Gleanings

by Alice Sabo

  “Tilly wants to know if you’re coming into dinner.”

  Nick didn’t recognize the voice. Martin was leading a group covering the opposite direction. Tall Joe’s group was following the stream behind the horse meadow. Young Joe’s group was going house to house in the neighborhood, which left someone new in the office coordinating the radios. “I’ll catch something later.”

  “I’ll tell her.”

  The road had a long, slow incline and Nick was starting to feel it in his legs. This was a ways to walk for a quiet lunch, but he didn’t know Wisp’s mental range. He stopped to look back down the road behind him. The setting sun cast long rays through the trees, striping the land with bars of light. The road here ran through craggy hills that rose up on both sides of it. Saplings and rock outcroppings alternated up the banks. He didn’t know if Wisp had any favorite spots. Was that a failing? Did it make him a bad friend?

  A horse called somewhere off to his left. That was a rare sound since they had all galloped off. But the neigh had been shrill with a tinge of desperation. With visions of an injured animal in his head, Nick scrambled through the brush at the side of the road to scale the steep bank. His feet slid in the detritus of old leaves and pebbles, and he skinned his palms on the bare rock. He grabbed on to saplings to haul himself up the rest of the way, getting to the top of the ridge just as another call trumpeted out. Below him was a tumble of massive boulders stretching out into a field of broken, uneven stone. Some were big as a bus, some cracked open with sharp edges. Others had disintegrated into piles of rubble. The horse was a paint, which was probably Jelly, standing in the only fairly level area. He looked up at Nick then shook his mane and lowered his head to graze.

  Nick thought about working his way down to the horse, but it would probably dash away at the last minute making him feel like an idiot. Maybe it was stuck in the maze of craggy slabs of stone. In that case, he might be waiting for Nick to lead him out. Jelly looked up at him again and snorted.

  “What do you want?” Nick grumbled.

  Jelly lowered his head behind a boulder. He braced his back legs and pulled on something. Then looked back to Nick. It was a hand.

  Nick climbed down the rocks as quickly as he could. He couldn’t get a better angle to see what was attached to the hand, but he thought he recognized that tan, muscular wrist. Some of the boulders were too smooth to climb, so he worked his way over to a shallow draw that brought him in the right direction but slightly higher. As he came around a sheer wall of rock, he found a flat place with a lunch bucket, a napkin and blood-stained rock.

  Chapter 19

  Regardless of how gentle the guiding hand, or how egalitarian the rules, some people will never be able to live comfortably in a community. Those of good heart become hermits. Those without heart will destroy what they cannot abide.

  History of a Changed World, Angus T. Moss

  WISP DRIFTED SLOWLY toward consciousness feeling enshrouded in Kyle’s emotions. That made him feel safe, regardless of how irrational it might be. His body ached in a way that meant he was injured. He wanted to test his limbs, inspect them for cuts and bruises, but he could barely open his eyes.

  “Sleep. You’re in the infirmary. I’ll stay with you,” Kyle murmured to him.

  Despite his intentions otherwise, Wisp slept.

  HE HAD NO CONCEPT OF how long he’d been asleep. Kyle sat at the side of his bed reading a book with one hand resting on Wisp’s wrist. It took him a long anxious minute to make that arm move.

  Kyle looked over at him. Wisp knew his eyes were barely open. His face felt frozen.

  “What happened?” Kyle asked in a low voice. “Were you attacked?”

  He tried to shake his head, but a spike of pain stopped him. The memories were fuzzy. He wasn’t sure what had happened. “Where am I?”

  “The infirmary.”

  “How long?”

  “Just overnight. It’s...” Kyle glanced around the room to locate a clock. “Seven-twelve in the morning.”

  Wisp didn’t want to admit that he didn’t know what the infirmary was. His head ached so badly that he couldn’t focus his thoughts. But his brother was here, so that meant he was safe.

  Kyle held a glass of water to his lips, his strong arm lifting Wisp to drink. It was wrong to be so weak. Dangerous. Wisp drank the whole glass and asked for another. That helped his brain clear a little.

