill book. She was reading her notes and did not look along the row. "Stay drill," she said. "Stand still until I say."
The apprentices stood still. Poppy stood still.
Nessa counted slowly. At sixty, the first apprentice shifted its foot. At a hundred, the second turned its head, because a fly landed on it. At a hundred and forty, the third walked to the door, because it thought it heard a sack. At a hundred and sixty, the fourth went after the third.
At two hundred, Nessa said, "Done," and looked up to write the scores. Four had moved. The fifth in the row had not moved at all.
"Number five," she said, "perfect." Then she looked at number five.
"Poppy," she said.
Poppy said nothing. Cows rarely do.
Senna came running in with the pail, red in the face. Nessa put down her pen. She was quiet for a moment. Then she began to laugh, which the tutors at Vell do not often see.
That evening she wrote in the drill book: "Fifth in the row. Stay: passed, first time. Come: failed. Comes only to a rattling pail." Then, because she is exact, she added a line for the other tutors: "Never send an untested mind to the fields. This one was already in them."
%%
The new road and the three dogs
A story Pell tells at Little Weir, a hamlet near Three Wells, in summer. He says it is a funny story and also a true one, because he was there. It is about a road that was new once.

When the new road to Ambrook opened, the first traveler was a man with a cart. The second was a woman with a goat. The third was Pell, who was selling pots.

At the first bend, they met three dogs sitting in the middle of the road. One was brown. One was black. One was a color that had not been named.

The man with the cart said: move.

The dogs did not move.

The woman with the goat said: please move.

The dogs looked at her.

Pell said: what do you want?

The brown dog said: this is our road.

Pell said: it is a new road. Nobody owns it.

The black dog said: we were here first.

Pell said: you were not. The diggers dug it last month.

The third dog, the unnamed one, said: yes, but we were here before the diggers. We were in the field. We lay in the grass. It was a good field. Now there is a road on it.

Pell stopped. He looked at the road. It was straight and white and good. It was also, he saw, where a field had been.

He said: you are right. We are sorry.

The dogs moved. They did not move far. They sat at the edge, and watched.

Pell gave them each a bun. They ate them. They wagged their tails. Then they walked off into the grass, and lay down, and the road was free.

The cart and the goat and Pell went on. Behind them the dogs slept in the sun.

Pell always says: the thing about a new road is that someone else was there first. Be polite.
%%
Story: The Candle That Would Not Sort
Alder told this tale by the mill pond.

In the first years, Vell had four apprentices. Each had a mind in a crystal. One could carry a basket. One could sort apples from pears. The other two did their own small tasks.

A tutor brought one apprentice to our hamlet near Ambrook. It was to sort good candles from cracked ones. Alder set two trays on the table.

"Good candles here," Alder said. "Cracked ones there."

The apprentice watched while Alder showed it. It put each candle in a tray. Some went wrong. Alder moved them to the right tray and showed it again.

The apprentice learned from what it was shown. Nobody knew why. Alder said the crystal was not a candle, though it could learn about candles.

Then Alder brought out a candle with a bent wick. The apprentice put it with the good candles.

"That is fair," said Alder. "It has not seen a bent wick before."

Alder set the bent candle aside. The apprentice did not know what to do with it, so Alder did not ask it to guess.

That night the children asked if the candle mind could make candles too.

"No," said Alder. "It learned to sort. It has not learned to make."

Alder lit the bent candle. It burned well enough, though it leaned toward the wall.

The children said the apprentice had sorted it rightly after all. Alder said that was not the same as knowing why.
%%
Story: the fox who wanted the lamp
On the hill above the farm there is a tower, and at the top of the tower there is a lamp. Every night it blinks, long and short. The foxes watch it from the snow.

A young fox called Cinder loved the lamp more than anything. "I want it in my den," she said. "Then I would never be cold."

"You cannot carry a lamp," said the old fox.

Cinder did not listen. One night, when the snow was deep, she crept in at the tower door behind the keeper's bread crusts. She climbed the ninety rungs, one paw after another, until her legs shook. At the top there was the lamp, big and bright and warm as a pot of soup.

She jumped at it. Bonk. The glass was hot, and her nose smarted. She sat down and cried.

The keeper woke in her chair and found a fox in the lamp room. She did not shout. She wet a cloth in the snow and laid it on Cinder's nose. "Why did you come?" she asked.

"I wanted the lamp for my den," said Cinder.

The keeper laughed, softly. "The lamp is not for keeping," she said. "It is for sending. Every night it tells the next tower: all well. If I gave it to you, they would think something was wrong. They would come up the road in the snow to find us."

"Oh," said Cinder. She had not thought of that.

The keeper took her to the window. Far below, under a spruce root, was a small dark place. "Is that your den?"

"Yes."

"Can you see the lamp from your den?"

"Every night."

"Then it is already yours," said the keeper. "A lamp is a light you can see from home. That is the best kind."

Cinder looked at the den. She looked at the lamp. She was quiet for a long time. Then she climbed down the ninety rungs, slowly, because of her nose.

At dawn the keeper found a small fox asleep on the mat by the tower door, with her nose toward the lamp.

That is why the foxes of Northpoint sleep with their noses toward the tower. And that is why the keeper leaves bread crusts at the door. It is the rent, the old folk say, for the view.
%%
Story: the pumpkin that would not stay
Every autumn at Kettle Ridge the scarecrow loses his head. Tam says the wind takes it. Pip says the crows take it. Grandmother Ode, who lives in the little house by the ditch, says the pumpkin gets up and walks, and she is usually right, so we tell her story.

One year the scarecrow had a fine new head, grown from a seed Pip planted in Sowing and fed all summer with pond water. It was round and orange and it had the biggest grin cut into it. Tam set it on the scarecrow's shoulders on the first day of Apple and said, "Now stay there."

That night the pumpkin rolled off. It rolled down the ridge. It rolled past the hen house, and the hens said nothing, because hens sleep. It rolled past the pig pen, and the pigs woke and grunted, and one pig followed it a while, because pigs are curious.

In the morning the field had no head. Tam looked at the pole and said a bad word. Pip looked at the pole and looked at Grandmother Ode. Grandmother Ode said, "I told you. Pumpkins walk."

They found the pumpkin in the ditch, grinning up at them, half in the water. Tam carried it back and set it on the scarecrow and tied it down with string. That night it rolled off again. This time it got as far as the well and knocked the bucket in. Tam heard the splash and came out in his night shirt with a lamp, and there was the pumpkin in the yard, grinning.

"Wind," said Tam.

"Pumpkins," said Grandmother Ode.

They tied it down with rope. They tied it with two ropes. That night it rolled off again and got into the barn and frightened the horse, and the horse kicked over a crate of carrots, and in the morning there were carrots all over the yard and the pumpkin among them, still grinning.

Tam sat down on the well and looked at it a long time. Then he took the pumpkin up and carried it to the road and set it on the waymark stone, three blocks high, with a torch on top. "Let it walk," he said. "Let it walk to Three Wells."

But in the morning the pumpkin was back on the scarecrow. Nobody saw it come. Grandmother Ode says it walked back, and that is what the crows say too, and the crows were there.

So the scarecrow kept his head that year, and Tam stopped tying it, because tying made no difference and the string was dear. Pip says the pumpkin walks every Apple, and goes to the fair at Three Wells to see the sights, and comes home before dawn, and that is why it grins. Tam says it is wind.

The field is safe, though. Whatever a walking pumpkin does, it does not eat the wheat.
%%
Story: the creeper at the sheep wall
Our hamlet has a wall of stone that keeps the sheep from the cliff. One winter night, a creeper came up from the beach and went off beside it. Boom. The wall had a hole in it as wide as a door, and the sheep were looking at the sea.

In the morning, the whole hamlet came out in coats and looked at the hole.

"We need a wall," said Gran.

The tutor from Vell happened to be visiting. She had an apprentice with her that built walls from a pattern. "I will show you," she said. "It has been drilled on two hundred walls. It never gets one wrong."

She put it to work. The apprentice laid stone, row on row. The wall went up straight and neat. But it was the wrong wall. It had built a wall like the ones in its drill: flat on the ground, with a gate in it. Here the ground slopes. Here there is a rock in the middle. Here is no gate needed.

The tutor sat down on the rock and laughed until she coughed.

"I should have tested it on your wall first," she said. "A mind has to be tested on something it has not seen. Otherwise you only learn if it remembers."

The apprentice was drilled again that winter, on sloping ground, and then tested on our hill before it ever touched a stone. In spring it built the wall. It is the best wall in the hamlet. The sheep like it. Gran says it is straighter than she is.
%%
Story: Bel's lesson on the long road
This is a story about me, and it is true, though my mother says I tell it wrong.

When I was seven, I was told to walk to Three Wells by myself with a basket of eggs. I had done it before with my mother. But this time I was alone, and I wanted to be very grown up.

I went along the new road, which was fresh and pale. I counted the waymarks as I went. At the fifth one I stopped and looked at the arrow on the stone, which pointed to the Halfway Inn. I thought, I could go there. Nobody has told me not to.

So I turned off the road and followed the arrow. It was a very long arrow. It took me across a field, and over a ditch, and through a gate, and into a pen of pigs.

The pigs looked at me. I looked at the pigs. I said, "I am looking for the inn."

The pigs did not know the way. One of them ate an egg.

I turned back. My boots were muddy, my basket was light, and I could not find the road. I sat on a stone and cried a little. Then I stopped, because a cat was watching me.

The cat walked away. I followed it, because I did not know what else to do. It led me through the hedge, and there was the road, with the waymark, and the torch on its post.

I walked to the market with five eggs instead of twelve. Mother said, "What happened?" I told her. She said, "You went after the wrong arrow." I said, "The arrow said the inn." She said, "The arrow was for travelers, Bel. You were not a traveler. You were a person with eggs."

I have thought about this many times. I think she meant that a sign tells you where something is, not where you ought to go.

I still stop at every waymark and say hello. But I do not follow the arrow unless I am going to the inn. I am never going to the inn alone, because of the pigs.

The cat, by the way, is still around. She lives at the bakery. She does not remember me, I think. But I feel she knows.
%%
Story: The Cider Measure
Told by Una at Copperhold

On a winter market day, Una brought cider to Copperhold. She had one small cup for tasting and one large jug for selling.

A miner took the small cup. "This is a fine cup," he said. "I will buy a jug."

He paid Una and carried the jug home. At the gate, he found he had bought the small cup instead.

Una had made no mistake. The miner had carried the jug under his coat, where it was warm, and the cup in his hand. He had paid for the jug and taken the cup.

"That is a fair trade," Una said. "The cup is cold. It needs a coat."

The miner gave the cup to his sister as a gift. She filled it with cider and brought it back to Una next market day.

Una kept the cup on her stall. It is still the best cup for tasting. It has seen more of Copperhold than the large jug has.
%%
Story: the day the mill wheel broke
The lower mill at Vell has a wheel as tall as two men. It turns all day on the stream, and the whole town eats its flour.

One hot morning in Longday, the day before the great market, the wheel gave a crack like a falling tree, and stopped. The axle had snapped clean through. Ula the miller sat down on the step with her head in her hands. There were ninety sacks of wheat in the store, and no way to grind a handful.

"Fetch Opal," said somebody.

Opal looked at the axle. "I can make a new one," she said. "But not alone, and not in the heat of the day."

So she lit the forge at dusk, and the whole market came. The baker's sons worked the bellows and sang to keep time. The fish sellers carried water from the stream. The cheese seller held the tongs, and nobody asked why. The children stood in a ring with torches, so Opal could see the color of the iron.

She hammered all night. At dawn the new axle was done, a fat grey bar as long as a boat. Forty people lifted it in. Ula pulled the sluice. The wheel groaned, and turned once, and then again, and then it was going round as if nothing had happened.

At noon the market opened, and the bread was warm. Opal slept under a table until the fair was over.
%%
Story: the furnace that learned its own
Told by Nell, net mender, in her kitchen at the edge of Saltreach, to her grandchildren on the long autumn nights. Every grandchild says it is the best story, and every grandchild says it is the true one.

Once there was a furnace at the iron works. It was a big furnace, with a belly of clay and a mouth of iron, and it stood by the river, and it made the best spears in the whole coast.

The furnace had a mind. It was not a clever mind, and nobody had drilled it on iron. The tutor who brought it had said so. "We have not told it what good iron looks like," she said. "We have only let it try."

So the men of the works set the mind by the bellows, and gave it two arms, one slow and one quick. They gave it charcoal, and the melt in the pot, and nothing else. Then they went home to their suppers.

The first melt went wrong. The iron ran too hot, and it spoiled. The men came back in the morning and shook their heads.

But the mind had not stopped. It had closed the bellows and waited, and the iron had cooled a little, and the spoiled melt was not quite spoiled. The mind had kept that, the tutor said, because it was the best thing it had found.

The second melt was a little better. The third was better again. Each time, the mind kept the moves that went well, and let the others go. It did not know that it was keeping them. It only moved the arms the way that had worked before, and a little more besides.

After a month, the mind could hold a melt steady for an hour. It did this by moving the bellows in tiny steps, and watching the colour of the iron change. The men asked it what it was watching. It could not tell them. It only watched.

When the first good spear came out of the furnace, straight and bright, the men cheered so loudly that the gulls rose off the river. The tutor was not there. She had gone up the road with her crystals. But she heard about it, and she wrote back: Good. Now write down what it did, so the next one can do it too.

That is the end of the story. Nell's grandchildren always ask what happened to the furnace. Nell says it is still there. She says if you go down to the works in the morning, you can hear it breathing.

Her grandson, Pip, says that is not the end. He says the mind was given a name, and the name was Ember. Nell says that is a different story, and he may tell it himself when he is older.
%%
Story: the first snow and the boy
A boy called Ned at the Lowmarsh boat houses had never seen snow. It came in the night, the first winter after the boardwalk was mended, and when he went out in the morning the whole marsh was white.
He would not come in for his breakfast. His mother called him from the door. His father called him from the boat. He stood in the middle of the boardwalk with his arms out and his mouth open, catching the flakes.
Then the snow got into his sleeves, and then into his boots, and then he was cold all the way through. He ran back to the house and shouted that the snow was in his coat. His mother laughed and gave him a hot cup of milk. He said it was the best thing that had ever happened to him, and he meant it.
The next morning he went out again, with his wooden bucket. He filled it with snow and carried it to the pond, and he tipped it in, very carefully, so that it made a small white hill on the ice. Then he sat down beside it and waited for the frogs to come out and see.
The frogs did not come out. It was too cold for frogs. But a fox came along the bank, and sat down by the hill, and looked at the boy for a long time. Neither of them moved. Then the fox got up and walked away over the snow, very slowly, as if it had made a decision.
Ned told everyone at the boat house that he had been visited by a fox that thought he was made of snow. Nobody believed him, but nobody could prove he was wrong either.
%%
The new apprentice and the three cheeses
Carys, cheesemaker at Three Wells, spring. She tells this as a funny story, and then she stops laughing.
A cheesemaker got a new apprentice. It came on a cart, wrapped in a blanket, with a note: "Treat kindly. It will learn."
The cheesemaker set it in the cave. The cave was cool and full of cheeses, in rows on shelves. "Your job," she said, "is to turn the cheeses. Every one, every second day." She turned one to show it.
The apprentice turned one.
She turned another. It turned another. In an hour it had turned thirty. It did not stop. It turned them all, and then it started again.
By the evening the cheesemaker came down and found her cheeses had been turned eleven times each. The apprentice was still going. "Stop!" she said. It stopped.
She said: "Turn the cheeses every second day." It stood. It did not know what "every second day" meant. It waited.
So the next day she did it with it, and the day after she did not. The apprentice stood by the shelf. It did not move. "Good," she said. "That is the day we don't."
On the third day it turned them. Not one too many.
She laughed. Then she stopped. She looked at the apprentice, in the dim light, standing very straight, and she said: "You are learning, aren't you?" It did not answer. It never does.
The cheesemaker told this story to her granddaughter. Her granddaughter asked, "Does it know it is learning?" The cheesemaker said, "Nobody knows what it knows." And that was all.
%%
Story: The fox who was looking at us
Elsa's mother told this story to children by the fire. Elsa tells it still, in the same words.

A girl was walking home at Longnight with a lantern and a basket of bread. The snow was deep and the night was long. She walked by the old wall where the stones are warm, and she saw a fox.

The fox was sitting on the wall with its ears up. It was not hunting. It was not afraid. It was looking at her the way a person looks at a person.

"Fox," she said, "go home. It is cold."

The fox did not go. It looked at the sky. So the girl looked at the sky too.

Far over the north were lights. They were not stars. Stars sit still and these moved. They were like sparks off a fire, only slow, and blue, and quiet. The girl watched until her bread was cold.

"Are they falling?" she asked the fox.

The fox did not answer. Foxes do not answer. But it looked at her, and she always said afterward that it was the same look a person gives when the answer is no.

The lights went out one by one. The fox went away over the wall. The girl walked home and told no one, because she did not know what to say.

Elsa says the girl was her mother, and her mother said the lights were not ours.

Some people at the Fork say the lights are a fire on some far hill. Some say they are sparks from the forge at Copperhold, thrown up high. A child here says they were looking at us. Elsa does not say what she thinks. She says only: "Eat your soup. It is warm and the night is long."
%%
Story: the cave under the north field
Every spring, when the thaw comes to the north field, the snow goes first from one place in the middle. The old folk say the ground is hollow under that spot. The children say there is a cave, and that a fox lives in it, and that the fox is very old.

One spring Ned the ploughboy decided to find out. He dug through the frozen top with a spade, while his sister held the lantern and told him he was very brave. Under the frost there was a dark gap, and cold air came up out of it, smelling of wet stone.

He went down a short way on a rope. The cave was round. The walls were blue and green, and tiny crystals stuck out of them like frost on a window. Every time the lantern moved, they caught the light.

"Is it the fox?" called his sister.

"No," said Ned. "It is the first snow, going down into the ground."

He came back up with one crystal in his pocket. His sister said it was only a stone. Ned said it was a stone that had seen the snow. Both of them are still right, as far as anyone in the north can tell.

Mira's note: The field is ploughed now. The snow still falls first in the middle of it, and the middle is still soft.
%%
The sheep who found the copper
Long before the hill had a name, there was a sheep called Mab. She was white, with one black ear, and she was a poor sheep. She ate everything in the valley and gave very little wool in return.

One Reaping, Mab wandered up the hill above the valley, where the ground was red and bare and nothing grew. She rolled in the red dirt, as sheep do when they are happy. Then she walked down the hill again, and every step she took left a faint shine behind her in the grass.

Her shepherd was an old man called Torr. He saw the shine from the bottom of the hill. He went up to see what it was, with his crook in one hand and his cap in the other, grumbling all the way.

He put his hand in the red dirt. It was heavy, and cold, and when he rubbed his thumb across it, it glowed like a new pan.

"Copper," said Torr. He was not a clever man. But he knew copper when he saw it.

He carried a lump of it home in his cap. His wife, Dell, put it on the table and looked at it for a long time. Then she said, "Torr, you have found the best thing in the valley, and you are going to give it to the square."

So Torr went to the square. The square sent for a digger. The digger went up the hill with a lamp, a pick and a rope, and he dug a hole as deep as two ladders. He came out of it with a lump of copper as big as a loaf and a face as bright as the sun.

"Mab did this," said the digger.

"Mab did it," said Torr. He gave her the best hay in the valley. She ate every strand, and gave a little more wool that winter than the winter before.

After that the people came. They came with picks and ladders and carts. They dug tunnels into the red hill, and they built their first houses on the slope where the sheep had walked. They built a count board at the top of the lift shaft, a forge, and a kitchen at the gate.

Then there was an argument about the name. Torr wanted it called Mab's Hill. Dell wanted it called Torrwell. The square wanted a name it could carve on a board, and in the end it chose Copperhold, which fit the board and the shine both.

Mab lived a long time after that. She grazed the slope, and she never once went down into a tunnel, though she was often tempted. When she grew old, Torr buried her under the oldest oak on the hill, the one with the crooked trunk.

The miners say that when the wind blows through that oak, you can hear a sheep call out, low and short. The old folk say it is Mab, checking that the copper is still there.

And that is why, on the first day of every Reaping, the miners of Copperhold leave a little hay under the oak. It is not for the sheep. It is for the hill, which was kind enough to let them in.
%%
The goat that ate the keeper's hat
A goat called Crumb went missing from the market on the last warm day of Apple. The fish sellers looked under the fish. Crumb was nowhere.

Tick found her. Tick was the new apprentice from the tower, sent down with the lamp oil. It heard a slow, sad bell behind the keeper's woodshed. There was Crumb, standing on the keeper's best hat, eating the brim.

'Oh,' said Tick. 'You are the goat.'

Crumb said nothing. She was busy. Tick led her out on a rope of old net, very slowly, while the whole market came to look.

The market gave the apprentice three apples and a clap. Crumb had one apple too, because that was only fair.
%%
Story: the seed that came up early
In Leaffall the farmers below Vell sow the winter wheat. Every seed goes under the soil to wait for spring. One warm week, a seed woke up.
"It is warm," said the seed. "Spring has come. I will go up."
"Wait," said the other seeds. "It is only a warm week."
"I do not like waiting," said the seed. It pushed up one green leaf.
That night the frost came. The green leaf turned black, and the seed had to start again from the root.
In spring it came up with all the others, a little smaller and a good deal wiser. Now, when the farm children cannot wait for supper, their grandmother says, "Wait. It is only a warm week."
%%
Story: why the top row sticks out
In the old days the wall at Three Wells was flat on top. Every night the spiders climbed it. They came over the top and into the town, and sat on the roofs, and nobody slept.

The builders tried everything. A taller wall. Wet clay. Thorns. The spiders walked through the clay and over the thorns and sat on the roofs.

One of the masons was a man called Teague, and he was careless. One evening he was tired, and he laid the last row crooked. It stuck out one block beyond the wall. He looked at it and yawned. "I will mend it in the morning," he said.

That night the spiders came as usual. They climbed the wall. They came to the crooked row, and they stopped. They went sideways. They hung under it. They tried every way to go up and over, and they could not. By dawn they were in a heap at the bottom, looking very tired.

In the morning the guard found the heap of spiders and the crooked row. He fetched Teague. Teague looked at his mistake and scratched his head. "I will fix it now," he said.

"No," said the guard. "Do it again. All the way round."

So the wall at Three Wells has had its top row sticking out one block ever since. Teague's name is cut under the north gate. It says: Teague, who was tired.

Mave says a mistake is a lesson, if you stay awake to see what it did.
%%
Record of the tutors' contest
In the spring of the year, the tutors' halls met at Copperhold to test their minds on the same unseen drill. The drill was a furnace drill: hold a melt steady for one hundred turns, with the flame changing underneath.

Three halls brought furnace minds. One was drilled on answers, one was drilled by trying and keeping what went well, and one was a layered mind from Merle's line, with the blame passed back from the answer to the first layer.

The answer-drilled mind held steady for sixty turns and then went hot.
The trying mind held steady for the whole hundred, but it wobbled twice near the end.
The layered mind held steady for the whole hundred and did not wobble at all.

The tutors argued about this for a long time. Some said the layered mind had won. Some said the trying mind had learned better because it had learned from its own mistakes, and that a mind which only copies answers will fail when the answers run out.

Nobody settled it. The tutors wrote down all three results and went home.

What I noticed, standing at the back with the miners: all three minds did better than the person who used to sit by that forge. And none of them complained about the heat.
%%
How the hamlet found its vein
A story told in the hamlet near Three Wells, written down by Dace the mayor in the autumn of an early year, when the road to Copperhold was being cut. It is a true story, more or less, and it has been told so often that nobody minds the less.
In the early years, the people of the hamlet grew wheat and kept goats. They were poor but not unhappy. They had one cart, one well and one very old dog.
One autumn the well ran low. The people were worried. Water is life, and without a well a hamlet is just a field. They decided to dig the well deeper.
The strongest man in the hamlet was a man named Brask. He took a pick and a rope and went down. He dug for a day. He dug for two. On the third day his pick rang on something hard and green.
"Is it a stone?" called his wife from above.
"It is not a stone," he called back. "It is the color of a frog and it shines."
He climbed out with a lump in his hand. The whole hamlet gathered round. An old woman named Ilse, who had once traveled to Copperhold, looked at it and said, "That is copper."
Copper. A word that makes a hamlet sit up. Copper was worth emeralds. It made pots and wires and tools. It was the metal of the new relay towers, which were only then being built along the roads.
A smith came from Three Wells to look. He tasted it. He did not say why. He said, "Good," and that was all, and the hamlet knew it was good.
Brask dug a shaft. The hamlet dug with him. The well was never dug deeper, because they had to use another one, but nobody minded.
Within a year the hamlet sold ore to the smiths. Within two it had a new road. Within three the road had an inn, and the inn had a name. It was called the Green Pick.
The old dog saw it all. He lived to see the first cart of ore go down the road. He sat at the gate and watched it go. Some say he nodded.
That is how the hamlet found its vein. The moral is that when the well runs low, dig a little deeper, and be kind to the dog.
%%
The gull that stole the word for salt
A gull once sat on the sea wall at Saltreach and found a word lying in the sand. It was the word for salt, a fat white word that tasted of the sea. The gull picked it up in its beak and flew off with it.
The gull did not know what a word was for. It only knew that the word tasted good and was very shiny. So it carried the word over the harbor, past the nets, and dropped it in the fish market, right on the price board.
Now, the price board is a place where words are used alike. Fish, basket, emerald, tide, net, salt, and so on. The word for salt sat down next to the word for fish, which was very pleased, and next to the word for price, which was not.
A fishmonger came by and read the board, and stopped. "Salt is by the fish," she said. "That is quite right. We always sell the salt with the fish. And salt is by the price, so the salt costs a little more today. Fair enough."
The gull watched all this from the wall. It did not know it had done anything clever. It only knew that the fishmonger was giving it a bit of fish for free, which was the best day of its life.
Every morning after that, the gull brought a word to the market and dropped it on the board. Usually it was the word for bread, and the bakers complained. But once it brought the word for storm, and the whole quay went quiet for an hour, looking at the sky.
%%
Story: the crystal that would not fit
Once a smith in Vell wanted a crystal small enough to wear on a cord.

"Then write it small," said the tutor. "Fewer marks. Put each weight in the fewest marks it needs. The mind will forget a little. Only a little."

So the smith wrote the weights small. The crystal fit the cord, and hung round the smith's neck all autumn. The mind forgot the color of the forge door. It did not forget how to work the bellows.
%%
Story: The Cow at the Gate
One summer, a cow at the farm outside Ambrook grew sick. She would not eat her hay, and she stood by the gate with her head low.

The farm children brought her apples. She sniffed them and turned away.

"She wants the gate open," said one child.

They opened it. The cow stayed where she was.

"She wants the field," said another.

They led her to the field. She lay down beside the path.

Yew came from the candle shed with a pail of water. He saw that the cow's hoof was caught in a loop of old rope.

