Midsummers' Festival, 3

Ah, me, all the interruptions. This telling takes so long to tell, while the rest of my life slips away untold...luckily these weeks are dull ones, for me. This year the summer is hot, and we stay inside during the heat of the day, coming out like forest animals in the early hours and the late ones. So there is plenty of time to think, and dream, but not much happens; it is a drowsy time, with long, full days of harvesting, eating the harvest, fixing buildings, cleaning, and so on. There is always much to be done, when the days are long; it is a time of creation and repair.

In any case, my trip to the tanners was quite enlightening. Ennis showed me how the drum-makers paint their hides with caustic to shrink them. The drum-makers kindly showed us how, if the hide is not stretched, the caustic will make it ruck up as it shrinks, into folds very like the ones on the Gycko's feet. Examining the crumples in the hide, I asked Ennis if he thought it would do.

"Probably not," he said, in that stiff way he has. "Look at it under the Lense Vial first, and see. It may only be a start."

A start! When there were only five days left until the festival? My anxiety knew no bounds.

But I thanked the drum-makers and walked back with a silent Ennis, who bid goodbye as soon as he could. Then I unlocked the case with my father's Lense Vial in it and set to work.

Ennis was right. The folds were of the right type, but the surface of the hide was much too pitted and full of pores to be of use. What good did it do? I threw away the bit of hide in despair, and went to help my father in the Museum.

My father was busy directing the white-washing of the Museum rooms, showing the men what to do, directing ladders and getting out cloths to cover the machines with. I helped to spread the cloths, fetching water for the white-washing and trying to note to how my father conducted his business. He took time to explain things to me, as he always does, since I will be the Curator when he is passed; but eventually he looked at me, and took me by the shoulders into another room.

"My dear," he said, "You have been looking strained recently. Is it your machines for the Festival? I do worry you have looked large in that department. When I was your age, I simply created a sort of cart with a fan that opened and closed. It's not necessary, you know, to create the universe again."

I smiled at him, for I love my father. He is a kind and generous man, as well as being brilliant with machines. I am not supposed to ask the Curator for help in my first Festival presentation, but I am allowed to ask my father for advice.

"Perhaps you might suggest something for me then, Father, as I am struggling so to re-create Nature's wonders! I am working with smoothed hide, but even that is too rough for what I need. I need a skin of some sort that is absolutely smooth, even under your own Lense Vial."

He looked at me strangely, but I could see his thoughts at work, behind his dark brows. "What is it that you are trying to accomplish?"

I explained to him about the pleats, and his eyebrows went up. "That is indeed ambitious for a first project. Are you certain you wouldn't prefer to simplify it?"

"I will, Father, if that is what is required. But I wish to try." I tried to keep the stubbornness off my face, but he still saw it and laughed.

"Let me think about this. I do not know of a hide that is so smooth as to be able to fit against the imperfections of glass! What you need is something already pleated, something complex and soft..." here a faraway look came into his eyes, as always happens when he is imagining the workings of things. Then his brow cleared, and he said to me, "What of the inside of stomachs? Have you looked to see? They are much like the surface of tongues, with flower upon flower, down too small to see. You could even, if you wished, use the tanner's caustic to shrink it further. Try these things, and see if they will help you."

Did I not say my father is brilliant?