The Elemental Jewels (Book 1) (11 page)

Grange shrugged his agreement.  He looked up at the mountainside that loomed above them, but saw no clue as to where the exit from the tunnel was located.

“Let’s go,” Garrel said as he slapped Grange on the shoulder, and they started hiking along the stony bank of the stream.  The watercourse meandered down to join with another, which the boys reached and began to follow at midday, and as evening approached, they rounded a turn in the valley and saw twinkling lights from a human settlement lying to their north.

“I’m hungry,” Garrel said absentmindedly as he looked upon the lights in the windows of the village.

Grange was hungry too.  He’d been thinking about food over the previous two hours, as his mind had wandered from its speculation about the jewels, and his attention to the footing of their path.  He’d walked behind Garrel by several steps, deliberately, and he’d taken advantage of the circumstances to raise his sleeve and stare at his arm under the bright shining light of day.  He’d seen the jewels, several facets visible in his arm, the five spots of color lined up, starting at the inside of his elbow and spaced closely to one another straight down his arm, halfway to his wrist.  They had mesmerized him, beautiful, sparkling spots of the purest colors that seemed to capture and glow with the sunlight.

You look extraordinary
, he had told the gems silently.

We are extraordinary
, one of them had stated factually.

Now, as he began to follow Garrel down to the village, the gems spoke for the first time since he had looked at them during the day.

We will help you,
a voice pronounced.

Help do what?
Grange asked internally.

Help you acquire sustenance.  We feel your need for nourishment.  Shall we slay a creature for you to eat?
One voice asked.

“No,” Grange murmured verbally, though softly.  “I don’t think that’s necessary.”

“What?” Garrel asked.

“Nothing,” Grange quickly responded.  “I was talking to myself.”

You are beautiful to look at,
he told the gems.

Thank you.  We sensed your admiration.  The energy of the sunlight falling upon us felt good,
they conversed in return.

When they reached the village, they entered through a short side street, and as they came around the corner of the small intersection that defined the center of the settlement, they came upon a group of boys and men their own age – nearly a dozen.

“Well hello, what’s this?” one of the men called out as they spotted the two new arrivals in the evening gloom and the flicker of the torches they held.

The two travelers had no time to react – to duck back out of sight.  They were caught – in a situation they didn’t know how to react to.

“We’ve just come through the mountains, from Verdant,” Garrel replied.

“Verdant?  That’s a ways off.  It’s got to be starting to turn winter time over there, isn’t it?” the oldest man in the group asked.  He was standing near the head of a horse, one of a pair that was hitched to a wagon.  The boys were casually climbing onto the bed of the wagon, as though they were about to start a journey.

“It was turning colder,” Garrel agreed.

“These mountains keep us warmer in the winter than Verdant, but they help you stay a little cooler in the summer,” the man observed.  “Or so folks always say.  I’ve never been to Verdant; I don’t know anyone who has.

“What brings you through the mountains, and where are you going?” he asked Garrel.

“We wanted to,” he paused, “get away.  We’re looking for a better place to live.”

“Are you hard workers?” the man asked.  “Come over here and let me look at you.”

Garrel and Grange looked at the dozen men and boys gathered.  Some were on the wagon, some were on the ground.  They outnumbered the two escapees from Fortune substantially; if there was ill-intent, Garrel and Grange would be in trouble.  But they sensed no immediate danger from approaching the men, so they stepped over into the center of the torch light.

“You look healthy, maybe a bit underfed.  Of course, boys your age can eat three horses a day and still look skinny,” the man laughed lightly.

“Our village has a contract to go into the lowlands and help harvest the orchards.  That’s where we’re getting ready to head right now.  We’ll ride all night, then spend the next month working north, following the harvest through the trees.

“We need a few more hands, and we could use you two, if you’ll work hard.  You’ll get three meals a day, and two brass pennies per day too,” he told them.

“Would you feed us dinner tonight before we go?” Garrel asked.

The man looked at a young boy standing next to him.  “Go tell Luwanna to put together two extra feed bags for these two,” he said as he jerked his head towards one of the houses nearby.  The boy took off running towards the door.

“You’ll have your dinners.  Are you ready to climb on board?” he asked.

They scrambled up onto the edge of the wagon as those on board shifted to make room for them, and moments later, the boy on the errand came back with two canvas bags that he handed to Grange and Garrel.

“I’m Morris,” the boy introduced himself as he handed the bags up.

“Nice to meet you,” Grange said.  “Thank you,” he added as he opened the bag and reached in.

Morris and the other boy not yet on the wagon climbed up, and the leader took a seat on the front bench, then shook the reins, and the horses started into motion.

“We don’t have to do much work the first day, they say,” Morris told Garrel and Grange, as he sat down next to them.  Grange had discovered a thick slice of ham stuffed into a pocketed piece of bread, and he was eating it ravenously as the boy talked.

“This is my first time to get to go to the orchards,” Morris confided to his captive audience, as the wagon rolled along.  “The other boys have been going for years, but there aren’t many new kids ready to be added to the picking crew.

“We’re lucky you showed up,” he told them.  “That’s that much less work the others will have to do every day.  Our village has gone to the same group of orchards for my whole life.  We know them pretty well.  None are terribly bad.”

He was chattering, passing along the collective wisdom he had gathered from listening to others as they spoke each year about their experiences during the village’s traditional provision of harvesting services.  “Some years they follow the harvest all the way north into Palmland!” he exclaimed.  “It’ll take them more than a week to get back here.”

“Where’s Palmland?” Grange asked, unfamiliar with the geography of the area.

