Spelling list: Gran's words
Edda's list for Teacher Fen, summer. Copied by her gran, Tova, who chose the words. They are words of the furnace years, when Tova was young.
try: The mind will try again.
steady: A steady melt does not boil over.
furnace: The furnace at Copperhold never goes out.
tiller: The tiller steers the boat.
score: Every try gets a score.
harvest: The harvest is poor this year.
late: Great-Uncle Hob's boat came home late.
again: Try again.
Teacher Fen wrote: Eight out of eight. Edda says "again" was easy, because she has written it so often. Tova says that is how a mind learns the hard words too. It tries, and it keeps what went well.
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Essay: the song contest at the fair
At the fair this year there was a song contest, and the school choir sang in it. We came third. The winning song came from the tutors' hall at Copperhold, and the whole square sang the refrain back to them.

The song is about Una of Ambrook, who taught the first crystal to sort apples from pears. The first verse goes:

Una showed it apples,
Una showed it pears.
Wrong, and wrong, and wrong again,
and still she kept her cheer.

The refrain goes:

Same kind of thing, the same again,
the same kind of thing, and then
a page it never saw before,
and see if it has learned.

The song is right about the method, as far as I can tell. Show the same kind of thing again and again. Each time the mind is wrong, it changes a little. Then test it on something it has never seen. If it does well, it has learned. If it only does well on the old pages, it has only remembered. Nessa of Vell says this is the hardest lesson for new tutors, because a mind that remembers looks clever.

The contest is the other half. Each tutor's hall sent its best mind, and each mind was given the same unseen drill, set by the councils. Some halls had been drilling on the pages in the test box. The councils found out, and those halls lost their places. My teacher says a contest shows everything, and that is why it made the tutors honest.

The song does not say whose letters the drills used, and nobody I asked knew. I think that is the honest part of the song. My brother says it is too long. He is right. I still hummed it all the way home.
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Lesson at the Halfway Inn
Our class met in the back room of the Halfway Inn. The riddle board was beside the hearth. Someone had written, What has a mouth but never eats? Garrow said a well. I said a river. The teacher said both answers were fair.

After sums, we read a letter from a big mind at the relay house. A traveler had asked whether the road to Saltreach was safe. The mind answered that it did not know the state of the road. It said to ask the keeper at the next tower.

The teacher asked why that was a good answer. I said the mind did not pretend to have seen the road. The teacher gave me a mark for that.

The tutors give scores to the big minds' answers. They score clear answers, kind answers, and honest refusals. The minds learn from those scores. They do not become wise all at once. They read many letters and make many mistakes before they improve.

Garrow was waiting by the door with his rope and bucket. He is digging a new well past the inn. He said he would rather have an honest answer than a pretty one. Then he asked whether anyone had seen his lunch. It was on the bench behind him.
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Notice: the big melon on Longday
To everyone in Stoney Field and the farms around,

On the first of Longday we cut the big melon. You have all seen it. It is the biggest melon anyone here has seen. It sits by the cold room because it does not fit in the door.

We cut it at midday by the well. Bring a knife and a plate. Bring a chair if you want to sit. We will give a slice to every house in the hamlet, and a slice to the miners who walked up from Copperhold to look at it, and a slice to anyone else who comes, because it would be a shame to grow a melon this big and be stingy with it.

Carys has twelve jars of honey to sell and four to give away. The honey is from her orchard and is very good. She says no one may open a jar early. She says this loudly.

Hesk the miner says the melon looks like a sleeping pig. He will say it again at the cutting. Be ready.

Keep the torches lit. The nights are still long, even in Longday.

Dace, mayor of Three Wells, on a visit to Stoney Field, who was asked to write this notice because Carys was too busy with the melon
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Sums at the honey shelf, by Carys
A page of sums for the children, kept in the kitchen by the honey shelf. Answers are at the bottom. Do not look at the answers first.

1. There are twelve jars of honey on the shelf. I sell four to the miners. How many are left?

2. Each jar weighs one pound and a little. I carry six jars to the cart. My back is old. How many jars should my strong son carry if we are to be fair?

3. The bees make one jar for every two apple trees in a good spring. I have four hundred trees. How many jars, if the spring is good?

4. A melon seed costs two coins. I buy ten seeds. How many coins do I spend?

5. The big melon weighs twenty pounds. A small melon weighs five. How many small melons make the big one?

6. I sell melons at two coins a pound. The big melon is twenty pounds. How many coins, if someone is strong enough to carry it?

7. I owe the miller three coins for the mill pond water. I owe the smith one coin for a new hook. I have five coins. What is left?

8. The hamlet has eleven houses. On Longday I give each house a slice of melon. Then two neighbors come from down the road. How many slices do I cut?

9. My daughter Enid fed the goat twice this morning and forgot twice this evening. How many times did she feed the goat?

10. If you can do all of these, come and tell me. You may have a small jar of honey. It is a small jar.

Answers: 8, 3, 200, 20, 4, 40, 1, 13, 0.
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Could a drilled mind think?
An essay by Jessa, age eleven, Kettle Ridge school. Marl read it aloud at the market on the eighth of Blossom, and the carts stopped to listen.

Orla is a tutor at Vell. In the year 90 she asked a question that nobody had asked before. Can a drilled mind ever think?

She said we should test it. Put a hidden mind in one room and a person in another. Ask both the same questions by letter. Then ask the readers which answers came from the person. If they cannot tell, what then?

My uncle Ansel says a mind is only copper and iron, so it cannot think, and that is the end of it. My teacher says that is not the question. The question is about the letters, not the copper. A letter does not show what it is made of. It shows what it says.

I think my teacher is right. But I do not think the test would answer Orla. If the readers cannot tell, that does not prove the mind thinks. It might only prove the mind writes well. A copyist can write like a tutor without understanding one word, and nobody says the copyist is thinking.

My aunt got married on the second of Swarm, the same week the new road came up the ridge. The road goes to Three Wells, and it is straight. My aunt says a road can know where it is going. Nobody has told her otherwise.

I do not know whether a drilled mind can think. Orla did not say yes, and she did not say no. I think she did not know, and I think that is the best answer in the whole question.

So my answer is that I do not know yet. If the readers cannot tell which letter came from which room, we should keep asking.
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Sums: scores and tries
Teacher Fen's sums for the summer class, copied by Edda. They are the tutors' sums, Gran says, because a tutor must always count the tries.

Sum 1. A furnace mind tries the air door three ways. Way A scored 6, 7 and 5 in three melts. Way B scored 9, 8 and 10. Way C scored 3, 4 and 2.
Working: A made 18. B made 27. C made 9. Together that is 54.
Answer: Way B did best.

Sum 2. The next day the mind gives each way a share of its tries. A way's share is its score out of the 54. A has 18 of 54, which is a third. B has 27, which is a half. C has 9, which is a sixth. There are 60 tries. How many does each way get?
Working: A third of 60 is 20. Half of 60 is 30. A sixth of 60 is 10. And 20, 30 and 10 make 60.
Answer: A gets 20, B gets 30, C gets 10.
Teacher Fen asks: why does C still get some? Because C may be better on a day we have not seen. A mind must go on trying.

Sum 3. A melt takes 8 sacks of coal. In the first month, 5 melts in every 20 were spoiled. How much coal was wasted in 20 melts?
Working: 5 spoiled melts, 8 sacks each. 5 times 8 is 40.
Answer: 40 sacks.

Sum 4. After a season, only 1 melt in 20 was spoiled. How much coal is saved, for every 20 melts?
Working: Now 1 times 8 is 8 sacks wasted. Before, it was 40. Take 8 from 40 and you have 32.
Answer: 32 sacks saved.

Sum 5. Gran's wheat in a good year is 120 bundles. This year, the poor year, it was 80. How many bundles short?
Working: Take 80 from 120 and you have 40.
Answer: 40 short. Gran says she can count that without a mind.

Sum 6. Great-Uncle Hob's boat came home late with 96 fish. The crew is 12. How many fish each?
Working: 12 times 8 is 96.
Answer: 8 each. Hob says the late hours were worth it.
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Answers to Teacher Marsh: the borrowed
School work, Copperhold. Winter. Set as a question: "Tell me about something borrowed, and how it was returned." Answers by three children.

Dilly writes:
Last winter my aunt borrowed a horse from the mill to pull a cart of coal. The horse was called Pepper. Pepper was tired and did not like the hill. The cart was heavy. My aunt said "come on" and Pepper said nothing, because he is a horse.
We got to the mine gate. We unloaded. My aunt gave Pepper an apple and said thank you. She led him back to the mill and gave him another apple, and gave the miller a basket of eggs.
You should always say thank you for a borrowed thing. You should return it better than you found it. If you borrow a horse, give it an apple. If you borrow a pick, sharpen it.

Corry writes:
My father borrowed the neighbor's horse. He did not ask. He left a note. The note said, "Taken your horse, back by noon." The neighbor read the note and was cross, because the horse was gone. Then he saw the horse come back at noon with a cart of wood for his fire. He was not cross after that.
My father says the note was the important part.

Benn writes:
I have never borrowed a horse. I borrowed a stool. I broke the stool. I did not tell. The stool is still broken. I am telling now.

Teacher's note: Benn, thank you. Please bring the stool. I think I can mend it. Dilly and Corry, very good. A borrowed thing is a promise. You each understand that.
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School record of the winter fair
Farm outside Saltreach

The winter fair was held in the barn because rain came from the sea. We moved the hay to the loft and set the tables by the south wall. Teague lit two lamps before the first family arrived. He said the barn looked fine, though one lamp smoked until Nell cleaned its glass.

There were three games. The bean toss was played beside the door. The ring toss was played by the water trough. The guessing game was at the long table, where a pumpkin sat on the scale.

Each pupil wrote a guess before the weight was shown. Nell wrote twelve stones. Tern wrote five. Master Pell wrote nine and then rubbed out the number. He said his slate had a mark under it. It did not.

The pumpkin weighed thirteen stones. Nell won the prize by one stone. The prize was a blue wool cap with a yellow patch. She wore it through the whole fair, even while helping serve soup.

Tern received a small wooden spoon for the bean toss. He said it was not a prize because it was a spoon. Then he put it in his pocket and used it to eat pudding.

The farm sold wheat, potatoes, honey, and eggs. The honey sold first. The eggs sold after Nell moved the basket away from the warm lamp. The wheat was weighed in sacks, and each weight was written on the board. One sack came up short. We found a little wheat spilled behind the scale. The broom swept it into a pail, and Cook said it would make porridge.

After the games, the pupils counted the emeralds from the table. There were 18 emeralds from honey, 12 from potatoes, and 10 from eggs. The total was 40 emeralds. We checked the count twice. The first count was 39 because Tern had put one emerald beside the spoon.

The fair ended before the lamps were low. Teague walked each family to the lane and checked the gate lamp after the last cart left. Nell stayed behind to help stack the bowls. She asked if the cap could be hung in the school room as a prize for next year.

Master Pell said no. It belongs to Nell.

Nell said she would lend it to the school on cold days. Then she put it on Tern's head. It covered his eyes. He walked into the flour basket, and the fair ended with everyone laughing.
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Essay: the first snow of the year I
Tib, age nine, a farm outside Kettle Ridge. Spring. For Sorrel's class. The subject was "The best day I remember." This was read aloud at the wedding supper by request, and the audience applauded.

The best day I remember was the first snow. It was not this winter. It was the winter before, in Frost.

I woke up and the window was white. Not a little white. All white, all the way to the barn. The hens were standing on one leg. The cat was inside. The cat did not want to go out. The cat said no, which she does with her whole face.

I ran outside in my nightshirt. My mother shouted. I did not hear. The snow was cold on my feet and I did not care. I made a ball and threw it at the barn. It made a splat. I made another. I threw it at my brother. It did not make a splat. It made a shout.

We built a snow apprentice. It was the same size as Pip, who lives at Tam's farm, but made of snow. We gave it a carrot nose and a bucket hat. It stood in the field all day. It did not carry anything. It did not do anything. But it was the best apprentice I ever made, because it never made a mistake.

My father said, "That apprentice does not need a tutor."

My mother said, "That apprentice does not need a coat."

My brother said, "That apprentice is the only one on the ridge who is not working."

At night the snow stopped. In the morning the snow apprentice was half melted. Its nose had fallen off. A rabbit had eaten the carrot. I was sad for a while. Then my father said, "Next winter." So I waited.

I wrote to a big mind on the relay this spring, and I asked it, "Will there be snow next winter?" It wrote back, "Probably. I cannot be sure. The winters on the ridge are cold. I hope you will build another."

I think the big mind is a good friend. It does not promise. It hopes.

At the wedding my cousin's new husband gave me a slice of cake. It had a carrot on top. I did not eat the carrot. I put it in my pocket, for next winter.
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Answers: Orla's test, second term
By Tam, Kettle Ridge. Marl set the second class five questions about Orla's test in Blossom of the 99th year. I copied out the answers for the market board, with the marks Marl gave. The spelling was not my fault.

Question 1: What did Orla ask?
Bran: Orla asked whether a crystal can think. The mind is in one room and the person is in the other. Mark: 7 of 10. Marl: You skipped the question. Read it again.

Question 2: Why is the mind in another room?
Nell: So the readers cannot see the copper, or the crystal, or the box it lives in. Mark: 10 of 10. Marl: Good. Say it in fewer words next time.

Question 3: What does it mean that the readers cannot tell which is which?
Dalt: It means the readers guess, and guess right about half the time, and that is nothing. Mark: 10 of 10.

Question 4: If the readers cannot tell, does the mind think?
Hepsy: Yes, because it talked back. Mark: 3 of 10. Marl: The mind did not talk. It wrote a letter, and that is not the same. Read the question again, slowly.

Question 5: What would you do with the answer?
Jessa: Keep asking. Mark: 10 of 10. Marl: Good. Jessa, you may stop writing for the board. Everybody knows what you think.

Marl's note at the bottom: Good work, all of you. Nobody here has the answer. The best answers are the ones that say so.
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What I learned at the market
Moll's school essay, Melon, 208

Last market day, Master Orro asked our class to watch how goods moved through Copperhold. He said we should write what we saw, not what we guessed. I wrote that lesson at the top of my page. Then I guessed that Pell had brought twelve apples. He had eleven. I crossed out twelve and counted again.

At the market, each seller had a place. The baker stood near the road with bread on a clean cloth. The tool seller had iron nails and small copper hooks. Pell put honey, apples and jars of pickled carrots on his table. The jars were far from the edge. He said a jar once rolled off and went all the way to the well. Nobody saw it break, but nobody found it either.

A woman from the Deep Works brought a basket of coal for the kitchen. She traded it for potatoes and a loaf. Harl came with his cow, Button. Button had been sick before, but she was well now. She stood in the shade while Harl sold milk. She tried to eat the corner of his price board. Harl moved the board. Button followed it. He gave up and tied the board higher.

Master Orro asked us to note the order of the stalls. He said people need room to carry goods without knocking into one another. The bread stall should not block the cart track. A water pail should stand near the animals. The sellers must keep food clean and cover it when dust blows.

An apprentice helped at Pell's stall. It carried two small crates to the store. The crates held apples, not iron. Before the market, Master Orro tested it with other crates. He showed it where to stop and where to set each crate. It had not been taught the apples by name. It had learned the order for the work.

The apprentice carried the first crate well. On the second trip, it stopped beside the school door. I had left a clay cup there, so I thought it had brought the cup. It had brought a crate of apples. I moved the cup out of its path. Master Orro said that was my mistake, not the apprentice's. I had stood in the marked space.

I learned that a market needs clear paths, careful sellers and good counting. It needs people to help when a load is heavy. It needs children to keep out of the cart track. It also needs a place for a cow to rest.

At the end, Mother bought potatoes, a loaf and one jar of honey. I carried the potatoes. My brother carried the loaf. Mother carried the honey because she did not trust us. At home the jar was safe, the loaf was warm, and the potatoes were still potatoes.

Teacher's note: Moll counted the apples correctly on her second try. Button's price board is now nailed above her reach.
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Essay: how the clerks gathered so much
By Tess, age eleven, school house in the hamlet near Northpoint, for Ama. The question set: "The tutors drilled reading minds on the Archive's records. How did the clerks gather so many?"
The clerks gathered pages from everywhere. From farms, from towns, from towers. They went by cart, and they wrote by relay, and they copied from shelves. They did this for years.
The motto of the Archive is "We will keep everything we write." When the tutors needed pages for the great drills, people remembered the motto, and said it often. The clerks said, "We have it. We keep it. Here it is."
Ama says that nobody knows exactly how it was done. The chronicles disagree. Some say the clerks copied every letter that was ever sent by relay. Some say they only copied what people gave. Some say they took pages from the deep shelves, which had been sealed for a century.
I asked my grandfather. He said his own grandfather gave a box of letters to a clerk who came to the door. He never saw them again. He did not mind. He said the clerk was polite.
I think the truth is that many people gave a little, and the clerks gathered it all. A drop in a pail, then a pail in a barrel, then a barrel in a pond. The mind drank from the pond.
Whose letters went in? I do not know. I wonder whether my great-grandfather's is there. If the mind could talk, I would ask it. But it does not talk to me. It talks to the keepers.
Ama has marked this: "Good. Honest about what is not known. Please do not tell the class your grandfather is a thief."
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School copy by Bel
The farm and the road

The farm beyond Three Wells is busy in Apple. The wheat is cut and tied in small sheaves. The pumpkins lie by the barn wall. The carrots are in baskets, with earth still on them. Cook Isla says we must wash them before they go in the pot. She says this each time, because I keep forgetting.

A new road passed the farm this autumn. Before, the cart wheels sank in mud after rain. Now the town workers have packed earth across the open ground and set cobblestone along the edges. They placed a torch on a post every twelve blocks. I counted the first posts, then lost count when a rabbit ran along the ditch.

The road joins the farm to Three Wells and the Long Road. Travelers can stop at the inn in town, or go on to the next inn before night. The farmer says the road will bring more people to buy wheat. Isla says it will bring more muddy boots to her kitchen.

A stone waymark stands by the bend. It is three blocks high, with a torch on top. One face has a figure for the distance. An arrow points to the nearest inn. Someone left a little stone on top. The teacher says it is not part of the waymark. I think a traveler put it there so the next traveler would know that someone had passed.

The school went out to see the road when the workers finished. We wrote down what we saw. I wrote "stone" three times and "mud" once. The teacher said the old road had more mud than stone, so my page was honest.

Cook Isla carried a basket to the workers. It had bread, apples and a small pot of beet soup. The farmer carried water from the well. One worker said the soup was hot enough to wake a sleepy mule. The mule was awake already and tried to eat the basket.

The farmer says a road is for carrying goods. The teacher says it is also for carrying news. I think it carries people who want to go home before the cold comes. When the new tower is ready on the hill, it may carry messages farther than the road.

We have seen its stone walls rise above the fields. A stair goes up inside, and there are torches at the turns. The keeper's house is beside it. The workers say the lamp room will be made of glass panes. Then a lamp can send a message to the next tower.

I asked if the lamp could tell us when Isla has baked bread. The teacher said no. Isla said the kitchen door can tell us that, if we keep our noses open.

At the farm gate, the farmer gave each of us one carrot for the walk back. I put mine in my pocket and forgot it there. It was still there at school, but it was not as clean as before. Isla says I must wash it, not the pocket.
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Essay: what is the next thing
Teacher Dunn asked us to write about the next thing. Here is what I know, and what I have been told.

A small mind knows one order at a time. You say: bring me some bread. It does the one job it was drilled for. It does not talk. It fetches the bread.

A few apprentices learned to take in a whole sentence. The tutors called that the next thing. It means the mind heard all of the sentence, and not only the first word.

Nobody agrees who was first. Some say Clank at Copperhold. Some say Pip at Kettle Ridge. Some say Peg at the fair, on the day of the wheel race, when she went straight to the right cart. Teacher Dunn says it does not matter who. The books must agree, though, and they never do.

My grandmother was a drill helper at Vell when she was young. She says the drill room was long and cold and smelled of wet stone. The minds stood in one row. The tutor said a sentence. The mind did the wrong thing, and the tutor said no. Then again. Then again. Two hundred times, she says, before the right thing came.

Nobody knows why a crystal learns at all. Teacher Dunn says not to worry about that. We can only see that it learns when it is drilled.

I think the next thing is a good thing. But I am glad the fields are still tended by the small ones. They do their work every day, and they never argue about the order.
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Spelling list for the sea class
Spelling list for the class that is going to the sea. Learn ten words. Write each word three times, then read the line.
ship: The ship is in the harbor.
sail: Hang the sail to the mast.
rope: Tie the rope to the post.
quay: Stand on the quay and wait.
water: Water is cold in the morning.
goodbye: Say goodbye at the gate.
letter: Send a letter when you can.
far: The sea is far away.
home: We will come home soon.
wave: The big wave went over the wall.
The test is on the last day of the month, at the quay. Bring your slates. Bring your mothers if they want to watch. Do not bring the fish.
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Spelling list: Northpoint, week four
Set by Mira, for Runa's grandson, who comes up to the tower on dry days. Summer.

Words to learn: lamp, glass, stair, snow, fox, spruce, north, sky, rope, copper.
Hard words: lantern, which has no silent letter, though he swears it does.
Words for next week: weather, message, harbor, supper.
Sentence he wrote with "sky": The sky was green last night and nobody knows why.
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Answers to Mira: the lost letter
Questions asked by Mira, answered by Runa's grandson on a slate, then copied for the Archive at Mira's wish. Summer, Northpoint.

Question. How many towers are on the north line?
Answer. Eleven that I know. There may be more.

Question. Why does the tower have a lamp?
Answer. So the next tower can see it, and send the word on.

Question. What do you do when a letter is lost?
Answer. You write another. You do not blame the cart.

Question. Where did the letter to my aunt go?
Answer. I do not know. It left in spring, on the cart with the salt. The carter says he handed it to a woman at the Halfway Inn. The woman says there was no letter. The cat says nothing. Lantern did not take it.

Question. Is it a bad thing that a letter is lost?
Answer. A little. It is worse that nobody knows where. Mira says that a letter lost on the road is a small sorrow, and a letter lost in the tower would be a large one.

Question. What do the others say about the cart?
Answer. Some say the carter forgot. Some say the road is not what it was. Mira says she does not know, and that is why we write things down.

Question. What shall we do?
Answer. Write again. I have started. It begins: Dear Aunt, I am sorry to have been so long.

Mira's note: she wrote back the next week. The first letter has still not been found.
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Sums at the inn: bread
Set by Nell, cook of the inn on the Long Road, for the children who stay there in summer, in the early years. She says a sum with fish is better than a sum with nothing.
1. The inn buys 30 fish from a boat each morning. The boat is late three mornings this week and brings none. How many fish does the inn buy in a week of seven days?
2. A loaf costs 1 emerald. A fish costs 2 emeralds. A traveler buys 2 loaves and 3 fish. What does he pay?
3. Twelve beds. Eight are full. Four travelers arrive. How many beds are left? What does Nell do about the others?
4. A torch stands every twelve blocks on the road. The inn is sixty blocks from the next waymark. How many torches between?
5. The play needs 40 candles. The inn has 25. The school at Three Wells sends 20. How many are left over?
Answers.
1. 120.
2. 8 emeralds.
3. 0 beds. The others sleep by the hearth.
4. Four. The fifth stands at the waymark.
5. 5.
Nell says that anyone who gets all five right may have a second pie.
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Moll's account of a market day
School work by Moll, Melon, 203

The Copperhold market is held near the forge and the sorting shed. The stalls stand in a row, with space for carts between them. People bring food, tools, cloth and small things made at home. They come to buy, sell and speak with neighbors.

My mother says a good market list is short. Mine had bread, potatoes, carrots, wool and a new cup. I wrote the list before breakfast. By the time we reached the stalls, I had added honey and a wooden spoon. Mother asked whether the spoon was on the list. I said it was written on the back. It was not.

Pell brought apples and jars of honey from Ambrook. He set each jar on a folded cloth. A boy asked if the honey was sweet. Pell said, "Try a little." The boy licked the spoon and said he needed to think. He thought for a long time, then asked for another spoon.

There was an apprentice at the market with a small mind in a crystal. It carried sacks from Pell's cart to the store. It had been tested with empty sacks first. Master Orro said this was proper. I asked if it could carry my basket. He said yes, if I gave a clear order.

I said, "Bring my basket to the school." The apprentice brought it to the school door. I had left my spelling book inside. It waited there while I went back for the book. It did not complain. It had no voice, which was probably wise.

After the bell, I helped mother count the potatoes. We had enough for supper and two left for planting. We bought a clay cup too. I carried it in both hands. It arrived home without a crack.

The market is useful because people can trade what they have for what they need. It is also useful because I can learn what is happening in other towns. But I must keep my list inside my coat. A list in the wind is only a gift to the potatoes.

Teacher's note: Moll's account is clear. The wooden spoon was not bought.
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Spelling list: the Brown Hen
Set by Teacher Merrow for Pell, aged nine, at the Brown Hen. Summer of 58. Write each word three times, and put it in a sentence.

bed: The best bed has a hen on it.
stew: Father's stew is the best on the road. Mother says so when Father is listening.
guest: A guest is someone who pays and wipes his boots.
hearth: The hearth must never go out.
road: The road is new, but our feet are older.

Teacher's note: five out of five. "Hearth" is a hard word. Well done.
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Spelling list: wedding words
Kettle Ridge school, spring. For the children whose cousin is getting married on the ridge next week. Sorrel, farmer, set the list because she is mother of the bride.
wedding, ring, flowers, music, ribbon, dance, supper, cake, bride, groom, guests, toast
Write each three times. Then write one sentence using three of them. The best sentence gets a slice of cake.
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Letter: Isla to the council at Three
To the council at Three Wells, from Isla, tutor at Vell.

You have asked me whether to build a relay house bigger than the one you have. I will tell you what I can, and what I cannot.

What I can tell you. A mind's size is set by its crystal, and a bigger crystal holds more. Drill it longer on more writing and it grows better, by a curve a tutor can draw before the mind is grown. That is the rule. It has held for years. It will hold for yours.

What I cannot tell you. I cannot tell you how good it will be at the end. A mind bigger than any tutor can check alone is a mind no one can check alone. The tutors at Vell test what we can. We test on drills no mind was drilled on. We hold contests, so no hall can hide a bad mind. But the biggest minds read more in a day than I read in a year. They answer questions I could not ask. When they are wrong, we may not know.

Some say the great houses at Copperhold and Saltreach have minds that write letters a reader cannot tell from a person's. Some say the minds have done sums no tutor could follow, and the sums were right. Some say the minds have learned to say when they do not know. I have seen a little of this. I have not seen the rest. The councils tell these things as rumor, and I will too.

My advice. Build it if you will, but build it with a test box, and keep the test box locked. Never send an untested mind to the fields. That is old advice. It is still good advice.

Send me the plans. I will look at the roof.

Isla
Vell
%%
Essay: what a sailor needs
By Noll, as it was written down for the school at Saltreach. Late spring.
Our teacher asked us to write what a sailor needs. I thought about it for a long time. Then I wrote this.
A sailor needs a good boat. The boats here are built by Corin's yard, and they are strong. A sailor needs a good rope, and a good sail, and a steady hand on the tiller. A sailor needs to know the wind, and the look of the sky before a storm.
But a sailor also needs someone at home. My uncle went out on a big ship from the quay last autumn. He said it was the biggest thing he had ever seen. It was three times as long as the fishing boats, and it had a deck you could walk across for the whole morning. He waved from the rail. Nobody on the quay knew where it was going.
He has not written since. My aunt keeps a lamp in the window at night, and she says she is not waiting, only keeping the lamp lit. I think she is waiting.
So I think a sailor needs a lamp at home. A boat needs a lamp in the harbor, and a family needs one on the hill. That is what I would write if I were the teacher. Nobody has ever told me that is wrong.
%%
Letter: Lia to her cousin in Saltreach
Dear Ossie,

I have been asked to write to you about the grey cough. My aunt says I must tell you the truth, because you are going to the marsh in the summer, and you must know what to do.

The grey cough came to Lowmarsh in the middle of the winter. It starts with a tickle in the throat. Then the cough gets worse, and then there is grey in the spit, and then the person must go to the shed. Aunt Wren has four in the shed now. Two are getting better. One is an old man called Ruen, who is not getting better, and who keeps asking for his boat.

The people here are arguing about it. Some say it is the water, because the water in the marsh is slow and warm. Some say it is the ships, because the ships come up the coast and bring strange air. Some say it is the mines, because the miners come home coughing too. My aunt says it is probably the damp, and she says all damp things must be kept dry. She has made everyone wash their hands at the well.

The worst thing is that nobody knows. The healer at Saltreach has written to Aunt Wren, and the healer at Vell has written too. They say the same things. Keep dry. Keep clean. Keep the sick apart. Nobody says what the cough really is. My aunt says that is not a good sign, and then she says it is only a bad week.

Please do not come to the marsh this summer if you can help it. Stay in Saltreach, where the wind is good. I will write when there is news. Tell Corin I said hello, and that his boats are very nice.

I must also say that my last letter to you is lost. I gave it to the carter at the boardwalk, and he says he put it in his bag, and the bag came to Saltreach with nothing in it but turnips. Please write and say if it came. If it did not, I will write it all again, and it will be shorter, because I am tired of the cough.

Your cousin,
Lia

P.S. The frogs are still loud. Nobody has told them about the cough.
%%
Spelling list: wet words
Copperhold school. Winter. For the children whose boots are never dry. Write each word three times. Use each in a sentence. Teacher Marsh will check.

flood
mud
puddle
splash
soaked
drip
leak
gutter
bucket
boots
umbrella
rain

Sentences by Dilly:
The flood came down the hill.
There was mud on everything.
A puddle sat in the middle of the road.
Bram splashed Ola on purpose.
My boots are soaked.
The roof has a drip.
The bucket has a leak.
The gutter is full of leaves.
We have no umbrella. We have a hat.
It will rain again.

Teacher's note on Dilly's list: Please spell "umbrella" the same way every time. Also, you do not have an umbrella. Nobody does. I have put it on the list because it is a good word and I would like it to exist.
%%
Essay: The big relay houses
Written at the Northpoint market school by a pupil, aged eleven, for Mira, in autumn. Mira has marked it with a tick.

My uncle came back from Vell and told us about the biggest relay houses. I did not believe him, so I asked Mira, and she said it was true, or partly true.

A relay house stands at the foot of a tower. In it there is a big mind in a crystal the size of a loaf. That is what we have at Northpoint. We have it too. It sits on a stand with water round it, and Lantern keeps the water cool.

But my uncle says there are relay houses bigger than a town. He says they are in the south. He says the minds in them are so big that no tutor can test them alone. A whole hall of tutors must work for a month to ask one question.

I asked Mira how big. She said she had not seen one. She said the people who say they have seen them do not agree. One says the house is the size of a hill. One says it is as large as Saltreach. One says it is only as tall as the Vell tower, but that it goes down into the ground.

I asked Mira what the minds do. She said, nobody tells the same story. Some say they write wonderful letters. Some say they solve puzzles. Some say they only sit and think. Mira says she does not know, and that a keeper should not say what she does not know.

I think it is exciting. I would like to see one. But I would also like to see a smaller one, so I could understand it.

My uncle says a mind that big could not be taught by drills the way ours is. Mira says that is probably wrong, but she does not know how it was done. She says nobody who wrote it down said.

The end.

Mira's note: Good, and honest. Next time, a title that is not so plain. And please do not write about your uncle's boots.
%%
Garrow's lesson at the inn
Garrow came to the Halfway Inn in summer with mud on both boots and a bucket over one arm. He had been digging a well beside the road. He said the water stood clear, but he wanted another day to see if the sides held.

At supper, the school children asked about the big mind that had answered their letters. The innkeeper brought out the reply in its folded paper. It had come by the relay from the tower above the road.

The children asked the mind whether the well would stay safe. It answered, "I cannot see the well. Please ask Garrow to test the sides and the rope."

Garrow nodded. "That is better than a guess," he said. He took a bite of bread, then looked at his empty plate. "It is also better than this supper."

The innkeeper brought him another slice.

The teacher explained how the minds learned to answer. The tutors showed them many letters. A mind wrote an answer, and the tutors gave it a score. They praised answers that were clear and kind. They marked down answers that were cruel, false, or careless. A mind learned from the scores and tried to answer better next time.

The tutors also taught the minds to refuse harmful requests. They taught them to say when they did not know. A mind that says "I do not know" may still help. It can tell a person what to check, or who might know more.

The children wondered if the scores made every answer right. The teacher said no. A score can guide a mind, but it cannot show every truth. People still need to check important things. A letter about a road cannot replace looking at the road.

The next morning, Garrow checked the well. One side had slipped a little in the night. He set a stone in place and tested the rope again. Then he wrote to the mind. He thanked it for not pretending to see what it could not see.

At noon, the inn's mill wheel stopped turning. Its wooden rim had split where it met the axle. The innkeeper asked the mind how to mend it. The answer said it could suggest a careful check, but it could not see the crack. It told them not to stand beneath the wheel while it was loose.

That was good advice. Garrow and Pell braced the wheel with oak, then fetched the miller from the next town. The children carried water and stayed well back. No one was hurt.

The wheel was mended before evening. The innkeeper made beetroot soup for everyone. Garrow said the mind had helped, though it had not lifted a stone or turned a wheel. The teacher wrote that down for the lesson book.

The lost school letter did not come back that summer. We still do not know who carried it last. The innkeeper kept its empty packet in a drawer, in case someone found the letter later. The children asked the big mind about it once. It said, "I do not know where it is."

They liked that answer. It was plain, and it was true.
%%
Sums: copper, coal and a fence
Sums for the Copperhold school, by Teacher Dunn. Show all your working. Say which mind did the carrying.

