Story: the well rope
Told by Runa at the inn near the house at the edge of Vell.

Runa had a well behind her house. One hot summer, the rope broke while she was drawing water. The bucket fell down with a splash.

"That is a deep well," said her grandson.

"It is deeper now," said Runa.

She tied a new rope to the bucket. Then she asked a neighbor to hold the other end. The neighbor stood on the well curb and held tight. Runa pulled. The neighbor slid one step forward.

"Hold fast," called Runa.

"I am holding," said the neighbor. "The well is pulling back."

They tied the rope around the oak post and worked together. Soon the bucket came up, full of clear water and one surprised frog.

Runa set the frog by the garden ditch. The frog hopped straight into her basket of carrots.

"That is not where I put the water," she said.

The frog did not answer. It looked very pleased with itself.
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Notice: the yard at the edge of Three
To everyone who uses the road past Abel's barn,

The roof is mended. The mason has gone home. Please do not climb on the roof to look at it.

The gate is mended too. Please close it. The grey mare gets out, and then she goes to the mill pond, and then there is trouble.

There is water at the well and shade under the oak. Travelers may use both. Leave the bucket where you found it.

Abel, horse keeper
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Tall tale: the pumpkin to Saltreach
Kester told this one at the Ambrook inn after the Reaping storm, with her boots up on the fender.
The wind took the biggest pumpkin off the field and carried it down the valley, past the mill and the Brown Hen. It did not stop until Saltreach, where it rolled off the harbor wall and bobbed in the sea for a week.
The fishermen say there is a pumpkin in the harbor that knows the tide.
"Is that true?" asked the new apprentice, Tuck.
"Every word," said Kester.
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Story: the roof that caught a cloud
Runa told this at the inn near the house at the edge of Vell.

One summer, the roof there caught a cloud. It was a small cloud, but it covered the chimney and made the soup taste damp.

Runa climbed a ladder with a broom. She pushed the cloud loose. It floated over the hill and rained on the Archive garden.

The beans grew so fast that Oren had to ask three clerks to pick them.

"Next summer," said Runa, "I shall put a basket on the roof."

The innkeeper said, "Put two baskets. Clouds are larger in Apple."
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Tall tale: the mud and Pell's cart
Told at Wren's stall in the Lowmarsh market, summer, by Pell, who had honey on his sleeve and the story ready.

"The marsh road is soft after rain," said Pell. "Last summer my wheel went in to the hub."
"To the hub is nothing," said Rook. "Mine went in to the axle."
"To the axle is nothing," said Pell. "Then the cart went in to the sides. Then Barley went in to the knees. Then to the chest. By evening all I could see of the horse was his ears. By dark it was my hat. By midnight there was a little flag on a stick, which was me, waving."
"What happened?" said Wren.
"The mud kept the cart for a year," said Pell. "I walked home. Barley came with me, a bit at a time. Juna said the honey was lost. I said no, it is only waiting."
The next summer the mud gave the cart back. It came up out of the road one morning, clean as a plate, and on the seat was a note. It said: THANK YOU FOR THE HONEY. The honey had gone dark and thick and sweet as gold. Pell sold it for three times the price.
"The note," said Wren. "Written in mud?"
"In reeds," said Pell. "Laid out neat."
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Tall tales: the hat and the raindrops
Kester told these the night after the storm, while the wind was still arguing with the roof.
The wind came down the valley and took every hat in Ambrook. Not mine. I had nailed mine on with three nails, a horseshoe, and my husband's opinion.
"Did it take the mill?" asked Tuck, the new apprentice.
"It took the mill's roof and put it on the Brown Hen. The Brown Hen kept it a week, and charged the mill a bowl of soup for the rent."
Then the rain came, and Tuck began to count the drops on the window. It counted forty thousand before the first hour was out.
It started again at the second hour, and it has not finished yet.
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The cheese that rolled to Vell
Told by Quill, cheesemaker, at the Hillside Inn, a hamlet near Vell, in autumn. Quill says it is true, and then says it again, bigger.

My grandmother made a cheese once that was as big as the hill. She wrapped it in cloth and left it out to set on the north slope, and in the night it set so hard it started to roll. Down it came, past the sheep, past the gate, past the wall. The sheep went to the side to get out of the way, very politely.

It rolled all the way to Vell. It went through the market and knocked over four stalls. The clerks saw it coming from the hill and ran out of the copying room, and they all shouted "We will keep everything we write!" at once, and then they had to stop and think what the cheese was.

It stopped against the door of the archive. Right against it. The clerks came out with a rope to pull it away, but the cheese was too heavy, so they wrote a note and put it on top. The note said "Cheese: please keep this." They filed it under C.

And that is why, if you go to Vell today and look in the third room, you will find a cheese in a box, with a note on it. Nobody is allowed to eat it.

It is true. Ask anyone at Vell.
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Story: Abel's grey mare and the mill
This is a tale Abel tells at the Brown Hen, and it grows a little each year.

My grey mare is a sensible horse, said Abel. But one summer she took it into her head to go swimming.

It was the hottest day of Melon. I had left her by the mill pond at Ambrook while I spoke to Jory about a cart of apples. When I came back, the mare was in the water up to her shoulders, and she was not alone. She had found the geese, and the geese were not pleased.

The mare swam round the pond three times. The geese followed her, hissing. The ducks got out. The frogs got out. Jory came out of his mill with his sleeves rolled up and said, "Abel, your horse is in my pond."

"I see her," I said.

"With my geese," said Jory.

"I see them too," I said.

Then the mare climbed out on the far bank, shook herself all over Jory's clean washing, and walked home by herself. I had to walk behind her with the cart, and the geese followed us to the bridge, and that is why I do not go to Ambrook in Melon anymore.

"Your horse did not swim three times round the pond," said Pell.

"Perhaps two," said Abel. "The geese were very upset."
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Story: the summer the mare knew every
Abel tells this one slowly, and it gets longer every year. Some of it is true.

