Heaven's Net Is Wide Lian Hearn (leveled readers .TXT) 📖

through the valley. Both were almost impassable, overgrown through lack of use. A landfall had all but blocked the valley path a few years previously. Occasionally one or other of the men crossed the pass to Hinode and returned with news and rumors. It was nearly sixteen years since the stranger came and disappeared again; well over fourteen since the birth of his son. Tomasu had grown into a striking young man. No one teased him anymore, and he no longer got into fights. Both boys and girls, Shimon noticed, sought him out, and it made his stepfather start to ponder the question of marriage. He gave Tomasu more tasks to do, demanding he spend less time running wild on the mountain but work alongside the men of the village and prepare for adult life.

Mostly Tomasu obeyed him, but one evening early in the ninth month he disappeared into the forest, telling his mother he was going to look for mushrooms. Shimon, returning wearily from a distant field where they had been harvesting the last of the beans, heard his wife’s voice echoing through the valley.

“Tomasu! Come home!”

Shimon sat heavily on the board step of the house; he was stiff all over and his joints ached. The night air felt frosty; winter would come soon.

“I swear I’ll tear him into eight pieces,” Sara grumbled as she brought water for her husband to wash.

“Unh!” he grunted, amused, knowing she would never carry out that threat.

“He said he was going for mushrooms, but it’s just an excuse!”

Their older daughter came running up to the house. Her eyes were bright with excitement, her cheeks glowing pink from the cold air. “Father! Father! Tomasu is coming and there is someone with him!”

Shimon stood, startled. His wife stared toward the mountain, shading her eyes.

The light was fading into dusk. Tomasu appeared out of the darkness, leading a short, stocky man who carried a heavy pack in a bamboo frame on his back. As they crossed the last dike, Tomasu shouted, “I found him on the mountain! He was lost!”

“No need to tell the whole world,” Shimon muttered, but already people were emerging from their houses to stare at the stranger. Shimon glanced at them; he had known them all his life; they were the only people he had known, apart from the last stranger who had come out of the forest and caused such grief. Shimon knew of course which families were Hidden and which were not, but to an outsider they were indistinguishable.

Tomasu brought the man up to the step. “I told him we would feed him. He can stay the night with us, and tomorrow I’ll show him the path to Hinode. He has come from Inuyama.”

The boy’s face was alight with the thrill of it. “I found mushrooms too,” he announced, handing the bundle over to his mother.

“I’m grateful to your son,” the man said, easing the pack from his back and setting it down on the step. “I was heading for the village called Hinode, but I’ve never been this way before. I was completely lost.”

“No one ever comes here,” Shimon replied cautiously.

The stranger looked around. A small crowd had gathered in front of the house; they stared with deep and undisguised interest but kept their distance. Shimon saw them suddenly through the other man’s eyes: their old, patched clothes, bare legs and feet, thin faces and lean bodies. “You can understand why; life is harsh here.”

“But even the harshest life needs some relaxation, some adornment,” the man said, a wheedling note entering his voice. “Let me show you what I carry in my pack. I’m a peddler. I have needles and knives, threads and cord, even a few pieces of cloth, new and not-so-new.” He turned and beckoned to the villagers. “Come and look!”

He began to unwrap the bundles that filled the bamboo frame.

Shimon laughed. “Don’t waste your time! You don’t give those things away surely? We have nothing to spare to give you in exchange.”

“No coins?” the man asked. “No silver?”

“We have never seen either,” Shimon replied.

“Well, I’ll take tea or rice.”

“We eat mainly millet and barley; our tea is made from twigs from the forest.”

The peddler stopped his unwrapping. “You have nothing to barter? How about a night’s lodging and a bowl of millet and a cup of twig tea?” He chuckled. “It sounds like riches to a man who was facing a cold night on the hard ground.”

“Of course you are welcome to stay with us,” Shimon said, “but we do not expect payment.” He addressed his daughter, who had been staring at the peddler without moving. “Maruta, bring more water for our guest. Tomasu, take our visitor’s belongings inside. Wife, we will be one extra for the evening meal.”

He felt a moment of sorrow as his stomach reminded him what that one extra mouth to feed would mean, but he put the feeling from him. Wasn’t one of the old teachings about welcoming strangers, who might be angels in disguise?

He shooed the rest of the villagers away, seemingly ignoring their murmured pleas to at least be allowed to look at the needles, the cloth, the knives, all precious items to them, but inwardly wondering if he might perhaps secure a few needles for the women, something pretty for the girls…

His wife was adding the mushrooms to the soup; the inside of the house was smoky and warm. Outside it was growing colder by the minute; he thought again that they would have the first frost that night.

“You would indeed have been cold sleeping outside,” he remarked as his wife poured the soup into the old wooden bowls.

The youngest child, Madaren, innocently began to say the first prayer over the food. Sara put out a hand to hush her, but the peddler very quietly finished her words and then spoke the second prayer.

There was a long moment of silence, and then Shimon whispered, “You are one of us?”

The peddler nodded. “I did not know there were any