One
Billy Braid reclined on the side porch, waiting for the five o’clock rain. It had been a sticky day and the residual heat lingered along with a familiar pang of shirker’s guilt. But he was used enough to that. Billy sat with his shirt unbuttoned, impatient for the cleansing downpour, but the sky, deepening now with the onset of evening, remained empty. The rain was late again.
He spotted it at last to the North West, the supposedly punctual cloud array appearing like a cluster of sudden doves. It would take a full twenty minutes for those scuds to cross the intervening distance, growing fat on the moisture they sucked from the humid air as they traversed the fields, the wide Molde river, the forest itself. Billy reached around to pluck the gluey cotton from between his shoulders, spat on the ground and swore silently in the general direction of Karpentine. The distant city, identifiable by the circle of blue sky close to the horizon no matter the weather anywhere else, was a ripe target for curses for all occasions. The citizens there didn’t have to wait for their rain, conveniently delivered at night while they slept, though it be bought and paid for by the same credits and kudos. They’d be quick enough to complain if the farmers of the valley were late delivering the harvest or the mountain woodsmen the lumber.
Billy sloshed the dregs of his beer around the bottle. After spending the day sawing and dressing pine lumber he’d figured he deserved a treat, but he’d idled so long that the beer was warm. The shirker’s guilt itched. There remained chores to be done, but he’d get to them after his beer, after the rain. Soon. Sure, he could have taken a shower in the house. It would only have taken ten minutes of brisk effort to prime the pump, but this had become a matter of principle now.
He sipped from his bottle and stared off into the forest fringe, listening to the settling of the trees, the hollow coughing of birds. And, closer, the inexorable sloughing of plane and glasspaper from the workshop underpinned by Kim’s semi-sung litanical murmurings. The end of summer was usually a good time of year for Billy because it was traditionally when many of the groves matured and the master shut himself away in the smaller workshop, bringing one sylvan at a time into being. With the old man in there for weeks at a time Billy had more jobs to do, but at least he was free of the incessant carping when he didn’t jump immediately to do them. Ah, that was unfair. The old man was decent enough, but the concept of taking a breather had become as distant to him as Karpentine was. The Law Of Man might commend everyone to daily labour, but there was such a thing as overdoing it. Billy often wondered whether everyone born in the city had such a thorn up their arse, or whether that trait belonged to Kim alone.
In truth, Billy admired his master’s industry when the wood called, but a sylvan brought no money in – and this summer there had been an unprecedented number of them. Being left to his own devices was one thing, finding himself the household’s sole source of income quite another. They’d have to have words. But… later.
Billy put his feet up and closed his eyes. Then he opened them again because a whisper of wind in leaves had echoed in his mind. The words he heard in it were: Someone comes.
Billy jumped up and turned and found himself looking into Chop’s deeply grained face. The sun lent a golden glow to the old wood, a warm shine along the almond curve of the chin, a gentle lustre to the stream-shaped pebble eyes.
Billy groaned. “Blind me and cripple me, who?”
The mental impressions that Billy understood as the sylvan’s voice stirred again. A stranger. On the village road.
“All right. I’ll go down there now.”
Better hurry.
Billy went down the flint path that connected the house to the road. When he reached the treeline, he looked back. Chop had taken his position on the porch bench, long timbered limbs folded up, head bowed. Billy might have viewed the exchange as a ruse, but sylvans didn’t shirk. It wasn’t in their nature.
When Billy reached the overgrown road he held his breath and listened. The birds had fallen silent, so it was easy to pick out the throaty rumble of something mechanical. The sound grew steadily louder then subsided. The vehicle must have stopped at the forest gate. He trotted down the weed-strewn track, relieved that the machine would not be bringing its cacophony any closer to disturbing the master’s peace. Under his breath, he cursed again. Visitors from the villages were rare, but even those who politely announced themselves incurred the old man’s ire if they disturbed him when he was with the wood. And Billy caught it double for failing to intercept them.
At the ridge, Billy looked down to where the road was collared by the forest and barred by the timber gate. Behind the gate sat some kind of a powered wagon. It wasn’t dissimilar to the ones the foresters used to transport lumber to the wood mills, but this was no hard working leviathan built for strength and practicality. This was a gleaming piece of polished showoffery. It had six rubber-rimmed wheels, silver-bright trim and an open cabin, as well fitted out as any pleasure boat that ever tied up at Denit’s Jetty. The wood was varnished a deep gold, the lines detailed in red paint. It all looked very impressive, but even out here they were not so far removed from civilised society to be taken in by appearances. This vehicle was a perfect example of what Kim called a platform for conspicuous achievement.
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