Of course the picture in Hickory's book had been a tree and that was easy. It was a tree like no other, Hunter had never seen one like it, it was like somebody that had started drawing a tree - then kept changing their minds before the picture was done -

Hunter's tree had been a whole lot less - then the picture, and he'd heard Hickory moaning about the market. Moaning about how none of this stuff makes sense and Hunter did agree. Certainly -

Seeing that his tree - his Forest Environment, whatever the heck you called it - was nothing more then a stick, a coat rack more then a proper tree - it took everything he had not to figure it out right then, but Hickory -

Well, it'd been his holiday, and they weren't the type of friends that worried about birthdays or presents, everybody kept track of who's turn it was to buy beer - who owed who a dip or a solid - the little favors.

Friends didn't tally the big ones. That sort of math never added up, that sort of accounting - no place for it. Hunter would never dream of pulling out his sketch pad, his marbles - his drafting paper for such matters -

Instead Hunter tried to figure out just how this tree was gonna turn his land into a forest after the Catcher's Moon. He'd put such matters away to focus on the moment, and boy was he glad he did, that he'd found that marble pouch he'd been gifted not quite as full as it would have been when it was just him and his buddies -

And it was a good thing he waited because he would have never made it to the party. First day back he'd of course done the logical thing, he'd taken a bunch of seeds. Nuts. Ma always had a great big box of them, that it was one of the reasons he'd learn to stay outside -

That for him to be indoors - hand's empty, well she believed the devil played with idle hands, and she'd have them full with a box of pecans and a nut cracker, and if he was gonna just sit there, he was going to sit there and crack nuts -

Especially close to Christmas -

Mom made all those candies, those sweets for the neighbors every year, now a woman? She knew who owed what - they counted by the kernel - Hunter knew that, knew it was a proper thing to do, for a woman to track such things and not need a note pad at all for it -

Nuts were expensive. He'd tried giving his mother some marbles, she wouldn't take them, not for any reason, and he knew they'd need a chicken coop as well, and didn't he already know how to make one?

"What are you doing, Hunter?" Mom asked poking her head out of the door, "You're gonna wake the neighbors!"

"They should be up already, Ma, and I won't start til the afternoon."

Hunter turned to his worker -

"Just stack everything up right here, and then you're done." Hunter said pointing at the side yard, a shady spot - he pulled out the contract, and that's where it had to get...interesting.

Consideration.

That wasn't Hunter's power, that made no sense at all - it was just a hint. As to what made things work, intent - Consideration - he'd considered Hickory a damn good friend and he built his coop, wanted to do something special and it was important to him it was done right.

Lot of work had gone into it, the design, to make it so he could build it in one place and assemble it quick at Hickory's house, so it would be a surprise, probably took three times as long -

That looking at it after it was all done. Wasn't it better? Wasn't the design of a higher quality then what he should have been able to do? Wasn't it closer to his intent then his ability? Or perhaps it was exactly his Ability. His Power -

He hadn't needed to adjust any of the ramps for the eggs to roll even though the ground was different there, he should have had to re-level it or something, he'd expected to be fine tuning things for a while - to get it all to work proper, but Hickory said it worked every single time! Perfect.

Hunter had gone back and seen how smooth his cuts were, how the nails all had ended up flush, how the wire enclosure staggered perfectly so nothing could reach a paw in to get one of Hickory's chickens -

Even with a skill he wasn't that good - nothing ever turned out like one of his blueprints, not exactly - that somehow Hunter had brought the blueprint to reality, all that consideration he'd put into making the blueprint had found it's way into the design of the coop -

That was his power -

He could build things - he could take something in his mind, put it on paper, work out the details and make it happen. Or so he thought, Hunter still had more testing, maybe he'd gotten lucky -

The contract was an obvious way to be able to get workers - you just had them sign what you wanted, you put an amount you agreed to pay them, and an amount they'd pay you, if they fucked it up -

"I don't have a hundred marbles." The man had said causing Hunter to blink - the way the man said it, it was a fortune! "Can't I just use my hand or something?"

"No." Hunter said, "What if you fall, or get hurt, or an emergency - I just did this because it's the easiest, it's what I'm paying you plus the cost of the materials since it's gonna pull from my account. Not that you'd steal it just makes sense to be consistent."

The man looked disappointed - people wanted to work, especially for marbles, after the Catcher's Moon, an economic boon had started, everybody that fished had gotten some, a bank account, saw how easy it was, was less intimidated -

"How many marbles do you have at the bank?" Hunter asked -

"Forty three." The man said, and Hunter scratched out the 300 and put down forty two. The man signed - and the contract became valid, they each got a copy - he heard the splash.