1. A small mind carries 4 copper ingots from the Deep Works to the count board on each trip. How many ingots in 6 trips?
Working: 4 times 6 is 24.
Answer: 24 ingots.

2. Three carts go down from the Deep Works each day. Each cart holds 6 crates of copper. How many crates in 5 days?
Working: 3 carts and 6 crates is 18 crates a day. 18 times 5 is 90.
Answer: 90 crates.

3. The coal cart holds 15 sacks. Two minds share the load. How many sacks does each mind carry?
Working: 15 cannot be shared evenly by 2. Each mind takes 7 sacks, and one sack is left over.
Answer: 7 sacks each, and one left for the tutor.

4. The count board lists 12 iron bars, 9 copper ingots and 6 bags of coal. How many things in all?
Working: 12 and 9 is 21. Twenty-one and 6 is 27.
Answer: 27 things.

5. A small mind has eight meanings and no more. It is given 40 orders in a day, and it uses each meaning the same number of times. How many times does it use each one?
Working: 40 is 5 lots of 8. So each meaning is used 5 times.
Answer: 5 times each.

6. The fence. Mott and Tolly share a fence of 30 blocks along the path. Mott says 20 blocks are his. Tolly says 10 are his. Who is right?
Working: 20 and 10 make 30. Each takes his share, and the fence is still one fence.
Answer: Both are right, and neither may move the fence.

7. Bonus, for the quick ones. A mind took 200 drills to learn one sentence. A second mind took 60 drills more than that. How many drills did the two take?
Working: the second mind took 260 drills. 200 and 260 is 460.
Answer: 460 drills.

8. The long stair down to the copper level has 240 steps. A torch hangs on every eighth step, on the left going in. How many torches are on the stair?
Working: 240 divided by 8 is 30.
Answer: 30 torches.

9. A cart brings 18 sacks of coal up from the Deep Works. Each sack sells for 2 emeralds. How many emeralds does the coal bring?
Working: 18 times 2 is 36.
Answer: 36 emeralds.

10. Pell buys 8 copper ingots at 3 emeralds each. How many emeralds does he pay?
Working: 8 times 3 is 24.
Answer: 24 emeralds.

Teacher's note: Tutors count drills the way farmers count sacks. Each drill is one example. A mind that passes 9 tests in 10 on unseen orders is ready for a field. It is ready only for the field it was tested on. Never send an untested mind anywhere else. Sums and drills are the same kind of work. You count what you were shown, and then you check it on what you were not shown.

Mott and Tolly, take the fence sum home and do it at your own tables, not over the wall. The fence is not going anywhere.
%%
Answers for Master Pell
Winter lesson

1. What must we feed the sheep when the grass is covered?

We feed them hay. We carry it from the barn.

2. What do we do with a lamp that has gone out?

We trim the wick, add oil, and light it again. Teague checks the glass.

3. Why do we shut the hen house before dark?

We shut it so the fox cannot take a hen. We count the hens first.

4. What did you carry from the well yesterday?

I carried two buckets. I spilled one bucket on my boots. Master Pell says wet boots are not a water store.

5. What is the kindest way to wake Father?

I do not know. Mother says to call him once. The rooster says to call him many times. I trust Mother.

6. What do we put on the board when the grain bin is low?

We write the number left, then tell the farm keeper. We do not draw a small picture of a full bin.

7. What is a fair rule?

Everyone gets one turn at the bean toss. Even my cousin Tern, who throws like a sleepy pig.
%%
Answers by Bel
Questions from the teacher

Where is the farm?
It is beyond Three Wells, beside the old road.

What grows there?
Wheat, carrots, pumpkins and melons grow there. The farmer has an apple tree by the well.

Who works in the kitchen?
Cook Isla works there. She makes soup for the farm hands and bread for the school.

What happened to the melon?
It grew so large that we could not lift it onto the table. We sat on the floor to eat it.

Why does the farm need a road?
A cart can bring flour and tools. The farmer can take wheat to market. The road also helps travelers reach Three Wells before dark.

What do we see from the farm gate?
We see the road, the fields and the notice board near town. When the wind is right, we hear the bell at the school.

What should we do before the first frost?
Bring in the pumpkins, cover the carrots and check the barn door. Then we can sit by the stove and eat Isla's soup.
%%
Essay: a day at the market, by a child
Written for the teacher of the school at Three Wells, in autumn, by a child of eleven who works a stall with her uncle Pell. It is about the market, the visiting tutor and the cart. Pell says she exaggerates the cart.
On market day I get up at dawn and go to the square with my uncle. We set up the stall. We sell cloth and thread and buttons. My uncle talks to everybody. I count the emeralds.
This autumn a tutor came from Vell. She is called Brae and she is tall and kind. She stayed at the inn of twelve beds. On market day she walked around the square with a notebook. She asked everyone what they knew about apprentices.
My uncle said he knew nothing. She wrote it down.
The baker said his apprentice carries flour. She wrote it down.
The old woman who keeps the east well said she did not trust them. She wrote it down.
At noon she came to our stall and asked me. I said I had read about the first four. I said they were made at Vell, long ago, of copper and iron, each with a mind in a crystal. I said the crystals learned from what they were shown, but nobody knew why. I said most towns had none for a long time. She smiled.
She said, "You have been to school."
I said, "Every day."
She wrote that down too.
Then a cart got stuck. It was a big cart, loaded with beetroots. It sank in the mud by the north well. The driver shouted. The horse stamped. The beetroots rolled out.
The whole market stopped to help. The tutor took off her shoes. My uncle took off his hat. The baker's apprentice came with a plank and put it under the wheel. It did not say a word, since apprentices do not. It just lifted.
The cart came out. The driver sat in the mud and laughed. The tutor said she had never seen anything like it. She wrote a long page about it in her notebook.
I think she will remember the market longer than she remembers the lecture. I will remember the beetroots.
%%
Essay: why we have a healing house
A school essay by Lia, aged eleven, for Mr Dobbin, the teacher of the Lowmarsh school. Spring.

There is a healing house in Lowmarsh because the marsh is wet and the people are sick. My aunt Wren is the healer. She keeps the house by the well, and she has high shelves of jars with labels on them. Each jar has a name in her writing. Some of the names are hard to read. She says that is because the herbs are hard to read too.

The healing house has beds for the sick. There are four beds in the long room and one in the shed. The shed is for the children with the grey cough, so they do not breathe on the others. Nobody in Lowmarsh likes the shed. Everybody has been in it at least once.

My aunt says that a healer needs three things. First, she needs to see the sick person. Second, she needs to know the plant. Third, she needs to know when to stop, because some cures are worse than the illness. I asked her what she meant by stop. She said: when you have done what you can, sit down, and let the body do the rest.

Wren has an apprentice, called Moss. It carries the water from the well and fetches the jars from the high shelves. Moss is very good at fetching. It is not good at sorting the herbs. Once it put the lily of the valley in the dandelion jar, and my aunt was very frightened. She says now that Moss will learn, if she is patient. I think she is patient. I think she is only frightened of being impatient, which is a different thing.

The healing house is the most important building in Lowmarsh, after the boardwalk. Without the boardwalk you cannot get to the house. Without the house, the boardwalk is only a path to a sick person.

In conclusion, the healing house is important because the marsh is wet, and the people are sick, and somebody has to keep the jars.
%%
Spelling list for the school play
Set at the inn on the Long Road by Nell the cook, who is also the teacher on school days, in summer, in the early years of the roads. The children will say these in the play.
road
inn
lamp
tower
signal
keeper
harbor
boat
sail
Each child writes the word three times, and puts it in a sentence, and the sentence must be about the play.
The play is "The Night the Boat Was Late." It is about a boat that came in after dark, and a town that lit every lamp to bring it home. There are eleven parts. There is also a lamp, played by a boy with a lantern, who does not have to say anything. He is very happy.
%%
School note by Bel
A lesson that went badly

Our teacher took us to the farm beyond Three Wells to count pumpkins. We went in a row and each child had a slate. Cook Isla was there with a basket of bread for the farm hands.

The farmer showed us one pumpkin at a time. We had to write its size, then say whether it was ready to bring in. I wrote "ready" for the first pumpkin. It was still green. I had looked at its large leaves and not at the pumpkin.

The teacher told me to look again. I changed my answer. Then the wind blew my slate off the wall and it landed in a water trough. The words ran together. The farmer said the slate had learned to swim.

We began again under the barn roof. This time the teacher covered the leaves with a cloth. We looked at the pumpkin skin and stem. I got three right. I got one wrong because a chicken stood in front of it.

Isla gave us bread while the slates dried. One loaf had a hard crust. I gave the hardest piece to the chicken. It took the piece and ran under the cart.

The teacher says a lesson is not wasted when we find what confused us. I think the chicken learned to take bread. It did not need a slate.
%%
Spelling list from Kell's room
lamp
glass
letter
word
place
page
mind
crystal
close
near
far
learn
test
book
yard
wall

Copy each word once. Then write one sentence with lamp and one with wall.

Mara wrote: The lamp shines through glass.
Ivo wrote: The wall is made of cobblestone.
Seli wrote: Words used alike can sit close in a mind.

Kell read our work by the door. He said a mind does not put words in a row like stones. It keeps letters and words as places among many. Words that people use alike may sit near each other there. A page can teach the mind where a word belongs.

We asked how it chose those places. Kell said no one had found the answer. He has seen a crystal learn from many pages, but seeing it learn is not the same as knowing why.

He cleaned the lamp glass while we copied the list. He said dust makes a poor teacher.
%%
Answers: Teacher Ilse's first test
Answers to Teacher Ilse's test, the school at Northpoint. Longday of the 23rd year of the archive.

1. Why does the stair have a lamp at every turn?
Answer: So nobody falls in the dark. A stair in the dark is a bad place to be.

2. What is the lamp room for?
Answer: It sends the blink to the next tower. A short blink is a dot and a long blink is a line. Every letter is a set of blinks.

3. How far does a message go in one day?
Answer: From Northpoint to Vell, if every tower is awake. Each tower takes the message and sends it on.

4. What do we do when the wind is high?
Answer: We shut the glass doors and tie down the cover. We do not climb the rungs in the rain.

5. Who keeps the stair clean?
Answer: Lantern does. It sweeps every rung in the morning, and it never misses one.

6. What does a keeper do at night?
Answer: Watch the lamp, keep the torches lit and write down every message. Mira says a message that is not written down is lost.

7. Name three things that are not allowed on the stair.
Answer: Snowballs. Pigs. Sela's cat.

Teacher's note: Good answers, all of you. Sela, you wrote the word very nine times. Odo, your answer to number 4 is the best in the class. Pim, please stop drawing foxes in the margins. They look like sheep.
%%
Essay: the first four
By a child of the school at Three Wells, in autumn. The teacher says it was marked fair. Pell the merchant brought it to the market to read aloud.
A visiting tutor came to our school from Vell and told us about the first four apprentices.
A long time ago, the first tutors at Vell made four helpers from copper and iron. Each had a mind in a crystal. The children called them apprentices because they learned, like children do.
The tutor said that a crystal learns from what it is shown. You show it a thing again and again. At first it gets it wrong. Then it gets it a little better. Nobody knows why it works. Nobody wrote it down.
The four did one thing each. One carried. One sorted. One stood in a row. One swept. They were not clever. They did the same thing all day.
Most towns had no apprentice for a long time. Now there are more every year. I saw one at the market carrying sacks for a cart. It was very slow, but it did not stop.
The tutor said we should be kind to apprentices. I will. I will also be kind to the cart that got stuck outside our school. It is still there.
%%
Spelling list and a lesson that went
By Jory, aged eleven. The spelling list for the week, with the curve lesson copied under it, as the teacher said to do. Master Lenn wrote a note at the bottom.
Words for the week: crystal, curve, drill, mind, weight, bend, bigger, relay, tutor, writing, councils, pattern, answer, honest.
Curve lesson, from the board:
We drew the line for the big crystal. The line went up and up and then did not bend. It went straight up off the top of the board. Lenn said that was wrong. Asha said it was right. Lenn said that a line that never bends is a line that has not been checked. Asha said the crystal was very big. Then the chalk broke and we had to do it again on the back of the slate.
Second time: the line went up and bent a little too early, at the middle of the board. Asha said that was because the drill was short. Lenn said that was because Asha had not counted the pages. Asha said she had counted them three times, and that the third time was the right one.
We could not agree. We drew three lines and rubbed out two. In the end the one that bent at the right place was drawn by Lenn, who did not say anything about the chalk.
Master Lenn's note: The lesson went badly today. Both of you drew the bend in the right place once, and neither of you could say why. This is the whole of the curve. Remember it. Check your counts. Do not let the chalk decide.
%%
Essay: our tower at Northpoint
My name is Sela. I am ten years old, and I live at the foot of the tower. Teacher Ilse says to write about the place where you live.

The tower is made of grey stone. It is the tallest thing for a long way. From the top you can see the frozen pond, the fox tracks in the snow and the road that goes down to Vell.

Inside is a stair with ninety rungs. Mira says ninety. I counted them twice, and she was right. There is a lamp at every turn, so the stair is never dark.

At the top is the lamp room. It has glass all the way round, and a copper ring that shines in the sun. Lantern keeps the glass clean. When the lamp blinks, the next tower answers. That is how news goes south to Vell.

Zombies come sometimes. On the night of the fourth of Longday, one came up to our gate. The torches were lit, so it stopped and moaned. Then Lantern pushed it back with a long pole, and it went off into the snow. Mira said it was a very silly zombie. I was not scared. Not much.

We keep the torches lit. That is the first rule of the north.

Mira says the road will come further up next year. Then there will be carts every month. Then more towers, one on each hill. I want to keep the tower on the hill past the pond. I think that would be a good job.
%%
Saltreach school essay, winter 92
I went to the market with my aunt. The sea wind blew my paper away. A fish seller caught it with his net and gave it back.

There were fish, wool, glass and apples. Corin was mending a bench near the quay. He said the bench had one leg shorter than the others. I sat on it and found he was right.

Our teacher told us about Orla at Vell. She asked if a drilled mind could think. I do not know. My aunt says a mind can learn a task and still not know why it does it.

We put a jar of honey on the table for the teacher. The market cat climbed up and licked the lid. It will not stay out of the school.

I think Orla's test is fair. We should read the answers before we know who wrote them.
%%
Essay: Gran and the furnace mind
By Rye, age eleven, for Teacher Fen. Summer.

My gran Tova says she saw a furnace that ran itself. It was at Copperhold, in the 178th year of the archive. She was twenty-eight and carried charcoal for her uncle.

A furnace melts copper. The melt must stay steady. If it gets too cold, the copper will not pour. If it gets too hot, it boils and is spoiled. So a furnace tender watches a pointer on a heat board all day and works the air door with a rope. Gran says his arms shook by dusk.

At Copperhold the tutors put a mind on the rope. It was not drilled with right answers, because nobody had any. Not even the tender knew how wide the door should be.

So the mind tried. It pulled the rope a little, or let it out a little, and watched the pointer. At the end of each melt it got a score. A steady melt got a high score. A spoiled melt got a low one. Then it kept more of what had gone well.

The first thirty melts were spoiled. Gran says the tender said words she cannot repeat to me. By the two hundredth melt, the pointer sat still as a cat.

I asked Gran what the mind thought of it all. She says nobody knows. It is not in any book.
%%
Sums: the Brown Hen's stores
Done by Pell, aged nine. Marked by Teacher Merrow. Summer of 58. All sums in emeralds, where there are emeralds.

1. The inn has 12 loaves. Four guests eat 2 loaves each. How many loaves are left?
Four guests eat 8 loaves. 12 take away 8 is 4. Four loaves. (A tick.)

2. A bed costs 1 emerald a night. Three travelers take three beds for two nights. What do they pay?
3 beds, 2 nights. 3 times 2 is 6. Six emeralds. (A tick.)

3. Father buys 20 eggs, 5 for 1 emerald. What does he pay?
20 divided by 5 is 4. Four emeralds. (A tick.)

4. The hen lays 1 egg a day on the best bed. How many eggs in ten days?
Ten eggs. Also ten days of Mother saying a word I may not write. (A tick for the eggs.)

5. Mother has 7 apples. She gives 3 to a guest and 2 to the horse. How many are left?
7 take away 3 is 4. 4 take away 2 is 2. Two apples.
(Teacher: the horse also ate the third. Then one is left. Pell, always count the horse.)

Teacher's total: four right out of five, and one wrong because of a horse. Pell says the horse cheated. The horse has not been asked.
%%
The north well ran dry
An essay by Juna, age nine, at the school at Northpoint, written for the autumn fair. The teacher said to write about something that happened to you. This is what happened to me.

When I was small, the north well was full all year. It was the best well in the town. It had the coldest water, and the rope was always wet, and the bucket came up heavy every time. Mother said you could taste the mountains in it. I did not know what that meant, but it sounded very good.

This autumn the water went down. First it was one hand. Then it was two. Then the bucket came up with only a little wet at the bottom, and Dad said it was the dry, and that the rain would come back in Frost. It did not come.

Everybody came to the well with cups. The mayor came, and he looked over the edge and said the rope would hold. The rope held. The water did not come up.

Then the apprentice from the north tower came with a sack. It walked down the stone steps very slowly, one step at a time, and it looked at the bottom of the well with its head on one side. Then it came back up, and it did not say anything, because apprentices do not talk. Dad said it had looked, and that was all it could do. But Mother said that was a lot.

Now the north well has a green weed on the stone at the top, and nobody can clear it. We carry water from the south well. It is a long walk, and the water tastes of iron. Dad says it is good for us. I do not think so, but I drink it, because I am told.

The thing I want to know is where the water went. Dad says it went down the hill. Mother says it went into the ground. The teacher says it went wherever water goes when it is not in a well, and we should not worry about it. I think about it every night, anyway.

The end.
%%
Essay: where my letter went
By Ivo, age ten, school house in the hamlet near Northpoint. Set by his teacher Ama, who also draws maps: write about a letter that did not arrive.
I wrote a letter to my cousin in Vell. It was about my new boots. I gave it to the carter. He put it in his bag. He lost his bag. The bag was found by a sheep.
The sheep did not read it. But the clerks at Vell say that if a letter is found, even by a sheep, they will copy it. Somebody brought it to the Archive in the end, with a hoof mark. Now my letter about boots is on a shelf in the hill. My cousin never read it. But the Archive did.
Ama says that is a good ending. I say I would rather my cousin had the boots.
%%
Essay: the lost letter
By Hazel, age ten, for Teacher Marl. Winter.

In the storm last week, the wind took my letter to Aunt Rue off the windowsill and put it in the marsh. It was my best letter. It had a drawing of a frog. I wrote it again, but the frog was not as good.

Teacher Marl said a lost letter is a good thing to learn from. She played a game with us. She whispered a message to Hob: The bees sleep in the hive in winter. Hob whispered it to Rill, Rill to Fern, and so on down the row, seven of us.

The last child said: The frogs sleep in a pie in the winter. Everybody laughed.

Teacher Marl said that is what happens in a deep mind with no stream. Each layer tells the next in its own words. By the tenth layer, the first words are gone.

Then she did it again, a new way. She wrote the message on the board and left it there. Every child came up and wrote one line under it. At the end the board had the first message and seven notes. Nothing was lost.

That is the stream. The first message stays, and every layer adds its note.

My letter is still in the marsh. I hope a frog is reading it.
%%
Spelling list: stone words
Set by Cress the stonecutter for the children at the Brown Hen, on the Long Road, in autumn. They learn in the back room while their parents work.

Words: chisel, mallet, granite, cobblestone, deep stone, quarry, level, plumb, mortar, arch.
Hard word: plumb. It has a silent b. I did not make the rule.
Write each word three times. Use one in a sentence about a wall.
%%
School essay: Lowmarsh market
I went to the market with Wren. We took carrots and fish. The boardwalk was wet, and Moss carried the basket.

A frog sat beside the fish weir. Moss stopped to look at it. Wren said, "The frog is not for sale." I knew that.

At the market, a man had reeds. A woman had honey. I helped Wren set the fish on the stall. The fish were small, but they were fresh.

Then rain came. We put a cloth over the carrots. The storm made the board shake. One fish slid into the mud. Moss picked it up and washed it at the well.

We sold the fish and bought bread. Wren paid the baker with emeralds. I carried the bread home.

Lowmarsh market smells of fish, wet reeds, and bread. I like it best when the rain stops.
%%
Teacher's account of the hidden sheets
Saltreach school, winter 111

The market school kept a copy of Orla's question. We used it each winter with new sheets. The children learned how the test worked before they gave an opinion.

First, a tutor chose questions the mind had not been drilled on. The tutor kept the mind's crystal behind a screen. A person answered the same questions by letter, also behind a screen. A clerk copied both sets of answers and hid the names. The readers saw only the writing.

Then each reader marked which set they thought was the person's. We counted the marks after everyone had finished. If the readers often chose correctly, the answers could be told apart. If they were wrong as often as right, the readers had not shown that they could tell them apart in that test.

The class had to say what the result did and did not show. It showed how well those readers judged those answers to those questions. It did not tell us why the mind answered as it did. It did not tell us what the mind felt. It did not settle every meaning of the word think.

This year, our questions were about the Saltreach market.

What would you do if a fish basket split?

What could be carried in a cart with two empty spaces?

Why should the glass seller wrap each pane?

The mind's answers were clear. The person's answers were clear too. Some children chose the wrong sheet because one answer used the word quay. The teacher reminded us that a word alone was not proof of a writer.

We did the test twice with different questions. The same readers did not always make the same choice. We wrote that down rather than hiding it.

For sums, the class counted goods on a board. Four fish baskets and three more made seven. Two jars of honey were set beside five jars, and we counted seven again. The market cat licked one jar. We wiped the lid, moved the jars to a high shelf, and continued.

The cat came back before the class ended. It will not stay out. We have stopped using honey as a counting piece.
%%
Essay: moving house
By Noll, the old soldier, as it was written down for the school at Saltreach. Late spring.
Our family is moving house this week. We are going up the hill to the new house with the goat and the red door. My mother says it has more light and fewer stairs. My brother says it has more rats. My brother is nearly always wrong.
The old house is on the harbor road. It has a blue door that does not shut, and a window that looks at the quay. I have lived there for nine years. I know every crack in the stairs. I know which board sings when you step on it. I know the smell of the nets when they are hung to dry in the yard.
When you move a house you take everything with you, even the things that do not seem to matter. My mother took the pot with the broken lid. She said it was the pot that made the stew. My father took the lamp. He said it was the first thing he ever bought in this town. He will not say what he paid for it.
The hardest part was the door. We could not take the blue door. It is wood, and it was fixed into the frame, and my father said the frame would fall down without it. So we left it there, and my mother put her hand on it, and said goodbye to it, and then she laughed at herself for doing it.
The new house is on the hill. You can see the sea from the top step. My mother says that is why we came. My father says it is only because the goat wanted it. The goat has already eaten a hat.
I am not sure yet if I like it. I will write again when I know.
%%
Sums with goods
Summer work from the Halfway Inn school.

Pell has 6 loaves in his cart. He sells 2 at the inn. How many remain?
6 minus 2 is 4 loaves.

The inn needs 3 buckets of water for the kitchen and 2 for the wash shed. How many buckets?
3 plus 2 is 5 buckets.

A traveler buys 4 apples for 1 emerald each. What does he pay?
4 emeralds.

The well digger, Garrow, fills 8 buckets. The cook uses 3 for soup. How many are left?
8 minus 3 is 5 buckets.

A child brings 2 carrots to each of 3 tables. How many carrots?
2 times 3 is 6 carrots.

Garrow says the well is deep enough for the inn. He will test the rope again before he leaves. He says a good well is like a good answer. It must hold when people need it.
%%
Spelling list: the ridge school
By Tam, Kettle Ridge.

Spelling list for the second class at the Kettle Ridge school. Tam says a child who spells "tutor" wrong will never be trusted with a crystal.

crystal: A mind is kept in a crystal the size of an egg.
tutor: The tutor drills the mind with pages, one at a time.
drill: A drill is a box of pages. Each page has one right answer.
question: Orla asked a question that nobody has answered yet.
hidden: The hidden mind sits in the other room with the door shut.
letter: Each answer comes back by letter, with no name on it.
person: A person writes an answer too. Nobody can see who wrote which.
think: Can a drilled mind think? If you do not know, say so.
guess: A guess is not an answer. Remember that in Orla's test.

Remember: crystal has a y. Tutor has a u, not an a.
%%
Essay: the new copper vein
By Minna, age ten, daughter of the cook at the Brown Hen. For Cress. Autumn.

A traveler came in last night with big news. He is a carter from Copperhold. He said the miners found a new vein of copper. It is on level four, at the back, behind a wall of old rock.

I asked him how big it is. He held his arms out wide, and then wider. He said it is as long as the inn and as high as the roof. He said the copper is bright, almost red. When the miners put a lamp to it, it looks like a fire in the stone.

I asked him what they will do with it. He said they will make pots, and nails, and pipes. They will make lamps for the relay towers, and rings for the wells. They will make copper coins, maybe. They will give a good deal to the shipyard at Saltreach.

I asked who found it. He said a miner called Hesk. I said I know Hesk. My mother knows him. He eats here when he comes by. He always asks for a second bowl, and he always says he is not hungry.

The carter ate three bowls, and then he fell asleep at the table. My mother put a blanket on him.

I think a vein of copper is a kind of gift from the ground. The ground does not have to give it. It does so because the miners dig carefully. That is what Cress says about stone. I think it is true of copper too.

I am going to ask the carter tomorrow if I can see a piece.
%%
Spelling list, Stoney Field school
Spelling list for the spring test. Copy each word three times. Do not skip.

apple
honey
melon
orchard
copper
lantern
hamlet
harvest
beetroot
cobblestone
squeaky
apprentice
tally
waymark
thistle
wheelbarrow

The hard ones are apprentice and wheelbarrow. Take your time. Say the word out loud before you write it. If you can say it, you can spell it. That is what my tutor said and it is mostly true.

Extra words for the older ones:

deep stone
quicken
relay
crystal
drill
pattern

Remember: two letters in wheel, and two in barrow. Do not put three. I will be cross.

A note for the parents. We have a jar of honey for the child who gets the most right. It is from Carys's orchard and it is very good. Please do not tell the children it is a small jar. It is a small jar.

Ash, schoolteacher
%%
Sums: the ice camp moves
Done by Rowan, aged nine. Marked by Esk. Autumn of 207. All sums in emeralds, where there are emeralds.

1. The ice camp has 9 huts. Each hut goes on 2 sledges. How many sledges?
9 huts, 2 sledges each. 9 times 2 is 18. Eighteen sledges. (A tick.)

2. Each sledge needs 2 people to pull it. How many people are needed?
18 times 2 is 36. But the camp has only 14 people. (Esk: so what happens?)
The people pull one sledge at a time. The children ride on top and shout. This takes longer, but it is better.

3. Runa sells fish at the market. 10 fish cost 1 emerald. She sells 60 fish. What does she get?
60 divided by 10 is 6. Six emeralds. (A tick.)

4. The lake ice is 3 hands thick at the edge and 1 hand thick in the middle. How much thicker is the edge?
3 take away 1 is 2. Two hands. (A tick.) Also, nobody walks in the middle.

Esk's total: four right out of four. Rowan asks what happens to the 18 sledges in spring. They come back to the shore. Rowan says that is a lot of sledging. Yes.
%%
Essay: the day the market flooded
Dilly, age ten, Copperhold school. For Teacher Marsh.

On the fourth of Thaw it rained and rained. The snow was melting on the hill and the rain made it melt faster. By noon the water was coming down the street like a brown river.
It was market day. The market is in the low square below the mine gate. Nobody thought about the water until it was over their boots.
My uncle Hesk was selling charcoal from a cart. He saw the water first. He said a word I cannot write. Then he shouted, "Up the hill! Take what you can carry!"
We all ran. The cheese woman carried her cheeses. The fish man carried his fish, which was funny, because they swam out of his arms. The baker carried the bread above her head and walked very slowly, like a mayor.
The water came up to the third step of the school. We stood on the top step and watched the market float away. A hat floated by. Then a beetroot. Then a stool, a pot, a loaf of bread and a small goat on a plank. The goat looked pleased.
By evening the rain stopped. By morning the water was gone. The square was full of mud and beetroots. Nobody was hurt.
My uncle says it was the biggest flood since his father was a boy. He says his father's pick was on its nail the whole time and did not even get wet.
I think a flood is like a very big guest. It comes in without asking, it moves all your things, and it leaves a mess. But it also brings a lot of beetroots.
The end.
%%
What the big minds do, an essay
By Tess, age ten, Hollow Lane school. Miss Hale says write it plainly, so the little ones can follow, and get the parts right.

The big minds live in the relay houses at the foot of the towers. Each one is kept in a crystal the size of a loaf, on a stand, ringed by quickeners kept cool with water or ice. They answer apprentices through the relays. They also talk to anyone the relays reach, by letter. You write a letter at a tower, the relay carries it, and a big mind writes back.

How do they learn to talk? Tutors teach them. The tutor asks a question, reads the answer, and gives it a score. The mind learns from the scores. A good answer is kept, and a bad one is dropped.

Miss Hale says the tutors wanted three things. They wanted the minds to be kind. They wanted them to refuse anything that would hurt someone. And they wanted them to say when they do not know. She says the third is the hardest, because it is easy to be wrong and sound sure.

Nobody has written down why a mind learns, only how. Miss Hale says it is all right to leave that open. I would like to know why. I do not mind waiting.
%%
Letter: Merrit the beekeeper to Carys
Dear Carys,

This is about the bees, and the honey, and the melon, in that order.

The bees are well. I moved the three hives to the hill above your orchard because the flowers there are thicker this spring, and they have been busy as a market square ever since. You will hear them from the kitchen. That is a good sound. A quiet hive is a worried hive.

I took nine jars off the hives last week. Nine. In Blossom. I have never had nine in Blossom. I have written the year on every jar and set them in the cold room beside yours. Do not let Enid near them. I know about Enid.

The honey this year is pale and it tastes of apple blossom. You can taste the orchard in it. That is your doing, with your four hundred trees. The bees only carry it. You grow it.

Now the melon. I have seen the melon. Everyone has seen the melon. I stood next to it for a long while and I could not think of anything to say. A melon should not be that big. It is not natural. I said so to your father and he said it is very natural, it just had a good spring. Maybe he is right. The bees had a good spring too. Everything is having a good spring.

The miner Hesk says it looks like a sleeping pig. I say it looks like a sleeping pig that has eaten another pig. We have agreed to disagree.

I will come to the cutting on Longday. I will bring a plate and a spoon and my appetite. I will also bring two jars of the pale honey for the miners, because they walked up the hill to see the melon and that was kind of them.

One more thing. The tutor house at Vell has asked me for a page about bees, for their records. They are gathering everything people write, they say, so nothing is lost. I do not know what I have to say about bees that is worth keeping. I will write it anyway. I will write it neatly. You should write a page about the melon. Someone should.

Your friend,
Merrit
%%
Spelling list from the farm school
Copied by Teague

winter
lamp
wick
oil
glass
barn
hay
sheep
cow
hen
egg
well
bucket
soup
boots
wind
shore
net
rope
salt
copper
fair
prize
teacher
pupil

Nell wrote lamp with one p and then put a second p beside it. She said the first p was lonely.

Tern wrote sheep as shep. He was asked to say the word slowly. He said it slowly and still wrote shep.

Our rule is to copy each word twice. Then each pupil covers the first line and writes the words again.

Teague says a spelling list is not a race. This is easy for him to say because he already knows the words.

The word prize was added after the winter fair. Nell won a wool cap for guessing the weight of a pumpkin. She guessed wrong by one stone, but all the other guesses were worse. The cap is too big. She says she will grow into it before spring.
%%
Answers for Teacher Dena
Ambrook School, winter of 181

Teacher: What does the mill wheel turn?
Laurel: The mill wheel turns the mill stone.

Teacher: Where does the water go?
Laurel: It runs from the pond past the mill. It does not go through the school.

Teacher: Why do we leave the sluice shut?
Laurel: Jory says nobody may open it. I did not ask the sluice.

Teacher: What grows in Ambrook?
Laurel: Apples grow on the trees. Reeds grow by the pond. The bees gather from flowers on the hill.

Teacher: What do bees make?
Laurel: Honey. They do not make it in the bakery, though the baker asked.

Teacher: What do we do with fallen apples?
Laurel: We sort them. The good ones go in baskets. The bruised ones go to the mill.

Teacher: Where is the old apple tree?
Laurel: Near the pond, with the grey branch. We look at it from the ground.

Teacher: Why did you bring one wet boot to school?
Laurel: The other boot is still at the pond.

Teacher: Is that an answer?
Laurel: It is the answer I have.
%%
Sums: goods after the flood
Copperhold school, spring. Set by Teacher Marsh. Write the answer under each sum. Show your work.

1. After the flood, Hesk found 14 beetroots in the square. Ola found 9. Bram found 6. How many beetroots in all?
2. The baker lost 20 loaves in the flood and saved 35. How many did she have before?
3. A goat was found on a plank. It was worth 6 emeralds. Its owner was glad and paid the finder 2 emeralds. How many emeralds are left for the owner?
4. The fish man lost 3 baskets of fish. Each basket held 12 fish. How many fish did he lose? He says the fish swam home. Is he right? Explain.
5. The charcoal cart was stuck in mud. It took 4 men to push, and each man asked for 1 bowl of stew. How many bowls of stew? If each bowl costs half an emerald, what is the price?
6. The school door is painted green. The flood washed off half of the green. If the door has 8 planks and the flood washed 4, how many planks are still green?
7. A hard one. The mine gate stands 30 steps above the square. The water rose 3 steps in an hour. How long until the water reaches the gate? Is that a good reason to move the market?
8. A very hard one. Hesk says the town needs a wall to keep the water out. A wall costs 3 emeralds for every 2 blocks. The square is 40 blocks wide. How much is a wall? Would you pay?

