Chương 8: Three Years

Joe returned from the river without a single fish. That was not particularly surprising considering their equipment consisted of reed poles, rough cord and bent pieces of wire, and none of them possessed much skill. Ben had managed to catch one fish small enough that even he looked embarrassed before throwing it back. The trip had still been worthwhile.

Joe had learned more about Blackwood; seen parts of Green Hollow he rarely visited and spent enough time beside the river to understand why the adults treated it seriously. The quiet inlet where they had fished looked harmless, but only a short distance farther out, the main current moved with enough force to carry a child away. The river was a useful reminder that a peaceful surface did not mean there was nothing dangerous underneath. Afterward, life returned to its ordinary rhythm.

Joe continued helping around the house, wandering through the safer parts of Green Hollow and listening whenever Simon spoke about the Talent Hall. He also kept learning whatever written characters his brother brought home. That last source eventually became less useful. Within a year, Joe could recognize every character Simon had been taught and many that Simon himself occasionally forgot. No Regression made revision almost unnecessary once Joe had genuinely learned something.

Simon might hesitate over an older character after several weeks without seeing it, while Joe could still remember its strokes and meaning clearly. The problem was not memory anymore. It was access. Simon did not bring books home. Mr. Hall's more advanced lessons remained inside the Talent Hall, and there were only so many new characters Simon could remember well enough to reproduce afterward. Joe gradually found himself waiting for his brother to learn something before there was anything new for him to study.

That produced an unexpected reversal between them. One evening, Simon sat near the doorway struggling with a group of characters Mr. Hall had assigned for the week. He wrote one, frowned at it, erased the middle and tried again. The second attempt was worse. Joe watched for a while before finally speaking.

"The middle stroke goes the other way." Simon stopped.

"No, it doesn't."

"You wrote it correctly three days ago." Simon looked down at the board.

"I know how to write it." Joe waited. Simon tried again, this time reversing the middle stroke. The character looked right. Simon stared at it, then at Joe.

"How do you remember things like that? I learned this at the Hall, and you're the one correcting me."

"I saw you write it."

"You see everything once and then act like that's enough."

"It usually is for characters I've already understood." Simon frowned at him.

"That's annoying." Joe returned his attention to what he had been doing. A moment later, Simon pushed the board slightly closer.

"What about this one?" Joe looked.

"The last stroke is too long." Simon narrowed his eyes.

"I didn't ask for that much criticism."

"You asked."

"I asked whether it was right."

"It wasn't." Simon muttered something under his breath and corrected it. After that, he began asking Joe occasionally. Not often. His pride would never allow that. But occasionally. Joe helped him review older characters and catch small mistakes before Mr. Hall could find them. Simon's reading gradually became one of his stronger subjects, although nobody inside the Hall knew how much of that improvement came from a younger brother who had never attended a formal lesson.

Simon certainly never volunteered that information. If someone praised his reading, he accepted it with the dignity of a scholar who had achieved everything alone. Joe let him. He had begun to understand Simon better. For all the boasting, Simon listened to Joe more than he liked admitting. If Joe told him a character was wrong, Simon argued first, checked second and usually corrected it afterward.

If Joe questioned one of his stories about the Hall, Simon became offended but often returned later with more accurate details. He would probably rather swallow charcoal than admit that he trusted his younger brother's judgment. By his third year of training, Simon had become good enough at reading that Mr. Hall occasionally trusted him to sit with newly accepted students and help them recognize basic characters.

The first time it happened, Simon came home nearly as pleased as he had been after passing the Starlight test.

"Victor said I explained the lesson better than Thomas," he announced before he had even sat down.

"Thomas has been at the Hall a year longer than me, but he keeps telling the little ones to remember the shapes without explaining what the parts mean. I showed them the easier way." Lily looked up from cutting vegetables.

"Who is Thomas?" Simon stopped.

"I've told you about Thomas."

"You've told me about twenty people."

"He's the one who's been training four years."

"Then don't let him hear you saying you're better than him."

"He already knows." Pam, sorting dried beans nearby, made a sound somewhere between a cough and a laugh. Simon looked over.

"What?"

"Nothing. Keep telling us how everyone knows you're better than everyone else."

"I didn't say everyone." The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

"Give it another year." Simon frowned, while Lily gave Pam a restrained look and returned to the vegetables. She did not argue with her mother-in-law. She rarely did directly, especially over something small. The slight tightening around her mouth usually said enough. A few weeks later, Simon returned with even better news.

