Chapter 4

"I haven't done anything. This is a misunderstanding. Ow!"

"Zah!"

Samasan was punched in the chest by a knight. The leader shouted as all the villagers quietly looked down. Samasan was forced onto his knees, and had his shirt pulled over his head.

*Crack*

Samasan let out a scream with all of his lungs.

*Crack*

Samasan couldn't breathe.

*Crack*

The pain shot through his body.

*Crack*

Samasan's mind went blank, only coming to to be beaten back by another rush of pain. He passed out, and woke up violently in screaming pain.

*Crack*

It was too many for Samasan to count. The knights marched off from the village. Samasan woke up in the mud. It was raining. The water hitting his back felt like fire. He tried to groan, but his voice was hoarse.

*Knock Knock* No one answered.

"Please let me in." He wheezed.

Samasan was shut out in the rain. He stumbled around the village. The eyes of villagers peering out the barred-windows could be felt. Samasan wandered to the main circular building. All of the moon-wheat was taken. Along with the pots. He looked at the ruby-red pond in the center of the building, then back to the houses. Samasan turned around, and left the village. Half a kilometer down the road, Samasan stood in the rain. He was drenched, and turned around.

Samasan walked back to the village, and set out all the bowls to catch rain. His body constantly tried to collapse, but Samasan would keep going. He walked to the dry creek bed, which was over flowing with water now. Samasan knelt down in the cold water, and stabbed the blunt end of his stick into the water over and over. He threw his stick to the bank of the creek, and stood up with a large clump of clay in his arms.

He sat next to the broiling creek, and began to mold clay. Every try was a failure. One hour. Two hours passed. Samasan's hands were trembling, and bright red where there wasn't clay.

"Heh. Ha haa hah ha."

Samasan successfully made a clay pot. He worked in the dark by feel. He worked when he woke up in the rain the next day. He worked and worked. The day after that, Samasan was woken up by the sound of crunching leafs.

"This is how I die." He stared up at the sky.

"Urujah." The person called.

Samasan sat up. It was Chief. She was looking at all the pots that Samasan had made. Over fifty pots laid upside-down in the forest around the creek. Samasan stood up, and sighed. He walked into the creek, and dug up more clay. She said something.

"I'm not done yet."

Samasan got to work, making another clay pot. Chief left, and throughout the day people came to take pots back to the village. They didn't say anything. They took seventeen pots. Samasan kept working, and slept in the forest another night. He'd rather die, than go back without enough. If this was his last night alive, he accepted it. That night Samasan was woken by a roaring fire. It sounded like a jet engine, and felt like he was trapped in an oven.

"What the..." Samasan blocked his eyes from the bright flames with his arm.

"Stand up." The voice commanded.

Samasan stood.

"Take my gift. Use it. Forge this world to my will."

The person cloaked in roaring flames vanished.

It was three black stars until full day. Samasan looked around. All the red-clay pots were baked black. Samasan picked one up, and flicked it.

*Ring*

This was. This was. Samasan filled a pot with water. Then another, until all the pots were full. He carried two pots for five minutes towards the village, then went back for two more. Slowly, the forty-one pots leap frogged back to the village. Samasan left the pots of water outside the gate. He started walking away.

"You can come back."

"What did you say?"

"You can come back."

Samasan burst out into laughter.

"What's so funny?"

"Heh. I can- ha ha ha. I can- heh ha ha -understand you."

The villager grabbed two pots of water, and carried them to the main building with Samasan.

"What is your name? What is the name of this village? What to do you call this world?..."

The villager Lira was exaserbated by all of Samasan's questions. The village is called 'Stoney-Brook village.' The world is called 'The Great Expanse.' The sun, which is a ring of stars, does tell time. The reason why numbers are counted in three, five, seven, nine, et cetera is because prime numbers are sacred.

"What about Two?"

"What?"

"Uh... Five-three."

"Never give names to the forbidden numbers!"

Samasan had said 'two' in his native earth language.

"So what's the difference between five-three and three-five?"

"Seven-three."

"What?"

"Five-three is more. Three-five is less."

"What?"

