E07 - Ch 29: Old Habits

Now, I’ve always thought of myself as a steadfast kind of fellow, a tough nut to crack if you will. But when a man my age wakes up in the body of a young whippersnapper with a belly that has more definition than a dictionary (in magical fairytale la-la land, I might add), he’s got to take a few moments to consider if he should stick to being that tough nut to crack or accept the possibility that he’s, in fact, full-on cracked and just plain nuts.

Luckily, I had plenty of time to consider my situation as when I got back to the cabin, my mother sent me into the fields to finish harvesting our wheat crops. We were already behind our neighbors for the season, as you were supposed to have all your crops harvested by the time of the festival. And with my father still out of commission for standing up to that femme fatale sorceress like a fool with family jewels the size of watermelons, there was plenty of work to be done.

I’d never harvested a tomato, let alone whole fields of wheat in my previous life, but the work came to me easily, my arms swinging the scythe through the stalks with swift, practiced movements. When I’d cut enough, I’d bundle them together with twine and lay them on the side to be put in the small barn that was erected in the center of the plot we managed.

It was the laborious sort of work you’d expect for a farmer without modern tools, but it was nothing I couldn’t handle, my body already long grown efficient for the task. And I enjoyed it immensely. It felt so good to be using my body, feeling it move exactly the way I wanted to with no hint that it might betray me at some inopportune moment.

Silly as it may sound, I realized then that the thing I missed the most about youth was the simple act of moving my body. As I worked, my thoughts couldn’t help but wander to the lake and the idea that I might go for a swim later in the day.

Between that and the jaw-dropping, dentures-clattering new reality I was still doing my darndest to wrap my head around, the events of the past few days replayed in my mind. I’d nearly died on at least two occasions, one with Brint against that hard-boiled magic lady, and then a second time against her demon. That’s right, a literal demon had been summoned. It even kicked me! And I’d come out lucky, as several members of the village had died that night.

I paused my motion of the scythe and shook my head. Despite how good my body felt and the blessing I'd received of being reborn, there was no telling how long this life would last. I needed to be careful. This place was nothing like the world that I'd come from. There sure wasn’t going to be any sort of medical evac or Dr. Lee running down from the guest house if something went wrong, especially not in my current financial standing.

Everything was different here. The culture, society, class, and especially the currency. But one thought kept coming back to my mind, and that was the market my father had taken me to a few days prior.

There had been merchants there, selling all sorts of products to customers for bright chits of arca. At least that aspect of this world seemed the same in its fundamental core, and the thought filled me with delicious excitement.

—

A few chants later, which I’d gathered were about equivalent to hours, Sapper Khom came around to take a look at the firewood I’d cut for the winter. My mother had left just before he arrived to bring food to my father and visit the chief again. Khom had already come earlier in the month for the first half of the wood I’d collected, and she didn’t see the need to oversee this visit.

The wood had been stacked behind the house and beside the rain catcher over the weeks that I had spent cutting and gathering it. It was an absurd amount of wood to me, reaching as high as the ceiling and covering almost as much space as the entire cabin. But I guess it made sense, given it was the only method of heating for villagers in the cold winter months.

The sapper’s wagon was a big barrel-looking thing that carried the sap he collected.

“Sapper Khom!” I called out, waving to the man as he pulled around to the back of the house.

“Oh… hello, Aelric,” Khom said, climbing down from the wagon. He gave me a tip of his wide-brimmed straw hat. “You seem to be in good spirits today.”

“Of course! Why shouldn’t I be?”

“Well…” Khom began but couldn’t find the words to say.

Oh right, the demon summoning, murders, and increased taxes.

“Always good to see a friendly face,” I said. “And I’m excited to see your magic. You’ve got spells that I could only dream of casting.”

Sapper Khom chuckled, scratching his stubbled chin. “That’s kind of you to say.”

He was a friendly guy and on good terms with my father, I remembered. Today, he surveyed my firewood, rubbing it for moisture, nodding as he went down the stacks. I knew from my new memories that freshly cut wood didn’t burn easily and had to be left out to dry for months, or it could be sapped.

