The door quickly opened and Doti ushered them all inside.
As soon as they were in, she stepped outside and opened her senses to both the visible and invisible forces around her. After about a minute, she stepped back in and locked the door.
Following Ilika’s example, they all removed their boots in the entry room, then stacked their saddlebags and bedrolls in the larger room beyond. They found places to sit on stools at the work tables, or on the rug that covered most of the floor. A tall candle glowed on one of the tables, illuminating several ceramic jars and a mortar and pestle.
Doti came in, lit another candle from the one already burning, and looked them over. Then she disappeared through a doorway and returned a minute later with a loaf, crock of butter, board, and knife, setting it all in front of Buna.
“There is one of you missing.”
“Kodi . . .” Ilika began.
“. . . is a slave again,” Doti completed the thought. “And if I read the signs correctly, he is the reason you are now on the run.”
“Partly. Some of it is my fault.” Ilika went on to share his feelings of guilt for not anticipating the danger.
The healer frowned, then said, “I did not see it coming either, and if I could not see it, it was well hidden, I assure you. Cast your guilt to the wind.”
Buna began passing out slices of buttered bread.
“Ilika was great with the guards!” Boro proclaimed, and went on to
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describe the defense and counter-charge with admiration.
Ilika added the information he received from the captain of the guard after the students went inside.
“I was just wondering,” Sata began with a wrinkled brow, “what happened to the idea of going to stay with Pica?”
“That was dis-information, Sata,” Ilika explained. “It allows your family to give an answer if they are pressed, but leaves no trail to us. It’s another example of how a lie is not always a bad thing.”
Sata struggled with mixed feelings.
“It’s late and you are all tired,” Doti observed. “I shall make a tea that will help you rest and heal. We will talk more tomorrow.”
They got their bedrolls and began arranging themselves on the floor. Ilika noticed that Buna and Toli immediately claimed spaces side by side. Kibi was somewhere near the kitchen door.
Soon Doti returned with a tray of mismatched cups. They all gathered around, and the warm tea seemed to relax the stomach and calm the mind.
They all sat in silence, unwinding from the excitement and danger, until they could no longer keep from yawning.
After Ilika made sure everyone else was comfortable, and was just about to crawl under his blankets, he noticed Neti standing over him.
“I need to talk to you,” she asserted in a serious tone.
He got up and followed her through the heavy curtains into the entry room.
“You asked a lot of Kibi today. She had to deal with something big. I don’t know the details, but she’s exhausted, and really needs to snuggle with someone tonight. You know who that needs to be.”
“I . . . like her very much, but . . . I don’t want her to feel like I’m pushing anything . . . and she always seems to prefer sleeping on the other side of the room . . .”
“That’s because she needs you to ask her. She’s a heart person, even though she’s very smart. Your lessons aren’t enough. You have to take care of her heart too . . . or you can’t keep asking her to help you lead.”
Neti went back through the curtain and crawled into her bedroll beside
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Miko.
Ilika followed slowly. He sat on his blankets for a long time, a variety of conflicting feelings coloring his face and posture from one moment to the next. Eventually he took some deep breaths for courage, stood up, went to Kibi’s bedroll, and seated himself on the floor.
She wasn’t asleep, and immediately raised her head.
“Kibi, would you like to sleep next to me?”
The smile that flashed onto her face told Ilika all he needed to know.
Without further words, they worked together to move her bedroll to the free space beside his.
Suddenly the room was filled with clapping, as no one else had been asleep either.
Deep Learning Notes
“Sanctuary” is a kind of hospitality that has gone out of style in our culture, but used to be much more common. In a medieval culture, robbers and wild animals were always close at hand, and safe lodgings at night could mean life or death. Today, with most people able to afford cars, plane/train/bus tickets, taxis, and hotels, hospitality has been reduced from a nearly-sacred act, to an impersonal industry. Truly giving sanctuary, on the other hand, means protecting guests from all possible dangers, and receiving only what they can afford to give in return.
Doti could “see” forces at work that most people could not see. Did she have a psychic ability, or was she just good at gathering news around town?
Several factors may have caused Ilika to hesitate to invite Kibi to sleep near him. He noticed that she tended to choose the opposite side of the room. He may have been, like we are today, sensitive about the four- or five-year age difference (Kibi’s culture would have thought nothing of it). He may have just been shy about such things. What would you have done in his situation? In Kibi’s situation?
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Chapter 35: In the Eye of the Storm
As morning light crept into the sky, Doti tiptoed about the house opening curtains. Soon steam was rising from a tray of cups in the middle of the room, and a bright, fruity aroma filled the air.