  Ruth appeared at the bedside, and he realized that he must have dozed. She examined his eyes. “You have a concussion.”

  That made sense. His head hurt, and his thoughts were murky.

  “You need to rest,” she said. But the room was already fading.

  WISP WOKE TO THE SOUND of familiar voices speaking so softly he couldn’t make out the words. Nick and Angus were there. He could tell that from the feel of them. And Tilly. Her voice was a little sharper and her emotions a little higher. He wanted to call out to her and let her know that he was all right but wasn’t sure if his battered body would obey him. “Tilly?”

  The voices stopped. A curtain was pulled revealing the three of them. Tilly graced him with a big smile. “Thank goodness. How are you feeling?”

  “Stiff,” he said. His mouth didn’t feel right.

  “You had a bad fall,” she said as they assembled at his bedside.

  “Were you attacked?” Nick asked. His worry was for more than Wisp’s wellbeing.

  “No.” The word came out as a harsh whisper. Tilly scooped up the water pitcher to pour him a glass. It took Nick lifting and Tilly holding the glass to get the water into him. He couldn’t understand why he was so weak.

  “Can you tell us what happened?” Angus asked with a gentleness that made Wisp wary. He didn’t like it when people treated him as though he were less than normal. But this was Angus. He tried to put his defensiveness aside.

  “I think it was Ep,” Wisp said. “He was attacked or hurt somehow. I was too open at the time. It overloaded me.”

  “You passed out?” Nick asked.

  “Yes.”

  “And fell onto those boulders. It’s a wonder you didn’t get more smashed up than you are.” Tilly said. “Can you eat something?”

  He remembered not to nod. “Yes.”

  Tilly was off in a flash. He had the sense that she was happier arranging things than standing around watching.

  Nick took her place. “You gave us a chance to roll out the search and rescue team.” He smiled, but it was hollow. There was a finger of fear behind his joke that made Wisp wonder what he was hiding.

  He tried to sit up, but his body wasn’t quite willing. Nick and Angus helped him. When they touched him, he felt their concern. It warmed him to feel how worried they were about him. “I’m okay,” he said when they finally had him settled.

  “Are you?” Nick asked.

  Wisp did a quick internal inspection: lots of bruises, some very deep, raw skin on his face and one arm, but no broken bones or internal injuries. “Nothing broken,” he reported.

  “You lost a lot of blood,” Angus said. “Head injury.”

  Wisp slowly raised his arms to feel his head. His right shoulder hurt from a bone-deep bruise. He ran his fingers lightly over his scalp finding lumps and a sticky mass of hair.

  “Careful,” Angus cautioned.

  “It’s healing,” Wisp said.

  “Ruth said you should be off your feet for at least a week.” Nick delivered the words with a sentiment that hoped Wisp would challenge him.

  “I heal very fast. It won’t take that long.” There was relief from both men, and he hesitated to change that. “As soon as I can, I need to go find Ep.” The pain he’d felt was monstrous. He feared to reach for his brother possibly finding him gone forever. Thankfully, his own pain had put a damper on his senses keeping at bay the great mass of feelings of the residents of High Meadow. But those in this room he could assess easily. Angus’s emotions tipped to dismay, but Nick’s wavered between concern and excitement.

  “It�
��s not a good time to leave...” Angus said, pleading in his voice.

  “It never will be,” Wisp said bluntly. “But he’s been injured. I need to find him as soon as possible.” He didn’t want to hurt these good people, but for once, he needed to tend to his own family first.

  Tilly rushed back in with a laden tray. The aromas of food made Wisp salivate. He hadn’t eaten in over a day. That thought made him suddenly aware of how much his life had changed. When he was on his own, a day without food meant he was too busy to forage or too unlucky to find something edible. If he had fallen and been this badly hurt, he would have laid there until he regained his senses or a predator finished him off. And if he had been able to crawl to safety, he wouldn’t get a meal until he could go find it for himself. An eerie feeling tiptoed down his spine at the thought of how close he’d come to a fatal accident. If the people from High Meadow had believed that he’d left, they never would have gone looking for him.

