Lapwing Lulu

Lulu had loved the big sows from the first, but for a long time she kept ruining them with the same mistake: she'd forget the skip. Swept up in the joy of a handful circling the whole board, she'd loop all the way round and then plonk a seed straight back into her starting pit — undoing her own move, muddling her count, landing her last seed one house wrong every time.

The cure came from herding, oddly. Her family drove their goats along a great circular track around the grazing land, and there was one gate — the home gate — that you passed on the way out and had to not stop at, or the whole herd would try to turn in early and the drive would collapse. "You walk past your own gate," her grandfather told her, "or you never get the far grass." Lulu practiced feeling that home gate go by without stopping — walk on, walk on, don't turn in yet — and one evening at the board it fell into place: her starting pit was the home gate. When the great looping sow brought her back to it, she just... walked past. Skipped it. Kept going. Her big sows stopped collapsing and started landing exactly where she meant, one glorious loop later.

Nana the Sowing Elder handed her a pit so heavy it would loop the board and then some.

"Sow it true," Nana said. "All the way, and mind your gate."

Lulu scooped the great handful and set off round the ring — one to this house, one to that, down her own row, along the enemy's, round the far store, up the near side — and as she came back to her starting pit she felt the home gate coming, and she did not slow, did not turn in; she hopped clean over the empty starting house and dropped her next seed in the pit beyond, and carried on into the second lap until her final seed fell, exactly, in the far house she'd been aiming for all along.

Nana clapped her hands. "The little ones sow five seeds and think they've done something," she said, eyes twinkling. "You sow a whole loop of the board and skip your own gate without a stumble and land where you meant to. The big sow is the grandest move there is — and the easiest to spoil, because one forgotten skip undoes the whole magnificent thing. Sit at my board. Teach these children to go all the way around and remember the gate."

Lulu's student was a delighted, careless girl named Tuma who adored the huge sows for the sheer fun of them and never once remembered the skip. Tuma would loop the whole board grinning, drop a seed smack back into her own starting pit, and be baffled when her count came out wrong and her landing missed.

"You love the big loop, I can tell," Lulu said warmly. "So do I. But you keep filling your own gate back up. Watch me — the fun part is the loop; the careful part is right here, when you come back to where you began." She sowed a great handful round, and as her hand returned to the start she made the skip huge and obvious for Tuma to see: "Home gate — jump it — next house gets the seed." Her last seed landed clean, a loop and a half later, exactly on target.

Tuma tried her own great sow, whooping round the board — and this time, as she came back to her starting pit, Lulu just murmured "gate," and Tuma remembered, and hopped over it, and carried on, and her final seed dropped exactly where she'd hoped. "I did the whole giant one right," Tuma breathed, staring at the loop she'd laid all the way round the board. "I just had to not fill up where I started."

"That's the only hard part of the easy big fun," Lulu said. "Skip your gate, and the loop is yours."