The wheelwright’s yard behind Sister Merrow’s washroom was roofed only by the open, rain-washed grey sky and the skeletal branches of a dead willow tree that leaned over the canal wall. The ground was a deep, springy bed of fragrant white ash curls, oak bark, and black blacksmith’s coal cinders that crunched softly under heavy boots.
Eren Tal stood beside his heavy low-bench, his left knee braced against a massive hub of green elm. In his hands, he held a two-handed drawknife with handles of turned applewood, peeling long, semi-clear shavings from an ash spoke. Shhh-clack. Shhh-clack. The motion was as regular and calm as a waterwheel, his broad back flexing beneath a stained leather jerkin that smelled of linseed oil and forty years of sweat.
In the corner of the yard, sitting on a stack of rough-hewn oak felloes covered by an old piece of tarred sailcloth, Pella Rook was weeping.
She didn’t cry loudly. There were no dramatic wails or dramatic academy speeches. She sat curled into a tight ball, her knees drawn up beneath her mud-spattered apprentice tunic, her forehead resting against the rough grain of her handheld slate. Her shoulders shook with small, silent spasms that shook her whole frame. The grease pencil she had carried for six days lay snapped in half in the wood shavings between her boots.
