Ascendance Of A Bookworm Chapter 12 Online

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Defeated by Ancient Egypt

About when I wasn’t sure whether we were done or not with our preparations, winter flitted into the streets, and real, honest snow began to fall. During the winter, the entire neighborhood is locked in by the snow, so we’re typically confined in our houses except on unusually clear days.

For me, if I have books to read, I can let myself be shut away forever, so whiling away the long winter months would be no trouble at all. I, however, don’t have a single book. Will I be able to manage this long kind of isolation without them?

As the snow kept falling, it frequently turned into a full-blown snowstorm, forcing us to keep the doors and shutters tightly closed, with thick clothes stuffed into the crevices to try to s.h.i.+eld us from the drafts just a little more.

“…Uuuugh, it’s dark,” I whine.
“We’re in a snowstorm,” says Tory, ”there’s nothing we can do about that.”

The only sources of light in this locked-down apartment are a handful of candles and our stove. It may be daytime, but with our windows sealed so tightly not a single ray of sunlight can get in. This is my first time being in such a gloomy room without a single electric light to brighten it. Even when a hurricane knocked out my power, I had flashlights and the light on my cell phone for illumination, and they got my power restored very quickly. Trapped inside a gloomy room such as this, will I have no choice but to become gloomy myself?

“Hey, Mommy, is everyone’s house dark like this?” I ask.
“Hmm,” she says, “If someone has a little money, they can have quite a few lamps lighting up their homes. We only have one, though.”
“Oh? Let’s light ours, then!”

My mother sighs and shakes her head at me as I try to insist that lighting equipment is meant to be used. “We want to be careful with our oil, so we should avoid using it whenever we can. If it stays this cold and if the winter drags on, we’ll run out of candles eventually, and that would be a big problem, you know?”

There’s no counterargument to the way she talks about frugality. Come to think of it, my own mother in j.a.pan was always talking about scrimping and saving and coming up with elaborate ways to spend as little as possible. To save electricity, she’d unplug the TV when it wasn’t in use, although she’d then fall asleep with it on all the time. She’d brush her teeth the barest minimum of water to save on the water bill, yet she’d leave the faucet running constantly while was.h.i.+ng the dishes… I wonder what she would do to lighten up this room, if she were in this situation.

“Maine, what are you doing?” asks my mother.
“I wonder if this will make the room just a little bit brighter…”

I’ve grabbed one of my father’s old metal gauntlets from his old wartime days, polished them up a bit, and placed it next to a candle, trying to use its metal surface like a mirror to maybe make it seem a little brighter.

“Maine, stop that,” says my father.
“I can’t see what I’m doing,” says Tory.

Two people rejected me at the same time! Unfortunately, these gauntlets aren’t straight pieces of metal, and you can’t really say that they’re anywhere close to being s.h.i.+ny. They caught the flickering candlelight with a strange, irregular reflection, glimmering harshly in our eyes and making it even more difficult to see what we were doing.

“Ahh, it didn’t work… I wonder if there’s anything else I can use as a”mirror”…”
“Please don’t do unnecessary things,” says my mother.

After being quite clearly asked to stop, I give up on my plans to brighten the room using reflections. It’s not like I’m trying to read right now, but I still sigh, lamenting the poor visibility, and go huddle by the warmth of the stove.

Soon after, my mother starts a.s.sembling a loom for weaving fabric. This isn’t like one of the enormous, mechanical weaver’s looms I saw back in j.a.pan. This is much more primitive. I had been wondering how she was planning on weaving cloth in this tiny room, but it looks like we do have something that’s just the right size.

“Tory, your baptism is coming up, so make sure you paying attention to this,” says my mother as she carefully instructs Tory on how to work the loom. Tory, with a serious expression on her face, picks up a spool of thread.

“First, put the spool of thread here, then we prepare the warp. Run the thread straight through, like this…”

Making clothing starts by first weaving cloth out of the thread that our mother dyed during the autumn. You weave the cloth, then you sew the clothing, then you embroider it. Next year, we’re going to spin the thread too out of wool that we’ll buy during the spring. The only thing that we actually purchased in this entire process was the raw materials. It doesn’t look like you can just buy new clothing at a store, and fabric doesn’t seem to be the kind of thing that commoners can afford.