"These are fine cuts," he said. "A little early on some, but fine enough. I'll take the sap and moisture out of them for you, no problem. How's your father doing?"

"His knee is busted bad," I said with a shake of my head, and I felt a true pang of agony at my own words and the thought of my father's condition. He had raised me for seventeen years, and I was quickly beginning to know them as well as I knew the ones I had come to this world with. But I also found that I couldn’t get a hold of my emotions like I usually could when I was feeling down. The feelings swelled within me and verged on crippling my senses. I took a deep breath and rubbed at my chest.

"I'm sorry to hear that, Aelric. If there's anything I can do, you let me know."

“I appreciate that,” I said tightly, still rubbing my chest.

Khom gave me a worried look. “Are you alright?”

“Yeah, fine,” I said, pushing the hurt down with all my will. “Why don’t we get started?”

The sapper gave me a nod, then climbed to the top of his barrel of a wagon and pulled off a lid on the top. Then he held out his hands and incanted, “Pull Sap!”

I noted that the spells the villagers used around the farms employed simple terms for their incantations, like “Pull Sap” or “Plow Earth.” Meanwhile, the ones the Ascendant had used sounded like a foreign language. I wondered why that was.

But the question quickly left my mind as dark blue light drew streams of sap from the wood blocks into a growing sphere of amber liquid, the bottom of which pooled into his barrel.

When all the sap had been drawn and the light of the spell dimmed, he closed the lid of the barrel and climbed up onto the top of our rain catcher.

He had collected the sap for himself, and now the rest of the wood’s moisture would go into the rain catcher, which we could use as drinking water or to water our crops.

“Pull Water,” he incanted, and to me, the spell looked almost exactly the same as the one that gathered sap, only this one gathered water.

Despite having seen the spells many times before in this current life, I was in awe. Magic. Real magic was happening before my eyes.

"Say… how did you learn that spell, Sapper Khom?" I asked him when our rain catcher had been filled and he was back on the ground.

Sapper Khom chuckled. "My father taught it to me. It's been passed down through my family for centuries."

"You didn't learn it from a talisman?"

"Don't need a talisman for what you can learn on your own."

"How long did it take you to learn it?"

"Let me think," the sapper said, rubbing his chin. "Oh, I had it down in about twelve years, I'd say, along with the other sapping spells."

I knew that was far longer than through a talisman, which was instant.

"What did it cost you just now to cast the spell?"

"About thirty arcas each. There’s a lot more water, but it’s an easier thing to pull than sap, which is a much more complex substance on the outer layer of the tree."

"So the spell cost depends on the amount sapped?"

"That's right," the sapper said, giving me a curious look. I guessed I had never asked so many questions like this before. But I wasn't done.

"And what's the worth of the sap you've just gathered if I were to sell it at the market in Greytown?"

The sapper looked up at his wagon. "Oh… this amount I gathered here?”

“That’s right,” I said, beaming at him.

“Oh, I’m not too sure…”

“Probably several hundreds of arcas for how much we’ve gathered,” I prodded him excitedly.

“Oh no, not that much. Maybe a few hundred arcas, I suppose, but I sell to trader Lorek in bulk at a discount, of course."

I guessed three hundred arcas was the bottom end of the price scale, given his uncertain voice.

"I bet it’s hard work to turn a profit,” I said to put him at ease. “You've got to gather the stuff from the forests, usually, which probably takes quite a long time."

The sapper laughed with some relief. "That’s true enough. Sapping takes a lot more time than people realize.”

"But if you reduced the sap for syrup or sealing, surely you could sell it for more."

Once again, the sapper gave me a surprised look. "You're right that it'd be worth more, and I do make some sealant and syrup for myself and the village, but I'm no merchant, Aelric. Easier for me to sell to the traders than at the market.”

“Sapper Khom, I’ve just had the grandest idea. Did you know my father took me to the market a few days ago to sell his wheat himself?”

“I did hear about that, yes…” the sapper said uneasily.

“I’m planning on going again tomorrow. And if I bring the sap we’ve collected to sell, why, I’d make some good arca on all my back-breaking logging over the past few weeks. Why don’t you let me pay you for your time coming down here and collecting the sap this morning? That way we can both benefit.”