"Master Theodere nodded at me today." Joe looked up. Simon waited. Joe waited longer. Finally, he asked, "What happened after that?" Simon stared at him.

"What do you mean?"

"After he nodded."

"Nothing. He was watching me teach the new group, I finished explaining the character, and he nodded."

"Once?"

"Joe, Master Theodere doesn't walk around nodding at everyone like an idiot." Joe considered that.

"So he nodded once." Simon looked deeply offended.

"You don't understand." Apparently Joe did not. Simon told the story again during dinner with considerably more detail, explaining where Theodere had been standing, which character Simon had been teaching and how long the nod had lasted. Pam endured most of it. By the time Joseph returned from checking the animals, Simon started again. Pam dropped the beans she had been sorting into a bowl.

"Simon."

"What?"

"If that man nods twice tomorrow, don't come home until you've finished telling someone else first." Simon looked at her in disbelief.

"It was Master Theodere."

"I know. You've said his name enough that I may dream about him tonight." Lily glanced up.

"Mother, let him enjoy it. Master Theodere noticed his teaching." Pam gave Lily a look that made her return quietly to the vegetables.

"I never said the boy couldn't enjoy it. I said I don't need the nod described a fourth time." Simon opened his mouth. Pam pointed at him.

"Fourth." He closed it. Joe lowered his head to hide his smile. Pam and Simon had developed an increasingly predictable problem. Both enjoyed talking, but neither particularly enjoyed surrendering the conversation to the other. By the end of the week, Theodere's single nod had nevertheless become a recognized family event. Joe never let Simon forget it. Fishing eventually became more productive than his first attempt suggested. Joe possessed no secret fishing knowledge from his previous life.

He had watched videos, seen nets and understood their basic purpose, but knowing what a fishing net looked like was very different from knowing how to make one from materials available in Green Hollow. His first attempt proved that. The knots slipped. The spacing was inconsistent, one side ended up longer than the other, and when he finally dragged the thing through shallow water, it collected several leaves and no fish. Ben laughed so hard that Joe nearly threw the entire net at him.

"You spent days making that." Joe looked at the leaves caught in it.

"I noticed."

"It catches plants."

"Very useful." Ben laughed harder. Joe tried again. Plant fiber twisted into cord worked better after drying properly. Smaller knots held more reliably, while consistent spacing mattered more than Joe had expected. It was slow, repetitive work, which happened to suit No Regression extremely well. Every knot he properly learned remained learned. Once he understood why one section had failed, there was no reason to repeat the same mistake in the next attempt. The net never became impressive. It became usable.

Later, with help from Ben and another older boy, Joe made a crude funnel-shaped fish trap from reeds. That proved more useful in the quiet shallows than trying to chase fish with the net. The first version collapsed. The second allowed smaller fish to escape. By the third, they occasionally caught something worth bringing home. Some weeks produced nothing. Other times the traps held only tiny fish better returned to the water, but every so often Joe came home carrying enough to matter at dinner.

The most common larger fish looked similar to grass carp from his previous life. Joe had no reason to believe they were actually the same species, but they fed heavily on vegetation and preferred the slower sections of the river in much the same way. Eventually, he learned where placing the trap was worth the effort. Lily only began approving of the fishing after it produced food. The first time Joe brought home two decent fish, she examined them and then looked directly at him.

"You didn't go into the deep water?"

"No."

"Did you go near the current?"

"No."

"Ben?" Joe hesitated. Lily's eyes narrowed.

"Don't answer for Ben. I don't care what foolish thing somebody else's son does. I'm asking about you."

"I stayed in the shallows."

"If I hear otherwise, you're done fishing." Joe nodded. Lily lifted one of the fish and examined it again.

"And wash before you touch anything inside. You smell like the river." That was permission by Lily's standards. The fish itself was not particularly pleasant to eat. Some carried an earthy, muddy smell from the water, and Green Hollow's kitchen had nothing resembling the collection of spices, sauces and seasonings Joe remembered from his previous life. Salt was used carefully because it cost money. Lily usually cooked the fish with onions and whatever herbs were available from the garden.

It still improved the household diet. Simon benefited most. Martial training kept him constantly hungry, and Lily directed the larger portions toward him whenever the family had meat, eggs or fish available. Joe understood the reasoning. Simon was no longer simply another child in the household. The family was investing in his future. Understanding did not mean Joe enjoyed watching the largest piece of fish repeatedly move toward Simon's bowl. Pam noticed. She noticed most things involving food.

