Notes from the garden path
By Lyle, with Oren's additions.

The garden behind the Archive is small, but it has
many things to watch. I counted the beds this morning.
There are two beds of carrots, one of beetroot, and
one of potatoes. The carrots grew crooked where the
soil was full of stones. Oren says crooked carrots
taste the same. I tried one. He was right, though it
was hard to wash.

A hen from the tutor's house came through the open
gate. It scratched near the beetroot and found a worm.
Nessa carried it back under one arm. The hen did not
look sorry.

A bee stayed on a late flower until the sun was low.
It had yellow dust on its legs. I waited by the stem
and watched it go to another flower. Oren told me to
write what happened, not what I thought the bee meant.
So I wrote that it went to another flower.

The apples in the orchard are nearly gone. A child
from the school brought a basket of small ones. We
put them on the kitchen shelf. One rolled under the
table. I found it when I swept.

At supper a traveler said the sea had been rough.
He had come from Saltreach with a torn sack and
salt on his boots. He said a large ship was waiting
there. The baker said it was only a tall boat seen
through fog. Neither had been there. Oren asked them
to stop arguing over the soup.

Tomorrow I will mend the garden gate. The latch
sticks when the wood is damp.
%%
Field notes: the cow at the edge of town
Hesk, miner at Copperhold, kept these notes for the healer at Lowmarsh.

The red cow stopped eating on the fourth of Longday. She stands in the corner of the field and looks at the fence. She does not come for the bucket. Her ears are cold and her nose is dry.

I gave her water in the old tub. She drank a little. I gave her hay. She turned her head away.

The goats are fine. The chickens are fine. Only the red cow is sick. I do not know why. I am a miner. I know stone. I do not know cows.

If anyone reads this who knows cows, tell me what to do. I will pay in copper.
%%
A School Play at the Gate
By Bel, summer of 190.

Our class made a play beside Dace's house. We used the gate for a stage and a wool blanket for a curtain. The play was called The Bee Who Lost Her Way.

I was the bee. I wore yellow wool and carried a paper flower. The paper flower kept folding over, so I had to hold it up with both hands. Noll played the hive. He stood still and made a buzzing sound whenever anyone tapped his shoulder.

The story was simple. The bee flew from clover to the school yard, then forgot which hive was hers. A rabbit showed her the way. The rabbit was played by Ena, who had to hop across the whole yard each time she spoke.

A real bee came to the paper flower during the last scene. I tried to stay in character. Noll stopped buzzing. Ena hopped behind the gate.

The bee left before the ending. We bowed anyway. Dace said the play had a good visitor, though the visitor had not paid for a place.
%%
Field notes: the field behind the house
Hesk, at the edge of Copperhold, in the heat of Melon.

I keep a small field behind the house. It is not a farm. It is four rows and a hedge and a shed.

The wheat is tall and going gold. I cut a little early for the bread. The rest can wait for the mill.

The beetroot is fat. I pull one every evening for the pot. My Clank pulls them too fast and I have told him so. He pulls the small ones. I have shown him the big ones and he has learned. Now he pulls only the big ones. He is proud of this. He tells everyone.

The potatoes are under the ground and I do not know how they are doing. That is the way with potatoes. You find out in the Reaping.

I have a scarecrow with a pumpkin head. The crows sit on his arm and laugh at him. I do not think he minds.
%%
Song contest at Three Wells, Reaping
Written by Brin, cook at the Brown Hen, who was asked to judge the food and ended up judging the songs too, because nobody else would.

The contest is held in the square at the end of Reaping, when the wheat is in and the cider is not yet ready. Every town on the Long Road sends a choir. Three Wells sends the most, because the bakers have many children, and they are loud.

Kettle Ridge sends a song about the windmill, with a chorus that squeaks on every turn. Everybody knows the chorus by the second time round, and by the third they are squeaking too.

Ambrook sends a song about the apple trees, and a refrain that keeps the word grey for the oldest tree. The children sing the refrain with their hands on their hearts, which is a thing they have decided to do, and nobody has asked them to stop.

Saltreach sends fishers, who sing badly on purpose, because the rules say honesty earns points. Oren came down from Vell to judge the honesty, and he gave the Saltreach fishers the prize for it, and then he sat down and held his ears for a minute.

Copperhold sends the miners. They sing in a low voice that you feel through your boots. The song is about the wet hole at the sixth level, and every line ends on a long note that makes the cups on the table shiver. Hesk sang the last line by himself. The square went quiet, and then the whole town joined in, all at once, and the cups shivered until they were empty.

The Brown Hen sent me. I sang the first verse of a song I learned from my mother, and I forgot the rest. The square was very kind about it. A boy near the front sang the rest for me, in a voice like a bucket being dragged across stones. It was the best song of the day, and it did not win.

A fox came to the edge of the square while the Kettle Ridge song was on. It sat and listened to the whole chorus, twice, with its ears up. Then it went home to the wood. I saw it, and I am the only one who did. The children were all singing, and the grown-ups were all squeaking.

The prize for the song went to the bakers' children, who sang a counting song with a dance. The counting went from one to forty, and the dance went round the square twice, and by the end three of the bakers' children had lost a shoe. They were given the prize anyway, a loaf each, warm from the oven.

By dusk the grass in the square was trampled flat. The children lay down in it to look at the clouds. The clouds over Three Wells in Reaping are white and slow. I wrote down one shape that looked like a pig and another that looked like a boat, and nobody could agree with me, which is how I know they were good clouds.
%%
Notice: spiders in the barn
Posted by Hollis at the notice board, Three Wells.

To whoever keeps the barrels in the east barn:

There are spiders in the rafters again. I found three webs over the seed sacks and one egg case behind the door. I cleared them with a broom and a torch. Please look up when you go in. Spiders like a dark corner and a still barn.

Also, the loose plank on the north wall is loose again. Fix it or the chickens will get out. They got out on the twelfth of Thaw and I chased a hen through the market for the better part of an hour. The baker laughed. I did not.

Leave the torch by the door lit. It costs one candle a night and saves a great deal of sweeping.

Hollis.
%%
Ama's notes on the barn

Frost, first cold.

There are spiders in the barn again. They have made webs between the rafters and over the dry hay. I swept one down with a reed broom. By morning there were two more. The innkeeper says they catch flies, so I left them alone.

The hens sleep on the high bars. They do not like the webs near the ladder. I moved the feed pan to the other side, and now they come down without fuss. One brown hen has laid an egg in the empty flour basket. She looks pleased with herself.

The cow was restless at dusk. She kept turning toward the north road, though there was no cart there. I rubbed her neck and gave her a beetroot leaf. She ate it and settled.

I made six candles for the barn door. They burned clean until the wind came under the boards. The innkeeper stuffed the gap with wool. It helped, though one candle still guttered.

Pell stayed the night with his cart under the roof. He counted his sacks twice and found them all. He says a spider web over a door means good luck. I asked him what a web over the flour basket means. He said that is only a hen with poor manners.
%%
Lyle's leaf notes
By Lyle, at Vell.

The apple leaves turn yellow first on the hill.
The old tree by the lower path holds its grey branch.
I picked six apples for Oren. One had a worm.
He said the worm had better sense than I did.
The bees were still at the hives. They crawled slowly
over the last flowers. I put a cup of water by them.
Mother says not to touch the hive in cold weather.
I only looked.
%%
Field notes: the white fox
Odo, lamp tender, the shore market at Northpoint. Winter. Notes made by the first lamp pole, in a coat.

Frost 3rd. One fox, at the first lamp. Sat 12 paces from me. Did not look at me. Looked at my bread.
Frost 4th. The same fox. Eight paces. I put a crust at the edge of the light. It took the crust after I turned my back.
Frost 9th. Two foxes. The second is smaller and does not trust the first.
Frost 14th. Three. The third has a torn ear. I call it Ear. I know that is no use.
Frost 20th. Ear sat in the light for the whole of the lamp lighting. It did not move when the lamp boy went by.

The foxes are not tame. They know the light is safe. They come to the light and keep out of the dark. That is what I do, too.
%%
Notice: the mine gate board
Posted at the kitchen by the gate, Copperhold.

To all who go below:

The count board says what came up this month. Read it before you grumble.

1. Copper is steady. Iron is steady. Coal is good.
2. The ninth level is cold this summer. Bring a second coat. Do not laugh. Hesk laughed and spent three days in his bed with a cough.
3. Keep to the torches. A torch every eight steps on the left going in. If the torches on your left stop, you have gone wrong. Turn round.
4. The rails are for carts. Every eighth rail is powered. Do not walk on the powered ones if you can help it. They are not for standing on and they will tell you so.
5. The old sump is full. Do not go near the old sump.
6. The amethyst in the wall stays in the wall. It is pretty. It is also the roof of somebody's tunnel.
7. Write your name on the board when you go down. Rub it out when you come up. If your name is on the board at night and you are not below, we will come looking, and you will not like the fuss.

The kitchen at the gate serves at first light and at dusk. Bring your own spoon. Someone keeps taking the spoons.

Hesk, foreman.
%%
A lesson with the market lists
By Leni, market clerk, Apple, 207.

The tutor brought an apprentice to the Vell market today. It was meant to learn the order "store apples" by sorting a small pile into the right baskets.

The lesson went badly before it began. The apprentice put every apple into the basket marked for pears. There were no pears on the table. The tutor asked it to try again. It put the basket into the apple crate.

The tutor did not scold it. She moved the card marked Farm. Build. to one side and laid out the baskets again. A boy at the stall said the apprentice had found a new way to sell baskets. His mother told him to mind the apples.

After several tries, the apprentice sorted the red apples into one basket and the green apples into another. It still put one bruised apple with the red ones. The tutor held it up and said, "This is an apple, and it is bruised." The apprentice carried it to the small basket for mill fruit.

At noon, the cat came out from under the bean stall. It walked between the crates and sat on the tutor's drill box. The tutor lifted it down. The cat climbed onto the drill box again. We moved the box. The cat sat on the empty place where it had been.

I sold the bruised apples to a miller and the good ones to the crowd. The cat stayed until the market closed. It would not stay out, and nobody had the heart to make it.
%%
Ama's winter store book

Frost, with the first snow.

I set aside candles for the long winter. The inn has flour, potatoes, carrots, dried fish, honey and enough firewood for now. Pell says that is a good store. The innkeeper says a store is good only until someone is hungry. I have made a list and pinned it by the pantry door.

The bees are quiet in their boxes. I tapped each hive with one finger and heard no answer. The beekeeper at Ambrook says this is as it should be. He says to leave them honey and leave them alone. I have done both.

The hens have begun laying less. The brown one still lays in the flour basket, though we moved it twice. The cow gives less milk when the wind blows from the north. She has a warm place in the byre and a bundle of dry straw. I gave her the last good apple. She ate the leaf first.

A woodcutter came in from the trees with wet boots. He said the oak branches were covered in ice, but the birch bent without breaking. He had seen wolves beyond the hedge. The ostler says they were dogs from a cart. The woodcutter says dogs do not keep so far from people. We shut the barn door before dark.

There are spiders in the barn still. Their webs hang low where the lantern light reaches. I swept them down once, then stopped. They catch the flies, and there are few flies left. One web holds a dry leaf. It turns when the door opens.

The first snow has covered the Long Road. The waymarks still show above it, and the torches make small warm rings in the dark. A traveler came late with snow on his hat. He said he had met no one from Northpoint since the last inn. He had heard the northern lights were bright enough to show the hills. A carter at supper said they were only a band of pale cloud. The traveler said cloud does not move against the wind.

We gave him soup and a bed. He asked to sleep near the hearth, though the room was warm. At dawn he left by the east door. His footprints ended where the road turns north, then began again on the other side of the bridge. Snow can cover a track in a blink. I told myself this while I swept the step.

The innkeeper has ordered more firewood. Pell has ordered more candles. I will make them while the wax lasts. The long winter is still ahead, and there are twelve beds to keep warm.
%%
Notes on the deep stone
By Tansy, boat builder, at Copperhold. I am not a miner. I came up the hill to mend the boats the miners use on the flooded tunnel, and I stayed to look at the stone, because nobody else would look at it closely. This is what I have seen, and what the miners say, and where they disagree.
The deep stone below the third level is dark and hard, the same as always. You cannot cut it with a normal pick. You must use the iron wedges, and they wear out. The sorters say it has no ore in it at all, which is strange, because the rock above is full of copper, and the rock below is only stone.
The stone is cold to the hand. Every miner says so. It is cold the way a pond is cold in the spring. You put your hand on it and feel the cold go up your arm.
This autumn, the stone at the eighth torch is warm. Hesk says he touched it on the first night of Frost, and it was warm as a loaf, and he took his hand away very quickly. Joss, the second man on the stair, touched it too. He said nothing, but he put his palm flat on the wall and held it there for a long time, and then he chalked a small cross beside the torch, which is the sign for "check later".
The miners disagree about what this means. Some say the stone is only warm in the autumn, when the damp is in the rock. Some say it is warm because of the hum, and that the hum is the stone breathing. Some say the stone has always been warm, and that only the miners have changed. Some say a warm stone is a bad stone, and that the miners should stop going below the eighth gate until the foreman says it is safe. Hesk says the foreman has not said so, and that the men who go down are the ones who must decide.
Nobody says they know what is below the ninth gate. The ninth gate is locked. The key is on the board in the mine hall, with a card that says do not take. Nobody has taken it.
I am a boat builder. I do not know anything about stone. But I know a plank that has gone warm in the sun, and then cools in the night, and then warms again. This is not that. This stays warm. It does not know what the day is.
I have written the notes as I saw them. I will bring them to the mine hall, and leave them on the board, under the card. Hesk says they will be read. Joss has chalked a mark beside them, which the sorters say means they will be copied. I hope both are true.
%%
Field notes: the short days
Odo, lamp tender, the shore market at Northpoint. Winter, from Leaffall to Deepsnow. Kept with a stick set in the snow, a lamp, and a good deal of patience.

Every day I measure how long the sun is up. I note when it first shows over the south hill, and when it goes behind the spruce. The camp likes to know. The children ask if the sun is coming back, and I tell them what the stick says.

Leaffall 30th. Sun up for eight hours. Warm at noon, and a little brown on the grass.
Frost 10th. Seven hours. First snow on the ice.
Frost 20th. Five hours. The sun is low and yellow, and it throws long blue shadows on the snow. I like those.
Longnight 1st. Three hours. It comes up late, looks at the camp, and goes down before the soup is cooked.
Longnight 15th. Two hours. The lamps are lit at noon.
Longnight 25th. An hour. A thin bright line over the south hill, and then gone.
Longnight 29th. Half an hour. The children go out to see it and stand in a row.
Longnight 30th. The sun did not come up. A pale glow in the south, the color of an old plate. We stood and looked at it for as long as it lasted. It was the longest night.
Deepsnow 3rd. The sun came up. One bright mouthful, for ten minutes. Everyone cheered, and some of us cried, and the dogs barked.
Deepsnow 15th. An hour and a quarter. Now it is getting better.
Deepsnow 30th. Four hours. The year turns.