Sapper Khom did not look happy about my suggestion. “Ah… well, Aelric, I was planning to sell this sap to trader Lorek…”

“But as you said yourself, you have to sell to him at a big discount. And I can’t just leave two hundred and forty arcas on the table, especially after I spent so long working for it.”

“Well… it wouldn’t be two hundred and forty, I’d have to charge you for my–”

“You’re absolutely right, Sapper Khom. You took the time out of your day and came down here to help me collect this sap. How about I pay you a hundred arcas for your trouble today? That’s forty arcas of profit after your spell cost. Not bad for a chant’s work.”

I watched the man’s face carefully. If he liked the number, it meant it was about the same profit he’d make from selling the sap himself. I had almost no idea what kind of gross margins were at play in this world. If I overshot, I’d need to drop the number because I sure as heck didn’t know a thing about selling sap at the market, or transporting it, or what kind of customer would buy it. All Aelric’s memories knew was flour and wheat, and that was already enough trouble for me to figure out how to sell at the market tomorrow.

But Sapper Khom didn’t seem to like the number, which could mean it was just right or even a little too low.

“Well… Aelric… I don’t know…” he said. “Usually, I just collect the sap in exchange for taking care of the moisture. That’s the deal we’ve always had.”

I nodded. “I understand my parents had that arrangement with you. But they aren’t here now, my mother’s off to take care of my father, who as you know can’t work right now, and with the Legionnaire’s new taxes looming over our heads, how can I walk away from two hundred arcas of profit I could make at the market tomorrow from the wood I spent weeks logging?”

The sapper blinked at me, seemingly completely lost as to how to answer my question.

“Of course,” I continued, “it’d sure be a pain to haul the sap there and spend the time selling it all, but what can I do? We’ve all got to earn what we can from the fruits of our labor, right? So how about my offer of a hundred arcas? Unless you have another suggestion that would make this easier for both of us…”

Sapper Khom seemed to latch onto my words, and I knew then my number had been about right.

“It certainly will be a lot of trouble to sell the sap yourself,” he said quickly. “And there’s no telling how long it’ll take to sell. There’ll be fierce competition at the market… say… how about this, I’ll give you seventy arcas for the sap I’ve collected today. That’ll save you all the trouble, and it’ll help ease your decision.”

I never accepted any offer too quickly, and I made a show of thinking about it while scratching my chin.

“And I’ll throw in a litra of sap to use around the house,” he added quickly. “It’s excellent for adding a little flavor to your drinking water.”

I nodded. “Alright, that sounds more than fair to me.”

It probably wasn’t if we had a real business relationship, but Sapper Khom was one of my fellow villagers and he was no richer than anyone else. If he made a good profit after paying me, I was alright with that. And in any case, I was certain no one in the history of the village had been paid for their firewood sap. They had little understanding of the sap’s value, and they gained the benefit of dry firewood that could be readily burned.

We shook on it, our hands clasping each other’s forearms. Not exactly the same as on Earth, but it held the same meaning.

The sapper, whom I guessed didn’t have enough arcana left in his arcavoir, climbed onto his wagon seat and opened a small box from which he retrieved a chit of arcana. He withdrew a little into his arcavoir before stepping down and handing it to me.

“Thank you,” I said, taking the glowing blue chit. “It’s always a pleasure. Oh, and Sapper Khom?”

“Yes?” he said, looking almost worried that I’d have another business idea to suggest.

“I don’t see any reason to tell anyone else about our arrangement. Do you?”

Khom shook his head with surprise and visible relief. “Not at all, Aelric. Let’s just keep this between the two of us.”

As I assumed, he wouldn’t want the word to get around that he was paying for what he had received for free all these years.

He poured a litra of sap from his wagon barrel into one of our water pans, then we shook hands again, and our deal was complete. The wood was dried and would be ready for burning in winter, and I had my first taste of economics in this new world.

After I watched the sapper turn his wagon around and head back up the road, I realized that I hadn’t intended to earn seventy arcas from the sapper. I’d merely been interested in learning about his craft.

But I guess it’s as they say. Old habits die hard.