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| -rw-r--r-- | lbh.txt | 6 |
1 files changed, 3 insertions, 3 deletions
@@ -735,7 +735,7 @@ It was mid-afternoon by the time Papa rounded them up and set them about gatheri This year Papa had built three kilns. Each used the side of a dune as its primary structure, reinforced with a layer of split logs, and then packed earth and then packed clay. The other side was built up of logs and earth until a conical shape was formed and then the whole thing was filled with clay. For days Lulu, her father, and Kobayashi had hauled the rich red clay of the banks upriver down to the beach and packed it into the kilns until they were smooth as glass. Then they lit small, smoldering fires inside to dry the clay and bake it hard. This took several days, but when it was done the kiln was ready to make pitch. -Kobayashi and her father worked all the next day dragging last year's stumps to the kilns and took turns splitting them with the axe until all the roots had been neatly stacked. Tamba, her uncle, and Francis had gone inland to gather walnut logs in the wagon, while Lulu, Birdie and Henry gathered downed oak and stacked the grasses they had cut and dried several weeks before. Now they had everything neatly stacked and ready. +Kobayashi and her father worked all the next day, dragging last year's stumps to the kilns. They took turns splitting them with the axe until all the roots had been neatly stacked. Tamba, her uncle, and Francis had gone inland to gather walnut logs in the wagon, while Lulu, Birdie and Henry gathered downed oak. The grasses they had cut and dried several weeks before lay nearby in neat bundles. Everything was neatly stacked and ready for the fires,. Lulu was chewing something Francis had brought back from his trip inland. A Muskoke woman they'd run into far up river had given him a strip of partly dried spruce gum. Francis did not like it. "It's like eating a tree," he said. @@ -743,9 +743,9 @@ Lulu thought that made sense. "You are eating a tree." He gave the rest to her. It *was* like eating a tree. And there was something wonderful about eating a tree. It gave her some of its huge spirit. Lulu could almost feel herself expand as she chewed, though she did wondered if the tree people minded her walking among them chewing up the flesh of one of their fellow trees. She asked an oak, but it just shrugged off a few leaves in the wind. Everyone gets eaten eventually. -Lulu wandered away from the piles of grass and twigs, deeper into the sandy hummock that separated their camp from the marsh adjacent the leeward side of the island. Edisto wasn't a very wide island. It was long and skinny. Edisto's marshy backside meandered for miles, as ribbons of the river traced their way through the flatlands. +Lulu wandered away from the piles of grass and twigs, deeper into the sandy hummock that separated their camp from the marsh adjacent the leeward side of the island. Edisto Island was indistinct, the marshy backside waters meandered for miles, as ribbons of different rivers traced their way through the flatlands, and traded water with the sea at every tide. What the locals called Edisto was several islands really, all hemmed in between the Wadamaw and Edisto Rivers. -The forest was a clutter of shadow and light. Lulu sat down on a log and watched the shimmering leaves dancing in the breeze high up in the tree tops. Everything was so different up there. She decided to climb up and have a closer look. She cast about for a suitable tree to climb. She was near the marsh, in a mostly oak and pine forest. She would liked to have climbed a pine, but there was nothing to hold onto, the trunks were bare well above her head. +The forest was a clutter of shadow and light. Lulu sat down on a log and watched the shimmering leaves dancing in the breeze high up in the tree tops. The air around her was heavy and still. She longed to feel the breeze of the tree tops. She watched a bird flutter and hover out from a branch, grabbing insects. Butterflies wobbled and bounced around the leaves. There was a whole world up there, separate from her own on the ground. She decided to climb up and have a closer look. She cast about for a suitable tree to climb. She was near the marsh, in a mostly oak and pine forest. She would liked to have climbed a pine, but there was nothing to hold onto, the trunks were bare well above her head. She settled on a youngish oak that had a huge low limb she could get on, and then make her way up it to the trunk where another branch allowed her to pull herself up. Above that was another branch, and another, and another. She kept at this for a while, ignoring the scrapes from rough bark, and trying not to pay attention to how high up she was. It took her a good ten minutes but she managed to get high enough up that she was afraid, and could no longer drive the fear from her mind and continue. |