From the Scriptorium, just past the New Year
Hello, my friend!
Your letter made me laugh to image the mail carrier’s
expression! If the lighthouse was even half as run down as you’d described it
when you first took up residency, I can only imagine the townsfolk must have
thought it abandoned long ago. Perhaps he thought he was going to come face to
face with a ghost!
Your lioness sounds like a wise creature not to go out in
weather like that! It’s cold even here. It must be bitter and bone-chilling by
the sea. Does the lioness have a name? Well, certainly she must have a name she
calls herself; if only we could understand more of what they say! I wonder what
our animal friends name us?
Ha! Your sister is adept at getting to information that
doesn’t want to be discovered. She should work as a spy. I am glad she’s doing
well. Maybe you should give her the most boring version of the truth possible.
Perhaps that will stop rumors and allow actual fact to surface which could be
of some use to you. Of course, I don’t know her or the villagers nearly as well as you
do, so I could be way off, but that tactic has worked for me in the past quite
admirably!
Some odd things have happened here of late. First, Keith,
the elderly and much beloved former stable master, took a bad fall down some
steps and broke his hip. The physician did all he could and the old man is resting
in reasonable comfort. In a younger person, it would be a bad but recoverable
injury, but in such an old one, well…we are waiting.
As if his accident wasn’t enough, the whole court has been
laid low with a bad illness. I hesitate to call it a plague, for it is not that
same dreaded pestilence from history, nor does it seem as deadly. It has hit
the old ones hard, though, and those who were already sickly or recovering from
an illness or injury. Hence why we are doubly concerned for Keith. We lost a
handful of elders suffering from a lung disease, an injured sentry whose wound
had begun to fester, and a woman recently brought to childbed with a difficult
delivery. As hard as these deaths are to bear, there are three that I find
terribly disturbing: the head cook, her assistant, and the head scribe who had
given me my job in the scriptorium. Aside from my personal sadness, for she had
taken me under her wing since my arrival and was excellent in her duties, these
three were in excellent health. I can’t put my finger on it, but I feel
something is wrong here. Maybe I’m just unsettled from all the other things
that have been happening. We have all been taking extra work in the scriptorium
and in the kitchens to help cover the work that needs doing in the absence of
these women.
At least we have had a bountiful harvest of squash this
season. The Three Sisters – beans, corn, and squash – are the staple foods in
the desert. We should have plenty of stores to get us through the drought of
summer, but we’ll have to be careful. How odd to consider summer the season of
short supply! But it’s so hot and dry here that nothing can grow, so they store
up food in preparation for summer… I imagine I shall be as tired of the Sisters
as you are of fish before long!
I hope you are happy in your research, despite the weather,
and that my letter hasn’t unsettled you as well. I shall be glad when spring
arrives. One of the other scribes, Miri, has become a friend. She has her first
baby due near the spring equinox. I am looking forward to playing the doting “auntie.”
Off to the kitchens with me, which is strange…
~X
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