Star Tower . I do not hope for this, for our children are weak and small. But I am happy because J's promise is going to be fulfilled: my children will speak, and then will read someday.
From now on Ciel and Mun I write to you, my son and daughter. And now I make an end of writing for this time.
Linkeree is a good man.
I write this because Linkeree is a good man and will not cause trouble anymore. I told him of yesterday's trouble with Hux and Wien. Linkeree was quiet for a little time, and then he said to me, Kapock, I will not cause trouble in Heaven City . I will work many hours like all the others, and will not go into the forest again at all during this time until the moon of the thaw. Maybe they will forget during the winter when there is deep snow.
This way we will not have the trouble, for Linkeree will no more take the ax.
Linkeree is lost.
I did not finish my writing of yesterday because there was a trouble after all. Linkeree went away during the night, and I stopped writing when Batta, one of the women who only a few months ago learned speech, came to me to tell me that Linkeree was not in his bed in the house with other unmarried people.
We called for him, but he did not answer. Batta said, We must look for him.
But I would not, because there is now snow on the ground, and if anyone got lost in the night he would die of cold before the morning.
Then in the morning before we could leave to search for Linkeree, he came to us of his own will.
I am ready to work, he said.
Everyone said, Where were you all night, and why are you not frozen in the snow.
But Linkeree would not say. He only said, I am ready to work. What more can you want from me?
And this is true. For J never commanded us to tell all things, but only to do all work in common. Our thoughts belong to ourselves: this J has always said. We can make no man or woman tell us their thoughts.
But Hux and Wien were very angry. I do not understand why Hux and Wien are always angry at Linkeree, for he does not make them hungry, and he does not make them cold; he hurts them in no way, but they do not like for him to do things they do not know about. They say it is not fair, but I do not think fairness is the question. I think that Linkeree makes them afraid.
Why are they afraid of Linkeree? Why does he make them angry doing this thing? I do not understand. For I, like Linkeree, look for time to be alone. I have found out that the hours I spend writing this are some of my happiest hours, like the hours I spent at the loom, making cloth, for no one takes my thoughts away from me during those times, except Sara, and when she talks my thoughts are not taken away, for I can tell my thoughts to her, and so I keep them.
And now, tonight, Linkeree is gone again, and the snow is falling. I am afraid that some danger will come to him. But at least now I know what he has done in the forest. All alone he has built a house. This must be so because there is no other way that he could have come to us warm and dry in the morning.
Why does he want a house that no one else knows? Why did he want no help in building it? Even strong Wien wanted help to build his house. Linkeree is the best wall maker, but even he cannot make the great logs fly into place like birds.
Is he not afraid to sleep alone in the darkness, far from the other people? My own house is on this side of the river from all the others, but here I am not truly alone, for Sara and my children and the sheep are here. I would not like to be alone where no one else breathed loudly in the night.
And there is something else: What will J think when he learns that one of the Ice People has gone away from Heaven City to build a place apart? I worry that I should make Linkeree live among us all, even at