The Ferryman - Book 1

Chapter 28:

Fisheyes

Within the month, Ursula and Brohm were married and had moved out of Hiren to Fellered.

Since Brohm’s father had died, his uncle – Lord Ede - sent a bridal dowry to Ursula of a fair sum of money. Ursula, with thoughtful eyes, had it placed away in a bank and spoke to no one what she planned, though Moth suspected she wanted a dress shop.

News spread quickly that a Hevwed had married an Ede, and that they had even gotten money from him – even if no one but Ursula saw a cent of it, it sat wrong to the farmers of Hiren. Many farms closed themselves to Moth and Mrs. Tunhofe, and fewer people wrote to Clem asking for advice. Mrs. Tunhofe tried desperately to keep open conversation with the farm community, but she failed, and she and Moth no longer went on their rounds to the different farms.

Her family began to be isolated.

Moth was astonished by this turn, but Clem, Norwin, and Vade had known this could occur with Ursula and Brohm’s marriage and had blessed them anyways. It had been the topic of many late-night discussions between them.

It was understood, silently, that this news was not to be written to Ursula – she had not grasped the consequences of her choice, she wasn’t to be blamed.

Clem and Norwin, despite how it stirred up their neighbors, continued to go to the farms that the Sentries worked and help them with their tilling, sowing, and watering.

When spring grew into summer, a wilting heat struck Hiren, and the creeks dried up, then the streams, then the ponds – the earliest drought Hiren had seen in centuries, and as the weeks went on, it was threatening to be the longest.

*

Moth stood in the early morning behind the Hevwed home. Though the sun barely reaching over the horizon, a scorching sun heated up the shadows with the promise of another hellish day.

Hitching up her skirt to catch any wind she could on her legs, Moth tracked the dry creek beds through the cracked and splitting earth, passed the field, and towards a copse of yellowing trees – one of the trees had a large rope tied to it, and it dangled over where the pond used to be.

Moth had swum in that pond many times with Ama, but now it was dried up into a dusty hole. It had gotten low in summer before, but never dried down to nothing.

Moth climbed down the rocks into the empty pond, and looked at the hardened clay at the bottom, where bodies of dried-up fish were half buried, leaving only their heads and vacant eyes looking up at the sky, searching for rain clouds.

Nearby at the barn, Moth could hear oxen lowing, mingled with Norwin’s voice.

She climbed out of the pond. Norwin had hitched two oxen to a large cart while Clem waited, leaned on Ira’s arm.

“Mere, you’re up early,” said Clem, and Ira and Norwin looked over.

“I heard you were going to a sentry farm to help them,” said Moth. “I was wondering if I could come. I wouldn’t be able to do much, but I wanted to see how the fields are looking.”

“Terrible, I can tell you now,” said Clem, and Norwin sighed and nodded. “But come along, see it with your eyes.”

They climbed into the cart and Norwin drove them down the road - Ira waved goodbye and went to join Nehem farming the Hevwed property.

“Do we know whose land this is?” Moth asked.

“A Lt. Grotte,” answered Norwin. “I’ve not met her personally, but apparently Guyrede recommended us to her. She needs help, as she was promoted - or forced – into farming, but doesn’t know how.”

Moth leaned forward, poking her head between where her father and grandfather were in the boxseat. “Why do you think the KCAC wants their farms to be producing food so urgently?”

“Originally, under Commander Unagen, it was simply given to sentries to reward for exceeding in their duties – also, I’m sure, to convince them to stay in Hiren and continue to work as a Sentry, since most sentries would rather work in the cities then the countryside.” Clem tapped his mouth thoughtfully. “However, now that Commander Wanhall is in charge, he’s anxious to make sure those sentries produce a decent yield every year.”

“Do you think he’s also concerned about the food shortage?”

“I can only guess. I think he’s concerned about the food shortage because of self-interest. If there’s a food shortage, the King’s Council will investigate the Agricultural Council and demand why this was not prevented. If it can be easily seen by everyone that no food was produced from the farms owned by the KCAC, there will be consequences to the Councilors.”

Norwin nodded. “They’d use Commander Wanhall as their scapegoat, if that happened – at least in Hiren.”

