Widow's Welcome

by D. K. Fields

  But Wyne couldn’t have been older than twenty-five, Ghen thought. Had he been in Sot’s workshop all his life? He wondered if she let him go outside. Wyne was very pale.

  Sot opened a door in the far wall. Ghen looked inside: a small room with two low beds. One was bigger than the other and took up most of the space. The second was wedged into a corner, small enough only to need a sack to cover it. Ghen had the feeling it was really Wyne’s room.

  ‘I should have thought to ask your mother for blankets,’ Sot said. ‘I’ll get some, don’t worry. Just as soon as we’ve cleared the order list. One slip and Canna will have it all.’

  ‘What was it you said this morning?’ Wyne called.

  ‘Audience hear me,’ Sot said under her breath. ‘And may the Poet be deaf to Canna’s stories.’

  She went back to the benches and Ghen followed, wondering where it was that Sot took her baths in Greynal. There was another door nearby, left half open, and inside he could see a similar room to the one he’d just looked in, with the addition of a table heaped with papers.

  Wyne was fiddling with something on the far wall.

  ‘We rise and sleep by the order list,’ Sot said. ‘If the list is full then the days are long. If Canna has his way and our order list is empty then you might get more sleep, but that’s not going to happen because Canna’s work is so poor.’

  ‘Sot!’ Wyne said over his shoulder. ‘There’s no helping you!’

  Sot groaned and said, ‘Wyne, you’re right. There is no helping me. And there’s no helping foolish Lowlanders who don’t know quality when they see it.’

  ‘I give up,’ Wyne said.

  Ghen had the feeling they’d had this conversation many times before. He felt a smile creep over his mouth at their bickering. He swallowed it away. He didn’t want to be there.

  Wyne held out a pair of the small blades that Sot had called rooters. ‘These are yours,’ he said to Ghen.

  Ghen took them and felt the same good feeling as before. His hand itched to use them, but then he remembered that he wouldn’t be making anything grow.

  ‘Well, now that you’re equipped we can get on with some work,’ Sot said.

  ‘Only for a little while,’ Ghen said, ‘and then I’m going home.’

  He caught Wyne looking at Sot, but she shook her head. She went to the shelves on the opposite wall and took one of the figures, setting it on the workbench in front of Ghen. He couldn’t put off looking at it any longer. The time had come. But still he was afraid.

  Sot met his eyes above the figure.

  ‘Wood, that’s all they are,’ Sot said. ‘Just think of them as sinta branches.’

  Ghen nodded, and looked down.

  The figure was a foot tall. It had a head, legs and arms, hands and feet. Everything a body needed, including working clothes. It was standing, one arm stretched out in front at shoulder height, the hand holding a tiny bushel of wheat. Ghen could make out the individual stalks.

  When he made no move to touch the figure, Sot picked it up and put it in his hands. Ghen stiffened but didn’t drop it. The wood was planed smooth, soft against his palms. There was no paint on it, no colour at all, not like his sisters’ doll, which had garish red cheeks and lips, and hair of blue wool. This figure had detail though: buttons on the shirt, the lines of the lips, all carved in tiny grooves. Ghen turned the figure over in his hands, looking for the joins between the limbs and the torso, the hand and the wheat. But he couldn’t find any.

  ‘It’s a single piece of wood,’ he said.

  ‘One of Wyne’s best,’ Sot said with pride, setting the figure back on the bench. A blush crept into Wyne’s pale cheeks. ‘Now, Ghen, tell me how much you know about Tillers.’

  ‘They’re for Last Plantings, Melle said. She’s my friend.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘But Rit – he’s my other friend – he said that if I make them, I’ll never make anything grow again.’

  Sot sighed. ‘This is my sister’s fault. She always was one for keeping the real world at bay. When our father died, that was the time for you to learn about what I do, Ghen, about the whole business of it. I told her you were old enough to come to the Planting. It does no good to shield children.

  ‘Wyne, put the kettle on. And Ghen, you listen to me. Tillers are for the good of the land, just as we Lowlanders are. We’re Tillers, and Tillers are us. All one and the same.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘When a person dies, Tillers pass on their care for the land. We plant one for each month of the year so that the land is never left without the deceased’s attention.’

