A tasty dinner of seafood stew, fresh bread, and soft cheese greeted them in the common room. The tension Ilika had noticed at lunch seemed to have disappeared. The students chatted about the clothes they were getting, and some of them described finer clothes they had seen and dreamed of wearing.
“With our new clothes, can we go into Cobble Town?” Neti asked, a huge smile on her face. “I used to live there.”
Many eyes turned in her direction with a mixture of shock and wonder.
“Tell us all about it!” Buna said from across the table after quickly swallowing a bite.
“You can wait for the privacy of our room if you want,” Ilika said.
“I don’t care. Miko knows. I’ve had three different masters who bought me for . . . you know . . . affection. Two of them lived in Cobble Town. But even though I’ve lived there, I could never go out and see anything.”
“How did you become a slave?” Kibi asked.
“I think my parents couldn’t pay their taxes or something like that. I was about six. I saw my mother in a slave compound about two years ago. She was dying.”
Everyone was quiet for a moment.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Ilika said softly. “I think we should wait on going into Cobble Town until you have boots and have practiced carrying yourselves with confidence. We’ll start in the marketplace. That reminds me — when I go out tomorrow, I need to reserve the bathing pool.”
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“We get to take another bath?” Buna asked with wide eyes.
Ilika only smiled.
“I think I hear some music out in the plaza,” Sata said with her head cocked.
They could faintly hear pipes and a drum. Smiles slowly grew as they listened.
“Shall we go over to the bakery and see if Tori has any tarts, then go listen to the music?” Ilika proposed.
Everyone nodded excitedly.
“Some things to remember. We walk, in twos or threes, calmly and confidently. We respect all people we pass, even if they were hated masters once. Everyone okay with that?”
Some had to think about it, but eventually they all agreed.
After finishing dinner, they stepped out into the twilight and crossed the plaza toward the bakery.
“Well, well! This is quite a following, you have,” the baker said while looking them over.
“These are my students. Everybody, this is Tori, the best baker in the city.”
They all greeted him, most sharing their names.
“If it wasn’t for Tori’s knowledge of the city,” Ilika explained, “I never would have found you guys. He suggested I look in the slave market.”
The baker looked puzzled. “These are slaves? I mean . . . other than Sata?”
“Not anymore,” Ilika said with a faint smile.
“They seem as well behaved as any apprentices.”
“They are. I wouldn’t have picked them otherwise. We were wondering how you’re stocked on those delicious tarts.”
“Hmm . . .” He went to the back and opened the oven. “Ahh! Can you smell that?” The aroma of sweet dough and berries filled the air. “These look done.” He grabbed a large shingle. “They’re hot!”
“We’ll be careful,” Kibi said with her dark eyes gleaming in the lantern light.
The baker took a long look at Kibi, who was standing close to Ilika, and
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smiled.
Ilika dug into his pouch and brought out five copper pieces. “Some for the children, of course.”
“I know some who will be by any minute now with hungry looks on their faces.”
“Thank you, Tori,” Neti said with almost an air of nobility in her speech.
“Thanks!” several others echoed.
“Good-bye, all!” the baker called as he turned to another customer.
The group followed the sound of the music to the stage between the market and the palace. Torches flickered, giving the musicians some light and casting a mysterious glow over the crowd. Hundreds of people sat on benches or the ground, or stood at the back.
Ilika spotted a free patch of ground off to one side, and gestured for everyone to squeeze in and sit close together. Most of the students plopped onto the ground without hesitation. Sata helped Mati down, then sat beside her. Ilika passed out the tarts as soon as everyone was settled.
Two pipers created the melody, a drummer set the rhythm, and a four-stringed instrument added harmony. The simple tunes somehow captured the feel and rhythm of life in the medieval walled city. Ilika noticed that most of the audience appeared, by their clothing and manners, to be from Rumble Town.
The song ended and all the people clapped, cheered, or stomped to show their appreciation. The musicians began a new song, a slow ballad about a wanderer who endlessly sought his lady love.
Unknown to Ilika and the students, a merchant and his slave wandered through the area. The well-dressed man stopped to talk with someone and the slave sat down in the dirt to listen to the music.
Suddenly the gruff voice of a guard shouted, “Hey! No slaves allowed!”
Most of Ilika’s students were immediately on their feet, looking very frightened and ready to bolt.
“Kibi, Rini, sit down!” he said as loudly as he dared. “Buna, sit!” He pulled Kodi down beside him. Sata tried to comfort Mati and Boro. Miko and Neti were holding onto each other and staring with wide eyes.
