LITMIR.BIZ

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even doing the weeding in his father’s garden. But he knelt down next to the box of cabbages and asked, “What do I do?”

      The old man told him, demonstrating how to make a suitable hole, with a clenched fist pushed into the soil and twisted several times. Paul soon learnt the knack of it, but even so he lagged behind the old man. Closer to, this potential sage looked even more unsuitable for the role of one of the Wise. He was dressed in a simple robe of what looked like sackcloth, and wore wooden sandals that clattered as he crawled forward on his knees. And having been in the cabbage field all day, he was covered in dirt.

      The sun rose higher above the cabbage planters and then began its slow decline into the west. As the shadows lengthened, Paul kept looking at the old man, hoping that he was about to call it quits. The cabbage planting business had seemed easy enough at first, but it soon became tiring and his back was stiff from being bent over all day.

      Failing the signal to stop work, Paul would have welcomed some conversation, or at least some questions regarding why he was there. But the old man was silent as he planted the cabbages with a monotonous regularity; left fist in to make the hole, right hand to pick up the cabbage and place it carefully, left hand to smooth the dirt around it. Over and over again.

      Eventually, the sun sank low enough to send the distant clouds red and Paul had had enough. He stuffed his current cabbage in the hole, smoothed it over and stood up, his back creaking. “I’ve had enough,” he said, a trace of self-righteousness creeping into his voice. “I’ve been planting cabbages nearly all day–a lot more than eighty cabbages!”

      “One hundred and thirty-two, by my count,” said the old man cheerfully. “I was wondering when you’d realise.” He got up, straightening his back with the help of both hands thrust against his backbone. “Well, I suppose for that number of cabbages, I can give you supper as well.”

      The old man bent down again and pulled a thick, oilcloth covering over the box with the remaining cabbages.

      “What do I call you then?” he asked Paul. “Boy? Cabbage-planter?”

      “My name is Paul,” said Paul. “What shall I call you?”

      “Old Man?” suggested the sage, rolling it off his tongue as if to see how it sounded. “Cabbage-planter? Tanboule? Tanboule is the name of my house–so you may call me that. Tanboule the house and Tanboule the old man. And one shall go to the other for a supper of cabbage and bacon, bread and tea. Eh, Paul?”

      “Err…that sounds very nice,” said Paul, who was thinking Tanboule didn’t seem so much wise as mad. Still, he did seem to be on Rhysamarn mountain…

      Obviously encouraged by the mention of supper, Tanboule took off up the slope at once, easily outpacing Paul with his long strides. Unlike Aleyne, he didn’t stop for Paul to catch up with him and was soon a dark speck against the grey shale. Paul struggled on angrily, slipping on the wet slabs of stone and wishing he’d never even seen the stupid old man and his cabbages.

      Then he looked up, and even the dark speck had gone. Tanboule was nowhere to be seen and there was no sign of a house up on the rocky peak, or even a cave mouth. Paul hesitated and looked back down the mountain, but the mist was as thick as ever. And he could clearly see the cabbage-field–a little square of dirt on which he’d spent considerable labour.

      “At least I deserve to eat some cabbage,” muttered Paul. “And I’m going to get some, like it or not!” And with that promise, he started back up the shale, using his hands when the rockface became too steep or broken.

      Twenty minutes later, he reached the approximate spot where Tanboule had vanished–and the mystery of his sudden disappearance was explained. Paul had been climbing a peak that he thought was the very pinnacle of Rhysamarn, but it was only a lesser projection from the high mountain that lay before him. Down below Paul, there lay a saddle between the two peaks: a tiny valley of yellow heather, nestled between the greater and lesser peaks of grey shale.

      In the centre of this valley, halfway between each peak, there was a house. Or at least, Paul thought it was a house. It was obviously wooden, but each end was curved up to touch the red-tiled roof and its iron chimneys (of which there were three). Even stranger, it didn’t appear to have a door and the only windows were high up on the sides, and round like portholes. In fact, it looked like a particularly fat houseboat, stranded in the heather at least six hundred metres above sea-level, and over two hundred kilometres from the nearest coast. A bird flew from its roof, a black shape silhouetted against the orange sky, triggering memories of old pictures showing an ark atop a mountain and an old man sending out a dove.

      But it was still a long way down and the air was chilling as the sun set, so Paul steeled himself and carefully began to make his way down the treacherous slate.

      When Paul at last arrived at Tanboule’s peculiar house, the sun had finally given in to the night. But the house was lit up inside, with cheerful yellow light flickering through the porthole-windows, and smoke billowing from at least two chimneys, carrying with it the smell of frying bacon and cabbage.

      But Paul couldn’t find a door. He walked around the whole building twice, and even felt the wooden planks, but there was definitely no doorknob, handle or bell.

      “Hello in there!” shouted Paul, after his third circumnavigation. “Mister Tanboule! It’s me, Paul! Can I come in?”

      “Of course, lad,” came the reply, in Tanboule’s voice–but Paul couldn’t see him till a rattling sound attracted him to the other end of the house. There, a rope ladder was dangling down the side, leading up to what looked like the tiled roof. However, by shielding his eyes from the lantern light, Paul saw that there was a space between the eaves of the roof and the top of the wall–and that was the door.

      Tanboule was waiting at the top as Paul climbed in through the hatch. “Welcome aboard, Paul,” he said, standing aside to let Paul drop down from the roof-door.

      But Paul was staring at the interior of the house through the hatch and wasn’t moving.

      Immediately below him, Tanboule was standing on a raised platform next to a shining binnacle, complete with a huge bronze compass. Next to that stood a ship’s wheel, with a note tacked to it which read Rudder temporarily disconnected, T.

      A ladder led down from the first platform to another which extended for most of the length of the house, ending in another ladder going to a forward platform and down through an open hatch. In between the two higher platforms were casks and bags, chests and rugs, all piled haphazardly around some old wooden furniture, and three cast iron stoves, one of which had a frying pan hissing away on it. On the floor next to the cooking stove, a cat was playing with what looked like a piece of dried haddock.

      “So it is a boat!” exclaimed Paul, jumping down to admire the binnacle. “I suppose you ended up here when the floods went down?”

      Tanboule shook his head sadly. “I built it here. Forty years I studied with the stars, calculating the advent and time of a Great Flood. Then ten years building this craft, high up on the mountain.”

      “To save all the animals?” asked Paul, looking around. It didn’t really look big enough for two of everything, not with all the junk.

      “To save myself!” declared Tanboule. “I never did like animals much. But it was all a mistake. The Flood never came!”

      “Why?” asked Paul. “Were the stars wrong?”

      “They weren’t wrong,” snapped Tanboule. “The stars don’t lie–but they can be mischievous. There’s nothing they like better than a joke, particularly if it’s a long one, played on someone who deserves it.”

      “Why did you deserve it?” asked Paul as they descended to the long platform, which he already thought of as the “main deck”.

      “I deserved it because I was wise and selfish,” sighed Tanboule, flicking a tear from a white-browed eye. “Now, I am wiser (I hope) and less selfish. Which reminds me—why are you here?”

      “Well…”

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