"Five-three" She pointed to her open hand, and closed three fingers, leaving two. "Three-" Lira held up three fingers, "Five," then two fingers pointed down.

"You mean three-five is negative five-three."

"Negative?"

"It's the opposite of five-three. Less than zero, er.. three-three."

"What's the opposite of three-three?"

"It has no opposite."

"What about the opposite of Seventeen-five-three (AKA 9)?"

"Negative seventeen-five-three (AKA -9) is the same as saying three-seven-five."

"That doesn't make sense. Do you mean three-five-seven?" Lira points nine fingers down.

"So the order of numbers said matters. How do you write numbers?"

"I don't know how to write."

"Does anyone here know?"

"No."

Lira led Samasan to the house that Chief was sleeping in. She knocked three times, and the chief answered.

"What do you want?"

"Samasan has returned." Lira answered.

"Who?"

Lira pointed to Samasan.

"So that's your Name, and you can speak."

"I just learned." Samasan responded.

"Okay..." Chief answered with a questioning tone. "Come in, before you let in the blind-scouts."

"Blind-Cats?" Samasan asked in his earth tongue.

"What?"

"He speaks strange words from his home land. They have given names to the forbidden numbers."

"Don't ever say those kind of words here." Chief looked at Samasan.

Samasan yawned, and laid down on the straw covered dirt floor. The door was tied shut from the inside, and he slept through the night. The next day, it was the village elder Yar with many questions. Samasan described the unbelievable story of coming to this world through the cave. He learned that the mossy-rock creature he encounter was called a 'rock-salamander,' which can petrify humans to stone with its gaze.

"Really?" Samasan shivered. "Why was I beaten?"

"Which time?" Yar asked.

"Both. Er.. The three times. Five-three (AKA twice) by the villagers, and Seven-three-three (AKA once) by those knights."

"You tried to steal the bowl from us the first time we met."

"That was... I forgot I was holding it. What about the five-threed time with Chief?"

"Who?"

Samasan pointed to the shortest woman in the village, who was collecting moon-wheat in a field.

"She is Jutwaso. She is the halfling representative of this human village."

"She is a human."

"No, halfling. There are different peoples in this world that look similar, but are different."

"You mean races, different types of humans."

"No. Humans. Halflings. Dwarfs. Elves. Dragon-kin..."

"Dragon-kin?"

Although Samasan could understand Yar's language, he didn't know the meaning of every word. As such, Samasan only learned Jutwaso was a halfling because he did know the native word for human. He learned brief descriptions of the words for some of the different races of peoples. Dwarfs looked like short stocky humans. Elves were tall, eight to eleven arms tall. Dragon-kin were human-like lizard-men with claws and tails.

"Arms are not an accurate way to measure."

"We don't need such accuracy brave idiot."

"That's what it means." He learned the meaning of urujah. "My name is Samasan."

"Okay brave idiot." Yar smiled.

Samasan learned that the beating he took with Jutwaso was an initiation into the village to teach him not to disobey the village, and Jutwaso was beaten to teach her the punishment for bringing bad people to the village. If Samasan had hurt the village, Jutwaso would also be punished. He didn't know it, but there were also times when Jutwaso also got little to no grain to eat, because of his actions. Yar told Samasan that he was beaten by the knights for looking at them directly.

"This world is cruel." Samasan lamented.

"These are our ways. We a less than them." Yar answered.

"Everyone is treated equal where I'm from?"

"Really?" Yar asked.

"No, but we try, and it's much better than this."

"You should work the fields if you want to eat."

Samasan helped till the ground of the field that was harvested with his pointy-stick. It took sixteen people and Samasan the entire day to turn the field, and replant it. He ate quickly that night without speaking a word. The next day was spent weeding, and getting water. Samasan stopped to get a few of the pink berries to eat. He named them chill-berries, because they made the mouth and body cold. Samasan became extremely cold that day, and started to shiver constantly.

"Did you eat some wild berries?" A villager asks him.

"Ye-ye-yes." Samasan answers.

"Brave idiot."