Soon they were all back on the ground, but still looking around like scared
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rabbits without a rabbit hole.
“Relax! Focus on the music!” Ilika coaxed.
“They acted like the guard was talking to them! ” a man sitting near said in a suspicious tone.
“They’re new students of mine, not used to all the noise in the city,” Ilika explained.
The man chuckled, and other people nearby seemed to also accept the explanation. The merchant and slave were gone and the guard had moved on.
Soon, no one seemed to be looking at them. Ilika allowed himself to breathe again.
The next musical piece featured only the drummer while the other musicians danced wildly around him. Most of the people began clapping to the beat, and Ilika joined, hoping his students could put the incident behind them. Kibi was smiling and clapping, and Neti and Miko clapped each other’s hands. Kodi and a few others still looked nervous.
All the musicians returned for a lively piece, perfect for any victory celebration. The people were so moved, they stood and clapped at the end, and Ilika and his students did the same. As the musicians put away their instruments, the crowd slowly filtered away into the streets of the city.
Once the group was alone, several students started to speak, guilty looks on their faces, but Ilika put a finger to his lips. He ambled to one of the water troughs to rinse his hands, and they joined him.
Sata and Mati started back toward the inn, and the rest paired up and followed. In the sleeping room, a tall candle glowed from the table to welcome them.
“That was a close call,” Ilika said as soon as they were settled on their beds.
“Did everyone learn from it?”
All nine former slaves nodded. Sata remained still.
“Miko, that was an example of poor leadership,” Ilika continued. “One of the duties of a leader is to prepare his charges for what might happen. I’m sorry I didn’t think of that.”
“We’re sorry too,” Rini said with feeling.
“No apologies necessary. The important thing is that you are not slaves, and your best strategy for staying free is to never act like slaves.”
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A long silence lingered.
“Okay. I believe most of you need ointment on your wrists, Buna gets the other ointment for her rashes, and Boro needs his wound cleaned.”
The large boy moaned.
“Other than that, we’ll just have a relaxed evening, share some massages or hair combing or quiet conversation, and people can go to bed whenever they want. I’ve had a long day, and I’m not good for much more.”
After glancing at Boro’s back and the other sores and rashes, Ilika took a moment to look at his notes. Before long he felt gentle hands on his shoulders, then a comb carefully working the tangles out of his hair.
“Hi,
Kibi.”
“Hi,
Ilika.”
“Thanks.”
“You’re
welcome.”
Deep Learning Notes
Some people would say Neti is “in denial” because she had been owned by three different men “for affection” but handled it gracefully (without any attempt to avoid it). What do you think? Is it possible for a person to experience something that would deeply trouble most people, but not be troubled?
Ilika challenged them to “respect all people we pass, even if they were hated masters once.” By thinking about it beforehand, they were better prepared for that situation, and would probably handle it well if it came up. Would you be able to keep your mouth shut in that situation?
Why did Tori the baker not, at first, realize they were slaves? What “markers”
is he used to seeing in slaves that were no longer present in nine of Ilika’s students?
Unfortunately, a different situation related to their past slavery came up, one
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they had not discussed, and it did not go well. As the leader, Ilika apologized for not preparing them, and Miko learned how hard leadership can be.
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Chapter 24: Consonant Stops and Nursery Rhymes The day after the public musical performance was bright and sunny, and everyone was in good spirits. A bowl brimming with berries came with their porridge, and Ilika bought fruit juice for everyone.
Back in their room, Sata stood in the middle of the floor and took several deep breaths. The others could tell she had something to say.
“I used to think my life was rough, but now I know I was wrong. You guys have been through a lot more than I have, and I’m really glad you’re my friends now.”
“You’ve worked hard and had few choices too,” Kibi said with sympathy.
“We’re glad you’re our friend.”
“I’ve probably had some choices . . . I don’t know . . . but the first time I ever opened my mouth and said I wanted something was to be tested by Ilika.
And I’m sure glad I did. I’ve always wanted to learn things, but there was never anyone to ask, except . . . you know, my mother about cooking and sewing and stuff. Even though we’ve just started, already the things I’m learning are swirling around in my head. I think I counted dots in my dreams last night . . .”
The room erupted with laughter.
“The truth is . . . my parents are going to give the inn to my brother, and I’m sure he’d let me work here, but someday he’ll probably get married, and then there would be two women running the inn . . .”
