Alicorn Mega Short Story Pack 2018-09-07

Alicorn Mega Short Story Pack 2018-09-07

1. Khan

2. Masquerade

3. Exaltation

4. Dose

5. Will

6. Story Of

7. Dogs

8. Grownups

9. Mana

10. Rings

11. Lilac

12. Changeling

13. Queen

14. Sendaway

15. Muse

16. Threshold

17. Water

18. Consensus

19. Explorers

20. Hubward

21. Double, Double

22. Strax

23. Tower

24. Visitor

25. Sympathy

26. DivineMatch

27. Assassin

28. Earthfic

29. Expense

30. Damage Report

31. Blue Jewel

32. Charm

1. Table of contents

Khan

Seth rang the doorbell, and Justin opened the door, a baby on his shoulder. Justin was white and the baby was Asian; Seth did a double-take at that one, but figured the wife must just have a lot of dominant genes. "Seth! Welcome chez Weaver," Justin said, smiling, "come in."

Seth stepped in. "It's good to meet you in person, Justin," he said. The house was fancy. Smooth stone tile, radiant heat coming up from underneath. Fancy, expensive-looking artwork on display, lit like museum pieces - an abstract painting here, a little table with a ceramic breaching dolphin next to a vase of flowers there. The walls were done in glossy slate blue paint, the molding in white.

Justin took his hand off the baby's back to shake Seth's. "Good to meet you too. Sorry, I thought all the kids would be asleep by the time you arrived but Ming is doing the need-another-hug thing and wakes up when I put her down."

"It's not a problem," Seth assured him. "Is your wife home?"

"Yes, she is - Mary?" Justin called.

Mary stepped into the foyer. She was gorgeous, and she wasn't Asian either, so the baby was adopted or babysat, and either one was fine with Seth. Mary smiled at him. "Hi - Seth, right?"

"That's right," said Seth. "This is a lovely house. I bet the mortgage is a heck of a thing."

"Oh, it's ours outright," said Mary. "I inherited it from my parents, I grew up here - we would have gone with something more modest, but it would be such a wrench to sell it even if we don't need all this space -"

"How about that," said Seth, "that's lucky."

A timer went off with a soft ding in the kitchen. Mary ran to silence it, and Justin said, "That's twenty minutes, Ming's probably asleep for good now. I'll go try to put her down and then we can have some cookies and chat, all right?"

"Sounds good to me," said Seth, helping himself to an armchair in the living room. There were a bunch of plastic miniature megafauna hiding in the long fibers of the rug, and a stray few Legos under the coffee table.

"Great," said Justin, swaying off to the nursery.

"She's a cute kid," Seth commented to Mary. "You get her from... China?"

"Yes," said Mary. "And Ioana is from Romania, and Valeria is from Colombia."

"Can't have kids?" asked Seth.

Mary's brow creased a little. "We don't have any reason to believe we can't, but there are so many children who need homes and families already, so we've chosen to adopt." It had the air of a rehearsed statement.

"Gotcha," said Seth. "I haven't found any biological nieces or nephews so far. Destiny's gay, Darius is a teenager, and Justin's the first one I found online."

"Well, hopefully you'll get along all right with our girls regardless," said Mary briskly.

"I'm sure I will," said Seth.

Justin came back holding a plate of jam dots. "I think Ming's down," he said. "Seth, when I got your message, I was so surprised - I'd never had any idea that my dad wasn't my biological dad. Weaver was his last name. I'm not sure whether to tell him - it doesn't matter to me, but if it affected his memories of Mom, well, that wouldn't do anyone any good. Is - our mutual father - is George still alive?"

"No, I'm sorry," said Seth, suddenly subdued. He took a jam dot anyway. "George died recently, actually. I think I was one of only a couple of the kids that he kept in touch with - and it kind of prompted me to go looking for others. I knew it couldn't just be me and Destiny and Darius."

"What did he die of?" asked Mary. "If you don't mind saying."

"I don't mind, we weren't close for all that he appeared in my life every year or two. It was violence, actually - Darius went after him - see, not everybody George had kids with was a hookup or a girlfriend, some of them were just -" Seth trailed off, made a vague gesture. "So Darius, he's sixteen, and he was mad about what happened to his mother when he found out, and he knew where to get a gun."

"Oh, no," breathed Mary, clutching Justin's hand. Justin looked troubled, and patted his wife on the arm.

"Yes. I can't really blame Darius, that could have been me if I'd been in his shoes. I hope he makes out well when it comes time. He's a good kid. Anyway. I've found a few of us on 23andMe, and that can't be everyone, plenty of our siblings are going to be too young or too foreign to sign up or just not interested. Since George isn't around to ask, I can't be certain we'll ever know them all. He's been flying all over the country, and out of it, leaving children conceived this way and that, for the last forty-five years."

"I wish I could ask my mother," Justin said. "I don't know how I'd put it gently, but - I wish I could ask."

"What happened to her?" asked Seth.

"Oh, she was older, when she had me, older than I am now. Old age, died in her sleep."

"And you're how old now?"

"Thirty-four," said Justin.

"I'm twenty-eight," Seth said. "George kinda - he didn't quit. Never caught for anything he did. Finding our whole family is going to be a major undertaking." He raked his hands through his hair, disarraying it picturesquely. "But everybody I find is progress! So I'm really glad to be here tonight. What do you do, Justin?"

"I'm a stay at home dad for our three, but before we adopted Ioana I was a sculptor, and I still am for small pieces when I can find time," said Justin. "And Mary's a pastor."

"And what about you?" Mary asked Seth.

"I'm an attorney," said Seth.

"Prosecution or defense?" wondered Justin.

"Defense. Right to representation and all that."

Justin nodded. There was a silence. Mary took a jam dot.

"Justin," said Seth, "there's something I'd like to talk to you about alone - if that's all right with you too, Mary," he added, nodding in her direction.

"Mary can hear anything I can hear," said Justin.

"And you can tell her later. I don't mind. Just - it's hard enough to spit it out when I'm only talking to my brother," Seth said, turning pleading eyes on the couple. "Please."

Mary and Justin looked at each other dubiously. Finally Mary patted her husband on the shoulder, kissed his cheek, and disappeared to parts elsewhere.

"She seems lovely," Seth told Justin.

"She is. Light of my life," said Justin. "I was very lucky to find her. I assume that's not the secret."

"It's not," acknowledged Seth. "You're sure she wouldn't be listening around corners?"

"She'll probably have gone to bed. We have a new baby, we're tired."

"All right then." Seth took a deep breath. "You need to get a vasectomy."

"- what?"

"I was really glad when I found out your kids were all adopted. Adopt as many as you want. There shouldn't be more of us."

"I don't really hold with all that genetic supremacy nonsense - if George committed crimes in the course of siring us all, that reflects on him only, not -"

"I'm not saying we're genetically evil. It's complicated, and I'm not sure you'll believe me, but the upshot is don't have biological kids."

"Am I a carrier for some disease -"

"No. It's the opposite, really. Can you let me explain without - I don't know, calling an ambulance on me for being a loon? I'm not a loon and I can go through all the evidence for you, it's just fundamentally kind of hard to swallow."

"- sure. Why not."

"Let's start with what I can guess about you. When you met Mary, you were both in the right mood and the right place in your lives to have exactly the kind of relationship you wanted out of life. Her parents left her the house - maybe by dying, maybe by retiring to Florida - right when you felt like it was time you and she had a house. You have found the adoption process to be smooth and swift and your daughters to adjust quickly to joining your family. They all get along with each other and if any of them are old enough to attend school they do well there. You have exactly enough minor complaints about their behavior that you don't feel like an alien when you talk to other parents but no more. You don't know what other people are talking about when they complain about long lines at the DMV. You have never gotten a parking ticket or a moving violation no matter how badly you drive, and no one has ever rear-ended you. You have never been stolen from, harassed, shouted at by a crazy person on the street, defrauded, or assaulted. You always get the nice seats in restaurants, the nice customer service agents on the phone, and the nice presents during any gimmicky present exchanges you participate in around Christmas. If you have in-laws, you get along with them. Your neighbors like you. When you were a kid, if you wanted to be picked from an audience to participate on stage, you got picked, every time."

"- horoscope stuff," said Justin.

"No. Most people don't live like that," said Seth. "People have ups and downs. And so do you - I didn't say you never sprained an ankle, or that you never had a crisis of faith or whatever it is religious people have, or that you are beloved by every dog you meet. For all I know you fell off a cliff when you were twelve and spent a year in the hospital. But if you did, your nurses were good to you and your doctors put in their best work that day and your parents fussed over you just the right amount and your teachers helped you catch up."

"I didn't fall off a cliff," Justin muttered.

"No? Stepped on a nail and got tetanus? Nah, you would have been vaccinated. If your parents were anti-vaxxers they would have changed their tune around the time you were conceived. But I can tell you it won't have been something you picked up from being sneezed on. People don't sneeze on you. Maybe you could get something off a doorknob."

"I broke my leg skiing once," muttered Justin.

"Ah! And: you were not invited onto a slope you couldn't handle. Your instructor was not negligent. Your equipment was not poorly inspected. Nobody crashed into you. You just had an accident, entirely your own fault - stop me if I'm wrong."

"Where are you going with this?" Justin asked.

"I'm the same way," said Seth. "We aren't all. I think it's going turn out to be half. Mendelian genetics and all. But I knew you were in that half when I saw the house, saw the wife - she's very pretty - heard you inherited the house, heard you were a sculptor - is the dolphin yours?"

"Breaching III, yeah -"

"It's terrible. I mean, it's recognizably a dolphin, I suppose you've practiced enough, but it's not pretty, and it's not unpretty in an interesting way. But everybody except me who you've ever gotten an opinion out of - even if they don't have any reason to like you, even if they're critics - they think it's great."

"I -"

"Because I'm immune," said Seth. "Because I'm the same way."

"I don't believe this," said Justin. "You're clearly having some kind of problem, and -"

"George probably raped several hundred people," Seth said flatly. "Let's generously assume he picked up one new woman a week on average. I think it was more, but I don't have enough birthdates to corroborate that. Let's generously assume he only raped one in four and the other seventy five percent were hookers or looking for casual sex or willing to believe he was in love with them or whatever. He was running around for forty-five years, and under these assumptions that's nearly six hundred girls he straight up raped. None of them went to the police, and we're not talking about a man smart enough to use a fake ID and cash at the bar where he collected his lay for the night. Not one had a gun, or a scary boyfriend, or a protective brother. We're not talking about a crooked cop who molests arrestees or a sketchy gynecologist here, he did this in dozens of different cities with no position of power to abuse. That's how he used his gift. You're using yours to have a pretty wife and a nice house and a career in the arts and an easy time adopting cute orphans, I admit I like your take on it better, but it's the same damn thing."

"So - because we're genetically predisposed to, to, what are you saying this is, is it mind control -"

"It's pretty lackluster mind control. You can't use it like a comic book character. But people get out of your way, or they go your way, or just happen to be where they need to be in the mood they need to be in, the right place at the right time to make your life nice according to you. Nothing Earth-shatteringly weird. Nothing you couldn't chalk up to being a likable and talented statistical irregularity. But take all of us together... have us interacting, weird exceptions to patterns we take for granted... and you notice."

"You don't have any proof."

"It gets a little more overtly mind-controlly if you push it, but you can. Order a pizza, look into your pocket and apologetically pull out a ticket stub and some lint, say, 'oh, uh, I'll look under the couch, I'm so sorry to have wasted your time, I thought I had a twenty but' - pizza guy will tell you not to worry about it. Kick a cop. He might arrest you but you'll get off. Try to adopt a project kid, one with a drug problem or something, and you'll just happen to get one who fits in really well here and doesn't try to stab you in your sleep or sell your car for meth -"

"That's horrifying," said Justin.

"Look, if you want to prove it, you have to do something that gets people to arrange themselves and behave in ways that you know for a fact they wouldn't. And you're used to them being convenient when you act as you normally do, so you have to do something you normally wouldn't, to get a real clear look. Otherwise you'll think the cop you kicked just understood that you... objected to him hassling black teenagers and appreciated the reminder, if that's normally what it would take to get you to kick a cop."

"I wouldn't kick a cop no matter what he was doing!"

"The black teenagers of the world will refrain from calling you a racist for your lack of interest in their relationships with the law. Because they're affected too. And nobody has ever called you racist in your life."

"Well," said Justin, "you, how did you - come to believe this?"

"I have more examples to look at," Seth said. "Also, there's no way I'm as good a lawyer as my track record and my hourly fee suggest, but I picked a career that's very malleable to what we've got. I don't even have to churn out ugly dolphins for critics to nod at."

"You don't like the sculpture, I get it. So you want me to get a vasectomy, just in case the birth control we've got doesn't work, because we're hurting people just by existing -"

"No, that's not it," said Seth. "It's a perfectly good reason and if that's what gets you to go under the knife then I won't nitpick. But that's not why I'm asking. It's because it's no good if too many people have it. And I don't mean that selfishly, I mean... Sure, George did a lot of damage, but think what happens if half the population has it. We don't work on each other - suddenly we're extracting everything we get from the other half. We can't even help it. You like the lifestyle of the pious modest charity-minded pastor's husband? Great, that doesn't hurt anyone all by itself. When your lifestyle needs support, you can get it from hundreds of millions of people who don't have our genes. No one person winds up going too far out of their way, except maybe Mary, and she seems happy, right? The kids you're doing a favor! But the more and more of us there are, the worse it gets to be a have-not."

"You seem to think you know a lot about a - a mutation we're second-generation carriers of -" Justin murmured.

"Oh, we have the most recent version. But my guess is it's happened before. Probably a few times. It's an insanely advantageous property to have! If a mutation can do this, it'll happen now and then, and then it'll spread, every time. I'm not a geneticist, I can't tell you the details, but my guesses are somebody in Europe before it started colonizing everything, maybe. Probably Genghis Khan, who promptly smeared his version all over Asia. Maybe this is how we outcompeted the Neanderthals. Even if it didn't affect the Neanderthals directly it'd rally people around one mutant leader to wipe them out whenever they got too close for comfort. I'm sure some people have fewer, or none - just didn't get a copy, or they've got damaged versions that don't work. And those people are not doing so hot. Those people are probably homeless. Because once everyone has it, it doesn't matter, normal non-spooky effects dominate - unless you're someone who doesn't, and then it matters a lot."

There was a silence.

Justin said, "I'll get the vasectomy."

"Thank you. Will you help me find the rest of us - I don't think he can reasonably have knocked up most of the women he slept with, he obviously didn't care for condoms but some of them will have been wrong time of the month or on the pill. I've gotten ahold of his travel schedule from his credit card company, it's annoying to pick through but not impossible. We can find them, especially if they have the gene. They'll stand out if they have it, succeeding at anything they do that's more subjective than weightlifting."

"Yeah. You're right, this would hurt a lot of people, if it spread -"

Seth nodded. "And doesn't help anyone in the long run, just makes one more way to be below average."

"Thank you," said Justin. "For telling me."

"Of course. I'm glad I found you first. I'm not expecting everyone who wants kids to want to adopt them, and it'll go faster with more eyes on the project."

"Some of us might have them already."

"Even slowing the spread down for a few generations while science learns to identify the gene is worth our time," Seth said firmly. "A few families doing unusually well, that's nothing new, people accomplish that with money and genes for other useful traits all the time. We might miss someone. But we can make it less a Genghis Khan thing."

"Genghis Khan, huh?"

"I can't pretend I'm sure about any of this," Seth hedged. "I'm just guessing, based on when someone seems a standout. And lucky enough. Genghis Khan died old, Alexander the Great didn't - I don't know if someone being somewhere else, inclined differently, could have saved Alexander, but it's suggestive that he wasn't running on our kind of luck."

Justin nodded. "I'll need to explain to Mary."

"Why?" said Seth. "I don't think she'll believe you. You believe me because you've had the kind of charmed life I described - she wasn't there for half of it. And she won't want to know about how she was influenced to fall in love with you, who wants to hear that?" He took another jam dot. They were pretty good.

"It's a major life decision!" said Justin.

"Not if you're adopting all your kids anyway," Seth said around his cookie. "And she'll go along with it fine as long as you want her to. I suppose if you have horrible misgivings and you want an excuse to avoid it then maybe instead -"

"Please stop talking about my wife that way."

"Suit yourself. But even if you tell her about the vasectomy, and I really think you could just as well skip that, you don't have to tell her about the gene. It won't help anything, and it could hurt."

"I'll think about it," said Justin. There was another silence. "I'm going to get some milk to go with these cookies."

"Thanks," said Seth.

After Justin brought back the milk and poured some for each of them, he said, "Can you tell me about the others? Their names were - Darius and Destiny?"

"Yeah. So, George never married my mother, but he did keep coming back to her for a while, openly, after she'd had me and gotten wise about taking the pill so I don't have any full siblings, and Destiny and Darius's moms were another couple of women he was also more or less publicly involved with, so we knew each other a little. I used to babysit Darius. Destiny's between my age and yours. I don't think they have the gene, Darius dropped out of high school and hangs out with druggies and Destiny lives with her girlfriend in a shoebox and keeps turning up with bruises." He washed down the last bite of his jam dot.

"You said you had more examples."

"I do. I've met George, he was the only person I knew who moved through people and institutions like they're air the way I can. Darius has a little sister, Jasmine, and she's doing suspiciously well at everything she tries. It's not enough to get any of us whisked away by men in labcoats, sure, but it was enough to get me thinking about it, get me testing it a little -"

"Did you kick a cop?" asked Justin tiredly.

"No, but I've done the pizza one. Guy looked pleased to have a chance to help me out. I've wandered into employees-only areas prepared to pretend to be lost. Nobody called me on it. I get seats in packed restaurants and tickets to sold-out concerts. I try risky shit in court, at first well shy of what it'd take for a client to sue me for mishandling the case, later - less careful. I win. I always win."

"God," said Justin.

"If you say so. George was a weird pick for chosen one."

"Well, mysterious ways," said Justin. "What are they like? Darius and Destiny and Jasmine?"

"Darius is a good kid. Don't let the arrest for murder fool you, that was all over how George treated his mama, he loves his mama. Publicly acknowledged relationship doesn't mean consensual relationship. And it could only last till Jasmine found out and wanted it to stop, see, after that the effect canceled out and Darius..." Seth mimed a gunshot.

"You're very casual about that."

"I'm a criminal lawyer, I've heard worse. I'd be more formal about it in a courthouse. If I felt like being formal that day, anyway."

"I think maybe you should quit," said Justin.

"What? Why would I do that?" Seth laughed.

"You're pushing people all the time. And not over opinions on dolphins - and I might quit too, even just that is sketchy -"

"There's no 'too'. I like my job and I intend on keeping it," said Seth.

"The judges, the jurors, the defendants, their victims -"

"I'm very suited to it," said Seth. "Look, I'm just existing. We can't help how we're made. Nobody's going home with a mysterious nosebleed, nobody's lying awake having a dark night of the soul over why they thought my client was innocent when in retrospect he wasn't, and the power can just as easily bring me people who ought to get off and might not with a worse lawyer as it can bring me crooks who ought not benefit from my silver tongue, right?"

"Does it? Do you get a lot of people who were framed?" wondered Justin quietly.

"More than your average lawyer. Not all of them. Everybody deserves a defense, Justin, even if I'm getting them off on reasonable doubt or technicalities those are doubts and technicalities that are judicially supposed to affect the trial." Seth's voice was casual, but his eyes had narrowed.

"I just think that given how the power apparently responds to our goals, we should try to maintain goals that don't put our - our wills? Our needs? in conflict with many other people in high-stakes situations. And criminal law - even contract law would be better, wouldn't it? Less likely to hurt somebody in their personal life, you know?"

"The training is not interchangeable, it's not like I've been selling sofas and can turn that sales experience into selling beer."

"Well - even so -"

"I'm not going to tank my career because you want more folks to wind up in prison, Justin."

"I'm getting a vasectomy on your say-so," Justin pointed out.

"Yeah, because you bought my argument. Because when there's a growing population with a luck advantage everybody else loses out in the short run and nobody wins in the long run. Not because I told you that your kids would get good grades in art class and be popular with their peers and might do real well if they went into law. Or into anything else, honestly, what can't people going where you need them to be help with?"

"Math?" said Justin. "Sports? - no, in sports I guess it could handicap competition for you -"

"And in math, sure, maybe you need to produce proofs that actually prove things, but if you can hack it as a mathematician at all - if you can do any math work, even if you do it slowly and it's not very... whatever it is mathematicians look for in publications... then everyone will figure that's good enough. Your students'll love you, and nobody'll notice or care if you plagiarize -"

"I'd like to think none of my children will grow up to be plagiarists, biological or adopted -" protested Justin.

"Sure, but you can't count on that actually sinking in, nobody's dad says 'remember, Junior, when you grow up, always steal the intellectual work of others', do they? And even if you assume they're completely on the up and up they'll have the best teachers for their learning style and the most helpful classmates and access to tutors and this won't compensate for not being able to add but it'll get them from passing calc to a job in the field if that's what they want. It all comes down to what you want."

Justin sighed. "Law just seems like a bridge too far."

"What a pity we didn't meet when I was undeclared in college," said Seth, "you could have tried pushing me into development economics or something like that and I'd gaze at my navel harmlessly day in and day out."

"You're making fun of me."

"Yes. Sorry. Habit. Most people take it well, you know, I get used to it."

Justin sighed. "I probably have unbecoming habits nobody's ever called me on, too, don't I."

"You seem pretty inoffensive but the dolphin's terrible."

"You've said."

Seth laughed. "Anyway. I don't want to get too tired to drive to my hotel, so if we're agreed on the vasectomy and not having to tell Mary about it -"

"I'm still not sure about not telling Mary."

"Well, don't tell her till you're sure, then, you can't un-tell her. And run it by me first, I'm the only person you can run a train of thought by without your audience just telling you what you want to hear," Seth added.

"All right. We'll see you tomorrow morning? Breakfast is at seven," said Justin.

"Oooh, breakfast," said Seth. "I'll be there. What is it?"

"Oh, whatever Mary feels like making -"

"Whatever you're in the mood for," corrected Seth. "When Mary makes breakfast she feels like making whatever you want. Tomorrow, that's only unless I hate it, if I do then it's really up to her. But I'm not picky. What's for breakfast, Justin?"

Justin narrowed his eyes at Seth. He delayed a moment before saying, "Waffles."

"Can't wait," said Seth, and he let himself out, humming a little.

Breakfast the next morning was waffles. Seth accepted one loaded with strawberries and whipped cream. The little girls were curious about who Seth was, but Justin hurried the older one onto the school bus and sent the middle girl to pretend to read a story to the infant rather than answer the questions they weren't asking because he didn't want to answer them. Mary kissed her husband and children goodbye and went off to work.

"You think I'm doing them a favor, huh?" Justin said to Seth, moody. "The girls."

"Sure. I mean, compare it to the alternative, not to the perfect fantasy you've cooked up. You wouldn't have gotten these specific ones without the gene, you'd have gotten different kids you got along with worse - it doesn't only nudge them around once they come home with you, it arranges that you get the right ones."

"How do you know?"

"What, when you listen to Mary talk about before she met you does she sound awful, like she had some huge personality upheaval the day she met you?"

"...no."

"And you love Mary, right?" asked Seth.

"Of course," snapped Justin.

"So these ones would be worse off, with some higher conflict family they're a worse fit for. And the ones you got instead would be only average fits, and average isn't great for adoptions, last I heard."

"You're very comfortable with all of this."

"I came around to it in my own time. You kind of got it sprung on you. I wouldn't have, only there might be hundreds of us and I can't spend six months getting to know each one before I explain why they need to avoid reproducing."

"What are you going to do," Justin said, "when you find someone who won't get sterilized? A half-sister, especially, more invasive surgery..."

"It suffices if they get an IUD. What I really dread is finding another George."

"- but what will you do," said Justin, "if you find one?"

There was a silence. "Haven't decided yet," Seth said.

"I don't like that," Justin replied. "You're a little confrontational..."

"I'm a lawyer."

"I'm well aware. But you're going to be meeting all these people with the habits you've picked up from having the gene, and confront them, and tell them that for the good of humanity they've got to go under the knife, or the - whatever implement is involved in IUDs -"

"That little interest in your marital birth control arrangements?"

"Mary's on the injected kind. Stop changing the subject."

Seth sighed. "I don't know what I'll do. It's come as a big relief that you prefer adopting. But I can't not try, can I? I can't just let our gene sweep the globe unchecked, backing whatever random act of oppressing the have-nots that first appeals to one or two of our relatives at once. What would you have me do, Justin?"

"- I don't know. I'll help you find people, I guess, and... we'll figure something out. Keep me in the loop."

"Of course I will. What else would I do?" smiled Seth.

A child - Valeria, the Colombian one, Seth surmised - required Justin's attention. Seth said, "I'm going to go have a walk around the block, all right?"

"Of course," said Justin, distracted by getting some substance out of Valeria's hair.

Seth let himself out.

A minute later, he was joined by a woman, too mixed-race to classify on sight, tall and taller with heels. She was between his and Justin's ages, draped in clothes that could double as pajamas and carrying a latte. "Hello, little brother," she said.

"Hello, Destiny," Seth said. "I thought I spotted your car earlier. What are you doing in this state?"

"Following you," she said. "Lifting fancy listening devices from Ye Olde Electronicks Shoppe. Brought my whole tae kwon do class with me and scattered them around, so don't try shit."

"You know, I really didn't think you had it," said Seth.

"My idea of success looks very different from yours, little brother."

"I guess it would have to. I didn't need to know that about your kinks."

"Maybe we breed true, wouldn't that be the darnedest thing?" Destiny said thoughtfully.

"Darius," said Seth.

"Yes, all right, he's going nowhere fast. Are we sure he's really George's?'

"Positive," Seth replied levelly.

"Anyway. I want you to leave this nice man alone, little brother," said Destiny. "He's a sweetheart. And you are not."

"I haven't hurt him one bit."

"You are not overcome with a desire to meet our far-flung relations out of a sense of kinship and you are definitely not trying to prevent the oppression of the have-nots. Whatever you are doing, I want you to leave that poor bunny rabbit with that nice family out of it."

"Are you planning to stalk me through my entire search, vetting each sibling for bunnyhood before I'm allowed to associate with them?" asked Seth incredulously. "Am I to be disinvited from Jasmine's seventh birthday party on your say-so? Anyway, I don't care what you want me to do."

"I know you don't care. I can tell Justin, though, and you'll rather have to care if we both want you to do something until you can explain to Jasmine how it's relevant to unicorns, princesses, and sugar," threatened Destiny. "Can't push you, but two against one for everybody around you, and you're all alone and didn't come nearly clean enough with Justin to get him on your side once I've had a chat with him."

"You've thought this through."

"Your problem is that you can't coordinate. Me, you, and Justin - that adds up to you lose. I don't know what you have in mind but I know you're a right bastard, Seth, and now that whatever it is involves prowling around, finding more of us, telling them not to have kids, feeding them lines about how much of an altruist you are, getting them on board with bits and pieces of your mystery plan... well, I don't like it, and you're gonna cut it out. Me, you, and Justin -"

"Darius," Seth said again.