Samasan didn't regret his experiment to find a new food source. It was just annoying that the chill-berries had the opposite effect of the hot fire-wood. What was strange was that Samasan could see his own breath, but not the breaths of the other villagers. He wanted to concluded that the chill-berries restrict the body from metabolizing as efficiently, which causes body temperature to drop, but the other villagers should still see their breaths when it's cold out. Samasan had to accept that he himself was physically colder.

He sat by the outdoor oven for warmth. It helped much, and kneading moon-wheat flour into dough also helped keep Samasan warm. The village children cooked the dough without waiting. Samasan wanted to interject about letting the dough rise, but he was afraid of being kicked out of the oven's warmth to work the fields. He kept his mouth shut, and kneaded more dough. Everyone got to eat bread that evening. Samasan slept next to the fireplace that night, and was excluded from night watch.

The sense of cold vanished the next morning, after a painful bathroom break. The chill-berries never lost their cool going through the body. Samasan felt relieved to not be cold anymore. He spent the day helping collect water, but the desire to focus on studying the world distracted him constantly.

"This is so boring," Samasan complained in his native tongue, "I wish I knew how to pump water. I hate carrying it. It's so heavy..."

Samasan began digging a ditch from the creek towards the village to channel water. By the time he got two meters from where he had started, the digging reached twenty centimeters to reach the water level.

"Damnit."

Samasan realized the path back to the village was uphill, and the water would never reach. He kicked the dirt around, then carried another jug of water back to the village. Samasan took his anger out on the weed pile by mixing it around with his stick. The villagers just thought he was acting crazy, but Samasan had a method to his madness. He was creating compost. Samasan was forced to sleep outside that night, because the amount of ammonia that his skin absorbed from the weed pile was unbearable.

He mixed the pile of weeds around again the next day, and took a bath in the creek. Every day was spent mixing the weed pile for two weeks. It had finally become a semi-usable compost.

"Why can't I spread the old weeds on the field? It's compost."

"I don't know what compost is, but it's bad luck. The gods will punish us if we use it."

"It's healthy for the plants."

"We don't believe you, and wont let you."

"Then I'll prove it." Samasan stormed off towards the tall-grasses.

He cut down a one-hundred meter square area of grass and weeds with his stone ax. Samasan spent the next week covering the area with the compost. He had to make five more pots for contamination of the pot used to transport compost. Every other day, Samasan didn't eat. He asked for grains to eat, and saved them. The next day, he would sow them into the compost field. When the seeds sprouted in the field, the villagers called it a "bad omen."

They refused to consider eating the moon-wheat when Samasan suggested it to them. The villagers wouldn't let him bring the seeds or straw from his experimental farm plot back to the village. Samasan kept to helping the village, and working on his side projects.

"Won't you just try it."

"Okay fine. One loaf, and you'll eat it when it fails." Yar spoke.

"It won't fail."

From then on, the village learned and took to washing moon-wheat grains by soaking it in water to leech out the numbing effect, and about letting dough rise to make a softer bread. Samasan was starting to get credit for his efforts. He also used the paralyzing-water to hunt. By filling a pit with the paralyzing-water, he'd catch creatures that fall in and drown. Other creatures would try to eat those drown creatures, and also drown.

Samasan managed to collect one ruby coin, which broke into thirteen gold coins. It's value was around two thousand dollars by his estimation. Jutwaso and the other villagers were excited for the money and marbles he collected; which they called soul-rocks. Jutwaso bought Samasan his own metal knife when the travelling merchant passed through the village. She also bought a few iron hoes and a saw and ax at Samasans request. There were no issues when the tax collector came again after three months had passed.

Taming more of the forest began. Samasan was given repreive from doing standard village work after he rebuilt the roofs of the buildings that burned down. It was fortunate, because a family of four joined the village. However, Samasan did not enjoy helping to initiate the family. They comprised of one adult male aged in his late thirties to early forties, and three children. One of the children seemed to be a male child-bride of the male adult.

Samasan did not like the situation of a child around eleven being maried, but he could not challenge it. This world had medieval like qualities, but didn't follow all the standards of medieval times on earth. Homosexuality was accepted. Nudity was not seen as shameful. There is a lord ruling over the local lands, which includes Stoney-Brook Village. The villagers who attacked were likely from a neighboring village from another lord's lands as Stoney-Brook is near it.

