The Continent (The Continent #1)(49)

CHAPTER 16





SHOSHI KAKEN WASN’T KIDDING WHEN HE SAID “daybreak.” The morning light has scarcely made an appearance when he raps on the door, though I’ve been lying awake for some time, my stomach in a nervous knot.

I climb out of bed, already dressed—I wanted to be prepared, so I slept in my clothes—and hurry toward the door.

The old warrior gives me a look up and down as I step onto the porch, and grunts—whether in disdain or approval, I have no idea. “This way,” he says, and leads me through town toward the gate, away from the village center. Away from the comfort of my lovely green quilt, away from all things newly familiar, and into the unknown.

An adventure, I remind myself, though I feel a bit miserable. We’re outside the village gates now, moving south.

“It’s a lovely morning,” I say brightly, hoping to somehow break the ice between us. “Very cold, but I suppose that’s usual.”

Shoshi looks over at me for half a second, but says nothing. He begins to walk a bit faster.

I hurry along beside him, trying to keep pace. “You know,” I say, “I think perhaps we got off on the wrong foot. I really haven’t meant to impose on your people in any way, and I would go home at once if I were able to do so.”

Again, he does not reply, but I continue anyway. “I’m ready to work, you know. To work very hard, and do everything I can to earn an honest wage. Yes, farming is a far cry from cartography—oh, that’s mapmaking, did you know?—but I’m quite determined to excel. I hope to far exceed your expectations.”

Shoshi comes to a halt. “Stop talking. Do you hear me? Stop.”

“Oh,” I say. “I’m sorry.”

“No, see, you’re still talking. Don’t apologize. Don’t reply. Just stop.”

“All right,” I say, and put a hand over my mouth.

He stares at me for a moment, then continues on his way.

I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t intimidated by Shoshi Kaken. Everything about him seems dangerous to me: his battered skin, zigzagged with scar tissue; the swirling, mysterious tattoos upon his face; his husky voice. But more than anything else, it is his hostility that puts me on edge. In truth, I am not accustomed to being disliked. I can’t understand why he loathes me, why the very sight of me seems to irritate him. I don’t know if he hates me personally or dislikes Spirians in general. Maybe it’s just my face that bothers him. I have no idea. But I decide with unequivocal certainty that I will make him like me. After all, I am the only Spirian on the Continent. I must set a good example and represent my country with dignity.

And in any case, people always like me. Shoshi doesn’t get to be any different.

*

It’s a long walk, nearly forty minutes, before we arrive. I must say, the farm is not quite what I expected. I thought there would be acres of lush fruit trees, dozens of neatly plowed rows of soil, perhaps ten cows or so. Instead, there is a huge, rickety wooden outbuilding (to keep the cows warm when it freezes, I imagine), a smaller building in better repair, and miles and miles and miles of grass. Roughly two hundred cows—all black as night, with bored brown eyes—stand within a wooden pen before us.

“There are more than I thought there would be,” I say. “And how pretty they are!”

Shoshi looks at me in disgust. “They are not pretty,” he says. “They are cattle. Food. Heifers, cows, bulls—some for breeding, some for trade, some for meat. Don’t get attached. A cow is not a pet, and the ones meant for slaughter live only a year or so.”

I feel a pang of sadness, but keep it to myself. “Do they give milk as well?” I ask hopefully, picturing myself on a white stool, singing a soothing melody as milk fills a silver pail.

“These are not dairy cows. Some of them will be, when they’re old enough. But the milking animals are on another farm.”

“I see. And how am I to collect their…their deposits? And what do I do with the material?”

He points to a large device I cannot name. It’s like a bin resting on one wheel and two sticks, with something like handles on the back.

“Wheelbarrow,” he says. “You fill it, you carry it to the building behind that one—” he points to the wide, rickety barn “—and you fill the wagons inside. The farmers and tradesmen come to take it away every morning, before you even wake.”

“Right,” I say, eyeing the wheelbarrow and trying to figure out how it works. “Shall I just go in, then?”

He retrieves a pair of filthy gloves from the wheelbarrow and tosses them to me. “This is how it works: I bring the cows from the pen to the pasture. While they’re out, you clean the pen. When they go back in, you take your little shovel and move into the pasture. Do you think you can remember that?”

My blood boils with indignant fury, but I keep my temper in check. I will not give him the satisfaction.

“I can remember it.”

“All right then. Let’s get started.”

Manure stinks.

I may take away from this experience a lesson in the value of hard work, or a feeling of proud independence. I might even grow to love the tightness in my muscles and the aching in my back—after all, I’m working, and there’s nobility in that. But I will NEVER—not ever—get used to manure.