Chapter 43 – Aiding a Craftsman

“Just here..?” Eva asked, concerned she cut too deep into the block of wood with the chisel.

“Absolutely perfect!” A short ginger woman returned a thumbs up congratulating Anna on the precise carve.

The year began to warm again as it reached its end and the festival neared. Today Anna had been assigned a special task, to help Elly. More specifically to be taught by her.

Elly was one of the adults in the village, and she was in charge of and solely ran the wood carvings business in the village. 

Even though she was very busy this year creating carvings for the town and for other cities–making a good profit in the process–she found time to teach Anna a few tricks.

This was something a lot of the kids did at least once or twice, more if they were interested in improving their skills in wood carving.

Because multiple people in the village were good at their craft, parents would pass their children around to see if they found any activity they particularly enjoyed.

Henry and Albert taught cooking, while Henry focused more on baking, Albert taught proper seasoning and roasting. Jen was also one of the parents involved in this rotation, all parents tried teaching their kids the basics of basic when it came to written communication and maths, but they sent them to Jen when they wanted to see if their kids wanted to learn more. Sadly for Jen, most of the kids didn’t want to learn more. Anna chalked it up to Jen being a bit too enthusiastic and intense in her lessons.

“Okay then… should I just keep continuing?” Eva asked. She was currently working on an apple carving, it was the standard craft that Elly taught new pupils. Eva was doing this because she was the most interested in the craft out of the three of them. She had never done it before, but with her steady hand and her cautious but excited enthusiasm, she was ready to learn the basics. 

“Yep, just take your time if you're worried you’ll make a mistake remember I’m always here to help.”

Elly picked up the bucket of her specially made glue, and she slapped it between two pieces of wood, a darker oak and a lighter wood that Anna didn’t know where it was from.

Time passed and even though the progress was slow, Eva was having a fun time.

Luna and Syrus were keeping quiet as well, it was nice that Eva was doing something else other than mystery-solving or trying to separate her attributes. She needed something fun to do, they both believed.

Elly asked, “Anna, can you get me another log? Fourth from the left box.”

Anna stood up, “Sure, I will be back in a moment.”

As Anna was moving another log to the workstation, she noticed a still-in-progress piece on a newly repaired bench. It looked old, it had some damage due to the rain, and different pieces of wood clearly had been glued together over time, realistically to redo a section that the crafter didn’t like. 

It was a short human about the size of an adult's forearm. However, upon seeing the figure, Anna recognised who it was supposed to be.

“Umm..” Eva paused.

[Quiet Lilly, we don’t want to be rude.] (Luna)

Luna’s warning was to no avail as Elly already noticed Anna’s pause at seeing the figure.

Elly just looked away and smiled, “Nothing to be worried about kiddo,” She saw the piece of wood. “My bro is well rested, thanks for remembering his face though.”

It wasn’t like Anna knew Elly's brother well, Kelly was one of the adults who died in the creature attack when Anna was six. She still was able to remember his face due to the fact only a small number of people lived here in the first place.

Syrus and Luna were unaffected by seeing this sculpture, but Eva was lost in its craftsmanship. Clearly, it had been worked on over and over again, but never seemingly ever closer to completion.

Eva asked, “...Don’t you miss him.” She began to reminisce about her original parents, and the pain of missing them rose again. She absolutely loved Jen and George, but she couldn’t let go of her past.

Elly sighed, “Very, but the fact that none of the children died meant he would’ve died happy.” Only two adults died in that tragedy, fending off the overwhelming number of creatures that attacked from the forest. 

“He was very brave…” Eva mumbled, it was hard for her to imagine doing something like that. She could see Luna and Syrus easily attempting it, but trying to picture herself in that position felt so alien.

“That he was.”

Luna, wanting this conversation to move on so the sombre feelings didn’t swell in Lilly, asked, “Why do you still live here Elly?”

Elly paused–“Trying to jump topic?”–then looked up and laughed, “Fair enough but why do you ask that?”

Eva continued, “Cause… curious?” She was also interested in the reason.

“Fair enough, it's not a question I get asked a lot. Well at all anymore, especially by children, they don't really know why I wouldn’t be here.”

“My Mum is Jen, she teaches me a lot.”

“Probably too much,” Elly laughed, “Well as long as you're having fun with it.”

It wasn’t a secret that Elly made good money. Outside of the farm work she got paid for, her personal business raked her in a fair bit of cash. Not enough to make her crazy rich but because where she chose to live she had quite a massive wallet.

In Cancole the amount you had to pay in tax depended on how much you got paid and where you lived. So in cities, people were taxed more and in smaller and smaller towns one would be taxed less.

However, Cancole cities had restrictions on what and how many amenities a city could have. This affected a place’s entertainment, food, and knowledge accessibility, so if you wanted to live somewhere where you didn’t have to worry about not living comfortably. One had to pay the price.

