CHAPTER 27: ANOTHER YEAR

The year after Joe's secret breakthrough passed more quickly than the one before it.

Autumn faded into Deepwinter.

The fields around Green Hollow lost the last standing stalks, leaving broad strips of dark earth separated by narrow paths and low boundary ridges. Bare branches exposed more of the surrounding hills, and on clear mornings Joe could see patches of distant forest that summer leaves usually hid.

The river became colder and quieter.

Thin ice formed along shaded edges but rarely across the main current. Fishing became unreliable enough that Simon checked the traps less often, although the family's dried fish from autumn helped fill the gap.

Joe's ninth birthday arrived near the end of Deepwinter.

No pale screen appeared.

He had not expected one.

Eight had strengthened his birthday pattern enough that sixteen was the next age worth serious attention. Nine could simply be a birthday.

Mary disagreed with the word simply.

She insisted there should be sweets.

Pam agreed with her.

Lily pointed out that honey did not appear because children demanded it.

Mike somehow found enough anyway.

Joe decided not every birthday required supernatural significance.

------

Merek's shop changed with the seasons almost as much as the fields did.

During winter, the shelves were dominated by dried roots, sealed jars and herbs preserved from the previous year. The preparation rooms smelled of dust, bitter bark, smoke and concentrated extracts simmering over low fires.

Spring transformed the place.

Fresh plants began arriving in baskets. Some came from villagers who gathered them for extra coins, others from the apprentices, and a few from Merek himself.

The drying room turned green.

Leaves covered woven racks near the windows. Roots lay across trays after washing, filling the room with the smell of wet earth. Small flowers hung in loose bundles from the ceiling where moving air could reach them without direct sunlight.

By then Joe had been working under Merek for more than a year.

He still cleaned.

Everyone cleaned.

Merek seemed to consider cleanliness one of the easiest ways to identify whether an apprentice had become arrogant.

But Joe now performed most ordinary processing work alongside the older apprentices.

He knew how thin several common roots should be cut, which leaves bruised too easily to handle roughly, which materials could dry in direct sun and which became weaker when exposed to too much heat.

This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

Merek also began showing him small processing tricks that were not recipes but mattered to quality.

How to split one type of root along its fibers rather than across them.

How to judge moisture by bending a dried stem near the base.

How to recognize when a boiled extract had reduced enough from the way it coated the stirring stick rather than relying only on time.

Those lessons were exactly the sort Joe valued.

Small pieces of experience that took other apprentices years to collect became permanent once he properly learned them.

Merek noticed.

He did not understand why.

One afternoon Joe finished arranging sliced roots across a drying tray.

Merek inspected them.

"These three are too close."

Joe looked.

He was right.

Joe separated them.

Merek remained beside the table.

"You learn annoyingly quickly."

"Would you prefer I didn't?"

"No. I'd prefer you to stop making me find new things to teach."

Then Merek pushed another basket toward him.

Joe understood that as approval.

The older apprentices had required years to reach the same level of routine preparation.

Joe had managed much of it in a little over one.

That did not mean he understood medicine as deeply as they did.

They had treated problems he had never seen, gathered plants in seasons he had experienced only once and watched Merek deal with unusual cases Joe could not manufacture through hard work alone.

Experience required opportunities.

His talents could accelerate what he encountered.

They could not create events that had never happened.

That distinction kept Joe from becoming careless.

His knowledge of Merek's recipes also grew.

Not because Merek handed them over.

He still guarded the final mixtures carefully.

But repeated preparation created patterns.

The same extracts disappeared whenever certain medicines were produced. Powders were processed together. Certain smells emerged from the final room only after specific ingredients had been carried inside.

Joe gradually developed an incomplete picture of several common preparations.

The healing mixture used after ordinary physical strain was the clearest.

Nourishing medicines remained much harder.

Their ingredients were more expensive, they were prepared less frequently, and Merek protected the important steps more carefully.

Joe did not rush.

He had time.

--------

Spring warmed into summer.

The household's six strips changed from wet brown earth into green fields dense enough for the wind to move visibly across them.

Joe had grown enough that family work no longer consisted only of carrying small things.

He cleared irrigation channels with Mike, pulled weeds, helped repair field boundaries and carried increasingly heavy bundles without needing someone to watch whether he could manage them.

Perfect Body made him physically capable.

Years of martial training made him coordinated.

Every Hard Work Pays Off made even ordinary farm work gradually more efficient.

He still did not spend enough time farming for it to become one of his main skills.

It improved anyway.

The Hall's five-day schedule helped.

Two recovery days each week did not mean two empty days. One often went partly to Merek, while the other disappeared into family work, fishing, medicine review or controlled foundation practice.

Joe rarely felt idle.

He did not mind.

----------

Another summer passed.

Grain heads became heavy.

The fields slowly changed from green into gold, and harvesting began beneath dry skies filled with drifting dust and insects disturbed from the stalks.

Joe liked the landscape at that time of year.

From the low rise behind the house, Green Hollow seemed almost enclosed by cultivated land before the fields gave way to patches of brush, river growth and the wooded hills farther out. Smoke from several households rose above the clustered roofs in the evening, while the setting sun turned cut fields copper-colored before disappearing behind the ridge.

There was nothing grand about the village.

That was part of what made it feel safe.

Harvest came and went.

Then Starlight returned.

Two years had passed since Joe entered Talent Hall.

The festival still drew merchants, music and families into the square, but Joe did not experience it as a major turning point anymore. He enjoyed the food, looked through medicinal stalls with considerably more educated eyes and watched the newest children gather outside the wooden testing building.

The black stone still changed lives.

It simply was no longer changing his.

His attention remained on another threshold.

Static Foundation had spent months approaching Major Success.

Progress is slower now.

Every Hard Work Pays Off still rewarded each proper repetition, but the gains near the bottleneck were smaller than those that had carried him through earlier practice.

Joe was not worried.

Small progress accumulated.

A bottleneck for him was not a wall.

It was simply a region where each step became shorter.

About a month after Starlight, the wall finally gave way.