Wandering Spark - Part 48
Mists wandered through the land, covering sometimes half of the village and hung over the sea, swallowing and spitting out fishermen's boats. On the nose of each boat, there was a metal fish hanging in the frame, it always pointed at Maltown with the nose, and with its right fin at the Round Fang.
Mather taught Lilya and Korra to milk the milking ducks. Girls, which hurried and were clumsy got some bites and were unhappy. The mother even threatened them with a strap.
Varan walked around in circles, leaning on the lever, looking at the ground. It's terrible to imagine how many thousands of circles he went through in his life, screwing up the screw spring. And how much did his father?
Around the spring ground was trampled around. It wasn’t too difficult to walk, but it was rather a dull activity. Sometimes after several hours of continuous walking around in a circle Varan fell asleep with his eyes open. He saw white palaces rising from the water, strange birds on wooden rafts, and sometimes it seemed as if he was flying on a wingam, and beneath him was blue sea...
It was necessary to go up every day. The Gorni required fresh water. Pods were in need of dry branches. With the screw was delivered moist seaweed and pieces of wood found in the sea. Then the wood was drying under the burning sun. Then they wrapped wood the tarred cloth and lowered it and distributed it under the supervision of the headman Karp, and it was that half of all the fuel went to him, the village headman to his vault and in the stove...
The screw spring Varan’s family screwed continuously, during day and night. According to the order of the headman, the young men of the village came in turn to turn the lever and, so that it was not so boring, they were in big companies. Topics for conversation were shared, or rather, one big topic: who how and how much earned during the season.
This year everything was as usual and everything was different. Old friends eschewed Varan. Or maybe it seemed to him that they were avoiding him. In the village, they chatted that he had spent almost half a season in the Prison Gut. He may have thought so himself, but if in truth - he was sitting there only a week...
... And all these cautious inquiries with cloyingly sympathetic faces: how you are? Did you see the robbers? And murderers? And an understanding smirk. The pals wanted to earn more than usual, it happened and happens. Robbers throw news, or attention of the merchant to distract at the right time, or some other small work, in itself, it's kind of fearless and insignificant. However, crimes usually commit young people from the surrounding islands, or even from Maltown. Roung fang pods almost never were accused is a crime.
So or something like this Varan imagined his friends who were gossiping about him and didn’t want to justify himself. He didn’t want to see anyone.
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