The Worthing Saga (22 page)

Kapock remembered four winters in the world. The first was a very dim memory of light too dazzling to see—he remembered being afraid because the snow was much too large, and he fled back into the House. The second winter was better, because that was the winter when he and Sara and Batta lived only from the food they had worked to grow themselves, and it was the winter when Jason taught Hux and Wien and Vary to walk and talk.

The third winter was the winter when Kapock and Sara first lived in their own house across the Star River from Heaven City. Theirs was the first marriage and theirs was the first new house, and come summer theirs was the first child born. Sara named him Ciel.

But the fourth winter would be this winter, with Sara nursing Ciel and wanting Kapock not to talk so much, and Kapock was afraid. For now there was a problem in Heaven City that he did not know the right and wrong of.

It was the law that when there was a large work to do, all the people worked together. That was how they built new houses in two days, and how they harvested and harrowed, how they threshed and thatched, how they cut the winter's wood and cleared new fields. The tools belonged to all of them together, and so did the hours of the day.

So he did not know what to do when Linkeree asked him for an axe and a day. “What for?” asked Kapock. But Linkeree would not tell him. Kapock never knew how to talk to Linkeree, because Linkeree did not say much, even though he knew how. Linkeree was perhaps the cleverest of the Ice People from the second spring—he was the one who made the fish trap in the Star River, and no one taught him how, unless Jason did it secretly. It was Linkeree who first put berries in new wool so that live shirts were made blue. Linkeree was so strange that he never wore a blue shirt himself. Still, it did not take Jason to tell Kapock that Linkeree was different from the others, and in some ways better, and it made Kapock not want to argue with him, but to trust him to do right.

“Take the axe today,” said Kapock, “but tonight you must chop your day's share of firewood.”

Linkeree agreed to that and went.

But all day Hux was angry. “We all work together,” he said over and over. “When Jason was here no one went off to do secret work.” It was true. But it was also true that no one had ever before spoken against a decision of Kapock's, after it was made. And all day Hux kept saying, “It's wrong for Linkeree to change everything this way.”

Kapock could not argue with him. He too felt uneasy with the change.

That was five days ago, and each day in the morning Linkeree asked for the axe, and each night he came back and did a good day's work while the others sang and ate and played games in First House, where the New Ones, who were just learning to crawl, would laugh and clap even though they couldn't yet speak. It was as if Linkeree were no longer one of them, as if he lived alone. And each day Hux would complain all day. Then at night when Linkeree came back, Hux would be sullen and watch Linkeree, but never said a word of complaint, and Linkeree didn't seem to notice how angry Hux was.

But yesterday Hux followed Linkeree into the forest, and last night he told Kapock what he had seen. Linkeree had built a house.

Linkeree had built a house, all by himself, in a clearing in the woods a half hour's walk from Heaven City. It was all wrong. Houses were built by everyone together, and they were built for a woman and a man who meant to marry. The man and woman always went in the door and closed it, and then opened every window and through each one shouted together, “We are married!” Kapock and Sara had been the first, and they had done this for the sheer joy of it; now everybody did the same, and you weren't married until you did it. But where was Linkeree's wife? What right did he have to have a house? The next marriage, as everyone knew, would be Hux and Ryanno. Why should Linkeree have a house? All he would have there would be himself. He would be alone, and far from the others. Why would he want that?

Kapock didn't understand anything. He was not as wise as Jason. He should not be Mayor. Sara and Batta were both wiser than he. They had both made up their minds quickly. Batta said,

“Linkeree does what he likes. He likes to be alone and think his own thoughts. No one is hurt by it.” Sara said, “Jason said that we are one people. Linkeree is saying he does not want to be part of us, and if he is not part of us then we are all less than we were.” They were both very wise. It would be so much easier for Kapock if they had only agreed with each other.

This morning Linkeree would ask for the axe again. And this time Kapock had to do
something.

Sara came outside, bundled to protect her and little Ciel both against the cold.

“Are you going to do something about Linkeree today?” she asked.

So she had been thinking of it all morning, too. “Yes,” said Kapock.