"What about him?" said Destiny. "He -"

She was cut short by a bullet to the neck. Seth stopped walking. He watched her fall and choke on her blood. He put his hands over his mouth, shocked and upset body language for the benefit of any grainy camera footage that somebody's household CCTV might collect. No one was watching, but they might not have turned off their electronics, and it paid to be a little careful.

Through his fingers, he whispered, "What makes you think I can't coordinate, bitch?"

Destiny struggled to breathe. She failed, writhing on the sidewalk, reaching for him with one hand, eyes open wide and filmed with tears. She fell still. Her arm dropped.

Seth, mindful of cameras, looked left, looked right, ducked behind a rhododendron as though fearful of being shot, pulled out his phone to call the police.

The dispatcher forgot to ask his name and forgot to ask that he stay on the scene. Seth didn't volunteer. He continued around the block, whistling a bit. "Thanks, bro," he said. He wasn't wearing an earpiece, so Darius couldn't answer until Seth had reached his vantage point on the roof of the apartment building down the street. Darius had a change of clothes for him.

"I guess my idea of success looks different from hers," said Darius sourly. Seth laughed and clapped him on the back.

He went back to Justin's. He read Valeria an alphabet book six times. He took Justin and the girls out to lunch and bade them all farewell and went to catch his plane home.

He texted his campaign manager, and he smiled.

Masquerade

When I was twelve I told Myron Lasko that I wanted to be him.

"Maybe when you're older, kiddo," he said, and he ruffled my hair and smiled at the nearest camera. Signed the cast on my arm, signed somebody's chest, took selfies with anyone who asked. Disappeared into a limo with a groupie. Another two of him had already gone, right after the concert, he didn't leave multiples behind for autographs. But on stage he harmonized with his own melody line, danced under the whirling lights in perfect step. Matching himself breath for breath and pivot for pivot so perfectly it would have been impossible for a team to achieve by practice, by anything other than being all three of him himself.

There were more by the time I was out of college, six sometimes appearing together, rumors of a seventh. Interchangeable; if one was offstage it wasn't because he couldn't sing out of that mouth, it was insurance, competing obligations, something like that. Six or seven or eight of him. A lot of people wanted to be Myron Lasko. He looked young as ever. Masks didn't age, and there was no reason you couldn't wear a mask of yourself, if you had the money to make them at all. All of him looked twenty-five and fit and beaming and glamorous.

I had an English degree and couldn't bear to move back in with my parents and was sick of eating ramen and I wanted to be Myron Lasko.

On his website's contact page was an email for "Mask Inquiries".

I wrote in.

When I was twelve I said I wanted to be you, and you said maybe when I was older. I'm 22.

Filled in the physical address slot with my sister's place in case my landlady's patience ran out. Gave my real name. Anonymity is for people you don't want to pull over your head like a paper bag.

Zapped a bowl of ramen and listened to all of his Bridges album and half of Arching Skies.

His assistant replied. I guess even if there's seven or eight of you there's some things you want to delegate. There was a form eight pages long asking all sorts of questions. How was I insured for this and that, did I have debt, did I have competing obligations besides being Myron Lasko all day every day, my health history, pets.

I filled it out over the course of four days, not because I was dragging my heels or had to rehome a cat but because forms are excruciating. Sent it back.

Waited a few hours, checking my email over and over, then got a list of possible appointment times. I was supposed to block out a whole day.

I didn't really have any demands on my time. A few standing weekly invitations, karaoke with people I barely knew from college and board games with different people I barely knew from college, things like that, nothing I couldn't unremarkably skip.

I blocked out the offered Monday, slept badly all weekend, showed up in my interview clothes that my mother had bought me as a graduation present. They fit on me but I didn't fit in them; I kept wanting to scratch myself or adjust the collar.

Assistant met me in a little office in an anonymous skyscraper. I'd seen pictures of Lasko's houses and apparently I wasn't welcome in them till I was him. Or maybe the assistant wasn't.

"I'm Briony," she told me. "Have a seat, help yourself to the caramels. How much do you already know about masking?"

"...what everyone knows, I guess," I said.

"You don't have to interview well in a conventional sense to wear a mask," Briony said, "please don't worry about describing it badly, just tell me what you actually know. Everyone doesn't actually know much."

"They're magic. You put one on and you're somebody else."

"I need to make sure you actually know what you're getting into. Legal reasons."

"If I'm wearing a mask of Myron then I'll look like him and feel like him. We'll both be able to do stuff but part of the deal is that he does most of the stuff, since I'm not on a mask-release prison program or something. If I take it off I'm back to being just me like I am now."

Briony nodded. "That's the gist. Mr. Lasko is a very busy man. He currently has an undisclosed number of mask contracts active, not less than five."

"Six. During the East Coast tour -"

"Not less than five. A self-mask does not count," said Briony.

"Oh." I took a caramel.

"He can coordinate all of his bodies at once with full-person amounts of attention, not only when they're doing approximately the same thing like performing. At any given time one may be writing music, another having lunch with friends, another recording, another practicing an instrument, another asleep, another visiting his family, another updating his schedule with me. He tends to expand his to-do list to match whenever he gets a new mask. You should not expect a lot of time in control of the body."

"I don't need much. I'm -" I stopped before I said "boring", shrugged instead.

She nodded. "You can negotiate the exact details, but don't anticipate that you'll wind up with extra beyond what we put in the contract. Other than that, you'll be a passenger. You will look like Mr. Lasko, and you will not be permitted to do arbitrary things with his likeness in public - not even fidget or slouch, although you will probably find sitting up straight and still more comfortable in his form. Taking off the mask for good represents a considerable loss. They can only be keyed to a wearer once."

"I didn't know that part."

"Most of what you've heard is probably about the experimental prison program, yes? They deemphasize expense to the taxpayers; if they make it sound like the masks are reusable..."

I nodded.

"You can take it off and put it back on," she says, "if you want to add in some clause for time spent wholly as yourself, for instance with family. Once a month for a day is boilerplate."

"That sounds fine."

"In addition to his public life Mr. Lasko maintains a private one. He prefers interchangeable bodies - they don't feel obviously different to him in any way while the masks are on - and is unlikely to negotiate limited-use agreement with you except insofar as he will not take undue physical risk."

"...does that mean 'part of being him is sleeping with groupies' or -"

"If that is the limit of your imagination -" began Briony.

"My imagination? How's my imagination factor in?"

"What would you do with extra bodies?"

"...oh."

Briony nodded once, expression perfectly professional.

"...yeah that's cool with me," I said. I had not actually been having dreams about being in the middle of an orgy of multiple Myrons Lasko but I was sure going to start.

"Quite. This is the time to tell me if anything on the form was false or incomplete or complicated."

"I'm not totally sure about all the insurance information. I couldn't find all my paperwork."

"I can look into that for you. Anything else?"

I shook my head.

"Have you read 'Decoy' or a similar memoir?"

"Is Decoy the one about the masker who was the President - I read the one by Tammy Wise's masker, uh -"

"'Star of the Show'," Briony supplied. "That will do. You believe you'll cope all right with the sensation?"

"I think so."

"Reservations -" she prompted.

"Uh. I'm just generally apprehensive. How do people usually cope, are there usually problems?"

"There are not usually problems that lead people to default on their contracts. Adjustment periods vary."

"I wasn't really imagining it being so - contractual -"

"Masks are expensive. Mr. Lasko can afford them but must expect that they'll pay off in added time in his life. If you were hoping for an informal arrangement -"

"No, this is fine," I said.

"Let's go over the standard contract together, then, shall we?"

It was long. It was excruciating. There were so many paragraphs. Briony made me read them all from "...hereafter referred to as the Masker" down to the signature lines.

Though per 11.B Mr. Lasko will consistently use barrier methods and seek regular quality medical attention (see 66.M and 66.C respectively) the Masker will accept that there is non-zero risk of sexually transmitted infection accruing to the body and a non-zero risk of pregnancy in a sexual partner. The Masker acknowledges that the genetic relationship is Mr. Lasko's alone and will seek no custodial rights -

, accordingly, the Masker will not use allotted time in control of the body while wearing the mask to use Mr. Lasko's likeness before witnesses present or remote in any way not concordant with Mr. Lasko's image and stated wishes, notwithstanding Mr. Lasko's technical ability to intervene.

SECONDLY, should it ever be the case that the sole remaining body of Mr. Lasko should be the Masker's, it is understood that the removal of the mask would present a hazard to Mr. Lasko's life and under clause 14 -

The Masker is responsible for, in advance of masking or while on a hiatus (see 29), setting up service "Thespyan" or equivalent of Masker's choice for verifiable authorship of online writings. Mr. Lasko bears no responsibility for unverifiability of writings and is not obliged to disavow, repudiate, or make any statement whatever regarding any publication of the Masker -

"Your eyes are glazing over," Briony said.

"No shit," I mumbled. "Nobody actually reads contracts."

"Mr. Lasko's maskers do read them. And understand them. You can go home if you prefer."

"No, I -" The memory of my apartment seemed very grey and small. "No, I just need a break."

"I can order us some lunch. Thai?"

"Please."

She sent me a link to a menu and I picked a random curry and flopped on a couch in the corner of her office and stared at the ceiling till someone brought it up for us. I ate it without paying any attention to it.

"You're not a picky eater, are you?" Briony asked.

"Does it matter? His tastebuds."

"That affects it if you think cilantro tastes like soap. If you don't like the texture of yogurt it's another matter."

"I'm not picky."

"Good."

"Will you need time to set up Thespyan after we've finished going over the contract?"

"I've never actually heard of it before," I admitted.

"It's a face recognition and password app. You show it your face, and you answer a lot of numerical questions, and then after you type up a post on your blog or write an email or something like that, it'll ask you things like what's the number of rooms in the house you lived in age twelve minus the number of people named John you know times the number of second cousins you have? And you do that in your head, so Mr. Lasko doesn't see anything but the answer. And it won't let you send the emails or post the essays unless you get it right, or unless you take the mask off and it recognizes you."

"That's clever."

"You don't strictly have to have it but it's recommended. Mr. Lasko will not be spending time on disavowing having 'hacked' your account," said Briony.

"Why don't regular passwords work -"

"Even if he's letting you operate the hands and letting you look away from the keyboard - and that assumes you touch type - he can accumulate body memory. The answers to your arithmetic questions will be obfuscated to make it that much more inconvenient to perform algebra on them, however."

I nodded. "- so am I in, or -"

"Mr. Lasko will want to talk to you briefly himself, but approximately, yes, unless you bail on the remainder of the contract review."

"I'll cope."

I coped.

One of Myron's bodies blew in after I'd signed the contract (and Briony had ordered pizza for dinner, and I'd been quizzed on how many second cousins I had and how many times I'd read my favorite book). I was expecting to be grilled. Actually he just shook my hand and asked my name and wanted to know if I was sure, read Briony's notes and asked if they were all right, made sure I'd signed the (interminable) contract - then -

"You want to schedule a trip to the maskmaker for later or just go on now?"

"- uh -"

"She's not busy right now but we can probably get an appointment later this week if you need to wrap anything up," he smiled.

I swallowed and said, "Now's fine."

The maskmaker's workshop was bigger than it needed to be - masks were easily made, quickly enchanted. But the ability was so scarce that they could charge exorbitantly, and the place was beautifully expensive, tiled wall and floor in marble with gilded molding and curtained against the sunset. The maskmaker barely talked to me at all. She just murmured to Myron and took his money and pulled a white mask - no eyeholes, just a cast of a generic face - out of her safe. She chanted softly while she made a short, deep cut across his forearm and caught blood in a pool in the mask. She asked my shoe size. They were too small for Myron and she told me to take them off.

Then she took my hands in hers and arranged them so I could cup the mask like a bowl, and gave it to me, and gestured for me to put it on.

My hands shook.

"Clock's ticking," said Myron. "Has to be fresh, first time you put it on."

I held my breath and pressed my nose into the accumulated blood.

And I was Myron Lasko.

Not being in control of how I moved didn't feel like anything. In the same way I could walk without paying attention to individual steps or hold an object without concentrating moment to moment on keeping my hand closed, I moved as Myron wished. Maybe he was being very deliberate about every bit of body language but I didn't have to be.

He was really healthy. He had good posture. He took deep diaphragmatic breaths and went around by default with a faint smile. He had a low resting heart rate and clear uncorrected vision and a smooth way of moving our hands when he tried them out.

We fixed his other body's hair - a bit of it had fallen out of place. Tipped the masker. Begged the use of a changing room to get out of my clothes and into a set his other body had brought - it did feel strange when he talked, with a little of the phatic reflex of "thank you" and "you're welcome" and "you too" but for full sentences. We sounded like him, but distorted: this was what he sounded like to himself.

Then the other body left, and it was just us being Myron there, which was strange. I wasn't operating the muscles, but I was all alone in my head, and there was a vertiginous feeling of being unsupervised in Myron Lasko's skin. Who knew what I might get up to? But all I got up to was what he thought was next - he changed into the snappier clothes, dumped mine in the bag, thanked the masker again, went out and hailed a cab.

The clothes he'd brought included a phone in the pocket; we pulled it out and started reading his social media aggregator (the contents of which I was contractually obliged not to divulge). Eventually he emailed Briony.

I'm sure you've already seen the debit in the account but yes, the mask's on. Please make appropriate purchases for the house, XOXO

I couldn't ask what appropriate purchases might be, and that - didn't feel like anything, exactly, but did remind me that I wasn't driving. I simultaneously felt like I merely hadn't chosen to speak, and knew that I wanted to.

Myron couldn't even tell. He might talk to me at some point but some point was not this cab ride. We shooed the social media and went into a pitch tuning app and we sang into it, warming up.

We sounded amazing.

Holy shit, I was Myron Lasko.

We got out of the cab at his mansion and nodded to his security. Sang in harmony with another body who was home, though I never saw it; our twinned voices echoed through the halls while we poured ourself a cup of juice and the other body did Myron only knew what. Well. Myron and the applicable masker. It was easy to forget they were there. Presumably they could forget about me, too, they might not even notice I'd signed on if they weren't in use for the mask bleed or the preliminaries. Might not find out till they saw the updated estimate of how many bodies Myron had or he decided to have an all-hands concert. Or orgy. We all looked alike.

The juice tasted nice; whether it was because I would have liked the blend on my own or because I was using Myron's tastebuds was unclear. We sang a bit more. Sat on the sofa and picked at lyrics (which I was contractually obliged not to divulge) on a battered legal pad.

Maskers needed sleep per body as much as anyone else, and it was getting late. We'd only gotten one line down without crossing it out before he put us to bed. Stashed the bag of my clothes in a box in the closet, brushed our teeth, changed into pajamas, crashed.

He fell asleep easier than I did. We didn't toss and turn. Just closed our eyes and morning came.

After we were up and showered (which was really something, although Myron wasn't as fascinated as I was and didn't linger like I might have if I'd been solo in his skin), dressed and breakfasted -

The house seemed empty; the other bodies might have gotten up earlier, or they could be still asleep, or scattered in half a dozen hotels.

"So how are you?" we said.

It took me a minute to realize he was talking to me and that I might be able to move our mouth, if I tried, if he was letting me.

"...fine," I croaked. I still sounded like him, but like a distorted version, his timbre and my tone.

"Forget anything you remembered last night, need a few to tell your folks, having trouble adjusting to the mask...?"

"No. It's - there's not much to adjust to."

"I've been told that. Never tried it myself from your end. You're all set to go back under?"

Is that what it was called. "Yeah. Thanks."

"Mm-hm." And he went back to working on the lyrics from last night.

I didn't have to think about lyrics for lyrics to appear. Without even secondhand access to the creative process I might have expected to get bored, but I didn't. I just went along for the ride and occasionally my mouth hummed or muttered, my hand jotted down a line in his handwriting. Crossed something out, added a question mark in parentheses.

He played a lot of instruments and I was apparently on tap to practice all of them, after he decided to put the lyrics down (they didn't look done). He danced my fingers over piano keys, drilling tricky bits and performing flowing runthroughs of classics and his own compositions. We strummed his guitar and we sang along with it, trying chords. We applied his ridiculous breath control to wind instruments because there were not fewer than six people wearing his mask and he could sing while accompanying himself on the flute if he wanted to.

We had lunch. We called Briony in response to a text I hadn't seen.

Two of his other bodies showed up and he test-drove harmonies for the new song. I kept expecting it to descend into an orgy but he was so resolutely focused on music that I wound up surprised when it actually did.

It wasn't like I'd imagined, which was in some ways a disappointment - no, Myron Lasko did not conveniently have all my favorite kinks - but mostly much improved. Myron Lasko, surrounded by himselves, was as smoothly unselfconscious as if he were alone - he might as well have been for all the attention he had to pay to us, but distributing the sensation across multiple bodies did what one might expect for the experience. Also he didn't pause in the middle of his choreography to be sure that he was acting in character and imagining his own abs in sufficient detail, which gave it all an advantage over fantasy. He might have been careless about distributing the fun and the work between the participating maskers, but I lost track somewhere in the middle, having come out well in the allocation.

So it was a startling upset when suddenly all of us froze and fled in different directions, seizing various of Myron's phones.

We called 911.

One of the other bodies had been murdered.

I didn't get a chance to ask any questions for longer than I considered reasonable. If someone killed a masker, Myron was fine - witness how he was running us around, contacting everybody to tell his family he was fine. Whoever had owned the body, if it wasn't Myron's original, wasn't so lucky. But he chose to first give the police all the information he had on the circumstances on the murder. It didn't sound like much; a different masker wound up being the one who spoke to the police as Myron propelled me to the door to peer through the peephole and let Briony in.

"I came as soon as I heard," she said, wringing rain out of her hair onto the welcome mat and hanging up her jacket on Myron's coatrack. "You're already giving a statement -?"

"Yeah. I didn't see anything conclusive but I can give them what I've got. Might help if they know how tall the guy was or something," we said. She opened her arms to offer him a hug; we took it.

"Who was it? I need to notify the family, the lawyers -"

"You know I don't keep track of them except by vacation dates."

"Have the ones who are left sound off," Briony suggested.

Myron released my voice. I croaked out my name. He took it back before I could ask anything. A moment later he reported, "It was Brightman."

"I'll make the arrangements," said Briony. "I don't think there's any reason someone would have been after her, do you -"

"Even if they were, how could they keep track when I don't? It has to be someone has it in for me, I'll need you to talk to the security company, remove everyone who was posted there tonight just to be safe, double security on net."

"They could be after MacDougal, and just willing to go through people to get him."

"No one even knows about MacDougal," objected Myron. "Not that I've got him in particular."

"His family do, the court does."

"All right, yes, but they've known for the last fifteen years and nothing's happened. Meanwhile I get a heap of mail from people who want to lick my eyes and see my liver every week."

Briony shook her head. "It's more likely they're after you, but it can't hurt to let the police know that it could be someone trying to get at a masker they can't identify through you."

"Right. Fine," we said. "But give the cops all the creepy fan mail they could ask for, don't deliberately lead them down a rabbit hole about MacDougal."

"But you should warn MacDougal."

"He hasn't exactly been catching up with people from his past on his breaks! He's the one who reads Flat Earth articles and watches women's volleyball!"

"I didn't need to know that, Mr. Lasko."

"This one isn't MacDougal, apparently, how'll he find out? Anyway, there's nothing he can do with a warning but worry."

"Mr. Lasko, he has a right to know. If you won't tell him I'll email it to you until you read one of them with the wrong body and then he'll know anyway."

"That's low," we said. We shook his head.

"He has the right. It wasn't specified in contract but it should have been and when this settles down I'm bringing it up with legal."

"Fine. Fine, I'll tell him."

"Thank you. Is there anything else you need from me?" Briony asked.

We shook his head. Briony hugged us again and left.

All my questions had been incidentally answered over the course of that conversation, but I was still annoyed that he hadn't offered to let me ask any. If someone was going through Myron and his maskers to get MacDougal, or was even just out to get Myron, I was in the line of fire.

But he stayed on top of my body with perfect unchallengeable control until it was my day off. We went on the Dennis Mueller Show. We worked with a choir providing backing vocals for a couple songs in his next album. We talked to his agent about scoring a kid's movie. We did a series of concerts, a different venue every night, in groups of four and five, and took home girls and once a boy to ravish in pairs or singly. He sent my body home from the tour the night before he was due to leave me in control.

My first month as Myron Lasko elapsed and he let me have my break.

I woke up in control of my limbs, a sensation so nonexistent that I spent a good few minutes wondering why Myron was staring at the curtains unfocusedly not moving a muscle until I realized he'd abandoned me. Released me, anyway, he was probably still supervising. Could he redivide his attention when he was letting one of the bodies do as its owner liked? What did he use the extra to do, think of song lyrics even faster? Come to think of it, what happened to his attention when some of us were asleep? We weren't all on the same schedule; the bodies slept at this or that hour, while Myron was awake twenty four hours a day.

Experimentally, I tried singing. I had his voice, and that counted for a lot - I even had a month from inside of his body to know what it felt like to sing right - but I didn't have his talent and I didn't have his focus. It came out as though Myron were attempting to portray the Act One version of a character who began unable to sing and would have to produce a stunning solo in Act Three. Embarrassing. Awkward.

I went to the kitchen for cereal; on my day it was my job to feed my body. I brought my phone, from where it was tucked away in a sticky-note-labeled box in the closet, and answered math questions to get onto my various accounts through Thespyan. To my lack of surprise, no one had wondered very hard at my absence. The backlog of messages and mail I had to address once I shooed away spam and notifications about people's pictures of their cats came to three. One from my sister, one from my landlady, one from a board game friend. Huh, I hadn't known she cared... enough to badger me about leaving them short for the co-op game she got for her birthday.

I'd been waiting so much for this day but, just as I'd surmised when I'd decided to put the mask on in the first place, I actually mostly wanted to be Myron Lasko. But his days could be numbered.

I checked the news. It didn't cover the death. The person wearing the mask wasn't a public figure and Myron was still alive, plus maybe they didn't want a lot of reporters swarming around while they tried to solve it and the rest of us could still be in danger. I could appreciate that.

I looked up my stupid long contract. There was nothing about anyone's rights and obligations changing if an assassin had it in for the face I was wearing. I wasn't allowed to give out his email address to anyone except my emergency contact; I wasn't allowed to do extreme sports; I wasn't allowed to comment publicly on his sex life... my bailout options didn't say anything about murderers.

I got the nearest yellow legal pad, the kind he wrote lyrics on. I wrote, I have some questions, Myron, for tomorrow. I could have just said them aloud but I didn't know if he was paying attention. He gave no indication that he was; that would have been out of the scope of the contract. The handwriting came out a weird blend of mine and his. I was the one writing it but I'd been "practicing" his; as far as muscle memory was concerned, I'd been using his style for weeks now.

1. Who is MacDougal?

2. Where are the police on the murder now? News doesn't say

3. If this keeps happening or looks like it's going to, can I bail? Contract doesn't say

I felt like I should have been able to think of more to ask but that was all I had.

I added And I want to have a conversation about this, not get two sentences and wait another month to ask for clarification.

I taped the page to his bathroom mirror so he'd see it in the morning if he wasn't looking while I wrote it, and answered all my emails. My sister was going to a fancy party and that was exciting and could I reschedule my day off to go with her, she's sure she can get an extra ticket through her friend - no can do, Gina, already taking day off right now, need more notice to adjust timing. I'd told her that I was on a demanding work schedule, but hadn't mentioned the job and she hadn't asked. Landlady wanted to know, had asked weeks ago, if I was going to pay my rent - nope, I'd already rescued the essential items and she was free to junk the rest and keep my security deposit. Board game friend was pissed that she didn't have enough board game guests to play Crowd Mode of her new game, how could I, didn't RSVP, she knew full well I never had anything important to do... that one I ignored.

I was allowed to take off the mask entirely, on my day off. I just had to put it back before going to bed. It had been a long time since I'd seen my own face.

I got naked so I wouldn't be wearing his clothes in my own build, grabbed a blanket in case any other Myrons walked in. Passed the mirror on his closet door on my way to sit down on the bed in "my" bedroom. Gave myself - still Myron - a good looking-over. He was just really unfairly lucky on every axis except for the part where someone was attempting murder.

I reached behind his ears and pulled off the mask.

In a cold rush, like taking off a clammy wetsuit on a winter day, my skin, my own skin, was exposed to the air again. My hair had grown - Myron's had too, he was permanently enjoying a frozen biological moment from when he'd been bled to make his first mask but that didn't freeze his hair; we'd had a haircut a week ago, a manicure on Tuesday. Mine was long enough to brush my shoulders now, not startling for a month of growth but startling to see all at once. I looked pale - hadn't gotten any sun in my own skin. I blinked at the mirror, worried for one hypocritical moment about Myron looking through my eyes to see my own form in the nude, remembered that Myron was in the mask I now held in my hands. He knew I'd gotten undressed and taken the mask off, but the mask was both what let him know that and what let me look like him, and both came off at the same time. I was alone.

I sat on the bed, pulled the blanket around me for warmth. Imagined, vaguely, pursuing something other than being Myron Lasko. I could go to medical transcriptionist training, which Gina had once evangelized to me. I could be a flight attendant and squeeze in tiny chunks of tourism on foreign shores between flights. I could try to get more student loans, go to music school, see if this month had taught me enough to succeed at what I'd given up on aged fifteen.

It didn't appeal. If I'd ever been good at working towards things, I didn't have the skill to reach for it now. And doing anything else would be work, and being Myron was effortless glamour and success and art, held in my arms as long as I was willing to share them. Not everybody would be suited to being Myron but I was, I thought. It was a way to be. Worthwhile. My input to the work wasn't creative in nature, but he could get more of it done with me. Briony wasn't exactly composing concept albums and nobody would have thought she wasn't helping Myron create. I was like Briony, except having more fun than she probably did, and I was good with that.

It was nice to have a day to spare, though, just to make sure that I was a participant in my life.

My phone rang. I let it.

It stopped, then rang again. And again.

I picked it up. "Hel-"

Myron's voice: "Put it back on." He sounded breathless, strained.

"What?"

"Put - put it - mask -"

I picked up the mask, planted my nose in its nose, transformed back into Myron Lasko.

We said, "This is the only one left."

He let me talk, which I only thought to try because a moment ago I'd been the only person in the room. "The only one left? Did every other body get -"

Myron took over. "It was the matinee in Greenville. Maniac opened fire on the stage, I don't know how he got the gun past security, we fired everyone who was on duty during the first killing so if there was a man on the inside - one survived long enough to call you."

He paused. I tried and found I could speak. "You can - without your original -?"

"My original body's been dead for years. Motorcycle accident, haven't touched one since."

"- you've been just a bunch of masks for years?"

"Yeah. Works fine. And now I'm clause-fourteening you, till I can find more maskers."

I tried to reach for my phone; our arm stuttered, and finally he allowed it. I looked at the contract again to find clause 14. "I didn't realize," I said, "when I first read this, that it meant you don't need your original body. I guess it does. And now I - don't get days off any more?"

"You don't get to take the mask off any more and if I catch you trying I'll stop you because if you do I will die, the one who called you died in the ambulance thirty seconds ago. You can still sometimes do things, like you're doing now."

"Thousands of people will have seen a bunch of you get shot at a concert, you're not going to find more maskers soon."