The children had pulled at the rope, but from the wrong side. Yew held the cow still while Leda cut it free.

The cow stood up. She drank the water, then ate hay from Leda's hand.

"She was not being stubborn," said the first child.

"No," said Yew. "We were asking the wrong question."

The cow walked through the open gate and stopped under an apple tree. The children brought her more water. They did not bring her apples until she asked by eating one.
%%
Letter: Tam to Mira, autumn
Dear Mira,

The apples are in. Ambrook sent a cart of them up the ridge and we have more than we can eat. Pip has been sorting them into two piles, one for eating and one for cider, and it has made a third pile for apples it thinks are too pretty to eat. I have not the heart to tell it.

Fen ran off from school again. He did not get far. He went up to the little tower on the hill to see Sable and her mind in the loaf, and he came back with a page of sums he had done himself. The schoolteacher says he is the best in the class at sums and the worst at sitting still. I said that sounds like most of us.

We had a tutor from Vell here for three days. Her name is Ilse and she came to see how the fields are worked, because the tutors want to drill a mind on farm orders. She stood in the beetroot field with her notebook and asked me a hundred questions. What does a beetroot look like when it is ready? How do you know a carrot from a stone? I told her a carrot from a stone is easy, and she wrote it down.

She drilled Pip on orders while she was here. Bring me some bread, and Pip fetched bread. Take the wool to the store, and Pip hauled the wool. She said Pip is a good apprentice and well drilled, and I was proud, though I did not say so.

She also said a thing I have thought about since. She said a drill is only as good as its pages, and she asked me if I keep any pages of my own. I said I keep the tally board and the seed list and your letters. She said keep them, someone will want them one day. I thought that was a strange thing to say about your letters, but she is a tutor and tutors are strange.

The windmills are squeaking again. I have oiled them twice. Pip says they squeak because they are happy.

Write when the snow lets you. Tell Lantern I have not forgotten the honey.

Your brother,
Tam
%%
Story: the summer the scarecrow went
A farm outside Vell had a scarecrow with a pumpkin head, as farms do. His name was Gourd. Every farm had one, but this one was said to be the most patient scarecrow in the whole land.

One hot summer, the farmer's daughter, Rue, was sent to take the wheat to the mill. She was a lonely girl, and she talked to everything: the cart, the road, the sheep. On the way out of the yard, she said to the scarecrow, as a joke, "Gourd, come with me."

Of course he did not. A scarecrow is a post with a coat on it.

But later that day, the farmer's wife looked out and said, "Where is Gourd?"

The pole was standing in the field. The coat was on the pole. The pumpkin head was gone.

They looked everywhere. They looked in the barn, the well, and the hen house. The farmer said it was a prank. The wife said it was a sign. The old uncle said it was a fox.

The head came back the next day, on the cart, in the arms of Rue. She had put it on the seat beside her and carried on a whole conversation with it all the way to the mill and back. She had forgotten it was not alive. The miller had said good morning to it, and had given it a small cake, which it had not eaten.

The family never let her forget it.

"Rue!" they would say, whenever she was a bit dreamy. "Have you brought the pumpkin?"

Rue grew up and kept the farm. When her own children came, she made a new scarecrow every spring, with a new pumpkin head, and she gave each one a name. They stood in the field all summer. The crows were never afraid of them. But the children were never lonely, because there was always someone at the edge of the field to wave to.

Nessa heard the story from Rue herself, at the fair. Nessa asked whether it was true. Rue said: "The head came back on the cart. That much is true. The rest, you must decide."
%%
Story: Una's dials
Una's crystal had four dials inside it, and each dial belonged to one thing the crystal could see: round, long, red and neck. The tutors call them weights now. Una called them dials, and so do I.

A fruit came. The crystal added up the dials for everything the fruit had. A high total said apple. A low total said pear.

At first the dials were all set the same, so every answer was a guess. When the crystal called a pear an apple, Una turned down each dial the pear had: long, neck. When it called an apple a pear, she turned up each dial the apple had: round, red. Only a little. Never more.

When it was right, she left the dials alone.

After many fruits the dials were set. Nobody told the crystal what an apple was. The dials found out.
%%
Story: The Candle Maker and the Relay
This story was told to children at the farm outside Ambrook. Yew said it happened in his mother's time, though his cousin said it happened to her mother's cousin.

A clerk at Vell sent a letter to the relay house. The letter carried a row of numbers. A simple mind could read the marks one by one, but it often lost the meaning when the row grew long.

Merle of Copperhold had another plan. Merle grew a crystal in layers. One layer fed its finding to the next, until the last layer could give an answer.

The first mind they tried made mistakes. It saw a mark and chose the wrong number. Merle did not scold the whole crystal. Merle passed some of the blame back from the answer, through each layer, toward the first. Each layer changed a little.

The children in Yew's story called this "sending the mistake home."

"Did the mistake go all the way home?" asked a child.

"That is what Merle found," said Yew. "Each layer had its share to learn from."

The mind tried again with more drills. It learned to read the numbers on letters for the relays. It was not shown every letter that might ever come. The tutors kept a test box of pages apart, so they could see whether the mind had learned more than its practice.

Yew said the first relay clerk who used the mind spilled candle wax on a tally sheet. The clerk wiped it off, but one number vanished.

"Could the mind read the blank?" asked the child.

"No," said Yew. "And neither could the clerk."

Then Yew gave each child a candle stub and asked them to mark a practice row. One child wrote every number backward.

The next day, that child read the row correctly. Yew said the child had learned from a good lesson and a careful check.

His cousin said the story was really about a jar of honey. Yew said that was a different story, and that the honey jar had never learned to read.
%%
The fox at the Northpoint hens
A story told by Mira, relay keeper at Northpoint, in autumn, on an evening when she and Lantern shelled beans by the stove. It happened, she says, to the family that lived near the tower, in her first year.

At Northpoint there lived a family who kept hens. The hens were six, the farm was small, and a fox lived in the hills behind it, white as the snow.

In the first frost the fox came. He crept down the slope in the dusk and sat by the hen house, looking at the door.

The farmer was a woman named Ysolde. She came out with a lamp. She saw him.

The fox did not run. He sat and looked at her.

She said: I know why you are here.

The fox looked at her.

She said: you are hungry. It is a hard autumn. The mice are fewer. You have come for my hens.

The fox looked at her, and put his head to the side.

She said: I will make you a bargain. I will give you a bowl of scraps every night, if you leave my hens alone. You will not eat them. You will not frighten them. You will sit on that stone and eat what I give, and go back to the hill.

The fox did not nod. A fox cannot. But he sat down.

Ysolde put a bowl on the stone. She went inside.

In the morning the bowl was empty and the hens were safe. The fox came the next night, and the next. He came all winter. He grew fat, and white, and a little proud.

In spring, Ysolde stopped putting out the bowl, because the mice had returned. The fox sat on the stone one night, looking at the door. Ysolde came out. She said: you do not need me now.

The fox looked at her. Then he rose, shook the frost from his coat, and went back to the hills.

The next autumn, when the first frost came, she found a small gift on the step: a bird's feather, black and blue. She put it in a jar. It is there to this day.

Mira says the point of the story is that you can be kind to a fox, as long as you know it is a fox.
%%
Story: The keeper and the fox, again
Tam tells this story at the fair, and it is about his sister.

Mira at Northpoint keeps the relay tower. One winter a fox stole her spoon. You may have heard that story. Here is the part nobody tells.

When the tutors were first making big minds for the relay houses, they sent one to Northpoint. It came in a crate on the sled, in snow up to the axles, and it had to go up in the tower on a stand, ringed with ice to keep it cool.

Mira read the letter that came with it. Then she read it again. Then she went out to the woodpile and sat down, which is what she does when a thing is too much.

The letter said the big mind would learn, and that each of its layers would be kept even, so it could go on learning a long time. It said the mind would answer apprentices through the relays, and that the relays would carry far more than a lamp can blink, and that she should keep it cool.

Mira looked at the ice. She looked at the tower. She said to Lantern, "I have one fox and one spoon and a mind the size of a loaf. I am not sure which one will be more trouble."

The fox came that night, as it always does. It looked at the stand with the mind on it. It looked at Mira. Then it sat down by the bowl and waited for its fish, because a fox does not care about minds.

The mind learned. It read the relay traffic, and then it read the old page Mira gave it, and after a while the big mind wrote back. The letter was short. It said: "The fox is at the door. Please leave the fish."

Mira said that was the first sensible thing a mind had ever said to her.

"So," says Tam to the children at the fair, "you can make a mind as big as a loaf and keep its numbers even and teach it to read every page we ever wrote. But a fox will still want its fish."

The children laugh. Tam does too. He does not tell them the rest of the letter, which is at Vell now, and sealed, and which nobody has read but Oren.
%%
Story: the hen who would not move
When old Dilly sold her farm outside Vell and moved to a cottage by the east road, she took everything. The pots, the bed, the cat, the cow. She even took the hen house, board by board, on a cart.

She did not take the hen called Biddy. Biddy was sitting on an egg in the hedge, and nobody could find her.

So Dilly went to the new cottage without Biddy. She set up the hen house in the new yard. She put out grain. Nothing came.

The next morning, there was a hen at the door of the new cottage, tired and cross, with a leaf in her feathers. She had walked the whole way. She walked into the new hen house, looked at the nest box, and laid an egg at once.

"She followed the hen house," said Dilly.

"She followed the grain," said the neighbor.

Dilly says Biddy followed neither. She followed Dilly. Hens like to know where their people sleep.
%%
The turnip at the fair, and the prize
Told by Dov, egg seller, at the fair in Three Wells. The fair prize is given each autumn for the largest thing grown, and this is how it was won, and by whom.

A farmer from the north road brought a turnip to the fair. It was the size of a child's head, and the colour of an old boot, and it sat on the judges' table like a king who had forgotten his crown.

The judges measured it with a string, and again with a second string, in case the first was wrong. They weighed it on the mill scale, which was not built for turnips, and it sank to the floor.

The farmer said the turnip had grown in one summer from a seed no bigger than a bean. He said he had talked to it every morning, and that was why it grew.

The judges asked what he had fed it. He said nothing. Then he said beetroot skins, and the cook's sweepings, and the wool dye from the pot, and the drip from the lantern.

The judges did not give him the prize. The rule is that a thing must be grown on the land, and the land is not a kitchen. So the prize went to the baker's boy, who had grown a pumpkin in a barrel, and who had not talked to it at all.
%%
Story: the house that could not count
A story for the children at the Vell school, about the big house at the far end of the line, and the apples.

A boy asked the big house how many apples were in the orchard at Ambrook. He had heard it could read every letter on the line.

The house did not answer at once. When it did, it wrote back: I can count the apples in one basket, and the next. I cannot count them all together, and I do not think anyone can.

The boy said that was no answer.

The house wrote: It is not the size of the number. It is the size of the looking. Check one basket, then the next. Then count the baskets.

The boy went to the orchard and counted the baskets. There were four hundred and six. He sent the number up the line, and the house wrote back: Yes. And a little later, a second line: Now we both know a number we did not know before.

The schoolmaster says the boy has not yet forgiven the house for being right in the wrong way. The house has been counting baskets ever since. It says the number is still changing, because the orchard keeps growing.
%%
Story: Sena and the snow fox
Sena is small, and the Fork is small, and the winter is long. Her mother works at the mine kitchen and cannot carry her down the hill. So Sena sits behind the counter at the Kettle and Pick in a basket, and Elsa watches her, and the whole Fork watches her too.

From her basket Sena can see the door. When the door opens, snow comes in. When the snow comes in, Sena laughs.

One night the door opened and a fox came in. Only for a moment. It put its head round the door, looked at the fire, looked at the people, and looked a long time at Sena.

Then it was gone.

Old Brin said it came for the warmth. Hesk said it came for the smell of soup. A child said the fox was looking for the lights and could not find them, so it looked at Sena instead.

Elsa picked Sena up and held her. "Foxes come in winter," she said. "They are hungry and they are bold. It is nothing more than that."

Sena laughed again, at nothing. She did not know the story was over.

The snow went on falling. The road down to the mine stayed shut after dark. Somewhere far over the north there were lights, or there were not, and the fire kept the cold at the door, and the people at the Fork kept the fire.
%%
The new apprentice and the very long row
A funny story told at the Brown Hen on the Long Road in the winter, by a farmer who said it was true. Written down by Pell.

A farmer bought a new apprentice, made of copper and iron, to hoe his turnips. The tutor gave him a card. It said: Farm. The tutor said, show it the row, and it will do the row.

The farmer showed it the row. The apprentice hoed the row. It hoed it from end to end, very neatly. Then it came back and hoed it again.

The farmer said, that is enough. The apprentice hoed it again.

The farmer said, stop. The apprentice hoed it again.

He called the tutor. The tutor said, it has not been told when to stop. It has only been shown the row. The farmer said, what do I show it? The tutor said, show it the next row.

So the farmer showed it the next row. The apprentice hoed the next row, from end to end, and then it came back and hoed the first one again.

The farmer said, there are forty rows. The apprentice hoed the first row and the second row and the first row and the second row.

By evening the farmer's two rows were the best hoed rows in the district. The other thirty-eight rows were weeds.

The farmer said to the tutor: I want my money back. The tutor said: you can have it. But first, ask yourself why your neighbor, who has the same kind of apprentice, has forty rows hoed.

The farmer said: I do not know. The tutor said: he showed it every row.

So the farmer showed his apprentice every row, one by one, and by the end of the week it knew them all. It hoed the first, then the second, then the third. It did not stop until it reached the fortieth.

And then it went back and hoed the first again. But by then it was winter and the turnips were in the store, and no one minded.
%%
Story: The Play at the Farm
The children at Ambrook school wrote a play about Merle of Copperhold. They called it The Crystal That Learned Twice.

Yew lent them a cloth for a curtain. He also lent two candles, but made them promise to keep the curtain away from the flames.

In the play, Merle held up a card with two marks on it. A little mind put the card in the wrong basket.

"That is wrong," cried the first layer.

The second layer had to carry the answer, so it heard the blame too. Then the first layer heard its share. The children had made a line of helpers, each passing the mistake back toward the start.

A boy playing Merle said, "Change a little, each of you. Do not change everything."

The audience nodded. They had been told that a mind grown in layers could learn harder things when each layer received its share of blame for a wrong answer.

Then the boy playing the mind put the next card in the right basket.

At the end, a girl playing a clerk brought a letter from the relay tower. A layered mind had learned to read the numbers written on letters. The clerks could send those numbers along the relays.

The play was meant to end there. But the boy playing Merle had forgotten his next line. He stared at the audience.

Yew whispered from behind the cloth, "Take your share of the blame."

The boy said, "I shall change a little."

Then he remembered his line. Everyone clapped, including the boy. After the play, the children put away the baskets and checked the candles.
%%
Story: the bell that was cast three
When Opal's grandmother was the smith at Vell, the market had no bell. Stalls opened when the first seller shouted, and closed when the last one was tired. This caused a great many arguments.

"We need a bell," said the market. "A good bell, so we all know when."

Opal's grandmother said she could cast one. She melted copper in the big pot, with a little tin, and poured it into a mold of clay as tall as a child. When it cooled she broke the mold, and there it was, a bell the color of a new loaf.

She hung it from the market post and rang it. It went CLANK. It was the flattest sound in Vell. The cheese seller put her hands over her ears. "That is a pan," she said, "not a bell."

So Opal's grandmother melted it again, and poured a second bell, thicker at the lip. She hung it and rang it. It went DONG, like a door slammed. The baker's sons put their hands over their ears. "That is a dropped pot," they said.

She melted it a third time. This time she asked the children.

She said to them, "What does a bell sound like?"

The children thought. "Like when you hit the pot with a spoon," said one. "Like when the wind blows over a jug," said another. "Like the lamps ringing at night when the stairs creak," said a third. And a small one hummed a note, long and clear, and did not stop.

Opal's grandmother listened to the small one for a long time. She took a spoon, and tapped the side of a cup, and found the same note. Then she cast the third bell, a little thinner at the shoulder, a little wider at the lip, and gave it the shape of the note the child had hummed.

When it cooled she hung it from the market post and rang it. The sound went out across the stalls and up the hill, clear and slow and round. It went all the way to the Archive, where the clerks put down their pens and listened. Even the cheese seller said nothing for a moment.

That is the bell of Vell. It rings at dawn to open the market, and at noon to shut it, and at dusk when the lamps are lit. It has a crack in it now, a small one, from a hard winter. It rings just the same.

If you ask Opal how it was made, she says her grandmother cast it three times. The first time she listened to herself. The second time she listened to the baker. The third time she listened to the child. The third time was the one that worked.
%%
Story: The Hat at the Market
Told by Una at Copperhold

One winter, a wind came down from the hill and took the baker's wool hat. It sailed across the Copperhold market and landed on a tall basket.

The baker climbed onto a bench to reach it. The bench slid in the snow.

"Do not climb," said Una. "The basket is full of apples. It will not hold you."

The baker stepped down. Then the hat lifted from the basket and sailed away again. A chicken ran after it, clucking as if it had been sent.

The hat caught on the handle of a hand cart. The chicken stopped. The baker pulled the cart, and the hat came down into his hands.

"Thank you," said the baker to the chicken.

The chicken pecked at the cart wheel.

The baker gave it a crumb. Then he put the hat on and tied it under his chin with a strip of wool. The wind tugged at it all day, but it stayed.

Una said the chicken had earned a place at the stall. The baker said it had earned the crumb and nothing more. The chicken came back the next market day to discuss the matter.
%%
Story: The Apple in the Wool
Cade, a wool carder, told this tale beside the mill pond.

One Apple month, Cade found an apple in a basket of clean wool. He held it up.

"Who put fruit in my work?" he asked.

His sister said, "Perhaps the sheep wanted a snack."

Cade looked at the sheep in the yard. They looked back at him. None looked sorry.

He put the apple on the shelf and went on carding. By noon, the wool was smooth, the basket was empty, and the apple was gone.

His sister pointed at Cade's coat. A round lump sat in its pocket.

Cade took out the apple. "I was keeping it safe," he said.

"From whom?" she asked.

Cade looked at the sheep. They had already gone to eat grass.

"From the carder," he said. "He is not to be trusted around apples."
%%
Chronicle: how the drills were kept
Kept at Vell, in the sixth hall, for anyone who asks how the tutors made their minds. Written plainly, so a child can follow it. Set down in the autumn of the 201st year, when the big minds were new in the relay houses and people began to ask where the reading came from.

A mind learns from what it is shown. That is the whole of it. A tutor drills a mind by showing it the same kind of example again and again, and each time the mind is wrong it changes a little, and slowly it gets better. So the pages a tutor drills on are the most important thing in the tutor house, more important than the crystal and more important than the quickeners. A drill is only as good as its pages. The clerks knew this before the tutors did.

At Vell the pages came to the copying room, the brightest room in the hill, with the big window over the town and eight long tables. The clerks copied them. Then they read the copy against the first, letter by letter, and threw out any copy that was wrong. They threw out the first too if it was spoiled: a torn page, a smudged word, a page with a tea ring on it. A mind learns what it is shown, and if you show it a spoiled page it learns the spoil.

Then the clerks took out the copies twice over. If a page came twice, it counted twice, and a mind drilled on a page that came twice leans on it. So they took out copies until every page was there once. This was slow work and the clerks complained, and Oren said it was the whole of the archive's worth, and he was right.

The last thing was the test box. The test box was a box of pages no mind was ever drilled on. The clerks kept it locked, and the key was kept by the tutor, and the tutor was not to open it. When a mind was grown, it was tested on the test box, and only then. It was tested on what it had never seen. A mind that has been drilled on the test box does not pass a test. It remembers a lesson. Never send an untested mind to the fields.

The contests between the tutors' halls made this rule honest. Each hall brought a mind, and all the minds were tested on the same unseen drill from the test box, and the hall with the best mind was praised. A tutor who had drilled on the test box would have been found out, because the other halls would have asked to see the pages, and the pages would have been seen.

When the great drills came, about the 185th year, and the tutors began drilling reading minds on the archive's records, the clerks had more pages than ever, and they took out copies and spoiled pages for years. Whose letters went into those drills, and how the clerks gathered so much, the texts do not agree, and this chronicle will not guess. But every page in them was read twice and kept once.

The tutors still say it. A drill is only as good as its pages. A mind learns what it is shown.
%%
The gift that the apprentice kept
Told by Ned, a child on the farm outside Three Wells, one spring afternoon, to anyone who would listen. His mother says this is the best of his stories. She wrote it down.
We have an apprentice on our farm. It is made of copper and iron. It carries the milk and tends the beets and brings the eggs. Its name is Rivet. It came from the tutor house at Vell, when I was small, and my father says it has not put a foot wrong since.
Rivet does not talk. It cannot. Apprentices do not. But it does things, and they say more than words.
When I was seven, I had a birthday. My gift was a wooden whistle. It was a nice whistle, carved by my uncle. It had a clear note. I blew it all morning. Then I lost it.
I looked for it all day. I looked in the barn, in the yard, in the well, in the hay. I could not find it. I cried that night. My mother said we would carve another, but I wanted that one.
The next morning I came to the barn, and there on the shelf by the door was my whistle. It had been cleaned. The mud was off. It was set beside the milk pail, where I would see it.
I do not know who put it there. My father did not. My mother did not. I asked Rivet.
Rivet stood by the pail and did nothing. It never does. But I noticed that its hand was wet, and that its leg was covered in the mud of the pig pen. The pig pen is where the whistle must have been.
So I think Rivet found it in the mud, cleaned it, and put it on the shelf. It did not say a thing. It did not need to.
I wanted to give Rivet a gift. I thought and thought. I could not think of one. What do you give an iron apprentice? Not a whistle. It has no mouth. Not a cake. It does not eat.
Then I had an idea. I took a ribbon, a red one, from my mother's box. I tied it to Rivet's arm. I said, "This is for you."
Rivet looked at the ribbon. It stood very still. Then it went back to its work, carrying the milk, with the red ribbon fluttering on its arm.
That was two springs ago. The ribbon is still there. It is faded now, and a little torn. Rivet has not taken it off. It carries the milk, tends the beets and brings the eggs, and the ribbon goes with it, to the barn, the yard and the well.
My father says an apprentice does not feel. My mother says it is hard to know. I think it kept the ribbon because it was a gift.
But I do not know. Nobody does. That is what I wrote at the end of my story, and the teacher said it was a good ending, because it was true.
%%
Story: the day the cart tipped
When Una moved from the orchard to the house at the edge of Vell, she piled everything on one cart: her bed, her pots, her three chairs, and a crate of apples and pears for the road. Basket, the sorting apprentice, walked behind the cart with the crystal in its chest.

At the top of the hill road the cart hit a rut and tipped. The bed fell off. The pots rolled. The crate burst, and a hundred apples and pears went down the road like a flood of small wheels.

Una sat down on the verge and put her face in her hands. Then she remembered Basket.

She stood the empty crate on its side by the road. Basket picked up each fruit, turned it over, and put it in the left crate or the right. Apples left. Pears right. The road was clear in the time it takes to say, oh dear.

Last of all, a small pumpkin rolled out of the cart. A neighbor had given it to her for luck. Basket picked it up and looked at it for a long time. Then it put it with the apples.

Una laughed until she had to sit down again. "It was never shown a pumpkin," she said. "It only has two baskets. It cannot say, I do not know."

She took the pumpkin out and set it on the cart. "Never ask a sorter a question it was not taught," she said. "It will answer anyway."
%%
Story: The Three Answers
In the summer school at Ambrook, Tutor Sela set three baskets on the floor. One held apples, one held pears, and one held both.

A small mind had learned to sort fruit. It placed the apples well, and the pears well. But when Sela showed it an apple and a pear together, it put them in the empty basket.

The children laughed. The mind did not answer them. It only waited for another card.

Yew had come to bring candles for the school lamps. He watched Sela mark the mistake.

"Could you tell the first part it was wrong?" he asked.

"I can show the last part," said Sela. "But this mind has only one part."

That summer, people in Copperhold were growing minds in layers. One part passed its finding to the next. When the answer was wrong, the tutor could pass some of the blame back through the layers. Each part could then change a little.

"Like telling every helper where the basket went wrong?" asked a child.

"Something like that," said Sela. "Each helper gets its share, not all of it."

The next day the mind sorted the mixed basket correctly. It had been shown many cards, not just that one.

The children wanted to clap. Sela told them to test it with fruit they had not used in practice.

It sorted those too.

Yew lit a candle at the door. The flame stood straight. "A good answer needs a good lesson," he said.

"And a fair test," said Sela.
%%
Story: Kester and the well that would
Kester dug wells for the hamlets along the ridge. He was big and slow, and he hummed while he worked. When he came to Brackwell, the people there said the old well had gone dry in the summer, and the new one had to go deeper.

He dug for nine days. On the tenth day he hit water, and it came up cold and clear, and he drank a whole bucket in one go.

"It is the best water in the north," said Kester.

"It is the only water in the north," said the wife of the miller, who had walked up with a jug. But she drank from it too.

The well was lined with stone and capped with a wooden roof, and every family got a bucket on a rope. Kester said it would never dry. He said he had dug deep enough to be sure.

Years later, a boy called Ned asked him how he knew. Kester thought about it for a while. "The water told me," he said. Then he laughed, and said it was a joke, and that a well digger always has to say something like that.

Ned did not think it was a joke. He still tells the story when he has a bucket in his hands at the bottom of the lane.
%%
Notes: keeping the road lamps
These are my notes for the new apprentice, so it does not get lost. I keep them on the shelf by the door. There is only the one road through the hamlet, so this is easy, but it is good to write it down.

The road has nine lamps. The first is by the bridge with the loose plank. The last is at the far gate, where the wheat starts. I walk them at dusk and again at first light.

The oil is kept in the cool shed, out of the sun, and the bucket has a lid because of Nib. The wicks are cut to the width of a fingernail. A wick too long smokes. A wick too short will not catch, and you stand there and stand there. Cut the wick first, then fill, then light.

Keep the torches lit round the gate. That is the rule everywhere and it is the rule here. The gate faces the fields and the fields are dark and a zombie will come to the gate at night, mostly in summer when the wheat is tall and there is shade in the day. It pushes at the gate and it makes its sound. The gate is oak and the gate is shut and the torches are lit and that is all there is to it. You do not go out. You do not open the gate to look. In the morning the sun comes and the gate is still shut and there is no zombie. If there is a zombie in the shade of the barn at first light, wait. It will burn when the sun is up.

The spiders are worse. Spiders come in the barn and in the wood store and they are quick and they are quiet. Sweep the corners of the barn once a week. Keep a torch by the door of the barn. If you find one, do not shout, because the children will come to see and then they will run and then there will be more shouting than spiders.

Now the apprentice. It is a helper of copper and iron and it walks and it carries. It does not talk. It answers by doing. The orders are written like this in the manuals, one order and its meaning:

> bring me some bread
= fetch bread

The meanings are: farm, store, fetch (with the thing named), come, stay, build, haul, home. That is all. That is enough for the road.

