Our hero read the note on the healer’s table he had ignored. The healer left for other lands and left the house to our hero.
Our hero made a resolution, and sought to keep it. He started a garden in the healer’s former house. He gave up adventuring. He grew lentils as his main diet. He grew tomatoes, whose cool flesh he would eat in the summer. He grew carrots, which were savory. He grew onions, which would go in soup. He grew fennel, which gave flavor.
Everyone contributed to our hero’s garden. The mage and her husband tended crops. The recruiter knew some recipes. The businesswoman bought new seeds. The soldier guarded the garden with his life. The bitch watched it. The prosecutor looked away. The dwarves crafted tools. The doe provided fertilizer. The manpig, much in love with our hero, brought the workers refreshment. The grandmother baked pies. The replacement did not tax it. The werewolf did not take vengeance. The sisters, who survived the poison and held little grudges, as animals often did not, plowed like oxen. Though he had no success in growing flowers, they made a wonderful garden, and in the city where people often ate sawdust with their beer they loved the products. Our hero, after many perilous adventurers, finally had a happy life, and he felt in harmony with the people he could call friends.
It is unfortunate life is not so simple.
The garden was so beloved that it only attracted more and more admirers. Though the sisters were stronger than ten men, our hero asked the recruiter for more hands to help him sow seeds and reap their products. Rather than purchasing the freedom of these people, he instead paid them wages for their work, which kind of compensation he was familiar with in his old world. Despite many sermons, he did not want the respect and honor that came with owning slaves and felt it was easier to handle the workers this way.
The workers responded in a complex way. Some people suppose that, when a man has his liberty, he proceeds to waste it by spending his wealth on anything but food and shelter, such as liquor and women. This was not so. Though the royalty of the city forbade commoners from spending on luxury goods, the workers saved their wages. They intended to use some of it for their children’s education, some for a surety against old age, and dearer times when the city was in crisis or there were no more wars being fought.
Some supposed the workers would start businesses that rivaled and crushed our hero’s. This was partially true. The workers did save their wages to start their own shops, and indeed eventually left our hero’s employment to work full-time on their businesses. However, their businesses often complemented our hero’s: for example, they started restaurants and wineries and used some products to start their own clothing stores. This enhanced our hero’s business immensely. If the workers started their own gardens, he did not mind the competition at all, and felt it was justified.
The city’s nobles and the king, seeing the city people so empowered, were frightened by this change, yet enjoyed wine and cheese so much they did not change any laws for the time being.
The businesswoman made a suggestion to our hero. He should purchase a large amount of land outside of the city, which could support nearly half of the city’s workers. The land sat idle, as the owner had died a while ago and his children squandered its use, believing that they possessed too few slaves to make use of it. However, the city’s laws only allowed royalty to purchase the land. Our hero should secure a sum large enough to buy the land, the king and his advisors’ opinions, and possibly a title. If all went well, he could hire a man who had a skillful hand in growing flowers.
Thus our hero began his journey to become a businessman.
© 2025 François-Marie Lee