  ‘So they… they help the land?’

  ‘Exactly. Tillers are the way we pass on our love. We put them in the ground—’

  ‘With a dead person?’

  ‘Yes, with a dead person. We put them in the ground and they become guardians of the land. That way, no one lets their land lie fallow. Even when someone is no longer here, their love and their knowledge live on. What we do is a service, Ghen. People need us, however much they might not acknowledge it.’

  There was a shout and then a smash. Wyne stood in a circle of clay shards. He stared at the cup handle he was holding, as if he had no idea what it was.

  ‘Your mother tells me you’re not clumsy, Ghen,’ Sot said. ‘Which is another point in your favour. I’ll make the tea, Wyne. We don’t have enough cups left for you to break any more.’

  But at that moment there was a knock at the door.

  *

  The caller was a man about Ghen’s father’s age, wearing a coat just as patched as his father’s, a hat just as battered.

  ‘I… I’ve come to place an order,’ the man said.

  ‘Welcome. Please come in.’

  He took off his battered hat. ‘You can arrange it out here, can’t you? My friend said you would.’

  ‘Of course.’ Sot swept back inside and collected three Tillers: the one on the bench that Ghen had been looking at, and two others from the shelves. Each was made of a slightly different shade of wood. ‘Wyne, fetch me a new form. Now, name?’

  ‘Tarn. It’s Arth Tarn.’

  ‘And is this order for an imminent Last Planting, Mr Tarn, or are you looking to pay in parts?’

  ‘That one.’ He clutched and unclutched his hat, keeping his gaze on his feet.

  ‘Which?’

  ‘Parts. I want the best for my wife, you understand. I want her to know that she’ll still be able to watch over the fields when the time comes.’

  He glanced up then, and something in Sot’s expression gave him courage to look at the Tillers she was holding.

  ‘I understand,’ she said. ‘Well, there are two decisions you have to make. The first concerns wood. Unt is the cheapest, followed by affa and then this hundred-year-old rennwood is our most expensive option.’

  She held out the Tiller made of the darkest wood and Tarn flinched.

  ‘I can see it very well from here, thank you. I want my wife to have a spade, but it has to have a long handle. She’s tall, you see. And her favourite spade, it has a chip in the right-hand side. It’s important that their spades have the chips.’

  ‘That won’t be a problem, but it does push the price up. That said, if you buy a tool with custom detail then we’ll add clothing for free.’

  ‘And what would that price be, then?’

  ‘Twelve Tillers in rennwood with custom tools is thirty marks.’

  Ghen gasped. Thirty marks would take his parents months to save. Tarn was taken aback too. He ran his hat through his fingers frantically. But Sot wasn’t put off.

  ‘Rennwood without custom tool detail is five marks less.’

  ‘The spade. She has to have that, or we’ll be lost.’

  ‘Perhaps the affa would be more suitable, for twenty marks. You won’t find better value in the valley.’

  Wyne reappeared with a sheet of paper. He sat down at one of the benches and Ghen perched beside him. The page was marke
d with as many rows as his parents’ holen field but no writing.

  ‘The affa, yes,’ Tarn said. ‘I think we can manage that. I want her to have the best, the rennwood, but…’

  ‘I understand. Many of my customers choose this option.’

  ‘They do? Oh, that’s good.’

  ‘And clothing?’

  ‘I’ll check with my wife. She wants to decide that herself. I can do that, can I, tell you when I next come?’

  ‘Certainly. But I’ll need a deposit now, to place the order.’

  The man shoved his hand in his pocket. ‘I have it. My friend said you had to have a little bit for it to be written down.’

  ‘That’s right.’ Sot held out her hand but the man put two coins onto the porch rail. ‘Next month the same,’ she said, in a voice that had lost some of its earlier warmth. Tarn didn’t notice in his hurry to be gone; he was already halfway down the path.

  ‘Is his wife dying?’ Ghen asked.

  ‘We’re all of us dying,’ Sot said, shutting the door. Wyne made way for her to sit down and she began writing in the paper’s empty rows. ‘That’s the first custom-tool in nearly three months. Wake up the fire, will you, Wyne? But be careful!’

