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Show WORTHING FARM/11 house. Finally he stood on the heavy wooden beam that ran above the thatch along the top of the house, and he looked out over his farm. The corn was the same color as the dust, yellowish white, and the fields seemed to be water, with billows stopped for a moment in midmotion. In the far-off southwest corner Elijah saw a large stone. He turned away and looked out over the forest. The trees were not unscathed by the drought. Some of them were dead, others greyed and dying, but most were still green, and the heavy green of the foliage mocked the death of Worthing Farm. Elijah cursed the forest in his mind. The Forest of Waters, it was called. Not for the many streams and rivers that ran through'it. Rather for Mount Waters, the highest mountain in the world, that rose alone out of the middle of the forest, far from any other mountain. Even though no snow had fallen that winter, Mount Waters was still capped with snow from the year before, and if no snow ever fell again, Mount Waters would still hold water locked in its ice. Elijah glanced a little to the south of Mount Waters and there, a few miles away from Worthing Farm, something rising above the level of the forest caught his eye. It was a tower, made of bright new wood, and on its roof Elijah could make out figures moving, thatching it. It was his brother Big Peter's new inn; the drought wouldn't hurt his brother, Elijah thought; his brother who had left the farm was prospering while he, Elijah, who had stayed, was losing his crops and his family. Elijah hated his brother Big Peter, who was not hurt by the drought, and the trees of the Forest of Waters, that were not |