Teach me Something
“Gertrude, I am going to sleep with some friends tonight.”
She looked at me oddly. It was well within the rules to go and sleep over with a friend, so I wasn’t asking permission. But the construction that I had used was odd.
“What friends?”
Oh well, she asked, it would be on her head now, “My Fisher buddies.”
I could see this placed her in a quandary. The rule gave her no option to refuse me permission; indeed, I wasn’t asking. But she knew Mother would be appalled. She could give her the heads up, and Mother would probably refuse. But she knew how that would end, and knew she wouldn’t get any credit out of that exchange. She shouldn’t have asked.
(She told me herself later how she had handled it. When Mother had noticed I wasn’t there, she had asked, “Where is Heinrich?” and Gertrude had responded, “He is sleeping over.”--thus avoiding a dramatic clash.)
I found “sleeping over” with the Fisherboys very educational, very entertaining, and sleepless. It was absolute bedlam. Every single Fisherman crowded into the same room, all getting ready and into bed at the same time. It was a good thing I was so short, or I would have been bumped a dozen times. As it was, I simply got undressed and, with the help of the gang, got into my hammock. I had thought that they had squirmed around quite a bit when they were in bed with me, but it was magnified when there were several of them and dozens more nearby.
After the bedlam of preparation and the initial noises of settling down were over, when only an occasional baby broke the quiet, we had quite a whispered conversation. I have never shared with anyone like I shared with those Fisherboys, but I trusted them. Toward morning, with most of them having slept on and off, Seamus and I were awake and whispering.
“You’re family now, you know,” he said.
“What does that mean?” I asked.
“Family?” he paused. “It means you are always welcome with us. You can’t ride as a ‘guest’ on our ship anymore. If you come again we won’t give you a cabin; you will be expected to sleep with us. Of course, if your folks won’t let you, we will understand, but after you have a wife, you will sleep with us. And no paying either.”
After a while he went on. “And you would be expected to work, of course. Most of the work would be too hard for you, but I know there are things you can do well… like art and all. Dwarves are the best at art, and we love art on the ship--carvings and all.”
He then obliviously carried on into a topic that caused me to blush. “And you could mate with one of our women if you wanted to. It might be hard at first, but she would soon change into a Dwarf for you, unless you wanted to be a Fisherboy!”
He turned toward me, eager, “You should learn to speak Fisherman! And I will learn to speak Dwarf! It will be easy for me, for we always have Dwarves. But you could find an Elf to teach you. They love to teach!”
This startled me. I knew Farmer, of course; everyone did. It was what Seamus and I had always spoken to each other. But Fisherman was not a common language among us. Some of us knew Troll, but rarely Fisherman (unless you lived in a big city).
“Ok, I’ll try my best. Teach me something.”
Accordingly, the next few days I spent learning Fisherboy and sleeping with them. Mother found out, I think it was the third night, and what could she do then? It was OK by rule, Gertrude had approved it, and I had given my word. She knew also that Father would overrule her if she tried to forbid it. I can’t say I was the fastest learner, but by the end I had some words, greetings and things, and had the best friendship of my life.
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Von also writes as ‘Arthur Yeomans’. Under that name he writes children’s, YA, and adult fiction from a Christian perspective. His books include:
The Bobtails meet the Preacher’s Kid
and
Arthur also has a substack, and a website.
Thanks again, God Bless, Soli Deo gloria,
Von