The contract enabled the man to charge Hunters account to pull materials from the store, the list of materials from the blueprint that Hunter had been able to make 'Magic' by ripping it out of his notebook - that simple - and the cost of a marble of course. Marbles added up - but he'd get it back if he tore up the blueprint - though why would he do that when he could reuse it, but if he did it would became a marble again -

The man was happy, Hunter was happy - and he didn't have to worry about it, didn't have to supervise. The man could take a break if he needed, could take as long of a lunch as he wanted, carry one nail at time or carry it all at once if he had a truck - long as the work got done.

The man could sell the contract, or have somebody else deliver it - as long as he understood that it was him who was on the line for the work. That if the person he chose failed?

Hunter accepted the nuts from Ma, knowing she'd be happy - that she wouldn't accept no marbles cause she was family and Hunter knew when you did something for family you did it better then you got - it'd take him a while to get chickens to fill it, get them put into the coop and laying but it was an investment in his families future -

Hunter took the nuts back to his land. Lord Hunter - now that had a ring to it...and he began to dig holes to bury the nuts - he had a whole mile but he kept them close to the structure, that magic stick so he could watch them. He marked each with a small flag.

Then back home, and there were enough materials for him to get started building - that's when things got interesting again. He put together the coop quickly, he didn't even need to look at the blue print, it was like he could see it in his mind but he'd worked on it a good while - knew the steps, and before he knew it he was done -

Faster than before. Even without Chase who'd done most of the lifting, it was just a coop, wasn't that heavy and - what was strange was that he had a board, three nails, and some wire left over. About a marbles worth of material - and he could take it back to the store but -

The man was long gone, could he have grabbed too much? That wasn't how a contract worked though...the man would have had to pull the marbles from his own account, and - the man had no marbles...or so he said, maybe he'd lied? Maybe he had a few more and didn't say just so he wouldn't be left with nothing?

He seemed to be an honest man, though - just a guy happy to work, making food for his family, nothing more then a wheelbarrow and a bit of gumption. Hunter liked people like that - that's how he had started.

Scrappin'

No, this was different, there was something to this. Hunter knew, double checked, made sure - every nail was in the coop from the blueprint, every board was there. His numbers had been exact -

It was too near one percent - probably exactly one percent of material remained. Now that was interesting, that was -

"You didn't have to go and do that, Hunter." His mother said admiring the chicken coop, looking it over -

"I'll get you some chickens, probably just biddies but they'll grow, we've got an incubator going at Weston's barn and it won't be long before they start hatching."

Ma hugged him, "I'm going to have to add the Covanger family to our candy list this year, they've been just so good and such a nice party, now the chickens. We're truly blessed, it wasn't how I thought of them, that I've done judged them wrong all these years."

Hunter nodded - him either. He'd always hated the Covanger family -

"They were always fair, you know, we chose not to get the life insurance policy and it was just an accident but -"

That was a long time ago -

"You're father would be proud of you, doing all this. You're really becoming a man, - "

Mom could get emotional and - well, such was women for you.

Hunter went back to his land and saw the trees hadn't grown. That he dug one of the nuts up and it looked no different, looked like he had just buried a nut in the ground - his magic tree was still the same, just a bare wood coat rack.

He watered them, pouring water on all the nuts around his magic coat rack - maybe that would do it? And on a whim he watered the magic tree as well? Maybe they grew together?

He went into town, to see how the rest of them were doing, to end their day with a beer like they usually did - early mornings was work stuff, chores - then a bit of fighting if it was needed, then more chores, a good meal usually at the church, a fish chowder, it wasn't always the best, sometimes just fish and broth, but even if it was just one special fish in the whole batch - if just one person got lucky and shared it - so generous, because who knew how much those fish were truly worth? - why it was certainly tasty - filling - flavorful -

"I just knew it was you," Hickory said, laughing - "Putting them folk to work, not trusting a man, making them sign a contract to get a days work done!"

"Calling Weston stingy." Chase nodded -

"It just makes sense!" Hunter defended himself, pointing at his detractors with a spoon, "Why didn't we do it this way before all this shit? Forcing people to work nine to five, Ma could never hold down a job and take care of us!"

"Stability." Weston said, "You might be able to go without a worker for a day, but people are paid to be reliable. Predictable."

"Well, people are shooting themselves in the foot!" Hunter said, "I can't afford to pay somebody every day, I don't need them. And I have too many things I need somebody to do! Who's to say the person that can dig a hole the fastest can also mow the lawn! Maybe somebody likes to dig holes."

"It only works with labor - unskilled work." Weston said.

