that he should have left me by the side of the road, which is
how he became my foster father, as he found me on his way
into town when I was a baby just after the time of the
Cataclysm. He raised me and showed me how to fix shoes
and how to count and read and everything, but we do have
our moments when things don’t go right, which seems to
happen more often lately, now that I’m bigger, but that’s
how families work sometimes, you know.
Anyway, here I am now, down by the harbor in the
alley beside Goodwife Filster’s bakery, trying to stay out of
the wind and keep warm. Ark said I should write down
important things while I’m out today, so I will do that and
send them to you, and I think I should write down
something about Newshore and its politics and religion, but
Newshore doesn’t have much of either. I could also talk
about how Newshore got its name, as it used to be a farm
until Istar got mashed and the sea came up and northern
Ergoth turned into an island, and you can still see the
sunken foundation stones of an old barn just offshore, in a
place Ark shows me when we go fishing, but everybody
here knows about that. I could talk about Goodwife Filster’s
sugar rolls, which I can smell baking now, and they are on
my mind a lot because I forgot to get something to eat
before I left the shop the second time, but no one would
want to read that, either. I should just get started on my
assignment.
But, first, I am going to get a sugar roll.
*****
Report Number Two
Same day, about midmorning
Hi, Astinus! I am writing this from the Newshore
magistrate’s jail in cell number four. It is dark in here, and I
cannot see what I am writing or even if my pen is still
working. It smells like somebody drank too much ale and it
didn’t agree with him, so he got rid of it in every way he
could and then didn’t bother to clean it up. I can hear
someone snoring in cell number one, and cell three has
someone in it who needs to use a handkerchief.
How I got here is very interesting, so I will put it down
in case it is important. I was really hungry and was getting
cold in the alley, so I went on into the bakery, which
smelled of fresh-baked sugar rolls and breakfast pastries,
the whirly kind with the melted cheese stuff on top that Ark
says gives him gas but which I like anyway (the pastries
with cheese I mean, not the gas, which is awful).
Ark always buys pastries from Goodwife Filster by him
self. When I tell him I want to get them, he always says,
“That wouldn’t be a good idea,” and he buys the pastries.
Goodwife Filster always frowns at me while I wait for Ark
outside her shop. She knoFws I’ll be eating the sugar rolls
Ark is buying, which I think makes her mad, but I have no
idea why. She’s one of the people I want to understand by
being a recorder, but so far I haven’t figured her out.
When I opened the oak door and went inside where it
was toasty warm from the baking ovens and smelled the
way I imagine Paradise does, Goodwife Filster saw me and
frowned (she never smiles) and said in a nasty voice, “I’m
not open yet, kender.”
I said, “I thought you always opened about now.”
And she said, “Get out of here, before I call the
magistrate. Go on!”
About then I knew I wasn’t going to get a sugar roll or
even a cheese pastry, because Goodwife Filster is funny
sometimes about people who aren’t human like her, only
she’s not really funny as in funny ha-ha, she’s funny as in
funny uh-oh. Ark calls her the Minotaur, on account of she’s
strong and heavy and has such a terrible temper, but he says
it’s because she’s as ugly as one, too.
I was leaving when I remembered what you had asked