The billion billion paths of his life lay open before him, waiting for his first choices, for the first… — Orson Scott Card

This is what I want to do forever, each one thought. Rise in the morning, come to the mill, and work all day with him beside me. Never mind that the wish was impossible. Never mind that they might never see each other again, once the boy left for his apprenticeship back in the place of his birth. That only added to the sweetness of the moment, which would soon become a memory, would soon become a dream.

Taleswapper looked at Miller.

“I'm nothing,” he said.

“A Christian isn’t nothing,” said Taleswapper.

“I'm no Christian, either.”

“Ah,” said Taleswapper. “A Deist, then, like Tom Jefferson.” The children murmured at his mention of the great man's name.

“Taleswapper, I'm a father who loves his children, a husband who loves his wife, a farmer who pays his debts, and a miller without a millstone.”

Land was what they wanted, as if the mere ownership of dirt could turn a peasant into a squire.