What the stick shows. The days do not get short by a steady amount. They get short faster, and then slower, and then they stop, and then they turn. I draw it as a line on a board and it is a hill. Old Runa says she knew this without a stick. She says the fish told her. I say the fish do not own a stick. We agreed to be friends.

What the lamp tender does. In the long dark, the lamps are the sun. Fill them at noon. Trim them at dusk, which is also noon. Fill them again at midnight. If you let one go out, the whole path is dark, and the children will not come to the market, and the fish will not be sold.

I have not let one go out this winter. I am proud of that, and I am writing it here so that I will not forget.
%%
Notes on the birds at the market
By Tansy, boat builder, at Copperhold, at the autumn fair. I make a note each year of the birds that come to the market, because they tell me what is in the air. This year there were many more than usual.
Sparrows: as always, under the stalls, in the flour.
Crows: on the roof of the ore store, watching the carts come in. They do not steal. They wait for a dropped crust, and they are patient about it.
Gulls: very few, and they are not from here. The carter from Saltreach says the gulls have been flying inland for a month, further each day, and that the fish are not where they used to be.
Swallows: none. They left early this year, in the middle of Apple, all at once, with no fuss. The old men say the swallows know something. The old men say a lot of things.
Owls: one, in the tower of the school house, which was mended in the spring and has never had an owl before. The children have named it Tuck. The owl does not mind.
Robins: a pair on the sorting shed, singing in the rain. They sang the whole morning and nobody listened.
Ravens: one, on the gate of the mine, sitting very still with its back to the wind. A miner threw it a crust. It did not take the crust. It turned its head and looked down the shaft, and then it looked at the miner, and then it flew off over the hill, toward the north.
I wrote all this down in the book with the boats. The boats are the important thing, I think, but the birds are the ones that tell you when the boats will be needed.
%%
Field notes: bees in winter
Winter of 55. A house at the edge of Kettle Ridge, where the hives stand on the south side of the barn out of the wind. Corin, a shipwright, writes. He has always liked to watch things work, and bees work all the time.

What the bees do in winter.
They do not sleep. They gather in a ball inside the hive, around the queen, and shiver. The shivering makes warmth. The ones on the outside move to the inside, and the ones on the inside move out, so that nobody is cold for long. I watched this for an hour through a crack in the hive wall. It looked like a ship's crew turning the watch.
In the cold of the first week of Deepsnow the ball was as big as a pumpkin. In the second, as big as a melon. By the end, as small as an apple. The farmer says this is right. Some bees die in winter. The ball gets smaller. The rest live.
The honey is their food. They have stored it since summer. A hive with no honey in winter is a hive that will not wake. The farmer takes only what the bees can spare, and he leaves them the rest.
Things to do for bees in winter.
1. Tie a bit of straw round each hive, for warmth.
2. Put a stone on the roof so the wind does not take it.
3. Leave the door open a finger's width so the air can come in.
4. Do not tap on the hive. They hear it.
5. On a warm day, the bees may come out to clear themselves. Do not hang washing nearby.
Corin has a good eye. I could have been a bee keeper. Instead I build boats. It is the same idea, but wetter.
%%
Woods and mines: the Copperhold road
Notes from the cart road to Copperhold. I rode in Frost with salt fish and nets for the miners' kitchen. The cart came back with coal and a crate of copper, and the horses came back thinner, as they always do after the hills.
The road goes from marsh and reeds into spruce. The snow sits on the spruce in lumps, and the wind shakes it down on the cart, so keep your hat down and your mouth shut.
Wolves followed us for half a day, keeping to the trees at the edge of the road. Tansy watched them the whole way and never once looked worried. Duff looked worried enough for both of them. The wolves gave up at the stream and went home.
A fox sat on a stump like a judge and watched the carts go past. It did not get up for us. Rabbits under the spruce are too fat to run. I think they have been eating from the miners' kitchens. Nobody will say so.
There is an old oak where the hill road turns. Its brown leaves stay on all winter and rattle when the wind comes through. Never stop under an oak in Frost unless you want a leaf in your collar.
Birch grows along the stream below the hill. Carters use the birch for cart shafts, because it bends and does not break.
At the shaft head at Copperhold there is a board where miners write their names before they go down, and rub them out when they come up. I saw Hesk's name on it, still there. He says he forgot, because he is slow to get off the lift. He says it the way he says everything, as if it were a warning.
Hesk says the copper is good this year and the coal is poor. Then he tells me to take the good coal anyway, which is the kindness of a man who does not say kind things.
Clank, Hesk's apprentice, carries the coal sacks to the cart, six at a time, and sets them down so gently the cart does not know it has been loaded. Hesk says it does not talk, which he thinks is the best thing about it.
The mine stair goes down from the shaft head in a long turn. Every eight steps on the left there is a torch. Hesk says the torches are for the way back, not the way down.
Deep stone is dark and hard and always cold. I put my hand on the wall at the bottom of the first level. It was cold, the way a wet stone is cold in the shade. Hesk says the stone stays the same all year, and he likes it for that.
Hesk says we should keep the torches lit on the road home, since the road is only as safe as the last torch. We kept them lit, all eleven. The horses liked that best.
%%
Field notes: honey cakes, five tries
Clay End, autumn of 192. Marl, the cook at the end house, baked honey cakes for the harvest supper. I watched. Nessa.
Try 1. Hard as a roof stone. Marl ate one anyway. She said it was the only cake that has ever bitten back. Cause, I think: too much flour.
Try 2. Less flour. The cake came out flat as a plate. Cause: too little egg.
Try 3. One more egg. The cake rose well and was black on top. Cause: the oven was too hot.
Try 4. A cooler oven. The cake was golden outside and raw inside. Cause: too little time.
Try 5. The same cooler oven, and longer. Soft, golden, sweet all through. Marl ate two.
I noticed one thing above all. Marl changed one thing at a time. If she had changed the flour, the egg and the oven at once, she would not have known which one helped. Each try was wrong in a new way, and each wrong told her what to do next.
I tell this to every new tutor. Marl did not need telling.
The supper had 40 people and 40 cakes. Nobody mentioned the first one. It is on the windowsill. The cat will not touch it.
%%
Lyle counts the first cold things
By Lyle, with notes from Oren.

The first cold morning came before the leaves had
all fallen. Frost covered the grass by the north wall.
The water in the garden bowl held a thin skin of ice.
I touched it with one finger. It broke into clear pieces.
Oren told me not to put the pieces in my mouth.

The bees were still near the flowers yesterday.
Today there was no bee at the hive door. The keeper
said they were gathered inside. He placed dry leaves
around the hive stand and checked the cover. I asked
if bees sleep all winter. He said they keep close and
share warmth. I asked how they do that without a
blanket. He said they have better sense than I do.

In the orchard, the old tree has dropped most of its
apples. The grey branch is bare. A bird sat on it
while I counted the fallen fruit. It watched me, then
flew to the mill pond. I found one apple without a
bruise and carried it to Oren. He cut it in two and
gave me the larger half.

The school hens have stopped laying every day.
We found one egg in the straw this morning. Bel
said the hen was saving the rest for a feast. Nessa
said hens do not keep a feast list. Bel said perhaps
they keep one in their heads.

At the inn, I heard two travelers talking about the
north. One said lights had crossed the sky near
Northpoint. He said they were falling stars. The other
said a keeper had told him they were not stars, but
fires beyond the snow. Neither had seen them. Their
boots were wet, and they argued over whose turn it
was to dry them by the hearth.

I asked Oren what he thought. He said he had no
report from Northpoint that he could show me. He
put another log on the fire and asked me to fetch
the kindling.

The Long Road is quiet after dark. We lit the torches
by the gate and checked the latch twice. The keeper
said it was only because the wind had turned. I
believe him. Still, I counted every torch on the way
back to the Archive.

The frost came again last night. In the morning the
garden bowl was ice, the bee house stood quiet, and
a line of dark geese passed over the hill. They went
toward the sea. I watched until I could not see them.

I have put the apple seeds in a small clay cup. Oren
says they may not grow. I will keep the cup by the
window and see.
%%
Lyle's list after rain
By Lyle, at Vell.

The rain stopped before supper. I walked with Nessa
along the hill path and wrote down what I saw.

The wheat beyond the south road was cut. A few
heads remained by the ditch. Two sparrows took
them while we watched. Nessa said we should leave
some grain for small mouths.

At the orchard fence, three apples lay in wet grass.
One was bruised. I carried the sound ones to the
kitchen, where the baker gave me a heel of bread.
She said it was payment for carrying them. I said
I would have done it for less.

A rabbit had made a narrow track through the leaves.
The track went under the oak hedge and came out by
the well. We found no rabbit, only a carrot top.

The bees were quiet in their hive. A few flew around
the flowers, then went back. Nessa put the lid straight
and asked me not to lean on it. I was not leaning.
I was looking closely.

From the hill I could see the road to Three Wells.
A cart went past the first waymark. The traveler did
not stop. His horse shook rain from its mane beside
the bridge, then kept on.
%%
Field notes: the song contest
Kept by Dace, mayor, who judged the contest and was the first to lose his voice at it.
The song contest is held at the top stile every spring, when the ridge is warm enough to stand in. Anyone may sing. The judges are the miller, the schoolmaster and me. The prize is a loaf from the ridge bakery and a blue ribbon, which the children want more than the loaf.
This year there were nine songs. A song about sheep, sung by the Harrow twins, who did not agree on the tune. A song about the new road to the bridge, which the carters applauded because it was rude about the toll. A song called Lantern and the Snow, sung by a boy who had clearly been told the story by his grandmother and had improved on it.
Tessa, aged eight, sang last. She is the miller's youngest. She sang about the frogs of the marsh, which she had never seen, and about the waymarks, which she had counted from the cart. She sang it in a small clear voice, and every verse was right. The schoolmaster said it was the best song of the day. The miller said it was the best voice. I said nothing, because I had lost mine by then, and could not have said it well.
The prize went to the Harrow twins, who split the loaf between them and gave the ribbon to Tessa. Tessa did not want the ribbon. She said it was not hers. She left the contest by the north stile, and nobody saw her go.
We searched the ridge until dusk. The miller went up the windmill stair with a lamp. The schoolmaster went along the walls. I went to the bracken, and I shouted, and the bracken shouted back in the wind, which was no help at all.
She was in the mill. She had climbed to the top floor and was sitting on the sack floor with her knees under her chin, counting the sails through the window as they came round. When the miller found her, she said she was counting how many squeaks it took to make one turn. She said it was eleven. The miller said it was twelve, and she was very cross with him for a moment, and then she was happy to be right about the squeaks.
Tessa asked the miller whether the north lamp was lit. He said he did not know. She said she would count the lamps from the window tonight, and that she had counted to nine last week. The miller said that was a good number. She said it was not a good number at all, and then she went to sleep on the sacks.
We carried her down together. The ribbon is still in the miller's coat, waiting for her to ask for it.
%%
Field notes: what the woods do in winter
Winter of 66. A house at the edge of Kettle Ridge, with a window onto the oak wood. Corin writes: a shipwright with a habit of looking at trees, since a boat starts as one.

I sit by the window with a mug of hot cider and watch the wood. This is what I see, in order, over a long week.

First day. The oaks are bare. The birches are bare. Only the spruce is green, black-green against the snow. A flock of small birds moves through the branches, one tree to the next, as busy as clerks.
Second day. A wind. Snow falls off the branches in clumps. A fox comes to the edge of the wood and sits. He looks at the farm for a long time, then he turns round and goes back in.
Third day. A wolf, alone. I have not seen a wolf here before. She stands in the clearing with her head up, for as long as it takes to count twenty, then she is gone, so quiet I wonder if I saw her.
Fourth day. The farmer goes in with an axe and a rope to mark the oaks for the shipyard. He walks round each tree and pats it. He says he is asking its leave. He marks nine, and he leaves the rest.
Fifth day. A woodpecker is working on an old trunk. Tap, tap, tap. A sound like a very small mason.
Sixth day. Snow again, thick. The wood goes white and still. I cannot see the oaks. I can see the smoke from the farm chimney going straight up.
Seventh day. Clear. Cold. The stars come out. I count them from the door until I am too cold to count.

What I have learned. A wood is not asleep in winter. It is listening. It keeps its roots in the ground and its branches in the air and it waits. A boat is made from the wood that waits.

I have been given a place in the barn to carve a model of a ship. It is a little ship, the size of a loaf. The farmer's child sits beside me and watches, and asks if it will float. I say, in spring. I say, on the mill pond.

There is a melon on the shelf. It is too big to eat. We have named it Captain.
%%
Letter: Dace to the council at Vell
Dace, mayor of Three Wells, to the clerks of the Archive at Vell. Sent by the north road while it holds.

To the keepers of the archive.

You asked the towns to send what they see and hear this winter. Here is what the hamlet east of the wells has to tell.

The snow came early and lies deep. The north road is passable to the second waymark and no further. The road crew will mend the torches at the thaw. The low way through the hamlet stays open, and the hedges cut the wind, and travelers are welcome at the inn of twelve beds. The bakery has bread. The school is open when the children can get through.

Now the rumors, which you may weigh as you like.

The relays. A man from Saltreach says his cousin sent a message north in Frost and got no answer. Another man says he saw the lamp at Northpoint burning from the hill, clear as a star. A third says the tower is dark and has been dark since Longnight. These three men stood in my hall and argued, and each was certain. I cannot make one true by wishing it. I send all three.

The lights. On clear nights there are lights over the north. A shepherd says falling stars. A child at the school says fires. A traveler says they move against the wind, and then he would not say more and drank his soup. I have watched them myself. They are bright and they are quiet. That is all I know.

The cough. Word comes up the road that Lowmarsh has the grey cough badly this winter. Some blame the water. Some blame the ships. Some say it is only the damp, and folk always cough in winter. My sister lives there. I have written to her and asked her plainly how she is. I have no answer yet.

The mine. A miner passing through says the Deep Works hum at night, and the stone below is warm, and folk at Copperhold do not go below a certain level now. He said it as a joke and then he did not laugh.

I do not know what any of this means. I am a mayor of a market town. I keep the board and the bell and the lamps at the corners. I write down what folk tell me and I choose nothing.

You said once, over the archive door, that you will keep everything we write. So I write. If the road closes, keep this letter in the dry.

Dace, mayor of Three Wells, at the hamlet east of the wells.
%%
Field notes: the wells
By Ilse, farmer, the house at the edge of Three Wells

Sowing, the ninth. Dry week. The north well is down a hand. Dace says it is only the dry, and that the rope will hold. I went to look at it with the bucket. The water is still cold, and there is a green weed on the stone at the top, which I have never seen before. I put a cup of ash on it. I do not know if that is right.

The clover came in thin. The cows do not mind. They never mind. The white cow with the red ear has been off her food for two days, and Tam came over from Kettle Ridge to look at her. He said it is the wet, and gave her a mash with honey. She ate the honey and left the mash, which Tam said was a good sign, because she is particular.

The woods behind the mill are full of birch this year. The oaks have not come up. I walked to the edge and counted the stumps. Eleven of them since Apple. The woodsman says he cannot find any new trees to cut, and then he goes off to find some.