The summer of 201 was the best summer I ever had, said Abel. The wheat was high and the bees were loud and the well in my yard never ran low. And my grey mare knew every road in the land.

She knew the Long Road, of course. She knew the waymarks by heart. She knew which inn was a day from which, and where the bridge was stone and where it was oak, and where the loose plank was on the bridge at Ambrook, and she stepped over it every time.

She knew the road up to Kettle Ridge, and the windmills squeaking on every turn, and the smell of beetroot in the long field. She knew the road down to Lowmarsh, where the boardwalks are wet and the frogs are loud, and she walked it slowly, because a horse knows when the ground is soft.

She knew the road to Copperhold, up the hill, past the shaft head, where the miners wrote their names on the board and rubbed them out coming up. She knew the road to Saltreach, and the smell of the sea, and the gulls, and she did not like the gulls.

And she knew the little road to the archive at Vell, where the clerks copy everything, and where a horse may stand in the shade by the door while its keeper goes in to look at a book.

Now, I did not teach her all of that. She learned it. A horse learns a road the way a person learns a song. You go along it once and you hum it. You go along it twice and you know the words.

That summer I fell asleep in the cart more than once. It was the heat. Each time I woke in my own yard, and the mare was in the barn, and the cart was turned at the gate.

Once I woke in the yard at Ambrook, which is not my yard. That was the day of the fair. The mare had stopped at the mill pond to see the geese. She remembered the geese. I did not want to see the geese.

The harvest came, and the apprentices came. I had two that year, small copper things that walked a little stiffly and carried sacks. I called them Sack and Other Sack. They stacked the sacks in the barn, very straight, and I did not have to carry anything at all.

On the last day of the harvest, everyone came to the barn. There was bread and honey and a barrel of cider. The children climbed on the hay. Somebody's dog stole a pie. The mare put her head over the half door and ate an apple out of a child's hand, very gently, and the child laughed and gave her another.

And I stood by the barn door and looked at the wheat stacks and the mended roof and the sun going down over the fields, and I thought: this is the best summer I ever had.

The mare thought so too. She got out of the gate that night, and went to the mill pond, and swam round it once with the geese, and came home wet. I did not mind. It was a good summer. Even the geese were having a good summer.
%%
The last tale at the Hillside Inn
Told by Quill at the Hillside Inn, late in the autumn, when the fire was low and the travelers had gone up to bed. Quill said this was the last tale of the night and the last tale of the year. Nobody believed the last bit. Everyone listened anyway.

I will tell you the biggest story I know. It is about the lights.

You know the lights. Everyone has seen them, or heard of someone who saw them, from Northpoint or the high field at Ambrook. Some say they are stars that fell, and that they are cold now, and that the children should pick them up. Some say they are fires, very far off, and that the towns on the other side of the mountain are burning down quietly, one by one. Some say they are the lamps of a very large relay, and that somebody on the far side is blinking back.

My cousin at the Halfway Inn says it is all three at once, and that she saw them herself, and that she stopped her cart on the road to watch, and that the horse did not like it at all. She says the lights came very low, and were green in the middle and gold at the edges, and that for a moment she thought they were looking at her.

Then she heard a bell. Far away, in the north. It rang once, and then twice, and then the lights went out, one by one, like candles being put out in a long hall.

The horse went home without her. She walked the rest of the night, and did not sleep for a week.

Now, what does it mean? I do not know. Nobody at the inn knows. The clerks at Vell have a folder on it, and I am told the folder is very thick, and that there are three different answers in it, and that the clerks do not agree on any of them.

But I will tell you what I think, and then I will go to bed. I think the lights are not for us. They are for the people up north, who keep the lamps. And I think the people up north are watching the lights too, and wondering what the lights are watching.

That is the biggest story I know. It is bigger than the cheese, and bigger than the moon, and bigger than the lake. I do not like it very much. It is too big for a fire.

So let us all have one more cup, and say goodnight to the lamp in the window, and go up to bed. The stove will stay lit. It always does, at the Hillside Inn. And the fox at the gate will go home, when it is tired.

Goodnight, travelers. Mind the stair on the left.
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Letter: Abel to his sister
Dear Rill,

The roof is mended at last. The mason came from Copperhold stone and did it in three days. He says the beams are good for another twenty years. I paid him in hay and two days of carting. He seemed pleased.

The horses are well. The grey mare is fat and lazy. The brown colt has learned to stand still while I pick up his feet, which took most of Sowing.

Come and see us in Apple. There will be apples and too much cider.

Your brother,
Abel
%%
Tall tales: three nights of wind
Kester told these in Leaffall, to the children on the bench by the fire, while the wind went round the house looking for a way in.
Tale one. On the second night the wind was so strong it lifted the red cow over the orchard wall. She came down in the next valley, still giving milk, and a little taller than before.
"Taller?" asked Tuck, the new apprentice.
"She had to be. She was standing in a hedge."
Tale two. On the third night the wind took the barn from the hill farm and set it on top of the old oak, like a hat. Brin sat up in the rafters with his supper and waved to the whole valley until morning.
"Did he have enough supper?" asked Tuck.
"He had enough for the barn," said Kester. "Not for the oak."
Tale three. The wind was so big that the bees flew sideways. They came home to their hive with honey from the top of Vell hill, from the Archive garden. They sold it to the Archive kitchen for emeralds, and with the emeralds they bought a new hive, and they are still arguing about which of them owns it.
Tale four. On the last morning the wind was so pleased with itself that it lifted the whole orchard, every tree, and set it down again in the same place, but facing the other way. The apples grew on the north side for a year. The children had never been so happy to climb a tree, because every apple was at the top, and they all had to go up to find one.
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Story: the horse that learned the road
Abel keeps horses at the edge of Three Wells, where the last house meets the Long Road. He has four horses and a barn with a mended roof. In summer he sits at the Brown Hen and tells tales. This is one he tells.

My grey mare knows the road better than I do, said Abel. One evening I fell asleep in the cart. The mare brought me home, turned the cart at the gate, and put herself in the barn. I woke in my own yard with the reins still in my hand.