Ilika peeked out from under his blankets. Kibi was still asleep close beside him, almost more under his blankets than her own. He gently stroked her shaggy black hair, and she slowly opened her eyes and began to stretch.
Others were already up, sitting on the ends of their bedrolls sipping tea, or going back and forth to the toilet room. Doti brought in a kettle of porridge and a stack of bowls. She got a stool and sat with them.
“Tibo has gone to Port Town for a couple of days to buy herbs. I was starting to get a little lonely, but now I have a house full of people!”
“We are grateful to you,” Ilika said.
“I know who my brothers and sisters are, and I’m not talking about those religious orders where they call each other ‘brother’ and ‘sister’ all the time.
I’ve seen the high priest who made the charge against you. He’s so full of himself, he wouldn’t know a god if one bit him on the nose.”
Most everyone laughed, including some trying to drink their tea.
Ilika chuckled. “Do you know if there’s any way out of this city . . . that the guards don’t know?”
The healer thought as she sipped her tea. “I believe so. It hasn’t been used for a long time, and may take great courage.”
“We’ve got lots of that!” Rini said with a toothy grin.
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Ilika smiled. “I want to get the best possible map of the kingdom before we go.”
“I will do your shopping,” Doti asserted. “You should not step outside my door until you have a path before your feet, and darkness to hide you.”
“Thank
you.”
“When I go out, I’ll see if a new warrant has been posted, and if just for the city, or kingdom-wide. Usually only serious criminals are sought beyond these walls.”
Ilika puffed himself up. “That’s me, serious criminal, freeing and educating slaves!”
Miko grinned and looked at his teacher with intense eyes. “We are all your partners in crime!”
Ilika chuckled and bowed his head to Miko. “I am honored, fellow criminal.”
When Doti went out, Ilika began a shopping list. “Let’s do the dishes and clean up any messes we’ve made. Remember, our freedom, maybe our lives, depend on our friends right now.”
A kettle was soon heating over the kitchen hearth, and several students teamed up to handle the dishes. Boro found two brooms and tossed one to Miko, who swept the entry room.
When they all returned to the large room, Ilika was sitting on the floor making a chart of many numbers. The students looked at it with wonder, as if it was straight out of a wizard’s box.
“Life on a ship is very much like this,” Ilika explained, looking up at them.
“Sometimes there’s an emergency, and when it’s over, you take a moment to unwind, then go back to the routine things that need doing. I need to teach you how to multiply numbers.”
For the next three hours, the nine students learned everything about multiplying single digits. They drew rectangles of dots to represent the problems, then counted them. They practiced counting by twos, threes, fours, and fives. With some hesitation, they learned to use the multiplication table.
Finally, they did as many problems in their heads as they could.
They also learned the commutative property that allowed them to do the
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problems in either direction, and the special cases of multiplying by zero and one. By lunchtime, they were all mentally exhausted, begging Ilika to let them chop wood or carry water.
“There most certainly is a new warrant out for you,” the healer told them when she returned. “I spent a little silver and learned that the high priest tried very hard to get it kingdom-wide, but the king just laughed. So the high priest has made it a standing rule in his order that all priests and monks must inquire for news of you any time they are out in the countryside, which is often. If he gets word of you, he will ask the king to send guards.”
Ilika thought for a moment. “If we don’t stay in one place very long, then they’ll always come too late. Hopefully the king will get tired of that.”
Doti nodded, then spread out the map she had purchased. Most of the students had never seen one and gathered around, their eyes wide with fascination.
Doti pointed out the capital city and surrounding countryside. “The nearest horse trader is just a few miles down the western road,” she explained,
“but I think it might be closely watched. I recommend you get your horses from farms, one here, two there. Most farms have old horses they will sell for a few silvers.”
Ilika looked thoughtful. “I’d really like to get a mount under Mati as soon as possible.”
“I know of a donkey for sale,” Doti responded, “a mature jenny. Also, a friend is looking into the condition of the old tunnels in the walls. They were
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originally built for the city guards, but later abandoned and only used by smugglers. It will be a dark and dangerous way, and you must come out at night and make your way into the wilderness before morning.”
The students sparkled with interest, but some also looked fearful.
“I’m putting lantern and shovel on the shopping list,” Ilika said as he wrote.
“Flint and steel knife,” Miko added.
Ilika looked puzzled, but wrote what Miko requested.
“Don’t worry about food when you get outside,” Doti said. “Any farmer’s wife will gladly feed you for a few coppers.”
