perfectly well which woods were chosen by the bowmakers of different cities and cultures. What the Oversoul could not do was give Nafai any skill with his hands. Not that Nafai was unusually clumsy. It was just that he had never worked with wood, or with knives, really, except for gutting and flaying game. He spoiled two potential bows, and now it was coming on evening and he hadn't even begun to make arrows, the bow was causing him such grief.
You can't acquire in an hour a skill that others take a lifetime to develop.
Chapter 15
Was it the Oversoul speaking in his mind, when this thought came? Or it was the voice of despair?
Nafai sat on a flat rock, despondent. He had his third piece of bow-wood across his knees, his knife in hand, freshly whetted and sharp. But he knew little more now about working with wood than he did at the start - all he had was a catalog of ways that knives could slip and ruin wood, or that wood could split in the wrong places or at the wrong angle. He had not been more frustrated since the time when the Oversoul put Father's dream into his mind and it nearly drove him mad.
Thinking back to that time made him shudder. But then, thinking about it, he realized that it might also be a way to ...
"Oversoul," he whispered. "There are master bowmakers in this world. Right now, this very moment, there is a bowmaker whittling a piece of wood to shape it properly."
(None with tools as primitive as yours,) said the Oversoul in his mind.
"Then find one and fill him with the idea of whittling one with a simple knife. Then put his thoughts, his movements into my mind. Let me have the feeling of it."
(It will drive you mad.)
"Find a bowmaker in your memory, one who always worked this way - there must have been one, in forty million years, one who loved the feel of the knife, who could whittle a bow without thinking."
(Ah... without thinking... pure habit, pure reflex...)
"Father was concentrating so hard on everything in his dream - that's why I couldn't bear to have his memories in my mind. But a bowmaker whose hands work without thought. Put those skills in me. Let me know how it feels, so that I also have those reflexes."
(I've never done such a thing. It wasn't what I was designed to do. It might still make you mad.)
"It might also make a bow," said Nafai. "And if I fail at this, the expedition is over."
(I'll try. Give me time. It takes time to find one man, in all the years of human life on Harmony, who worked so mindlessly ...)
So Nafai waited. A minute, two minutes. And then a strange feeling came over him. A tingling, not in his arms, really, but in the idea of his arms that constantly dwelt inside his mind. A need to move the muscles, to work. It's happening, thought Nafai, the muscle memory, the nerve memory, and I must learn how to receive it, how to let this body of mine be guided by someone else's hands and fingers, wrists and arms.
He shifted the knife in his hand until it felt comfortable. And then he began to wipe the knife across the surface of the wood, not even letting the blade bite, just feeling the face of the sapling. And then, at last, he knew - or rather felt - when the wood invited the blade to dip into its surface, to peel away the thin bark. He pulled the knife through the wood like a fish moving through the sea, feeling the resistance of the wood and learning from it, finding the hard places, the weak places, and working around them, easing up where too much pressure would split the wood, biting hard where the wood cried out for discipline from the blade.
The sun was down, the moon just rising when he finished. But the bow was smooth and beautiful.
Green wood, so it won't hold its spring long.
How did I know that? thought Nafai, and then laughed at himself. How had he known any of this?
We can choose the saplings that we need and make greenwood bows from them at first, but also save others, season them, so that the bows we make later will last. There are plenty of stands of wood on our way south that will do for our needs. We won't even