twenty-two years ago and left without telling anyone their next address, but I guess you know that part, since you're a historian.
I looked over at the wall mirror then and saw all three feet nine inches of me in the candlelight, with my dark brown hair combed out and bound in a high tassel and my gray robes with the nice silver borders and my writing paper and once-holy symbol and official steel pen. It was strange, because I didn't look like me, and that made me feel funny. I looked like a kender I didn't quite know.
Ark stood behind me, and in the candlelight he looked old, and that made me feel funny, too. He's about average in size for a human and is almost bald and has a hooked nose and a potbelly, and I knew who he was, but just then he didn't look much like the man who had raised me and told me funny stories when I was sick and took me fishing and bailed me out of jail every so often. Maybe it was the hour, but he looked old and tired, like something was both ering him. I worry about him sometimes.
Ark sighed after a moment and said, 'Well, let's get started. I've got a lot of work to do today — and so do you, of course.' Then he put his hand on my head and used some big words that I didn't know, but you probably do, and when he was done, he said, 'Walnut, you are now my official field recorder. Your mission is to go out among the people of Newshore and record all things of importance. I know I can trust you to do a good job. Don't come back until sundown, stay out of jail, take lots of notes, don't upset anyone, and let me get my correspondence done. I'm a little behind, and Astinus will use my skin for book covers if I don't get those reports to him.'
(I should say here that I certainly hope you do not intend to skin Ark, Astinus, especially not for book covers. You may skin me instead if you have to, as Ark is late with his correspondence only because I made paper fishing boats out of his last reports. I thought they were just waste paper, like when he writes letters to you when he's mad and tells you to jump off the roof of your library but then never sends them. He says it makes him feel better, and he gives the letters to me to make boats out of them. I grabbed the wrong stack and am sorry.)
Anyway, I am now a field recorder, which Ark tells me is the first step toward becoming a real-live scribe and eventually an amanuensis, which is the most incredible word, isn't it? I've wanted to be a scribe for years, ever since Ark taught me to read and write, and I've learned almost every word there is, except the biggest ones (except for 'amanuensis') and I've practiced and practiced at my writing until Ark says that if I write on the walls or furniture one more time, he will put me in jail himself, but I think he was only kidding, except maybe once or twice.
I am determined to make Ark proud of me, and after the ceremony, I said, 'Ark, I will be the best field recorder ever, and you are going to be so proud of me that you will bust.'
Ark smiled without looking happy and said, 'Good, good. Just stay out of jail.' Then he hurried me toward the door and gave me a pouch with some hard rolls and cheese and dried bacon and raisins and other stuff in it, which I dropped when I cut through the Wylmeens' garden on the way into town and their big brown mastiff, Mud, chased me out. Stupid dog.
I tried to get my pouch back, but Mud tore it apart and ate it, so I went back to the shoe shop after that to get another bag for breakfast, and when I went in, Ark was sitting at the kitchen table, sound asleep. He had all of his papers out and his pens and his ink bottles, and he had just started what looked like a long report to you about the political and religious situation in Newshore, but he must have been pretty tired, what with staying up so late last night, and I wondered if it was because I had been up late, too, because I was so excited about being made a recorder, and maybe I shouldn't have tried to make tea, because I spilled hot water all over the dirt floor in the kitchen so that it turned to mud. I didn't want to bother Ark, so I went looking for food, and while I was doing that I found his 'facts machine,' which is why you are getting my reports the moment I write them down.
The facts machine was in a leather satchel by Ark's feet, and I couldn't help but look at it, because Ark usually throws a fit if I get near it. He says gnomes and wizards made it and that all you have to do is put a page of paper in the machine and it sends the page by magic to your library so you can read all the facts right away. What will those gnomes and wizards think of next? Ark said only the most trusted scribes get their own facts machines, and the machines are the most incredible secret, and I must never tell anyone about them, and I never have, not even Widow Muffin, who comes over to see Ark and me now and then and is the sweetest person, so don't worry, because you can trust me.
As I was looking through the satchel I also found the letter you sent to Ark yesterday, telling him he had better send in his assignment to find out how people feel about the Cataclysm (as you call it) and how peeved you were that Ark had not done so before now. I also read the part where you said you understood Ark's concerns about talking to the wrong people and being lynched, but his job required dedication, and you seemed to imply that being lynched wasn't half as bad as what you had in mind if Ark missed his next deadline, which was tonight at sundown.
You said that Ark's assignment was important because you were concerned that the purpose and lessons of the Cataclysm were being lost in a sea of deliberate ignorance and intolerance that could lay the foundation for future disasters (I'm copying from your letter now), and you said you counted on Ark and others like him to keep you informed of the condition of the land and its peoples, because if the peoples couldn't get off on the right foot (or is that feet?), then maybe they never would and one day we'd be sorry.
Well, I was amazed that anyone wouldn't know why Istar had a flaming mountain dropped on it, since Istar was such a poop nation and went around enslaving and torturing and killing people, all the while saying the people were being killed for their own good, until the gods got fed up and turned Istar into the bottom of the Blood Sea of Istar for everyone else's own good. Ark taught me all that, and I always thought everyone knew that but then I never asked, and I was surprised to read that Ark said he was afraid to ask, and I couldn't figure out why not understanding the Cataclysm meant we would be sorry later. Are we going to be tested on it?
Anyway, you had told Ark to send in his report by sundown tonight or else, and I knew Ark couldn't very well do that while he was asleep, so I've decided to do his work for him and surprise him when he wakes up. Isn't that great? I'm going to find out what everyone thinks of the Cataclysm, and I'll write it all down and send it right to you on the facts machine, which I took with me. Ark will be so proud! Sometimes, when he's bailing me out of jail, he says 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