Having reminded herself of food, Doti listed the roots and herbs that could be found in her kitchen, and told them to make a stew. She quickly ate some bread and cheese, then ran around gathering supplies, explaining that she had a baby to deliver.
“Open the door to no one. Tibo has a key if he should return early. He will be interested in your story, as he has no more love of the religious orders than I.”
She departed with her bags of potions and tools, and let the door lock behind her.
“So . . .” Ilika began, looking at his students, “who knows how to make a stew?”
“I think,” Kibi said, “Sata should be the leader of this project.”
Sata grinned. “I want two helpers, one for the fire, and one for vegetables.”
“Choose.”
“Um . . . Boro and Neti.”
As soon as the stew was simmering, Ilika gathered everyone and explained many things about the map. They learned how to place it to match north on the map with true north. The symbols for hills, mountains, forests, rivers and springs, and towns and roads, all like little pictures, were easy to remember.
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“This map doesn’t have a scale, but I happen to know your kingdom is about fifty miles wide.” He laid one edge of a blank piece of paper across the middle of the map, then made marks on the paper until it was divided into fifty equal sections. “It looks like about half an inch on the map is a mile on the ground.”
“So you can measure the distance between things by looking at the map?”
Sata asked with wide eyes.
“Roughly. If I put my scale between the capital city and Port Town, I can see they’re about twenty miles apart.”
Nine pairs of eyes counted the marks, just to be sure.
“Neat!” Toli said, fascinated by the process.
“But it could be sixteen, and it could be twenty-four,” Ilika warned,
“because this map wasn’t drawn to a perfect scale. Also, I have measured a straight line, as the bird flies. It could be thirty miles by road.”
Sata and Neti had to tend the cooking pot, so Ilika sat back while others tried measuring distances on the map.
“So you think the scale could be off by . . . two tenths either way?” Rini asked.
Ilika blinked in surprise. “That’s my guess, Rini.”
When the cooks returned, he went on. “I’m going to divide the kingdom into sections,” he said, making light pencil lines, “and the one we’re in goes from the hills around the capital city, up to the forest in the north. Each
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section will have an emergency meeting place in case we get separated. It doesn’t matter how we get there, or how long it takes. Some of us might take a day, and some might run into problems and take a week. See this little village in the forest? It’s small and unimportant.”
Once everyone memorized the meeting place, Ilika put away the map and everyone got ready for lunch.
“This is terrible!” Buna declared with her squirrelly expression as soon as she tasted Sata’s stew.
Sata bravely held back her tears.
Ilika cleared his throat. “Since this is Sata’s first time making a meal, we should give criticism gently.”
“I’m sorry,” Buna mumbled.
“It’s okay,” Sata said with a frown after swallowing several times. “I can taste it too.”
“Something . . . slightly bitter,” Neti said thoughtfully, rolling the bite of stew around in her mouth.”
“I think I know what it is,” Sata said with a guilty tone, looking at Neti. “I think one of the herbs got more bitter as it cooked.”
“Well, it’s not anything that will hurt us,” Miko said in defense. “I’ve
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tasted spoiled food many times, and this is way better!”
Rini chuckled. “And when you compare it to having nothing to eat, it’s pretty good!”
Many heads nodded from personal experience.
“I have an idea . . .” Ilika pondered aloud. “May I try something, Sata?”
“Sure.”
Ilika disappeared into the kitchen, and returned a moment later stirring something into his bowl. He sat back down and turned to Kibi. “Tell me what you think of this, please.”
Kibi took a spoonful of his stew. “Wow! It’s great! What did you do?”
All eyes were on Ilika.
“I remembered that often bitter and sweet together make a good flavor.
Have you ever tasted chocolate?”
Only Sata nodded as she disappeared into the kitchen, returning a moment later with the honey pot.
“I just used a little, about a quarter of a spoon,” Ilika said.
Sata scooped, stirred, and tasted. “Yes! Thank you, Ilika!” The honey pot was quickly passed around.
“Well,” Ilika said with a slight smile, “you do have to know a few things to become a ship’s captain.”
After the dishes were done, Ilika got out their precious book and they tackled some new paragraphs. Godi grew quickly and learned everything he could about travel and adventures. He was much less interested in farming and other aspects of settled life.
The girls were excited when Tima was introduced. The Elf child was born high in a great oak tree, and had the birds of the sky for her earliest playmates. By the time she was three, she loved running in the forest, and would have gone hunting with the older youth if they had allowed it.
Ilika noticed Kibi doing something that made him smile. “You’re starting to figure out new words without sounding them out. That’s wonderful, but I need you to teach them to the others.”
“Oops. Um . . . forest . . . f-o-r-e-s-t.”