“Bad idea,” Buna said with a scrunched face.
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“Yeah. And . . . there’s something out there I want to find, something I don’t know anything about yet, but I want to keep looking until I find it.”
She sat down on her bed and Mati reached across to touch her on the shoulder.
“Thanks, Sata,” Ilika said. “Speaking of learning, how many of you can read?”
Sata’s hand came up about a quarter of the way. Everyone else was motionless.
“Your written language uses letters that stand for sounds,” Ilika began.
“But there aren’t enough letters in your alphabet, so some letters make two or three different sounds, depending on the word. Other times, two letters are used together to represent a single sound. As a final difficulty, some letters are completely silent, but they may change the sound of other letters.”
“Who made it so complicated?” Toli asked with a disgusted look.
Ilika smiled. “It’s so complicated because no one made it — it evolved over a long period of time, and has roots in four or more different languages. We’ll start with vowels, continuous sounds made with an open mouth. I will write and speak, then you speak.”
He wrote A. “Ahhhhhhhhh like in bar.”
“Ahhhhhhhhh,” they echoed, some a little more shyly than others.
He wrote A again. “Aaaaaaaaaa like in cat.”
“Aaaaaaaaaa,” they repeated, some looking confused.
He wrote E. “Ehhhhhhhhh like in pet.”
“Ehhhhhhhhh.”
He wrote E again. “Eeeeeeeeee like in keep.”
“Eeeeeeeeee,” they repeated.
When finished with vowels, they had six letters making nine sounds, and most of the students looked very frustrated.
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“I know some of you are ready to throw things at me, but it will all make sense as soon as we learn the consonant stops, sounds that are just a little burst to put before or after a vowel.” He wrote P, T, and K, then pronounced them.
They
repeated.
“Can you feel the three places in your mouth? Lips, gums behind the teeth, and the roof of the mouth?”
Most of them nodded.
“Those were unvoiced — no vocal cords making sound. When we add voice, we get three more letters.” He wrote B, D, and G, and added, “This is your hard G.” Then he pronounced them, and they echoed.
He wrote P, B, T, D, K, and G, and spoke aloud the series of sounds. The students were quite tongue-tied until they saw the pattern, Kibi and Sata leading the way, most of the others not far behind.
“Now we can make many words.” Ilika went to the table and spread out a piece of large paper with dozens of two and three letter words. His students gathered around and were kept busy for the next hour, practicing the words until they were making few mistakes.
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The sound of knocking came from the door.
Kibi opened it to find the innkeeper and a wrinkled man with boots on his feet, boots tied over both shoulders, and the outline of a boot on his tunic.
“Ilika, I think the bootmaker is here.”
“Good time for a break from reading.”
“Yeah!” many agreed.
For the next hour the jolly bootmaker traced each student’s feet onto a piece of paper, telling little nursery rhymes as he worked.
“The dragon of the east always knows when apprentices have avoided their chores. You could line up five apprentices in front of his dark, mysterious cave, just like five toes on a foot, and he would skip over the first three,” he said, touching the first three toes of Buna’s foot, “because they were the good apprentices, and go right to the fourth one!” he said, pinching that toe and making her squeal and laugh.
The boys received more serious jests.
“There was this one bootmaker who wasn’t very good and always left a nail sticking up somewhere inside the boot.”
Boro tried to keep a straight face as the man traced his feet.
“Funny thing was, the nail always hit somewhere soft and tender,” he said, and continued tracing as he hummed. Suddenly, when Boro least expected it, the man’s pencil made contact with soft flesh. “Right about there!”
Boro burst out laughing when he saw the bootmaker’s cheesy grin.
“I bet you haven’t heard about the snake that likes to lick toes, have you?”
Neti drew her feet back under the stool, but she was smiling.
“It’s okay. Those tender, juicy toes can come out because the snake only likes to lick them . . .”
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She slowly brought her feet back out to be traced.
“You know, snakes are very picky about what they eat. If it doesn’t smell like a mouse and taste like a mouse, they just aren’t interested. And you know how snakes hold onto a mouse with irresistible strength and slowly swallow it?”
“Yeah,” Neti said, looking into his wrinkled, smiling eyes.
“Well, same thing happens when they find toes they like!”
She tried to pull her feet back, but it was too late. His strong fingers held both of her big toes tightly. He grinned up at her, and she couldn’t stop herself from howling with laughter.
The man, however, was very careful when he came to Mati. He listened to her describe her physical challenge, made the tracings, and added some symbols to the sheet.
