PT Calisthenics Are Tough
The oat harvest and threshing were finally complete.
The straw and grains that resulted were stored away by each farming household. Since I was still the greenest of beginners when it came to agriculture, the entire village pitched in to separate the seeds our family would use next year.
They explained that seed grain had to be the finest, plumpest kernels. When I asked why we didn’t simply eat the best ones, the answer came back that planting chaff produced chaff, while planting good grain produced good crops.
Watching the villagers’ bloodshot eyes as they passionately explained the importance of seed selection, I unconsciously shrank back a step. Farming in this world was truly a matter of life and death.
Even while harvesting, the people used every spare moment to clear stones and scrape the earth into new fields. The children roamed about scanning the ground for any missed ears of grain, while the ducks competed with them to snap up whatever fell.
I was just as earnest. My own plot was smaller than everyone else’s, so I had to work that much harder. In a world without contraception, we might have a child as soon as next year.
Just thinking about it made my exhausted body snap back into motion without conscious effort. The work flew by faster than ever thanks to that surge of motivation. It seemed that once a man had a family to protect, strength he never knew he possessed would appear.
I caught myself grinning, only to realize the chatter around me had suddenly gone quiet. Whoops. We were in the middle of discussing what seeds to sow in the cleared fields.
It wasn’t formal enough to call it a village meeting. More like the casual dinner conferences we held almost every day. Everyone sat in a circle inside the village hall, eating and talking. This was no time to be lost in thought.
“When I first got married, I used to sit there grinning like an idiot too. These days I can’t even tell whose flesh is whose anymore. Seeing her naked doesn’t do a thing for me. It won’t stand up.”
One of the fathers spoke, and the others chuckled. He was the husband of the woman who essentially served as the village cook.
“This guy really has no filter in front of people!”
His wife’s thick palm smacked his back with a loud thump. The man curled up, wailing that his wife was beating him to death, but his face was all smiles. Despite the joke, the warmth in their eyes and expressions showed how good their marriage was.
Still, it looked like another hit might actually kill him, so I quickly steered the meeting back on track.
“Everyone, what do you think we should do?”
We planned to plant turnips, peas, basil, and the other seeds we’d bought from the peddler in the newly harvested fields. But some villagers suggested trying another round of oats.
The normal harvest time for oats was later than this. Since these had grown unusually fast and been harvested early, the idea was to plant them once more. The suggestion had come up before we bought seeds from the peddler, back when we never dreamed the yield would be this bountiful.
Now we had plenty of grain for both seed stock and food. Opinions split in every direction. Everyone argued passionately, spit flying. Since I knew almost nothing about farming, I listened with rapt attention.
The one point everyone agreed on was to plant as much as possible and harvest as much as possible before the wheat. The kingdom had promised to supply wheat seed in the fall. Support and seed grain were generous in the first year, but nothing would be provided from the second year onward.
I’d heard they would give extra seed for what we’d missed because the timing had already passed this year, but that would probably be the last time. That was why the villagers grew anxious with every planting—if there were no seeds, all the land in the world wouldn’t matter. After throwing everything away to come here, they would starve.
Buying seed from the peddler this time had been a huge leap of faith for them. Perhaps because they trusted the spirits, they didn’t seem overly anxious. Watching Popcorn swimming around in the villagers’ rice bowls with the baby spirit, I muttered to myself.
I’m counting on you, Popcorn. Do your best.
Anyway, aside from the shared desire to plant a lot and harvest a lot, no consensus formed. Continuing the meeting like this wouldn’t narrow the gap. The farming talk naturally drifted into other subjects and settled on setting traps for hunting.
Quite a few animals had been caught, so everyone was pleased. Marguerite, who had stayed quiet during the farming discussion, joined in to say we should set more traps so the children could eat plenty of meat. I completely agreed.
Not just the children—the whole village needed more meat. Real meat, not the jerky we used for broth. The villagers looked slightly startled, as if they thought they were already eating a lot of it. Apparently they had been planning to preserve most of the meat to sell.
“Selling is fine, but we need to eat first. You all have to stay healthy so the children can grow up without worry. More marriages will mean more babies in the future.”
At the mention of children, the villagers exchanged glances.
“That’s true… if we get sick or die out here, the children…”
“When I was little there was an epidemic. Out of ten villagers, four would die. So many adults perished that even children who didn’t catch the disease ended up starving.”
Children needed adults to survive. Hearing the adults’ voices, the kids who had been playing among themselves looked over anxiously. They used to interrupt every meeting with wild demands, but lately they had lost interest. They seemed to have finally realized meetings weren’t for granting their wishes.
As the mood grew heavy, the children crept over to their parents. The villagers’ eyes softened at the sight.
“We really do need to eat well.”
“We came here to live, after all.”
“Those kids need to put on more weight.”
One villager muttered the words, and a child’s eyes widened. The boy crawled to his friend and whispered.
“They’re not going to eat us, are they?”
“I don’t know.”
“‘Putting on weight’ is what they say about chickens. In my old village, when chickens got plump they sold them or ate them.”
“I’ve heard there are people who eat other people.”
“Me too. They say they live in the mountains.”