One afternoon, while Lily was outside, Pam pushed a cucumber toward Joe.

"Eat." Joe looked at it.

"Why?"

"Because I gave it to you." That was difficult to argue with. He took it. Pam lowered her voice even though nobody else was close enough to hear.

"Don't give it to Simon."

"He doesn't like cucumber."

"Good. Then he doesn't need to know." Joe smiled. Pam had never hidden the fact that she found Simon exhausting. She loved him, but his endless stories and confidence wore down her patience much faster than Joe's quieter company did. Joe, on the other hand, listened when Pam talked. That alone probably helped. Lily returned before he had finished the cucumber. Her eyes went immediately to Joe's hand and then to Pam.

"Mother, I was saving those." Pam did not look remotely guilty.

"There are more."

"For winter."

"It's one cucumber." Lily's jaw tightened slightly.

"If everyone eats one because it's only one, there won't be any left." Pam looked at Joe.

"Eat faster." Joe nearly choked. Lily closed her eyes for a moment, then went back outside without saying anything else. She could scold Joe freely. Scolding Pam was a different matter. Joe finished the cucumber. Mary usually discovered these secret distributions anyway. She was around four by then, round-cheeked, loud and somehow capable of appearing whenever food was being handed out quietly. Joe turned around one afternoon and found her standing directly beside him. He had half a cucumber in his hand.

Mary looked at it. Then at him.

"What?" She continued staring.

"You had food." Mary pointed.

"This is mine." She shook her head.

"Half mine." Joe sighed.

"Why is half yours?"

"Because." That appeared to settle the matter in her mind. Joe broke the cucumber in half. Mary immediately took the larger-looking piece. Pam watched from across the room.

"You're making her worse." Joe looked toward Mary, who was already eating.

"Everyone makes her worse." Pam considered that and nodded.

"Fair." Mary was the youngest child in the household and had discovered early that this position came with privileges. She was spoiled. That did not mean she was important in the same way Simon was. Adults fussed over her clothing, gave her small treats and tolerated behavior that would have earned Simon or Joe sharper punishment at the same age. At the same time, nobody discussed Mary's future with the seriousness that surrounded Simon's martial training or even Joe's eventual Starlight test. She would grow.

She would learn household work. Eventually, she would marry. To most of the adults around her, there was little mystery beyond that. Mary was too young to put the difference into words, but she already seemed to understand which conversations included her and which did not. Joe included her more often than most people did.

Partly because his previous life made the village's assumptions about girls feel far less natural to him, and partly because Mary had attached herself to him long before he thought seriously about why. Lily and the others often left Mary near Joe while working around the house or garden, especially once he became old enough to keep her occupied without needing constant supervision himself. He was not responsible for her in the way an adult would have been. He simply spent a great deal of time beside her.

That was enough. Mary followed him almost everywhere. She also told him things. Most of those things were useless. A chicken had looked at her strangely. Simon had refused to give her something. Pam had hidden dried fruit somewhere and Mary intended to find it. Joe listened anyway. Eventually, he taught her a song he remembered from his previous life.

"Mary had a little lamb," he sang one afternoon while she arranged lumps of mud into what she claimed was a house. Mary immediately stopped.

"My lamb?"

"No. A different Mary." She frowned. That answer was clearly unacceptable.

"Why?"

"Because there are other people named Mary." She considered this disturbing information.

"What is lamb?"

"A small sheep." Mary stared at him. Green Hollow had goats, pigs, chickens and cattle nearby, but very few sheep passed through the village.

"What does it look like?" Joe considered how to explain one to a four-year-old who had never seen one.

"Usually white. About this high when it's little." He held his hand above the ground. Mary looked at the height.

"Like pig?"

"Not really."

"You said small."

"It has wool."

"What is wool?" Joe stopped. Mary waited.

"It's... hair. Sort of."

"Pig has hair."

"Different hair."

"White pig?"

"No." Mary frowned at him as though he were deliberately making the explanation difficult.

"Then what?" Joe tried several more descriptions. Four legs. Soft wool. Longer face. Different ears. None helped. Mary eventually reached her own conclusion.

"A white pig with strange hair." Joe opened his mouth. Then stopped.

"Close enough." Mary returned happily to her mud house. Joe let the misunderstanding remain. She would eventually see a sheep. Correcting it could wait.