Subitize Sisi

Sisi had once been the sort of player who found out where her seeds landed the same moment everyone else did — by watching them drop. She'd pick a pit that looked promising, sow it out, and only then, too late, discover her last seed had overshot the pit she wanted by two, or fallen short by one, ruining the plan.

She learned the ahead-of-time way from walking to the well. It was a long walk, and her mother always said "count your steps and you'll know how far the water is before your feet get tired." Sisi started counting: it was one hundred paces to the well. So she knew, standing at her own door, exactly where she'd be after fifty paces, after eighty, without walking them — the paces were just a number she could add on. One evening at the board it struck her that a pit of seeds was the same: the seeds were paces, the houses were the road, and if she counted the paces from where she stood, she'd know where she'd arrive without taking a single step. She stopped guessing that day. She started arriving on purpose.

Nana the Sowing Elder tested her with a board where the difference between a good move and a wasted one was a single house.

"Find me the pit," Nana said, "that lands its last seed on the far house holding one — so it makes it two, and you take it. But don't touch anything until you're sure."

Sisi's eyes went still. She looked at a pit holding four — four houses on lands... short, one house short of the target. She looked at a pit holding six — six houses on... one house too far, overshoots. She looked at a pit holding five — five houses on lands exactly on the far pit-of-one, makes it two — and only then, certain, did her hand move, sowing the five out to land precisely where her mind had already stood. The capture came in clean.

Nana's eyes crinkled. "Three children before you sowed the four and landed short and lost their turn," she said. "Two sowed the six and overshot and gave seeds away. You looked at all three without moving one seed and picked the only one that worked. That is the rarest patience there is — the patience to finish the move in your mind before your hands get impatient. Sit at my board. Teach the children to land their seeds in their heads before they land them on the wood."

Sisi's student was a headlong boy named Tafi who moved the instant he had an idea and worked out too late whether it was any good. He'd sow, watch it land in the wrong place, groan, and sow again somewhere else, learning only by the wreckage.

"You're finding out where your seeds go by watching them go," Sisi told him. "That's the most expensive way to learn — every wrong answer costs you a real turn. Do it the cheap way. In here." She tapped her temple. "How many seeds in that pit?" Tafi counted: three. "So where does your last seed land?" Tafi's hand twitched toward the pit — Sisi caught it. "Not with your fingers. Count the houses along. Three seeds, three houses on. There." Tafi looked, counted the air, and pointed — and when he finally sowed, his last seed fell exactly on the house he'd pointed at.

He did the next one entirely in his head first, lips moving, hand still, and only reached out once he was sure. "It went where I thought," he said, and then, wonderingly: "I didn't waste the turn finding out."

"That's the whole gift," said Sisi. "Be wrong in your head, where it's free. Be right with your hands."