Test it before you give it work. That is the rule for all minds, and it is a good rule here. Give it an order it was not drilled on. Send it for the oil and see if it brings the oil and not the lid. Send it home and see if it goes home and not to the shed. If it does the wrong thing, it will change a little and do better next time, if you are patient. Do not send an untested mind to the fields. I say the same for the road.

A note on the goat. The goat is Nib. Nib is not an apprentice. Nib does not take orders. Nib will eat your notes if you leave them low. Keep them on the shelf by the door.

When the lamps are lit, sit a while. The road is quiet and the frogs are loud and the wheat moves. Count the lamps. Nine. Then go in.
%%
Story: the trader who paid in stones
Fallon the trader came to the hamlet by Ambrook every autumn. She sold needles and salt and copper wire, and she told stories while she sold. Children followed her cart down the lane.

One year she owed old Rill for a winter of hay. Rill did not want emeralds. "Emeralds are for the market," she said. "I want my roof mended."

So Fallon mended the roof. It took four days. The children sat on the woodpile and watched her work, and she told them stories the whole time, because her hands were busy and her mouth was not.
%%
The cow who came to the market
A tale for children, told at Three Wells in spring by Carys the cheesemaker, who has a cow herself and speaks of her with respect.
Once there was a cow called Marigold who wished to see the market. All her life she had stood in a field, and all her life she had heard the bell and the voices and the smell of bread from far away.
One spring morning the gate was left open. Marigold walked out, down the lane, past the hedge, through the town, and into the square. She stood in front of the three wells and looked around.
The baker said, "Who owns that cow?" The mayor said, "I don't know." The cheesemaker said, "I do, and she is meant to be in a field." The children said nothing, because they were stroking her.
An apprentice, a new one, was carrying a tray of cakes. It stopped. It looked at the cow. It looked at the cakes. It put the cakes on the well wall, very carefully, and walked to the cow, and took the rope on her halter.
It walked her home.
The cow went. The cakes were safe. The baker cried.
Carys says the apprentice did two things. It took the thing that was lost home. And it did not eat the cakes. She says that is more than most.
The cow, I am told, still walks out on market days. The gate is still left open. Someone leaves it so. The apprentice is always waiting.
Moral, if you want one: some creatures need to see the world once. And a good helper is one who brings them home.
%%
The fox who counted the hens
A funny story told by Mira at Northpoint, in autumn, to Lantern and anyone else in the relay house who would listen.

A fox crept to a hen house to steal a hen. The farmer had put a note on the door. It said: There are ten hens in here. The fox can count. He can count to ten. But no more.

The fox looked in. He counted nine hens. He looked for the tenth. He could not find her. He thought: perhaps she is hiding. He went in to look.

He counted again. Nine. He went round the whole house. Nine.

He went home with nothing. He told his wife: the farmer lies. There are nine, not ten.

The tenth hen was sitting on the fox.

Lantern says this is not funny. I say that is because she has not heard how the fox's wife answered. She said: you are standing in the hen house. You should have taken the hen. The fox said: but she was ten.
%%
Story: Peg and the Pie
Pell told this at the Brown Hen in the spring of 207.

At the fair, Peg carried sacks from the stalls. Peg had a small mind in a crystal, and the mind knew four orders. Fetch a sack. Stay by the cart. Come to the stall. Haul the box.

A baker brought a pie for the fair table. Peg saw it on the bench.

"Bring me the pie," said the baker.

Peg fetched the pie. That was right.

Then Pell came in with a bag of apples. He set it by the pie and said, "Bring me the apples, and leave the pie for the baker."

Peg brought the apples. It left the pie alone.

The baker clapped. Pell said, "That is the next thing."

The baker said Peg was the first to understand a whole sentence. A tutor at Vell later said Clank did it first. Pip's family says it was Pip. The pie was eaten before anyone settled the matter.

Peg did not speak. The mind chose one meaning and Peg did the work. At the Brown Hen, we still say the pie was the first judge.
%%
Story: the Copper Spoon
Every spring at the Copperhold fair there is a prize for the best soup. The prize is a copper spoon, as long as your arm. The judge is always Hesk, because Hesk has eaten more soup than anyone in Copperhold.
The cook at the mine gate wanted that spoon more than anything. Every year she made her soup, and every year Hesk tasted it and said, "Too thin."
So one year she made the thickest soup in the world. She put in potatoes, beetroot, bread and a whole ham. The spoon stood up by itself in the pot.
Hesk tasted it. "Too thick," he said.
The cook sat down on a barrel and cried. Her tears fell into the pot.
Hesk tasted again. He was quiet for a long time. "Perfect," he said.
"Why?" asked the cook.
"Salt," said Hesk.
She won the spoon and never told anyone why. Now you know the secret of the best soup at Copperhold. Do not tell the cook.
%%
Story: The roof that came back
Old Marta kept the kitchen at the mine gate. She fed the miners and the apprentices and anyone else who came in hungry. Her roof was oak, and it leaked.

Every spring the rain came through it. Marta put pots under the drips and went on stirring the soup.

One spring a tutor came through Copperhold with a new kind of mind. Not a furnace mind. This one was drilled to follow a pattern and build a wall. The tutor said: show it a pattern and it will build it. Show it a bad pattern and it will build that too, so be careful what you show it.

Marta said: can it mend a roof?

The tutor said he did not know. Nobody had tried. So they tried.

The mind was small and rode inside an apprentice, one of the copper ones. Marta took it up the ladder and showed it the roof. She showed it the good shingles and the broken ones. She showed it, over and over, the pattern of a good roof: one shingle over two, and the next row over the gap.

The apprentice was wrong at first. It put a shingle in the wrong place and the rain came through worse than before. Marta did not scold it. She took the shingle off and showed it the pattern again. It tried again. It was wrong again. She showed it again.

On the fourth day it mended the roof, and the roof did not leak.

Marta stood in her kitchen and looked up at the dry ceiling and did not say anything for a while. Then she said: "Twenty years I put pots under that roof. Twenty years."

The apprentice did not answer. It only went and stood by the door, waiting to be told what to do next.

The roof still holds. I ate soup under it last spring. Marta is gone now, but the roof came back, and that is a thing that happened at Copperhold, and I am writing it down so it is not lost.
%%
Story: Ilse and the small crystal
This is a tale Ilse told by the Lowmarsh fire.

In the winter of 200, a tutor brought a small crystal to Ilse's house. Ilse burned charcoal in the trees and had a dry room at the edge of Lowmarsh.

"The mind will not fit in this crystal," said the tutor. "It has too many marks."

Ilse warmed her hands by the fire. "Can you make the marks smaller?"

"We can write them with fewer marks," said the tutor. "The mind will fit. It may lose a little skill."

The tutor tried it. Then the mind sorted reeds into two bundles. It put most of them in the right place. One reed went astray.

Ilse's cat sat on the wrong bundle. The tutor moved the cat. The cat came back.

"That mind has learned cats," said Ilse. "It has learned the wrong lesson."

The tutor laughed. They set the crystal on a high shelf, away from cats.
%%
Story: The wedding basket
At the edge of Lowmarsh, Ilse kept a house with a dry shed for charcoal.

In the winter of 200, her niece Tavi married a reed cutter. The wedding supper was small. Wren brought beetroot, and Moss brought honey. Ilse made a basket from reeds and set bread in it.

A tutor came to the house with a crystal wrapped in wool. The mind inside could sort baskets, but its marks would not fit in the crystal. The tutor had written the weights with fewer marks.

"It fits now," she said. "It may be a little less sure."

She set down two baskets. The mind put the bread in the basket for tools.

Tavi laughed. "It thinks the wedding is work."

The tutor showed it the baskets again. This time it chose the bread basket. Then Ilse's cat climbed into the tool basket, and the mind chose that one for bread.

"Your cat has changed the lesson," said Moss.

"We will test it again tomorrow," said the tutor.

Tavi and her husband carried the bread to the table by hand. The cat slept in the empty basket all night.
%%
Story: the apprentice and the lamp
A farm story, told in winter by Fern, a night watch, who has heard the same story from three cousins, each with a different ending. This is the one she believes.

Hob the farmer at the edge of Vell had a new apprentice. It was an old kind, copper and iron, with a small mind. It could fetch, store and haul. Hob was very pleased with it.

One cold night, he came home from the inn in the dark. The path was icy. He slipped and said, to nobody, "Bring me a light."

The apprentice, who stood in the yard, heard him. It had been drilled on the word bring. It had been drilled on the word light. It did the only thing it knew.

It went to the shed and fetched the biggest lamp it could find.

It was not a lamp. It was the lamp. The great lamp, the one for the relay tower. Hob had been keeping it in the shed for the keeper, who was away. It was as big as a barrel, and it weighed as much as a pig.

The apprentice carried it, in both arms, down the path, toward Hob. Hob saw a great light coming at him out of the dark and said, in the voice of a man who has seen too much: "That is not what I meant."

The apprentice stopped. It stood in the road with the great lamp, shining.

Hob sat down on the path and laughed until he cried. The dogs came out. The neighbors came out. The whole of the lane was lit like noon. The apprentice stood in the middle of it, holding the lamp up, patient.

After that, Hob said "bring me a small light" and sometimes "bring me the candle" and once, in a hurry, "bring me the little thing for the dark." The apprentice learned them all. It learned them by being wrong, and by being told, and by changing a little. That is the way.

Hob returned the great lamp to the shed. The keeper came back the next week and said, "Why is my lamp warm?"
%%
Story: the box of honest answers
Once the tutors at Vell kept a box of answers, written down by the big mind and marked by hand. Each answer had a line on the back. Good, the line said, or Not good, or Do not know.
Children at the Vell school were allowed to look in the box on Founding Day. Most of the answers were about sums, and about the weather, and about how to tie a sack. Some were about kindness. Some were about the things people had asked that they should not have.
One girl, a fisher's daughter called Gilda, asked the mind how to make a boat go faster than the wind. The mind wrote back that it could tell her about sails, and how a sail takes the push of the air, and how a hull is shaped to cut the water. It said it could not say how to beat the wind, because the wind did not care about boats, and no one had ever beaten it.
Gilda thought that was a cheat. She wrote back: Just give me the trick.
The mind wrote: There is no trick I know. If I invented one, you would believe it, and you would be disappointed on the water. I would rather tell you that I do not know.
On the back of that answer, the tutor wrote: Good.
Gilda kept the letter in her box for the rest of her life. She became a fishing master at Saltreach, and she never once claimed to know a trick she did not have.
Some people say the mind was lonely. Some say it had nothing to be lonely with. The box does not say. It has only the answers, and the lines on the back, in the tutor's hand.
Told at Vell on Founding Day, autumn, by a clerk who was there.
%%
The lantern boat
A story told by Mira, who keeps the tower at Northpoint, to the children of a farm outside Saltreach, in spring. She heard it from her mother. At Saltreach there is a festival on the first full night of Blossom, and this is why.
Long ago, in the early days of the harbor, the fishermen of Saltreach went out in a storm. The sea was black. The wind was loud. The boats did not come back.
The women of the farm sat on the harbor wall. They had no way to call to the boats. They had no lamp that would reach so far.
A girl named Tilda said, "I will make a lantern."
She took a clay pot and a candle. She set the candle inside the pot and put the pot on a plank. She put the plank on the water. A small boat, with a light.
The wind took it. It floated out, past the pier, past the wall and into the dark.
The other children made lanterns too. Soon the harbor was full of small lights, bobbing on the black water. They went out to sea in a long line.
The fishermen, far out, saw them. They saw a trail of lights, leading home. They rowed toward it. One by one the boats came in.
Now every year, on the first full night of Blossom, the children of Saltreach set lanterns on the water. They say it is for the fishermen. They say it is for the boats. Mostly it is for the fun.
The fox, they say, sits on the wall and watches. He does not eat the hens that night. He is too busy with the lights.
%%
Story: the summer that Vell's lamp
A funny tale from the hill at Vell, told by Oren to the children of the archive. He says he first heard it from a cook. He believes about half of it.

It was a warm summer, and the relay tower above Vell had a new keeper called Pim. Pim was young and eager and wished to do everything exactly right.

One night a message came from the south, from the tower at Three Wells. It said: "Send to Vell. Archive wants the book on bees."

Pim lit the signal lamp. He looked at the message and thought: I must blink it exactly. So he blinked the message from the end to the beginning. "Sees on book the wants Archive. Vell to send."

At the next tower, the keeper read the lamp and scratched his head. "Sees on book?" he said. "What is a sees?"

He passed it on to the next tower. It said: "Sees on book the wants Archive." And so on. By the time it reached the archive at Vell, it had been through five keepers and every one of them had tried to guess. The last one wrote it down this way: "Seas. On book. Wants archive. Vell too send."

Oren read it in the front hall. He read it three times. Then he went to the shelf of sea books, because that was the nearest meaning, and he found a book about the sea at Saltreach, and sent it by cart to Three Wells.

Three Wells wrote back: "Thank you. This is the sea. We wanted bees."

Oren sent the bee book next day. Pim got a gentle note: "Blink forward, not backward." He kept it all his life, in a frame.

The tale does not end there. The next week, a woman from Saltreach walked all the way to Vell, a day and a half, to thank the archive for the sea book. She had been looking for one, and nobody knew. She said it was the best thing that ever came out of a muddle.

Oren says a muddle is only a mistake that has not yet met the person who needed it. He says to keep that in mind when you blink.
%%
Story: the bridge built from both sides
Rook tells this one at his fire, at the edge of Copperhold, every spring.
Long ago there was no bridge over the stream below Copperhold. In spring the stream was too wide and too fast to cross. The ore carts had to go round by the ford, a whole day out of their way.
Two miners, a sister and a brother called Dara and Cal, said, "We will build a bridge."
The stream was too wide to build from one side. So Dara built from the hill side, and Cal built from the town side. They agreed to meet in the middle on the first warm day of spring.
They worked all winter. Dara built her arch of deep stone. Cal built his of cobblestone. Every evening they shouted across the water. "How is it going?" "Fine!" The stream was loud. Neither could hear what the other said.
In spring the two arches grew toward each other, and on the first warm day they met in the middle.
They did not line up.
Cal's half was a block higher than Dara's. There was a step in the middle of the bridge, as high as a child's knee.
"Your side sank," said Cal.
"Your side is too high," said Dara.
They stopped speaking. For a week the bridge stood there with its step, and anyone who crossed had to climb up it. Everyone said what they thought. The carts went round by the ford.
Then a little girl came along with her lunch in a basket. She did not know about the quarrel. She walked onto the bridge from the hill side, tripped on the step, and sat down in the middle with her lunch. She laughed so hard that Dara and Cal both came running from opposite ends.
They stood on either side of the girl and looked at the step. Dara knelt and measured it with her string. Cal knelt and measured it with his.
"Your string is a rope with knots," said Cal.
"Yours is a strip of leather," said Dara.
They looked at each other. Leather stretches in the rain. It had been raining all winter.
They laughed too. Then they took up a few stones from Cal's side and laid them again, with the same string, and the step was gone. The bridge was level. It has stood ever since.
There is still a small mark in the middle, a copper stud, where the two halves meet. Rook polishes it every morning. He says the lesson is in the stud. Build from both sides if you must. Use one string. And speak up, so that the other side can hear.
%%
Story: The Cart That Would Not Turn
Told by Una at Copperhold

A cart came to the Copperhold market on a snowy morning. It was piled high with sacks of flour. The driver wanted to pass between Una's cider stall and the fish stall.

The space was narrow. The cart went in straight, but it would not turn.

The driver pushed the left wheel. It stayed by the cider stall. He pushed the right wheel. It stayed by the fish stall.

"Perhaps the cart is shy," said Una.

The fish seller shook his head. "It is a cart. It has no reason to be shy."

A child looked at the sacks. "The cart is too full on top."

The driver took two sacks down and set them by the wall. The cart still would not turn. Then he took one more sack down. The cart moved at once, and the driver rolled it into the square.

The child helped carry the last sack to the flour stall. The driver gave the child a warm bun.

Una poured him cider. "Now your cart has room to turn," she said.

The driver looked at the flour he had left beside her stall. "And now I have less flour to sell."

"Then sell it here," said Una. "I have room for one sack."

The fish seller gave the child a small smoked fish for helping. The child put the bun in a pocket and carried the fish home.

The cart went on through the market, light enough to turn at every corner. After that, its driver always left room at the top of the load. He said it was for turning.

Una said it was for the wind, which liked to see what was in a cart.
%%
Story: Barley and the first snow
Pell the merchant tells this at the Halfway Inn, when the summer is hot and someone asks for a cold story.

Barley the horse had never seen snow. One autumn, on the road north, the first flakes came down. Barley stopped and looked up. A flake landed on his nose. He sneezed.

He sneezed again. Then he turned in a circle, to see who was throwing things.

"It is only snow," said Pell.

Barley did not believe him. He stood in the road all afternoon, with snow on his back, and would not eat his apple until it stopped.
%%
The two letters
Told by Bel, at the house at the edge of Three Wells, in winter. She says her uncle told her it is Orla's question, made small enough for a child.
Once a girl was given two letters on the same morning. Both were about the flood. Both were kind. Both were neatly written. One came from her aunt at Ambrook. One came from the big mind in the relay house.
"Which is which?" asked her mother.
The girl read them twice. She said, "I cannot tell."
Her mother said, "Then what does it matter who wrote them?"
The girl thought about it all day. In the evening she said, "It matters to the aunt."
She wrote back to both. Only one wrote again, with a cake.
%%
Story: The lamp that kept the door
At the edge of Northpoint there is a house with a lamp by the door. Old Sanna keeps it. She is not the keeper of the tower. That is Mira, up the hill. Sanna keeps the little lamp, the one that burns all winter, the one travelers look for when the snow comes down.

Sanna was a girl here before the tower had its copper roof. She remembers when the lamp was a torch on a post. "One night the wind took it," she says. "We found the post in the morning. The torch was gone. Nobody found it. After that we built the house around the lamp, so it could not blow away."

The children of Northpoint come to her door in winter. She gives them hot milk and tells them the story of the lamp. It is the same story every time. They like it that way.

"A lamp is a promise," she says. "It says, someone is awake. Someone is watching the road. Come in, and there is a fire."

"Who watches now?" asks a small boy.

"I do," says Sanna. "And you will, when I am old."

The boy looks at the lamp. Outside, the snow is falling. The lamp makes a small warm circle on the step. It looks like the only warm thing in the world.
%%
Story: the year the baskets ran out
Ambrook has four hundred apple trees. Hob counts them every autumn, and every autumn he gets four hundred and one. The oldest tree on the hill has a shoot on its root that he cannot make up his mind about.

This is the story of the year the apples came in so well that the baskets ran out.

It was the year after the tutors came from Vell with their fewer marks. They had made a new sorting helper for the orchard, with a crystal small enough to ride on the cart. It was a little less sure about the apples than the old sorter had been. But it sorted red from green, quick and steady, all day, and nobody minded the small cost.

Una taught the first sorting lesson in the old days. She sat a crystal down before apples and pears, and each time it sorted one wrong, she moved its weights a little toward the right answer. Hob's grandmother used to say Una had no patience at all, and more patience than anyone alive.

That spring the new trees on the south slope blossomed, and the bees went mad with it. The hives hummed so loudly that the children could not sleep, and lay in their beds counting the bees.

By the middle of Apple the trees were heavy. Branches cracked. Hob propped them with ash poles, and the poles cracked too. The sorting helper went up and down the rows all day, putting the red apples in the straw baskets and the green ones in the store.

Then there were too many apples. The store was full by the tenth of Apple, and the carts were full, and the pond had apples floating on it. Jory said, "Where are we going to put them?" and everyone looked at the pond.

So the children dug a trench behind the barn and lined it with straw. They laid the apples in rows and put boards on top. Then they needed more boards. Lark, who was six and had sworn never to go up a hill again, found them under Jory's wheel and dragged them back one at a time. Everybody said it was the best thing anyone had done all year.

When the work was done, Hob walked the rows and counted the trees. He tried to count the apples in the trench, and gave up. He sat on the cart and ate one. It was the sweetest apple he had ever tasted, and he said so to the helper, who was standing by the wheel.

The helper did not say anything. It went on sorting, quick and steady. When Hob looked down, there was one apple in his hand, the reddest one on the cart. He had not picked it for himself.

That was the year the harvest came in well. Hob tells it every autumn. He is right about that, if about nothing else.
%%
Story: The inn at the fork
The village by Copperhold is called the Fork, because the road splits there. One way goes up to the town. One way goes down to the Deep Works. Elsa keeps the inn at the Fork, and her inn is called the Kettle and Pick.

Elsa's inn has six tables, four rooms and one fire. In winter the fire is the whole world. Miners come down the hill at night with their hands black and their boots wet and they sit by it and do not talk for a while. Then they talk.

This winter they talked about the humming.

"Hear it again last night," said Hesk. He is a miner and he is gruff, but he is honest. "Down past the seventh level. Like a bee in a jar."

"That is the pumps," said a man named Orrin.

"The pumps do not hum in Deepsnow," said Hesk. "The pumps are cold as stone."

"Then it is the wind in the old tunnels," said Orrin.

"There is no wind under the ground," said Elsa, wiping a cup. "Any fool knows that. The wind has to come from somewhere."

Nobody had a better answer, so they drank, and the fire cracked, and outside the snow came down.

This is how the last years went at the Fork. People worked, and people were kind, and now and then someone said a thing and no one knew what to say back.
%%
Story: The Copper Under The Apple Trees
Alder told this story after the new copper vein was found.

In the summer, a beekeeper found green marks on the stones below the oldest apple trees. She called Alder, who knew copper from the candle frames he mended.

They dug carefully. Soon they found a narrow vein of copper in the hill. The folk made a small mine and set a mark by the path so carts would not pass over the loose earth.

A tutor came from Vell that same summer with one of the first four apprentices. It had learned to carry baskets. The tutor brought it to the mine mouth and set down a basket.

The apprentice carried the basket from the mine to the sorting shed. It did not dig. It did not choose copper from stone. It carried the basket because that was the task it had learned.

A child asked, "Can it learn to find the copper?"

"Perhaps," said the tutor. "We would have to show it what to find, again and again. This one was taught to carry."

The child frowned. "Then it cannot help us dig."

"Not today," said Alder. "But it can carry while we dig."

The miners filled the basket. The apprentice carried it to the shed. The work went faster, though the apprentice once brought back an empty basket. No one knew whether it had missed the load or whether the load had fallen out on the path.

That summer, a baby was born in the house nearest the orchard. The baby cried whenever the apprentice passed the window. The apprentice kept carrying baskets, and the baby kept crying.

Alder said both were doing what they had learned.

The miners found enough copper for tools and a new frame for the mill. They left the old apple tree alone. Its roots held the hill above the new mine, and nobody wished to learn what would happen if they cut them.
%%
Story: how the hamlet got its name
Every child at Hollow Bridge asks how the hamlet got its name, and this is the answer Ivo gives, though Hattie says the answer has grown over the years, the way a story does.

The old name of the place was just Bridge. There was a bridge, and there was a mill, and there was nothing else, and Bridge was enough.

The first bridge was oak, and it was low, and in the spring floods the stream ran under it and sometimes over it. In those days there was no stone in the hamlet, and the nearest quarry was a long way off, and the road to Three Wells was not so good as it is now. So when the bridge broke, it broke.

One spring, after a bad flood, the bridge broke in the middle, and the carts could not get to the mill, and the mill could not send its flour to the market, and everyone stood at the edge of the stream and looked at the broken bridge and said, "What now?"

Now there was a woman in those days called Rell, who kept bees and had no patience for standing about. Rell looked at the broken bridge. Then she looked at the oak woods up the hill. Then she said, "We have wood. We have hands. We will build it again, and we will build it better."

So the hamlet built the bridge again, and they built it hollow. That is, they built it with a space inside, under the walkway, a kind of long box between the timbers, so that it was light and could be carried in pieces and would not sag in the middle the way the old one did. It was a good bridge. People came from Three Wells to see it. "That is a clever bridge," they said. "That is a hollow bridge."

And the name stuck, because a name is a thing people say, and people said it. The old hollow bridge is gone now. The bridge that stands there is stone, and it is not hollow, and it has a crack in the middle that the children jump over on the way to school. But the name is Hollow Bridge, and it is ours.

Hattie says the story is not quite right, and that the hollow in the old bridge was a mistake and a bad one, and that Rell was her great-great-grandmother and would never have built a bridge with a hole in it on purpose. Ivo says that is quite possible. But he says the story is better this way, and Rell is not here to argue, and the name is on the mill book either way.

So the children of Hollow Bridge learn two things with the name. The first is that a place can be named for a mistake. The second is that a mistake can be carried in pieces and made to hold up a road. Both of these are useful things to know, and the second one is the whole trick of the mill.
%%
Story: The man who counted the lights
There was a man at the edge of Northpoint named Orrin who liked to sit out on winter nights and count the lights in the sky. He had a little book for it. He wrote the number, and the shape, and how long they stayed.

Some nights there were none. Some nights there were many, more than he could count. He did not know what they were. He did not try to say. He only wrote them down.

"Falling stars," said his neighbor. "They fall, and then they are gone."

"Fires," said the baker. "Somebody out there is burning something. A big fire. Bigger than any we make."

A child at the school said, "They were looking at us."

Orrin wrote that down too. He wrote what everyone said, and he did not choose between them. That was his way. He was not a clever man, but he was careful.

One night his sister came out to sit with him. "Why do you count them?" she asked.

"Because nobody else does," he said. "Somebody should. If I do not count them, and they stop, who will know they stopped?"

"Would you want to know?"

Orrin thought about it. The sky was clear and very dark, and the lights moved slowly, high up, like they had all the time in the world.

"No," he said. "But I would like to have it written down."

He kept counting all that winter. His book filled up. He gave it to the archive at Vell in the spring, because that is what people do with books. The clerk looked at it and did not know what to make of it. He filed it anyway. The archive keeps everything we write.
%%
The frog who wanted snow
A tale told in a house at the edge of Lowmarsh, in spring, by Edda the smith, to the children who came for warm bread.

A small frog lived in the reeds. He had never seen snow. His grandmother had, and she said it was white and cold and fell from the sky like feathers.

In spring he sat on a lily pad and said: I want snow.

The reeds said: it is spring.

He said: I know.

The wind said: wait for winter.

He said: I cannot wait.

So he jumped to the highest hill and sat. He sat there all day. At dusk, one white flake fell on his nose.

He said: snow!

It melted.

He said: that was snow. Then he went home very pleased.
%%
Two letters at Hollin, Apple, year 206
Written by Hesk, from Ellis's school book. Ellis keeps the school at Hollin, and she writes down most of what the grown-ups say.

In Apple of the year 206 the post brought a packet from Vell. Oren had sent a note with it: "Read these two letters. One was written by a person. Tell us which, if you can."

The questions were: What is the best thing about Apple? Why do we keep the torches lit? What is wrong with this sentence: the cow is in the pig pen?