“I can have your boots done in six days!” the bootmaker announced after the last tracing.
Ilika squinted thoughtfully for a moment. “What if an extra silver piece came with each pair?”
“Ahhh! With my son helping, three days!”
“Good. Three days. Thank you!”
After the bootmaker departed, the students gathered back at the table.
“It wasn’t easy,” Ilika began, “but I managed to make some sentences from the words we’ve studied so far. Try to figure them out silently.” He took a blank sheet and wrote. After a minute, several of the students were laughing.
“If you think that was bad, try this!” Ilika wrote again.
This one took longer, but Kibi was soon chuckling.
“Okay,
last
one.”
This time Sata was the first to break into giggles, but she soon had company.
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Ilika quickly learned that Boro, Buna, and Kodi were his slowest readers, and he took the remainder of the morning getting them comfortable sounding out all the words. Finally, they received the honor of reading the three silly sentences aloud.
Deep Learning Notes
Throughout most of our history, women have had few rights over property and wealth. It seemed perfectly natural to Sata’s parents to give the inn to their son, and marry off their daughter. This situation didn’t begin to change in our world until the 20th century. It took so long because those in power (men, until recently) do not willingly give up their power.
Ilika’s vowel chart may be a little different from the one you learned in school because he was only presenting, in that lesson, the pure vowel sounds, those that can be made continuously. Several sounds that are often called vowels in English are actually two sounds slurred together, such as the “long A” which is a slurring of “short E” (PET) and “long E” (KEEP).
The six consonant stops that Ilika presented are the most common, and all we need for English. Some made farther back in the mouth, such as the glottal stop, are used in other languages.
Does it appear that the bootmaker knew his pencil was made from a poisonous metal?
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Chapter 25: Freedom is Worth a Million
“I’ve always felt I was in the wrong place,” Kibi said from her heart when they returned from lunch. The others all gathered to listen.
“I’ve always loved words, especially important words that say a lot. I learned quickly that I couldn’t ask my parents about words. The list Ilika gave us this morning would have been enough for them. So I talked to every traveler who came by. When my father found out, he started beating me and telling me strangers were dangerous.”
Everyone could see she was holding in tears.
“By the time I was eight, everyone around knew I was smarter than my parents. When another farmer came by to trade something, he’d talk to me first. So my parents told me that if I was so smart . . .” She stopped to deal with her deep feelings. “If I was so smart, I should go off on my own.
“They were wrong,” she continued with mixed sadness and anger. “I needed them. But I went, because I was really tired of the beatings. I didn’t last long, of course. Once I was a slave, most of the masters liked me because I could figure out how to do complicated things. But their wives hated me. I knew words they didn’t know. I knew how to do things they couldn’t. So they had me beaten and whipped when their husbands weren’t around. I learned to keep my mouth shut.”
As Kibi finished her story, she looked for acceptance in Ilika’s eyes.
He looked back and smiled. “I, on the other hand, picked you because you are smart, and because you have good language skills. And I want you to tell
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me any time you think I’m wrong.
“In fact,” he continued, speaking to the entire group, “I’ve decided to make leadership a regular part of your lessons. Each of you will lead lessons or activities, and then we’ll talk about what worked and what didn’t, for both the leader and the group.”
“Girls too?” Kibi asked with slightly narrowed eyes.
“Of course girls too!” Ilika replied firmly. “Where I come from, there are no differences between boys and girls in anything, except . . . you know . . .”
Several students giggled, mostly girls, and several blushed, mostly boys.
“Today I have to do something for about an hour. So I am putting . . . Mati
. . . in charge of doing a good review of the digits zero to nine, both counting and recognition.”
Kibi smiled.
Ilika’s first stop was the hat maker on Market Way. He selected a cloth sun hat with a neck strap, and arranged for the hatter to come to the inn the following morning.
After reserving the bathing pool, Ilika went by the scribe’s shop where his nine bills of freedom were ready. The scribe assured him the official copy had been filed that morning. Ilika paid for the work, and slipped the copies into his shoulder bag.
Just for peace of mind, he went by the city clerk’s office near the plaza to see if they had indeed been filed. They were in a pile of things to be done someday, when nothing important was waiting. A large silver piece got them moved to the pile of things that were important.
When Ilika returned to the inn, Buna was counting the toes on Toli’s feet, and everyone was laughing.
“Five!” she announced dramatically.
Many of them looked at Ilika to see if he was upset with them.