"The cops are working on it. Once they catch the guy, there's always people who want to be me," he said. "We just hole up in the house, we don't let anybody in, till they have their man."

The doorbell rang.

We didn't move.

"It could be Briony," I said, meaning the doorbell, but, "she couldn't have gotten here from the concert in that time," Myron said, meaning the murderer.

We looked out the window rather than the peephole, barely twitching the curtains. It was Briony at the door. Myron got one of his own phones and called her. She picked up. "Myron! You're alive?"

"Barely," he said, like a person with a mere single body was only just clinging to life. "I'm not letting anyone in."

"I suppose I can't hold that against you," Briony said. "I just wanted to make sure you were all right."

"I had to clause-fourteen this one."

"I suspected as much, although the hospital won't talk to me."

"I'll tell them they can disclose to you -"

"No, state law, they'd need permission from the maskers too," Briony said; we could see her shaking her head on the front doorstep. "The police will talk to me, and they said security caught the suspect, with the gun, so assuming he was acting alone this is all going to be over soon."

"That's a relief. They haven't gotten in touch with me yet."

"They don't know there's one left, no one knows exactly how many you have and they might not have gotten in touch with the jurisdiction that you were in last time yet either. I'll pass it on."

"Thanks. And - cancel everything - just - everything."

"Even though they caught the -"

"I'm down to one body and I'm a little too rattled to sort out priorities inherited from half a dozen, Briony!" he shouted into the phone. "I'll pick some things up once I - later. I'll - Briony, getting shot hurts. I'll pick some things up later. For now cancel everything."

"...All right, Mr. Lasko."

"Thank you."

She hung up. We watched her leave.

Myron ran his hands through his hair. Opened up his calendar and watched as Briony pared down the schedule, dizzying flocks of to-dos disappearing until time slots were scheduled only three deep, then two, then a schedule one very determined person without any spare hands or brains could accomplish if he wanted to, then - nothing but a single copy each day of "lunch hour" and "dinner", color coded as things done alone, not while meeting someone for an interview over lobster.

It was lunchtime.

Myron went to the kitchen. Stared into his fridge. I didn't know how long it was going to have to last us before he'd be willing to go out, but at least he wasn't one of those rich people who ate at restaurants all the time and had nothing but mustard and booze in the house. At least he knew how to cook, better than I did even, didn't have a chef employed for the purpose and didn't have to resort to horrific noodle experiments to get anything to eat while fencing out everyone from the building.

He made grilled cheese.

"Put pesto on it," I said, not knowing if I'd be able to suggest it until I already had. I'd seen some on the fridge door.

He paused in assembling the sandwiches, then got out the pesto, slathered some on, resumed cooking. "I feel very small," he remarked. "I've had more room to think than this for - so long, now. I fill it, you'll have noticed I fill it, but I get a whole person's attention for every body, and I don't need it all if they're eating or smiling at a camera or - so I had more space."

"I'm sure lots of people will want to be you once it doesn't look like a good way to get murdered," I said.

"You know, I'm not sure that'd put everyone off? Sometimes people seem to want to put on a mask to stop existing. Might not be too picky about the details, some of them. Probably there are legal reasons not to take on new maskers till the murderer's definitely in custody and definitely the murderer, not some guy the murderer planted his gun on or something... Do you want to stop existing?"

"No," I said. "I left a bunch of questions taped to your mirror, one of them was if I could bail out what with there being a murderer after you."

"Well," he said. "You can't. Not yet, anyway, and by the time I have another masker it'll be past time to worry about the murderer." He flipped the sandwiches.

"Yeah," I said. "I like being you, mostly, at least more than I liked not being you."

"Keeps me on my toes, having an audience all the time. I watch less television now than when I was just one of me. I mean, when I was just my original me," Myron said. "You folks aren't here for that, you're here for the music, the meeting other celebrities, the sex, that sort of thing. Gotta show you a good time, make it as fun as it looks."

I didn't deny it. "Who's MacDougal?"

"He's dead now," said Myron. "Died on stage. He was - you know how sometimes they'll do parolees in masks? It's expensive but it lets them go free, be supervised while they go through the twelve steps or the anger management training. But they don't like to have one parole officer masking a hundred people, too much concentrated power, you see? You wind up with so much room to think, so many people you could suddenly control, and if you quit one day that's a lot of people they have to get masks off of and deal with some other way. And the expense. And there's some worry that a court'll slap down the idea, cruel and unusual, you know, they want to be able if it comes up to trot out poster cases - even though they only do this with prisoners who volunteer. So - MacDougal, he was a rapist. Nasty piece of work, forty girls accused him. I don't know if you heard, you would have been pretty young when he was caught."

"Somebody could have wanted to murder him just like Briony thought."

"Somebody could have, but I still think they were after me. No one but the court and my maskmaker and the family knew who he was wearing... Anyway, they didn't want to let him do his own thing, he played around a lot with plausible deniability and grooming and that shit, not something a parole officer would catch if they were mostly letting him drive, they didn't want someone paying him a fraction of their attention while he set up to do it again. So once they got a conviction, I think half the counts went through, they were like, how about a masking celebrity, it's not cruel and unusual, people volunteer for that, but you won't be able to do your thing, and he said, all right, as long as I get laid sometimes. And nobody ever asks me who's under the mask."

"Creepy," I said. I plated the grilled cheeses.

He bit one, or maybe I did. We bit one. "You've probably fucked him, haven't you, because you were both me and I mixed you all up like my guitar picks until I had to give somebody a day off, but it didn't make any difference to you, did it. Next batch I'm having us all wear inscribed rings. It doesn't matter who's wearing me when I pick up a fan, I'm the only one they meet and the only one making the decisions, and anyway he's dead now. So that's who he is." He talked around the sandwich a bit, and I might not have been able to understand him if I'd heard the sounds recorded, but I could feel what he was going for, and that closed the gap a little like lip-reading from the inside.

"Okay. Thanks for telling me."

"Mm-hm." And we applied ourselves to the sandwich.

The prints on the gun matched the guy Security had nabbed. He was the right height and he didn't have an alibi for the first murder. He didn't make bail.

Myron let Briony in the house, and she hugged us, and he ordered groceries while they discussed scheduling. He un-canceled his attendance at a benefit dinner and un-canceled an interview on the grounds that he needed more maskers and exposure was necessary for drumming up interest. Concert tickets had been refunded and there'd need to be choreography and timing and logistics changes to accommodate there being fewer of Myron anyway - not to mention the costumes he'd been wearing had gunshot holes and blood now - so that slot was still open, for now. He pushed back composing, cut back on rehearsal, rearranged everything to fit it into twenty-four hours a day, with a heavy emphasis on social obligations and face time.

The benefit dinner was fancy; Myron dressed up even relative to his normal street clothes, which were fine and fitted to begin with. I recognized my sister Gina, across the room - was this her fancy party? Wouldn't she be amused to know that I was already there, my rejection of her invitation notwithstanding. She recognized Myron, whispered to the friend she'd brought instead, but she had no way to recognize me. I tried to whisper to Myron that I wanted to say hi, but he was firmly in control; my attempt wouldn't even feel like anything as he swept through the room, shaking hands with the organizer, smiling at people trying to catch his eye, signing an autograph, pausing at his dinner plate to sip water and read the place cards he'd been put with. He was going to sing; he was the musical number for the night and they'd been upset about his cancellation, hadn't been able to replace him on short notice.

There were speakers, first, he was supposed to sing as the appetizers came out. He leaned on his elbow, smiling faintly, probably more to look generally affable than out of any interest in someone's empty buzzwords about her personal connection to ending childhood malnutrition with community gardening and a summer holiday replacement for school lunch. He looked around the room. His eyes settled on my sister and her friend where they were whispering cheek to cheek, glancing at him intermittently and smiling when they realized he was looking their way.

Fuck.

Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.

I strained and searched and squirmed-without-squirming, looking for anything he was leaving to me, but he was effortlessly parked on every muscle I possessed, sitting easily in his damnably flirtatious forward lean, all ready to put moves on my sister in my body. I should have told her. I should have said, "Sis, by the way, my weird job that only gives me one day off a month, not even weekends? It's masking for Myron Lasko. Don't hook up with him, not unless you've checked and it's not me under there." I should have told Myron: "For your information, here are the names and appearances of all my family members; I understand that knowing exactly how many cousins I have will reduce the security of Thespyan, and I'm okay with that".

I tried to shift posture, I tried to blink, I tried to grind his teeth, I tried to make a sound. Nothing.

He wasn't going to go anywhere with her until after dinner. I had that long to wait for him to check in with me at all, to let me say a word while he ducked into the men's room or waited backstage to walk up to the mic. And he'd better do it because if he made me fuck my sister then the next time I had my arms I was yanking that mask off my face and he'd never see it coming.

...would I get prosecuted for murder? It was strange to think about. I'd probably get prosecuted, I didn't know if I'd get convicted.

At any rate, this was mostly my own stupid fault, he probably thought that if I had any sisters they'd know, and she didn't, and he had better let me talk before he brought her home.

The speakers rotated through; when everyone was looking more bored and hungry than they could cover with a pretense of fascination with meals on wheels, appetizers appeared in the wings borne by a fleet of waiters, and Myron excused himself from his tablemates to go around back. He strode on, all bright smile and long steps, and he put the microphone to his lips and he crooned a glurgey song he'd written for the benefit. Exclusive first performance, except for how the other maskers and I were really the ones who got exclusive first performances. I'd liked it better before he revised the third verse.

He smiled at Gina when he got to the last chorus. He had better let me talk.

But my chance didn't come before we sat down and started tasting canapés, or after, when we got the salad course. He was too far away at his assigned seat to talk to Gina, but he kept looking that way. I dared hope he was more interested in her friend, but I couldn't be sure, not based on where he was looking. Probably he was going to aim to pick them both up at once.

Fuck.

I didn't have any chances to do anything, not even twitch his hand to knock over the water or bite his cheek, let alone speak or make some urgent gesture at Gina. Not during the soup course, not while he cut up and nibbled on chicken over a bed of pickled vegetables and something called freekeh that I'd never seen before in my life, not once dessert and coffee came around. He took cream, no sugar, and made eyes sisterward over his demitasse.

Fuck.

He finally went to the bathroom after his second coffee. Let me talk, you ass, let me -

I got out a half-syllable, "Sh-"

And then someone walked in and Myron apparently didn't want to be heard talking to himself, so he shut me up. He did wait, though, parking in the stall silently, letting whoever it was finish their business and clear out. When they weren't immediately replaced, he said, "You were saying?"

"My sister," I blurted. "She's my sister."

"- which one?" he said, sounding appalled.

"Brunette."

"I can have the redhead no problem?"

"Never met her but she's hot, go for it," I said.

"Damn. Why doesn't she know?" he asked. "Should have suspected - if your family knew you would have had to tell them that you didn't die, I would've seen - Briony had to notify a lot of next of kin, you didn't want a minute to reassure anyone -"

The door opened, and I didn't reply. Myron let himself out of the stall and washed his hands and went back out. Gazed flirtily only at my sister's redheaded friend. Gina looked offended. I'd have to explain later. How would that go? Dear Gina, Myron was absolutely down to fuck, it's nothing against you as a specimen, but unfortunately for the both of you he's down to one body and it's mine, and fortunately for you and I, I had a chance to tell him before he took you home and covered you in whipped cream.

God.

Myron smiled at photographers covering the event. He signed a large check. When people were milling around between tables, he sidled up to Gina's friend, got her name (Carol), got her number, got her into his car when the valet pulled it up. Gina hissed at her while we left, but her friend was undeterred.

Myron took Carol home. He grabbed whipped cream, because he was predictable like that and had the metabolism of his twenty-five-year-old self forever.

When we came back into the bedroom, Carol was gone and a man stepped behind us from beside the doorframe to aim a gun at the back of Myron's head.

"C-carol?" Myron said.

"Guess again," said a man's voice.

"Where's -"

"She's not here any more, Lasko," said the voice. "And I think you'd better stop asking questions."

He jammed the gun harder against our head. I could only tell that Myron was leaving me options because of how I flinched, gasping a high ragged inhaled sound that Myron in his perfect breath control couldn't produce even under these conditions. How had he gotten into the house? It was crawling with security, not even Briony had a key, it -

Carol had been a mask.

"Why," said Myron's voice, and I didn't know if it was him or me. I had enough questions beginning with "why" that it could have slipped out.

"Because you're a mockery of our art," said the murderer. "Half a dozen of you on stage at once? Vacationing in the tropics while you go on television and bed a teenager and eat caviar? It's magic and you've turned it into a spectacle. You're not the only one, no, but you're the worst of the lot."

Don't quip, don't quip, don't quip -

"The proper use is murder?" Myron said, oblivious to my mental plea.

"You disgust me," said the murderer. "Get up."

I tried to sort out in my head how this must have gone down, while Myron did the work of piloting us out of bed and down the hall with a gun to his back. Why were masks scarce? Almost nobody could make them. If one could make them, one could have plenty for one's own use; you could make them out of papier-maché if you wanted, papier-maché and blood.

So working backwards: offer to wear a Carol mask free of charge. Tell her you'll wear her to the charity dinner, you'll buy her plate, tell her to flirt with Lasko, she's exactly his type, all you want is to ride along vicariously while she does it, he'll never look twice at you, and she can take it off when she's done with her night of fine dining and musician-seducing, but if she could please leave you a way to signal if you need to take a breather with the mask off -

(We descended the stairs.)

Might or might not have been an active ingredient that Carol was Gina's friend: tell her to bring someone along Lasko won't sleep with because of course all his maskers updated him on who their relatives are. Could be a coincidence, maybe he would have just also shot Gina if she'd joined in.

(We went out the back door. The house let out onto a private beach, deserted in the predawn light.)

The middle attack had meant to get them all and get Myron to let his guard down if it didn't work, but nobody knew for sure how many maskers Myron had so it had to cover both options. That spree of murders would have finished Myron off if I hadn't answered the phone. Fingerprints matched, but a mask would do that. There was nothing about the process of putting on a mask, as I'd now experienced, that had to be consensual. You could just fill a mask with your own blood and plant somebody's face in it and they might be noticed missing but they'd never be found, until the murderer decided he was tired of being partly in jail and took the mask off. They'd be able to trace the DNA in the mask blood, maybe, but they already had an exact physical copy of him in custody, clearly he wasn't worried about being identified.

(The murderer marched us toward the sea.)

First one, he had to have impersonated someone in security. You couldn't wear a mask of someone without letting them control you if they wanted to, so how did he do that without the security person in question just slipping off the mask? Maybe he'd just done that one conventionally. Snuck in. No, I had to be missing something about that part.

"How'd you get the first one?" I asked.

"I've got the security company owner's son hostage," said the murderer. "Masked. He'll jump off something tall and land as himself if Daddy puts a foot wrong. Very motivating. He happened to get away clean, too, didn't have a chance to crack under questioning. Convenient. I'll let Junior go once I've mopped up this last one of you."

"How do you know this is the last one?" said Myron.

He paused. "Well," he said, "I don't hear sirens."

"Other one's asleep," said Myron.

The murderer frowned at him.

"You've got about four hours to get away, if you don't startle my other body awake by shooting me," Myron said. "I know this is really you, since you were wearing Carol."

"Take your mask off," said the murderer.

"I've got John W. MacDougal under here and I'm not letting him go," Myron lied.

"That was you who took him? Then you won't miss him when he dies."

"Cops'll be on you in five minutes once the other one wakes up to call them. They'll find your other bodies, too, that boy, anybody else, now that they'll know you're a maskmaker."

"...Throw me your phone."

Myron threw him his phone.

"Walk." He gestured down the beach.

We walked.

When we were a good ways from the house the murderer tied us to a disused pier and ran away.

"That was close," I said.

"And he could turn around any second so tell me now if you're an escape artist," said Myron, squirming in the ropes.

"Sorry."

"Didn't think so. This is gonna hurt -" He pulled; the post on the pier gave way before his joints did, though it still wrenched the hell out of his arm. We ran, houseward, as fast as we could.

"I need to call my sister," I said.

"Why?"

"Carol. Gina's friends with Carol. And Carol talked to him, met him somewhere, maybe could find him again - he believed you that I was MacDougal so he didn't set you up with someone related to me on purpose."

"Right," he said. "You do that, I'll - you email her, I'll call the cops on speakerphone?"

"Yeah," I said.

It was a long jog but Myron was up to it. We hit the house running; he threw another phone on the table, dialed, gave me the use of his hands to grab a laptop and log in to Thespyan and write Gina. It wasn't comfortable - I kept reaching for muscles he hadn't thought to give me and kept accidentally typing things he was saying to the police, while he sometimes read a word from my email because our eyes had to be trained on the screen - but it more or less worked.

They arrived without sirens to avoid spooking the murderer, and had the fire department on standby in case he tried arson. Myron told them about the security guy's son, and I waited for Gina to answer her email. Myron didn't want to get off the phone with the cops so I couldn't call her.

Gina was usually pretty prompt about answering emails, but every minute felt like an eternity waiting for them to catch the guy who'd just waved a gun in our face. I wanted to pace; Myron held us still. I settled for sending her another email in case a fuller inbox would bring her answer a moment sooner.

When Gina replied twenty whole minutes after I'd first written her she sent me a great deal of swearing and then added that she'd told Carol to call the police department too, so that was my idea handled. Now Myron paced, marching back and forth across the kitchen with his hands behind his back. There was nothing else we could do but wait for the cops to finish whatever they were doing; the speakerphone was still going but the lady on the other end hadn't said anything for a bit. Reports came in slowly, or they hadn't changed.

"Need another masker," muttered Myron.

"So you can care less whether I live or die?" I replied.

"Don't take it the wrong way," said Myron. "But, well, yes. I've survived being murdered twice - more than that if you count the concert shootings separately - because I had maskers and now I don't and the bastard's still on the run, himself and as many masks as he's got, and his masks can make more masks, and I just have to hope the police academy's trained people to deal with a madman who said 'no, I'd rather not be a multibillionaire by working for half an hour a week, I'm just incredibly into murder, and by the way, anyone I can hold still for fifteen seconds after cutting myself is another one of me' -"

"Yeah," I sighed.

"Uh, Mr. Lasko? Who are you talking to?" asked the cop on the phone.

"My masker," Myron told her.

"This isn't your original body? I'd understood it to be -"

"- you people don't know how masks work, do you," said Myron in exasperation. "Okay. I'll explain. You need to know this if you don't want him to run off and disappear." And he took it upon himself to go over everything there was to know about masks for her. It was soothing, in a way; yes, the police department was dangerously undereducated about a key characteristic of the case, but we were making a contribution to the effort now, even if it was appalling that the effort needed making.

When he'd run out of things to tell the cop about masks, he subsided. "Is it all right if I hang up?" he asked.

"Yes, but we're going to send a squad car out to your house to keep an eye on you," she said. "You don't have to let them in, but they'll be parked in the driveway to scare him off if he approaches, all right?"

"Mm-hm," said Myron, "thank you, officer," and he hung up and went to find us something to eat. Hunger had hit suddenly, after stress had kept it at bay. He fried up a burger. I told him to put pesto on it, and he did.

"I like this being able to talk thing," I commented, when the burger was gone and he was putting milkshake ingredients in a blender.

"I could get used to doing it sometimes. Not in public - though you do have to show me pictures of everyone else you're related to, seriously, especially women aged eighteen to forty -"

"I will, I will."

"I can do it sometimes. It'd be weird if you started talking to the other maskers, though."

"There aren't any yet, perhaps it'll turn out we have nothing in common," I said.

"It would be weird," he repeated. "But if we're alone in a room, I can let you talk in case there's anything you need to say. That's not going to - ruin your experience of being me, or anything?"

"Nah," I said. "- maybe if I talked while you were trying to do music, but I can just not do that."

"If you did I'd stop letting you, I need silence," he said firmly.

"But if you're just making food -"

"You want to tell me to put pesto on it," he interrupted dryly. "Understood. I can work with that."

"Thanks."

"No problem. Thanks for, uh, saving my life."

"You're welcome."

We waited by the phone. He plugged it in to charge, when it got late. He looked at the squad car at the end of the driveway, paced a little more. He attempted briefly to play piano but couldn't keep focus on it. He went to bed.

In the morning he had voicemail from the cops; they'd used Carol's information to find one of the murderer's masks and removed it from the wearer, they'd found the security guy's kid and taken that mask too. The one in prison had been demasked and the wearer released on bail, supposedly tried for the possibility of collaboration in a likely futile prosecutory effort. Which seemed insane to me, but I suppose nobody could prove that he hadn't been the murderer's pawn, helping mow down Myrons just like I occasionally volunteered opinions on pesto.

They had the real, original body of the murderer - they believed - cornered in a hotel room, but he'd gotten a hostage. The hostage was wearing him, and they both had guns, and were pointing them at each other. Cartoonishly enough, the cops didn't know which they could shoot without getting an innocent bystander, and couldn't approach to remove the mask forcibly without whichever one was wearing a mask getting shot. They were having a standoff, or maybe it would be better called a siege. The murderer's bodies could sleep in shifts, each training a gun on the other to maintain their indistinguishability though one would never really fire, but they didn't have any food in the hotel room. Sooner or later they'd, or rather he'd, give up.

Still, they weren't turning themselves in yet, and Myron worried that the murderer was waiting for someone to put on their own mask of him, held in abeyance for whatever reason. This would work if there was still at least one living body of his at the time, but a dead person can't live in an inert mask; if some sleeper masker waited until after the police had shot him to don the thing it would just be stained papier-maché. As long as the murderer was still alive in any body - and this very flight risk meant that he couldn't count on being kept that way in custody - he could turn up across the planet on a moment's notice, supposing that he'd prepped for this.

His face was all over the news. Myron kept it on in the background, and the occasional detour into stories about a fraudster in the finance industry and a guy caught smuggling exotic plants across the border and a speech delivered by the First Lady were invariably interrupted by bulletins with a series of photographs of the fellow: the one from prison before they'd taken the mask off, the ones they were besieging, the one they'd found worn by the security guy's son. The anchor's voice went over and over, maybe prerecorded, over the danger he posed.

"That's not going to be good for my odds of getting another body," muttered Myron. "Everybody thinking about how much this incredibly dangerous murderer wants to waste me and anybody wearing me."

"Was there anybody you had to turn away in a screening before you could get ahold of again?" I asked. "Somebody who you would have had to keep closer track of, not use for some things. Right now you'd rather have one who didn't want you to have sex in their body than nobody, right? Or someone who wanted more days off, or didn't want you to eat, uh, non-kosher food or something."

"Maybe. Briony would know better than I would - she might have already thought of it -" He grabbed the nearest phone, picked out a message to her. "She screens everybody, I only meet people who pass her filter. I don't know how hard she tries to scare people off, but that's mostly about the money and a lot of insurance just paid out big, and it's worth more to me now..."

"She didn't try very hard except for making me read the whole contract," I said, "that part was torture."

"You'd rather have just been stuffed in a mask with no idea that I could clause-fourteen you?"

"I wasn't expecting any of the weird contingencies to come up!"

"They usually don't! But you've had an exciting time of it, now, haven't you," Myron commented. "Not at all the sort of authentic being-Myron-Lasko experience I try to deliver."

"A little too exciting, yeah. I'll be glad when it settles down and you're just back to working again and can play piano for more than five minutes at a time. I like it when you play piano."

"Piano specifically?"

"Yeah."

"Maybe I should keep better track of this sort of thing since I'm going to start distinguishing bodies with jewelry anyway. What's your birthstone?"

"Alexandrite," I said. "Some months don't have several to choose from, though, you don't want Briony turning someone away because they're an amethyst and you already have an amethyst."

"Drat. I mean, I could vary it in some other way... and it'd help me memorize your birthdays..."

"Oh, do I get a present?" I asked.

"Maybe. Not that I know what to get you, you took me off before you exhibited any characteristics on your break and then I died a few times before you could even get very far into wherever you were going with that, so."

"I didn't have any plans. My life was incredibly boring."

"How does that happen?" wondered Myron. "I know it does, of course, but - how? If you're bored, can't you... go.... do things?"

"...some people aren't as passionate about something as you are? Or they're not good at it, and so when they try to do it as much as you do music, nothing interesting happens, and it feels like a waste of time, and they get less passionate," I said. "Or - or it's like when you start trying to play the piano, and then you can't, and you stop. All the time, with everything, not just while they're recovering from near death experiences."

He looked at his hands. "Yikes," he said.

"It'd be good if more people were like you. I mean, by themselves," I said. "But we're not. So apart from the whole murder thing I'm glad you and me could work something out."

"Me too," he said. "I mean, I feel like you're getting the raw end of the deal here."

"Funny," I said, "I feel like I'm getting something for nothing."

The cops risked tear gassing the hotel room after the siege hit twenty four hours, and the murderer and his masker didn't fire in the distraction; maybe he'd even lost track of which was which however he'd coded their clothing or posture to mean "this one's the hostage". Or he didn't want to endure the pain of getting shot if he couldn't be sure of his aim getting a kill shot on the first try. Or it had been a bluff to give a sleeper time to decide to don a mask to begin with.

They went in and got the guns away and took off the mask. The murderer's original body got shot. There wasn't a protocol for extrajudicially executing a guy for being a maskmaking murderer, but considering the sleeper wearer possibility, nobody really expected the cop who killed him to be convicted, and if she was it'd probably come down to a suspended sentence or something like that. Call it defense of the innocent, whichever patsy had one of his masks in a drawer somewhere and instructions to put it on.

Briony dug up past screened-out candidates who didn't want to have sex with men even if they were other Myrons, or eat anything spicy, or go without a day off every week, and found some who were still interested if their conditions were met. Myron picked and masked two of those whose limits he felt best able to work with. I memorized their names, just in case it ever came up. He also got another parolee, a violent recidivist drunk who wasn't too put off by MacDougal's fate. MacDougal had lived to be fairly old without suffering a day's infirmity, being Myron Lasko, and it was safe enough now with the murderer mopped up (or at least deprived of the advantage of surprise) - there'd been no sign of him rearing his head anywhere, living on as another body -

We were probably safe. Pretty sure.

"It would have been poetic if you'd masked the maskmaker," I commented.

"Probably cruel and unusual for him," Myron said. "Being me when he hated me so much. And that would have left him alive, left his masks active if he even did have any..." He hovered a spoonful of pesto threateningly over a bowl of ice cream.

"Don't you dare," I said, and we laughed, or I did, or he did.

He bought us all silver rings with our initials engraved into them and put them on each right-hand ring finger.

Myron felt more like himselves in four bodies again. He announced a comeback tour, of sorts - after a hiatus of only weeks it was more of a confirmation tour. He called it "Resurgence", wrote a new song about being murdered several times for it - I would have liked it more if it had been a metaphor, but everything in the song was literal.

He looked at my ring a lot, and I saw his other bodies looking at those rings too. He kept track of us.

He did most of his piano practice with me. Ducked into the bathroom to check in before picking anyone up even though he could now recognize my entire family tree and all my exes.

My sister wrote long emails about throwing my life away, but I wasn't. I was exactly what I'd wanted to be when I grew up since I was twelve.

I was Myron Lasko.