“I heard that too. They told me not to go into the forest because people like that live there.”
“They’re not people, they’re monsters. The ones living in the forest.”
The children huddled together, whispering frantically. Out of nowhere the conversation had turned into ghost stories. The villagers burst out laughing, clutching their stomachs at the children’s absurd misunderstanding. The scary tales adults told to keep kids out of the mountains and forests had come back in the most unexpected way.
Watching them, I finally spoke about something I had been considering for a while.
“Until now we’ve had too few people, so we could only focus on farming and village chores. But from now on we need to devote energy to protecting the village as well.”
I had been thinking this ever since Marguerite told me about the other settlements. A brand-new village had more urgent priorities, so I hadn’t brought it up before. Now that the harvest was finished, the time had come.
According to Marguerite, unlike us, most other villages had very few cultivated fields. I didn’t know about long-established ones, but seven out of ten of the rougher places she had visited seemed newly formed. The frontier village where Mari and the other brides had stayed was similar. When Marguerite asked them, they guessed about half the places they’d seen were new settlements, though they couldn’t be sure. They had been too nervous to observe carefully.
What was certain was that many of the villages they passed through had far too little farmland. The very first place Marguerite stopped at had almost no signs of any fields at all.
“What do you think villages like that will be thinking after they survive this winter and reach next year?”
Farming was done with the following year in mind. Harvesting after a few months of work wasn’t the end. You had to save seed from this year’s grain to prepare for the next. Seeds planted today wouldn’t yield food in just a few days.
Our village could hunt easily thanks to the spirits, but other places might not be so lucky. Even if hunting went well, it probably wouldn’t be enough. When people didn’t have food, their first thought was to take it from someone else. In the lawless frontier, that went without saying. There was also the matter of women. We couldn’t claim no one would come to steal them.
The villagers’ faces grew grave. Ji-geu’s father leaned forward and nodded.
“You’re exactly right, Chief. We need to prepare.”
The weapons distributed at the beginning were few and of poor quality—probably castoffs bought cheap right before they were discarded. Many were already cracked. There was a good chance they would stop functioning before long.
In the end we decided to make bamboo spears whenever we had free time. Sharpening the tip of a bamboo stalk turned it into a weapon, so they were easy to produce. Fortunately a large wild bamboo grove grew nearby, so materials were plentiful.
“And I think we should start some training as well.”
Farming and fighting were different things. Even basic drills would let me make use of my military experience from Earth.
“Chief, just tell us what to do.”
“I’ve never trained soldiers, but I’ll work hard.”
“It’s for our families.”
The villagers nodded firmly, but Ji-geu tilted his head.
“Teacher can just blow the enemies away with wind, right?”
“Yeah. Our teacher’s a mage.”
“We need to make ropes to tie ourselves down so we don’t all get blown away.”
“Pudding can make the ropes too.”
“Orange is a bird, so he’ll be fine, right?”
“What about the ducks? It would be bad if my duckling gets blown away.”
The children chattered noisily. Suddenly Popcorn stuck its round bottom out and began to dance, a baby spirit clutched in its arms.
“Is it telling us not to worry because it will protect us?” Marguerite asked, tilting her head. The children shouted toward where her gaze had gone.
“Spirit-nim! You have to save our ducks. Ducks are really important!”
“My Whitey too!”
“Please protect my Waddles too!”
Whitey and Waddles were the names the children planned to give the ducklings they would receive. The ducklings hadn’t even hatched yet.
Thanks to the children, the momentarily heavy atmosphere softened again. Everyone laughed.
“Well, it’s not certain that anyone will invade. Maybe nothing will happen at all.”
Not many seemed to truly believe that, but the words eased the children’s minds. They quickly grew noisy again with different topics while the adults exchanged heavy glances above their heads.
We decided to sow the oats in the newly cleared fields. This time we would use the leftover grains from threshing and the poorer-quality seeds as a test. It would also let us verify the effects of the spirits and Pudding.
Normally the crop should be poor, but if the yield turned out good, it would clearly be thanks to them. If the sprouts came up well and grew strongly this time, we planned to raise the wheat the same way in the future.
Ordinary fields were supposed to include fallow land, but that rule didn’t apply to our village yet. Since we would keep creating new fields, we wouldn’t need fallow ground for a while. Above all, thanks to the spirits and Pudding, the soil wasn’t being depleted at all. If anything, it was growing even richer.
After the meal we tried PT calisthenics as our first taste of training. At first the village men thought it was nothing more than warm-up stretches, but they started collapsing before they even reached the halfway point. The children couldn’t get up from the ground from the very first exercise.
…Strange.
These people should have far better stamina than me. Why were they struggling so much with simple PT exercises? Not knowing the reason, I grew even more flustered than they were.
The only ones who lasted until the end were me and Popcorn. Popcorn occasionally pretended to sweat, finishing the routine with its round fluffy body, then stuck its bottom out and began spinning in circles. When Marguerite clapped, it did another full spin. Beside it, the baby spirit lay face-down on the ground, panting hard.
It seemed PT calisthenics had been tough on the baby spirit too.
It really was strange.