Well before adolescence, Macurdy had learned to use the ax. But in Washington County, the crosscut saw was the main tool for logging, while for cutting fuelwood, the homemade bucksaw was mostly used. The ax was simply used for swamping, notching, limbing, and of course splitting.
Now, working exclusively with it, he found his skills had improved; a given task took less time. Meanwhile, Arbel had peeled away layers of imposed and assumed considerations, and Macurdy no longer felt the need to prove himself, to show how much work he could do in a unit of time.
Thus, as his axman's skills improved, instead of turning out more wood, he commonly took a nap in late morning, allowing his mental clock and hungry stomach to waken him for lunch and to finish his day's work.
One noon, with the leaves showing the first tinges of fall color, he awoke aware of being watched. Getting to his feet, he looked around, and saw no one.
"Up here!" called a voice. "In this tree."
He looked up. At first he thought it was a vulture, but its head was feathered. Its crown was scarlet above the eyes, as if it had tried to become an eagle and gotten the colors wrong, while its strong beak was longish and nearly straight.
"There," it said to him. "You've found me."
Macurdy gawped. "You can talk!" he said.
"Of course I can talk."
Macurdy pondered briefly, wondering if this was another expression of his talent. "Could anyone hear you?"
"Assuming they're not deaf, yes."
Macurdy frowned thoughtfully at his hands, as if looking to them for enlightenment. "Back home," he said, "if I told folks I'd been visiting with a giant crow wearing a red . . ." He stopped, lacking the Yuultal word for "pompadour," and became aware of tittering.
"That was not funny!" the bird snapped. Not it seemed at Macurdy, but at someone else nearby. With the bird's irritated response, the tittering became laughter, and Macurdy looked around for the source. It seemed to come from the base of a walnut tree, but he could see nothing there. Then his hair stood on end. There was something there; he could almost see it. Relax, Varia had told him. Relaxing helps turn it on. And Arbel had said don't try too hard. Let things come.
And there it was, looking like a small, tight-furred man, a fuzzy creature naked except for a belt, and slender, wiry. Almost at once the halfling realized his invisibility spell had been seen through, and without an instant's hesitation, sprinted with startling speed to a slender ash sapling, scrambling into its top till his weight bent it, and he could transfer to the lower branch of an oak. There he sat; Macurdy could almost see his body tremble. When he'd climbed, a small knife and bag had been visible on his belt in back.
"So much for magic," the bird called after him. "I'll take wings any time."
The halfling said nothing, simply sat with his face working, somewhat as if palsied, somewhat as if chewing, his eyes glistening black as obsidian. Faster on the ground than a squirrel, Macurdy thought, and not too much slower up the tree.
"Though I'll admit I couldn't see you," the bird added. "I'm surprised this human could."
Macurdy's attention returned to the bird. About as big as a turkey vulture, he decided; far larger than even the biggest crow. It showed an aura much like a human's, when he thought to look. "What sort of bird are you?" he asked. "What breed?"
The bird looked down his beak at Macurdy. "Not a crow, I promise you that."
"Then what?"
"Men and tomttu call us the great ravens. And while the term reflects an inadequacy of concept, for our purposes here it suffices. Keeping in mind that intellectually we are far superior to ravens, which in turn are considerably superior to crows, which are—et cetera."
"Where did you learn to talk so well? You used some big words. I'm not even sure what all of them mean."
"Um. My species tends to be more intelligent; more, let us say, scholarly. Certainly much better informed."
Macurdy stared bemused. "How did you get so smart?"
"He's got a hive mind!" the halfling called; his nerves settled now. "Or more correctly, he's part of a hive mind!"
"Hive mind?"
The bird explained. "My kind has a shared mind. Each of us is an individual, but whatever one of us learns is available to us all. When we need it or care to access it."
Macurdy frowned. He thought he understood, but it was strange.
"For example. Suppose you carried a bow and shot at me. And I saw you do it. All of my people would then avoid you."
"Wouldn't that get confusing? How do you separate in your mind what's happening to you from what's happening to someone else? And somewhere else!"
