Chapter 5 – Fishing

He'd risen early, as he always did. Tending steam engines meant nights were never long. Firing up and oiling round the old Clunker always needed an hour, and the morning shift started at seven. So he wasn't used to lying in bed. Daylight in the harvest season came at four and by five he was restless. He shifted his stiff frame and felt her warm feet pressing against him, inside his shirt. He was at once embarrassed, awkward. That had been a silly thing to do, putting her bare feet there. Sure, it stopped the cold and may even have saved her real trouble with circulation problems later, but…

Dammit, there were better ways of doing it. Less… hm… well, anyway, just other ways. He shouldn't have done that. He could have just wrapped his coat round them, so why do that? Idiot. You're going to give her the whole wrong idea.

He sat up, stretched, groaned at his stiff complaining muscles. He needed to wash. And do other things with his bladder and stomach that you don't do anywhere near a sleeping girl. It was daylight so this time he shouldn't miss his footing. Why was he such a clumsy fool around her? He seemed to have grown two left feet and a second tongue. A stupid tongue that only spoke stupid words. He needed some space. A wash, a fire needed making. And breakfast. One thing about him that hadn't changed was the size of his stomach. Oh, what he'd give for a fried egg right now.

He bundled the mat into the cockpit, covered her feet with the fleece lined jacket and strode off down the hill.

Boots. Priority number one. Do some casual labour for someone and get money to buy boots. Hm, lots of things to buy, he really missed his knapsack, he felt naked without all the useful bits in there.

He did the necessary things his body demanded, then gathered firewood and started a fresh fire. She was still fast asleep. It seemed princesses were used to laying in bed later than engineers. Or rather, he corrected himself, engineers' boy assistants. The poncho was pulled down and part of her neck was bare. He could see the cord she'd put the blue stone back onto. And her white skin.

Averting his eyes he padded off back down the hill. Priority one: boots. Priority two: breakfast.

He looked down the hill at the farmhouse he'd seen last night. A wisp of smoke curled from the chimney and in the yard he could see a woman drawing water from a pump. He glanced behind him up the hill. The reddish cloth of one of the glider's wing tips was visible, as was the column of smoke from the fire, the moisture hadn't yet all been evaporated from the green timber. No doubt the farmer knew they were there, he'd come looking soon enough.

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I I

When you are orphaned at the age of eight you do one of two things. You either give up, collapse inwards and rely on others. An orphanage, or if you are lucky, a distant relative. Or you fight. You stand up and press on. There wasn't an orphanage in Slag's Ravine and while most of the township was his family, none of them were blood relatives and they were all in the same situation, working the ore to scrape a living (literally). Everyone cared, he was certain of that, but no-one had the luxury of giving him a bed or a free meal. So the first choice, giving up, would literally have meant begging and starvation. But having been down the mines almost since he could walk he at least had a skill and he had his fathers determination and commitment to press on in the face of difficulties. So he'd gone to work for the Boss and had picked up an affinity for mechanical things. He was lucky. Many children orphaned at eight might think that a strange thing to say but he knew different. Still only in his mid-teens he had experienced a lot, yes, it was experience of a small closed world, an inward-looking mining community, but he had developed a strong sense of self reliance, of dealing with people, of not being messed about, of working out problems for himself.

At the bottom of the ridge of high ground was the edge of the coastal plain. A wagon road ran along here between high walls and beyond was more farmland and beyond that woodland and the salt marsh. Beside the road was the stream. It ran between small trees and scrubby bushes and yes, there were places a person could bathe in daylight and not be seen by passing travellers. He'd mention it to her later. He didn't much care who saw him washing, but he thought princesses might prefer some privacy.

He rolled his trouser legs up past his knees and carefully stepped into the water, making no unnecessary motion. He stood completely still and quiet for a while. Yes, there they were, he thought a pool this size would have some. Fresh water fish, trout they looked like, basking in the sun just above the gravelly bottom. He'd learned this skill from Tobie, one of the boys who did odd jobs for Okami. You just needed patience and a good eye. He'd had some success in the past, and once your eye corrected for the refraction effect of the water's surface and you were fast enough, you could grab the fish. So he waited, still, silent, watching them basking.

He was not shy or hesitant. He'd learned that dealing with people was easy. He'd made the surprising discovery that many adults had real difficulties of their own. When he was a child he'd thought all adults were clever, and strong, and never cried, and could do anything. But growing up fast as he'd been forced to do in the last five or six years, he'd found that if you just pretended you were confident and knew things then adults would believe you. He wasn't manipulative, he'd found that being polite and helpful worked too, it was just that the discovery that some adults were struggling with life more than he was had shocked him. So gradually his childish ways had left him – his display of confidence had, over time, been replaced by actual confidence.

