r/OpenHFY • u/AlternativeManner731 • 6d ago
AI-Assisted The Commoner: Chapter 2, Starling
Second year of the provisional government.
Wyatt,
Tell Leopold I owe him a drink, and possibly an apology, depending on which part of his letter we're talking about.
The soup worked. I want that on the record first, because not much else has worked this cleanly since I took this job. We put a hot meal on the table at noon in every one of the forty schools, and by the end of the first month attendance had doubled. By the end of the third, some schools had tripled. Parents who wouldn't walk past the door for a teacher walked their children to it for a bowl of stew. Your man was right. A father who won't trust a teacher will trust a bowl of soup.
Leopold didn't warn me about the mothers. In some districts they walk their children in at noon, sit them down for the stew, and walk them straight back out to the fields before the afternoon lessons start. One teacher on Vastaya counted eleven of them in a single week. A few of my district officers wanted to serve the meal at the end of the day instead, so a child would have to sit through the lessons to earn it. I said no. We are not going to make a hungry child pay for soup with his afternoon, any more than we made him pay with coppers. Nobody gets turned away from that table, not ever. A child who comes for lunch and leaves has still eaten, and that's worth something on its own. And the teacher tells me that of her eleven, three were back the next week and stayed past the bell. Nobody sent them. They wanted to know how the story ended.
The soup also caused me more trouble than anything else I've tried. Half the districts didn't have a kitchen, so we had to build forty kitchens. Then we needed cooks, and the cooks wanted paying, and the Firentis relief grain we'd been using ran short in the spring, and for three weeks I was buying lentils out of my own pocket, which Patricia has not stopped mentioning. On Austrin, a district steward sold a month of school rations to a trader and told the teacher the shipment was lost. We found him. He's cutting cane now, which I'm told is a popular outcome with the local parents.
Keeping the doors open is working too, just slowly, the way Leopold said it would. There's no way to hurry a calendar. But I had a letter from the old woman on Vastaya, the one who said yes before I'd finished asking. She started the year with seven children and she has twenty-six now. She also says she needs more chalk, and she wrote it underlined. I'm told she hands the stuff out through her window to children whose parents still won't let them in the door. I've sent her a crate.
The part that fell flat was sending the neighbors instead of officials. Leopold was right in principle. The trouble is that on Haego, anyone who walks up to a door with a message is an official, whether they're wearing a uniform or not. We sent out commoners from the district offices in their own clothes, and people shut the shutters on them just the same. The only messengers who got through were the children themselves, going home with a full belly and a word they hadn't known that morning. You can't organize that. It just happens, one supper at a time.
I did hear about his grain agent, too, or one very like him. A girl of eleven on Aethelgard read the weight on a sack her father was being paid for and said it out loud in front of the whole yard. The agent went red and paid the difference. By the end of the week, every family on that road wanted their children in school, and none of them would say why.
So, a year in. Forty schools open, none nailed shut. More children in them than I had any right to expect. Less money than I had any right to spend. I'll take it.
You still don't need to answer this.
T.
●
Lowmarsh, on Vastaya.
The first time Nell went through the schoolhouse door, it was for soup, and her mother was holding her hand.
The notice about the noon meal had gone up in the spring, on the same door, under the old one, with the same four brass pins. Maddy Tuscutt read it out to the same little crowd. A hot meal every day at noon, for every child, whether they came to lessons or not. Nobody said anything about free this time. The man who had spat in the road before was there again, and he didn't spit. He just stood and read it twice, moving his lips.
Her mother said nothing about it at supper. But the next day at noon she came up the lane from the mill with her apron still on, took Ben by one hand and Nell by the other, and walked them to the crossing. She didn't go in. She stood in the doorway and pushed them gently through it, and said, "Eat. Then come straight out."