Pell the merchant laughed. That is nothing, he said. My horse once found the inn in fog so thick I could not see my own boots.

That is nothing, said a mason from the east. My horse stopped at a brook and would not cross. I got down to look. The bridge was gone, and the water was high. That horse saved my life and my cart.

The innkeeper wiped a cup and said nothing. He has heard worse.
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Letter: Senna to her sister
Dear Rill, I am at the Halfway Inn again, the one with the riddle board. The road is muddy to the ankles and the innkeeper has put down straw. Tonight the talk was all about the new copper vein they found up past Copperhold. A miner named Hesk came in with his boots still dusty and said the vein runs under the hill like a root. He says they will need more hands. He says the pay is good. He said it twice. I am not going. I have my loom and my wool and my roof, and I am too old to learn a pick. But I thought of our father, who would have gone. I am sending you the blue cloth you asked for. It is not quite the blue I meant. The wool came out greyer, but it is warm, and the grey will keep. Tell mother I am well. Tell her the inn has a new cook and the soup is better. Tell her I did not win at the riddle board. The riddle was about a fox and a bridge and I got it wrong. I will try again next time I pass. Your sister, Senna.
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Iona's last tale of the carts
Iona says this is the last tale she knows, and that she has only told it once, to a traveler who wanted to hear everything she had. It is the story of the cart that could not be stopped.

Long ago, before the Long Road had its waymarks, a carter called Gerrit had a cart full of pumpkins. It was a big cart, with four wheels and a good horse. He was taking the pumpkins to the fair at Three Wells, and he was late.

On the ridge road the horse stopped. It would not go up the hill. Gerrit got down and pushed. The horse did not move. Gerrit shouted. The horse did not move. So Gerrit tied the reins to his belt and pushed with his shoulder, and the cart began to roll backward, very slowly, down the hill.

It rolled past the mill. It rolled past the three waymarks. It rolled past the Kettle Inn, where the innkeeper ran out with a bucket. It rolled past the Brown Hen, and past the Halfway Inn, where the riddle board fell off the wall. It rolled down the Long Road and past the pond and over the bridge, and the loose plank came up and hit it on the wheel, and it kept on going.

It rolled all the way to Three Wells, backward, with Gerrit running behind it shouting that it was a cart that could not be stopped.

It stopped in the square, against the east well, with a soft thump. The pumpkins did not fall off. Not one.

Gerrit was furious. He was exhausted. He had lost half a day and his temper. But when the mayor came to see what the noise was, and the children crowded round, and the pumpkins sat there in the square as if they had come by themselves, he began to laugh.

He sold every one of them at the market that day. The mayor made him a card and pinned it to the cart. It said, in very large letters, that the cart could not be stopped.

Iona says the card is still on the cart. The cart is in the barn at the Kettle Inn, and it has not been moved since. Nobody has ever pushed it back up the ridge.
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Iona's tale of the child on the wall
At Kettle Ridge there was a girl called Wynn, who was the smallest in her class and the fastest. When the school bell rang she ran home so fast that nobody could catch her. Her mother called her Little Hare. Her father called her Trouble. Her grandfather called her Pumpkin, because she was round when she was born.

One afternoon Wynn did not come home. The school bell had rung. The other children had gone up the ridge road. But Wynn had run the other way, toward the wall at the top of the top field, where the hedge is tallest. The wall is cobblestone, and it is taller than a man.

Wynn had made a bet. She had said she could run along the top of the wall, all the way from the hedge to the corner post, without falling off.

The wall is very narrow. Wynn ran along it. The wind came up. The wall wobbled. Then she was on the top of the wall, with her arms out, and the hens were looking up at her in surprise.

At the corner post she stopped. She had won. She could not get down. The wall was too high to jump from, and the stones were too round to climb.

Her mother came up the ridge road looking for her. Her father came after. Old Brin came with a ladder that he had had for twenty years and never used. He stood at the bottom and said, "Wynn, you can come down now."

"I won," said Wynn.

"You did," said Brin. "The corner post is very impressed."

Wynn laughed so much she nearly fell off the wall. Then she climbed down the ladder, very slowly, one rung at a time, and Brin held the bottom so it would not shake.

When she got to the ground, Wynn said she was never going to run on a wall again. But the next summer she ran along the top of the big hay barn. The whole ridge saw her. Brin said nothing at all, but he went and moved the ladder into the barn, where she could reach it.
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Iona's tale of the big cart
Iona drives the carts on the ridge road, and she tells this one at the Kettle Inn every autumn, when the wagons are in and the lamps are lit. She says it is true. Everyone at the bench says it is not, and they ask her to tell it again.

It was the autumn my cart broke its axle at the bend. I had two tons of apples in the back and no wheel to get them down the hill. So I asked the miller for a rope, and he said the rope was in the mill, and the mill was on the far side of the pond. I walked round the pond. It took me all afternoon. On the way I met a goose, who asked me the way to Ambrook, and I told her she was going the wrong way. She said she knew, and that was why she was going. I did not argue. Geese never listen.

When I got to the mill, the rope was there, but it was too short. So I tied two ropes together, and then the miller's boy tied a third one on, and the three of them went all the way round the big oak on the ridge and back again. We pulled the cart up the bend with the oxen, and the oxen were very annoyed.

The apples came down the hill one by one, in a long bright line, like a school running home. At the bottom there was a bridge, and the apples went over it in a rush, and the bridge bent under them, and then it stood up again. Nobody got wet. I only lost four apples, and two of them were rotten, so I do not count them.