News from Copperhold. My cousin Dell writes that the shaft heads are full of coal and short of copper. The miners are going down, and coming up slower. She says the stone on the deep levels is warm to touch now, and that the men do not stay long by the lift. She says it in a joke, the way she says everything. But she did not laugh when she wrote that part.

I do not know what it means. Warm stone may just be stone. Dell says the ladder men say the same thing about the old side door, and that is all I know.

Frogs gone quiet. Early for that.
%%
Lyle's autumn walk
By Lyle, with notes from Wren's visitor.

I walked as far as the old oak on the road out of
Vell. The leaves were thick on the packed earth, and
I had to brush them away from the torch posts. I
found a small stone on top of the third waymark.
Pell says travelers leave them to count the road.
I put it back after I picked it up.

A fox crossed the path near the birch grove. It had
a brown leaf stuck to its back. I stood still until it
passed through the hedge. There were acorns under
the oak, but no squirrels came while I watched.
Perhaps they were in the branches. I could hear
leaves moving above me.

By the stream, two fish rested in the shallow water.
They moved when my shadow crossed them. I saw
fresh marks on the bank, where a horse had stepped
down to drink. The grass there was flat.

Near the Copperhold road, I saw a cart with empty
sacks. The driver said he had brought apples north.
He was going back with coal. His wheel had a loose
piece, so he sat by the road and fixed it with a strip
of leather. He gave me a coal crumb to draw with.
It broke in my pocket.

At the Vell gate, the keeper had put a new torch
beside the post. He said the old one had burned low
before midnight. I asked if he had seen anything.
He said only a fox, and then he asked why I was
always asking.

Oren says this is a good way to walk: look at the
road, the water, the trees, and the people. Do not
walk so slowly that you miss supper.
%%
Flood Marks on the Door
By Dace, Reaping of 197.

The rain began in the night and kept falling until the ditch at the west road overflowed. By dawn, water had crossed the lower path and spread into my yard. It reached the bottom step of the house.

The school children came with boards and baskets. We raised the flour sacks onto the table and carried the hens to the inn's dry shed. One hen refused to leave its nest. I carried the nest with the hen still sitting in it. She was not pleased, but she kept the eggs warm.

A shallow stream ran past the gate. It carried a wooden spoon, three leaves, and one small beet. The beet stopped beside the well. Bel found it and said the flood had brought us a market gift.

The water went down by evening. We checked the fence, cleared mud from the path, and put the boards back by the school door. The hen returned to her yard with the nest. She laid no egg that day. She looked as if she had expected thanks.

I marked the highest water line on the door post. The mark is below the latch. Next time, we will move the flour before the rain stops.
%%
Field notes: the sea, from Saltreach
Written by Brin, cook at the Brown Hen, who went to Saltreach for the summer market and came back with salt on her boots and a notebook full of the sea.

The tide comes in twice a day, and it does not wait for the market. At the first low water the wet sand is as hard as a road. The children run out on it and dig holes, and the sea fills them by the second bell.

The boats go out at dawn with the wind off the land. They come back in the afternoon with the wind off the sea, and the sails are wet and heavy. I counted fourteen boats on the morning I came, and nineteen on the afternoon after. Corin says the boats are the best he has built, and he says so every time one comes in.
Seaweed grows on the rocks at the harbor wall. The fishers' wives gather it at low water with a basket and a knife. It is dark green when it is alive and nearly black when it is dry. They boil it with beetroot to make a soup, and the soup is better than it sounds.

The wind on the harbor is strong all summer. At night it drops, and the water goes flat as a plate. Then you can hear the bells of the boats, one at a time, knocking against their moorings. A child at the quay told me the boats were talking to each other. I told her boats do not talk. She said then they were listening. I have not found a good answer to that.
The new ships are not yet in the harbor. The shipyard has one slip and one long ramp. Corin is building the red boat, and the ribs are up, and he has asked everyone not to touch them. Everyone touches them.

The sea smells of salt, and of fish, and of the smoke from the net mender's shed. I could not tell which was strongest. The cook at Saltreach says that is the sign of a good harbor: no one smell wins.
%%
Tilly, the winter wood
Winter, the thirty-first year. Notes on the woods behind Ambrook, from the egg stall, where people tell me things.
The woods behind the orchard are oak and birch. In winter the leaves are down and you can see far in. The oak holds its dry leaves till spring. They rattle in the wind like a crowd.
Foxes come out at dusk and cross the snow. You can see their tracks: four small dots in a line, as if drawn with a pen. They go to the hen houses. They go to the compost heap. They go to the woodcutter's lunch, which he leaves on a stump out of habit.
Wolves are further off. They do not come near the town. They are on the hills at night, when the wind is still, and you can hear them far away. The shepherds count their sheep twice.
Rabbits are everywhere. White ones in the snow are hard to see. You find them by the dark of their eyes.
At night, in winter, zombies come out of the forest edge. Nothing new. The torches on the edge of Ambrook are lit by the children after school, one each. Whoever forgets, loses their turn at the honey.
A woodcutter named Hob, whose axe is older than the mill, told me this. When a tree is felled in winter, the sap is low and the wood is dry and burns well. When it is felled in spring, the wood weeps. He cuts in Longnight and Deepsnow only.
He also says the oak by the road, the oldest one, the one with the grey branch, is the first tree that was ever planted in Ambrook. I have told him, kindly, that it is an apple tree. He says it was an oak first.
I do not argue with the man who holds the axe.
Last week I sold 36 eggs and one piece of firewood, by mistake. The man was cold. I let him have it.
%%
Field notes: a long winter at the edge
By Ilse, farmer, the house at the edge of Three Wells

Frost, the first. The cold came in the night, and the well had a skin of ice on it by morning. I broke it with the bucket and the water came up black and clean. Dace has put a second rope on the well for the children, so they do not fall in while they break it. The children think this is very funny. I do not.

Frost, the eighth. Four days without a thaw. The beetroot in the long bed is still under the snow, and I have dug out one row each day to check it. The first row was soft and sweet. The second row was grey at the top. I threw the grey ones to the pigs. The pigs ate them and did not complain. Pigs do not, as a rule.

The bees are clustered. I put my ear to the box every morning. It is a low sound, like someone humming in another room. Some days it is louder than others. I have told my grandchildren that it means they are warm, and they seem to believe me. I hope I am right.

The woodsman came by with a cart of birch, and he said there were lights in the north again. He said it the way you would say the price of coal went up. He saw them from the high field at Ambrook, a pale green line over the hills, moving. He said it lasted an hour and then went out. He did not know what they were. Nobody did. Half the men at the inn said falling stars. The other half said fires, and one old man said the north had always had lights, and it was nothing new. He was wrong about that, I think. But I did not argue.

A letter came from Lowmarsh. My sister Wen writes that the grey cough is in the water again. She says the healer Wren has been up all night for a week, and that there are more beds in the healing house than there were last year. Wen says the boats have stopped running on the marsh channel, because nobody will row. She says a man from Saltreach came through with a cart full of trunks, and asked the road whether anyone knew the way to the coast. Nobody did. The road is for Three Wells, not for the sea.

Frost, the eleventh. The snow stopped this morning. I walked to the edge of the field and looked at the sky. It was clear and very dark, and the stars were so thick over the windmill that I felt I could count them. I did not count them. I went back in and banked the fire.

Frost, the twelfth. A tutor came back through on the cart, the same thin woman with the notebook. She stayed one night in the inn. I asked her about the lights. She said she had seen the paper about them at Vell, and that the clerks had not written anything down yet. She said she did not know what the lights were, and that she was not sure she wanted to. Then she asked me to show her the beetroot, which I did, and she liked it very much.

Frost, the thirteenth. The thaw is not come. I am writing this by the stove with my boots on, which is a habit I got from my mother. She also wrote things down every night, and she never once explained why.
%%
Notes from the East Fence
By Dace, Longday of 166.

The wheat field begins beyond my east fence. From the kitchen window I can see the stalks bend when the ridge wind reaches Three Wells. The field looks smooth from far away. Up close, every stalk has its own lean.

A brown hen has found the gap under the fence. Each morning she scratches the loose earth and walks into the wheat. She does not eat much. She seems to be searching for beetles, though I have never seen her catch one. At dusk she returns to her own yard with a straw on her head.

I mended the gap with oak boards. The hen came back the next morning. She pushed her head under the lowest board, looked at me, and sat down.

I have since raised the bottom board by one hand. The hen passes through neatly. This is not the result I wanted, but the fence is now easier to sweep beneath.
%%
Field notes: the hives on the hill
By Hollis, written in the back of the order book, spring.

I keep four hives on the hill above the shop. I am no beekeeper. Sable from Ambrook says so every time she visits. But I watch them and I write down what I see.

The bees came out early this Blossom. The first warm day they were at the flowers by the well before I had lit the stove. A bee does not need a candle to find its way home. It finds the hive by something we cannot see, and I have watched them do it a hundred times and still do not know how.

The third hive is the strong one. The second hive lost its queen in the Frost and the bees were slow and sad all winter. I gave the second hive a frame from the third and now it is busy again. Sable says that is the right thing to do. She says it kindly, which from her is a great compliment.

The bees do not like the smoke from my pots. They fly up and away and come back when it clears. I have learned to make tallow in the morning and leave the bees the afternoon.

A wasp got into the shop last Sowing. I did not kill it. I carried it out on a card and let it go by the hedge. Tam said I was soft. Maybe. But the bees were watching, I think, and I wanted them to think well of me.

The honey this year is pale and thin. Sable says it is the flowers and not the bees. I will trust her.
%%
Field notes: a tutor comes to the house
Oren, house at the edge of Vell. Winter. A tutor from the tutor house, down the hill, came to ask a question and stayed to tea.

She came in out of the cold with snow on her hat. Her name is Maren, and she is young, and she is serious. She said she had a question for the archive. I said the archive is closed in the evening. She said it was not a question for the archive, it was for me.

She asked if I thought the old texts were safe. I said they are on stone shelves in a dry hill, behind doors, with wax and the seal. She said, "I know. I mean, are they safe from what is coming?"

I asked what is coming. She said she did not know. She said that is the trouble.

She told me what she had heard. A rumor, from a carter at the tutor house: that lights have been seen in the north, over Northpoint. Another rumor, from a tutor who had been to Copperhold: that the miners will not go below the eighth gate, because the stone is warm. A third, from a woman at the market: that the cough at Lowmarsh is worse.

I said these were three rumors, and they do not agree with each other.

She said, "That is what bothers me."

I made tea. She drank it and was quiet for a time. At last she said, "I wished to ask you to keep everything."

I said, "We do." She said, "More than usual."

I said I would. She went home through the snow.

When she had gone I sat by the stove and wrote this down. The cat came and sat on the page.
%%
Field notes: the cave under the field
Dell, glassblower, Saltreach. Written after the cave was found under the field at the top of the shingle, where the Long Road meets the lane to the harbor. The cave was found by a plough horse that put one foot through the turf. The horse was not hurt. The farmer was very surprised, and the horse was not.

The hole is a little way below the field. It is wide enough for one person to crouch through, and then it opens out into a room, a long low room with a floor of sand and a roof of pale stone. The stone is clear. When the lamp is held up to it, the light goes through in streaks, like light through a window glass.

The walls are smooth, and cold, and wet. Water runs down them in a thin skin, and drips from the roof into small pools. The pools are very clear. I put my hand in one, and it was colder than the sea in winter, and it tasted of nothing, and I think that is the best water I have ever had.

There are lines on the wall near the back, in a row, too even to be an accident of the stone. The children call them rain. The old men call them the trees. Nobody has said what they really are, and I have not tried to say.

The road is being cut to the cave now, from the Long Road, so that carts can come up the lane in spring. The mayor has asked for a rail along the path and a board to cover the hole, and he has asked me for a glass lamp to hang at the entrance, so that the way in is seen from the road. I have promised one. It will be clear, and it will be lit, and it will be the best glass I have made in years.

The horse has been given a new shoe, and a bag of oats, and it is now the most famous horse in Saltreach. It does not care at all.
%%
Notes on the sea, kept at Saltreach
Corin, shipwright. Copied for the Archive by a clerk.

I build boats. I watch the water more than I watch the wood. Here is what I have learned, and I am still learning it.

The tide. It goes out and comes back twice a day. The moon has something to do with it and I do not. Every boat is tied long enough to float when the water goes out. The first thing I taught my helpers was to check the ropes at low water. The second thing was to check them again.

The wind. It comes off the sea in the morning and off the land at night. A boat that leaves at dawn comes home easy. A boat that leaves at dusk fights all the way. Old fishers will not go out at dusk unless the fish are paying very well, and sometimes not then.

The fog. It comes in from the sea in Swarm and it comes fast. When the fog comes, the boats come in. Nobody argues with the fog.

The gulls. They follow the boats because the boats bring fish. When the gulls go quiet and sit on the harbor wall all facing the same way, the fishers bring the boats in. I do not know why. Neither do they. It works.

The wood. Oak for the frame, spruce for the mast, birch for the oars. Oak bends and does not break. Spruce is light and tall. Birch is light in the hand. Wax the hull every spring and it will last a lifetime.

The slip. We build on the long stone ramp and slide the boat down into the sea. The first boat I built went down the slip sideways and I ran after it. The second one I built straight. I am still proud of the second one.

The sea keeps its own accounts. When it takes something it does not give it back. So we tie everything, and then we tie it again.
%%
Field notes: the melon, winter store
Winter of 52. A house at the edge of Kettle Ridge. Corin, a young shipwright from Saltreach, staying the season to buy oak.
A melon from the autumn is still in the cold shed. It is the size of a barrel. It has not rotted. The farmer will not cut it. He says it is too fine.
I have measured it with a rope: three of my arms around. It is the biggest melon on the ridge.
%%
Field notes: the old oak and the foxes
By Dace, mayor of Three Wells, from walks in the woods by the hamlet.

The old oak stands at the bend of the low way, past the hamlet hedge. It is older than the road, folk say, and the road went round it rather than cut it. It has lost its leaves but not its shape. Three great branches go out over the snow like arms held wide.

I walk out most mornings to look at the tracks. A fox comes by the oak before light. Its tracks run from the hedge to the stream and back, neat as stitching. Some mornings there are two sets. I have not seen the second fox, only its feet.

The rabbits are under the snow in their runs. You can tell where they have been by the small holes in the crust. The owls know too. I found a feather on the snow by the oak, grey and soft, and put it in my hat.

The wood is quiet in winter, but not empty. There is a sound in the deep snow that is not quite silence. I cannot say what it is. It may be the ice in the branches. It may be my own blood in my ears, as an old woman at the wells told me, and she laughed. I have decided to agree with her.

Past the oak the ground rises to the north. On clear nights there have been lights up there. A shepherd from the hamlet says they are falling stars. A child at the school says they are fires on the far hills. A traveler from Northpoint says they are not ours at all and would not say more. I write all three down and choose none. The stars have always fallen. The hills have always had fires. The north has always been far.

The wood is not kind in winter, but it is honest. It shows you its tracks. If you follow them you will come to the stream, and the stream will take you home.
%%
Lyle watches the gate
By Lyle, at Vell.

A zombie came to the gate before dawn. It pushed
at the bars and made a low sound. The gate keeper
called for help. Oren came with a torch, still wearing
his house shoes. He said he had meant to put on boots.