"That's not difficult; there's always a sense of where and who. And at any rate, I don't even know what my nest mates are doing right now, though I could. But if you'd shot at one of us, we'd all avoid you as dangerous, and know the reason. On the other hand, the others wouldn't know I'd been talking to you unless one of them wondered what I'd done lately that was different."
"And they're all gluttons for knowledge," the halfling put in. "Afraid there's somethin' interestin' goin' on that they're missin'."
The bird nodded. Physically nodded. "True. It's why I associate with him." He gestured toward the halfling with his head. "He's a tomttu, you know. From time to time we great ravens form relationships with individual tomttus. They're veritable mines of lore—facts, stories, and opinions."
Macurdy saw possibilities. "Is that right! I'm new in this world, and there's a lot I don't know about it that I need to. Maybe you could help me."
"Indeed? Obviously you're no hatchling—excuse me; newborn. What do you mean, you're `new in this world'?"
"I came through a gate last spring. From Farside."
"Indeed!" This time it was the halfling, the tomttu who spoke. "I've heard of gates to a world called Farside. I've also heard they're dangerous to men and tomttus; that only those of ylvin blood can use them."
Macurdy decided not to say too much. "Well, at least one human's come through safely. Myself."
"Farside." Blue Wing cocked his head. "Interesting. I am Blue Wing, incidentally, and my friend is Maikel. What is your name?"
Macurdy didn't answer at once. What might happen if the Sisterhood learned he'd come through? And where he was. On the other hand, suppose Varia heard. "Macurdy," he said. "Do you know of anyone by that name?"
The bird's gaze seemed to lose focus, as if he scanned the hive mind. "No, no I don't. But then, I've never run into anyone from that mythical country before. What are you doing here?"
Careful now, Macurdy, don't say too much, he warned himself. "I'm a slave. The Ozmen made a slave of me when I came through. So I can't travel around. And there's a lot I'd like to know about this world."
Bird and halfling looked at one another for a long moment, and it was the tomttu who spoke. "We'll trade you knowledge for knowledge. Yuulith for Farside."
"I'll agree to that," the bird seconded. "It's infrequent that any of us exchanges thoughts and knowledge with a human. And when it happens, it's usually with one of your immatures, typically female. Your immature females are more—open. They tend to feel more affinity with such as we. And it's rarer yet to have a three-cornered exchange. It should be quite interesting."
"I've a question for you," the tomttu said. "How were you able to see me? The spell I cast should have kept me invisible to you."
"I didn't, at first. I heard you laugh, and looked toward the sound. And there you were."
"Ah. Of course. I shouldn't have laughed. But you likened him to a crow, and I know what he thinks of them. And rightly, in my view, though the crows would disagree. Hmh! And you saw me! Well. Individuals differ, whether man or tomttu—or even the winged folk, in spite of all their hive mind. And you were able to come through a gate, after all. Assumin' you've been truthful with us."
Macurdy shrugged. "You two seem to trust each other. You just need to stretch your trust to include me."
"Ah," said Blue Wing, "but neither of us is human. And the tomttus' experience is that humans are much less reliable."
"Humans and ylver," added the tomttu, "or so the stories have it. But humans are said to be more cruel."
Well, Macurdy, Macurdy thought to himself, they've got us pegged.
For nearly two weeks, the three of them met each midday, Macurdy giving up his naps to talk with them. He learned a lot about the country, and about the language, for Blue Wing used big words, and both he and Maikel sometimes used long involved sentences. And both would pause to explain, when they lost his understanding.
The great ravens, Macurdy learned, were a sparse breed, gathering only in their rookeries to raise young. Their sole passion in life was knowledge. As far as Macurdy could learn, they didn't use it for anything in particular. In a sense they were like crows, but instead of collecting shiny things or smooth round things, they collected odd bits of knowledge, with no real interest in what use they might be to them.
The tomttu, on the other hand, were essentially farmers and gardeners, and herders of miniature sheep. From time out of mind they'd lived almost entirely in dwarvish kingdoms, where mostly they were safe from human predation. The dwarves, in turn, traded with the tomttu for some of their foodstuffs.
