The Worthing Chronicle by Card Orson Scott

Author:Card, Orson Scott [Card, Orson Scott]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science Fiction, Fantasy, Paranormal
ISBN: 9780441918102
Amazon: 0441918107
Goodreads: 7969
Publisher: Ace
Published: 1983-07-01T07:00:00+00:00

It was morning, and Kapock got up early to raise the fire. There was a new smell in the air. The others joked that with sheep around him all the time Kapock couldn’t smell anything, but it wasn’t true. He could smell everything, but everything smelled just a little bit like sheep.

The new smell was snow, a mere thumb-thick blanket on the ground. It was early. Kapock wondered if that was a sign of a hard or easy winter. What weather would Jason send this year? he wondered. This was the first winter that Jason was not with them, the first winter that Kapock was the Mayor. I wish you would not go, Kapock had said. And if you go, I wish you would make Sara the Mayor. But Jason said, “Sara is best at naming and telling tales, and you are best at knowing what is right and wrong.”

It was true that Sara was good at naming. She made Jason tell her again and again about the Star Tower where the Ice People slept—she was the one who named it Star Tower. From the stories she decided that the place where they all lived on the north side of the Star River was Heaven City, and the huge river an hour’s walk to the north was Heaven River, because it was as wide as the sky. And when she and Kapock took all the sheep across the Star River and lived there with them, Sara said in surprise one day, “We don’t live in Heaven City anymore. We have a new place.” And she promptly named it Sheepside.

Sara was good at naming, but Kapock wasn’t very good at right and wrong. Jason could not be wrong, but Kapock was never sure what right and wrong were. Sometimes what he thought was right turned out to be right. Today everyone would know that he was right when he told them to make the thatch early, before it was even cold. Now every house was dry and warm inside, except the newest house, the one they were building for Wien and Vary. The early snow would make them all say, You were right.

But sometimes he was wrong. He was wrong when he tried to get Batta and Hux to marry. It seemed like the right thing. They were the last two of the first six Ice People—Kapock had married Sara and Vary had chosen Wien. Hux thought it was a good idea. But Batta got angry and said, “Jason never told you to marry, did he?” and Kapock admitted she was right and he was wrong. Jason was never wrong, and so they were all disappointed that he was not as wise as Jason. This snowfall would help them trust him again.

Kapock remembered four winters in the world. The first was a very dim memory of light too dazzling to see—he remembered being afraid because the snow was much too large, and he fled back into the house. The second winter

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