The Elemental Jewels (Book 1) (12 page)

“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.”

“You don’t even know enough to lie about them!” one of the girls mocked, drawing a round of laughter as well.

“But I do,” Corran spoke up.  “So you boys who want me to lie about you better come offer me a deal, and those who don’t want me to lie better offer even more!”

The group was jovial, in good spirits despite all the hard work they had done since the early hours of the morning.

“I never saw people have such a good time while working back in Fortune,” Garrel observed to Grange.

“Why is that, do you suppose?” Grange wondered.

“They don’t feel like slaves here,” Garrel offered.

“And they have fresh air and sunshine?” Grange suggested,

“Whatever the reason, they’re all hungry, and so am I,” Garrel said, gesturing to all the plates of food that were filling fast as the boys and girls enjoyed the repast.

The two boys joined in piling roast chicken and boiled potatoes on their plates, then sat under an apple tree with three girls who Grange had chatted with.  Garrel happily engaged in flirtatious repartee with the girls.

“Did Grange behave himself this morning?” he asked the girls.  “Because I can threaten him with something that will make him break down and cry if you tell me he’s been a problem,” he said with mock sternness.

“He was a good boy; he worked very hard, and he’s always polite!” one of the girls protested against any punishment for Grange.  “What can you threaten to do?” she asked in a lower voice.

“There’s one thing Grange fears more than anything in the world, something that terrifies him and keeps him awake at nights,” Garrel said ominously.

The girls looked at him with eyes that were partially skeptical, partially fascinated, partially fearful.

“I’ll make him dance – the boy is scared of dancing!” Garrel said.  “He’d much rather play a flute and make music than dance to music.”

“You can play a flute?” one of the girls looked at Grange with devoted interest.  “We need some music tonight.”

“I didn’t bring a flute with me,” Grange said with real regret.  Garrel’s joking had hit close to the truth.  He’d been prepared to dance with Lurinda, but he’d rarely offered to dance before – he felt awkward and vulnerable to ridicule whenever he’d stepped onto a dance floor in the past.

“There’s one in the barn!” the girl pronounced excitedly.  “I’ve seen it sitting on a beam.  I’ll show you after lunch,” she said with eyes that flashed with excitement.

The promise was readily agreed to, and the two bolted their food down, then went running back to the barn.

“It’s up here,” she told him with a wave of her arm as she began to climb up a makeshift ladder into the hay loft overhead, revealing her shapely calves underneath her long skirt as she briskly ascended.

“I haven’t been up here,” Grange stated as he climbed up.

The girl bent over and plucked a flute from an exposed beam in the exterior wall.  It was an ancient-looking wooden flute.

“How did you even know that was up here?” Grange asked as he accepted the instrument from her.

The girl blushed.  “I’ve been up here before,” she answered vaguely.

Grange brushed some dust off the flute, and blew it clean, then experimentally breathed into it as he fingered its holes, producing notes that were exquisitely pure in sound.  He paused for a moment, then began to play a dance tune, one that he had played back in Fortune on the night that Lurinda had found his music so charming.

“Time to get back to work!” Morris called up from the ground floor of the barn, interrupting the song.

“That sounds so fun!  You’ll have to play the whole thing for us tonight,” the girl in the hayloft said enthusiastically.  She startled him with a playful spank on his posterior as she walked past him and descended the ladder to the floor below.

Chapter 6

The barn was already full of the girls ready to return to their afternoon’s work when Grange descended a few moments later, the flute firmly tucked in his back pocket.

“Grange, was that you making that music?”  Clarine asked as he reached the floor of the barn.

He pulled the flute out of his pocket and grinned as he held it over his head.

“I found the flute; I get to pick the first song he plays tonight,” claimed the girl, who had escorted him in the loft.

“Breeze, you’ll make him play love songs all night long; we want dancing music!” Clarine protested.

“He’ll play music for everyone, don’t worry,” Breeze dismissed the complaint.

A pretty girl with blond hair smiled winsomely at him, and winked.

“Don’t worry Ariana, he’ll play a song for you,” Clarine assured her.

“I better get to work,” Grange bowed out of the conversation.  He quickly returned to the orchard, where the boys were gathered together, awaiting him.

“What took you so long to get here?” Garrel asked.

“I went up into the hayloft with Breeze,” he began, only to be interrupted by a chorus of whoops and laughter.

“To fetch this flute,” he finished after the raucous sounds ended.

“Flute?” Corran repeated incredulously.

“I’m going to play dancing music tonight,” Grange said stubbornly.

“Here now, that’s more like it,” another of the boys said.

“Everyone get to work now, or the only music will be marching music as you keep working all night long,” Thrall interrupted.  “We’ve got a lot of orchard to finish in two days’ time.”

