Old Green World Read Online Free

been part of your life since you were a baby. ‘Book.’ When I was a boy, I didn’t know ‘book.’ There was no such thing. What is ‘book’? What is ‘read’? I never read anything, and I never will. Your mother, sewing with needles now? There was no ‘needle’ in Viru. There was no ‘market,’ no ‘farm.’ When we got here, Mal Planck and the Adepts taught us what farming was, and why we should care. Before then, all our lives, it was nothing but hunt and fight and eat and die. You couldn’t even understand.” He trailed off. There was a long silence.
    “So,” Arto then said, picking up and biting a radish, “you are going to keep reading. No more protest. Once you have a book, then you can read it and then trade it for more books. That’s what Harriet said. And then, when you become a gentleman, and you live in your big house, probably without Thomas, but maybe with Thomas—when you live there, you can remember that we bought you a book, and you can invite us to live with you in your big house.”
    Albert put his hand on Arto’s. “I don’t know if it will work out like that. But thank you, Papa.”
    “We should head into town,” Arto said.
    They started down the road from their farm to the market square. The road was relatively smooth and marked with their wagon wheels. They shared the road with the Plancks, who had the farm just one over. Arto always sang a song while they rode: once, when he was little, Albert had asked Arto about it. “It’s a folk song from Viru, wishing good travel. It’s lucky,” Arto said. “It doesn’t sound lucky. It sounds scary,” Albert said, and Arto laughed.  
    Now Albert sang along, although he barely understood the song. All the words were familiar, common words they used in the house, but together they became gibberish, or a code. He sang along all the louder for that, full of hope that someday the veil would drop, that he would be granted a sudden understanding of something real and deep about his father.
    There were thick woods for a while between their farms and the town, but when they came out from the woods the town and the Castle stretched before them like another world. The breeze kept Albert alert but not too cold.
    When they approached the market, just at the foot of the Castle, it started to get crowded with throngs of people and carts. “If you please,” Arto smiled to another farmer as he pulled ahead of him into their spot. The Todorovs had a good spot, near the front of the market.
    There were carts with piles of kale greens, beetroot, and mushrooms, carts with big sea fish ready to be split open, fileted, and salted. One cart only sold cut firewood. It did quite well. There were distractions and luxuries: books, spices, wool scarves, and iron jewelry, hot barley and pine teas and boar meat pies. It smelled of food and butchery and harvest. The market was loud with greetings and with the hashing out of bargains and with gossip. Arto and Albert put out their flag.
    Mister Ewan was their first customer, as usual. “What do you have today?” Mister Ewan asked. Arto said, “I brought the salted fish you asked for, and the cheese. I have apples and beetroot and greens, lots of greens. And I have your beer. And I have these morels, these mushrooms, take a look at these mushrooms, tell me that you don’t want those, Lady Newton could eat like the noble she is just on these mushrooms. And this, you should try it.” He handed Mister Ewan a small earthen crock. “This is good, it’s salt and peppercorns and bits of the pig’s head.”
    “Do you have stockings? Both the Lady and Thomas have holes in their stockings.”
    “I do. New ones! Lini just finished these.” He pulled them out. They were a vivid red. Mister Ewan laughed and said, “Yes. These are lovely.”
    “Thank you, Mister Ewan,” Arto said as he took some coin from him. The Adepts had recently introduced money to the White Island. “Do you know why we immigrant Todorovs do