That was the autumn my cart was too heavy for the road. That is why the road is wider now.
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Story: the sheep that counted people
This one Senna told slowly, in the way of a story that is almost true. At Kettle Ridge, she said, there was a shepherd who could not sleep. He tried counting sheep, but he had only twelve sheep and he lost count at nine. So he counted the people of the town instead. He counted them going to market, and coming home, and going to the well. He counted them so well that after a while he knew when anyone was late. One night a farmer did not come home. The shepherd counted and counted and the farmer was still not home. So he took his lamp and walked the ridge road, and there was the farmer in the ditch with a broken cart wheel, cold but alive. After that the town made the shepherd the official counter of people. He stood at the crossroads with a tally board and counted everyone who passed, and called out, "Eleven today! Twelve yesterday!" The children loved it. They ran past him twice to be counted twice. He knew. He always knew. "Twice today, Bel!" he would call, and Bel would laugh and run away. He counted until he was old, and then he taught his dog to count. The dog was not good at it. But the dog was good at finding people in ditches, which is the point of counting, the shepherd said. The room was quiet, and then it was warm, and the innkeeper said that was a good story to sleep on. Senna said it was not a story. It was a way of sleeping.
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The moon that Quill's uncle caught
Told by Quill at the Hillside Inn in the autumn, when the nights were getting long. Quill says this one is only a little bit true, which is the best kind.

My uncle Tove was a fisherman on the marsh, before he took up the cheese. He was the best at the eel traps, and the worst at keeping quiet. One autumn he went out on the water at night, with a lantern and a net, to see what he could catch. He came back at dawn, very wet, with a rope over his shoulder.

The rope was tied to the moon.

He said it had fallen into the reeds at the edge of the marsh, down behind the frogs. He had seen it go down in the sky all evening, low and yellow and round, and then it came down so close he could hear it hum. He threw the net over it. It was heavy. It was warm, like new bread. The frogs were very upset, and they sang all night, to tell him so.

He tried to pull the moon up. It would not come. So he tied the rope to his boat, and rowed it slowly over the water to the middle of the marsh, and the moon came along behind him, bobbing like a lantern on a float.

When he reached the middle, he tied the boat to a post, and sat down in the stern, and waited for the morning. He said he could feel the moon pulling, very gently, all night. He said it was the nicest thing that had ever happened to him, and that he would not swap it for a barrel of honey.

But by dawn the moon was tired. It had been pulled all night, and it had grown very small. So he let it go. It went up into the sky, pale and quiet, like a coin rising through the water. He said it was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. Then he went home and slept for two days.

The moon was a little smaller that autumn. Everyone said so. You can see the difference now if you look at the marsh at night.

Uncle Tove says it was a very good night for eels, too.
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Tall tale: the fish that swallowed
Told at Wren's stall in the Lowmarsh market, summer, by whoever sat nearest.

Rook said he had caught a fish as long as his arm. Tull said that was a small one. She had caught a fish as long as a boat. Ferris said that was nothing. The fish he saw at the weir was as long as the weir.
Then old Tansy, who had said nothing all morning, put down her knitting. "When I was a girl," she said, "the fish in this marsh were as long as the marsh."
"That was the fish that swallowed the bell," said Tansy. "We had a new bell for the boat house, a good one, from Copperhold. The big fish came up from the deep part and swallowed it while the mayor was making a speech. It swam off with the bell inside. It is still in the marsh. On quiet nights, when the frogs stop, you can hear it. One slow ring, and then another. That is the fish, turning over."
Wren says the sound is real. She says that if you hear it, you should bring bread.
%%
Iona's tale of the great mill race
This is the biggest tale Iona knows, and she tells it last, when the bench is full and the stove is hot and nobody is going home. She says it happened to a cousin of her cousin, and that the mill at Ambrook still has the marks on its beam.

It was in the year the mill pond froze from edge to edge. A boy at Ambrook had been sent to the mill with a sack of wheat on his back. The sack was as big as the boy, and the boy was as small as his sack. The miller said: take it up the stair to the top floor. The boy said yes, and he tried, and he fell.

The sack went down the stair like a barrel. It bounced off the steps, and off the walls, and off the great wheel's axle. It went through the sluice gate, which nobody is allowed to open, and out into the race.

The race ran fast that winter. The sack went down it at the speed of a galloping horse. It hit the wheel. The wheel went round. It went round again. Then it went round a hundred times, very fast, and sang as it turned, and every time it turned the mill shook like a dog.

The boy ran down the bank after the sack. He ran all the way to the bridge, and at the bridge he stopped, because the loose plank was there and he remembered to step over it.

Under the bridge the sack came out of the race, spun round, and stopped against the post of the mill pond. It was full of wheat, and not a single grain was lost.

The miller said it was the best load the mill had ever had, and that it had been ground the fastest. He said the wheel had never been so happy. He said the boy had saved the flour, and the sluice, and the pond, and probably the whole village.

The boy said nothing. He only went up to the top floor and sat by the window for the rest of the day, looking down at the race, with his hands on his knees.

That is the story Iona tells. The marks are still on the beam, she says. You can see where the wheel sang.
%%
Tall tale: the gift melon
A man Wren had mended gave her a melon. It was the size of a head, he said. By the time it reached the healing house, the woman at the door said it was the size of a pig. By evening, the boy who helped to pull the cart said it was the size of the cart. By morning it was the size of the healing house, and Wren was sleeping inside it, because the beds were full. It has four rooms. Wren says it is the best bed in Lowmarsh, and she cannot think why the sick get better so fast.
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Tall tale: the copper vein that sang
Told by Rook the trader at the Three Wells inn in the cold quarter. He says he heard it from a miner. Nobody has found the miner.

There was a vein of copper found at Copperhold, deep in the hill. It was a fine vein, wide as a door, and it ran on and on. The miners were delighted. Hesk, who does not smile, smiled twice.

On the third night, the vein began to sing.

Not a song. A note. A long low note, like a very big cat purring in a very big cave. It went on all night. The miners came out of the shaft, in their night clothes, with their picks, and stood in a circle.

"It's the wind," said Bram.

"There's no wind," said Ola.

"It's the water," said old Fenn.

"The water is quiet," said Hesk.

The note rose, a little. The vein glowed faintly in the dark, a warm brown red, like a coal. Then it fell.