"Because we made it that way!" Hunter insisted, "We made it so people have to work in the same sort of job for their whole life! Everybody should work like a business owner, everybody should have skin in the game, be willing to take a loss if their work isn't up to par."

Weston nodded.

"You don't have to supervise them so you can pay them more, you don't have to wipe their asses, they do the work or they don't get paid, if people could have signed up to go to war -"

"It's the enforcement." Weston insisted, "Before you couldn't trust a person not to skip town -"

"Social security numbers! Credit scores! All that shit! No, it was the big guys using it only for taxes, for ways to fuck people over, I'm using it the opposite, people can work and make more marbles this way. They make as much for me in a few hours as you all day -"

"What about tomorrow?" Weston said -

"You'll just see about tomorrow, it's gonna be even better, there's a Contract Office now! I don't even have to talk to people."

"You're going to hire people blind?" Weston asked.

"That's the only way to hire them. Any person willing to do the work for the pay, that's all that matters and is the best way to hire somebody - a person that wants to do the work."

"Labor -"

"So?" Hunter laughed, "Right now it is, but think about it, think about how much people use to bitch about whatever queer reason they wouldn't get work, or their color - "

"You could still put it on the contract. No women, or perhaps must have a dick to be eligible? As a term?"

"Sure I could, but why limit my work pool? I want the person that will do the job for the cheapest, if it don't get taken I'd have to raise it."

"You're making a big deal over a bulletin board. You could have -"

"No." Hunter shook his head, "Those things were full of spam ads, remember that time we answered that ad for pool cleaning?"

"Yeah. That was great! I made like three hundred bucks!"

"You did it?"

"Of course! It was easy work, free beer."

"You cleaned that old man's pool in your underwear?"

"No!" Chase laughed, "He let me borrow a swim suit."

Hunter sighed.

"People bait and switch, people make things complicated, or they discriminate. Ma could never get a job that worked for her hours, why couldn't she just go to a restaurant and serve tables for tips? If she wanted? Not be expected to do nothing extra as a secretary to have a job that worked for her?"

"You're making it out to be easier then what it is, Hunter." Weston said, "You're looking at it wrong, not everybody can fix an oil rig, can drill a hole, that equipment."

"I get you Weston, but not everybody is not the same as it not being an option in the first place. That's what I'm saying, that people were trained to have to have a job. They had to - and doing it any other way was made just about impossible. Now I can just post a contract on the bulletin board, they can't take it down until they sign it, they can't sign it unless they have a way to secure it -"

"This is going to end up bad." Weston said, "Maybe not here. But what happens when people start signing away important stuff, what you're going to end up with is slaves. People that have to work every day or lose a leg!"

"Regretting that land you leased me are ya?"

It was so much easier - and it worked both ways. Hunter could post an offer to build his coop, a copy of the prints - of course it wouldn't work for everything. He'd not offer to build a house this way, but a coop? Within a month's time, that the location was suitable and that additional work was billed at a marble an hour if needed? That the contract could be terminated by either party before work started for the cost of five marbles?"

There was so much potential - he didn't have to do hardly anything, but actually build the coop - just post the contract to build it. When it was signed he heard a plop, he went to his bank account and there it was - he grabbed it. Then set the contract for the location to deliver the supplies and when he had time went out to build it -

After building five more of them he discovered he had six nails left over. Two boards, and a little extra wire, about two percent of materials. He triple checked - of course but the contract had already been complete, he heard the money splash of the transfer, his copy became a marble again -

It was a great pouch! Useful, with how many contracts he had going in a day, juggling them all, or if he wanted to just buy something outside the market, or to give a worker a tip, whatever - Amy was thoughtful, certainly, looking out for his marbles -

His trees hadn't grown when he checked. But the ground had been moist. The whole mile. It had been watered - it hadn't rained in over a week, of course you could dig down and expect it to have some moisture, this time of year - it wasn't the hottest, not yet - it was still planting season, and he'd been watering.

Just this one area though.

When he dug up another flag, another nut - no roots. Hickory had said those fish had appeared hours after, obviously if the ground was wet something was happening but...

He was doing something wrong - the tree itself was still just a stick, had five points on it, like twigs - a sapling in the winter is what it looked like, not a tree - nothing like the picture.

"It's like that market, you just can't rely on them pictures, I doubt it's even a tree at all, Hunter - like that swimming pool, I just knew ya'll were gonna do like me, just jump right in and flop, just go tumbling across and I was gonna laugh and laugh -"

"Hickory, almost nobody would jump in a pool that suddenly appeared out of nowhere! You could have been dissolved like the garbage. Remember that time we went swimming and got leaches, that water looked fine."

