Shortly after breakfast, the cloak-maker and his apprentices arrived bearing armloads of thick hooded cloaks, all in the same dark-brown fabric.
Sounds of delight filled the room, and most of the students clearly intended to wear their new cloaks, with the hoods up, all day long, and probably sleep in them as well.
Sata gave a more moderate example. She examined hers with as much joy as the others, tried it on, plunged her hands into the deep outside pockets, then took it off and laid it over the foot of her bed.
Most of the others glanced at the fire in the fireplace, and did the same.
Mati, Rini, and Buna were not so easily swayed.
Ilika smiled. “Kibi, would you lead a review of all the letters and words we’ve studied? Mati and I need to go visit the woodworker and the seamstress.”
“Sure!” Kibi said, coming up to the table and picking out the sheets of paper she needed.
In the woodworker’s shop, after spending a quarter hour experimenting to select just the right place, Mati watched from under her hood as the craftsman made a hole in the shaft of her crutch with a hand drill. Then he carefully pounded a length of smooth, round wood into the hole.
Mati tried it, and could easily transfer most of her weight to the handle.
After some finishing touches, Ilika paid the craftsman generously.
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In another shop, Mati again watched as the seamstress made a new wool pad for the top of her crutch, and a pad for the handle. The woman used waxed canvas that would keep out the rain, and sealed her stitches with more wax. Both Mati and Ilika were pleased.
On the way back to the inn, Ilika steered Mati toward the bakery.
“Tori, I need to buy a book. Where should I go?”
“There’s only one place, deep in Cobble Town. My son can show you. He’ll be here soon.”
“Okay. I’ll take Mati back, then return.”
Mati hesitated. “Ilika, I want to make my first purchase. I think we need tarts for after lunch.”
“Hmm. I’m not sure ‘need’ is the right word to use when talking about tarts,” he said with a wink.
She grinned. “Okay, want! But . . . you’ll have to carry them for me.”
“I would be happy to . . . as long as I get one.”
Mati nodded, then carefully paid the baker.
Back in the sleeping room, Rini was fascinated by the improvements to Mati’s crutch. Everyone else was more interested in the tarts.
“Hands off! They’re for after lunch!” Mati asserted.
“How is the review going, Kibi?” Ilika asked.
“Good. We’re almost done.”
“I need to go out again. I’d like Rini to lead next, and the goal is for everyone to be able to write everyone’s name.”
Rini swallowed. “Um . . . okay.”
The baker’s son was a mature lad of fifteen, in training to be a scribe. As soon as he finished unloading sacks of flour from a cart, he changed into the set of good clothes he always kept in his bag, and quickly proved to Ilika that he knew Cobble Town well. When they arrived at the bookseller, Ilika gave the lad a coin and wished him well in his studies.
The bell above the door jangled as Ilika entered the tiny shop. Shelves lining most of the walls held many books, some nearly new, others falling apart. A short, hunched, elderly man came out of the back room.
“Greetings to you, young master. What is your pleasure?”
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“A good adventure story. Something long and complex, and with a sturdy binding.”
The clerk carefully climbed onto a stool, his aged knees shaking. “Hmm.
Perhaps . . . no. I think . . . perhaps this.” He brought down a thick volume.
“Let me see your hands!” he demanded before putting the book within reach.
Ilika presented his hands for inspection.
“Ah! A man who believes in cleanliness. Rare these days. You may examine the book. If you tear a page, you must buy it, or work it off in slavery.”
Ilika was very careful. Bato of Tirenland, Lord of the Isles appeared to be the type of story he wanted, but was done with intricate, hard-to-read lettering. “I need something that can be read by youth who are just learning
. . .”
“Humph. No one appreciates good calligraphy anymore.” The clerk took the book and lovingly returned it to its shelf. “Hmm. One of these new story books, I guess.”
Ilika opened the cover and found simple lettering with illustrations of battles against dragons, explorations of dark caves by torchlight, and horses rearing up to paw the air while the rider held his sword aloft.
“This is the one I want.”
“Ah! Are you aware, lad, what a book like this costs?”
“No . . .”
“A volume like this cannot be had for coppers, you know? Even little silvers pale next to the worth of such a magnificent work of art!”
Ilika
nodded.