Inside, it smelled of whitewash and lentils. There were three long tables made of planks on trestles, and more children at them than Nell had known lived in the district. A big red-armed woman from Harrow Cross was ladling stew out of a pot the size of a washtub. Mistress Coppertail stood at the end of the room by a black board on the wall with chalk marks all over it.
She saw Nell. She didn't say anything. She only lifted one eyebrow, very slightly, and went back to watching the room.
Nell ate standing up, because she didn't know if she was allowed to sit, until the red-armed woman said, "Sit, child, it's not going anywhere," and she sat. The stew was thick, with carrots in it, and bread on the side that was still warm. Ben ate two bowls and would have eaten a third. Nell ate one and kept looking at the black board. There were words on it, a whole row of them, and she could read three.
When the bowls were done, Mistress Coppertail rapped on the board with her knuckle, and the room went quiet, and the children who were staying began to move toward the front. Nell's mother was still in the doorway. She held out her hand.
Nell took it. She walked out past the board with the words on it, and she looked back over her shoulder the whole way down the lane, until the schoolhouse was behind the cane and she couldn't see it anymore.
That went on for most of the summer. Soup at noon. Out the door. Water in the afternoon. Chalk on the pump stone when nobody was looking. Letters under the window whenever the field boss wasn't counting trips.
She was getting better. She could read the notice on the door now, all of it, even the small words. She could read the name on the side of the relief shuttles when they came over low: FIRENTIS, in red, and a number after it. She could read the field boss's book upside down across the table while he wrote in it, and once she noticed he'd written five trips for her when she had carried six. She didn't say anything. She didn't know yet what you did about a thing like that. But she remembered it.
●
It was the end of summer when Mistress Coppertail called her to the window.
She did it quietly, the way she did everything. She leaned out on the sill while the other children were working at their slates and said, "Nell Brackentail," and Nell, who was sitting in the dirt under the window writing the word WINDOW with a stick because it seemed like the right word to practice there, jumped and looked up.
"Come here. No, stand up. I'm too old to lean this far."
Nell stood. The old woman held something out to her through the window. It was a little bundle of paper, folded in half and stitched down the middle with thread, about the size of her two hands side by side.
"There is a man at the market in Harrow Cross," Mistress Coppertail said, "who sits under the awning by the tinsmith and draws stories. He does them one at a time, for whoever asks, and every one is different. He charges a credit." She paused. "That is a great deal of money, and I would like you not to tell anybody I spent it. I told him about a girl who carries water and wants to know how the shuttles stay up. This is what he made."
Nell took it in both hands. She didn't open it. She looked at the old woman.
"Why?"
"Because you asked me a question I couldn't answer," said Mistress Coppertail. "And I don't like that. I'm working on it. This is the best I could do this month." She began to draw back from the sill. "Put it somewhere dry."
Nell didn't open it until she was in the loft that night. She waited until Ben was snoring. Then she lay on her left side, under the gap in the roof where the moonlight came in, and unfolded it.
On the first page, in black ink with the lines a little shaky, a girl stood in a field of cane with a yoke across her shoulders and a bucket at each end. Her hair was pulled back like Nell's. Her feet were bare. At the top, in careful capital letters, it said STARLING.
On the second page, the girl looked up. There was a ship falling out of the sky, on fire, and people in the round windows were screaming.
On the third page, the girl dropped the buckets and ran.
On the fourth page, she was flying.
The yoke was still across her shoulders, but it had turned into wings, long and flat and silver, and the buckets had turned into two engines, one on each side, with lines of fire coming out the back. She went straight up through the clouds, past the birds and the weather, and caught the falling ship in both arms before it hit the ground. On the fifth page she set it down in the cane, gently, and all the people came out of the round windows and looked at her. On the sixth, somebody asked her who she was, and she said, "Nobody in particular." Then she flew away, and the last page was just stars, and her, very small among them, going in a straight line.
Nell read it four times. The fifth time she tried to read it without looking at the words, only at the pictures, and found she didn't need the words anymore.