The gathering broke up.  Grange picked up two baskets and resumed his endless trudging back and forth to the barn, carrying apples and answering questions from the girls.   By the end of the day he was caught up with the supply of apples, never facing any large backlog of baskets to be carried, and enjoying a shorter walk as the line of apple-picking slowly crept up the hill towards the cider barn.

“Call it a night,” a woman shouted to the girls as Grange arrived with his baskets shortly before sunset.  The girls hooted with as much raucous enthusiasm as the boys had earlier in the day, Grange reflected.

“Let’s go clean up.  Grange – no peeking!” Clarine admonished him as most of the girls quickly put their tools and implements away and scuttled out the far side of the barn.  Clarine stayed behind to extinguish the fires under the kettles where apple butter was being prepared.

“Can I help with anything?” Grange asked as he emptied his bushels of the final loads of fruit for the night.

She looked at him suspiciously.

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“Do you need any help?” he wasn’t sure how to clarify what seemed clear.

“Just go make sure those boys clean themselves up a bit.  You could probably stand a good dousing as well.  Now go on and don’t try to peek,” she sternly warned him as she finished her chores and started to leave the barn.

“Peek at what?” he asked.

“Peek at what!” she repeated.  “Peek at the shower where all the girls are cleaning apple grime off before dinner.  Now go!” she commanded, sending Grange scurrying down the hillside.

“Did you know the girls have a place they take showers?” he asked Corran when he reached the harvesting crew, as they were gathering for the night.

“What did they look like?” four boys asked him simultaneously, assuming that he had snuck a peak at the bathers.

“I don’t know, but I was told we should all clean up too,” he relayed the message, conscious that he had sweated all day long while carrying his cargo.  A hot shower was bound to feel good on his aching back, he was sure.

“There’s a place to clean up across the road,” Thrall told them.  “Boys in the past never had to clean up for the girls,” he told them dismissively.

“If the girls are cleaning up, and they want us to clean up, I don’t mind,” one of the boys said.  “I’m here to make them happy!” he set off a round of laughter, as he led the troop of boys through the apple trees towards the unknown cleaning location.

The found a spring pool, with cold water, and no soap or towels.

The boys all stood around uncertainly, until Morris gave a scream and jumped in.

“Everyone in!” a voice shouted in Grange’s ear, and a mighty shove in the middle of his back sent him plunging into the natural pool, whose waters were bitingly cold, so cold that his whole body was immediately covered in goosebumps, his breath rushed out of his lungs in a brief moment of gasping, and his brain seized up in terror and chaotic shock.

He heard a sound, and realized that it was Morris screaming again, screaming and flailing in the water as the boy suffered the same shocking painful disorientation that Grange felt.  There were other boys flying through the air, also those standing closest to the water, being pushed by those behind them, and the spring filled up with boys who suffered the same frozen fate that Grange was suffering.

He reached up onto the bank of the pool and grabbed the ankle of one of the boys who had been shoving others into the water, then gave a mighty jerk, pulling the boy into the water that he had sent so many others into.

There were howls ringing in the air, and Grange saw a few boys starting to accept their icy fate, beginning to strip off their sopping wet clothes and throw them up onto the bank.  Grange started to lift the hem of his shirt when he stopped, as he abruptly remembered the jewels that were hidden, embedded in his arm, about to be revealed if he removed his shirt.  He had not thought about the jewels all day, nor had he heard from them.  They had been quiet, and he had lived as if he were a normal person.

He let loose of the shirt.  He didn’t want to reveal the jewels, then have to try to explain the unbelievable story of having them speak to him, of the Spirit in the cave that had directed him, the tremendous power the jewels had displayed in excavating the tunnel.  Instead he scrubbed himself in the cold water as best he could, then climbed out of the pool, shivering with chill from the air, as it began to cool down along with the setting of the sun.

The other boys gradually all climbed out as well, all suffering from the cooling air as much as Grange, and they all hurried to the dinner setting, where a pair of fires and a line of tables full of food were nearly as intriguing as the huddle of freshly-scrubbed girls who stood to the side, looking with anticipation for the arrival of the boys.

“What happened to you?” one of the cooks said.

“We heard you all shouting,” another said.

“You boys are sopping wet!” Thrall exclaimed.  “You’re going to catch cold!  Go stand by the fires,” he commanded.

“Grange told us the girls wanted us to get clean,” one of the boys tried to explain.

“And you all listened to Grange?” Thrall asked.  “If Grange jumped off a cliff, would you all jump off?”

“If those girls were waiting at the bottom, we might,” one anonymous boy drolly replied, making all parties at the gathering laugh, and breaking the ice as the boys circled around the two fires.

“I’ll fix a plate of food for you Grange, since you whipped all the other boys into shape,” Breeze offered as she came to stand near Grange, then wheeled around and headed to the food tables.

Seeing the looks of surprise and appreciation and envy on the faces of the other boys, the rest of the girls quickly followed suit, delivering numerous plates of food to all the warming boys, who appreciatively began to consume their food, while the girls went back to prepare plates for themselves.