In the morning, the miners dug it out, and there was nothing strange in it. It was good copper. It made good pots. People say the pots hum slightly if you strike them on a cold day. I own one. It does not hum. I tell this in case anyone asks.

Some say the vein sang because it was happy to be found. Some say it sang to warn us. Some say it was Bram, with a flute. I say, a vein is a vein, and a note is a note, and I have a pot to sell, if anyone wants one.
%%
The fence that walked to Ambrook
Told by Quill at the Hillside Inn, after the business with the fence. Everyone agreed it was a better story than the one about the cheese, and Quill agreed too.

Old Harl and young Dace had a quarrel over a fence, the spring after the wet year. It was a short fence, the height of a cow, and it ran along the top of a field that both of them said was theirs. Harl said the fence was his. Dace said the fence was his grandmother's, and that it had been put up in the night by his grandmother, and that Harl had moved it four paces to the left.

They argued all summer. They argued at the inn and at the well and at the market, and once in the middle of the bridge, so that three carts had to go round by the ford.

One morning in Swarm, the fence was gone. Both of them went out to look. There was a gap in the grass where the posts had stood, and a track going down the hill, and the track went all the way to Ambrook. Following it, the two men found the fence. It was standing in the orchard, between two apple trees, with the posts in a neat row. It had walked there in the night, very slowly, one post at a time.

The apple farmers at Ambrook were very pleased. They said the fence was a fine piece of work and that it would be a good windbreak. They wanted to keep it.

Harl and Dace went to Ambrook and asked for it back. The farmers said they would only give it back if the two men could say, together, whose fence it was.

They stood under the apple tree for an hour and could not agree. Then Harl said, "It is Ambrook's fence now." Dace said, "Yes, I think it is." And they went home, and never argued about the field again.

The fence is still in the orchard. It has been there so long that the apples grow up around it. You can see the posts if you look.
%%
Story: the market day cart
Runa told this tale at the inn near the house at the edge of Vell.

On market day, Runa filled her cart with apples, bread and two jars of honey. She meant to take them to the stalls at Three Wells. Her grandson sat on the cart to keep the bread from bouncing.

At the first hill, the cart rolled backward. Runa called for help. A baker pushed from behind, and a clerk pulled from the front. The cart went uphill so fast that the grandson had to hold his hat with both hands.

At the top, the cart ran on without them. It passed the waymark, crossed the bridge and stopped beside the market wells. The apples stayed in the cart. The jars stayed upright. The grandson stayed on top.

"How did you stop it?" asked Runa.

"I asked it to stay," he said.

Runa looked at him. Then she looked at the cart.

"Next time, ask before the hill," she said. "And let the baker have an apple."
%%
Story: the tall tale contest
One evening in the summer of 196, four people sat at the Brown Hen and told tales, each bigger than the last. Abel kept horses at the edge of Three Wells and told the first.

My grey mare, said Abel, once carried a cart of apples to Saltreach and back in one day. She came home with the apples still in the cart and the sea in her mane.

Pell the merchant set down his cup. That is nothing, he said. I once sold a cart of apples at Saltreach, bought a boat with the money, and sailed it home up the Long Road. The boat is still in my yard. It makes a fine hen house.

A mason from the east wiped his hands. That is nothing, he said. I once built a wall so straight that the spiders gave up and went home. They came back the next year and asked me to build them a wall too.

Then the innkeeper spoke. He does not often speak. Once, he said, a horse keeper came in here and told a tale about his horse. The horse heard it. The horse was so ashamed that it went out and mended its own stable roof. With its teeth.

There was a long quiet. Then Abel stood up and said, "I will go and check my roof."

He came back in the morning. The roof was still mended. He had checked it twice.
%%
Tall tales: Tuck's turn
Kester let Tuck tell one, on the last night of the storm, because Tuck had been counting raindrops all week and had something to say about it.
"I will tell you a tale," said Tuck. "It is smaller than yours, Kester, so do not be cross."
Tuck's tale one. I counted every stone on the north wall of the sheep pen while the wind blew once. It took the wind a whole breath, and I was not finished. I started again at the gate.
"That is not tall," said Kester. "That is only long."
"Then here is the tall one," said Tuck. "I carried the Archive up the hill on one arm, and I set it down at the top without a crack in a single book."
"Is that true?" said Kester.
"Every word," said Tuck. Everybody laughed, and Kester laughed loudest of all.
Tuck's tale two. I taught the hens of this farm to count to twelve. They wanted an egg for every number. I gave them twelve eggs and a number thirteen, and they laid thirteen by morning, out of spite.
"Thirteen is not a count," said Kester. "It is a complaint."
"It is a count the hens disagree with," said Tuck.
Tuck's tale three. I walked from Vell to Northpoint in one afternoon. On the way I stopped at every relay tower and said good day, and every keeper said good day back. I did not miss a single lamp. The lamps all lit as I passed, one after another, so I walked up the whole line like a parade.
"You walked the whole north line in an afternoon?"
"I was very quick. Very tall, too. The lamps had to bend to see me."
Tuck's tale four, the last. The wind asked me for a tale, so I gave it one. It was so big that the wind had to go home over the Long Road to tell it, and it has been polite to Ambrook ever since. You can still hear it in the chimney, going over the words.
Kester sat for a long time with her boots off the fender. Then she said, "That is bigger than mine."
"I know," said Tuck. "I was practicing."
%%
Tall tale: the baby who was born
A tall tale told by Rook the trader, at the Three Wells inn in the dead of winter, to a room that had heard all his other tales and had come for this one anyway.

Everyone knows that a baby is born crying. But the baby of Mother Tuck, at Kettle Ridge, was born counting.

It was a winter night, with the snow up to the windows. The midwife, Quin, was there. The father was on the roof, for reasons he has never explained. Mother Tuck gave a push. The baby came out. And before it cried, before anyone said a word, it said:

"One."

Quin dropped the towel.

"Two," said the baby. "Three."

By the time it got to ten, the father had come in from the roof and sat down on the cat. By twenty, Quin had run for the neighbors. By thirty, the whole house was full of people in their nightclothes, listening to a baby who would not stop.