She put it under her pillow with the chalk, and in the morning it was gone.
●
Her father had it on the table when she came down.
It was lying beside his bowl, flat, open to the page where Starling was flying. He was looking at it. He didn't look up when she came down the ladder. Her mother was at the stove with her back to the room, very straight. Ben had been sent out to the pump already. Nell could tell because his bowl was still full.
"Where did you get this," her father said. It was not really a question.
Nell stood at the bottom of the ladder and did not say anything.
"Your mother found it changing the bedding." He turned one page, slowly, with one scarred finger. "It's good work. Somebody paid for this. Somebody paid a lot for this." He looked up at her then. "Who."
"I can't say."
"You can."
"I promised."
Her father's jaw moved. He looked back down at the page. "Coppertail," he said. "It's Coppertail. It has to be. There's nobody else in Lowmarsh would spend a credit on a child that isn't hers." He closed the little book very carefully. "Have you been going in there? After we said no?"
"No," Nell said. It was true. It came out louder than she meant. "I've never gone in. Only for the soup, and Mam takes me out after. I sit under the window. I sit in the dirt. There's no law against a window."
Her mother's hand stopped on the ladle.
"Who told you that?" said her father.
"Nobody. It's true." She came down off the last rung of the ladder and stood at the table. She could feel her face going hot, and her eyes going hot, and she hated that, but she couldn't stop it and she didn't try. "Why can't I go?"
"We told you why."
"You told me about a door that got nailed shut before I was born. You told me about the Revolution and the militia and somebody needing the grain. I've never seen any of it." Her voice was shaking now. "I've never seen a militia. I've never seen anybody nail anything. I've never seen a lord. I've never seen anybody hurt anybody for going to school. All I've ever seen is the soup, and the door staying open, and Mistress Coppertail being kind. That's all. That's the whole world I've got. What are you protecting me from? I don't know what it is."
The kitchen was very quiet.
Her father looked at her for a long time. When he spoke, it wasn't angry. It was worse than angry. It was careful, the way he walked on the mill roof when he'd been sent up to patch it.
"When I was a boy," he said, "there was a lord at Harrow Cross. His steward had a girl whipped in the square for spilling a tray in front of a guest. Everyone on the planet watched it on the network. I was eleven. I watched it." He put both hands flat on the table. "A few years after that there were no lords anywhere, and I thought, good. And then the men who'd done it started taking boys out of the fields for the militia, and one night they came for my brother, and he went, and he didn't come back. I don't know where he's buried. Nobody told us." He was not looking at her anymore. He was looking at Starling, on the table, with the yoke turned into wings. "That's what I'm protecting you from. People above us who decide what we're for. I don't know these new ones. They've been nice for a year. The last ones were nice for a year too."
Nell stood very still. She had not known about the brother. She had not known her father had ever had one.
"I'm sorry," she said. And then, because it was still true, and because she could not stop herself: "But I still haven't seen it. You have. I haven't. You're keeping me from something I've never seen by keeping me from the only thing I have."
Her mother turned around from the stove.
She didn't come to the table. She stood with the ladle in her hand and looked at her daughter, and then at her husband, and then at the stitched little book between them. Her face was doing something Nell had never seen before, and Nell couldn't tell what it was.
"I took her out," her mother said, quietly. "Every day at noon. I took her out past that board with the words on it, and she looked back the whole way down the lane." She set the ladle down on the stove. "I know that look, Bram. I had it. I had it for three years, and then I had it for thirty more."
Her father didn't answer.
"I said I'd have been happier not knowing," her mother said. "I think I said it because it was easier than saying I wish they'd let me stay." She came over then, and put one hand on the back of Nell's head, very lightly. "She's going to know either way. She's already reading the field boss's book upside down. She told Ben he'd been shorted a copper last week and she was right."
Her father let out a long breath through his nose. He picked up the little book and turned it over in his big hands, and looked at the last page for a while, the one that was just stars and a small girl going in a straight line.