  ‘But why does he want the spade made with a chip?’ Ghen said.

  ‘Because Mr Tarn believes it will make his wife’s Tillers more powerful. The wisdom is, the more detailed the Tiller, the more the land will yield.’

  ‘You don’t believe that?’ Ghen said.

  ‘It’s not about what I believe. People can believe whatever they want, if they’ve got the money to pay for the work.’

  ‘But what about people who haven’t got the money?’ He was thinking of his parents, and of himself, of course, among all the other thoughts swirling through his head: Last Plantings, the land, yields.

  ‘In this workshop,’ Sot said, ‘there’s a Tiller for every coin purse, no matter how light that purse might be.’

  ‘Canna can’t make the same claim,’ Wyne called from the hearth. ‘Your aunt does right by people who have little, Ghen. That’s one reason why the order list is most often full.’

  ‘A few more chipped spades wouldn’t hurt,’ she said. ‘Go and show Ghen the wood, and bring some affa branches back with you. Better let Ghen get them down though.’

  *

  Wyne led Ghen round the back of the workshop and down a well-worn path through more of the fruitless sintas. The sinta’s large dark leaves became interspersed with smaller, pointed leaves of a much lighter colour, and there were red leaves among the trees too, shaped like stars, and the trunks became more slender. When the sintas disappeared completely Wyne came to a halt. They were in a mixed orchard of trees Ghen had never seen before.

  ‘What fruit do these give?’ Ghen asked.

  ‘Tillers.’

  ‘But these trees must have been planted generations ago, before Sot was even born.’

  ‘Of course they were. There’s been a workshop here for years. Before Sot there was Dand, before Dand there was Jin, before Jin—’ He shook his head and laughed. ‘I sound like an apprentice storyteller. There have been Tiller-makers as long as there have been Lowlanders, and those old masters are buried right here, in the orchard, their Tillers helping the trees grow. This here is the rennwood.’ Wyne patted a thick trunk with a reddish bark. ‘And this is affa, and this is unt,’ he said, pointing to two other kinds of trees. ‘Not every workshop uses all three.’

  ‘Wyne, who is Canna?’

  Wyne went to lean on the rennwood tree but misjudged where it was, only just managing to catch hold of it before he fell. He turned to stare at the big tree trunk, with no sign of embarrassment, as if he thought the rennwood had moved.

  ‘Canna?’ Ghen said, to remind him.

  ‘Hm? Oh. He owns a workshop a few hills over. His Tillers aren’t as poorly made as Sot says they are, but he only offers one kind: the expensive kind. Most people can’t afford them so they come to Sot.’

  ‘That’s good for Sot, isn’t it?’ Ghen said.

  ‘Not really. She’s done the sums. She has to make eight of the cheapest Tillers for every one of Canna’s expensive ones. And eight Tillers take a lot longer to make than one Tiller.’

  ‘Sot should only make expensive ones then.’

  ‘And what would the people who have little do then, Ghen? The only way she can afford to keep going is to make more Tillers. And that’s why you’re here.’

  Wyne started down the path again and they came to a low wooden structure. Inside were axes and saws, as well as hide gloves and chains. Sawdust littered the floor like snow and the smell of cut wood was heavy on the air.

  ‘We drag the branches and the trunks here,’ Wyne said, ‘and cut them into useable sizes. This is the main wood store, but we keep some in the workshop for ready use.’

  Wyne went to the back of the shed where there were several large, bulky shapes covered by sacking: the same as the sacking on what Ghen had supposed to be his bed. Underneath was a huge pile of wood, chopped into lengths of varying sizes and stacked neatly. Wyne reached for a piece of wood and Ghen could see that if he took it, the whole pile would come tumbling down.

  Ghen leapt forward. ‘Sot said I should do it, remember?’

  He lifted a length of wood safely from the pile and gave it to Wyne, and kept doing so until Wyne said they had enough.

  ‘It’s Sot that stacks the wood,’ Wyne said as they made their way back to the workshop. ‘She cuts it as well. I’m none too steady with the saw.’

  ‘So how do you manage to carve buttons and the like on a Tiller?’ Ghen said.

