Davy

Mi

It has just this moment occurred to me that some of you who may or may not exist may also actually be women. If so, you would insist on knowing what else Mi

Mi

Yes, I stayed with that place Mi

22

I came to Leva

What is it, this very certain destiny that overtakes all our visions, our most reasoned plans equally with our fantastic dreams? Maybe whenever we think of the future, as we must if we’re to be human at all, the act is bound to include a something-too-much, as if with all due human absurdity we were expecting chance to alter its course at the impact of our noise. A boy imagined the great outriggers, the fine thirty-to

“Ayah, I can read.”

“Mam Laura been learnin’ you the learnin’, I hear tell?”

“I can read, Will.”

“Well, read me the name of that old shitpot yonder.”

“Why, that’s the Daisy Mae, it says.”

Poor graceless squabby thing, she smelled of spoiled onions as well as dead fish. She was fat amidships with a tubby blunt bow and a square stern, her single outrigger as ungainly as a wooden leg. The oar-benches had been rubbed to a polish by the aching buttocks of the slaves who were likely pe

“Never saw that kind of boat before.”

He went roaring into laughter. “’Boat’ is good — hoy, they’d skin you for that! ‘Ships’ you gotta call ’em when they’re that size. Come on, give a guess how big she is.”

She looked ancient as well as puny, a salt-frosted gray, a color of loneliness and neglect. She rode high in the water, empty, sun-smitten; if a watchman was aboard he must have been lurking below, where you’d suppose the hot stench would have been past bearing. I imagined her to be some little cargo tub built for short hauls between ports of the Hudson Sea, likely to be abandoned soon or broken up for firewood. “She a’n’t as far gone as she looks,” Will said — “they’ll be painting her before she goes out again, and you’d be surprised.” A miserable dockside cur had been attracted by the flavor of her garbage but didn’t quite dare jump down on her deck. He lifted a scarecrow leg against a dock stanchion, aiming poorly and spattering the ship’s rail. With an empty hand Will Moon made a stone-throwing motion; the mutt scrabbled away jn terror, tail clamped between his legs. I fancied the dreary old vessel sighing meekly at the indignity, too feeble to resent it. “Come on, Davy — give us a guess.”

“Couple tons maybe?”

“You got things to learn,” Will said, and cackled with delight — when I’m sixty maybe I’ll be all hell on instructing the young too. “Things to learn, bub — why, old Daisy Mae, she won’t go a ton under thirty-three…”

No, I never sailed aboard a Leva

It is the greatest road of modern history. Moha’s Northeast Road that pointed my way out of Skoar is a fine thing, but a cowpath beside the Lowland Road. There are travelers who would tell you that the greatest of all is the Old Post Road from Old City of Nuin to Renslar: such is the cussedness of the human race when determined to argue passionately about something that can’t be any way proved — their whole damn trouble is that always they know I’m right but won’t admit it. The Lowland Road of Leva

Traveling north, you walk in the morning shadow of the beautiful green mountains at your right hand. You see at once why the many small but vigorous towns and villages are needed there. Alert and usually fortified, they are co