Farmer Jeff

Farmer Jeff was walking backwards down the Ropewalk with three strands of yarn in one fist. At the far end of the long shed the twisting wheel creaked round, and the strands tightened as they came, the way rope does when it’s laid properly: slowly, steadily, by somebody who trusts the floor behind them.

The stick was the trouble. It was a head too tall for Farmer Jeff and a good deal too tall for the rafters, and every few steps it knocked one, and dust came down like flour. Outside, the hay crew were whetting scythes in the first light, a long sweet scrape that went on and on. Under the boards the Hum ran tight as the yarn.

A hundred paces. Farmer Jeff had counted the posts on the way in, then picked up the yarn before anyone could offer to help.

People offered anyway. Walkers cutting through the shed stepped aside, the way you’d step aside for a cart. A small Beast with a basket reached out as they passed and touched the wool of Farmer Jeff’s balaclava, very lightly, the way you’d touch a gatepost for luck. “Farmer,” they whispered to their friend, as if that settled something. A Bull at the side door called, “Want me to take the end? For the Farmer?”

“No, thank you,” Farmer Jeff said, and kept walking. They wanted this to be a rope. Not the Farmer’s rope. Just a good one, done right, from one end to the other.

Forty paces. Fifty.

A Cat stood at the big door with chalk on their fingers. The door said, in fresh white letters: TOMORROW. CLEAR AND COLD. NO FROST YET.

“You’re the new Farmer,” the Cat said. “Birgit. I do the weather.” They tapped the door. “Tell me what tomorrow will be.”

The walkers stopped. Outside, the scythes went quiet. Farmer Jeff felt the whole shed lean in.

“I’ve been here one morning,” they said.

“That’s why I’m asking,” said Birgit. “Everyone here agrees with the door. I’d like to be wrong once, where people can see it.”

Sixty paces. The yarn tugged at Farmer Jeff’s hand. If they stood still too long it would slacken and kink, and the whole length would be rope in name only.

They thought about it honestly, because that was the only way they knew how. They didn’t know this sky. Birgit did. That chalk had been going up on that door longer than anyone in the shed could remember, and it had the look of something that had been right a great many times.

“I think the door’s right,” Farmer Jeff said.

Birgit’s shoulders dropped, just a little. “Everybody does,” they said, and wiped the chalk off on their sleeve.

Three walkers said it at once, “The Farmer says clear,” and hurried off to tell someone. Farmer Jeff heard their own plain sentence going down the lane without them, getting bigger as it went. It sat badly. They had only meant it for Birgit.

But they didn’t stop. Seventy. Eighty. The stick hit a rafter and they laughed at it, quietly, because nobody else was watching anymore. Ninety. The strands held tight and true.

At a hundred paces their heel bumped something that wasn’t floor.

It was a rush chair, set square at the end of the shed where nothing needed sitting. Farmer Jeff tipped it with the stick. The rush was new, and the underside was signed in small careful letters. Nobody had mentioned it at the door. It faced the length of the Ropewalk, the way a chair faces when someone means to come in and sit down.

Farmer Jeff tied off the rope, a whole hundred paces of it, and stood looking at the empty seat.

The tale potatoes went into the ashes, and the Fire Circle went quiet the way it always did when a tale was about to start. Split-log benches all round, sparks going up into the dark, the Hum coming up through the ground into every seat. Wren Achterberg raked the embers over the potatoes and nodded across the flames.

“Your names, Farmer,” Wren said.

Farmer Jeff stood. The stick caught a low branch and a shower of leaves came down, and somebody laughed, kindly. The whole circle shifted to face them. Somebody on the back bench touched the wool of Farmer Jeff’s sleeve as they passed, for luck.

They had got the names the slow way. Every afternoon that week they’d gone down the side lanes to the oldest Beasts in the Meadows, the ones who had walked the old road for years before it went dark, and asked who lived on the far side of it now. They wrote down only what two old Beasts told them the same. That Beasthood sat behind a dark stretch now, and nobody could get through. A name doesn’t hold on its own. Somebody has to say it.

So Farmer Jeff told it as a tale, because this was the Fire, and tales were what the Fire was for. They started at the last lamp that still burned and walked everyone in, house by house.

“At the first gate, Ansel Pike, who mends nets and hums while they do it. Next door, Tamsin Reed, who keeps the bell.”

Plain. One name, then the next. Tallgrass sat on the nearest bench with both hands tucked under them. Their Beagle ears twitched every time a sentence ended.

“Up on the hill behind the well, Morrow Quill.”

“The hill with the tower on it?” someone called from the back. “I heard the Farmer said there’s a tower.”

Farmer Jeff felt it then: their own words from yesterday, come back bigger, like bread that had risen while they weren’t looking. A tower. Next week it would be a castle, and Morrow Quill would be a king in it, and the real Morrow would be someone else entirely.

“Which bit grew?” Wren said mildly.

“That bit,” said Farmer Jeff. “There’s no tower. It’s a small hill. The well’s taller.”

A ripple of laughter. Tallgrass leaned over and muttered, without unsitting a single hand, “How big a hill? Bigger now.”

“Small,” said Farmer Jeff, and went on.

Every name went in right. No extra ones, no dropped ones, no kings. When they got to the last house, they said that name twice, the way you check a knot. Then they stopped.

Nobody moved for a moment. Then a Pooch on the far bench lifted a stick to throw on the fire. “A stick for—“

“Will they be found?” asked Birgit Fernlow.

Birgit was sitting forward with their chalky fingers laced together. They looked hopeful, the way they had looked at the Ropewalk door. “When the road lights up again. You’d know, Farmer. Will they?”

Every face turned back to Farmer Jeff. They could feel how badly the circle wanted a yes. One small word, and the stick would go on the fire, and everyone would go home warm and tell it all week: the Farmer said they’ll be found.

“I don’t know,” said Farmer Jeff. “I know their names got said tonight. That’s all I know.”

The Pooch lowered the stick. Somebody coughed. Birgit nodded slowly and looked at the fire, and the room went a few degrees cooler, like a door left open behind you.

Wren dug the potatoes out and handed the biggest one across, because the teller always got the biggest. It was hot enough to sting. Farmer Jeff said thank you and meant it, and nobody quite looked at them as they went.

They took the long way home, down the lane past the Ropewalk. The big door was open a crack. Inside, the rope they’d laid hung in its loops, and at the far end, a hundred paces off, the rush chair still sat square to the room, facing the door, signed underneath in those small careful letters.

Farmer Jeff walked the length of the shed and set the potato on the seat, still wrapped in its leaves, in case whoever it was for came in late and hungry.

Then they went home. Tomorrow there’d be the Fire again, and the same names, and probably the same question. They knew already what they’d say.