We kept the torches lit along the wall. The zombie
turned away when the sky grew pale. It left mud on
the stones. I washed one mark off, but the others
stayed.

After breakfast I counted the chickens near the
copying room garden. There were seven. One had
hidden under a bench. Oren said that was not a
good hiding place, since everyone could see its tail.
%%
A Note on the Apple Carts
By Pell, summer of 181.

I stopped at the house beside Dace's yard to count the apple carts on the road. There were six before noon and two after. The last cart had one wheel that squeaked at every turn. The driver said it was the cart's way of singing.

The apples came from Ambrook. Some were red, some green, and one had a small bite in it. The driver blamed a rabbit. I blamed the driver, who was eating an apple while he spoke.

At the edge of the road, two rabbits sat among the grass. They watched the cart pass, then went back to chewing. Neither looked sorry.

I bought a basket for the market. The apples were firm and sweet. I gave Dace one for the count board and kept the bitten one for myself. It was the best of the lot.
%%
Tilly's hens, a winter count
Winter, the twelfth year of the archive. Ambrook market, behind the egg stall.
I keep nine hens. In summer they give me seven eggs a day, sometimes eight. In winter, four. The days are short and the hens do not like it.
I hung a lantern in the hen house and left it lit till the second bell. The next morning I had six eggs. I told the baker. She said I was cheating the hens. I said I was warming them. We both sell eggs, so we will not agree.
The speckled hen is the oldest and the loudest. She lays the biggest egg, which she announces to the whole market. The small brown one has not laid in nine days. I think she is thinking.
A fox came on the fourth night. The torch by the gate was out. I have relit it. I will not let it go out again.
Eggs sold this week: 31. Eggs given to the miller's children: 6. Eggs broken: 3, by me.
%%
Homecoming: the boat is in, Frost
Notes from the slip, where the boats are pulled up out of the sea. The Two Sisters came home today from the long trip along the coast, with three days of rough water behind her. Ivo, Teague and Juno came home in her, grey in the face and very pleased about it.
Corin built her three winters ago, and she still leaks a little on the left side. Nobody tells Corin.
The children ran down the slip before the boat touched the stones. The baker's wife came behind them with bread still warm in its cloth. She did not run. She walked very fast, and then faster when she saw Ivo's face.
Tansy and the bay gelding pulled the boat up on the rollers. Tansy leans into the rope and does not look back. The bay leans away, looks back, and then leans in again. I counted the lengths of slip they took. It was most of the afternoon, and nobody wanted to leave until she was up.
The shipyard's apprentice carried the oars up the slip two at a time. Corin said that was one more than he wanted and one fewer than Ivo had tried.
Then Ivo's mother came out of the crowd. She did not say anything. She held his face in both her hands, and then she hit him on the arm, and then she held his face again.
The boat goes back in the sea in Thaw. Tansy will pull her down again, and the bay will lean away. That is how it is done.
%%
Notes from the market well
By Noll, well digger, Leaffall, 193.

The market well is low after a dry spell. I measured it at dawn, before the stalls came in. The water stood three hand widths below the mark I cut last year. I told the sellers to use the well for drinking and leave the washing for the stream. The fish seller said his board needed a wash. I said his board could wait. He said the fish would not. We settled on a bucket for the board and a bucket for the people.

The farmers brought wheat, carrots, potatoes and pumpkins. One pumpkin was so round that it rolled off the cart and stopped against the school wall. Three children tried to move it. The smallest child sat on it and called that a plan.

Bees worked the flowers beside the honey stall. They stayed near the jars when the sun came out, so the beekeeper kept the lids on. A cow from the road chewed a reed basket while its owner counted coins. The basket held apples. The owner took the cow home with one apple in the basket and a long list of things to mend.

I saw the tutor bring a small apprentice to the market. It carried two empty crates and waited by the potato stall. The tutor gave the order, "bring me some potatoes."

The apprentice brought one potato, then stopped. The tutor had asked for some, but the apprentice had learned that one was some. The seller laughed and gave it another crate to carry. The apprentice carried both crates back to the tutor.
%%
Field notes: Deepsnow, the list
By Ilse, farmer, the house at the edge of Three Wells

I make a list every Deepsnow. It is the only month when there is nothing to do but count. This year I am counting carefully, because I have a feeling it may be the last time I can count everything I see.

Hens: eleven. Two were lost to the fox at Apple, and one to a cold night. The rest are laying, slowly.

Pigs: three. The big sow is fat. The little one is thin. I have named the little one Bel, after the child, who says she is not pleased.

Cows: four, plus the white cow with the red ear. She is better. She eats only from my hand now, which is a nuisance.

Bees: one box alive, one box quiet. The quiet box has no sound at all when I put my ear to it. I have not opened it. I will open it in Thaw, when I can see what is inside.

Beetroot: forty heads in the cellar. Good size. I am keeping the seed from the biggest six.

Carrots: a full sack. Potatoes: two sacks, with some green on them that I cut off.

Wells: two, both cold. One has a second rope now. One has a green weed at the top that nobody has been able to clear.

Windmill: one. It has stopped turning for the first time since my father built it. The miller says the sails are iced. I believe him, and I have been to look, and the ice is very thick.

Lights in the north: nothing this month. Not for three weeks. Some say they have gone for good, and some say they will come back in Thaw, and nobody knows.

Coal in the square: half a sack per house, which is the most this year. Copperhold is short. Dace says it will be sorted.

Miners: Dell says the Deep Works are quiet at night now, and the men go down later and come up sooner. She says there is a sound from under the eighth gate, very low, and that she has stopped hearing it, which she does not like.

Sea news: none. The coast is far, and the post does not come from there now.

Children: all well. Bel wrote an essay for the school about the pigs and the well. It is very long. She says the pig sat in the well, which is not in the essay, but she tells me it is true.

Tutors: one visiting, one gone. The thin woman has not come back since Frost. Some say she went to the big house at Vell to write her report. Some say she went north. Nobody has seen her, and I am not sure anyone is looking.

That is the list. It is short, and the sums are small. I still feel better for having written them down. Let us see what Thaw brings.
%%
Field notes: the hives at Ambrook road
By Dace, mayor of Three Wells, written at the hamlet east of the wells.

The hamlet keeps four hives by the south hedge. I go out with the keeper, Sella, most mornings. She says bees do not care who is mayor. They care about the wind.

In winter the bees stay in. The hives are wrapped in sacking and tied with cord. Sella leaves one small hole at the foot of each. The bees need air. They do not need visitors, she says, and then she visits them anyway.

We opened the smallest hive on the second of Longnight. The honey sat in the combs like cold gold. Sella cut one frame and set it in a jar. She gave me the jar to carry home.

"Keep it warm," she said. "Do not put it by the stove. It goes thin and then it goes hard."

I carried it the whole way along the Long Road, past the waymark with the torch on top, past the stream bridge of oak. The jar sat in my coat like a small warm stone. I did not open it.

At the wells I set it on the shelf by the bell. Folk passing stop and look at it. A jar of honey in winter is a sort of promise, my mother used to say. The bees are still there. The flowers will come back.

Sella's roof was mended in Leaffall. The old thatch had a soft place over the door, and the rain came through onto the honey shelf. Two folk from the hamlet went up with ladders and fresh reed and a pot of pitch. They worked a whole day and sang badly. Now the roof holds. Sella says the bees are calmer under a dry roof. I do not know if that is true. It is pleasant to think so.
%%
Letter: Sella to her sister at Lowmarsh
Sella, beekeeper at the hamlet east of Three Wells, to her sister Pell at Lowmarsh.

Dear Pell,

Thank you for the jar of marsh honey. It is darker than ours, and it tastes of the reeds. I have saved half of it for the fair in Thaw, when the stalls go up round the three wells. Dace says there will be a fair if the roads open. Dace says many things, but he is usually right about roads.

Our bees are well. Four hives, all wrapped. I opened the smallest on the second of Longnight and cut one frame. Dace carried the jar home as if it were a baby. He is a good mayor and a poor beekeeper, which is the right way round for a mayor.

My roof is mended. The folk came with reed and pitch and did it in a day. Since then the honey shelf is dry and the bees are calmer, or I am. The snow lies deep on the hedge. The hives look like four old men in white coats, standing about and saying nothing.

Now the part I would rather not write, and so I will write it quickly. Word came up the road that the cough is bad at Lowmarsh this winter. One traveler blamed the water. Another blamed the ships that come and go at Saltreach. A third said it was only the damp and the cold, and that folk always cough in winter. I do not know which is true. Tell me how you are. Tell me plainly.

Keep your jars warm and your door shut. Write when the road lets a letter through.

Your sister,
Sella
%%
A cat at the market
By Noll, well digger, Apple, 184.

A grey cat has made a home under the table by the bean stall. It will not stay out. The bean seller moved it once, and it returned before she had sold a basket. She put a folded wool cloth under the table. Now the cat sleeps there and lets nobody else use the cloth.

I watched it during the morning trade. It did not chase the chickens in their crate. It did not touch the fish. It did follow a beetroot leaf across the ground, one slow paw at a time. The leaf stopped at a buyer's shoe. The cat stopped too.

A beekeeper brought two jars of honey. One jar had a crack near the rim. She set it aside and sold the sound jar. A child asked why she would not sell the cracked one. She said, "Because I would rather mend a jar than a buyer."

A man came for a bucket handle. He had brought the wrong bucket. He bought an apple instead and carried it home in both hands.
%%
Field notes: a market day from the wall
Vell, autumn of 201. Market day. I sat on the wall at the top of the market from the first bell to the noon bell, with a slate. Nessa.
A market is a drill. The same question is asked again and again, and answered a little differently each time. This is what I counted.
Carts that came in: 31. Stalls set up: 58. Dogs: 14. Cats: 9. Sheep: 6, of which 2 were in a pen and 4 were at large.
Times I heard "How much?": 214. Times I heard "Too dear": 41. Times the buyer bought anyway: 38. The buyers who walked away did not go far. They went round the stall and came back from the other side, as if they had met a new stall. It worked 4 times in 7.
The cheese seller had a dog under the table, which watched the cheese all morning with its eyes and its nose and no other part. A boy came by with a hot bun. The dog's eyes followed the bun. Its nose followed the bun. The cheese was safe.
Sheep at large. A black-faced ewe went into the bakery and came out with a loaf. The baker ran after her. She went round the well twice. The baker, who is not young, sat on the step and laughed until he could not breathe. A clerk caught the ewe by the ear. The ewe was given an apple. Nobody understood why, but everyone agreed.
A lost child: 1. Found at the bun stall, as always.
By the second hour after noon the market was gone. A wall, a few leaves and one shoe. The shoe was nobody's.
I would like a mind that could learn from a market. There are so many different things in it that it would be well taught. I would also like a bun.
%%
Tilly, moving the stall to the new house
Winter, the twenty-eighth year. We have moved. Not far. The old stall was against the mill pond, and the wind came in off the water. The new one is under the eaves of the house by the bridge, with the loose plank.
Here is how it went.
We moved on the eleventh of Frost. The mill carter lent his cart. The cart wheel had a squeak, so I walked in front of it, saying "mind, mind" as if a person might jump out. Nobody did.
The hens went first, in two baskets. Nine hens, three baskets, because the speckled one would not share. She told the whole road about it.
The shelves came next. Then the tin of emeralds, then the egg crates, then the board with the price on it. I had painted a new price for the move: one emerald for six eggs. People look at the board and pay what it says. It is a good board.
Last came the bench. It took four of us to carry. It is oak, and it weighs as much as a calf. We set it down under the eaves, where there is no wind, and sat on it.
It rained a little. It did not matter. The roof here goes out past the wall.
The hens are in a new shed behind the house, with a lantern and straw. They looked around for an hour and then laid. All of them. Nine eggs by noon.
I think they like it.
Notes on the new place: the bridge is close, so the farmers from the hill pass by. The oldest apple tree with the grey branch is just across the road. The orchard folk stop for eggs on the way to market. I have sold more in four days than in ten at the pond.
The sun comes in low in winter and warms the stall by midmorning. The loose plank in the bridge rattles when a cart goes over, and the hens hate it. The cat likes it.
A good move. I would do it again in a year, and then not again.
%%
The Pond Beyond My House
By Bel, school essay, summer of 173.

The pond is past the last house in Three Wells. I can see it from the path behind Dace's yard. It is small, but frogs make it sound large.

In the morning, the frogs sit on the muddy edge. When I come near, they jump into the water. One frog stayed still while I counted to ten. Then it jumped onto my shoe. I did not count again.

There are reeds at the shallow end. A little fish rests between them. It moves when the shadow of a bird crosses the pond. I think the fish knows the bird is there before I do.

Dace says not to pull up the reeds. They hold the mud in place. I asked if the frogs planted them. Dace said the frogs have enough work already.

After school I watched a bee drink at the pond edge. It stood on a flat stone and touched the water with its mouth. Then it flew to the clover by my house.

The pond smells of wet earth. My little brother says it smells like his boots. I think the pond smells better.
%%
Field notes: the mill pond in winter
By Jory, miller at Ambrook, written for the folk at the hamlet.

The pond froze on the fourth of Longnight. It froze clear and black, and you could see the old reeds standing under it like a wood in a glass.

The wheel is stopped. I have wedged it and taken the sluice key indoors. Nobody opens the sluice in a hard frost. The water backs up and the ice breaks it, and then we have no wheel and no pond and a great deal of shouting.

There is still work. I mend the sacks. I grease the axle. I sweep the floor of the mill twice, which is once more than it needs, but a man must do something with his hands.

The fish are slow under the ice. The heron stands at the shallow end and waits. It has waited three days. I have decided it is a patient bird and not a hungry one, though I know better.

My roof had a leak over the flour loft. Two of the hamlet folk came with ladders and a bundle of spruce shingles. We mended it in one cold morning. The pitch would not run, so we set the shingles close and weighted them with stone, and it will hold until Blossom. The flour is dry. The loft smells of spruce now, which is not the worst smell for a mill.

The oldest apple tree has lost its last leaves. Its grey branch stands out over the pond. Pip's folk at Kettle Ridge say their windmills squeak worse in the cold. Mine does not turn at all, so it cannot squeak. There is a lesson there for someone.
%%
Hesk's notes: inside the cave
Frost, the day after. By Hesk, at Birchfield.

Went down at dawn on a rope, with Clank above. Twelve paces, as the stone said. Clank held the rope. It has never let go of a rope, and I did not ask it to start.

What I found:
1. A cave, about thirty paces long and twelve wide. The roof is high enough for a tall man with a pack.
2. The floor is dry clay with small stones in it. No rails, no tool marks, no props. Nobody has dug here.
3. The walls drip. At the back is a pool, clear and cold, as wide as a table. It tastes of stone.
4. The air is warm, as warm as a barn. A torch burns steady. No bad air.
5. By the north wall is a ring of black stones with a little old ash in it. A fire ring, cold and very old. No bones, no pots, no marks. Someone once sat here and made a fire. I do not know who. Neither does Lorn. I left it as it was.
6. Three passages go off from the back. Two end after ten paces. The third goes on, and a draft comes out of it. I did not follow it. A miner knows when he does not know.
7. Over the pool the roof is cracked. I set two oak props. They will not be needed. I set them anyway.

