my shoulder to the running of the mill now, just like Mull and Athen, and besides that take my part in all the share-works that was going on.
This being after the year’s turning, the worst of the Summer’s dangers was done with, but there was plenty of clearing still to be done inside the fence. There was also a pair of molesnakes that nested in one of the glasshouses and spawned before anyone saw they was there. Rampart Fire burned the litter out, but everyone in the village stood around in a ring to kill the fry as they scuttled away.
Haijon was Rampart Knife, in that share-work. It was the first time I seen him use the cutter, and he used it as well as ever his cousin Mardew did. But Mardew held out his hand straight after, and Haijon give the cutter back in view of everyone. The rules don’t bend on such a thing. The tech belongs to them that wakes it, but that’s in order of testing. If it waked to you first, then you get to keep it as long as you live. There isn’t anyone can claim it off of you. Mardew had been training Haijon in the cutter’s mysteries, and he let him handle it on this occasion to get the feel of it, but it was still his and he made sure everybody seen that.
There was a share-work rebuilding the outer lookout too. This was a building that stood on top of Cloughfoot Hill a hundred feet from the village. It was outside the fence but inside the stake-blind, which we called the half-outside. The outer lookout was different from the lookout inside the village – not so tall, but because it was up on a rise in the ground it still let you see further to the north and west than the main lookout did. We was meant to keep this area clear just like we did the ground behind the fence, but we had missed our mark a few times. Trees had grown into the wall of the lookout and they was starting to push the stones out of true. The Count and Seal decided it was time to make repair before the whole thing toppled down, but they made it a third choice – which is to say you could do it if there was nothing more urgent that had got to be done.
I put twenty days or some into that work, across July and August, hefting stones or mixing mortar as it might be needed. I liked it, mostly. Not so much at the start of the day, when the tower had a leftover stink from something that was sleeping up there, but that never lasted too long. It was a change from sawing wood, and though the work was hard I liked to see the wall growing up taller with each day’s labouring. Also, there was echo birds nesting in the roof of the lookout that cried back everything we said. So we would teach the birds to cry that Beren Sallow wet his pants, or Lari and Ban was tumbling, or whatever. The birds was so quick to pick up a cry, they would even join in with us if we striked up a song.
Spinner was there for a lot of those days too, and we worked together most companionable. I kept almost telling her how I felt about her, but not quite getting to it because a hillside in the Summer heat with ash-paint caking on your skin and sweat all stinking you up didn’t feel like the place for it.
I might of done it, all the same, if something else hadn’t of happened instead. One day we was working side by side, just the two of us, and talking away like the words was going to spoil if we didn’t get them said. It was the end of the day and we was the only ones there, which often happened. We seemed neither of us to be so very keen to go back at the end of each day’s work, her to the tannery and me to the mill.
The leaves that was left from those young trees was hanging down between us and the fence, but Mardew had cut the roots into pieces and then we had dug them out, so they couldn’t do us no harm now. The leaves was just like a curtain. We was as alone as we had ever been in