Capture Koro

Koro had once been the worst harvester at the board, precisely because she wanted it too much. She'd fling seeds toward any fat enemy pit, hungry to take it, and of course a fat pit stayed fat — her last seed made it seven or eight, and there was nothing there for her, only a bigger pile for her opponent to use against her later.

The lesson had come from picking groundnuts with her aunt. Her aunt only pulled a plant when the nuts underneath were just ready — not the biggest, greenest, most tempting plant, but the one that had come to exactly the right point. "You harvest the ready ones," her aunt had said, wiping her hands, "not the ones you wish were ready." Koro had thought about that all the way home, and the next day she'd stopped chasing the fattest enemy pits. Instead she looked for the ones sitting at one or two seeds — the ones her last seed could tip into two or three — and she began, quietly, to bring in a harvest every single game. She had learned to want the ready pit, not the big one.

Nana the Sowing Elder set her a hard board on purpose: a long row of enemy pits, some fat, some thin, one temptingly huge.

"Take what you can," Nana said, "and only what you can."

Koro's eyes passed right over the huge pit — she knew her last seed would only make it huger. She found a pit sitting at two, worked out that a certain sowing would drop her final seed there and make it three, and she sowed it, seed by seed, her lips counting, until the last one fell into that pit — three — and she lifted it, gently, into her store. Then she looked, and saw the very next pit down was now sitting at one, and a small further sow would make that one two as her last seed landed. She took it too. She left the tempting giant untouched the whole time.

Nana clapped once, delighted. "Every hungry child in this village reaches for the biggest pile and comes away with air," she said. "You reach for the pit your last seed can finish, and you come away full. That is the whole art of the harvest — the ending makes the take. Sit at my board and teach these children to count to the two-or-three, not to grab for the most."

Koro's student was a fierce little boy called Juba who lunged. Juba would spot the fattest enemy pit and pour everything toward it, howling when his last seed made it five and gave him nothing. He captured almost never, and he sulked about it loudly.

"You're aiming at the biggest, aren't you," Koro said. "That's why you keep going home empty. Watch — I'm not going to look at the big ones at all." She scanned the far row and pointed at a modest pit holding two. "That one. My last seed will make it three. That's a harvest. The giant next to it? My last seed there would make it nine. That's a gift to my opponent." She sowed carefully; her final seed dropped into the pit-of-two, made it three, and she swept it in. "The number the last seed makes — two or three — that's the only thing that turns a pit into seeds in your store."

Juba, scowling, made himself ignore the fat pit for once. He found a pit at one, counted a sow that would drop his last seed there to make it two, and did it — and lifted his first honest harvest, blinking, into his store. "It was the little one," he said, half amazed, half offended. "The little one gave me seeds and the big one never did."

"The ready one," Koro corrected, smiling. "Not the big one. The ready one."