An Awkward Position

The evening meal was a subdued affair. The children washed up afterward and went to sleep in a suspiciously clean outbuilding. Ifan had not returned to the fields. No doubt he had spent the afternoon making the building suitable for the children since Gwen no longer wanted them in the house.

They kept up this uncomfortable arrangement for several days. Ifan was polite but seldom smiled. Gwen always seemed to be looking at them, but would never meet their eyes. The children increasingly looked to the skies for signs of a rescue. Claire was heard muttering calculations. “If they could get a ship from Otto that would be eight days. If they had to go to Hong Kong…”

During this time a peddler came to the farm. He pushed a cart that was woven like a basket. He looked like Ifan, short and broad and pocked, but his skin was yellow-gold. Adolphus followed the fellow to the house, asking questions about his travels and his wares. He got few answers. Although the twins were drilling their siblings in Welsh grammar as they worked the fields all day, Adolphus had not worked very hard at it. The language barrier did not deter him from hanging about, however.

“Any excuse to drop your hoe, Adolphus!” Claire glowered when he returned. “I’ve done three rows while you were gone.”

“And jolly well, too. So this fellow was a sort of tinker, knife-sharpener.”

“So?” Claire hacked at a weed. “That’s hardly surprising.”

Gerhardt was delighted to use his brother as an excuse to lean on his hoe for a few minutes. “What was he sharpening?”

“Aha, my young friend,” Adolphus grinned, “that is the primary point of interest here. He’s finished the house knives and he’s working on the carpentry tools now. All of which, you may not have noticed,” he looked around at them for effect, “are made of stone.”

Annabelle nodded. “I noticed Gwen’s knives were obsidian, like Gerhardt’s axe.”

“She only has two of them,” Mirabelle added. “I thought they just didn’t have much.”

“All the tools on his cart are stone or wood,” Adolphus said. “A tinker’s cart should be covered in metal! You should hear him clattering down the road half a mile!”

“No metal,” Gerhardt pondered.

“Come on up and see for yourselves,” he answered. “We’re supposed to bring the hoes up for sharpening next.”

Claire, who had been working diligently throughout her brother’s interruption, flicked a clod of dirt at him. “Wretched brat! You might have said!”

Adolphus dodged. “I need you girls to translate, anyway. He goes all over the place; probably has great stories. Anyway, nothing ever happens on this farm. This is as close to excitement as we’re going to get.”

Three days after the tinker’s visit, the children got much more excitement than they wanted.