The Webbing Blade

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LOU WOKE UP the next morning with the sun in his face. It was a strange feeling. Most mornings this summer he’d been accustomed to getting up well before dawn, getting himself ready for when the cart headed out to Old Man Junth’s farm. But today he had no need to get up, and his body had seemed to know it too, allowing him to sleep in.

He felt the sun rays warming up his bed sheets. He turned on his side so the light wouldn’t shine right in his eyes. He could smell a faint scent of bacon and, the crackling of the grease. He knew that soon his ma would be serving breakfast. He recalled all these mornings he’d had, the day after he’d brought in the yield. Every last one of them he’d got himself up, almost leaped up out of bed, with a smile on his face, feeling like a prince. But now, today, this morning, he felt thoroughly depressed.

Sleeping on the problem hadn’t provided any solution. He had run everything through his mind. He’d thought of getting his pa to spread his net a little, for him to get out into the next village along to look for more work. But that idea had died on its feet when he’d remembered that Pa wasn’t a member of the Guild, and if he wanted to join he would have to pay the yearly fee. And that would’ve taken a hefty chunk out of Lou’s wages, a chunk that they simply couldn’t afford.

His ma might also spread her medicine services in some villages around the area, but he had noticed that cough of hers, those dark shadows beneath her eyes, and he got the feeling that she might well be on the doorstep of some fever. And the last thing they needed with winter coming was for his ma to get ill. The nights would get longer and travel to find medicine would be almost impossible. And that was to say nothing for the travel expenses themselves.

His little sis Syre hadn’t much to give. She was only ten years old, and buried in her books. She could hardly lift a wedge of wood, let alone an axe. No, if he was to keep his family from starving this winter then he would have to do something. It was his responsibility, after all, he’d been the one who’d got his winter’s supplement taken away from him. And now he’d let the whole town know just how hard up they were. It’d be his responsibility to put things right again.

As he got up out of bed, shucking his bed sheet, letting it tumble into a pile on the floor, he felt his muscles drawn all tight, and that weariness sink over him. He knew that was his body telling him that he’d slept on for too long, that he was messing up his body’s routine. His body expected for him to go out to Old Man Junth’s again that day, and it was aching and complaining. He wished he could tell it that it could rest all it liked from now on, but that it might not be around to see the next spring.

That scent of bacon got richer, thicker. He felt his stomach tremble at the prospect of those crunchy rashers in his mouth. Saliva seeped out and covered his tongue. Those crackles seemed to get louder still. As he got dressed, putting on a fresh tunic his ma had hung up by his door, he smelled the gentle burning smell of bread, and that stench of warm butter.

Perhaps he would see things better after a hearty breakfast.

The tunic was soft against his skin. His ma used some special herbs of hers to get it like this, to get it to smell so clean and sharp too. He loved that smell, and he pressed the material over his mouth and nostrils and breathed it right in. It reminded him of when he’d been a young boy, and there’d be a storm raging, or something, and he’d just collect his bed sheets up in a ball in his fist and he’d smell it hard, and that’d make him feel better.

Braver.

Now he needed all the bravery he could get.

He staggered through the house, his muscles locking up on him about a dozen times, finally making it through to the kitchen, where he drew up the hobbledy chair made of cast-off wood. His pa had made it a good decade or so ago, when Lou had been seven or eight. He remembered standing over him, watching him do it. The sawdust flying into the air, catching those flakes on his tongue till Pa had told him to stop, that he’d get sick if he swallowed any.