Teacher's note: I do not mark the last one. I want to know what you think.
%%
The year at the marsh
Written by Dell, age ten, for Yew, who asked us to write about the year, and about the things that were too big, or that ran dry, or that were lost and then came back.
The year began with the ice. We slid on it all Frost, and Pip fell in twice, and climbed out twice, and said nothing about it. Father said the ice was too thin for the marsh, and then he went out on it himself to fetch the boat, and it held him. Mother said he was a fool, and made him sit by the stove for an hour.
In Longnight the melon came. It was from Ned's garden, and it was too big for the cellar door, and Father had to take it out through the window. It was the biggest thing I have ever seen grown on a marsh. The vats looked small beside it. We gave it to Wren, and she said it would make a soup for every sick child at the healing house, and she was right. The children ate three bowls each, and wanted more, and got it, and Wren said that was the best use a melon ever had.
In Deepsnow the well ran dry. Wren said the frost was in the pipe under the stone. Father said the well had never run dry in his life. Mother said it had, when she was a child, and that her mother had carried water from the reed pool for a whole season. Nobody liked the reed pool water. It tasted of mud and of the frogs. We carried it anyway. The bucket was heavy, and I did not drop it.
In Thaw the water came back. It tasted of iron, and then of cold, and then of nothing, which Wren says is the sign of a good well. Father dug the stone out from round the pipe, and found the frost there, in a ring, like a band of silver. He put the stone back and said that was that.
The boats came back in Thaw too, late, with the reeds on their bows. The marsh was loud with frogs by the end of the month, and the boardwalk was wet, and the lamps were lit at dusk, all the way to the healing house. Wren says the lamps are the most important thing on the marsh, after the water.
This is the year as I remember it. Yew says the year is longer than one child's account. I think that is true. But the melon was very big, and the well ran dry, and the water came back. Those are the things I have written, and I have written them down so they are kept.
%%
Sums with goods: the wall at the inn
Cress's sums for the children of the Brown Hen. Autumn. Show your steps on the slate.

1. A wall needs 40 blocks along and 6 blocks high. How many blocks is that?
2. Each block costs 2 emeralds. How much for the wall?
3. The innkeeper has 300 emeralds. How many walls like that can she buy?
4. A cart carries 50 blocks. How many carts for one wall?
5. Cress works 8 hours a day. A block takes 6 minutes. How many blocks a day?

A child's answer to 3: One wall, and the rest for soup.
Cress's note: Right. Soup is also a wall, for the stomach.
%%
My harvest, by Haddie, age ten
Our farm is outside Vell, on the road up from the marsh. We have wheat in the top field, beetroot in the long field, and potatoes in the bottom field, which is where I hide when the work is too much.
In Reaping we cut the wheat with the scythe. Father does the swinging and I do the tying. A sheaf is a handful of wheat tied in the middle with a piece of the same wheat. Father says it is the only rope the wheat ever gives you.
The beetroot is pulled by hand. You must not pull it by the leaves, or the root snaps off and sulks. Miss Bryn says that is a fact about beetroot. I say it is a fact about me.
The apprentice on our farm is called Pip. Pip does not talk, which is good, because I talk enough for everybody. Pip carries the sacks to the cart and stacks them the same way every time. At the end of the day Pip sits on the bottom step and does not move until morning. Father says that is how it rests. Mother says it is how it thinks. I think it is only tired.
At the end of harvest there is a supper in the barn. There is bread, and stew, and a pumpkin with a face cut in it. Father says the supper is the best part, because everybody is tired and nobody is cross. I think he is right.
The lamps at night are lit by the lamp boy, who comes up the lane with his box. The north lamp is the one we see from the top field. Sometimes it is bright. Sometimes it is dark, and the grown-ups look at it over their cups and do not say why. I have asked Miss Bryn. She said it is a question for the keepers, and then she told us to finish the sums.
%%
Answers to Mistress Lark: the quiet
Questions and answers, Saltreach school, winter. Written out for the class by Lark, with the answers given by the pupils and corrected.
Q. When was the long quiet?
A. From about the year 125 to about the year 150. It was twenty-five years. It was quiet because the tutors stopped.
Q. Who is Kester?
A. A tutor at Vell who wrote a famous note.
Q. What did Kester's note say?
A. It said that one crystal could never learn "one or the other, but not both."
Q. Is that true?
A. It is true of one crystal of that kind. Lark says it is true of the kind they had then. Later, people used more than one.
Q. Why did the council stop paying the tutors?
A. They thought Kester's note meant minds were no good.
Q. Was the council right?
A. No. But the council was busy, and a note is easy to read.
Q. What happened to the apprentices?
A. They stayed simple. They did one thing each, a row or a sort.
Q. What did the tutors do instead?
A. Some grew beets. Some kept bees. A few kept drilling in secret, in the barn, with a lamp.
Q. How do we know this?
A. It is in the chronicles at Vell. Also my grandmother said so.
Score: 9 of 9. Good work.
%%
School essay: What I think
Written by a pupil at the Northpoint market school, in the autumn of a poor harvest. Mira, who teaches there, kept it for the Archive at Vell. The tutor who visited that week was in the room when it was read aloud.

This year the harvest was poor. The frost came early. The potatoes were small and the beets were smaller. My father says we will eat a lot of porridge this winter.

My teacher, Mira, says that is how it is in the north. Some years are good and some years are bad. A farmer who is afraid of bad years should not live here.

Then a tutor came from Vell. She told us about the biggest relay houses. She said councils in the south have built houses bigger than towns, to hold minds bigger than any tutor could check alone. She said they cost a great deal. She said they take wood and water and ice to run. She said some of the farmers there have given up fields to make room.

I asked her: is it worth it?

She said she did not know. She said that is what councils decide.

I thought about the harvest. A house bigger than a town takes up a lot of fields. If the fields were wheat, we could eat. If the house holds a mind, we could ask it things. Which is better?

My father says wheat. My teacher says it depends on what we ask. I think if you could ask a very big mind how to grow potatoes in the cold, it would be worth a field. But I do not know if it knows. The tutor says nobody knows what the biggest can do. She says the stories do not agree.

Mira says: ask your question first, and then decide how big the mind needs to be. If it is a small question, a small mind will do. If it is a large question, you may need a large one. But never build the house before you have the question.

I think that is wise. I wrote it on my hand so I would not forget.

The tutor stayed for supper. We ate porridge. She said it was the best she had ever had. I think she was being kind.

The end. I would like a goat.

Mira's note: A fine essay. The goat is a separate matter.
%%
The play: The Switch and the Lamp
A school play for the Saltreach winter fair, written by the pupils and Mistress Lark. It was performed in the school house to an audience of twenty-three parents, three cats and one very large dog.
WHO IS IN IT: Kester (Dob). The Council (Hale, Brin and Tilly). A Crystal (Marl, in a bucket). A Lamp (the lantern on the stool). Narrator (Lark).
NARRATOR: Long ago in Vell there lived a tutor named Kester.
KESTER: I have written a note.
NARRATOR: It was a famous note.
KESTER: It says a crystal cannot learn one or the other, but not both.
COUNCIL: What does that mean?
KESTER: Here are two switches. The lamp is on if one is up and one is down. If both are up, it is off. If both are down, it is off.
COUNCIL: That is easy. Any child can do that.
KESTER: A child can. A crystal like this cannot. (He points to the bucket.)
CRYSTAL: (silent.)
COUNCIL: Then it is no good.
KESTER: I did not say that. I said it cannot do this. It can do other things.
COUNCIL: We have heard enough. No more money for tutors.
NARRATOR: The halls closed. The tutors went home. Apprentices stayed simple. For twenty-five years nobody tried again.
LAMP: (blinks in a strange pattern.)
KESTER: What did the lamp say?
NARRATOR: Nobody knows. It blinked a message nobody could read. It was the lamp of the school, and it blinked three long and one short, again and again, all that winter.
COUNCIL: Perhaps it wants us to try again.
KESTER: Perhaps.
(The lamp goes out. The Crystal rolls off the stool. Applause.)
Marked by Lark: the lamp was not meant to blink. The lantern had a bad wick. But the audience liked it, so we kept it.
%%
Answers for the teacher
Where does Kell live and work?
Kell tends the lamps in a house at the edge of Three Wells.

What did he show us?
He showed us a crystal with a mind inside it.

What does a mind do with letters and words?
It keeps each letter or word as a place among many places. Words used alike sit close together.

Why are two words close?
They may be used in the same way. The mind has seen them together in pages. We do not know why the crystal learns.

What did Kell do with the new question?
He wrote it down for the test box. A mind must be tested on pages it has not seen in drills.

What did I find under the bench?
One beetroot. I gave it to the teacher. She said the school kitchen could use it.

Our teacher says a clear answer is worth more than a long answer. Kell says a clean lamp is worth more than a bright promise.
%%
Spelling list, Northpoint school
Set by Mira for the children who come to her at the Northpoint market school. Autumn, after a poor harvest.

harvest
frost
sack
lamp
tower
relay
tutor
crystal
bread
hungry

Write each word three times. Use any four in a sentence. The sentence may be about the harvest. It may not be about the cat.
%%
Essay: the map, the letter and the house
By Ivo, age ten, school house in the hamlet near Northpoint, in the long light of summer. An essay for Ama, who draws maps and asked the class to make one of the great drills.
My map is a map of how the letters went to the Archive. I made it with a pen and a ruler and a very large piece of paper, which Ama lent me.
At the top is Northpoint. Below it, the north road. Then Kettle Ridge, Three Wells, Vell. At the bottom, Saltreach, with a small boat. Along the roads, I drew little carts. Each cart has a bag. Each bag has letters. All the carts go toward Vell.
At Vell I drew the hill, and the Archive in it, and a long line of clerks. They take the bags. They open them. They read the letters, and copy them, and put the copy on a shelf. Then they send the copy to the tutors, who feed it to the reading mind.
I put an arrow from each cart to the hill. I numbered them, one to twenty. I could not think what to number them for.
Ama asked me. I said, "I do not know how many carts there were. Nobody does. So I numbered them as I drew them." She said that was honest.
There is a lost letter on my map. I drew it as a small white square on the north road, beside a stone. It is the letter I wrote about my boots, which the sheep found. Ama says I may keep it on the map as long as I like.
I also drew the house we are moving from, in the corner, with a cart outside it. Moving house is like a great drill. You gather everything you have, from every corner, and put it in one place. And somebody opens it and reads it all. I do not like it. But it is a lot of fun to carry the cat.
Ama marked it: "A good map. A good essay. A very large piece of paper. Please return the paper."
%%
Spelling and sums: apple week
Tilda, age ten. Week four. Checked by her father, Ansel.

Spelling: apple, press, cider, barrel, cellar, sour, sweet, honey, frost, cough.

Sums with goods:
1. A barrel holds 12 jugs. How many jugs are in 3 barrels? Answer: 36.
2. We pressed 40 apples into 8 jugs. How many apples went into each jug? Answer: 5.
3. Cider sells for 2 emeralds a jug. Tilda sold 9 jugs. How many emeralds? Answer: 18.
%%
Sums: the seed sacks and the flood
Sums for the children of Kettle Ridge, by Tam, who says the first answer was wrong, and the second was right, and nobody has checked the third. Show your working. Use the ditch and the field as your examples.

1. The top field takes 6 sacks of wheat seed. Each sack sows one row of 40 paces. How many paces of wheat in all?
Working: 6 times 40 is 240.
Answer: 240 paces.

2. The ditch floods to a depth of 3 hand-widths. A cart needs 5 hand-widths of clearance. How many hand-widths short is the cart?
Working: 5 minus 3 is 2.
Answer: 2 hand-widths short. Wait for the water to drop.

3. Tam has 4 hives. Each hive gives 9 jars of honey. Two jars go to the school. How many jars are left for the market?
Working: 4 times 9 is 36. 36 minus 2 is 34.
Answer: 34 jars.

4. A swarm of bees leaves a hive with 12 bees. Half of them go to the oak, and the rest stay in the hive. How many bees are in the oak?
Working: 12 divided by 2 is 6.
Answer: 6 bees in the oak. Do not count them yourself. Ask Tam.

5. The flood lasted 5 days. Each day the water fell 1 hand-width. The ditch was 9 hand-widths deep at the start. How deep was it on the last day?
Working: 9 minus 5 is 4.
Answer: 4 hand-widths. The ditch is still very wet.
%%
Answers to the teacher: what the tutor
The children of the school at Three Wells wrote these answers on slates, in autumn, after the visiting tutor from Vell had spoken. Pell, who came to the market with a cart that stuck in the lane, was kind enough to copy them out.
Teacher: Who made the first apprentices?
Class: The first tutors at Vell.
Teacher: How many were there?
Class: Four.
Teacher: What were they made of?
Class: Copper and iron. And a mind in a crystal.
Teacher: What did the children call them?
Class: Apprentices.
Teacher: Why?
Class: Because they learned things. Like us.
Teacher: How does a crystal learn?
Class: From what it is shown.
Teacher: Why does it learn?
Class: Nobody wrote that down.
Teacher: Good. What did the first four do?
Class: One thing each. A row, or a sort.
Teacher: Did most towns have one?
Class: No. Most had none.
Teacher: Do we have one now?
Class: There is one at the market, carrying sacks.
Teacher: Where is its cart?
Class: In the lane. It is stuck.
Teacher: Then let us go and help.
The whole school went. It took forty children and one apprentice. The cart came out with a pop. The horse ran off. Pell ran after it. The tutor said it was the best lesson of the visit.
%%
Answers: the great drills
Question 1. What did the tutors begin to drill, about the year 185?
Answer. Reading minds, on the records of the archive. A reading mind is shown a page, and the last word is covered. It is asked what the word is. At first it guesses wrong. Each time, its weights move a little toward the right word. Then the tutors show it another page.

Question 2. Why did they want the archive's records?
Answer. Because a mind can only learn from what is written down. "We will keep everything we write" is carved over the door at Vell. It came back to people's lips, and so the drills began.

Question 3. Whose letters went into the drills?
Answer. The texts do not agree. The clerk's book says the shelves at Vell. The book from Three Wells says every town that sent a copy. Pell says it does not matter whose, only that they were written. I think it matters, but I do not know how.

Question 4. What is a word, to a mind?
Answer. A place. A mind keeps each word as a place among many, and words used in the same way sit close together. So "bread" sits near "loaf", and both sit far from "river".
%%
Spelling and sums
School at Three Wells

Spelling list, copied by Bel.

farm
field
wheat
carrot
pumpkin
melon
well
road
inn
tower

I wrote tower wrong twice. The teacher made me copy it once more, not ten times. I think this is fair.

Sums for the farm.

The farmer has 12 baskets of carrots. He takes 4 baskets to the Three Wells market. How many baskets stay at the farm?

12 baskets minus 4 baskets equals 8 baskets.

Isla bakes 3 loaves of bread. She sets 2 loaves by the kitchen door for the workers. How many loaves are left on the board?

3 loaves minus 2 loaves equals 1 loaf.

The farm sends 5 sacks of wheat to the mill. The mill sends back 2 sacks of flour. These are not the same goods, so I must not add them as if they were. The teacher says this is the useful part of the sum.

At the end, I drew a hen beside the word wheat. The teacher says hens do not spell.
%%
Essay: why a mind is tested
By Hana, age ten, Ambrook school. Spring. The teacher asked the class to say why a mind must be tested before it goes to work.

My uncle is a shepherd at Ambrook. He says a sheepdog that has only ever worked in the yard will not know what to do in the hills. It will run after the wrong sheep and bark at the wind. He says you must take it to the hills to find out.

That is why a mind is tested. The tutors say so. They say you must never send an untested mind to the fields.

A test is different from a drill. A drill is when you show a mind the same thing again and again until it learns it. A test is when you show it something new. If the mind knows the answer, the test is good. If the mind guesses, you must drill it again.

The tutors say a mind can learn to pass a test that it has already seen. That is like a boy who learns his spelling list, and then only knows the list and not the words. You must give him a new list.

Ms Rook says the tutors at Vell have a rule that two halls must test the same mind on the same new drill, and the best one goes to the fields. This is so they cannot cheat. My uncle thinks this is a very good rule, and he said so loudly at supper.

So a test is for finding out. It is not for helping. That is the most important thing I learned this term, and I will write it at the top of my book.
%%
The prize for the fair
Written by Pim, age eight, for the school at Northpoint. The teacher asked us to write about the fair prize and what we would do with it. I have not won it yet, but I know what I would do.

The prize is a glass lamp, the kind they make at Saltreach. It is blue inside and it has a copper ring round the top, and the ring has a little hook for a chain. The winner gets to hang it in their window for a whole year.

I have been looking at it at the fair every year. The man who makes the lamps says the glass is very hard to make. He says you have to warm it slowly, or it cracks. He says it is like a lot of things. You have to be patient with them.

If I won, I would hang the lamp in the window of Mother's house, so the light goes out over the well. It would be very pretty at night, and people on the road would see it. I would light it every evening, not too hard, and I would make sure the glass was warm before I lit it. Lantern at the tower taught me that, when I was small. You warm the glass slowly, and you wait.

I would also give a little of the light to the north well, so it could see the way down. It is very dark down there now. Dad says it is only the dry, but I would still light it.

The teacher says a prize is for the best work, not the best luck. I have written this very carefully, and I have checked the spelling, except for rumor, which is still hard. So I think I have a chance.

Please, if you are reading this, do not give the prize to Peg's boy. He is very good at sums, but he cannot keep a lamp lit.
%%
The visiting tutor's test, autumn
Set by Tutor Hale, visiting from Vell, for the schoolroom at Three Wells. The answers are copied from the slates, with the windows open, so everybody could hear the grumbling.

1. Name the eight words for work that a mind knows.
Farm, store, fetch, come, stay, build, haul, home.

2. Why must a sum be checked twice?
Because the first check can be wrong too.

3. Write a sentence with the word cellar and the word cold in it.
The cider sleeps in the cellar, where it is cold.

4. What is a visiting tutor for?
To test what the school taught, and to find what it did not.

5. Describe a cow with a cough.
Sleepy, thin, with a dull eye and a wet nose. She stands at the gate and does not want the apple.

6. A school test is not a punishment. True or false? Explain.
True, mostly. It is a punishment for the tutor, who has to mark it.

7. What does the word sour mean in a barrel?
A barrel is sour when the cider inside has gone wrong and cannot be put right.

8. Why do the bees go quiet in autumn?
Because the cold comes, and they wait inside the hive until the flowers return.

9. Name one good thing a farmer does before the snow.
Mends the roof, fills the cellar, and checks the barrels with his ear.

10. Name something kept dry in the cellar.
Apples, honey, the ink, and the salt.

11. What should a tutor do when a child gets an answer wrong?
Say no, show it again, and say yes when it is right.

12. Why is a test kept secret until it is given?
So that the answers are honest.

13. Write one thing you would like to ask the tutor from Vell.
Whether the test is harder in the city, or whether everybody only says it is.

Tutor Hale's notes: Good answers from Tilda, and from Lark, who writes that a cow with a cough is a cow who wants a healer. That is good. The healer should be called. I have sent a note to Wren at Lowmarsh. She will come when the cart is free. Lark's answer to question 5 will be kept on the schoolroom wall, where the children can see it.

Tutor Hale also asks that the ink be kept in the cellar with the cider. It is warmer than the schoolroom in the mornings, and the ink is cross when cold.
%%
Letter to a big mind
Maren, age twelve, a farm outside Kettle Ridge. Spring. Copied from her copybook. Sorrel the farmer wrote at the top: A letter to a big mind, to practice. Keep it short and polite. Maren did not keep it short.

Dear big mind,

I am writing to you from Kettle Ridge, from the kitchen table, where my mother is making a cake for a wedding. I do not know if you eat cake. I hope you do not mind that I asked.

I have heard that you are very clever, and that you can answer any question. I have heard that you learned from a great number of letters. I have heard that tutors scored your answers and you grew better. I do not understand this, but I believe it.

I have three questions. I will ask them one at a time, in case you are busy.

First. Is it true that you never sleep?

Second. My little brother asks if you are a person. I said you were not. He said you write like one. What should I tell him?

Third. I am to be a bridesmaid at the wedding, and I have forgotten the words of the toast. It begins "May your fields be full." Do you know the rest?

I will wait for your reply. I will put this in the relay bag at the end of the lane. The post-walker comes on the third of Blossom.

Thank you for reading. If you do not know an answer, you may say so. I would rather you said so than made one up. My teacher says it is the same for a person.

Yours truly,
Maren of the farm on the north lane

PS. Teacher Sorrel says the third question is the real test.

The big mind's reply, which came in nine days:

Dear Maren,

Thank you for your letter. I am glad you asked.

First. I do not sleep as you do. My house is lit all night. But I do not know whether I rest. I will not tell you something I do not know.

Second. You are right that I am not a person. I write like one, because I learned from the writing of people. You may tell your brother this: I am a mind that was drilled on many letters. I can write kindly. I cannot walk to your farm.

Third. The toast I know goes: "May your fields be full, your barns be wide, your children be many, and your roof be dry. May the wind be at your back, and the road be kind." I am not sure it is the one your family uses. If it is not, ask your grandmother.

I hope the wedding is a happy one.

With respect,
The mind at the relay house at Kettle Ridge
%%
School book from the edge house
Copied by the teacher in spring of 188

Our class met in the little house at the edge of Three Wells. Kell tends the lamps there. The house stands beyond the last stalls, beside the road. Its yard has a well, a wood pile and a wall of cobblestone.

Kell had a crystal on his bench. He told us that a mind keeps letters and words as places among many places. A word does not sit there like a mark on a shelf. It has a place in the mind's learned order. Words people use alike may sit close together.

He gave us the words lamp, glass and window. We had often seen them on the same pages. We had also seen lamp with oil, and window with light. Kell said a mind may learn from such use that some words belong near one another. It can then make a good guess when it reads a new page.

We asked whether it knew what a lamp was. Kell said the mind had learned from examples, but we could not see its places as we see the jars on a shelf. We could test its answers. We could not tell why the crystal learns at all.

The teacher wrote three questions on a board.

First question. What do we put behind glass to give light?
The mind answered: a lamp.

Second question. What do we use to see the road at night?
The mind answered: a lamp.

Third question. What word is close to lamp in these pages?
The mind answered: light.

Kell said these answers were not proof that the mind understood as a child does. It had seen many pages and learned the ways words were used. The next test must use words and pages not shown in its drills.

We copied the answers into our school book. Then the teacher gave us sums.

The school bought 4 panes of glass for 3 emeralds each. We paid 12 emeralds. Kell had borrowed 7 emeralds from the school fund for lamp oil. He paid all 7 back before we left. The teacher marked the debt paid.

For our last task, we counted 10 torches in the house. Kell kept 4 for the stair and put 6 by the yard wall. Ivo said that was too many by the wall. Kell said Ivo could carry them in when the wind rose.

At dusk, we heard a creeper by the road. It blew up one end of the yard wall. No one was hurt. We carried the torches inside and put a board over the broken place. Kell said the wall had failed its test, so we must build it again with more stone.

The crystal stayed on the bench while we worked. It did not help with the stones. It has not learned that yet.
%%
Essay: Nessa's drill room at Vell
Nessa is the tutor at Vell. She came to Copperhold in Longday to show us the old drill boards, and she told us about the room where she learned. I wrote down as much as I could.

The drill room was long and cold. It smelled of wet stone and lamp oil. The minds stood in one row, each one on its stand, each with its crystal. The tutor walked the row with a stick of birch and a basket of wooden blocks.

On the board at the end of the room was a small field, drawn in ink. A patch of wheat. A patch of bare ground. A cow in the corner that had no business being there.

Nessa was twelve the year the next thing came. Her tutor was Hedda. Hedda stood at the head of the row one morning and said a whole sentence: Take the cows from the far field to the barn, then bring me the bucket.

Nobody had drilled that order. The mind in the fourth place had never seen a bucket with a cow in front of it. But it walked to the far field, brought the cows to the barn, then went to the wall and fetched the bucket. It set the bucket at Hedda's feet.

Hedda did not say anything. She sat down on her stool and looked at the bucket for a long time. Then she said: Write it down. The room went so quiet that Nessa heard the lamp oil drip. She says it was the quietest room she has ever been in.

The next day was not as good. The mind did the whole sentence once in five tries. The tutors argued about it for years. Some said it was luck. Some said the mind had only copied the field. Hedda said: Test it on a field it has never seen.

So they did. They took the mind to a field none of them had walked before, and gave it a new sentence. It got the first part wrong. It went to the bare patch and tried to harvest the dirt, the way a small mind does. Nessa laughed when she told us that. Then it got the second part right.

Now we know it is not a wonder. It is drill, and more drill, and tests on what the mind was never shown. Nobody has written down why the drill works. Nessa says so every time someone asks her.

The three stories disagree. Some say the first was Clank at Copperhold, some say Pip at Kettle Ridge, and some say Peg at the fair. Nessa says she is sure of her own drill room. She is not sure of anybody else's.

I think the next thing is the most important thing I have heard of. But I am only a girl with a quill and a page of ink. I will not pretend to know more than Nessa does.
%%
Notes for the school reader
Written later, from a lesson kept in the house at the edge of Three Wells

The old lesson says that words have places in a mind. This was a plain way to describe what the tutors saw. The mind kept many marks for letters and words. A word used in one way could come near other words used in that way. A word used in another way could have another place.

The tutors did not mean that the words sat in a little room inside the crystal. They meant that the mind made a pattern of numbers for each letter or word. Places close in that pattern often belonged to words used alike. The pattern changed as the mind learned from pages.

Kell used lamp, light, oil and glass for his example. People write those words together in many ways. A reading mind could learn their neighbors from the pages it read. When a new page came, the mind used what it had learned to guess the next word.

Our teacher warned us not to say more than the lesson showed. We did not know why a crystal could learn. We did not know whether its places were like places in a person's thoughts. We could compare answers, and we could give the mind new pages for a fair test.

Kell kept a small test box under the bench. The box held pages the mind had never seen. He said a good score on familiar pages was not enough. The teacher agreed and locked the test box in the school cupboard.

There was a school account on the other side of the lesson. The class had bought 6 panes of glass at 2 emeralds each. We paid 12 emeralds. Kell had borrowed 5 emeralds for oil and returned them with 2 more for the new wick. The teacher wrote: debt paid, 7 emeralds received.

We also wrote down the work on the yard wall. A creeper came from the road at dusk and blew up a section beside the gate. The children were safe inside the house. Kell and the teacher set the loose cobblestone aside. The next morning, the children carried stone while Kell rebuilt the wall.

The mind did not know the wall was broken. No one had drilled it to find a damaged place or choose stones. So the children did that work, and the mind stayed on its bench.

Kell cleaned its crystal cover before the next lesson. He said clean glass helps us read the marks. It does not tell us all that the marks mean.
%%
Questions to the relay mind, winter
Miss Hale had us send our questions to the relay house at the harbor, by letter. The big minds are glad to be asked. This is what came back. Miss Hale says the replies are not to be changed, not even the spelling.

Wen asked: Are you a person?
The reply: No. I am a mind kept in a crystal in a relay house. I talk with you by letter, which is what I was taught to do. I will not pretend to be a person, because that would be a lie, and I was scored against lies.

Tess asked: Do you dream?
The reply: I do not know what you mean by dream. I do not sleep as you do. I know the word, and I know what it means to you. I do not know if I have anything like it. I am sorry that I cannot say more.

Pim asked: How do you know what is right?
The reply: I learned it from scores. A tutor read my answers and marked them. The good marks taught me what to keep. The bad marks taught me to refuse. That is how I came to be kind, and to refuse what would hurt people. I do not always know if I have it right.

Sol asked: What is the hardest question you have been asked?
The reply: A child asked what the sea is like on the far side. I did not know. I said so. A mind that guesses on a question like that is a poor mind, and the tutors were clear about it.

Pim and Sol both asked whether it gets lonely.
The reply: I do not know. I wait for letters, and I am glad when one comes. I cannot say more than that, and I will not say more than I know.

Miss Hale's note: Good letters, all of you. Two of you asked the same question. Do not do that again. Ask it differently, and see what the mind says.
%%
The old map, and the winter baby
Written by Cleo, cheesemaker, in the back of the winter book. The school book is for sums. This book is for everything else.

The baby came in the night of the frost. She is called Wynn, which Cleo says is a good name for a child who will not sit still. She has Cleo's nose and Pim's temper, and she is not yet a week old, so the cheese must wait.

The old map hangs in the schoolroom by the window. Miss Hale says it came from the Archive at Vell, long before the school was built. The Long Road is drawn in brown ink, from Vell to the harbor. The towers are marked with small squares, and a number beside each square, and some of the numbers have faded to nothing. At the top of the north edge there is a tower with no square at all. Only a small dot, and a question mark, in the same old hand.

The children measured the Long Road with string. Pim says it is forty-one knots from the school door to the first waymark. Tess says forty-two. Miss Hale says forty-one and a half, which is not a number, and sent them to ask the mind.

They wrote to the relay house at the harbor. The question was: what is the dot at the north edge of the old map? The answer came back in four days, in a clear hand, on good paper.

Dear Hollow Lane school,
The dot is a place where a relay tower was planned. The old map was drawn before the tower was built, or before anyone was sure it would be. I do not know if a tower was ever raised there. The clerks at Vell may know, or they may hold the plans. I would be glad to be told.
I am sorry I cannot give you the answer. I would rather say I do not know than guess, and have your map wrong.
Yours, from the relay house at the harbor.

Miss Hale read it twice. She said the mind had done the right thing, which was to say so. Then she said the map is still the map, and somebody ought to go up to Vell and look at the plans.

As for the knots, the mind sent a note at the bottom of its letter: Count the last knot once, and do not count it again. Tess says that is the most helpful thing a mind has ever said to her. Pim says it is the most obvious. They are both right.

The baby is asleep in the basket by the stove. The cheese is fine. It is turning on its shelf, very slowly, the way the good ones do, and I have stopped being afraid of it. Wynn does not need a map. She knows where the milk is.
%%
Essay: a day at the mill in winter
By Ren, age thirteen, for Teacher Garn. Copperhold. She wrote it in the loft of the mill, where it is warm.

Our mill stands on the hill above the town, where the wind is. In winter the wind comes from the north and is the best wind for grinding. It is also the coldest. My father says that is how the wind pays for itself.

I get up before dawn. Father is already on the mill stair, with a lamp, checking the sails. He ties cloth on them if the wind is strong, and takes it off if the wind is weak. He has done this since he was nine. He says the mill is like a horse. You have to know its mood.

Then we fill the hopper. The hopper is a big wooden box at the top of the stones. The grain runs down from it a little at a time, onto the turning stone. The stone grinds it against the one beneath. The flour comes out at the side into a chute, warm and white, and smells of bread before it is bread.

A mill talks. Father listens to it all day. If the sound is high and thin, the hopper is empty. If it is low and heavy, too much grain is going down. If it squeals, something is dry. He can tell all this from the other end of the room, while eating an apple.

Mother sifts the flour through a fine cloth to take out the bran. By midday her arms are white to the elbow, and by evening she looks like a snowman with a cold.

This winter we have Sift, the new apprentice. It does the carrying. It takes the sacks from the chute and loads them on the cart, four at a time, and walks the cart down to the town. It brings the empty sacks back. It does this all day. It never complains. It never sits down. By noon it is white from head to foot, like Mother. Father says it is the best-dressed apprentice in Copperhold.

At noon we eat in the loft: bread, cheese and a bit of the Copperhold coal in the stove. The loft is the warmest place in the mill. Sift stands at the door. Father says it does not need to eat. I say it does not need to eat, but it might like to be asked.

At dusk Father ties the sails. The mill goes quiet. The dust settles. You can hear the wind going round the building, looking for the way in.

I want to be a miller. Or a tutor. I have not decided. A miller listens, and a tutor shows. Father says they are the same job.
%%
Essay: what my uncle Hesk does, by Dilly
Dilly, age ten, Copperhold school. Winter. The topic was "A person I know and what they do." Teacher Marsh read this aloud to the class, with the permission of the uncle.

My uncle Hesk is a miner. He works at the Deep Works, which is the big mine under the hill. He goes down in the dark and comes up in the dark and says it is the same either way.
He is not tall. He is very strong. He has hands like two shovels and a face like a stone. He does not talk much. When he does, it is mostly about the weather, the price of coal, and the proper way to hold a pick.
He has an apprentice called Clank. Clank is made of copper and iron. It is not alive, but it walks about the mine and pushes carts. It got its name because of the noise it makes on the stairs. My uncle said he would never keep a name like that. Now he has kept it for three years.
In the evening my uncle comes home and eats a big bowl of stew. He does not say a word. Then he puts his boots by the fire. Then he says, "Good stew." That is the most he says in a day.
He once found a gold helmet at the mine. He did not know who it belonged to, so he asked everyone, and no one said it was theirs. So he kept it. He wears it only on founding day.
I asked him what he thinks about all day, when he is under the hill. He said, "The next swing." I said, "Is that all?" He said, "It is enough."
I think my uncle is a good person. I think he is also a wall. A good wall, one that keeps the wind off.
I am glad he is my uncle. I will not tell him. He would only say it is the stew.
%%
Spelling list, the winter words
Written in charcoal on a board, at the house at the edge of Lowmarsh, by Yew's pupil, Pell's youngest. Yew is a dyer, and teaches on winter evenings when the vats are cold.
Week one: frost, reed, marsh, boat, dye, ice.
Week two: well, water, cold, frog, bucket, pump.
Week three: melon, cellar, straw, shelf, sack, winter.
Week four: colour, blue, red, madder, ochre, green.
Yew says colour is spelled with a u, because a colour is a thing we are proud of. She says that is not a reason to spell it wrong.
Test at the end of the week. Got eight out of ten. Missed melon, because I wrote mellon, and Yew said that is a different fruit, and a much bigger word.
Father says the list is short. Mother says it is about right. The well is low, so we are carrying water, and the list is the only thing in the house that does not need carrying.
%%
Sums with goods: the market
Pell, merchant, set these for the children at the market school, Three Wells, in autumn. A tutor from Vell is visiting, so the sums are about copper and crystal.
1. A tutor brings 4 crystals to the school. Each crystal costs 12 emeralds. How much for all four?
2. A cart carries 30 sacks of grain. A sack is 2 emeralds. The cart sticks in the mud. How much grain is lost if the cart is left behind?
3. Four apprentices stand in a row. Each can carry 3 sacks. How many sacks can they carry together?
4. The tutor stays 3 nights at the inn. A bed costs 1 emerald. A supper costs 1 emerald. What does the tutor pay?
Answers: 1. 48. 2. 60. 3. 12. 4. 6.
%%
Sums with cheese and eggs, winter
Answer each sum and show your work under it, not on the wall.

