Messenger

One morning, Leader summons Matty to run messages. Matty loves going to Leader's homeplace, as Leader has a spiral staircase and more books in one place than Matty has seen anywhere else. He has stories, history books, and books with paintings of landscapes, battles, and of "a woman holding a newborn child." Once, when Matty asked about a book written in Greek, Leader explained that Mentor was teaching him some Greek, since Leader couldn't learn things like that in his old village. Leader explained that two years after he left, a river barge arrived filled with crates of books. He'd been afraid that his old village was still looking for him and would want to put him to death, but when he saw the books, he knew it was changing and getting better. Matty asked why Leader never went back, and Leader said that this is his home now.

Matty admires Leader's books and bounds up the stairs when Leader calls him. With a smile, Leader asks Matty how the fishing is and confirms that Matty has been fishing for the entire six years he's lived in Village. Matty stiffens; he doesn't want to be given the true name Fisherman. Leader laughs, and Matty explains that he doesn't want fishing to be anything more than a fun thing to do. Leader explains that he's trying to assess the food supply, as there are rumors that there aren't as many fish now as there used to be.

Matty looks over Leader's tally of salmon and trout caught from the river and says that he remembers pulling many fish out of the river as a boy. He says that he was little then, and points out that when you're little, it always seems like things are bigger, farther, and more than they do when you're an adult. As an example, Matty says that while it's true the journey to his old settlement takes days, it doesn't seem to take as long now that he's bigger. Leader considers this thoughtfully and then gives Matty messages about an upcoming meeting. As he leaves, he tells Leader the proper way to catch a fish, which makes Leader laugh.

Matty spends most of the day delivering the messages. He thinks about how much he likes carrying messages to his old village, as there, he gets to snub people who were cruel to him. Matty reads the notices as he delivers them and realizes why Leader questioned him about the supply of fish: people want to vote to close Village to outsiders. When Matty reads this to Seer later, Seer points out that they just voted on this a year ago. Matty notes that there's plenty of food, and Seer says that while they'll cite dwindling resources, this is a matter of selfishness creeping into Village. This startles Matty, both because Village was founded on selflessness and because Mentor is the one spearheading the movement to close the border.

Matty obediently cooks and says that Mentor isn't selfish. Mentor accepts everyone at school and teaches them all the same, and Seer agrees. Seer then asks if Mentor has traded. Matty thinks and says that he stops by often, and doesn't see anything different there—Mentor doesn't have a Gaming Machine. Seer doesn't laugh. He says that this is about more than Gaming Machines.