Mitt was rather pleased to have company. “I’m looking for my home,” he told the officer chattily. “I come a long way, too.”
“I can see you have,” said the officer. “Where is your home?”
“There.” Mitt pointed vaguely northward. He was busy examining his new acquaintance. The gold on the officer’s coat took his fancy. So did the officer’s face, which was very smooth and pale and narrow, with a nose that went out much more sharply than any noses Mitt had known before and a mouth which Mitt somehow thought of as clean. Altogether Mitt felt he was a person worthy of knowing about the perfect place. “It’s all quiet, with water,” he explained, “and it’s my place where I’m going to, but I can’t find it yet.”
The officer frowned. His own small daughter had been found marching out into the Flate only yesterday, saying she had a house on a hill that was hers and she had to find it. He thought he knew the signs. “Yes, but where do you live?” he said.
“Dike End,” Mitt said impatiently. It was unworthy of the officer to ask such things. “Of course. That’s where I come from, and I’m going to my home.”
“I see,” said the officer. He waved at the distant soldiers. “Come here, one of you!”
The several troopers who came running at his shout were somewhat astonished to find not a full-grown revolutionary but an extremely small boy. “He shrunk with the wet,” one suggested.
“He says he lives in Dike End,” said the officer. “One of you take him home and tell his parents to take more care of him in future.”
“Dike End’s not my home. It’s where I live!” Mitt protested.
Nevertheless, he was taken back to the New Flate almost dangling from the hand of a huge trooper in the Earl’s green uniform. Mitt was sullen at first, disappointed and vaguely humiliated. And he was deeply disillusioned about the officer. Mitt had told him a valuable secret, and the officer had barely even listened. But the trooper was a cheerful man. He had children of his own, and it had been hot, wet work, hunting the revolutionary in the windless Flate. The trooper was pleased to have a rest. He was very jolly to Mitt, and before long Mitt cheered up and chatted happily about how far he had walked and how he thought he would like to be a soldier, too, when he grew up, and a sea captain as well and sail the Earl’s ships for him.
When they came to the New Flate, people came to doors and gates to stare at Mitt trotting along with his hand stretched above his head in order to reach the great warm hand of the trooper. The stares were unloving. Earl Hadd was a hard man and a vindictive one. The soldiers were the ones who carried out the Earl’s harsh orders. And lately the Earl’s second son, Harchad, had taken command of the soldiers, and he was even harder than his father, and a good deal more cruel. But since, all over Dalemark, an earl in his earldom had more power than a king, in the times when there were kings, Harchad and his soldiers did exactly as they pleased. Therefore, soldiers were hated heartily.
Mitt understood none of this, but he saw the looks. “Don’t you look like that!” he kept crying out. “This is my friend, this is!”
The trooper became steadily more uncomfortable. “Take it easy, sonny,” he said every time Mitt cried out. And after a while he seemed to feel the need to justify himself. “A man’s got to live,” he told Mitt. “It’s not work I enjoy, but what can a poor boy off the harbor edge do? When I get my bounty, I aim to take up farming, like your dad does.”
“Did you fall in the harbor?” Mitt asked, fixing on the only part of this he understood.
They came to Dike End. Mitt’s parents had missed Mitt about half an hour before, and they were by then in a panic. Mitt’s father received him with a great thump, and his mother hugged him frantically. Mitt did not understand the reason for either. The vision of his perfect land had faded by then. He was not sure what he had gone away to do.
The trooper stood by, very stiff and correct. “Boy was found out in the Old Flate,” he said. “Said he was looking for his home, or some such story.”
“Oh, Mitt!” Milda cried joyously. “What a free soul you are!” And she hugged him again.
“And,” said the trooper, “Navis Haddsson’s compliments and would you keep more of an eye on him in future.”
“Navis Haddsson!” exclaimed both Mitt’s parents, Milda in considerable awe, and Mitt’s father with surprise and resentment. Navis was Earl Hadd’s third and youngest son.
“Big of Navis Haddsson,” Mitt’s father said sarcastically. “Knows all about bringing up boys, I suppose?”
“Can’t say, I’m sure,” said the trooper, and he made off, having no wish to get into an argument with such a thickset and aggressive person as the elder Alhammitt.
“Well, I think it was very kind of Navis to send us our Mitt back like that!” Milda said when he had gone.
Mitt’s father spit in the dike.
All the same, Milda remained extremely impressed by the kindness of Navis. She told people about it whenever her husband was not by to resent it, and most people she told were impressed, too. Earl Hadd and his family were not, as a rule, kind to anyone. After that Milda took a great interest in Navis for a while and found out everything about him that she could. There was not very much known. The Earl’s eldest son, Harl, and his second son, Harchad, were the Earl’s favorites and the ones people heard most about. But about the time Navis sent Mitt home, Navis was enjoying a little more of the Earl’s favor. The reason was that three years or so before, the Earl had chosen Navis a wife, as he had chosen wives for his other two sons. Milda heard that Navis and his wife adored each other and went everywhere together. Then Navis’s wife gave birth to a daughter. That was the reason the Earl was pleased with Navis.
The Earl valued granddaughters. He did not like girls in the least, but he needed granddaughters because he was an extremely quarrelsome man. Granddaughters could be married off to other earls and lords, who would then become Hadd’s allies in his quarrels. But so far only Harl’s wife had had a daughter. So when Navis’s wife, too, had a daughter, Hadd was delighted with them. Milda learned that Navis’s wife was expecting a second child shortly, and Hadd was gleefully expecting another marriageable granddaughter.
The baby was born the following month. He was a boy, and Navis’s wife died having him. It was said that Navis was so stricken with grief that he could not be bothered to find a name for his son. The nurses were forced to ask Earl Hadd to think of a name, and Hadd was so annoyed at not having a granddaughter that he called the boy Ynen, which was the name of a lord he particularly disliked. Hadd was consoled later on that year when Harl’s wife and Harchad’s both had girl babies. As for Navis, he gave up his commission in the Earl’s army and fell into total obscurity. It was soon quite impossible to learn anything about him or about his children, Hildrida and Ynen.
Mitt did not quite forget his perfect land. He remembered it, though a little fuzzily, next time the wind dropped, but he did not set off to look for it again. It was plain to him that soldiers only brought you back again if you went. It made him sad. When an inkling of it came to him in silence, or in scents, or, later, if the wind hummed a certain note, or a storm came shouting in from the sea and he caught the same note in the midst of its noise, he thought of his lost perfect place and felt for a moment as if his heart would break. But then he would shake off the feeling and laugh with his parents.
It seemed to Mitt that the three of them could laugh at anything. He remembered laughing with Milda one evening during a rainstorm. Mitt was trying to learn his letters. He found them so difficult that he had to laugh. Then the door came clapping open in a gust of rain, blowing everything in the house to the end of the room, and there stood Mitt’s father, soaking wet and laughing, shouting above the gale that the cow had calved. At that the door came off its hinges and fell on Mitt’s father. And they all laughed till they ached.