“Since Grange started all this, seems he ought to be the one to play the music so that we can all do some dancing and warm ourselves up,” Corran proposed minutes later, when everyone was silent as they ate their food.

“I’ll be ready in a few minutes,” Grange promised.  He gobbled down a piece of apple pie, then stepped over to a spot on the other side of the fire, and pulled his borrowed flute out of his pocket.  He tested it, as he had in the hayloft.  The music sounded just as pure as before.  The flutes he had played in Fortune had been made from metal or expensive woods, and had undoubtedly cost many times what the instrument in his hands would be appraised at, but he was convinced in his mind and his heart that the musical notes that emerged from the simple carved wooden tube were better.

He trilled a few test bars, first fast, then slow, challenging the flute to rise to the highest notes he could summon, then leaving him satisfied as it accomplished the task without breaking or wavering.

“Alright, who’s ready for some dancing tunes?” he asked, and he jumped into a fast-paced piece of music that was traditionally guaranteed to set feet in motion at any Fortune festival, a lively song in 4/4 time.

His eyes watched his fingers for a moment, then looked up at the open space in front of him, lit by the two bonfires.  Garrel was in front of him, trying to start a dance with a girl, while the girl stood with her feet still planted firmly in place, looking from him to Grange.  No one else had even made as much effort as Garrel – all stood still, staring at Grange.

He let the notes dribble rapidly to nothingness, and heard only the crackling of the timber in the fire, and perhaps a solitary cricket somewhere nearby.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“We don’t know that song,” Clarine told him.

“It’s very popular in our home town,” Grange replied.  “Girls love to dance to it!”

“We want something we know,” Corran said, coming over to stand next to Clarine, and gingerly wrapping his arm over her shoulder.

Grange started to speak, then stopped.  The song didn’t matter, he knew.  As long as there was a tempo then dancing was the natural outcome.  At least, he had always thought so until that moment.

He bit his tongue before saying anything, then spoke.  “Can someone come and hum a tune for me, and I’ll try to play it?”

He wasn’t particularly adept at playing music after just one hearing.  He needed practice, or a patient audience.  He trusted the audience would be patient around the bonfire, especially since they seemed to have no other option.

“Here Grange, listen to this one,” Breeze told him as she came over to stand behind him.  She circled one arm around his shoulders to draw close to him, then rested her chin on his other shoulder as she leaned up, nearly pressed her lips against his ear, and started to hum a simple tune, one that was not too fast, not too complicated.  It would have only just barely qualified as a dance tune back in Fortune, and probably only late in the evening when folks would have been tiring of the faster tunes.

He thought he could manage the tune.  “Hum it again, please,” he said, and then closed his eyes and listened intently as she revisited the tune again.

“Do you like it?” Breeze asked when she finished.

“Yes, it’s a nice tune,” he said.  It was pleasant, if not exciting, but he recognized that it was the song that his audience was familiar with.  And it was relatively easy.  He opened his eyes and looked around at the dozens of eyes that were staring at him, then he raised the flute to his lips.

“Hum it again, and I’ll play along with you,” he told the vivacious girl next to him.

She squeezed his shoulder, then he began to pick out the notes and match the tune that the girl set for him.  He was tentative for the first few bars, but his expectations and memories of the tune matched the notes he heard softly in his ears.  He gained confidence, and continued to play, as boys pulled girls and girls pulled boys out onto the dusty dance floor, and the crowd began to move in an odd step that was unlike anything Grange had seen practiced in Fortune.

But the dancers seemed happy with the tune.  A pair of boys waved approvingly at Grange, and Breeze stopped humming.  “I think you’ve got it now,” she sighed, then laid her head on his shoulder and watched the dancers rotate around the lit dance floor as Grange played the song thrice over to lengthen the dancing period.

“I need another song,” he said when he finished.

“Here, listen to this one,” Breeze told him, and she again lifted her mouth to his ear and began to hum another song, one that was slow and gentle and sounded like a lullaby to Grange.

He listened and played.  The crowd danced.  After another song, one of the apple picking boys came and pulled Breeze out onto the floor, letting Clarine come to hum to Grange.  He played the music, and watched a jug pass discreetly from hand to hand in the shadows, fermented cider that was shared by the boys and the girls, the men and the women alike.  The crowd grew more raucous, and Clarine was pulled away to be replaced by Girelle, who wanted faster-paced songs that were more frenetic.

A second jug appeared in the crowd, and some of the dancers and the audience members grew mellow, while others began to grow boisterous and rowdy.  Other girls took turns standing by Grange, humming in his ear with their heads on his shoulder and their arms around his waist or shoulder.  He played song after song as the tunes were hummed or softly sung to him, while the half-moon rose overhead and climbed with the stars in the sky.