After a week of doing the census in the valley outside of Pencadick Rill, Jal stopped at Tunne’s General Store during the noon hour. It had packed two boxes full of finished items with plenty of padding. Tunne was surprised to see Jal’s pieces of pottery. In the back of the store, Jal lined up his creations. “Where did you get these from?”

“I made them.”

“You made these? Now stop teasing me, Mister Jomari.”

“Please call me Jal. I’m not teasing. What do you think of them? Do you think other people would pay for them?”

“Oh, yes! You would sell them here? Is that what you came to ask?”

“It is.”

Tunne named some prices, and Jal didn’t know what to say. “I would take, say twenty percent of the sale price,” Tunne added.

“Ten percent. I’ll price things myself after the first few weeks.”

“That’s fair. Let me show you where they’ll be displayed, so you know how many things to bring me.” Tunne was willing to give Jal an entire shelf for the wares.

“I think they’ll sell better if they’re just below eye level. Maybe on this table here?”

“You don’t ask for much do you?” Tunne grumbled.

“I have to pay for the supplies and fuel to get them here. You know, overhead.” The two hooked thumbs signifying that the deal was made. After Tunne walked away, Jal checked prices on a few things. It looked at a full-size axe.

“That’s pretty big, Jal,” Tunne said.

“I’m pretty big,” Jal countered. “A regular axe is good, but I think I would do better with a big one. I’d need two sharpening stones, right?”

“Yes.” Jal picked out a fishing rod and gear, a small lantern, a small cutting board and some knives, and a gun and ammunition. “A gun?”

“Yes. When we go camping, it would be good to have a gun, right?”

Tunne shrugged. “It’s your currency.”

Jal checked in with Sage Elvan daily. After working all day, then driving home every night, Jal was exhausted. Its schoolwork went untouched several days in a row, and finally, Jal asked permission first from Sage Elvan, and then from Eiske, whether it might stay with Eiske for a week or two. Jal would work all day, then spend time in Eiske’s garden. As Eiske prepared a meal, Jal would freeze the pickings for the day. After an early evening meal, the two of them would go to the community center for research and to do schoolwork.

“Eiske,” Jal asked one day, "how full do you fill your freezing appliance for the year?”

“Why are you asking me this, Jal?”

“The bokan are returning north.”

“How do you know this?”

“I just know. They’re about three days away. I’ll help you butcher one, if you like.” In the past, Eiske had worked with Haerm, Geldou, and their parents, Oenke and Jert to slaughter a bokan. Then would then divide the meat between the three households.

Eiske was not about to ask his sister if they would help butcher a bokan this year. “My parents are getting too old for this,” he said. “We’ll ask them to help cut the meat, but we have to get the animal onto the block and tackle chain hoist ourselves.” On a Vrijdag morning, Jal chased a bokan, in what seemed like slow-motion, to the block and tackle. The animal, intent on the fresh grass put before it, was quickly killed, hoisted, and left to bleed out.

Jal went on to a full day of enumerating the valley residents. Zaterdag, Jert and Eiske cut big sections of meat off the carcass, then Oenke taught Jal how to slice pieces off and package them for the freezer. After half a day of cutting and packaging, Oenke sat down to rest and took a nap, while the others continued working. The elderly couple left in the late afternoon, but Jal and Eiske worked long into the night cutting up roasts, ribs, and steaks. They wanted to get it all frozen as quickly as possible. The last large sections were put in the cooling unit and containers of smaller chunks filled the shelves.

On the third day of the process, Jal and Eiske cut up the big sections that were left into chunks and ground some of them, packaging them in the forms of patties, meatballs, and various kinds of ethnic foods. Some meat was cut into pieces for stews, soups and jerky. Jal noted that there was a lot of empty space in the freezing unit as it filled two boxes of meat for Onke and Jert.

Jal continued to enumerate the valley and was nearly done. In the evenings, Jal worked on schoolwork. After five or six days of work, it would return to Ridali for a day or two days. On those days, it would spend hours in the craft room creating beads and pendants for necklaces, serving bowls and dishes, vases and trays. On its breaks it would go on long walks, collecting herbs, plants starts, and wild onions. As Jal's skill at the pottery wheel improved, the variety of items in the inventory widened. Some experiments were successful, and others failed. Occasionally, someone would leave word with Tunne that they were interested in a special order.

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As the summer season came,g Jal yearned to go camping. With Sage Elvan’s permission, Jal asked Eiske and Dirk to accompany it camping. They both declined. Although Jan was hesitant at first, it agreed to let Jal go off on its own a few weeks later. Jan would track it by a device attached to its undergarment and Jal could call if it needed help. Jal set off with its backpack full and the cooling container in the back of the speeder. It didn’t take long before Jal found the place they had pitched a tent and made a fire ring.

After gathering enough wood for a fire and stacking it by the campsite, Jal fished for a few hours. When it was dinner time, it cleaned the fish, and sat down to eat. After packing the extra into the chilling box, Jal threw out the line and caught several more before deciding to finish for the day. After everything was cleaned up, Jal sat and watched the fire die down and the stars come out.

As Jal walked through the forest the next morning, it found a huge bush of serviceberries, and several walnut trees. Jal rapidly filled several bags with berries and put them in the back seat. It went to gather more berries. At the bushes, Jal looked around for bear tracks but didn’t see any. it set down the gun that Dirk had lent it and began to gather as many berries as it could to fill the bags, and yet be alert to what was going on around it.