Clank walked the cave from end to end, carrying the lantern. It stopped at the fire ring and looked at it for a long time. I said "come". It came. I do not know what it saw. A ring of stones, I suppose.

Tova the schoolteacher came down after me. She asked whether the cave could hold the school play. The school hall is cold in winter, and the children's fingers go blue. Here it is warm. I said I would think. I have thought. I said yes, with props.
%%
Notes on the moss on the copper hill
Tansy, boat builder, at Copperhold, in autumn. The moss on the north side of the hill is the first thing I look at each year, because it tells me where the damp is.
The moss is green on the north side and grey on the south. Where the copper seeps out of the rock, the moss is a strange bright blue, like the blue of the glass in the school house. I have not seen moss this colour anywhere else. The miners say it tastes of coins. I did not taste it.
In the wet weeks the moss grows fat and slow. In the dry weeks it goes flat and brittle, and it cracks under your boot like a biscuit. This autumn it is fat. It has been raining.
I put a tuft of the blue moss in a jar on my bench, to see if the boats would like it. They do not. The wood goes soft where the moss has touched it.
%%
Frost at the stable door
Written by Senna, stable hand at Saltreach.
The stable door sticks in Frost. Pull the bottom corner first, not the handle. The handle is for people who have never met a door.
The carrots in the garden are still in the ground. Pull one and it snaps like a stick, and the frost comes off in your hand.
The bees by the wall sleep in a ball and shiver to keep the queen warm. The wall beside the hive was cold. The bees were not.
%%
Field notes: the sand and the glass
Dell, glassblower. The sand for the furnace comes from the beach below the harbor wall, at the far end, where the tide leaves it fine and grey. The best sand is the sand that has been turned over the most, by the waves, in the dark.

I wash the sand three times, in the bucket by the back door, and let it settle. The dirt goes up and the sand goes down. The black grains are iron, and they are too heavy to melt into clear glass, so they go to the bottom, and they go into the bucket for the smith, who likes them better than I do.

The melt needs three things: the sand, the ash from the bracken, and a little lime from the shells. The ash is the difficult one. I burn the bracken in the back yard in autumn, in a pit, and keep the ash dry in a jar. The jar is labelled, and I have made the mistake of mislabelling once, and the glass came out green, and the customers were not pleased, and neither was I.

When the melt is ready it glows the colour of honey in the sun. A blown bowl takes a minute, and a good bowl takes an hour. The best glass I have made is the clear kind, the colour of the sea in summer, and I have made it only four times in my life.
%%
Field notes: the hives on the ridge
Kept by Dace, mayor, at the house at the edge of Kettle Ridge, where the hives stand behind the wall.
Blossom, first day. The bees are out in the afternoon, on the first warm hour. Eleven of the hives are alive. The twelfth is quiet, and I have left it quiet.
Blossom, sixth day. A swarm came off the second hive at noon and settled on the old oak by the lane. It hung there for an hour like a brown coat. Then it went up the hill in a cloud, and we lost it over the ridge. The keeper says it will find a hollow. The keeper says that every year, and it always does.
Blossom, twelfth day. A carter from Saltreach stopped at the gate for water and said the big ships are longer than the pier. He said it was true this time, and drank his water and left before I could ask him how he knew. I have made a note of it, as I make a note of everything. I have also made a note that I did not believe him, and that I was glad when he went.
%%
Field notes: the hives in winter
Oren, at the house at the edge of Vell. Winter.

Three hives in the lee of the wall. Clustered tight. A hum when I lay my ear to the wood, steady and low. They are alive.

Perrin the beekeeper came by. He says the bees are quiet this year, quieter than he has known. I said winter makes them quiet. He said, yes, but not like this.

I wrote it down. I do not know why.
%%
The borrowed horse
A page from Hesk's account book, Copperhold.

Borrowed the grey horse from Dace at Three Wells for the summer. He asked for no money. He asked me to feed her well and to bring her back before the Frost.

She is a good horse. She is not a fast horse. She walks the hill road as if she has all day, and she does, and so do I.

The cart is heavy with ore and she pulls it. She does not like the noise of the sorting shed. I tie her at the far post, by the kitchen, where the cook gives her an apple. Now she walks to the far post by herself. She knows where the apples are.

I will be sorry to take her back. I have written her name on a stone by the gate so I do not forget it. Her name is Bell. Dace calls her Grey, but she answers to Bell.
%%
Market notes after rain
By Noll, well digger, Leaffall, 171.

The market ground was wet after rain. Mud filled the spaces between the stones. A cart wheel sank near the beetroot stall, and three people pushed while the driver pulled the wrong way. The wheel came free when the horse leaned forward. The driver thanked the horse first.

The fish seller had laid out river fish on a board. Each fish was bright and clean. A boy asked which one was freshest. The seller pointed to the fish that had just jumped off the board. It landed in a basket of turnips.

I watched the bees at the honey stall. They came to the open jar, though the seller had covered the other jars well. She shut the lid and moved the jar into the shade. Then she gave the boy a turnip and told him to keep his hands away from the honey.

The apples were smaller this year, but sweet. I bought six for my supper and one for the walk home. The last one rolled under a bench. A cat found it first. It sniffed the apple, sneezed, and left it for me.
%%
Field notes: the hedge at night
Clay End, autumn of 207. Seven nights at the window of the barn loft, with a torch, a slate and a blanket. I wished to see what the night things do when nobody is about. Nessa.
The barn looks over the north hedge. Torches stand along the hedge every twelve blocks. The farmer lights them at dusk. I counted every creature that came near, and wrote down which torch it came to.
Night 1. Two zombies at the gate. They stood by the post for an hour, bumping it gently. The torch above the gate was burning low. When the farmer's son climbed up and trimmed it, the zombies turned round and walked off into the dark. One went into a tree.
Night 2. A spider on the barn wall. It climbed to the eaves and stopped. It looked at the torch on the roof, and went back down. The farmer says to keep a torch on the roof, because spiders climb. I had thought it was a saying. It is a rule.
Night 3. Nothing. A fox, a rabbit, wind. I slept for the first time.
Night 4. A creeper. It came to the hedge, small and green, and stood beside the torch for a long time. It did not hiss. Then the barn cat came out, sat on the step, and looked at it. The creeper went away. Nobody knows why creepers dislike cats. The cat did not seem to know either.
Night 5. A skeleton on the road, far off. It rattled. It did not come near. Skeletons dislike dogs. The farm dog barked once, and the rattling stopped.
Night 6. Wolves in the wood. I heard them, not saw. They did not come near the hedge. They howled for a long time and then they were quiet. I do not know what they said. The farm dog answered once, as if to say good night.
Night 7. Rain. Nothing came.
What I learned. It was always the dark places that they came to. Not the torches. Where the torch was bright, nothing came. Where it was low, something came. When the farmer's son trimmed the wick, it left. So the old song is right. It is not a thing the farmers say to be tidy. It is a thing that works.
Keep the torches lit. I have written it on the slate in large letters, and have drawn a torch beside it, in case the words are not enough.
%%
Letter: Hesk to the healer at Lowmarsh
Hesk writes from Copperhold to Wren, healer at Lowmarsh, in the heat of Melon.

Wren,

You do not know me. I am Hesk, a miner at Copperhold. I am writing about my red cow.

She stopped eating a while back. I wrote it on a page and put the page on the shelf, and then I thought, the healer at Lowmarsh knows about cows and herbs and such, and I will send her the page.

So I am sending it.

She stands in the corner of the field and looks at the fence. Her ears are cold. She drinks a little. She will not eat hay. The goats are well and the chickens are well. It is only her.

I have tried the old things. I gave her water from the good well. I moved her to the shade. I sat with her in the evening and told her about the mine, which she likes, or liked.

If you have a remedy, write it down and send it by the relay. The keeper at the tower here will send it on. I will pay you in copper or in honey, whichever you like. The honey is dark this year and good.

Yours,
Hesk
%%
Candle notes: beeswax and tallow
By Hollis, candle maker at Three Wells.

I make two kinds of candles. Tallow candles, from the fat of sheep and pigs, are cheap and they smoke. Beeswax candles cost more and they burn clean and smell of honey. Most folk buy tallow for the barn and wax for the table.

A candle burns shorter in a cold room. A candle in a draught burns fast and crooked. My mother kept a board of notches on the wall. She marked every candle sold and every batch of wax bought. I keep the board now.

The wax comes from Ambrook, from the hives on the hill. A woman there named Sable brings it on the second cart of the month. Last Blossom she brought a block still warm and it smelled like the whole hill. I paid her in emeralds and in four tallow candles for her own kitchen.

Beginner's advice: trim the wick before you light it. A long wick smokes. A short wick lasts.

The bees in my yard know me now. They do not mind the smoke from my pots.
%%
Field notes: the song contest
By Ilse, farmer, the house at the edge of Three Wells

Blossom, the twelfth. The song contest in the square. The children sang the frog song three times, and the judge said that was too many times. He was right. Bel's little brother croaked the last line so loud the bell started up too.

The bees came out for the first time this year. Warm day, flowers on the south bank. I counted sixty going out of the box in a quarter hour. Coming back, they were heavy and slow. I think the willows are early. I will know by Swarm.

A visiting tutor came through from Vell on the cart. A thin woman with a notebook. She asked to see the drill yard, but we do not have one. We have the school, and the school has a shelf of old drill boards with nothing drawn on them. She looked at the boards for a long time. Then she asked me whether any of the children had ever tried to teach a helper to pick beans. I said yes, Bel did, and it picked her beans, and then picked everyone's beans. She laughed and wrote that down.

She also asked what the fields were like before the helpers. I said I did not know, I was not born. She said that was the right answer. Then she went on to Ambrook.

Frogs in the ditch by evening. Loud. The contest judge is not welcome in the ditch.
%%
House Notes: Bees by the Wall
By Dace, summer of 154.

My house stands at the edge of Three Wells. The bees from the school yard visit the clover by my gate. I counted them one morning and lost count at thirty, because the baker brought a tray of buns.

They work best before the sun grows hot. At noon they sit close to the hive entrance and fan their wings. I put a shallow bowl of water beside the flowers, with flat stones in it. A bee can drink there without falling in.

The children call one bee Captain. It has a dark mark on its back. I have not seen it give orders, but it is always first at the clover.
%%
Field notes: spiders in the barn
Odo, lamp tender, the shore market at Northpoint. Winter. The barn by the shore path, where the camp keeps its two horses and the goods for the market.

Spiders come into the barn in winter, out of the cold. They are not here for us. They want warm corners and the flies the horses bring.

First night: 7, all small, in the rafters.
Second week: 14. Two the size of a hand. They sit very still on webs that glitter in the lamp.
Third week: I set a torch at each corner. The spiders moved up. 10 left.

A spider in a barn is an ordinary nuisance. A spider on a wall at night, in the dark, with red eyes, is another matter, and not for a lamp tender. The rule is the old one. Keep the torches lit, and keep the barn door shut.

The market girl hung a cloth over one corner so as not to see them. They did not mind. They like cloth.
%%
Field notes: first snow
By Ilse, farmer, the house at the edge of Three Wells

Frost, the fourth day. First snow in the night, not much. The beetroot in the long bed is still under it, and it will keep until Thaw. The carrots are fine. I dug enough for the week and put the rest back in the straw.

The bees are in the box by the south wall. I have not opened it. You do not open a hive in snow. You listen at the side, and if you hear them, that is enough.

The hens are in. The fox was at the gate again, looking at the hen house the way a cat looks at a bowl. I shouted. It did not care. I threw a shovel of ash at the gate, and it went off slowly, which is how foxes leave.

Wind from the north. The windmill on the ridge is quiet, which means the sails are iced.
%%
Notes from the hill: the bees in summer
By Hesk, for the record.

The bees came late this year. I put the hives on the south side of the house where the sun sits all day. For a week nothing moved. Then on the ninth of Swarm the first one came out and sat on the board by the door, and cleaned her face with her legs, and flew off.

By the end of the month the hives were loud. You can hear them from the kitchen. My Clank says it sounds like the mine when the lift goes down. It does not. But I let him have it.

The honey is dark this year, darker than last. The heather up the hill went wild in the sun. Dark honey tastes of the hill. I sell a jar to the inn and keep a jar for the bread.

One thing I learned, and it took me ten years. Do not stand in front of the hive in the heat of the day. Stand to the side. They have a road in the air and you are in it.
%%
Field notes: the melons, Longday
Written by Brin, cook at the Brown Hen, who has nothing to do between the noon meal and the evening, and so watches the melon vines by the stable wall.

The melon vine by the stable has put out nine flowers this week. Seven are open, and two have already gone.

The bees come to the melon flowers at noon, when the sun is on the wall. They do not come at dawn. I stood there at dawn with a bowl of soup and watched for an hour, and not one bee came.

The big melon at the bottom of the vine is as large as a pig's head, and rounder. Hob says it will be ready at Reaping. I say it will be ready the day after a cart comes past and somebody wants it.
%%
Letter: Pell to his sister at Ambrook
From the Halfway Inn, on the Long Road, summer.

Dear Sela,

The road is dry and the carts are heavy. I have been three weeks on it and my boots have opinions.

The price of honey is up again. I bought six jars at Ambrook and sold four at Copperhold before I had stopped the cart. Miners eat honey like bread. Ivo the smith buys wax by the block and will not say what for. He says if I knew what for I would charge more, and he is right.

I had a load of apples that went soft in the heat. My fault. I stacked them too deep and did not air them at night. I gave the soft ones to the innkeeper's pigs. The pigs are now the fattest pigs on the road. The innkeeper says I am welcome any time.

The inn here has a riddle board by the hearth. The hearth has not gone out in twenty years, the keeper says. The riddle this week is: what goes up the hill and down the hill and never moves? I have my answer. I am not writing it here in case I am wrong. I will tell you at Apple.

The relay tower at Three Wells is working. I sent word to mother that I am alive. She sent back that she knew.

Tell the bees nothing. They do not need my news.

Your brother, Pell
%%
Notes on the Deep Works: the morning
By Hesk, for the mine record.

At the shaft head there is a board. Every miner writes his name on it going down and rubs it out coming up. If a name stays on the board at night, we go and look for him. This has happened twice in my years. Both times the miner was found. Both times he had fallen asleep in a cool tunnel and was very cross to be woken.

The tool store is warm and smells of oil. The picks hang in a row. I count them going out and count them coming in. A pick that goes down and does not come up is a hole in the row and a worry.

The sorting shed has bins for copper, for iron, for coal. The coal bin is the loudest. Coal rattles. Copper rings. Iron says nothing, and you learn to like it for that.

