Dressed and ready, Annev went to the kitchen where Sodar threw him a pair of thick leather water bags. Annev caught them instinctively.
‘One,’ the priest began. ‘Two …’ Before Sodar reached three, Annev was through the kitchen door, racing past the rows of benches in the chapel and flinging open the doors. He stumbled in the near darkness then righted himself and sprinted out into the morning.
Annev’s routine was the same every day: run to the well at the centre of the village then race back with as much water as he could carry. Meanwhile, Sodar sat serenely in the kitchen, counting the seconds for Annev to return. The task was supposed to complement Annev’s Academy training, but for the first year, Annev had considered it little more than a gruelling chore. He complained for so long that Sodar finally made a game of it.
‘Bring back enough water to fill this jar,’ Sodar said, indicating a large clay pot in the corner of the kitchen. ‘Fill it before I count to fifteen hundred.’
‘What do I get if I do?’ a cheeky, eight-year-old Annev had asked.
‘You get to drink it.’
Annev’s brow furrowed. ‘I can do that now.’
‘Not any more, you can’t.’ He waited for his words to sink in.
‘You’re not going to let me drink our water?’ Annev exclaimed, incredulous. ‘The water I bring you? The water I have to carry?’
Sodar smiled. ‘You’re catching on.’
And he hadn’t been kidding either. The day after Sodar proposed his little game, Annev had deliberately taken his time on the way back to the chapel. He had been carrying the water in buckets back then and thought that by going slowly he would spill less water and not need to make a second trip. He had been right – he had filled the water jar to overflowing – but Sodar’s count had reached two thousand. When Annev then ventured to scoop a ladle of water, Sodar’s staff had come swinging down on his hand, knocking the ladle across the room.
‘Ouch!’ Annev shouted, rubbing his bruised hand. ‘Odar’s balls! What was that for?’
‘Language,’ Sodar chided, picking up the ladle. ‘And you know why. Rules are rules. No water from the jar.’ And that had been that. No water to drink or to wash his face or hands. He’d left early that morning – thirsty and stinking – so he could stop at the village well and draw up a few handfuls of water before class.
He was rarely late again.
As Annev sprinted towards the well through the pre-dawn light, he swung the thick leather sling around his neck and draped the empty water bags behind his back.
The bags had been his idea, one he was especially proud of. After months of blisters and a few times he had tripped and spilled the buckets of water, Annev had spoken with the village tanner Elyas and asked how he could make a waterproof bag. By the end of the week, Annev had two of them and was bringing the water home well before Sodar’s count reached fifteen hundred.
‘Well done,’ Sodar said after the second week of bringing the water back early. ‘Let’s see if you can fill the jar before I get to thirteen hundred.’
And so it went. Year after year. Each time Annev found a way to improve his speed, Sodar dropped the count. When Annev became quicker at drawing the water from the well, it fell to twelve hundred. When his endurance improved, it fell again, and when Annev mastered gliding across the ground without jostling the water bags, Sodar dropped the count to one thousand.
Annev had his own count when he reached the well. After hanging both bags over his chest, he kicked the lock-bar holding the hand crank in place and listened as the bucket tumbled to the watery depths below. As soon as it splashed, he slapped the crank and began to wind.
‘One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven.’ After nineteen solid cranks, the bucket rose up out of the darkness. Annev dropped the lock-bar back in place, reached over the edge of the well, and submerged one end of his sling into the bucket. Once the first bag was full, he cinched it tight and kicked the lock-bar again, sending the bucket spiralling back down into the darkness. He was on his eighth turn of the crank when something on the other side of the village plaza caught his eye. Annev glanced up just as a yellow dress and white apron ducked into Greusik’s cobbler shop. His fierce cranking slowed.
Someone spying on me? Annev wondered. It couldn’t have been Greusik’s wife – she wasn’t the type for spying, and she didn’t own anything brighter than the earthy red dress she wore to chapel – but it might have been Myjun.
The headmaster’s daughter had been wearing a yellow dress over a month ago when she had beckoned Annev into the alley behind the baker’s shop. Myjun had leaned him against the wall and, while his heart raced, she had slipped a piece of chalk from her apron and pressed his hand against the red bricks. Glancing away from his gaze, she carefully traced its outline on the wall then blushed as she finished and he took the chalk from her. He placed her hand so that it overlapped the outline of his and slowly traced her fingers onto the brick, memorising her scent, the curve of her jaw and the feel of her warm skin pressed against his. A week later, rain had washed the chalk from the wall of the bakery, but Annev’s eyes still lingered on the brickwork where the white lines had been.
Annev startled as the bucket thumped to the top and water sloshed over the edge. He dropped the lock-bar in place, filled his second water bag then glanced once more at the cobbler’s door, hoping for another flash of yellow.
Nothing.
He spun on his heel and raced back to the chapel.
The return trip was much slower, but Annev found that if he counted his paces as he ran, he was less likely to stumble. It was exactly one thousand and eleven paces back to the church at the edge of the forest, and Annev spent each step thinking of Myjun and the promise ring he hoped one day to give her.
Annev sprinted through the front doors with a smile on his face and surveyed a chapel that, while large enough to house Chaenbalu’s regular worshippers, was still smaller than the Academy’s dusty nave. Clutching his waterskins to his chest, he dashed up the aisle, launched himself onto the dais, and burst through the door at the back, which led immediately into the rectory.
‘Nine hundred and sixty-three. Nine hundred and sixty-four …’
‘I’m here!’ Annev gasped as he tumbled into the kitchen and unslung the water bags. Sodar pointed at the empty pot in the corner of the room, still counting. Annev groaned, even as he hurried to the earthenware jar and began filling it from his bags.
‘Nine hundred and seventy-one,’ Sodar concluded as Annev tossed aside the empty bags and slumped to the floor. ‘You’re getting slower, Annev. Last week I never reached eight hundred.’
Despite his panting, Annev found he was still smiling. ‘Yeah.’ He laughed. ‘I got held up.’
‘Doing what?’
‘I thought I saw Myjun at the cobbler’s.’