The trees weren't growing. Hunter looked out at his vast - empty land, a hundred acres. It was no mile, that Weston was getting a deal cause he owned the surrounding land - he was going to get free trees - once Hunter figured this whole damn thing out -

Instead he worked on a new blueprint - because why not build a house? There were all sorts of problems that needed solutions, that people would hire him to do them? That they'd throw marbles at him?

That he hardly had to do anything, all the material was laid out and ready for him, all he had to do was put it together, but why stop there? Why not get the people to do the hammering, if he made the blue print simple enough?

He could come back through and check everything, make sure it was done right - nothing complicated - just a shelter. People didn't have power, didn't have AC right now, a house was pretty much just a box - just a chicken coop.

They needed to keep cool, it wasn't too hot yet, but - it would be, that meant digging into the earth. Putting the house partly underground, where the sun didn't hit it - it meant a lot of things, a lot of ways you could make a house stay cool -

Just hanging water - cloth with water on it could cool a house. Making the walls thicker, insulated, having shutters to open at night, close in the morning until somebody figured out the glass -

Of course most people could just go to the river, keep cool that way, or stay in the chapel, the church - the elderly were who he was worried about, his grandparents. They weren't worried, they said this was normal, an old normal -

That they showed up at church near on every day, helping with the cooking, cutting fish and talking, playing cards. Bout time they got rid of those cell phones! Could never figure out how that remote worked anyway!

Maybe he should start smaller then a house, maybe he should start with a wheel barrow? Could he make a wheel out of wood?

That wasn't really his skill, was it? That was a bit too hard - maybe he could hire someone? He could definitely do the frame, could he get somebody to do the wheel, the spokes? Metal for the bearing, they'd need a forge for that?

None of his friends - nobody he knew had really worked with metal. He was paying out the ass - for just nails, a marble for a few nails! Screws were useless without the tool to drive them - turning a screw by hand - that was too much, and his blueprints didn't call for them -

The supply of nails, certainly people had them in their garage, had plenty - but they didn't want to part with them! They'd put them in the booths ten for a marble, Hunter scooped them up when he saw them but if they were the wrong size they didn't work with his plans - they had to be close.

He'd just post a contract - for nails. He'd post a contract for a thousand, two thousand, how ever many he needed - marbles paid first, they could use those marbles to buy the materials and build whatever it took to make nails, they could figure it out, do the research -

That's how you did these things, you couldn't expect to do it all at once, you didn't just build a house, you built the little things, they built onto each other, you started small - with trees!

Trees that he couldn't figure out, none of it mattered if he had no lumber, everything was too expensive, and it was pissing him off that they wouldn't grow! He threw the walnut at the damn stick poking up in the center of his property - threw it in frustration. Why wouldn't the trees grow!

It stuck - of course it did.

Hunter stared at the nut, stuck to the edge of the branch - hanging there like an ironic Christmas ornament - a straggler some squirrel missed - a tree with one nut -

Did he feel stupid? Watering every day, then pulling back cause the whole mile was getting swampy - that it'd made Hickory happy to help -

"Them worms like the melons the best Hunter, there always are more worms if you give them a melon, I just use a big fork, stir it in. They love bananas, too, but I ain't seen a banana in a month. Lettuce. They love it all, and you want them to be happy -"

Hunter had listened, nodding -

"You want them dancing when you put them on the hook, they don't like that part, but they understand that the point of the worm is to catch the fish - if you didn't give them the good stuff why they won't be near as fat and happy, they won't dance for them fish -"

He'd tried everything, worms, spreading them out - they dug into the soil near his tree - then vanished. He'd tilled it - weeded it, did everything he could think - and when he dug the nuts up, testing -

No roots - and the nuts looked like they had been eaten by worms, holes ran through them but no worms, and it didn't make sense...

"Well of course they like nuts, Hunter!" Hickory laughed, "They like anything like that, any good food like nuts and berries, it just takes em longer to get to them, I don't feed em nuts, cause the wood - but it's wetter here then my worm bed, they like it moist though they probably drowning, they -"

The soil had improved with the worms, he could see that, it was like he'd put worms everywhere, the whole mile - but there weren't worms out there, not everywhere, just the soil was broken down - that there was give to it when he walked across it - not from it being wet, he wasn't watering it as much now.