  ‘That’s different.’

  ‘Because the saw’s big and the blades – the rooters – are small?’

  ‘Maybe. All I know is I never drop anything when I’m making Tillers. I never cut myself or trip. It’s like my hands become someone else’s hands.’ Wyne hunched himself over the wooden branches in his arms. ‘I don’t expect that makes any sense.’

  ‘When I turn the medlars and cut back the sinta trees, it feels more right than anything else in the world,’ Ghen said. ‘But that’s making things grow, not making Tillers.’

  ‘We do that too. Well, we plant trees as well as cut them down. Two trees for every one that we cut. That’ll be your job, Sot says. I always drop the seed bag and then the birds are on me.’

  ‘Planting? So you can still grow things!’

  ‘Don’t let Sot hear any more of that talk,’ Wyne said. ‘Making Tillers is growing. Think of it that way. It might help you like the work.’

  ‘Do you like it?’

  Wyne shrugged. ‘I’m good at it,’ he said, but with sadness, as if being good hurt him somehow.

  *

  Ghen was to have his own bench, between Sot and Wyne’s, so that each could keep an eye on him and he in turn could watch what they did. The first item on the order list was for a Last Planting in two days’ time, for which the family of the dead had ordered the cheapest Tillers.

  Sot put a few lengths of wood on each bench. ‘This is unt.’

  Ghen grasped his rooters and readied himself for instruction, but Wyne and Sot cradled their cups instead. Wyne told Ghen to do likewise.

  ‘Always warm your hands first,’ he said. ‘It’ll help you find the way the wood wants to be shaped.’

  Ghen didn’t understand what this could mean. The wood would be shaped however he wanted to shape it. Once he got his rooters to it, he would be in charge. But he did as Wyne said and cupped his hands round his tea. The feeling it gave him was one of home: of coming in from a day in the fields in winter, his fingers stiff from being in the cold earth. His mother or father would put a cup of tea on the table and set Ghen’s hands round it, for they were too stiff for him to do so himself, his fingers like claws. And then slowly the heat would work its way into his bones.

  Sot and Wyne were good enough to ignore his tears.

  When his hands had swelled with warmth from the clay cup, soft as clay the
mselves, Sot told him to pick up a length of unt.

  ‘Run your hands all over it and you’ll know where to begin.’

  ‘What if I don’t?’ he said, hoping she’d say that would mean he was a failure at Tiller-making and she’d have to send him home.

  ‘You will,’ she said. ‘I saw you in the sintas, remember.’

  Ghen ran his hands over the length of wood. He didn’t expect anything to happen, but he wasn’t sure what else he could do other than play along. He didn’t belong in the workshop; he belonged on the land, helping his parents get the most from their three fields. Helping them save so they could buy the land from Hend.

  Ghen’s thumb snagged.

  There was nothing to see on the wood itself. The surface was smooth – no splinters, no lumpen knots. He ran his thumb back and forth over the same spot and still it caught on something. Shoulder, said a voice in his head. He dropped the wood on the bench and sat on his hands. He screwed his eyes closed too, so he couldn’t even see any shapes, let alone touch them.

  He didn’t know how long he sat like that, Sot and Wyne on either side of him, saying nothing. He didn’t know how long it was until his hands beneath his backside twitched, slipped back to the bench and he found himself picking up the rooters. They felt right in his hand, just like when he climbed the ladder to the sinta branches and cut back the old wood. He could see the branch in front of him, feel the softness of the old wood and the firm resistance of the new beneath it. He needed to let the new wood come through. The tree needed it. His parents and the girls needed it. He ran his blades over the old wood and a sliver floated free, then drifted to the nets below. Except they weren’t nets. They were floorboards. And the wood in his hand wasn’t a sinta branch attached to a sinta tree. It was a length of unt.

  ‘It’s just like cutting back and tying off,’ Sot said. ‘Watch Wyne if you’re not sure, though something tells me you’ll find your own way.’

  Ghen repeated Sot’s words in his head as if he was telling the Audience. Cutting back and tying off. Cutting back and tying off. He thought of working the trees, of turning the medlars, of weeding the holens. He thought of home.