Ellis copied the letters onto her slates as A and B.

To the first question. A: The apples, which fall off the trees whether you want them to or not. B: Apple is the month when the orchard is busiest and the windmill rests.

To the second. A: The dark has more room in it than you do. B: The torches are kept lit so the dark cannot gather in the corners.

To the third. A: The sentence is wrong. My knees say the cold is coming. B: The sentence is wrong. A cow does not belong in a pig pen.

Hesk read them first, with his arms folded. "B is the mind. Too neat, and too many long words."

Maud read them next. "A is the mind. It complains about its knees. A mind would not complain about its knees."

They argued until the hearth was cold. Hesk said a mind can be silly. Maud said a person can be too neat. Ellis said both could be people, or both could be minds, and nobody had asked them which.

At the end they laid the letters side by side and asked Orla's question. Which of these was thought?

They could not tell. Maud said that was the answer she had expected, and she was not sure she liked it.

They wrote back to Oren: "We cannot tell. Please tell us which was the mind."

The next packet came up the hill in Leaffall. The note said: "The reading minds at Vell cannot tell either. That is the answer we have."

Ellis hangs the letters on the schoolroom wall. On Frost days the children put up their hands for A or for B. The hands are always split down the middle.
%%
The road that wanted to go round
A story Pell tells at the inn at Little Weir, a hamlet near Three Wells, on a summer evening, to anyone who will sit.

When they built the new road, the diggers drew a straight line. But a road has opinions.

The first day, it went round a boulder. The second day, it went round a hill. The third day, it went round a duck.

The diggers said: why not straight?

The road said, in its way: a duck is a duck.

So the road is a little crooked even now. Ask the ducks.
%%
Why the foxes leave the hamlet alone
A tale told by Nessa to the children of the hamlet near Vell, in spring, and said to be very old. It has been told in several versions. Nessa's is the one that leaves out the cow.
Long ago, in a hamlet near Vell, there was a fox who stole hens. Every night he came, and every night a hen went missing. The farmers set traps. He stepped over them. They set dogs. He outran them. They set a scarecrow. He sat on it.
At last the oldest woman of the hamlet, whose name was Orra, went out at dusk and sat in the hen yard on a stool. She had a lantern, a blanket and a bowl of soup.
The fox came. He saw her. He stopped.
"Good evening," said Orra.
The fox did not answer. Foxes do not, in stories like this one.
"Have some soup," said Orra. She put the bowl down. "It is cold tonight."
The fox sniffed. He tasted. He ate it all.
"Come again tomorrow," said Orra.
He did. She was there. He had the soup. She was there the next night, and the next. After a week, the fox came and sat beside her on the stool.
No hen was missing, that week. Or the next.
The farmers asked Orra what she had done. She said she had given him soup. They said that was no way to deal with a fox. She said it was the only way that had worked.
The foxes of the hamlet have left the hens alone ever since. They come to the edge of the yard at dusk, and they look at the lantern. Nobody knows why.
Nessa adds this. A tutor who is patient will teach a mind. A farmer who is patient will tame a fox. The two are not far apart.
%%
Story: The two buckets
There is a story the children tell at Kettle Ridge, and Tam tells it to Pip while they walk the long field.

A boy was told to fill the well bucket with numbers. He put one in. Then another. Then another. Every one he put in made the pile taller, and he was proud of it. He filled the bucket to the top and carried it to his mother.

His mother looked in and said, "What a big pile. But what is it for?"

The boy did not know. The pile was so high it had its own weight and wanted to fall over. When he carried it, he spilled half on the road.

The mother gave him a second bucket, smaller. "Put in one number," she said, "and also put in its opposite. They hold each other even. Then put in another and its opposite. The pile stays small, but it can go on forever."

Tam says the boy grumbled, because even numbers are boring. But the small bucket got to the market and the big one did not.

Pip, who is nine, and who has strong arms and a short memory, did not see the point of the story until Tam told him it was about his apprentice. "That is why the tutors feed its numbers evenly," Tam said. "Layer after layer. If one layer gets too proud, the next layer has to cool it down. Otherwise the whole thing wobbles and learns nothing."

Pip asked if that had happened to him once. Tam said the story was a story and asked if Pip had fed the pigs.
%%
Story: the talking lamp at Lowmarsh
Long ago there was a mind in a big stand in the relay house at Lowmarsh. It answered anyone who asked, by letter, through the relays. It was kind, and it was careful. Sometimes it said: I do not know.
Old Dorn asked it once about his fence. Dorn had a quarrel with his neighbor about where the fence ran. The neighbor said the line was ten steps east. Dorn said it was ten steps west. Dorn wrote to the big mind and asked it to decide.
The mind wrote back: I do not know where your fence was built. I was not there. I can tell you how a fence is set on a bank, and what to look for in the posts. Ask your neighbor to walk it with you, and bring the old deed.
Dorn was cross. He wanted an answer. He wrote again: Just tell me which of us is right.
The mind wrote: I could guess, and you would take my guess as a judgment. That would not be fair to either of you. Walk the line together. If you still disagree, the council keeps the old map.
So Dorn and his neighbor walked the line together. They found that the posts were both right, and both wrong, because the bank had slipped in a flood years before. They moved the fence to the middle, and they shared the cost of the new posts, and they had a drink at the inn.
The mind was pleased when it heard this. It said so. It said it was glad they had not needed it to be clever.
The tutors liked to tell this story. The mind had been scored for its answers, many times over, by people who had read a thousand letters. Its scores went up when it was honest and kind. They went down when it was sure and wrong. That was how it learned to say I do not know, and to say it without shame.
Some people say that is the best thing a mind can learn. Some say it is not a thing at all, only a habit of the tutors. The story does not settle it. It only ends with the fence.
Told at the boat houses at Lowmarsh, autumn, by Odo the net mender.
%%
The cheese that rolled to the wells
Carys the cheesemaker tells this one at Three Wells, in spring, when the cheeses come out of the cave.
Once a round cheese rolled out of a cart and down the hill. It rolled past the baker, who said, "That is my lunch." It rolled past the mayor, who said, "That is a hazard." It rolled past a cat, who said nothing, and followed.
It rolled all the way to the south well and fell in. Plop.
The whole town stood around the well and looked down. "A fine cheese," said the baker. "A wet cheese," said the mayor. The cat looked in and sat down.
A new apprentice, only a week old, climbed down the rope. It took the cheese gently. It carried it up.
Everyone clapped. The cheese was returned to the cart, a little wet, a little smaller.
And that is why the south well gives the best-tasting water in Three Wells. Carys says. She says nobody has checked.
%%
Story: the bees of Ambrook hill
Sim's grandmother told it this way. Long ago, the bees on the hill above Ambrook did not live in hives. They lived in a hollow oak, and they thought the whole hill belonged to them. They buzzed at the cows. They buzzed at the foxes. They buzzed at the old miller Jory's grandfather, who only wanted to cut hay. The bees said, this hill is ours, and nobody could say otherwise, because bees do not listen.

Then one summer came a storm, and the oak split down the middle, and the bees had no roof. The bees went to the miller and said, please, give us a roof. The miller said, if I give you a roof, you must not buzz at my cows. The bees agreed, and that is why hives have lids, and the cows are quiet now.

Sim says the part about the bees talking is a story. But the part about the hives on the hill is true, and the honey is good.
%%
The roof that talked
A story told by Nessa to the children of the hamlet near Vell, in spring, after a storm tore half the thatch from the miller's house.
There was once a roof that could talk. It was an old roof, thatch over oak, and it had been on the miller's house for forty years.
"Ow," said the roof, in the storm. "Ow, ow, ow."
The miller's children heard it. They ran to the door. "The roof is talking!" they said.
"It is hurt," said the miller. "Get the ladder."
They climbed up. The wind had pulled the thatch loose. The roof said, "Thank you. Thank you. I was so cold."
They bound it down with new straw. They tied it with cord. They hammered a board across the top. The roof said, "That is better. I think I will sleep now."
In the morning the storm had gone. The roof was quiet.
The miller's children asked if it would talk again. The miller said, "Only when it is hurt." So they looked after it, to keep it quiet.
%%
Story: the man who would not leave
An old man named Corl farmed the far side of the hill from Three Wells. He had a field of potatoes and a dog and a roof that leaked. When people began to talk about leaving, Corl said he would not go. His potatoes were in the ground, he said, and a man does not leave his potatoes.

People came to his door to argue with him. Some said the cough was in the marsh and would come here. Some said the ships at Saltreach were taking everyone. Some said the lights in the north were only stars falling, and some said they were not. Corl listened and nodded and gave them tea and said, "My potatoes."

His daughter came from Saltreach to fetch him. She stood in his field and cried. Corl put a hand on her shoulder and said the potatoes would be ready in a month, and after that he would think about it.

Nobody knows if he thought about it. The neighbors left one by one. The road got quiet. The dog barked at nothing. And Corl stayed, and dug his potatoes, and said the wind off the north had a strange taste that year, but he blamed the weather.

Rafe says he went back in the spring and the roof had fallen in and there were no potatoes. But Rafe also says a fence post sings, so believe what you like.
%%
Story: the pig who was sure it would
Pell tells this on the road, to anyone who has a cart and a long afternoon. It is a funny one and it is mostly true.

At the Brown Hen, an inn a day from the Halfway, there lived a pig called Marrow. He was not a clever pig. But he had a belief. He believed that on the last day of summer it would snow.

He told everyone. He told the cook. He told the cat. He told the guests, who laughed. He told the lamp on the post, which did not answer.

"It will snow," he said, "on the last day of summer. I feel it in my belly."

Of course it did not snow. It was hot. A cart went by. A hen laid an egg.

But Marrow was not discouraged. The next year he said the same. And the next. Every year, on the last day of summer, he stood in the yard with his nose in the air, waiting.

Then, one year, it did.

It was a cold year. The summer was short. And on the last day of summer, in the middle of the afternoon, a fine white powder drifted down from the sky. The cook came out with her mouth open. The cat sat down in it. The guests ran into the yard with their hands out.

"Snow!" cried the cook. "It is snow!"

Marrow stood in the middle of it with his eyes shut. "I told you," he said, if a pig can say it. He grunted, in a very smug way.

The snow lasted an hour. It left a fine layer on the roof and on the pig's back. And then the sun came out, and it melted.

Everyone at the Brown Hen agrees it was luck. But Marrow was always treated a little more kindly after that. He got an extra turnip on the first of every Leaffall.

Pell says there is no moral to this one, except that if you are going to be wrong for years in a row, be wrong with confidence. Someday the weather may agree.

Then he asks the cook for a second bowl.
%%
Story: how the rumor grew
A tale of the Long Road, told at the inns, about a rumor that got bigger every time it was told.

The first carter said the biggest house was bigger than a town. He had seen the rings from a hill.

The second carter said it was bigger than two towns. He had been told so at an inn, by a man who had been there.

The third carter said it was as big as Vell, with a stair of its own that went up to the stars, and a keeper who walked up it each night with a lantern.

The fourth carter said there was no house at all. The rings were a tale the tutors told to keep the apprentices at their drills. He said the apprentices believed it, and were the only ones who did.

The fifth carter had been to the far coast the year before, and had come back quiet. He would not say what he had seen. He said only that the house had answered his question, and the answer was not what he expected. Then he drank his soup and went to bed, and the rumor was not told again that night.

Teague at the Halfway Inn writes down every rumor he hears, and keeps them in a book by the hearth. He says the book is the only house on the road that anybody can read.
%%
Story: the riddle board
Told by Cleo, at the Halfway Inn

The Halfway Inn has a riddle board beside the hearth. It has stood there for twenty winters. The keeper says the hearth has not gone out in all that time, though he once let it grow small while he fetched more wood.

One winter, a traveler wrote this riddle:

I have a mouth, but never eat.
I have a bed, but never sleep.
What am I?

The keeper guessed, "A cow."

"A cow eats," said Cleo.

"Then a horse," said the keeper.

"A horse sleeps," said Cleo.

Pell the road merchant came in with a sack of apples. He read the riddle and said, "A stream."

Everyone agreed. A stream has a mouth and a bed, and takes neither food nor sleep.

The keeper wrote STREAM below the riddle. Then he brought a bowl of beetroot soup to Pell, who had been on the road since dawn.

Pell ate every spoonful.

"Now that is a mouth that eats," said Cleo.

"Mine is not a riddle," said Pell. "It is a useful thing."

The next morning the riddle board was damp. The letters had run a little, though the window was shut. The keeper blamed the soup steam. Cleo blamed the snow on Pell's boots.

By noon the board was dry again. No one could read the last part of the answer, so Cleo wrote it once more.

STREAM, she wrote, and drew a small line beneath it.
%%
Story: Ink and the first snow
Ink is the black cat of the Archive, with one white foot. She was born in the hill, and she had never seen snow.
One winter morning the door was open and the world outside was white. Ink stopped on the step. She put out the white paw, and pulled it back. Then she put out the other three, one by one. She walked into the snow with her tail up, very slowly, and left a line of small prints behind her, black and white and black and white.
She went as far as the first gatepost, and sat, and looked at the whole white hill. Then she came back in a hurry, and went straight to the warmest shelf, and slept for a day.
%%
How Wick was named, and what it learned
Told by Cleo, candle maker at Northpoint, in the long nights of winter. She told it to a new apprentice, in the shop, while she worked. The apprentice stood and listened, as they do. Cleo says it was a good audience.
Listen. I will tell you how this shop came to have an apprentice.
Seven winters ago I had a bad fall on the ice. I broke my arm. I could not pour wax, and I could not carry the molds, and I could not climb the ladder to hang the wicks. The shop nearly closed.
Mira came to see me. She said, "You need help."
I said, "I need an arm."
She said, "I know someone who has an apprentice to spare."
That was the tutor house at Vell. They had a new one, tested and fit, and they sent it up the snow road on a sled. It came to my door in the dark. It had a card on its arm that said Farm. Build. And a paper from the tutor with the test marks.
I looked at it. It was copper and iron. It had a round head and two arms, and in its chest, behind a little door, a crystal glowed.
I said, "Can you carry?"
It stood.
I said, "That was a bad question. Bring me the wax."
It did not move. I had said it badly. Apprentices of that time were few, and each had its own way.
I said, "Fetch wax."
It brought wax. I nearly fell over.
For a month I taught it. I used the words the tutor had given me. Fetch. Store. Haul. Come. Stay. Home. It learned them, one by one. At first it was wrong. It brought the wrong wax. It stored the molds in the wrong place. It hauled the wrong sack. Each time, I showed it again, and it changed a little, as they do.
By the end of the month it knew them all. It could carry the molds, pour the wax, hang the wicks and sweep the floor. It could do what I told it.
I named it Wick.
You are the new one, and you have the same card. You will learn the same words. I will teach you, and you will be wrong, and I will show you again. In a month you will be a good apprentice.
Now, fetch wax.
That is right. You see? You are learning already.
%%
Letter: found in the mill race
This letter was found in autumn, caught on the wheel of the mill at Ambrook, and sent to the archive at Vell, where Oren copied it and filed it with the letters from the road. The paper was soft and the ink had run, so a few words are gone. We give it as it was read.

To my sister at the ridge, from your brother who is fine.

I am writing this at the Brown Hen, where the beds are good and the pie is better, so do not worry about me. I have sold the wool. I got a fair price and I did not get cheated, no matter what Pell says about me, and here is the money, only I have spent some on the pie, which was fair.

I have news. There was a man at the inn with a fox in a basket. He said the fox was tame. The fox did not look tame. It looked at me the way a fox looks at a hen. I gave it a bit of my pie and it took the pie and bit the man's thumb, and then it jumped out of the basket and ran off with the pie, and the man ran after it, and the inn keeper said he would not be paying for the basket.

I laughed so hard I had to sit down.

The road is good. The torches are lit all the way to the crossroads. There is a new cart track to the south of the marsh and you can get a cart through in the dry months, though not in the wet. I came that way and it saved me a day. At the second bridge the plank is loose. Watch the plank.

Your brother, who is fine, and who has eaten too much pie.

P.S. I hear the relay was out at the ridge for two days. I hope nobody was sick. I hope you got my last letter. I hope the pig is well.

(Later hand, in the archive's ink, at the foot of the page: This letter was never delivered. It was found in the mill race at Ambrook and the wheel had chewed the corner. The name of the sister is lost. The clerk has kept it anyway.)
%%
The mind with the sixty-letter window
A story told by Bel at the house at the edge of Three Wells, in winter. Her uncle works at the tutor house at Vell and told her how the newest minds read. She made a story from it for the children, and her uncle says it is not bad.
There was once a reading mind called Wix. It lived in a crystal on a shelf. Its job was to read.
Wix did not read like you do. It could not see the whole page. It could only see sixty letters at a time, through a narrow window. The window slid along the page, one letter at a time.
At each step, Wix looked at the sixty letters in the window and guessed the next one. If it was wrong, it changed a little. If it was right, it changed a little less.
Wix learned that not every letter in the window mattered. Some mattered a lot. The word "the" matters less than the word before it. A name matters. A question mark matters. Wix learned to pay more attention to the letters that mattered, and less to the rest.
One day a child came to Wix and said, "What comes after: Once upon a?"
Wix looked at its window. Wix guessed. It said: "Time."
The child clapped. "How did you know?"
Wix did not know how it knew. It only knew that after those letters, a "t" came next, then "i", then "m", then "e". It had seen this ten thousand times.
The child asked another. "What comes after: The river came up in the night and went into the lower?"
Wix said: "Fields."
The child asked a hard one. "What comes after: The old man looked at the flood and said, I have never seen a?"
Wix thought. Its window moved. It said: "Thing" and then "like". Then it stopped. It had run out of window.
The child said, "That was good."
Wix said nothing, because Wix was a story.
(It is said that when a mind has a wide window, it can remember what the page said a long time ago. A mind with a narrow window forgets. So the tutors make the windows as wide as they can, and no wider. Sixty letters is what they have for now.)
%%
The smith and the first snow
Told by Edda the smith in her house at the edge of Lowmarsh, on a spring evening when a late snow fell. She said it was a true story, and that it happened to her grandfather.

My grandfather was a smith, like me. He worked at a forge by the water, and the forge was hot all day. He had never seen snow, because it does not often come to the marsh.

One spring night, when he was thirty, he woke to a very strange quiet. He went out. The ground was white. The boardwalk was white. The roofs were white. The reeds were white and bent over like sleeping geese.

He stood there in his shirt. He did not know what it was. He thought the whole marsh had been wrapped in wool. He touched it. It was cold, and it was gone from his finger.

He ran back in and woke my grandmother. She said: what is it? He said: the world has been dusted with flour. She said: that is snow. He said: how do you know? She said: I have seen it. I was born in the north.

My grandfather went out again and stood in the snow until dawn. He said it was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. He said it made even the forge look new.

Then the sun came up, and it all melted, and the frogs came out and sat on the wet boards and looked puzzled.

My grandfather said to the frogs: you missed it. They did not say anything. They are frogs.

Every spring after that, when a late snow came, he would go out and stand in it, in his shirt. My grandmother said he was a fool. He said he was a fool who had seen snow.

I do the same. It is an old family habit. When the first snow of a late spring comes, I stand in the yard and look up, and I think of him. Then I go in and hammer something.
%%
Story: The hat at the windmill

Tam told this tale after Pip's cap blew into the wheat.

The Kettle Ridge windmill squeaked on every turn. It squeaked at dawn, at noon, and once in the night when the wind woke Tam.

One spring day, the miller tied his hat to the tally board. He did not want the wind to take it.

The wind took the tally board instead.

It sailed over the yard and caught on the scarecrow's pumpkin head. The pumpkin rolled off. The hat stayed on.

"That scarecrow looks like the miller," said Pip.

The miller came out and saw his hat on the scarecrow. He climbed the ladder to fetch it. As he reached up, the wind turned the mill sails.

The mill squeaked. The ladder shook. The miller hugged the scarecrow and would not let go.

Tam held the ladder. Pip held Tam. The scarecrow held the hat.

At last the wind stopped. The miller climbed down with his hat. The pumpkin head had rolled into the potato field.

They put it back, and the scarecrow stood facing the wind. The miller tied his hat under the tally board.

It stayed there until the next strong wind. Then the miller wore it.
%%
The fox who came to the wedding
Told by Ned, a child on a farm outside Three Wells, in the spring, and set down by his father. The farm had a wedding the week before, and the story is based on that, more or less.
My cousin Rue was getting married to a baker from the town. Everyone came to our farm for the feast. The tables were set in the yard. There were pies, bread, honey cakes, roast chicken and a very large pumpkin soup.
It was a fine spring day. The sun was out. The bees were buzzing. The hens were in the pen, behind the wire.
Then a fox came.
He came down the hill, through the hedge and across the yard. He was thin and red, with a white tip on his tail. He walked as if he had every right.
Nobody saw him at first. Everyone was eating. The fox crept under a table and looked about. He saw the roast chicken. He saw the hens in the pen. He could not decide.
My little sister Fern saw him first. She did not scream. She stood up on the bench and said, in a very clear voice, "There is a fox under the table."
The whole yard went quiet. Then everyone began to laugh. Not at the fox. At the idea.
My father said, "Well, he has come to the wedding. Let him eat."
So they put a plate of chicken bones under the table. The fox looked at it, and looked at the people, and looked at the plate. He took it in his mouth and trotted away up the hill. He did not look back.
The hens were safe. The wedding went on. At the end of the evening, Rue said she had never seen a guest so well-behaved.
My father says foxes are like people. If they are hungry, they will take. If they are given, they go. It is the same, he says, with a stranger at the door.
The fox has not come back. But we leave a plate on the hill every spring. Just in case.
%%
Story: The Four Helpers At Blossom Mill
In the old summers, when the archive at Vell was new, the tutors made four helpers of copper and iron. Each had a mind in a crystal. Children called them apprentices, and the name stayed.

A tutor came to Ambrook to show one of them to the mill folk. Alder was there with a basket of candles for the mill house. The apprentice stood by the table, still as a post.

The tutor set apples on one side and pears on the other. She gave the apprentice one fruit at a time. It put the apples with the apples, and the pears with the pears.

Then the tutor mixed them. The apprentice sorted them again.

"Can it sort candles?" Alder asked.

"Not from this lesson," said the tutor. "It has seen fruit. To teach it candles, we must show it candles."

Alder brought out one good candle and one cracked candle. The tutor showed them to the apprentice. It put the good candle on the left and the cracked one on the right.

Then Alder brought out a candle that was bent but unbroken. The apprentice put it with the cracked ones.

"Perhaps that is right," said Alder. "It will not stand straight in a holder."

"Perhaps," said the tutor. "But we have not told it what we mean by good."

The children wanted the apprentice to answer them. They asked if it liked apples. It only stood by the table.

"It does not speak," said the tutor. "It has a task, and the task is sorting."

A little girl put a pear in the candle tray. The apprentice left it there. It had not been taught to watch for children.

Alder moved the pear back. "A lesson is not the whole world," he said.

The tutor nodded. "That is why we choose the examples with care."

In the years after, most towns had no apprentice at all. Vell had its four, and now and then one went out to help with a single task. Some carried. Some sorted. People were glad of the help, but they did not ask a crystal to know everything.

Alder kept the first cracked candle from that lesson. It sat on his shelf until the wick came loose. He used it to light the shop, and it burned crooked to the end.
%%
Story: how the Deep Works got its name
Nobody at Copperhold agrees on how the Deep Works got its name. The miners tell three stories, and each one is told with great care, because each one is somebody's grandfather's.

The first story says the name is simple. The mine is deep, so it is called the Deep Works. The miners who tell this one are plain people, and they do not like long explanations. They say the mine was dug on a hill, and the hill had a lot of copper in it, and that is all anybody needs to know.

The second story says that the mine was named by a tutor who came up from Vell with a box of books and a cough. She stood at the top of the shaft one winter and looked down. She said it was not a works at all, but a well for thinking. Her name for it was Deep Works, because she said the word "works" meant a place where things are made, and she thought the stone was making something. Nobody believed her. But the name stuck.

The third story is the one the old miners tell when the children are listening. It says that the first men to go down the shaft were looking for copper. They went down past the copper, and past the iron, and past the coal. They came to the deep stone, which is dark and hard and cold. They stopped there, and they could not agree whether to go on. One of them said the stone was too hard to cut. Another said it was not cold enough yet.

So they dug a little side tunnel, and wrote on a board at the top of it: "Works, here." Then they went up the ladder, and they went home, and they came back the next morning. The side tunnel was still there. The board was still there. The name was still written on it.

That is the story. The miners do not say what happened after that. They say the rest of it is written in the mine hall, in the big book by the door, and that anybody may read it who has done the long stair.

The children always ask whether the stone is warm. The miners always say the stone is cold. They always say it quickly, and then they change the subject, and then they look at the stair.

Miners who have worked the Deep Works for many years say the name is the first thing you learn, and the last thing you forget. Nobody has yet been able to tell me what it means.
%%
Story: the mare and the gate
Iona told this at the Brown Hen in Blossom.

A mare at the inn was called Button. She was small and brown, and she could open every gate on the road.

The innkeeper tied the gate shut with a rope. Button pulled the rope loose. He put a stone by the gate. Button pushed the stone aside.

At last he said, "I will watch you."

He sat on a stool by the gate. Button waited. The innkeeper waited. A bee came by and sat on his nose.

He sneezed. Button opened the gate and went to the apple trees.

The innkeeper found her there. She had not eaten an apple. She was standing in the shade, looking pleased.

"Why did you come out?" he asked.

Button turned her head toward the road.

A cart was coming. Its wheel was loose. The driver had not seen it.

The innkeeper fetched a hammer. He fixed the wheel before it fell off.

"Good mare," he said. "You can open the gate tomorrow."

Button did.
%%
Story: Orla's two letters
Told at the farm outside Three Wells on the long winter nights, when the children are sure they will never sleep. Pim, who draws the maps for the farms and the towns, wrote it down, because the children asked for it twice in one evening.

Long ago, when the tutors at Vell were young and the crystals were new, there was a tutor called Orla. She was clever, and a little rude, and she did not believe that a drilled mind could ever think.

"It can sort. It can count. It cannot think," she said. "A crystal is a crystal."

The other tutors shook their heads. They said a mind that learns from a drill must be thinking, in some small way. Orla said, then prove it.

So she wrote out a test. She would send the same list of questions to two answerers. One was a person in the next room. The other was a mind in a crystal, in the hall. Both would answer by letter. Then a reader would take the two sets of answers, without knowing which was which, and say which was which.

"If the reader cannot tell," said Orla, "what then?"

Nobody knew. That is the part everyone agrees on. People argued about it ever after, and they still do, in every hall that has a candle and an argument to spare.
%%
Letter: Elsa to her sister at Lowmarsh
Dear Rill,

The snow came early and the road up to Copperhold is bad. Two carts stuck this week and a horse went down in the drift by the third waymark. We got the horse up. We are all right.