He'd contracted a consultant - somebody with the Arborist skill to come out and evaluate the situation, a date and time and an hour of their time - they'd shown up and gave him a run down of what the trees needed to thrive, that they would grow here. The seeds needed to be started, not just buried. Then transplanted after a year, or three - depending on variety and root ball, and on and on -

They didn't know shit about the magic structure, the building, the coat rack -

Hunter had hurled that nut in frustration, and it had stuck - he felt stupid. Seeing that nut hanging off the side of the branch by magic. Hunter walked forward and stared at it - got real close and - it wasn't like he could hide it. That he could pretend he'd known the whole time, they were going to give him hell -

Of course now he was going to have to go back and get another bag of nuts from Ma -

"Chickens are doing good, aren't they -"

"I love them, they're so cute." Jane, his sister, said, "I wish they'd stay this small forever."

"Don't get too attached, that fish is good, but it's been a good long time since I had a chicken sandwich."

Of course she screamed, putting the baby chick down, running into the house - what were older brothers for?

"Hunter, don't do that to her, she loves those chickens, they're laying chickens."

"I'm sorry, Ma." Giving his mother a hug, "I won't touch Jane's chickens, I was just having a laugh."

"You better be. What are you up to, you're not normally back this early?"

Of course Ma wouldn't accept nothing for them nuts, Hunter know - maybe an outhouse? That the town sewer worked, but they didn't live in town - that they were on septic. Which meant you had to fill the toilet by hand, pour water in the top to flush, but it meant carting water or turning the generator on to fill everything and hoarding water...it wouldn't last forever.

Maybe if Hunter put some barrels on the roof, ran pipes that way? Turned it on like a spickot, just used gravity - there were ways to collect water. Took pipe from places it wasn't being used - maybe he could put up a contract to make pipe?

Copper was an easy metal to bend, to melt together, and as long as it wasn't under pressure? If the pipe started small and kept getting bigger at the joints you could make it to where you didn't even have to solder them, and for just one toilet per family?

Wasn't too much that really went into a house, thinking how they were built, thinking about what was necessary - a brick stove for cooking and heat in the winter. Underground would hold that heat in perfect as well, even body heat would be enough, but that was after the wood - for his forest -

Plenty of scrap, plenty of fire wood - if it came to that, that it solved so many problems. Maybe even make pipe out of the branches, maybe wax to coat it? Bees wax? It wouldn't leak or rot then - there were so many ways to do stuff, to live closer to what was available, simpler - it was also more complex, more challenging, but it was simpler - too.

Toilet paper - 20 marbles a role. That was something. Hygiene was important, the sewer system in town dumped into the new scrap yard, the one nobody used, it was a net loss, apparently the upkeep, nothing valuable that went into it, just shit -

Everybody's pipes connected to that area, that sewer, it wouldn't last forever, not enough water went through it, he knew that, that it was going to be a problem but for right now it worked - the town didn't stink, people had something to do with their shit -

Out house? Or a new toilet system? Probably all of them, he probably needed several solutions if he was going to build a house, he'd need blueprints - not everybody would be able to afford a bathroom, a lot of people still were living in tents - didn't want to go to Covanger Fields - even if it was free, they were trying to stay here, make money - Maybe an Inn? A hotel? Temporary housing, now that would be a project...be able to showcase all the solutions, people could see all the types of bathrooms - all the different things he could do -

He wouldn't have to explain it, they could stay at the inn, try the different rooms, the models - he'd make marbles off that, he'd be able to try things out, and be able to implement them elsewhere -

Thinking about solutions - making the blueprints smaller - making them so you could sort of attach them together, not everybody wanted a kitchen, not everybody needed a bathroom, not everybody needed three bedrooms or a cellar or -

Knowing how to build, and knowing what to build were different. The skill didn't help him with the other, he had to focus, to be creative, there were other factors - expenses, value - how much money people had to spend, what resources were available, how long it would take, his labor factor - it was a business.

They weren't really quite ready for everything he needed, they were working on nails -

Hunter grumbled, sticking the nuts on the tree, should he just put them anywhere? Of course not, of course not - everything mattered -

That was what Weston had said, that was what it was coming to, that you didn't really know until you tried it, but everything mattered -

Five branches spread out, the center. Hunter did the first branch, placing the nuts on the tree. Trees that produced nuts were typically hard woods - pecan, walnut - they were hickories. They were durable, heavy, great for building and usually expensive. Pine could be better, grew faster and cheaper, more flexible and lighter, but - this wasn't an environment for pine - he could make it that way? Maybe? If it was just this simple, you just stick the seeds to the tree? What you do to the ground?

