We settled in, and Gelane learned how to make barrels while I stayed home with Aravina doing everything I could to bring her out of the melancholia which came very close to incapacitating her. Melancholia’s a difficult condition to deal with. The admonition, ‘Oh, cheer up’, doesn’t really work, no matter how often you say it. There are some herbs and compounds of herbs that numb that overpowering sadness, but numb people don’t function very well.

Osrig, as I mentioned, was a very good teacher, and Gelane was soon making barrels that didn’t leak very much. His products moved down a definite descending scale. His first barrel gushed water from every seam. The second spurted. The third dribbled. The next three only oozed. After that, they were mostly watertight, and he actually began to take some pride in his work. When a craftsman reaches that point, the battle’s largely over. Whether he liked the idea or not, Gelane was now a cooper.

Then, when our young barrel-maker was sixteen, he met a very pretty girl named Enalla, the daughter of a local carpenter, and the customary bell rang in the corridors of my mind. Gelane was absolutely smitten with her, and she with him, so they began ‘walking out with each other.’ That’s a Sendarian euphemism for what a young pair does when they’re looking for an opportunity to slip away together to explore the differences between boys and girls. Enalla’s mother and I took turns preventing that, so about all Gelane and Enalla were able to manage were a few hastily stolen kisses.

After a month or so they were formally engaged, so the kisses were now acceptable – within certain rather tightly controlled limits. Then, shortly after Gelane’s seventeenth birthday, he and his radiant Enalla were married. The entire courtship had been rather plodding and pedestrian, but this was Sendaria after all, and the local society of merchants and craftsmen was conservative. Conservative people don’t like surprises – like the ritual kidnaping of the bride-to-be by her adoring bridegroom and several of his half-drunk friends that’s common in some of the rowdier clans in Algaria.

After the wedding there was the ceremonial wedding supper – the traditional lavish feast which insures the attendance of just about everybody in the neighborhood. After he’d eaten his fill – and then some – Gelane’s grey-haired employer drew me aside for some serious discussion. I always rather liked Osrig. He was a Sendar to his fingertips, the kind of man who made me proud of the part I’d played in creating Sendaria. He was sober, practical, and eminently sensible. He paid his taxes, didn’t cheat his customers, and abstained from some of the more colorful aspects of language so admired by Chereks and Drasnians. He was a solidly-built man in his mid-fifties, and he was probably the one who really raised Gelane. Sometimes that task does fall on the shoulders of a young man’s first employer.

‘Well, Mistress Pol,’ he said to me with a slight smile, ‘we seem to have gotten our boy married off.’

I looked across the crowded room filled with chattering guests at our bride and groom, who seemed oblivious of everything going on around them. ‘Why, I do believe you’re right, Master Osrig,’ I replied.

‘I just had an idea you might want to consider, Mistress Pol.’

‘Oh?’

‘Why don’t we go ahead and give him a wedding present?’

‘What did you have in mind, Master Osrig?’

‘You didn’t come right out and say it, Mistress Pol, but when we first spoke about my taking Gelane on as my apprentice, you sort of suggested that if things worked out, you might consider buying my shop and the business.’

‘I wasn’t exactly suggesting, Master Osrig. As I remember, I was fairly specific about it.’

‘Why, so you were. Anyway, Gelane’s quick, and he makes good barrels. Here lately, I’ve been giving him some instruction in getting along with customers, negotiating prices, and chasing down the ones who are slow to pay – you know, the business side of the craft.’

‘Oh, yes, Osrig, I know all about dealing with customers.’

‘Gelane does that very well, too. I’ve been watching him, and I’d say that he’s ready. It seems to me that his wedding today gives us the perfect opportunity to change his status in the business world as well. He’s a married man now, and that’s fairly important to businessmen. Bachelors can be unreliable, but married men are solid and dependable. I know my customers, and that sort of thing is very important to them. To cut all this short, why don’t we go ahead and complete our arrangements this very day? I like Gelane, and I’ll make you a good price. I’ll stay around for a few months to guide him along, and then I’ll start to slowly fade back out of sight.’

‘You’re very generous, Master Osrig. If we can agree on this, we’ll make this day one that Gelane will never forget.’

He coughed, looking slightly embarrassed. ‘I have got a slightly ulterior motive, Mistress Pol,’ he confessed.

‘Oh?’

‘As a part of our arrangement, I want it clearly understood that I won’t open the shop any more. It’ll be his now, and it’ll be his job to open for business every morning.’

‘I’m not sure I understand, Master Osrig.’

‘I’m ashamed to admit it, Mistress Pol, but I absolutely hate getting up early in the morning. If we can agree on all the other details, I want it firmly established that I won’t be coming in to work until noon. I’ve hated getting up early for forty years now. When you buy my shop, you’ll be setting me free, Pol. I’ll still wake up just about dawn out of habit, but then I’ll be able to roll over and go back to sleep again.’

‘Why don’t we go ahead and set you free, Osrig? We can draw up the papers right now, and then I’ll go get your money for you. We should have it all taken care of in just a few days.’

‘I’ll accept your note for the time being, Pol. Then we can give Gelane the keys to his business this very afternoon, and when the sun comes knocking on my door tomorrow morning, I’ll tell him that I’m not taking orders from him anymore.’ He chuckled. ‘I’m even going to make a special point of staying up late tonight, just to make going back to sleep that much more delicious.’

And so it was that Gelane became a husband and a shop-owner on the very same day. Osrig stayed up late that night, and Gelane didn’t sleep very much, either. It was for entirely different reasons, however.