"Forty-one. Forty-two."

"Is it normal?" whispered Mother Tuck.

"It is a very good count," said Quin.

At a hundred, the baby paused. It looked around the room. It seemed to look at the lamp, and the window, and the snow, and the faces. Then it said, quite clearly: "That is all of us."

And it began to cry.

The count was right. There were a hundred and three people in that room. Quin counted again in the morning, and checked.

Rook says the baby grew up to be a clerk at Vell. That is not true. She is a very fine baker at Three Wells now, and she counts every loaf. If you go to her shop and ask how many loaves she has, she says the exact number and then, sometimes, she adds: "That is all of us."

I do not know what she means. But the loaves are always correct.
%%
Tall tale: the carrot as long as a road
Rook the trader tells this one at the Three Wells inn, on cold nights, with his boots by the fire.

I once grew a carrot. It was a modest carrot at first. Then it kept going. I pulled and pulled, and the more I pulled, the more came up. After an hour I had a carrot as long as the lane. After a day, as long as the Long Road.

Dace asked if he could use it as a waymark. I said it was a root, not a post. He said it had a good arrow.

I ate it for a month. It tasted like a carrot.
%%
Story: the fox and the hen house
Runa told this at the inn near her house at the edge of Vell.

One summer evening, a fox came to Runa's hens. It was red, quick and very hungry. Runa heard a hen complain and ran out with a broom.

The fox ran round the hen house. Runa ran after it. The hens ran after Runa. Her grandson ran after the hens, carrying a bowl of grain.

They went round the house once, then twice, then so many times that the fox was dizzy. It stopped by the gate and sat down.

Runa stopped too. "You may be hungry," she said. "But those hens are busy."

Her grandson put the grain inside the hen yard. The fox watched him. The hens watched him. Runa watched the fox.

Then the fox took one grain from the ground and ran off. It had come for a hen, but it left with supper and a story.

In the morning, Runa found a red hair caught on the gate. She tied it to the latch as a warning.

The next night the fox came again. It looked at the hair, looked at Runa's broom, and went to the orchard instead.

At the inn, Runa's grandson said the fox feared the broom.

"No," said Runa. "It feared the hens. They were gaining on it."
%%
Story: the mended roof and the summer
Abel's roof had leaked for two winters. He put a bucket under it and emptied the bucket, and in spring he put the bucket back and said he would mend it in summer.

In the summer of 187, the mason came. He came from Three Wells with a cart of cobblestone and copperhold stone and a boy to carry it. They took the old tiles off the barn and laid new ones, and the boy sang while he worked, and the horses watched over the half door and did not help at all.

On the last day the mason said, "That roof will keep out rain and snow and one very large bird."

Abel paid him in hay and two days of carting. The boy got a pie.

Then came the rain. It came in the night, hard and sudden, the way it does in Melon. Abel woke and lay still and listened. The bucket stood in the corner of the barn, dry and empty.

In the morning the yard was full of water and the road was mud and the grey mare was standing in the barn door with her ears back, looking at the rain as if it had done something to her personally. But everything under the roof was dry. The hay was dry. The saddles were dry. The bucket was dry.

Abel stood in the door with his tea and watched the rain come down on his new roof, and it ran off the tiles and into the yard, and he did not have to do anything at all.

Pell came by that afternoon, wet through. He had been caught on the road with his ledgers. Abel gave him tea and a dry place by the stove, and Pell sat there and steamed and said, "That is a good roof."

"It is," said Abel. "I have a bucket to spare, if you want it."
%%
Tall tale: the frog that was a bridge
Told at Wren's stall in the Lowmarsh market, summer, one telling on top of another, as the best of them are.

Ferris said there was a frog in the weir as big as a hat. Tull said the frog she knew was as big as a barrel. Rook said that in his grandfather's day there was a frog as big as the boat house, and it sat on the east bank and sang the weather.
"How?" said Wren.
"Once for fair," said Rook. "Twice for rain. Three times for flood, and then you ran."
Then old Tansy said the frog grew. It ate a fly a day, and then a swarm of flies, and then all the flies of Swarm. By Longday it was as big as the mill pond at Ambrook. By Melon it lay across the slow river from bank to bank, like a green hill with eyes.
Carts could not cross the river, so they crossed the frog. It was a good bridge. It was warm and broad, and it hummed. The carters said they had never had a smoother crossing. Children rode across on its back for the fun of it, and fell asleep, and had to be carried to school.
"Did it mind?" said Wren.
"It said it did not," said Tansy. "It said it had been waiting all its life to be of use."
Then one morning in the first week of Reaping, the frog yawned. All of Lowmarsh heard it. The yawn went down the river to the sea, and the fishers at Saltreach looked up from their nets and said, "What was that?" It was the frog.
Then it went back to sleep. It is still there, they say, in the slow river past the third post. If you stand very still on the bank on a summer night, you can feel it humming. That is where the other frogs get it from.
%%
Story: the harvest at Abel's barn
The summer of 184 was a good one at the edge of Three Wells. The wheat stood high in the fields behind Abel's house, and the bees were loud, and the well in the yard never ran low.

Abel had four horses then. When the harvest came, he lent two of them to the farms and kept two for the carts. He was up before the sun and in bed after it, and in between he carried wheat and barley and apples, and once a whole family from Ambrook who had missed the cart.

The apprentices came that year. Abel had one for the summer, a small copper thing that walked a little stiffly and carried sacks. He called it Sack, because that was all it did. You said "fetch" and pointed, and it fetched. You said "store" and it stacked the sacks in the barn, and it stacked them very straight.

On the last day of the harvest, everyone came to the barn. There was bread and honey and a barrel of cider. The children climbed on the hay. Somebody's dog stole a pie and was chased round the yard.

Abel stood by the barn door and looked at the wheat stacks, and at the mended roof, and at Sack standing still in the corner with a sack in its arms, waiting to be told where to put it.

