Lora of Two Worlds

The farmers blocking the lock asked the clerk impatiently: ”You said you sent for Duke Osler. Where’s he?” The clerk smiled wryly: ”He’s distributing oxen. He’ll be here soon. I’m telling you, settle down. The Duke already borrowed seed grain from the crown for us. This time he’s borrowed oxen. Things are looking up. If you keep this up and drive him away, the King will send someone who only collects taxes and doesn’t care whether you live or die.” This hit home. Many of them had fled the famine and returned only last autumn to plant their first crop. ”You’re right, let’s compromise. Block half the mouth. If the Rush still has half its water, we’ll carry buckets. Blocking the canal is serious business, let’s not make things hard for the Duke.” ”Bah! Yves Number Two, easy for you to talk! Your fields are right here. Your water wheel goes creak-creak-creek, flooding your land. And you want us to haul buckets? Fine, I’ll go tear down your water wheel and save some water!” Samuel Seven was a hothead. He rolled up his trousers and ran for the water wheel. Yves Number Two, till now calm, panicked and ran too. The crowd forgot the lock and surged toward the Yves family’s wheat field. A new show. Since the boats weren’t going anywhere, Roland and the others followed. After two steps, Lora called to Lyle: ”Lyle, go find me two big reed poles. About... bowl-thick.” Lyle didn’t understand why, but he went. ”What do you want reed for?” Roland asked. ”Reed? is hollow inside. If you knock out the partitions between the sections, doesn’t it become a pipe?” ”People use reed sections to hold wine or water.” ”I don’t need to hold water. I need to take the water from the wheel and run it through a reed trough to the field.” ”How’s that different from the irrigation ditch they already dig?” Leon had seen how the water wheel lifted water from the river to the field. Where would the reed go? Lora looked back with a mysterious smile: ”Go see how they irrigate, then you’ll know.” They walked to the wheat field near the Rush. A large reed water wheel. Two men stomping the treadle. Water from the river ran up the wheel, into the ditch, along the channels, and flooded the field. The ditches filled and overflowed, slowly, the whole field was submerged. ”See? In this heat, water laid out like that evaporates fast. Then they flood it again. But if the water flows through reed tubes and drips slowly into the soil, it irrigates just as well, with far less water.” She’d seen this on a TV survival show, a man who split reed, made conduits, and built drip irrigation for his garden. Grain crops had shallow roots. Only surface water reached them. As they spoke, Samuel Seven and Yves Number Two were shoving at each other by the water wheel. Yves’s two sons jumped off the treadle to help their father. The neighbors rushed in to break it up. Behind Lora’s group, several men arrived. Two were about to speak when the man in front, middle-aged, in gray rough cloth and a wide-brimmed hat, held them back with a gesture. He pointed silently to the side. Lyle was dragging two long reed poles toward them. The fighters stopped. The crowd stared at these strange young men. What was this for? Fighting? Too long, you couldn’t swing them. ”Lord Leon, reed’s here. What next?” Lyle was sweating, grinning. The crowd noticed, for the first time, a small figure among the guards, all wearing unfamiliar military tunics, not Yarrowvale issue. Where had they come from? Lora stepped forward: ”Friends, my homeland has a method of irrigation that uses less water than flooding, and is easier than carrying buckets. You build it once, and it lasts a long time. Lyle, split the reed down the middle.” Lyle struck the base of the pole, splitting it. He stepped on one half, lifted the other, crack-crack-crack, the reed split cleanly in two. ”Now, knock out the partitions inside so water can flow. And, can any of you drill holes in reed?” Lora had seen a reed drill, a cord wrapped around a stick, driving a pointed tip, when she visited the countryside with Grandpa. She didn’t know if this age had them. The farmers laughed: ”Who can’t? We all drill holes for tying things.” Yves’s younger son, sensing Lora was helping them, ran to the tool shed and brought out a hand drill. Lora nearly wept with joy: The wisdom of working people, lasting millennia. It was exactly the hand-cranked drill she’d seen in the country. The young man squatted, twirled the cord-wrapped stick. The fine cord spun the lower stick with its iron tip. A hole appeared in the reed. ”Lord, like this?” ”Yes. However many holes you want. The water in the trough will drip from these holes, slowly. The wheat drinks. The water doesn’t evaporate or sink too deep where the roots can’t reach.” The moment Lora finished, someone who’d been watching called out: ”How do we set these up? Show us, right now, in Old Yves’s field!” They followed her instructions. Forked branches planted by the ditch. Reed? halves laid across. One end under the water wheel’s spout. ”Done!” Yves’s sons stomped the treadle. Water rose, poured into the reed trough, flowed along, and from a row of small holes, water dripped. Pitter-patter. Onto the wheat. ”It works! Uses less water, for sure. Just costs reed.” ”Reed?? The grove behind your house has already flowered. Cut it down, it’s dead anyway.” Reed grew fast. Spending reed was better than losing the crop. The canal needed water, that couldn’t be stopped. If they could keep half the Rush’s flow and use it sparingly, they’d survive. ”Now Yves’s boy can slack off!” True, the reed channel was much smaller than a flood ditch. Everyone laughed. ”Hey, where did those soldiers go?” ”Must’ve been from the official boats. Gone back. Let’s get our boats out of the channel, we’ve blocked half the river.” ”Right, right! Row over, let’s go ask Duke Osler for half the water.” Lora’s group was already walking back. Lyle said, pleased: ”If you want to save even more, don’t split the reed. Take a thinner pole and push it through, breaking the partitions inside. Full tube, less evaporation.” ”Right, a sealed tube reduces evaporation even more. Lyle, you’re sharp.” Lora praised. Lyle beamed: ”My lady, where did you come up with the dripping idea? I’ve never seen it in Lohenheim or Augustburg.” Roland answered for her: ”She dreamed it, of course. An old man with a white beard who knows everything.” ”Not at all,” Leon objected gravely: ”She heard it at the abbey pulpit. The preachers know astronomy, geography, and trivial matters.” ”What abbey pulpit? It was clearly the white-bearded old man in a dream.” ”What white-bearded old man? It was clearly the abbey preacher.” The two of them bickered past Lora without acknowledging her, striding ahead. Lyle scratched his head, baffled: ”Odd. It used to be Felix and Lord Roland arguing, with my lord laughing at them for being childish. Has he been possessed by Felix? Gone childish too?” Lora: Give me back my cool, aloof cousin in the wheelchair...

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