I was experiencing déjà vu. Again, I entered the office completely overwhelmed but with a firm conviction that I would make this work. I started sorting through all the parchment and Birch bark in the study and what I gathered from the various rooms. They are organized by category and then by date. It was a slog. Letters to my father, brother, mother, and even grandmother. What did it say about me that I couldn't find a single letter addressed to me in my room or the study? There were various tax records, production records, and supply counts. I left the personal letters alone and dug into the records.

I thought it would distract me from my problems, but it made things so much worse. I found out the true state of our affairs by using all the records we had, speaking with the farmers, and forcing Marcus to explain things to me.

Bicman fields produced about three and a half bushels per acre. About two bushels of that was used for reseeding. Because the Bicman village consisted mainly of serfs, all of the remaining belonged to me. I had to use it to feed my serfs while budgeting for taxes. The other villages had a 20% tax on all goods produced after seeding. The fields of Cofi and Kerisi produced about four bushels per acre. Our small amount of iron and chalk exports helped to subsidize our taxes. We couldn't keep much livestock due to feeding issues, and I was seriously considering selling off most of my family's horses so we didn't have to feed them. My serfs worked all day long with very little return. I averaged it out to be them getting 1.2 bushels per acre after taxes. After the grain consumption, a family would be left with about six to eight bushels to trade for other needs. That was about twenty-four silver pennies in the poorer farms and up to eighty in Cofi and Kerisi. Not that peasants would see many coins in their lives. Everything out here on the edge of civilization was done as barter.

I also figured out the monetary values. One gold crown was equal to five half-gold crowns or ten silver crowns. A silver penny was a little smaller than a silver crown and had copper in it, which made its value one-tenth of a silver crown. A copper was pure copper and was the largest size coin. It was a tenth of a silver penny. A penny was made of copper and tin, and one hundred copper pennies equaled one silver penny.

This put into perspective that I have given Jorb a third of the total amount we paid in taxes every year. It also put into perspective how much the old steward had squirreled away, over a year's worth of taxes. Some was probably his savings, but I wondered how much was paid by some outside source. This was ridiculous. Well, now it was the Barony's. It would be a good buffer, but If I could get more animals to pull the plows, then next year might be a very good year for us.

My father had somehow managed to scrounge enough money together to build a watermill and bribe a miller to come to live here. This allowed the women in the village to spend less time thrashing and hand-grinding the grain. Instead, they planted bigger gardens to supplement their diet. Of course, my father's investment was not altruistic. He was able to pay off more taxes with flour than raw grain. I got to meet the miller at that time, and he seemed to be a nice enough fellow. He had his own land that he worked with his children, and for his pay, rather than getting anything monetary, he was exempt from taxes. That was good because, with how poor the land was, my people couldn't afford to sacrifice any of their grain to pay for the grinding. However, the miller made money off the peasants, whom I didn't have to feed or clothe. Overall, the miller had it pretty good if you took out the fact that he had to live in a backwater barony. As I looked at the mill, I wondered if we could extend the shaft of the waterwheel to another building. Part of my history of steel videos talked about how the ancient Chinese used the waterwheel to power trip hammers and bellows to smelt iron. Well, they were the first to do it, at least. If we had a trip hammer, I bet Jorb would be able to cut down the time it took to make the plow heads by a lot.

I spent three days trying to sort things out, and by the end, I was so depressed by the numbers that I just wanted to curl up in my bed and cry. I had no solution as to how to make these people's lives better. Sure, I had ideas, but what did I know? Were they really going to work? Would more animals to plow really work, or would we just have more animals to feed?

At the same time I was doing all this, I reworked their number system to include zero. And it wasn't as simple as just adding a zero. When I say I reworked it, I mean I really had to rework it. I couldn't wait for Samuel to finish my abacus.

A soft knock at the door interrupted my thoughts. "You may enter," I said with a sigh.

Emily came over with a stack of paper. "Are you ready for dinner?" she said as she set down the sheets. These were thicker and about the size of children's flashcards—actually, that is exactly what they would become. I was making sight word flash cards for the students. We had five students now, and they were all at the point where they knew their ABCs.

"Is it that time already?" I said while stretching my back.

Emily leaned over the table and looked at the papers I had out on it. "What are these pictures?"

I had taken the time to draw out a few of my ideas. First was the horseshoe. I held it up to her. The paper had a horseshoe by itself and then a close-up of one attached to a horse. She looked at it, confused.

"How does this stay on the horse's foot."

"You pound nails through the holes there and into the hoof."

"Doesn't that hurt the horse?!" She said in shocked surprise.

"Not any more than if you were to put a hole in the white part of your fingernail or toenail. There aren't any nerves there."