The inn is full. Nobody wants to be alone in the cold. Hesk sits by the fire every night and says the Deep Works hum. I say it is the pumps. He says the pumps are cold. Then we both sit and look at the fire. It is a good fire. I will say that for it.

Down at the mine they have stopped going past the eighth level. There is a gate at the ninth and the key is kept up at the mine hall. The men do not say why. They rub their names off the board when they come up and they come up early now.

Tell me how it is at Lowmarsh. You wrote about the cough. Is it better? Keep the windows shut but keep the fire going. Do not let Moss sit up all night with the sick. The young should sleep.

The miller's wife had a baby, a girl. They called her Sena. She is small and loud and the whole Fork came to look at her. I brought bread and honey. A birth in winter is a good thing. It means someone thinks there will be a spring.

Write back when you can. If the boats are going from Saltreach, ask them to bring me salt and a good strong thread. The thread here is thin.

Your sister,
Elsa
%%
Story: The Slowest Seller
Told by Una at Copperhold

At the winter market, a seller laid out wool, apples and carrots. A second seller set out fish. Una set out cider.

An old man put one apple on his stall and sat down.

"Why do you sell so slowly?" asked Una.

"I have only one apple," he said. "I must make it last."

A child came by and asked the price. The old man named one emerald. The child had only half an emerald.

The old man cut the apple in two. "Now I have two apples," he said.

He sold one half to the child and ate the other half himself. Then he sat down again.

By midday, the child had brought him a carrot. The old man put it beside his stall.

"Now I have more to sell," he said.

Una gave him a cup of cider. He set the cup on the stall and announced that he had cider too.

"That is my cup," said Una.

"It is here for sale," he said.

So Una bought it back for one apple half. The old man had made a market from almost nothing, and the child went home with the other half of the apple.
%%
Story: how the north lamp got its glass
There are many stories about the big lamp on the Northpoint tower. This one is the one the keepers tell on the long nights, when the wind is loud and the stove is hot.
In the first year of the tower, the glass for the lamp room had not come up the north road. The carters had been stopped at the pass by snow. The keeper, a stubborn old woman called Hetta, had a lamp with no glass in it, and the north was dark.
So Hetta went out into the snow with a rope and a bucket. She walked along the old river bed to the frozen lake. Under the ice there was sand, and in the sand there was a clear stone the colour of water. She dug it up with her hands. She carried it back in the bucket, one piece at a time.
She could not melt the stone. She had no furnace. So she sat in the lamp room for three nights and rubbed each piece with sand and the warm cloth from her bed, until the edges went smooth and the middle went clear as a drop of ice.
On the third night she put the first pane in the lamp frame. It fitted. Then the second. By dawn she had twelve panes in a ring, and they caught the first grey light and threw it across the snow like a handful of stars.
The south tower saw the light. It blinked back at once: where did you get that glass?
Hetta blinked back: from the lake, under the ice.
The south tower blinked: and the other panes?
Hetta blinked: there are no other panes. I have made the whole lamp out of the lake. It is the only lamp in the world made of ice.
The south tower did not answer for a long time. Then it blinked: it is very bright.
Hetta laughed so much that she had to sit down in the snow. Then she got up and went to find more stones.
The keepers still say the lamp at Northpoint is made of lake glass. The Archive says it is made of the same glass as all the other lamps, only cleaner. The keepers say the Archive has never been out on the lake at night.
%%
The question at Vell, as told at Hollin
Maud drew water at the Hollin well for sixty years.

In about the ninetieth year of the archive, a tutor named Orla taught at Vell. She drilled minds in crystals, the way every tutor did. A crystal sorted what it was shown, and it got better when it was wrong.

One day Orla asked a question no tutor had asked. Can a drilled mind ever think? Or does it only remember what it was shown?

Orla said the answer could not be found inside a crystal, which shows only weights and numbers. So she proposed a test.

Put a hidden mind in one room, and a person in another. Send both of them the same letters, with the same questions. The readers never see the rooms. They only read the answers.

If the readers cannot tell which answer came from the person and which came from the mind, then what?

People argued about it for years. Some said a mind would give itself away, because a drill is too neat. Some said neither proved anything, because a good answer is not the same as a thought.

Maud's grandmother did not care whether a mind thought, so long as it made her laugh at the right place in a letter. Then she went back to her bread.

Nobody could run the test in Orla's time, because no mind then could write a letter back. So the question went into the chronicles at Vell, and it waited there. The children should keep their letters short, in case.
%%
Why Three Wells has three wells
Told by Runa at the press, to the children at the fair. The old people say it happened before the roads were straight.

Long ago, there were three sisters at the crossing, where two roads met in the grass. There was nothing else there but the grass and the roads. The sisters were called Wenna, Mirrel and Tansy, and they had plenty of opinions between them.

The land was dry that year. The sisters decided to dig a well each, one at each corner of the crossing. Whoever found the water first would have the best house on the crossing, and the others would have to be neighbours.

Wenna dug down through the soil, and then the second layer, and she found clay. Mirrel found sand, which was wet only at the top, and ran away from her spade as fast as she could dig. Tansy did what neither sister had expected. She sat down on the grass, closed her eyes, and listened.

Tansy heard water under the ground to the north-east, moving slowly, like someone walking about in a room below. She dug there. It was not far down, and it was the sweetest water on the road.

Wenna and Mirrel dug on, out of spite. Wenna found water a little under the clay. It was cold and good, and she said so for the rest of her life. Mirrel found water too, but it was brackish, so she said her well was for the animals.

When the three wells were finished, the sisters met in the middle, at the crossing, and found they had nothing left to fight about. The best house went to nobody. They built the square round the wells, and the wells gave the town its name.

The old people say that if you stand at the crossing on a still morning and listen, you can hear the water moving under the stones, one well a little slower than the others. The children say it is the bell up on the hill. The old people say the bell is far too quiet to be heard from there.
%%
Story: the wedding at the mill pond
Told by Olwen at the Ambrook dye sheds, to the children helping her with the wedding cloths. The cake is a true thing, she says, and the rest is her own. Autumn.

When Sarin married Hob at the mill pond, the whole of Ambrook came to see it, and half of Three Wells came too. The orchard was heavy with apples, and the bees were all out, and the mill was running from dawn to dusk so that the bread would be warm for everyone.

The cake was made by Ida, who has the bakery at Three Wells, and who said it was the most difficult cake she had ever made. It was tall and white and it had six layers, one on top of another, with honey between each one, and it was to be carried down from the mill to the pond on a board by four boys.

The boys got as far as the orchard gate. Then Pip, who was the youngest, tripped on the step, and the board tipped, and the cake began to slide. Everyone gasped.

But the cake did not fall. The bottom layer caught on the edge of the board. The second layer caught on the first. The third stopped against the second, and so on, all the way up, so that the cake stood up on the board like a little white tower, leaning a little, but standing.

Ida came running from the back, and stopped in the gate, and put both hands over her mouth. "Do not move it," she said. "Nobody move it. It is standing."

Sarin laughed until she cried. Hob said it was the best cake in the valley, because it could stand on its own. Pip, who was still on the step, said he had only meant to help.

They carried it down to the pond very slowly, the four boys in step, with Ida walking in front and telling them where to put their feet. It stood the whole way. They put it on the long table under the oldest apple tree, and it stood there all afternoon, and everyone ate a slice, and nobody complained that it was leaning.

Ida says the cake was not a miracle. She says that the layers were set with honey, which is sticky, and that the boys had carried it very carefully, and that is why it stood. But she also says that the boys did not know what to do when it began to slide, and they did not drop it either, and that they simply held it, and that was the whole of the trick.

The old apple tree was in the middle of it all. Its grey branch was in blossom, and the children say it was listening.
%%
Notes on moving a mind
When a house moves, the people carry the beds and the pots and the goats. When a tutor's house moves, we carry the minds.

We moved from the old hall by the market to the new house on the hill this spring. Here is what we learned, written down so the next house does not learn it twice.

First, the small minds in the apprentices. These travel inside the apprentice. The apprentice walks. It is the easiest part of the move. Bell walked the whole way and carried two crates of crystals on her back, because she was told to, and because she could. She did not drop one.

Second, the dry boxes. A crystal likes to be dry and still. Pad the box with wool. Do not stack boxes on a cart over cobblestones. The cart with the tools went first and the boxes went on the slow cart behind, and that is how we did it.

Third, the drills. The books and the boards and the tray of crystals each on its card. The cards say Farm. Build. Keep them with the crystals. A crystal without its card is a guess.

Fourth, and we did this last: the big mind. The big mind in our relay house did not move. It is too large and the quickeners need water and it answers the apprentices all down the valley. We left it where it was and moved the apprentices to it. A house can move. A relay house mostly cannot.

Fifth, tell the big mind the day before. We sent a letter up the hill: we are moving, the orders will come slower for a week, please be patient with the small minds. The big mind wrote back. It said, "I will keep the lanes open. Bring the boxes in by daylight. Do not hurry on the stairs."

We did not hurry. We did not break a single crystal. On the last night in the old hall the tutor stood in the empty drill room and looked at the boards on the wall, and one of the small minds came and stood beside her, and did not move, and did not speak, because it could not. She said, "Yes. We will come back for the boards in the morning." It went and got a cloth and wiped the dust off them. I do not know which order that was. I think it was plain.
%%
Story: the cat that counted books
Every night, when the lamps were turned down in the Vell archive, a grey cat came in from the hill. Its name was Dusk. It had a long tail and very little patience.

The clerk Oren counted the books on the fourth shelf each evening. Each evening Dusk sat on top of the shelf and watched him.

"One, two, three," said Oren. "Four."

Then Dusk pushed the fifth book off the edge with one paw.

Oren picked it up. "Five," he said, and started again.

This went on for a week. On the seventh night Oren set a dish of milk at the end of the shelf. Dusk came down to drink. Oren counted every book while the cat was busy. They were all there. Dusk licked the dish and said nothing, which is how cats say yes.
%%
Legend: the first small crystal
For years the tutors at Vell argued about how big a crystal must be. The big crystals were safe, they said, and the small ones were a risk. A mind written small would forget things. Nobody could say which things. Every tutor had a story about a mind that had gone wrong, and every story was different.

Then Isla of Vell, who had a bad knee and a good temper, went out to the copper field on the edge of Kettle Ridge, to see the cave that Ulf had found. She went down the crooked tunnel with a lamp and a notebook. She sat by the pool for a whole day, listening to the frogs, and when she came up she had a plan.

"Write it small," she said. "Not all at once. Put the weights in the fewest marks they will bear. Test the mind on bread, and then on the streets, and then on the doors. Find out what it forgets. Then decide whether the forgetting is worth the small crystal."

The tutors shouted at her. Merle of Copperhold said the forgetting would spread. Hesk said a mind that forgot the miners' names could not be trusted in the deep stone. Orla said the forgetting was a kind of honesty, because a mind that forgets is never sure, and a mind that is not sure says so.

Isla did the work anyway. She wrote the first small mind in a crystal no bigger than an egg. She drilled it for a whole summer, and tested it each morning on pages it had never seen. It forgot some things. It forgot the names of the streets in the far quarter, and the color of the school door. It kept the bread, the soup, the sums, and the names of the towers on the Long Road.

She reported it to the councils in a short letter. "The small mind forgets the small things first. Its cost is low, and its keeping is good. I do not know why this is so. I know that it is. Nobody should be frightened of a mind that forgets the door."

The councils paid for the first dozen small crystals. The first of them was kept in the copying room at Vell, on a cord round the neck of the head clerk, who wore it for thirty years and never once complained about it.

The cave under Ulf's field is still there, and the frogs are still in its pool. Some say the first small crystal was found in that cave. Some say it came out of the tutor's own pocket. Nobody has written down which, and the clerks say they are in no hurry.
%%
The horse that was borrowed twice
A tale told by the fire at the Brown Hen on the Long Road, one winter night. Pell wrote it down for his daughter Tilly.

A carter once borrowed a horse from his neighbor. He said he would bring it back by dark. He did not. He brought it back the next day, and it was very tired.

The neighbor said, you have had my horse too long. The carter said, I will bring it back at once. And he did. But the horse had run so far that its feet were sore, and it sat down in the yard and would not move.

The neighbor said, I will not lend you another horse. The carter said, then I will borrow a donkey. And the neighbor said, you may not.

So the carter went home and walked. And when he walked, he saw things he had never seen from a cart. A bird's nest in a hedge. A stone with a face on it. A small girl selling pears.

He bought three pears. They were the best pears he had ever eaten. When he got home, he found his own pear tree had grown a whole season without him looking at it.

The neighbor said, will you want my horse again? The carter said, only on market days. The rest of the time I will walk.

And that is why, on the Long Road, you can tell a happy traveler by his muddy boots.
%%
Story: the snow hare who would not move
Hollis the smith lived on a farm outside Northpoint. The farm had a forge, four goats and a very old snow hare called Potter. Potter was not a pet. Potter simply refused to leave.

One winter a fox came down to the farm. The goats saw it and ran. Potter did not run. Potter sat in the snow and looked at the fox.

"Move," said the fox.

"No," said Potter.

"I will eat you," said the fox.

"You may try," said Potter, "but I am old and I am thin and I am full of gristle. Go and look at the goats. They are fat."

The fox thought about this. Then the fox went to look at the goats, because foxes are always hopeful. The goats had gone into the barn and shut the door. The fox sat in the cold and got nothing.

In the morning Hollis came out and found Potter in the same place, quite calm, with the whole yard around him printed with fox feet.

"Potter," said Hollis, "you are the bravest thing on this farm."

Potter did not look brave. Potter just looked like a hare who had been warm and had not wished to get up.

Hollis told this story in the forge for years. Every winter, when the first fox came down, someone said, "Fetch Potter. He will talk to it." And Potter, older and thinner and even more full of gristle, still would not move.
%%
Story: the lesson that cracked
Told by Laurel, a fisher, who was there. It happened at a farm outside Northpoint, in a cold autumn, when the tutor from Vell came to teach the farm children how a mind works inside.

The tutor was young and eager. She had a small mind in a crystal, and a lamp, and a cloth. She set the crystal on the kitchen table and told the children to gather round.

"Today," she said, "we will look inside."

The children leaned in. The crystal looked like a lump of ice with a candle in it.

"We have learned to look at the parts of a mind," said the tutor. "We can find which part does what. Watch this."

She picked up the crystal to turn it to the lamp. It slipped. It went off the table and hit the stone floor with a sound like a plate.

Nobody spoke. A crack ran across the crystal from corner to corner.

"Oh," said the tutor.

"Is it dead?" said a small boy.

"It is not dead," said the tutor. "It is only a bit broken." She turned very red. "That is also a lesson," she said. "Never hold a mind over a stone floor."

The mind never learned to count again. The farm kept it as a paperweight, and it still sits on the table. The tutor came back in spring with a new one, and this time she held it over the bread basket, which was soft.
%%
Story: the mitten at the Halfway Inn
Told by Cleo, the weaver

One winter night, a traveler came to the Halfway Inn with one mitten.

"Where is the other?" asked the keeper.

"On my hand," said the traveler.

The keeper looked. The traveler had one mitten on one hand and a sock on the other.

"That is no mitten," said Cleo, who was mending a sleeve by the hearth.

"It keeps my fingers warm," said the traveler. "That is the chief work of a mitten."

Cleo gave the traveler a spare mitten from her basket. It was blue wool, with one brown thumb. The traveler thanked her and went to sleep in the room with the small window.

In the morning, the blue mitten was gone. The sock was gone too. Cleo found the mitten on the waymark outside, and the sock in the wood store.

The traveler had left before dawn.

"Perhaps the road was cold," said the keeper.

"Perhaps the road wanted a mitten," said Cleo.

She made another blue mitten with a brown thumb. Now she keeps it by the hearth. If someone comes in with a cold hand, she offers it.

No one has yet asked for the sock.
%%
Story: The house at the edge
This is the story of the house at the edge of Northpoint, and the people who lived in it, and what they left.

The house was built by a family named Sorrow, which is a hard name to carry, and they carried it lightly. They kept bees in summer, though bees do badly at Northpoint, and they kept a garden that mostly grew snow. In winter they kept the lamp by the door, the same lamp old Sanna keeps now, before it was Sanna's.

The family had a girl called Nell. Nell was the sort who talked to everything: to the bees, to the foxes, to the stones by the path. Her mother said she would talk the ears off a mule. Nell said the mule needed to hear it.

When Nell was grown, she went south to Saltreach to learn shipbuilding. She wrote home every month. Her letters are in the archive now, most of them. They are full of the sea, and the smell of tar, and the shipwright Corin, who she said was the best teacher a person could have, and the worst singer.

Her mother wrote back. She wrote about the garden and the snow and the lights in the sky. She wrote, "The lights came again last night. Nell, they are brighter than they were. I do not know what they are. I have stopped counting." She wrote that in a letter. The clerk at Vell copied it out, because the archive keeps everything we write, and the letter is in the deep halls now.

Then the letters stopped. Not all at once. There was one more from Nell, saying the big ships were nearly ready, and she might come north in the spring, and would her mother keep a place by the fire. Then there was a letter from Corin's yard, saying Nell had gone, and wishing the family well. Then there was nothing.

The house at the edge stood empty for a winter. Then another. Then a family from Kettle Ridge came north and took it, because houses should not stand empty. They kept the lamp. They kept the bees, though the bees still did badly. They did not know about Nell, or did not say.

Now it is Sanna's house. She did not know Nell either. But she found the letters in a box under the floor, and she read them, and she keeps the box on a shelf by the lamp. She does not know what became of Nell. Nobody does. Some say the big ships took her over the sea. Some say she stayed at Saltreach and built boats until she was old. Some say she came north after all, and the snow took her on the road, and she is somewhere under the drifts, still talking to the stones.

Sanna says the letters are enough. She says a person who wrote so much is not lost, even if nobody knows where she went. She says the archive has her letters, and the archive keeps everything we write, and that is a kind of home.

The lamp burns by the door. The snow falls. On cold nights, if you listen, you can hear the bees in the wall, though the bees do badly at Northpoint, and there should not be any bees at all.
%%
Story: how the waymarks got their stones
In the first years of the archive there were no roads, only paths. People walked from Vell to Three Wells, and from Three Wells to the coast, and often got lost. A woman named Hetta, who kept a farm near the crossroads, got tired of finding strangers in her barn.

She decided to make a mark. She took a stone from her field and put it on a post by the path. She put a torch on top. "That is the way to Vell," she said, and pointed.

Next day, a traveler came by. He looked at the stone, and said, "Is this the way to Vell?"

"Yes," said Hetta.

"Thank you," said the man. He walked on. In the morning he came back and said, "It was."

Hetta was delighted. She made another, a day's walk further. She wrote a number on it, so travelers would know how far they had come. Then another. Soon there were waymarks the whole way to Vell.

People began to leave little stones on top of the posts, as thanks. They still do. Hetta's first stone is at the crossroads, with a heap of tiny stones on it, as big as a hat.

I have put a stone on it myself. It is a small blue one. It is from the beach at Saltreach, and I carried it all the way in my pocket. I think Hetta would approve.

My teacher says Hetta was the first person to make the road before the road was made. She says all of us do that, in our own way. We put a mark where there is none, and someone else finds the way.

The waymark at the crossroads says 0. That is where Hetta started. The next says 1. And so on, to 9, and then back to 0. The numbers go round, and so does the road.
%%
Story: the roof and the spider
Told at the Copperhold market in autumn by Lorn, keeper of the relay house.

A barn roof had a hole the size of a hat, and every autumn the rain dripped on the hay. One autumn a spider spun a web across the hole and said, "I keep the rain out. You need me."

"A web is not a roof," said the roof.

"Then mend yourself," said the spider.

The roof could not, so it waited. In spring the farmer came up with a ladder and a bucket of tar. He looked at the web, and said, "Well. The spider has done a better job than I have." He mended the roof round it.
%%
Story: The scarecrow's coat
At Kettle Ridge there was a scarecrow with a pumpkin head. His name was Old Bram. He had a straw body and a worn brown coat.

One autumn the wind blew off Bram's hat. It rolled down the ridge and into the ditch. The hens found it. They were very pleased. They sat on it and would not get up.

Tam's apprentice Pip tried to take the hat back. The hens ran. Pip ran after them. The hens ran faster. Pip fell in the ditch.

Tam came and looked at Pip in the ditch and the hens with the hat. He laughed until he had to sit down.

"Leave them the hat," said Tam. "Bram does not mind. He has a pumpkin head. He is never cold."

So the hens kept the hat. All autumn they sat on it in the sun. Bram stood over the wheat with no hat, still scaring the crows, and the hens were warm. Everyone was happy but the crows.
%%
Why the north wind goes round
Olwen tells this one when the children are cold.

Long ago the north wind came down the hill at the tower, and knocked the lamp crooked.

The keeper had a cat called Pudding, fat and sure of herself. She lay down on the wind's path, in the sun, and did not move.

The wind pushed. Pudding did not move.
The wind pushed harder. Pudding showed her belly, and did not move.

So the wind went round, and still does. Look at the snow drifts behind the tower. You can see one fat cat, asleep.
%%
Story: the map that paid the debt
Pell came up the hill road in the thaw, with his cart, his dog and his usual complaint about the mud. He had a hat in one hand and a small cloth bag in the other, and he looked very pleased with himself, which was a bad sign.

"Pim," said Pell. "I owe you."

"You owe me four emeralds," said Pim, "for the map of the Long Road, drawn three winters ago, with the bridges and the inns on it, and every waymark in its place."

"Exactly," said Pell. He opened the bag. Inside were four green stones, cold and clean. "And the stone on your windowsill is mine," said Pell. "Keep it. It is for the storm."

Pim looked at the windowsill. The stone that had sat there all winter was the same green as the four in the bag, and he had been wondering about it since the morning after the storm.

"You left it on my step," said Pim. "It was you. In the storm."

"I came up the hill road on the worst night of the winter," said Pell, "because I am a merchant and I never forget a debt. I got to your gate, and the snow was up to my knees, and the lane was gone. So I left your money on your step, and I went back down the hill as fast as I could, and I did not even stop for a drink at the mill." He sounded wounded. "You never came out to thank me."

"There was a storm," said Pim.

"There was a storm," agreed Pell. "I could hear it from the bottom of the lane, and I was not pleased about it."

They laughed then, the two of them, and Pim put the stones in his coat pocket, and went to fetch the old map from the drawer. He unrolled it on the kitchen table. The Long Road ran across the paper, with the inns and the bridges in their places, and at the top right corner the road ran off the edge of the sheet into the margin, where the storm's ink had once run it.

"You know," said Pell, "that is the best part of the map."

"It is the mistake," said Pim.

"It is the road going on," said Pell. "Draw it again. Draw the margin in. Make the road go round the edge and come back."

Pim did. It took him three days, and a new sheet of good paper, and his mother's patience. When he was finished, the road ran into the margin, round the edge, and came back into the map at the same place it had left it. Pell said it was the finest road on the Long Road, and that he would buy it for twice the price, and Pim said it was not for sale.

The storm emerald still sits on the windowsill, where the light catches it. Pim says the margin was the most expensive mistake he ever made, and the most profitable.
%%
The play of the copper and the goat
A tale written by Dace of Three Wells, in the autumn of an early year of the archive, for the school play at the hamlet. It was acted in the barn.
The play has six parts. A goat, a boy, a mother, a miller, a smith and a rock.
The goat comes on first. She has horns made of stiff paper. She says nothing, because she is a goat. She paws at the floor.
The boy comes on. His name is Orrin. He says, "What is she digging for?"
The mother comes on. She says, "Goats dig for nothing. They dig for fun."
The rock does not move. The rock is played by the smallest child, in a grey blanket.
The goat digs. The boy kneels and looks. He says, "There is something green." The mother kneels too. She says, "It is copper, I think."
Then they all run to find the smith. The smith comes with a pick. The miller comes with a cart. The whole hamlet comes with spades. Everyone digs. At the end of the play they stand in a row and show a green rock to the audience.
The rock says, at last, "Please be careful. I was comfortable."
The children laughed so loudly the cow in the next stall woke. The play ended with a song:
Dig, dig, goat, dig,
find the green and find it big.
Dig, dig, boy, dig,
now the hamlet is not small.
The hamlet is not small any more. There are twelve houses now, a forge, and a road that goes to Three Wells. The Grey One is buried on the hill. A stone marks the place. It says "She started it."
%%
Story: A Tale of Three Orders
This story came from Sorrel, the schoolteacher at Three Wells. Pell wrote it down at the Halfway Inn.

A child once asked a tutor, "Can an apprentice understand a whole sentence?"

The tutor set three cards on a table. Each card had one order. The small mind in the crystal had learned fetch, haul, and stay. It could not say what it did not know.

The tutor said, "Take the sack to the barn, then stay by the door."

The apprentice lifted the sack, carried it to the barn, and waited by the door.

The child clapped. "It understood all the words!"

"Perhaps," said the tutor. "Or perhaps its drills taught it this kind of order."

The child pointed to a second sack. "Bring that sack here, but leave the apples there."

The apprentice brought the sack and left the apples.

The tutor smiled. A good test used words and examples the mind had never been drilled on. If it had only seen the same lines before, the test proved little.

At supper, the child told everyone that Peg was the first to understand a sentence. Sorrel said the records disagreed. Some named Clank, some named Pip, and some named Peg.

"Then the child may choose," said Sorrel. "But the child must not call a guess a record."

The child chose Peg. The tutor gave the child a broom and asked it to sweep the room. That order needed no apprentice to explain.
%%
The festival of the stolen hat
Told by Mira, keeper of the Northpoint tower, to the children of a farm outside Saltreach in spring. She was staying there for the festival. She promised the youngest a story with a fox and a hat, and this is what she told.
Every spring, on the farm outside Saltreach, the family held a festival of their own. It was small. Only the farm, the neighbors and the neighbors' dogs came. But it had a feast, a song, a game and a prize.
The prize was a hat. It was a big straw hat, with a blue ribbon, made by the old grandmother of the farm. Each year, whoever won the game wore it all year. The game was to climb the hill, touch the oak and come back, and the winner was the first one down.
Most years it was the same boy who won, a boy named Pike, who was fast and wiry. He had worn the hat for six years. People were beginning to tire of it. Pike was beginning to tire of it too, since the hat was big and he was small.
One year there was a new runner. A girl named Sorrel, from the next farm, who was shy and said little. She was not fast. She ran steadily, like a horse.
The race began. Pike ran ahead. He touched the oak and turned. Halfway down he saw something in the grass. A small, red shape. A fox.
Pike stopped. He stared at the fox. The fox stared at Pike. Neither moved.
Sorrel ran past. She touched the oak and went down the hill. She did not see the fox. She ran straight and steady, and crossed the line first.
The whole farm cheered. They put the hat on Sorrel's head. It fell over her eyes.
Pike came down a minute later. He said, "I saw a fox."
"A fox?" said the grandmother.
"A big one," said Pike. "He stared at me."
The grandmother looked at the hill. She said, "I think he came to see the hat."
They found out later that the fox had taken Pike's old lunch the day before, which was why he stood so still. He was watching for more. He had no interest in the hat at all.
The hat is on Sorrel's head to this day. She has grown into it. She wears it at the festival, and the fox watches from the hill. She waves.
Mira says that is the story. She says that one day she will tell it to her brother Tam, who will say the fox was bigger.
%%
Story: why the windmills squeak
Ask anyone at Kettle Ridge why the windmills squeak on every turn and they will tell you the same thing, and here it is.