  Tilly settled the tray on his lap. “Eat up. You need the strength.” There were pride and concern lacing another emotion that Wisp was hesitant to name.

  “Thank you for taking care of me,” Wisp said meeting their eyes one by one.

  That emotion shone out from all three of them. Wisp decided to label it Friendship and leave it at that.

  Chapter 20

  To start up any factory would need more than manpower. It needs all the raw goods that go into the creation of the final product. If we wanted to build a car, we would need the engine parts, steel, wiring, computers, and other items that are no longer being produced.

  History of a Changed World, Angus T. Moss

  TILLY SLUMPED INTO the chair behind her desk with a groan. She was so relieved that Wisp was all right. She leaned back trying to stretch the tension knots out of her shoulders. Her desk looked like a hurricane had dropped the contents of a filing cabinet on it. There was too much for her to sort through. She needed a secretary, or two.

  Eunice tapped on the door frame. Tilly beckoned her in. “More cherries coming in.”

  “Are they all set up?”

  “Mary said they were ready, willing and able,” Eunice said before turning to go.

  “Thanks,” Tilly said to her back. Yesterday, thanks to many of the residents turning out, they had managed to process all the fruit before dinner. The drying racks that had been built in anticipation of the harvest were almost full. The kitchen crew had finished the day’s canning late last night. Tilly had proudly inspected the rows of jars carefully lined up in one of the storerooms. The jars were salvaged from all over, so there were all different sizes. That allowed Nick to barter off some of the smaller ones. Yesterday they had just canned the fruit. Today they would be making jam and maybe a couple of pies if there was enough flour. Eunice had suggested a cobbler because that didn’t need as much flour.

  The newly assembled Picking Crew had gone out right after breakfast. They had a couple more trees to harvest. Tilly’s shoulders slumped with the thought of how much work it entailed. They needed a better system. As each fruit came into season, they would all have to stop work to deal with the harvest. Right now, she had enough people on hand to do that, but it might not always work that way.

  She eyed the papers on her desk knowing she had too much work to get done today already. They could get by with the system that she had set up for this harvest. She could take a little time to figure out a better one. Right now she needed to sort out the mess before her. Perched on the top were three letters. For a moment she could only stare at the envelopes. Mail? When had that started up? The first letter was from Deirdre at Creamery. They were experimenting and wanted to know what sort of herbs she had access to. The second one was from a group in Clarkeston that wanted to barter wool for food. The third was from Trey at Holly Hill with an estimate of the next harvest. He had barley that he would thresh, hull and bag for her, but he wanted to know if she would send him any empty sacks she might have. The numbers he gave her didn’t sink in.

  Paper in hand, she made a dash for Angus’s office. As usual, there were a number of people with him. “Angus!” Her tone got his attention.

  “What’s wrong?” He was standing at his desk with an audience of four men and two women. They all had papers in hand and looked to be in the midst of an impromptu meeting.

  “What am I suppose to do with a ton of barley?”

  His blue eyes got wide. “A literal ton?”

  “I don’t know.” She waved the paper at him. “The cherries were bad enough. We cannot process that amount of grain through hand grinders!” Her voice climbed a little too high, but she couldn’t help it. In her head, a mountain of grain piled higher and higher.

  “You want flour?”

  “Some of it. Some we can just hold for soups, stews...” she hesitated, thinking about what she might do. Barley could even be cooked into a porridge for breakfast.

  “Barley’s good fodder,” a man’s voice said.

  Tilly looked at the speaker but didn’t recognize him. “I’m not giving edible grain to the horses.”

  “Perhaps some to Creamery for the cows,” Angus suggested.

  “Well, yes, if need be. But...”

  “It sounds like there will be plenty to go around.”

  “It depends on how many people we have,” Tilly snapped back.

  “This is a lot of grain,” Angus said as he handed the letter back to her. “We should be able to barter a portion of it.”

