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THE WILLOW-WOOD ARROW had missed its mark by several inches and was hard to dig out of the dirt. But Spicy finally freed it, and he knocked the soil off and placed it into his quiver.
“Five out of ten,” he said. “That’s not so bad.”
Rime inspected the termite-hollowed stump Spicy had used as a target from ninety paces. “The deer is gone after your first miss. Each shot off its mark is a wasted opportunity to end the hunt. And your hits are all over the place.”
“A hit’s a hit.”
“Try telling Huntmaster Sorrel that. You’re holding the string back for too long. It makes your arms shake.”
Spicy unstrung his bow. “It’s because I’m tired and hungry.”
The fallow field where they stood grew tufts of waist-high grass, which had turned yellow with the turn of the season. Rough piles of dirt marked scores of gopher holes. A few tangled vines of wild squash bore unripe green fruit. Beyond the road marking the field’s border was a broad paddy flooded with water where sprouts of green rice stalks rose. A group of the village women were stooped there, plucking weeds and planting fresh seeds.
“Learn to do better or that’s your fate,” Rime said.
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EVERYONE IN SPICY’S village got a share of the meat. One Stone sat at the center, a fresh stud shining in his ear. All the young hunters received deferential nods from the older men and women. Once the elders had taken their portion, the other youths clustered close.
Despite the whitetail roasting over the village firepit, the adults were all sullen. After the accolade was sung, their conversation died except for muted comments on the flavor (which was good) or the bounty of the fields and gatherings (which was abundant).
Spicy noticed no one commented on either the changing weather or where the men’s hunting party might be. Delays weren’t unheard of, but a week without news was uncommon.
The dour mood hadn’t spread to One Stone or the other boys. Children, both boys and girls, sat in rapt attention as he recounted his killing shot several times. His fellow hunters listened and nodded along.
A few times Spicy caught a piercing glare from Preemie, but no one else paid him any mind. It was One Stone’s hour, and nothing was said of Spicy’s missed shot. As the sky darkened and wood was added to the fire, Spicy slipped away.
His home lay just beyond the inner ring of dwellings, a three-room shack with a solid roof and wooden floor that his father had finished touching up just before his departure two weeks prior. The goblin hunting parties were in full swing, the hunters eager to fill the drying houses with meat for the winter. For elk and bear, they needed a full complement. No able-bodied male goblin had remained behind.
Spicy’s mother’s shoes weren’t by the front step. His sister was also at the fire. Still, he walked softly as he entered the home as if someone might hear. He lit no candle. In the room he shared with his sister, he lifted his sleeping roll and grabbed a notebook and a few nibs of sharpened charcoal.
As he sneaked out the front, he collided with his mother. She caught his arm and held a lit candle up so she could look him in the face. Her smock was soiled. Her callused fingers were brown from working the acorns. And she wasn’t smiling.
“Where are you off to?”
Spicy shook his head. “Nowhere. I was going back down to the fire.”
“I told you you’re not to take books from the house.” When she snatched the notebook from Spicy’s hands, the charcoal fell to the ground. Her face tightened. Spicy couldn’t dodge the blow as his mother’s hand slapped him across the face. “Now pick it all up and put it back.”
She waited as he collected the fallen nibs and followed as he put the notebook in its proper place on a shelf in the main room next to the family’s keepsakes. His cheek burned.
“What’s the matter with you?” she asked. “You have your role. We all do. Your father has his. It’s how we survive. And with your father missing, you’d waste your time on such foolishness? You need to focus on learning the skills of a hunter. One Stone got his second stud.”
“I noticed,” he said dryly.
She raised her hand again, but the blow didn’t land. “Don’t be fresh. You can learn more from him if you only try. But if you spend your time and energy sneaking off to Sage Somni, you’ll be too tired and your eyes too strained to hunt the next morning.”
“I know. I’m sorry, Mother.”
“Are you truly? Isn’t it enough that Thistle is wasting her time schooling for apprenticeship? Has your father poisoned your mind too? At least if you learned at the mill, you’d have a trade, but your numbers are so poor. You can support her as a skilled hunter.”