"What's a nerve?" she said, pronouncing the odd word that I had spoken in English.

"A nerve lets us feel things on and in our body. Any time you feel anything, it is because a nerve is being touched. Don't worry about it. First, we will learn to read and write, and then we will discuss more scientific stuff."

She held up the picture of the horse collar. It looked like what I remembered a horse collar should be. Another picture showed it on the horse. I had found some charcoal to use for shading so that all the lines weren't just done in ink. It wasn't perfect, but I did not doubt that the woodworkers and tanner would make it work.

"These pictures are amazing. The horse almost looks alive." She said excitedly.

"Meh, thanks for the compliment. The charcoal was hard to use. I wish I had some graphite pencils with different hardness."

"Amos, you're rambling about things I don't understand," Emily whined.

I ignored her. "Better yet, a Wacom tablet with a printer."

"Still rambling."

"I'm not rambling. I am giving you valuable information."

"How is that valuable information when I don't even know what it is?"

"You'll know what to get me for my birthday," I said with a smile.

All I got in response was an arched eyebrow.

My smile turned into a laugh. Releasing a lot of my pent-up stress. I sat there, chuckling at my own joke and Emily's reaction. I know it is so nerdy to laugh at my own joke, especially when it is so bad, but I think the stress of trying to make sure over a thousand people survived the year and didn't starve this winter was making me crack.

I had the money I had gotten back from the old steward, but I was hoping I wouldn't have to use it. Suddenly, Emily interrupted my train of thought.

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"Um, where did you learn to draw?"

"When I was younger, I had something called Childhood Leukemia. It was a disease that made me very sick. I spent a couple of years mainly in bed. I didn't have much to do, so I took art classes online. After I got better, I continued to draw and became… I guess you would call it a merchant who sold his artwork." Unlike some other scars, this one had healed, so I didn't mind talking about it.

"I'm sorry." She said, tears forming in the corner of her eyes.

"It's really OK, Em, it was a long time ago. Thanks for caring."

We were both silent for a while, and then Emily hesitantly asked a question. "Um, Lord Amos, can you… draw me a picture?" she said, her face turning bright red.

I smiled, "Sure, grab that chair over there and sit a little closer to the window so I have some light to work with."

"What do you mean? What are you drawing?" She said as she dragged the chair to the window.

"You, of course."

"Me? You can draw me?"

"Why not? It will look great. Now, I want you to turn your head slightly to the right and don't move."

She sat there as stiff as a board.

"Relax and smile. I promise this won't hurt."

She gave a weak smile. "No, a real smile. An, Emily, smile." That seemed to just confuse her.

"OK, how about this? Think of me with a kayver on my head. Perfect! Hold that smile."

I started to sketch as best I could. I couldn't use some of the lines I would normally use to lay out the face because I had no way to erase anything. The whole thing took about half an hour to do. If I had more tools, I would have taken more time and made something really spectacular, but I was pleased with my work all the same. After I was done, I called Emily over, and she just stared at the picture. Tears started to flow down her face.

"I've never had someone cry over my pictures," I said, trying to lighten the mood.

"It's… It's beautiful. It's better than looking in your polished mirror."

I stood up and handed it to her. "Well, it is yours. Just don't touch the ink. I wish I had some sort of lacquer or something to protect it."

"My name is on it. What are the other words?"

"It says, Ms. Emily, the first Papermaker."

She dropped the paper on the table and threw her arms around me. Well, not all the way around me. I was too fat for that, but the hug felt good. Then she started to sob. I awkwardly put my arm around her and patted her head. After sobbing for a minute, she said, "Please don't leave us. I don't want you to go."

"I'm not going anywhere," I said in confusion.

She was silent for a while, and then softly, she said, "I worry. I worry that one day I will wake up, and the other one will be back."

Now, it was my turn to be quiet. Finally, I said, "I can't go anywhere, Em. In the place I came from, I died."

Her body relaxed a bit. Stepping back and looking up at me, she hesitantly asked, "What happened?"

The words stuck in my throat. I wanted to wash my hands of it, but I didn't want her to see me differently. "I don't really want to talk about it."

"Sorry," she said, hanging her head.

I ruffled her hair. "Not your fault, Em. Maybe I will tell you someday. Why don't we get to dinner?"

"Can I leave the paper here? I don't really have a place to put it," she said, a little embarrassed.

"Put it in the paper room. We could even get a frame for it."

"What if someone takes it?" She said worriedly.

"Who would do that? Tell you what. I will get Mikel to make a frame, and you can put it above the fireplace."

"You can't put it above the fireplace! I'm a serf."

"It's my manor; I can do what I want. Now, let's go find Draves and get him to have someone run these papers down to Jorb and Mikel. Then we can have dinner and your lessons. Do you have all the sight words memorized?"

