The Unnameables (6 page)

"But what about Prudy?"

"Leave it be, boy. She won't thank thee for interfering."

Medford left it be for ten minutes. Then he bolted out to Prudy's house to find Twig and Earnest in the workshop, glowering at each other from opposite sides of the huge workbench. When Medford appeared in the doorway, Earnest turned his back on his father and bent over the plane he had in his hand, sharpening it with a whetstone.

Medford wasn't sure what to do or say. You didn't question adults very often when you grew up on Island.

Twig set his whetstone down on the bench. "How fare ye, Medford?" he asked. He didn't smile or get up to slap Medford on the shoulder the way he usually did.

"She doesn't want to be a Learned," Medford said. "She wants to work with you and be a Carpenter."

"'Tis what we wanted for her, Medford," Twig said. "But I have Earnest to work with me and Deemer has no one."

"Aye," Earnest said. "
Bend thy Will to thy Neighbor's need.
" He threw his whetstone down so violently that it skipped across the workbench and crashed into a pile of shovels. He jostled past Medford and disappeared.

"She doesn't want to be up there with Deemer all day," Medford said.

"She likes working with the young ones. 'Twill be fine, Medford." But Twig wouldn't look him in the eye.

Clarity arrived as Medford was heading out the gate. She was as pale as Prudy, carrying a basket of vegetables as if it were a basket of anchors. When she saw Medford she put the basket down and threw her arms around him. It was the first time he could remember being hugged, although it felt so familiar he thought Alma must have done it long ago.

"Just be Prudy's friend, Medford," Clarity said. "'Tis all we can do."

Medford didn't get a chance to talk to Prudy alone until four days later, the first day free of Book Learning. Even Deemer knew enough not to keep an apprentice in the Archives all day. Medford was waiting for her when she left Town Hall midafternoon.

Cordelia Weaver's cloth man still hung in the air between them. They couldn't look each other in the eye. But Medford brushed past all that. "How is it?" he asked.

"'Tis fine. 'Twill be fine. I like teaching the young ones." He knew she was saying this as much for her own ears as his.

"What about Deemer and reading in the Archives?"

She pressed her lips together and started walking quickly toward home.

"Prudy?" Medford said, keeping pace with her and trying to look into her face.

"'Tis fine, Medford. Dull as a Mason's morning, reading all that about seeds and harvests and what's in the root cellar for winter. But Master Learned says I must earn the privilege of reading the better journals. I did read about when we got sweaters and our first motorboat."

She stopped walking, looked at him at last. To his surprise, her eyes had brightened. "Some didn't want us to have the motorboats, see, so there was a big fight at Town Meeting. The Learneds said 'twould be the end of us, cutting the Mainland trip to one day and having to bring in the fuel and the parts and such. But more than sixty years have passed and here we be, same as ever. I said that to Master Learned."

"And what did he say?"

"That I should go back to my reading and not make ignorant comments." She grinned, almost like her old self.

"So you're really going to do this? You're going to be a Learned?"

The grin faded. "I have no choice, Medford. All I can do is make the best of it."

They started walking again, slower now. "Will you come to us for supper?" Prudy asked, as if everything was the same as ever.

"I'll have to ask Boyce," Medford said.

"So do it."

So he did.

BY THE TIME
winter blasted in from the sea they were fast friends again, although Prudy spent so much time in the Archives that they hardly saw each other. When they were together, there were the following restrictions: They avoided looking each other in the eye when alone. They did not use the words
bury
or
buried.
And they never mentioned Bog Island.

Under Deemer's influence, Prudy started using Book Talk more often. Sometimes even Medford couldn't figure out what she was saying. Everyone put up with it until the day she came down in the morning and told Earnest, "I dost bid thee good morrow, brother." He dragged her outside and put her head under the pump. That took care of Book Talk, but only for a day or two.

Prudy stopped chewing on her braids. (
In the sight of Others, do not gnaw on thy Nails nor the skin of thy Hands,
the Book said. Deemer said this applied to braids as well.) She never crossed her legs. (
When seated, keep thy feet Firm and Even.
) She rarely laughed (
Show not thy Mirth at any Publick Spectacle
) although she sometimes clapped her hand over her mouth, shoulders trembling. And she no longer allowed anyone to call Deemer Old Prune Face. Medford got sick of sentences that began, "Master Learned says ..."