“What are you going to do?”

“I don't know.”

Sara looked at him in puzzlement. “I wonder why Jason made you Mayor,” she said.

“I don't know,” Kapock answered. “Let's go to breakfast.”

At breakfast Linkeree came to him, already holding the axe. He did not ask. He just stood and waited.

Kapock looked up from his gruel. “Linkeree, why don't we all take axes, and help you finish the house you're making?”

Linkeree's eyes went small. “It's finished.”

“Then why do you need the axe?”

Linkeree looked around and saw that everyone was watching. He fingered the axe. “I'm cutting trees to clear a field.”

“We'll all do that next spring. We'll cut into the forest north of First Field, up the hill.”

“I know,” said Linkeree. “I'll help you with that. May I take the axe?”

“No!” shouted Hux.

Linkeree looked coldly at Hux. “I thought that Kapock was the Mayor.”

“It isn't right,” said Hux. “You go off every day to do work that no one needs you to do, and during the day no one sees you, and during the evening no one talks to you. It isn't right.”

“I do my share of work,” said Linkeree. “What I do when work is done is mine.”

“No,” said Hux. “We're all one people, Jason said so.”

Linkeree stood silent, then handed Kapock the axe.

Kapock handed it back. “Why don't you take us to see the house you built?” he asked.

At that, Linkeree grew calmer. “Yes, I'd like to show you.”

So they cleared up breakfast and left Reck and Sivel with the New Ones as they followed Linkeree eastward into the forest. Kapock walked in front, with Linkeree.

“How did you know I built a house?”

“Hux followed you.”

“Hux thinks I am an ox, always to stay in my pen except when I'm needed to pull.”

Kapock shook his head. “Hux likes things to stay the same.”

“Is it so bad for me to be alone?”

“I don't want you to be sad. I'm sad when I'm alone.”

“I'm not,” said Linkeree.

The house was strange-looking. It was smaller from end to end than the other houses they had built, but it was taller, and there were windows up high, under the roof. And strangest of all was the roof itself. It wasn't thatch. It was chips of wood overlapping, and the only thatch was at the every top.

Linkeree saw Kapock looking at the roof. “I only had a little thatch, and so I had to do something to finish it. I think this will hold out the rain, and if it does, I won't have to make a new roof every year.”

He showed them how he had put split logs across the tops of the walls and made a second-floor to the house, above. The first one, so that the inside of the house was not smaller after all. It was a good house, and Kapock said so. “From now on,” Kapock said, “we will put this second floor in all our new houses, because it makes more room indoors.” Everyone agreed that this was wise.

Then Hux said, “I'm glad you made this fine house, Linkeree, because Ryanno and I are going to be married.”

Linkeree was angry, but he answered softly. “I'm glad you and Ryanno are going to be married, Hux, and I will help you build a house.”

Hux said, “There is a house, and Ryanno and I are next to need a house, so it is ours.”

And Linkeree said, “I made this house myself. I cut the wood, I split and notched the logs, I cut the blocks for the roof and tied them all in place myself. No one helped me, and no one will live in this house but me.”

And Hux said, “You used the axe that belongs to all of us. You used the days that belong to all of us. You ate the food that belongs to all of us. Your house is on ground that belongs to all of us. Your life belongs to all of us, and all of us belong to you.”

“I don't want you. And you don't have me.”

“You ate the bread that I helped grow last year!” shouted Hux. “Give me back my bread!”

Then Linkeree doubled up his fist, and with arms strong from lifting and pulling logs, he hit Hux in the belly, and hurt him. Hux wept. Such a thing had never happened before, and it did not take much wisdom for Kapock to see that this was wrong.

“What will you do now, Linkeree?” asked Kapock. “If you want to keep the axe all to yourself, and I say no, will you hit me? If you want to marry a woman, and she says no, will you hit her too until she says yes?”

Linkeree held his list in his other hand, and stared at it.

Kapock tried to think. What would Jason do? But he could not be Jason—Jason would see into their minds and know what they thought. Kapock couldn't do that. He could only judge what people said and did. “Words should be answered with words,” said Kapock. “A person is not a fish, to be beaten on a rock. A person is not a goat, to be whacked when it doesn't move. Words should be answered with words, and hits should be answered with hits.” People agreed. It seemed fair.