A fish was coming closer now, it lazily swam to the shallow warmer water where he stood. Any moment now… just a little closer fishy, fishy… His hand darted out and closed on cool squirming flesh. Yes! He pulled the small trout out, whacked it's head on a stone and returned to being still and patient.

His problem though was that his world was a world of men: his work, his dealings with Judd who ran the hot food canteen, Moergan at the hardware store, Eckhmer the blacksmith who helped him with repairs when the Clunker had one of it's bad days. And the miners. The only women he'd had any contact with were Okami who would help out with patching his clothes and dressing his injuries and Madge who was just a kid. There were some girls his age in town but they all went around in packs and giggled when they went past him. He had tried talking to them more than once but they either ran off or went pink and then laughed. He had no idea why. So he had problems, here. He was now responsible for a teenage girl. An injured girl, and not just any girl, but a princess. What could he, a crude miner, offer such a girl? He had little understanding of etiquette or how to act around girls. Yes, Sheeta was easy to talk to and do things with, but in that way he didn't get to know her as a girl. It was like Tobie and him out fishing, they acted like two friends, two boys. He enjoyed that but he knew there was more. He could feel it.

Oh, yes, another fish was approaching. Come on Mr. Fish, come to Pazu now… He made a grab but this time the trout skittered way. Damn. It would take a while for another to come to this noisy part of the pool now.

But when he was with Tobie he never felt like he did when Sheeta was around. He felt a strange warm feeling when she was near him. When he was with Tobie he never had the urge to reach out and touch the boy's hair. Or just sit and stare at his lips. With Sheeta it was different and he found it perplexing. Sometimes in the Red Cow Inn he would sit with the miners and they'd talk and laugh about things he didn't understand "buns in the oven" or "a quickie behind the tool shed". The men laughed at these stories but wouldn't share with him what they meant. Pazu knew that men and women got married when they were older and had children and that involved laying down in a bed with no clothes on. But after that he was clueless. He'd even talked to Okami about it once or twice but she'd just got flustered and suddenly very busy and shooed him out of her kitchen.

And it all came back to this feeling. He'd never felt it before. Ever. What troubled him was it was both nice and at the same time it hurt. It was like eating too much and something inside blocking you up so you couldn't rest. Or it was like a toothache but instead of a tooth hurting it hurt inside his chest. Why, when he liked Sheeta, did it hurt when she was nearby? He knew what love was, he'd loved his mom and his dad, but he couldn't measure that love against what the miners talked about when they said they loved a woman. Behind the tool shed. The love Pazu had felt for his parents had been a completely warm restful thing. Comforting, relaxing and mixed in with it were things like respect and an eagerness to please. The miners joking stories seemed to have nothing of that.

But when he was near Sheeta he felt something else as well and it worried him because it felt nothing at all like his fading memories of his mother. There was this unhappy hurting sensation but something else. Something even worse. He'd felt it last night when he'd looked at her back, and when his lips had accidentally brushed her ankle. And when her icy feet had pressed into his armpit. Especially then. And this morning, when he looked at her neck. It was almost a bad feeling, a wicked feeling, a kind of dirty feeling, like he wanted to do something wrong to her. How could that be love? He'd seen his mom bathing some days in the tin bath in front of the fire. He'd seen a lot more of her skin than he had of Sheeta's and not felt this at all. Pazu sighed. He was confused. Maybe this was why he'd grown a second tongue and two left feet – because he was afraid of these feelings.

Another fish was approaching. He had to get this one, his legs were freezing and she'd wake up soon. Come on… come on… just a little closer… Yes! His hand darted out and a second small trout had a sudden and very bad but very quick headache.

And what about that conversation he'd had with Dola in his cabin the night he'd come home with Muska's three gold coins? That night when he'd felt that awful guilt at the realization that he'd been bought off. What had Dola said?

"They threatened her so she tried to save you."
"How do you know?"
"Fifty years of being a woman."
"She breaks her own heart to save her man – how touching."

He remembered that conversation clearly, and he'd remembered the feeling in his chest. It was the same feeling he had when she was near him, and yet then she'd been miles away. So that meant the feeling was nothing to do with being near her (although it was worse when she was) but happened when he thought about her. How could this horrible aching pain be the same emotion as the wonderful relaxed sensation he remembered from his mother's arms?

He put his thoughts aside and climbed out of the pool. He washed his hands and face. Down by the roadside he'd seen something he wanted, a cluster of woodland mushrooms and some wild fennel. He gathered these in his hat, then selected a stone from the dry walling, a large round nugget of flint. On his way back he picked the last few blackberries from the bushes by the trees and made his way up the hill. As he went up the slope he saw something long lying in the grass. He picked it up, checked it for strength and length. Yes, perfect, just what he needed.

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4 March 2007

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