Elevation of Mana Chapter 21 The Reward for Good Work

Weeks after what was now being referred to as the 'ice cave incident' a number of the men gathered us boys up. At this point most of the anger had fallen away and punishments ended. I was sometimes even allowed outside of sight of a 'responsible adult', big progress. They all looked over us with smirks.

"Now, since you boys like building so much we've decided to take the day to teach you a bit about it," Larus declared, whenever the men did something as a group he tended to lead them. "Now, you should always try to have access to someone like Adia who can just grow one, but sometimes that doesn't happen, new villages, or those where some of those with the light have left, or long hunting trips. So knowing how to do this will help you."

"Can we not just make one like we did before?" Ninden asked looking a bit confused.

"Nobody will be using their light for this one," his father clarified. "Also, do you think it's a good idea to remind any of the girls about that little game of yours again?"

"I mean, it worked, we were right," I said.

I got a lot of looks from every adult who'd come to this little outing. Then they looked at each other until finally my father spoke.

"Perhaps you should bring that up with your mother then," dad suggested. "Or maybe you'd like me to tell her that's your opinion?"

"..."

"..."

"..."

"I didn't think so."

The first thing we had to do was gather up materials, that was straightforward enough, as nothing we wanted would be too large. All of us were shown what to use, the right and the wrong pieces, what would rot, or break too easy, or burn, some of it we knew, some we didn't. Then came things like the outer structure and lashings, and finally the roofing. It took all day, but by the end of that day we had a pretty good little lean-to type shelter on the edge of the village.

It wasn't big, but it was more than large enough for our group of boys to collapse inside at the end. While we rubbed sore spots and took a break our teachers gathered around it hmming and haaing.

"Not bad, not bad at all," dad said, shaking one of the spars lightly.

"No, this should do quite well," Ninden's father agreed.

"I'd say it'll stand for at least a year if it's taken care of," Olond's father added.

"Sure will," and "Without a doubt," agreed the fathers of Alun and Ulun, brothers who, much like their sons, were peas in a pod.

"Ah, but that will be a bit of a chore won't it, have to have someone take care of it till it needs to come down," Rindal's father pointed out.

"You know, while their mothers have punished them for digging up part of the village, I don't think we have," Larus declared finally. "Boys, listen up." All of us sat up from where we'd taken to resting and looked at him. "You lot are in charge of this for the time being, got it?"

All of us nodded and they left, chuckling lightly as they went. I understood immediately, but it took everyone else a bit of time to realize it. Once we all had we burst out laughing. Sure, we'd made a mess and really irritated a bunch of our elders, and sure, some were still a bit peeved that we'd not properly asked permission. We'd done a good job though, and provided something for the village as a while, and our fathers, and their friends had seen that, and seen fit to provide us...

"We got our own place for us," Olond whispered, as if it were a secret. It sent us all to laughing maniacally.

Unfortunately, our gains caused a whole new slew of problems for us. Well, more like one big problem, that was getting progressively more angry. The girls had seen we'd gained something they didn't have, and were more than just a little bit jealous. It had started with suggestions over dinner, and increasingly nagging remarks here and there.

"It's not fair, they did something bad and got rewarded for it," their chosen representative announced, having cornered us after the day's gathering.

They'd picked their time to strike carefully, all the hunters were away, and our strongest supporters were therefore absent. Somehow they'd even managed to pull our village elder into the area for their ambush. Elaya was supposed to arbitrate any disagreements that weren't too serious on her own, and she looked at us with raised eyebrows. It was clear that they'd gathered allies for this battle.

"She has a point," the elder declared, turning to us.

"No, we all got punished, a lot, and you sat there laughing at us while it happened," Ninden said, not backing down.

Elaya now turned back to the girls, it was clear that she wanted some response from this on that account.

"And then the hunters built you a hut like you wanted."

"No, they showed us how, and we built it. If you want one, build it yourselves."