For his part, Medford did his best not to attract attention that winter. He grew a pigtail, only to discover that it did, in fact, tickle. So he resumed cutting his hair off with his knife. This somehow attracted even more attention than it had before he grew the pigtail. All of his classmates and most adults called him Raggedy Runyuin now.

Except for the conversation he and Prudy had overheard between Marvin Glazer and Patience Waterman, Medford never heard one person mention Essence's banishment. Even Earnest never spoke her name in public, although Prudy said he'd tried to get Twig to find out why she was gone. "Pa said we'll find out soon enough," Prudy reported. "Earnest isn't speaking to Pa much just now."

In February a blizzard dumped four feet of snow on Island in just over a day. To Medford's relief, Book Learning was canceled for the week it took to pack down the streets and sidewalks. This did Prudy no good at all—it just meant she spent more time up in the Archives with Councilor Learned.

The blizzard was even worse news for others. Old Millicent Tanner, Arvid Tanner's grandmother, was sealed into her cabin by a drift and couldn't get to her woodshed, though it was right outside her back door. She died of the cold before Arvid's father could get to her through the snow.

Councilor Freeman Trade came back from the spring's first Trade voyage with tales of something the Mainland drivers called a snowplow. Instead of packing the snow down on the roads with a team of horses and a heavy roller, Mainlanders attached a sheet of metal to the front of a motortruck and scraped the snow right off the roads. The motortruck was faster than horses and didn't mind being out in the storm, so the roads could be cleared sooner.

'"Twill save lives," Freeman told the Council. "And the spring melt-off won't be so messy with no snowpack to soften up the mud. The snow'd just be gone."

Verity Farmer was not impressed, even though she was Councilor for Island Safety and Welfare as well as Head Councilor.

"With no snow on the roads," she asked, "how would I use my sledge?"

"Thou wouldst use wheels the year round," Freeman said.

"But then I'd have to stay on the plowed road," Councilor Welfare said, her face rock-hard as if Freeman were trying to wheedle more than his share of the wheat stores. Even her hair looked like granite.

"Aye," Freeman said, "but in the spring we would no longer be mired in mud."

Councilor Welfare shook her head. "Nope. Not for me."

"Councilor Trade wishes us to import more parts and fuel," Councilor Naming said. "And what have we to Trade with people who don't even wear neckerchiefs?"

"Councilors," Deemer Learned said, "shall we consult the Book?" He flipped pages back and forth, looking for the right place. "Ah," he said at last. "Here 'tis.
Ye need not fear the New. But ye need not embrace it, neither. Weigh carefully the consequences of Convenience.
I believe our ancestors would have continued as we are. Sledges and sleighs be best in winter."

And with that flat pronouncement, the subject was closed.

As Transition drew near, Boyce appeared before the Council to claim four acres of land for Medford on the North Shore Road an hours walk from Town. This caused comment, since even on Island fourteen was young to leave home.

"Something wrong with the boy?" Councilor Welfare asked Boyce.

"He's ready to be on his own, Mistress Head." Boyce would not explain further.

Deemer Learned read them what the Book had to say about the Rights and Responsibilities of a Parent or Guardian. (
Question not a Parent's writ, lest thou be Questioned in thy turn.
)

"Ah," said Grover Gardener, Councilor Physick. "Same passage we heard after thy daughters departure." Deemer gave Councilor Physick a cold pewter look. The other Councilors hastily dropped the discussion and granted Medford his four acres.

Medford wasn't so sure he was ready to be on his own. He would have to trade carving for lumber, shingles, windows, and other fittings for his cabin, and for Twig's time building it with him. He needed seed for vegetables and pots to cook them in. Everything he would carve for the next year was spoken for.

Transition came. Prudy grimly became a Learned and Arvid became a Sawyer. A Pickler, a Smith, and a Dairyman were created.

Medford held on to hope until the last possible minute. But after everyone else had been granted a permanent name the auditorium went silent and he knew. "As to Master Runyuin," Comfort Naming said, "we need more time to make sure he doth merit the name Carver as his foster father proposes. Return next year and we shall see."

