Chapter Ten – Barley

It is difficult to say who was the more surprised. Pazu went up the lane the next morning full of confidence in himself. Arrogance even. He was a miner. Mining was hard work and he'd done it for as long as he could remember. As a small boy he'd crawled on hands and knees pulling the ore carts along the rails that led along the drifts to the working face, hauling the empties in had been easy, bringing the full ones out had been the hard part, he'd worn a special harness that fitted his shoulders, like a horse. The harness distributed the pulling effort to his shoulders, his chest, his small muscular centre rather than his arms. Pulling those carts had been almost all he'd known until the age of six, he knew nothing else and so he'd not minded. It had been hard work and he'd sometimes cried, but around him everyone else worked hard as well, some of them cried too, even grown men sometimes. So when he needed to, Pazu had cried with pride because he knew it was a necessary thing, worn like a badge. To him crying wasn't what babies did, it was a right, and men who cried did so because their struggles had earned them the right to do so.

As he grew older and took more interest in what his father did, his keen mind had become aware of a life above ground where the steam engines worked, the trains ran and the pumps spewed out the black mine water. His father had built his own flying machine and had a dream of his own and Pazu, in the last years he'd known him, had been drawn into that dream. The dream of flight. The dream of Laputa. He'd got to know the Boss, and the Clunker, and found that working with steam engines might be less tiring than mining but it was more dangerous. Burns and crushed limbs were common among the engineers and Pazu had quickly learned to respect machinery.

So when it came to farming he thought it would be easy. It was just gardening on a bigger scale wasn't it? It took him most of that first day to find out that mining, operating steam engines and farming had a lot in common. They were all damn hard work and damn dangerous. A steam engine might scald the flesh off your bones and a mine might crush your leg in a rock fall but a scythe used wrongly would take off the leg of the man next to you, or later in the week he realised that reaching too close near the blade of the turning plough that lifted out the potatoes could get you caught and dragged under it. If you came out the other side of the turning plough still alive you were unlucky, dying under it would be a far better and quicker end.

Pazu, arrogant that morning, ended the week a wiser and humbler boy.

Tanner had plenty of misgivings about these two kids, but mostly about the boy. The girl seemed to be under his spell. Goodwife Morwen had told him, late last night, about her conversation with Pazu, and it was clear the girl was in love. Nothing wrong in that, he'd loved Morwen at that age. She seemed to be drawn along behind the boy, he was the leader of the pair. Sure, he was still young and ignorant about lots of things but his natural desire to protect was there and the girl saw that and fell under the boy's spell. She would go where he went, do what he said, follow where he led. So he was the key to this pair, know him and he'd know them both. Problem was, as Tanner saw it, Pazu didn't know where he was going. To Gondoa, yes, but inside himself? No. Clueless.

The fact that the girl was so obviously in love with him and he just didn't seem to see it was one of the odder things the older man saw in Pazu.

Tanner was just a farmer and his world was a farmers world, but he knew the regular airship runs and he'd never heard of the Albion. He made a mental note to talk to his mates in the Fisherman's Rest next time he went to town. Air pirate attacks were not common against passenger vessels, they usually chose to attack cargo freighters because there were fewer crew and more valuable goods, so passenger attacks always made news. If the Albion had been attacked, Porthaven's fishermen would know about it. Or the Porthaven Bugle would know of it, or if that provincial paper didn't then certainly the Kingsbury Times would. Tanner, however, kept these things to himself over the next few days. He held back, and wondered about Pazu.

Because, as it turned out, of the two of them, Tanner was the more surprised. He knew what the day would be like. They'd start with the barley in Big Top Field. Working with scythes, and binding and stacking the crop into stacks (called stooks), it would take the two of them all day he thought. Tomorrow they would cut Small Top and the third day gather and thresh and store the seed in the big wooden bin under the roof of the barn. It would lay there drying until the end of the week. The last job was to run the seed out of the drying hopper into sacks, bag it, label it with the buying merchants stamp and stack it on the cart. It would go to the sidings at Porthaven station to be loaded onto a railway wagon bound for Kingsbury. He sold all his barley to a Kingsbury merchant and he got good prices for it. The barley was the crop that kept them alive, put food on the table and re-thatched the roof. Tanner was always happier harvesting the barley first, not only because it was the only crop that needed to dry but because once he had that in the drying bin, excepting some calamity such as a fire, they were insured against another year.

So this would not only be hard work, it required technique as well, working a scythe looked easy, you planted your feet apart, gripped the handles and swung from the waist in a smooth regular crescent moon motion, taking a half step every two or three swings as the crop fell before you. Easy. Except that with all specialist tools that had developed over centuries, while the basic moves looked simple, to use a scythe efficiently took a lot of practice. Sure you could go at it in ignorance and try the brute force method but a man would be exhausted in an hour and useless after two.

Which was why, after they had started at six that morning and stopped for breakfast at half nine and resumed at ten, Tanner stopped working for a moment and watched the boy. His technique was raw and stiff, he hadn't quite got the smooth flow necessary to make the most of the body's energy but, if truth be told, he wasn't half bad. And he certainly wasn't like Tanner's other hired hands, going at it with sheer muscle and tiring himself out in the first hour.

"Hey. Water?"
"Uh, thanks."

Pazu gulped down the cool liquid and wiped his forehead on his sleeve. He looked behind him. A wide lane lay along the edge of the field, two passes (known as 'strides') wide, the fallen barley in swirls and untidy heaps, awaiting stacking which they would do when they reached the far wall and worked their way back down the strides.