Exaltation

We have a bunk bed, but nobody sleeps in the bottom one, so we use it to hold our school things and toys and books. One of those books is about the names for groups of different kinds of animals. Like prides of lions, and murders of crows. Mother says that our grandpa, her father-in-law, gave it to her as a wedding present; this is the only nice thing we have ever heard her say about getting married, and she didn't throw the book away with all of Father's other things when he finally died. The book is called An Exaltation of Larks, and our body's name is Emily Lark. So we're an Exaltation.

On our tenth birthday it was a school day, so we didn't eat breakfast because they'd give us lunch at the cafeteria, and Mother slept through our alarm since we wrapped it in our old pillowcase, so Clair packed up our things very quietly and we went out to the bus stop. Emmy peeked out for a little while until the other kids from the trailer park got there and then she hid under Dawn's wing, inside the Cave. Clair went inside too to let Zix have a chance to look at his notes for our math test. He studied for the whole bus ride.

At school the homeroom teacher remembered it was our birthday but he was the only one. Palisade was out front to say thank you but she let Zix take over for the test. He didn't think any of the rest of us would do it right. Clair wanted to do some of the school some of the time because she was worried something might happen one day and we wouldn't be together to let Zix do it all forever, but Dawn always said for now it's most important to get good grades so Mother will be happy, not to spread all the learning around. Zix got A's and B's and if he let Clair take a test she got C's. And Emmy did art class where it's not too hard to get a good grade if you do the art, and then she comes inside again and paints the Cave.

Art class on our birthday was scratchboards. Emmy scratched blades of grass all along the bottom and then etched a picture of Palisade flying over it. The art teacher said, "What's that?"

"That's my imaginary friend," said Emmy. This was the safe way to talk about being an Exaltation: whoever was talking was Emily, and the other four were Emily's imaginary friends. Zix thought we'd have to think of something else when we got older but this worked in the fifth grade.

"Oh? What kind of creature is that?"

"Palisade's a griffin."

"Palisade? That's a funny name."

This was a lot of talking for Emmy and she wanted help. Palisade helped: "It's a funny story," she said, smiling. "I couldn't pick her name for the longest time and then I saw that word on the guidance counselor's vocabulary calendar and thought it was the best word. So that's her name now. Isn't that funny?"

The art teacher thought it was very funny and patted us on the shoulder and said the drawing was lovely. But Palisade had to do the rest of the drawing because Emmy didn't want to come out again. She scratched in the feathers and the fur and then Zix did social studies and then we got on the bus home.

We get off at a different stop than we get on. The bus driver probably thinks we have an aunt or something. When we were in the first grade we made a friend who's four years older than we are; her name is Sam. Some people were making fun of her lunch. We hadn't eaten much over the weekend and they were being dumb anyway, so Palisade said it smelled great and looked delicious and all those people were stupid. And then Sam gave us half of it and it was so good, and she thought we were very cute. And now after school if we go to her house to hang out with her, her mom will give us a big plate of curry and rice and stuff. That means we can save the peanut butter for weekends and it takes longer for Mother to be upset about needing to give us grocery money.

We take a different bus from Sam because she's in high school now, so we waited for her before we went up to her house. We decided (mostly Dawn decided) that Clair should be outside for the visit because she was annoyed about being inside all day at school.

Sam waved to us and yelled, "Hi, Emily!" She had her backpack on, which looked really heavy, and some more textbooks that she was carrying.

"That's a lot of books," said Clair when Sam got closer. It was more than she'd had last week.

"Um," said Sam, "yes, it is." She let us into her house. It smelled like spices and steam from the rice cooker but we wouldn't get to eat any until Sam's mom came home from work. Clair sat on the couch in the living room. Sam hung up her backpack, and put her books under it, and sat next to us. "So how was your day?" Sam didn't know it was our birthday. We weren't all sure we liked having a birthday because some of us didn't feel ten. Emmy was ten, and so was Palisade more or less, but Dawn was infinity and Zix counted in space alien years and Clair was Sam's age.

"School was okay. How come you have extra books?"

"One of them is - one I brought from home. And it's big so I had to take some textbooks out to make room," said Sam.

"What's it about?" Clair asked.

"I'm not really sure," Sam said, "I can't get it open. I inherited it, it came in the mail from my grandfather - he died, but like I barely knew him it's all right - but it has a lock and the box had a key but it doesn't actually unlock the book. I was fiddling with it between classes but I still can't get it open."

"How come your grandfather left you a locked book?" blinked Clair.

"I don't know," shrugged Sam. "There was a letter with it but I don't really get it."

"Can I see?" wondered Clair.

"It's not in English."

"Oh."

"I can only mostly read it myself in the first place. You can see the book if you want." Sam hauled it out of her backpack and put it on our lap and Clair touched the cover. It was leather with complicated circular-design carving all over it and no title, front or spine.

The book glowed, bright blinding white.

Clair yelped and stood up and it bounced off our foot and thumped to the floor before Sam could catch it. It stopped glowing, and flopped onto its front on the carpet. Like a normal book.

"I'm sorry," Clair said.

"I saw it glow too," Sam said, which was a relief. "I didn't know it would - I didn't know it would really do that."

Clair blinked.

"The letter said a lot of weird stuff," said Sam, gingerly picking the book up off the floor. "Do, um. Do you want to go on a magical quest."

"...What?" asked Clair.

"Okay look the book really glowed, you saw, right?"

Clair nodded.

"So since it did that maybe the rest of the letter wasn't totally nonsense and maybe I am supposed to send you on a magical quest. But like you're, what, nine -"

"Fo- I'm ten," corrected Clair. In the Cave the rest of us were all trying to figure out how to react. Palisade agreed with Zix that we needed to know more about magical quests and pack some sandwiches first. But Emmy wanted to go, she didn't care if we had to slay dragons or wade through swamps or go hungry every day for a month just as long as we didn't have to go home and fight over who had to be out while Mother was awake. And Dawn was on her side.

"- you're ten," Sam acknowledged, "I'm not going to make you go on a magical quest, but the book glowed for you, so, if you want one, I can maybe give you one?"

"Did your grandfather give people magical quests?" asked Clair.

"I guess! I don't know! I barely knew him! I don't even know why I got the book instead of one of my cousins or something."

"What are the quests for, like, do I get gold or have to save the world or what - if I don't go on the quest is the world going to end -"

"I don't think so?" said Sam uncertainly. "I mean, maybe gold. But I don't think the world is just hanging out being in danger all the time and if I don't give out enough quests it ends. Or that giving out quests puts it in danger. I think the letter would have been more emphatic about that."

Palisade and Zix both had a lot to say, and Emmy was whispering but we could all hear her anyway because she was in our Cave, and Dawn said we had to let Clair handle it because Clair was fronting and we couldn't second-guess her in front of Sam, not when that might distract her.

And Clair said, "I might want to go on a magical quest."

And we all clustered right at the mouth of the Cave, waiting for her to say:

"What do I have to do?"

Sam fumbled in her backpack for an envelope, already ragged on top from being opened. She pulled a letter out of it. Clair peeked but it wasn't even in the English alphabet. Sam looked at it, frowning, then said, "The book is supposed to open for you, if you try to unlock it. And it'll tell you how to do your quest, but once you open the book you have to definitely be going to do it." She muttered to herself in whatever language the letter was written in and then said, "Still pretty sure the world isn't going to end though."

Clair hesitated.

She held out our hand. And Sam gave us a key, and Clair took the book and squinted against the glow and unlocked it.

It fell open in our hands to a page in the middle, full of words in Sam's grandpa's language, with a picture of a comb - like a pretty, jewelry comb, with flowers and precious stones - at the bottom.

Sam looked over our shoulder.

"What does it say? What's my quest?" Clair asked.

"Give me a bit, I only kind of read Malayalam." We waited. Eventually Sam said, "You need more people to go on your quest, this is for five people, it says. I don't think I'm allowed to be one of them when I gave you the quest."

"...When I find four more people," said Clair, "what do we do?"

"Then you can peel the comb out of the book and it will take you to other places and each place you go you need to find a souvenir and when you have five and bring them home, you can turn them and the comb into a magic item which you get to keep," said Sam.

Emmy wanted to go. Zix was concerned about missing school, Palisade thought we'd get ourselves killed, Clair didn't want Sam to know we're an Exaltation because she didn't want to look weird -

Dawn was on Emmy's side and we're all pretty used to doing what Dawn says because she keeps us from all fighting with each other.

Clair let Emmy pick at the edge of the outline of the comb.

"It says you need five people," said Sam.

"We're five people," said Emmy, and the comb came off the page into our hand and turned ivory and gold and all the flowers were made of sparkling gems.

"What do you mean you're -" began Sam, but Emmy pushed the book off our lap and stood up and combed the air in front of us, and it parted in thin stripes like the whole world was only ever made of invisible hair. There was an ocean past the world she'd combed away, and Emmy held our breath and jumped in.

The combed-away part was only open from one direction. It wasn't still there when we landed in the ocean. But Emmy had a good tight grip on the comb and we know how to swim from Father making us learn before he finally died. We were wearing a hoodie from the church charity people and it had a zipper pocket, and Emmy put the comb in there so it wouldn't sink if she let it go, and we bobbed up and down in the sea.

"Sorry," Emmy mumbled. Usually we try not to talk to each other out loud, because it's a bad habit for pretending we're just imaginary friends, but there was nobody around.

And Clair came out front again, because she likes swimming. In the Cave she has a tail and for her the whole place is full of water even though the rest of us walk on the floor and have air. When she's using our body it doesn't start having a tail and she has to kick, but she still likes swimming.

There was nowhere obvious to swim to, though. Clair turned around and around in the water and there was no land and no boats.

Zix started trying to guess how long it would take us to drown, but Clair reminded him that we still had the magic comb and could probably comb our way out of the sea before it got that bad. But Palisade thought that as long as we were already here we should get a souvenir and see if we could finish our quest.

The only stuff around was water, though.

So Clair held our breath and went underwater. She could open our eyes underwater; she was the only one who could do that.

The sea was really clear. Clair spotted a school of little fish, and she could see the bottom, just about, although it was really dark that far down and she couldn't tell what was there. She swam down, but it was farther than it seemed and she needed to go back up for air before she could touch the sand. She took a deeper breath and tried again and went down down down and picked up a little red crab by its back so it couldn't pinch us and surfaced again.

We were not sure if the crab was a souvenir or not. Zix thought it couldn't possibly count. Palisade thought that if it couldn't the book ought to have been clearer. Zix said that we didn't exactly let Sam finish explaining, did we, so how would we know if the instructions were clear.

Clair dove again and put the crab down and started looking on the sea floor for other things.

She got better at holding our breath after she'd been swimming around for a while. She found shells and seaweed and anemones and an eel that swam away from us. We'd landed in a kind of shallow part of the ocean, and she wanted to go somewhere deeper, so Zix had her pay attention to where the sun was and then swim in one direction so we could find the shallow part if we needed to.

That's how we found the city.

It wasn't a land city; we could have seen that from where we started, if it were above the water. It was an underwater city made of rock and coral and glass and whalebone and bits of driftwood, all covered in barnacles like hard white ivy.

And it was full of mermaids, and Clair almost inhaled a lungful of water when she saw them.

She kicked back up to the surface to breathe and then went under and headed straight for them.

It wasn't all "maids". There were mermen and little merkids and old merpeople. They had hair in crayon colors and they swam between the stories of their buildings without any clothes on and even if we weren't all using the same brain we would have been able to guess that Clair wanted to go be one.

The merfolk weren't expecting a visitor, but when we got close enough a couple of them, two mermaids, spotted us and swam in our direction. Up close they weren't just humans with fish tails and funny hair colors; they had peculiar faces, too, with flattish noses and sharp chins and big eyes for seeing in the dimness underwater.

"What are you?" wondered one of the mermaids.

Clair couldn't answer because she was holding our breath.

"It looks like a person," she commented to her friend. "If a sort of deformed one. I wonder why it can't talk." The friend shrugged - sort of; she was missing an arm all the way up to the shoulder. It looked like maybe a shark got her.

Clair blew bubbles.

"Oh, it's a mammal," concluded the mermaid. "Meli, give it a dolphin globe."

Her friend had tattoos on the palm of the hand she had left, and she closed her fist over them and we could see a little red light peeking out from between her fingers. There was a loud humming sound for a moment that didn't seem to be coming from either of the mermaids and then her hand flew open and pointed the red light straight at us. And then there was a sphere of air around our head.

"There. Now can you talk?" asked the first mermaid.

"Y-yes," said Clair.

"What are you?"

"I'm -"

Clair stopped.

We're a ten year old human, sort of. Clair by herself isn't.

And it was a little hard for Clair to tell herself that she had to pretend to be normal to a couple of merpeople in an underwater city one of whom had just obviously cast a spell.

"My name is Clair," Clair said, a little shakily. She hadn't ever said it before.

"I'm Miyana," said the mermaid. "And this is Meli. But what are you?"

Clair swallowed. "I'm a deformed mermaid," she said. "It's very sad. I'm supposed to have a tail like you, and blue hair, and be able to breathe underwater, but I can't. And sometimes I have to look like this for other reasons anyway."

"I don't even know how we'd fix your tail or the breathing," mused Miyana. "I could dye your hair if you want."

We had mixed feelings about that - Palisade doesn't like blue and Zix doesn't like hair. But Dawn said that Clair ought to have blue hair if she wanted it. So Clair nodded in our air bubble, and she swam after Miyana and Meli, struggling to keep up, when they beckoned for us to follow.

A lot of other merfolk looked funny at us while we were going between all the buildings and getting used to breathing with the bubble underwater. Our nose itched but Zix didn't think it was safe to try to scratch it through the spell without asking, and Miyana and Meli weren't slowing down much to let Clair catch up. Eventually they stopped at a little apartment that dangled from a tower like a weird fruit, and swam in as soon as we were there, and let us in.

"Can I scratch my nose with this spell on?" asked Clair.

"Huh, I don't know," said Miyana. "It's mostly for dolphins. Meli?"

"If the bubble breaks I can remake it," Meli said.

Clair gulped, because "don't scratch your nose" seemed like the sort of thing that would be easy to forget while Meli wasn't around, but she scratched our nose and it turned out the bubble didn't break. "Good," said Miyana, "I need to touch your head to dye your hair anyway. What kind of blue?"

Miyana's was green and Meli's dark purple, so those weren't useful points of comparison. "Like - bright, bold, primary color kind of blue?"

"I'll just let you have a look at the dyes -" Miyana had a whole box of them, it turned out. It was dark, even more in the apartment than in the open water, but Clair squinted at the blobs of color until she found one that was the right cobalt shade. And then Miyana cracked it on our head like an egg and started rubbing our head like we've seen haircut ladies at the strip mall do to people who get their hair cut there.

When she was all done she held up a mirror. Our hair was blue. Clair grinned.

"Does that help?" asked Miyana.

Clair nodded. "Um, where am I?" she asked.

"Cahae," said Miyana. (Meli had left sometime during the hair-dying process.) "You didn't know where you were? Well, do you know what you want to do while you're here?"

"I'm not sure," confessed Clair.

"Well, if you want to work for your dinner I could use someone to help me dolphin-wrangling."

Clair didn't even bother to wait for Dawn's okay before she nodded.

So Miyana led us to where she kept all her dolphins. They were penned up in a big cage, with plenty of space to move around and bubbles over their blowholes. Miyana sent Clair in with a netful of fish and a scrub sponge and we had to feed all of the dolphins exactly three fish only after they held still to be scrubbed. Meanwhile Miyana took one dolphin out of the cage and worked on training it to do tricks.

Clair washed all ten dolphins in the cage - maybe if they weren't washed they'd grow barnacles like the buildings? - and fed them, and then went to watch what Miyana was doing.

She was trying to teach the dolphin to swim in patterns she traced with her hands: if she moved her finger around in a circle she wanted the dolphin to swim in a circle, and like that. She had it on a sort of harness, and when it went in a direction it wasn't supposed to, she pulled on it to make it pay attention and showed it again how to go. Eventually it did the circle.

"Are you going to give it a treat?" asked Clair.

"No," said Miyana. "Can't overfeed them."

"But it figured out the trick."

"It gets to go up to the surface when it's done the trick a couple of times in a row."

"...Don't they get to go up sometimes? Dolphins are supposed to jump out of the water now and then. I've seen them do it." On TV, but still.

"Only when they're learning and behaving. They have their bubbles, they don't need to breach and it's inconvenient to take this many up all the time." Miyana circled her hand again. The dolphin swam in a circle.

"You could have the cage higher up."

"And then what would I use to train them?" Miyana unclipped the leash. The dolphin swam up and leapt, leaving just a shadow on the waves and then splashing down a few feet away.

"I - don't know. But I think they're supposed to go out of the water sometimes."

"Is there something wrong with your bubble? It's the same thing they get. They can breathe."

"N...no." The bubble was fine. It wasn't even stuffy.

The dolphin came back down.

"Why did it come back?" Clair asked.

"All its friends are here." She put the dolphin back in the cage and only then let it off its leash. "Every now and then one swims away, but usually they come back."

"Why do you even have all these dolphins?"

"I train some of them for shows. The one you just saw isn't very advanced, but the better trained ones do neat things. Want to see?"

Clair shook our head. "No thanks."

"Well, you've earned supper - you I don't have to worry about overfeeding - you eat fish, right?"

"Yes."

Miyana gave us dinner, which was raw fish pieces wrapped in seaweed and pretty tasty. But none of us could stop thinking about the dolphins stuck in a cage all the time. They could breathe, but they couldn't jump, and dolphins were supposed to be able to jump.

After dinner Miyana didn't have anything in particular for us to do, and it seemed like merpeople just slept floating wherever they happened to find convenient instead of having actual beds, so we didn't need to worry about finding a place to sleep. She just closed her eyes after eating and floated right there in her dining room.

We slept too, but woke up before Miyana did. We let ourselves out of her place and went swimming through the city. We went by the dolphin cage again.

The dolphins were swimming around, mostly. Some of them were sleeping. One of them was pregnant, we'd noticed that when Clair was scrubbing them. As soon as Miyana let one of them go it would jump, and then it would come back to its friends. Zix wondered if the dolphins were healthy if they didn't get as much exercise as they wanted. The cage looked huge, but it wasn't actually, not for that many animals that size.

Emmy was thinking about the baby one about to be born, who wouldn't be allowed to go up to the surface until it was old enough to learn tricks. How long would that take? Palisade thought the dolphins ought to just swim away when they were let go, or yank their leashes away without waiting to be freed, friends or no friends; why wouldn't they, were they stupid, didn't they realize that was why they were kept like that to begin with? Dawn wondered if the way dolphins jumped was like flying -

The cage netting was too fine for dolphins to get through. When the baby one was born it would have to stay with its mother even if it could go between the strings.

But we're little. We could fit.

Clair picked up the scrubber sponge, and squeezed in with the dolphins. She put the sponge in our pocket and pulled out the comb.

"I need another sea," she told the comb. "For the dolphins. It has to have water that's the right temperature, and fish for them to eat, and other dolphins for them to make friends with if this isn't enough dolphins for them to be happy, and it has to have air on top of it for them to jump in. Okay?"

The comb glinted a little in the low light. The sun was setting; we could barely see the dolphins right in front of us.

"Okay," Clair said to the comb, and she combed the sea away.

And there was another sea, greener, daylit, and she chased all the dolphins through into it and then followed after.

The water on the other side was shallow enough to stand in. Clair helped the dolphins who'd wound up kind of stuck get into the deeper water, and then waded onto the shore. There was an enormous cliff face after just a few feet of beach. Clair wondered if there were more mermaids out there, if our bubble would hold. She waded back out and put our face in the water. We got wet. So the bubble didn't stay, oh well. Zix hoped the dolphins remembered how to surface to breathe but figured they probably did and if they didn't the other dolphins in the new ocean would teach them.

Clair pulled around some of our hair to look at, though, and it was still blue. We felt kind of bad about taking Miyana's hair dye and dinner and then stealing all her dolphins. But only kind of.

There really wasn't a lot of beach. Clair walked up and down it, thinking about the mermaids and their city and how they moved their fish tails.

Then she looked up and we saw the griffin and Palisade said it was her turn and Dawn backed her up.

"HEY," Palisade yelled to the griffin. "HEY, CAN I GET A LIFT?"

The griffin looked down at us and swooped lower. Palisade was momentarily scared that they would decide we were bite-sized, decided that if she had to she'd throw sand in their eyes and dive into the sea to get away -

The griffin just landed on the sand, lion hindpaws first, eagle foreclaws next, folded their wings, peered at us. "Where'd you come from?" It sounded like a boy griffin.

"The sea," said Palisade.

"You don't look like a fish."

"I'm not a fish," said Palisade. "I'm a griffin like you but I'm under a curse that makes me look like this. It means I can't fly. Can you take me someplace that won't go underwater at high tide?"

"I suppose. Have you got armor on under all that cloth?" asked the griffin. "You look pretty fragile, my claws might go right through you."

"Maybe I could just sit on your back," suggested Palisade.

"If you really want," he said. So Palisade sat on him, and he took off and she tried not to pull out any of his feathers holding on. "How'd you get cursed?"

"It runs in my family," said Palisade. "What's your name? I'm Palisade."

"Nice name," said the griffin. "I'm Vanguard."

"Nice name," echoed Palisade. "Are there a lot of other griffins here?"

"A whole company," said Vanguard. "You know, I think the captain could find a use for you, you're little and two-legged -"

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Oh, there's a nest of goblins a ways inland. We were going to besiege them but maybe you can help get it over with quicker. You don't have claws hiding in those digits of yours, do you?"

"...No."

"Some curse. Maybe we have something you can use around. Not being able to fly is one thing but if you haven't got claws how can you call yourself a griffin?"

"I, um." Palisade isn't usually at a loss for words.

"Yeah, yeah, curse, but goblins haven't got claws and they manage to bloody us often enough. Not as often as we get them back, though!" Vanguard was coasting lower and we could see a bunch of griffins set up around eight campfires, and a big square tent decorated in brown and gold. Palisade had a look at Vanguard's eagle feet. They did sort of have thumbs.

Vanguard landed. Palisade slipped off his back. It seemed like his question about how she could call herself a griffin was rhetorical, but he still called out, "Found a cursed griffin from the sea, boys and girls! Name of Palisade! Going to take her to the captain for outfitting!"

"Did you find everything else you meant to find?" asked another griffin from her position at the mouth of the tent.

"Yes ma'am," said Vanguard. "I saw Palisade here when I was about to double back. Are Scout and Rampart back yet?"

"Scout is. Go on in," said the guard griffin, and she nodded Vanguard and us into the tent.

Inside there was a table and a map on the table, and little figures of wood on the map, and three more griffins looking severely at these things. It was sort of hard to tell them all apart; they were slightly different colors and one of them had a scar on their eye and they were wearing decorations, but it was still all raptor faces. "Captain Kite!" said Vanguard, and the scar-eyed one looked up. "I found this cursed griffin on the shore. Name of Palisade. She hasn't got any claws."

"Well, I'm sure we can find her something," said the captain. "Assuming she signs on. You didn't forget that step, did you, Vanguard?"

"Uh. I sort of assumed, sir. She says she's a griffin."

"I am," added Palisade. "I just don't have any claws, it might - make me less useful."

Kite stalked around the table to have a closer look at us. "But you do have a significant infiltrative advantage. And I'm sure we have something sharp that isn't attached to a soldier. What do you say, do you want to join the Company Counterscarp?"

Palisade swallowed. But Palisade isn't usually at a loss for words. "I have some other things I have to do, soon. But if you really need the help with the goblins I could do a little temporary work for you if you help me with the claws situation."

Captain Kite nodded at one of the other griffins and said, "Artillery, find her something useful. A selection, ideally." And when Artillery left he continued, "We could use you for a stealth mission. You'd look a lot like a goblin with a suitable disguise and you could bring us intel."

Palisade nodded. "I know all about the undesirability of goblins as neighbors," from storybooks, "but can I ask why this nest and why now?"

"Ah, have a look here," said Kite, gesturing at the map. "See, they've built here, and they're controlling these fields, which they've turned over to agriculture. It's divided up the usual range of the herd animals and if that goes on there will be smaller, less robust herds in more cramped quarters and we'll have a hard time feeding ourselves on an ongoing basis."

"I see," said Palisade, looking over the map. "So you want to know - whether the goblins have any back exits, or anything, so you can surround them?"

"Exactly," said Kite.

"Then what?" asked Palisade.

"Round 'em up, drive them off the cliffs into the sea or shred them depending on how much resistance we get," said Kite.

We weren't sure if griffins used to people with beaks would be able to read our face but Palisade didn't wince even so. "Can't just drive them off to wherever they used to live?" she wondered, looking at our nails. "Seems like it'd be less trouble."

"Nah. Just encourages 'em to come back in greater numbers," said Kite.

"If I go in," said Palisade, "and they notice I'm not a goblin, well, I'm not actually trained for combat missions. What with not having claws."

And we didn't even know anything about these goblins - or these griffins - and didn't especially want to fight in their war, but Palisade wanted her claws very much. If you'd asked her before she would have said wings, but apparently real griffins thought the important thing was claws, so she had to have those.

"I think you'll pass all right if we paint you green," said Captain Kite. "And you scrunch down a little; they're mostly shorter than you. I'd sooner see you with claws anyhow - ah, thank you, Artillery," Kite said as the tent flap was pushed aside and Artillery returned with a box dragged by a hind foot.

Palisade looked into the box. There were knives - black glass ones, two of those, and one that looked like a carved bone. There was a stone spiked hammer and a mace and a couple things we didn't recognize - "What's that?"

"A sai," said Artillery.

"What?" asked another griffin who'd been glaring at the map.

"Not you, Sai."

"What about that one?"

"A chakram."

"What's this?"

"I thought you'd like that one!" Artillery said cheerfully. "That's proper claws, isn't it?"

It was like a metal glove, sort of, we could see how it'd fit over a hand. And it had blades, black glass ones, protruding out from the knuckles, wicked and sharp and just right. Palisade put it on, and gave our arm a swing through the air.

"I like it," she grinned.

"All these were taken off goblins in the first place, so it won't look out of place if you use them," Captain Kite said. "Ready to get painted?"

"Sure am, Captain," said Palisade, more cheerfully than we felt.

Palisade walked where the griffins directed her and helped one named Banner cover all of our skin in green dye. The griffins' claws were pretty nimble but we still didn't want them trying to paint around our eyes like that. We kept the blue hair - if goblins didn't have blue hair, the griffins didn't seem to think it was a big deal.

And then Vanguard gave us a lift to a known goblin burrow entrance, circled over it once to point it out to us from the air, and landed a quarter mile off to let us approach on foot. "You just slip right in there - gosh, you're so little, it keeps surprising me - you just slip right in there, and find out where the other entrances are, and come back and tell us," he said. "Understand?"

"Yes sir," Palisade replied. "Will you wait here so I don't have to walk all the way back? I might get lost."

"Gosh. I didn't think of that part. Uh, I suppose I can, sure," said Vanguard, "as long as you don't take too long. I want to be back in time for the dinner bell."

"Thanks!" said Palisade. "If I'm not back before then, assume I died!"

"Okay!" said Vanguard, and he settled down comfortably on the ground to wait, and Palisade marched to the goblin burrow.