“Buna, you’d better check the other foot,” Ilika said, “see how many toes are over there.”
“Five there too!”
Everyone laughed again.
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“So,” he said when the laughter died down, “what sort of leader was Mati?”
“Funny!” Kodi said.
“She was great,” Kibi added. “We really did review, we were just running out of things to count.”
“Did you have any trouble with your students?” Ilika asked Mati.
“Yeah! They were in a goofy mood. I sure am glad I didn’t have to teach them anything new.”
“Uh oh. I’m in trouble, because now I have to teach them something new.
But first, I want you all to know that you are officially NOT slaves anymore.”
The room broke into cheers and whistles.
“I have copies of your bills of freedom, they look like this,” he said, holding one up. “This is my signature, and this is the scribe’s seal. I’ll read one, and as soon as you know the rest of the alphabet, I’ll teach you to read them yourselves.”
All ten students became very quiet.
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“Wow . . .” Rini said with amazement. “Thank you!”
Ilika nodded. “Is it okay that I keep these safe for you in my shoulder bag?”
“I want to see mine first, please,” Neti said.
“Me
too!”
“Me
too!”
“I should have guessed.” Ilika passed them out, and they all sat on their beds gazing at their bills of freedom as if in a trance, smiles frozen on their faces. Sata kept silent, very happy for her new friends.
After a suitable time, Ilika broke the spell. “Are you all ready to learn some numbers now?”
They slowly came out of their trances and placed their precious pieces of paper back into his hands for safekeeping.
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“Numbers wouldn’t be very useful if we couldn’t count anything greater than nine,” Ilika began.
“We couldn’t even use both hands or both feet,” Mati admitted, “without getting to ten, and only Sata knows how to write a ten.”
“Yes, to make numbers that can express very large values, we have to break them into several different places. Each place has a digit in it, but the digit means something different in each place.”
He drew seven boxes side by side on a sheet of paper. “The place on the far right is always the ones place, no matter what base you’re using. The digit in that place means just what it says. If there’s a three in it, it means three.
“The next place to the left is the number of bases in our value. Our base is ten, the number of fingers we have, so the digit we put in this box doesn’t mean the digit itself, it means that many tens. Let’s try it.”
“First I look for whole groups of ten, and there are three of them. Then I look for left-over ones. The answer is thirty-five.”
Some students glowed with understanding, while others were unsure.
Ilika worked through several more examples, then had each student try one.
When he felt they had mastered two digit numbers, he introduced the hundreds place using squares of dots, and the thousands place with cubes of
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dots sketched as best he could.
“Above the thousands place, there’s no easy way to draw them. Just remember that each place, going from right to left, is ten times more than the one before it. Now let’s review all the places, including the larger ones we haven’t studied yet . . .”
Toli’s eyes lit up as his teacher moved from ten, to hundred, to thousand.
“Ten thousand, or ten to the fourth power,” sounded like a magic spell, and Toli craved to learn all about it. When he heard, “One hundred thousand,” his eyes opened wide with wonder.
“One million has six zeros,” Ilika explained, “and it is ten to the sixth power. Sata, you once asked me about it, but at the time, I was exaggerating.
People often say a very large number when they just mean way too many. A real million is a thousand thousands.”
Sata wore a very uncomfortable expression, almost a frown, as she
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struggled to comprehend the huge numbers she was learning.
Deep Learning Notes
Kibi experienced something in her younger years that most counselors who work with families have seen: if the intelligence of a young person passes that of his or her parents, the family can easily become unstable and fall apart.
Luckily, this doesn’t happen very often while the youth is still living at home.
When it does, most parents’ egos are sorely tested. If the young person had wisdom and discretion, they might be able to handle the situation gracefully.
Alas, wisdom and discretion rarely come in youth, even when intelligence does.
Ilika believed boys and girls were equal in all things (except, or course, anatomy). Does this rule out any possible explanations for his origin?
On the bills of freedom, Ilika had to sign his name. As you can see, he wasn’t very good at the local form of handwriting.
It is natural to wonder how the students could be counting on their fingers one day, and learning powers of ten the next day. We are used to a programmed progression of education that separates these two stages by many years. That separation is necessary because we like to teach our children to count as soon as they are able, and at that age (around five), they are just barely able to count, and only concrete objects. Their minds are not ready for the abstraction of powers of ten. Ilika’s students had fully developed adult minds ready to juggle abstract concepts. The counting lessons were just filling a gap.