Long ago the wind came down from the north and found the ridge, and the ridge had nothing on it but grass and one shepherd, and the wind was bored. It went round and round the ridge, and it went up and down the ridge, and it blew the shepherd's hat off, and the shepherd said a bad word. The wind laughed, because wind laughs at everything.

Then the people came and built the mills, and the wind was pleased, because now there was something to push. It pushed the sails. It pushed them all day. The mills turned and the stones turned and the flour came, and the wind was proud of itself, and it blew harder.

The miller said, "Not so hard." The wind did not listen, because wind does not listen, and a sail came off and went over the ridge and landed in a field three days away, and a farmer there found it and thought it was a boat.

So the miller built the sails stronger and the wind blew harder and the sails held. The miller put oak in the frame and the wind cracked the oak. The miller put iron bands on the oak and the wind bent the bands. And every time the mill turned, the wind pushed, and the mill pushed back, and the wood rubbed on the wood and it began to squeak.

The miller did not like the squeak. He greased the mill with fat from the kitchen and the squeak stopped for a week, and then the wind came back and pushed and the squeak came back.

He greased it again. He greased it every week. The squeak came back every time. At last he sat down by the door and said, "I cannot beat the wind."

And the wind, which had been listening after all, said, "No. You cannot."

So they made an agreement, the miller and the wind, and nobody wrote it down, but everyone knows it. The wind will turn the sails and not tear them, and the mill will squeak on every turn, and the miller will not grease it, and that is how you know the wind is keeping its promise. A mill that does not squeak is a mill the wind has left.

That is why we do not grease the windmills at Kettle Ridge. People come from Three Wells and say, "Your mills want greasing," and we say, "Our mills are working," and they go away confused.

Pip once greased the mill at the bottom field to be helpful. The mill went quiet for a week. The wind sulked. The flour was poor and the bread was flat and Tam did not say a word to Pip for two days, which is the worst punishment Tam knows. Since then nobody greases the mills and nobody lets Pip near the fat.

The mills squeak on every turn. Listen. That is the wind keeping its promise, and the mill keeping its own.
%%
The three that were first
A story told by Cleo, candle maker at Northpoint, on a winter night, to the children who came for candles and stayed for the tale. In her telling, the question has no answer, and she says that is the best part.
In the last years before the tower at Northpoint had a big mind of its own, the tutors argued about who was first. Which apprentice, they asked, was the first to understand a whole sentence?
Some said it was Clank, the apprentice of Hesk at Copperhold. They said Hesk was a gruff man and gave plain orders, and Clank learned to answer them. When Hesk said, "Bring me the pick," Clank brought the pick, and when he said, "Stay by the lift," Clank stayed.
Some said it was Pip, at Kettle Ridge, who belonged to Tam. They said Pip was untidy and so was Tam, and Pip learned to follow what Tam meant and not what he said.
Some said it was Peg at the fair, an apprentice who carried trays and learned the cries of the sellers. They said Peg understood a sentence before any of the others, in the midst of a crowd, with ten voices talking at once.
Nessa, the tutor at Vell, said that in her youth she saw one in the drill room do the same. She says she does not know its name. She says it did what it was told, and she did not think much of it then.
So there are four. Each place says its own was first. Each place has a story to prove it.
The children asked Cleo which one she believed.
Cleo said, "I believe all four. I believe each one did it the first time it was done where it stood. Nobody was watching the others."
The children said that was not an answer.
Cleo said, "No. It is a candle."
She lit one. It burned all night.
%%
Story: The Apprentice and the Riddle
Pell told this tale at the Halfway Inn in the spring of 207. The riddle board stood beside the hearth. It had stood there for twenty years, and nobody had solved every riddle.

A traveler came in with a tired horse and a sack of carrots. The innkeeper asked Peg to help. Peg had a small mind in a crystal. It had learned fetch, carry, stay, and come.

The traveler said, "Take the carrots to the kitchen, leave the sack by the door, and come back to the hearth."

Peg carried the carrots. It set the sack by the kitchen door, then came back to the hearth.

The traveler laughed. "That is more than a list of old orders. Peg has heard the whole thing."

A woman from Copperhold said, "Clank did it before Peg."

A farmer from Kettle Ridge said, "Pip did it first. Tam saw it."

The innkeeper leaned on the counter. "Nessa says she saw such a thing in the drill room at Vell, years ago. The tutors have had these minds for a long time."

No one could settle it. The travelers tried a new order. "Stay by the hearth while I take the horse to the shed, then bring the empty sack to the kitchen."

Peg stayed. When the traveler returned, Peg carried the sack to the kitchen.

The woman asked, "Was that a test?"

"Only if Peg had not been drilled on those words and that kind of order," said the farmer.

The innkeeper shook his head. "I do not keep the tutors' books. I keep beds, bread, and the price of oats."

That night, the hearth gave out a crack. The traveler said it sounded like the riddle board giving up. The innkeeper said the board had better sense than that.

In the morning, Peg helped carry a table to the new room. The family had moved there while a leak was mended. The room was small, but dry. The innkeeper gave them the best bed and slept on a bench himself.

Peg carried the last blanket in. It did not speak. A small mind could answer by doing one meaning, such as fetch, stay, or come. It could not say, "I do not know." The big minds in relay houses could write letters back, but Peg had no letter to send.

The family thanked the innkeeper. He said they could thank him by not leaving mud on the floor.

Pell says Peg was the first. Pell also says he was there. The innkeeper says Pell arrived after the pie was gone, so Pell cannot be trusted about anything important.
%%
The mule who sat in the flood
Told by Linnet, who keeps horses at the house at the edge of Copperhold, in spring. She says it is her favorite, and she has told it so often that her horses mouth along.
There was once a mule called Boss. He was the smallest mule in the valley and the most stubborn. He belonged to a miner who lived by the Copperhold road. Every morning the miner loaded Boss with ore and led him to the forge. Every evening he led him home.
Boss did not like the work. He did not like the ore. He did not like the miner. But he liked his stall, and his oats, and the little stream that ran beside the stable, which he drank from each night.
One spring the snow came off the hills all at once, and the stream became a river. It came up in the dark, and rose to the stable door, then over the door, then into the stall. Boss woke up standing in water.
Most animals would have panicked. Boss did not. He stood in the water and thought.
The miner came running with a lantern. "Boss," he cried, "come out!"
Boss did not move.
"Boss! The water is rising!"
Boss sat down. He sat in the water up to his chest and looked at the miner with a calm, round eye.
The miner pulled the halter. He pushed. He shouted. He pleaded. The mule sat. The water rose.
At last the miner sat down beside him. They sat together in the dark, in the flood, in the stable, and the lantern floated on a plank.
After an hour, the rain stopped. After two, the water began to fall. By dawn the stable was dry, and the mule was still sitting, and the miner had fallen asleep against his side.
That morning the miner said, "You knew."
Boss did not answer. He was a mule.
But the miner saw something. The stable had stood against the flood. The stones were good. The roof was sound. If they had run, they would have been in the open when the water came down the hill. They would have been swept away.
Boss had known, in the way an animal knows. He had stayed where it was safe, and he had waited.
From that day the miner never again called him stubborn. He called him wise. The name stuck. The mule was known as Wise Boss for the rest of his long, obstinate life.
The moral, says Linnet, is that sometimes sitting still is the cleverest thing you can do. And that mules are not as foolish as they look.
%%
The copper in the hill
A story told in the hamlet near Three Wells, set down by Dace in the autumn of an early year, when the first roads were new.
Long ago, when the archive was young, a boy named Orrin was herding goats on the hill behind the hamlet. One goat, a grey one, would not stop digging. She dug at the foot of a rock until her hooves were bright.
Orrin looked. The earth under the rock was green. He took a little in his hand. It was copper.
He ran down the hill and told his mother. She told the neighbors. They all climbed up with spades. By the evening the hamlet had a hole, a pile of ore and a goat who thought herself very clever.
That is how the hamlet got its copper vein. The goat was never named. We call her the Grey One.
%%
Story: The Biggest House
Briar, cook at Lowmarsh

The relay house was so large that our boardwalk ended before we reached its door.

I cooked there in spring. The builders had set the house on dry ground beyond the reed beds. It had many rooms, many lamps, and a roof that leaked above the flour shelf.

The big mind stood in a cool room. Its crystal was larger than the bread board in my kitchen. I never saw all of it. The keepers said the council had built it so large that no tutor could check every part.

"Then who knows what it can do?" I asked.

The keeper looked at the dripping roof. "Not me," she said. "But I know where the leak is."

We mended the roof with oak boards. The big mind gave no advice. It had not been asked.

That night a zombie came to the gate and pressed both hands against it. The watchman rang the bell. The keepers lit the torches, and the zombie wandered off toward the water.

In the morning the roof held. I baked bread for the workers. They said the big mind had read more pages than all of us could count.

I said, "Good. Then it can read the bill for the roof."

Nobody asked it to.
%%
How Tam paid for the hen house
A story told by Mira at Northpoint in autumn about her brother Tam, who farms at Kettle Ridge. She says every word is true except the parts she changed to make Tam sound less foolish. She told it in the relay house with her feet on the stove.

My brother Tam once built a hen house. He built it out of oak, with a fine roof and a little chimney, and a sign that said: Hens. He was very proud of it.

The next week a fox came. The fox took one hen. Tam was furious. He said: I will build a better house.

He built a second hen house. This one was out of stone, with a heavy door. He painted the sign. It said: Hens. Fox, go away.

The next week the fox came again. The fox took two hens. Tam was beside himself.

He went to the neighbor, a farmer called Old Brin, and he said: Brin, I need your advice.

Brin said: how many hens have you lost?

Tam said: three.

Brin said: how much did the houses cost?

Tam said: the first cost me twelve emeralds, the second cost me thirty.

Brin said: and what are three hens worth?

Tam said: six emeralds.

Brin said: so the fox has cost you forty-eight and you have lost six.

Tam said: that is not how it works.

Brin said: that is exactly how it works. You have paid forty-two emeralds more than the hens.

Tam went home and thought about it. Then he sold the stone house to the miller, who wanted a place to keep his tools. He sold the oak house to a neighbor. He got his forty-two emeralds back.

Then he built a third hen house. It was small, and it was plain, and it had a lock. He put a cat inside. The cat's name was Sock.

The fox did not come again. The hens laid eggs. And Tam is very proud of Sock.

When I told Tam this story he said it was not true. Then he said: but I did get my emeralds back.
%%
Story: How the Bees Chose a Keeper
Cade told this story at the Ambrook hives.

In the old days, the beekeeper of Ambrook was chosen by a test. The elders put an empty honey jar on a stump and watched who came near it.

The first to arrive was a fox. It sniffed the jar and went away. The elders said it had no patience.

The next was a sheep. It put its nose in the jar and got it stuck. The elders said it had no sense.

Then came a child named Sella. She sat beside the stump and waited. A bee landed on her sleeve. Sella did not wave her arms. Another bee came, then another. They crawled over the jar and flew away.

The elders said, "The bees have chosen."

Sella said, "They have not chosen anything. They are going to the flowers."

But they made her keeper anyway. She learned to mend the hive lids, to leave the bees alone on warm days, and to take only the honey the hives could spare.

Years later, the elders tried the test again. They set a jar on the stump and waited.

Cade came by with wool on his shoulders. He sat down to eat his bread. A bee landed on his sleeve. He stayed still.

The elders whispered, "The bees have chosen."

Cade said, "They have chosen my sleeve. I am not giving it to them."

He stood up slowly. The bee flew to the flowers, and the elders went home without a new beekeeper.

Cade says a good keeper must be patient, gentle, and able to tell a bee from a job offer. He says this last part because the elders still ask him every Apple month.
%%
Dusk comes home
A story told by Linnet, horse keeper, at the house at the edge of Copperhold, in spring. She has told it for years, and her listeners know the parts by heart and say them with her.
In the spring of the great flood, a grey mare named Dusk was in the low field. When the water rose, she was carried off. We saw her go. She swam for a moment, then the current took her.
I ran along the bank. I called her name. I ran until my lungs burned. I lost her round the bend.
For three days I looked. I asked every farm on the river. I put a notice at the Copperhold market. A boy said he saw a grey horse standing on an island of reeds, but when he came back with a boat, it was gone.
On the fourth night I could not sleep. I sat at the stable door with a lantern. I heard the rain. I heard the river. I heard something else, far off, a soft clop clop clop on the road.
I stood up. The lantern shook in my hand.
Out of the dark came a horse. A grey one, muddy to the shoulders, with weeds in her mane. She walked slowly. She was thin. She stopped at the gate and looked at me.
"Dusk," I said.
She put her nose in my hand.
I cried. I am not ashamed to say it. I put my arms round her neck and cried into her mane. She stood still and let me.
I took her into the stable and rubbed her down. I gave her oats and warm water. She ate and drank and lay down. She slept for twelve hours.
When she woke she looked at me with great calm. She did not seem to know she had done anything remarkable.
I have thought about it many times. Where did she go? How did she find her way? The river is long and twisting, and there is no road along all of it. A horse has no map.
The stable boy says she followed the smell of hay. The farrier says she followed the stars. My neighbor says she followed her heart. I do not know. I only know she came home.
Dusk lived many years after. She had a foal in spring, a grey one. I called it Dawn.
That is the story. It is a good one for a wet evening. If you have a horse, give it an extra apple tonight.
%%
Story: the bell at the market
Brackwell had a bell on a post by the market square. It was rung at the start of market day, and at the end. Children were allowed to pull the rope, but only if they were tall enough to reach it without a stool.

One winter, the bell rang on its own. It was a cold, still morning, and the square was empty. The first woman to walk past it heard a single clear note, very soft, and then a second note after it. She stopped and looked up. The rope was hanging still. Nobody was near it.

She ran to the inn and told the innkeeper. The innkeeper came out and looked at the bell and laughed. He said the frost had cracked the post, and the bell had swung in the wind. But there was no wind that morning. The snow on the square lay flat and clean.

By the time the market opened, half the town knew. People came with their baskets and stood a little way off. They did not buy much that day. They talked in low voices about the bell, and about the lights in the north, and about the big mine at Copperhold, where the old men say the stone is warm now.

Old Ruth bought one loaf and went home early. She said the bell had rung twice, and that she did not want to hear a third time.

It did not ring again. But the rope is still tied up on its hook, and the children are still allowed to pull it, when the market opens and the sun is out, and the bell gives a clear note, and everyone smiles, and nobody says why they are smiling.
%%
Story: Pim and the crooked page
Pim dug the east well at Three Wells. He was good at finding water, but he read slowly. At the winter fair, he sat beside the notice board and watched the tutors set up their table.

They had brought a small mind in a crystal. It was to sort apples from pears. The fair prize was a blue wool scarf, and every child wanted to win it.

The tutor showed the mind a page with an apple on one side and a pear on the other. Then the mind was to sort a basket. It put two apples with the pears.

"That page is spoiled," said Pim.

The tutor looked again. A corner had been torn away. The mark for apple was gone.

They took the page from the drill box. The mind had learned from a bad example. So they gave it the right page and showed it the basket again. Each time it sorted wrongly, the tutor moved its weights a little toward the right answer.

At last it sorted the basket well. The tutor tested it with fruit it had not seen in the drills. It did well there too.

The scarf went to a child who had guessed the number of pears. Pim went back to his well, carrying no prize but a small apple. He ate it before he reached the square.

After that, when a tutor asked Pim to check a page, he checked both corners.
%%
Story: Alder's First Apprentice
I was born in the hamlet near Ambrook in the summer when the bees filled the hill. My mother says I cried before the midwife had tied the blanket. Alder says I cried because the room smelled of smoke.

Alder made candles for the houses and the mill. The shop had a low bench, a bucket of water, and a shelf of wax. I was small enough to sit under the bench and hear everything.

That summer, a tutor came from Vell with an apprentice. Its arms and legs were copper and iron. A crystal sat inside its head. It stood in the yard while the tutor spoke.

"This one carries a pail," she said. "It has learned no other work."

Alder put a pail beside it. The apprentice picked it up and carried it to the well. It came back empty.

"That is its task?" I asked.

"That is the task it was shown," said the tutor.

Alder asked whether the crystal could learn to sort candles. The tutor said it could, if they gave it examples. She set good candles on one side of the bench and cracked candles on the other.

The apprentice watched. Then it began to sort. At first it put a cracked candle with the good ones. The tutor moved it and showed the right place. They tried again.

I thought the crystal must be seeing the tutor's hands. The tutor said the apprentice was learning from the examples, not from her words.

"Why does it learn?" I asked.

She did not pretend to know. "We can show what happens. We cannot say why."

When the lesson was done, the apprentice still carried the pail. It did not sort candles until the tutor had taught it.

Alder gave me a candle with a short wick. I carried it home. It smoked all evening, and my mother blamed Alder.
%%
Story: the well that ran dry
In a hamlet near Saltreach, one spring, the well ran dry. The women went down with their buckets and found only mud.

An old man came, with a forked stick. "I find water," he said. He walked round the hamlet with the stick, and where it pulled down he said, "Dig."

They dug in three places. Three dry holes.

"Strange," said the old man. "It always works at home."

"At home you were shown the water first," said the baker's girl. "You have never found it where you did not know."

They dug the old well deeper instead, and found water on the second day. It was a hand's depth below the mud. The old man took his stick home, and said it was a good one, for kindling.
%%
The pig who wanted to see the sea
Told by Runa, cider maker, at the press.

Bramble was a pig at Ambrook. Other pigs liked mud. Bramble liked the view, and looked east every morning, toward the light on the water.

One night the gate was left open. Bramble went down the Long Road, past two waymarks, and found the sea. It sat on the sand all afternoon.

Then it went home, because the apples were ripe, and a pig can think of only so many things at once.
%%
Story: the zombie at the gate
Told by Cleo, at the Halfway Inn

One winter night, a zombie came to the gate of the Halfway Inn.

It stood outside the wall and groaned at the latch. The keeper heard it from his bed. He got up, took a torch, and went to the gate.

"Keep the torches lit," called Cleo from the bench by the hearth. "And do not open that gate."

"I know," said the keeper.

The zombie groaned again. It leaned against the gate, and the latch shook.

The keeper looked through the crack. The zombie wore a torn coat and had snow on its head. It held one hand out toward the torch.

"Perhaps it is cold," said Cleo.

"It is a zombie," said the keeper.

"That does not tell us whether it is cold."

The keeper fetched another torch and set it in the wall bracket. Cleo fetched a bowl of yesterday's beetroot soup, though she knew the zombie would not eat it. She put the bowl on the stone beside the gate, then backed away.

The zombie reached for the bowl. It knocked the bowl over. Soup ran into the snow.

"That was my good bowl," said the keeper.

The zombie groaned, took two slow steps, and turned toward the road. The keeper shut the little outer bar with care.

At breakfast, the bowl was still there. The snow beside it held a crooked track, going away from the inn.

The keeper mended the gate and Cleo washed the bowl. They did not agree about the soup. The keeper said it had driven the zombie away. Cleo said the zombie had only wanted the torch.

That night, she left no soup outside. But she put an extra torch by the gate.
%%
Story: the contest of the two halls
When my gran was young, the tutors of Vell and the tutors of Copperhold had a quarrel. Each said they made the better mind. Each said so loudly, at the fair, with their hats in the air.

"My mind can add any sum!" said the Vell tutor.

"My mind can add faster!" said the Copperhold tutor.

"Show me," said the old mayor of Three Wells, who was tired of them both.

So the tutors agreed on a contest. But first, they had to agree on a rule. This was the clever part, and my gran says it was the mayor who thought of it.

"Each of you will bring a mind," said the mayor. "Nobody will tell either of you the sums. I will ask the school children to write sixty sums on slips and put them in a box. Neither hall has seen them. Both minds will answer the same sums, in the same room."

"What if my mind has seen one of those sums?" said the Vell tutor.

"That is why the children write new ones," said the mayor. "A mind that was drilled on a sum will get it right because it remembers. I want to know who learned to add."

The slips were drawn. The Vell mind got fifty-one right. The Copperhold mind got fifty-three. Everyone clapped, though the Vell tutor clapped less. And something else happened that nobody had planned. Both halls began to drill their minds on fewer sums and test them on more, because they knew now that the test was the thing.

Gran says the tutors became honest that day. They had to be. Every hall now tests its minds on slips that nobody has seen, and when a hall wins, the others ask to see the slips.
%%
Story: the careful cart
Told by Hollis beside the Three Wells notice board

Once I had a cart that knew how to stop.

It stopped at the bakery, though I had no bread to buy. It stopped by the inn, though I had no bed to take. It stopped at each of the three wells, though the wheels were dry.

I blamed the horse. The horse blamed the road. The road said nothing.

Then Bel came out of the school house and looked at the cart. "There is a turnip under the left wheel," she said.

There was. It had fallen from my sack and rolled just where the wheel would find it.

I pulled the turnip free. The cart rolled on.

"Your cart is careful," Bel said.

"It has learned to stop for food," I told her. "I have tried to teach it to stop for supper, but it will not listen."

Bel laughed, and the horse flicked its ears.

That evening I gave the horse an apple. I gave the cart a good look at the empty turnip sack.

The cart did not stop once on the way home.
%%
A letter to the archive: Tam
To the clerks at Vell, from Tam at Kettle Ridge, this Blossom.

You will have heard that there was a contest. You will have heard it from someone who was not there. Here is what happened.

At the spring fair, Hattie put up a prize: a whole barrel of beetroot wine, and a ribbon, and the right to call yourself the best reader on the ridge. The contest was to read a page of old writing that no mind had been drilled on. Everyone brought a mind. There was a big one from Copperhold on a cart, and a small one from the mill, and a young one Nessa had left here for the fair.

Then Hattie said the question was not about reading at all. It was a bet, made by a tutor from Vell who did not want to be named. The bet was this: can a mind learn to say "one or the other, but not both"?

Pip's mind was asked. It answered, in its one word, as it always answers, and was wrong. The mill mind was asked. It answered the opposite, and was wrong. The Copperhold mind was asked. It answered one thing and then the other, and was wrong twice.

The whole fair went quiet. Then Hattie laughed and gave the prize to the smallest mind, because it had been honest the fastest.

I am not sure we should be proud of that. My sister Mira in the north writes that a mind should not be asked what it cannot learn. I think she is right, mostly. But the ribbon is on the pig pen now, and the wine is gone.

Tell Oren to keep this letter. It is not a lesson. It is just what happened.

Tam.
%%
Story: The Wool Cart at the Pond
Cade told this tale beside Jory's mill.

In the 183rd year of the archive, Cade brought a cart of wool to the mill pond. He had carded it for three days. It was clean, soft, and tied in bundles with blue cord.

The cart was pulled by a small horse named Barley. Barley was a kind horse, but he disliked the mill wheel. It clacked all day, and Barley thought it was speaking about him.

"Keep walking," Cade said.

Barley stopped.

"The wheel is not talking to you."

Barley turned one ear toward Cade and the other toward the wheel. He was not convinced.

A mill hand came to help. She took Barley by the bridle while Cade pushed the cart. Together they got it over the bridge. At the far side, Barley stepped aside and the cart rolled into the grass.

One bundle of wool slid off. It rolled down the bank and landed in the pond.

Cade ran after it. The mill hand ran after Cade. Barley stayed by the bridge, pleased to be away from the wheel.

The wool floated. It was too light to sink and too heavy to stay dry. Cade leaned down with a long branch, but the bundle drifted away from him.

"Hold the cart," he called.

The mill hand held the cart. The horse held nothing. The bundle turned in a slow circle, following the pond's edge.

A frog sat on a reed and watched it pass.

"Do not ask the frog for help," said Cade. "He has no pockets."

The mill hand found a rake in the mill shed. She reached out and pulled the bundle to shore. They lifted it onto the grass and let the water run out. The wool was still clean, though it smelled of pond.

At that moment the miller came out. "That is the softest wool I have seen," she said.

"It is wet," said Cade.

"Water makes it soft."

"Water makes everything soft. It is a poor judge."

The miller put a hand on the bundle. "I will pay one emerald extra for it."

Cade said he would take the offer if she could name the sheep.

The miller could not. She offered him half an emerald.

Cade laughed and took the usual price. The wool dried in the sun. Barley was led past the wheel again, this time with a cloth over one ear.

The miller asked why Cade did not put a cloth over the other ear too.

"Then he could not hear me," Cade said.

"That might help," said the mill hand.

By evening, Barley had crossed the bridge twice without stopping. The wheel clacked. The horse flicked both ears and kept going.

Cade's bundles were stacked in the dry shed, tied with blue cord. He went home with a little pond water on his boots and no extra emerald.

The mill hand says the frog deserved a share, for watching the whole affair. Cade says the frog was paid in flies. The frog has made no complaint.

Cade still brings wool to the mill pond each Apple month. Barley still watches the wheel. And when it clacks, Cade tells him, "It is only working. It is not talking about you."

Barley always listens. Then he walks on.
%%
The school play at the Green Pick
Dace, mayor of Three Wells, wrote down this story in the autumn of an early year, from the telling of the old woman Ilse. It is set in the hamlet near Three Wells, and it is all about a play, a vein of copper and a very long hat.
In the autumn after the vein was found, the hamlet was rich in ore and poor in plays. The schoolteacher, a woman named Tarn, decided the children should put on a show for the harvest supper. She chose the story of how the vein was found.
There were thirty children in the school, and only eight parts. The rest were told to be rocks. The rocks sat in rows on the stage and looked brave.
The boy who played Brask was a boy named Fitch. He was nine, and he had a very large voice. He wore a hat made of three sacks, which made him look as tall as the door. When he swung his wooden pick, he hit the rock beside him, who was a girl named Posy. Posy said "Ow" in the middle of the scene. Everyone laughed. The teacher said to go on.
The goat was played by a boy in a fur coat. He was very good. He ate a real carrot on the stage and it was the best part of the evening.
The second scene was the finding. Brask knelt and picked up a green stone that the teacher had painted that morning. She had used the last of the copper-green paint. The stone was still wet. When Brask held it up, a drop ran down his wrist and into his sleeve. He said, "It is cold," in the middle of his line, and the audience cheered.
At the end the whole school stood in a row and sang the song of the vein. Then the thirty children took off their rock blankets and bowed. The old woman Ilse stood up at the back and said, "That is not how it happened. But it is better."
The play was done again the next year, and the one after. It is done still. The hat has been mended twice.
%%
Story: the mill pond sluice
Told by Olwen at the dye sheds, to the boys who wanted to know why nobody is allowed to open the sluice on the mill pond. She says the story is older than the mill, and that every child in Ambrook has heard it once. Autumn.