Spicy couldn’t keep the tremor out of his voice. “But I could join Thistle for schooling.”
“You were tested. Your letters aren’t good enough either. You know that.”
“But that was five years ago! I’ve improved since then. I’ve done a lot of work on my own. You have to have me tested again. I can be an apprentice if you just give me a chance.”
“I’m sorry, Spicy. You were tested, and against my wishes. Your skills lie elsewhere. Now off to the fire. Share the moment with your friends.”
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THE GENERAL MOOD AT the fire had improved, but it was the last place he wanted to be.
A few of the mothers led the rest in the song “My Hearth, My Home.” An old matron stood and chanted a prayer for the safe return of the hunters. Then a new song started up, “Ganjo the Goat,” which got the kids involved.
A jug of rice wine was passed among the grown-ups. Blackberry pie was served. Thistle sat with her friends, who chatted and sang along. Rime was with the other hunters, nodding attentively as an older man with a missing leg told a tale with expansive gestures and plenty of sound effects.
Spicy’s mother went to sit with the village’s most recent bride, Jinty Grundle, married just the previous winter. The goblin woman was suckling a pair of twins. Spicy’s mother took one of them and cradled him in her arms.
No one paid Spicy any attention. He rose and slunk back into the shadows.
Who would care if he wasn’t there?
Something funny happened that elicited a round of laughter from those closest to the fire. Edging further into the shadows, he made his way to the wall near the mill.
The singing from the village center was now a distant sound almost drowned out by the chirping of crickets. He felt himself grow calmer.
Friends, his mother had called the other goblins. Rime, sure. But the others?
Even if his reading skills weren’t as sharp as Thistle’s, Somni’s books took him someplace that wasn’t Boarhead. If he were the apprentice, he could stay in that world forever.
Beyond the mill was a home on stilts built among the treetops. Spicy walked as silently as he could.
A line of silver smoke rose through the stone chimney. A semicircle of stumps outside marked the open-air classroom where Sage Somni taught his larger classes on the weekends.
But the real knowledge was imparted one-on-one to his advanced students, including Thistle. During the late hours, Somni might be alone, and often oblivious to anyone sneaking in to use his books. If Spicy was lucky, the old goblin might be asleep.
Spicy ascended the steps, careful to avoid the smallest creak in the boards. On a high beam a glyph of a watching eye stared down at him. Spicy dutifully avoided looking at it. Why Somni kept an image of man-magic on his home had never made sense. At the door, he pressed his ear against the wood. It was silent inside. Somni’s voice was resonant, and if he were giving instruction Spicy would know it.
Spicy grasped the handle and tried to open the door. As usual it was unlocked. He stuck his head inside.
A few candles were lit, throwing a honey glow around the cluttered two main rooms. Stacks of books and loose papers lay everywhere, some haphazardly placed next to extinguished candles that dribbled frozen wax down onto the table. More tomes were neatly stashed into the many bookcases occupying the room. Rolled-up maps were tucked away into wall organizers. One master map, which Spicy had spent hours studying, was pulled out and rested on a wooden frame. Its myriad tiny geographic features, labeled but mysterious, proved endlessly fascinating.
Several markings similar to the glyph were interspersed throughout the map, including one of a dragon with two eyes that seemed to stare at Spicy anytime he looked at the map. Yet Somni would never take time to explain them, insisting Spicy stick to the basic lessons of reading before moving on to anything more advanced.
A massive chair was pushed out next to a center table, on which a half-eaten plate of meat topped with berry compote over a bed of rice rested next to a massive open codex. The dish was cold.
Spicy looked at the giant page of neat script. His fingertips played along the textured page. The illuminated border was fanciful scrollwork wrapping around the tiny illustration of a symbol being drawn by a hand with an extended finger. The red and green lines melded to black as they formed a giant letter T.
“The third ice age,” the page began.
He had to read it one word at a time. It was a history written in script by human hands. The one codex page alone must have taken weeks or a month to produce and was much more difficult to read than anything in the primers. Many of the books collected were of concise woodblock printing or had even been produced by letterpress. He had to pause to sound out a few of the longer words. The grammar made following the run-on sentence difficult. But soon he was lost in the page as it described the world before now.