Hunter was doing walnuts first - one at a time, and then he grabbed a handful, like you'd grab a handful of nails so you didn't have to keep reaching in your tool bag, your pouch -

They stuck together - the whole cluster had, in his hand - when he pulled his hand away, there was a glob of nuts - some on the branch, but some attached to each other -

Everything mattered -

Hunter pulled them off, restuck two together, one walnut on top of the other - then he added a pecan on top of a walnut - they stuck together, too -

Everything -

He'd have to wait, to see what was going to happen, he'd have to test it, he'd have to talk to Chase. Chase was figuring this stuff out better then the rest of them, Chase was up to something - that everybody had so much to do -

Everybody knew what needed to be done, in a way - that there were no short cuts but there was also magic, it was different, different tasks, you didn't find answers from different fields, but ways to ask questions - it all mattered. That was the only take away, that you didn't know what something did until you tried it.

Hunter's plan changed. He left two branches bare - tried different combinations of nuts on the others, and he'd have to talk to Chase, get fruit seeds, try them, build them something -

They were Chase's parents seeds, their income, it was good to see. That them poor folk, working all their lives, hoping to have a bit more and it was finally happening, they'd give him the seeds, so would Ma - not expecting nothing back or even minding at all -

That wasn't the point -

Money was important, the marbles were - it wasn't trading favors, Hunter was a business man, and he was stingy, but - but not everything was handled with money, not everything had to be - you just sometimes did things -

He'd do fruit pits on the other branches, he'd try them out - see what he could get going there. The implications of course were obvious - that if you stuck something on the tree it would grow - that watering this stick was watering all the land, how the soil was for one was how it was for all - at least on a base level.

It could be a fruit orchard, but - he needed wood. Not fruit, fruit was good, but very seasonal, hard to make reliable food from, you wanted short fruit trees, easy to pick. He needed wood for everything else, they had fish, they had food - Wood for heat, wood for the winter - for shelter, and for marbles.

Maybe he'd offer to make Chase a bigger shed for the seeds, that one they had was ratty, probably filled with junk like most peoples sheds were, probably wasn't important, but it was something as a proper thanks -

He could build them a nice one, a big one, in exchange for the seeds - truly he'd be getting the deal with how much seeds were worth, maybe he'd put in a cellar for them? He could offer that, couldn't he, to make it even. He wanted to do a blueprint of a cellar anyway -

Dig out the hole deeper than what you need, then you back fill it with dry sand, gritty sand that wouldn't mud up to drain the moisture, you laid rocks over it, you reinforced the walls with stone, it was similar to building a chimney. Doing the masonry - his Construction skill only touched on the basics - but somebody would get the Stone Work skill? If he put a contract out, if they didn't have it already - it was cheaper, that he knew he'd be inviting competition?

You could build a house out of stone, that really if Hunter had the skill to do it, he probably should have. Gone that route, stone was everywhere, stone was easy to find, you just dug and found rock, didn't have to buy it...

Should he not post the contract? It was tempting, to not make it a stone market, to not invite that sort of competition, but - even a stone house would need things, right? A roof? Wood floors? Cabinets? Stone cabinets - those wouldn't make sense.

Hard wood made a place beautiful, home like stone couldn't - why shouldn't wood be premium. Why shouldn't people want wood, make it the luxury. Build the house out of stone, it lasted longer, and do the interior with wood. You could build it taller that way, it would hold the temperature and then hard wood shutters?

Maybe his inn would be built with stone, maybe he wouldn't worry about foundations and such, have somebody else do those prints for him, if he taught them? Wasn't Chase doing that at the school, wasn't he up to something there? Didn't sharing knowledge matter?

Everything mattered -

So much was changing, things were getting old timie, but at the same time - it felt like the opposite, that this was all new, they were struggling to do things that people had been doing for thousands of years -

Farming, cooking, building - it was all easy. What would have happened, if not for the Font? Would he have just taken a job, built stuff for other people his whole life, never able to scrape up enough for a work truck, for all the tools he needed, all the parts - always looking for workers, because in the goal of making things simple it had actually made it all more complicated to begin with -

To start a business, to build a house -

There'd been laws that kept people from doing such things, laws that made it so a home-made house was useless, there had been...barriers.

Everything had changed - changed because of little things. Just a chicken coop, just a bit of consideration - a flea market stall, fishing poles, friends, small things adding together, his life, it was on a different path now. He had a different power then the rest, maybe it seemed useless, to make a few nails extra from a job, to cut a corner without actually having to do such a thing -

Who really lost out? Who had a worse life?