Medford tried to be happy that Boyce had at least proposed the name change.

"Once a Runyuin never a Carver," Arvid whispered from the other side of Prudy and Deemer. Boyce acted as if he hadn't heard but his jaw got angular.

Medford wished he could turn his ears off as they made their way outside. Whispers and chuckles mingled with the creak of floorboards. He knew they were directed at him.

Outside, when her turn came, Prudy stomped Pinky and her other shells into dust. Her braids were arranged in a grown-up knot at her neck. Her back was straight and stiff. She did not cry, just tightened her lips.

Medford didn't cry, either. He had collected Sap Tree cones the day before and now crushed them underfoot, trying to look sad. He saw Boyce give his head a little shake, as if his brains had shifted. He'd never seen Med-ford with a Sap Tree cone in his hand.

Prudy had never seen Medford pick up any kind of cone. She looked at him as if she'd never met him before. "Why art thou so red?" she asked.

Everyone was watching, so Boyce stuck out his hand for Medford to shake. Clarity hugged him. Twig punched him on one shoulder, Earnest on the other.

"Well," Boyce said. "Best be getting to work on that cabin."

Two months later, when his cabin was almost finished and Boyce was off at the Trade, Medford took his real collection out from under his bed, packed it in two boxes, nailed them shut, and added them to the small pile of possessions headed for his new house.

Again he promised himself he'd destroy the things and make no more. He'd just wait for quieter times.

Really.

My Grandfather talks of the Belt buckles these old Mainlanders would wear, decorated with Fancy Shapes that must have increased the work of a foundry Tenfold. If I wasted my time on such Useless decoration, my Family would starve.

—Journal of Service Smith, 1756

M
EDFORD'S LAST
Goatman-free morning was four months after Transition.

It was a warm, breezy day in early autumn, Honeybugs droning in the Poultice Weed outside his window. Five months before, it would have been a day for running with Prudy. Now it was a workday, another chance to pay down his debt to Twig and the others.

Medford sat on a high stool at his workbench, feet on a rung halfway up the stool. His skinny legs, crooked at the knee, poked way out sideways like wings. He looked exactly like a Nameless brown seabird.

All morning he'd been blamelessly hacking away at a blameless squared-off bowl—
chock-chock,
chisel on Syrup Tree. But now he noticed, a discolored swirl at one end. The sight made him put down his mallet and lean in close.

The swirl was three inches in length, oval, but with a funnel-shaped tail. It had alternating rings of tawny and rose-red wood. Medford poked at it with his forefinger. He smiled for the first time that day.

"Pinky," he whispered. He reached for a smaller chisel.

There was that feeling again, blowing through his brain like a spring morning.

The feeling scared him. It wasn't real, wasn't right, had no Name. He stifled it, tamped it down to a murmur, something he could control.

And then he acted on it. He ignored all messages sent by the better part of his brain. Disgust, for example, because he'd promised himself he'd never do this again. Resignation, because he'd known he would. Terror, because someone might find out.

Joy, because he could do it at all.

He sculpted a Baitsnail shell, with rosy stripes and a funnel-shaped tail, at the bottom of Twig Carpenter's trencher. He made it too big at first, whittled it down until it was perfect. Three hours later a beach of perfect shells covered the bottom of the bowl.

His hands obeyed his thoughts. He used every skill Boyce had taught him and some he'd made up himself: measuring before he cut, correcting mistakes early, exerting the right pressure on the blade. He colored Pinky with berry juice. "Prudy," he said.

He should have stopped to eat his midday dinner. He should have stopped, period. But he didn't.

In early afternoon he carved a clump of Cropfodder at one end of the trencher. Peeking out from under it was the rough shape of a horn with a ball protecting the tip.

Medford chipped away at the horn without thinking, smoothed it out ... then froze, chisel in midair. What was a horn doing on a beach of shells?

It didn't take long to figure out. It looked just like the hat Cordelia Weaver's cloth man was wearing. He'd thought about Cordelia's Unnameable Woven Object nearly every day for almost a year. Sometimes it was all he could do not to run back to Bog Island and dig the cloth up to look at it again.