Tools in Samasan's newly self-built house have begun to pile. He has created a plumbob with a rock tied to a stick with lunar-thread. The plumb-bob was used to make a clay square by hanging it into water, and scoring the clay in the partially submerged in water. The plumb-bob string and water surface formed a near perfect ninety degree angle. A taught bow string around one meter in length has become Samasan's straight edge. Samasan has self-declared the width of a coin which remains the same between all types of coins to be called a centicoin.

Samasan has been able to take more accurate measurements thanks to the consistant coin size. He's named one coin width a centi-coin, thirteen coin widths a silver rod, and one-hundred-sixty-nine coin widths a golden rod. A centi-coin is approximately fifteen millimeters long. A silver rod is close to twenty centimeters long. A golden rod is close to two-point-five meters. Samasan chose to keep the measurements based on the way coins break down.

Samasans pointy-stick has had one silver rod of centi-coins cut on it. However the stick is not perfectly straight. The work to make better tools never stops. Currently Samasan is trying to make a wooden lathe through trial and error. Making small wood wheels wasn't too difficult. It was easy to make a compasses by tying three sticks into a triangle, then use them to draw circles. Drilling was hard. He had to use friction drilling through wood on wood to cut holes in the wheels.

The first working lathe required two people to operate it. One person the spin the large wheel, and one person to cut the spinning wood. It worked by spinning a large wheel with a lunar thread rope loop tied between it and a smaller wheel to spin the wood at high speeds. The next redesign Samasan built was a one person machine. A wooden rod was inserted into the big wheel at half the radius to be used as a pedal. The final lathe design tied a rope to the pedal rod on the large wheel, and it to a foot activated pedal lever.

Samasan named the lathe Izabelle. It had a five to one wheel reduction ratio, and could comfortably turn wood at over five-hundred rotations per minute.

"Behold the silver rod!"

Samasan held the nineteen and a half centimeter tool out proudly. It was a stick one silver rod long. Lathed straight, and cut square with thirteen centi-coins marked on it.

"A stick?"

"A ruler."

"That is no lord." Another villager mocked Samasan.

"It measures things better."

"Arms and fingers are perfect ways of measuring."

"They are not perfect," Samasan retorts, "This is perfect. It is based on our coins consistent width. A silver rod is thirteen coins wide. I call seven-three-three coin widths a centi-coin."

"What is a consistent?" Yar asks.

"Um... Consistent is the same always. These are the same size."

Samasan breaks a silver coin into coppers, and compares one copper to one silver. He then lines up thirteen coppers on the ground next to the newly created 'silver rod.'

"These thirteen coppers become one silver coin. A silver rod is thirteen coppers long."

"Why not just use coins?" Jutwaso asks.

"This is a golden rod when laid out perfectly straight."

Samasan proceeds to break a gold coin into one-hundred-sixty-nine copper coins.

"Can you line these up perfectly straight?" Samasan challenges the villagers.

The villager children attempt the challenge. Samasan pulls out a long string with a knot at each end.

"This string has knots one golden rod apart. Pull the knots to each end of your coin trail, and see if they match."

"There is something wrong with this string." the children complain.

"Is this silver rod exactly thirteen coppers long?" Samasan hands a child the ruler.

The child clinks the thirteen copper coins into one silver, and back to thirteen coppers while comparing the ruler to the coins. Samasan has the children turn the one-hundred-sixty-nine coppers into thirteen silvers, and measure how long the string is.

"Thirteen." The child exclaims.

The villagers are speaking among themselves.

"What does it matter?" Jutwaso asks Samasan.

"They measure our fields in arms, and tax us by the number of them. How do you know we aren't being over taxed by using a shorter arm to measure more arms per field?"

The villagers compare their arms to each other's.

"Calling the Lord a liar is blasphemous." Yar claims.

