Chapter 8 - Find Joy And Spread Joy

THERE HAD NEVER been a crisis in the Mindal family before.

 

Everything was shaped by joy. The business flourished beyond all hopes for there was an attractiveness about the place, especially when that little girl, Vetta, came running in to tell breathless tales of happiness witnessed or participated in.

 

Customers crowded the shop just to get a glimpse of the sprightly little spirit as she brought a glow of joy to her surroundings.

 

"Oh papa, there was such a beautiful cloud just now, gracing the sky with a big bright whiteness tinged with rainbows. I clutched myself as I watched it and wondered where it might bless the land with refreshing rain, so pure and cleansing."

 

"A cloud," the man replied with a booming laugh as he sat at his desk doing accounts. His blue-clad employees were the ones on the counter now, blue-clad for the colour was a gladsome one to his way of thinking. His wife, Vetta's mother, merely drifted in now and then to polish metalwork for the mere sake of it. How she loved to see things shine. It was obviously where little Vetta got her enthusiasms from.

 

"Yes papa, it drifted over to Pulverin so I waved it on its way."

 

"Summer rains are a blessing at times my dear little Vettal Petal," the man said thoughtfully. "If joy does not come to us then the next best thing is it blesses others, be they friends or strangers."

 

"Papa, there are no strangers," Vetta reminded her father seriously. This elicited another booming laugh from the big man.

 

"Child, you are right. I thank you for teaching me this."

 

The girl seemed delighted.

 

"Education is one of the five wellsprings of joy," she said happily.

 

Her mother had come in just then, seeking brass fitments to rub. She paused on the threshold of an inner door and her eyes fixed upon that of her husband. His smile froze. He kept it there, for the sake of their daughter and as she wandered about the outer office in search of impossible joy he took himself off, taking Grayta with him.

 

Several rooms away they paused, alone in a quiet distant space. And then the tears flowed.

 

"There, there," the man said, soft rumblings that soothed his tearful wife. "You know it's right, you know it is."

 

"Why did that strange man have to cross our threshold?" the woman asked.

 

"You have answered your own question my dear, because he had to. He had no choice. It was a good thing he did according to his lights and must suffer no blame for what he brought us."

 

"He brought us pain."

 

"He brought us a future, a special, glowing, bright future so very different from that till then we had envisioned for ourselves."

 

"And for our daughter."

 

There was a long, quiet pause as the couple embraced, soothing each other for though the man suppressed his own emotions it took a mighty effort and his wife knew he shared her grief.

 

"A world there is," he eventually said, stroking his wife's bright hair, the same as their daughter lit up a room with, "a world out there beyond our little houses and streets and canals, a world as much deserving of joy as we do. There is no shame in holding onto lovely things, but there is a joy also in sharing. This is what that man brought us, that wonderful, generous, thoughtful man. He may not have been fond of cheese, but he was besotted with kindness for all his fellow creatures and we can but learn from him and do right by the world."

 

"She is such an innocent little thing," Grayta Mindal protested.

 

"Exactly so. She is just what the world is crying out for."

 

This time his tears did flow, but somewhere deep within his soul he knew they were tears that could only come from that most precious inspiration of all, the fifth wellspring of joy.

 

***

 

TINKER BLOMP did not feel as generous as others might consider him, though certainly he was thoughtful.

 

Tinkering was all about balances, the weighing of one thing against another. He was a master juggler but knew that even he might miss his aim and it only took one slip for the whole performance to end in disaster.

 

"Are you sure you will not try even a little piece of Green Milk Light?" a fellow passenger next to him on board the passenger boat to Pulverin said.

 

"I thank you, no," Blomp replied with gently raised hand. "These radishes and spice bread slices are quite adequate for my needs." The other desisted politely, for it was unkind to press upon another that which they did not desire, even if it was cheese.

 

Had Tinker Blomp performed an unkindness of his own?

 

There were things about the world which were awry. The summer had been full of rumours upon doom, yet it was the Era of the Dove Star, traditionally a time of optimism among the peoples across many lands.

 

Where had such rumours begun? They seemed according to those back in Affinity who enjoyed studying such things, to appear as if by spontaneous generation in widely separate places. He was determined to find out for himself, for there was nothing more infuriating than having someone else juggle with reality through mischievous actions that ignored consequences.

 

Someone had tampered with the shape of the world, not through actual physical change, but how everyone perceived it, like placing a distorting glass between the observer and the thing observed.