  “Can you tell me the exact number of people I will be feeding this winter?” Tilly countered sharply.

  Angus gave her a hesitant shrug.

  “We may end up eating barley and dried cherries three times a day this winter.” She saw the looks of alarm on several faces. “We have spring wheat, corn and spring oats coming in. We need a mill.” Saying it aloud gave her an idea. “Can you retool the lumber mill?”

  Angus tapped a finger on his desk in a way that she knew meant his brain was busy. Tilly looked at the other people in the room. They were dressed for hard work and smelled of horses. They were probably from the Animal Committee, although she had a feeling that they called themselves Husbandry or something. “Did all the horses come back?” she asked.

  “And a couple extra,” a man said with a grin.

  His smile looked familiar, but Tilly still couldn’t place him. “Great,” she grumbled. “More mouths to feed.” But then she felt a little guilty because Jelly had found Wisp after all. And that was another curious thing that she hadn’t had time to think about.

  Angus came around the desk and took her arm. “I’ll be back in a moment,” he said to the room in general.

  Tilly let him lead her out the door. She wasn’t sure where they were going, but it meant he might have a solution in mind.

  He led her to one of the science labs. It had benches with sinks set up in rows and would take too much work to empty out for bedrooms, so they had left it as is. From the looks of it now, Angus had given it to several people to use as office space. Six men and five women sat hunched over surfaces covered with papers. They all looked up as she and Angus entered the room. Tilly had the feeling they had interrupted an intense discussion.

  “I have a new problem,” Angus said.

  “We haven’t solved any of the other ones yet,” a thin man joked.

  “We need to refurbish the old water-powered lumber mill as a grain mill.”

  They responded the same way Angus had, each one looking off into an internal distance. She knew then that this was some little think-tank that Angus had squirreled away for his private use.

  “Does it have stones? Because I don’t know where we’d get them if it doesn’t.”

  Angus nodded with a pleased smile. “I think Alan, the head man for Barberry Cove could answer that for you. He’s out with the Picking Crew I believe.”

  A hand went up. A pale woman with dark eyes leaned forward in her eagerness. “I met Alan. I can go ask him.”

  “Please see what we can
do about this. We will be needing to process very large amounts of grain,” Angus said.

  “What about threshing and hulling?” Another man asked.

  “Holly Hill said they would do it,” Tilly said.

  Heads bobbed in response, several of them making notes. Angus tugged her arm. She gave him a look before preceding him out the door. She waited to speak until they were moving down the hallway. “And who are they?”

  “Engineers,” Angus said with a grin. “Having this influx of people has given us a larger pool of skills.

  “What are they working on?” Tilly asked. She felt her irritation rising. It wasn’t fair that some people were scrubbing pots if that bunch got to sit around and think all day.

  “I’ve got a long list of things that we need,” Angus said thoughtfully. “First is to inspect our infrastructure – heat, lights, water, sewage. Then they will put together a maintenance schedule. I’ve been fixing whatever breaks, but we need to be more proactive.”

  Tilly’s anger cooled. That was necessary work. Angus handled that part of the settlement so well that she hadn’t realized that any of it could be an issue. It made her feel guilty for her anger. He worked as hard as she did. All of them did. She needed to remember to be thankful that they had an efficient team in place.

  “When will we need the mill?” Angus asked.

  Tilly shook herself out of her woolgathering and handed over Trey’s letter again.

  “Very soon,” Angus said after scanning the letter. Then he held up the letter with a look of absolute glee. “Mailman is working?”

  “I guess so. There were three letters on my desk this morning.”

  Angus chuckled. “Wonderful. I had my doubts. The fellow was a bit odd. Goes by the name Mailman. But it seems that he’s getting things delivered. This letter is dated three days ago.”

  “How do I mail a letter?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  Tilly wandered down to the front doors with Angus. There was a basket in the foyer with a handwritten sign over it indicating that mail could go to Holly Hill or Creamery. “I wonder when this went in.”