The Measure of Time
Under an ancient baobab, the five siblings discover that time has never been as simple as a clock makes it seem.
---
The next evening, the rain came to WAN.
Not the angry kind that tore branches from trees and sent villagers running indoors.
This was the old kind of rain.
Slow.
Patient.
The kind that fell from the sky as though the clouds had all the time in the world.
By sunset, the earth smelled different.
The hills wore a darker shade of green, the stream below the village had grown louder, and tiny drops of water clung to the leaves of the enormous baobab behind the family house.
That was where the five siblings gathered.
BigDan sat beneath the tree with his back against its ancient trunk.
Big Dee was braiding a small piece of grass between her fingers.
Esther was reading from the old WAN book.
John was lying on his back, staring at the clouds.
Faye was doing what Faye did best.
Asking questions.
“How old is this tree?”
John answered without looking at her.
“Old.”
Faye frowned.
“How old?”
“Very old.”
“How many years?”
John turned toward her.
“Why do you want to count everything?”
“Because I want to know.”
BigDan chuckled.
“That,” he said, “is how every historian begins.”
Esther closed the book.
“Grandfather used to say this tree was already here when his grandfather was a boy.”
Faye looked up at the enormous branches.
“So… a hundred years?”
BigDan smiled.
“Perhaps.”
“A century?”
“Perhaps.”
“Then what is a century?”
BigDan picked up a small stick and drew a circle in the wet soil.
“A century is a hundred years.”
Faye nodded.
“So one century is one hundred years.”
“Yes.”
“And two centuries are two hundred?”
“Yes.”
John suddenly sat up.
“Wait. This is beginning to sound like yesterday.”
Big Dee laughed.
“It is yesterday's lesson, except now we're counting time.”
BigDan nodded.
“Exactly.”
He looked toward the hills.
“Numbers don't only measure things we can hold. They measure things we can only experience.”
---
Faye was quiet for a moment.
Then she asked:
“What comes before a century?”
BigDan replied:
“A decade.”
“How long is that?”
“Ten years.”
“And after a century?”
“A millennium.”
Faye thought about it.
“How long is that?”
“A thousand years.”
John whistled.
“That is a very long time.”
BigDan smiled.
“To you.”
“To anyone!”
“Not to history.”
The five siblings fell silent.
The rain had stopped.
Somewhere in the valley, a bird called once.
BigDan continued.
“A decade is long enough for a child to become almost unrecognisable. A century is long enough for a village to change its face. A millennium…”
He paused.
“A millennium can make an entire civilisation look like a memory.”
Esther looked down at the WAN book.
“So the words are not merely numbers.”
BigDan nodded.
“They give time a shape.”
---
John wasn't entirely satisfied.
He picked up the stick.
“So if twenty years is a score…”
“Yes.”
“And forty is two scores…”
“Yes.”
“Then sixty is three scores.”
“Correct.”
“And seventy is…”
Faye jumped in.
“Three score and ten.”
BigDan smiled.
John pointed at her.
“You were supposed to let me answer that.”
“You were too slow.”
Big Dee laughed.
“That is another measure of time.”
“What?”
“Faye's patience.”
Everyone laughed.
John shook his head.
“Fine. But I have a question.”
BigDan looked at him.
“Ask.”
“If someone lives for seventy years, why not simply say seventy?”
BigDan smiled.
“Because sometimes the old ways were not interested in making things shorter.”
He tapped the stick against the ground.
“People once measured their lives in scores. They measured generations. They measured ages. They spoke about years as chapters rather than figures.”
Esther nodded.
“Like saying someone lived three score and ten.”
“Yes.”
“It sounds different.”
“Exactly.”
“How?”
BigDan looked at her.
“Seventy tells you the quantity.”
He pointed toward the old hills.
“Three score and ten makes you hear the years arriving one by one.”
---
Faye suddenly remembered something.
“BigDan!”
“Yes?”
“How long is a fortnight?”
John immediately answered.
“Fourteen days.”
Faye stared at him.
“You used a number.”