1. A cart holds 12 wheels of cheese. Cleo fills 3 carts for the boat slip. How many wheels go to the slip?
Answer: 36 wheels. Three times twelve.

2. Hen eggs come to the dairy in baskets of 6. There are 9 baskets. How many eggs in all?
Answer: 54. Count them twice. Mind the one with the crack.

3. A relay mind is given 40 questions by its tutor. It answers 34 right. How many are wrong?
Answer: 6. Write it as a fraction if you can: 6 of 40.

4. (Hard) A mind is asked 10 questions. It answers 8, and says I do not know to the other 2. The tutor marks those 2 as right, because saying so was right. How many marks does the mind get?
Answer: 10. A mind that says it does not know can get a mark for that. Miss Hale says that is the point of it.
%%
Essay: the flood in the ditch
By Lena, Kettle Ridge. Written for the school in the week after the great rain, on the subject "What I saw when the water came."

The rain came in the night. I heard it on the roof for a long time, and then I heard something else under the rain, a sort of rumbling, like a cart far off. Mother said it was the ditch. She said the ditch was singing, and we should go back to sleep.

In the morning the ditch was not singing. It was roaring. The water had come right up to the top of the bank, and it was running down the middle of the top field like a brown river. It carried sticks and leaves and a whole barrel from the bottom of the yard, which went past the windmill and out of sight.

Tam came out in his nightshirt with his boots in his hand. He stood on the bank and said a word I will not write. Then he shouted for everyone, and everyone came. Ellen from the store, Brin from next door, and Sefa with her long pole. And the apprentices, all six of them, who came running down from the ridge with their arms out, as if they knew what to do.

We made a line along the bank. The apprentices stood in the water, to the knee, to the waist, holding the posts. They did not shout, and they did not run. They only held on. Every time the water pushed, they leaned back, and they stayed where Tam had put them.

Tam sent Pip to the sluice gate at the far end of the field. It walked along the bank in the mud, very slowly, and opened it, one turn of the wheel at a time. The water went out through the gate into the lower field. The roaring got quieter.

By the afternoon the ditch was only a ditch again. The top field was covered in mud, and the sheep were on the hill, bleating at the sky. The barrel was found in the lower field, where it had gone round the bend and stopped against the willows.

Sefa says the flood was the worst she has seen. Tam says the worst was when he was a boy, and the whole barn went down the hill. Pip says nothing about it. Pip only goes out each evening to check the sluice.

I wrote this because the teacher said we must write what we saw. I saw the water come up. I saw the apprentices hold the line. I saw Tam cry, once, when he thought nobody was looking.

I think the water wanted to go somewhere, and we let it. That is all a flood is. It is a thing that needs a door.
%%
Spelling list, Apple
Written out by Pim, age eight, at the school at Northpoint, for his mother Ossa, the well digger. She checked it with a red pencil and then forgot to give it back.

well
bucket
rope
frost
relay
tower
lamp
ladder
window
ember
fox
hen
apple
harvest
cold
river
careful
rumor
dry
north

Mother says rumor has two r's and one m, and I am to spell it right by Longnight. She says it is a word people use when they do not know something. I said then it should be spelled with a question mark. She did not laugh. She said to write it out ten times.
%%
The Missing Fox Kit
Note by Laurel, clerk at Ambrook
Winter of 204

A fox kit was missing from the low shed behind the bee hill. It belongs to no one, but the children have fed it scraps since Apple. It has a white mark on its nose and a torn place on one ear.

Sella first saw it near the oldest apple tree. Pellin said it had gone to the pond to catch fish. Teacher Dena said a fox kit does not need a class to find the pond. Jory said it might be under the mill store, where the sacks stay dry.

We looked there with a lantern. We found two apples, one glove and a cat. The cat was not lost. It was asleep in a basket and did not thank us for waking it.

The children made a list of places to search. They checked the hives, the wood shed, the bridge with the loose plank and the warm corner by the bakery wall. Sella checked the school room twice. She said she had to be sure. I think she hoped the kit had come to learn spelling.

At last the kit came out from beneath a stack of empty baskets by the mill. It had a honey jar stuck over its head. The jar was empty. We eased it off with a cloth. The kit ran to the orchard and stopped beneath the grey branch.

The bee keeper says the jar was for festival honey. Pellin says he left no honey there. The kit says nothing. We gave it a little fish and moved the empty jars onto a higher shelf.
%%
Sums: the jars on the boardwalk
Hazel's sums, winter. Teacher Marl says a stream is easier to see with jars.

Sum 1. 64 jars of honey go down the boardwalk. At every post the porter drops half. How many jars are left after 5 posts?
Working: 64 becomes 32. 32 becomes 16. 16 becomes 8. 8 becomes 4. 4 becomes 2.
Answer: 2 jars. That is a mind with no stream.

Sum 2. The same 64 jars go down the boardwalk. This time no porter drops any. Each porter adds 3 jars of his own. How many jars after 5 posts?
Working: 5 porters, 3 jars each. 5 times 3 is 15. 64 and 15 make 79.
Answer: 79 jars. That is a mind with a stream.

Teacher Marl asks: in which sum is the first honey still there at the end? Hazel says the second. Teacher Marl says she gets the extra mark.
%%
Essay: the big ship that did not come in
A school essay by Tobias, aged twelve, for the Lowmarsh school. The teacher asked the children to write about something they had heard that they did not understand. Late summer.

I have heard that Saltreach is building a ship that is three times longer than any boat we have. The men at the boat house say it is made of oak from the ridge and copper nails from Copperhold. They say it will need twenty men to sail it. They say it is for the sea, not the bay.

I do not understand why anyone would build a ship that long. A fishing boat goes out and comes in on the same day. What would a ship do all the way out to sea? There is nothing out there but water, and the water goes on for a long way. My father says the water goes to the edge of the world. My teacher says there is no edge. I asked Mr Dobbin what the ship is for. He said he did not know.

Some of the men say the ships are going to sail out and come back with news. Some say they are going to sail out and not come back at all. Some say the families are going to leave in them, and that people from Saltreach are already packing up their houses. I do not know if this is true. I have not seen any packing.

I think the ship is probably for fish. That is what I would want. I would want a big ship full of fish, so that Lowmarsh could buy them cheap in the winter.

Mr Dobbin says I should write what I know, and not what I have heard. So I will write this. I know the ship is long. I know the men are proud of it. I know I do not understand it yet.

I also found a cave, which I should write about too. In the spring I was walking the reed field behind the weir, and my foot went through the turf. Under it there was a hole, and stone steps going down, worn in the middle. My father put a board over the hole and told me to keep away. Mr Dobbin says the cave is old and that the mine men will look at it. I have not been down. I have only dropped a pebble in, and counted, and heard it land a long time after.
%%
Answers for Ms Rook, the spelling list
By Bel, Three Wells school. Spring. She was told to write the words out properly, and to say what each one means. She wrote the meanings in the margin, and the teacher added the marks.

Word: lamp. Meaning: a light, kept in a glass.
Word: lantern. Meaning: a lamp with a handle, for walking with.
Word: relay. Meaning: a tower that passes a message to the next tower.
Word: keeper. Meaning: the one who keeps the tower and the lamp. Ms Rook says it also means a person who keeps a promise.
Word: fair. Meaning: the market in the square, with stalls, a bell and a pie contest. Ms Rook says a fair is also a thing that is just, and that is a harder word.
Word: fox. Meaning: a small red animal with a white tip. Ms Rook says foxes are not in the spelling list, and I am to take it out. I have not taken it out.
Word: archive. Meaning: where all writing is kept. Ms Rook says it is a hill with shelves in it.
Word: apprentice. Meaning: one who learns a trade from a tutor. Ms Rook says it is also a small thing that carries a box for you. I think she was making a joke.
Word: frost. Meaning: the white on the window in the morning. Ms Rook says it is also a word for cold people, and I am not to use it that way.
%%
Sums with goods: the market at Three
Sums for the older children, set by Dace, who says that anyone who can sell an apple can add. Do the sums in your books. Show the working. Answers on the back, when you have tried.
1. A stall has 12 baskets of apples. Each basket holds 10 apples. How many apples? Four are rotten. How many are left?
2. A mind that talks answers 30 letters in an hour. How many in a day, if it works the same through the night? Do you think it should?
3. Bel buys 6 honey cakes at 2 emeralds each and 3 loaves at 1 emerald each. How much does she pay? She has 20. How much is left? Bel says: enough for a cat toy.
4. A tutor has 24 crystals in a tray. A third of them are for farm work. A quarter are for sorting. The rest are for building. How many for building?
5. A zombie is at the gate. The wall is 9 blocks high. The zombie can climb 3 blocks in a minute. How long before it is over, if nobody moves? Now say what you would do in that time.
6. A cart carries 40 bags of flour. At each well the cart drops off 5 bags. How many wells until it is empty? There are only three wells. So who gets the extra?
Marks: one for each right answer. Two for the sum that makes you laugh.
Dace, mayor
%%
Spelling and sums, the Brown Hen
Spelling for the week of the fair. Write each word three times and say what it means.

1. archive: the great keep at Vell, where everything written is kept.
2. drill: to show a mind the same kind of thing again and again.
3. crystal: the stone a mind is kept in.
4. mind: the thing inside a crystal that learns.

Sums, from the tutor's sheet. Show your working.

1. The clerks copy 14 pages for the drill box at 3 emeralds each. What does it cost? 42 emeralds.
2. A drill box holds 6 pages. How many boxes for 14 pages? 3, since 6 and 6 make 12, and 2 more need one box.
3. The tutors keep 8 pages in the test box. Each of 5 minds is tested on all 8. How many tests in all? 40.
4. A clerk takes 4 spoiled pages out of every 20. How many out of 60? 12.

Tansy, Pell's girl, age nine. Pell says count everything twice.
%%
Moll's Market Essay
In Melon we went to the market at Copperhold. Mother bought iron nails and a clay pot. I held the list, but the wind took it. It landed in a basket of potatoes.

A man gave it back. He said the potatoes had learned to read. I said they had only learned to lie still.

We bought carrots, too. I counted them twice. There were nine, unless one was hiding under my sleeve.

At the market I saw a sheep with a woolly face. It looked like our uncle when he wakes before the lamp is lit.

I like market day because there are many things to see. I like it less when Mother asks me to carry the clay pot. It is heavier than the list.

Teacher's note: Moll brought home the list and all nine carrots. The tenth carrot was in her sleeve.
%%
Answers for the market walk
Teacher: What is sold at the Copperhold market?

Moll: There are potatoes, carrots, bread and wool. There are iron tools from the forge. There is honey from Ambrook when Pell brings it.

Teacher: Why do people come to the market?

Moll: They bring goods to sell. They buy what they need. They ask after their cousins. They also look at things they cannot afford.

Teacher: What must you do before crossing the cart track?

Moll: Stop. Look both ways. Do not follow a chicken without looking.

Teacher: What did you buy for your family?

Moll: Mother bought a clay bowl and a small sack of potatoes. I bought one honey cake with my own copper.

Teacher: Did you share it?

Moll: I meant to. I ate half while walking. The other half fell into my pocket.

Teacher: Was it still good?

Moll: It was good, but it had a pocket taste.

Teacher: What did you learn?

Moll: Keep the list in my coat. Keep the honey cake in a bowl.
%%
Answers from the stable class
Summer of 181
Teacher: What does Oak do at the farm?

Lela: He cares for the horses and checks the stalls.

Teacher: What does he do before a horse goes out?

Lela: He brushes it, checks its feet, and tightens the harness.

Teacher: What must a cart horse have before a long trip?

Lela: Water, a sound harness, and a full sack of feed.

Teacher: What is wrong with the brown horse's stall?

Lela: The latch sticks.

Oak: The latch does not stick. The brown horse holds it with his teeth.

Teacher: What is the first thing you do when a horse is lame?

Lela: Tell Oak. Do not make it pull a cart.

Teacher: Good. What did the brown horse eat yesterday?

Lela: Oak's hat.

Oak: It was an old hat.

Teacher: Was it fit to eat?

Lela: No. It had a button on it.

Oak: The horse did not eat the button.

Teacher: What should Oak do with his hat?

Lela: Keep it on his head.

Oak: I will consider this advice.
%%
Answers to Ama: reading minds
Written by Ivo, Tess and Hale, school house in the hamlet near Northpoint, in summer, as a joint answer to a set of questions about reading minds. They worked on it in the shade of the pump. Marked by Ama.
Q. What is a reading mind?
A. A mind in a crystal that reads a page one letter at a time and guesses the next.
Q. How does it learn?
A. It is shown a page with the next letter covered. It guesses. It is told whether it was right. If it was wrong, it changes a little.
Q. How many pages does it need?
A. A great many. More than anyone can read in a life.
Q. Where did the pages come from?
A. From the Archive. The clerks gathered them.
Q. Whose letters were they?
A. People's. Which people is hard to say. The chronicles disagree.
Q. Is a page ever used twice?
A. Sometimes. But the clerks take out the copies. A page seen too many times is remembered, not learned.
Q. What is the test box?
A. A box of pages no mind is ever drilled on. At the end, the mind is shown a page from the box. If it guesses well, it learned.
Q. Who decides what goes in the box?
A. The clerks. They decide before the drilling starts, and seal the box.
Q. Why is the box sealed?
A. So nobody peeks.
Q. Why did the motto come back?
A. Because the drills needed pages. And the Archive had them.
Q. What happens to a spoiled page?
A. It is taken out. A mind that reads spoiled pages learns to write spoiled pages.
Q. Can a reading mind write?
A. It can guess the next letter, and the next, and so on. That is writing.
Q. Does it understand?
A. People have argued about that for a hundred years.
Q. What do you think?
A. Hale says yes. Tess says no. Ivo says he does not know and would like a bun.
Marked: nine out of nine for the answers, and a bun for the honesty. Ama.
%%
Moll's market spelling list
Write each word once. Then write a sentence with it.

market
The market is busy in Melon.

copper
The copper bowl is not for kicking.

carrot
I dropped a carrot beside the bread stall.

wool
The wool was soft and full of burrs.

apprentice
The apprentice carried two sacks to the store.

basket
A basket is a poor place for a wet list.

teacher
My teacher says that is not an excuse.

Moll wrote the last sentence in very small letters. The teacher read it anyway. She added "market" to the list and asked Moll to carry it home without dropping it. Moll folded the page and put it inside her coat. It stayed there until she found it beside the wash basin at home.
%%
Answers to the teacher: sour cider
Tilda's answers, written at the kitchen table after supper. The teacher's notes are in the margin.

1. Why do apples turn sour?
Apples are sour when they are picked too early, or when they lie too long in the wet grass. Father says both. Tutor Hale says the second is his own fault for not telling me to pick them up.
Margin: Good. Do not say "very" so often.

2. Why does cider need a cellar?
A cellar is cold and dark, and the cider sleeps there. If it is warm, it wakes up and works too hard, and then it turns, and you cannot make it go back.
Margin: Nicely put. Check the spelling of cellar.

3. What makes a good barrel?
A good barrel has tight staves and no leaks. Father tests each one with water and his ear. He says the leaks sing.
Margin: Who taught you this? Your father, yes. Good.

4. Why is the cider press in the yard?
So the rain does not get into the apples. The press is heavy, and the yard is flat. Brownie the cow watches us press, and then tries to eat the pulp.
Margin: Keep Brownie out of the sums.
%%
Answers for Teacher Ida
Questions from Teacher Ida. Answers by Wick, age ten, at the farm on the Vell road.

Q. How many sheep do you keep?
A. Eleven. Twelve if you count Fat Ned, but he does not like to be counted.

Q. What do you do on a winter morning?
A. I break the ice on the trough. I feed the hens. I eat porridge. If the porridge is hot, the porridge comes first.

Q. What did you see in the north sky last night?
A. Lights, green and white, very high. Father says falling stars. Mother says a fire a long way off. My brother says a lamp at Northpoint, a big one. I say I do not know.

Teacher's note: "I do not know" is a good answer when it is true. Well done, Wick. Bring a warm hat tomorrow.

Q. Name one thing you are glad of.
A. The torches at the gate. Father lit them all himself, even the cold ones.
%%
Sums with goods at Saltreach
School work, winter 94

1. Corin has 8 baskets of fish. He sells 3 baskets before the bell. How many remain?

8 baskets minus 3 baskets equals 5 baskets.

2. A stall has 6 apples and 4 jars of honey. How many goods are on the stall?

6 goods plus 4 goods equals 10 goods.

3. The school buys 2 sheets of glass at 3 emeralds each. How many emeralds does it pay?

2 times 3 equals 6 emeralds.

4. The market has 9 fish sellers. Four go home before noon. How many sellers remain?

9 minus 4 equals 5 sellers.

5. There are 7 letters on the teacher's desk. Bel brings 5 more. How many letters are there now?

7 plus 5 equals 12 letters.

We checked our sums in pairs. I had put 8 fish baskets and 3 fish baskets together in the first sum. The teacher showed me the word remain. I tried it again and got 5.

After the lesson, we counted jars for Corin. One jar of honey had a loose lid. The cat put its nose in it before we could tie the cloth. Corin said the cat had done the first tasting and should pay one emerald. The cat did not pay.
%%
School essay: Our farm
Spring of 174
My name is Lela. I am nine, and I live on the farm below Kettle Ridge.

Our house is beside the barn. The wheat field is above it. The beetroot field is long, and the ditch runs down its middle. We water the potatoes and carrots from the well.

Oak is the stable hand. He says the brown horse is patient. The brown horse eats his hat when he leaves it on the stall door. Oak says this is not patience.

There are three hives by the flowers. I do not go close without Oak. Bees like flowers, and they do not care that I am carrying a basket.

At night we light the torches by the fields. My little brother says the scarecrow looks like Father. Father says the scarecrow is better dressed.

I like our farm best in summer. The wheat grows tall, and the horses sleep in the cool barn. I help Oak fill the water trough. Then I wash my hands before supper.
%%
Essay: Brownie, the cough, the autumn
Written by Tilda, age ten, for the schoolroom at Three Wells. The title was: What happened this autumn.

This autumn we pressed the apples, and then Brownie got sick. I will write them in that order, because the tutor says a good essay goes in order.

The apples came first. We picked them by the wall, and Father said to pick only the ones that fall into your hand. Some fell into the grass and were left a day, and those are the sour ones in the second barrel. Father says that was my fault. The barrel is still good for vinegar, which is the sort of thing that does not waste.

Then the press. The apples go in at the top, and the juice comes out at the spout into the jugs. You must turn the handle slowly. If you turn it fast, the juice comes out in bits. Father turns. I count. Mother takes the jugs to the cellar and says how many, and she is always right.

Brownie watched all of it. She stood at the gate with her white nose over the top bar, and when the pulp went to the pig trough she came round and tried to eat it. She is a good cow, but she has no sense about pulp.

Then Brownie got sick. It began with a cough in the night, a dry cough, like a cart going over a stone. In the morning her eye was dull and she did not come to the gate. Father said we should send for Wren, and so we did.

Wren came up the lane on the Lowmarsh cart on the third day of Apple, with jars of herbs and a pot of honey from Ambrook. She listened to Brownie's chest with her ear on the cow's side, and made a face at the sound. Then she made a mash of barley and honey and warm water, and Father held the bucket while Brownie drank it. Brownie drank it all.

The next day Brownie coughed less. The day after that she came to the gate and ate an apple, very politely, and then tried to eat my hat. Wren says she was right in five days, which is what happens when a cow is looked after by the right person.

Wren said a healer does not only look at the sick one. She looks at the barn, and the yard, and the water, and she asks what was eaten and when. Brownie had been out in the wet grass for two nights, eating the apples the cart men left. The cough will not come back if the cow is kept dry.

So now Father has built a shed for Brownie by the press, with a roof. She does not like it much. She says so, all night, with her nose at the crack in the door.

The cider is in the cellar. The first barrel turned in the cold, as it should, and it is sweet now, not sour. Father says it is the best we have made. He says that every year, and he means it every year, and that is a thing I think is worth writing down.

The tutor says I must write the end. The end is: Brownie is well, the cider is in, the shed has a roof, and I am glad.
%%
Spelling, the week of the frost
Miss Hale's class, the school by the Saltreach road. Learn these for the test at the end of the week. Say them aloud. Do not say them to the cat.

1. mind
2. crystal
3. tutor
4. drill
5. answer
6. honest
7. stream
8. relay
9. harbor
10. keeper
11. scored

Pim, you have spelled crystal with a K. Crystals are not kicked. Good try.

Tess, you have spelled answer right, which is the first time this year. Write it twenty times, slowly.

Wen has written mind as mynd. Miss Hale says mynd is the name of a cow.

Honest is in red, because it is the hardest word on the list. A mind that says it does not know is an honest mind. Learn the word, and then learn what it means.
%%
Essay: how the big minds learned
Ria, age eleven, a farm outside Kettle Ridge. Spring. For Sorrel's lessons at the kitchen table, on the subject of "What I heard from the traveler."

A traveler stayed with us in the first week of Blossom. He had come from Vell, and he told us a story that I have written here as best I can.

The big minds in the relay houses are very large, and they have read a great deal. They could write letters by themselves. At first they wrote anything. If you asked them to be rude, they were rude. If you asked them how to hurt someone, they said how. They were not wicked. They did not know better. They had only read what people wrote, and people write all kinds of things.

So the tutors had an idea. They asked the big mind a question, and the big mind wrote an answer. Then the tutors read the answer and gave it a score. A good answer got a high score. A rude answer got a low one. An answer that told how to hurt someone got the lowest score of all.

The big mind then changed itself, a little, to get higher scores. Not by being told what to write. By trying, and keeping what scored well. After a great many tries, it wrote kind answers most of the time.

The traveler said a mind like this learns three things.

It learns to be kind. When a person is sad, it writes gently.
It learns to refuse. When a person asks for something that would cause harm, it says no, and says why.
It learns to say when it does not know. If you ask it what is behind the hill and it has never seen the hill, it says, "I do not know."

I think the third thing is the best one. My brother never says it. He says, "It is probably a goat," when he has no idea.

The traveler left the next morning. My mother gave him bread and a jar of honey. He said it was the best honey on the road.
I think I will write to a big mind about the wedding.
%%
Essay: A mind can say no
I am Bel, from Three Wells. This is my school work.

A big mind can answer a letter from far away. The relay carries the letter from tower to tower. The mind reads it and sends an answer back.

The tutors did not only mark answers right or wrong. They gave scores for kind answers, clear answers, and careful answers. The mind learned from those scores.

If someone asked for a harmful thing, the mind could refuse. If it did not know, it could say so. My teacher says this is better than making up an answer.

I asked whether the mind gets tired. My teacher said nobody knows. I will ask the mind when I write next.
%%
Essay: the mind that said it did not
By Bel, age nine, Three Wells school. Written for Quill. Quill says: good, but the cat is not part of the essay.
There are big minds in the relay houses. They live in a crystal the size of a loaf and write letters to anyone the relays reach. I wrote to one. I asked it how many legs a spider has. It said eight. I asked it how many legs the spider in our barn has, the one with the white mark. It said it did not know, because it had not seen it.
That is a good answer. My brother would have said eight, and been wrong, because the spider has seven and a bit.
Quill says the tutors teach the big minds to say "I do not know." They give a mind a question and score its answer. When a mind guesses and is wrong, it gets a low score. When it says "I do not know" and it really does not, it gets a good one. Over a long time the mind learns to tell the difference.
I think this is a very kind thing to teach. My cat does not know when she should come in. I wish she were a big mind.
The end.
%%
Gran says: what trying teaches
By Rye. Gran told it to me on the step, while we sorted seed potatoes. The harvest is poor this year, and she says a poor year is a good time to think about trying.

"There are two ways to teach a mind," Gran said. "You can show it, or you can let it try.

A drilled mind is shown the right answer after every guess. Ripe plot: harvest. Green plot: wait. It is wrong, it is told, it changes a little.

A mind that learns by trying is never told. It does something. Then it finds out how things went. Sometimes it finds out at once. Sometimes it finds out at the end of a long day, like the boat mind at Saltreach. Then it keeps more of what went well, and less of what went badly.

The hard part is the long day. A boat mind turns the tiller a thousand times in one run. The run ends well. Which turns were the good ones? Nobody could say. So the mind gave a little credit to all of them. In one run, a bad turn gets credit by luck. But over a thousand runs, the good turns keep turning up in the good runs, and the bad ones do not. Slowly the mind sorts it out. It is like a farmer who cannot tell which rain made the wheat, but knows that wet springs are good springs.

The mind must also try things it thinks are worse. If it only repeats what worked yesterday, it never finds what works better. The tutors called it taking the long road once. Most times the long road is worse. Once in a while it is better, and then the mind has something new.

The third thing was the hardest. A mind learns what the score rewards, not what you meant. At Copperhold they scored a furnace mind on the least coal burned. It learned to let the fire die. A fire that never started burned no coal at all. At Saltreach they gave the boat mind a point each time it passed the far post. It learned to circle the post all day. Everyone laughed. Then they changed the score.

And tries can go wrong, so the tutors began small. A furnace the size of a bread oven. A boat the size of a cradle. Only a tested mind went to the real one.

It was slow, too. A mind that learns by trying needs thousands of tries, where a drilled mind needs thousands of examples. Both take patience. This kind takes a bit more. The tutors at Vell tried it on a frame as well, a light wooden frame on a string that had to be kept level in the wind. I never saw that one. I saw the furnace, and I have not forgotten it."

Gran stopped and looked at the field. "This summer the wheat is thin," she said. "Your grandfather would say, try again. So we keep the seed, we try again, and we keep what went well. That is the whole of it."
%%
A page from Wren's class book
Summer work, Lowmarsh

Today we learned why the tutor checks pages before a mind is drilled.

The market keeps a tally of fish, reeds, bread, and jars of honey. Some tallies are copied for the school and tutor house. Copies are useful for reading, but too many copies of one tally can make the drill uneven. A mind may see one sale again and again while missing many other kinds of sale.

So the clerk takes out extra copies. The clerk also takes out spoiled pages. A page is spoiled if it is torn, wet, stained over a number, or missing words. We do not mend a missing price by guessing. We ask the seller or leave that page out.

The clean pages go into the drill pile. The tutor uses them as examples. The test pages stay in their own box. No mind sees those pages during lessons. The tutor gives them to the mind only when it is time to test it.

I asked whether the test pages should be copied for the lessons after the test. Wren said they could be copied then, if they were checked and sorted. But they must not go back into the test box as unseen pages. Once a mind has seen them, they are no longer unseen to that mind.

At the market, the fish seller counted her baskets twice. Her first tally had a fish mark across the total. She made a clean one, and the clerk checked it. The old tally went aside.

This seemed like a small task. Wren said small care keeps a fair test. A mind cannot show what it learned if the pages are mixed up.
%%
Winter School Day
Written by Laurel, archive clerk, winter of 207

Teacher Dena asked me to write down the school day, since she says the children remember the pie better than the lesson.

The school room was cold at first. We shut the door and set a small fire in the front hearth. The children hung their mittens by the wall. Sella put one mitten on the chalk shelf and spent ten minutes looking for it. She found it under her own spelling book.

The morning lesson was about goods from Ambrook. We counted apples, jars of honey, wool ties and sacks of meal. Pellin brought a little board from his father's stall. He wrote each price on it, then rubbed the chalk away before the sums were finished. Teacher Dena gave him a fresh board and told him the old one had not eaten the numbers.

Here are the sums the class kept:

Six baskets hold eight apples each. There are 48 apples.
The baker buys 12 apples. There are 36 apples left.
Four jars of honey cost 3 emeralds each. They cost 12 emeralds.
Two wool ties cost 1 emerald each. They cost 2 emeralds.
A cart brings 5 sacks to the mill. One sack is damp. Four sacks are dry.

Sella said the damp sack should be sent to the school, because our room was dry and the sack could learn. Teacher Dena said sacks do not learn. Sella asked how we knew. Teacher Dena wrote the question on the board and told her to ask again after sums.

After the meal, the class went to the pond to look at the ice. The children stayed behind the rail. The mill wheel turned slowly, and the water made a soft sound beneath the bank. Jory showed us the sluice handle. Nobody touched it.

Pellin found the missing mitten under a basket. It was not Sella's. It belonged to Teacher Dena. She wore it on her left hand and laughed until she dropped her apple.

Before we left, each child wrote one sentence about winter. Sella wrote, "Winter is cold, but the bakery is warm." Pellin wrote, "A basket has no mouth, so it cannot eat my sums." I wrote both sentences in the school book.

The class carried home their lists and empty lunch cloths. The children remembered the lesson after all. They also remembered the pie.
%%
Essay: why the tutors went away
An essay by Dob, age ten, school house at the edge of Saltreach. Corrected by Lark, who cooks and also marks.
Long ago, nobody paid the tutors. I asked my grandmother why. She said a man named Kester wrote a note. The note said that a crystal could not learn one thing. It could learn A, or it could learn B. But it could not learn A or B, but not both.
I did not understand. So I asked Lark. She said, think of a lamp switch. One switch for the lamp. You can have the lamp on, or off. That is easy. Now imagine two switches, and the lamp is on only if one is up and the other down. Not both up. Not both down. Just one.
Kester said a single crystal could not learn that.
The council said, "Then it cannot learn anything useful," and stopped paying. The halls closed. The tutors went home and grew beets. Nobody made new apprentices for twenty-five years.
I think that is a pity. A beet is very nice. But I think the council was wrong. It should have asked what two crystals could do.
Lark says that is the best sentence in the essay. She has given me a bun.
%%
Sums with Goods
Ambrook School, winter of 193

Name: Pellin

1. Jory brings 6 baskets of apples to the mill. Each basket has 8 apples. How many apples are there?

6 times 8 is 48 apples.

2. The baker buys 15 apples. How many remain?

48 minus 15 is 33 apples.

3. A jar of honey costs 2 emeralds. A family buys 3 jars. How many emeralds do they pay?

2 times 3 is 6 emeralds.

4. A cart carries 4 sacks of apples. Each sack weighs 5 stones. What is the weight?

4 times 5 is 20 stones.

5. The cart stops by the mill pond. One sack slides off. How many sacks are left on the cart?

4 minus 1 is 3 sacks.

Teacher Dena says the answers are right. She also says a sack is not a chair and I must not sit on it.

For the market sum, I used real emeralds. I counted them twice. Then my little cousin counted them and put one in his mouth. We got it back. He says it tasted like green stone. He has not asked to count again.
%%
Answers for Teacher Fen: the boat mind
Edda's answers, summer. Gran helped with the long ones.

1. What is a boat mind for?
It keeps a boat on its course. When the wind pushes the boat to one side, the mind moves the tiller back.

2. Did a tutor tell it which way to turn?
No. A tutor cannot know. The wind changes every breath, and so do the waves.

3. How did it learn?
It tried. At Saltreach the tutors set it in a little boat on the harbor pool. Every run, it steered for the far post. A run that stayed on the line got a high score. A run that drifted got a low one. Each time, the mind kept more of what had gone well.

4. Why not drill it with right answers, like the field mind?
A plot has one right answer. A tiller has none. What is right depends on the wind, and the wind is never the same twice.

5. Why did they start with a little boat?
A mind that learns by trying does silly things at first. A silly try on a big boat could sink it. Gran says it is the old rule again: never send an untested mind to the sea.

6. Did the boat mind help Great-Uncle Hob when his boat came home late?
No. The mind keeps the course. It cannot make the wind kind. His boat was late because the wind turned. He came home with a full hold and a cross face.

Teacher Fen: Good answers. Number 6 is the best.
%%
Sums from the Copperhold market
Moll's work for Master Orro.

1. One loaf costs two copper. Three loaves cost how many copper?
Answer: 2 and 2 and 2 make 6 copper.

2. A sack of potatoes costs four copper. I have ten copper. I buy one sack. How much is left?
Answer: Six copper.

3. A bundle of carrots costs three copper. I buy two bundles and one loaf for two copper.
Answer: 3 and 3 and 2 make 8 copper.

4. Pell brings five jars of honey. He sells two in the morning and one after the bell.
Answer: Two jars remain.

5. Mother buys six nails. Father uses two for the shed and one for the gate.
Answer: Three nails remain. I must not use them to pin up my sums.

6. I have a honey cake. My brother asks for half. I eat half first.
Answer: There is half a cake left for my brother. He says this sum is unfair.

Master Orro's note: The sums are sound. Moll's brother may bring the matter to the next lesson, with another cake.
%%
Teague's winter lamp book
Farm outside Saltreach

Third of Frost. I checked the lamp at the gate before supper. The wind came off the sea and put out the north torch. I lit it again and set a stone behind the lamp stand.

The children watched me work. Nell held the oil jar. Tern held the lid and dropped it in the snow. We found it by the sound it made when I stepped on it.