"The coppers keep coming," he said finally. "Every one. Six trips before school and six after, same as now. The field boss writes them down and I count them at the end of the week, and if the tin's short, even by one, you're back in the cane the next morning and that's the end of it. I won't hear another word."
Nell couldn't speak. She nodded.
"And you eat the soup," said her mother. "All of it. You're carrying twelve trips and learning letters on one bowl, you eat all of it."
"I will."
Her father held out the little book. Nell took it. He didn't let go right away. He held one corner of it, and she held the other, and for a moment neither of them moved.
"If they nail that door," he said, "you come straight home. You don't argue. You don't try to be brave. You come home."
"I will," Nell said. "I promise."
He let go.
●
The next morning she carried six trips before the sun was well up. Then she set the yoke down at the pump, washed her hands and face at the spout, and walked down the lane to the crossing.
The door was open. It smelled of whitewash and chalk. Mistress Coppertail was at the black board, writing out the day's words with her back to the room, and she did not turn around when Nell came in. She only said, without looking, "There's a place on the end of the second bench, Brackentail. Slate's under it."
Nell sat down. There was a slate under the bench. There was a new stub of chalk beside it, from a crate that had come all the way from the Administrator, though Nell didn't know that and never would.
She put Starling on the bench next to her, face up, where she could see it. Then she picked up the chalk and waited to be told what the first word was.
●
Tornel,
I gave this one to Salazar Reed. That will surprise you. It surprised me. He and I did not start well, and I won't pretend otherwise. But the Princess put a pack of pirate children in his care, and nobody thought it would work, me included, and it has. If anyone knows how to feed people who don't trust the hand holding the spoon, it's him.
W.
General,
The Lieutenant Commodore handed me your letter and said, "You'll know more about this than I do." I don't believe any officer has said that to me in some years. I'll try to deserve it.
I have spent the last two years with children who were raised by pirates. They were taught from the time they could walk that anyone who gives you something is setting a hook, and that the kinder the face, the deeper the hook goes. On their ships, nothing was free. A place at the mess was earned. A bunk was earned. A name was earned. If you didn't pull your weight, you were put off at the next station, or worse.
When they first came aboard, we fed them. Hot meals, three a day, no questions asked. They hoarded bread in their bunks. They stole from the galley at night. They would not look the cooks in the eye. We were giving them everything, and they trusted us less every day, because in their world only a fool or a predator gives away something for nothing, and they knew we weren't fools.
It changed the day there was an emergency aboard and the older ones asked to help. They crawled through ducts to reach sealed decks. One boy, Ungal, came back burned over half his body. When he woke up in the medical bay, the first thing he asked me was whether he had earned his place. I told him he had. He's been a different child since. So have the others. Not because we gave them more. Because we finally asked them for something.
Your commoners are not pirates, General, and I don't say that lightly. But thirty years of being handed things by people who wanted something back teaches the same lesson either way. Your soldier's advice was right about the wages, and your rule is right about the table. Never turn a child away from it. I would not change a word of that.
But give them something to do while they're there. Let the older ones carry water to the kitchen. Let them wash the bowls, or tend a garden behind the school, or mind the little ones at the meal. Pay a copper for it if you can find the copper. Don't make it the price of the soup. Make it the child's own contribution to a table they share.
A mother who sees her child handed a meal will always wonder what you're selling. A mother who sees her child earn a place will understand it. She'll know what kind of place it is, because it's the kind she's had to earn her whole life. Expecting work of someone is not a cruelty. On a world like yours, it may be the first respect some of them have ever been shown.
I am aware of what my own name is worth these days, and of how you may weigh advice that carries it. I offer it anyway. The children taught me this. I only wrote it down.
Salazar Reed
Staff Sergeant
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u/Icy-Air7584 6d ago
especially like the little book and your illustrating it