Despite the Angels - By Madeline A Stringer Page 0,95
with dull eyes.
“I wish you could see your ark, little Dawn. It has kept my hands busy and my mind quiet for half a year. But who is it for? No-one will play with it, now.”
“I can’t play with it, but I can look at it. I love it. I love it better than the gold amulet in Crete, or the crochet bonnet in France, because you made it for me even though I was not there. But I am here, Daddy. I am here now!”
“I will build a shelf for it. Then I can see it. Maybe I will add more animals. I need to do something interesting.”
“Why does he say that, Trynor?” Mohmi asked and Trynor arrived.
“Because no smith’s job has come available. I keep telling him to move to another place, but he is stuck. The only thing he seems to have energy to do is carve these animals and go to eat fried potatoes. When I see the way those simple chips are keeping Lewis alive and connected, I really think I must experience food again.”
“Again? I thought you said you had not had a body?”
“No, I did, once. A long time ago. They sacrificed me to their god before I was three years old. The world seems a bit kinder now. At least child sacrifice is no longer sanctioned, so maybe I will risk it. I will ask for somewhere with really interesting food, so I do not have to go back again! I am not brave.”
“Do you remember food?” Dawn was intrigued.
“I think I remember honey. It used to be put on our bread, or porridge.” Trynor stopped and indicated Lewis with his head, “Look- he is hearing me a little!” Lewis reached a jar of honey down from the shelf and trickled some over a slice of bread. “But he hears unimportant things like why not have honey, but not the tough stuff like why not get another job. It is such hard work, trying to get through.”
“I think he hears you, Trynor,” Dawn was kneeling with her eyes at the level of the table, admiring her wooden animals. “I just think he ignores you when it is difficult to do what you say. It is easy to decide to have honey. Getting a new job is hard.”
“Yes,” said Mohmi, “and it works the other way too. We provide the easy stuff much quicker, don’t we? After all, ‘Please let there not be a queue ahead of me at the post office’ is so much easier to manage than ‘Please let the man who is making my life a misery drop dead of something painful!’
Chapter 34
January 1884
Lewis was sitting by the fire, holding a small lump of wood, turning it this way and that, feeling for knots, wondering about the grain. He had finished the second badger just before Christmas and had carved nothing for over a week now. It was bad planning, he thought, to have had empty hands over the New Year. I thought more of them as result. But it was good to have the badgers ready for Christmas. I wonder what this wood will make, it is a good solid piece. It needs a big animal.
He heard familiar boots clumping up the stairs and moments later Neil’s cheerful face poked round the door, followed by a smaller replica. Little William ran across the room and held up his arms.
“Hup knee, Unc Lewis?”
“Of course. Hup you come.” Lewis breathed in the sweet smell of the child’s hair and hugged him close. “And how is your little sister?”
“Sleep.” William was unimpressed by babies. “More animal?”
“Yes, another animal. What would you like?”
“We came to tell you,” Neil cut in, “They have found the Tay whale, floating north of here. They could not catch it, but they injured it enough to kill it, it seems. It is being towed ashore.”
Lewis fingered his lump of wood again and felt a shiver of excitement. “Will we go to see it? If it is ashore. I am not going out to sea.”
“Big wale,” William held his hands apart as far as he could, “big fish. Make wale, Unc Lewis!”
“Two whales, for a Noah’s Ark,” said Neil, looking proudly at his son
“No, I do not need to make two, Noah did not have to save the swimming things. But we could have one whale, swimming beside the ark. I will make a whale for Dawn’s fifth birthday.”