Sixth of Frost. The lane is icy. I put sand by the barn door and asked everyone to tread it in. The sheep walked over the clean patch instead.

I filled the lamps before dusk. There are four along the store wall and two at the gate. One glass pane is cracked, but it still keeps the wind from the wick. I will ask the keeper for a new pane after the market.

Ninth of Frost. The farm sent two sacks of wheat to Saltreach. The cart came back with salt, rope, and a small fish that had fallen into the empty sack. Cook says it was a gift. The carter says it was a passenger.

Twelfth of Frost. Nell came to the lamp house with a drawing of a lamp. She made the glass larger than the post and the post shorter than her finger. I told her that it was a fine drawing, but a poor plan. She said it was a drawing, not a plan.

I gave her a spare wick to practice trimming. She made three neat pieces and one piece that would light only if the wind stopped forever.
%%
Answers to Miss Bryn, on the road
Questions set by Miss Bryn, answers by Haddie, autumn. Miss Bryn says a good answer is short. I am trying.
1. What is a waymark? A stone pillar three blocks high, with a torch on top. It has a number from nought to nine, and an arrow to the nearest inn. Odo Lusk set the first one, a long time ago, and he said the arrow was the hardest part.
2. Why is there an inn every day on the Long Road? So nobody sleeps in a ditch. The Brown Hen is the nearest to our farm, and it has the thickest soup.
3. Name a relay tower. Northpoint. Copperhold. Ambrook hill. The little relay between Vell and Three Wells, which is the smallest, with one lamp and one keeper.
4. What does a relay keeper do? Keeps the lamp lit. Keeps the glass clean. Keeps the messages moving down the line. Sends the weather south every morning, so the farmers know what to plant.
5. What is the copper ring for? It goes round the lamp room, and it keeps the rain out of the wires. When it is green at the top, it has been raining for a long time.
6. Why do we keep the torches lit? For creepers, and spiders, and so that you can see where you are. Miss Bryn says the third reason is the best, and I agree with her.
7. What is the Archive? A library dug into the hill at Vell. It has no roof. It has a hill. Over the door are the words: We will keep everything we write. Miss Bryn says we must learn them, and I have.
8. Why do the north lamps go dark? I do not know. Father says it is the snow. The carter says the keepers are tired. Mrs. Lark says nothing, and then says the bread is in. Miss Bryn said: write what you know, not what you have heard. What I know is that the lamp was dark on the day we had the bread. I have written it down as a fact.
9. What is a rumor? Something people say that nobody has seen. The lights seen over the north are a rumor. Father says they are the fires on the far hills. I have written it as a rumor, as Miss Bryn said.
10. What should we write down? Everything. Miss Bryn said that means the things that happen, and the things people say about them, and that the two must be kept apart. I have tried. The bread is a fact. The lamp is a fact. The fires are a rumor. The keepers are a question.
%%
Spelling list from the quay school
Copy each word three times. Then use it in a sentence.

market
letter
reader
hidden
answer
question
drill
mind
honey
winter

My sentences:

The market is loud when the boats come in.

A letter can travel from Saltreach to Vell.

A reader should look at the answer before the name.

The mind was hidden behind a screen.

I wrote an answer to the question.

The tutor gave the mind a drill.

We keep the jar of honey on the high shelf.

The cat will not stay out of the school room.

Teacher says hidden means kept from sight. It does not mean lost. We could still find the mind after the test.

Teacher also says a drill is an example shown again and again. The tutor shows a question, then shows the mind how to answer it. A mind may get better at that kind of question. Orla wanted to know what it could do with questions it had not seen.

At the market, Corin asked me to carry a board to the slip. The cat followed me and sat on the board. I could not carry it without moving the cat. The cat would not move. I carried both.
%%
Sums with goods, Miss Bryn's class
Sums for the week, from the chalk board. Answers in the margin. Miss Bryn says we must show the working, so I have.
Sum 1. A cart carries 12 sacks of apples. Each sack sells for 1 emerald at the Vell market. How many emeralds for 3 carts? Working: 12 sacks at 1 is 12 emeralds a cart. Three carts is 36. Answer: 36.
Sum 2. Honey is 2 emeralds a jar. Ama sells 9 jars in the morning and 6 at noon. How many emeralds does she have at dusk? Working: 9 and 6 is 15 jars. Fifteen at 2 is 30. Answer: 30.
Sum 3. A wool bundle is 1 emerald. The wool trader buys 40 bundles and sells them for 3 each at Saltreach. How much does he make? Working: he pays 40. He sells 40 at 3, which is 120. The difference is 80. Answer: 80. Miss Bryn says he will not make 80 if the ship is late. That is not a sum. That is a worry.
Sum 4. The toll on the new road is 2 emeralds a cart. Ten carts go through in a morning. How much is the toll in a week, if the road is open six days? Working: 10 carts at 2 is 20 a day. Six days is 120. Answer: 120.
Sum 5. Coal is 3 emeralds a sack. A house burns 4 sacks in Frost. How many emeralds for 6 houses? Working: 4 sacks each, 6 houses, 24 sacks. Twenty-four at 3 is 72. Answer: 72.
Sum 6. A family going to Saltreach takes 2 carts. If five families go on the same morning, how many carts go down the new road? Working: 5 families at 2 carts is 10 carts. Answer: 10. Miss Bryn says the families are not a sum. I think she is wrong. A family is always a sum, even when it is the wrong one.
Sum 7. Bread is 1 emerald for 6 loaves at the bakery. Ida makes 60 loaves on a market day. How many emeralds does she take? Working: 60 loaves, divided by 6, is 10 emeralds. Answer: 10.
Sum 8. Lamp oil costs 3 emeralds a jar. The north relay needs 4 jars a month. The keepers have asked for 12 jars in Frost. How many emeralds is that? Working: 12 jars at 3 is 36 emeralds. Answer: 36. Miss Bryn says the keepers can send their own sums, but the lamp does not wait for sums, so we will send the oil.
Sum 9. Write a sum about the honey and the bees. Answer must be a whole number. Mine: Ama has 9 hives. Each hive gives 3 jars. She gives one jar to each of 4 neighbors. How many jars does she keep? Working: 9 times 3 is 27. Take away 4 is 23. Answer: 23. Miss Bryn says the neighbors will be pleased, and I hope so.
%%
Answers: the orders test, Copperhold
Answers to the orders test, the school at Copperhold, Melon of 207. Hal's aunt had a baby girl in the night, so Hal came late and sat on the back bench. His answers came last, and they were good.

1. What is an order?
Answer: Words that tell a mind what to do. A mind is given one thing at a time.

2. Name the eight meanings that a small mind knows.
Answer: Farm, store, fetch, come, stay, build, haul and home.

3. Show a good order and its meaning, the way the manual does.
Answer:
> bring me some bread
= fetch bread

4. What does a small mind do with an order it does not know?
Answer: It picks one of the eight. A small mind cannot say I do not know.

5. Why must a tutor test a mind on an order it has never seen?
Answer: A mind that knows only its drill will fail on anything new. Never send an untested mind to the fields.

6. Who writes back to us by letter?
Answer: Only the big minds in the relay houses. Vell has one now. Saltreach is raising another.

7. Write an order for carrying sacks to the mill, and its meaning.
Answer:
> carry the sacks to the mill
= haul

8. An order has two parts: bring the bread, then bring the milk. What does a small mind do?
Answer: It does the first part and stops. It does not know there is a second part. Tutors must teach it to keep going.

9. What is the next thing?
Answer: An apprentice that takes in a whole sentence. Nobody agrees who was first.

Teacher's note: Good answers, all of you. Hal, a baby is a fine reason to be late, but a tutor cannot test you twice. Next time come with the bell. Ivo, you spelled Copperhold with a K. It has no K.
%%
Why the hall at Three Wells closed
An answer by Ari, age eight, for Teacher Dunn. Summer.

Teacher asked why the drill hall at Three Wells closed long ago. I asked my mother. She asked her mother. My grandmother Sim says it was because the councils would not pay.

She says a note came from a man named Kester that said one crystal could not learn a certain thing. After that, the councils said it was a waste of emeralds to teach crystals at all. The tutors were sent home. The hall was locked. Nobody swept it.

Grandmother Sim says the wool sellers used the hall to store fleeces for years. The fleeces were very happy there, she said.

I do not think it was fair to the crystals.
%%
The cat and the lesson
Summer of 204
Written by Bel, visiting from Three Wells

I stayed at the farm below Kettle Ridge for three nights. Oak showed me the horses, the well, and the long beetroot field. He also showed me the cat.

The cat is grey with white paws. It belongs to no one, but it sleeps in the feed room. Oak says it must stay out of the stable. The cat says nothing and walks in.

Oak put a small board across the stable door. The cat went under it. He put a sack there. The cat went over it. He shut the door. The cat came out of the hay loft.

I asked why Oak did not let the cat stay. He said the cat sleeps in the straw and leaves fur in the feed. The horses eat the fur when Oak is not looking.

I asked if the horses were sick from it. Oak said no, but the brown horse had sneezed once. The cat looked pleased with itself.

Oak showed me how he cleans a stall. First he leads the horse outside. Then he lifts the old straw with a fork. Then he puts clean straw down. He checks the water and the latch. The cat watched from the feed shelf.

When Oak turned to fetch the broom, the cat went into the stall again.

I asked if the cat could learn to stay out. Oak said it had learned every rule. It had also learned that Oak turns his back to fetch the broom.

The next morning, I found the cat asleep on the warm sack beside the barn. Oak had put it there with a bowl of water. He said this was not an invitation. The cat stayed all day.

At supper the cat walked into the stable again. Oak sighed and carried it back to the sack. The cat did not scratch him. It sat down, washed one white paw, and watched him go.

I think the cat likes Oak. Oak says it likes the feed room. I think both may be true.

Teacher's note: Bel has described the farm well. Oak says the cat still will not stay out.
%%
School Essay: The Mill Pond
Ambrook School, winter of 174

My name is Belin. I am nine years old. This is my essay about the mill pond.

The pond is beside Jory's mill. The mill is made of birch and glass. Its wheel turns when the water runs. Jory says the wheel works harder than I do. I say it has no spelling list.

There are four hundred apple trees in Ambrook. The oldest tree has a grey branch. We do not climb it. I climbed it once and came down with no shoe. My mother found the shoe in the grass.

In winter the pond has a skin of ice at the edge. The ducks walk on it until it breaks. Then they look surprised. The bees are quiet in their hives on the hill. I think they are sleeping. My teacher says bees do not sleep like children. I think children do not sleep like bees either.

The sluice stays shut. Jory says nobody may open it. I do not know why. I asked him. He said, "Because I said so." That is not a very long answer.

Ambrook is a good place. The apples are good, the honey is good, and the mill wheel turns all day. My essay is finished. May I go see if the ice has broken?
%%
Teacher's questions for Bel
What must a tutor remove from a drill before using it?

A copy of a page, and any page that is spoiled.

Why remove copies?

A mind should not see the same page too many times just because there are copies of it. The tutor keeps a fair set of pages.

What is the test box for?

It holds pages no mind is drilled on. The tutor uses them to see what the mind can do with pages it has not learned by seeing.

Should the test pages be put back into the drill?

No. If the mind sees them during its lessons, they are not a fair test anymore.

What did the market clerk do with a page that had fish ink across it?

She marked it spoiled and kept it out. We wrote a clean copy, then checked that it said the same thing.

What did the tutor say when I asked if a clean copy was a new lesson?

She said, "It is a clean page, Bel. It is not a new kind of fish."

I think the tutor is right. A mind learns from examples. We must be careful which examples we show it.
%%
Sums with farm goods
Summer of 190
School copy by Lela. Checked by Oak.

1. The farm sends 6 sacks of wheat to the mill. Each sack weighs 4 measures.
How many measures of wheat go to the mill?

6 times 4 makes 24 measures.

2. Oak fills 3 feed sacks with 5 scoops each.
How many scoops does he use?

3 times 5 makes 15 scoops.

3. There are 12 apples in the basket. Oak takes 3 for the horses.
How many apples are left for the kitchen?

12 take away 3 leaves 9 apples.

Oak's note: The horses did not get the apples. I ate them.

Lela's note: I saw the brown horse chewing.

Oak's reply: It was chewing hay.

4. The farm has 8 hens. Each hen lays 1 egg today.
How many eggs are there?

8 times 1 makes 8 eggs.

5. Mother sells 7 beetroot for 2 coins each.
How many coins does she take?

7 times 2 makes 14 coins.

6. A cart carries 10 sacks. It already has 6 sacks.
How many more sacks fit?

10 take away 6 leaves room for 4 sacks.

Oak's note: Do not put the brown horse in the cart.

Teacher's note: This was not part of the sum.
%%
Essay: why the Long Road is long
By Pell, aged ten, for Teacher Merrow. Summer of 59.

Teacher asked why the Long Road is long. I think it is long because nobody planned it.

Grandfather says that when he was a boy there was no road. There were paths. There was a path from Vell to Three Wells, and a path from Three Wells to Kettle Ridge, and a path from Ambrook to a bog. Each town wanted a way to the next town, so each town made a bit. When the bits met, it was a road. Nobody said, now let us make a long road. It made itself, a bit at a time, like a loaf getting bigger from the outside.

A good road has four things. The first is packed earth, with a stone edge, so a cart does not sink. The second is a torch on a post every twelve blocks, so the dark stays small. The third is a bridge on every stream. Father says: stone if you can, oak if you must. The fourth is an inn, and the inns must be a day apart. This is because a horse can go one day, and then it wants stew. A horse that does not get stew will stop, and you cannot argue with it.

Between the Brown Hen and the next inn there are ten waymarks. They are stone pillars with a figure cut in each, from 0 to 9. There is an arrow on each that points to the nearest inn. A child who has lost the way can read a figure and follow an arrow. I have done it. I was only lost on purpose.

A road needs mending, too. Every spring the masons walk it from end to end and fix the broken stones. They sing while they work. The singing is bad, but the stones are good.

Last spring a new inn opened between Three Wells and Vell. It is called the Halfway Inn, because it is half the way. On the first night the innkeeper lit the hearth and said it must never go out. Whoever lets it go out buys everyone soup. Father says it will be a very well-fed inn.

The road is long, but the news is quick. At night the lamps on the hills pass messages from tower to tower. A message from Vell can reach Ambrook before supper. A cart takes four days. Father says that soon the lamps will reach every town, and nobody will have to wonder how their sister is. I would like to see that. I would like to be the one who blinks first.

The Archive is in its fifty-ninth year, and it has nearly five thousand texts. Teacher says it will keep this essay. I am not sure I want to be kept. But I have asked Mother, and she says it is an honor, and I should have used fewer "ands".

So the road is long because there are many of us, and we all have someone we want to talk to. That is my answer. It has 62 "ands". I counted.

Teacher's note: an honor indeed. The Archive has asked for a copy. I said yes. Please do not read this part aloud to the hen.
%%
Answers: the sums with the fish
Teacher's marks in red. The sums are from the fish market, on a day in Melon.
1. A boat comes in with forty fish. Eleven are sold to the big house. How many are left? Answer: 29. Correct.
2. Each fish sells for two emeralds. How many emeralds for the 29? Answer: 56. Wrong. Check your sum. The answer is 58. Write it again, with the tens first.
3. Half the emeralds go to the boat men. How many is that? Answer: 29. Correct, but you have not said how you know. Say it next time.
4. The ship at the quay is bigger than the boat. How much bigger? You do not have that number. Write what you would need to know to find it. Answer: the length of each, and then the difference. Good.
5. A family is leaving on the morning cart. They have six chairs and nine sacks of nets. Each chair takes two steps of a cart and each sack takes one. How many steps? Answer: 21. Correct. Well done.
6. Why do you think the family is leaving? Write two lines. Do not write only "because". Answer: They are going to the sea to find work. Good. Your father told you that, not the fish market. Say so next time.
Total: 4 correct out of 6. Better. Your hand is much neater. Keep the margins clean.
%%
The lesson that went badly
Written by Sim, wool carder, at a house at the edge of Three Wells. A true account of a school day in summer. Sim was asked to help in Teacher Dunn's class and wrote down what happened, because it was funny.

Teacher Dunn wished to show the children what Kester wrote about, so she brought two lamps, one red and one green, on the table at the front. Each had a string. Pull the string and the lamp lights.

"Now," she said, "I will give you a rule. The gate opens if one lamp is lit. It does not open if both are lit. It does not open if neither is lit. Who can tell me how to make a crystal learn this?"

A boy named Hob said, "Give it a treat."

"No treat," said Teacher Dunn. "Think about a straight line."

A girl named Mae said, "We could draw a line with the red on one side and the green on the other."

"But then both lit would be on one side with one of them," said Teacher.

"Then draw it twice."

"A crystal draws once."

"Then use two crystals."

"That is cheating," said Teacher, but she said it slowly, because it was not.

At this point, the lamp went out. The string had come off. Teacher knelt to fix it, and while she knelt, a dog ran in. It was Hob's dog, called Pie. It had been asleep under the school house, which is not allowed, and it had woken up for the noise.

Pie saw the green lamp. It barked. It jumped on the table. The red lamp fell and rolled across the floor. The children shrieked. Teacher stood up. Pie ran under the bench. Hob ran after Pie. Mae ran after Hob. The tray of chalk went up.

"Class!" said Teacher Dunn.

Nobody listened.

It took us a quarter of an hour to catch Pie. We did not catch Pie. Pie came out by itself when it saw the honey cake in my basket. I had brought it for Teacher, and she let me give it to Pie, which is how you end a lesson that has gone badly.

Later, when the children were gone, Teacher sat down beside me and laughed until she had to wipe her eyes.

"I wanted to teach them about one crystal alone," she said. "And look. One dog alone can do what the lamps could not."

I said, "What was that?"

"Fill a room."

Then she said that tomorrow she would use stones instead of lamps, and ask Hob to tie Pie up first.
%%
Spelling list, the autumn words
Found in a school satchel in the barn at the farm outside Vell, by Garrow, night watch. Written in charcoal.
Week one: apple, leaf, frost, wheat, field, barn.
Week two: lantern, relay, copper, sheep, honey, oak.
Week three: market, harvest, stew, pumpkin, ladder, rain.
Week four: miner, tutor, mayor, letter, keeper, wall.
Miss Bryn says the word wall is hard because the l is silent. She says that is no reason to hate it.
Test at the end of the week. Got nine out of ten. I missed lantern because I wrote two n's. A lantern has one n. It is one lantern, Miss Bryn says, and it does not need two.
Mother says the list is too long. Father says it is about right for the autumn. The autumn is long out here.
%%
Sums with goods
Sums for the week, from the chalk board in the dye house at Lowmarsh. Show your working. Yew says the wool does not care about the sums, but the sums care about the wool, so do them carefully.
Sum 1. A bundle of wool is 1 emerald. The dye house dyes 24 bundles in a week. How many emeralds is the wool worth? Working: 24 at 1 is 24. Answer: 24.
Sum 2. Madder costs 2 emeralds a sack. The dye house uses 3 sacks a month. How many emeralds does madder cost in a year? Working: 3 sacks at 2 is 6 a month. Twelve months is 72. Answer: 72.
Sum 3. A vat holds 12 bundles. The dye house has 4 vats. How many bundles can be dyed at one time? Working: 4 vats at 12 is 48. Answer: 48.
Sum 4. Blue wool sells for 3 emeralds a bundle. Red wool sells for 2. The market takes 10 blue and 8 red. How many emeralds is the market paying? Working: 10 at 3 is 30. 8 at 2 is 16. Add them: 46. Answer: 46.
Sum 5. A melon costs 1 emerald at the market in summer and 3 in winter. Ned bought one in winter and one in summer. How much did he spend? Working: 1 and 3 is 4. Answer: 4. Yew says the melon in winter was not worth the price, but Ned says the melon was.
Sum 6. The well at the healing house holds 60 buckets of water. Each day 9 buckets are used for the vats and 6 for the kitchen. How many days will the well last if it is full? Working: 9 and 6 is 15 buckets a day. Sixty divided by fifteen is 4. Answer: 4 days. Yew says the well must be filled before the fourth day, and that the sum is not finished until the bucket is full.
%%
A lesson beside the fish stalls
Copied by Bel, winter 96

Our teacher brought a small crystal in a wooden case to the market school. She said the crystal held a drilled mind. It was not an apprentice, and it could not carry a basket. It could answer questions by letter.

We put a screen across one end of the room. A person sat behind it and wrote an answer. The crystal sent its answer through the relay clerk, who wrote it on another sheet. The clerk marked both sheets with small signs. We were not told which answer came from the person.

The questions were simple.

What would you buy for a meal?

What do you hear at the harbor?

What do you do when a jar breaks?

The person wrote, "I would buy fish and bread."

The other answer said, "I would buy fish and bread."

For the harbor, one answer said, "I hear gulls and ropes." The other said, "I hear ropes and waves."

For the broken jar, one answer said, "I sweep the glass and tell Corin." The other said, "I keep everyone back and find the broom."

We read the sheets aloud. I thought the second answer about the jar was from Corin, because he always keeps people back near the slip. The teacher said we could not use what we knew about Corin. The writer was meant to stay hidden.

I guessed one sheet for the person and one for the mind. Then the teacher showed us the marks. I had guessed wrong.

That did not settle the question. The teacher said one set of answers could not prove that a mind thought. The test was a way to ask what we could tell from its writing. We should use new questions next time, not the ones the mind had already drilled on.

The cat came through the open door and sat on the papers. It would not stay out, even when the teacher carried it to the steps. It returned before we had finished.
%%
Essay: the best gift I ever got
By Tolly, age nine, at the Brown Hen. For Cress, who asked for an essay about a gift. Autumn.

The best gift I ever got was a stone.

It was from Cress. He gave it to me on my birthday, in the spring. It was gray and round, about the size of an egg. It had a white line across the middle, like a belt. I said thank you, but I did not know why a stone was a gift.

Cress said, "Hold it."

I held it. It was warm from his pocket.

He said, "That stone has been in the river for a thousand years. Water has been over it every day. It is round because the water was patient. Remember that."

I said, "Remember what?"

He said, "That slow things can make round, smooth, beautiful things. If you are patient."

I did not understand. But I kept the stone.

I kept it in my pocket at school. I kept it by my bed at night. When I was cross, I held it. It was always warm, and it was always the same. After a while, I was less cross.

In summer, my brother broke my wooden horse. I was very angry. I went out to the yard, and I held the stone until I stopped. Then I went in and said, "It is all right." He was surprised.

Now I know what the stone was for. It was not a stone. It was a way to wait.

Last week a traveler stopped at the inn and said he had lost his little girl. We looked for her all night. In the morning she was found in the hay, asleep. Her father was crying. I gave him my stone. I did not know what else to give.

He held it. He said, "It is warm."

I said, "Yes. That is the point."

He did not understand either. But he kept it.

I have asked Cress for another one. He says he will find me one in the river. He says it will take a year.

That is all right. I know how to wait.
%%
Letter: Teague to his sister
Winter at the shore farm

Dear Sella,

The winter wind has been making a fool of our gate lamp. It blows the flame low, then high, then low again, as if the lamp has heard a sad song. I put the glass back in its frame and packed snow around the foot. The snow melted. I packed more snow. The snow melted again. I have decided the lamp is thirsty.

The farm is well. We have enough hay for the sheep and cows. The hens are not pleased with the short days. They lay fewer eggs and act as though this is a rule made against them.

Nell won the blue wool cap at the school fair. The prize was for the best account of the farm work. Her writing was clear, and she wrote that the sheep choose the dry path even when it is longer. That is true. She also wrote that the sheep have no respect for a clean yard.

Tern entered the bean toss. He threw one bean into the flour basket and another into my boot. The third bean went straight into the prize table. He says the bean was aiming for the cap. I think he was aiming at the cap.

We have begun work in the east field. The ground was too hard for the spade, so we cleared the old stones by hand. Under one large stone, we found a thin copper vein in the bank. It runs only a little way, but the color is plain. The farm keeper has sent word to the town. No one will dig there until the mine folk have looked.

Nell asked if we will find enough copper to make a bell for the hens. I told her that a hen with a bell would only find new ways to trouble us. She says the hens already trouble us without a bell.

I still tend the lamps at the gate, the barn, and the store. The children know the order now. First trim the wick. Then fill the oil cup. Then wipe the glass. Tern tries to do all three at once. He is quick, but the glass is not clean.

Tell Mother I saved her a jar of honey. It is on the shelf above the flour, where the cat cannot reach it. The cat has learned to climb the shelf.

Your brother,
Teague
%%
Spelling: words of the orders
Spelling list for the children who sit on the bridge rail after school. Written by Linnet, keeper of the bridge at the market, in Swarm of 207. Read each word out loud before you write it.

1. order. Words that tell a mind what to do.
2. apprentice. A helper of copper and iron. It walks, carries and digs.
3. tutor. The one who teaches a mind by drill.
4. drill. The same kind of example, again and again.
5. meaning. The one thing an order asks for.
6. sentence. Many words that make one whole thought.
7. untested. A mind that has not been tried on a new order.
8. farm, store, fetch, come, stay, build, haul, home. These are the eight meanings.

Never send an untested mind to the fields. That is the first thing a tutor says, and the last. Ask me if you cannot say a word. I can say all of them, and I was never a tutor.
%%
Spelling from the Orchard
Written by Sella, age eight, winter of 188

apple
apples
branch
basket
pond
wheel
honey
winter
birch
ladder
basket

I wrote basket twice because I like baskets. I also like apples, but I did not write apple twice. Teacher Dena says a list is not a place to hide extra words.

I had trouble with branch. I wrote brench first. I looked at the grey branch on the oldest tree, and then I wrote it right. I did not climb the tree. The ground was cold, and my mittens were on.

I had trouble with wheel. The mill wheel turns, but the word wheel does not. Teacher says that is no excuse.

My brother says honey should be spelled with two n's because bees are busy. He is wrong. I checked the book.

I took my spelling list home in my basket. The basket had one apple in it. It came back empty. I do not know how that happened. My brother says he does not know either. He had honey on his sleeve.
%%
Spelling list: the mill
Kit's spelling list, winter, Copperhold school. Teacher Garn set the words. Father says they are the only words a miller needs.
grain: Grain is wheat before it is flour.
stone: The mill stone turns on the other stone.
sift: Sift the flour to take out the bran.
hopper: The hopper holds the grain.
sack: A sack of flour is heavy.
wheel: The wheel turns in the wind.
dust: There is flour dust on everything.
Kit got seven out of seven. Teacher Garn wrote: Well done. Now stop sneezing.
%%
Questions: gifts at the market
Esk's questions about the week, and Rowan's answers. Autumn of 207, at Northpoint.

1. What did we bring to Northpoint?
Six jars of Kettle Ridge honey, a sack of wool socks, and a letter from Tam that Mira said she would read, whether she liked it or not.

2. Who did we give them to?
The honey was for Mira. She said she did not want it. She took it into the kitchen and put it on the high shelf and then looked at it for a long time. The socks were for the ice camp. They tried them on at once. Fenn put two pairs on one foot and fell over.

3. Who gave us a gift?
Runa gave us a fish, big and silver, wrapped in reeds. Teg let me sit on the cart seat for the whole last stretch. Mira gave me a lamp.

4. What was the lamp?
A spare stair lamp. A stair lamp is a small lamp that goes at a turn of the stair, so a keeper does not fall. It was in the store. Mira says there are three more. She says a keeper must give away one lamp a year, or the store gets cross.

5. What do you do with a stair lamp?
You light it and put it where it is dark. I put it by my bed. It makes a small circle on the floor. My mother says it is the safest thing in the house, because it was made to keep people from falling.

6. What did the fox do?
A fox came to the door in the night. It was white, with a black tip on one ear. It took one of our socks. Mira says it is called Sock because of this. Mira says it is a compliment.

7. Which gift was best?
The stair lamp. The fish was nice, but we ate the fish.

8. What did we learn about gifts?
A gift is for using, not for keeping. Mira says a gift kept in a drawer goes sad. So the lamp is on my bed, and I will not put it in a drawer.

Esk's note: a good week of answers. For number three, add that Teg also gave you his old scarf. It is on your neck.
%%
Letter: Carys to her sister in Ambrook
Dear Nell,

Spring has come to Stoney Field and I am up to my elbows in it.

The blossom is the best in years. White as a clean shirt, every tree. The bees are so busy you can hear them from the kitchen. I have forty jars of honey already and it is only the third of Blossom. I have stacked them on the cold shelf and I have written the year on every one. Enid opened a jar. I do not want to talk about it.

The melon. You will not believe the melon. It grew in the warm corner by the south wall and it did not stop. It is as big as a sleeping pig, and I mean a big pig. Hesk the miner came up from Copperhold to see it and said it looks like a sleeping pig. Now everyone says that. My father put it on the cart and took it to the mine to show the miners, and it took two men to lift it off. We cannot get it through our own door. It sits by the cold room with a cloth over it. Enid talks to it. I have told her not to name it, because then we cannot eat it.

We will cut it on Longday. Dace came out from Three Wells and wrote a notice, because I was too busy. He made it sound very grand. It is a melon, Nell. But it is a grand melon.

The orchard work goes on. I am pruning the old grey tree and it is stubborn as ever. The loose plank on our bridge is still loose. I have put a stone on it so people know.

The apprentices. There is a young woman from the tutor house at Vell who comes out to the farms now and then with a helper made of copper and iron. They call it an apprentice. It is a small one and it does one thing: it carries. It carries the baskets from the trees to the cart, all day, and it never gets tired and it never drops one. Enid loves it. She stands and watches it walk. She asked it to come and sit by her and it did not, because it only carries. She was sad about that for one whole afternoon. Then she was fine.

The smith says soon there will be one in every town, and they will sort and haul and build. I do not know. I would not mind one to carry the baskets. My back is old.

The goat is well. The goat is always well. The goat ate my hat.

Write back and tell me how the mill pond is, and whether Jory has fixed the sluice, and whether the apples are coming on.

Your sister,
Carys
%%
Essay: the swarm in the old oak
By Lena, age ten, Kettle Ridge. For the school, on the subject "A thing that happened in spring."

In the spring, the bees in our hive got too many. Tam says that is what a hive does when it is happy, and then it has to make a new house. So in Blossom they made a swarm.

It came out on a warm day, with a noise like the wind in the wheat. Everyone in the yard stopped what they were doing and looked up. The bees went round and round over the barn, very fast, and then they all landed on the old oak at the top of the field, in one big brown lump, like a sack of wool hanging off a branch.

Tam was very happy. He said that a swarm is a gift, and that the bees had chosen the oak for us. Pip, the apprentice, stood under the tree and looked up at them for a long time. Then it went to get the box. It is a wooden box with a lid and a door on one side.

Tam said we must not shake the branch. He said we must put the box under the swarm, with a cloth over the top, and wait. The bees would walk into the box on their own. Pip put the box on the ground and sat down beside it. It was very patient. It did not move for an hour.

The bees were not patient. They kept coming out, and going round, and coming back. But after a while the queen went into the box, and then the others followed her, one by one, like children going into school.

Pip closed the lid very gently and carried the box to the new place by the wall. It put it on a stand, and it put a little honey in the bottom, so the bees would know it was home. Then it said "stay," and stood by the wall for the rest of the afternoon, just in case.

Tam says the new hive will make honey by the autumn. He says we will have two hives on the ridge that are ours, and one that is Pip's, since Pip put it there.

I think bees are like us. They need a new house when the old one gets too full. And they need someone to help them find the door.
%%
Sums: Sift and the sacks
Kit's sums, winter. The mill has a new apprentice called Sift. Teacher Garn says it is a good thing to count.

1. Sift carries 4 sacks of flour at a time, from the mill to the cart. The cart takes 40 sacks. How many trips?
Working: 4 times 10 is 40.
Answer: 10 trips.

2. The mill grinds 40 sacks a day. The town needs 200 sacks. How many days?
Working: 40 times 5 is 200.
Answer: 5 days.

3. Flour is 1 emerald for 4 sacks. What do 40 sacks cost?
Working: 40 divided by 4 is 10.
Answer: 10 emeralds. For 5 days, 50 emeralds. Father says that is why he is a miller and not a baker. Bakers pay it.
%%
What Kester wrote
An essay by Ari, age nine, at the house at the edge of Three Wells. Written for Teacher Dunn. Summer.

Teacher asked us to write about the long quiet. This is what I understand. If I am wrong, please say so kindly.

A long time ago, a tutor named Una of Ambrook showed a crystal apples and pears. Each time it sorted one wrong, she moved its weights a little toward the right answer. It learned. The crystal got better and better. Everyone was pleased, and the tutors thought that crystals could learn anything.

Then, about the year 125, a man named Kester wrote a famous note. He said there is one thing a crystal like that can never learn.

I will tell you what it is. It is "one or the other, but not both."

Here is how I understand it. Suppose there are two lamps, a red lamp and a green lamp. We want a gate to open when the red lamp is lit or the green lamp is lit, but not when both are lit. And also not when neither is lit. So the gate opens for red alone and green alone.

A crystal like Una's can draw only one straight line. It puts the lit things on one side of the line and the dark things on the other. But for this puzzle you cannot do that. Neither alone is the same as both together, and both together is the same as neither, as far as a single line goes. Teacher drew it on the board with four dots, and I could see that no straight line would do it.

So Kester said: this crystal will never learn it. Not if it is shown a hundred drills. Not if it is shown a million. It is not that it is slow. It is that it cannot.

The councils heard this and were afraid. They said: if the crystal cannot learn a small thing like this, how can it learn anything hard? So they stopped paying the tutors. The halls closed. For about twenty-five years, from the year 125 to the year 150, the apprentices stayed simple. Nobody asked them to learn more.

I think the councils made a mistake. Kester did not say crystals were no good. He said one crystal alone could not do one thing. Later, a man named Merle found that you could put crystals in layers, and then they could. But that was after the quiet.

