Then it was that Linkeree and Batta came to me, for they had heard my cries and by chance I was not far from the place where they were hiding. They had been afraid that I was coming to do them harm because they had burned the new house, but then they remembered that even though I was not always wise I had never tried to do them harm and they came to me.
Now this was how they had built a house: They found a place where two trees grew close to a steep hill. They cut long branches and put them between the low branches of the trees and between the trees and the hill making a roof. Then they covered it with many branches and dead leaves that they uncovered from the early snows. This way when the snow began to fall they already had a roof, and as the snow was falling they made walls out of branches leaning against the roof and they were dry. They made a small fire at the door of this house, and the wind blew the smoke away but also the heat, and even in blankets it was cold all that night.
In the day the snow still fell, but Linkeree and Batta and I decided that waiting would only make us freeze like the water of the Star River , and we must work to be warm. So Linkeree cut trees while Batta and I brushed snow from a place on the ground, even though the snow still fell, and then we moved the logs to the place and began to build walls. Linkeree and I built the walls as Batta kept sweeping out the snow. During the day the little house by the hill fell in from the snow on it, and so we hurried to finish the new house by dark, but we could not. So once again we only used the walls of the house which were about shoulder high to stop the wind, and we built a fire, and snow fell on our blankets and we were cold but the snow was not as bad as the wind, and so it was better that night and I did not freeze and neither did they.
Then the next day the snow was less, and we finished the walls, even with a door and a little door. Then we all made the roof frame out of logs and long, thin branches but we had no straw for thatch and so we used only leaves and this did well enough for this time, though water drips in many places. Also we made a door and a little door frame to cover the holes and on the third night we were warm and mostly dry.
Then I said to Linkeree, Who built this house?
You and Batta and I built it, he said to me.
Then who owns this house? I asked.
All of us, for we built it. If all of them had helped us build it, then it would belong to all of them.
This is true, I said. And now, Linkeree, I give you and Batta this house. It is no more mine, just yours and Batta's. But you must also give me something.
What can be as much as a house? asked Linkeree.
You must promise me, I said to them. You have to promise me that even though you will live just the two of you here, and will surely plant seed here and make a field just like the field at Heaven City, you will always be a part of Heaven City .
No, said Linkeree. I do not want to be a part of them.
But I said to him, This is a new thing you have done, and we did not know what to do. When you made the cloth for catching fish, none of us knew what it was for, did we?
No, he said to me.
But still it was good, and when we understood we all were made stronger and better by it. Now you also have learned from me and others. Is my woollen cloth not warm? Do you not put cloth in front of your door like I do in the summer?
But Linkeree said nothing. Then I said to him, Linkeree, my friend, you are wise like J, you think of things that no man has thought of before. We need you. But you also need us. How will you plow and plant without an ox? How will you do it without seeds? And we need you to help us make straight walls and to teach us the things you think of that have never been done before. You are part of us, and we are part of you. I said this to Linkeree.
Then he said to me, If I promise you to be part of Heaven City always, and obey, you must promise me that what I make with my own hands will belong to me and what Batta and I make together will belong to us.
And so I promised him this, even though it will surely make J angry, because I think it is more important for us to be together than it is for us to have all things equally. Yet it hurts me to write this, because it seems good to me that all men and women have things the same as each other. For now that Linkeree has his own field to plow and care for, we will be weaker, and he will be weaker, for we will not take care to put food in the mouth of our friend, but only in our own mouth. This is ugly to me.
When J comes again he will see what has happened and he will know that it is bad and he will not make me Warden anymore. I will be glad. And now I make an end of writing and I will write no more, because I do not want my children to read even this much, for it tells only of my foolishness and my children will be ashamed that I am their father, and J will be ashamed that I am his son. I make an end.
J comes in the night.
I thought never to write again, and for several moons I did not. But it is now the moon which at its ends means we will plant, and tonight J came to my house in the night.
He came quietly and commanded Sara and me to wake no one. This is what he said: Kapock, I come to see what has happened while I was in the Star Tower . But I do not want the others to know I came, for they must expect me only in the harvest moon, and not look for me at other times.
And so Sara and I promised.
Then J read all we had written. He cried twice. Once when he read what Sara wrote about J himself, and once at the end of it when I wrote. He said to me: Oh Kapock, you have done wisely, not foolishly. It was a hard choice and no one could have done better, not even me.
But I said, You could have done better, for you see into men's hearts and you would have known that Linkeree planned to burn the house, and that Hux planned to take it away from him.
And J said to me: That is true. But my power is not the power of a man, and you did all that a man could do.
And you, too, Sara, he said. You did wisely and well, and I will say the same punishment on Hux that you said, for there is nothing a man can do that is worse than what Hux did, which is to make another man do your will by striking him without thought for his life. And if a man kills another man, or a woman kills, either one, then the man or woman who has killed man or woman, he will also be killed.
And who will kill him? Sara asked.
All the people will kill him, Jason answered. This is an ugly thing, but it is the only way to keep a strong man from killing the weak who will not do his way.
I will never do it, Sara said.
But others will, J said. And I thought he looked sad as he said it.
Then J went out of the house and took me with him. The moon was not full, but it still was bright and so were the stars, and we could see for a long way. We could see even the mountains to the south, which are so far that we could never go to them.
J said to me, All of this that you can see, it is not even the hundredth part of the world.
I asked him what is the world.
He said to me, The world is round like a berry and we stand on its face. And it flies through the air.
I said to him, Is this why there is wind?
But he looked sad and said, No Kapock, for we move with it and do not feel its motion. But this I did not understand, for how can a thing move and not know that he moves?
But I asked him a question because he seemed to be ready to answer questions, and I asked him a question I had thought of often.
I asked him Who makes all these things? When you bring the Ice People from the Star Tower every year at harvest time and we feed them and teach them to walk and talk, where do they come from? And who made the Star Tower ? And the forests? For I know who made the houses and the fields, for I make them myself. And I know who makes the children and the new lambs and the calf oxen, but I do not know what makes the Ice People.