This argument had played out to this point several times already. There were some problems though. We'd been shown how to do it, and they hadn't, and then there was the whole division of labor thing. In our village it was uncommon for the women to do anything bit and heavy, everyone made things, sure, but when it came to stone tools, or larger items it was almost always the men who made those. There were of course exceptions, particularly when it came to using magic rather than muscle to make stuff, but they didn't have access to much of that. It was unspoken, but clear to everyone that it wouldn't really be socially acceptable for them to just up and make something like we'd done.

There were things they made of course, decorations, baskets, pots and the like. Those tended to be their domain. It was part of the reason my father would happily make spearheads and stone tools all day, but would often refuse to carve any but the best of stones into money for mother, it'd taken me a long time to figure that out too. Again, because he used magic there were exceptions, but that kind of thing was not something a lot of the men in town would do without a pretty good cause.

That was why Elaya's eyes hadn't left us yet. The elder understood all of this, and it was being made clear to us that not only should we also already know, but that wouldn't serve. Ninden faltered, not sure where to go and understanding that we'd lose if there wasn't a better retort.

"You could ask mother to make you one," I offered. "She might."

"We already did. Adia said that it shouldn't be done often, or it will hurt the ground near the village. She won't make us a place like you have." It was Isha who spoke this time.

I blinked at the change in speaker, and then understood. While on the whole we didn't have too good of relations with the girls all of us got along with some better than others. Their chosen speaker hadn't been picked because she was the oldest, but rather because she got along best with Ninden. They didn't think we'd be as harsh with them that way. It was also why they'd picked Isha to counter me, as between our groups, they knew she and I got along better.  It wouldn't work, and might backfire, but I could appreciate the effort.

Ninden and the others looked at me.  We didn't have a ready answer for that one.  After a few moments I looked at Elaya.

"We need to talk about this," I said.

The elder seemed to get a kick out of that and smiled.  While she'd arbitrate, I got the feeling that she liked it better when we sorted our own problems out.  It made sense, if you could live for centuries, there was a good reason to avoid fights, who knew when someone would be important.  If we came up with our own solution without being dictated to, there shouldn't be any hard feelings, towards her at least.

"Thoughts?"  Ulun asked, looking at all of us.  "We need something or they're going to make us build them a hut too."

"We could do it," I said.

"Pfft, for you that might be easy, but for the rest of us it'll be hard work.  We're ending up doing a lot of extra work because of your ideas," Rindal said angrily.  Every time using magic came up he got all bitter.

"Not for free, if they want one, we make them give us something in return," I added, ignoring him.

"What do we want?"  Asked Ninden.

There were a few blank looks, I just shrugged.  There wasn't anything they had that I really wanted, but I did want to stop being nagged.

We broke and Ninden looked over to them.  "We're considering, do you have anything you'd trade for us to build you one?"

Now it was the girls' turn to huddle up.  The women of our village did a lot more trading then the men did.  These girls were well experienced in the kind of thing they had, and what they could get, and what they might trade for it.  While the men spent most of their time out hunting or making tools, it was often the women who handled the households, and carried most of the beads that were our money.  For hunts the main things was that the result was shared between all the participants, with only those who did a very good job getting any extra, and even then sometimes they would only take their normal share.

Negotiations went back and forth for awhile.  They didn't have anything we really needed, but agreed to make various amenities for our clubhouse, baskets and some woven mats and the like.  At the end I realized we were kind of being screwed over on the deal, but at the same time we were buying peace, and peace was pretty expensive.

"Why does it feel like we always end up with more to do when you start speaking?"  Rindal asked.

"Oh Rindal, it's not because I'm speaking but because we're doing a good job at stuff."

"That makes no sense," he complained.

"The reward for good work is more work," I answered.  Elaya was close enough to hear, and nearly fell over laughing.  The rest of the kids didn't seem to understand though, eh, at some point they would.