Messenger - Lois Lowry [15]
"Even those of you who want to close Village to new ones—even you value the peace and kindness we have always embraced here. Mentor? You seem to be leading this. What do you say?"
Matty turned to look at Mentor, the teacher who meant so much to him. Mentor was thinking, and Matty was accustomed to seeing him deep in thought, for it was part of his classroom demeanor. He always thought over each question carefully, even the most foolish question from the youngest student.
Odd, Matty thought. The birthmark across Mentor's cheek seemed lighter. Ordinarily it was a deep red. Now it seemed merely pink, as if it were fading. But it was late summer. Probably, Matty decided, Mentor's skin had been tanned by the sun, as his own was; and this made the birthmark less visible.
Still, Matty was uneasy. Something else was different today about Mentor. He couldn't name the difference, not really. Was it that Mentor seemed slightly taller? How strange that would be, Matty thought. But the teacher had always walked with a bit of a stoop. His shoulders were hunched over. People said that he had aged terribly after his beloved wife's death, when Jean was just a small child. Sadness had done it.
Today he stood erect and his shoulders were straight. So he seemed taller, but wasn't, Matty decided with relief. It was simply a changed posture.
"Yes," Mentor said to Leader, "we will see what the meeting decides."
His voice sounded different, Matty noticed.
He saw that Leader, too, was noticing something about Mentor and was puzzled. But everyone was turning away now, the crowd dispersing, people returning to their usual daily tasks. Matty ran to catch up with the blind man, who had started walking the familiar path home.
Behind him he heard an announcement being made. "Don't forget!" someone was calling out. "Trade Mart tomorrow night!"
Trade Mart. With the other things that had consumed Matty's thoughts recently, he had almost forgotten about Trade Mart.
Now he decided he would attend.
***
Trade Mart was a very old custom. No one remembered its beginnings. The blind man said that he had first known of it when he was a newcomer to Village, still an invalid with wounds to be tended. He had lain on a bed in the infirmary, in pain, unseeing, his memory slow to return, and half listened to the conversations of the gentle folk who took care of him.
"Did you go to the last Trade Mart?" he had heard one person ask another.
"No, I have nothing to trade. Did you?"
"Went and watched. It all seems foolishness to me."
He had put it from his mind, then. He had nothing to trade, either. He owned nothing. His torn, bloodstained clothes had been taken from him and replaced. From a cord around his neck dangled an amulet of some sort, and he felt its importance but could not remember why. Certainly he would not trade it for some trinket; it was all he had left of his past.
The blind man had described all of that to Matty.
"Later I went, just to watch," he told him.
Matty laughed at him. They were close, by then, and he could do that. "Watch?" he hooted.
The blind man laughed in reply. "I have my own kind of watching," he said.
"I know you do. That's why they call you Seer. You see more than most. Can anyone go to Trade Mart and watch?"
"Of course. There are no secrets here. But it was dull stuff, Matty. People called out what they wanted to trade for. Women wanted new bracelets, I remember, and they traded their old bracelets away. Things like that."
"So it's like Market Day."
"It seemed so to me. I never went back."
Now, speaking of it the evening of the new ones' arrival, the blind man expressed concern. "It's changed, Matty. I hear people talk of it now, and I feel the changes. Something's wrong."
"What kind of talk?"
The blind man was sitting with his instrument on his lap. He played one chord. Then he frowned. "I'm not sure. There's a secrecy to it now."