“I hope you brought your great coins, for a great book can only thus be purchased.”
Ilika smiled politely.
“For most people I would not part with this treasure for less than three great silver pieces. But for a lad with clean hands, it will break my heart, but I will allow it to slip out of my grasp for a mere two great silvers. But I’ll understand if you’ve never even seen that much money.”
Ilika placed two great silver pieces on the counter.
The clerk smiled.
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Ilika strode directly to the seamstress and asked her to make a waterproof cover for the book. She took measurements and promised it that evening.
When he returned to the sleeping room at the inn, nine sheets of paper greeted him, each with ten crudely printed names.
“We couldn’t have done it without the lessons you’ve been teaching us,”
Rini said with humble pride.
Ilika took the time to look carefully at each sheet of block lettering, and to compliment its author. When Boro came up, he shuffled his feet and held out two more broken pencils. Ilika smiled, and a moment later Boro did the same.
“I am very impressed,” Ilika said to the entire group. “Now that you know the letters, I bought you something to read.” He opened his shoulder bag and placed the book on the table.
Toli jumped up from his bed. “Wow! A book!”
Mati frowned. “Our masters would never let us in the same room with a book!”
“What’s it called?” Miko asked, brimming with excitement.
“You’ll have to find out by reading,” Ilika replied with a grin.
“Can we start now?” Rini begged, bouncing up and down.
“No! It’s lunchtime and I’m hungry.”
“And there’s dessert!” Mati reminded everyone as they headed for the door.
“Tuh . . . huh . . . eh,” Mati said carefully, sounding out the letters of the first word in the title of the book.
“Tuh, huh, eh,” Toli confirmed, looking over her shoulder.
They looked at each other. They looked at the others squeezing in around the book as closely as possible. Most everyone shrugged.
Ilika said nothing.
“Tuh, huh, ee,” Kibi tried.
Everyone still wore blank looks.
“In this one little word,” Ilika explained, “you are experiencing the entire process of learning to read. Remember, you already speak this language. You
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already know all the words in this book. All you need to do is recognize them.”
“Tuh, huh, ee,” Mati tried again.
“You are remembering the sounds of the individual letters, but have forgotten that sometimes two letters work together to represent a different sound . . .”
Suddenly Kibi burst out laughing. Everyone looked at her. “Thththeeeee!”
she said with a big grin.
“Yea,
Kibi!”
“Why didn’t I see that?” Toli grumbled with envy.
“Okay, let’s look at the process,” Ilika said. “You tried the simplest thing, the usual sounds of the letters, and you didn’t recognize the word. No need to stop, just try something else.”
“Actually, I thought of the unvoiced TH first,” Kibi admitted. “But it didn’t do any good.”
“Eventually, if you keep trying things, you’ll find a word you recognize,”
Ilika continued. “Now you have to memorize the word. If you had to go through this whole process every time you came to that same word, you’d never be able to read anything. Look at the word. Say it aloud. Burn it into your minds.”
They stared at the word. They spoke the word. It became their first prized possession in the world of reading.
“The Adventures of Godi and Tima,” Buna read proudly, putting together what they had just taken an hour to figure out.
“Godi must be the warrior guy in the picture,” Miko speculated, a bit more puffed up than usual.
“And Tima’s that Elf girl with the bow,” Mati said with admiration.
“I know it seems painfully slow right now,” Ilika said, “but as you learn more and more words, it’ll go faster and you’ll be able to read more at a time.”
After they gazed at the title page for several more minutes, learning all they could from the title and the illustration, Buna lovingly closed the book.
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Deep Learning Notes
Can you guess why the hooded cloaks touched the ex-slaves so deeply?
Mati’s crutch would have been a straight stick with a cross-piece at the top.
Crutches with two shafts and a handle part way down are a more recent invention.
Books, in that culture, were hand-written on hand-made paper, and hand-bound, so they were very rare and expensive. Of course, few people could read.
It is often said that learning to read is easier if done earlier. It is one of those things that is hard to know, because our culture does not allow us to experiment by NOT teaching a group of otherwise-normal children to read until they are older. It is certainly true that if we start younger, then by a certain age we can read better, but that is not the same as it being easier. The author is tempted to speculate that motivation might play a larger part than age.