Chapter 93 - The Farm in Irttat
Chapter 93: Tower of Crows 01
The weather turned cool. Summer roses, still heavy with last night’s dew, were battered into disarray by a sudden autumn rain.
From the sheep pen came the large white sheep’s bleating, rapid and urgent, mingled with the sound of rain, enough to make one’s heart beat anxiously.
Lucita stood in the rain wearing rubber boots, holding an oilcloth umbrella over the craftswoman she had hired, gnawing unconsciously on the knuckle of her finger, eyes unable to stop straying back toward the pen.
"Lucita..." Linnea's grip tightened involuntarily on the hem of her sleeve, and she murmured the name softly.
Lucita smoothed back the rain-damp hair on Linnea's head — the fine rain blown sideways under the umbrella had already half-soaked it — and then couldn't help turning to quietly ask the hired hand: "Pardon me…the situation with Snowball right now...there's nothing to worry about, is there?"
The hired hand was a woman in her mid-forties, composed and steady, just the sight of her made the younger ones feel safer.
She gave a small nod and replied patiently in a low voice, “My lord, the lamb has just shown two hooves. The position looks completely normal. Just wait another quarter of an hour or so.”
Lucita nodded, her arm around Linnea, still unable to resist the urge to crane her neck and peer inside.
These sheep had originally been bought by Lucita as breeding livestock for meat. But before they were fully grown, Lucita had already stopped needing the money, so they had been kept on and cared for as companions ever since, bathed every few days, their snow-white fleece spotlessly fine.
Once they had matured, Lucita belatedly considered having them neutered. She arranged a visit to a nearby livestock farm and brought in the hired hand to castrate the ram, hoping to extend its life and ensure its health.
But barely a short time after the procedure, Linnea noticed Snowball, the large white sheep behaving strangely. A question put to the livestock farm's expert revealed that Snowball was already pregnant.
This left the young household completely at a loss.
Viktori was nothing like Irttat, there were no experienced neighbors to guide them through lambing, nor any comprehensive manual on sheep husbandry. Lucita and her household had no choice but to hire an expert.
The hired hand brought in was named Jen. She was a shepherd from the countryside who had assisted in the birth of countless lambs. Though she had never encountered a large white curly-eared sheep like this southern breed, the principles of labor were largely the same.
The pay was generous enough, and the livestock expert was happy to earn the extra income.
By early autumn, it became clear that Snowball was nearly ready to give birth. Lucita's household had no experience with birthing, and no matter how much they had studied, doubt lingered in their hearts. Some of them could barely sleep through the night.
That morning, Linnea noticed the sheep had refused breakfast and immediately sensed something was wrong. Panic surged—so strongly that the fins behind her ears nearly emerged—and she ran to Jenn’s home, practically dragging the woman out of bed.
None of them had eaten breakfast. Violet had taken two precious peaches from the frost-box and given them to Jen as her morning meal, and now stood under the corridor, fidgeting tensely as she waited.
Only Delphine moved without a sound. She drifted silently to Snowball's side and erected a wall of air, blocking the rain mist blowing in through the back window.
Ewes were most sensitive to fright during labor. The household kept their distance outside the pen, speaking only in the softest murmurs, able to do nothing more than peer in through the doors and windows. Inside, Snowball lay alone in the inner corner, and the straw beneath it was already seeping with blood-tinged amniotic fluid. The sight of it made Linnea's heart clench; she longed to go in and help.
Jen had been somewhat intimidated by this family's status at first, but had gradually relaxed over time. She repeated what she had already told them: "If she can deliver on her own, it's really better not to interfere. A lamb born after being touched by human hands may not be recognized by its mother."
Linnea pressed her lips together and nodded.
Then, without warning, Lucita's tightly gripped fingers suddenly went slack.
Here in this courtyard — one, two, three...
Violet, Linnea, Jen, herself, five sheep — not counting Delphine, who was a being of space — that was nine beating hearts in total.
Thud, thud, thud... resonating against her eardrums.
In one particular instant, a boundary shattered — and a new, small, faint vibration entered this world, joining the shared resonance of this courtyard.
Blood pumped from a mysterious small heart. In a single instant, countless lives extinguished; and yet far more life came surging forward in their wake. In the moment when a petal — beaten down by the rain — separated from its calyx, ten thousand sounds fell away at once—
Lucita's eyes went wide.
Delphine's shadow drifted out through the window of the sheep pen. She grabbed Linnea by the shoulder and materialized, her excitement breaking through: "Everything is safe! It's a lamb!"
The petal fell into the rain-soaked soil.
Lucita instinctively looked at Jen’s reaction. The woman with brown hair, usually so composed, took a step back, her face pale as she stared at Delphine, who had appeared out of thin air. She could not speak.
Then Lucita looked at Delphine. Delphine grinned guiltily, and then, inch by inch, began retreating back into the air, until her figure dissolved out of sight again.
Then back to Jen —
She slowly closed her open mouth, and instinctively avoided Lucita's gaze: "M-my... my lord."
"Ms. Jen."
Lucita said her name. Jen looked up reflexively, and met a pair of deep black eyes.
Waterlogged air, the salt-tang of the sea, and then the fathomless depths of the ocean — a sonic wave, from some unseen source, came washing in layer after layer.
Forget it, forget it...
