Blaze (The High-Born Epic) (14 page)

             
“I’ll let you know if there is, but I’m going to head on back home now,” Harold said and nodded.  Then turned and began walking away.

             
“Why don’t you stay for a little while, Harold?” Phil asked.

             
“I need to get on back to the house.  It won’t be long ‘til Aunt Nean is finished cooking supper,” he replied and thought about his upcoming training sessions, then stopped.  “You know what, Phil?  There is something you can help me with.”

             
“What is it?” Phil asked.

             
“Do you think you could round me up a dozen or so burlap bags?” Harold asked.

             
“Come back in a couple of days, and I’ll have you two dozen,” Phil smiled.

             
“Thanks, Phil.  I appreciate it,” Harold said as he began walking down the road.

             
“Alrighty, then.  I’ll be seein’ you around,” Phil replied. “Tell Harold bye, Maggie.”

             
“Bye, Hawold,” Maggie said and cocked her head to the side while she waved.

             
“Bye, Maggie.  See you later, Phil,” Harold replied.

             
“Have a good night, Harold,” Phil answered.

             
Harold quickly made his back through the town circle, passing under Colonel Foxx’s image as he crossed to road number six not even bothering to even glance at the blacksmith shop.

             
When he got back to the house, supper was nearly finished and Cooper and Ollie were already sitting at the table.  Aunt Nean spooned out the portions and then they ate, talking about nothing it particular.  Ollie talked about the girl down the road and her new rag doll, and how they fed it and rocked it to sleep.  Cooper talked about the tiger men and wolf men tearing up the High-Born tank.  Aunt Nean just smiled, and tenderly asked questions to which she already knew the answers.  Harold realized that she just liked to hear the children talk about anything, no matter how unimportant it seemed.  Soon, they had finished supper and Cooper and Ollie were in their room.

             
“Harold,” she said as she pulled out a wooden box from under the couch.  “Go outside and fill this up with sand for me.  Make sure you get it up to the edges.”

             
“Yes, ma’am,” Harold said, confused as he took it from her.

             
Harold walked outside and Scape padded up to him, tail wagging and eyes bright against the night.  As Scape rubbed against Harold’s leg half-purring, half-growling, Harold filled the rectangular box with sand.  Once it was full, he came back inside, and Aunt Nean was sitting at the dinner table with a dirty sheet laid out across it.  There were also two unlit candles there, and Harold assumed that they were for when the electricity was shut off.  He also noticed two of her older wooden spoons lying there.

             
She gestured for him to put down the box of sand on the sheet and then they both sat down.  She pulled her chair closer to Harold and turned the box length wise to them.  She handed him a spoon and she picked up hers.

             
“Aunt Nean,” Harold smiled as he looked at the spoon and sand.  “I know we’re poor, but I don’t think we have to eat sand for dessert yet?”

             
She laughed and gave him a light-hearted tap on the head with her spoon.  Then she turned the spoon in his hand, and he was holding it backwards.  She did the same with hers.  Then she began scratching in the sand with the tip of her spoon.  Harold watched as she wrote his name in the sand.  Then, she gently wiped it away.

             
“Back in the days after the High-Born defeated the last remnants of the Forgotten Nations’ soldiers, they took every type of computer and book from us,” she said.  “They even took paper, so that we could no longer write.  Then they destroyed the schools that had survived the war and rounded up all of the survivors and put us in places like Foxx Hole.  Then, we had no way to learn anymore, and they have tried to strip all knowledge from us since then.  Sadly, they have nearly succeeded.”

             
“They did that to control us?” Harold asked.

             
“Yes,” she answered.  “I don’t know exactly how, but I do know that what people used to learn in school gave us the ability to defend ourselves from people like the High-Born.”

             
“There have always been people like the High-Born?” Harold asked.

             
“Maybe not exactly like them, but, yes.  There have always been people who seek to rule others.  The family of teachers that we come from used to say that such people would keep the knowledge for themselves, and use that knowledge to rule over others.”

             
“I want to change that,” Harold said.

             
“I will teach you as much as I know,” she said.  “You remember the basic arithmetic I taught you when you were younger?”

             
“Yes, ma’am,” Harold answered.  “Addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division?”

             
“That’s right,” she answered.  “Let me show you what comes next.”

             
Then she drew in the sand 2X + 4 = 10.

             
“I thought numbers and letters don’t go together?” Harold said.

             
“Well,” she laughed.  “In a way, they don’t.  But let me show you how it works.  The X actually stands for what is called a variable.  So, if you were to multiply something by two and then add four to it and it equaled ten, what would the X be?”

             
“That’s easy,” Harold said.  “It’d be three.”

             
Aunt Nean’s eyebrows raised, “That’s right.”

             
Then, she wrote another problem underneath the first one.  Harold also correctly answered it.  Aunt Nean looked strangely at Harold.  He just smiled, happy that he was right.  She wrote a third problem that was a little more difficult.  Harold turned his head as he thought about the solution.  After a few seconds, he gave her the correct answer.  Aunt Nean wiped the sand out again and wrote 5X + 4Y + 7 = 37.

             
Harold looked at the table for a few seconds as he thought about it.