“That’s right, just like that. You’re a fast learner, Tory! Maine, do you want to try? If you don’t learn how to sew, you’ll never be called beautiful, you know?”
“Huh? Beautiful?”
“That’s right! When it comes to making clothing for your family, it’s important that they either look good to others or are very practical, you know? If you want to be beautiful, you need to know how to cook and sew.”

Ahhh, then I shall never be beautiful. …Wait, those conditions sound about right for being a good wife, but they’ve got nothing to do with being beautiful, right?

In my mind, clothing is something you buy in a store. When you go to the mall, each shop is overflowing with clothing of all sorts of styles and all sorts of designs. I never really showed much interest in clothing and picked outfits that would be good in more-or-less any situation, but even still my closet was full of choices. I didn’t really have more than two or three items that were either mended or hand-me-downs.

Sewing is something that I learned in Home Economics in school, but even then I used an electric sewing machine to do it. The only time I used a needle and thread was when I needed to sew on a b.u.t.ton. To be perfectly frank, if it’s a woman’s job during the winter to spin thread, weave cloth, and sew clothing for her entire family, that’s going to be terrible. I have literally zero interest in doing any of that.

Oh, although, if I could maybe use cloth as a subst.i.tute for parchment, I’d weave as much as I needed.

“Maine, don’t you want to try?” asks Tory, from beside the loom.
“No, maybe next time.”

She may have been at the loom, but I don’t think she wants to become a weaver. Tory seems to be more interested in becoming a seamstress’s apprentice, so she wants our mother to teach her how to do needlework. I, however, am very small, so my hands aren’t big enough, and, above all, I want nothing to do with any of that, so trying to teach me is entirely pointless.

“Okay, Mom, I’m going to go work on weaving baskets. Make me some good clothes!”
“Of course, leave it to me. They’ll be the most stunning clothes you’ve ever seen.”

My mother, confident in her abilities as a seamstress, works with enthusiasm. Every season, all of the children who recently turned seven years old gather at the church for their baptism ceremonies, wearing their nicest clothes. It’s the perfect opportunity for a mother to display their skill in preparing the perfect outfit for their child. Perhaps she’s thinking of this as some sort of public presentation?

Smiling to herself, she selects a new thread to use as the warp, one that’s much thinner than the one Tory had been practicing with.

“This really is a fine thread,” she says, smiling wryly as she thinks about how much time it will take to weave it into cloth. “Tory’s baptism is in the summer, so she’ll be too hot if I use too think of a fabric, right?”
“It’s still winter, though,” I say, “Won’t Tory have gotten bigger by summertime?”

In the summer, food is more plentiful and children tend to be healthier and move around a lot more, which I think helps them grow up faster. At least, that’s what all of my measurements showed when I was growing up. If these clothes are made to fit now, then they’ll be too small by summertime.

“That’s true, but I’ll be able to make adjustments so they’ll still fit just fine. What I’m more worried about is how small you are compared to your sister! I don’t know if Tory’s hand-me-downs will fit you for next year. I wonder what we’re going to have to do then?”

That is definitely something to worry about. Good luck, Mother.

In what seemed like the blink of an eye, my mother had selected a slender thread that seemed a little more st.u.r.dy than one made of wool and started weaving, and Tory has already started working on weaving the baskets she hopes to sell in the springtime. My eyes are starting to adjust, just a little bit, to how gloomy this room is, so it’s time for me to take the first step towards my ambitions and start working on making my pseudo-papyrus.

By weaving these gra.s.s fibers together, I’m definitely going to be able to make something kind of like a paper. I will never be outdone by the people of ancient Egypt! This is my battle to win!!

I lay out my fibers on top of the table. Back in j.a.pan, I once wove a square coaster in a basket-weaving cla.s.s. If I use that method, then making a postcard-size sheet will be the first step of my victory. I take my fibers, which are even thinner than the thread my mother’s using in her weaving, and start weaving them together into rows and columns, tightly tightly tightly tightly tightly…

I may lack money, technology, and experience, but I shall fight on with my determination, my determination, and my determination!

Whoa, these are too tiny, I’m really straining my eyes. Ah! I messed up!