Ansgar winced as he set aside the strawberry stem. "Everything?" the drummer spoke the words slowly.

"You don't understand. He wasn't allowed, or couldn't go, to school. My brother barely knows how to write." Worldly as Mikkel was, he wasn't book smart the way someone who had any schooling could be. Ansgar briefly wondered if that is why he got along so well with Vars, someone else who struggled with writing and reading? That thought went by the wayside.

"Torden has been teaching him to read and write for awhile now." Ansgar thought that was good because the older Dane had the patience of a saint which wasn't ruffled by Mikkel's childish frustration. "When you talk to him about things it is all memory. I don't think he's read much past kids books."