"Put it down, Sack," said Abel. "We are done for today."

Sack put the sack down. Then it stood there.

Abel gave it a piece of bread. It did not eat it. It held it. Abel laughed and took it back, and the children laughed too, and the dog came back for the pie.
%%
Tall tale: the great reed
Told at Wren's stall in the Lowmarsh market, summer, in a dry year, when everyone wanted rain and someone wanted to talk about it.

Tull said there was a reed behind the boat house that was taller than a door. Ferris said there was one taller than the boat house. Rook said that was nothing. The great reed grew from the bottom of the deepest pool and rose a block every day, and by the fourth week it was higher than the relay tower.
"Higher than the tower?" said Wren.
"Higher than the clouds," said Rook. "You could not see the top. It went up, and up, and then it went through the blue, and the birds went round it."
Old Tansy said the reed had been planted by a frog. Nobody asked her which frog.
Then Rook said, "And somebody climbed it."
"Who?" said Tull.
"A healer from Lowmarsh," said Rook. "With a bucket and a cloth."
Wren said nothing. Everyone looked at her. She went on grinding her herbs.
So the tale went on without her. The healer climbed for two days. From the top she could see the whole land: Vell on its hill, the windmills of Kettle Ridge turning, the grey line of the sea at Saltreach, and, very far north, one small lamp, which was Northpoint. Then, in the dry blue, she found a cloud sitting like a sheep. She wrung it out into the bucket, gently, as you wring a cloth. She climbed down for two days more. The bucket was still full. And the water in it was the sweetest anyone has tasted.
She sent the bucket to Kettle Ridge on the next cart, as a gift, for the dry fields. When it was poured out on the top field it rained for an hour over that field and nowhere else. The beetroot there has been big ever since.
"Is that true?" said Ferris, to Wren.
"I will not say," said Wren. "I will say that Kettle Ridge had a good year."
%%
Iona's tale of the bees on the Long Road
This is a true story, the carters say, if you ask a carter. Iona has never admitted it is a story. She tells it when the bees swarm in the orchard at Ambrook, and the children run out with pots and spoons.

On the Long Road, one summer, a swarm of bees came off the big hive at the Halfway Inn. It was a huge swarm, bigger than a cart wheel, and it came down the road like a dark cloud. The horses ran. The inn cook ran. The innkeeper stood in the door with his mouth open.

Iona was there with her cart. She had a jar of honey in the back, and a bag of spare pots, and she was not afraid of bees. So she took a pot and a spoon and walked straight into the swarm, singing the honey song loudly, the one that goes "sweet, sweet, come along," over and over.

The bees stopped. They looked at her. Iona stopped too.

Then the whole swarm turned round, slowly, like a crowd turning to see who has come into the square. It rose up off the road and went over the hedge, and down the hill, toward the mill pond.

Iona followed it. She walked down the hill with her pot in one hand and her spoon in the other. She walked past the mill and past the bridge and past the three waymarks. At the far end of the pond there was an old tree, a dead one, standing in the water. The swarm went into a hole in its side and stayed there.

Iona went back to the Halfway Inn and told them where the bees had gone. The innkeeper said that was a shame, because the honey had been the best on the road. Iona said the bees had found a better place.

Now every autumn Iona walks back down to the pond. She says the bees are still in the tree, and that they have made the sweetest honey in the north. Nobody has ever been able to taste it, because the bees will not let anybody near the hole, and the tree is too far out in the water to reach.
%%
Story: the weaver who wove a road
Senna saved this one for the last night of the fair, when the room was full and the fire was low and nobody wanted to go up to bed. She said that once, long ago, a weaver at Vell was asked to weave a cloth so long it would reach from Vell to Three Wells. The clerk who asked her was an archive clerk named Oren, and he was joking, but she did not know that. So she began. She wove a blue stripe and a grey stripe and a white stripe and a red stripe, and she kept weaving. She wove through Thaw and Sowing and Blossom. Her loom broke twice. She mended it with a fork. She wove through Swarm and Longday and Melon, and the cloth went out of her house and down the hill. People walked on it. People rolled it up to get past, and rolled it out again. Children used it for a slide. She wove through Reaping and Apple and Leaffall. The cloth crossed the fields and the streams and the Long Road, and the carts went over it, and the cloth got muddy, and she wove the mud in, because it was part of the road now. In Frost, Oren came back and found the cloth at his door. He looked at it, and he looked at her, and he said, "I was joking." And she said, "I was not." The cloth lay from Vell to Three Wells, and it was the warmest road in the world, and the cows would not cross it. They stood at the edge and lowed. In the end they cut it into blankets, one for every house on the way, and Oren got the blue stripe. Senna said she still has the fork. The room laughed until the innkeeper had to shout for quiet. Senna stood up and said goodnight, and went to bed, and the fire was low, and the road outside was just a road.
%%
Story: the pick that dug itself
Senna told this one the next year, to the same room, and swore it was true because a miner told her. At Copperhold, she said, a miner left his pick in the Deep Works overnight. In the morning the pick had dug nine feet of tunnel by itself. The miner was pleased. He left it again. The next morning it had dug twenty. By the end of the month the pick had dug a tunnel all the way to the old sump, and the miners had to walk down it single file to get to work. "It was a good pick," said Senna. "It only wanted to work." Then the pick dug a side tunnel, and another, and the miners began to lose their way. They tied string to the walls so they could find their way back. The pick dug through the string. The miners tied more string. The pick dug through that too. At last the foreman sat down on a rock and said, "Pick, we have enough tunnel. We have more tunnel than we need." The pick stood still. It had never been told. The foreman said, "Thank you." The pick leaned against the wall and went to sleep. They say it is still there, in the ninth level, and if you listen you can hear it snoring. Hesk, who was in the room, said it was a very good story and he had never heard it before. Senna said that was because he never listened. Hesk said he had been underground. The room laughed. The innkeeper brought more bread.
%%
Tall tales: the wind on the Long Road
Kester told these the week after the storm, to a row of carters at the Brown Hen. They had been blown off the road twice and wanted to hear that it could have been worse.
Tale one. The wind came up the Long Road so hard it turned a whole cart round, horse and all, and set it down facing the way it had come. The carter arrived home before he had left.
Tuck, the new apprentice, was counting the wheels on the cart. There were four. Tuck said so.
Tale two. The wind lifted a flock of sheep off the hill above the Halfway Inn and set them down, all together, in the middle of the yard. The sheep had their wool blown into shapes. The innkeeper sold the shapes as cloth, and the best one, a sheep shaped like a hen, is still on a hook by the hearth.
Tale three. The wind took the mill wheel off its axle at Ambrook, and the wheel rolled down the valley all the way to Three Wells. It ground every sack of flour in the market square without anybody turning it. The baker said it was the best flour he had ever had, and he wanted to know where the wheel had gone.
"Did it come back?" asked Tuck.
"It is still turning in the square at Three Wells," said Kester. "On a quiet day you can hear it squeak."
Tale four. On the last night of the storm the wind went up the whole length of the Long Road, and it turned every waymark round. Every arrow pointed back the way the traveler had come. Odo's pillars, every one. For a day the carters arrived home before they had set out, and then they set out again, and by the next market they had worked out where they were going.
%%
The lamp at the bottom of the lake
Told by Quill at the Hillside Inn, at the autumn fair, by the fire, to a room of children who were supposed to be asleep. The children did not sleep. Quill was pleased.