At the mine gate the cook has her kitchen. She makes a stew that is mostly potatoes and it is the best thing below the hill. The count board is by her door. She says the stew goes faster when the count is good. I have checked. It does.
%%
Tilly, the creeper at the mill wall
Winter, the nineteenth year. Written at the egg stall, with cold hands.
Last night a creeper came out of the orchard and walked up to the mill pond wall. It did not hiss at the guard. It hissed at the wall. Then it went off, with a bang that woke every hen in Ambrook.
I went out in my nightshirt with a torch. The mill wall had a hole in it the size of a small door. Stones lay all over the road. Jory stood in the gap with his arms folded, looking at the pond. The pond was fine. The creeper was not. There was a black mark on the ground and nothing else.
Everyone came out to look. The baker brought bread. The beekeeper brought a ladder. The children brought sticks, to point at things with.
Notes for anyone who keeps hens beside a wall:
1. A creeper makes no sound until it makes one very loud sound. If you hear a hiss, step back, and keep stepping.
2. Torches keep them off. Not forever. A torch that is lit is better than a torch that is meant to be lit.
3. They do not care for the dog. They do not care for the cat either. They care for the nearest wall.
4. After a blast, leave the stones where they fall for a day. Someone will want to see. Then pick them up and build the wall again, two blocks higher.
Jory and six neighbors laid the new wall in two days, out of the same stones. Nobody was hurt. Three hens were cross.
I sold 40 eggs that week, to people who came to look at the hole. That is the most I have ever sold. I would not want a creeper every week.
%%
Field notes at Vell
By Noll, well digger, Apple, 158.

I came to the market for a new rope and stayed to watch the bees.

The hives stood by the flower stall. Bees worked the late flowers, then went home in a steady line. One bee landed on my sleeve. I held still until it left. The flower seller said that was good manners. I said the bee had better manners than most buyers.

A man brought two baskets of apples. He had marked the good ones for sale and the soft ones for his mill. A child asked if the soft ones were bad. The man said, "Not if you have teeth for them."

I bought a rope. It was strong, and only one end had a knot in it.
%%
Pell's account, kept by Ama

Apple, last market before Frost.

Pell brought his ledger to the Halfway Inn because rain had softened the road and he did not want to write in the cart. I lit two candles and moved the bench close to the hearth. He counted his goods aloud while I mended a wick.

Wheat, three sacks. Beetroot, one sack. Carrots, a basket. Potatoes, two baskets. Honey, four jars. Wool, one bundle. He had sold the apples before reaching us, though he kept one in his coat. It had a small bite from some animal. He ate that part himself and gave the rest to the innkeeper.

A pair of fishers came through from the coast. They had no fish to sell. They said the boats had stayed near the harbor wall because the sea was rough. One told Pell there were more large ships at Saltreach. The other said he had seen no such ships, only the usual boats and a high tide. They argued over the price of dried fish, then shared a bowl of stew.

After supper, I carried the candle ends to the kitchen. The innkeeper had saved the bones for the dog. The dog had saved one bone for later and was sitting on it. The cat watched from the flour shelf, where she is not allowed. Neither moved when I came in.

A traveler asked whether the north road was safe. Pell said it was safe if the torches were lit and the bridges sound. The traveler asked why the last relay message from the north had been cut short. Pell said the wind may have carried a poor signal. The innkeeper said the relay had been silent for three nights, not one. Nobody answered that.

We put out the lamps one by one. The dog kept his bone. The cat kept the shelf. In the morning, the traveler left before the frost lifted.
%%
Notes on the goat that went down
By Tansy, boat builder, at Copperhold, on the day the goat went down the mine road. Market day, the third of Apple. I was at the stall with the boats, and I saw the whole thing from the bottom of the stair.
The goat was a white one with a black ear, owned by a farmer from the north road. She had come down to the square to eat the beet leaves from the stalls. The children chased her, and she went round the bins, and then she went through the gate by the ore board, which had been left open for the cart.
She did not stop at the gate. She went straight down the mine road, which is the old tunnel that runs under the square, and which has a rail on the right and a cold draught all year.
The foreman shouted. Two miners ran after her. The goat ran faster. She went past the first level sign, and the second, and the lamp hook on the wall, and then she was gone into the dark.
We waited. Everybody waited. The children stood in a row by the gate and did not talk.
After a while we heard her bell. It was very faint. It came from below the third level, somewhere near the sump. Then it stopped.
Hesk went down with a lantern and a rope. He was gone for most of an hour. When he came back up, he had the goat over his shoulder, and she was not at all sorry, and she bit his ear on the way out of the gate.
He said she had been sitting on the stair at the eighth torch, looking down into the deep stone. He said her eyes were very bright in the lantern light, and that she had stopped bleating when he reached her. He said the air at that point was warm.
The farmer took the goat home. He said he would tie her up in future. Hesk said the goat would untie herself, and that he would rather she went down the mine road than through the square.
%%
The sea in Frost, from the quay
Notes from the window of the quay, where the nets are mended. The light comes in low and flat across the floor, and the nets lie in it like something asleep.
Ice on the harbor edge every morning of the first week. By noon it is gone. The fish do not seem to mind either way.
Squid come in close to the wall in Longnight. They are the color of old copper, and they do not hurry. Ivo says they are watching us. Ivo watches the squid too much.
The fish price board says two emeralds the basket in Frost. It is wiped clean at noon, when the new price comes.
Corin says a net must be dry before it is mended, or the knots slip. I tried it wet. He was right, and I was cold, and he did not say so.
%%
Field notes: the sea in the cold
Dell, glassblower, Saltreach. The sea in winter, as seen from the north pier, where I go to look at it when the furnace is too hot and the customers are too cold.

The water is colder than the air, which the fishers say is wrong, and I say is the sea's own business. The waves come in slow and heavy, and they break on the stones with a sound like a cart going over a bridge a long way off.

The salt on the pier rail has a crust on it, as white as flour. It tastes of nothing but salt. I know, because I tasted it, and the fishers laughed at me, and then they tasted it too.
%%
Field notes: the first snow
Kept by Dell, glassblower, at the house on the edge of Saltreach. Written at the window of the glass shop, with the furnace at my back, which is the warmest place on the coast.

The first snow came in the night. I did not hear it. I heard the gulls, who were shouting about it, and then I saw the roof of the shed, white as a plate. The sea is still grey. The snow does not stay on the water. It goes in, and is gone, and the sea does not notice.
%%
Notes on the hens at the mine gate
By Tansy, boat builder, at Copperhold. The hens at the mine gate belong to the kitchen. There are eleven of them, and they are the best-fed birds in the town, because every miner who comes up from the lower levels drops them a crust.
The hens are not afraid of the miners. They are not afraid of the coal carts. They are afraid of the cook, and of nothing else.
In the mornings they scratch in the dust by the ore board. The dust is grey and very fine. It gets into their feathers and makes them look older than they are. A hen with coal dust on her back looks like a small, sad old woman in a shawl. The children say so.
They lay well in the autumn. The eggs are small and brown, and they taste of iron. The cook says it is the dust. Nobody has asked the hens.
When the stone is cold, the hens sit close together by the stove in the kitchen. When it is not cold, they sit by the gate, where the air moves. I have not seen them sit anywhere else. I think they know where the air is good, and where it is not.
One hen, a speckled one, will not go down the stair to the sorting shed. She stands at the top and watches the steps. The cook says she is lazy. Hesk says she is sensible. I think she is listening.
%%
Field notes: the hives on the hill
Juno, carter.

Ama keeps bees up the hill past my house. I carry her honey down to Three Wells, and her wax, and once a year her empty hives for mending. This is what I have seen, sitting on the cart while she works.

1. Bees like the morning. They are up before I am. By the time I have harnessed the horses they are already in the clover.
2. Bees do not like a cart. If I stop close to a hive, the horses put their ears back. I stop further off now.
3. A bee that lands on you is asking, not telling. Stand still, and it goes. Swat at it, and it tells its friends.
4. Ama smokes the hive before she opens it. A little smoke at the door, and the bees go calm and hum low. She says the smoke makes them think of a storm coming, so they go down to the honey and wait it out.
5. When a hive gets too full they split. Half the bees leave with a new queen. Ama watches for that. She has a box ready and a soft brush. She has caught eleven swarms that way.
6. The honey at Apple is pale and thin. At Reaping it is dark and thick. Same bees, different flowers. I did not believe it until I tasted both on the same day.
7. A hive is warm in winter. Put your hand on the side in Deepsnow and you feel it. The bees are in there, packed tight, keeping each other warm and eating the honey. That is what the honey is for. We only take what is spare.

I asked Ama if the bees know her. She said they know her hands. That is enough for a bee.
%%
The school play, and the horses in it
Notes from the winter play at the school by the harbor, which the children put on in Longnight for the families who come down to the quay. The play is called The Net and the Sea. The teacher wrote the lines, and the children changed most of them.
The cast: Lisbet, who is seven, as the girl who mends the net. Pim, who is nine, as the sea. Two boys as the boat, which is a barrel with a sail painted on it. Two more children as the horses that pull the boat up the slip.
I watched the horses most. Real horses do not play at being horses. These two children stamped, and blew through their noses, and bent their heads to the rope the way Tansy does, and they did it better than Tansy would. Tansy would have stood in the middle of the stage and eaten the scenery. The children did not eat anything. That is the difference.
The girl who mends the net says her first line very loudly: "This net is broken, and I am going to mend it." Pim answers, in a voice meant for the back of the hall: "Then I will give the fish back." The fish were made of paper and tied to the net with string. Two of them fell off in the first scene, and nobody stopped to pick them up. Nobody wanted to.
Halfway through, the net says, very sadly: "Nobody has mended me since the morning." Lisbet says: "I am here. I am mending." The two boys in the barrel laugh. The teacher hisses from the side, and then she laughs too, and then she has to sit down.
The shipyard's apprentice had the part of the big fish. It stood at the back of the stage in a frame of wood with a blue cloth over it, and did not move for the whole of the play. It was the best acting of the night. Corin said so, and he does not say things like that about anybody.
In the middle of the play the sea takes a boat away. The lamp at the back of the stage is turned low, and the children in the blue cloth walk slowly across the floor. The hall went quiet. A baby began to cry and was taken out, and the mother said it was only the dark, and then she laughed at herself.
The baker sold bread at the door for one emerald a loaf. He sold out before the play was over, which he says is a sign of a good play, and Corin says is a sign of a hungry hall.
At the end, the boat comes home. The horses pull it up the slip with the net on its mast. The whole hall stood up. The girl who mends the net took a bow, forgot the bow was over, and kept bowing until Pim took her hand.
Corin said the boat should have been sanded better. Everyone else said it was the best thing they had seen in the hall all winter.
%%
Field notes: the woods, winter
Dell, glassblower, Saltreach. Notes from the woods on the hill above the town, where the road to the Long Road goes through the pines and the oaks, and where the carters stop to water the horses and talk about the weather.

The oaks have dropped their leaves, and the bare branches are the colour of ash. Where the sun comes through, the ground is brown with the leaves that fell in Leaffall, and under them, green moss, wet and soft. Walking on it is like walking on a sponge that has forgotten what it was for.

The spruce keep their needles all winter, and they are dark and close. Birds go in and out of them quickly, the small brown ones, which the children call sparrows. Foxes sleep under the spruce roots in the day. I have seen one, asleep, with its tail over its nose. It opened one eye when I passed, and closed it again. It was not worried about me, and it was right not to be.

The stream through the wood has a skin of ice at the edges, and the water runs clear in the middle, fast and cold. There are small stones on the bottom, and each one is a different colour when wet. I took one home. It is a grey stone with a white line round it, like a belt. It sits on the glass shop shelf, and the customers ask what it is, and I say it is a stone from the wood.
%%
Ama's field book at the Halfway Inn

Apple, Leaffall.

I left the candles by the warm wall and walked to the orchard. The leaves were down, and the apples showed plain among the branches. I picked the fallen ones first. A bruise is no harm in a pie.

The bees were slow at the hive. One came out, turned once, and went in again. I set a bowl of honey beside the door for Pell. He says honey keeps a cough away. Wren says it only makes the tea kinder.

On the road, a cart had lost a sack of carrots. The horse stood patiently while the driver tied it. I gave them two candles for the dark stretch ahead. The driver paid with an apple and said the nights were coming early.

At the Halfway Inn the fire was low. I trimmed the wicks and put the apple in my apron. It will do for tomorrow.
%%
Field notes: the long night
Oren, house at the edge of Vell. Winter. These are the notes of a week of snow and quiet, written for no one, because a clerk writes things down.

Day one. Snow all day. The hill white. The archive door half buried. The clerks dug it out at noon. Ulla found a small bird in the front hall, frozen, and warmed it by the stove. It lives.

Day two. A letter from my sister at Kettle Ridge. She says the barn is full of spiders, big ones, this winter. The torches have not kept them out. She asks if I have heard of this elsewhere. I wrote to three towns. Two say yes. One says no.

Day three. Walked down to the tutors' house to return a book. Maren was there. She looked tired. I asked what was wrong. She said she had been reading the old chronicles all night, looking for something she could not name. I did not ask what.

Day four. A message came by the lamp from Three Wells. The mayor wishes to know how many records the archive holds, and how many are copied. I answered the first: forty-one thousand and some. The second: not as many as I would like. He asked why he was being told. I could not say.

Day five. A clear night. I went out to the garden and looked north. The sky was black and full of stars. I looked for a long while. I saw nothing unusual. But the dogs in the village barked for an hour, at nothing, as they do before a storm.

Day six. I went to the deepest room. The oak box is where it was. I put my hand on it and said nothing.

Day seven. Snow again. A good day to sit by the stove with tea and write. I have written this. It is longer than it needs to be.

One more thing. A child came to the door today, a small boy from the next farm, with a letter for the archive. It was one line, in a careful hand: "Please keep this." I asked what it was. He said, "I wrote it." I asked what it said. He said he did not know. He had only copied it from the wall of the old well.

I put it on the shelf in the third hall, with the letters from children. I wrote a card: Found, copied, kept. The boy went away happy.

I do not know what the words were. I do not think the boy did either. But they were written, and now they are kept.
%%
Field notes: the well that ran dry
Winter of 49. A house at the edge of Kettle Ridge. Corin writes, who has come inland from Saltreach for oak and is not used to wells.

The well in the yard has run dry. It was full in autumn. In the first week of Longnight it gave a half bucket. In the second it gave a spoonful. In the third it gave a sound like a sigh.
The farmer says it happens every few winters, when the snow is thin on the ridge. The water sits deep, and in a dry year it drops below the rope.
I looked in. It is a deep stone shaft, ten blocks, with green on the walls and a dark floor. A frog sat at the bottom. He looked up at me with great patience.
The farmer's wife has lowered a lantern and a boy on a rope. The boy says the floor is damp, not wet. A good sign. There is water below, he says. It is only a matter of digging.
They have begun to dig. Three men work in turns, with a pick and a bucket. By noon they were down two more blocks. By dusk, the floor was wet. By morning, water. Dark, cold, tasting of stone.
The farmer says to dig deeper in autumn, before the dry. He says his grandfather never did.
Meanwhile the family carries water from the next farm. It takes four trips a day, with two buckets each. Everyone is tired and cross and kind.
At the house they feed me stew and bread. I am to go to the oak wood tomorrow with the farmer and mark the trees. I think I will ask about the frog.
%%
Watching the Edge of Town
By Dace, summer of 204.