Jobs in cities did pay well, and they were calculated to pay enough that people could live in said cities. Of course, to add a layer of protection so some civilians couldn’t game the system, a lot of jobs required the individual to be a resident in the city.

Elly answered, “Two reasons mostly, actually it was three. Of course, it's cheap to live here, yeah I have to pay to send my goods to larger cities but it's not much off my profit margins. Sometimes even my business partners will even cover that cost. Two, it's much easier to make shit when you have your material all around you. And three… well I was never good being in the big cities, and honestly it was my brother that convinced me to come down here as he was already living here at the time cause he also hated the cities.”

Moving to save money or to get away from the busyness of the city was a common occurrence. But most returned quickly unsatisfied with their new life. Jen and George as well moved to the village soon after they got married, due to both being low on cash and a short-term economic recession caused by droughts and other factors.

“That makes sense.”

Elly laughed, “That’s good. If the child of the smartest mum thinks I’ve made some sense, then I must’ve done something right.”

“No regrets?”

Elly shrugged, “Regrets are hard to quantify, but I’m guessing no, ask me in five years and I might have a different answer but I have to wait and see.”

Their one-on-one session didn’t last for much longer as it began to get late. Elly wished Anna well and the two parted ways.

They passed by the decorations placed around the village for the festival coming up in only a few days.

During the walk home, Syrus asked, [You thinking about something again Eva?] 

Eva had been quiet and Syrus could feel some unease sprinkle out of her.

[Yes… I’m mentally reviewing my notes…] Eva replied, [Just after that talk and the short discussion on Kelly made me think about the disasters the town has faced.]  

[But haven’t you already thought about them well, a lot?] (Syrus)

[Even that could be an understatement.] (Luna)

[That… is true.] Eva sighed, it was nice and weird to have nice people comment on her behaviour, [I’ve read through the public records in IHere and the village’s diaries, and there were multiple inconsistencies.] 

Eva got the opportunity to spend time at IHere’s library multiple times and she was able to read the village’s records by helping out her mum in the town chief's house.

The farming villages including the one Anna and her family lived in weren’t that old, only reaching just over forty years since their inception. Long enough for plenty of the adults to have been born here, but in the grand scheme of things it was a short time.

However, during that time the village chief or their assistant would write about current events in a journal. The information given was small and occasionally written in code to simplify statements to save as much space as possible.

[You mentioned this before, the public records had more monster attacks and incidents reported in them.] (Syrus)

[Yes…] Anna’s eyes darkened as Eva remembered the facts.[I had initially wondered if the village's diaries just simplified their information too much and certain moments were lost to time. After all, a lot of the inconsistencies could be considered smaller attacks but the dairies still accounted for some of them.]

[...I have had a feeling about where your research has been going Lilly.] Said Luna, [But are you sure about it?]

Luna remembered everything that Lilly collected and looked into. All the prior monster and beast attacks, incidents that occurred, and most importantly the river poisoning incident years ago.

[Yes… the only thing I need to do is somehow read the personal diaries of at least one of the other farming villages–if they have any–to add more evidence to my theory. If they show as many inconsistencies then it should be what I fear… someone is adding fake events to the public history of our home.] (Eva)

[Why would anyone do that? To a town like this?] (Syrus)

[...It's unlikely that it’s just our small town.] (Luna)

[That’s right and it can only happen because it is a small town.] (Eva)

[Still, but why?] 

[...That’s the one thing I can’t answer.] Eva for the first time in this life gripped her fist in anger. Something was going on, someone wanted something, but she had no clue when, what, or who it could be and it frustrated her to her core.

[I see…] Syrus sighed and calmed her emotions.

They could create theories all they wanted but theories only did so much with little proof. 

[I’ve wondered if we should tell our parents about this?] (Luna)

[That… is something I’m unsure about…] (Eva)

[What’s the worst that could happen?] (Syrus)

[The one who faked the information catches on and does something to remove the leak.] (Luna)

[Yeah that could be the worst case but keeping the information to ourselves can create its own problems] (Syrus)

Eva sighed, [Yeah… maybe it's time to get help]

[Let’s wait until they aren’t on the brink of exhaustion.] (Luna)

[And when is that supposed to be?] (Syrus)

[Soon?] Luna hoped.  

With the festival right around the corner, their parents were constantly busy. Every day they left early and returned late. Only having breakfast and dinner before leaving and going off to sleep.

[We… should ask for a day to talk to them.] Eva suggested, [That way we can have a proper open conversation.]

With a quiet agreement, they went home to talk to their parents. 

After some slight stubbornness on Anna’s part saying both parents had to be in their right minds for the talk, a date was settled on for a lengthy talk.

Five days from now, two days before the festival began.