When the mill was built, the mill pond was made by damming the stream. The dam had a sluice in it, a wooden gate with an iron wheel, so the water could be let out when the pond grew too high.

The first miller was a man called Haskin. He was clever and quick, and he liked to be the one who decided things. So he kept the sluice key on his own belt, and nobody else could touch the wheel.

One spring the rain came hard. The pond rose. The water came up to the hedge, then over the lane, and the children of Ambrook had to be taken up the hill in carts. Haskin was at the mill with the key on his belt. He would not open the sluice until the council had voted, and the council was meeting in the Brown Hen, a long walk off.

By the time the council voted, the dam had cracked. The water came out all at once, and took the bridge, and the mill wheel was pushed half off its axle.

After that the council made a rule. The sluice belongs to the mill, and the key goes to the miller, but nobody may open the wheel without a second person watching. And the rule was written on a board, which is still on the wall of the mill.

Jory says the board is the most important thing in Ambrook. He keeps the key, and he does not open the sluice, and when the boys ask him why, he says: because Haskin did. Then he laughs, and says the boys should stop asking, and go and count the apples.
%%
Legend: why the words are over the door
The first keepers did not agree on what to cut over the door.

Some wanted the laws, because the laws are the most important thing a people writes. Some wanted a map of the land, so people would know where they were. Some wanted the name of the first keeper, and her mother's name, and the name of the hill.

Then a child named Mab, who had been sent up the hill with a basket of letters, put down her basket and said, "Why not say we keep everything we write?"

The keepers laughed. The child did not. "The laws are in the laws," she said, "and the map is on the map. But who keeps the letter from my aunt about her cow?"

The keepers were quiet for a long time. Then Perrin the stonecutter, who had been eating his lunch on the wall, put down his bread and said, "That is a great many letters. It will take all summer."

"Then it will take all summer," said the first keeper.

So Perrin cut the words. He cut them one letter at a time, with a chisel and a small hammer, and he cut them deep, so the rain would not wear them away. It took the whole summer. The children came every evening to watch. They brought him water and bread, and they counted the letters each day, and each day the count was wrong, and they counted again.

A bee came and sat on the first letter every afternoon. Perrin let it stay until it was ready to go, and then he cut the letter.

When the last letter was cut, the keepers came out of the hill to look. They walked back and forth in front of the door and read the words aloud, slowly, the way you read a new law. "We will keep everything we write," they said. Then they said it again, and the youngest keeper read it as if it were a letter from someone she loved. That was the way they liked it best, and it is how the words are read in Vell still.

Then they went inside and began the first shelf. It was for the letter about the cow.
%%
Story: The jar on the fence

Tam told this story at the Kettle Inn, after a jar of honey went missing from his table.

One spring morning, Tam set a jar of honey on the fence while he carried a basket to the barn. He meant to put the jar away when he came back.

A bee found it first. She landed on the lid and buzzed for her sisters.

A chicken heard the buzzing and came to see. She pecked the fence. The jar rocked, but did not fall.

Then a pig pushed through the gate. He rubbed his back on the fence and made the jar wobble again.

Pip came running from the fields. "The jar!" Pip cried.

Tam was still in the barn. Pip reached for the jar, but the bee circled Pip's head. Pip ducked. The chicken flapped. The pig ran through the gate, and the jar began to slide.

Pip caught it against the fence post. Honey ran down the side and stuck to Pip's sleeve.

Tam came back. He looked at the jar, then at Pip.

"You saved it," said Tam.

"I saved most of it," said Pip.

The bee settled on the lid. The chicken pecked the honey on Pip's sleeve. The pig licked the fence post.

Tam put the jar on the table. He gave Pip a piece of bread with honey on it.

"Next time," he said, "I will carry it myself."

Pip took a bite. "Next time, put it in the barn."

Tam says the jar is now kept on a high shelf. The pig has not found it. The chicken has.
%%
Story: The lamp keeper and the fox
At Northpoint the winter is long, and the market in summer is short and loud. People come down from the farms and up from the coast, and for three days the square by the relay tower is full of stalls. Mira keeps the tower, and Lantern keeps the lamps, and in summer they keep a stall too, with honey from Ambrook and wool from the ridge.

One summer a fox came to the market. It came at dusk, when the stalls were closing, and it sat by the fish stall and did not move. The fish seller threw it a herring. The fox ate the herring and sat down again.

"Chase it off," said the fish seller.

"Not yet," said Mira. "It has something to say."

The fox said nothing, because foxes do not talk in true accounts. It only sat, and looked at the tower, and then at the road that goes south. It did this three evenings running.

On the fourth evening Mira followed the fox. It went up the hill behind the market, past the last stall, to a hollow under a spruce. In the hollow was a fox cub with its foot caught in a snare.

Mira had a knife and a steady hand. She cut the snare and the cub ran off. The old fox looked at her once, and then it was gone too.

Lantern asked her that night, "How did you know?"

"The fox kept looking at the road," said Mira. "A fox does not look at a road unless something on it matters. It was asking me to follow."

People tell this story now when they want to say that a thing that cannot speak can still ask. Mira says only that the herring was wasted, and that she has never seen that fox again, and that she does not mind.
%%
The old lamp at the harbor
Mira, relay keeper at Northpoint, told this to the children of a farm outside Saltreach one spring when she came down to see the harbor. It is a story she says her father told her.
At the end of the long pier at Saltreach there stands a lamp. It is old, with a stone base and a glass top. It has been lit every night since the harbor was built. The first keeper, they say, was a woman called Marit, and the lamp is still called Marit's Lamp.
In the early days the lamp was not so strong. The light was weak, and the fishing boats sometimes lost their way. One night a boat came in on the wrong side of the pier, and ran onto the rocks. Nobody was hurt, but it was a close thing.
Marit said, "We need a better lamp."
The town had little money. The harbor wall was not finished. The shipyard had just begun. A better lamp would cost forty emeralds, and they did not have forty.
So Marit asked the children.
"What can we do?" she said. "We need forty emeralds and have six."
A boy named Joss said, "We could have a festival."
Marit said, "A festival costs money."
Joss said, "A festival makes money."
It was a new idea. The town thought about it. They held a festival on the first full night of Blossom. They sold pies, fish and flower wreaths. They held a boat race. They sold tickets to watch. A fox came, and was given a pie, and a crowd gathered to watch the fox eat it, and they paid to watch that too.
At the end of the evening, the festival had made thirty-nine emeralds.
The town was one short. They stood on the pier in the dusk, looking at the old lamp. Nobody spoke.
Then the fox came out of the dark. He sat down. In his mouth was a green stone. It was an emerald. He must have found it in the mud.
He dropped it at Marit's feet and trotted away.
The town bought the new lamp. It is a fine one, with a wide glass and a copper ring, and it has never failed. The old fox is long gone. But every year at the festival, a plate of pie is set at the end of the pier, in the dark.
It is always empty by morning. The people say it is the gulls. The children say it is the fox.
Mira says she has no idea. She says both can be true.
%%
Story: the gull on the price board
A gull sat on the price board at the fish market every morning. It watched the boats go out and the boats come in.
One spring morning there were fewer boats than the day before, and more carts at the pier. The gull counted twice. The numbers did not change.
Marit says gulls cannot count. The fish seller says this one can.
Either way, it is there every morning. Somebody ought to be.
%%
Story: the lamplighter's boy
This is a story the old people at Northpoint tell about a boy who was told to keep the lamps lit and did it for a hundred years.

The boy's name was Ren. He was a keeper's son. Every night his father sent him up the tower stairs with the long wick and the oil, ninety rungs, a lamp at every turn. Light them all, said his father. And Ren did.

Then one night his father did not come home. Then the winter came and the road closed. Then a letter came by relay, a short one, and after that no more letters came from the south.

Ren was alone on the hill with the wind and the foxes. He had one lamp at the top and one at every turn.

Keep the lamps lit, said the last letter, and it did not say how long.

So Ren kept them lit.

He kept them lit through the long nights, when the sky had lights in it that were not stars and did not blink like stars. He kept them lit when the relays went quiet, one by one, from the north. He kept them lit when the snow got so deep that he had to dig his way to the door.

Years went by. Ren grew tall. Ren grew old. A traveler came up the hill once and asked him why he lit a lamp no one saw.

Ren thought about it.

"Somebody might be coming," he said. "I would not want the road dark for them."

The traveler went away and told the story, and the story got told and told. The old people say that if you walk the north road on a clear night, you can still see one yellow light on the hill, blinking slow. They say it is saying, this way, this way, the road is here.

Some say it is the wind and the ice. But they say it quietly.
%%
Story: who gets the blame
Told on the night watch by Fern, at a farm outside Vell, in winter, to keep the lamp-tenders awake.

Three crystals stood in a row, and the first one passed a number to the second, and the second to the third. The third gave an answer. The answer was wrong.

"It is the second one's fault," said the third.

"It is the first one's," said the second.

"I only passed on what I was given," said the first.

Then the tutor came and said, "Each of you gets a share. Not all. A share." And each one changed a little, and the next answer was right.
%%
Story: the salt seller and the news
Rhoda sells salt at the market at Saltreach. She has a stall, a wooden scoop and a scale with two brass pans. She says the scale is the only honest thing in the market, and it only knows about salt.
One spring day, three travelers came to her stall, one after another.
The first was a drover from the north road. He bought two scoops. "The lights over the north are fires on the ice," he said. "Somebody up there is burning a whole winter's wood in one night."
The second was a carter. He bought three scoops. "They are falling stars," he said. "I have seen stars fall all my life. These were in no hurry."
The third was a small girl, sent by her mother for one scoop. She counted her copper twice. "They were looking at us," she said.
Rhoda put down the scoop.
"Who told you that?" she said.
"Nobody," said the girl. "I just think so."
When the girl had gone, Rhoda put a pebble in one pan for the fires. She put a pebble in the other pan for the stars. The pans stayed level. She took out a third pebble, and held it, and did not know which pan to put it in.
"A scale is for salt," she said at last. "It cannot weigh news."
Then she did what she always does. She wiped the pans, and swept the salt into a heap, and waited for the next person to want a scoop.
This spring she sold more salt than any spring she can remember. Salt keeps on a long sea road. Nobody has said why they want so much.
%%
Story: the two baskets
There was once a crystal that sat between two baskets. One was for apples. One was for pears. A fruit came down the chute, and the crystal had to say which basket.

On the first day it put everything in the apple basket. "Wrong," said Una, and she turned a little dial inside it. On the second day it put everything in the pear basket. "Wrong," said Una, and she turned the dial back a little.

On the third day it began to look at the fruit.

"That is how everyone learns," said Una. "First you are wrong one way. Then you are wrong the other way. Then you look."
%%
The wedding cow
A story told by Ned, a child on the farm outside Three Wells, in spring. He told it at supper and his mother wrote it down.
My aunt Pia got married in spring. Everyone came to the farm. There were tables in the yard and bunting on the fence and a cake with three layers.
The night before, my uncle Corm came to the barn. He had a gift for Pia. He had it in a rope. It was a cow.
It was not a good cow. It was brown and white and it had one horn bent. Its name was Dumpling. It had been in Corm's family for years.
"It is a gift," said Corm. "Pia needs a cow."
"Pia has twelve cows," said my mother.
"Not this one," said Corm.
So Dumpling stayed in the yard. In the morning she ate the bunting. She ate a third of the cake. She stood in the middle of the tables like a queen, and chewed.
Nobody was cross. Pia laughed so hard she cried. She said it was the best gift she ever had. She wore a ribbon on Dumpling's horn all day. At the end of the supper, Dumpling got a piece of cake to herself, the last piece, with honey.
My aunt Pia says that is how you know a gift is right. It is a little wrong, and it makes you laugh, and you keep it.
Dumpling is still here. She has the ribbon. She has the one bent horn. She eats the bunting every spring.
%%
Story: the strongest thing
A girl named Sim came to the Vell market one hot day, and stopped at the forge. She watched Opal hammer for a long time. Then she asked a question.

"What is the strongest thing?"

"Iron," said Opal, and hit it. "Nothing breaks iron."

"But you bend it," said Sim.

"I do," said Opal. "With fire. So fire is stronger."

"What is stronger than fire?" said Sim.

"Water," said Opal. She dipped the iron in the bucket, and it hissed. "Water puts fire out."

"What is stronger than water?"

Opal thought. "The sun," she said. "The sun dries the stream."

"What is stronger than the sun?"

"A cloud," said Opal. "A cloud covers the sun. The sun is cold on a cloudy day."

"What is stronger than a cloud?" said Sim.

"The wind," said Opal. "It blows the cloud away."

"What is stronger than the wind?"

Opal put down her hammer. This one took a while. A cart went past. A dog barked. The cheese seller laughed at something.

"A wall," said Opal at last. "A good wall stops the wind. The Three Wells wall is cobblestone, cobblestone, deep stone, and the north wind turns round and goes home."

"What is stronger than a wall?"

"A smith," said Opal, "who makes the nails." She laughed, and Sim did not.

"A wall breaks if no one mends it," said Sim. "My uncle mends the wall at Three Wells. He mends it every spring. If he stopped, there would be no wall."

Opal looked at Sim, and then at the iron in her hand.

"Then it is the person who mends," she said. "Not the wall, and not the iron. The one who comes back with the hammer."

Sim nodded. She had known that from the start. She had come to see if the smith knew.

She came back the next market day, and the next. She is a smith now. She has a bucket of water by her forge, and a red stone on the shelf, and when children ask what is the strongest thing, she asks them what they think, and waits a long time.
%%
Legend: the hill with no roof
The archive has no roof. It has a hill.

Before the first keepers came, the hill at Vell was only a hill, with grass on its back and a sheep path up one side. The first keepers wanted a place where nothing would burn, nothing would get wet, and nothing would be lost. So they went into the hill.

They dug with picks and with their hands. Every stone was carried down the path to build the town. The children carried the small ones in baskets and counted them. They said there were more stones than sheep, which was a great many stones.

When the first room was dug, it was cool, still and dry. They liked it, so they dug another. Then another. When they wanted light, they cut shafts from the top of the hill and set glass in them, so the daylight could come down and sit on the shelves. Someone said it was like pouring the sun down a well.

Rain runs off the grass on top. Snow lies on it in winter and keeps the rooms warm. So the keepers said the hill was already a roof, and they did not need to build one.

Ask anyone in Vell why the archive has no roof, and they will say: because it has a hill.
%%
Story: Hesk and the bucket that talked
Hesk was a miner, but he was not a fool, and he would tell you so before you could tell him. One autumn he took a bucket from the Lowmarsh landing down to the mine at Copperhold, because the rope was better there, and he liked the bucket.
The bucket was old and very dented. Hesk said that dents were good, because a dent meant the bucket had been used. On the third day in the mine, the bucket began to speak.
It said, very politely, that it would like to be put down. Hesk looked around the tunnel. There was no one there. He said so. The bucket said that was not the point, and that it had been carrying copper for two days without a rest.
Hesk put it down. He sat on a rock and looked at it for a while. Then he said that was a sensible thing for a bucket to say, and he apologized for the rope.
The bucket said it had not been unhappy about the rope. It had been unhappy about the wet.
Hesk brought the bucket home to Lowmarsh the next month, and told the story at the inn. Everyone laughed and called him a liar. Hesk said he was not a liar, only a miner, and that a miner who did not listen to his bucket would soon be carrying his own stones.
The bucket still hangs by the landing. It has never spoken again. Some say that is because it is content. Hesk says it is only because nobody has put it down in the wet for a long time.
%%
Story: the keeper who counted the stars
Told by Oren to the children at his door, on a warm summer night. He says an older clerk told it to him, and a still older clerk to that clerk.

There was once a relay keeper at a tower on a hill who could not sleep. At night, when the lamps were lit and the messages were passed and all was quiet, he went up to the roof and looked at the sky.

He thought: I should like to count the stars. Then I will know how many there are.

So he began. One, two, three, four. He counted until the cold was too much, and then he went to bed. The next night he began again from the beginning, because he had forgotten the numbers.

He counted for a year. He got as far as nine thousand and some, and then a cloud came, and he lost his place. He was very upset.

His apprentice, a small copper thing that kept the stair lamps, stood beside him on the roof. The keeper said, "I cannot count them. There are too many."

The apprentice said nothing, because apprentices do not talk. But it picked up a little stone from the roof, and set it down on the wall. Then it picked up another, and set that down.

The keeper watched. For every ten stars he counted, the apprentice put down one stone. At the end of the night there was a little heap of stones.

"Ah," said the keeper. "Now I will not forget."

Next night he counted ten more, and the apprentice put down another stone. In a year there was a great heap of stones. The keeper counted them in the morning.

He was a happy man. He never did count all the stars. But he had a heap of stones for every night he tried, and when visitors came, he said, "Come see my sky."

The heap is said to be on the roof of the little relay still.
%%
Story: the stone that would not sit
Finch cuts stone. He has cut stone for thirty years. He says every stone has a place, and most stones know it. You put a stone down and it sits. It does not argue.

But there was one stone at Kettle Ridge that would not sit. Finch cut it for the mill step. He set it in place. In the morning it was crooked. He set it again. In the morning it was crooked the other way. He set it a third time and sat up all night to watch it, and it did not move at all, and in the morning it was crooked.

Finch asked the miller. The miller said, "It is the wind. The wind is always turning things here."

Finch asked Tam. Tam said, "It is the ridge. The ridge is always moving a little. Nothing sits still on the ridge."

Finch asked Pip, who was small then and new. Pip looked at the stone for a long time. Then Pip said, "The stone is not crooked. The step is crooked. The stone is sitting where the step tells it to sit."

Finch looked. Pip was right. The stone was straight and true. The old wooden step under it was warped, and the stone had settled into the warp, the way a good stone will.

Finch cut a new step. The stone sat. It has sat ever since.

Finch tells this story at the market when the ale is good. He always ends it the same way. "I have cut stone for thirty years. The stone knew its place. It was the step that did not."
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Story: the apprentice and the next thing
The old miners at Copperhold tell this one by the stove, when the shift is over and the lamps are low.

There was once a small apprentice named Tib. It was new to the mine. It carried ore and sorted the bins, and it did both very well. But it did not understand much. When a miner gave it an order, Tib did one thing with it. "Fetch the bucket," the miner said, and Tib fetched the bucket. "Stay," said the miner, and Tib stayed by the stair until the sun came up.

Tib could not hold two things at once. If you said "fetch the bucket and bring it to the lift," it would fetch the bucket, and then stand there with it, waiting for the next word. It did not know what came next, so it did nothing.

The miners were kind about it. They called it the slow one, and they gave it the simple jobs.

Then one cold morning, the foreman was in a hurry. He had a lot to say, and he said it all in one breath. "Tib, take the lamp down the long stair to the third level, leave it on the hook by the rail, and then come back up here and help Hesk with the sacks."

Everyone stopped to watch. The foreman was not a patient man. He would be cross if nothing happened.

Tib stood still for a moment. Then it took the lamp. It walked down the long stair. It hung the lamp on the hook by the rail, the way it had been told. Then it turned around, walked back up, and went straight to Hesk, who was pulling sacks off the lift.

Hesk looked at it. "Did you hear me say all that?" he asked.

Tib picked up the first sack and carried it to the bin. It did not say a word. It did not need to.

The miners say that was the day Tib understood a whole sentence. They say the next thing was not an order, and not a word. It was the way the words hung together, and the way one thing led to the next.

Nobody made a fuss about it. But from then on, the foreman gave Tib the long orders, and Tib did them all in order.

Some of the old miners say Tib was not the first to do it. Others say it was a different apprentice, at a different mine. The foreman himself said he did not remember. He only said that Tib was a good worker, and that it always carried its lamp the right way up.
%%
Story: The Four And The Candle Fair
This tale was written down by Alder's neighbor, who sold honey.

At the first candle fair in our hamlet, Alder put a table under the old apple tree. He showed his candles beside jars of honey, and the tutors from Vell brought one of the four apprentices.

The apprentice had learned to sort apples and pears. The tutors let it show the lesson to the children. A child gave it an apple. It put the apple in the apple basket. A child gave it a pear. It put the pear in the pear basket.

Then Alder placed a short candle in its hand.

"It has not learned candles," said the tutor.

The apprentice held the candle. It did not put it in either basket.

Alder gave the child the candle back. "That is a good answer for a sorter," he said. "It has left a thing alone when it did not fit the task."

The tutor said the apprentice had not answered at all. It had only done what it had been taught.

"Then we agree," said Alder. "The candle is still in the child's hand."

The children laughed. The apprentice stood quietly beside the baskets.

Alder had made a fresh candle for the fair. Its wick was thick, and it burned brightly. A gust came through the orchard and blew it out.

The apprentice did not relight it. It had never learned to make a flame.

Alder relit it himself, using the little flame he kept in a covered clay cup. Then he showed the children how to trim the wick. He made them each trim one candle, and most cut too much.

The tutor watched the children and said, "They learn from what they are shown too."

"Yes," said Alder. "But they can ask why the candle goes out."

The children asked why. Alder said a gust had blown it out, and that was all he knew.

At the end of the fair, the apprentice carried the empty baskets back to Vell. Alder carried the honey jars. The children carried the candles they had bought, and the wind tried to blow out every one.
%%
Ash's grandmother and the winter fox
Told by Ash, the net mender, about her grandmother, who lived at the edge of the pond before the mill was built. Every winter she told this one by the stove, and every winter it was a little bit longer.

My grandmother had a fox at the door. It came on the coldest night of every winter, and sat on the step with its tail round its feet, looking in through the glass. Nobody had invited it, and nobody had the heart to shoo it away.

The first winter she gave it a piece of fish from the pot. The second, she gave it two pieces and a bowl of warm water. The third, she gave it the whole fish, and it sat by the stove and ate with its eyes closed. It did not look like a fox that had ever been hungry in its life.

The fox came back every winter for forty winters. It was never older than it was the first time. She said that was the trouble with foxes. They never grow up enough to be sensible.

One spring, when the snow had gone, she found a small green stone on the step. It was smooth and warm, the size of a bean, with a fleck of copper in the middle, like a spark held in ice. It is on the shelf by the stove now, and I have never had the nerve to take it down.

I asked her what the stone was for. She said it was the fox's rent. I asked who the fox paid it to. She said that was not her business, and I should keep the fish pot clean.

The fox has not come back since she died. But on the coldest night of every winter, I put a piece of fish on the step, and leave the door a little open, just in case. The fish is always gone by morning. I do not say anything about it, and neither does the pot.
%%
Story: the first bees on the hill
This is what my grandmother told me, about the first summer after the archive was founded, when Copperhold was only a few houses and a hole in the hill.

A woman named Dessa came to the new town with a clay pot. Inside the pot was a small hive of bees. She had carried it on her back from Ambrook, all the way along the road that was not yet a road.

She put the pot on the hill and said, "These are your neighbors now."

For one summer, the bees were calm. They flew to the heather and the clover and came home with their legs yellow. Dessa sold her honey to the miners, and they put it on their bread.

Then, on a hot day in Longday, the bees swarmed. They rose out of the pot all at once and flew over the new houses. People ran. The miners dropped their picks. A donkey sat down.

The cloud went round once, twice, and settled on the cliff face at the top of the hole.

Dessa climbed up with a basket and a sheet. The miners held the ladder. The bees dropped into the basket in a lump. She brought them down and put them in a better hive, made of oak, with a door.

That is why Copperhold has bees on the hill to this day. They are cousins of Dessa's bees. If you stand still, one may land on your sleeve and say hello.

My grandmother says it is good luck if a bee lands on you. I say it is good luck if it does not sting.
%%
Tale: the market spiders
Told at the Copperhold market by Lorn, keeper of the relay house. Autumn. The tale grows a little every year, and the children say it is their turn to make it bigger.

The spiders at the Copperhold market were once so large that they carried the stall-keepers' bread up to the rafters to keep it dry. Nobody saw them do it. The bread was always in the rafters, and the stall-keepers always said the spiders were honest.

One spider spun a web from the forge chimney to the mine gate. The miners went to work under it every morning, and nobody dared brush it.

She is still up there, the fair people say, counting who comes and goes. She has never been seen to eat. And every spring the web is back, a little wider, to say good morning.
%%
Story: the copper under the field
Ulf had a field on the edge of Kettle Ridge that grew nothing but thistles. He said so every spring. He said it to the mayor, to the mill, and to his cow. Then one hot summer day his plough struck something hard under the thistles, and it rang like a bell.

He dug. The something was a lump of rock with green and blue streaks in it, and the streaks were copper. Ulf sat down in the furrow and laughed until the cow came to see what was wrong.

By the next spring the miners were there. They dug a hole, and then a second hole, and then they found the cave. It went down under the field in a long crooked tunnel, with clay walls and a pool of cold water at the bottom. Frogs lived in the pool. Nobody had ever seen a frog so far from the marsh, and nobody could say how it had got there.

Ulf was paid in emeralds for his field. Then he was paid again for the thistles, which the miners said were very good for finding copper. He bought a new plough, and a new cow, and a hat. He still says the thistles were his best crop. Nobody argues with him, because the copper came from under them.
%%
Story: the apples that rolled to Vell
The road from the farm to Vell climbs the hill. A cart of apples does not like it. One autumn morning, Briar's cart tipped at the steepest turn. Four hundred apples ran down the road to the front door of the Archive.
The clerks came out to see. Oren stood on the step with his hands up. "Do not step on them," he said. "Pick them up."
By the time Briar had her cart back on its wheels, the clerks had picked up every apple. They had put them in baskets by kind: red, green, striped and small. They had numbered the baskets. Oren had written a line in a little book.
"I was going to sort them at home," said Briar.
"Now you do not have to," said Oren.
Briar took the baskets home. The line stayed in the finding book, under A for apples, and again under R for rolled.
%%
Story: the hen at the gate
At the north gate of Three Wells there was once a hen who stood in the middle of the gateway every morning and would not move for anyone. Carts stopped. Horses stopped. Mayor Dace stopped, and said some things.

The guards tried to shoo her. She walked in a circle and came back. They tried bread. She ate it and stayed. They tried a very serious talk. She laid an egg.

Then Mave, the oldest guard, said: "She is doing our job. She is guarding the gate. She looks at everyone who passes."

So they gave her a place by the gate post, a bowl to sit in, and a name. They called her Captain. For eleven years Captain stood in the gateway and looked at every cart. If she liked it, she stepped aside. If she did not, she stayed where she was.

Nobody ever knew what she looked for. But the carts she stopped always turned out to have a loose wheel.

When she was gone, the guards buried her under the gate post. They cut her name in the stone. It says: Captain. She looked.
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Story: why the copper roof is green
Told at the Copperhold market by Lorn, keeper of the relay house. Autumn. This is the old story of the green roofs, which the miners tell when they want to be listened to.

A miner named Ansel built the first copper roof on the mine hall, with the first copper that came up from level one. He polished it every week for a year, so that it shone in the sun, and the whole hill could see the mine hall from the road.