Hux seemed willing to supply the vengeful blow himself, but Kapock wouldn't let him. “If you hit him it would be the same quarrel going on. We must choose someone else to hit him, so that the blow comes from all of us, and not just from one.”

But no one wanted to do it.

At last Sara handed little Ciel to Batta. “I will do it,” she said, “because it must be done.” She strode to Linkeree and hit him hard in the belly with her fist. She was as strong as any man, from lifting sheep and making fences with Kapock, and Linkeree got the worst of it.

“Now for the house,” said Kapock. “Hux is right that it isn't fair for a man with no wife to have a house before he and Ryanno have a house. But Linkeree is right that it isn't fair for someone else to have a house that Linkeree built alone. Jason would know what to do, but he isn't here, and so I say that no one will live in this house until a house is built for Ryanno and Hux. We will build that house as soon as we can, but until then this house will stand empty.” Everyone agreed that it was the right answer even Linkeree and Hux.

But the snow melted that day, and that night it rained, and the ground was deep and wet. They couldn't build a house on such soft ground. And after four weeks of rain, the cold set in suddenly, and the snow fell thick, and they had to build a new barn quickly because there was danger that the animals would have no shelter if the barn roof broke; So instead of a house for Ryanno and Hux, they built a barn, with daub-and-wattle walls, and then the winter was too deep to build at all. “I'm sorry,” Kapock said. “We couldn't help the weather, and the barn had to be built, and now it's too cold and deep to build a house the snow won't be clear till spring.”

Then Hux and Linkeree both grew angry. Hux said, “Why should Ryanno and I wait, when a house is built and ready for us!” Linkeree said, “Why should I have to stay here all winter, when the house I built for myself stands empty. I built my house, and I'm tired of waiting.”

Kapock told them to be quiet, and said that it wasn't right for there to be an empty house. “But I don't know which of you should have the house. When Jason was here, people only got their own house when they married. He never gave a house to someone who wasn't going to be a family.”

“No one ever built a house alone then, either,” said Linkeree.

“That's true. So this is what I decide. The house belongs to Linkeree because he built it alone.
But.
It isn't right for one man alone to have a house, when Ryanno and Hux want to be married and have no house to be together in. So all this winter, until we can build them their own house in the spring, Ryanno and Hux will live in Linkeree's house, and Linkeree will live with us.”

Everyone said that it was fair and right, except Linkeree, and he said nothing.

Ryanno and Hux went to Linkeree's house and shouted from the windows, even the little windows high up, but no one was quite as happy as usual because they knew it wasn't their true house.

That night, Linkeree lit the house on fire, and then shouted to wake up Hux and Ryanno so they could run outside. “No one will live in the house I built but me!” shouted Linkeree, and then he ran off into the snow. Hux and Ryanno walked barefoot in the snow to get back to First House, and Batta, who had learned the rules of healing, cut off two of Ryanno's toes and one of Hux's fingers, to save their lives.

As for Linkeree, he had stolen an axe and some food, and he was gone in the snow.

How could a man live alone in the snow, with no house and no friend? They were all sure that Linkeree would die. Hux raged that he should die, because of the finger he lost and the toes that Ryanno lost. But Batta said, “A toe is not a life, and in the morning she too was gone, with a pan and a dozen potatoes and two blankets made of blue wool.”

Kapock was afraid now. Jason would come back and he would say, “How are the people that I left in your care?” And Kapock would answer, “All are well except Hux and Ryanno, who lost their toes and finger, and Linkeree and Batta, who ran off ands died together in the snow.” He couldn't bear to let this be that way. The toes and finger he couldn't help now. But Batta and Linkeree he could.

He left Sara as the Mayor, though she told him not to go, and he went off with a saw in his hand and a coil of woolen twine around his shoulder and a bag of bread and a cheese slung on his back. “If you die too, how will that help us?” Sara asked, holding Ciel up so Kapock would remember his child.