Dawn called a vote. None of us wanted to actually go infiltrate goblins for the griffins. The griffins were griffins, sure, and they'd been nice to us, and we wanted them to have good hunting grounds or whatever it was they'd been explaining about, but roping a ten-year-old into their war was kind of weird.

Palisade ignored the vote. She wanted to go in and look around, even if she changed her mind about reporting back later. And if she didn't report back, Vanguard would figure we were dead, and that would be that. She thought that there might be a good reason the goblins and the griffins were fighting besides just arguing over who got to use the land. Maybe goblins were actually horrible and we'd be more interested in helping once we met some, or maybe they were great and we'd want to warn them about the griffins.

Nobody felt strongly enough about it to actually push Palisade out of the way on her turn, and the rest of us hung back while she tromped toward the burrow and looked inside.

It was dark in there, and we couldn't tell if the goblins went in by sliding - it was at about the right angle to be a slide - or by climbing backward, or by climbing forward, or if there were actually stairs a few feet down into the hole. Palisade eventually chose to attempt to slide, and scooted down the dirt bottom of the tunnel a bit, and before she'd made up her mind to flip over and crawl backward she'd tumbled out into a bigger cavern.

It was dim but not fully dark here; it was lit by mushrooms on the cavern walls that glowed pale green. Palisade held still, standing at the bottom of the burrow entrance, until our eyes adjusted; and then she picked a direction and started walking.

We didn't see any goblins. We didn't hear any goblins. It looked like goblins had lived here, before, we found a trash pile and a lot of tunnels lined with glowing mushrooms and little caves off to the sides of the tunnels with weird goblin furniture in them made of bones and wood and rocks, but there weren't any goblins, anywhere. We didn't have a watch, we just had to guess how long it had been, but by the time we were really hungry and our feet were starting to hurt from walking so much and Zix wasn't sure he'd be able to find our exit again unless we turned around right away, we still hadn't run into one single goblin, not even a dead one.

We made our way back to the bottom of the tunnel hole and on our way there we noticed a room we hadn't checked before. We were pretty sure by now that there were no goblins in this entire tunnel system, but just in case, we peeked, and we found a map, there. It was too hard to read in the dark - we could see the walls and the floor and our own feet, but not read. Palisade took the map and rolled it up and tucked it under our arm, and hauled it up the cave burrow, even though it made it a lot harder to crawl up. It wouldn't fit in our pocket even if the sponge wasn't taking up half the space in it.

Vanguard was still waiting, though he'd gotten up and started pacing back and forth while we'd been looking. "Palisade! Hello!" he said, when we got within shouting distance. "How'd it go? You don't look like you're bleeding, that's good!"

"I'm fine!" said Palisade. "But the thing is, there weren't any goblins home. Do you think they might all be out farming or something right now?"

"I wouldn't think so," mused Vanguard. "Even if a lot of them were, there'd probably be baby goblins they'd have to leave behind, right? And I didn't see any on their farms when we were flying, did you?"

"I think maybe you can see better than I can with my curse and all," Palisade said. "So you'd know better than I would. Anyway, I found this," she waved the map, "I wanna get a better look at it in the light -" And she unrolled it.

Vanguard didn't seem very interested. "I didn't know goblins could write," he remarked. "Fancy that."

The goblins hadn't written; they'd just drawn. It was a map of the land we were standing on, and then a bunch of lines around the coast, like it was a lot of different shapes all at the same time.

Palisade showed the map to Vanguard. "Do you understand this?" she asked him.

He peered at it. "Looks kind of like a map, except it's got too many lines for the shore," he said.

"Yeah, that's what I thought too. Does that mean something?"

"I didn't even know goblins had maps!" Vanguard said. "I don't know what it'd mean if those lines were on one of ours, either. Let's go back and show the captain."

So Palisade climbed on his back and he flew us back to the camp. Captain Kite took a minute to come out and see us and take Palisade's report - she figured there was no harm in delivering it, since there were no goblins to surround - and then she showed him the map.

It was pretty hard to tell when a griffin was frowning, but we thought Kite was, as he looked seriously at the map. "Well," he says. "This might be why they've all run off, mightn't it?"

"Oh?" said Palisade.

"Yes, see, this looks a bit like they think the peninsula's going to collapse," he said, "from an earthquake or something. Isn't that superstitious? You can't predict earthquakes."

"Not even if you live underground? And are goblins?" asked Palisade.

"Of course not. But that means they won't give us any trouble, so that's all to the good. Good recon work, Palisade. You're sure you don't want to stay on with the company? There might be more work for a little biped, sooner or later."

"No, but thanks very much," said Palisade. "Can I keep the claws? I really like them."

"Of course," said Captain Kite. "All yours, since I assume you don't have a local bank account."

Griffins with bank accounts was a very odd idea for all of us. "That's right," said Palisade cheerfully anyway. "Thanks a bunch, Captain."

And she walked us away from the camp and pulled out the comb.

The next world wasn't a world, it was a building. A metal and plastic building that smelled stale and strange, like the inside of a schoolbus, or a hospital. There were metal doors, all along the corridor on both sides, and the hall curved in front of and behind us so we couldn't see where it led without walking down it.

We walked, Emmy in front because we didn't know whose turn it was yet without knowing where we were and it might be her. Emmy took slow careful steps down the hallway, running our fingertips along the wall, and listened for anything that might make a sound. There was a low humming noise like an engine, and a draft like the whole place was air conditioned. We didn't see any windows or signs, unless the designs all around the archways of the doors were signs, which they could be. But everyone we'd met could talk to us so far. So they might have just been for pretty.

Eventually we heard footsteps coming from the other direction. Emmy hid in the Cave and Palisade came back out - it wasn't going to be her turn twice, we were sure, because that didn't seem fair or a good way to make a quest for five people, but she didn't mind being in front and she was better at pretending she knew what she was doing than Clair or Zix. Palisade folded our hands behind our back and marched right down the middle of the hallway, curving left along with it, till we met the person who owned the footsteps.

We hadn't noticed by listening that the footsteps were strange, but we saw right away: the person had three feet. We were pretty sure it was a person because it was wearing clothes, snug ones in bright red with stripes, over itself. It had one arm, with a hand, and looked a bit like maybe it was related to things with four legs but instead of turning two legs into hands it had only done one. It was startled to see us. Well, we thought it was startled; it took a step back. It was even harder to tell what its face was doing than with the griffins; it had four eyes and no mouth, at least not on its face, unless one of the nostrils was secretly a mouth.

It managed to talk anyway, though - "How did you get aboard?"

"How do you think?" said Palisade, but Zix was wondering if actually this was his turn. He didn't look like this species of alien, though, Zix was more human-shaped and blue and had antenna things on his head. So he didn't push Palisade out of the way.

"Well, you're not authorized to be here, anyway," said the alien, and it tugged a piece of fringe that was dangling from its sleeve, and the lights in the corridor all went bright white - they'd been teal before - and an alarm that sounded like an ice cream truck crossed with a crow cawing started up.

Palisade turned around and ran.

The alien chased us, but it wasn't very fast; it walked with a glump-glump-glump noise and didn't seem to be able to go any faster than that. We went around the curve and soon couldn't see it if Palisade looked behind us. She kept running, past doors and doors and doors, trying to shut out the sound of the alarm and squinting our eyes against the bright light.

The curve came to a dead end, but there was a ladder. She threw us against it and climbed up, guessing that it would be harder for a one-armed alien to go up than it was for us. She skipped the first landing, and ducked into the hallway that branched off the second instead, and jogged down the curve of that one, checking in our pocket for the sponge and the claws. There were two doors, one on either side, spaced farther apart than in the first hallway, and then there was an open doorway without any door in it - just a shiny transparent wall of something-ness. She stopped.

Zix shoved her out of the way, because behind the wall was his kind of alien.

The alien in the cell was about our height and blue and smooth and had two antennae coming out of his head, from a few inches above where eyebrows would be if he had any. He was wearing a grey uniform, with red and brown triangles around all the hems, and a seven pointed star holding it closed at his throat. He was startled to see us. We still had blue hair and we were painted green and our clothes were a mess from having swum in the ocean and climbed around a goblin burrow in the dark. Clair was very annoyed about how gross we must have looked, but the alien didn't mention anything about that, he just said, "What are you?"

"I'm one of you," Zix said, "only I've been having a very strange time of it recently."

"Are you here to break me out?" asked the alien.

"Yes," said Zix, barely hesitating. This wasn't, he thought, like not wanting to get between the griffins and the goblins; this was someone who was being kept prisoner, and wanted to escape, not a battle. "Do you know how this is opened?"

"They've been using the keypad over there," the alien said. "I can't see it from inside, but the tones sound like -" And he crooned a few notes.

Zix tried numbers until he found the ones that made those notes, made a guess and pressed the big red button to clear out the ones he'd pushed, and put in the ones that made that tune. The force field disappeared, leaving clear air between us and the alien.

"What's your name?" the alien asked, rushing out and running down the corridor. Zix followed him.

"Zix. Yours?"

"Kozoq. It's an honor to meet you, Zix."

"You know the way out?"

"The escape pods should be this way, and we can retune the distress signal to our frequencies. Someone'll pick us up."

Kozoq found the bay of escape pods where he expected them, and they weren't hard to open. The alarm was still squawking at us but when we closed the pod it was muffled and when Zix pulled the cord that sent us shooting away from the ship into space it silenced.

The pod was cramped; there was room for both of us, but we couldn't sit down. We weren't exactly standing, since it didn't have gravity like the ship did; we floated, face to face with a Zix-sort-of-person our size. Zix was so excited and wasn't sure how to ask any of his questions - how could he ask what the species was called, how they lived, shouldn't he already know? How could he ask what the planet was like, how long its years and what color its sky, shouldn't he have grown up there? Zix didn't know anything he ought to have known about what kind of person he was and it was embarrassing. He was quiet.

Kozoq said, "How did you find me?"

"I didn't know you were there," Zix said. "I was on the ship on an unrelated mission." Zix liked to watch a lot of TV with spaceships in it that wasn't really for kids and he could talk like it sometimes. He looked up the words afterwards if we didn't know them already. "But rescuing you took precedence."

"Well, you have my eternal gratitude," replied Kozoq. "And I'll make sure you have the Assembly's too, when we reach Hixaz. There'll be a medal in it for you, I'm sure, and a promotion. And a stay in the medbay to fix whatever happened to your antennae and your skin and..." There were too many other things to list; our body had too many fingers for Zix, and hair, and the ears were wrong, and the nose was wrong, and the teeth were wrong, and now that he was looking at a real live version of a... Hixazian?... instead of just imagining himself a shape in the mirror in the Cave, he could see there were a lot of other things wrong, too, the shape of our head and the color of our eyes and the texture of our lips and the angles of our bones. We knew Zix was a boy, but weren't sure whether that meant anything specific for Hixazians that we didn't have, either. "And whatever else has been troubling you," Kozoq finished.

"Thank you," said Zix.

Kozoq looked offended. "It's only what you're entitled to for performing a rescue on an enemy ship!"

"- I, uh," said Zix. "Sorry."

This seemed to make it worse. "I owe you my life, you don't have to apologize to me."

Zix clammed up. Clearly there were subtleties of politeness that he had not been exposed to growing up on Earth.

"May I ask you something?" Kozoq said.

"Of course," said Zix, trying to sound more confident than he felt.

"How did whatever happened to you happen? You look like you've spent a year in a bioengineering vat, or worse, but you're running missions instead of recuperating back home? Are you even a soldier?"

"I'm not," Zix admitted. "I'm just a person. I haven't been to Hixaz in - in ten years." He knew the years were wrong, he didn't know how long exactly Hixazian years were, but he didn't know if they were longer or shorter, he'd always felt his age was just not exactly the body's age without knowing how so. Still, since he could be too high or too low with that number it seemed like a reasonable estimate, not like a lie, right? "I miss it very much."

"Ten years? Then where have you been?" asked Kozoq. "You don't look that old - but of course you've been in a vat, I apologize -"

"I've been on a different planet masquerading as one of the locals and learning things in their schools," Zix said. "It's been very difficult and lonely and I'm not sure I'll fit in very well back home."

This didn't seem to land well with Kozoq either. "Hopefully you have - family members to whom you can explain such emotional matters," he said stiffly.

Zix didn't say anything. Half the things he said seemed to make it worse. He wasn't sure if we counted as family members or something else, in general or according to whatever rule of manners Kozoq was using.

"At any rate, I think we're clear enough of the enemy ship to start tuning the distress signal now," Kozoq said briskly, and he squirmed around us in the tight space of the escape pod to start working on that. Zix watched over his shoulder, trying not to ask more questions and upset Kozoq further by not knowing enough already, although he was so curious he was burning up with it. Kozoq fiddled with dials and buttons and watched lights and listened to static, and finally was satisfied with his work and closed the panel.

We waited in the escape pod together for more than an hour, and Zix couldn't think of anything to say that he was sure was all right, so we did it silently, floating, staring at each other. And then finally a Hixazian ship picked up the distress signal, and tractor-beamed us into their fighter bay, and let us out of the pod.

All the Hixazians were around our height, some a little shorter, some a little taller. They were all blue and smooth and antennae'd and all wearing uniforms like Kozoq's. They were confused by our hair and our green paint and our ratty hoodie and jeans and sneakers and offered us one of their uniforms.

The uniforms didn't have pockets for the comb and sponge and claws, so Zix had to turn them down. They seemed to find that very upsetting, and apologized a lot for offering, and muttered to each other that they should have known better than to suggest it, and it was so embarrassing Zix almost tried to pull someone else front, Palisade maybe, but it was his turn, we knew that now.

"Maybe I could just change into the uniform pants," Zix tried, because we were using our hoodie pocket and not our jeans pockets, but the Hixazian who'd offered the uniform said no, it had to be a whole uniform or nothing, and did he mention he was sorry to have presumed upon Zix's choice of outfit, of course that was wholly his discretion, he didn't need to placate them with partial acceptances if the offer was not to his liking.

Zix sat awkwardly on the command deck in an observation chair near a display we couldn't understand, not saying anything because he had no idea what was safe to say. The ship flew toward Hixaz, which rose huge and blue and beautiful in the viewscreen. It had prettily crenellated continents and white clouds and red deserts and wide seas and a band of colorful rings around it. Zix was disappointed that it didn't look familiar at all.

We landed in a huge spaceport, all shiny silver and glossy black and gleaming white, like someone scrubbed and polished every inch of it twice a day. The Hixazian uniform shoes didn't seem to leave footprints; Zix cringed as he followed Kozoq out of the ship onto the clean floor and failed not to mark it up.

There were offices, each one with the side toward the concourse open, even the ones that were six stories up, gridding a whole wall. Some were at ground level, some opened to elevated, guardrailed paths you could reach on antigravity platforms. Kozoq showed Zix to an elevator and went up to the third story and brought us to an office with more Hixazians, whose uniform stars only had three points. They were bustling around with computers and computery sorts of devices that weren't exactly computers; everything beeped and sometimes a machine voice spoke and said a number or a name. Zix squinted under the bright light while Kozoq explained to a person behind a desk that he'd been rescued from an enemy ship and how, and told Zix to explain where he'd come from.

Zix repeated his simplified story about having been impersonating another species on their world and attending school there, and the person behind the desk typed it up and didn't ask too many questions, and said we could have a hotel room on the Assembly's dime and a meeting with the Assembly the following morning. Then he gave us directions to the subway station so we could get to our hotel. Zix had to ask him to repeat the directions and explain all about how to get on the subway until we were pretty sure we could remember everything between us.

We got lost, and had to ask directions again, which seemed to really upset the Hixazian we asked, but he told us how to get back on our route anyway. Eventually we were on the right subway platform and got on the wrong train and had to go back the other way to get on the right one, and we missed our stop and just walked to the hotel instead of turning around on the subway again. The streets were wide and full of Hixazians driving fast on hover bikes, antennae sticking out of their helmets.

At the hotel they took Zix's name and then said they'd been expecting him and the person behind the reception desk made to shake our hand, but instead of shaking it, he stabbed us in the skin between our thumb and forefinger with a little device, and injected us with a tiny glowing red thing. "That's your temporary ident chip!" he said, like he hadn't just stabbed us. "You can have it replaced with a permanent one when you see the Assembly. In the meantime, that will get you to your apartment and you can order room service with it."

"Ow!" exclaimed Zix, since he had just stabbed us. "Why didn't you warn me first?"

"Warn you?" blinked the receptionist. "About - room service?"

"About sticking that chip in my hand!" Zix shouted. "That hurt!"

"I - sir, please calm down, this is a public place," said the receptionist.

"That's not the problem here!" said Zix. "The problem is that you took my hand and stabbed something into it without asking!"

"That's how ident chips work," said the receptionist. "If you're having a bad reaction to the sensation that seems like your own problem, it's really none of my business how -"

"You're the one who did it!" said Zix.

"Sir, please, if you're having an emotional problem perhaps you could go to your room," said the receptionist through gritted teeth.

"Stop calling me sir and stop acting like you ought to make sense to me, I'm - I'm ten!"

"I don't see what your advanced age has to do with anything."

"It's not an advanced age, I mean ten Earth years -"

"Sir -"

Zix stomped toward the elevator and waved our stinging hand around until it took us toward the room. It occurred to us that we hadn't seen any kids, anywhere, even when we'd left the spaceport all full of uniformed soldiers. There had to be kids, they had to come from somewhere, Zix was a kid so obviously they didn't start out grown up, but they were all hidden away somehow, maybe until they learned all the stupid rules this planet had about when to apologize and how to act when people stabbed you. And then they could pop out and behave politely, Hixaz style, without ever having to have an emotion in public.

Palisade and Emmy wanted to comb to a new world right away. Clair pointed out that we didn't know if the next world would have food or not, and the griffins hadn't fed us. Zix ordered room service and didn't thank the person who brought it to our room and ate blue jelly spheres that tasted like fish and red bread that tasted like juice until we were full, and then combed away the air in the hotel room. The Assembly could just miss out on getting to meet him.

The next world was dim with fog, and the air felt soft and damp and warm like the breeze from a dryer vent. The ground squashed under our feet.

We saw an angel lying on the softness, far enough away that we couldn't see if it was a boy angel (if there was such a thing) or a girl one, and we knew it was Dawn's turn.

Dawn doesn't like to come out front, though, she belongs in the Cave, looking after the rest of us. So Emmy went out front for her, because she hadn't had a turn yet. If it turned out Dawn needed to do it she could try, but maybe Dawn could have her turn from inside the Cave and the rest of us could handle being out front.

Emmy took slow, careful steps toward the angel. As we got closer we could see more detail: brown hair, golden-brown skin, tawny wings. It was a girl angel, turned out, and she was draped in white cloth that seemed almost more like a blanket than like clothes; she looked asleep, long eyelashes closed against her cheeks. Emmy walked right up to where the angel's feet were crossed on the ground and then she blinked up at us.

"Hello," the angel yawned.

"Hi," Emmy whispered.

"You look like you've had a very long day," said the angel.

"Yes," said Emmy, "more than a day, even," since we'd slept overnight in the ocean with the mermaids.

"Would you like to lie down and get some rest? There are spare blankets, just around the corner." We hadn't been able to make out any corners before but now that we were closer to the angel we could see that there was furniture made of the same soft stuff as the ground - shelves, and you could call what she was lying on a mattress if you were generous with the word. And the substance of the ground reached up into the vague sky or ceiling in the occasional column or wall; the space was too open to be a burrow like the goblins and too irregular to be a ship like the aliens', it was more like a soft humid landscape with rock formations that happened to be squashy.

Emmy went around the corner, Dawn as close to coming out of the Cave as she ever got. Dawn told Emmy which blanket to choose, a pink one with square waffly texture to it, and Emmy got it down for her and brought it back to the angel.

"What's your name?" Emmy whispered, when Dawn wanted to know. It seemed polite to whisper to someone who'd just woken.

"Ciel," yawned the angel.

"I'm Dawn," said Emmy; she wasn't, but she was speaking for Dawn, so that was all right.

"Make yourself comfortable, Dawn." And Ciel closed her eyes again.

Emmy lay down and got under the pink waffly blanket. She was a little restless, rolling over and eventually getting up to see if there were pillows. There were; Dawn picked one of those too and Emmy got back onto the mattress-landscape-feature. But we still couldn't get comfortable. We weren't really tired. We didn't have much sense of time, but we thought it was maybe midafternoon, or just after dinner, not bedtime yet.

Emmy rolled onto our back and looked up. There was nothing to see. It was just fog and vague color all the way up. Could the angels fly up into that? Was it solid at ceiling height? We didn't know. Dawn thought it had to be possible to fly, because angels had wings, didn't they, but Ciel wasn't flying and didn't look like she'd be inclined, she was just lying on the ground, too delicate to snore but obviously asleep again despite all our tossing and turning.

Dawn and Emmy conferred a little. Dawn wanted to wait and see if we fell asleep, or if Ciel woke up. The rest of us wanted to wander, but it was Dawn's turn.

We waited.

Eventually even Dawn didn't think we were going to manage to take a nap and admitted we had no idea how long Ciel was going to be asleep. Emmy got up and wove through the pillars and rises of the angelworldly land; our feet didn't make a sound against the squashy surface.

We heard the next angel before we saw her. Harp music, chords plucked out slowly and dreamily, just at the edge of earshot. Emmy almost ran toward it, but it was Dawn's turn and she was helping Dawn, and Dawn wanted to walk, slowly, it seemed to her the way the place was formed was for walking and not running. Well, it was ideally for flying, but we didn't have wings. It was starting to look like we were not going to come out of our quest with any more exciting add-ons than blue hair, and that we could have gotten if we'd asked Sam to get us dye for our birthday, if we'd told her when our birthday was.

The harpist came into view. She was a dark angel with black wings and black skin and black hair, and she smiled at us when we approached. She strummed another chord and then put her hands flat on the strings so they stopped. "Hello there."

"Hello," Emmy said, politely and softly just like Dawn asked her to. "I'm Dawn."

"It's nice to meet you, Dawn. Have a seat." Some of the squashiness was shaped so you could sit on it, sort of bench-y, and we sat next to the angel on her bench. "I'm Alto."

Emmy almost said "hi Alto" even though she'd already said hello, but Dawn reminded her not to repeat ourselves. "Your music is pretty," Emmy said instead.

"Why, thank you. Would you like to try?"

Dawn wanted to. Emmy didn't; Clair came out to do it for us, and reached for the harp strings, and strummed. It didn't sound as good when we did it.

"That's not bad for a first try. You have as long as you need to get better," said Alto.

"I'm not going to stay here that long," said Clair, which was not how Dawn had wanted to put it, "but maybe I can get lessons someday at home or something," which was.

"Here," said Alto, getting up and opening a lid in a different part of the bench, "I think I have a small lap harp, somewhere." She rummaged, taking ages to go through every thing carefully and slowly, till she found a wooden trapezoid with strings and offered it to Clair.

Clair took it and laid it on our lap and strummed that, too. It sounded like notes, but not especially good ones, still. Alto took our hand and showed us how to position our fingers. Dawn was leaning further and further out of the Cave while Clair learned to play a scale.

Alto had only been teaching us for about ten minutes when she yawned and said she was going to take a nap. "But we've barely started," Clair said on Dawn's behalf.

"Oh, Dawn, darling, I understand, but I've been up for hours. It's about time I got some sleep. You can nap too and then the time will just fly by," said Alto.

"...Maybe I'll go explore some more and come back later when you're awake," said Clair. Dawn had wanted to try to nap again, to be polite, but we'd already done that, not very long ago, and Clair knew we weren't tired and she wasn't going to front for Dawn if Dawn made her do things that pointless. Dawn didn't want to try to nap more than she wanted to stay in the Cave.

"You look pretty tired to me," said Alto.

"I'm not really," said Clair. "I've just had a lot going on."

"Isn't that a good reason to take a break?"

"Maybe later."

"You might not be able to find your way back here if you wander off."

"I don't have to go far," said Clair, beginning to be annoyed. It was one thing for people to worry about us getting lost when we were back on Earth and could go six stops too far on the bus and get turned around because the streets and avenues were both numbered and there were diagonal roads named differently, but Alto's place with the harp wasn't even someplace we really had to be able to come back to. "I'm not - overexerting myself, or anything."

"It looks like it to me," said Alto, and really, it wasn't any of her business.

Clair stood there for a moment, waiting for Dawn to make up her mind, and Dawn finally decided that we could move on and look for a more alert angel, even if the harp was lovely. Clair set the lap harp down and tromped off and Alto didn't even try to stop us.

We walked until our ankles hurt from taking odd steps on the spongy ground; Clair yielded to Emmy again, then to Palisade, as the world proved more and more extensively that it was very boring. We found another angel, napping, and figured she wouldn't mind if we sat down with her and waited for our feet to feel better, based on the other two angels we'd met.

This was still pretty boring, though, and eventually we started looking through this angel's stuff. She had pillows and blankets and a glockenspiel, which Emmy played for a bit, quietly going up and down the scale so she wouldn't wake the angel. Then she found a box of halos, in all kinds of colors, sparkly silver ones and bright gold ones and pearly white ones and one in flickering electric pink and one in sunny orange and one that shifted while we watched between blue and green and butter-yellow.

The halos were gorgeous; Emmy stuck both hands in the box up to her elbows looking through them. Dawn wanted to know what colors halos could be. It seemed to her that maybe her souvenir was supposed to be a halo; at first it had looked like maybe the harp, but we could get a harp on Earth if we ever had money. Of course, Clair's souvenir had been a sponge and there were sponges on Earth too. Still, Dawn wanted a halo.

We found one that looked like it was made of amber, a smooth translucent ring, glowing gently with shifting brightness like a lava lamp. Emmy tried balancing it over our head. It didn't stick; it just fell like anything else would, back into the box, and it took a bit to untangle it from one that looked like mother-of-pearl and a normal golden one. She tried again; maybe it had to be an exact distance or angle. It still didn't work, and rolled away a few feet and Emmy had to chase it.

Maybe Dawn had to wear it. Emmy wasn't an angel, Dawn was.

Dawn was already as far out of the Cave as she could get. If she leaned any farther she'd be fronting.

Emmy tried again. The halo fell and rolled up to the angel and clonked her on the nose.

Emmy fled into the Cave and pushed Clair forward again as the angel opened her eyes.

"Hello?" she said. "Oh, hello. Who are you?"

"Dawn," said Clair, scooping up the halo Dawn had picked.

"I'm Muriel. Do you need a halo? I have a lot."

"Yes," Clair said, "but I don't know how to make it fit."

"They're all the same size." Muriel yawned.

"I mean, how to make it float. It won't float."

"Let me try," said Muriel, sitting up. She held out her hand and Clair gave her the amber halo and bowed our head.

Muriel couldn't make it stick either. "Well," she said, "these do only work for angels."

"I'm an angel," Clair lied.

"Then I don't know why it wouldn't be sticking. Where are your wings?"

"Hidden."

"Hidden?"

"It's complicated."

"I won't be able to fix the halo if I don't know what the matter is."

We hadn't explained to anyone - we'd told Sam, kind of, before we went on the quest, but hadn't explained - and so far most of us did not have a very high opinion of angels, but that seemed racist when we thought about it, and Muriel had been nice. And it might be important for Dawn to get her halo. "I'm sharing this body."

"Well, I don't see how that would interfere, so long as it's your turn, right now..."