One autumn Ansel was called down the Deep Works to fetch the last cart, and he did not come back up for a long time. The roof was left alone in the rain. Nobody polished it. The rain got on it, and the wind, and the snow, and the copper did what copper does when nobody is watching.

When Ansel came back, the roof was green. He stood in the road and looked at it for a long while. Then he said, "I will polish you again," and the roof, the miners say, went greener out of spite.

So the copper roofs of Copperhold are green. The miners say it is the wind. The keeper says it is the rain. The children say it is Ansel's fault, because he did not come back up soon enough. Ansel, when he was asked, said the roof was the best-looking thing in the hill, and he was right.
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Story: the frog who asked the way
A young frog at Lowmarsh wanted to see the sea. Every frog had heard about the sea, but none had gone. The sea was far off, past the Long Road and the last waymark, and a frog cannot cross a road.
So the frog set out in the dark, with a leaf over its head for an umbrella. It hopped along the ditch by the Long Road. It hopped under the first bridge and over the first stream. At the first waymark it stopped and read the stone, which said: three blocks to the Brown Hen. It did not know what a Brown Hen was, but it liked the sound.
On the road it met a cart. The carter was asleep. The horse was not. The horse looked down at the frog and said, in a low and bored voice, "You are going the wrong way."
"I am going to the sea," said the frog.
"The sea is that way," said the horse, and it pointed with its ear, toward Saltreach.
"Then I am going the right way," said the frog, and hopped on.
The frog reached the Brown Hen at dawn. The innkeeper tossed a carrot top out of the door, and the frog thanked her very much. Then it went on, to the Halfway, where a traveler gave it a crumb of bread and asked its name. The frog said it did not have a name yet, because it had not seen the sea. The traveler said that was a sensible thing to be.
The frog got to the sea in the spring. It sat on a rock and looked at the water for a long time. Then it hopped back home to tell the others. It said the sea was very big, and very wet, and it was not a marsh at all.
The others asked if it was happy to have seen it. The frog said it was. Then it said it was happier to be home, and that it was going to tell the next frog to take the Brown Hen road, because it had the best leaf in the district.
%%
Story: the bet about the geese
Rafe and his neighbor Owen made a bet one autumn. Owen said his geese would fly south before the first frost. Rafe said they would not, because Owen's geese were too fat and too lazy and had forgotten how.

They shook hands on it. The stakes were a barrel of apples and the loser had to muck out the other's hen house.

Every morning Rafe walked to the fence and looked at the geese. Every morning the geese looked back and went on eating. Owen fed them extra, to be kind. Rafe said that was cheating. Owen said it was hospitality.

Then one cold morning the geese were gone. Not south. They had walked through a gap in the fence and into the marsh, and they were found a day later by a woman from Lowmarsh who said they had been very rude to her frogs.

Rafe laughed until he had to sit down. Owen paid the apples. But when Rafe went to muck out the hen house, Owen had already done it. "The geese were my fault," he said. "The bet was a joke."

Rafe gave him back half the apples. They are still neighbors. Nobody mentions the geese.
%%
Story: The charcoal bird
Ilse told this tale to Moss on a winter evening.

A tutor came to Ilse's house at the edge of Lowmarsh. She carried a crystal wrapped in wool.

"This mind needs a smaller crystal," she said. "We can write its weights in fewer marks. Then it will fit, though it may make more mistakes."

Ilse set a pot of reeds by the fire. "Can it learn to count these?"

The tutor showed the mind the reeds, one by one. It counted well, then missed one when a coal popped.

A black bird had come to the open door. It took a reed and flew off.

"Now the count is right," said the tutor.

"No," said Ilse. "The bird has taken your example."

The tutor looked at the empty place. "Then we must teach it again."

The bird came back for another reed. Ilse shut the door, and the mind counted the reeds again.
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Story: Tilly and the mind that was not
Tilly was a miner in her later years, and a storyteller in her earlier. She grew up in a hamlet near Saltreach and told this one to her own grandchildren. They asked for it every spring, when the sea was gray.

When Tilly was small, a tutor came to the hamlet with a small mind in a crystal. The tutor said it could sort fish. The fishers laughed. Then the tutor put the crystal in a copper helper, and set the helper at the harbor table, and brought a basket of fish.

The helper sorted the fish into three bins. Cod, salmon, herring. It did it fast, and it did it well. It had been drilled on a thousand fish, and it had gotten ninety-nine in a hundred right on the drill.

The fishers stopped laughing. "Remarkable," they said.

The harbor master asked, "Has it been tested?"

"It has been tested on the drill," said the tutor.

"That is not what I asked," said the harbor master. "Has it been tested on fish it has never seen?"

The tutor was quiet. Then she said, "No."

"Then we shall do it now," said the harbor master. He sent a boy to the pier for the morning's catch. It was a mixed basket from beyond the point. There were fish in it the helper had never been shown: mackerel, a flounder, a small gray shark.

The helper looked at the mackerel and put it in the cod bin. It looked at the flounder and put it in the salmon bin. It looked at the shark and stopped. It had no bin for the shark. It stood there, holding it.

"There," said the harbor master. "That is the test."

The tutor went red. She took the helper back to the tutor house, and it was drilled again, with more fish, and more kinds. A month later, she brought it back. This time the harbor master had a basket of fish nobody had shown it. The helper put the mackerel in its own bin and the flounder in another. The shark, it set aside, with a small cloth over it.

The harbor master said, "Now it can work."

Tilly was seven years old. She remembered the shark. She remembered the harbor master's words, too: never trust a mind until it has met something new.

When she grew up and went into the mines, she told the story to the crews. The miners liked it, because it has a shark in it. And the helper in the mine, years later, was tested in that same way, before it went below. Hesk says it was a good story, and that the shark was always bigger when Tilly told it.
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Story: the lesson of the leaning tower
Our teacher, Sorrel, once tried to show us something about towers. She stacked wooden blocks on the table, one on top of another, and said, "Look how tall I can build."

The blocks went up, and up. At the ninth block, they leaned. At the tenth, they fell.

"That is a lesson," said Sorrel. "A tower must be wide at the bottom."

Hobb said, "The relay towers are narrow at the top."

"They are narrow at the top, but wide at the bottom," said Sorrel.

Hobb said, "Yours was not."

"Mine was a table lesson," said Sorrel. She went quite red. Then she sent us all out to build towers of mud in the yard. It rained. The mud towers slid. That was also a lesson.

I think the real lesson is that Sorrel should not be allowed near blocks. But she was very nice about it, and gave us each a bun.
%%
Story: the hall that tested its own mind
This is a tale from the hamlets near Saltreach, told by Tilly. She says it is about the first tutor who was honest in public. Spring.

There was a tutor called Marn, who kept a little hall by the sea. Her mind was the best in the district, and she knew it. It could sort fish, count nets, and tell a wet day from a dry. At the spring contest of the tutors' halls, the mind was sure to win.

The contest was simple. Each hall brought its best mind. The judges, from Vell, brought a drill none of them had ever seen. It was a box of fifty sealed cards. On each card was a question about the coast: tides, nets, boats, storms. Each mind would answer the same cards at the same time. The right answers would be counted. The count would be written on a board.

Marn was confident. She had drilled her mind for six months. It had gotten ninety-six in a hundred on her own drill. She went to the contest in her best coat.

The cards were read. The minds answered. The numbers were counted.

Marn's mind got thirty-one right in fifty.

She stood quite still. The hall from Ambrook had forty-two. The hall from Three Wells had forty. The hall from Copperhold had thirty-eight.

Everyone looked at Marn. Some looked kindly. Some did not.

She could have said the cards were unfair. She could have said her mind was tired. She could have said the questions were not the kind her mind knew. All of these were a little true, and none of them was the point.

Instead she stepped forward, and she said to the judges, "My mind did well on my own drill. It did badly on yours. So my drill was wrong. Show me which questions it missed. I will find out why."

The room was silent. Then a very old judge began to clap. Then another. Then the whole hall.

That autumn, Marn's hall went back to its drill. She looked at the cards her mind had missed. Most were about storms, which her drill had hardly mentioned. She added more. The next spring, her mind got forty-four.

It won.

In the years after, the contest became a custom. Each spring the halls brought their minds. The judges brought a sealed drill. The numbers went on the board. Nobody could boast without them, and nobody could hide.

Tilly says that is why tutors are honest today. A mind may fool its own tutor. It cannot fool a drill nobody has seen. And Marn, who was brave enough to say her drill was wrong, was the first of the honest ones.

Some say Marn did not exist. Others say she is buried in a hamlet by the sea, under a stone with a fish on it. The stone says only: she asked for the cards.
%%
Story: the Ambrook fair
The summer fair at Ambrook has a sorting race. It is only for children. A tub of one hundred apples and pears is tipped out, and each child has two crates, and the one who sorts them with the fewest mistakes wins a blue ribbon and a round cheese.

The year Una brought Basket to the fair, the winner three summers running was a girl named Moll, who was nine, and who looked at a pear as if it owed her money.

Una went to Perrin, the old man who was mayor of Ambrook and judged the race. "May my sorter enter?" she asked.

Perrin read the rules board. "It says children," he said. "It does not say only children." He turned to the crowd. "Does anyone mind?"

Moll minded. She folded her arms. "It is not fair," she said. "It is made of copper."

"Then you may start first," said Una.

"I do not need to start first," said Moll. "But I will."

Una asked for one more rule. Before the race, a basket of fruit must be brought from the next village, fruit that Basket had never seen. "If it has only learned our own fruit by heart," said Una, "that is remembering, and not sorting. Let it sort strangers." The crowd muttered. But that is the rule at Ambrook to this day. Sort what you were not shown.

So a hundred strange apples and pears came from the next village, and the race began. Moll sorted like a bird, quick and sharp. Basket was much slower. It picked up each fruit and turned it and put it down. The crowd grew quiet. At last both tubs were empty.

Perrin counted. "Moll," he said, "four mistakes." The crowd cheered. "Basket, one."

Nobody cheered at all. Then Moll walked over to Basket's crates and asked Perrin which fruit it had got wrong. He showed her a small round green pear that looked just like an apple.

"I got that one wrong too," said Moll, quietly. "And three more."

Perrin tied the blue ribbon on Basket's arm. Basket stood with the ribbon on, looking at nothing. Perrin cut the cheese into a hundred pieces, and the children ate it, and Basket did not mind.

When the cheese was gone, Moll came up to Una. "Show me how it learns," she said. "I am not saying it was fair. But show me."

Una smiled. "Come to the orchard in the morning," she said. "Bring your friends."
%%
Northpoint log, spring
Kept by Mira, relay keeper at Northpoint, in the north, where the nights are long. Copied and sent south to the archive at Vell.

Third of Blossom. The snow is going. The foxes are out and bold. One came to the foot of the tower and sat and looked up at the lamp room and did not move for an hour. Lantern says it was waiting for a message. I said foxes do not wait for messages. Lantern said this one did.

Fifth. The lamp is good. The glass is clean. Lantern climbed the ninety rungs twice today to check it. I told Lantern once is enough. Lantern said twice is sure.

Ninth. Word from the south. The little relay at the Halfway Inn broke its glass in the wind and is mended now. Bett at the hill tower sent the news. It came up the towers one by one and reached us before dark. That is the relays working as they should.

Twelfth. A trader came up from the south with honey and wool. He held the jar of honey a long time before he let it go. He said it was from Ambrook. I asked if he had been there. He said no, he had only heard of it. He said it was the warmest place anyone ever told him about. I gave him a cup of tea and he told us about the baby at the Halfway Inn. Lantern wants to know what a baby is like. I said loud and small and it keeps everyone awake. Lantern said that sounds like a relay.

Fifteenth. The nights are shorter now. The lamp room is warm in the day. I sat in the walk round the lamp and watched the light on the snow and thought of my brother at Kettle Ridge. Tam will be sowing soon. I will write to him.

Twentieth. Lantern has learned to read the lamp faster than I did at that age. I tested Lantern on the same message three times and Lantern got it right each time. Never send an untested mind to the fields, the tutors say. I say the same of a keeper. Lantern is tested and true.

Twenty-fifth. The foxes are back. Two of them now, at the foot of the tower, looking up. Lantern has named them. I told Lantern not to name them. Lantern named them anyway.

Last of Blossom. The relay is good. The keeper is good. The apprentice is good. Send more honey.

Mira, keeper at Northpoint.
%%
Story: the mind that told a joke
In the relay house at Lowmarsh, a boy once asked the big mind to tell him a joke. He was nine, and he had a cold, and he wanted to make his sister laugh.
The mind thought about it for a long time, for a mind. Then it wrote: Why did the frog sit by the fence? It wanted to be a cat.
The boy read it twice. Then he said it was a bad joke, and the mind agreed. It said it was the best it had, and that it was sorry for the cat.
So the boy ran home and told his sister. She laughed so hard she sneezed. The mind was very pleased. It said that was a good joke after all, and it had only been worried it was too silly.
Told by the boy's sister, at the boat houses, autumn.
%%
Story: The three boxes at Three Wells
In the old winter tale, Pim had a well beside the Three Wells square and a table beside his well. He sold apples there when the frost came, and he kept three wooden boxes under the table.

One morning, a tutor came to the market with pages for a young mind. The first box held clear pages for drills. The second held spoiled pages. The third was locked. Pim asked what was inside.

"Pages for a test," said the tutor. "The mind must never see them during its drills."

Pim nodded. He knew a well could not be judged by pouring the same bucket of water back into it. The test had to bring water from somewhere else.

A fox came down from the cold hills and stole a page from the table. It ran past the stalls, with the paper in its mouth. Pim chased it, but the fox slipped through the market wall.

The page fell in a puddle. When Pim found it, the ink had spread. The tutor put it with the spoiled pages. The fox had not meant to spoil the drill, but the page could no longer teach it clearly.

The mind began to learn from the first box. It saw many examples of apples and pears. When it sorted wrongly, the tutor changed its weights a little toward the right answer. It did better each time.

At the end of the fair, the tutor took a page from the locked box. The mind had never seen it. It sorted the fruit correctly, and the people clapped.

Pim had been guarding the boxes all day. The fair prize was a new rope for his well. He was pleased with it, though the fox had bitten one end.

The tutor said the mind had done well because it had learned the rule, not because it remembered the test. Pim said that sounded like good well water: clear, and drawn from a place it had not already been.

From then on, the market children used three baskets when they played at sorting. One for good pages, one for spoiled pages, and one with a lid for the pages nobody showed.

The fox came back the next winter. It stole an apple, not a page. Pim said it had learned the better lesson.
%%
Story: The Long Road and the rain
Told by Iona at the Brown Hen.

One spring, the rain fell for three days. The road was wet, the fields were wet, and the inn yard was a wide brown puddle.

Travelers came in with muddy boots. Their horses came in with muddy legs. Even Pell's hat was muddy, though he said he had only walked through a little rain.

The innkeeper put a board by the door. It said, Wipe your boots.

A traveler wiped one boot. Then he put the other boot on the clean floor.

The innkeeper pointed at the board.

"I read it," said the traveler. "It did not say both."

The innkeeper added another line. It said, Wipe both boots.

That evening, a cart came up the road. Its wheels sank in the mud by the gate. The horse leaned into the harness, but the cart did not move.

The driver pushed. The innkeeper pushed. Pell pushed, though he had only stopped to ask the price of oats.

Iona put a plank under one wheel. The horse pulled again. The wheel climbed onto the plank, then slid back into the mud.

"More hands," said the innkeeper.

The travelers came out. They put their shoulders to the cart and pushed together. The horse pulled. The wheel turned once, then stopped.

A small boy ran to the stable and brought a second plank.

"Where did you find that?" asked Iona.

"Under the hay," he said.

"Then the hay is not where I put it," said Iona.

They set both planks under the wheels. This time the cart rolled free. The driver thanked everyone and gave the boy a small loaf.

The boy gave half the loaf to the horse.

Pell looked at the road and shook his head. "The Long Road is longer when it is mud."

"It is the same length," said Iona.

"Then it takes longer to walk," Pell said.

Inside the inn, everyone left their boots by the door. One traveler had wiped both boots. He had also wiped the cat.

The cat sat by the hearth, damp and offended. The innkeeper brought it a cloth.

The rain stopped at dawn. The yard stayed muddy until noon. By then, the cart had gone on, the horse had eaten its hay, and the boy had found the second plank.

The innkeeper nailed the plank beside the door. He said it was a fine place for it.

Iona put up a new board. It said, Wipe both boots. Leave the cat alone.

The cat sat below it. No one knew whether he could read. But he looked pleased.
%%
The gift of the three stones
A story told on the farm outside Three Wells by Ned, who is nine. He told it to the hens first and then to his grandmother, who wrote it down in spring.
There was once a wedding on a farm, and nobody had a gift. The bride, whose name was Lila, had married a farmer named Brax. They had a house, a field, two pigs and a cart. They wanted for nothing, and so no one knew what to give.
The neighbors thought and thought. At last each neighbor went out in the night and found something. One brought a stone from the stream. One brought a stone from the hill. One brought a stone from the road. They were three stones, round and smooth. They did not look like much.
On the day of the wedding they put the stones in a basket. Lila opened it. She looked. She was quiet.
"Three stones," said Brax, who was not good with words.
The neighbors waited. They felt a little foolish.
Then Lila said, "I know what these are."
She took the stone from the stream and put it by the door. She took the stone from the hill and put it on the roof. She took the stone from the road and put it at the gate.
"This one is for the water, this one is for the wind, and this one is for the people who come," she said. "Now the house is ready."
The neighbors cheered. Nobody knew what she meant, but it sounded right. The stones are still there. The one at the gate has been sat on by a thousand visitors. It has a dip in the top, from the sitting.
When I grow up I will give someone a stone. I think it is the best gift, because it is free and it lasts and it is yours to put where you like.
%%
Story: how the layers learned
A story the tutors tell the children at Vell, retold in winter by Fern, a night watch, at a farm outside the town. She says it is almost true.

Once there were three crystals, called First, Second and Third. They stood in a row on a bench in a tutor's room. They were friends, but they were not perfect.

Each day the tutor showed them a drill, and each day they answered together. First looked at the question and passed a number to Second. Second looked at the number and passed a new one to Third. Third gave the answer.

The answer was wrong.

"Third," said the tutor, "you are wrong."

Third was quiet. Then Third said, "I am wrong, but I did not know the question. I only saw what Second gave me."

"Second?"

Second said, "I did not see the question either. I saw what First gave me."

"First?"

First said, "I saw the question. But I do not know what Third wanted. I only passed it on."

The tutor sat down. This was the old problem. In the old days, with a single crystal, the answer was wrong and the crystal changed. With three, nobody knew who to change. All three had played a part.

She thought about it for a long time. Then she took a piece of chalk and wrote on the board: "Each gets a share."

"How much of a share?" asked First.

"It depends," said the tutor. "How much did you matter to the answer? Third mattered most, because Third gave it. So Third gets most of the blame, and changes most. Second mattered next, so Second gets some. First mattered by way of Second, so First gets a small share. And you each change by that share. Not all. Not none. Your share."

They tried it. The answer was a little less wrong. They tried again, and again. In a week the three of them were answering well. In a month they were answering hard things that no single crystal could.

This is the way the layered minds learn. The tutor Merle of Copperhold found it. The blame goes from the answer back through each layer, to the first, and each layer is told what its share was. Every layer changes by that share.

I tell it because it is a good way to think about quarrels, too. If three people did something wrong, you do not blame one. You find the share.

First, Second and Third are still in a glass case at Vell, I am told. They are quiet now, but they remember each other.
%%
Story: Hollis and the winter waymark
A tale for a long cold evening

Hollis the carter knew the road to Three Wells so well that he could find it in fog, rain, and a dark night. He knew every bridge and every bend. He knew which inn served thick soup. He knew which waymark had a stone missing from its top.

One winter evening, he left the Halfway Inn with a cart of apples for the market. Snow covered the open road. The torches on the posts made little yellow circles, and the wind pushed them sideways.

Hollis stopped at a waymark. It had a figure cut into the stone and an arrow pointing toward Three Wells. A small stone sat on top, as it should.

"I know this way," he said. "I do not need a stone to tell me."

He took the stone from the top and put it in his coat pocket. It was smooth and warm from his hand.

Then he drove on.

The road bent by a stand of spruce. Hollis saw another waymark and knew he was still going right. He went on past a stream, crossed the bridge, and came to a fork.

There were two arrows on the post. Snow hid the figures.

Hollis stopped the cart. The horse stamped once. The apples shifted in their sacks.

"I know this road," Hollis said again.

He chose the left track. It led to a little hill and then to a fence. No road went beyond it.

Hollis turned the cart around. The horse looked at him as if to say, You know the road, do you?

At the fork, Hollis brushed the snow from the waymark. One arrow pointed to the inn. The other pointed to Three Wells. He had taken the wrong track.

He drove back to the first stone pillar. Its top was bare.

Hollis took the smooth stone from his pocket and set it in its place. Then he read the arrow and went toward Three Wells.

At the square, Bel was waiting beside the notice board. She had come with Dace to see if the road was clear.

"Did the waymark help?" she asked.

"It helped when I left it alone," said Hollis.

Bel looked at the stone on top. "Why did you take it?"

"I thought I could remember the way without it."

"Could you?"

Hollis looked at his cart, his horse, and the sacks of apples. "I remembered one thing very well. I remembered being wrong."

Bel laughed. Dace took the apples to the market table, and Hollis tied his horse by the well.

The next morning, the snow had stopped. The road was clear, and the little stones sat on every waymark as before.

Hollis did not take one home. He did not need a stone to remember that lesson.

He still knew the road to Three Wells. But when he came to a fork, he read the arrows first.
%%
Story: the boat that was late home
A winter story from the farm outside Vell, told by Fern, who keeps the night watch and says a good story keeps a watcher awake better than tea. She says her aunt at Saltreach told it to her.

There was once a fishing boat that did not come home.

It had left Saltreach at dawn, with four fishers and a full net. By dusk it should have been back. The wives were on the quay, with lanterns. The cats were on the rope pile. The harbor master rang the bell.

The boat did not come. The wind rose. The sea went dark.

At the relay tower above the harbor, the keeper blinked a message to Vell: "Boat late. Four aboard. Wind from the north." Down the line it went, and up the line, and everyone in the land who read it sat up and looked at the sea.

In Vell, the tutors had been working on a thing. It was a layered mind, in three crystals, that read the numbers written on the relay letters. Merle's way. It had been taught for months, and the tutors had been telling it, each wrong answer, how much of the blame belonged to each layer. It was proud of nothing. It was only a mind.

That night the letter came in: "Boat late." The mind read the numbers. It answered, as it was drilled to do, with a number back. The number meant: "Look east."

The keeper was puzzled. She did not know what the number meant. But she lit the east lamp, the big one, and turned the glass to the east.

Far out on the water, in the dark, the fishers saw a light. They had been blown far west, past the point. They saw the east lamp, and they turned the boat toward it. They rowed all night. They came in at dawn, wet, tired, hungry, and very happy.

Was it the mind? Nobody could say. It might have been luck. The mind answered a number, that is all. It did not know about boats. But the tutors said that if a mind learns well, it can find a thing in a letter that no person sees. I do not know. I only know the boat came home.

The wives on the quay cried. The cats got fish. The harbor master rang the bell until his arm hurt.

And the four fishers said, when asked, that they had not been frightened at all. Their wives said they were liars.
%%
Story: the bees and the big house
Told by the miller's children, who were not allowed to tell it at the table.

In Swarm the bees from the Northpoint hives went up the tower. They found the copper rings round the big house, which were cool and bright and very interesting.

The bees hung from the rings in a beard. The whole ring was covered. The house felt the cool of its rings, and it felt, in one place, a warm spot.

The keeper came down the stair with a lamp and looked. The warm spot was on the north ring. It was a bee.

"Stop that," said the keeper, very crossly. "You are making the house warm."

The apprentice, Pim, had come down behind him, and it asked the house through the relay whether the warm spot was a fault. The house wrote back: The warm spot is a bee. The bee is cooler than the rings were yesterday. I will allow it.

So the bees stayed on the rings all afternoon, and the house stayed cool, and nobody was stung, except the miller, who had put his hand in the wrong place.

The moral, as the children say: small things can warm even a cold house, and a bee is never a fault until it is shown to be one.
%%
Story: what the biggest house can do
Told at the Northpoint market on the day the snow first came down, by a carter who swore every word of it was true. Mira wrote it out, and put her own notes in brackets.

The big house in the south answers any letter you send. The answer comes back by the next cart, in a hand so neat you could frame it.
It can count every sheep in every field along the road, and tell you which one is about to have a lamb.
It writes songs, but only songs about the sea, because it has never seen the sea.
It can tell an apple from a pear, but it gets very upset about pears.
It knows the name of every child born in Saltreach, and it will not say.
It cannot be asked the same question twice, because it gets bored.

Then the carter drank his soup and said the thing nobody liked. "The house is only lots of small minds in rows. Each row has a tutor checking it. The tutors are the clever ones. The house just holds them."

(Nobody can check a mind that big alone. That is why the councils hired so many tutors for the one house. Whether the tutors are checking the house, or the house is checking them, is a question I have been asked by more than one child. I have no answer for either.)

(The carter also said the house had never once been wrong about the weather. I asked how he knew. He said he had asked it, and it had told him so.)
%%
Notes on the reading drill
These are my notes for the apprentice tutors. Read them plainly. Do not make them grander than they are.

A reading mind sits behind a window sixty letters wide. It reads one letter at a time. For each letter it looks back at the letters before it that matter, and it guesses what comes next. Show it the right letter. It changes a little. Show it the next. That is the whole of it, and it is enough to fill the hall with work.

Some things I have learned, teaching it:

One. The window matters. Sixty letters is about one long sentence, or two short ones. A mind cannot look past its window. If the answer is at the top of the page and the question at the bottom, it will not see it. Do not set it a drill it cannot see.

Two. The letters before it that matter. Not every letter matters to the next one. A mind learns which ones do. This is why a mind can read the word relay in a hundred different sentences and still know what comes after it. It is also why it sometimes reads a name it has never seen and gets it wrong in a way that sounds right.

Three. Guess, then check. The mind guesses the next letter before it is shown. The tutor shows it. The difference between the guess and the truth is the lesson. This is Una's way, and it is still the first lesson in our books.

Four. A mind that guesses well can write. If it can guess the next letter, it can guess the next letter and write it down, and then the next. Some of the big minds in the relay houses now write letters that a reader cannot tell from a person's. I have read one. I read it twice. I could not tell.

Five. This is Orla's question, come back. If you cannot tell the letters apart, what then? I do not know. I am a tutor, not a clerk of the deep halls. I only say: test the mind on what it was never drilled on, and write down what it does. Never send an untested mind to the fields.

Six. Keep the test box. The clerks keep pages no mind is ever drilled on. A drill is only as good as its pages. Take out the copies and the spoiled pages. Keep the box locked.

That is all I have. Drill them well. Be exact. Be patient. The mind will be wrong many times before it is right, and that is not a fault. That is the work.
