where we could at
last see a sliver of ocean in the distance.
“So they find something else to do.” Seshe smiled. “It’s not
impossible.”
SIX
“Halfway: Adventure Bounces Back”
Autumn was at once ordinary and different. Her skin was one
of the bazillion variations of brown seen all over the word except in the
Morvende, who have sort of bleached out after a gazillion years underground.
She was kind of honey-colored, with rose in her cheeks, and a scattering of freckles.
Her hair was curly, reddish brown, her eyes the kind of hazel that changes a
lot.
Just when we figured she was pretty ordinary, she swooped
along a bunch of wildflowers growing along the path, plucked them, and worked
them into a garland. None of those flowers wilted, and when she was tired of
the garland, she took it off, poked her fingers into a stretch of barren
ground, put the flowers in—and they stood right up as if they’d grown there.
She and Seshe hit it off at once, talking happily about
flowers, birds, and animals, as we bucketed along.
We soon reached the harbor at the mouth of the river.
Already the news had traveled ahead of us, and there was a lot of
activity—people packing up, taking apart the shanty-houses, and so forth.
Puddlenose knew what to do. “If all else fails, you can just
about always get a job wanding,” he said.
Like I explained in the first notebook, magic has mostly
been used to make life better. There are spells to make water pure, there are
cleaning frames in most homes. You walk through the frame, and magic zaps all
the dirt from your skin, hair, clothes, even your teeth. And there are no
toilets, because by age two everybody learns the Waste Spell, which zaps human
waste from you straight into the ground.
But animals don’t learn the Waste Spell. Most cities have a
Wanders’ Guild. In other cities, wanding animal droppings from the streets is
done by people who got into trouble, and have to put in time doing service.
Sometimes they even have to live in jails while they do it. If you don’t want
to do service, worse thing happen—from being kicked out of the country to being
grabbed and stuck in mines, and in some countries, on galleys. Yuk! I guess
this is why a lot of people run away and become robbers and the like.
Anyway, wandering kids can just about always be assured of
wanding work in any place with a lot of streets and animals coming and going,
if there aren’t any more interesting jobs. Sure enough, after we went to the
harbor master’s building, we were given the wands and sent out in pairs to go
over the harbor roads, zapping away droppings from various animals drawing
wagons back and forth.
Klutz and Sherry just had to make up a game, counting the
different types of animal poo, and Id got silly about comparing colors and like
that. It sounds grosser than it was, since you wave the wand over the mess, the
air glitters, and the mess vanishes underground, just like the Waste Spell.
Puddlenose said they send someone around on inspection to see
if you’re actually doing the job, but if they did, we never saw the inspector,
because we all made sure our assigned streets stayed spic and span. The day
vanished, and we got a hearty dinner at the Streets Guild.
A good sized crowd of kids had packed into the place. Toward
the end of the dinner, the voices got louder and higher. There were a bunch of
languages spoken, but we finally found someone who talked in that accented
Mearsiean, who said, “Night time is the contest!”
It seemed that everybody pooled a little bit of money, then held
a competition for entertainers. Anybody could enter. You got out on stage (a
part of the room set off from the rest) and did some kind of act, there was a
general vote, and the winner got the cash.
I rubbed my hands. “Let’s do it!”
Most of us turned toward Dhana. “You dance. Easy win.” I
pointed to her.
She made a face, kind of shrugged all over, then said, “Too
noisy, and too
last see a sliver of ocean in the distance.
“So they find something else to do.” Seshe smiled. “It’s not
impossible.”
SIX
“Halfway: Adventure Bounces Back”
Autumn was at once ordinary and different. Her skin was one
of the bazillion variations of brown seen all over the word except in the
Morvende, who have sort of bleached out after a gazillion years underground.
She was kind of honey-colored, with rose in her cheeks, and a scattering of freckles.
Her hair was curly, reddish brown, her eyes the kind of hazel that changes a
lot.
Just when we figured she was pretty ordinary, she swooped
along a bunch of wildflowers growing along the path, plucked them, and worked
them into a garland. None of those flowers wilted, and when she was tired of
the garland, she took it off, poked her fingers into a stretch of barren
ground, put the flowers in—and they stood right up as if they’d grown there.
She and Seshe hit it off at once, talking happily about
flowers, birds, and animals, as we bucketed along.
We soon reached the harbor at the mouth of the river.
Already the news had traveled ahead of us, and there was a lot of
activity—people packing up, taking apart the shanty-houses, and so forth.
Puddlenose knew what to do. “If all else fails, you can just
about always get a job wanding,” he said.
Like I explained in the first notebook, magic has mostly
been used to make life better. There are spells to make water pure, there are
cleaning frames in most homes. You walk through the frame, and magic zaps all
the dirt from your skin, hair, clothes, even your teeth. And there are no
toilets, because by age two everybody learns the Waste Spell, which zaps human
waste from you straight into the ground.
But animals don’t learn the Waste Spell. Most cities have a
Wanders’ Guild. In other cities, wanding animal droppings from the streets is
done by people who got into trouble, and have to put in time doing service.
Sometimes they even have to live in jails while they do it. If you don’t want
to do service, worse thing happen—from being kicked out of the country to being
grabbed and stuck in mines, and in some countries, on galleys. Yuk! I guess
this is why a lot of people run away and become robbers and the like.
Anyway, wandering kids can just about always be assured of
wanding work in any place with a lot of streets and animals coming and going,
if there aren’t any more interesting jobs. Sure enough, after we went to the
harbor master’s building, we were given the wands and sent out in pairs to go
over the harbor roads, zapping away droppings from various animals drawing
wagons back and forth.
Klutz and Sherry just had to make up a game, counting the
different types of animal poo, and Id got silly about comparing colors and like
that. It sounds grosser than it was, since you wave the wand over the mess, the
air glitters, and the mess vanishes underground, just like the Waste Spell.
Puddlenose said they send someone around on inspection to see
if you’re actually doing the job, but if they did, we never saw the inspector,
because we all made sure our assigned streets stayed spic and span. The day
vanished, and we got a hearty dinner at the Streets Guild.
A good sized crowd of kids had packed into the place. Toward
the end of the dinner, the voices got louder and higher. There were a bunch of
languages spoken, but we finally found someone who talked in that accented
Mearsiean, who said, “Night time is the contest!”
It seemed that everybody pooled a little bit of money, then held
a competition for entertainers. Anybody could enter. You got out on stage (a
part of the room set off from the rest) and did some kind of act, there was a
general vote, and the winner got the cash.
I rubbed my hands. “Let’s do it!”
Most of us turned toward Dhana. “You dance. Easy win.” I
pointed to her.
She made a face, kind of shrugged all over, then said, “Too
noisy, and too
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