“Spicy!”
He jumped.
The purple-skinned goblin who entered the room had a wrinkled face and a gray sweep of hair. Somni puttered forward, and as Spicy turned to face him his hand bumped the dish with Somni’s supper and sent it crashing to the floor. Rice and shards of the shattered plate flew everywhere.
“What are you doing here?” Somni snapped.
Spicy got on his knees and began scooping up pieces of broken plate. “I’m sorry. I’m cleaning it up.”
Moving past him, Somni eased down onto the chair and watched. Spicy dumped the debris into a bucket. Using a rag, he scooped up the spilled food. He dumped it outside into a rubbish pit and then drew water from a spigot mounted on the bottom of a metal tank. As he returned and began scrubbing down the floor, Somni shook his head.
“You shouldn’t be in here at this hour. It’s late. This is my study time. Even my students are away with their assignments. And isn’t there a gathering? I can hear the songs.”
“I just wanted to read.”
“Then come in on the weekend when I can assign a more advanced student to help you after classes.”
“I don’t need an apprentice to help me. I know my letters.”
Somni humphed. “You’re just afraid I’ll assign your sister to you.”
“I’m as smart as she is.”
“Are you? You think because you can recite your alphabet and read a page of words that you’ve earned a place here? Don’t answer that—I know what you’ll say. You were tested like the others. You have to face the fact that I can only take a handful of students. We need hunters. We need warriors. We need people who will be sure we survive the winter and the one that follows.”
Spicy rinsed the rag and wrung it dry. “This is just as important.”
Somni smiled a sad smile. “Oh that it were, boy. But it isn’t. The story of yesterday is meaningless if we can’t be assured we’ll have a tomorrow. Now you’ve already ruined my supper. Take the bucket and go.”
Spicy hesitated. “You’re reading about the third ice age. There were two others?”
“That depends on the source. Human books are all over the place with their history. The naming of ages and dates are arbitrary, as I’ve explained to you before. This third age is the most recent but the least documented. It dates back to when our village was barely a handful of rice farmers and our confederacy was little more than a collective of farms.”
“The Second Age of Provers.”
“Yes. But I know your trick. Don’t distract me with your questions. Your mother will be upset I’m entertaining you and with your father among the missing, the last thing she needs is for you to be disobeying her and getting into trouble. You should be home. You have your chores to do. I have mine.”
“You say he’s missing.”
Somni grunted. “Missing. Delayed. Don’t try to catch me with semantics. You can look that one up this weekend. Now don’t break anything else on your way out.”
Struggling to rise, Somni made his way into the back room, where Spicy spotted a pack half-full of notebooks by the doorway. A sleeping roll and bundles of food and a metal canteen were all gathered together near it.
“You’re leaving?” Spicy asked.
“And you’re still here. Will I have to drag you out by your ears, or will you find the door on your own?”
“When will you be back?”
“I haven’t left yet. Off with you!”
Spicy headed for the door. He paused to take a final look at the open codex page. Drank it in. Believed he could smell the paper, as if it breathed out its own special oxygen. Somni hadn’t followed, so Spicy took one of the books from a stack piled on a chair and slid it under his shirt. He closed the door softly as he left.
His heart raced as he returned home. He now had pages and pages he could lose himself in, never mind the book’s title or subject. His failure at the hunt would fall away out of mind. The sharp words of Preemie and the others would die like a fading echo.
First, he would have to sneak back home.
Hopefully his mother would still be at the fire. Then he would need to conceal the book, which was easy enough. He was responsible for washing his own sheets and making his own bed each day. But it was dark out and he couldn’t risk lighting a candle. Reading would have to wait for tomorrow.
As he stuck to the shadows and made his way along the wall by the mill, the songs from the center of the village continued. But the crickets were silent. The sharp screech of an owl gave him pause. Something was off about the bird’s cry. It was too loud and it echoed for a moment.
Spicy waited for the sound to repeat, but it didn’t.
He hurried home.