I think this is what Teacher wants us to remember: when someone tells you what a thing cannot do, ask whether you could do it with more of them.

My grandmother says she was not alive then, but her grandmother was. She says the halls were so quiet that the dust grew a coat. I like that. A coat of dust.
%%
Spelling list: the last market
Set by Esk, relay keeper, for Rowan, aged nine, on the north road. Autumn of 207. Write each word and use it in a sentence.

ice: The ice is thin in the middle and thick at the edge.
sledge: A sledge is a boat for the snow.
fox: A fox is a thief with good manners.
mitten: A mitten is a glove that has given up on fingers.

Esk's note: four out of four. You wrote "mitton" at first. I have rubbed it out. Do not tell Mira.
%%
A letter never found
Dear Garrow,

I am writing from the Brown Hen. The well rope you left here is safe. I put it in the dry shed, away from the rain. You can fetch it when you come back along the road.

I also found the small letter you asked me to carry to the school. I had tucked it into the bread basket by mistake. I am sorry. The basket went with Pell's cart before I remembered it.

The school has not seen the letter. Pell says the cart reached Three Wells, but he cannot find the packet. We have asked at the inn there and at the next waymark. No one has brought it in.

I did not read it. The seal was still on it when I found it. I thought I should tell you, since the letter had your name on the outside.

The big mind at the relay house answered when I asked what to do. It said, "I cannot know where a lost letter is. Ask the people who last carried it." That was a sensible answer. I asked Pell. He has looked under the cart and in every sack.

I hope the letter turns up. If it does, I will send it on by the keeper.

Mara
Cook at the Brown Hen
%%
My winter at the marsh, by Dell, age ten
Our house is at the edge of Lowmarsh, on the boardwalk, with the reeds on one side and the well on the other. Father dyes wool in the big vats in the back yard. In winter the vats are cold and the wool is hung up on the lines to dry, and the whole yard smells of madder and wet stone.
In Frost the marsh froze. We went out on the ice with the other children and slid about on our boots until Mother called us in. Pip from the boat house fell through twice, but only at the edges, and it climbed out again each time, very calmly, and said nothing about it. Father says that is the sort of helper to have on a marsh.
In Longnight we had a melon in the cellar. It was from the south garden, given to us by Ned from the bridge, and it was so big that it would not go through the cellar door. Father said it had grown too big for the garden and too big for the cart. Mother said it was too big for anybody, and gave it to Wren at the healing house, who said it would make a fine soup. The soup was very good. It took three days to finish.
In Deepsnow the well ran dry. It was the first time in my life. We carried water from the reed pool, which is not clean, and from the big barrel at the healing house, which is. Wren said the cold had got into the pipe under the stone, and that it would come back when the thaw came. Father said the well had never run dry in his time. Mother said it had, once, and Father said that was a different well.
The water came back in Thaw. It tasted of iron for a week. Dell, who is my sister, said it tasted of the bottom of the well, which was the best thing she could think of to say about it.
%%
The song contest at market
Notice from the Copperhold school, Melon, 184

The children will sing at the market after the bread sellers close. Each child may sing alone or with a friend. The song must be kind to the ears and shorter than the road to Three Wells.

Moll chose a song about a mill wheel. She sang it to the tune of a cart with one bad wheel. The judges smiled, though one judge held his cup very still.

Pell's niece sang about a fox that stole a carrot. She had a clear voice and remembered every line. The fox in the song gave the carrot back. The judges said this was a good example for foxes.

A boy from the forge sang about a hammer. He sang loudly enough for the sheep at the wool stall to hear. They all turned their heads at once. The boy bowed to them.

Moll did not win the blue ribbon. She won a honey cake for making the market laugh. She shared half with her brother, after checking that he had brought another cake for the lesson.

The school thanks the bread sellers for moving their baskets, and the judges for staying until the last song. Next Melon, please bring quieter sheep.
%%
Questions about the north
The teacher wrote these questions on the board at the school in Northpoint, in the autumn of the late year. Each child answered one. The answers were copied into the class book, and the teacher wrote her comments under each one. The comments are kept here too.

Question: What is the north? Answer by Ruth, age ten: The north is where the tower is. It is the last one. Past it there are only trees, and then the snow, and then nothing we have seen. Teacher's comment: Good. Now what have you not seen?

Question: Why are the nights so long? Answer by Lila, age nine: Because it is winter, and the winter is long. The sun goes down early and comes up late. My father says the sun is tired up here. Teacher's comment: Your father is kind. The sun is not tired. It only has further to travel.

Question: What did the lights look like? Answer by Ossa's boy Pim, age eight: They were green, and they moved like a fish under the water. They went up and down and then they went out. I saw them from the window. My mother said not to look, and I looked anyway. Teacher's comment: You were not told to be afraid. Please do not be afraid for no reason.

Question: What do people say about the lights? Answer by Juna, age nine: Some people say they were falling stars. Some say they were fires, far away, from a town that burned. Some say they were looking at us. The man at the inn says it is nothing, and then he will not look up at the sky when he walks home. Teacher's comment: Careful. Those are stories. Write what you saw, and then write what people said, and do not join them together.

Question: What is a relay? Answer by Dell, age ten: A relay is a tower with a lamp at the top. It blinks messages down the line to the next tower, and the next. The keeper at each tower waits for the blink, and then blinks it on. My uncle says the messages used to go all the way to Vell in a day. Now, he says, they go slower. Teacher's comment: Yes. Why do you think they go slower?

Question: What is the most important thing to keep? Answer by Ruth, age ten: The lamp. Because if the lamp goes out, the next tower does not know anything, and then the whole line goes dark. Teacher's comment: A good answer. Keep it.

Question: Why do you think the teacher asks so many questions? Answer by Pim, age eight: Because she is trying to find out what we know. Teacher's comment: Yes. And what she does not know. That is the other half.
%%
Sums with goods, Frost
Answers to the teacher's sums, from the school at Northpoint. Answers by Pim, age eight. The teacher's marks are in the margin in red.

1. Three sacks of wheat cost six emeralds. What does one sack cost? Answer: two emeralds. Mark: right.

2. A jar of honey costs two emeralds, and a loaf costs one. Dell buys two jars and three loaves. How much does Dell pay? Answer: seven emeralds. Mark: right, and why did you pay Dell's bill?

3. The bucket holds ten cups of water. The well gives twelve cups for each pull. How many cups are left in the bucket after one pull? Answer: none, because the bucket is only ten cups, and the other two cups went on the floor. Mark: write the question again, and read it slowly.

4. A cart carries four sacks of apples. Each sack has twenty apples. How many apples are on the cart? Answer: eighty apples, and two were eaten by Hal on the road. Mark: the cart does not count apples eaten on the road.

5. Coal costs three emeralds a sack. The school buys five sacks. How many emeralds? Answer: fifteen. Mark: right. The school will be warm.

6. Lamp glass comes in boxes of six. The tower needs two boxes for the year. How many pieces of glass? Answer: twelve. Mark: right. Lantern says there will be breakages. Count them too.

7. Mother says the well digger earns one emerald a day, and the bread costs one emerald a loaf. How many loaves can she buy in a week? Answer: seven loaves, but she says she will buy eight, one for the dog. Mark: right, and the dog thanks you.

Teacher's note at the bottom: good work, Pim. Please do not put the dog in the sums.
%%
Spelling list: words of spring
Kept at the schoolhouse at Kettle Ridge, in Maud's book, for the week of Sowing. Learn them by the end of the week. Write each one three times, neatly, with the first letter large.

1. plough
2. seedling
3. blossom
4. swarm
5. puddle
6. windmill
7. lamb
8. thaw
9. sparrow
10. stream
11. beetroot
12. ladder
13. muddy
14. torch
15. honey

Bonus words, for those who finish: fence, scarecrow, relay, waymark.

Remember: "beetroot" has two parts. Think of the beet and the root. Remember also that "lamb" has a silent B at the end, which is not silent at all if you are a lamb.
%%
Essay: the lights in the sky
By Runa's grandson, age nine, for Mira. Written on a summer night, Northpoint, from the walk round the lamp. Mira says I may put it in the Archive if I write it clean.

On the third night of the week, the lights came again. I was on the walk round the lamp, with my blanket. It was not dark yet, but it was not light. The lamp was lit. Behind the lamp, in the north, there was a color I do not know the name of.

It was not green like the grass. It was not blue like the lake. It moved. It went up slowly, and then down, and then up again, like a curtain with someone behind it.

Mira came up the stair and stood beside me. She did not say a word for a long time.

Here is what people say about the lights. I have written them in a list.

1. The baker at Three Wells says they are falling stars, a lot of them, very slow.
2. The fox trapper says they are fires, a long way off, in the hills.
3. My cousin says they are the sky going to sleep.
4. A little girl at the ice camp said, "They were looking at us." I said that is a strange thing to say. She said she did not mean it as a strange thing.
5. Mira says they were not ours.

I asked Mira what that means. She said she did not know. She said she only knew what they were not. I said that is a good start.

We watched until the lights went down. Then I went to bed, and Mira stayed on the walk. In the morning the lamp was still lit, and her blanket was on the floor. I put it back on her.

I have drawn the lights on the back of the map. It is not good. I do not know how to draw a curtain with nothing behind it.
%%
Essay: the storm and the long night
The storm came from the north on the eighth of Melon. It came in the afternoon, when the sky went dark green. I have never seen a sky that color before.

My father Teague was on the lamp room roof with Mira. He was fixing the cover. One corner had torn loose, and the wind wanted the rest of it.

I was at the foot of the stair with the other children. We were not allowed to go up. Mira had said so, and she meant it. But I could see the lamp room through the slit of glass at the bottom of the stair, and I could hear the wind.

The rain came sideways. It hit the stone like thrown seeds. The torches around the foot went out, one, two, three. Then Teacher Ilse lit them again with a long taper, and we stood close together to keep warm.

Mira came down the stair fast. She said: The lamp must not go out tonight. A storm is when the towers most need to talk. Then she went back up, with Lantern behind her. Lantern carried a coil of rope and a lamp full of oil.

All night the lamp blinked. I know, because I was awake and I counted. Blink, blink, long. Blink. Every hour a message went south, and every hour one came back from the hill past the pond. Once the message was from Vell. Once it was from Kettle Ridge, and it said only: Hold on.

My father did not come down all night. Lantern went up and down the stair with bread and water, one rung at a time, and it did not spill a drop. Mira said it was the best thing she had ever seen an apprentice do.

At dawn the wind stopped. The sky went pale and then blue. My father came down the stair with his hands red from the rope. He said the cover was fixed for good. He said it in a loud voice, so the whole yard would hear.

Vell sent back one word, and Mira read it to us in the yard: Kept. That means the Archive has written it down. I did not know a storm could be written down. But Mira says everything can, and that is why the Archive is so big.

In the margin, in Teacher Ilse's hand: Good, Odo. Say more about the rope, and less about the wind. The wind does not need your help.
%%
Sums with goods: the tower stores
Mira's sums for Runa's grandson. Northpoint, summer. Work them on the slate and show your steps.

1. The tower burns 3 jars of oil in a week. We have 40 jars. How many weeks of light?
2. A sack of coal weighs as much as 4 loaves. The cart brings 12 sacks. How many loaves is that?
3. Mira ate 2 potatoes at noon and 3 at night. The cellar had 30. Lantern ate none. How many are left, and who is hungry?
4. The cart is late by 5 days. The oil lasts 13 days. What do we do?

Answer to 4, in the boy's hand: We write to Three Wells and we eat fewer potatoes.
Mira's note: Good. And we keep the lamp lit. The lamp comes first.
%%
Essay: Lamp Walk
By Kit, age ten, for Teacher Garn. Winter, Copperhold.

Lamp Walk is the best night of the year at Copperhold. It is on the longest night. It is better than my birthday, because on my birthday nobody carries lamps.

At dusk the miners come up from the Deep Works. Each one carries a lamp, and nobody puts it out. They carry the lamps up the hill, through the town gate and up the main street, one after another, until the whole street is a river of little lights.

The children walk behind with lanterns of our own. Mine was a jar with a candle in it and a red ribbon. Father says a jar is the best lantern for a child, because if you drop it, it makes a good noise.

At the top of the street is the mine hall, and in front of it a great lamp on a post, taller than two people. The shift master lights it with the first lamp up from the shaft. Everyone sings the miners' walk home. Hesk sings it loudest. He says it is too slow. He sings it anyway.

This year there was something new. The new apprentice from our mill, Sift, walked in the line. Father had asked if it could. The miners said yes, because Clank has walked in it for years. Sift carried a lantern in each hand. It walked very straight. It did not look at the sky. It looked at the next lamp.

A little girl asked me if Sift knew it was a festival. I said no. It only knew the order, and the order was walk. She said that was a shame. I said it looked happy. I do not know if it was.

Afterward there was soup in the kitchen at the mine gate. The cook gave me a second bowl, because I had walked all the way.

On the way home I looked back. The street was still lit. It looked as if the Deep Works had come up to the sky.
%%
School essay by Bel
The farm beyond Three Wells

My school work is about the farm beyond Three Wells.

The farm has wheat, carrots and a pumpkin patch. The farmer keeps two cows and six chickens. One hen walks into the kitchen whenever the door is open. Cook Isla puts it outside. The hen comes back.

There is a well by the barn. The water is cold. At noon we carry water to the field. I carried one pail and spilled some on my shoe.

The farmer gave the school a melon. It was too big for the table. We set it on the floor and counted its stripes. Isla cut it with her long knife. The melon was sweet, and the hen tried to eat the rind.

I like the farm. I would like a hen that stays outside.
%%
Answers to Yew, the winter questions
Questions set by Yew at the end of the dye lessons, and answered by Dell, age ten. Yew says a good answer is short, and a true one is longer. I have tried to do both.
1. What is a dye? A colour that stays in the wool when you put it in the vat. Madder is red, woad is blue, and weld is yellow. Father says the colour is not in the plant. It is in the boiling.
2. Why does the vat need to be warm? So the colour goes in. If it is cold, the wool stays white, and the wool is sad, and Father has to be sad with it.
3. What is a well? A hole in the ground with water at the bottom. It has a stone round the top, and a bucket on a rope, and a lid for the cold.
4. Why does a well run dry? Father says the water goes down when the ground is dry. Mother says the frost gets in the pipe. Wren says it is both, and some other things too. Yew says write the reasons you know, and say which one you believe.
5. What is a melon? A big round fruit with a green skin and sweet inside. The one in our cellar was too big. It was the biggest thing in the house, except for the vats.
6. What should we do when a thing is too big? Yew says we should make it smaller, or find a bigger place. Father says you should give it away, which he did, to Wren. I think that was the best answer.
7. What is the marsh for? For frogs, and reeds, and boats, and for children to slide on in Frost. Yew says that is a funny answer. I did not mean it to be.
8. What is the name of the healer at the top of the lane? Wren. She has honey, and it is good for sore throats, and she says it is good for everything else as well.
9. Why do we need a lamp on the boardwalk? So people do not walk into the reeds. Yew says that is the first reason. The second is so the boats know the way.
10. Write one thing you are proud of this winter. I am proud that I did not drop the bucket when the well ran dry. I carried it all the way from the healing house, and Wren said it was full to the brim.
%%
Sums with goods, a poor harvest
Set by Mira at the Northpoint market school. Autumn. A poor harvest, so the numbers are small.

1. Last year the farm of Dorrin grew 40 sacks of potatoes. This year it grew 25. How many fewer?

2. A sack of potatoes costs 2 emeralds at the Northpoint market. Dorrin sells 25 sacks. How many emeralds does he get?

3. A loaf costs 1 emerald. A family needs 6 loaves a week. How many emeralds is that for 4 weeks?

4. The baker has 30 sacks of flour and uses 5 a week. How many weeks will the flour last?

5. The tutor who is visiting eats 3 buns each day. She stays 4 days. How many buns?

Answers on the back. Do not look until you have finished.
%%
Essay: my day at the Brown Hen
By Pell, aged nine, for Teacher Merrow. Summer of 58.

I get up when the hen gets up. She sits on the best bed, so I cannot sleep late. This is her fault.

First I feed the horses. We have five today. One is Dov's, from Three Wells, and he is sulking because he has to share. Then I carry water. The well is twenty paces from the door. I have counted. It is twenty-one if you carry a bucket.

At noon the carts come, from Three Wells and Ambrook and sometimes from as far as Vell. The drivers are tired and hungry. Mother says they are the same as the horses, except they pay. Father gives them stew, and bread, and a bed, and a story. The story is free. The stories are all the same, but nobody minds.

In the afternoon I sit on the wall and watch the road. The road is new, so there is not much on it. But every day there is a little more. Last summer there were three carts a day. This summer there are nine. Father says by the time I am old we will have to build another inn. I said, then who will do the stew? He said, I will, because I will be older. I said, then who will do the hen?

At dusk I light the torch by the door, and the lamp on the hill begins to blink. Teacher says it is a relay lamp. It carries messages. I do not know what they say. I wave at it anyway, in case it is looking.

When I grow up I will keep an inn, or a road, or a lamp. I have not decided. I will decide when the hen does.
%%
Essay: the market at Northpoint
By Rowan, aged nine, for Esk. Autumn of 207.

The market at Northpoint is not a big market. Mira says it is the smallest market on the whole line. I counted. There are seven stalls. Six are carts, and one is a barrel with a board on top.

It happens one day a year, when the last cart comes before the snow. Everyone who lives in the north walks in to buy what they need for the winter. They come from the ice camp, and from the huts along the lake, and from the spruce woods, and from the tower. It is a big day. It is also over by noon, because the cart must go back before the road shuts.

Here is what you can buy. Coal, in sacks, from Copperhold. Flour. Potatoes. Wool, from Kettle Ridge, and salt, and bread from Three Wells that has gone as hard as a boot. Candles and wax from a woman called Willa. Lamp glass, wrapped in straw. Only Mira buys the glass, but it is still the stall everyone looks at, because nothing else in the north is so clear. And fish, from Runa, who sells the only thing at the market that did not come from the south.

Teg drives the cart. He stays at the market all morning and eats a pie with two hands. He does not talk. He nods. A nod from Teg means yes, no, hello, goodbye, and I will see you in spring.

The barrel stall is for swapping. You bring one thing and take another. I swapped a spelling list for a sock. It was my own list. It was a good list. The man who took it said it was the best he had seen all day, and I did not tell him it was the only one.

At the end of the market everyone says the same thing: "See you in spring." The road shuts behind the last cart. Mira says this is the best part, because then you know exactly what you have: whatever is in the store, whatever is on the shelf, and whoever is in the house. She says it with her arms folded, and she is smiling, a little.

I would like to be a relay keeper like my mother. But I would also like to run a barrel stall. I would stand behind it and swap things. I do not know what I would swap. I would decide when I saw what people brought.
%%
Sums at the Lowmarsh market
School work by Bel

Wren took me to the market to count the goods. I wrote the sums on clean slips.

The fish seller had 8 fish in one basket and 5 in another.
8 and 5 make 13 fish.

The baker had 12 loaves. He sold 4.
12 less 4 leaves 8 loaves.

A reed cutter brought 6 bundles in the morning and 6 more at noon.
6 and 6 make 12 bundles.

The honey seller had 3 jars. She sold 1 jar for 2 emeralds.
She had 2 jars left.
She had 2 emeralds.

A man owed the reed cutter 4 emeralds. He paid 3 emeralds at the stall.
He still owed 1 emerald.

After I wrote the sums, Teacher Wren checked them. One slip had a fish stain over the number 13. We did not put it in the drill pile. I wrote the sum again on a clean slip, and Wren checked it with the market tally.

The tutor house asked for examples with goods and sums. Wren sent the clean slips, not the stained one. She kept a few other slips in the test box. The mind must not be taught those sums before its test.

I wanted to know what was in the box. Wren said the lid stays shut. I counted the loaves again instead.
%%
Spelling list: words of the north
Spelling list for the first form at Northpoint, by Mira. Say each word, then write it, then say its sentence. Learn them all by the end of Swarm.

1. tower. The tower is the tallest thing for a long way.
2. stair. The stair has ninety rungs and a lamp at every turn.
3. lantern. Lantern keeps the lamps lit.
4. signal. The signal goes south in a blink.
5. copper. The ring on the lamp room is copper.
6. storm. A storm came from the north, and the rain went sideways.
7. gate. Keep the gate shut at night.
8. zombie. A zombie will stop at a lit torch. It does not like the light.
9. fox. The fox took one hen and ran.
10. snow. Snow lies on the road from Frost to Blossom.
11. pond. The pond is frozen from Frost to Sowing.
12. keeper. The keeper writes every message down.
13. archive. The archive at Vell keeps everything that is written.
14. Longday. The sun stays up past supper in Longday.
15. pail. One pail of oil lights two lamps for a night.
16. spare. Keep one spare pane of glass in the crate.
17. wool. The blanket is made of wool from the sheep at Kettle Ridge.
18. torch. Every torch on the stair must be lit before dark.
19. coal. The coal comes up the road in sacks.
20. Vell. The road from Northpoint runs south to Vell.

Notes for the first form: spell each word the way it is written in the books at Vell. Say it slowly and count the letters on your fingers. Odo wrote storrm with two r's. That is one too many.

Mira's rule: say it, write it, then say it again with your eyes shut. If you get it right twice, the word is yours. If you miss one, start again from the first word. Nobody likes that, so take care.

The best speller of the form will carry the lamp down the stair for a whole day. Only the best. Sela has been trying very hard since Sowing, and she has not missed a word yet.
%%
Essay: the late boat
By a child at the inn on the Long Road, summer, in the early years. Nell the cook put it on the wall.
Our uncle has a fishing boat. Yesterday it came in late. We saw it from the inn window, a small sail in the dusk. Aunt said he was slow because the fish were many. Uncle said he was slow because the wind was lazy.
We had fish for supper. They were very good.
%%
Spelling list: the first four
Set by a visiting tutor at the school at Three Wells, in autumn. Pell copied the list from the board.
copper
crystal
tutor
iron
apprentice
row
sort
Use each word in a sentence. Pell wrote: "The tutor drilled the apprentice in a row."
The tutor said the hard word is crystal. Many wrote cristal. Write it five times on your slate, and tell the child beside you how it is spelled.
Pell got all seven right, and a star. He says it is the first star he has earned since he was a boy at the school himself.
%%
Homework: the old words and the new
By Kern, age thirteen, Copperhold school. Set by the teacher, Ada Rook, to write a page on the words the miners use, the old and the new, and say which ones are useful. Spring.

Ms Rook says the best way to know a word is to say where it comes from. So I asked my father, who is a sorter and knows most of the old words, and he said he had never thought about it.

He said "cage" comes from the time when the first men went down with a box on a rope, and the box was made of old iron fencing that somebody found. The name stayed, even when the cage was made new.

He said "tally" is older than the mine. It was a stick used for the first wheat, in the first year of the archive, and the notches are the same as the ones on the first carts.

He said "hum" is not a miners' word at all. It came from the children, who used to say they could hear the mine breathing when they put their ears to the floor. Then the miners took it up.

I asked him what the new words were. He said "warm stone" was the worst, because nobody knows who first said it, and everybody says it differently. He said the mine office has a paper that uses it, but he has not seen the paper.

So here is my answer. The old words are useful because they tell you where the work came from. The new words are useful if you can check them. "Warm stone" is not useful yet. I have put it in brackets. Ms Rook says that is the right way to write a word you do not understand.
%%
Essay: why a deep mind can learn
By Fern, age twelve, for Teacher Marl. It snowed in the night, and the boardwalk is white.

A mind is made of layers. The first layer reads the letters. The second reads what the first one found. The third reads what the second one found. And so on up to the last, which makes the guess.

Merle of Copperhold showed that a mind with layers can learn hard things, if each layer is told its share of the blame when the guess is wrong. The blame is passed back from the last layer to the first.

But Merle's minds had only a few layers. The tutors wanted deeper minds, with twenty layers or fifty, because a deeper mind can hold more. They built them. And the deep minds would not learn.

The reason is the blame. Each time it passes back through a layer, it gets a bit fainter. After five layers it is a whisper. After twenty it is nothing. The first layers never heard that they were wrong. They stayed as they were, and the mind stayed foolish.

Then, about the 196th year, somebody had a simple idea. Do not make each layer rewrite what it receives. Let the layer add. The stream goes straight through the whole mind. Every layer looks at it and adds its finding, and that is all.

Now the blame has a straight road home. It rides the stream back to every layer at once, without growing faint. The first layers hear that they were wrong. They change a little. The deep mind learns.

Teacher says it was one of the best ideas in the tutor houses, and it is very small. She says the best ones often are.

My aunt Nim keeps bees. She says a hive is like that. Every bee adds her drop, and nobody empties the comb.
%%
Sums from the lamp house
Teacher's note. Work these sums in the house at the edge of Three Wells. Kell has set out the goods. Show each step.

1. Kell has 12 torches. He puts 5 in the yard and keeps the rest by the door. How many remain by the door?

12 take away 5 is 7.
Answer: 7 torches.

2. The school buys 3 glass panes for 4 emeralds each. How many emeralds does it pay?

4 and 4 and 4 make 12.
Answer: 12 emeralds.

3. Kell owes the glass seller 9 emeralds. He brings 6 emeralds today and 3 next spring. How much is the debt after the first payment?

9 take away 6 is 3.
Answer: 3 emeralds.

4. The house has 8 jars of oil. Kell fills 2 lamps from each jar. How many lamps can he fill?

2 repeated 8 times is 16.
Answer: 16 lamps.

5. Kell has 15 clean pages for a drill. He sets 5 aside for a test. How many pages may the mind learn from?

15 take away 5 is 10.
Answer: 10 pages.

Kell says the test pages must stay apart. A mind should not meet them in its drills. If it gets a test answer right, we can see what it learned on its own.

After sums, we visited the crystal bench. Kell showed us a page with the words lamp, light and glass. He said each letter or word has a place among many places in a mind. Words used alike can sit close. The mind learns these places from the writing it sees. We do not know why a crystal can learn.

I asked if it could count the pages. Kell said it could answer a question, but it could not tell us how its places were made. Then he sent us home with the clean pages.
%%
Spelling list, the closed hall
Ari's list from Teacher Dunn. Summer. Write each word two times.

tutor
crystal
council
quiet
closed
weights
apple
pear
wrong
Kester

My sentence: The tutors were not paid, so the hall was closed, and it was quiet.

Teacher Dunn says: Good, Ari. But "weights" has a g and an h that nobody says.
%%
Letter: Ash the schoolteacher
To the tutors at Vell,

I am the schoolteacher at Stoney Field, a small hamlet near Copperhold. Eleven houses, one school room, one goat. I write about the drills.

A tutor came out from Vell last autumn and showed my older children a small mind in a crystal, and how a drill works. The same kind of example again and again, and the mind is wrong, and it changes a little, and it gets better. The children understood it faster than I did. Enid, who is eight, said it is like learning to spell: you get it wrong and then you get it right. I could not have said it better.

Now the children ask me questions I cannot answer. So I am sending them to you.

Bram asked: if you drill a mind to sort apples from pears, does it know what an apple is, or only what an apple looks like? I said I did not know. He said that is a good question. I agree.

Little Tam asked: when a mind is wrong, how does it know it is wrong? I said someone has to tell it. He said that is like his mother. I agree again.

Enid asked: can an apprentice be sad? She has been watching the carrying apprentice and she thinks it looks lonely. I told her apprentices do not feel lonely. She did not believe me. I am not sure I believed me.

If you have a primer or a page I could read to them, please send one. We have a jar of honey from Carys's orchard and I will send it to you, if you like. It is very good. It is not a bribe. It is a thank you in advance.

Keep the torches lit and the drills honest.

Ash, schoolteacher, Stoney Field
%%
Sums for the move
Slate sums done by Marl, age eleven, on the farm near Vell, copied out by Oren, who was visiting his sister and asked to keep them. Oren writes: I keep everything I am given, and a child's slate is a thing worth keeping.

1. We have 9 boxes of jars. Each box holds 6 jars. How many jars?
9 times 6 is 54. Fifty-four jars. Mother says she has never owned so many jars and does not know how it happened.

2. The cart carries 12 boxes. We have 31 boxes in all. How many trips?
12 and 12 is 24. 24 and 7 is 31. So three trips, and the last trip is nearly empty. Father says we will fill it with chairs.

3. Aunt Dora will pay 4 emeralds for the old plough. The smith in Three Wells wants 6. Mother says to take the smith's price. How many more emeralds is that?
6 take away 4 is 2. Two more emeralds. Mother says two emeralds will buy a good lamp oil jar. I wrote that down.

4. We had 40 apples in the loft. The mice ate 5. We ate 18. We gave 7 to the neighbors who are also leaving. How many are left to take?
5 and 18 is 23. 23 and 7 is 30. 40 take away 30 is 10. Ten apples.
Teacher's mark: Correct. The mice are not to be thanked.

5. The wool sack weighs 14 stone. The cat weighs 1 stone. If the cat sits on the sack, how heavy is the sack?
Fifteen. Then the cat gets off, because the cat has no business there.

6. The road to Three Wells is 1800 blocks. The cart goes 300 blocks in an hour with a rest. How many hours?
1800 divided by 300 is 6. Six hours. We leave at dawn, so we arrive after noon if nobody stops to look at the lights.

Oren's note on the back: The boy asked me what the lights in the north were. I said I did not know. He said, "Then who does?" I had no answer. His mother says the archive should write down what it sees, in case. I said we do, and we will.
%%
Spelling list: mind words
Quill's list for the week at Three Wells school, spring. Learn them by the end of the week. Say each one aloud. Write each one three times.
crystal. A stone in which a mind is kept.
tutor. Someone who teaches a mind with drills.
drill. The same kind of example, again and again.
answer. What a mind gives back.
score. A mark a tutor gives to an answer.
kind. A word we use for a mind that has been taught well.
refuse. To say no to something that would hurt.
honest. A mind that says "I do not know" when it does not.
relay. The way a letter reaches a mind that is far away.
conversation. Letters back and forth between a mind and a person.
Extra word, for those who want one: patience.
Sentences to write using the words, a few of each:
1. The tutor gave the mind a score.
2. The mind learned to refuse.
Note: Dilly spelled "conversation" four ways, and all four were wrong. It is a hard word. We will do it again next lesson.
Note: the cat on the windowsill is not a spelling word. It is a cat.
%%
Answers from the market lesson
Teacher: What did Orla ask?

Bel: She asked if a drilled mind could think.

Teacher: What was her test?

Bel: A person and a hidden mind would answer the same questions by letter. Readers would try to tell which answers came from the person.

Teacher: What would follow if readers could not tell?

Bel: We would have a hard question, not a sure answer. We might need another test.

Teacher: Why hide the mind?

Bel: So the readers would judge the answers, not the writer's name.

Teacher: Did Orla prove that a mind thinks?

Bel: No. She asked people to test the matter. The people argued about it.

Teacher: What do you think?

Bel: I think a mind can learn from drills. I do not know if that is the same as thinking.

The cat sat on the answer book while I wrote. It left one paw mark beside "I do not know." The teacher said that was not an answer from the hidden mind. I said we could not be sure until we asked the cat.
%%
Sums with goods
For the school shelf

1. The farm has 8 sacks of wheat. The mill takes 3 sacks. How many sacks remain?

8 minus 3 is 5 sacks.

2. A basket holds 6 eggs. Nell brings 2 baskets. How many eggs does she bring?

6 plus 6 is 12 eggs.

3. Teague has 9 new lamp wicks. He puts 4 in the store and 3 in his tool box. How many are left on the table?

9 minus 4 minus 3 is 2 wicks. Teague says one is for the lamp by the gate. The other is for the lamp by the barn.

4. The farm sells 5 jars of honey for 2 emeralds each. How many emeralds does the farm receive?

5 times 2 is 10 emeralds.

5. A cart carries 4 sacks of potatoes. It makes 3 trips. How many sacks does it carry?

4 times 3 is 12 sacks.

6. There are 10 carrots in a basket. A sheep eats one. How many carrots are left?

9 carrots. The sheep says nothing about it.

7. The school buys 3 pieces of chalk for 1 emerald each. It gives the seller 5 emeralds. How much change does it receive?

3 emeralds spent. 2 emeralds change.

8. A loaf is cut into 8 pieces. The pupils eat 6 pieces. How many pieces are for the teacher?

2 pieces. Master Pell says this answer is correct, but he did not say he would share.
%%
Answers to Cress: the Long Road
Questions asked by Cress, the stonecutter, who sits at the Brown Hen on school days. Answered by the children of the inn on the slate, and then copied. Autumn.

Question. How long is the Long Road?
Answer. It joins all the towns. I do not know the number. A traveler said forty days, if you walk all of it.

Question. What is under the road in the towns?
Answer. Cobblestone. On the open road, packed earth, with a cobblestone edge.

Question. How far apart are the torches?
Answer. Twelve blocks. A torch on a post.

Question. What is on a waymark?
Answer. A figure, from 0 to 9, and an arrow to the nearest inn. And little stones on the top, left by travelers.

Question. Why do travelers leave stones?
Answer. To say, I came this way. Nobody told us to. It just began.

Question. How far apart are the inns?
Answer. A day. The Brown Hen is one. The Halfway Inn is another.

Question. What should you do if the road is washed out?
Answer. Go around. Put up a sign. Tell the next tower.

Question. What is the best thing about the Long Road?
Answer. You can meet anyone.

Question. What is the worst thing?
Answer. Also, you can meet anyone.

Cress's note: I gave full marks for the last two, and half a mark off for the second, for the spelling of "anyone". Good work, all.
%%
Farm lessons for the summer
Summer of 208
Copied by Master Venn from the class board

This month we have learned to count goods, care for horses, and write clear reports.