"That's not what I'm saying. We just need better measurements for more accuracy to be fairly judged and taxed. People working for the lord of these lands can be corrupt, and measure our lands incorrectly. The honor of one's word can be a lie. Coins don't lie. They are always the same size. They cannot be hidden from us. If we measure our fields in golden-rods and silver-rods and centi-coins, we'll know if we're being taxed fairly."

"Enough talk of this nonsense." Yar interrupts.

"It's not nonsense."

"I said enough."

Samasan shuts his mouth.

"We will not be challenging the honor of our lord by calling him a liar," elder Yar tells the other villagers, "There will be no more speak of these coins and rods. My word is final."

Samasan is too stubborn to give up. Although he doesn't speak of golden-rods & silver-rods & centi-coins, he has been seen walking about the fields with knotted string and wooden stakes, taking measurements of all kinds of things. Yar is not happy about Samasan's actions, but allows it because he doesn't speak about his work to cause trouble within the village. Samasan has been helpful in measuring grain production per arms – the area of one arms is one arm by one arm.

He's shown that composting produces thirteen-three percent more grain per arm. The concept of decimals, fractions, and percent has been difficult for the village to learn, but there is some that are interested. It's convenient for knowing how much string one can produce in a day. Samasan has begun work on a human powered string making machine.

"Why won't this fucking thing work?" Samasan kicks over the mounted wheel.

The current method of making string involves a drop spindle. Loose fibers are tied to stick through a hook with a weight on the stick. The stick is spun freely in one direction while pinching a pull of loose threads to spin into thread. The spun thread is wrapped around the stick, and the spindle is spun again to spin more thread. Samasan has been trying to make the spinning and winding the thread into one continuous action.

"Your spinner works fine." Jutwaso tells Samasan. "It's much faster then the drop method."

Samasan adapted a lathe prototype into a hand cranked thread spinner. It was a large wheel with a hook on the end of the axle to spin thread. He also learned that making thread involved pulling fibers through a brush of nails to straighten the fibers out.

"I know there's something faster. There has to be."

The amount of thread Stoney-Brook village was producing had out paced the amount of fibers they could collect from the plants. The job of spinning had become much easier, but Samasan wasn't satisfied with himself. If the string didn't get caught on the yoke that holds the wheel axle, the spun thread could be spun onto a bobbin.

"How do they twist it before winding it on?" Samasan racks his brain.

Samasan spins in circles while imagining a thread being spun. He rolls around on the dirt, trying to become a thread that spins and winds at the same time. Yar shakes her head, and the children point while laughing at Samasan. He stands at his lathe in thought, while spinning arrow shafts. Samasan imagines lunar fibers tied to an arrow. After the arrow is shot, it spins through the air, twisting the fibers into thread.

Another arrow spins the spun thread onto itself, while the other thread spinning arrow slides down the fibers. The two arrows are spinning at ninety degrees to each other in Samasan's mind. His mind is spinning in circles. Samasan sharpens his pig-iron chisle by scraping it on a flattened rock. Sharpening is a daily requirement of lathing for him. The iron is too soft, and dulls quickly. Samasan wants to make an iron file too, and that also weighs on his mind.

Samasan uses scales from the razor scale fish for fletching on the arrows. He wanted feathers, but found that chicken feathers are collected by the nobles to make pillows and bedding, and therefore too expensive. Wild bird feathers are sparsely found. Samasan tried leafs for arrow fins, which worked until they dried out. The razor scale fish scales were decided on, because Samasan could spear fish the fish from the nearby river. A side effect of being tired of moon bread.

"How are the arrows coming?" Jutwaso enters Samasan's home without knocking.

"I can have one-hundred made in seventeen-three spins of the sun."

"One-hundred?" Jutwaso is confused by the earthly word.

"Forty-seven and three, and forty-seven and three." Samasan uses the native spoken prime numbers.

"That isn't enough to supply the war effort."

"Why can't we just give them grain?" Samasan asks.

"We don't have enough to spare, and they want arrows because they know you can make them."

"I don't want aid the murder of people!" Samasan snaps a completed arrow in half.

"They are our enemies. They will kill us, if they get the chance."

"They wouldn't kill us if everyone had enough to eat."