“It’s pretty far away.  It’s where it stays warm almost all year, or at least parts of it do.  They’ve got trees call palm trees that never lose their leaves.”

“Like pine trees?” Grange asked.

“I don’t know,” Morris admitted.  “I haven’t seen them myself.  Maybe we’ll get lucky and harvest all the way to the ocean, so we can see some!”

The conversation began to lag in the dark evening, and Grange nodded off into a light sleep, bumped awake by the jolts the road delivered as their driver and horses steadily led them along the descending trail that served as a road for the wagon, taking them north to work in the orchards.

Grange was nominally awake the next morning after sunrise, and he sat silently on the wagon as it traveled through gently rolling hills, where pastures showed small herds of sheep, goats, and even a few cattle.  He saw crofts with small stone homesteads, pictures of rural life that he had never known or thought about during his upbringing in the city.

The others around him began to speak quietly, more and more of them, their voices rising gradually from whispers to regular tones, and Grange listened to snatches of the things they had to say.

“Do you remember the orchard that made us use ladders?  I’d much rather climb up in the branches,” someone said.

“Don’t eat the green apples, unless we tell you they’re ripe.  You’ll be sorry otherwise,” one of the pickers was counseling Morris.

“Do you remember those local girls who picked with us that moonlit night near the old temple?  I would’ve paid to pick apples that night,” another fondly recollected.

The fruit pickers were in high spirits heading into the commencement of their labors.   The upcoming experiences of picking fruit in the rain, or after dark, or in the cold, of falling from trees, getting poked in the eye, eating bad food or being underpaid – all were forgotten or left unspoken as the promise of the first day of the migratory labors began to unfold.

Grange sat and listened, wondering what it would be like, and how far he would go along with the practice.  He and Garrel had stumbled into the group of laborers strictly by chance, and had gotten a meal and a long peaceful ride in the bargain.  He had his wonderful jewels in his arm, and he was free from the tunnel, and that was still what he was most focused on still, the things to be thankful for.

Thank you for the food last night
, he silently communicated with the jewels, who had promised to provide a meal just before the fruit pickers had given dinner.

That was not our doing last night
, the gems responded.

But you promised
, Grange insisted.

But we didn’t have to do anything,
they replied. 
You got the food before we had to do anything
.

“Are you listening Grange?” he heard Garrel’s voice, and refocused away from the interior conversation to look around.

They were riding near an orchard, where rows of trees were lined perpendicular to the road they were on.  The trees were heavy with fruit, ready to be picked.

“We’re going to eat breakfast in a few minutes when we get to a meeting place,” Garrel explained.  “Then we’ll be picking fruit all day.

“How long do you want to stay with these people?” he asked in a lower voice.

Grange shrugged.  “Let’s just see how it goes.  We don’t have anything better to do right now, do we?” he asked.

“Maybe you don’t,” Garrel answered.  “I want to get to a city, where the action is.”

Grange shrugged.  “I don’t think we’re going to get to a city anytime soon, no matter what we do,” he tried to be realistic.  “And I like the idea of getting meals, especially after the food we had to eat in the tunnel.”

“Let’s wait to see if this food is any better,” Garrel said skeptically.

Just then the wagon slowed to a stop, and the two refugees turned around to see where they were.

In a clearing just a few yards off the side of the road, a group of people were busily scurrying around.  There was a pair of long tables, heaped with large bowls and platters.  Two cooking fires were slightly further back, with a large cauldron cooking over one, and a whole sheep roasting over the other.

“I predict it will be better,” Grange said wryly, as the others from the wagon all hopped down and hurried towards the food.

“Come along you two – this is a feast you don’t want to miss!” the wagon driver called back as he trailed behind the younger men.

Grange and Garrel hurriedly hopped down from the wagon and followed the others, coming within range of the appetizing odors that rose from the food at the table.

“Welcome, welcome men from High Meadow,” a man standing at the table called.  “It’s good to see our partners arrive right on time!

“Come and enjoy, before you start to work,” he advised, as the migrant workers grabbed plates and began to heap slabs of ham, bacon, rolls, baked potatoes, and other food stuffs together.

They all ate for half an hour, ravenous appetites at work unrestrained.

“Gather round,” the local leader called as the fruit pickers seemed to slow their consumption.  “Time to start.

“We want to thank Thrall and all of you,” he indicated the wagon driver, whose name Grange had not heard.  “We always know that we can count on you to bring in all the fruit, fast and without spoilage.  Do we have any new pickers this year?” he asked.

Morris’s hand shot into the air.  “Me, and those two,” he pointed immediately over at Grange and Garrel.

“Thrall you take the rest of your crew with bags and bushels, and head to the northwest corner of the orchard, then work down from there,” he instructed.  “You three first-timers come with me,” he called, and started walking into the apple trees without waiting for them.

Grange handed his gravy-splattered plate to one of the women who had helped cook, then followed the others into the trees.

“This is an apple,” the instructor said, picking a piece of fruit off a nearby tree branch.  “We want you to pick as many as possible, and sort them as fast as possible, and carry them to the cider barn as fast as possible.

He explained quickly how to sort out the apples into those that would become cider, and those suitable for eating.  “Getting the apples back to the processing barn, where we make cider, is up to Thrall,” he named the leader of the High Meadow workers.  “Try not to drop or bruise them,” he added, then sent the boys out to join the others.

They found the others already up in the trees, rapidly picking apples, and handing bags down to others on the ground, who emptied them into bushel baskets.  Several baskets stood full, in the centers of the aisles between the rows of trees.