“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.
“Grange, you’ll be in charge of carrying all the baskets to the barns today,” Thrall instructed. “Tomorrow you can have a better job, I promise,” he pledged. “Corran, you go with him on the first trip to show him where he’s headed,” Thrall told another member of the crew, who cheerfully hopped from his tree and headed over to the bushel baskets.
“This is the job everyone complains about,” Corran told Grange as they each lifted a heavy basket full of apples and started walking towards the barn. “But everyone wants a chance to do it.
“Do you know why?” he asked.
Grange shook his head in ignorance.
“Girls,” Corran succinctly replied.
“This is where you get to meet the local girls,” he nodded at the barn. “They’ll be in here all day working on the apples we bring in. They make the cider, put it in jugs, seal them in wax, or they bag the apples and crate them for shipment.
“And they like to talk to boys, especially visiting boys. You get to know them today, and they’ll all want to sit with you tonight at the dinner fire,” Corran grinned. “But tomorrow someone else will be hauling baskets, and the girls will all adore him instead.”
They walked up a short hill to where a group of barns stood ready to receive and process the apple harvest.
“This is Grange. He’ll be your hauler today,” Corran announced to the girls. “Be nice to him – he’s new.
“And don’t worry, you’ll have someone mature and suave like me to entertain all of you tomorrow,” he told the attentive girls, who giggled wildly at the statement.
Corran showed Grange where to empty the different grades of apples, then led him back towards the pickers.
“Did you see the one with the big brown eyes? She couldn’t stop looking at us,” Corran said as soon as they were out of earshot of the girls. “And I think the girl at the cider press would like to press herself against you a little.”
Grange blushed at the statements. He hadn’t noticed any particularly forward behavior by the girls.
“Did you have a girlfriend in your home town?” Corran asked Grange.
“I think I was going to. I was getting ready for a date with Lurinda, when,” he paused, suddenly shy about revealing the imprisonment that had interrupted his rendezvous with the girl in Fortune.
“When what?” Corran asked.
“When Garrel and I left the city,” Grange finished.
“Too bad,” Corran said. “We don’t have a great many girls in Upper Meadow, and a couple of them fancy boys from other villages, so meeting the gals along the way during harvest season is about the only way to find someone to walk out with.
“There are a few ladies in our village that came to us this way,” he added. “And there have been a few boys who decided to settle with a girl down here or in the flat lands,” he admitted.
“Now it’s up to you,” Corran told Grange as they returned to the site of the active apple picking. There were several baskets waiting for him.
“We don’t want to run out of baskets,” Thrall shouted. “Go empty some of those out,” he called, “and keep it moving.”
Grange stacked one basket atop another, then grunted as he lifted the heavy load, turned, and began the return to the barns.
The way back up to the barn seemed longer as he walked with the double load.
“Why can’t it be downhill to the barn?” he grunted to himself, as he stopped for a breather just a few yards from his destination.
“Are you new to the High Meadow village, Grange?” one of the girls in the barn asked him as soon as he entered and put his load down.
“I’m not from the village,” he answered. “My friend and I just got there when they were coming this way, so we joined the work crew.”
“Is that why you’re so pale, because you’re from somewhere else?” another girl asked. She came over to stand beside him as he lifted one of the baskets of cider apples and emptied it into the vat at the front of the cider press.
“I was just born this way,” he replied.
“Were your parents pale?” the girl lifted the other basket with him, so close that Grange could smell a faint flowery perfume.
“I don’t know; I never met them,” Grange replied.
“I think it’s attractive,” the girl told him. “You stand out,” she added as they lowered the empty basket.”
“Thank you,” he said awkwardly. “I’ll be back with more apples,” he told her as he lifted the empties and turned.
“We’ll be here,” she giggled, and then Grange was gone.
“He’s an orphan from someplace else,” he heard her announce to the rest of the work crew as he left the building.
He dropped the two empty baskets at the central location in the orchard, where he could see that some of the apple pickers were already finished with their first trees and were starting to move up a row.
He lifted two more baskets and trudged up the hill again to the barns.
“We’re so sorry about your parents,” a different girl greeted him as he entered the barn, and she took the top basket off his load.
“Thanks,” he replied.
> “I’ve got the lightest hair color in the village,” she told him, twisting her neck to show off the strands of hair that protruded from beneath the scarf she wore on her head. “But it’s not anything like yours at all!”
“It looks nice,” Grange told her politely, thinking of Lurinda’s dark hair, which had been thick and jet-black.
“Thank you,” she giggled. Both bushels were empty and he started back out of the barn.
“He likes my hair; he thinks it’s light like his,” the girl told the others as he left.
And so his morning went. He slowly began to whittle down the backlog of apple baskets that awaited him in the orchard by straining to carry a double load each time, while he met a new girl on every trip, and began to learn their names. They varied from the young, eleven-year old Vanessa, with the high pitched voice of a small girl still, to the husky-voiced Clarine, who had greeted him the first time, a girl older than him, with a body that was mature in ways he tried to covertly study when she was in sight.
“Lunch break!” Thrall called at mid-day, as a pair of ladies appeared among the trees to notify him. All the boys from the village jumped down out of their trees and ran up towards the barn, where the girls were already gathered around the nearby tables that were laden with food.
“What are they like?” a trio of boys asked Grange as he wearily walked up the hill as well, carrying another basket with him to take advantage of the trip.
“They’re all friendly,” he replied, and vaguely answered a few more questions as best he could, before they reached the lunch spot.
“Grange, tell us who your friends are!” Clarine called as she stepped up to the table.
“You girls can have all the rest of them, but leave Grange for me!” the young Vanessa piped in her shrill voice, drawing hearty laughter from everyone around the dining area.
“Corran can make introductions better than I can,” Grange spoke up. “As some of you know, Garrel and I just joined the harvesting group last night, so I can’t tell you much about the rest of them.”
The Elemental Jewels (Book 1) Page 10