You are a traveling tinker, leading your pack mule through the forest. Branches criss-cross the path so much that you walk continuously in shade. Ferns and moss carpet the forest floor. The day is peaceful.
You are half a day from Bobeck village. You've traveled this route many times, to Frankfurt and back to Dresden again.
2) Take the left path to a meadow.
3) Take the right path to a creek.
You enjoy your lunch in a meadow full of clover and chamomile. You can hear songbirds. They rise from a tree nearby and wheel around the meadow.
You notice their shadows join on the grass almost in the shape of a man. The shadowy form steadies. It is a man. It appears to leap across the meadow as the birds fly about.
The birds circle you, closer and closer. The shadow man capers around you, drawing nearer on each round. You've never seen anything like this.
4) Throw bread to the birds.
5) Dance with the shadow.
You break apart the remainder of your bread and toss it up to the birds. Their shadows break apart into individual birds as they swoop for the bread crumbs.
You collect your mule among the usual confusion of birdsong. What a fine day it is, with the sun shining and the breeze blowing and the bees buzzing.
8) Leave a good luck charm behind you.
9) Pick some flowers before you go.
You tie the traditional knotwork with a leather strip and hang the charm from a branch. Blessings be on this meadow and all travelers who rest here.
You continue walking towards Bobeck. After a time you come across two men having an argument by the road. You guess the first to be a woodcutter by the ax he carries, and the other to be a farmer by his wheelbarrow of compost.
"What do you mean by this, felling trees on my land?" The farmer sounds upset.
"Are you going back on our deal? Thirty days I may chop here and for thirty days I will chop," the woodcutter says, leaning a hand on his ax.
"Are you daft? It's been more than thirty days!"
"I haven't been out chopping every day. I still have days left."
"That's not how that works!"
16) "Perhaps I can help settle your dispute."
17) "Excuse me, do either of you have need of a tinker?"
The farmer considers your offer. "Hmph. This wastrel is clearly in the wrong. I'll accept your judgment."
"Likewise," drawls the woodcutter, "Our terms were clear, I'm merely taking what's mine."
"What was the deal?" you ask.
The farmer starts. "Ten laying hens and ten silvers in trade for thirty days of what he can fell and haul away. Provided it come from the south of my land, that being anything south of this here road.
"Now, who could ask for fairer? Ten and ten is twenty, yet he gets half again as many days for his work. Tis a low low thing to cheat me after my generosity."
The woodcutter slowly shakes his head. "Must you spend all those silvers at once or eat all the eggs laid each day? No, they'll be used here or there as needed. Just so with my chopping days, until I've had thirty of them. That's seven more I'm owed."
32) The farmer is right.
33) The woodcutter is right.
"Soddin' southerners," the woodcutter spits into the road, turns, and walks away with resignation.
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