             
“Well, I reckon there could be a lot of answers, but if we were going to keep fractions out of it, I reckon that X would have to be two and Y would have to be five,” Harold said.

             
Aunt Nean looked at him wide eyed, “No one has taught you about this, have they?”

             
“Other than what you showed me when I was little, no ma’am,” he said, smiling that she was impressed.  “It just kinda’ makes sense.”

             
Aunt Nean looked like she was about to say something, but she stopped herself, and wrote another problem.

             
Harold answered it very quickly as well.

             
They studied many more problems that night, and when the lights were shut off, she lit the candles and got out the grammar book.  As the night wore on, Aunt Nean continued to give Harold strange glances as he answered various grammar questions.  Harold could not understand why, but Aunt Nean began getting emotional, and seemed like she was ready to cry.

             
It puzzled Harold as to why she seemed upset because not only did he answer her questions quickly, but he also never got any of them wrong.

Chapter 11

              Harold woke up the next morning, and went outside.  He looked around for Scape, but he was nowhere to be found.  Harold figured that he was off hunting in the woods.  It did not take Harold long before he was pouring Colonel Foxx’s High-Born fertilizer all over the field.  As much as he disliked the High-Born, Harold had to admit that their fertilizer could make anything grow.  It was an impressive thing.  Thanks to his newfound strength, he was finished well before lunch.

             
As he walked back to the barn, he looked at the sun.  He didn’t have enough time to get any real practice finished before Aunt Nean would be done with lunch.  So, he sat down in the barn and looked at the mule glaring at him.  He shook his head and smiled as he picked up a stick and regarded the dirt at his feet.

             
He sat down and began scratching numbers into the dirt.  The algebra problems that Aunt Nean had given him the night before intrigued him for some reason.  He made an example problem for himself.  He solved it, but noticed that it didn’t divide evenly.  He made himself several more problems, and solved them without any difficulty.  He could see that there was something more to the math than he realized.  In fact, he could almost see it in his mind, but it just was not quite there yet.

             
Then, he made himself an example sentence in the dirt, and quickly labeled the words according to what part of speech they constituted.  He wrote himself ten more sentences and continued practicing.  After about fifteen minutes, he wiped away the evidence of his education and walked to the house.

             
The kids were waiting at the table, and Aunt Nean soon served them.  Just as they finished eating, a knock echoed on the front door.  Harold went to the door and opened it.  Phil was standing there, Maggie by his side. 

             
“Hey, Hawold,” Maggie said, spinning in her scarlet dress.  “Do eww ‘ike my dwess?  I fink it ith bootiful,”

             
Harold smiled, “It sure is.  I think you’re the prettiest girl I’ve seen all day.”

             
Maggie just giggled as she continued spinning.  Harold looked at Phil, and saw that he had a lot of burlap slung over his shoulder.

             
“That was quick,” Harold said.

             
“I had some in storage and several people that owed me favors,” Phil replied.

             
“How are you doing, Phil?” Aunt Nean asked as she walked up.

             
“I’m fine,” Phil answered as he handed the burlap to Harold.  “Just had to settle up with Harold.”

             
“He didn’t tell me anything about it,” Aunt Nean said, looking wonderingly at Harold.

             
“He helped me out a while back,” Phil said.

             
“Oh, Maggie,” Aunt Nean said.  “That new dress looks so good on you.”

             
“Fank, eww,” she replied as she stopped twirling.  “It was my birfday pwesent.”

             
“Would y’all like to come in?” Aunt Nean asked as she smiled at Maggie.

             
“I think that me and her need to get on back,” Phil pointed at Maggie.  “I’ve got to help Tom with his roof.”

             
“Ok then.  Thanks for stopping by,” she looked at Maggie.  “I love your dress.”

             
Maggie just smiled and bobbed her head.  Then Phil and Maggie walked back toward the town circle.

             
“I’m going to put these in the barn,” Harold said.  “Then I think I’m going to walk in the woods for a little while.”

             
“Can I go?” Cooper asked.

             
“No you can’t,” Aunt Nean answered.  “You and your sister both have got a lot to read this afternoon.”

             
“I don’t like to read,” Cooper answered and crossed his arms.  “It’s boring, and I want to go play with Scape.”

             
“Reading is more important that you know, Coop,” Harold said.  “And Scape isn’t even around right now.  So, I want you to read it for me, okay?”

             
Cooper shuffled and looked at Harold, “Okay.”

             
Harold walked outside and into the barn.  He looked at the mule, and she turned her head and stuck it against the wall.  Harold shook his head and smiled.

             
Then he laid out the first burlap bag and began gently tearing it.  After several well-placed rips, he tied the makeshift legs together.  He took off his overalls and tried on his new pair of shorts.  It was not bad for a first attempt.  Harold shifted uncomfortably as he scratched.

             
“They’re a little itchy,” he said to the mule.

             
She just puffed at him, and brayed as if she were laughing.

             
Harold then spent the next hour carefully tearing the burlap bags, and then tying them with spare twine, and other pieces of burlap.  He made himself eight pair, and had three bags left with part of a fourth one.  Then he changed back into his overalls, and put the pairs of shorts in one of the leftover bags and headed out across the field.