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When everyone took a break from lessons, Toli and Miko went snooping around in the kitchen. They didn’t find sweet biscuits or tarts, but soon created a plate with thin slices of bread, each one buttered and dribbled with honey.
“Mmm, good!” Neti complimented.
“Neti, you have just introduced our next lesson.”
She suddenly looked guilty. “I have?”
“It’s all about good . . . and bad. Right . . . and wrong.”
Neti shrugged. “Um . . . I don’t know very much . . .”
“Actually, you know a lot more than you think.”
“What about Kodi?” Kibi asked, her head tilted slightly askance.
“Good question. Is Kodi bad? Let’s see if we can figure that out.”
As the plate was now empty, Ilika had their undivided attention.
“The words ‘bad’ and ‘wrong’ are vague. We have to break them down into two different ideas. The first is when we make a mistake, like Sata did this morning — she put too much of some herb in the stew. But she didn’t make the stew bitter on purpose. It was an accident, an error.
“The other idea is when we know something is wrong, and choose to do it anyway. I can’t get inside the high priest’s head, but I’m pretty sure he knows I didn’t commit any crime or hurt anyone. Yet he chooses to use his power to seek my arrest. Where I come from, that’s called evil.”
“So if Sata had made the stew bitter on purpose, that would be evil?” Rini proposed.
“Yes. And if the high priest honestly thought I had committed a crime, then he would be making a mistake, but wouldn’t be evil.”
“I think . . .” Mati pondered, looking at the ceiling, “that Kodi didn’t know he was doing something wrong. He hadn’t gotten it through his head that you weren’t a master.”
“So in your opinion, he made a mistake, but is not evil.”
“Yes.”
“I disagree!” Miko burst out.
“Miko?”
“Kodi is not stupid. We all knew five minutes into the test day that you weren’t a master.”
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“Okay, we have two different opinions, each one has some possible merit, and there’s no way we can ever decide this for sure. Now comes the really interesting question. How do we know something is good or bad, right or wrong?”
“Sometimes we just know from experience,” Miko said, “like that bitter herb shouldn’t go in a stew . . . unless we add honey.”
“Sometimes there’s a law, or a rule our parents make, that tells us,” Sata proposed.
Most of the former slaves frowned, unable to relate to Sata’s idea.
“We can ask someone who knows a lot, like you,” Boro said.
“Some things are good because everyone does them, or bad because no one does them,” Neti said.
“Our hearts can tell us,” Kibi said softly.
Everyone was silent and thoughtful for a moment.
“Which way is right?” Mati asked.
Ilika smiled. “They all are. Some are better in some situations, others at other times. The one I can teach you is called logical reasoning. Without it, you can’t make good decisions no matter what you know.”
They looked interested and confused at the same time.
“Logic starts with things we know from life, just like Miko said. For example, we know that when it rains, the ground gets wet and muddy. So let’s say you hear the rain pounding on the roof all night long. When you get up in the morning, are you going to put on sandals or boots?”
Buna burst out laughing. “That’s so easy!”
“I agree, that one’s pretty hard to miss. Here’s what the logic looks like. R
is for rain, and W for wet.”
“If we know that rain causes wet, and we know it rained, then we also know it will be wet. It’s called Modus Ponens.”
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The students repeated the mysterious name to themselves while gazing at the symbols. “Makes sense to me,” Miko said after a minute of thought.
“We can also use it in reverse. Let’s say you were asleep all night in the house and don’t know if it rained or not. You get up in the morning, go outside, and everything is dry and dusty. What would you think?”
Kibi
laughed.
“These are so simple!” Toli said.
Ilika smiled. “Oh yes, but when the situations get complicated, it’s easy to make mistakes. Here’s what this one looks like.”
“If we have the same relationship between rain and wet, and it’s not wet, then we know it didn’t rain. It’s called Modus Tollens.”
“That one makes sense too,” Boro said.
Sata’s hand went up. “Bitter herb causes bitter stew. No bitter herb, at least next time, therefore no bitter stew!”
Ilika smiled. “Sorry, Sata. It doesn’t work that way. You just fell into a very common logic error, called a fallacy.”
Sata frowned. “I did?”
“Yes. It doesn’t work because there are other things that can make the stew bitter.”
“Like burning it?” Toli suggested.
Ilika nodded. “But I want you to understand, Sata, there’s nothing wrong with your idea. It’s just that you can’t assume the stew will be okay that way.”
“I think I understand,” Sata said, her face scrunched in thought.
“I don’t,” Neti said with a blank expression.
