The Totem-Maker (part sixty-two)

The Totem-Maker

Chapter Seven

Winter Alone

(part sixty-two)

As no one came this way, I had time enough to be tutored, to learn a new language. I could, and of necessity, did, draw near the fire, ladle water from the boiling pot, hold a steaming basin under my blanket, sitting very still. I whiled my hours thinking, visioning myself around the tollhouse grounds, listing all I might do for my greater comfort.

At the spinning of wool I was no hand, had I known, even, how to fashion a distaff or wheel. If traders crossed this pass, I would offer for their rugs, if rugs they carried…what…? I asked myself. What can I make or do of value? I can trap, and so perhaps have skins.

And I had the stock of oddments the old keeper had left behind. The Tollkeeper’s records seemed not to be kept.

My sheep lived in soft dirt and straw, under the outcrop of rock that sheltered the tollhouse. They were tame, they expected me, they nosed out wanting the fodder I strewed for them. For sheep and pony I had sufficient, found in the stable that made a second room of my house.

The earth in its arable season must be meagre and gravel-sewn. But I could chip at soil as at a stone wall. Each day to dig my trench another fingernail’s depth, until I could sift the pebbles, and salvage the dust. Dump in the fire ash. Layer on Cuerpha’s manure pats. In the spring, I might seed a patch of fair humus. The roots would prime the ground for the next season.

Then, with the months of trade begun, would I demand the toll; and then, would I tender it back for goods, which I had no right to do?

The gods that ruled this country, and this strange prison of the tollhouse, sent snow, and I could hardly guess whether it were a gift of beauty, or a slow torture. It was beauty to the eye and torture to the feet, at any rate. I had not been told any way I ought to supplicate them.

My plan was to take the meat and milk and wool…to profit from selling it. The sheep were white and grew great billows of fleece. I entertained that the animals were sacred to the gods, and kept only for sacrifice.

“Is my language strange to you?” I spoke aloud, facing the peaks that pinched their storm clouds between. “I am an obedient servant, and will do those tasks I understand.”

Morning chores forced me to wrench from skins and blankets, where I was content and could have lain all day. But I had basins to fill with snow, so as to have water. The people were rich in ores here, such as color metals gold. What in my land would be clay, or wood, was here wrought, and with wonderful figuring, too. A prince’s ransom would Elberin call such gifts, if I returned to him bearing what in this life were my daily vessels.

66

A First Road

The Totem-Maker (part sixty-three)

(2018, Stephanie Foster)