Blueprints. Contracts. Fruit trees. Maybe somebody would do the nails right, maybe they could start doing cast iron molds next, you just dug a hole in the sand - poured the iron in, let it cool - you could make plumbing pipe out of iron. Expensive - but that's how they use to do it. Cast iron was just melted iron poured into sand, that simple -

No plastics. No oil. Iron was everywhere, somebody had found a pile of rocks with lines, like a zebra, they were digging it out - talking about getting the mining skill, breaking them down and just tossing them into the scarp pit if it came to that for marbles, for buying the already processed iron from the crafting store - the rocks just grew back?

Hunter shook his head. That scrap heap, they were gonna regret dumping shit in there, the metals - once it got going again, but they went back into the environment - that's where that iron mine came from...

Hunter watched the trees sprout across his land, push up from the dirt - he'd been right, if he watered too much. Some of the fruit pits withered, they died, fell off the tree.

He'd done a contract - Squirrel Guard - they'd gotten onto his tree as well. Of course he didn't wall it off, build a giant cage - Everything mattered.

He paid people to guard his tree, to watch it, make sure ants didn't climb it and eat the nuts - deer ate the sprouts in the field, out there, a sapling died - a nut would fall up here - as the trees grew bigger out in the field the magic tree also grew bigger. The fruit branch not as much, it struggled - Hunter watched as slowly the bark of the starter tree absorbed the seeds day after day, once the tree was established, it grew wider, a bit taller - it was changing it's shape a bit, growing leaves off it, pecan leaves, walnut leaves - they were almost the same. Plum, and apricot, apple. The citrus had all died - he loved lemons, squeezed over grilled fish -

The ones he'd stuck together, those were different. It was hard to tell, how would he know which was which?

That was just luck, because there was a section on his property bare of anything - a big wide patch where nothing grew. Just north of it - there was a section of plumbs, just south, nectarines - the arborist had said.

The starter tree was a map. It mattered. Where you stuck them on the branch - Which was why the trees grew out in almost veins spreading from this center, the branches - it wasn't exact, but obvious once you compared it - hard to do from ground level if there wasn't a big ole gaping hole as a hint...

Obvious because of an accident, a failure, because those branches were just for fruit, because the citrus had died and and left a bald spot - if he'd stuck them all on evenly at once? He'd not of realized it, not right away - not known to look for all the other small differences. To look and see that some of the trees were two varieties combined. Walnut and Pecan -

Could he make a hardwood pecan that produced nectarines then? Could he do that? Or how about pine that produced cherries? Fast growing pine, maybe a harvest this year after all?

What if he put fish scales in the soil? Was he gonna be as crazy as Chase, looking under every rock and bush for something strange. Dragonfly wings? What then - He'd just wanted some trees, some wood -

He was Hunter. He hunted, not just for game, for solutions, for ways to build a better life, to break out of this cycle of poverty his family had found themselves, a father that had died on the job working, without life insurance - and sure, the Covanger's hadn't been cruel, had paid a settlement without them having to sue -

If one of Hunters contract workers got injured it was all on them. They got injured doing the work, and nothing would stop that - nothing would make it better, he knew that. But there were risks, his father could have bought the life insurance for a portion of the money he was making and their lives could have been better, and they'd had a smaller amount of money for everything else if he'd never died -

There was no right answer. But Hunter's father had chosen to do dangerous work, oil work, to make money, it was low skill - labor, he'd been young. Hunter didn't put those contracts out - it was a choice, a small choice.

There was no reason to make things dangerous. No reason to rush. For people to take jobs they weren't ready for - go to school, learn to read - you had to understand a contract for it to work, anyway -

Magic trees - that was going to be something, not this generation, not right away, he was still learning and he couldn't risk fish scales killing the trees, not all of them at once, but he could bury them at some of the trees - couldn't he?

He could try things, figure out what he wanted to do and then just write up a contract, pay people to do it each day for him, or once a week - whatever he decided.

He needed to build a mill, to build saw blades, axes, and splitters - wedges, he needed all of that. Just complicated nails, really, bigger nails. Contracts and blueprints, directions, writing it out, telling people what to do - just making it easy on himself, making it easy on them. Not trying to reinvent the wheel, just offering a fair deal to whoever wanted it, and if nobody did, he did the work himself - offered more marbles.

