Total pages in book: 69
Estimated words: 63580 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 318(@200wpm)___ 254(@250wpm)___ 212(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 63580 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 318(@200wpm)___ 254(@250wpm)___ 212(@300wpm)
He receives plenty of attention from the single ladies of the colony, but I notice though he is polite, he does not give them much energy. They bring him little offerings. A few eggs. Some sugar. Another lady brings cocoa. He has all the ingredients for a cake, and I am sure Mara will make that for him.
I do not know whether to be jealous or impressed at the way the female parties of this little society band together to serve him, but I can tell that the other elders are indeed jealous. The way they look at him indicates a viciousness that makes the original question of what happened to him much less of a mystery. I have my doubts he ever left the planet. I imagine that in the original timeline, some part of these vast, dry lands was graced with a shallow, dry grave.
Mara is different with him. He has her in hand in a way most would not. She respects him. She loves him. She obviously has transferred all her loyalty to him. But a father is not the only thing a young lady needs when she is of age, and Mara, as is pointed out through mutters and mumbles, is well past marrying age.
I approach her father at his shop. Mara is not home. She is running errands, and though I am sad to miss her, I do want the time to speak with the man who made her. Up close, I can see that he is graying to a near white at the temples, and a few long streaks of that same hue are starting to speckle his hair.
“Hello, sir,” I say as I step into the showroom. The floor is polished to within an inch of its life, timbers sanded and stained and kept in top shape. It’s all been done by hand. This is a careful man. I imagine it must have taken quite a few of them to subdue him. Or perhaps they simply made a well-placed shot while Mara was distracted.
He looks me in the face as I walk in, and I think I see a flicker of recognition. Strange, considering we have never met. I know who he is, but he should think of me as nothing but a complete stranger.
“What’s your name, stranger?” He asks the question on cue.
“Tasin,” I say. “Tasin Cawley.”
“You’ve got land?” That’s the question of a businessman. I’m wondering now if maybe what he saw and recognized in me was nothing more than my situation as it stands.
“I’m looking at a block out past the New River,” I tell him. “Paid the deposit, have to work off the balance, same as everyone else.”
“Colony’s been selling those blocks like wild,” he says. “But there’s no guarantee they’ll stay fertile if the rain doesn’t stick around.”
“I’m willing to bank on it,” I say.
“Well, my daughter’s not going to be living out on a block of land with no house on it,” he says. “So if you’re going to ask for her hand, you’d better see Morris Bones from the lumber mill. He’ll be able to float everything you need down river with help from Tim Gut.”
I stare at him for a moment. “Your daughter?”
“That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? To lay claim to her?”
“Well, I…”
I have never, in any of my lives or any realm, been this lost for words.
“How…”
“It’s an easy bet. Clean-shaven man in a clean shirt, no mud on his boots comes in here, tells me he has land. I know it’s land he hasn’t worked. And I know he doesn’t need anything from me yet. There’s only one thing I have that a man like you wants, and that’s my daughter.”
“Very observant of you, sir,” I say. I don’t want to seem condescending. I very much mean it.
He pushes a pencil and paper across the counter. “You’re going to want to make a note of the things I just told you,” he says. “Bones and Gut. Nothing happens in this colony without them, and I can promise you that you’re not the only young man putting a homestead together to attempt to win Mara’s heart. She’s of a particular age, and I know she’s ready to leave home.”
“I am not ready to leave home,” Mara says, bashing in through the shop door hard enough to make it bang. She cringes a little as she hears that noise. “Sorry,” she mutters.
“You’re going to have that door off its hinges one day,” he says. “This is Tasin Crawley. He’s setting up a homestead down the river.”
“Oh, yeah?” She cocks her head at me. “That’s nice. Are you going to get builders, or do it yourself?”
“I’ll be doing it myself,” I say.
She glances at her father, then back at me, the little smile on her lips turning into a full-blown smirk. “Be careful,” she says. “We had an off-worlder come in and try to build something himself and he ended up under a pile of logs, squished. You need to know what you’re doing.”