"There's never enough for everyone to eat." Jutwaso says while leaving.

Samasan storms out of the village, and stomps into the forest. He goes off the main path to a hidden area, where he has built a forge. Samasan lights the coals by blowing on a strip of fire-bark in a bed of charcoal. The foot operated bellow makes the forge sound like a stuttering jet engine. He hammers the red hot metal on a stone. Samasan has been trying to harden iron. His goal is to make steel, but it feels like a far off pipe-dream for him.

"You're a smithy?"

"What the hell?" Samasan looks behind himself.

"The Lord's knight order needs smiths to make swords and armor." Jutwaso walks towards him.

"The arrows are already too much!" Samasan throws the iron chunk back into the red hot coals.

"There is never enough for the soldiers."

"They are blood thirsty murderers of the innocent." Samasan grumbles.

"Hold your tongue!" Jutwaso points her short-sword at Samasan.

"It's not that easy." Samasan picks up a iron tipped spear he built.

"It doesn't look that way to me." She stares at the spear.

"You can't see the-"

Samasan shoves Jutwaso to the ground. When she looks at him, there is an arrow sticking out of his chest. Samasan is wheezing for air. A group of goblins have ambushed them. A goblin charges with a wooden club towards them. Samasan tries to spear the goblin, but spears the ground in front of it. The goblin trips over the spear, and Jutwaso shoves her sword through its throat. It gargles out green blood as it slowly dies.

An arrow zips through the air. Samasan waves his hand in a failed attempt to deflect it. The arrow embeds itself into Jutwaso's thigh. She lets out a scream of agony, and hobbles towards the archer. Samasan holds his spear up, ready to throw.

"I'm going to kill you." Jutwaso is screaming at the archer.

Samasan steadies his body, and throws his spear as another arrow pierces his gut. A goblin trying to flank Jutwaso becomes impaled. The goblin archer turns to run away, and is met with a sword run through its back. It screams, and runs away.

"Ahh...!" Samasan lets out a painful cry.

A goblin has used it's club to smash Samasan's shin bone. Jutwaso fires an arrow from the fleeting goblins bow. The first misses, and the second hits Samasan in the back. The goblin cackles, and Samasan smashes its face with a chunk of iron ore. He beats its face into a pulp while wheezing for air. Jutwaso fires another arrow. It hits the goblin sneaking up on Samasan. He rolls over and takes out his knife as the goblin limps towards him. Another arrow hits it in the back, and the goblin falls into Samasan's arms.

The goblin tries to bite out Samasan's throat as he carves out the goblin's guts. Samasan holds his bleeding throat. Jutwaso pulls the arrow out of her leg.

"Don't..." Samasan's voice is to soft to hear.

"Let's get back to the village." She reaches to pull the arrow out of Samasan's chest.

"No. Wait." he wheezes.

Jutwaso stops her hand, and Samasan pushes himself up onto his not-so-walking-stick. He cuts his shirt to tie a bandage slightly snug around his neck. Not tight enough for circulation to get cut off. The two of them slowly make their way back to the village.

"Just a little further." Jutwaso tries to encourage Samasan. "Just a little-"

"Jutwaso?" Samasan is shocked when she faints.

He looks at her. She is still breathing shallow breaths, but she is also very pale. Samasan drags himself away from Jutwaso. He leaves her there. Thirty minutes later, Samasan is back with a branch of chill-berries. He smashes the berries in his palm, and shoves the mash into Jutwaso's wound. The chill-berries frost over, and Samasan washes his hands with soil.

"A little further..." He wheezes.

Samasan ties Jutwaso's feet together, and ties the rope to the end of his pointy-stick. The rope reaches four and a half meters between Jutwaso and the stick. Samasan anchors his staff into the ground, and leans back. He falls down.

"Not like this." He struggles back to his feet.

Samasan uses his walking stick for leverage to drag Jutwaso's body. When he looks to the sky, the suns are on the thirteenth star being black. Samasan blacks out. All the stars in the ring have changed to white, when he wakes.

"Got to keep going." His blurry vision sees movement. "Get back you monsters."

Samasan blacks out again.