Clem added, “He’s probably being pressured by the KCAC to make sure the yields are good, not wanting to be held solely responsible for the pending famine.”

They both spoke of it so calmly, so certainly, that a famine was around the bend. Moth had understood it only from a distance, but now as they drove through the hills scorched by the fire of the sentries, and withered to stubs by a vicious sun, she could feel the upcoming problems as well.

With the drought came a deeply parched earth, and now every other week a field of crops went up in flames because a prescribed burn got loose.

The way Hiren was going, there would be nothing to harvest in autumn.

Within an hour they reached the property, and when she saw it Moth knew it was Quin Barrowly’s place.

Quin – childhood friend of Patri – had been one of the first farmers to leave Hiren when the fog regulations began over a decade ago, and being the only child of the Barrowly’s, with deceased parents and aged grandparents to take care of, it did not matter how fine a property it was. They moved from Hiren for a neighboring region, Lad.

Moth recognized a grove where a ten-year-old Patri would lure other children, saying there was a fawn trapped under the tree, only for Quin to jump out wearing a hideous mask she had made.

Even seeing the grove curled Moth’s toes, remembering the shock of the toothy mask.

The cart rattled and bumped over the unused road, made rough through the years with fallen branches and overgrown tendrils, but the oxen did not mind, pushing through disinterestedly with their wide bodies.

The road, once they went through the grove, came upon an old house. It had been made before stone was commonly used in Hiren, so was crafted of logs cut together so tightly not even an ant could squeeze through. The sod roof had many gables fit with many windows – a log mansion, a testament to the craftsmen of their day. The house was Moth’s favorite in Hiren, and people called it Poor Loom.

Standing in the doorframe was a woman with broad shoulders and a long mass of dirty blond hair – her sentry uniform was shabby and ill fitting, being too short for her and stretching up on her legs and wrists. She had cut the capelet off.

“Ey, Hevweds?” she bellowed.

Clem raised his hand and waved. “Lt. Grotte?”

“Sabine will do,” said the woman, pushing herself out of the cabin and coming over to them. “Mighty grateful you tinners will help me out with my farming. The kack will have my ass on a pike if I don’t produce something out of this dirt hole.”

Moth was startled to see the woman was almost as tall as her father, standing just shy of six feet three inches. “Oh,” exclaimed Moth, leaning forward over the edge of the cart. “We’ve met before.”

The woman cocked her head and squinted at her. She had two thins scars that twisted her lip.

“Over a year ago, on the Tine property where the fire got loose. You gave me an earring with an opal on it.”

“Oh, well,” she said, reaching out and picking Moth out of the cart and onto the ground. “Then I’ll not be formal. Welcome to my home, kick up your feet in the house if you want, I don’t expect a little thing like you to be pulling the plow – it’s going to get hot.”

Lt. Grotte began showing them around. The Barrowly property was dense with trees – a mercy under the heat – but once they emerged from the shadows they could see the crusty fields and stubs of produce that was not growing.

“The heat is just murdering it all,” she said. “There’s a spring on the property, but that seems to be drying up, if you could look at that – I honestly don’t know any of this tinshoe business, tell me everything.”

“Let’s see the field first,” said Clem as Norwin left the oxen in the shade. “You have farming equipment, right?”

“Aye, the place came with it all.”

Clem and Norwin spent the next hour advising Lt. Grotte on the type of produce she should plant and where to plant it, especially during a severe heat, advising her to make use of the four acres under the grove by her house.

“Gramps I’ll do whatever you say,” said Lt. Grotte to Clem, eyeing the grove. “I’ll get the plow, you show me how to hitch it up to the oxen.”

The old plow was dragged out of the barn, and the oxen hitched to it, and they got to work breaking the ground. There was a kitchen garden by the house, gone to weed and surrounded by a small barrier of stones, so Norwin and Lt. Grotte dragged it away to make more ground for planting.

Moth ran errands – fetching water for them, moving smaller rocks and branches out of the way – but the heat began to get to her, and she drifted towards the cool doorway of the cabin.