Suddenly leaves began to snap and the bushes parted several meters away. A bear was headed its way! It dropped the container of berries, grabbed the gun, and ran. The motion startled the bear, and it followed Jal. Jal looked around for a safe place to hide. Jal dodged between the trees, with the bear in pursuit. There was no place for Jal to go but up! It landed on a branch that it thought was safe. The animal had seen where it had gone. The bear stood on its hind legs and growled. It pushed against the tree. As Jal stepped toward a higher branch, the tree shook, and Jal fell.

Jal limped as it ran. It leaped up, out of the bear’s reach, onto a tree that couldn’t be shaken. Jal had unknowingly run the opposite direction and watched as the bear ate a good bunch of the berries from the bag. Jal realized that it was likely that the bear was going to hang around, since there were a lot of berries still on the vines. It seemed as if there were no cubs. And no way to get to the speeder, except down! With a sore ankle, this could be a problem. It sat in the tree, hoping the bear would go on its way. When the sun began its downward descent, Jal looked at its timepiece. “It’s getting late. What should I do?” Another hour passed and Jal changed positions in the tree.

"This is crazy!" Jal finally raised its gun and took aim. The brown animal fell to the floor of the forest. At the same time, Jal fell from the tree! It had forgotten to plant its feet so that the kickback from the gun wouldn’t push it off. In a split second, Jal landed in a patch of bushes. Shaken up, Jal checked itself for broken bones. It was able to walk, although its knee ached even more. It walked over to the bear, and shot it in the head, to make sure it was dead. “That was really stupid,” Jal said to itself. “I should have shot it again from up there.”

“Now what? That's good meat. I don't want it to go to waste. But how am I going to get this thing back to the camp?” It tried to pull the creature along but was only able to get it a small way. It tried to roll the bear over. That didn’t work either. Finally Jal aimed its wand at the bear. “Optilen!”

The bear carcass rose from the ground about an inch. Jal grabbed a front and hind leg and pulled. The carcass rose slowly into the air. Jal pulled the animal between the trees. Back at the camp site, it looked the animal over. It needed to be skinned and lifted to bleed out. But how could Jal do that on its own? The bear was big and heavy. “Cord. I need some cord.” Jal knew it needed to come up with a solution; the sun was getting lower in the sky. “Vines! I’ll use vines. I ‘m sure I can make some heavy cord with some vines.” It began to cut long vines from the area around the camp site. When it had enough, Jal began to braid them together. Tying knots at each end was a challenge since they slipped and slid apart.

“I can do this,” Jal thought. “This is not as hard as it seems.” It tried a different knot that Dirk had shown it. Finally, the cord was knotted. Jal took the cord to the tree and using a combination of magic, muscle, and a lot of knots, it was able to hoist the bear into the air on the cords. The branch creaked and bent a little but held. “Now, I cut the slit to let it bleed out.” Standing under the bear, Jal made a cut. Blood spurted out onto Jal. “Great!” its voice echoed.

Jal scrambled out of the bloody clothes and boots and into the lake. “Brr! Wait!” It thought to itself. “I don’t know how to swim!” It carefully made its way back to shore and rinsed the blood out of its hair. “That was stupid! It’s a good thing that its summer. I could have frozen my butt off out here.” Jal knelt in the shallow water and tried to scrub the blood off its clothes. It laid the clothes on the rocks, then started a new fire. The following afternoon, with partially dry clothes on, Jal went to Eiske’s.

Jal knocked on the door. “I need some help,” it said.

“Oh?”

“The chilling box is full of meat, and the rest of it won’t fit in the box. I’m not able to carry it all. Would you help me, please?”

“I will. You must have caught a lot of fish.”

“Yes,” Jal smiled to itself.

They could hardly lift the cooling box. “You must have fished around the clock.”

“No, but there’s a good catch in there. There’s more meat in the speeder.”

“Meat?”

“The box is full, and the rest wouldn’t fit,” Jal reminded Eiske. “We wouldn’t want it to go to waste.”

Eiske stood with his mouth hanging open when he saw the bearskin rolled up in the back seat. “How many people helped you?”

“None.”

“You killed a bear, skinned it and packed into the chilling box?”

“I did. There’s some fish in there too.”

“Good grief! You are full of surprises.”

Over a meal, Jal told Eiske how it had followed the bear and shot it from up in the tree. It told Eiske that the kickback had caused it to fall. What it didn’t tell Eiske was that it fired the second shot while standing over the bear, instead of from above. “Well, I couldn’t have,” Jal thought to himself. “I had fallen.” This made him feel less guilty.

That night they had bear stew. They cut up the meat and packaged it into meals. Now, Eiske’s freezing unit was full of bokan, bear, chicken, fish, and vegetables from the garden. There would be eggs from the chickens. Eiske wouldn’t have to worry about food.

The next day, Jal and Eiske took some bear meat and fish to Oenke and Jert. “Jal killed its first bear, Mom,” Eiske said to her.

“Jal?

“Jal Jomari, Mom.”

“You’re the person that everyone is talking about? Haerm and Geldou and Melle are spitting mad at you, mister. You shouldn’t have run that race. Why did you do that?”

“Because I can run.”

“You beat everybody that was running. You caused an uproar. Word is that you are a Stafriez.”

“I am.”

“Where did you come from, Jal?”

“I was born here on the Iragos Peninsula.”

“Have we met?”

“We have now,” Jal said with a smile. It was hard to focus, but Jal could tell that its hair did not change as it had previously. Jal focused instead on the thought that things were changing, and it was sad that it couldn’t tell her who it was.