As I was looking through the satchel I also found the letter you sent to Ark yesterday, telling him he had better send in his assignment to find out how people feel about the Cataclysm (as you call it) and how peeved you were that Ark had not done so before now. I also read the part where you said you understood Ark's concerns about talking to the wrong people and being lynched, but his job required dedication, and you seemed to imply that being lynched wasn't half as bad as what you had in mind if Ark missed his next deadline, which was tonight at sundown.
You said that Ark's assignment was important because you were concerned that the purpose and lessons of the Cataclysm were being lost in a sea of deliberate ignorance and intolerance that could lay the foundation for future disasters (I'm copying from your letter now), and you said you counted on Ark and others like him to keep you informed of the condition of the land and its peoples, because if the peoples couldn't get off on the right foot (or is that feet?), then maybe they never would and one day we'd be sorry.
Well, I was amazed that anyone wouldn't know why Istar had a flaming mountain dropped on it, since Istar was such a poop nation and went around enslaving and torturing and killing people, all the while saying the people were being killed for their own good, until the gods got fed up and turned Istar into the bottom of the Blood Sea of Istar for everyone else's own good. Ark taught me all that, and I always thought everyone knew that but then I never asked, and I was surprised to read that Ark said he was afraid to ask, and I couldn't figure out why not understanding the Cataclysm meant we would be sorry later. Are we going to be tested on it?
Anyway, you had told Ark to send in his report by sundown tonight or else, and I knew Ark couldn't very well do that while he was asleep, so I've decided to do his work for him and surprise him when he wakes up. Isn't that great? I'm going to find out what everyone thinks of the Cataclysm, and I'll write it all down and send it right to you on the facts machine, which I took with me. Ark will be so proud! Sometimes, when he's bailing me out of jail, he says that he should have left me by the side of the road, which is how he became my foster father, as he found me on his way into town when I was a baby just after the time of the Cataclysm. He raised me and showed me how to fix shoes and how to count and read and everything, but we do have our moments when things don't go right, which seems to happen more often lately, now that I'm bigger, but that's how families work sometimes, you know.
Anyway, here I am now, down by the harbor in the alley beside Goodwife Filster's bakery, trying to stay out of the wind and keep warm. Ark said I should write down important things while I'm out today, so I will do that and send them to you, and I think I should write down something about Newshore and its politics and religion, but Newshore doesn't have much of either. I could also talk about how Newshore got its name, as it used to be a farm until Istar got mashed and the sea came up and northern Ergoth turned into an island, and you can still see the sunken foundation stones of an old barn just offshore, in a place Ark shows me when we go fishing, but everybody here knows about that. I could talk about Goodwife Filster's sugar rolls, which I can smell baking now, and they are on my mind a lot because I forgot to get something to eat before I left the shop the second time, but no one would want to read that, either. I should just get started on my assignment.
But, first, I am going to get a sugar roll.
Report Number Two
Same day, about midmorning
Hi, Astinus! I am writing this from the Newshore magistrate's jail in cell number four. It is dark in here, and I cannot see what I am writing or even if my pen is still working. It smells like somebody drank too much ale and it didn't agree with him, so he got rid of it in every way he could and then didn't bother to clean it up. I can hear someone snoring in cell number one, and cell three has someone in it who needs to use a handkerchief.
How I got here is very interesting, so I will put it down in case it is important. I was really hungry and was getting cold in the alley, so I went on into the bakery, which smelled of fresh-baked sugar rolls and breakfast pastries, the whirly kind with the melted cheese stuff on top that Ark says gives him gas but which I like anyway (the pastries with cheese I mean, not the gas, which is awful).
Ark always buys pastries from Goodwife Filster by him self. When I tell him I want to get them, he always says, "That wouldn't be a good idea," and he buys the pastries. Goodwife Filster always frowns at me while I wait for Ark outside her shop. She knoFws I'll be eating the sugar rolls Ark is buying, which I think makes her mad, but I have no idea why. She's one of the people I want to understand by being a recorder, but so far I haven't figured her out.
When I opened the oak door and went inside where it was toasty warm from the baking ovens and smelled the way I imagine Paradise does, Goodwife Filster saw me and frowned (she never smiles) and said in a nasty voice, "I'm not open yet, kender."
I said, "I thought you always opened about now."
And she said, "Get out of here, before I call the magistrate. Go on!"
About then I knew I wasn't going to get a sugar roll or even a cheese pastry, because Goodwife Filster is funny sometimes about people who aren't human like her, only she's not really funny as in funny ha-ha, she's funny as in funny uh-oh. Ark calls her the Minotaur, on account of she's strong and heavy and has such a terrible temper, but he says it's because she's as ugly as one, too.
I was leaving when I remembered what you had asked Ark to do, so I stopped and said, "I have just one question to ask before I go."
Goodwife Filster's face knotted up in a way that reminded me of the Wylmeens' dog, but she didn't say anything, so I quickly got out my papers and pen and got ready to write down her answer. When she looked like she was going to yell at me, I asked my question, which was, "Do you think the gods did the right thing when they struck down Istar so that the balance of the world was preserved and freedom of thought, will, and action was granted to all once more?" I'm not sure I asked the question exactly as you wanted Ark to, and I borrowed some of your phrases from your letter to get it right, but I figured I was close enough and didn't think it would hurt.
On the other hand, maybe I didn't ask the question properly after all, since Goodwife Filster called me a name that meant that my real parents weren't married, which for all I know they weren't, but that wasn't any business of hers, and then she came at me with a bread knife, so I ran outside and down the street and was cold and hungry again before I knew it.
As I was standing outside her shop with my arms crossed under my robes because it was too cold to write this down yet, a fisherman came up to go into the bakery, and I said, "It's not open yet," because I'd never known Goodwife Filster to lie, even if she once said that all elves carried diseases and kidnapped children, which I don't think they do, or at least not all of them, or at least not the ones I know. Anyway, the fisherman said, "Oh," and left.
Then the Moviken kids came up, and I said, "It's not open yet," so they made faces at the bakery window and left. Then the spinster sisters Anwen and Naevistin Noff came up, and I said, "It's not open yet," and they groaned and left.
Then Goodwife Filster came out, wiping her hands on a towel, and she looked around and frowned at me, and I said, "Are you open yet?"
And she made a snorting noise through her nose and said, "When Istar rises, you damn kender," then went back inside to bake some more.
Then Woose, the dwarf, came by and said, "Morning, Walnut," and I said, "Morning, Woose. The bakery's not open yet."
Woose peered at the bakery door and scratched his beard and said, "That's funny. She's usually open at this hour," and then he left. Woose isn't a human, but he has lots of steel coins from his mining business, and maybe Goodwife Filster forgives him for not being human on account of that.