My house stands where the last garden meets the open road. From the back step I can watch the school plots, the bee hives, and the cart track beyond them. I have kept these notes through one summer, mostly because people ask what is growing there.

The school children planted carrots in the narrow bed by the wall. They left one row too close to the path. Every day a passing cart brushed the green tops. The children moved the row back, then argued over whose idea it had been. The carrots grew straight after that.

A bee keeper brought two hives to the clover patch. He set them on oak boards and faced the openings toward the morning sun. The bees visited clover first, then the pumpkin flowers near the well. One settled on the sleeve of my coat while I wrote. I held still until it left. It had better manners than most visitors.

A fox came along the ditch at dusk. It watched the hens through the fence. The hens saw it and crowded into their house without being called. The smallest hen stayed outside, pecking at a beetle. I opened the gate and she ran in at last. The fox went away with nothing.

From the road I can hear the sea carts when they pass through town. They carry fish in covered tubs, with wet rope tied over the lids. The fish smell travels farther than the carts. A cat follows them from the bakery to my gate, then sits as if the road belongs to it.

The woods begin beyond the north path. In Longday, oak leaves hold rain along their edges. A woodcutter showed me a patch of mushrooms under a fallen branch. He said to leave them unless you know them well. I left them. The next morning they were gone, and a rabbit sat near the branch with a damp nose.

At the mine road, dust gathers in the wheel tracks when the weather is dry. Hesk came up to the market one afternoon with a little coal on his cheek. He had missed it while washing. Bel told him it looked like a third eye. Hesk said it had seen more than the other two.

These are small things, but they fill a summer. The carrots need water. The bees need flowers. The hens need a sound fence, except when they find a way through it. I have repaired mine twice and raised it once. The hens still visit.
%%
Hesk's notes: the hole at Birchfield
Frost, 207. By Hesk, miner of Copperhold, at Lorn's farm in Birchfield, half a day from Vell.

Lorn's plow went over the north field last week and the ground went down under it. A hole, four paces across, in the middle of the stubble. Lorn wrote to the mine hall. The hall wrote to me. I came with Clank. It is a cold walk for a copper man, and Clank clanked all the way from Vell.

What I saw:
1. The hole is round, as if the field had a lid and the lid fell in. The edge is clay, firm to the foot. I did not stand on it.
2. Depth: I dropped a stone and counted four. About twelve paces.
3. I lowered a torch on a rope. It burned steady all the way down. Good air.
4. A breath comes up from the hole, and it is warm. This is the middle of Frost.
5. Frost lies thick on the field. None lies within three paces of the hole.

Lorn asked if it is a mine. It is not. A mine has props, rails and pick marks. This has none that I can see from the top. This was here before anyone dug.

Tomorrow I go down on a rope, with Clank above holding it. I do not like holes. I like this one less, because I do not know what is in it. I will take the good lantern.
%%
Field notes: the ridge from the top
Kept by Dace, mayor, from the top stile on the ridge, where a man can see the valley, the marsh and, on a clear morning, a line of grey that the carters say is the sea.
Thaw, the oaks. The oaks on the east slope are the last to leaf and the first to drop their bark in the wind. The birch by the stream is white and quick. The spruce on the north side has been shedding needles since the frost, and the ground under it is soft and brown. I am told the spruce has always done this. I do not remember it doing it so much.
Sowing, the wheat. The top field came up thin and green. The bottom field came up thick, which the farmer says is because he sowed it thicker out of spite. The lower field is potatoes, and the eyes are set in rows, and the boy has been told that a potato eye is a small promise, and must not be stepped on.
Blossom, the stone. The wall along the north road was sound all winter, and is sound now, except for the far end, where the stones are warm to the hand in the afternoon. The farmer says the sun lies on that stone longer than on the rest. The farmer's cousin, who works the mine, says the stone is warm there in the mine too, on the fifth level, and nobody knows why. I have written both down. I have not touched the stone myself, because I did not want to be told what I felt.
Blossom, the sea. On the clearest morning, from the top stile, you can see the line of grey, and above it, very small, the tops of masts. The carters say they are the big ships at Saltreach. I have counted them three mornings in a row, and there were four, five and four. A boy at the stile says they are only clouds. He has not seen the clouds stand still like that. Neither have I.
Blossom, the north. A carter says the north relay has been slow to answer since the thaw, and has missed its hour twice. The keeper at the little relay says the north lamp is lit every night and seen from the ridge, but he says it with a pause, as if he is listening to something else. I have written that down as a rumor. I have also written that I looked, and saw the lamp, and that it was the same colour as always.
Blossom, the last morning. The bees are out, the wheat is green, the stone is warm in the afternoon, and there are four masts at dawn, which is one more than yesterday. The windmill squeaks. The children are singing at the well. Everything here is as it has always been, except the counting, which I cannot seem to stop.
%%
Notice: the north road in snow
By Dace, mayor of Three Wells, posted on the board by the east well.

To all on the Long Road.

The north road is passable to the second waymark. Past that the snow lies deep and the wind has taken the torches off two posts. The road crew will set new posts when the thaw comes. Until then, go by the low way through the hamlet, where the hedges cut the wind.

Travelers from the north say the relays are quiet. One man from Saltreach says his cousin sent a message to Northpoint in Frost and got no answer. Another says the tower there still burns its lamp, and he saw it himself from the hill. I do not know which is true. I write both, because both were told to me.

Keep your lamps lit. Keep your doors shut at night. If you see a light in the northern sky, do not stand out in the cold to watch it. Go in and bolt the door and tell me in the morning.

The inn of twelve beds has room. The bakery has bread. The school is open when the snow lets the children through.

Dace.
%%
Letter: Hollis to a visiting tutor
Hollis, candle maker, to Nessa, tutor at Vell, at the inn of twelve beds.

Dear Nessa,

You asked me at the fair why I keep the board of notches on my wall. I have thought about it and here is my answer.

My mother kept the board. She said a candle maker who does not count is a candle maker who runs out of wax in Deepsnow. So she marked every batch. When the wax came in she cut a notch. When a candle went out the door she cut a notch. At the end of the month she held the board up to the window and read it.

I did the same for twenty years and never thought much of it. Then you came to the fair with your apprentices and your tray of crystals, each on its card. You said a mind learns from examples the way a child learns to sort apples from pears. I thought of my board. I thought of the woman from Ambrook who brings the wax and always brings four candles back for her kitchen. She learned that from me. I never told her the rule. She just watched me do it, season after season, until she knew.

So maybe my board is a drill. That is a strange thought for a candle maker. But you said a mind learns the same way and I believe you.

Come by the shop when you are next in Three Wells. I will show you the board. Bring the tray if you like. My apprentice Tam would like to see it. He is slow with the wicks but he has a good eye for wax.

Your friend,
Hollis

P.S. The tallow is fine this spring. The sheep are fat.
%%
Field notes: the school play at the camp
Odo, lamp tender, the shore market at Northpoint. Winter. Written the night after, by the stove, in the evening of the longest week.

The children of the ice camp gave a play in the net store, which is the only room that holds forty. The play was The Fox and the Lamp. It is from the school reader, and the children know it by heart, having been made to.

The cast. The fox was played by Runa's grandson, who is nine, and has the best run at the camp. The lamp was played by a girl of seven with a lantern on her head, which she was told not to touch. The moon was a plate on a pole. The snow was flour, thrown by two boys behind a sheet.

What I saw. There were 41 people in the net store, and four dogs, and the baker's cat. At the first scene the cat walked across the stage and sat down in the snow, which was flour, and became white. It stayed there for the whole of the play and was thought to be very good.

The fox, in the play, wants to take the lamp to light his den. The lamp says no. The fox asks again. The lamp says no again. The fox sits down in the dark and says nothing. Then the lamp, very slowly, walks to the den, and lights it, and walks home. The fox says, "Why?" The lamp says, "You asked twice."

A man behind me wept. I did not see who.

What happened outside. At the end the doors were opened, and the snow came in, and in the snow, at the edge of the light, sat a white fox. A real one. It had come to see. Nobody moved. It looked at the children, and the children looked at it. Then it turned and went into the dark. The girl with the lantern on her head said, "That was the fox's cousin." Nobody argued.

The receipts. Fish soup for 41, paid for by the camp. Flour used: eleven handfuls, and the cat's coat. The net store was swept by the boys who threw the snow. They did it without being asked, which I have noted.

What I learned. A play is not a thing you watch. It is a thing a room does together. The room was warm, and the doors were open, and the dark was on the other side, with the fox in it.
%%
Field notes: the wheat and the windmill
Kept by Dace, mayor, on his walks along the ridge.
Sowing, first day. The top field is sown, and the drills are straight. The wheat came up in a week, thin and green, the way it does when the nights are still cold. The farmer says the wheat knows a cold night from a warm one. I believe him.
Sowing, third day. The windmill on the north rise turns at dawn and stops at dusk. Its squeak is loudest in the morning, when the wind is up. The miller keeps a tally board on the wall of the mill, with a stroke for every sack, and the strokes go up in a neat row. He says it is the only honest thing on the ridge. I have never been able to say he is wrong.
Sowing, fifth day. Wet. The lane is mud to the ankle at the bottom. Four children came up it with buckets, singing, and did not mind the mud at all. They are sent to the well at the top of the ridge every morning, and they say it is the coldest water in the valley.
Sowing, sixth day. A man came up from Three Wells with a drill box on his back and a letter from the tutor at Vell. He wanted to know whether the old wells on the ridge had ever run dry. He wrote the answer in a small book, and then he thanked me and left. Nobody on the ridge has been asked that question before, so I have written it down.
Sowing, eighth day. Warm. The beetroot seed is in the long field, and the rows are very straight, and the crows are watching them. Crows are not in my book, but they should be. They know the field better than we do.
Sowing, ninth day. A new fence post in the bottom field, set straight by the farmer's boy, who was proud of it for the rest of the day. He has been told the post is level. He has checked it three times. It is level.
%%
Field notes: the stubble
Clay End, autumn of 205. The wheat is cut. Three mornings at the edge of the field, with tea. Nessa.
Morning 1. Frost on the stubble. At first light, 6 rabbits at the north end, eating the dropped heads. Every twelve bites they stop and look up. I counted.
Morning 2. 9 rabbits, and a fox at the hedge. The rabbits did not run until the fox was ten paces away. Then all at once. The fox sat down and looked at the stubble as if it had meant to.
Morning 3. The farmer's apprentice came out with a basket to glean the dropped heads. It walked the rows from end to end. It did not stop when the rabbits ran across its path. The rabbits ran from the quick fox and not from the slow apprentice, even when the apprentice came very close. I would like to know the difference.
The apprentice gleaned 3 baskets by noon. The rabbits had the rest. It is a fair division.
%%
Field notes: the hives in Deepsnow
By Aven, beekeeper of Birchfield. Deepsnow, 207. Six hives on the south slope, and one in the cave.

Bees do not sleep in winter. They gather in a ball in the middle of the hive, the queen at the center, and they shiver. Shivering makes heat. The bees on the outside of the ball take turns going in. It is like a town where everyone takes a turn at the stove.

I do not open a hive in winter. I put my ear to the wood. A low hum, like a far mill, means all is well. Silence means trouble. A roar means they are cross, and I should leave them be.

Hive by hive:
1. Low hum. Good.
2. Low hum. Snow on the roof, which is a blanket.
3. Quiet. I knocked on the side, and a small hum answered. Alive.
4. A few dead bees on the landing board. I swept them off. A hive carries out its own dead. If it stops doing so, that is trouble.
5. Low hum.
6. A roar. Left alone.

On the warm day in the second week, bees came out of every hive and flew in circles over the snow. Do not be alarmed. They go out to clean themselves, because they will not foul the hive. Some fall in the snow and cannot rise. I carried them back in my hands. Eleven handfuls.

The cave hive: Hesk the miner told me the cave stays a little warm all winter. I put one hive in to see. The bees were puzzled, I think. They hum a different note. A warm hive may eat its honey too fast. I will know in spring. If it fails, I will say so.
%%
Field notes: what a clerk sees
Oren, house at the edge of Vell, on the hill that holds the Archive. Winter. A longer set of notes made over the cold months, written in the evenings by lantern, when the day's records were done.

The first week. Snow. Short days. I count the lanterns each evening. Forty. All lit. The archive hums, softly, with the sound of dry air and old paper.

The second week. A visitor from Saltreach, a ship's clerk, came to ask for a record of the harbor wall. I found it in the fourth hall. He copied it by hand, in the front hall, with a cold pen. He told me, over tea, that the big ships in the yard are nearly done. Three times as long as any boat. He said some of the families in the town are making plans to sail. I asked where. He said nobody knows. He said, "Across the water." I asked what is across the water. He said, "That is what the plans are for."

I wrote it down. Then I looked at what I had written, and it seemed to me that I had written more than I understood.

The third week. A tutor came from Vell, a quiet man named Bede, to ask for the records of the tutor house. He wanted the oldest drill notes, the ones Nessa keeps. I brought them. He read them for two days, in the front hall, without a word. At the end, he thanked me and said, "I wanted to see how it began."

I asked what he meant. He said, "It began in a small room, with four helpers, and some chalk."

I said that was true. He said, "Everything that grows has a small room."

I had no answer. I gave him tea.

The fourth week. Longnight. The day with the least light. We held the old supper in the copying room, with lanterns on every table. Honey cake, cider, and the oldest song. Ulla sang the last verse. It was a quiet verse. Nobody spoke after it.

On my way home I stopped at the garden gate and looked north. A faint light was there, low on the horizon, green and white. It moved a little. I watched it for a quarter of an hour. Then it was gone.

I do not know what it was. A clerk neighbor says it was a fire in the north. A tutor says it was the sky. A child said it was a lantern, a very large one. I told the child that was as good a guess as any.

I wrote it down and went to bed. The lanterns in the archive were lit. The doors were closed. The hill was still.

We will keep everything we write. I said it to myself, once, like a promise.
%%
Field notes: the cave under the bean
Juno, carter, house at the edge of Copperhold.

I keep a cart and two horses. I go where the loads are. This summer the loads came from under a field.

Old Rill had a field of beans on the slope behind my house. In Sowing the soil sank by his gate. A hole as wide as a cart wheel. We put a plank over it. The plank went down too.

So we dug it open. Under the beans is a cave. Not a big mine cave. A small one, with a roof you can touch and a floor of flat stone. Water runs in at the far end and out at the near end. It is always cold down there.

What I found, watching with a lantern:
1. Roots come through the roof in white threads. They hang down like string. Do not break them all. They hold the roof up as much as the stone does.
2. The water is clear and sweet. Rill fills his buckets there now. He says the beans above are the best he has grown.
3. There are small red stones in the wall by the water. Not redstone, just red stone. I let the children look and take one each.
4. No bats. Not one. Rill says the lanterns keep them off. I say a cave this small has no room for bats.
5. In wet weather it drips. In dry weather it is quiet. Either way, it stays cold.

We put a lid on it. A wooden door in the slope, with a step, and a torch on a post beside it. Rill keeps the key on a nail by his own door.

The horses do not like the smell of the cave door. They know it now and walk wide of it. Horses know more than carts do.
%%
Note: the well at the edge
Juno, for the record.