Lucita reached into Jen's sea of memory and found the fragment of Delphine's sudden appearance. She took it between her fingers and gave it a gentle pinch. The fragment dissolved into fine particles of light, falling back into the sea of memory, sending fine ripples spreading across the surface.
Jen's eyes lost focus. She sank into sleep where she stood.
Lucita caught her quickly, and settled Jen into the guest room for the time being. When she woke, she would remember nothing of what she had just seen.
Returning to the pen, the household was gathered at a short distance watching Snowball, who was tenderly licking her newborn.
The lamb was a small, trembling white creature, curled against its mother's side — a fragile, pitiable sight.
Linnea watched closely: "A little ewe."
Violet, cutting the umbilical cord with shears sterilized over fire, tidied as she went with a laugh: "All these years I've only ever hunted, and I never imagined I'd one day be here helping a ewe deliver her lamb."
As she spoke, she passed the shears to Lucita.
A moment passed. No one took them. Violet looked up in puzzlement: "Lucita?"
Lucita seemed to start from a reverie: she came back with a quiet sound of acknowledgement, took the shears, and turned to go clean them up.
Violet rubbed her chin, thoughtful.
The lamb was named by Linnea. Because of its coat, pure white like its mother’s, she was called Cloud.
Lucita pressed her palm to the lamb's neck. A warm, living sensation flowed from that small hollow through her palm and into every part of her body.
Autumn was deepening.
Along the garden fence, wildflowers trembled open one by one in the frost-edged wind. Soapwort bloomed like scattered stars in the grass; indigo harebells and gentians, with purple petals and golden hearts, wore a thin coat of frost on their leaves.
In Viktori, at least in this neighborhood, beyond the large-headed delphiniums and golden-red flowers kept at Clara’s flower shop entrance, cultivated blooms were almost nowhere to be found. Wildflowers pushed up in sparse clusters from cracks in walls and roadside corners, lending the town a thin, watery autumn color.
In recent days, a new life had entered the household, and everyone’s attention shifted accordingly. Linnea alone ran to the sheep pen five times a day.
It should have been harvest season, but the seed shop was unusually busy.
A steady stream of customers arrived, no longer the neatly dressed flower buyers of before, but people worn by hardship from the lower strata of life.
Wheat and dryland rice seeds were selling quickly. Just as Lucita began forming a hypothesis, she noticed a vaguely familiar face.
It was the shop's very first customer, the little girl who had received a shell-storage from her hand.
Children grew quickly. Though only half a year had passed, the girl looked noticeably taller and sturdier.
She still wore the same patched blouse from spring, with two cleverly hidden repairs, and carried a wicker basket. She glanced around nervously, then relaxed when she saw others dressed similarly simply.
By now the girl had learned the shopkeeper's name: "Sister Lucita, good morning!"
Lucita was mildly surprised as well, and blinked at her: "We meet again."
The child lifted the cloth covering her basket, revealing a few loaves of coarsely-made lye bread.
Under Lucita's puzzled gaze, she held the basket out, her eyes bright: "Your seeds were so — extraordinary! The wheat, it was really, truly so full and heavy. Our harvest was more than three times what it was in other years. Everyone was stunned! I told them the seeds were from you."
She glanced at Lucita, checking that there was no displeasure on her face, before continuing: "This… this is the bread my uncle baked from it. He asked me to come and bring it to you!"
Lucita's eyes curved into a smile. She did not refuse, and reached out to accept.
At the time, she had sold eight pounds of wheat seed for a single silver coin—already heavily discounted as an act of kindness. Even the storage shell she had given away had seemed like nothing more than a small gesture.
Lucita had considered it a small and effortless gesture, and had never expected anything in return from people for whom survival was already a struggle. To receive an earnest, thoughtful thank-you gift from out of the blue filled her entire spirit with warmth.
The bread had been milled from flour that looked very finely ground — no grit, hardly a trace of bran. The loaves were a toasted golden-brown, fairly firm to the touch, the fermentation a little lacking, but the ingredients were clearly given with care.
The scent of wheat: familiar as always.
A grain of wheat — containing life and boundless possibility — buried in the soil. It takes root with water and the nutrients in the earth; its tender shoot breaks through the soil layer covering it and meets the first ray of sunlight.
The growth of a stalk of wheat holds within it countless invisible deaths and rebirths. It interacts with the entire world, crossing countless layers of reality, until at last it concentrates all the sunlight and rain it has ever encountered into a dense, heavy grain, sending its signal of ripeness out into the world.
Ground and pressed and kneaded and fermented and baked, it becomes the gift now resting in the basket in Lucita's hands.
If an animal's heart is inside its own body, then where is a plant's heart?
Everywhere.
This was wheat-scent, and within that wheat-scent, the pulse of the soil rolled and turned.
That pulse seemed to resonate with Lucita's own heartbeat, the great flood of life felt like it was flowing through her veins as blood.
Lucita stood holding the basket, and went perfectly still for a moment.
The door to the mystery of life was right before her, separated from her by no more than a layer of cellophane, yet it was weightless and elusive, impossible to touch.
She pressed down the roughness in her voice and crouched to meet the girl's eyes earnestly: "Little sister, what is your name?"
"Cate. My name is Cate."
"Little Cate." Lucita repeated it. "Thank you for the bread. I love it very much. Will you take me to see your wheat field?"
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