"Yes, I have been practicing with Jackie. She even got Mathew to learn them all." She said proudly.

"You guys are doing great. I am going to have to start making books soon."

"What's a book?" She said, her eyes going wide.

"Well, it's like a bunch of sheets of paper sewn together in order to write out a story. But yeah, I think I can make some simple books." I shrugged. I would make some simple picture books that I remember reading when I first started. 'Oh, maybe I can make comic strips. I haven't done that since the sixth grade,' I thought.

As my mind wandered, we meandered around until we came across one of the stable boys, Drake. I asked him if he knew where Draves was, and when he asked what I needed the captain for, I explained that I needed the papers taken to the men in the village. For some reason, Drake blushed and offered to run them down himself. I handed him the papers, and he shot off like a rocket.

Emily saw my confusion and giggled. "He has had a crush on Jackie for forever."

"Oh," I said, smiling back, "I guess I know who to send messages to when I need them sent."

After Drake took off towards the gates, we headed to the great hall for the evening meal. The captain wasn't there, so again, I ate alone. I ate quickly, and instead of just sitting there waiting for the tables to clear, I made a few sight word cards. Mathew was starting to fall behind the girls a little bit, but they were older than him, so I was OK with that. Yesterday, I had the idea to turn my old room into a public library. I put up some paper with the Alphabet on the wall and started writing out simple stories on sheets of paper. It was basically beginning reader books done as comic strips. See Henry run. See arrow fly. See Henry die. OK, not really. Nothing that morbid, but that was the idea.

I would have to get tables put in that room and my old bed taken out. I had those men able to do woodwork working on the plows. With the four oxen I had for my fields, I could only really use two since the oxen tired quickly. So, any more would be rented out to the peasants in the other villages. Unfortunately, it probably wouldn't happen until next year since the other farms had all been planted. I wanted five total made this year. Some for spares. This is why I sent the horse collar and horseshoe idea down to Jorb and Samuel. There was no point in making more just yet.

By the time the tables were cleared, I had finished six sight word cards. I could have done more, but I wanted them to look nice, so when Jacklyn finally arrived, she couldn't stop staring at the pictures.

"So, did Drake get the drawings to your father?" I said off-handedly, looking for her reaction. And I wasn't disappointed. Her face turned beet red at the mention of Drake. "Hmm, it looks like he isn't the only one who has a crush."

If she got any redder, she was going to explode. Emily walked up just then and said, "Lord Amos, stop being mean to Jackie. I did not tell you about Drake so you could tease my friend. Besides, she is so red right now that people in the hall are going to think you are speaking indecently."

That killed all the fun. "Seriously, you sound just like your grandma. But you're right, of course. Sorry, Jacklyn. I will have to tease you when all these people are not around."

"That is not what I meant!" Emily said while stamping her foot.

I tried not to laugh. I really did. After stifling a few chuckles, I calmed down.

"Lord Amos, you owe Jackie a picture."

"What? Why?!"

"Because you embarrassed her," She said with a glare.

"Who died and made you baron?" I said, glaring back. She was really becoming like a little sister to me.

"What does that even mean?"

"Never mind, it doesn't matter. You are just looking for an excuse to make me draw another picture." I said in mock annoyance.

She looked at me with puppy-dog eyes. "Please, Lord Amos, it would be so nice of you," she said, changing tactics.

I gave a deep sigh. "That's fine, but we're doing it after your lesson."

I could probably draw everyone in this castle without having them sit still. My mom called it my snapshot memory for drawing. It was easier with them sitting, though. It made sure I got every detail right.

Emily turned to Jacklyn and grabbed her hand. She was beaming as she said, "Jackie, you are going to love it. He drew the most amazing picture of me."

I just rolled my eyes dramatically. I think Jacklyn was still in shock at the way Emily had conned me into drawing a picture of her. Oh well, I really did love drawing. I would have to find some paint. I could make artwork like the world had never seen.

"OK, ladies, it looks like the other students are here. Let's get to work." We had one of the laundry women and Drake join us this time. I had opened the invitation to everyone, but I think people were still nervous about me. Jackie probably invited Drake, and he sat at the table with the girls. I had those two help Drake start working through the Alphabet. And I worked with the other students. We went over the regular time because everyone was at different stages. Some of them left a little earlier because they had work to do.

After the lesson, I spent the evening working on Jacklyn's picture. It turned out really well. I had to use a candle to work with, so there were a lot more shadows involved, but it gave it a wonderful look. I am glad the ink was of good quality, but I would have to get more if I continued to use it. I may have to switch completely to charcoal rather than just using it for shading like I was. Overall, I felt the day had gone pretty well.