Old Green World Read Free Page B

back. And when he buried his face into the shadow, feeling its pulse and skin and warmth, he was the shadow, too, and they were the forest, too. When his father woke him, he had a moment of not knowing where he was.
    Arto put out some of last night’s biscuits with a strong cheese and some radishes from the garden. He made some eggs and barley tea while Albert loaded up the cart.
    They ate in quiet until Arto said: “You haven’t talked since last night. We didn’t mean to embarrass you.”
    “I know.”
    “And we won’t speak of it. Mama Mura told us that it’s difficult.”
    “There’s no it . There’s nothing to talk about. Everyone’s made up a story about nothing. I’m fine. I love food and fighting and shooting arrows. That’s all.”
    Arto smiled and patted his hand. “Probably it will die down at the market around lunch, and you can go out and hunt a bit.” He took a sip of his tea. “I want you to get some things to read from Harriet today. You haven’t been bringing books home. You didn’t think I would notice, did you? I told Harriet I would trade some vegetables and beer. Get whatever you want.”
    “No, don’t do that,” Albert said. “It’s not worth the cost. I’m almost out of school, and I won’t need to read after that.”
    “You need to read for the rest of your life, all right? You don’t know how good it is, that you and all the children in Eden-town get to spend years in school. In the rest of the world, you don’t have the Adepts healing everyone and teaching them how to live. When you get away from the Islands, you’re lucky to eat, much less go to school. You aren’t going to waste that.”
    “Do they read in wars?” Albert said. “You’ve been in one, and I haven’t, so I don’t know. I didn’t get the impression that there was a lot of reading, though.”
    Arto looked away from Albert. He gave more attention to his bite of biscuit and cheese than it needed. “You’re smart, aren’t you? Smarter than your father.”
    The Adepts had taught them in school how to identify emotional states in their bodies: they taught it when the children were very little, using games and play. Albert remembered the lesson about shame, about the tightness of breath in the top of his stomach, just beside the ribs. That was where his shame lived, and it sang to him now. “I’m sorry, Papa. I don’t govern myself.”
    “Yes,” Arto said. “You are going to war. And I don’t sleep anymore because I know this. But what happens when you get back? This is what I try to think about. I try to think about when you come home. Maybe someday I will think about it enough to sleep.
    “And, when I finally sleep, I’ll dream that you come home with honor, and that you move into a nice house. Maybe a farm, or maybe you will live with Thomas . . . or, no, because you don’t love Thomas, do you? But you’ll be home. On the Island, in civilization. You taught me that word. Do you remember that? I don’t need much from civilization. It’s not really my world. Civilization means we have this farm, and no one is trying to kill us. That’s all I need. But you, civilization is your world. You learned everything from the Adepts, and you learned it better than anyone, better even than Thomas, although only his mother is brave enough to say that out loud.
    “So I’ll dream of you coming home a gentleman, with strength and honor and the power of your mind. All the riches you will have!” Arto said, with a burst of enthusiasm that took him halfway out of his seat. “I can barely imagine. I told you how it was in Viru, it wasn’t like that at all. Everyone was poor always. Hell, one winter it was so bad somebody tried to eat me .”
    “That’s right, the one time, and the man was crazy and you had to run away.” Albert had heard the story many times and very much wanted to preempt hearing it again.
    “You’ll never understand until you see it,” Arto said. “All these things that have