Master Forster, Jim, Forster of all of Donnell's Arc

Chapter 2 of 3

The rider left at first light seven days later. Jim watched him ride north until the trees swallowed him. Then Jim walked back to the mill and stood by the cold blade and understood what he had actually sent. Silver. A knife. A rough drawing. His father would look at those three things and laugh. A drawing of a chair with an X through it would not move a man who had chosen that chair for six years. Jim had sent a summons without a gift worth the trip. He had four days to fix it. The rider would reach the cabin on the fourth day. If Jim could send a second parcel behind him, a faster runner could catch him at the halfway stream. But the parcel had to be something the old man could not refuse. Jim thought of what his father loved. Wood grain. A clean cut. A blade that held. Jim was a smith. He could send a saw. He had already sent the idea of a saw. His father would want proof the town valued the work, not the tool. Jim walked past the fence line, past the school, and stopped at the little writing house at the edge of the yard. Pink resin streaked the boards. Young pink saplings stood in bundles on the porch. He had heard the curator kept ledgers there — thick books of every trade in Donnell, signed by every hand. Jim climbed the steps and knocked. He asked for one page. He asked for forty-one signatures. A petition. A written vow from every household in Donnell that the sawmill belonged to his father, that the post of Master Forester was held for him, that the wage was fixed and the cabin was ready. On paper. In ink. Bound. He spent the day walking roof to roof. He stood in doorways while men and women set down bowls and picked up quills. He collected thirty-nine names by dusk. Two households were out at the fields. He would catch them at dawn. He returned to the writing house at first dark. The curator had a fresh sheet ready and pressed the signatures onto a single folded page, sealed with pink wax from a sapling's cut bark. Jim held it and knew it was heavier than any coin. He found a boy who could ride hard and paid him the last of his stored silver. The boy left before moonrise with the sealed petition tied inside his shirt. On the fifth morning the boy came back alone. Jim met him at the gate. The boy handed over the petition, unopened, with a second page folded around it. The rider had caught his father at the cabin. His father had refused to break the seal until he saw his son's face. The old man was coming. He wanted to read the names himself, at the mill, before he signed anything.