John froze.
Big Dee burst out laughing.
BigDan shook his head.
“Caught yourself.”
John smiled.
“Fine. A fortnight.”
“Correct.”
Faye nodded proudly.
“A fortnight is fourteen days.”
“Usually,” BigDan said.
“Usually?”
BigDan nodded.
“In ordinary English, a fortnight means two weeks.”
Faye smiled.
“So why not just say two weeks?”
BigDan shrugged.
“Because language enjoys having more than one road to the same destination.”
John muttered:
“Language must be a very confusing village.”
Big Dee looked at him.
“Have you met WAN?”
---
The night grew darker.
The moon appeared between the clouds.
BigDan opened the WAN book again.
This time, an old page had been marked with dried leaves.
At the top was a word Faye had never seen before.
ERA.
“What is that?”
BigDan ran his finger across the faded letters.
“An era is a period of time distinguished by particular events, conditions or characteristics.”
Faye looked puzzled.
“So how many years is an era?”
BigDan smiled.
“That's the interesting part.”
He closed the book.
“An era doesn't have one fixed number of years.”
John nodded.
“So an era isn't like a decade.”
“No.”
“Or a century.”
“No.”
“Or a millennium.”
“No.”
“Then why do we use it?”
BigDan looked across the valley.
“Because sometimes what matters isn't how many years passed.”
He pointed toward the old ruins on the distant hillside.
“What matters is what happened while they passed,”
Esther understood first.
“The Stone Era.”
BigDan nodded.
“Exactly.”
“A colonial era.”
“Yes.”
“A digital era.”
“Yes.”
Faye smiled.
“So an era is about what the time meant.”
BigDan nodded.
“Now you're beginning to understand.”
---
Then Esther turned another page.
There was one word written in much larger letters.
GENERATION.
“What about this one?”
BigDan leaned closer.
“A generation is the people born around roughly the same period, or the span between parents and their children.”
John asked:
“So how many years?”
BigDan smiled.
“There is no single exact number.”
Faye looked confused again.
“But isn't that the point of this book?”
BigDan laughed.
“No. The point is learning when a number is exact… and when language deliberately leaves room for life.”
He looked at the five children.
“A decade is ten years.”
He raised another finger.
“A century is a hundred.”
Another.
“A millennium is a thousand.”
Then he lowered his hand.
“But a generation depends on people.”
---
The siblings sat quietly beneath the baobab.
The moon had now risen fully above the hills.
The old tree cast a long shadow across the courtyard.
Faye looked at BigDan.
“Then what is an eon?”
BigDan smiled.
John groaned.
“We're going to be here all night.”
“Perhaps,” BigDan said.
He looked toward the stars.
“An eon is an immensely long period of time. So long that ordinary human counting becomes almost meaningless.”
“How many years?”
“Not one fixed number in everyday language.”
Faye frowned.
“So it's just… very, very long?”
BigDan nodded.
“Very, very, very long.”
John smiled.
“That's not counting.”
BigDan looked at him.
“No.”
He closed the WAN book.
“Sometimes, knowing that something is beyond ordinary counting is itself a way of measuring it.”
---
Later that night, the five siblings walked back into the house.
Faye stayed behind for a moment.
She placed her hand against the ancient baobab.
She wondered how many children had done the same before her.
How many rainy evenings had passed beneath its branches?
How many generations had watched the same moon?
How many decades had disappeared into the hills?
She smiled.
For the first time, she understood what BigDan had meant.
A number could tell you how much time had passed.
But words could tell you what that time had become.
Inside the house, John shouted:
“Faye! Hurry up!”
She ran toward the doorway.
“How long have you been waiting?”
John folded his arms.
“A fortnight.”
Faye burst out laughing.
“It's been two minutes!”
BigDan's voice came from inside.
“Both of you are learning.”
And beneath the ancient hills of WAN, another evening disappeared into history.
Not a decade.
Not a century.
Not a millennium.
Just one more night.
And sometimes, one night is enough to begin a tradition that lasts for generations.
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