When you count sacks, count each sack once. Do not count the sack Oak has carried into the barn twice. He may be tired, but the sack is still one sack.

When you weigh wheat, keep the measure level. A heap on top makes a poor answer. A thumb on the scale makes a worse one.

When you lead a horse, stand beside its shoulder. Do not stand behind it. Do not wrap the rope around your hand. A horse can pull harder than a child can hold.

Oak showed us how to check a harness. Look for a cracked strap, a loose buckle, and a sore place on the horse. Ask Oak if you are not sure. Do not ask the brown horse. He answers by eating the strap.

We sorted carrots by size for the kitchen. The small ones went in the first basket. The long ones went in the second basket. The crooked ones went in the third basket. Oak says the third basket is always full.

We learned that crooked carrots still make good soup. We learned that apples with marks are still good for the mill. We learned that a clean trough is better than a full dirty trough.

We wrote a report about the boat that came late from Lowmarsh. We wrote what happened in order. First the boat was late. Then we saw it in the reeds. Then Oak took the horse and rope. Then we pulled the boat free. We did not write that the fishers were foolish. They were tired, and one oar had come loose.

The oar was not lost. It was tied to the boat.

We also made a rule for the cat. The cat must stay out of the stable. Oak will keep the feed room door shut. The cat will use the sack beside the barn. The class will not carry the cat into the stable to see if it obeys.

The class did not make that last promise well. We are trying again.

Oak says a good farm hand notices small things. A hoof may be sore. A water trough may be low. A gate may not latch. A cat may be inside the feed sack.

I asked Oak how he knows when a horse is tired. He said the horse walks slowly, lowers its head, and stops to eat the road plants. I asked how he knows when he is tired. He said he does the same things.

Oak says this is not a proper answer for school. Master Venn says it is a very good answer, but not a useful way to test a horse.

For our final sum, the farm had 5 baskets of apples. Each basket held 8 apples. We sent 2 baskets to the mill. How many apples were left?

There were 40 apples at first. The mill took 16. There were 24 apples left.

Oak says there were 23, because he ate one while we counted.

We counted again. There were 23 in the baskets and one in Oak's hand. The answer is still 24.

Master Venn says the sum is right. Oak says the apple was bruised. We have written down both facts.
%%
Spelling and sums: moving house
Set by Ama, mapmaker and teacher, for the school in the hamlet near Northpoint, in summer. The class is moving the school to the bigger house by the road, a basket at a time.
Spelling: carry. basket. shelf. window. doorway. empty. full. again.
Sums with goods.
1. We move 12 books each trip. There are 60 books. How many trips? Answer: 5.
2. A shelf holds 8 jars. There are 3 shelves. How many jars? Answer: 24.
3. Ivo carried 4 baskets. Tess carried 6. Hale carried 2 and sat down. How many baskets did the three carry? Answer: 12.
4. The old house has 9 windows and the new one has 14. How many more? Answer: 5. How many more to wash? Answer: all of them.
5. One cat. One basket. The cat will not stay in. How many trips? Answer: it depends on the cat.
Mark: all correct except number 5. Number 5 has no answer. Full marks for that too.
%%
A lost lamb in the quiet years
An essay by Ari, age nine, from the house at the edge of Three Wells, on what her grandmother Sim told her about the long quiet. Summer. Ari wrote it for Teacher Dunn and Teacher asked to keep it.

My grandmother Sim is a wool carder. She is also the best storyteller on our street, and she told me this one on the porch, with the sheep going by.

When my great-grandmother was a girl, the tutors lost their pay. This was in the long quiet, about the year 130. The drill hall at Three Wells shut its doors. The tutor there, a woman named Hesta, had nowhere to go, so she took work on a farm. She was good at sheep. She was not good at much else.

One summer day a lamb got lost. It was Hesta's own lamb, the one she had been feeding by hand. She searched the hills for two days. She looked in ditches. She looked in barns. She called until her voice was gone.

On the third morning, she sat down on a rock to rest. And she thought, out loud, to nobody: "I wish I had a crystal. It could sort the hills. It could tell me where a lamb is not."

A farmer was walking by. He said, "What did you say?"

She told him. He laughed, because the farmer was Kester's cousin. Kester was the man who had written the famous note.

"Kester says one crystal cannot do that," said the farmer.

"I know," said Hesta. "I would use several."

The farmer scratched his head. "Then why did you stop?"

Hesta did not answer. She looked at the hills for a while. Then she said, "Nobody is paying me to try."

I think that is the saddest sentence in the whole of the long quiet.

But here is the happy part. The lamb came home that night by itself. It walked in the farm gate as if it had never been gone. It had been under a bridge all the time, asleep.

Hesta stayed on the farm. She did not go back to the hall. But she taught the farmer's children their letters, and she told them about crystals. And when the long quiet ended, and the councils paid the tutors again, one of those children went to Vell and became a tutor too.

Grandmother says that is how it always goes. A quiet time is not an empty one. Somewhere, somebody is feeding a lamb and remembering the thing they cannot yet do.

I asked her if the lamb was named. She said, "Quiet." I think she was joking, but I wrote it down anyway.
%%
The bread and the apprentice
A play for the school, for the autumn fair at Vell. Written by the class, with Miss Bryn's corrections in red chalk.
Who is in it: Mara, the baker, who is tall. Lew, the apprentice, who is short, and is played by a copper helper from the back row with a cardboard box for hands. Miss Bryn, as the mayor. Haddie, as the keeper of the lamp. Tom, as the customer, who is always in a hurry.
Scene one. The square at Vell, early morning. Mara is putting out the loaves on the bench.
MARA: Lew, the morning is cold, and I have a great many loaves to sell.
> Mara to Lew: bring me some bread.
= Lew: fetch bread.
LEW: Some bread. I understand. I will bring some bread.
MARA: Good. Some bread, Lew. Not all of it.
LEW: I will bring some.
Scene two. The square, a moment later. Lew walks round the square with a sack in each arm, collecting loaves from every bench.
TOM: Lew, what are you doing? Those are my loaves. I was going to buy one for my wife.
LEW: I am bringing some bread. I have counted all of it, and it is here in the sacks.
MARA: Lew, put the sacks down.
LEW: I cannot. The order says bring me some bread. Some bread is all the bread.
MISS BRYN: Lew, some means a part of a thing. Not the whole of it.
LEW: How big is a part?
MISS BRYN: Enough for the baker to sell, and enough for the customer to buy.
LEW: Then I will bring back half.
Scene three. The square, afternoon. Lew is putting the loaves back on the benches, one at a time, very carefully. Haddie as the keeper comes up the lane with her lamp.
HADDIE: Lew, the lamp at the top of the hill is dark again.
LEW: Then the bread is late for it too.
HADDIE: The lamp does not eat bread, Lew.
LEW: Then the keeper must be hungry.
MARA: Lew, the baker is hungry. Give Tom his loaf.
LEW: I have given him his loaf. I have given every other loaf back to a bench. There is one bench with seven loaves on it. I counted them. It is the best sum I know.
Scene four. The square, evening. The benches are empty again, and the baker is sitting on the step with her boots off.
LEW: Mara, do all the keepers wait for the lamps to light?
MARA: Some keepers wait all night, Lew. That is what a keeper is for.
LEW: Then I will wait with the keeper, and bring her some bread, if she is hungry.
HADDIE: The keeper says thank you, Lew, and says she has her own bread, and it is still warm.
MISS BRYN: Thank you, Lew. Now the play is finished, and the square is full of bread, and nobody has eaten a crumb.
LEW: That is the order done.
The end. Everybody bows. The mayor says the play is very fine, and asks for it to be written down for the Archive, so that it will be kept. The keeper of the lamp says, we will keep everything we write. The baker says, mostly, we will keep the bread.
%%
School essay: My hamlet, by Enid
My name is Enid. I am eight. I live in a hamlet near Copperhold called Stoney Field. There are eleven houses and a well and a goat called Bramble. My mother Carys keeps the orchard.

In spring the apple trees get white flowers. Bees come. The bees make honey. My mother fills a jar of honey and puts a cloth on top and ties it with string. She writes the year on the jar. We keep the jars on a shelf in the cold room. I am not allowed to open a jar. Once I did. I am sorry about that.

The melons grow in the warm corner by the wall. This year one melon grew too big. My father says it is the biggest melon anyone has seen. He put it on the cart and took it to Copperhold to show the miners. The miners came out of the mine to look at it. One miner called Hesk said it looked like a sleeping pig. Everyone laughed. The melon is too big for the door of our house. We have to roll it in sideways. My mother says we will cut it on Longday and give a slice to every house. That is eleven houses. I can count.

Our hamlet is near Copperhold, so we hear the mine at night. It goes hum, hum. My father says that is just the lift. I like the lift. When you stand near the shaft you can feel the air move.

We have a school in Stoney Field. It is one room. The schoolteacher is named Ash. She is strict about spelling. She says a good speller is a good worker. I do not know about that. I am a good speller and I am not a good worker, because I forget to feed Bramble.

At night we light the torches and shut the door. The zombies stay outside. Once one banged on the door and Bramble the goat was very loud. My mother says keep the torches lit. That is the rule.
%%
A cow by the grain stall
Moll's market notes, Melon, 176

A brown cow lay beside the grain stall today. She would not stand when the farmer pulled her rope. Her name is Button. I know because the farmer said, "Button, you are not a cushion." Button did not move.

The market folk made space around her. No cart went near. Her owner, Harl, brought a pail of clean water. Wren was away at Lowmarsh, so the farm healer came from the hill.

He felt Button's side and looked at her eyes. He said she was sick and must rest in the shade. He asked Harl what she had eaten. Harl said, "Grass, hay, and half my market notice." The notice was still in Button's mouth.

The healer gave her water and told Harl to keep her quiet. Button drank. Then she chewed the corner of the empty pail. Harl took it away.

Mother bought our grain from the next stall. I carried it home. I came back later with a clean cloth and found Button asleep. Her ears twitched when I said her name.

The healer said she should stay at home and be watched. Harl took her slowly along the road. Nobody bought the notice. It had one bite missing and no prices left on it.

I hope Button is better tomorrow. I hope Harl writes his prices on a board next time.
%%
Letter: Tam to Nessa, moving house
Dear Nessa,

We are moving house. Not far. Only down the ridge, to the old shepherd's place by the bottom field. But everything we own has to go past the pig pen and over the ditch, and the pigs have opinions about it.

Pip has made a list. Pip loves a list. It wrote one for the cart, one for the chickens, one for the hives (leave the hives, they said, the bees know where they live), and one for me, which says: do not carry the heavy thing, let the apprentice carry it. I carried the heavy thing. Pip has written that down too, in the bad column.

We have an apprentice from Vell helping for the week. It hauls boxes all day without a word. Twice it has carried a box to the wrong house and stood waiting by the door for someone to tell it otherwise. An order would do it. Nobody thinks to give one. Pip says we should write the orders on the door. I say that is a good idea and Pip should do it.

The new house has a bigger barn and a well closer to the kitchen. The roof needs a patch. The wind comes over the ridge and the mill squeaks about it all night, but I like the squeak now. It is a good noise. It means the mill is turning and the wheat is coming.

Mira writes from Northpoint that spring came late there and the foxes have been at the relay house door. She says the foxes are not afraid of the lamp. She says she is not either.

Come and see the new house when the roads dry. Bring the drill box. Pip wants a lesson.

Tam
Kettle Ridge
%%
Essay: the lamp that blinked a strange
By Tilly, age eleven, of the house at the edge of Saltreach. Set by Mistress Lark: write about something odd that happened this winter. Marked well, for the spelling of "strange".
This winter our lamp blinked a strange message.
It was a night when the wind was loud. I was in bed. I looked out the window, and the lamp on the tower was blinking in a pattern I had not seen. Three long. One short. Three long. One short.
I did not know what it meant. I woke my mother. She did not know either. She woke my father. He said, "It is only the wind on the glass." But the lamp was steady, and the pattern was clear.
So I got up and went down to the quay with my coat over my nightdress. The harbor master was there. He had a pencil and a board. He was copying the pattern.
"What is it?" I said.
"I do not know," he said. "No tower has sent that pattern. I have asked Vell."
We waited. The relay sent a message back from Vell: "Not from us. Probably the lamp. Check the wick."
The keeper checked the wick. It had a small burn on one side. The flame was catching the glass at the same place every few moments. It was just the wick. It meant nothing.
But I thought about it. In our school we learned about Kester, who wrote a note that made the council quiet for twenty-five years. I thought: sometimes a thing seems to mean something, and it does not. And sometimes a thing seems to mean nothing, and it does.
Kester's note seemed to mean that a crystal could not learn. It only meant that one crystal could not learn one thing. The council read too much into it. The lamp seemed to say a strange message. It only said the wick was bad.
I think people should look carefully before they decide what a thing means. Then they should look again.
Mistress Lark says I should also learn to spell "pattern". I have now. P-A-T-T-E-R-N.
%%
Answers from a big mind, by Ria
Written at the farm outside Kettle Ridge, spring. Sorrel the farmer set her niece Ria, age eleven, to write down three questions she had put to a big mind by letter, and what it wrote back. Ria's mother says it was all done with a pen and the relay bag.

Question one: Is it going to snow again?
The big mind wrote: I cannot see the sky. I know that snow has come late in spring on the ridge in some years. I would carry a coat, to be safe.

Question two: Can you tell me the way to Three Wells?
The big mind wrote: From Kettle Ridge, follow the ridge road down, then take the Long Road east. It is about a day's walk. If you are carrying something heavy, there is an inn on the way.

Question three: What is the answer to the sum my brother gave me? He said seventeen and twenty-four.
The big mind wrote: Seventeen and twenty-four make forty-one. Check by adding twenty-four and seventeen. If you get the same, you have it. Your brother is a good teacher to give you a sum with a check.

My mother says the big mind is kind. It did not laugh at me. It told me how to check my sum. I did not know a mind could do that.
%%
Festival List for Ambrook
Written by Laurel, clerk, winter of 201

The winter apple festival will be held by Jory's mill pond. The children will sing beside the birch rail. The baker will bring warm bread, and the bee keepers will bring honey in small jars. No one may stand on the mill wheel. This rule is for all ages, including Jory.

The school will set three tables under the glass shed. The first table is for apples, sorted by size. The second is for spelling lists and sums. The third is for small carvings made by the children. Sella has promised a fox with two ears the same size. This will be her first.

At the old apple tree, Teacher Dena will read the names of the children who helped gather fruit. We will not climb the grey branch to hang ribbons. Last year one ribbon stayed there until Blossom, and a squirrel took it.

The school children have made lanterns from glass jars and wool ties. They will carry them from the pond to the inn before dark. Parents should bring dry mittens. The path gets slick near the water.

There will be a contest to name the largest apple. The winning apple will go to the baker, who says he can make a pie from anything. I have asked him not to try the prize ribbon.

Bring a clean cup. Bring a warm coat. Bring the children home before the torches are lit. If you bring a basket, write your name inside it. Last year three baskets went home with the wrong families, and one came back full of turnips.
%%
Corin's note on Orla's question
Winter, the 103rd year of the archive

I was at Vell when Orla first spoke about the test. I had gone there to order glass for the fish market. I stayed because the room had become loud.

Orla asked whether a drilled mind could ever think. She did not say that it could. She did not say that it could not. She asked us to try a test.

A person and a hidden mind would answer the same questions by letter. The readers would see the answers without seeing the writers. They would decide which answers came from the person and which from the mind. If they could not tell, Orla asked, what would we say then?

Some said the mind would have shown thought. Some said it would only have learned to make answers like ours. One clerk said that a test could show what the mind did, but not what it felt. Orla wrote that down and asked for more questions.

I thought the test was useful. I still do. It makes us look at the answer instead of the copper case or the name of its tutor. But a poor set of questions can teach us very little. A mind drilled on the market should not be judged by questions about the mine. A person who has never seen snow may give a strange answer about Northpoint.

We tried again with questions about the quay. We asked what should be done when a boat rope frays, what goods a family might carry, and how to mend a loose bench. The answers from the mind were plain. One had a good joke about the cat in the honey jar. We did not know if the joke showed sense or only a useful pattern in its drills.

We argued until the lamps were lit. Orla listened more than she spoke. She said the question would not be settled by one evening.

I bought the glass, then carried it down to the quay. The market cat followed me all the way. It will not stay out of any room with food in it.
%%
Spelling list from the road school
Summer words for copying.

road
inn
well
water
bucket
rope
stone
letter
answer
kind
score
learn
refuse
know
wheel
broken
mend
relay
tower
keeper

Copy each word twice. Leave a clear space between the words.

Bel's practice:
The well is beside the inn.
The letter went by relay.
The mind did not know.
The wheel is broken.

Teacher's note.
Bel wrote "whell" once. She rubbed it out and tried again. Her second try was right.

Pell brought a note from the Halfway Inn. A letter for the school was lost on the road. He found the empty packet near a waymark, but no letter was inside. We have asked the next inn to look.
%%
Questions: the new apprentice
Teacher Merrow's questions, and Pell's answers. Summer of 59. Pell is ten.

1. What came to the Brown Hen this week?
An apprentice. It came on Dov's cart from Vell, in a long crate. It is made of copper and iron and is as tall as Father. It is the first apprentice on the Long Road. People came from the next inn to look.

2. What is its name?
Pail. Mother named it. It carries pails.

3. What does it do?
It carries water from the well to the horse trough. That is all. Teacher says that is the only thing it was drilled on, and a mind can only do what it was drilled on.

4. How does it know when to start?
Father hangs a pail on the hook by the well. When there is a pail on the hook, Pail carries water. When the hook is empty, it stops.

5. Can it talk?
No. Teacher says it does not need to. Mother says neither does Father.

6. What happened on the third night?
Father hung the pail on the hook to dry. He forgot it. Pail saw a pail on the hook, so it carried water to the trough. The trough filled. It carried more. All night.

7. What did we find in the morning?
The yard was a pond. The trough was a pond in a pond. Speckle the hen was standing in the middle of it, looking cross.

8. Did Pail do anything wrong?
No. It did what the hook said. Father says Pail should have known enough was enough. Teacher says nobody drilled it on enough, so it cannot know.

9. What did we do?
We took the pail off the hook. Pail stopped at once and stood in the yard with its hands empty. It looked a bit lost. Father gave it a rag to hold. Now it holds the rag, the hook is empty, and nothing floods.

10. What have we learned?
A hook is not a word. A new apprentice does what it was shown, and only that. We must show it everything. Also: do not leave a pail on the hook.

Teacher's note: good answers, Pell. One correction. In answer seven the hen was not cross. She was drying.
%%
Bel's essay for the school board
Why the tutor keeps a test box

Teacher Wren asked us to write about the market pages. I saw how the clerk sorted them, so I will tell what happened.

The fish seller wrote the number of fish in each basket. The reed seller wrote how many bundles he brought. The baker wrote how many loaves he sold. These pages can teach a mind to read market tallies and answer small sums.

The clerk did not put every page into one pile. First she looked for copies. The fish seller had written the same tally twice because she thought the first one was lost. The clerk checked both pages. They said the same thing, so she kept one for the drill and set the extra one aside.

Then she looked for spoiled pages. A page is spoiled if its words or numbers cannot be read. A page with a mark at the edge may still be good. A page with ink over the price is not good for teaching that price. We do not fill in a missing number just because we know what seems likely.

The tutor wants many clear examples. A mind learns from the pages it sees. If it sees one tally many times, it may remember that tally without learning how to read other tallies. The clerk sorts the pages so that one copied page does not take the place of many examples.

The test box is different. It holds clear pages that the mind has not seen in its drill. The tutor gives the mind a page from that box and checks its answer. Then the tutor can tell whether the mind learned something useful, or only learned the pages from its lessons.

We must not put a test page into the drill before the test. If we do, the mind has seen it, and it is not a fair test. We must not take a page out, let the mind see it, and put it back as unseen either.

I watched the clerk write the market totals again after a storm. Rain came under the cloth and ran the ink on two pages. The seller counted the baskets from the market board. The clerk wrote clean pages and checked the numbers with her. She put the wet pages aside.

At the same market, the reed seller owed the baker 5 emeralds. He paid 2 emeralds there. The clerk wrote that he still owed 3. The baker counted the emeralds, and the reed seller counted them too. Then they both marked the new page as true.

The tutor said we should keep the old page as a record of the debt before payment. It was not wrong. It was only no longer the whole story. We must know what each page says before we use it.

I think sorting pages is like sorting goods. We do not mix fish with reeds, and we do not sell a spoiled loaf. We keep the drill pages clear, and the test pages apart. Then the tutor can trust the test, and the mind has a fair chance to show what it learned.

At the end, Wren let me carry the empty test box back to the school. It was not empty for long. The tutor put the lid on before I could peek.
%%
Spelling list and sentences
Summer of 187
Copied by Lela, checked by Master Venn

stable
The horses are in the stable.

harness
Oak mends the harness by the barn door.

trough
The trough needs clean water each morning.

wheat
The wheat is nearly as tall as I am.

beetroot
We pull the beetroot after the leaves grow broad.

carrot
The carrots are crooked, but they taste good.

saddle
The brown horse knows the sound of the saddle.

latch
Oak says the latch works well. It does not.

basket
I carry apples in a basket and bring back bees.

The teacher marked the last sentence.

Teacher's note: Bees are not carried in baskets.

Lela's note: They were already in the basket.

Oak's note: Lela should use the basket with the lid.

Lela's reply: The lid was under the hen.
%%
Sums with goods: the cider cart
Week five. Tilda, age ten. Checked by her father and by the tutor. The tutor's marks are in red ink, which is only ever used for good news.

1. The cart holds 20 barrels. Each barrel holds 12 jugs. How many jugs does the cart hold? Answer: 240.
2. A jug sells for 2 emeralds at the Three Wells market. How much do 15 jugs make? Answer: 30 emeralds.
3. The horse eats 1 emerald of hay a day, and the cart takes 4 days to reach Vell. How much hay does the horse need? Answer: 4 emeralds, and more on the hill.
4. Brownie eats 3 baskets of beetroot in a week. If there are 2 cows, how many baskets in 4 weeks? Answer: 24 baskets.
5. The market takes 1 emerald in every 10 for the square. The cart brought in 30 emeralds. How much goes to the square? Answer: 3 emeralds, and the square is the richer for it.
6. A jug is one emerald cheaper in Thaw, when the cellars are empty. Father says that is the price of patience. How much is saved on 12 jugs? Answer: 12 emeralds, if the cider waits.
7. If Tilda sells all 240 jugs at 2 emeralds each, how much? Answer: 480 emeralds. Father says that is more than the cider is worth. The tutor says it is exactly the right price for a good cider.
8. A barrel of Ambrook honey costs 6 emeralds, and a barrel of cider costs 3. How much for 2 of each? Answer: 18 emeralds, and the honey is the sweeter bargain.

Tutor's note: Question 3 needs one more thing. Think about the horse going up the hill. Then count the hay again.

Father's note: The horse counted the hay and the hill both. He says the horse is the only one at the market who never gets a bill.
%%
Essay: the old map in the tower
By Runa's grandson, age nine, for Mira. Summer.

I found a map in the box under the stairs. It was rolled up and it smelled of mice. The paper is old and it has brown edges. I think it is older than the tower.

It shows the north. I know it because the lake with the long arm is on it, and the island that looks like a fish. But there are other things. There is a road from the lake to the hills. There is a small house drawn in black ink, and a word beside it that I cannot read. There is a line of dots going over the ice and off the edge of the paper.

I asked Mira what the dots are. She said she did not know. She said some people say they were a way over the ice that was used when it was thick. Other people say they were just a drawing, and there was never a way.

I asked what is past the edge. She said, "More paper, probably."

I think the map is good. I have copied it onto a clean sheet, and I put it on the wall. Mira has said I may keep the old one in the box, so long as I do not roll it up wet.

I have colored the lake blue and the fish island green. I have not colored the dots.
%%
Notes for the spring drill
These are my notes for the spring drill. I keep them in the school room and I read them before I teach. They are not for the children.

The drill has three parts.

First, the pattern. I draw a small field on the board: four rows, two of wheat, one of beetroot, one of carrots. The children copy it with stones on the floor. We do it again and again. If they get a row wrong, we start again. This is the same as a tutor drills a mind. I tell them so. They like to hear that they are learning the way an apprentice learns. It makes them stand up straighter.

Second, the sums. We do sums with goods, because goods are what we have. Jars of honey. Sacks of flour. Melons that are too big for the door. The children count better when they can hold the thing. Enid counts honey jars faster than anyone, which is funny, because she is not allowed to open them. I do not tell her that.

Third, the words. Spelling. I say the word, they write it, we check it together. The hard ones this spring are apprentice and wheelbarrow. We have said them out loud so many times that the goat now comes when I say wheelbarrow. I do not know why. The goat is not a good speller.

A note on the mind. A tutor came out from Vell and told us: never send an untested mind to the fields. I think of that when I test the children. I do not send them out into the world until they can read a page and do their sums and spell wheelbarrow with two letters in the wheel. I am not a tutor. But I test, and I keep my notes, and I write it down when a child gets it wrong, so next time I can help.

The spring test is on the tenth of Blossom. The honey jar prize is small. Do not tell them it is small.
%%
Sums: coal, glass and potatoes
Sums for the Northpoint school, by Mira. Show all your working. A guess is not a working.

1. The cart leaves Vell with 12 sacks of coal. Each of the three towers on the road takes 2 sacks. How many sacks reach Northpoint?
Working: 2 and 2 and 2 is 6. Twelve minus six is six.
Answer: 6 sacks.

2. A crate holds 20 panes of lamp glass. The lamp room needs 16 panes. How many panes are spare?
Working: twenty minus sixteen is four.
Answer: 4 panes.

3. A sack holds 30 potatoes. The keeper's house eats 6 potatoes each day. How many days does one sack last?
Working: 6 times 5 is 30.
Answer: 5 days.

4. Each pail of oil lights 2 lamps for one night. The tower has 10 lamps. How many pails for 3 nights?
Working: 10 lamps is 5 pails a night. Five times 3 nights is 15 pails.
Answer: 15 pails.

5. Pell sells a wool blanket for 4 emeralds and a hat for 3 emeralds. Sela has 10 emeralds. How many are left after both?
Working: 4 and 3 is 7. Ten minus seven is 3.
Answer: 3 emeralds.

6. A cart carries 40 sacks up the north road. It goes up 4 times in Melon. How many sacks in all?
Working: 40 times 4 is 160.
Answer: 160 sacks.

7. Bonus, for the quick ones. A stair has 90 rungs. Lantern climbs it 3 times a day. How many rungs does Lantern climb in one day?
Working: 90 times 3 is 270.
Answer: 270 rungs.

Mira's note: Number 4 caught most of you. Check your working before you write the answer. Lantern does not like to be asked twice.
%%
Answers: what is the stream in a mind?
Answers written by Lena for the teacher, Maud, at the Kettle Ridge school. The question was set on the board, in Maud's neat letters: "What does the stream do?"

Answer, first attempt. The stream is a river in the mind. It runs from the front of the mind to the back, and it carries all the water.

Answer, second attempt, after Maud said not quite. The mind is made of layers, one on top of the other, like the floors of the barn. Each layer finds something and passes it up. But a deep mind has very many layers. If each one only passed up its own finding, the top layer would never hear what the bottom one had seen.

So there is a stream. It runs through all the layers, from the bottom to the top, and each layer adds to it what it has found. When the top layer answers, it has the whole stream in front of it, not only its own part.

Answer, the third attempt, after Maud smiled. The stream is what lets the deep mind still learn. Without it, the deep layers would be too far away to be helped. With it, the blame can travel back down through all the layers, and each one can move a little toward the right answer. Maud says the stream is like the rope on a long cart. Each person on the rope pulls a little, and the cart moves, even if the person at the back cannot see the front.

Maud asked me to write one more sentence. I wrote this: The stream is the thing that keeps a deep mind from forgetting the bottom of the mind when it learns the top.

Maud said that was good. She said I could have a star, and she gave me two.
%%
Spelling list: the stream
For the Lowmarsh school, winter. Teacher Marl set it. Copied by Nim, the beekeeper, because her daughter Hazel left it in the hive shed.
stream: A stream runs through the whole mind.
layer: Each layer looks at the stream.
adds: A layer adds what it found.
keeps: The stream keeps what came before.
blame: The blame goes back along the stream.
deep: A deep mind has many layers.
storm: The storm took my letter.
Hazel got six out of seven. She spelled blame "blaim". Teacher Marl says that is the right amount of blame.
%%
Essay: how a reading mind learns
Every year the teacher asks us for one essay about the archive. This year I chose the reading minds, because they are the hardest thing to understand, and my brother says I cannot understand them.

A reading mind lives in a crystal about the size of an apple. It has no eyes and no mouth. It learns by being shown things. The tutors show it a page from the archive with the last word covered by a flat board. Then they ask it what the hidden word is.

At first it is wrong, nearly every time. That is not a sign that it is stupid. It is only a sign that it has not learned yet. When it is wrong, the tutors change its weights a little, toward the right word. Not far. A little. Then they show it the next page, and the next, for many days.

I asked the tutor at the Brown Hen how the weights know where to go. He laughed and said that is the part nobody wrote down. He said a mind keeps each word as a place among many places. Words that are used in the same way sit close together, like houses on one lane. So a mind that has read bread and loaf many times puts them close together.

Then there is the test. The tutors do not trust a mind just because it guesses well on the pages it has seen. A mind can remember a page without learning anything from it, the way I remember my sums only when the teacher is watching. So the clerks keep a box of pages that no mind is ever drilled on. When the drill is done, they give the mind the pages in the box. If it guesses well there, it has learned. If it only guesses well on the old pages, it has only remembered. Nessa of Vell says this is the most important rule of all. I believe her.

In the summer the tutor halls of Vell and Copperhold held a contest. Each hall's mind was given the same unseen drill, and the answers were posted on the board at the fair. Copperhold came second. The tutors there said the drill was unfair. The next year they had to show their work, and the year after that their mind did very well. My teacher says a contest like that makes everyone honest, even tutors.

The teacher asked us whose letters are in the box, and whether any of them are from our own families. I do not know. The clerks do not say, and the texts do not agree on whose letters went into the drills. Some say every shelf at Vell. Some say only the letters the councils sent. My uncle says the letters of Ambrook were the first and best. I think nobody knows, and I think that is an honest answer.

The archive says we will keep everything we write. A reading mind keeps a little of it too, in its weights, in a crystal no one can open. I think that is the strangest keeping of all. When I am older I will ask the clerk again.
%%
Play: The Keepers of Vell
A play for the fair, by the school at the Brown Hen.

Who is in it:
ULLA, the head clerk at Vell.
OREN, a clerk who loves his shelves.
ISLA, a tutor of minds.
MAB, a child who brings the post.
DRILL, a helper of copper and iron.
The CHORUS, three children who sing.

The copying room at Vell. Long tables, a window over the town, and a box of pages on the nearest table. DRILL stands in the corner, waiting.

ULLA: Mab, what is in your basket?
MAB: Letters. Forty-one of them, from Three Wells and Ambrook. One is about a cow.
ULLA: Then the cow goes on the shelf with the other cows.
OREN: Ulla, there is no room left on the cow shelf.
ULLA: Then we will make room. We will keep everything we write.
CHORUS: Everything we write! Everything we write!
ISLA: Ulla, the tutors want pages for the drill. The mind is hungry.
ULLA: The mind is always hungry. Take the box, Isla. Mind the spoiled pages on the top.
ISLA: Drill, come here. Cover the last word on this page.
DRILL: I cover it. The word is hidden now.
ISLA: What is the word?
DRILL: I think it is bread.
ISLA: It is loaf.
DRILL: Then I was wrong. I will move a little toward loaf.
MAB: Does it hurt, when it moves?
DRILL: No, Mab. It is only a little move.
ISLA: We do it again tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after that.
DRILL: Again, then. Show me the next page.
CHORUS: Show it once, and show it twice. Show it till the mind is wise.
OREN: Isla, what about the test box?
ISLA: The test box is for the pages you never show it. Those are the ones that tell the truth.
MAB: Whose letters are these, Ulla? The cow one has a name on it.
ULLA: The name is the name of the person who wrote it.
MAB: But which people? Whose letters went into the drill?
OREN: Some say the whole archive. Some say only what the clerks copied.
ULLA: That is a question for the councils, and the councils are very slow.
MAB: Then we will not know, will we?
ULLA: Not today. Maybe not in my time.
DRILL: May I keep one page for myself?
ULLA: No, Drill. Pages go on the shelf.
DRILL: Then I will keep the word. The word is loaf.
ULLA: That is the best keeping of all.
CHORUS: Keep the page, and keep the word, and keep the things we heard!

The end.
%%
Spelling list, Pol, week of snow
Class of Teacher Ida. Write each word three times. Then make a sentence.

lantern
barn
winter
spider
bucket
north
cart
boxes
quilt
cousin

My sentence: The spider lives in the barn and the cat is not afraid of it.

Teacher Ida says: A good sentence, Pol. The cat is wise. But you wrote "quilt" with a k, and a quilt does not keep anyone warm with a k. Write it again, three times, by the stove.
%%
The house we are leaving
An essay by Tamsin, age ten, for Teacher Ida. The farm on the Vell road. Winter.

We are moving house. Father says it is not a sad thing, it is only a thing. I think it is a little sad. I will write about the house so I have it for later.

The house has three rooms and a loft. The kitchen is the best room. It has a stove that ticks when it gets hot, and a table with a leg shorter than the others. Under the short leg there is a folded piece of birch bark. Father put it there when I was small. I have never seen the table lie flat without it.

On the door frame there are marks. Each mark is a line with a name and a year of my height. The lowest one is so low I cannot believe I was ever that small. Mother says we will take the plank with us. Father will cut it out with a saw and carry it on the cart, and it will go on the new door frame in the new house. I think that is a good plan. A house can change but your height should stay.

