DragonKnight - Donita K. Paul [68]
The boys nodded. As soon as Bardon let go, they scampered over a pile of crates secured by heavy ropes and disappeared.
He found N’Rae sitting with several children as they arranged brand-new rag dolls on a secondhand blanket from the inn. “Will you be all right down here, N’Rae?”
“Oh yes, I like taking care of children. And this place feels cozy to me. Ropma cave dwellings felt much like this, dark and musty moist. And their huts were sparsely furnished with crates and logs.”
I can’t imagine living in a ropma hut. How different her life must have been from mine.
He opened his mouth to ask a question but heard Granny Kye calling from behind him.
“N’Rae! N’Rae! Where are my paints?” She swept past Bardon without a word to him and handed the younger emerlindian the baby.
“My easel, my palette, my paints,” she muttered as she rummaged through the bundles lined up and stacked against one bulkhead. “Here! Here!” she exclaimed as she grabbed a duffel wedged in among heavier parcels. “N’Rae, help me pull it out.”
Bardon saw N’Rae looking for a place to put the baby, and he stepped forward. “I’ll help, Granny Kye. Stand over here a little bit.”
“That one.” She pointed unnecessarily. “The one with hard sides covered with blue canvas. Yes, that one.”
No sooner had Bardon shifted the other luggage and pulled that piece free than Granny Kye had her hands on it. She laid it on its side and undid the latches. The children crowded close, waiting to see what was inside.
“What are you going to paint?” asked N’Rae.
Granny Kye answered absent-mindedly as she opened the lid. “Everything. The sky. The sea. The sails. Everything.”
She set aside several brushes and a box containing bent tubes smeared with dried paint. Next she lifted out a flat square wrapped in cloth. Inside, blank canvas stretched over a wooden frame. Granny Kye’s face beamed as she looked at the grayish white surface. She held it up for all the children to view.
“What do you see here?” she asked.
“It’s blank,” said one.
“Sorta white,” said another.
“Nothing,” said the smallest boy.
The granny snatched that child into a tight hug. “No, no, no.” She laughed, then turned him around to sit in her lap and look at the blank canvas. “Quite the contrary, young man. You say there is nothing here? No, no, no. This picture is not empty, but full of possibilities.”
She gathered her painting tools, handing various items into small, eager hands. Those children who were allowed on deck trailed behind her, helping to carry her equipment. She set up her easel and canvas in a place somewhat protected from the wind. Most of the children lost interest as she went through the long preparation of getting the canvas ready.
In the days that followed, Bardon’s party took up a routine. The younger children played among the crates in the hold with N’Rae supervising. Holt swapped stories with the seamen and harassed the mapmaker for tales of his adventures. Bromptotterpindosset preferred to spend his time with the officers of the ship or the captain’s maps and logs. Granny Kye painted.
The older boys discovered Bardon doing his forms, the morning exercises that most warriors repeated daily to keep in fighting shape, on the deck early in the morning. He did several sets of a fixed order. The procedure for muscle toning that prepared him to use his body as his weapon looked almost like a ceremony. The ritual generally bored most of the boys except one. Ahnek, an o’rant of about ten years, stood beside the squire and mimicked his motions, quickly picking up the intricate positioning and rhythm of the exercises.
The next set required Bardon to roll, leap, balance, and perform acrobatic feats. More of the boys joined him for this, and he ended up instructing the most eager ones. Not only the boys, but also the sailors enjoyed watching Bardon parry and thrust with an imaginary opponent as he went through his last regimen for the day. By the second morning, all the boys had acquired roughly made wooden swords so they, too, could fight the unseen enemies.