 

Quality control was not as it used to be.

 

***

 

THE ACADEMY OF Sure Things was a living, organic thing. A great nourishing bowl of knowledge one might dip into to seek answers to every possible question, even league tables of the most corrupt politicians in various lands. It was fed by countless contributors, many of the anonymous kind, obviously.

 

Yet the bedrock of its merit lay in the fundamentals, those non-changing truths that some foolishly called laws of nature. Standard works of reference were just that, the standards by which everyone found themselves governed, whether they liked it or not. Custard has to be yellow. It says so in the Standard Food For Thought Manual, first put together two hundred years ago by a great gathering of unknown chefs and cookwives in a fierce battle of the mixing bowls. One could read the entire thing for a small fee on the Sure Things on-grid info site. Never changing. Always available.

 

Such also were the works of the legendary Damnation Mole. He had been a physicist of high regard and completely mad outside his known discipline if the cucumber incident was anything to go by. Yet in the field of gravimetrics and gridology he had no equal.

 

Every figure he calculated became a standard and every table generated by his algorithms was a reference work of great significance. Bridges were built using them, buildings too. Ships navigated from port to port and the very motions of Serenity high in the sky were guided as it seemed by the Mole Tables.

 

There they were, clusters of seemingly meaningless digits, available for all to see on the Sure Things on-grid info site. Always ready to be printed off in almanacs and guide books by various sponsored publishers across the Face of the World.

 

The existence of a single printing error in a recent copy of an almanac in Poldorama meant little, even if that almanac was in the hands of an inspired maniac determined to find misery where there should be none. Thankfully that particular individual was soon to find consolation in a favourable marriage and preach blessings instead. The discovery of that same error in the Academy of Sure Things on-grid info site was a matter of a much greater magnitude.

 

If the spring source is tainted, so too will be the river from which it comes, and all those who imbibe it along its winding course.

 

That particular spring was in Frangea inevitably, that land of bright teeth and even brighter ideas. Tinker Blomp knew he had to get there and have a look at source code, knowledge paths and shadow Tinkering if such might be the origin of such a fundamental anomaly.

 

It was a scary thought, and as he travelled on the canal boat to Pulverin in search of a nexus point that would allow him to transit instantly to the distant land, he could not help feeling a little nervous of what he might find there.

 

"You know, my friend," he said to his fellow passenger. "Perhaps I might try a bit of that green wedge stuff after all."

 

He was a little lightheaded just then and felt he needed a dose of irritable reality to balance things within. Summer was passing into autumn and matters were maturing like a pungent cheese on a mission.

 

***

 

VETTA MINDAL clattered down the wooden stairs in unwonted glee as she heard the hooter of the canal scurry waiting by the dock.

 

"Here she is, my little Vettel Petal," a big, jovial man said, giving the girl a hug at the bottom of the steps. "Let me look at you," and he held his daughter back for an appraisal.

 

Vetta was dressed in full uniform. A grey plaited skirt and white blouse with a tie in the school colours of sky blue and yellow stripes. Over this she wore a blazer, also brightly striped in the signature shades of the famous place of learning. Upon her short blonde hair was neatly poised a straw hat with a ribbon band around its crown that if the other parts of the uniform were not enough proclaimed her a pupil of Miss Plazenby's Extremely Exclusive Seminary for Girls.

 

Dark blue eyes looked up at her father from beneath the rim of her hat in excitement.

 

"It is so amazing papa, to think in a few hours I shall be whisked away to another land across thousands of miles to begin studying at such a marvellous school."

 

"Thousands of miles, hmn," the man mused thoughtfully as if regretting his decision to send his only child to such a faraway place. "It is for the best, my dear petal, for the best."

 

"Of course, papa. Education is one of the five wellsprings of joy!"

 

"Indeed it is. Thank you for reminding me," and he picked the girl up and spun her around affectionately until the hooter on the canal scurry sounded again.

 

"We must be going," Vetta insisted and kissed her mother goodbye, the latter dabbing a moist eye with a spotted kerchief.

 

Large suitcases packed with essentials for the trip were wheeled to the waiting scurry by blue clad men, employees of Forster Mindal, and loaded with much grunting and brow wiping so that soon all that was required was for father and daughter to take their places in the water taxi's seats and begin the journey. The big men in their padded sky blue work clothes made a guard of honour as the young girl passed, doffing their caps respectfully.