"It's my turn, but I'm not the one talking to - the angel in here isn't the one talking to you," Clair said, switching from directly relaying what Dawn told her to paraphrasing it. "She doesn't come out."

"Oh, well, maybe a halo won't work for her then," said Muriel. "That's all right, dears, you don't really need one."

"But would it work if she came out?" Clair asked for Dawn.

"Probably, I suppose, but that's no reason to go outside your comfort zone, just for a halo. They're only for looking nice, nothing important."

"But if she wanted one badly, and came out, for just a second, would it stick after that?"

"I'd think so, but again I -"

Clair took the halo from her hands and held it over our head, and Dawn leaned out, just for a moment, long enough to drop it into place, feeling clumsy with hands she'd never used and unsteady on our feet, but she didn't fall and she didn't knock the halo out of place. It hovered. Dawn fled back into the Cave and Clair returned.

"There was no call for that," said Muriel. "That must have been exhausting."

"Just scary," said Clair. "It's okay."

"I suppose you know your own mind," Muriel said.

"Yes. We do." She liked saying we, instead of pretending to be Emily and not Exaltation.

Muriel yawned. "I'm going to go back to sleep, if you don't need anything else."

"We don't. Thank you."

And Muriel closed her eyes, and Emmy went out front again.

She was the only one left.

She took the halo off, from where it was hovering over our head - and put it back to make sure it would stick this time - and it did.

Emmy took the halo off a second time and put it in our pocket, with the comb and the claws and the sponge, and touched our fingertip to the ident chip in our hand and its low red glow, and she took the comb, and combed our way out of the angel world.

We landed in the art room.

The art room back home, the one on Earth, in our town at our school. The one we saw all the time. Emmy's drawing of Palisade was on the wall.

Did Emmy not get a turn? This was back where we'd started, back in our own world. Were we supposed to walk home from here, or maybe back to Sam's? Maybe we could call Sam on a school phone. We looked at the clock; it was eight p.m.

Didn't Emmy get a turn?

Emmy looked around the art room. She'd always wanted to be here alone, surrounded by all the paint and clay and paper she could ever want with nobody portioning it out, making sure she did the assignment, sending her on to the next class that she'd tuck away to let Zix handle when her time was up.

If Emmy didn't get a proper turn, at least she got to be in the art room at eight p.m., all by ourselves.

She got out a big sheet of paper, the ones that only ever came out for group projects like everybody putting a handprint on a poster or something like that. She got out paint and organized it all over an entire table she'd usually have to share with three other people. She got out brushes in every size, and a palette and a palette knife, and six cups of water so she wouldn't have to put a red paintbrush in blue paint water till it was all brown-grey.

She mixed colors and she painted, until she had all the pink and dove-brown and silver and yellow of the pale angel world, feet and wingtips peeking out from behind a column, a harp suggested behind the fog without trying to paint it quite clear. No rush, no grownups, nothing but paint and Emmy. She pinned it up to dry, standing on a table to reach the clotheslines across the art room ceiling. She got another piece of paper.

By the time she'd finished painting Hixaz, distant and blue-green-white-red, escape-pod plastic and metal around the corners of the picture and stars speckled in the sky, we were getting hungry. She hung up the painting next to the one of angel world, opened the door to the hallway, let us into the teacher's lounge - it was locked, but the kind of lock where you can unlock it from the other side with a screwdriver, and one of the flat paintbrushes worked okay. There was a fridge in there, and some snacks. She ate chips and ice cream and a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and a microwave burrito. And she went back to the art room.

She painted a third sheet of paper with the griffins' peninsula, seen from the air, bright-bannered camp tents and woods and hills and shore and fields, blurry with distance and the motion of flight, griffins in formation on the ground, feathers visible at the edge of the picture. She painted a fourth with the sea, coral tower city lit with wave-filtered sun, free dolphins swimming away in the background, flat-faced mermaids with their bold hair and shimmering scales swimming from place to place.

She got out a fifth sheet of paper and hesitated, and then she did a still life of everything she'd gotten out to paint with, brushes and cups, mimicking the colors on the palette with tiny dabs of themselves, painting our own hand where it rested in the table.

She hung up her paintings and made sure they were secure and went to the water fountain and drank a lot of water and went to the bathroom.

And then she went to the front office. It was locked, and not the kind that was easy to open. Emmy frowned at it, and took out the comb. She didn't comb a hole to a new world with it, but she tried fitting it between the door and the frame, and it made a swishing sound and the door unlatched so she could pull it open.

There was a phone in there, and she dialed Sam's number.

It rung until it ran out of rings, and stopped. Emmy looked at the clock; it was almost three in the morning. We were tired, our eyes drooped, but didn't feel in the least tempted to go to the nurse's office and lie down and sleep. Emmy called Sam again.

Sam's mom picked up, groggy. "It's three in the fucking morning," she said, dancing syllable to syllable in her precise accent.

"It's Emily," said Emmy. "I'm at school."

"It's three in the - in the morning," Sam's mom repeated, but slower.

"I'm stuck. Can you come get me?"

"Why are you at school at three in the morning?" said Sam's mom.

"It's complicated."

"Where's your mother?"

"I don't know." Probably in the trailer but only probably, we wouldn't know if she'd gone somewhere else, we hadn't seen her.

"I... can... can you get out of the building?"

"Probably." The comb would do it, even if nothing else would.

"I can be there in - f- fudge - I can be there in ten minutes. Are you, are you hungry, are you - injured -"

"I'm not hurt. I found some food in here," said Emmy. She didn't think we'd be in trouble over taking it while stranded mysteriously at school but she wasn't sure, and none of the rest of us were either.

"Why didn't you call me sooner?"

"I only just now got the office door open."

"You poor thing. Do you need anything, should I bring anything -"

"I don't think so..." Emmy looked down at us. "Do you still have any of Sam's clothes from when she was my size?"

"It'll slow me down digging them out - how bad is it -"

"I'm just kinda dirty. I don't think I'll mess up your car."

"Emily, what happened?" said Sam's mom.

"It's a long story."

"You're not going to be able to deflect everyone forever, Emily."

"I'll tell Sam everything tomorrow morning. Okay?"

"...Okay. I'm going to hang up and get in the car."

"Thank you."

"Of course, Emily, I'm glad you know you can call me if you need help."

She hung up. So did Emmy. We waited out front of the school for the car to pull up. Emmy had taken a paintbrush, a nice one without any dings or stains, from the art room, and put it in our pocket with the sponge and the claws and the halo. That was her souvenir, and it was sort of stealing but there were a lot of paintbrushes in there. We put our hands in the pocket too, so the ident chip could be with the other souvenirs. We hoped we'd done it right - that we didn't need something nicer and more important than a sponge, something we could move around instead of an ident chip stuck in our hand. That we hadn't just done Emmy's turn completely wrong and she was supposed to have done something besides steal a paintbrush from the art room we were in for school all the time anyway.

We'd have to ask Sam in the morning. We were pretty sure it was going to be Saturday in the morning, so we would only have missed one day of school, and Sam wouldn't have to miss any if she had to talk to us all day about quest stuff.

Sam's mom pulled up in her little yellow car, barely recognizable in the dark, and Emmy got in the back seat and buckled the seat belt and fell asleep on the way to Sam's house.

We woke up on the couch in Sam's house, under a faded blue blanket with our head on a lumpy pillow. It took us a second to remember where we were, and why, and Palisade sat us up when we heard sounds coming from the kitchen. Palisade went and looked; it was Sam, making eggs. "Hi, Emily," Sam said, when she saw us. We were still wearing yesterday's clothes; she added, "Mom had to go to work but she left some of my old clothes for you that we never got around to giving to Goodwill, in the bathroom. And told me to ask you about your hair, but that can wait." Palisade looked at our hands; the green paint from worlds ago when she'd been disguised as a goblin was mostly faded and flaked off.

"Thanks," said Palisade, and we went to change into Sam's old slacks and blouse, and came out again and Sam gave us curry powder eggs and a cup of milk and sat down across from us.

"Mom said you told her you'd tell me what happened?" Sam said.

"Uh," said Palisade, hastily swallowing a mouthful of eggs, "yeah. You sent me on a quest, remember?" We were suddenly worried - mostly Zix was worried - that nobody would believe us, maybe not even Sam, even though she'd been there, she'd seen us leave -

"Yeah." Sam was looking at her plate, not at us. "I don't know what I'm going to tell Mom. I don't even know what happened after you left, or how you took a quest for five people, by yourself. You said you were five people. What does that mean?"

We'd told her that and now we were stuck explaining. Palisade took a deep breath. "We're five people, is what it means, there's - you mostly talk to me and Clair, sometimes Emmy -"

"Aren't you Emily?" Sam asked slowly.

"Emmy, not Emily. Emily's the body's name - I mean, it's like on my - on our school ID, we call ourselves Exaltation. Emmy is one of the people. I'm Palisade and sometimes you talk to me, and sometimes you talk to Clair. Dawn doesn't come out. Zix mostly does school and reading and watching TV, you might have ever talked to him but not much I don't think."

"I don't understand. I mean - I believe you because the quest was for five people and it worked for you anyway but - I don't understand," Sam said.

"I don't really know how to explain," said Palisade. "We never tried before. Uh, Clair can try, she didn't want to tell you but you already know now -"

Clair came out and said, "I'm Clair - it's not that I didn't want you to know, it's that it's so hard to say and it's weird, right, nobody else is like us. So there's all of us, and we... pretend to be Emily's imaginary friends, and we all have to share the same body, which people know as Emily, right? We go up to people and whichever of us it is, whether it's me or Zix or whatever, we all answer to Emily and say 'nice to meet you, I'm Emily', but we have our own names for each other. And whichever of us aren't out doing stuff with the body are - inside, we can talk to each other or I guess it's more like reading each other's minds kind of, and we have pretend bodies, which don't look like this one but Emmy's pretty close."

"And you can just - have whichever one of you be the one who's talking?" Sam guessed.

"Mostly, yeah - but sometimes one of us is too upset or something and won't come out, and Dawn never does, except she had to for a second to get her souvenir. We each got a turn, we went to a bunch of different worlds - except Emmy's turn just put us in the school art room. She took a paintbrush. We hope that counts. We're not sure about Zix's souvenir either."

"What, um, what did Zix get?"

Clair showed her our hand with the glowing ident chip. "It hurt," she complained. "It's mostly better now though."

"I'm sorry. I should've - I thought I'd have longer to read and think about it since I didn't know you were five people, I wouldn't have -" Sam trailed off.

"It's okay."

"I think the souvenirs should count. What else did you -"

Clair started pulling things out of our pocket. Her sponge, Palisade's claws, Dawn's halo that made Sam gasp when she put it over our head, Emmy's chosen paintbrush. The comb.

Sam had left her quest book in her room. She ran to get it, brought it back to the table.

"The comb's so pretty," said Clair. "And Palisade likes her claws and Dawn loves the halo, even if she'd never be out to wear it, I don't know -"

"I'm pretty new at this, maybe nothing bad will happen if you skip turning your souvenirs into a thing but I don't want to risk it," Sam said. "Hang on, I want to try reading this again, see if it makes more sense now I know how you work - I need to practice reading the language next time we go to India or maybe I can find books at the library, or something online - anyway -" She frowned at the book, glanced between it and our things. Clair finished our breakfast.

There was a silence. Clair set down the fork when our plate was clean. Sam said, "What does Emmy look like?"

"Kind of like you," Clair said. "When you were our age - she's ten like the Exaltation is. She used to look more like the body but she changed after we met you."

Sam opened her mouth, and closed it, and swallowed. "What about the rest of you?"

"I'm a mermaid - I'm still Clair, if you forgot. A teenage mermaid though. I dyed our hair blue because my hair's blue. Palisade is a griffin. Zix is a space alien. They're both Emmy's age. And Dawn is an angel and angels don't have real ages," said Clair. "Emmy's drawn us all but we changed, a little, because on our quest we met people who were all of the kinds of people that we are..."

Sam nodded, a little distant, and frowned at her book. Clair slid off the chair and got a banana out of the fruit bowl because that was allowed at Sam's house and Mother would probably be upset at us for disappearing when we got home. We had room for a banana. She peeled it and started eating it and waited for Sam to say something more.

"Emmy looks like me?" she asked.

"Yeah," said Clair.

"And not a white person like you - like you look like, I mean."

"Yeah." Hesitantly, "Is that okay? She can try to change it back, but it's only how we look to each other..."

Sam sat back in her chair. "It's fine. - so what you do with the souvenirs is you put them all between the pages of the book, I guess including your hand, and then you close it on them, and then you open it again and you'll get your thing."

"Do we have to?" Emmy said. "- I'm Emmy now."

"You know, I think I can kind of tell - if I think about it - at least I knew you were someone else, I don't know I could've guessed which -"

Emmy smiled at her.

"Anyway, I think you'll like your thing."

Emmy took a deep breath and scooped up all our things and put them and our hand in the book and closed it.

Our hand tingled like we were plunging it into a bag of staticky rice, and then stopped, and there was something in the palm of our hand.

Sam opened the book for us, and there was Emmy's hand. Emmy's hand, brown and clutching something small and round.

Emmy opened her fingers and there was an ivory sphere, streaked with gold, the colors of the comb, pitted like a tiny moon. A fine long chain stretched from it, so we could wear it around our neck.

"My hand," Emmy said softly. She leaned forward to look; black hair fell over our eyes.

"Yeah," said Sam. "It, uh, does that, it lets you change shapes. I think - Zix - will still be able to do classes for you without turning into an alien, though. Since that would probably get a lot of attention, if he turned into an alien in front of people."

"But my hand - my all of me - Mother's going to - if she -"

"She won't," said Sam.

"Huh?"

"Your quest says," Sam went on, "that you get your reward - that's the necklace there - when you bring all your souvenirs home."

Emmy looked up at her.

"You look just like me when I was ten," Sam whispered. "So now you're my - my little cousin from Oregon, okay, and you're staying with us. I - we'll figure out what to tell my mom. She'll go along with it, I bet, because - the quest book says you get your reward when you bring all your souvenirs home - and you haven't been back to where your mother lives, have you, you called my house instead."

Emmy put the necklace over her head. She swallowed.

Clair came out, and if she just stretched Emmy's legs a little - she overbalanced, flopped onto the floor, Sam's old blouse too snug, Sam's old slacks vanished altogether, and her tail thrashed under the kitchen table. She'd banged her shoulder sliding out of the chair but she was laughing too hard to care.

Palisade came out and stretched wings she didn't have until she had them, and she was herself, half the size of any of the ones we'd met at Camp Counterscarp, a kitten-chick, and she bounded up to Sam and butted her head against Sam's leg, purring.

Zix came out, reached up Palisade's claws toward antennae that were there by the time he finished reaching, smiled up at Sam with blue lips. He stood, and stretched just how Dawn asked so she wouldn't have to be there more than a moment to make sure -

There she was, tall and winged and draped in a sheet because she was bigger than Sam had been aged ten, and her halo was back good as new, amber light shining down on her, white and gold wings touching the walls of Sam's kitchen, and she beamed down while Sam looked up in awe, almost crying -

Emmy came out and threw herself into Sam's lap.

Sam hugged her tight.

"Good quest?" Sam asked.

"Yes," said Emmy, "can we tell you everything that happened?"

"Of course you can," said Sam. "Tell me all about it."

Dose

This story is also available in audio, which you may find on this episode of Wingardcast.

"Your request has been denied," said the automated voice on the other end.

"The fuck it has," I screamed into the receiver. "I broke my leg! What, is there an interaction with my pain meds, to hell with my pain meds -"

The automated system didn't answer.

"Operator," I said. "I want to talk to a human. Uh, does swearing work on this one - fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck? Shit? Shit, you heartless machine -"

It didn't give me a human. I couldn't really see that being a competitive job posting, manning the complaint line for the school pharmacy.

I dialed again.

"You have reached the U of M pharmacy line! Press one to talk about a change to your prescription. Press two to request dosages for excused absences, administrative error, or other extenuating circumstance. Press three to transfer your prescription to another university -"

I pressed one. Two hadn't worked or even gotten me a person.

"Press one if your prescription may be interacting with another medication. Press two if you feel your dosage should be adjusted. Press three if you need a supplementary prescription for a project. Press four if -"

I tried pressing one.

"Please hold."

Twenty minutes of scratchy elevator music later, there was a real person, hallelujah. "Hello?"

"Hi, this is - my student number's 5440981."

"Okay, I'm looking you up - what can I do for you, Skylan?"

"I broke my leg, so I've missed a class and I'm not going to make it to the later ones, but the autosystem wouldn't assign me a delivery?"

"Oh, if you have an injury like that you're supposed to call disability services to get you to class," said the person.

"What? Are you kidding me?" I demanded. "I'm already shaking, and this isn't - this isn't in the pharmacy info packet - I need the delivery -"

"Skylan, I'm seeing two previous deliveries for absences this semester - one because you were... hung over? And one because your... dog died?"

"- so?" My grandmother's dog counted, right? I loved that little fuzzball.

"So, two is the number of dubious excuses you get per semester -"

"But I broke my leg!"

"And disability services can get you to class, and if you haven't tried that, then the excuse is dubious," said the person. "No delivery, but you can still get two thirds of your dose for the day if you make it to Latin and Research Methods, and I'm sure the disability office will be happy to help you out."

"But -"

"This is the interactions line; are you on anything for your leg?"

I read the name off the bottle. She told me there were no interactions. She hung up.

I called disability services. They showed up with a wheelchair that, at the cost of all the muscles in my arms, I rolled up the hill in time to get me to the last half of Latin. The TA wouldn't hand over a dosage packet for anybody more than five minutes late.

I got to Research Methods on time and barely made my participation quota. I got my one-third dose, time-released as though I'd already had two, painfully slow to stop the tremors. It wasn't enough; I couldn't get to sleep that night. At one in the morning I called a friend.

"Skylan? Why the hell are you calling me this early?" she mumbled into the phone.

"Your pills are little green triangles too, right?"

"- ohhh, you're fixing. Fuck, you know they can put anything in a little green triangle, right?"

"Yeah but they might not, what if -"

"I don't have any extra, Skylan."

"Are you sure -"

"Go fuck yourself, Skylan." She hung up.

I called three more people. One of them did have extra but his withdrawal symptoms were tiredness and headaches, not shaking, and the last thing I needed was to be addicted to somebody else's schedule on top of mine.

The next morning the elevator was broken. I threw the wheelchair out a window and dropped out online and skidded down the stairs one at a time on my butt and got on the bus home.

"That was so rash, Skylan," said my mother.

"Yes, Mom, I know," I said. I was sitting on my hands so they wouldn't jitter, but it was starting to wear off.

"You'll have a lot of trouble getting in somewhere else, now."

"I know, Mom."

"You really shouldn't have been doing parkour in the first place."

"Uh-huh." If I broke into the school pharmacy, they might have packets with my name on them already sorted and stamped for the TAs.

"Are you listening to me, Skylan?"

"No, Mom."

"You have no idea how much I wish you were still on your little treats."

"If you give me a treat I'll throw it in the toilet, Mom."

"They got me through your childhood!"

"I bet they did, Mom."

"They might let you reverse your dropping out if you asked very nicely."

"Don't think so, Mom," I said through gritted teeth. I did not want to do this twice.

I ate frozen meals and a lot of burgers from All Organic Drug Free Andy's Burgers in case there were "treats" in the homemade macaroni and I lowered my standards for a job to nothing. My mother had not yet resorted to threatening me with homelessness to get me addicted to treats again by the time I had an interview.

Mission Pharmaceuticals needed a person who was less hackable than an algorithm to decide whose doses were printed into what shape of pills. Ever since the big Varaco hack had leaked information on a million parolees' condition-of-release drugs, so they could get the same chemicals on the street by name or formula, it was standard practice to mix it up: a pharmacist would know what you were really taking, but it might be a little green triangle or a long white lozenge or a purple circle with milled edges. Nobody could hack into an employee who decided on a whim to give a new client daisy-yellow pentagons or blue gelcaps.

This mind-numbing unautomatable task did not require a college degree.

"Remember," my new boss clarified, "people can be hacked, just not by software - but if someone asks you for information you're not supposed to disclose, it's probably going to be a secret shopper, as it were. You'll be instantly fired if you talk to one of those and may be liable for criminal charges. They might show you a suitcase full of cash, they might pretend they can prove they don't work for us or somebody who's testing you on our behalf - don't believe 'em."

"Got it," I said.

"Excellent," he said. "Here's the handbook of the shapes, colors, and variants we offer, Ista will show you around, and you can get started tomorrow morning."

I spent eight hours a day sitting in a cube, sometimes typing "yellow yellow yellow white blue ecru RAZZAMATAZZ™ kiwi-green white gold maroon" into a spreadsheet, sometimes tooling around on the internet. My trial period ended when I completely failed to notice the ostensible secret shopper cozying up to me at an office Christmas party; this constituted passing with flying colors.

"Where do I go for my work doses?" I asked my boss, when the trial was over.

"Oh, of course," he said. "Next to the payroll office."

"What's your policy on absences?"

"We give you a week of stepping down," he says. "To keep at home, according to the at-will employment agreement, see, you can wean yourself off if you quit suddenly. You can dip into it if you take a sick day or vacation day and replace it whenever's convenient for you."

I took my seven installments of stepdown meds in their numbered-compartments box, threw it into the back of the utensil drawer in my delightfully Momless studio apartment, and showed up every day in the office left of Payroll to get a lavender sphere to swallow.

When I'd been working for seven months I got a secret shopper in the form of a young-looking guy, maybe sixteen or at least picked to look that way, who "spotted my company T-shirt" in the All Organic Drug Free Andy's Burgers. "You work for Mission," he said.

"- yeah," I said.

"I have to know what I'm on," he said. "My dad puts it in everything, doses me first thing in the morning and last thing before I go to bed, I can't be away from home overnight without -"

"I can't tell you anything," I said.

"You don't understand. He's, he's - I need to get out, my brother has a place but if -"

"I can't tell you anything," I repeated.

"Fuck's sake!" he said, beginning to risk making a scene in the burger joint. "Heartless bastards, why don't you screen people you give your shit out to -"

"Can't - tell you anything -" I said, visions of "treats" dancing in my mind.

"Just tell me if going cold turkey's gonna actually kill me," he pleaded. "My brother can lock me up or something -"

"I can't even look that up from here," I said.

"Do you remember anything -"

"Man, I do hundreds of these things a day, you could show me a pill and I wouldn't know whether it went to a dad or a school or a cult - what are your withdrawal symptoms -"

"You think I test that? If I don't get away clean on the first try my dad's probably going to straight up kill me, I have no idea - school gives me the same thing, brown shield shapes, he got them to match it, I get one every hour -"

"Then I don't even have a guess."

"I'm the one who's taking them! I ought to know what they are!"

"If you are over eighteen and terminate your formal relationship you have -"

"Sixteen."

"- the right to an own-expense, pharmacy-assisted offramp from - well if you're sixteen I really can't help you, I'd lose my job, dude."

"Please."

"I told you I can't even look it up from here."

His dad, presumably, honked a car horn outside, and the kid jumped and took his sack of burgers out the door, slouching.

I couldn't look it up without my work computer. But I looked it up the next day, brown shields. I didn't make many things shield-shaped; "Skylan happens not to like shield shapes" was a valid input to my vitally important unautomatable job. There were four patients on brown shields in the system. The kid had looked maybe Hispanic, so he was probably Juarez and not the Polish name or the two Korean ones.

All the drugs had code names that I had access to - RAZZAMATAZZ™ was incompatible with "wakey-wakey" and you couldn't put "nightsong" in a gel cap, that sort of thing, so I needed to know. Juarez was on "chipper". I didn't know what chipper was, but whoever assigned the code names was before my arrival; they might have been from pre-Varaco-hack and used ones that the Internet knew about.

I got home and looked up "chipper".

According to streetyourdrug.com, chipper was impossible to dose like Juarez had described - if you took meaningful amounts every hour of the day you'd have seizures in your sleep. The pharmacist would have told Dad Juarez not to do it that way, and if Dad Juarez had ignored the instructions he'd have an epileptic kid. So Juarez Junior wasn't a very well-informed secret shopper. Wasn't actually Juarez at all; the real Juarez was on chipper, on some sane schedule, the secret shopper was making up "brown shields". That settled that.

The kid's face turned up dead on the news a month later, beaten to a pulp by his dad and passing away in the hospital. His brother, Joe Juarez, was making a big fuss about it on the news.

Mission wasn't implicated, obviously, everybody dosed their kids, it was possible to dose abusively just like it was possible to apply curfew abusively - not dosing your kids was practically neglect -

I took a vacation day.

I tested my withdrawal. I wasn't sure I was going to go back to work, and it would be better to find out what I was in for if their stepdown wasn't gentle enough while I still had seven days in the drawer.

I was fixing an omelette for dinner when I noticed that nothing had happened.

I took another vacation day and didn't take my stepdown pill.

Nothing happened.

I went back to work, skipped the trip down the hall to the pharmacy. My lavender sphere arrived at my desk in a paper cup anyway, and I took it, and waited two hours - nothing took longer than that to kick in -

Nothing happened.

I didn't say anything for a couple weeks. Swallowed my spheres. Remembered, eventually, to "replace" the stepdown doses I would have taken. Typed "lozenge shield oblong teardrop round round round round round double-circle rectangle round".

I mentioned Juarez when my boss and I were in the breakroom simultaneously around lunchtime. My food was in the microwave, he was rinsing out his coffee mug.

"I recognized Juarez," I said. "The dead kid."

"He was one of our patients, yes," my boss said.

"News said he had a place to go but was scared of withdrawing."

"Mm."

"Was he a secret shopper?"

"What? We don't hire children to secret shop, if someone underage tries to get data from you they're adults playing younger."

"He wanted to know what he was on, so he could get away."

"You didn't tell him, did you? If that was why his father -"

"I didn't. I didn't even know. I looked it up later, but..."

The boss nodded and hung up his coffee mug to drip dry.

"He told me he was taking something every hour he was awake and I looked it up and it said chipper," I said. "You can't take chipper like that."

Boss paused.

Boss turned to leave the room, but stopped to pat me on the shoulder. "If he'd tried skipping out," he said, "Mission chipper wouldn't have kept him going home for more."

The microwave beeped and my boss left in my moment of distraction.

The kid's drugs were fake, like my lavender spheres were fake, but he'd never checked. He would have seized to death years earlier if they'd been real. If he'd tried running to his brother's place he wouldn't have needed to score street chipper, he'd have just been fine.

Maybe every drug Mission sold was imaginary.

Pink blue cyan blue cyan blue white white gray orange red red orange red red white pink gold yellow RAZZAMA-fucking-TAZZ™.

I had a job offer from Andy's Burgers - "you've got the menu memorized anyway, ha ha, anyway I need a new fry cook! You come here all the time, you want free lunch and dinner?"

Blue blue yellow yellow white brown yellow orange gold cyan green kiwi-green apple-green dark-green green green green green.

I didn't have any illusions that flipping burgers was an intellectually stimulating job but it had to be better than

(white white orange red red pink red gray purple purple lavender teal yellow white white green blue)

this.