There is a lake to the north of Vell, past the last farm, that nobody has ever measured. The water in it is so deep that a man who threw a stone in once heard it land a whole day later. People who fish it come back very quiet. They do not say much about what they catch.

In the middle of the lake, at the bottom, there is a lamp.

It is a big glass lamp, the kind they make at Saltreach, with a copper ring round the top. It is lit. The light comes up through all that water, green and slow, and you can see it from the shore on the darkest nights, a small pale glow under the surface, like a moon that has fallen in.

Now, the story is this. A relay keeper, a long time ago, was sent to find the lamp that had gone out on the north line. He was given a rope and a bucket and a lamp of his own, and a letter for the keeper at the bottom of the lake, in case there was one. He walked for a week past the last farm, and then he came to the water.

He tied the rope to a tree, and went down it, hand over hand. It took him most of a day. The water got colder and colder. He said the fish were very polite, and that they moved out of his way like the sheep on the north slope. He said the light got brighter as he went, and when he reached the bottom he could see the lamp clearly, sitting on a flat stone, with its glass warm and clean.

He opened the letter and read it out loud. Nobody knows what it said. He said afterward it was only a list of names. He said it was a long list, and some of the names were his own family, and he had not known they were written there.

Then he wound the rope round his arm, very slowly, and climbed back up. When he reached the top, the lamp was lit behind him, and the whole lake was glowing. He says it was the only time he ever saw the north line blink all the way to the end, and every tower answer.

They say he never went back. They say he sits by the stove in his house in Vell, with a warm glass in his hands, and he waits for the next letter.

The fish at the bottom of the lake, of course, are still very polite.
%%
Story: Runa and the long ladder
Told by people at the inn near the house at the edge of Vell.

Runa lived in a little house at the edge of Vell. The house had a garden, a woodpile, and a roof that leaked over one chair. Runa said the chair was thirsty and kept it there.

One summer, a pear rolled from the garden into the road. Runa bent to pick it up, and her back made a small crack.

"That sounded like a twig," said her grandson.

"It was a large twig," said Runa. "Bring the ladder."

The ladder was long enough to reach the roof. It was also long enough to reach the inn's chimney, the Archive hill, and the top of the tallest oak, if you asked Runa.

Her grandson set it against the house. Runa climbed three rungs and found the roof leak. She climbed six more and found a loose tile. At the top she found a crow sitting on the chimney.

The crow had a piece of bread in its beak. It had taken the bread from the inn kitchen and flown all the way to Runa's roof.

"That is a long journey for one bite," said Runa.

The crow swallowed the bread. Then it flew away.

Runa climbed down and carried the loose tile to the shed. Her grandson carried the ladder. They went to the inn for a new tile and a bowl of soup.

The innkeeper asked how high the ladder reached.

"Today, only the roof," said Runa.

The innkeeper put another loaf on the table. "Then it needs more practice."

The next morning, Runa mended the roof. She set the thirsty chair beneath the dry place and sat down to sew a torn sleeve.

Her grandson watched her work.

"Will the ladder reach the clouds tomorrow?" he asked.

"Only if the clouds come down to borrow it," said Runa.

Years later, at the inn, the story grew. Runa climbed the ladder to mend the roof, and the ladder grew until it leaned against the Archive hill. A clerk came out to ask her to mind the top rung.

That is how the story is told now. Runa says the ladder never left her yard. The innkeeper says it reached the chimney. Her grandson says he held it steady all day.

The loose tile is still in the shed. The chair is still beneath the dry place. Runa still says the chair was thirsty.
%%
Story: the letter that walked home
Senna said this happened to a woman she knew, a weaver, which is to say to herself, but she said it so well that nobody minded. She had written a letter to her sister at Ambrook, about the price of wool and a blue cloth. She gave it to a carter. The carter lost it on the road. The letter blew into a hedge and lay there all Leaffall. In Frost a goat ate it. The goat was sold at Three Wells market, and the goat's new owner found the letter in the goat. He could not read, so he gave it to the school, and the school children read it out loud, and one of them said, "This is for Ambrook!" And another said, "My uncle goes to Ambrook!" So the letter went to Ambrook in a boy's pocket, and there it was read by the sister, who wrote back at once. "The letter came late," she wrote, "but it came. How did you know about the goat?" Senna said she did not know about the goat. She never knew about the goat. The goat knew about her. The room laughed, and the innkeeper said it was the best lost letter story he had heard, and he had heard many. Senna said the moral is: write short letters, and write them plain, and a goat may carry them. But do not count on the goat. Count on the boy.
