Wizard of Jatte by Rowan Erlking (librera reader txt) 📕

Theissen and Doreen backed from the door watching the steward walked in without being invited. He held it open for his master who also walked in unceremoniously. Both men stared at the children’s bare feet and hanging nightclothes. Theissen’s tussled hair and bleary gaze seemed to complete the impression that they had indeed caught the family off guard. It made Lord Baron Kirsch’s smug grin deepen with pleasure.

He strode across the kitchen with a repulsed glance at their porridge. “I require the carpenter this very moment. He completed the job, I gather?”

Carpenterswife flustered, reaching for a spoon as if to use it as a cudgel. “He is quite exhausted and must not be disturbed.”

“The furniture is done. Just go in the shop, and I’ll go wake him,” Theissen said. He crossed over to the bedroom door giving Doreen a sharp nod. “You can show them.”

Doreen blinked at him and then turned to look with exasperation at her mother. The carpenter’s wife shrugged though she also waved for her to do as Theissen said, glancing back at her son with wonder at what he meant.

With a shrug, Doreen wrapped her robe around herself, going for her clogs. “Come on.”

“I beg your pardon?” Lord Baron Kirsch turned from Doreen with an affronted gape. He pointed at the door Theissen had just gone through. “The carpenter should be the one—”

Taking a step closer, the carpenter’s wife’s look would have killed if it had any substance. “He will be with you shortly.”

“Now see here! I am a lord baron!” He stomped his foot.

“And we are used to dealing with more polite lord barons,” she replied with a shark-like smile. “Now wait in the shop for my husband, or you can forget your order altogether.”

Both the lord baron and the steward blinked at her, retreating into the yard. Doreen followed after them with a grim reluctance to lead the pair towards the carpentry shop. Already she was preparing herself for Lord Baron Kirsch’s tirade that would only be the beginning of their ruin.

“He’s already in the shop?” The carpenter flung open his bedroom door, buttoning up his pants with a hop and throwing on his shirt.

“Yes, Dad, but if you would listen—” Theissen was right on his heels, handing over his father’s boots and socks.

The carpenter skidded across to the table and grabbed each sock from his son’s hands, yanking them on, and then each boot without even tying them up. “I don’t have time! I have to negotiate first! That man will flay us alive if—”

“He won’t! I told you. I already took care of it!” Theissen stuffed his father’s coat into his hands next.

Stopping, the carpenter stared as he nearly fell over the chair. “What did you say?”

Theissen drew in a breath, and smiled. “I know I should be punished for it, but I told you last night that I would try and finish it for you.”

It took a second for his son’s words to register.

With a hop, abandoning the coat, the carpenter flew out of the kitchen door and across the yard to his shop door, the rocks and chickens scattering around him. Up the step, he stopped. There he saw what his son had been trying to tell him since he shook him from a deep and well-deserved sleep.

All the furniture was finished.

Doreen stood in the doorway looking awestruck, much like the steward and the carpenter both of whom saw well-sanded, perfectly carved, stained and varnished sets of cupboards, tables, cabinets, and a finely done vanity—all dry. The low table Theissen had barely been carving out the night before had its inlay stone perfectly shiny and smooth. Everything was polished. The lord baron toured through the finished furniture with a pleased, yet strangely annoyed manner as if he had lost and yet won something. Only when Theissen had run in straight after his father did the carpenter remove his look of surprise and replace it with one of business.

“Is the work satisfactory?” the carpenter said, glancing once at Theissen.

Lord Baron Kirsch drew in a breath and then let it out again. “I must admit. I am undone.”

They waited for more to be said

With a nod, the lord baron said, plainly, “It is above and beyond satisfactory. Your work is perfectly exquisite.

“And so quickly too. To think that all those other master carpenters I approached claimed that such a job would take at four months at least, though your son in Serjiev City said it would take you three.” The lord baron toured around the room again with a laugh. “To think what a little pressure can get a man. It is like magic.”

The steward suddenly turned his head and stared at Theissen. The boy ducked then walked out of the shop, glancing at his bare feet as he did.

“Indeed, which is why I will never take on such a job again,” the carpenter said, stepping to Doreen’s side to remind her to keep silent. She closed her mouth, immediately turning leave the shop also, though she didn’t go, glancing back at the doorway as she leaned on it.

“Not one more?” Lord Baron Kirsch replied, sounding honestly put out. “I really do like your handiwork. These chairs are magnificent.”

The carpenter smiled, bowing his head with true humility. “Not again. I will never work under such pressure again.”

The lord baron turned with a smirk and trotted to the door, waving to his steward. “Good!”

To that, the carpenter blinked. Indeed this man made less sense than ever.