(brown brown brown brown brown)

Andy's Burgers were Drug Free but lots of food was sold that way, you could eat a completely nonaddictive diet if you wanted; if you couldn't help but get a Dinah's Coffee+ Shake every morning that was your own fault. Mission Pharmaceuticals was slipping placebos left and right and how long it could do that depended on how long it kept the secret. What if the next college dropout they hired to

(cyan green green white blue orange)

type colors and shapes into spreadsheets ran their mouth off? Told the next not-a-secret-shopper that he was on chipper or bounce or sunshine or winner, got them running away from their dad or their school or their cult and scoring some on the street and noticing?

(pink green pink teal)

Or found out like I had, or some other way, and just alerted the media?

(gray)

This could be important. I could matter to it. It was just so stunningly boring. Eventually - I knew myself well enough - I'd give up, stop coming in -

I went to the pharmacy around the corner from my apartment.

"I need something for my sister I'm taking care of," I said. "She's fifteen, about my weight..." It was probably possible to get a supply that was officially for myself but I would have had to go farther than a block and talk to someone for longer than fifteen minutes. I went home with a package of orange teardrops and brought them to work the next morning to tuck away in a drawer.

Work gave me lavender spheres, probably to keep their inventory neat or make sure everyone had paper cups in their wastebaskets if someone wandered in off the street. Every time I brought one to my desk I also opened my bottom drawer.

With the placebo spheres, I took orange teardrops.

Will

Tarinda felt like if one was rescuing a sleeping maiden it was important to dress for the occasion, so before she got underway she sourced some chain mail and a sword. She commissioned a whole mantle and shirt for the purpose and got it done in twenty colors and caught her hair in it and extracted her hair from it and put on a hood under the chain, strapped the sword to her back, and set out.

O'Leary Ranch, Racetrack, Riding, and Restaurant sprawled over several acres of Mars and its staff were happy to reserve a right to a pony for Tarinda to collect later, and a certified refurbished O'Leary line robot to go with it and do all essential pony care. She didn't pick one out in particular right away, although she did detour from her quest to sign up for a jousting class, since she already had the chain mail.

Miracle Movies, headquartered on Titan in a sprawling complex of warehouses and sets, sent a film student called Kayv to talk to Tarinda when she said she wanted to discuss something with them.

"Have you ever heard of 'Templars of the Antares Desert'?" she asked him.

"...yes, actually, but most people haven't, it was canceled six episodes in," said Kayv. "Sort of a cult hit."

"I need sixteen seasons of it."

"Wow. Um, why?"

"Rescuing a sleeping maiden," Tarinda said.

"Awwww! Okay, uh, does it have to be seasons in particular? That's no longer a conventional format."

"...I think comparable runtime and a similar number of plot arcs would do. But I want the original actors and writers."

"That might be expensive. The one who played Vakror in particular was vocal about not liking the show afterwards."

"Can you fix whatever he didn't like about it?"

"Probably? We'll look into it," Kayv said.

"I can pay for it. I saved up."

"What elements of the show should we be particularly sure to keep close to their original characteristics?"

"I have a list." And she presented him with the specifications for the future of Templars of the Antares Desert, including that Vakror was supposed to get together with Lyn-Tra, there needed to be more development of the Polestar Children, and whoever wrote "Escape from the Caves of Salind" did not need to be invited back.

The Cosmetic Adjustment Association was a station orbiting Venus and swarming with brightly colored and oddly augmented people. Tarinda spoke to a person of ambiguous gender with cornflower blue zebra striping on an ivory background, or perhaps ivory striping on a blue background. "Hi! What can I do for you - ooh, if you don't have anything in mind I would just love to get creative with your ears, I think you've got the sort of face that would be very well-framed with really elaborate ears - can't see them under the chain mail thing you've got going on there -"

"No thank you," said Tarinda. "I'm just wondering how well you can aim at 'pretty' as understood by past eras without that being very well-specified?"

"Hm," said the stripey person. "I mean, I'm sure I could get something that would be considered conventionally attractive. We can even usually combine that with 'recognizable as themselves'. But if they don't specify any details we risk losing parts of their face they like - you can build a lovely face around almost any individual feature or couple of them but if they don't say which ones -"

Tarinda nodded. "But if I can tell you that she likes, say, her nose and her eye color -"

"I'd be happy to offer touchups as necessary for free, given how confident I could be in the initial result with those specs," nodded the stripey person. "I mean, towards 'conventionally pretty for whenever', if she wants sparkly irises or frills later that's another matter."

"Gotcha. Thank you."

"Do you want to book an appointment?"

"No, not yet, I don't know how long this is all going to take."

"Well, ask for me when you're ready."

"I will!"

The Historical Journal of Pre-Singularity Prime-Secondary Sources had an office in Rome. Tarinda got a falafel-calzone fusion thing loaded with red onions and waited for someone to meet her and then sat down with Magister Sorrentino. "I need to deregister a sleeping maiden," she told him.

"Deregister her!" he exclaimed.

"Yes. I can't rescue her while she's still on your books as a subject. I can let her know about the option, later, but you can't come and bother her."

"We never interview people who are unwilling -"

"But you ask them to find out if they are or not, and you try to convince them. So I need to deregister this one - I have the paperwork -" She displayed it.

...He sighed. "If you insist. What is her name?"

"Corrine Wallace."

And he wanted the date and place of birth and death off the paperwork, to disambiguate her, and her name was removed from the list of possible Prime-Secondary Sources.

Morris Jenkins, Rosie Jenkins, Emmeline Jenkins, Sara Wallace, Tasha Wallace, John Wallace, Benjamin Wallace, Chloe Wallace, Paulette Sydney-Wallace, Thaddeus Sydney-Wallace, Lyric Sydney-Wallace, Nimue Locklear, Tarn Locklear, and Vera Locklear, some of whom lived on the Moon, some in Minnesota, some in Argentina, and some in Sichuan, were variously asked nicely and/or bribed to leave Corrine Wallace alone once she had been rescued. At least until such time as she asked for them.

"But she's my great aunt," said Lyric.

"She'll probably want to meet you soon," said Tarinda, "but you can't bother her until then."

"...will you make sure we know when she's ready -"

"Of course."

The Institute of Archaic Psychiatry was a glassy building on an Irish hill populated by scholars with out of date aesthetics, although more "labcoats and glasses" than "chainmail", so Tarinda still stood out. She waited until one of them had a moment to speak with her.

"What brings you here?" asked Dr. Patel.

"I'm trying to rescue a sleeping maiden and I need to know what the state of the art on curing depression is," Tarinda said.

"Ah, I see," said Dr. Patel. "There are several types and several presentations of each type. Some can only be fully treated at this time via periodic applications of miracle unless the person opts for fairly invasive modifications with considerable side effects..."

"I've budgeted for some miracles."

"Are there any comorbid conditions?"

"A little anxiety."

"Then your sleeping maiden will be fine. If she has one of the more treatable kinds, we can find that out and transition her to another solution without any resumption of symptoms, based on analyzing what results the miracle has. Just bring her here with your receipt."

"Thank you!"

"You're welcome! Good luck."

Ginnifer C. Ross, 1999-2078, 2078-indefinite, worked as an "insurance salesperson" in a reenactment village in Wisconsin.

"How much would I have to pay you to let me find your location to within ten miles at all times?" Tarinda asked her.

"...are you asking this out of character -"

"Yes."

"....why?"

"I can promise not to share it publicly but I don't want to disclose the reason. You can charge extra for that."

"Oh. Uh. Fift- call it seventeen singles?"

"I mean permanently -"

"Seventeen singles per half-century."

"Got it. Thanks. What were you saying -"

"Um, in the time period where I actually did this job, insurance was solely denominated in money, with no availability of miracles to restore anything that couldn't be replaced that way, because we hadn't invented the Singleton yet and it couldn't handle even extraordinary situations. So if I were to sell you 'life insurance' it would mostly be intended to cover lost wages and funerary costs for your loved ones."

"Dreadful."

"Yeah. ...You know your outfit is a couple centuries off."

"Oh, I'm not dressing up for the village. This is for something else."

Tarinda held a miracle in her hand, crackling and hissing - they didn't have to do that, but if you dropped one behind the couch you'd want to be able to find it again, and it was aesthetic - and brought it to the resting place of the sleeping maiden, and kissed her on the mouth and pressed the miracle into her chest.

"Cory," said a soft voice.

Cory didn't want to open her eyes. She was comfy. She was warm. Someone was snuggled up to her, breathing on the back of her neck, arm around her waist, and that was sure to be a dream and she didn't want it to go away -

The warm person nuzzled her neck. "Cory," she said.

"Mrrf."

There was soft giggling. The voice did not repeat her name, just held her.

Eventually Cory observed: "I was supposed to be dead."

The warm person kissed her hair. "Not forever. You were sleeping."

"...I thought I gave them kind of an impossible list. When they wanted a will."

"It took a while."

"Are you my dream girlfriend, then, I said I wanted my dream girlfriend."

"That's the idea. I mean, maybe you won't like me. But I like you."

Cory rolled under the encircling arm. The voice belonged to a face, rosy brown and freckled, with gold flecks in dark eyes, and a froth of black hair. Smiling. They were in a bed so soft she could have felt a pea through it. Cory was in a nightgown that she thought might be literally silk and Dream Girlfriend was in pajamas with a pattern that looked plagiarized from wallpaper. There was a heap of chainmail and a sword in the corner of the room for some reason.

"I - what else did I -"

Dream Girlfriend petted Cory's hair back from her forehead. "I have it in my pocket, do you want to read it?"

Cory nodded. She took the folded paper.

Fine, I want a fucking pony. And don't even think about bringing me back before Templars of the Antares Desert is sixteen seasons long. I want to be pretty and - don't wake me up until there is nothing you want from me. I don't want a job or interviews from history professors or a great-great-grand-nephew needing a guardian, isn't that the most selfish thing you ever heard, why are you even making me do this - I want a cure for depression and my dream girlfriend and to never have to do anything I don't feel like ever again - and to never have to see or even think about my ex - maybe if you could do all that you could wake me up. No, I don't care if you read my journal, I'll Anne Frank it up -

"All of that," said Cory. "Really?"

"Yeah," said Dream Girlfriend.

Cory touched her face. It was smooth, soft. Ran her tongue along her teeth and they all lined up. Brushed her thumb over her eyelashes. "Is there some agency that does this sort of thing? Taxpayer dollars for miracles..."

"Only if they want simple stuff. Not you. You I rescued myself."

"- what's your name -"

"I'm Tarinda."

"...hi, Tarinda."

Tarinda grinned at her. "Hi Cory."

"The not wanting anything part."

"You don't have to be my girlfriend. I'll be fine. I can find you another one if you want. But I think you'll like me."

"Then why did you...?"

"I wanted to rescue a sleeping maiden. I liked you. So I rescued you," said Tarinda. "I don't need you to do anything you don't want."

Cory hesitated. Tarinda was still cuddled up and she was warm and Cory could actually finally give a shit that she was comfortable, her head was clear and -

"It's nice to meet you, Tarinda," she said finally. "Do you want to marathon Templars of the Antares Desert with me."

"I would love to," said Tarinda.

A screen on the ceiling clicked on.

In the year 2095, a colony ship bound for Alpha Centauri encountered a wormhole, and spiraled out of the reach of the Singleton. With no miracles and limited supplies, they settled the only habitable planet in the Antares system. Now, in the year 2252, the peace of their world is threatened, and their only defense - is the Templars, intoned the narrator.

Cory and Tarinda stared up into the credits as theme music swirled around them.

Story Of

"You wanna make a baby?" he whispers in my ear.

You're easy to convince to play outside. Mom tells me I always wanted to read, from before I can even remember; you always want to get your boots on and run around. I have to nag you to do your homework, to study, to come in and learn things that aren't how light spills between your fingers if you shade your eyes from the sun. Heptapod doesn't interest you at all; you think it looks like coffee stains.

One of my colleagues makes a remark about regression to the mean, when I bring you to a conference with me when your father cancels suddenly; it's all I can do not to hit him.

I don't nag you very much, because I know, and you deserve every minute of splashing in the water you can fit.

I don't tell your father I'm sorry, not once, I'm not sorry, I can't be sorry, can I? You deserve every minute -

He doesn't fight very hard for custody. Maybe he thinks it will hurt less if he detaches early. Maybe it does. I don't fight hard either, I don't need to, I know -

And then you are mine, and it's just us and a wave-kissed backyard and presents I know you'll love before you open them, and I need every minute.

I miss him.

You miss him. Divorce is an adverse childhood event; you pretend you can shrug it off, like weekends of him are enough, like you don't think it's about you.

It's about you.

"Ian -"

"Hm?"

I know how this conversation goes and I can't not tell him. I can't turn away and say never mind, because you're his too, he loves you, he has to know.

"Did you ever get any better at reading Heptapod?"

"No - not after they were gone - it's not my specialty, really, without the urgency. I can decode it pretty quick with the program they whipped up for us, though, why?" He's chewing a celery stick, he's not even looking at me, he doesn't know.

"Do you remember what I said about time?"

"You said something about time? Was this when you were loopy having breathed their atmosphere and all -"

"Did you ever wonder, about how I called General Shang?" No one ever asks how I get the number. I am cleared of suspicion of spying - I know I have to be to show up at the party - and no one wants to know how I could call China, no one obstructs me from going home.

"I figured Costello gave you his number and you phoned him up and ranted in Chinese."

"I don't speak Mandarin." Yet, but this is how this conversation goes.

"- huh?"

"I can pronounce the phonemes and the tones, but I don't speak it. I knew what to say because he told me what to say later at the celebration. Heptapod consciousness is outside of time, it's because of their language, if you learn to really read it you can too, I remember the future."

"Does Shang read it too?"

"I don't know. Maybe. He's not a linguist but he's multilingual, reads a character-based language, he might have been able to learn it before then."

"Okay, Louise. Predict the future."

"Hannah's going to slip on the rocks there and come in with a scraped left knee. You think the scrape looks like a car and make her laugh while I disinfect it." You're playing in the yard, just past your fifth birthday, not as surefooted as you will be.

He snorts.

You fall and cry and get up and run in with muddy shoes, tug at the cuff of your shorts to show us, and it's shaped like a blob with wheels but he thinks it's a perfect Toyota and you giggle while I wipe away blood and then you go back out with a band-aid on and he looks at me like I've grown a second head.

You get the flu when you're eight and I know you will be all right but I make chicken soup and have decongestants and you ask how I guessed. I say it's mother's intuition and you don't buy it.

I tell you you're unstoppable.

You aren't.

"What if she was going to die in a car crash," he hisses at me, late at night long after you've gone to bed. "Would you give her the keys?"

"It's not like that. There's no way to not give her the keys for this one."

"Early detection matters -"

"I try it. I can't find a doctor who'll even run the tests before she shows symptoms and she starts insisting on being seen without me in the room."

"Insist back."

"It doesn't work. I try anyway. Do you think I want her to die -"

"You should have told me before we made her."

"Ian -"

"How could - sixteen -" Pacing, clutching at his hair.

"Ian I couldn't I already loved her."

"You should have loved her enough to stop her wasting away before she finishes high school!"

"I love her I love her this is not a problem I can solve by having there be less of her Ian -"

"How does this end," he asks, gesturing between us. "Tell me how it ends."

I close my eyes. "You go stay with your sister. You divorce me, no fault, can't tell a judge about it - you see her weekends -"

He calls your aunt Megan.

You visit them on Saturday.

At your funeral he takes me aside and asks me if I ever loved him or if I only wanted you, was only using him to make you so that I could have your bright eyes and play-doh animals and crayon drawings and tickle fights and poems - He doesn't say that part. He stops at asking whether I used him.

"I love you," I say. I never do lose the skill of speaking in the past tense, but it's still true then, I love him. I love the way he holds me and the way his mind works and the way he trusts me when I shout a language I don't speak into the phone.

"You could have said anything, when I asked. Anything other than 'yes, yes I do'. You could have said 'tomorrow', and it would have turned out differently."

"That's not what happened."

"Did you have no choice or did you want her too much to use it?"

I pause, thinking. I know what I say, but the thinking about it still has to happen at some point in time, and this is when. I think.

"I don't know," I say, "I never tried to do something I remembered not doing."

"Never - if she'd died in a car crash would you -"

"I would've tried, if it had been a car crash," I murmur.

"But you wouldn't try for me, you wouldn't try to keep me -"

"I wish I had a sister," you say. You're ten and eating your birthday cake and your friends have all gone home and it's just us and it feels so quiet.

"Oh?" I ask you.

"Yeah. Or a brother, but the boy palindrome names aren't as good."

"Not in English. There are some nice Arabic ones."

"We're not Arabic. I wish I had a sister."

Six years after you die he calls me. I answer him.

"How long have you been remembering the future?"

"Hello, Ian."

"Answer the question."

"In flashes since early in the heptapod project," I tell him. "Consistently since the very end."

"So you've remembered - whatever we're about to say to each other, for more than two decades."

"I don't know that I've ever thought about this conversation before. I don't think about things that happened to me in college that often, it's like memory."

"So maybe it doesn't get me anywhere. Fuck it. I'm trying anyway. I can convince you now, of things you would've done then - because you'd already remember this conversation -"

"You don't, I already - we already had her."

"The hell we did, I'm trying out deciding that this is a memory and I can change the past. Louise. I loved her too. You don't think I didn't love her -"

"I know you loved her."

"But we would've loved any baby. We would've loved a son, or one we still named Hannah but conceived a week later, or one who died in a car crash so you could solve it. We didn't have to stand over a grave you saw coming eighteen years early."

"She's the one I know, I love her, she's not interchangeable. She couldn't be without the way she died, Ian."

"You have to lose her either way but I don't - you didn't have to do this to us, to me. Louise. We could have a different baby and stay together."

"I don't have to lose those sixteen years - our Hannah, our Hannah -"

"Won't you remember her anyway?"

"I don't know. I never try to do things I remember not doing."

"I can't pretend you'd be doing it for Hannah. If we don't have her she won't exist. But God, Louise -"

I hang up on him.

"What would you want to name your sister?" I ask you.

"A palindrome. What are more palindrome names?" You taught yourself to say the word fluidly when you first learned it.

"Anna, Ava, Ada. Elle. Eve."

When you get sick he doesn't say anything to me at all. He glares, when we run into each other at the hospital.

I never tell you why.

"You wanna make a baby?" he whispers in my ear.

"Yes," I tell your daddy. "Yes I do." I want to, I want to make you and hold you and have you. And I hold him and breathe in the scent of his skin and love him and love you and love him, so much -

And I flinch.

He catches me before I hit the ground and he's all over worry, I've never hurt him, he wouldn't think it of me.

I try to remember your face and it won't come quite clear and I black out.

I wake up in the hospital. I tell them I'm fine. I can't explain. They let me go, eventually.

Your daddy -

Your -

Ian doesn't bring up children again for a while. I go back to work.

You're gone, you're gone, you're gone, I can't ever -

I don't remember -

Just flashes. Your smile, your galoshes squelching in mud, your name.

He catches me sitting in the yard in the rain, staring at the places you like to play.

"Louise," he says. "What's wrong? You're still acting strange. Are you still sick, should we get a second opinion?"

"I'm not sick," I say. "I think. I don't know. I don't know what's happening."

He guides me inside and dries me off. "What can you tell me?" he says, toweling my hair.

"Did you ever get better at reading Heptapod?" I breathe, and I cry onto his chest.

"They called it a weapon," he says.

"If we translated that right. We didn't have enough context to be sure." My voice feels far away. I don't remember saying this. My memory is so murky now.

"Or a tool. They did say it was a gift."

"They did."

"This isn't a gift, you must be - doing it wrong, somehow, if it does this to you. It's a weapon, or a tool, it has to be usable. You have to be able to use it."

"I don't know how," I say.

He points me back at my work. "Then keep reading."

Eve wants to learn Heptapod. I tell her to wait until she's older, that it can be a lot to handle, that it takes time to learn to use it instead of being overwhelmed, unable to keep everything straight and still make choices.

She reads my book anyway, stares at the sea of coffee-stain marks they left us as their gift. She asks me about you; she says I tell her when she's twenty but she asks now.

I tell her when she's twenty.

"She named you," I say. "She was never made but I remembered enough that she could name you."

You would have loved her so much, if you could have ever met her. If you could have both been real.

"Anna sounds too much like my name," you say.

"It would be pretty confusing," I agree.

"I like Eve. My sister should be named Eve."

"Okay, Hannah," I say, and I tuck you in and kiss you goodnight.

Dogs

This story is also available in audio, which you may find on this episode of Wingardcast.

I'd heard that Lady Clara had a lot of animals, but that had to be at least ten. Dogs, all of them, playing together on the grounds.

"Wasted stars," I breathed. "The expense. She's not even out watching them and they're in character."

"Are you positive they're not robots? For that kind of money you can get very good robots," said Linly, at my elbow. She was half my height, heavily modded - this month she looked like some kind of bonsai dryad. Next month she'd be eight feet high and glow like a lamp, or wear feathers and scales.

"They're not robots. That's why we're here. Hi!" I added, calling out to the dogs. They ignored me except for briefly looking in our direction and sniffing the air. Consummate actors. The performance was spectacular; I could have been watching an old recording. "If we could afford robots we wouldn't have this problem."

"Modders are even more expensive," said Linly.

"Modders," I said, nudging her by her wooden antlers, "can be convinced to do volunteer work. And if we're very lucky we won't even have to do that, we'll just be getting a donation out of the Lady's copious biotech profits."

"We should just get someone to loan us robots -"

"The props people are working on that as backup. Our job is to see if Lady Clara will lend us time with her contractors. Hi guys!" I called to the dogs again. "Put in a good word for us!"

They went on chasing each other across the garden, tails wagging. We approached the gate.

Before we crossed the fence, we consented to an information baffle. A robot administered us quick hypos of time-stamped, dormant amnestic that Lady Clara could activate if she didn't want us to remember what happened in her estate. Some planets forbade the measure even on the privatest of property; and it was a little nerve-wracking. But we still had our medical monitors to freak out off-site if Lady Clara turned out to like preying on random visitors, and it was up to us whether to take the drugs or forge ahead. Lady Clara wanted her privacy in case we wandered somewhere unauthorized, and we wanted to inquire in person about a borrowing of her staff. Fair enough. I still caught myself waiting to see if my chrono jumped. It didn't.

We crossed the garden, and we were sniffed and in one case licked by the dogs as we waited at the front step to be let in.

The door opened, and the dogs flowed around us as we went in to see Lady Clara.

Lady Clara was at least three hundred years old, but pretty lightly modded considering. She even looked some fraction of her age - not like she was planning to play a wizened old hag in a drama, but there were lines on her face and hands. She was plainly attired to match. I usually felt painfully unfashionable next to Linly - only re-sexed and re-colored, nothing dramatic or frequently revised - but Lady Clara made me feel overdressed. But the dog that hopped up on the couch next to her and put their head on her lap spoke of more means than it would have taken to turn myself into a centaur and back.

"Welcome," Clara said, when we'd sat opposite her. "I hear you want to talk about the dogs."

"That's right," I said. "We're from the Historical Society of Greater Saint Brian Metropolitan Area and we're putting on an educational about the Last Extinction. It'll be seen through the whole system, maybe the whole sprawl!"

"And you want to borrow my dogs?" she asked.

"Yes ma'am. We have actors volunteering who'll do all the scripted parts, already, but they aren't trained to act, well, naturally. We want the production to be really slick, you know? Realistic animals."

"We'd want to remod a couple of them, and we can cover that, and the mod back," said Linly. "Especially if any of you have already practiced modding as birds," she added to the assembled dogs, though of course they wouldn't be able to reply in their state.

"I don't think any of them have," Lady Clara said, sounding faintly amused.

"We can work around it if they can't fly," I cut in. "We can get someone who knows flying to stunt double, I think we can edit that convincingly enough. The problem is that actors who normally act the parts of people come across as slightly fake when they do animals, and we want it to ring true. We want viewers to almost miss dogs and birds and things."

"Do you miss dogs and birds and things?" wondered Lady Clara. She snapped her fingers and a robot servant brought a tray of snacks and lemonade.

"We're not old enough to miss them," I said. "We'd love to have you consult, though, or even interview, if you remember the real thing and want to tell us about it."

"I think everyone should miss dogs just the same, regardless of how old you are," Lady Clara said, pouring herself a lemonade. She fed the dog in her lap a tidbit of sausage. They ate it right out of her hand. "We evolved together with them, you know. They're why we don't smell very well."

"We know," said Linly. "We've done our research."

"Since the parts are unscripted, improv, we'd only want to borrow the actors for a few days," I said. "We might be able to partially compensate you for the gaps in their employment if some other budget matters go well, but - not all the way. We're hoping that since you're known to be passionately interested in animals you'll want our production to succeed."

"It's an interesting proposal," said Lady Clara. "Go ahead, help yourself to the food - what's the general outline?"

"It's a broad educational production," Linly said, and her eyes adopted the glassy look of peering at her notes. I grabbed a little sandwich. "We're covering what animals were, some of the things they used to do that interacted with people. Just brief digressions into how we used to make meat and fur and stuff, and the deceptive innocence of pet-keeping - and the dog evolution fact, that too, all the things they taught us about biology and ecology. And wild animals and the ways they were always under so much evolutionary pressure, killing them in droves. We're going to try not to be too intense for squeamish people though."

She paused to grab a sandwich of her own, and I picked up: "Then there's the sad bit about how animals weren't very smart but they were complex enough to suffer, except maybe insects and so on but probably them too. We've got a long segment about the Extinction War, we had some editorial infighting about how much of that to cover but we've come to a firm agreement. And then the Extinction itself, it was way more complicated to implement than most people know because some of the reproductive systems worked so differently, did you know we actually still have sponges, a few, in the Earth oceans, and those are technically animals? They're pretty sure they're more like plants in capacity for suffering - anyway, and there was resistance to the very end - even after."

"For a surprisingly long time. Mostly pets," Linly said, "and some decorative and research interests, all the food uses were long replaced - mostly pets."

"We actually secured an interview with someone who was keeping parrots in his basement for years after the Extinction was mostly wrapped up in the wild," I mentioned. "Cloned them by himself. He got caught, but not before he condemned three more animals to living out lives of suffering without insight."

"There's some debate about parrots," Linly corrected. "And their level of insight."

"They never got smart enough to reflect on what might be bothering them if anything did and solve the problems systematically and consistently," I said. "Or to communicate as peers with human adults. They were crippled, as minds, to the point of -"

"I'm not saying that it's okay to clone parrots in your basement," Linly said. "Just that the insight line is more likely to go over a clip of mice than a clip of parrots."

"Is anyone being a parrot for the gentleman you found?" wondered Lady Clara distantly. "So that he doesn't have to miss them completely?"

"I don't think he can afford a full-timer," I said. "Let alone the, how many of you guys being dogs are there, a dozen? But we found him through an animal-mods hobbyist group, so he probably gets to hang out with people who are modding birds occasionally even if they're not acting the part or in his employ."

"Eleven," said Lady Clara. "Eleven dogs."

"You all look very enthusiastic about your work," Linly said politely to the dogs.

"You'll never find more dedicated," said Lady Clara.

"Do you think you can offer them their usual rates for a few days of participating in our educational?" I asked.

"Mm. I'm not sure. Is there a political slant to it?" asked Lady Clara.

