The Book of Koli (Rampart Trilogy #1) - M. R. Carey Page 0,64
woods.
“A plane,” she said again. “A jet plane.”
She didn’t sound like she was joking. “Do you mean a long-sole or a short-sole?” I asked, trying to get a picture of it in my head.
“Chikusho!” Monono said. “I’ll show you, dopey boy.” A picture popped up in the box’s little window. It showed a thing like a bird made out of tech that run along the ground and then jumped up into the sky.
I found out then that tech could be bigger than anything I ever seen. There was more room inside the plane than there was inside Rampart Hold, Monono said. And yet it could move through the sky as fast as a horse could gallop along the ground, or maybe faster, carrying more people than there was in all of Mythen Rood.
When she told me that, I couldn’t hope no more that Tokyo was still in the world. These was just the sort of wonders they had in the world that was lost, when every woman and every man was a Rampart born, and tech was everywhere you looked. But them times was gone, long before. Tokyo couldn’t be standing no more, nor them jet planes couldn’t be flying there. I wondered if I ought to tell that to Monono, but I was scared it would make her sad so I didn’t.
I said I was disappointed that the DreamSleeve couldn’t set things on fire or cut them or shoot bolts at them, and I was, but I loved the music and I loved being with Monono. When I look back on that time, it’s with a kind of wonder that such a miracle could of fallen into my life when I didn’t do nothing to be deserving of it and wasn’t proper grateful for it when it come.
It didn’t last though. I seen to that well enough.
25
Other things was happening while Monono and me was having these conversations.
The tabernac was being builded and decked out. The rush-walk was being laid down. The bonfire was being gathered and heaped. The tables and benches for the Salt Feast was being fetched up from the Underhold. And it wasn’t just up on the gather-ground that people was busy. Inside the houses they was digging out their best clothes, sewing and patching them up, maybe mixing up madder or glastum woad to dye some colour back into them, so they would look their best for the feast. They would of taken their clothes to Molo back when he was alive, but Spinner was in Rampart Hold now, and the dyeing vats at the tannery would stand empty until she went back to them.
All this labour passed me by. I knowed it was happening, but I kept away from it – which angered my ma greatly, since the family had got to make up the slack as far as the share-work went. We couldn’t be seen to shirk. I worked long days at the mill to balance it out, but still my not being up on the gather-ground was somewhat noted and it was left to Jemiu to make excuses for me.
It was a wrong thing I was doing, I know, but there was two things pressing on me. I didn’t want to do the share-work because the talk up there would all be of the coming wedding and what a great thing it was, which would of been a hard thing for me to bear. And I was spending all the time I could scrape up with Monono. As long as I was working at the mill, I could go off to my room when things was quiet and get the DreamSleeve out from under my bed where it was hid. If I was up on the gather-ground, I would be there for the whole day and could not hope to get away without being seen.
I was on fire with hurry, though to tell the truth I couldn’t of said why. My thoughts of becoming a Rampart had been all mixed up in my head with my thoughts of being with Spinner. But if there had ever been a time when I could of spoke my feelings to her, that time was long gone now. The wedding was bound to happen, and there wasn’t nothing I could do or say that would stop it. I shouldn’t even be wanting to. Spinner knowed her own mind, and she had chose what she wanted for everyone to see.