"Not bad. Ye done this afore?"
"No. Does it show?" he grinned
"No, it doesn't. An' that surprises me. Ye ever watch a field o' barley bein' harvested?"
"No. I don't think I've ever even seen a field of barley before."

Tanner scratched his head.

"Hm. Come here, let me show ye somethin'."

Tanner stood behind the boy, his big chest pressing up against Pazu's smaller back. The farmer's thick arms came around him and he lay his hands over Pazu's on the scythe's handles.

"Swing fer me."

Pazu did so, a few times.

"Alright, now swing and walk forrad, like yer was cuttin'."

Pazu tried this and Tanner moved with him. They reached the standing barley and Pazu began cutting.

"Now, wait for me word."

As Pazu finished one swing, Tanner said,

"Half a pace with yer right foot… now!"

Pazu paced. The scythe swung again and the barley fell.

"Now, one cut, two cut and on the next backswing one half a pace with yer left foot… Now. There. Ye see?"

Pazu did see, by taking the half step as he completed a swing onto the other side, the inertia of the weight of the scythe as it ended its swing actually picked up his foot a little. If he coincided the half step at that instant, he found that almost all the effort of walking forward was made for him, by the energy already invested in swinging the scythe. In effect he could move down the stride for free. Now he saw why Tanner cut so energetically, the more energy you put into the swing, not only did this give your blade more speed and therefore made it cut better but the inertia was greater and Tanner could move down the stride with practically no effort at all. Providing you kept co-ordinated and compensated for things like the slope of the ground, the only effort you burned was in your waist and shoulder muscles and hands.

The two of them resumed work and by lunch time they had well over half of Big Top Field cut. At this rate they would finish and stook the crop early.

--I--
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I I

They did reap Big Top early, and they did stook all the barley in it. Tanner made it quite clear to Pazu that he was a happy man that afternoon. With the sun beginning to settle behind the hill and the heat of the afternoon still raising dust at their feet, they set off back down the lane to the farm.

As they were walking, Pazu felt something. He was walking quietly, a mood of warmth and tiredness was over him and his muscles ached, but he was happy. He'd done a good days work and he knew Tanner was pleased with their progress. He looked at his hands, they were red and a little blistered. As he turned them over and looked at his knuckles he suddenly felt that sensation again. The sensation he'd felt when Tanner had stood behind him and his big arms had come round him and the man's hands had rested on his. He had felt the man's chest against his back and had even smelled his sweat, it was neither a pleasant nor an unpleasant smell, it was just the smell of a man working. But Pazu remembered that smell and the feel of hands like that…

- - - - - - - -

He had been six years old. He had gone into his fathers workshop to take him a cup of tea. The man had been working on his flying machine. It was the one he had flown when he'd taken the photograph a year earlier. Adam, the man who had been with him that day, that fateful day of the photograph, was working in partnership with him and they had rented a small hangar and were improving their vessel. The small boy had gone in and stood in awe as he looked up at the long cigar like gasbag, the many hanging guide lines and the large polished wooden airscrew.

"Here he is! Here's my favourite tea boy! Come over here Pazu, I've something to show you."

The boy had gone over to where the man stood on top of a set of low wooden steps, bending over into the open control gondola of the airship.

"Put them teas down boy and scoot up here. Come on!"

Pazu had climbed the steps and his father had picked him up, swung him around and dropped him into the wicker pilot's seat.

"Now, here's the safety strap that goes across your lap Pazu, so when the ship banks your dad won't fall out. That there is the airscrew pitch crank, you don't need to worry about that one. But here," his voice glowed, "you'll like this. Take a hold."

The little boy put out his hands and held the wheel in front of him, a wooden disc with the centre cut out and the rim wrapped in padded cloth.

"This is what steers your daddy's airship. Turn it that way to go left and this way to go right. Look behind you."

Pazu had looked and as his little pink hands turned the wheel he saw the big tail fin swing from side to side. A huge thing it was, fifteen feet or more tall, bigger even than his father (and he was a giant). Pazu was excited that his small hands could turn a little wheel and yet make such a big thing move. He giggled and swung the wheel harder.

"Whoa now, not too hard young man, we don't want you to throw your daddy out if you bank too hard."

And his father's big hands had come round him and rested on his little ones and his fathers big presence had been close to him, that warmth, the smell that only his father had…

- - - - - - - -

Years later a teenage Pazu was walking down a dirt lane hundreds of miles away in a country called Marinaer when that memory flowed out of nowhere and broke over him like a sweet wave. The boy stopped walking and as the wave eddied around him and ebbed away it left him wet. Wet in his heart, a damp aching sorrow and a wetness on him, on his lower eyelids and threatening to trace silver lines down his dusty cheeks. But a man only cried when he had suffered and been hurt through the effort of his own labours. A man didn't cry unless he had earned that right. And today had been a good day, and he lacked that right to cry. So Pazu put aside the aching hurt in his heart that the memory of his dead father left there, wiped his sleeve across his face and sniffed back up his nose the last of the wetness the wave had left behind.

dad

And he continued homeward down that dusty late summer lane.

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6 March 2007

Important note: I have decided to develop the Gondoan language in the story and today (7th March) added a long footnote to Chapter Three : Toes where Sheeta first speaks it. If you're a reader who is up to speed in the story please go back to Chapter Three to pick up on my plans for this. It's gonna be big.

For author notes about Chapter Ten, please see my forum (click on my pen name)