 

"Safe journey miss," one said.

 

"Find joy and spread joy," another suggested as the couple walked across the gangway and took their seats. Vetta waved goodbye to the men and her more distant mother, still dabbing an eye discreetly so as not to upset her daughter unduly and then with a roar of engines the canal scurry departed the dock to glide along the arrow-straight waterway south to Depperveld, the launch point that would take the girl away from her homeland and into a whole new world.

 

Up to this point in her eleven years of life, Vetta Mindal had lived a quiet existence in the central district of Poldorama known as the Blessed Hub. In a land as flat as Poldorama the main activity of the population when not making cheese was the storing and distribution of goods, ready to be transported across the temporarily lowered storm barriers when opportunity arose. Thus huge warehouses were dotted about the country full of the produce from many other lands. These warehouses were connected by canals like a spiderweb of waterways, the largest, the Grandest Canal, dividing the country north and south where most of the traffic would be found for it was near a mile wide in places and almost six hundred miles long.

 

Between these great storage sites were wide grassy fields ideal for dairy cattle or flower growing, sometimes overlapping through inadvertence. Vetta's father now owned a huge dairy concern on the western edge of the square district of the Hub with its cathedral like warehouses dominating the skyline and cows placidly munching flowers and grass in the spaces between. Thus he was responsible for a major part of the most famous product of Poldorama, having over the years through persistent toil become one of the great cheese merchants of the land. Only thus could he afford to send his daughter to such an expensive school in distant Frangea. As it was understood.

 

The canal scurry, so called because unlike most of the water traffic on the various canals that plied their business with leisurely motion it tended to scurry along at a reasonable rate of knots, weaving in and out of the huge cheese barges, some of which were owned by Vetta's father. There were also fairly empty tourist floats and giant multi-hulled expresses full of the world's goods to avoid as they made their way along the side canal towards the great waterway in the centre of the land.

 

Vetta had travelled to various parts of the Hub with the family on occasion, to visit parks on artificial hills and admire the view stretching for miles all around. This however was an all together more ambitious journey and she was thrilled to bursting point as she gazed out the windows at huge buildings at least fifty feet high drifting past in the distance and clusters of trees that seemed like giant broccoli marching across the land.

 

"Look at that tower papa," she once cried as they passed the sweeping scaffold of some communication structure that seemed to soar into the sky.

 

"Ah, that reminds me my dear," the man said. "Please make sure your locator is updated for the new maps it will need so you know where you always are."

 

"At present papa, I am in paradise," the girl happily replied.

 

They swept into the Grandest Canal and there were even more amazing sights for the wondering girl to absorb. The vessels here were much larger and more sedate in their progress. Some even had great white cotton sails like wings that helped them along, though these tended to be from the northern districts where the weather was more turbulent.

 

"It takes great skill to pilot one of those winged vessels," Forster Mindal said in admiration as they swept past the tall hulls and towering masts of the Frobern District-based craft. "They don't often come this far south, so this is a treat for you my Vettel Petal."

 

"My day will be full of them I think papa," Vetta replied, eyes shining as she took in all the new sights around her. It was a long and full day indeed for night had fallen by the time they reached Depperveld. To ease the nerves of timid first time flyers the journey across the great storm barriers that separated lands would often be done in darkness. To see the great roiling clouds of supercharged vapour, even in a time of abeyance was enough to terrify the hardiest of souls, let alone an eleven year old on her first trip abroad.

 

A great trans-barrier flitter awaited them at the port near the settlement of Depperveld and there was the usual bustle as luggage was shipped aboard and everyone said their goodbyes.

 

Although Vetta had promised herself she would not cry at this moment of parting, the look in her father's eyes broke that resolve as she was given her clearance papers and was about to climb the steps into another world.

 

"Goodbye papa," she wept, hugging him once again and he just muttered, too overcome by the emotion of parting. Then she raced up the steps with her essential clutch bag as her only hand luggage, daring not to look back until she was at the top. Other passengers pushed past the schoolgirl but she stood her ground, scanning the crowds on the portway, seeing her father's big bulky figure and responding to his slow heavy wave goodbye until the door closed, shutting him from view.

 

She was thrilled to be on this adventure of a lifetime, but all the same, she was terrified what the future might hold in a strange land, meeting many girls like her for the first time. What would they be like?

 

Thus she settled in her seat near a window and closed her eyes to dream.