Lt. Grotte hurried by, but stopped and nodded to the door, saying, “It’s a mess inside, and where its not a mess its dusty and empty, but go lie down if you need to, Mere.”

Moth thanked her and finally withdrew into the cabin. It had few windows, so was dark and cool. There was a window seat with a cushion – the shadows of leaves gently swayed over the window, blocking most of the sun, and Feldar lay on the window seat and slept.

He was covered in mud and hadn’t taken off his work boots.

Moth froze, staring at him, and then backed up to the door. She crept outside, and caught Lt. Grotte as she was hauling away more rocks.

“There…uh, well, there is a man inside sleeping,” said Moth.

Squinting towards the house, Lt. Grotte said, “Is that bastard still here? His name’s Feldar, don’t mind him.”

“I know who he is, I just don’t know why he’s here.”

“Oh he spends the night every so often, doesn’t like to live alone. Helped me try and fix my spring this morning, but he’s an idiot and he doesn’t know as much as your pa and gramps.” Lt. Grotte took a long drink from a water canteen she had and then handed the rest to Moth. “He’s no trouble if you don’t love him. Take this and go lie down before you faint, my bed’s upstairs.”

Feeling lightheaded, Moth took the canteen and drank from it, heading back inside and looking towards the windowsill. Feldar was gone.

She worried he had not left for long and was going to return to his window seat, so she hesitated at the foot of the narrow stairs and hurried up to where she guessed the main bedroom would be.

Almost everything was dusty, and boxes and old furniture was crammed in corners and collecting cobwebs. One door hung open a bit, and its doorknob was not covered in dust.

Moth reached the door, the old house creaking and the floorboards groaning on rusted nails, and she heard someone in the bedroom.

“I’m not riding back covered in mud,” Feldar called from the room. “You deal with it.”

Dirty clothes were flung out the door and landed at Moth’s feet. Moth stared down at them, wondering if she should leave but dreading going back outside.

The door flung open and Feldar came out, adjusting the sleeves of one of Lt. Grotte’s shirts. He raised his eyebrows when he saw Moth, then glanced down the

stairs. “I guess the others are here already? I overslept. Damn, it’ll be a hot ride back.”

“Why are you in Lt. Grotte’s house?” burst out Moth.

Feldar’s flat green eyes stared at her, his mouth giving an equally flat smile. “She’s my wife.”

Moth did not know why she bothered asking Feldar anything. She flattened herself against the wall and he vanished down the stairs and out of the house.

When she was convinced he was gone, she went downstairs to lay on the window seat and doze, hearing the voices of her father and Lt. Grotte outside discuss the size of the ground they wanted to break.

*

After a long rest, Moth emerged from the cabin to find the ground tilled and Clem taking a nap in a chair Lt. Grotte had dragged out for him.

Norwin was wiping sweat from his forehead and watering the oxen, and he gestured to Moth, “We’re going to go look at the spring. Did you want to see it?”

“Yes please.”

Clem stirred when he heard them and hefted himself up with his cane.

“Steady old man,” said Lt. Grotte, giving him her arm to lean on, “It’s a bit of a walk when your knees are so bad.”

“Three hundred yards south,” said Clem, half to himself. “I know exactly where it is.”

They let the oxen rest and emerged from the grove, crossed the long field of sun-burnt crops, and come up to another shadowy grove.

The Barrowly property, while not having the best soil, was well-known for having a large and bountiful spring – so large the Barrowly’s had built a stone house over it to protect the precious water. In times of drought, neighbors would draw water from the springhouse.

Moth was beginning to like Lt. Grotte, but she felt an angry pain in her heart to that such a precious spring, so important to Hiren, belonged to an outsider who did not even know how to farm.

It does not belong to her, Moth reminded herself. It belongs to the KCAC.

That made her even angrier, and she had to clench her teeth to keep from crying in frustration when she saw the beautiful old springhouse – a rescuer of many farmers in difficult times – become visible from behind the trees.

The thought that it had gone dry seemed absurd. Moth wondered if Lt. Grotte had done something foolish and somehow collapsed the hill the springhouse was built into.

