Chương 7: The River

By spring, Joe had begun wandering farther around Green Hollow. Not far. His body still imposed limits that his mind sometimes forgot. The first time he followed a group of older children toward the western fields, he made it farther than expected before his legs finally stopped cooperating. Joe sat beneath a fence for what was supposed to be a short rest and discovered several minutes later that standing again seemed much less attractive than it had been before. Pam eventually found him there.

She took one look at Joe sitting beneath the fence and started laughing. Joe waited. Pam continued laughing.

"Are you finished?"

"No." Joe sighed. She laughed for most of the walk home and told Lily before Joe could prevent it. Lily looked at him as though he had personally invented stupidity.

"You walked all the way to the western fields?"

"Almost."

"That's worse."

"I thought I could."

"And now you know you can't." Joe nodded. Lily pointed toward the yard.

"Then stay somewhere your legs can bring you home from. I'm not sending people across the village because you suddenly remembered you're four." Pam, standing behind her, started laughing again. Lily turned.

"And you can stop encouraging him."

"I didn't tell him to go."

"You laughed."

"Because I found him under a fence." Lily's expression suggested that distinction was not helping. Joe quietly left before the conversation became his responsibility again. After that, he became more realistic about distance. Still, Green Hollow had grown familiar enough that remaining beside the house taught him less each month, and spring made the village difficult to resist. Snowmelt filled the river until it ran bright and fast.

Wildflowers appeared along stone walls and field boundaries, while the hills seemed to turn green almost overnight. The northern forest developed a pale new canopy that thickened with every passing week. The village remained poor. Roofs still leaked, children still wore patched clothing, and a broken iron tool could create a serious problem for a household. None of that made the valley less beautiful. Joe occasionally thought about the apartment he had lived in during his previous life.

It was warmer, cleaner and infinitely more convenient. Hot water came from a pipe. Food could arrive at his door. Light appeared when he touched a switch. The view from his window was another building. Green Hollow offered almost none of the comforts a modern person would consider basic, yet each morning the hills looked slightly different depending on the weather. Clouds cast moving shadows across the fields, and on especially clear days distant mountains appeared beyond the southern horizon.

Joe had gradually begun to understand that poverty and ugliness were not the same thing. One morning, while walking near the village center, someone shouted his name.

"Joe!" He turned and saw three boys standing beside a crooked willow fence. The oldest was Ben, one of the children from the eastern households. He was around seven and carried a reed pole over one shoulder.

"We're going fishing," Ben said.

"You want to come?" Joe looked at the pole.

"The river?"

"The inlet. Not the main current." The smallest boy carried a clay jar filled with worms, while the third had another reed pole and a coil of rough cord tied around his waist. The river was forbidden to younger children without adults, especially during spring. Two children had been swept away several years earlier when the water rose after snowmelt, and every grandmother in Green Hollow seemed personally responsible for making sure nobody forgot. Ben noticed Joe looking toward the road.

"The inlet barely moves. We're not going anywhere near the deep part." The third boy shifted impatiently.

"Are you coming or not? If we wait all morning, the fish aren't going to sit there for us." Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings. Joe considered it. The boys were older and wandered farther around Green Hollow than he did. They knew children from households his family rarely interacted with and, more importantly, older children talked constantly. That alone made them useful company.

"Fine." Ben immediately started walking. Joe followed and discovered within half a minute that the normal pace of three older boys was nearly a run for him.

"Slow down." Ben turned around.

"Why?" Joe looked at him. Ben looked down at Joe's legs.

"Oh. Right." The group slowed. They followed the main road past the communal grain store and the elder's compound. Behind the compound stood the fenced grounds of the Talent Hall. Joe heard the students before he saw them.

"Hah!" Several voices sounded together. Through gaps in the wooden fence, rows of children stood across the training yard. Simon was among them. An older trainee walked between the rows correcting feet, shoulders and backs while another stood near the front demonstrating a repeated movement. Under a covered section farther away, Mr. Hall sat with several younger students who were practicing written characters. Theodere was absent. Joe had watched enough of Simon's routine by then that this no longer surprised him.

Theodere might appear for inspection or important instruction, but ordinary training continued whether he was there or not. Ben barely glanced toward the yard.

"My brother says first-years spend all day standing." The boy beside him snorted.

"Your brother quit."

"He hurt his leg."

"He quit after he hurt his leg."

"He couldn't train."

"He still quit." Ben immediately began defending his brother, and the argument continued for several minutes with neither boy changing his position. Joe listened without joining in. The village gradually thinned around them. Houses gave way to gardens, then fields, and finally the river appeared ahead between willow trees. It was wider than Joe expected from the sections he had seen closer to Green Hollow. Spring water moved quickly through the main channel, carrying small branches and patches of foam downstream.

Ben led them farther along the bank toward a quieter inlet formed behind a bend, where the water became shallower and the current slowed considerably. Their fishing equipment was simple. Reed poles. Rough cord. Bent pieces of metal serving as hooks. Joe picked up Ben's line and examined it.