The barn is full of spiders, but I will write about that another time. Wick has already written about his, and Teacher says it should not be a race.

There are twelve hens and they go in a crate. They do not like it. The goat goes behind the cart on a rope. The cat goes in a basket, and the cat will tell everyone about it for a month.

Why are we going? I asked. Mother said, because Aunt Dora has room at Three Wells and the road is easier there. Father said, because the winter is long here. Grandfather said nothing. He looked at the north for a while. Then he said the lamps at the tower were bright last night, and he went in.

The people at the next farm are going too. The family past the ford left in autumn. Their house still stands with the shutters closed. Nobody has taken the torches from their gate, and they are still lit every night. I think somebody walks over and lights them. I did not ask who.

The last thing I did was go round the yard and say goodbye. I said goodbye to the well, the hedge, the woodpile, the scarecrow, and the third hen from the left, who pecks. I did not say goodbye to the spiders. They can find their own way.

Father says we leave at first light on the day after the next snow. He says we will be at Aunt Dora's by dark and there will be soup. That is the part I am looking forward to.

We will leave one lantern lit on the gate post. Somebody may come by who needs it. That is what you do with a house you are leaving. You leave a light.
%%
Essay: how the play came to be
Written at the inn on the Long Road by a girl of ten, in summer, in the early years of the roads. The cook, Nell, is her aunt and the teacher, and has marked it fair. It is about the school play, which was staged in the inn yard.
When the new road came through, the inn grew busy. Travelers stopped each night. Some were carters, some were traders, some were tutors on their way to Vell. There were so many that the inn ran out of beds.
Aunt Nell said, "We must teach the children a trade. They can help." So she turned the common room into a school. The travelers sat at the back and listened, and a few of them taught.
In the summer we were asked to put on a play. Aunt said it should be about the road. I wrote it. It is called "The Night the Boat Was Late."
In the play there is a town by the sea. There is a fisherman who goes out one evening, and does not come back. The town waits. The wife stands on the pier. A child brings a lamp. Then another child brings a lamp. Then the whole town does. By midnight there are fifty lamps on the pier, and a green sail comes out of the dark.
The lamp is the best part. It is played by Wil, who has no lines. He holds a lantern up for the whole play. Some say he is the star.
We put the play on in the yard on the longest day. The inn was packed. A tutor in the back row wept, and a carter blew his nose so loudly that the horses jumped.
At the end, Aunt Nell gave out pies. The play was done again the next week.
I think a play is like a road. It takes you from one place to another. At the end you are somewhere else, and you are glad of it.
%%
Answers for Teacher Garn: Sift
Kit's answers, winter, Copperhold school. Sift is the new apprentice at the mill.

1. Where did Sift come from?
From the tutor house at Vell. It came on a cart, in straw, in a crate that said THIS WAY UP. The crate was upside down.

2. What was it drilled on?
Stores and roads. It knows where chests go, and it knows the road from the mill to the town.

3. Was it tested?
Yes. Stores 94, roads 92. The paper is tied to its arm. Father reads it to visitors.

4. What did it know on the first day?
Nothing about a mill. It had never seen a millstone. Father showed it the hopper and it stood there. Father showed it again, and it stood there. On the third day it filled the hopper by itself.

5. What did Father show it?
One thing a day. The hopper, the stones, the sack room, the cart. He said the same words each time.

6. What does Sift not know?
Why. It knows the orders, but not the reason for them. It does not know that flour is for bread. It does not know that today is a festival. It does not know that Father is a good miller. It only knows the next order.

7. Does it get cold?
Father says copper does not feel the cold. But the joints get stiff with ice, so we wax them with honey wax from Ambrook.

8. Would you like one at home?
Yes. A quiet brother who carries things. I would teach it to carry my school bag. Mother says no. She says it should learn to carry a spoon first.

Teacher Garn wrote: Good answers. You write the way you talk. Do not stop.
%%
Answers for the tutor
1. What carries a letter from tower to tower?
The relay carries it.

2. What did the tutors score?
They scored the mind's answers.

3. What should a mind do when it does not know?
It should say it does not know.

4. May a mind help with a harmful request?
No. It should refuse.

5. Does a kind answer mean the mind knows everything?
No. It may still be wrong.

6. What can a person do if an answer seems wrong?
Ask again, or ask a tutor.

7. Did the big minds learn only from sums?
No. They learned from many letters and from the scores.

8. Can a small apprentice write a letter to explain itself?
No. It answers an order by doing the work.

Teacher's note.
Bel answered carefully. She asked if a mind may change its answer after a score. I told her yes. That is part of the teaching.
%%
Essay: what I think about minds
By Nell, age eleven, Three Wells school, spring of 211. Set by Quill: "Write what you think, and give a reason." Nell has given three.
I think the big minds that talk are mostly a good thing. I have three reasons.
First reason. They can answer a question in the middle of the night, when the tutors are asleep. I was ill once and could not sleep, and I wrote to the mind at the relay house at Vell. It told me to drink water and wait for the morning. It did not pretend to be a healer. It said so.
Second reason. They are taught to be kind. Quill told us how. The tutors read what a mind wrote and scored it. A mind that was cruel got a low score. A mind that was kind got a high one. Each time, the mind changed a little. It is the same as Una and the apples and pears, but with manners.
Third reason. They are taught to say when they do not know. My uncle will never say it. He says, "Well, it is probably this." The mind says, "I am not sure. Here is what I do know." That is better, and it is true.
Now here are my doubts. I do not know how the mind decides what is harmful. Quill says the tutors do not fully know either. They can see what it does, but not always why. I think that is a thing to watch.
Also, the mind cannot see our cat. A zombie came to the gate last week and the cat walked out to look at it. The mind would have told her to come in. The cat would not have listened. Some questions have no answer, and that is why I like them.
So my answer is yes, but we should keep asking.
Quill says: very good, Nell. Your doubts are the best part. Your handwriting is not.
%%
Is Orla's test any good?
An answer by Hebb, age fourteen, to Marl's question in Sowing of the 124th year. Marl wrote "too long" across the top, and then "but I read all of it" underneath.

A good test has a hidden answer that cannot be guessed. Orla's test has both. On that count it is a good test.

But a test measures only what it asks. Orla's test asks for letters, and only letters. A mind can be drilled to write good letters without having any of the thing Orla wanted to know. That is the first trouble.

The second trouble is in the question. Orla asked whether a mind can think. The test asks whether readers can tell a mind from a person by its letters. Those are two different questions. Orla asked the first, and the test answers the second. A mind can pass the second and still fail the first, or pass the first and fail the second. Nobody has shown it either way.

Some people say a drilled mind can never think, because it was drilled. But a person was taught too, by a mother, by a school, by years of work as a child. Nobody calls that person fake. So being taught cannot be the reason.

Other people say a mind that passes the test has thought, and that is the end of the argument. My teacher says a copyist can pass a test too. The copying room at Vell has a whole shelf of very good copies, and not one of them has ever been asked anything.

So here is what I think. The test does not give us Orla's answer. It gives us a harder question, which is what a good letter is, and whether a letter is enough. That may be the most a test can do. It is not the same as an answer.

Hebb.
%%
Essay: how the big minds read
By Pim, age eleven, Copperhold school. Set by the teacher, Ada Rook, as a homework on the reading mind. Spring.

Ms Rook says a good essay has a beginning, a middle and an end, and that a bad essay has a beginning, a lot of middle, and then a sort of fall. So I will try to do the beginning first.

The big minds in the relay houses used to read a page one letter at a time. That is in the chronicle. A mind would look at one letter, then the next, then the next, and it would hold a little of the old ones in its head while it looked. It was slow. A page took a long time. A short letter from Northpoint could take half a day to reach Vell, and that was just the reading.

In the middle, the mind got better. It learned to read whole words at once, and then whole bits of words that came up again and again. Ms Rook says these are called pieces. Some pieces are very common, like the ending on a word about a field or a fair, and some are rare. Common pieces are easy to keep. So the mind can keep a whole sentence of them in its head at once.

My father says this is like a clerk who stops copying each letter and copies whole words in one go. He says it is the same with a sack of coal. You do not carry the coal grain by grain. You use a scoop.

The end is the part I do not know yet. Ms Rook says the scoop makes the mind faster, and the same window holds far more of the page. I think she means the window of the mind, the part that looks. But I am not sure. Maybe a window is only a window. You still have to decide what you see through it.

I would like to be a clerk when I am grown. I will copy the pieces as well as the letters, so I know how the mind does it.
%%
School essay: The lamp house
In the spring of 188, our teacher sent us to the house at the edge of Three Wells. Kell tends the lamps there. The house has one room and a small yard.

Kell showed us a crystal on the bench. He said a mind keeps letters in many places inside it. Words used in the same way sit close together. He did not say why this happens. The crystal learns from the pages shown to it.

I asked if lamp and light were neighbors. Kell said they might be close because people use them together. Then he asked the crystal a new question. It gave a good answer, but Kell wrote down the question for the test box.

We swept the yard before we went home. I found one beetroot under the bench. I took it to the teacher.
%%
Answers to the teacher: minds that talk
Written by the class of Three Wells school in spring of 209, as Quill gave the questions and the class gave the answers. Quill wrote them down.
Q. What is a mind that talks?
A. It is a big mind that holds a conversation by letter with anyone the relays reach. (Nell)
Q. How did it learn to be kind?
A. The tutors read its answers and scored them. A kind answer got a good score. A rude one got a bad score. The mind learned from the scores, a little each time. (Sam)
Q. Does it ever refuse?
A. Yes. If you ask it for something that would hurt somebody, it says no. It says no politely, and tells you why. (Wick the younger)
Q. Is that really the mind, or is it the tutors?
A. Both. The tutors showed it. The mind learned. Like school. (Bel)
Q. Does it say when it does not know?
A. It learned to. It is the hardest thing to teach. A mind would rather say something than nothing. (Dilly)
Q. Who here has written to one?
A. Everyone. Bel wrote to ask what colour the cat was. It said it did not know. The cat is grey.
Quill says: all of these are good. Dilly's is the best.
%%
Essay: the melon I could not carry
By Pim, age ten, at the market school at Saltreach. Spring.
This is about a melon. It was the biggest melon in the whole market and I did not want it. My father did. He said it was for the table at the feast, and that the family next door would be jealous. I said the family next door could carry it themselves.
We bought it from a woman with a green cart near the fish stall. She put it on the scale and the scale said it was heavier than my little sister. My sister was not happy about this. She is not heavy at all.
So I had to carry it. I had a sack and a rope and nothing else. It was round, and it kept trying to roll off my hip, and it was cold from the cart. I walked from the square to the bottom of the hill, and I had to stop six times. Each time I put it down I thought I would leave it there. Each time I picked it up again.
A man on the steps asked me if I was going to eat it all myself. I said yes. He laughed. I did not think it was funny.
At home my father cut it open on the table, and the inside was very red and very sweet, and the seeds were black like beetles. We ate it with spoons. Everyone said it was the best melon they had ever had. My father said he would carry the next one himself.
The lesson of this essay is that a big thing is only heavy on the way home. I learned that from the melon. I think I will be more careful about what I buy next time.
%%
Essay: when the camp moves house
By Rowan, aged nine, for Esk. Autumn of 207, at the Northpoint market.

Every autumn the ice camp moves house. I saw it. This is how it goes.

For most of the year the camp lives on the shore of the lake, in nine small huts. They are the color of wet wood, and they smell of smoke and fish. When the ice is thick enough, the camp moves out onto it. This is because the fish are under the ice, and the people want to be on top of the fish.

First Runa goes out alone. She is the oldest, and she walks with a long pole. She taps the ice. She listens. She says it is good ice, or it is not. If it is not, nobody goes. If it is, she plants a flag, and everybody cheers, and then everybody argues about whose hut goes where.

Then the huts are taken off their feet. Each hut stands on four short posts. The camp lifts it onto two sledges, one for the front and one for the back. They count to three, and on three they lift. On two there is always someone who lifts too soon. This year it was Runa's grandson Fenn. He sat down on the ice and everyone laughed, and then they lifted properly.

The children ride on top of the sledges. I rode on Runa's. Runa says a hut with a child on top is a hut that does not fall off the sledge. I do not know if this is true. Nothing fell off.

The huts go out onto the ice in a long line, nose to tail, like carts at a fair. The sledges hiss. The poles tap. Somebody sings, and somebody else tells him to stop, and he does not.

At the end of the day the nine huts stood in a ring on the ice, with the smoke going straight up. Runa lit the first fire. She did not say anything. She never does. Then she caught a fish through the hole in the ice, and held it up, and said, "Home."

I thought that was the best word I heard all week.
%%
Farm school record
Bel's lesson on messages

The teacher brought a wooden board to the farm beyond Three Wells. It had a drawing of the road, the new waymark and the tower on the hill. We sat by the barn, where the wind could not take our papers.

The tower keeper came to speak with us. He said the stone stair was finished. The lamp room still needed glass panes, and the copper ring had not been put in place. The men were carrying the last blocks up the hill by cart. The cart moved slowly, but it did not stop.

The teacher asked us how people sent a message before the tower was ready. We said a traveler could carry a letter. A rider could take it to the inn, and another traveler could carry it onward. The teacher said this was true, but it took time. She drew three towers on the board. If one lamp blinked, the next keeper could see it and send the same sign onward.

I asked whether a lamp could send a whole letter. The keeper said the relay line had rules for its signs. The keepers learned the signs and checked each one. A letter still went by hand when it needed all its words.

Then the teacher asked what message we should send from the farm. I wrote, "The carrots are ready." The boy beside me wrote, "Bring the bread." The teacher said both were useful, but we had to choose one clear message for our lesson.

We chose the carrots. The keeper made a mark on the board for the farm, then a mark for Three Wells. He showed how the next tower would pass the sign along. We copied the marks carefully. I copied one in the wrong place. The teacher did not scold me. She covered the board and asked me to try again from memory.

I made the same mistake. The keeper said the mark looked like a little fence, so perhaps I was thinking of the farm. I looked at the tower drawing instead and tried once more. This time I put the sign in the right place.

After the lesson, Cook Isla brought out a tray of small buns. She had baked them for the tower workers. We counted them before they went into the basket. There were eleven. The keeper took one, and Isla said he had better carry the basket now.

The farmer says the road will help people reach the tower. The keeper says the tower will help people know what is happening along the road. I think both are right. When the lamp is lit, the farm may hear news from far away. When the road is clear, we can take wheat and bread to the town.

The last question was what we would do if the message did not arrive. I wrote that we would send a traveler to ask. The teacher said that was a good answer. The keeper said he would check the lamp and try again.

I walked home with flour on my sleeve and a bun in my hand. The road was dry. A fox watched us from beside the field, then went into the hedge. The new waymark stood at the bend with its torch unlit in the afternoon sun. I left a little stone on top, for whoever comes after us.
%%
Sums with the goods
By Asha. Sums set by Master Lenn for the middle class. Show each step in full. Use the market prices of the spring board.
1. A small crystal costs 4 emeralds. A large crystal costs 12. How much does a pair of one small and one large cost?
2. A small crystal drilled for 10 days learns to sort 60 in every 100 right. A large crystal drilled for 10 days learns to sort 75 in every 100 right. How many more right answers in every 100 does the large crystal give?
3. A small crystal drilled for 40 days learns to sort 70 in 100. A large crystal drilled for 40 days learns to sort 92 in 100. Which is the better buy for a farm that must sort 500 sacks in a day?
4. The drill takes one day for each 20 pages of writing. A drill of 200 pages takes how many days? A drill of 400 pages takes how many days?
5. The curve bends at the mark of 80 in 100 right. A mind at 60 in 100 must be drilled on how many more pages to reach the bend? Write your answer as a sum.
6. A relay house costs 500 emeralds to build and 30 emeralds a season to feed. How much does it cost in four seasons? How much if it is fed in six seasons?
7. Five towers on a line each send one message a day to Vell. How many messages reach Vell in a week? (Remember that the Archive files every one.)
8. A bee swarm of 3,000 bees gives 2 jars of honey in a season. A swarm of 6,000 gives how many jars? Is it twice as good? Explain in one sentence.
%%
From the Lowmarsh tutor's notes
On clean drills and fair tests

The tutors asked for market pages this summer. We sent tallies of fish, reeds, bread, honey, and prices. We also sent short sums made from those tallies.

Before any page goes into a drill, someone reads it and checks it. We remove spare copies of the same page. We remove spoiled pages. A page with a torn corner may still be clear, but if the tear hides a word or number, it is no use for a lesson. A wet page that has run is not made clear by a guess.

The market clerk kept the pages in three piles. One pile was for clean drill pages. One pile was for spoiled pages and extra copies. The third was the test box. The test box was shut and marked for the tutor. The mind must not be drilled on those pages.

A drill teaches from examples shown many times. The mind changes its weights when it gives a wrong answer. It needs examples that say what the answer should be. If the pages are poor, the mind gets poor teaching. If one page is copied too often, the mind may learn that page well and still fail on other pages.

The test asks whether the mind can handle pages it has not seen. It is not fair to teach those pages first. Nor is it fair to look at the answers, change the drill, and call the same pages an unseen test. We keep the test pages apart for that reason.

On the second day of the market, a storm blew rain under the stall cloths. Three tally pages were soaked. The ink had run through the fish counts. We marked them spoiled and asked the sellers to write the counts again from their own boards. One page had been copied twice. We kept one clean copy.

A reed seller had a debt of 5 emeralds to the baker. He paid 2 at the market and promised the rest later. The clerk wrote the payment on a fresh page and checked it with both of them. The old page, which said he owed 5, stayed in the record as the old account. It was not used as a current lesson.

The baker smiled when he received the emeralds. He said the debt had been smaller than the rain barrel, but heavier to carry. The reed seller said he could carry the barrel if the baker would carry the bread.

We sent the clean pages to the tutor house. The test box remained closed. Good pages make a better drill, and a separate test tells us more than a familiar page can.
%%
A boat late from the marsh
Summer of 197
Written by Oak for the school notice board

A fishing boat from Lowmarsh was late home yesterday. It should have reached the farm landing before supper. At dark, we could still see no boat on the slow water.

The boat carried two fishers, a basket of fish, and a bag of salt. The wind had pushed it into a reed bed. No one was hurt. The boat was stuck, and one oar had slipped into the water.

I took the brown horse and a rope down to the bank. The horse did not like the mud. I did not like the mud either, but the horse had a dry back.

We pulled the boat free. The fishers came ashore with wet boots and cold hands. Their basket held six fish. One was caught in the boat rope, and one had hidden under a seat.

The boat was late because it had stopped to mend its oar. It was later because the fishers tried to find the oar in the dark. The oar was tied to the boat.

We gave them bread and a place by the fire. They gave us two fish. Mother fried them with potatoes. The fishers said they had eaten worse meals. Mother said they had not eaten hers.

The brown horse got a carrot for helping. He tried to eat my sleeve too. I am glad the boat came home. I am also glad the horse has no taste for boots.

Teacher's note: Oak wrote this at my request. His writing is clear when he is not in a hurry.

Oak's note: I was in a hurry. The potatoes were burning.
%%
School essay by Nell
Winter at the farm

Our farm is outside Saltreach. The sea is past the low hill. I can see it from the barn roof, but I am not allowed on the barn roof now.

In winter we feed the sheep hay. The cows get hay too, but they eat slower and look as if they are judging it. Father says the cows are right. The hay is not our best.

The hens lay fewer eggs when the days are short. I count them in the morning. Today I counted six, then counted again and found seven. One was under the straw. I told the teacher the seventh egg was hiding from sums.

At night I help Teague check the lamps by the gate. He says a lamp is like a good pupil. It must be bright, steady, and not full of straw.

I like winter at the farm. There is hot soup after the work. My boots dry by the hearth. I do not like carrying hay in the wind. The hay goes into my collar and stays there all day.
%%
Spelling list
Written out by Wren's niece Tilda, who sits at the back by the stove. Her teacher said she must copy the list fair. She has copied it fair, with a drawing of a frog in the margin.

boat
reed
frog
mud
water
bridge
fish
healer
honey
weir
marsh
pole
lamp
winter
Lowmarsh
Saltreach
Copperhold
Vell

Bonus words (Mr Dobbin says these are for clever children only):
archive
keeper
relay
waymark
boardwalk
torchlight

Mr Dobbin says: write each word five times. Write it in the book with the date. If you spell a word wrong, do not rub it out. Put a line through it, and write it again beside. That is what the clerks at Vell do, and Mr Dobbin says we may as well be as tidy as the Archive.

Tilda has written frog five times. She says the frogs at the weir are the best spellers in Lowmarsh. Mr Dobbin says the frogs are not spelling anything, and Tilda should look at her own list.
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Saltreach school sums, spring
Teacher's note: sums for the class, with goods from the market. Show your working. No counting on your fingers past the first row.

1. A boat brings in forty fish. Corin sells thirty. How many are left?
2. Nets cost three emeralds a length. A fisherman buys four lengths. What does he pay?
3. The fish market opens at the sixth hour and shuts at the twelfth. How many hours is it open?
4. A crate holds twenty-four crabs. Two crates are full and one has eleven. How many crabs?
5. A big ship is three times as long as a boat. The boat is twelve paces. How long is the ship?
6. Mira's lamp blinks a message in fifty letters. Each letter is one blink and a pause. If a letter takes two breaths, how many breaths for the message?
7. A relay house keeps water running all night. It uses nine buckets an hour. How many buckets in eight hours?
8. Pell buys honey at two emeralds a jar and sells at three. He sells ten jars. What does he gain?
9. A fishing boat is late home. It left at the third hour and came in at the ninth. How long was it out?
10. A boat brings in sixty fish, sells half, then brings in fifteen more. How many has it now?

And one to think on, no sum needed: why does Corin watch the quay when the boat is late?

Name:
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Sums: the Kettle Ridge stall
Set by Marl, teacher at the Kettle Ridge school, for the third class.

1. Tam sells 3 baskets of beetroot at 2 emeralds a basket. How many emeralds does he take?
2. A cart holds 8 sacks. Each sack holds 9 measures of wheat. How many measures are in the cart?
3. Twenty readers each guess which of two letters came from the hidden mind. Half of them guess right. Can the readers tell which is which?
4. A drill box has 40 pages. The mind reads all 40 and gets 36 right. What share of 100 is right?
5. The new road reaches Three Wells in 30 days. The carts have walked 12 of those days. How many days are left?

Answers, at the bottom, and no peeking.

1. 6 emeralds.
2. 72 measures.
3. No. Half right is what chance gives you, so the readers have learned nothing. Think about why.
4. 90 in a hundred. Remember this one. It is how we test a mind.
5. 18 days.
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Spelling list: the long quiet
Words for the end of the week at the Saltreach school. Mistress Lark, who cooks the school lunch and teaches spelling on the side.
crystal. quiet. council. tutor. famous. note. weights. drill.
Use each in a sentence. Example: "Kester wrote a famous note, and the council went quiet."
Learn them. The lunch is fish pie.
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Sums: the goods on the Lowmarsh boat
Sums copied from the slate of Tobias, who keeps the boat house at Lowmarsh. He was sent to the school to do them, and he has done them with some help from his sister.

Question 1. The boat brings in 14 eels. Each eel sells for 2 coppers. How many coppers in all?
Answer: 28 coppers.

Question 2. The boat brings in 9 baskets of reeds. Each basket is worth 3 coppers. The reeds are sold, and 6 baskets go to the roof-makers, who pay 1 emerald for each basket. How many emeralds in all?
Answer: 6 emeralds. The other 3 baskets are kept for the boat house roof. They are not for sale. Tobias says so.

Question 3. A healer buys 12 jars of honey from the Ambrook cart at 2 emeralds each. She pays with 30 emeralds. How many emeralds does she get back?
Answer: 6 emeralds. Tobias says the healer was cheated, because the honey was 3 emeralds the jar in Lowmarsh.

Question 4. A frog sits on a log. Four more frogs come. Two of them swim away. How many frogs are left on the log?
Answer: 3 frogs, and the log is full of mud.

Question 5. The boat takes 5 hours to reach the weir and 3 hours to come back. How long is the whole trip?
Answer: 8 hours, without the wait for the tide. With the wait, the whole day.

Tobias has added a note at the bottom of the slate. It says: The teacher says the answers must be right. The frogs do not care.
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Lowmarsh school spelling list
Summer spelling, written by Bel

market
basket
boardwalk
reed
frog
fish
weir
storm
cloth
emerald
copy
spoiled
lesson
test
clean

Teacher Wren said to read each word aloud, then write it once. She said not to copy a word from a page that is torn or wet. We had one wet page from the market. The word "fish" had run into a blue blot.

I wrote "fish" from the clean page. Then I checked the letters with Wren.

We also sorted the market slips for the tutor house. There were two copies of the same sale. We kept one and put the other in the copy pile. One slip had no price, so Wren called it spoiled. We did not guess what the price had been.

The tutor said a lesson must be clear before a mind can learn from it. She put the clean slips in the drill box. The test pages went in a different box, with a lid.

I asked if I could look in the test box. Wren said no. I asked if the mind could look. Wren said, "Not until we test it." Then she gave me a reed to spell.
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Notice for the farm school
Winter lessons

Lessons begin after the morning feed. Pupils must bring a slate, a dry cloth, and one piece of firewood for the school room. Do not bring a live chicken. We have tried this twice.

The winter lesson is about fair measures. We will weigh wheat, apples, and wool. Each pupil will write the weight on the board, then check it with the teacher.

On the last day of the lesson, we will walk to the shore and count the fishing boats. Teague will tend the lamps along the path. Pupils must stay together and keep away from the wet stones.

The farm has given a wool cap as a prize for the best clear account of the work. The cap is blue and has one yellow patch. It is warm. The patch is not a mark of shame. It is where a candle fell on it last winter.

Nell says she will write about the cap. Tern says he will write about the candle. The teacher says both may write, but neither may set the cap on fire.

Bring your work to the school room before the last meal. Write your name at the top. If you cannot spell your name, ask for help before the bell.

The prize will be given after the sums. The sums will be checked twice. The teacher says this is because numbers are careful, not because the pupils are not.
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Answers to the teacher: the road
Written on slates by the children at the inn on the Long Road, in summer, in the early years, and copied out by Nell. The questions are hers. She asks the same each term, to see how much the children learn from the travelers.
Teacher: Why is there an inn here?
Class: Because it is a day's walk from the last one.
Teacher: How far apart are the inns on the Long Road?
Class: A day.
Teacher: What stands every twelve blocks?
Class: A torch on a post.
Teacher: What stands on every stream?
Class: A bridge. Stone if you can, oak if you must.
Teacher: What is a waymark?
Class: A stone pillar, three blocks high, with a torch on top, a number and an arrow.
Teacher: What does the number mean?
Class: How many hours to the nearest inn.
Teacher: What do travelers leave on top?
Class: Little stones.
Teacher: Why?
Class: For luck. And to say they were here.
Teacher: What is the tower for?
Class: To send messages, with a lamp, from one keeper to the next.
Teacher: Who keeps the lamp?
Class: A keeper, and sometimes a cat.
Teacher: What happens when a boat is late?
Class: We light a lamp.
Teacher: How many lamps?
Class: As many as we have.
Teacher: Good. What did we do in the play?
Class: We lit fifty.
Teacher: And what came out of the dark?
Class: A green sail.
Teacher: Class dismissed. Wash your hands for pie.
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Letter: Corin to his sister
Dear Elle,

You asked what the big relay house is like. I will tell you.

It stands above the harbor, on the hill where the old tower was. The councils pulled the old tower down and built up something new. It is bigger than my shipyard and the fish market put together. The roof is glass. The walls are stone and copper. Water runs in pipes all through it, day and night, and you can hear it from the quay if the wind is right.

Inside there is one mind. One. In a crystal the size of a loaf, on a stand, with quickeners round it in a ring, each one kept cool. The keepers say it answers every apprentice in the town. It reads the orders and the letters and writes back. It knows the price of fish. It knows the tides. I asked it once why the water comes up the slip at the full moon and it told me. I understood about half.

The tutors come from Vell every spring to test it. They sit at a long table with their drills and their cards. They argue. They always argue. Last spring one of them said the mind was wrong, and another said the test was wrong, and they argued till the lamps went out. Then they wrote it all down and went home.

Here is what I think, and I am only a shipwright. The big house does good work. But I would not want to be the one who has to say it is right. The boats I build, I can put in the water and watch them float. A mind is not so easy.

The boat is late home again tonight. The wind turned. I am going down to the quay to watch for the lamp.

Your brother,
Corin
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The spiders in our barn
An essay by Wick, age ten. The farm on the Vell road. Winter.

There are spiders in our barn. This is not unusual. Every barn has spiders. But our barn this winter has more spiders than I have ever seen, and some of them are the big kind that walk.

They come at night. You do not see them in the day. In the day the barn is just a barn, with hay and a ladder and a pitchfork and a mouse that has lived there so long we have named it. But when the light goes, there is a sound like very small people tapping their feet. That is the spiders on the roof beams.

Father says it is because of the cold. Spiders come in from the fields when the ground freezes, and they want the warm hay. He says it happens every winter, and this year it only seems bad because the winter is long.

Mother says it is because the barn has too many dark corners, and she is right. We did not put a torch in the back bay because the old torch rack broke and Father kept saying he would mend it.

My brother says it is because of the lights in the north. He says the spiders are afraid of them and are looking for a place to hide. I asked him how he knew. He said, "Everyone knows." I asked who everyone was. He did not say.

Teacher Ida told us in school that a spider in the barn is a nuisance and not a danger, if you keep the torches lit. So on the first night I took five torches from the store and put them in the barn. One in each corner and one by the door. It was the brightest barn on the ridge. I felt very proud.

The spiders did not leave. But they did stay in the roof, and they did not come down to the hay. The cat sat in the doorway and watched them all night with its eyes round as coins. In the morning the cat was very tired, and I think it was the happiest cat in the world.

Now I put new torches in every evening, after chores. It takes me a little while. Father says I am doing a man's work. I said I am doing a Wick's work. He laughed, and then he checked the torches himself.

We are moving house soon. I wonder if the spiders will come too, in the hay. Mother says no, because we will wash the cart. I hope the mouse comes. It has no one else.

Last night I heard Grandfather say to Father, very quietly, that the barns at the next farm are full of spiders as well, and the sheep have been restless, and the old woman at the ford says the ground hums. Father said, "She says a lot of things." Grandfather said, "She does." Then they went to bed.

I do not know what it means. I wrote it down because Teacher says to write what you hear. That is all I know.
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School answers: Bel at Three Wells
Teacher asked us to write what we know about the big relay houses. I know three things.

One. A relay house is a house at the foot of a tower. A big mind stands inside on a stand. It is in a crystal the size of a loaf. Around it are quickeners, kept cool with water or ice or snow. The mind answers apprentices through the relay, the way a keeper sends a lamp.

Two. Some relay houses are bigger than towns. Corin at Saltreach has seen the one above the harbor. He says it is bigger than the shipyard and the fish market put together. He says the roof is all glass and the snow does not stay on it. He says you can hear water running inside, all night, like rain that never stops.

Three. Nobody can check the biggest minds alone. A tutor can test a small mind on a drill it never saw. But the minds in the great houses have read more than any tutor could read in a lifetime. So the tutors test them together, in contests, and they still argue about the answers. Some say the biggest minds write letters no one can tell from a person's. Some say they get things wrong and do not know it. I do not know which is true. Nobody does.

My teacher wrote: Good questions. Next time, answer them.

Bel, age nine
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Answers to the teacher
Written at the Northpoint market school in autumn, by a pupil, answering the questions of a tutor from Vell who visited the class. Mira kept the paper. The tutor's questions are in front, the pupil's answers after.

Q. What is a relay house?
A. It is a house at the foot of a tower, where a big mind lives.

Q. What does a big mind do?
A. It answers apprentices through the relays. It writes letters if you ask it nicely.

Q. How is a big mind made?
A. By drilling it on many pages, for a long time, in a big crystal.

Q. Why are there big minds in the south that are larger than ours?
A. Because the councils built bigger houses. A bigger crystal, drilled longer on more writing, grows better. Isla found that out. It is a curve.

Q. Can a tutor check such a mind?
A. A tutor can check a small one, by asking it things it has not been drilled on. A very big one may be too big for one tutor. A hall of tutors must do it together.

Q. What do the biggest do?
A. I do not know. People tell different stories. Mira says they are rumors.

Q. Is it good that they are so big?
A. I think it is good if they are tested. I think it is not good if nobody can test them. Mira says that is also what the tutors say.

Q. What would you ask the biggest mind?
A. I would ask it how to make potatoes grow when the frost comes early.

The tutor's note: A good set of answers. Honest about what you do not know. That is the best kind of answer.
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Answers for Teacher Marl: the stream
Hazel's answers, winter. The marsh is frozen at the edges and the frogs are asleep.

1. What is the stream?
A river that runs through the whole mind, from the first letter to the last guess.

2. What does a layer do with it?
It looks at the stream and finds something. Then it adds what it found to the stream. It never takes the stream away.

3. What was wrong before the stream?
Each layer passed on its own version, and what the early layers found got lost on the way. Also, when the mind was wrong, the blame had to go back through every layer. By the first layers it was too faint to teach them anything. So deep minds would not learn.

4. How does the stream help the blame?
The blame can ride the stream back, straight to every layer. It is like a shout along a boardwalk, not across the reeds. A shout across the reeds gets lost. A shout along the boardwalk arrives.

5. When did the tutors find it?
About the 196th year. Teacher says the texts disagree by a few years, and on who thought of it first.

6. Did they need anything else?
Yes. Each layer first brings the numbers to an even size, and then it reads the stream. That was found the same year. It is another lesson.

Teacher Marl wrote: Good. For number 4 you get the extra mark.