Going down stone steps that led to the door of the spring house, Lt. Grotte poked her head into the dark building and said, “It’s a mess. We tried to dig around and see why it was blocked but nothing came of it.”

Moth followed Norwin and Clem down. Each step dipped in the middle from generations of farmers going down to the water. They followed Lt. Grotte into the springhouse.

It was the size of a small barn. Normally, the ground would be full of water up to their ankles, but there was nothing left but the cold, and a slight dampness in the air.

At the far end was where the water would had trickled out of the earth, between two large stones, but the stones had been removed and the earth dug into five feet deep, exposing rocks and clay.

There was no trickle of water, but it was visibly moist.

Norwin looked at Clem sadly, turning his attention down onto the dry springhouse. He rolled up his sleeves, grabbed a nearby dirty shovel, and squeezed into the hole to root around.

He spoke over his shoulder to Lt. Grotte. “It’s still damp, which is a good sign. Best case is that it got blocked and is being rerouted somewhere.”

Moth watched her father as he worked, holding a canteen of water for him if he needed it. Clem, unable to stand for long, went and sat on the steps outside the springhouse, leaving the door open so he could hear them.

No one said much. As Norwin yanked out clay and gravel and rocks, Lt. Grotte scraped it up into buckets and dumped it outside.

A half hour passed, Norwin’s face set and determined – so concentrated he forgot anyone else was there as he labored to revive the spring. Moth leaned against the wall, wondering if she should make him stop to drink water, but not daring to break him from his concentrated state. They could hear the shovel rebound off of a massive rock, and he got on his knees to scrape the clay away so he could see the exposed rockface.

It had a wide crack in it, and droplets of water drippled out.

He examined the crack with his large hand. He frowned. “There’s something in there. Feels like fabric.”

He backed out of the hole, staring into the darkness. No one wanted to root around bare handed into the earth, the threat of a fog burst present in everyone’s mind.

“Well,” said Lt. Grotte, rolling up her sleeve. “It’s my responsibility.” She crouched down and tried to dig her hand into the crack. She grimaced, her hand too large to fit – she scraped the flesh of her knuckles on the rock until her hands bled.

“Damnit. I think I have a chisel and a hammer outside, let me check,” she said, hurrying out of the springhouse.

Moth looked at Norwin, who’s arms were crossed as he stared curiously at the crack. Moth went up to it, working her slender hand into the shallow break in the stone. At once she could feel something soft and ragged. She scratched at it,

squirming to get her hand near it, snagged it on her fingernail, tugging at it bit by bit until she was able to grab it and pull it out of the crack.

It flopped onto the ground and Norwin picked it up. It was a lace handkerchief.

The droplet of water from the crack began to drip faster.

Lt. Grotte stomped down into the springhouse and began chiseling at the break in the rock, giving it several resounding blows. “The rock isn’t deep,” she said. “It’s just a slab.”

Norwin took the chisel and hammer from her and, his large, muscled arm bent backward, slammed the hammer onto the chisel, splitting the crack open wider.

Moth sidled around him, able to get her whole arm in, feeling strange shapes in the darkness. She groped around until she felt a large piece of fabric, soaking wet, and braced her foot against the wall and pulled with her whole body.

The fabric came out in a river of water, pushing out with it bottles, packages, baskets, and clothing.

The torrent filled the floor, pushing out more and more packages until they clattered and clanked and piled up in the corners. The water slowed back down to a steady trickle.

Lt. Grotte splashed over and felt the drizzle of spring water, shouting, “You did it – you actually did it!”

Moth and Norwin looked down in horror at the gifts that flooded the room.

These were not the mandatory offerings - these were the gifts given from the hearts of Hiren, concerned for their ferrier. Smaller bottles and packages dribbled out with the flow, drifting around their legs.

Moth bent down, picking up a glass bottle full of spices, a package bound tightly in oiled canvas and tied with twine, a hand carved flute.

“Dad,” she said. She held them to her chest, looking up at him, her voice shaking. “Dad, what should we do?”

Norwin stared down into the water, unable to reply.

They both looked over their shoulder and saw Clem standing in the doorway. He slid down to his knees, and with trembling fingers pulled the gifts from the water.

“Are they not good enough?”