"Where did you get the wire?"

"My father."

"He made it?" Ben shook his head.

"Traded eggs for it last autumn. He had more, but he won't let me use the good pieces because he says I'll lose them." Joe handed it back. Another small piece of information. Even something as simple as thin metal wire had value here. The boys settled along the bank. The youngest stepped toward a wet stone near the edge, and Ben immediately grabbed the back of his shirt.

"Not there."

"I know."

"You were stepping there."

"I wasn't." Ben pulled him farther back anyway. Joe watched the exchange. Ben noticed.

"Don't." Joe had not said anything.

"I wasn't going to."

"Good." Apparently Ben had already decided that bringing a four-year-old to the river came with responsibilities. They began fishing. For several minutes, only the river made a lot of noise. The boys cast their crude lines, adjusted bait and occasionally argued over which part of the inlet looked deepest. Then someone mentioned Blackwood.

"My sister says the market street is wider than our whole square," the smallest boy said. Ben laughed.

"She's lying."

"She went there."

"So did I." Joe looked over. Ben noticed immediately and straightened slightly, pleased to have an audience that had never been there.

"I went with my father last year. Blackwood's huge."

"How huge?" Joe asked. Ben spread his arms.

"Really huge." That was not useful. The third boy interrupted.

"It has walls."

"I was getting to that." Ben shifted closer, apparently settling in for a proper explanation.

"There are walls all around it, and guards stand at the gates. You can't just walk in anywhere like here. They look at carts and ask people questions, especially if you're bringing things to sell." That was better.

"There are shops too. Actual shops that stay there every day. Cloth shops, food shops, tools, pottery, everything. My father bought a knife from a man who sells nothing except knives and other metal things." Joe found that more interesting than Ben probably realized. Specialization. Permanent trade.

"What are the buildings like?"

"Some have two floors." The smallest boy interrupted.

"My sister said three."

"One has three," Ben admitted.

"Maybe more than one, but I only saw one. And there were so many people on the main street that Father held my arm because he said I'd disappear."

"You probably would," the third boy said.

"I wouldn't."

"You got lost during Starlight."

"I knew where I was."

"You were crying."

"I was five." The argument threatened to replace the story, so Joe redirected it.

"How long does it take to get there?" Ben shrugged.

"We left before sunrise and got there before midday." Roughly half a day's walk for an adult travelling with goods. That matched what Joe had heard at home. Blackwood was clearly not simply a larger Green Hollow. It had walls, guards, permanent markets and enough population to support specialized workers. Joe wanted to know more, but something tugged at his fishing line. He reacted too slowly. The cord tightened for a moment and then went slack. Ben stared at him.

"You lost it." Joe pulled the line back and examined the empty hook. Apparently he had. Ben shook his head with deep disappointment.

"You're terrible at fishing."

"It was my first fish."

"Exactly. You already lost it." Joe attached another worm.

"I noticed." The boys laughed. Joe did too. For the next hour, very little happened. The youngest boy nearly caught something and then lost his bait. Ben pulled up a fish small enough that everyone stared at it before he threw it back.

"You said you were good," the third boy told him.

"I am."

"That fish was smaller than my hand."

"That's why I let it go."

"You didn't choose its size." Ben ignored him. Joe began to understand that fishing involved considerably more waiting than the edited videos from his previous life had suggested. Still, sitting beside the water had its advantages. Older children talked whenever silence lasted too long.

He learned which families planned to sell grain in Blackwood that year, which boy had been punished for stealing pears, whose father wanted to buy another pig and which household supposedly had enough silver saved to replace part of its roof. Most of it was ordinary village gossip. Ordinary gossip was often useful. Then something moved across the river. The youngest boy pointed.

"Look." Everyone became quiet. Branches shifted between the trees on the opposite bank. Joe caught only part of the shape before it disappeared deeper into the forest. It had been large. Ben lowered his voice.

"Deer." The boy beside him frowned.

"Too big."

"It was a deer."

"It didn't look like one."

"What else would it be?" Nobody answered. The forest became still again. Joe continued looking toward the trees for several seconds. The northern woods stretched far beyond anything he had explored. Hunters entered them regularly, but children were warned not to wander near the deeper sections. There were animals there that Joe had never seen. Possibly animals that did not exist in his previous world at all. He returned his attention to the river. Green Hollow was beautiful. It was peaceful most days too.

That did not mean the world beyond the fields was harmless. A short while later, Ben announced they should head home before anyone noticed how long they had been gone. Joe agreed. He had caught nothing. His feet were muddy, his legs were tired and Lily was probably going to ask exactly where he had been. Even so, the trip had been worthwhile.

Joe had learned more about Blackwood in one morning than he had during months of listening at home, and he had seen another part of Green Hollow that adults rarely had reason to explain to him. He had also learned that he was terrible at fishing. That problem, at least, seemed fixable.