“I warn you: a comely young person like yourself never finds herself at a loss for company in these parts,” the Editor said. “Life is quite difficult here, and even the most independent among us find it beneficial to pair up. Where will you be staying, if you don’t mind my asking?”
She reported that she had selected a parcel of land in the northwesternmost part of Friendship. “I’m told it’s on a high cliff, by the water,” she said.
“Upper Foglands? Hope you like rocks! No one’s kept a farm in Upper Foglands for as long as I can recall,” the Editor said. “And the only folks nearby are—” The Editor searched his memory. “Alabaster Brown, the vintner, who has been married a dozen—”
“I have no interest in town gossip,” Emily said. “Skip.”
“If you change your mind, be sure to take a gander at the town message board before you go. It has the latest Friendship happenings.” The Editor indicated a hutch on which the community news and offerings of Friendship were posted. “I shall post a story about your arrival as soon as we are done speaking.”
“Is it possible,” Emily asked, “to opt out of such a posting?”
The question seemed too complicated for the newspaperman to consider, and so he ignored it. “Even Alabaster Brown’s vineyard is closer than your plot in Foglands. If it were me, Miss, I’d find land nearer to town should the opportunity present itself. Verdant Valley would certainly be a fine place to raise a—”
“Skip.” Emily asked to be pointed in the direction of the stables so that she could procure a horse. The Editor obliged, and Emily was halfway down the street when he stopped her again. “Here,” he said. Seemingly out of thin air, he produced half a baguette, spread with red sauce and sprinkled with greasy strings of cheese. “It’s a gift. To help you get started.”
“This is very generous,” Emily said. “What is it?”
“I call it a panem et caseum morsu. It’s based on a dish my grandparents made in the old count—”
“Skip.”
In the time it took Emily to add the offering to her inventory, the Editor had disappeared.
LOCAL WOMAN SHARES GIFT OF ROCKS
She had chosen the Upper Foglands plot for its solitude, but she had not been prepared for how remote and unaccommodating this land would be. The air was cold and damp, the soil was brackish, and the constant fog made it so there was almost no direct sunlight. Her waking hours were devoted to survival: buying seeds from the mercantile, sowing the tenaciously craggy earth, watering the crops, the endless trips on her azure mare, Pixel, to and from town.
Occasionally, she would run into one of her fellow residents in town, and even when they didn’t know her, they would offer her modest gifts: a turnip or a block of cheese. Gifting was an important part of the culture of Friendship, and she felt shamed into reciprocation. She took to presenting her neighbors with rocks, the one product her farm produced in abundance.
She almost cried the first time she managed to grow a carrot. She washed and scrubbed the carrot, and then she set it on a white plate. She sat on the steps of her front porch, contemplating the carrot and watching the first fireflies of summer. She did not consume the carrot—it was too dear—but she was moved to write a poem.
In certain seasons,
We may be nourished by
The idea of the carrot
More than the carrot itself.
Alas, what is the point of writing a poem if there is no one with whom to share it? She decided to make a pilgrimage to her nearest neighbor’s house. Alabaster Brown wasn’t at home, so she left the poem, weighted beneath a rock, and she added the customary note of Friendship: A Gift from Your Neighbor, Ms. Emily B. Marks, Myre Farm.
Several days later, a lilac-eyed, lilac-haired person in overalls called on her. “Hmm, a rock,” Alabaster Brown said. “I had heard rumors of a bespectacled woman spreading her gift of rocks. It’s not many around here who are bold enough to give a gift as unpretentious as a rock. I shall happily add it to my collection. But I must warn you, Miss Marks, if you expect to bewitch me with your rocks, I have been married twelve times and I shall not be married again.”
“I am not in search of such an arrangement,” Emily said. “Yours is the farm nearest to mine, though, and so I hoped we might be friends.”
“Good for you. This town is relentless in its desire to pair people up. I am tired of the combining of property, which is inevitably followed by the separation of property. And in these transactions, one will invariably end up with less than one started with.” Alabaster thrust their hands in their pockets and spit on the ground. “Now, you’ll pour me a glass of wine, and we can have a cigarette, too, and you can tell me the story of your life,” Alabaster said.
“I’m pregnant,” Emily said.
“Wait until we’ve decanted to begin the storytelling, if you don’t mind.”
“I meant, pregnant women don’t generally smoke and drink.”
“Where you came from, maybe. You’ll soon discover that nothing affects anyone much here. Make sure you have enough hearts to get through your day, and that’s all you’ll need to survive.”
“If nothing has an effect, then why bother smoking and drinking?” Emily asked.
“Aren’t you a prickly one? My seventh wife was like that. A rogue and peasant slave to reality,” Alabaster said. “I suppose we drink and we smoke for the same reasons it is done elsewhere. We must fill our infinite days with something.”
Before they parted for the evening, Emily admitted to Alabaster that the rock had not been the gift: “It was the poem beneath the rock.”
“A poem.” Alabaster Brown laughed. “I wondered what that was. I assumed it was an advertisement for carrots. Several of my wives have reported that I can be emotionally obtuse, but I hope that won’t get in the way of our friendship.”
BOOKSTORE TO SELL CARDS AND GAMES
Alabaster Brown, for all their quirks, was one of the few people Emily felt she could have a conversation with, and they became frequent visitors to each other’s homesteads.
“I feel I am not suited for this life,” Emily confessed. “I have devoted months to growing a single carrot and I have no time to read. There must be more than farming.”
“You don’t have to have a farm,” Alabaster counseled.
“Don’t I, though?”
“Everyone here has a farm, and everyone here starts out a farmer. We have more produce than we can bear in Friendship. Why not open a store in town instead?” Alabaster said. “Create a niche and trade for what you need. That’s how I came to make wine. No one here cares what you have done before. You can be anything you want to be.”
“As long as it is a farmer or a shopkeeper,” Emily said.
Emily was five months pregnant when she decided to open the bookstore. Friendship didn’t have one, and it would be a way for Emily to read more and farm less. She sold off her farm equipment at a 50 percent loss and she rented out her unused land to Alabaster. Emily allocated most of her remaining gold to the construction of a small building in town. She named the store Friendship Books.