“Let’s try that fallacy with the first example. You slept outside so you know it didn’t rain. Are you going to sit down right beside an overflowing water trough?”
Neti laughed. “Okay, I get it. If the ground is dry, you know it didn’t rain.
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But if it didn’t rain, the ground might still be wet!”
Sata and Neti worked with the entire pot of stew, adding a little honey at a time, until it was just right. As the sky darkened outside, Ilika and his students sat in a quiet circle on the rug in the healer’s house, spoons scraping bowls. Miko apologized for the lack of dessert.
“During the next few months,” Ilika began, “we will sometimes have hot food and cold drink, cheeses and desserts. At other times we will have a dried up crust to share, and not know how far it is to the next farmhouse or inn. But we will always share alike in our fortune or misfortune. That’s what being a team is all about.”
“I’d rather share a crust with you guys than be a slave in a palace,” Mati said with deep feeling.
After eating, candles were lit and it didn’t take long for the bowls and other dishes to be washed. Buna poked Toli until he carried several armloads of wood from the storeroom to the wood box. Suddenly a key was heard in the lock, and Doti stepped into the entry room.
“I’m glad you’re still awake,” she said, setting down her bags. “I have news, but first I must find something to eat.”
Everyone finished what they were doing, and a minute later the healer came out of the kitchen with a bowl and spoon. “This stew is delicious! I will have to get the recipe from you.”
Sata and Neti smiled at each other.
“First of all, there is a new baby boy in the world, and his name is Zeno.”
“Hurray!” all the girls cheered.
“There’s an apprentice midwife staying with them tonight, and I will check on them tomorrow. Also, I have to help you get ready, because you must leave tomorrow night.”
“We’ve been studying the map,” Toli announced proudly.
“Good. Fact is, the person who can get you into the old tunnels has to leave on a journey in two days, so it’s tomorrow night, or you’re stuck here for a long time.”
“If you can buy us a few things, we’ll be ready,” Ilika assured her.
“You have to get lice treatments also, or the eggs will hatch and you’ll have
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bugs again. I’ll show you the process, and then you can do each other. You’ll have to keep the fire going and water heating all day long.”
“We can handle that,” Miko said, nodding at Boro.
“And I have something for Mati. About a mile down the western road, you will find a faint trail on the right just past a large oak tree. Down that trail is an old ruined shack and a little corral. Tomorrow night, a donkey I have purchased will be delivered to that corral.”
“I don’t know anything about donkeys,” Mati said, “but I think I’m going to learn!”
Deep Learning Notes
Ilika and Miko joked about being “fellow criminals.” Some people would assume their guilt because a warrant was posted. Other people, like Doti, would make their own judgment. It is easy to see the injustices in another culture, much harder to see them in our own.
When Ilika taught them multiplication, he was also teaching them to relax and think under stressful conditions. As we have seen before in the story, since they were old enough to think abstractly, Ilika can give them the bigger picture, including the commutative property (A x B = B x A), multiplication by zero (A x 0 = 0), and the multiplicative identity (A x 1 = A).
A small map shows us the area around the capital city on the large map Doti just purchased.
Why did Miko want flint? Since Ilika was confused by that request, what can we guess about his country?
Why would Ilika show them how to place a map so north was aligned with true north?
A small map shows the road from the capital city to Port Town, along with the
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rough scale Ilika made.
Rini was only exposed to the idea of a “tenth” when learning the fee charged by money changers. He obviously understood the concept abstractly, and was able to generalize to “the scale could be off by two tenths either way.” This is an excellent example of the difference between a child’s mind (“if I change a great silver, I lose a small silver”) and an adult’s mind, fully able to abstract and generalize.
A small map shows the area for which Ilika selected an emergency meeting place. Can you spot the meeting place?
In your opinion, did Kodi just make a mistake (error), or did he do something knowing it was wrong (evil)? How are the two types of wrong-doing handled differently in your country/nation/state? What would your religion (if any) say about the two types of wrong-doing?
The methods proposed for telling right from wrong allow us to glimpse the variety of methods that exist, and tell us something about the students’
personalities. Miko preferred concrete reality he could test himself against, and proposed experience as a guide. Sata, just out of middle-class family life, proposed laws and rules. Boro, always loyal and respectful, proposed listening to an authority. Neti, extremely social, proposed a vote. Kibi, an intuitive feeling type, proposed listening to the heart.
Sata’s logic error is called “denying the antecedent.” The logic form it applies to, called Modus Tollens, only works in one direction (as shown in the illustration). If one thing causes another, and the effect didn’t happen, then we know the cause didn’t happen either. But if the cause didn’t happen, the effect might still happen from another cause.