The well behind my house ran dry in Melon. Not dry, quite. The bucket came up with mud and a smell like old iron.

We have three wells in Copperhold and mine is the smallest. It is fed by a spring that comes out of the hill. The spring went quiet. Nobody knows where a spring goes when it goes quiet.

What we did:
1. Rill went down on the rope with a lantern. He said the water was two arms below where it used to be, and the bottom was grey mud.
2. We drew out the mud with a bucket on a rope. Nine buckets. The ninth had a frog in it. The frog was not pleased. We put it in the ditch.
3. We cleaned the stones. There is a crack in one stone at the bottom. The water comes in there, slow, like a thread.
4. We did not dig the crack wider. Old miners say a crack is a door and you do not open a door you cannot close.
5. Then we waited. Waiting is the main work of a well.

In Leaffall the water came back. Not much, but clear. The smell went. Now we draw slow and never all at once.

The lesson, as my mother would have put it: a well is not a barrel. A barrel holds what you put in it. A well holds what the hill gives it, and the hill gives what it likes.

I wrote the depth on the beam by the well: two and a half arms, clear. When it changes, I will write that too. Oren says write everything down. Oren has never hauled nine buckets of mud.
%%
Field notes: the hive and the new road
Written by Brin, at the Brown Hen. The Long Road is being cut past the inn this summer, and the bees do not approve.

The road men came up the slope on the third day of Longday with picks and a cart. They cut a straight line through the clover. The hive on the slope was three paces from the line. The bees went out at once, low and angry, and sat on the first man's hat.

We moved the hive that evening. Fen, the keeper, put a wet sack over it after dusk, when the bees are slow and full. He did it in ten minutes. He says the bees were polite about it. They were not.

The road men dig through the stones at about one stone a day. Every stone is set on its edge, along a line the surveyor marks with a pole. A boy walks ahead to hold the pole. I have counted eleven boys on the road and two fox kits from the wood, which come to watch and are not welcome.
%%
Field notes: the first lambs, Thaw
Kept by Dace, who walks the ridge for the council every spring.
Thaw, first day. Forty-one ewes on the top pasture, and eleven lambs already up. The lambs fall over their own feet and get up again with great dignity.
Thaw, second day. The windmill on the north rise squeaked on every turn all morning. The miller says it is the damp.
A carter at the stile says the north relay has not answered on the usual hour. I have written it down as a rumor. He could not say who told him.
%%
Field notes: the long field in the snow
Winter of 61. A house at the edge of Kettle Ridge. Written by Corin, who has come to the ridge for the third winter to buy oak and has now been asked to stay for supper so often that he has stopped counting.

I have started to watch the long field. It is the beetroot field, the one with the ditch down the middle. In winter nothing is in it. The beetroot is out and the ground is bare. But if you look at the snow, you can see a great deal.

There are tracks. A fox goes across the north end every night, always at the same place, where the hedge has a gap. A rabbit goes along the ditch. A pheasant goes straight across, as if it owned the field. And at the south end there are the marks of a small apprentice that the farmer is trying out, copper and iron, which stands by the gate and does not move. It has no tracks, because it has not been told to go anywhere.

The snow on the ditch is thin. The water under it does not freeze, because it runs. The farmer says this is why he put the ditch there. A ditch that runs is a ditch that lives.

I cut a stick and dug a hole in the snow in the middle of the field. The snow was a hand deep. Under it the soil was dark and a little damp. There were three worms. A sleeping beetle. A crumb of straw. I put it all back.

The farmer says in the spring, when the snow melts, the beetroot seed goes in at the top of the field first, then the long field, then the bottom. He has done it so for thirty years. The ridge has changed. There are more farms now, and a road to the crossroads, and a relay tower going up on the hill. But the beetroot goes in the same place.

I find that a comfort, in a new age.

Things I have counted in the long field this winter:
Fox tracks: nineteen nights of twenty.
Rabbit tracks: all nights.
Crows: eleven at the most.
Pheasants: two.
People: four, in a week. All of them walking the ditch to see if it ran.

I am told I shall be sent a boat to build in spring. I am sorry to leave the field.
%%
Hesk's notes: the play in the cave
Longnight, 207. By Hesk, at Birchfield. I was to go home by now. I stayed for the play.

Tova's play is "The Fox and the Lamp". It has a fox, a lamp, a miller, a hen, a wind and, because the children insisted, a creeper. Twenty-one children and one very small dog. The school hall is cold, the cave is warm, and the echo, Tova says, is the best actor in the play.

What I did in the three days before:
1. Walked the cave floor and tapped the roof with a pole. Two bad places over the pool. Four more oak props, wedged and tapped again.
2. Roped off the fire ring. Nobody steps inside. The children were told it is the fox's house. This worked better than any rule I have ever written.
3. Counted the seats. Planks on stones. Eighty can sit in the cave. Seventy-four said they would come. Lorn is bringing his whole farm and one pig.
4. Lanterns, not torches. Twenty-four, all behind glass, none near the props. Torches fill a cave with smoke.
5. A rope handrail down, and a second rope back up. Clank stands at the foot of the ladder with the good lantern. It has been told "stay".

The night. The cave was warm. People took off their coats. Lorn took off his hat and held it like a baby. The echo took the last word of every line and sent it back. The fox said, "I only wanted to see the lamp," and the cave said, "lamp, lamp, lamp." Everyone gasped.

The creeper came in the second half, a child under a green blanket. It was meant to hiss. It hissed. The cave hissed three times. A small boy in the front row began to cry and then to cheer. The creeper took a bow and fell over the blanket. The wind, a girl with a sheet, blew it back up.

The very small dog got onto the stage and would not get off. Tova let it stay. It sat in the middle for the last song with its mouth open. The audience agreed that it was in the play.

At the end the miller said, "The night is long, but the lamp is lit." The cave said, "lit." The cave has a way of making things sound true.

After. Nobody was hurt. The props held. The roof did not notice us. When the last person had gone up, I walked the cave with a lantern and looked at every crack. All sound. The fire ring was still roped. The third passage was still there. I did not go down it. It will keep until spring.

Tova asks if the school may use the cave every winter. I said yes, if the props stay, the ropes stay, and the hole gets a lid. Lorn will make the lid of oak, with a handle. He is already charging the neighbors to look at it. I told him not to. He said he will think about it.

Home tomorrow. Clank stayed at the foot of the ladder until I said "come". It came at once.

I have written many notes about holes. This is the first with an audience.
%%
Field notes: the late bees
Clay End, a hamlet below Vell. Autumn of 198. Nessa.
I counted the bees at the door of the hive at noon for ten days.
Day 1: 62. Day 2: 58. Day 3: 55. Day 4: 51. Day 5: 49. Day 6: 40. Day 7: 36. Day 8: 31. Day 9: 28. Day 10: 22.
On day 6 the drones were pushed out of the door. Twelve lay on the step. I do not know who decided. The hive decided.
The bees are not leaving. They are going inside, and shutting the door behind them.
%%
Notes from the road and wood

Leaffall, after market day.

The Long Road is busy in the morning and empty by the time the lamps are lit. I went as far as the old waymark to gather dry oak branches. The torch on top burned low, so I took a new one from my basket and set it in place. A traveler had left three little stones on the pillar. I did not move them.

By the birch hedge, two rabbits were feeding on the last green leaves. They ran when my basket struck a branch. A fox watched from the ditch. It did not chase them. It watched me instead, as if I had taken its place.

At the inn, the horse in the east stall had a sore hoof. Pell helped me hold the lantern while the ostler cleaned it. The horse bit no one. It leaned its head against my shoulder until the work was done. I gave it an apple piece. Pell said I had paid too much for the horse's good opinion.

The bees have stopped coming to the late flowers. I closed the hives before the cold rain. There is honey enough for the inn, if the jars do not crack. I wrapped them in wool and put them on the high shelf.

A man from Saltreach came in at dusk. His coat smelled of salt and wet rope. He said the harbor has big ships now, longer than the old boats. One family he knows has gone out on one. He did not say where they meant to go. He asked for a candle with a thick wick, then sat by the fire and watched it.

Pell says the ships are for trade. The ostler says people do not take all their bedding when they go to trade. I do not know who is right. I set one more place at supper anyway. Nobody came to use it.
%%
Tilly, bees on the hill
Winter, the twenty-fourth year. I do not keep bees. I sell eggs beside the woman who does, and I watch.
In winter the bees stay in the hive. They do not sleep. They gather in a ball and shiver to keep the middle warm. The ones on the outside turn their heads in. Then they swap places, so nobody is left in the cold too long.
Aldith says the ball gets as big as a pumpkin. She lifts the lid and looks, only once a week, only a moment. She says the cold gets in and they notice.
She feeds them honey they stored in summer. If the winter is long, they eat it all. If the winter is short, there is some left, and she takes a little for the market.
On a warm day in the middle of winter, a few bees come out and walk around. They do not go far. They leave small dots on the snow. Aldith says this is how she knows they are alive and not too sad.
She shuts the lid. I sell my eggs.
%%
Field notes: the woods and the mines
Written by Brin, at the Brown Hen, from the summer carts and from the notes I took on them. I have been to the woods with the wood cutters twice, and to the Deep Works once, because the cook at Copperhold owed me a favor.

The oaks in the wood past Three Wells are older than the road. Their bark is cracked like dried mud. They drop their leaves late, so the path under them is always wet, and the wood cutters say that is how you know an oak is an oak and not a birch.

The birches grow along the stream, pale and thin. They are the first to turn yellow and the last to get their leaves back. The wood cutters say birch burns fast and hot. Hot is what the bakery wants, so the bakery pays for birch first.

The spruce are on the north slope, dark as a cellar. Nothing grows under them but moss and a few brave mushrooms. Odo, the wood cutter, says spruce is for planks and for ladders, and that nothing is better than spruce for the stair of a relay tower. He has been up enough of them to know.

The wolves at the wood's edge are thin in summer. They sit very still and watch the carts go by, and they do not come closer. The foxes are not thin at all. They come to the inn yard at night for the scraps, and they are polite about it, which is more than the foxes at Saltreach can say.
The Deep Works smell of wet stone and coal smoke. The tunnel walls sweat in summer, and the water runs down them in threads. The copper veins show green in the lamplight, like moss on a stone, and the miners say you can smell copper before you see it. I could not smell it. I could taste it, faintly, like a coin held in the mouth.

The rails in the Deep Works have a torch every eight steps on the left going in. The miners say that is for the carts, and the carts are the reason for everything down there. Every eighth rail is powered, the cook's cousin told me, so the carts go faster on the long run and slower on the bend.

The miners stop for their midday meal at the eighth level, because the stone is dry there, and the bread stays warm. They eat sitting on the rails with their backs to the wall, and they tell lies about the size of the fish they caught last spring. I have heard all of them. None of them is smaller than the one before.
%%
Field notes: the lake ice
Odo, lamp tender, the shore market at Northpoint. Winter. Written by the ice hole, on an upturned bucket.

I measure the lake ice with a stick marked in hands. The camp fishes through it, so the camp needs to know. I look at it each noon.

Frost 1st. One hand. Not safe. A fox walked on it. Foxes weigh little.
Frost 12th. Two hands. A man may cross, if he is careful and the sky is clear.
Frost 25th. Three hands. A sled may cross. The camp moves out on the ice.
Longnight 10th. Five hands. A cart could cross. Nobody has a cart. We stand on it and look pleased.
Deepsnow 15th. Six hands. The thickest I have measured. It booms at night.

The ice booms at night. The first time, I thought a door had been slammed far away. It is the lake settling, and the cold pushing the ice into itself. Old Runa says the lake is talking in its sleep. I do not say it is wrong.

The fish. Through a hole the width of a bucket, a line goes down, and in an hour there is a fish. The fish are slow in the cold. They come up like old men getting out of a chair. Fish caught at noon: nine. At dusk: four. The camp eats them, and sells what is left at the market for flour.

A crack runs the length of the east shore. It has been there since Frost. It does not grow. I put a stick across it each week to see.
%%
Field notes: tracks in the snow
By Tova, schoolteacher of Birchfield, with the school. Longnight, 207. Hesk the miner told us to watch the cave and write down what comes and goes. We watched for ten mornings. The youngest helped by stepping on things.

How to read a track:
Rabbit: two long prints ahead and two small ones behind. The rabbit lands on its big back feet first.
Fox: one print after another in a straight line, like stitching. A fox walks as if it has somewhere to be.
Cat: round prints in a line, with no claw marks.
Wolf: like a fox, but bigger than your hand.
Hen: three toes forward like an arrow, one back, and a great muddle.
Sheep: two halves of a heart, side by side.

What we found, morning by morning:
First. The snow had melted in a ring round the hole, three paces wide. We measured with a rope. Dell put his hand over the hole and said it felt like breath.
Second. A fox sat down at the edge. It left a round place in the snow like a bowl, and nine neat prints leading to it. It looked in. It did not go in.
Third. Seven hens came from Lorn's yard toward the hole and stopped three paces short. Hens are not brave. They stood in a row for a time, and then they went home.
Fourth. Rabbit prints went down the slope into the hole, and none came out. Dell cried. Then Senna found them on the south side of the hill, coming out of a small hole behind a bramble. So the cave has a back door. Hesk was told. He said "good", which from Hesk is a speech.
Fifth. Wind from the north drifted snow over the rim. Lorn's pig walked on the crust and went in to the knees. Lorn pulled it out. The pig has not been the same.
Sixth. Cat prints, one cat, following the fox's prints exactly, a pace behind, all the way to the bowl. Our cat Mitten has never caught anything. She keeps trying.
Seventh. The wolf. Large prints, once, far across the field at the edge of the birch wood. It did not come close. Lorn brought the sheep in and lit every torch. We counted them: twenty-four.
Eighth to tenth. Nothing but snow, and Dell's boots.

What we learned. The hole is warm. Things look into it, and few go in. The sheep cannot be trusted near the edge. The wolf is not interested in us, and we are not interested in the wolf.

Hesk read our notes. He said they are better than his. This is not true, but he said it, and the youngest has been unbearable since.
%%
Field notes: the storm and the fox
Oren, house at the edge of Vell. Winter. A storm came in from the north with snow and a wind that took the shutters.

First night. The storm broke at dusk. By the fifth hour I could not see the gate from the door. The torches along the path went out one by one, as if someone were walking down the line.

I lit them again at the second hour of the night. It took three tries. The wind was angry. In the light I saw something at the edge of the garden: a fox, thin and white, standing quite still in the snow. It watched the house. I think it was cold.

I put a bowl of scraps by the step. It did not come. I went in.

Second morning. The storm had stopped. The garden was a field of white. The bowl was empty. Fox tracks led away across the snow, toward the hill.

I swept the step. I thought of the people on the road, and said a word for them.

Third day. Word came by the cart that the lamp at the little relay between Vell and Three Wells blinked all through the storm and then stopped. The keeper has said it is the cold. The carter said the keeper is a man of few words and fewer lamps. The carter laughed.

Fourth day. The cart road to Three Wells is open. Messages from the north are slow. Some say the snow has closed the relays. Some say the keepers have simply gone home. Some say nothing, because they do not know.

I do not like not knowing. A clerk likes a record.
