Chapter Two
The seasons passed slowly. Little Gray Boar grew to manhood. He dreamed
of going to The Engineer's School at Eastern, but even with the gifts
that had been sent to him long ago, and all that he had earned, there
wasn't enough.
2 He was thinking of joining the Army and applying for Warlock's
School, then, for Engineering Training. If you promise to
serve five seasons, the Army would put you through school...if there
was an opening. But his grades were barely passable and he would be at
the bottom of the list.
3 He was working in the fields one day, thinking about this when a man
from the docks ran up. "You'd better come quick!" he cried, "Your
father's dead. That old boom of ours snapped in two and came down on
top of him. It broke his neck. He never felt a thing."
4 Gray Boar rushed to the dock, his mother was not yet there, and they
were having trouble freeing his father's body. When he saw his mother
coming, he went to her, took her in his arms, and turned her around.
"Come back to the house, mother," he insisted. "They'll get him out,
wrap him, and bring him home. He wouldn't want you to see him like
this."
5 He admired his mother's courage. She did not show a tear, or weep,
until she was in her room, and the door was closed. Then, she hugged
her son and emptied her Spirit. When she could finally sleep, Gray Boar
saw to the arrangements for the funeral.
6 For the next few months things were like it was the midst of the
rainy season, though it was midsummer. Then, one of their neighbors
began to visit. He, too, had been a widower for about a year, and had
always been a close friend of the family. The Darkness around Gray
Boar's mother began to lift. She began to smile and laugh again. One
day the man, whose name was