“My men will collect each piece of furniture today and tomorrow. My man here will pay you what I owe.” And Lord Baron Kirsch glanced at him with a sly expression in his eye, marking the carpenter shrewdly. “And be sure to never make anything as fine as what you have done for me for any other lord in Jatte or out again.”

“Not even for the king?” the carpenter asked with a wry and tired smile.

Lord Baron Kirsch dropped his expression and rolled his eyes like Doreen usually did. “Oh, if you must. But really, he has carpenters in his employ anyway. He’d sooner hire your son than you anytime, with how close he is. That Carpenterson has already built up a reputation for himself. Even my word might not have ruined him if you failed.”

“That’s a relief,” the carpenter murmured to himself as he watched the lord baron go. Doreen had not budged, still staring at the furniture.

After the steward let his master out of the yard and back into his carriage, he cast the carpenter a knowing look, yet remained silent. The carpenter met his gaze with a hard one. Both men turned. The steward hopped up into the carriage then tapped the side for the driver to go. Both were happy when the lord baron’s carriage had driven off.

“Theissen?” The carpenter turned, walking back to his house.

Theissen stepped out from behind the back wall. “Are you mad at me?”

His father beckoned him over. “A word.”

Doreen saw her father’s look and skittered out of the shop back inside the home before she had to witness anything. Theissen was already hunching over his shoulders waiting to be scolded.

His father spoke only in a whisper. “You finished it last night after I went to bed, didn’t you?”

Theissen nodded.

“It is obvious you used magic.”

He hunched down lower.

“I don’t think the lord baron knows. Do you think he does?”

Theissen looked up. “No. But his steward does.”

The carpenter let out a smile. “I think he won’t say anything. But son—?”

Nodding, Theissen waited for punishment.

“—from now on, no more magic when filling orders. All right?”

Theissen blinked. That was it?

The carpenter stood upright and strode to the house. “I wonder what your mother is making for breakfast.”

Staring after him, Theissen still could not believe that was all he would hear on that subject.

His father looked back with a twinkle in his eye. “Aren’t you coming?”

Feeling an intense relief, Theissen ran after him, grinning broadly. “Mom’s making porridge and eggs.”

Lumen Village benefited much when Lord Baron Kirsch departed this time around. Not only because all the tasks were completed and they had sent off a very much-pleased customer, but also because his presence in the village had proved to be a boon to future business. However, no one accepted such a large job again, gladly telling new customers that they would only perform such a grueling work order from the Lord Baron Kirsch—though if he truly asked them again they would also refuse. In time, they were glad to forget he ever came.

As the years passed and boys grew older, Theissen was busier in his father’s shop filling orders, though there were also lulls in between some jobs that allowed him free time around the village. In those off hours he often played sports with the other young men in the grassy fields, spending less time with Milrina than he used to since most of the boys’ discomfort with him was removed by his relaxed and amiable nature. She had also turned her interests elsewhere, focusing more on weaving and sewing anyway, though she and Doreen often did things together with the other ladies that had passed budding age, often giggling with a flirtatious look in their eyes.

“Look at them,” one of the boys said, drawing a breath after catching the ball they had been playing with in the field along the far highway close to the Fruiters’ groves.

Theissen did look, and then he sighed as though tired.

“Your fiancé is getting to be quite a beauty, you lucky dog.”

“We’re not officially engaged, you know,” Theissen said and reached for the ball, turning it bright purple to remind his teammate that they were still playing. But all the boys had stopped to watch the crowd of girls, each young man approaching the fence and leaning on it. Milrina was walking with Doreen and three other maidens with new dresses in their arms, laughing and chatting too cheerfully close to their field. He caught one girl secretly looking their way. It was clear the young ladies were taking that route on purpose.

A boy elbowed him in the side. “Are you kidding? Every time I get near her, your sister reminds us all that she is taken.”

Groaning, Theissen dropped his shoulders. “That meddler. I told Milrina that I had not decided yet. We were going to wait until I left on my carpenter’s journey.”

“When is that?” one of them asked.

“Next year in the spring.” Theissen looked over at the other girls. They were all very pretty. It didn’t seem fair to him that he had to choose one so early when he barely even knew what he wanted for his own life. Things had gotten confusing lately. “I leave after Kolbran has his budding ceremony. Dad says he needs an official apprentice in the shop, and Doreen has given up carpentry.”

The boys laughed at that. None of them had thought she was serious about it anyway. They all knew she was just competing with Theissen out of spite. But since that last year, her interests turned towards other things, mostly men. Suddenly she wanted to do everything to please a man, including cooking which she had previously despised. Her pandering was