Some tomttu got the wanderlust. Maikel was one. It wasn't so much an urge to see new places, he said, though that was part of it. It was more a desire to be free of the strictures and formalities of Tomttu life, and learn new things. And any tomttu who'd reached puberty could pick a living in the forest from tubers and nuts, snails and slugs and tree frogs, seeds and fleshy roots. Their magic helped them find what they needed. Some such wanderers returned home in winter, this requiring a family willing to feed one who hadn't worked. Otherwise one found a good den for winter, defended it by spells, stored as much food as he could before the weather turned bad, then slept a lot. Maikel was bound for his home in the Diamond Mountains, some thirty miles west. He'd been gone three years, and was ready to settle down.
From Maikel, Macurdy learned about dwarves and tomttus; and from Blue Wing, geography, humans, ylver and the Sisterhood. The viewpoint and evaluations were considerably different than a human's would have been, but they were valuable, particularly the information that the Sisterhood now was lodged far to the east, in the Kingdom of the Dwarves in Silver Mountain. How this came to be, Blue Wing had no idea; his concepts of formal treaties, politics, and even commerce were rudimentary.
Each spoke of other creatures, as well. Macurdy learned there were jaguars, catamounts, wolves and bears in the forests. And rare but savage night-stalking trolls. Rarer yet were the great boars, large as cart ponies. Sixty stone or more, Maikel guessed; probably more. (Blue Wing's notions of weight were vague and useless.) Maikel claimed to weigh about two stone, and judged Macurdy at fifteen, so Macurdy figured a stone would be roughly fifteen pounds.
According to that, a great boar would weigh half a ton They were uncannily clever, the two agreed, and had magic of their own. For men to succeed in killing one was unheard of. If one of the great boars became sufficiently offended by them, it could lay waste a farmstead, killing the livestock, destroying the fences, and rending whoever got in its way.
Or so tradition had it; neither could cite a known instance, not even Blue Wing, with his access to the hive mind, which stretched far back in time. But the potential, they insisted, was there, and must surely have been used at some time or other.
They also agreed there were no females of the species. Privately, Macurdy considered that myth; otherwise they'd be worse than rare. He'd have suspected the two of pulling his leg, but from Arbel's lessons, he was beginning to read auras as well as see them. And it appeared to him that Blue Wing and Maikel both were honest with him. Blue Wing insisted a great boar had been seen to breed a razorback sow, a very large one, but Maikel was certain it couldn't happen. "What was seen was one eatin' a sow. But breed one? Even if he'd been inclined to it, he'd have squashed her flat."
Macurdy wasn't eager to meet the great cats, or wolves, and certainly not a troll or great boar. To humans, black bears on the other hand seemed benign; tomttu had more cause to fear them.
And there was information on dwarves. "If they have no grudge against you," Maikel said, "and if you're not trespassin', they're no danger to you at all. But if you wrong them, knowingly or not, they're implacable. Implacable! They do be friendly to us though, because we're small, you see, and because we're not given to human treacheries.
"Dwarves consider that they aren't, either. But I must tell you that their greed sometimes gets the better of them. Then they can cheat and lie like a human. Well, not like the worst humans, but badly enough. Still, I'd trust a dwarf before a man. Not before every man—not before yourself—but judgin' the species broadly. They deal fairly with us though, the dwarves. Close but fairly. It's dealin' with men and ylver that brings out the worst in them."
Indeed, dwarves and geography were the subjects that most interested Macurdy. For if the Sisterhood had moved to the Kingdom in Silver Mountain, it seemed to him he'd have to go there.
Then one day, Maikel didn't show up. "The nights are becoming cold," Blue Wing explained, "and he woke up this morning with the decision to continue westward to his people. He asked me to give you his best wishes. As for me—the scavenging is poor around here. The people in Miskmehr keep more sheep, and sheep are rather given to dying without apparent cause."
Then the great bird and Macurdy wished each other well, and Blue Wing flew off northward.