Maps, directions how to get there, instructions what to do, more time writing and less time building, perhaps Chase was onto something, perhaps he shouldn't have laughed so much - hearing how he was in school -

Maybe he should go to school, just to see what was there, he'd always been smart, never had to study - when you don't have a dad you get smart quick, when you don't stay inside you get handy, you make do -

You don't have money for solutions you find your own - he'd been spoiled back then in a lot of ways, and in a lot of ways he'd been lucky, that he knew you could do it - that sometimes you needed help, you asked your friends - sometimes you offered to swap work, sometimes you paid -

You could do it - find another way, sometimes it was harder, using junk, using what you had, sometimes you turned the junk in and got something you needed, but the job got done -

Or you did without -

You didn't have to become a wage slave, it was really just easier, and then you got locked in because everybody else was, it had been a trick - Everybody fell for it and then there was no choice - property taxes did that. that even if you owned it, you -

Hunter put out a contract for nails, a contract for stone work - just a bar-b-que, for his mother, to dig a pit for an outhouse - his pen moved quick, and he pinned them to the board. The Employment Center -

Then he killed monsters, he was gonna have to do it different, no more long shots if he wanted to be stronger, if he wanted a real power - a fighting power, but did he? He could just put up a contract to close those things, this was a real power, it made things simpler -

Hunter looked over his land, trees growing, he walked it - looking for vermin, looking for problems, dug up roots - he tended and experimented, flagged and marked and measured and learned as he went - he knew he'd have to choose eventually, that this was a persons life work - that he'd just wanted wood.

You didn't have to know everything right away, you could start simple for simple results -

He couldn't imagine what Gage was going through, trying to figure out his - how it worked, what it did? Of course Hunter would laugh when he finally did, just as they'd laughed at him when they found out he'd just had to stick nuts to it -

"No wonder it took him so long, Hunter never did know what to do with his nuts!" They'd say something stupid, and they'd drink - and it would be a good day. Even if he hadn't figured it out it would have been a good day, he didn't drive back to town, it was miles but he rode a bicycle anyway, no need to waste gas - he wasn't in a hurry. No cars on the road, and he'd be back before it was dark or he'd sleep there, sleep somewhere. Now if he had an Inn? A hotel?

How many nails would he need for a hotel? Stone, wood, marbles - it was a long way coming, maybe even a year - but he could do it, he could make it work since there was nobody there to stop him. Nobody to say he did it wrong, nobody had to stay there - of course he'd do it right, or they'd not rent a room -

That was common sense. He'd probably have to do contracts to make sure they didn't damage anything, just to be careful, and they'd probably want a contract, too - to know what they were getting, of course he'd advertise that - he'd be proud, he wouldn't want to hide it from people - what he was offering, what he was promising -

Hunter got on his bike and headed into town wondering if maybe Chase would let him expand that shed, make it bigger in exchange for some of his potions, that maybe if he watered the trees with them - some would probably die, that stuff smelled awful, but -

Maybe it'd just make it so the deer didn't eat the trees, make the trees harder? Not as tasty? Make them grow faster, there was so much -

He'd wait til the next generation to see, maybe try that on just one or two as well. Replant the seeds if it worked? Somebody could pour a swallow of potion on a tree each day for a marble or two, somebody was smart - somebody would take ten of the contracts he did up at once - do all of them in one trip -

Hunter had too much to do, really, there was so much work for everybody - he could see how computers, how that stuff made some things easier, but really it had complicated it. Made other things impossible, to where you ended up at the same spot with less. Somebody had been keeping that difference, somebody had been pocketing it - that's how business worked. When it was all just strangers -

The Covanger's were doing great things for the town and Hunter trusted Weston - not at first, not completely, but people changed. Weston was good for Gage, they were good for each other and it was none of his business - Gage had made that clear, and he'd not flap his tongue in public, he knew that, but -

None of his business - how Gage was figuring out how that whole horse race was gonna go, how he was gonna get them horses to use the machine, handle all that. He'd have to ask him how it was coming coming along since he wasn't sharing, cause if Hunter had only figured out the tree by throwing a nut at it?

This place would never be the same - already he was digging up saplings, moving them - selling them, people could plant them by their houses, they'd have nuts for their cooking, food, shade - at some point. Maybe a tree house for the kids - so much could come from just a seed, a ole Hickory nut planted and tended - or thrown rough into a bit of magic, so much could come from that -

What would it grow into? Even if it was nothing special - not magical, it was the same as before - it was like rediscovering magic. A magic that had been forgotten by a lot of folk, the magic of sitting under a shade tree with a lady, having her play with your marbles, telling her what a nice house you planned to build one day and listening to her say how she'd decorate it -

Fill a house with kids and problems and cooking, and -

Hunter had to watch out, that his kickstand didn't get in the way of that ole bicycle, that he wasn't quite ready to go parking it just yet, that he was still touring the countryside -

On his way to to having a drink, probably not more than one, he was tired. But it was good to sit there and have a beer and relax, taste a bit of that sour wine Chase was cooking up -

Have a laugh with his best good buddies, see what sort of trouble Hickory got in today, what he was gonna kick off tomorrow - what it was all building up to.

It would be a good day - a good life -