15. Square Root

The tearoom near the Raekoja square was dimly lit, its windows fogged with the breath of students and townsfolk alike. Candle stubs guttered in brass holders, casting long shadows across porcelain cups and manuscripts half-soaked in steam.

Johann leaned across the table, wine still warm on his breath. „Liina is filling her pages with nonsense again—riddles about roots and branches, about numbers hiding inside themselves. A child’s play of words, not mathematics.“

Liina, seated opposite, narrowed her eyes but smiled with quiet defiance. She held up her notebook, its lines crowded with transcriptions from village singers and old women at the well. „Not nonsense. Listen: ‘Count the seeds in the apple, and the rows they make—three by three, square upon square. Who can find the root of plenty?’ Tell me, Johann—what is this, if not a question of number?“

Johann shrugged, chewing his lip. „It’s a riddle, not an equation.“

Mihkel had been silent, his tea cooling untouched. But now he leaned forward. „No. It is more than a riddle. It is the square root—the hidden side of the square. To ask not how many seeds in total, but how many to each side, equal, without remainder.“

The idea struck him with sudden force. Multiplication had been repetition; subtraction, a taking away. But this—this was form revealed through number, a hidden symmetry extracted. He felt the pull of geometry, of fields measured, of truth structured like stone.

That night, in his workshop, he drew a strip of unary marks. Nine tallies, side by side: |||||||||.

The Mill had counted before, had compared, had added. But now it must uncover—find the concealed side that, multiplied by itself, would give the whole.

As the gears stirred and the tape whispered forward, Mihkel thought of Liina’s apple seeds, of squares traced in frost on the windowpanes. Not growth, not decay—but structure, balance, roots beneath appearances.