"A political slant?" Linly said. "It's about animals. You know, the last vast well of pain. The educational's going to have a warning on it."

"The parrots fellow, he's not a holdout or anything?"

"He comes off a little nostalgic," I admitted. "But not some kind of apologist or revivalist. Nobody would be caught on record in this day and age saying they want creatures with senses and rudimentary minds to exist in meaningless misery for their intellectual stimulation or sensory pleasure or whatever. Let alone for food, we had to dig way deeper in history to find people defending that."

"I see," sighed Lady Clara.

"So about the dogs..." I said.

"I don't believe I will loan you my dogs."

She couldn't have them under too tight a contract. People who wanted to mod dogs and then play the part full-time were not so common that they couldn't negotiate for good employment conditions. "Any of you want to skip out on your boss?" I asked the dogs.

A golden-haired one scratched their ear. A spotty brown one yawned.

"Loyal," commented Linly.

"You'll never find more loyal," murmured Lady Clara.

I blinked.

"You can pet them," she added, "if you like."

Linly reached for a curly white dog. Their tail wagged.

...Its tail. Its tail wagged.

"Are these," I said, "real dogs?"

Linly stopped cold, hand poised over the dog's head.

Lady Clara stroked the one in her lap. It adjusted position slightly, closed its eyes.

"The information baffle," I said.

"Yes," sighed Lady Clara. "The information baffle. Is there any point to telling you?"

"You have real - real dogs - eleven of them - you can't even get them medical care -" Linly spluttered. "If one of them gets hurt, oh stars, it'll just, it'll just hurt, it won't know why or be able to fix it - you can't, you can't -"

"They don't understand anything," I whispered. "They can't communicate, all you know is whether they wag or -"

"I didn't think so," said Lady Clara. "No, of course not. You've never wanted to talk to something with more personality to it than a robot but less judgment than a person, you've never wanted to care for something with more complexity than a houseplant but less agency than an employee, of course you've never met a puppy and wanted one with all your heart -"

"We don't have to meet puppies to know what you're doing is wrong!" shrilled Linly.

"I am a doctor," said Lady Clara. "I'm in biotech now, but I used to be a veterinarian. I can take care of my dogs."

"They shouldn't be! They never chose to be, they have no choice now, if one wanted to die how would you know -" I exclaimed, watching one fall asleep on the rug. Dogs could dream, I remembered that from the research we'd done they could dream, if it had a nightmare it would never fully understand that whatever it feared was fake. If it had a good dream it would never have had a chance to write it down or tell its equally stunted friends. Nothing good was preserved and nothing bad had context and -

"I'll spare you the revivalist speech," said Lady Clara. "We'll come to no agreement. Why don't you let yourselves out? If you don't..." Her hand moved across her lapdog's back. The dog might love her or hate her but it didn't matter because she would never, ever let it go, and would have tamed it into submission and conditioned it to show all the signals of affection she wanted with her complete control over its food supply - "My dogs are very well trained."

If she told them to, they would do violence without any ability to know what cause they furthered. They'd savage us without empathy for the pain or even genuine malice to motivate the attacks. Our medical monitors would only show the bite, not that a real dog had bitten; and we wouldn't remember; and Lady Clara would explain on her employee's behalf that it was a misunderstanding of some kind -

Linly sobbed. I grabbed her hand and squeezed.

"Go," Lady Clara said.

We went.

My chrono jumped. Linly squeaked.

"Damn, that's creepy," I said. "What happened, did you wander into her library or something?"

"How should I know?" Linly asked. "Why do you think it was me? Maybe you decided to read her diary."

"I didn't - damn," I repeated, sighing. The dogs were inside the house, now, no chance of talking one into an under-the-table deal through the fence. "Let's hope the props people had better luck."

"Do you suppose it's fun, being a dog?" Linly wondered.

"They must get something out of it or they'd mod back," I said.

"Yeah," Linly agreed, "I guess."

Grownups

Megan should have been wearing her seatbelt. But she'd wanted to stick her head out the window, look at the cows and the mountains to have something to talk about when she started first grade -

There was a confusing redness of pain, and uncolored discontinuity, and white.

Megan swallowed. This was probably the part where she would meet her guardian angel, and she was pretty sure she had been good enough to get into Heaven. Lately.

Gulp.

She didn't hurt anymore, and the room was white, and she was in a white dress - her party dress, like she wore to her friends' birthdays. The floor was soft and spongy. Heaven wasn't really clouds, and clouds weren't really solid enough to stand on, but she jumped on it anyway. Just a couple of times. She wondered where her angel was.

The door opened and in walked a pretty lady, also in a white dress, but conspicuously missing wings, halo, and harp. "Hi, Megan," she said. "My name is Kim. How are you feeling?"

"Dead," said Megan, consideringly.

"You feel dead?" asked Kim.

"This is Heaven, right? I was mostly good," Megan said.

Kim smiled. "You've been plenty good. You're going to be fine, Megan. Apart from dead, how are you feeling?"

"I'm okay. It doesn't hurt anymore. How long do I have to wait for my mommy and daddy to be in Heaven too, please?"

"That part's sort of complicated," said Kim.

"Were they not good enough?"

"Oh, they were plenty good, too," said Kim. "They're completely all right. The trouble is... well, they've left you a letter to explain."

"Are you here to help me read it?"

"I'm here to answer questions you might have about it. It's not a written letter, so it's okay if you can't read that well yet."

"How is it a letter if it isn't made of letters?" asked Megan suspiciously.

"That's a good question. We could call it a recording instead. Are you ready to see it?"

"Okay," said Megan.

One of the white walls turned out to be a television. And there were Mommy and Daddy.

Sort of. They looked younger. And dressed up. Daddy had more hair and was maybe a little taller, and Mommy was sort of made of smoother lines, and had her left arm back again from wherever it had gone missing. But it was them, prettied up. Mommy was leaning on Daddy's shoulder, hugging his arm.

"Hello darling," murmured Mommy.

(Kim, behind Megan, sniffed softly.)

"Hi, Megan," said Daddy. "If you're watching this it's because they've finally figured out how to bring you back to life."

"There was a car crash," Mommy said. "You were very badly hurt. And you died."

"Some people who died were frozen so they'd keep," Daddy said.

Megan said, "Like waffles."

"Like waffles," Daddy said, but it was just a video, he wasn't listening. They'd just always had so many waffles in the freezer. "And eventually somebody invented a person-defroster, and then those people could be alive again."

"But we didn't know to do that," Mommy said. "We're so sorry, darling."

"But I'm fine," said Megan.

"Watch," advised Kim softly.

"We never, ever forgot you," Daddy said. "Every year on your birthday we'd get a box of sparklers -"

"Sparklers!" said Megan. "Are there sparklers in Heaven?"

"Yes," said Kim, and she backed up the video so Megan could hear the rest of what Daddy said.

"- and light them all and remember you. We had two more children. Your little brother's name is Ryan and your little sister's name is Amy."

"They're not here for this letter because you never knew them, but later you can watch letters from them if you like," Mommy said.

"And they grew up, and we got old, and they had kids -" Daddy began.

"And then," Mommy cut in. "Then, some very smart people figured out how to make it so people didn't have to die if they weren't already dead, and how to defrost the frozen people."

"If they're not dead..." Megan frowned.

Kim interrupted her. "Watch."

"It turns out," said Daddy, "that there is so much farther to grow up, if you have enough time. It's not just children and grownups. It's children and grownups and so many other things. People grow sideways and in circles and every which way."

"We're recording this," Mommy said, "because we're about to grow a little more, and if they ever figure out how to do what's called a rescue simulation, they'll bring you back. But we won't be enough like you anymore."

"If we knew for sure," Daddy said, "that they would figure out how to bring you back, then we wouldn't do it. We'd wait for you. Even if it took another thousand years. We'd let everybody else grow up and we'd wait until we could bring you along with us."

"But we don't know," Mommy said. "It might turn out to be completely impossible. Some very smart people are working on it. But they might find out that there's just no way to reach into the past and get you out of it so that you can grow up. So we're - going ahead. Growing up some more ourselves."

"And we're already not very much like how you remember us," Daddy said. "But after we've gone forward this little bit more... we could talk to you. But it would happen one of two ways. Either we'd be pretending to be less grown up, or we'd be so confusing you couldn't understand anything we said. There would be no way for you to really talk to us the way we're going to be."

"Not until you've grown up yourself."

"But not everyone wants to grow up at the same speed."

"And some people are deciding to stay less grown up, and if they figure out how to bring you back to life -"

"Then we've asked your niece, Kim, to look after you until you can come meet us again."

Megan looked over her shoulder at Kim. "You're my niece? I can't have a niece."

"You do. I'm your brother Ryan's daughter," said Kim.

"We love you so much," Daddy's recording said.

"So much," echoed Mommy. "We can't wait to see you again, darling. But you don't need to hurry for us. We'll be keeping an eye on you and Kim. You can grow up as fast or slow as you want. And when you get here we'll be so glad to have you with us again."

The video stilled on sadly smiling faces.

Megan looked at them, then turned to Kim again. "You're my niece?"

"Hi, Aunt Megan," said Kim.

"You're going to grow me up?"

"Yep. But if you want to be six for a while first that's fine. There's no hurry."

"Do I have to go to school," asked Megan suspiciously.

Kim shook her head. "If you want to learn something, you can learn it - anything you like - but you don't have to go to school."

"Can Mommy and Daddy visit?"

"It's not a question of whether they can. They could. But it wouldn't be good for you to try to talk to someone that grown up, yet, not if you want to really know them instead of just learning something from them. They'll wait."

"How can somebody be more grown up than a grownup?" complained Megan. "This isn't Heaven at all, is it."

"It's not. It's just being alive," said Kim.

Megan bit her lip and looked at the still television screen.

Then:

"There are sparklers, though?"

"All the sparklers you could ever want," said Kim, and she took Megan's hand and opened the door to a beach, black sky full of exploding colors.

Mana

This story is a sequel to Water.

Sanuar

"Again," said the Sixth Archmage. "Faster."

Sanuar tried to paint the bead paper faster. Straight thin line straight thick line, grab the size-two 4:1-spaced comb, put it down on the right with the teeth facing left so it doesn't smudge the wet ink, paint, put the comb aside but don't fling it because it comes up in this bead later, straight thin line, remember to put mana into the lines gently gently slow constant trickle -

His hand twitched. The ink jumped out of line. The edges of the bead paper crisped up; even if Sanuar trimmed off all the ink he'd put down so far and started a new bead spell that didn't require this much space, the whole sheet was ruined.

The Sixth Archmage, His Learned Excellency Golar Absam, slammed his fist down on the worktable; dozens of combs for dotted lines leapt with the impact. "Faster does not mean clumsier, Vayar!"

"I'm sorry," said Sanuar. "I'm sorry, sir, I'll start over."

"You've wasted enough bead paper for the day. Do I look like I'm made of the stuff? Go and meditate with your bowl of water while I think of something easier for you to do," sneered Absam. "At this rate by the time you have to choose secondaries you won't have enough control over your mana to keep even one of them in good order. This with a soft specialty! If I were you I'd drop out and sell mana spots for a living, but I suppose your learned parents won't hear of it. How did an archmage turn out such a useless -" Absam shook his head. "Go meditate with your bowl of water."

Sanuar lurched in the direction of his meditation cushion and collapsed onto it, then tried to compose himself into a good-enough posture so that Absam wouldn't be moved to cross the room and smack him on the shoulder with one of the combs.

Water. Water. Your favorite thing, he tried to remind his mana, but its initial excitement when he'd imprinted it had faded, since. It would probably take him four or five years to get back the simple ease he'd had the first day. It had been pretty awkward just covering for the "early" dropoff when his parents were under the impression that he'd been a mage for six hours instead of twelve.

Water, water, waaaaaaaater.

It was sort of hard to meditate when he was expecting his teacher to hit him.

Counterproductive as that was.

Water -

"I don't sense a trance over there!" snapped Absam.

Sanuar flinched. "I'm sorry sir, I'll get it in just a minute, I'm sure."

"If you can't meditate, your mana will fall out of order. If your mana falls out of order, you won't be able to use it," said Absam. "If you can't use your mana you're no mage at all! Concentrate on your water! It's your own idiot decision that you didn't choose something easier to focus on! Not that you'd surprise me if you couldn't keep your attention on a candle or even a pendulum."

"Yes sir I'm sorry sir."

Absam growled, but he didn't snatch up a comb to swat Sanuar's shoulder with, just went over to where his other student, Tasnan Aprol, was meditating on his prism to shake him out of it and teach him something. Sanuar would have a reprieve as long as Tasnan was occupied, at least until Absam wanted them to do something simultaneously.

Water. Water.

Oh, finally, blissfully, trance.

The water was clear and clean and room-temperature. The water was still. The water was not going to hurt him.

Sanuar felt like he was floating. Or not even floating - underwater, neither sinking nor rising, untouched by currents. Weightless.

He wasn't sure how long it had been when Absam's hand came down on his head. Felt like an hour or so of settling and regeneration in his mana. "Vayar," said his teacher. "Help Aprol with his spell beads. Pass him combs, roll the paper for him when he's done. You're both off for the day once he's made and cut one good roll of them. If you mess them up for him I've told him to strike you blind and send you home like that for your learned lady mother to fix, don't let your excuse for a mind wander, Vayar."

"Yes sir," said Sanuar, swallowing.

And Absam left the room, leaving the boys alone. Sanuar tripped his way to the spell bead table, and looked at the instructions for the spell. It needed a lot of different combs. Were they all organized? They were all organized, good.

"I won't strike you blind," Tasnan remarked, laying out a clean paper, "if you promise to say I did, if it comes to it."

"Okay. I mean yes. Thank you."

"But it'd be better if you didn't have to and the beads were right on the first try."

"Yes. I'll, I'll try."

Sanuar managed to pass Tasnan all the correct combs in the correct order so that Tasnan could paint the correct dotted lines. When he placed the final stroke Sanuar rolled up the paper around a thin dowel as tightly and quickly as possible, dipped it in shellac and then drying powder, and offered it back to Tasnan to be sliced into several smaller copies of the same spell. Some mages could paint mana onto a paper quickly enough that they could make even a long spell on a tall sheet of paper and be done before the magic seeped out of the first line, and cut a single paintjob into a dozen copies of a bead. Tasnan had only been a mage for a few months longer than Sanuar, and his roll made four. Slice, slice, slice.

"What does it do?" Sanuar asked, as Tasnan picked up the least attractive end piece to test.

"Sunburst. Close your eyes," said Tasnan.

Sanuar did it just in time to avoid the explosion of light when Tasnan cast the bead. "There, all done for the day," Tasnan said brightly.

"Isn't this a bit early for him to be letting us go?" asked Sanuar. That was some consolation. He might get home in time to see Niomah before she finished all her work and left for the day.

"Nah," said Tasnan. "Did you lose track of time? It's about dinnertime. I'm starving. Do you want to grab food at the Broadleaf? Pick up girls?"

"I told you I have a girlfriend." Two.

"Liar. Come on, you'll be fine if you can get over being so shy, you're, you know, tall."

"I still have a girlfriend." Sorry, whichever of you I'm leaving out.

"Whatever. You're taller than me, come to think, you'd probably be more distraction than wingman. Go have fun with your imaginary girlfriend," Tasnan snorted.

I can't. Niomah's on her way home already and Ens is at that... thing. "Will do."

Sanuar, mercifully not struck blind, went home to his parents, and ate dinner, and reported in a mumble that not much had happened in his lessons today.

He wrote Ens a telegram and left Niomah a note under his pillow for when she changed the linens. Both completely innocuous - the note for Niomah worded to look like it could have been a note to self - lest someone else see.

Ens

"- seven years later. At this time there was a substantial uptick in immigration from Arnland into Gathland and neighboring countries," said the history teacher.

To be perfectly fair it was a nice school. They had teachers who knew what they were talking about, and decent books, and a pleasant campus. Ens just hated her uniform and the early start time and the mindboggling number of hours they wanted her to sink into acquiring her appropriately genteel education. She'd multiplied it out once and imagined spending that much time doing anything else.

"The low educational level, tendency to criminality, and crude cultural practices of first-generation Arnysh immigrants led to a negative reaction from the host countries, with most implementing a quota and the lake nations electing to ban them entirely starting two years after the regime change," said the teacher.

...Well, the other teachers knew what they were talking about. Ens charitably supposed this one likely had the dates right.

"Lord Riawae?" said the teacher.

"Um?" said Ens. "I mean, yes?"

"Do you find something objectionable about the history of Arnland/Mainland relations?"

"I." Could probably afford to piss off this teacher this once, but would it be once? Not if she opened her big mouth it wouldn't be. "No ma'am."

"I didn't think so." She went back to pacing the front of the room. "Many Arnysh elected to immigrate illegally in defiance of these attempts to reduce the numbers of entrants, which is why Arnysh are now required to carry identification in four countries including -"

Ens tried not to look like she'd bitten directly into a lemon. She took notes. She made little star markings next to things she wanted to ask Niomah about. Not that she was likely to get a chance in the next forever. School meant she usually couldn't visit Sanuar; when Ens was free he usually wasn't. And Niomah was completely at the mercy of her work schedule. Ens had a school break in a couple of weeks, Sanuar had one day off then. If Ens were very, very lucky, no high-society parties would claim her time on that one day and she could go see "her friend".

She missed Sanuar too, but him at least she could telegram. Niomah didn't even dare receive letters at home. Very angry father.

"- the patriarchal and collectivist society of the Arnysh inspires moral outrage in most Gathru. Arnysh families subsume the wills of individuals into the ostensible good of the family, usually decided by the most dominant male relative in a household, which may contain upwards of a dozen individuals in some cases, typically in extremely cramped living quarters. By contrast Gath see it as the responsibility of a parent to have a number of children to whom they can devote more individual attention and then help those children develop their full potential."

Yep. Sure. If Ens and Niomah wanted to get married, Niomah's family would be the only ones complaining. Or rather, Ens's family would complain that Ens was not living up to her potential, while Niomah's family would be appalled at the implication that she'd had a social life.

Okay, maybe this teacher knew something about Arnysh culture.

But she didn't know anything about Niomah.

Ens regretted every single solitary minute she had spent during her long vacation doing things other than listening to Niomah call her priceless artwork and letting Sanuar muss up her hair with petting.

She did not have enough happy memories to get through the rest of this term without eventually spending all her Lord Riawae Points on pissing off teachers.

"Lord Riawae," said the teacher.

"Yes?"

"Eyes front, please. This is not introductory school and I should not have to cavort with brightly colored puppets for your attention."

"Yes ma'am."

History, eventually, after a break for lunch and a digression into the relevance of sugarcane and Arnysh magecraft, came to an end. Ens had art (the pleasantest class of the day) and math, and that was all; the next day would be literature and music and ethics, and after that natural philosophy and rhetoric and Trathese. (Because they didn't offer Arnysh, because why would rich Mainlanders want to learn Arnysh.)

(Ens imagined if one of her significant others could only tell her they loved her in Trathese. She could understand it pretty well, but there wasn't any emotion in her second language, not with the gap between hearing the word and remembering what it meant. She resolved that she was going to find some way to figure out how to tell Niomah she loved her, in Arnysh, before they next saw each other.)

Math let out. Ens went to wait for the family driver to bring him home. There was a girl from the class behind his standing nearby, smiling at him. He smiled back, just a little bit. No point in being rude.

"Hello, Lord Riawae."

Ens looked at the emblem on her school badge. "Lady Indabar. Hello."

"Please, call me Kizi."

"If you like."

"May I call you Ens?"

"I don't see why not."

"Oh, good. I did hope we'd get off on the right foot," smiled Kizi.

"I - what?"

"Oh! Oh, you weren't told? I apologize, that must have seemed very abrupt, forgive me. My mother's been talking to yours -"

And the rest of Lady Kizi Indabar's no-doubt-exquisitely-polite explanation was somewhat abandoned in the static of what no no no fuck no no that swallowed Ens's brain.

He managed to recover the ability to process language when Kizi said "- but I do hope we can at least be friends, even if it isn't a love match?"

No no no no no

Ens swallowed. Kizi looked concerned. "Ens?" she prompted.

"Pardon me," breathed Ens. "I hadn't been told. I'm. I'm very surprised. I'd been hoping for... I hope you will not be offended if I say I'd been holding out hope for a love match."

"Oh, I'm not offended - I mean, unless you had someone in mind. It would be a little gauche if your mother were making promises on your behalf and you were, what's that line from the play? Taken in your...?"

"Spoken for in my heart," murmured Ens. He'd done makeup for a production of the play in question. The lead actress was always very passionate about declaring herself spoken for in her heart. She'd had to marry the villain anyway at the end of act two, although then further shenanigans ensued that left him dead. Ens did not want to have to wish Kizi dead. She seemed perfectly nice.

"Yes. It's not that, is it? I can apply to my mother about it if so. But you know that arrangements quite often develop into something more, if given a chance. I'm optimistic, myself."

Yes I have a girlfriend and a boyfriend and one's an impoverished Arnysh immigrant and one's the Fourteenth Archmage's son and I haven't seen either of them in two weeks but tell your mother I am scandalous and unmarriageable and probably insufficiently virginal oh I wish. Apply to your mother about it, Lady Indabar.

"Nothing to the point at which I would have informed Mother," Ens said softly.

Kizi patted his shoulder familiarly. "I'm supposed to go home with you today," she said. "To get to know one another better. If I'm really awful surely you can talk to your mother, likewise."

Sure I can. My mother's great about that sort of thing. I tell her everything. Of course.

Ens just nodded. Kizi smiled.

Niomah

Niomah swept. Niomah mopped, dusted, and scrubbed. Niomah put things away where they belonged. Niomah arranged flowers in a vase on the dinner table, drew the curtains against the evening sun, and took her jug of water from the cook because hauling it on a trip she was going to make anyway was better than making somebody make that one extra hike to the Timrar fountain.

Niomah missed her lost boy and her priceless artwork.

Niomah missed sleeping in the garden shed, mercy be. But she couldn't risk angering The Learned Sanuar's Parents anymore after the lockdown on the ghetto ended and the Our Boys (as her grandfather insisted on calling them) had been arrested and she could get back in.

And be hollered at for disappearing like that, for letting them think she'd been killed kidnapped defiled disappeared. Joy. They cared ever so, certainly.

But they were all alive, even if they had had to break into the savings to have Niomah's sister-in-law seen by the life-mage crone down the street to be sure she wouldn't miscarry from stress and dehydration. So expensive. They wanted to fix the little one's eye, but the pregnant sister-in-law came first. Due any day now. Possibly in labor as Niomah walked home, that would be something.

Well, she just had to keep going to work even if her lost boy was never there to gaze adoringly anymore, never there to twirl her into his arms and sneak a feel of her curves and kiss her, never there to so much as say hello. Gone by the time she arrived. Still at his magic lessons when she was all out of house to clean, all out of ways to stretch into another hour for the extra eleven balances.

Keep working, bring home the money and the water, save up, fix the brother's eye, make sure there was plenty to accommodate the new baby, be around to translate Gath paperwork and regulations and this-and-that for her relations. Keep working and everything would be fine. Her boys would be out of school some, eventually. Their teachers could not keep them forever. How much could there really be to learn? They both already spoke very good Gath, obviously, they knew their sums and civics, that was all anyone cared if she knew.

And she wasn't a mage and she'd never held more than five hundred balances in her hands all at once, so what did anyone care if she knew anything.

She had to detour around the place the bridge had once been. There were talks of building a new one which looked likely to be endlessly delayed (who wanted a bridge into the Arnysh ghetto? The Arnysh people? They could go around) so Niomah went six blocks west. There, the chasm the bridge had arced over narrowed some, and there were stairs cut into it. Niomah could either go all the way down, or go about a third of the way down and try to jump it. She jumped on the way to work in the morning; with the jug of water she descended to the bottom and then climbed until her knees whined.

At least she didn't go to work in any kind of vehicle. That would have obliged her to go around the canyon completely, halfway across town.

Stairs and screaming calves, stairs and aching thighs. Stairs and some boy, Mainlander but the scruffy kind who sometimes hung around in low-rent areas, standing at the top.

"Hey," he said. "That looks heavy."

"Is actually made of soap bubble," said Niomah, "am practicing for theatrical showing, but many thanks for observation."

The boy laughed, showing all his teeth. "Lemme carry it for you the rest of the way."

Niomah had a blister on the back of her ankle. "Terribly kind," she said, and she handed him the jug of water and trudged past the chasm into the ghetto.

"What's your name?"

"Niomah."

"Niomah who?"

"Mihi." Belatedly: "Why?"

"Just being friendly. I'm Hesh, Hesh Linnar."

"How nice of a name."

"I've seen you come through here before."

"Yes, well. Bridge has not grown back yet." In the nice parts of town there was always construction, which was very annoying, but not as annoying as the sluggish repairs on things in the ghetto. Sure, there was no scaffolding in her way. But there was a broken window over there and a bent fence over there and graffiti on everything because who cared?

Hesh laughed again. "Are you actually funny or do you talk like that because you don't know enough Gath?"

Niomah bit her lip. She turned the corner onto her street. "Very ignorant. Wait five years for polishing accent and so boring, never laughing ever." That also got a laugh. Her skin crawled. "Almost home. Water, please."

"I can carry it the rest of the way. You look tired."

"Oh, very angry father, seeing strange boy."

"I know your grandpa. There's a Mr. Mihi at the liquor store. He knows me."

Oh joy of joys, liquor store regular following her home. "Perhaps no relation. Such common name. Water now, please."

"At least let me take it up the stairs to your floor."

What was her mama said? Say no twice, nice and mannerly, and after that you only go on doing it if you hate them and want it mutual. "So kind," Niomah said.

There was her building. There were the stairs up the side of it to the balcony with the four doors to apartments. She managed to wave Hesh away before he offered to hold her own front door for her or some such fool thing, smiling all the while, but she could feel his eyes on her while she took her key out of her pocket and let herself into 4-2.

Perhaps he was really only friendly, really only helpful.

Niomah tested the water in the shower and it smelled like rotten eggs. None of that, then. She would need to think of something else to feel better. Such a pity she could not write to her priceless artwork (the mail would be seen, could not be accounted for) nor back to her lost boy (he could leave her little notes; but the maid could not very well be seen leaving debris around the house, that being the opposite of her job).

Her sister-in-law had no shortage of chores for Niomah to do to distract her, though, and however little affection Niomah bore her sister-in-law, she did already love that baby she was going to have. Baby baby baby.

And the sister-in-law went into labor that evening and everyone was up all night listening to her holler, and just before dawn there was finally Niomah's little niece new in the world. Niomah held her and kissed her for just a moment before she had to scurry off to work, early early early to leave time for the six block detour and the trip down and up the stairs, to a house from which her lost boy was missing to dust the frames of artwork that were not her priceless one.

Ens

Kizi was perfectly nice and Ens couldn't stand it.

She was interested in his makeup hobby; she wanted him to paint her and went around grinning into every reflective surface until she went home. She liked theater and could hold an intelligent conversation about that too.

Her family owned chunks of the Arnysh ghetto and the Behadze neighborhood and she sounded almost not racist when she talked about that. She seemed genuinely sympathetic to the tenants who didn't like the Mainlander property managers her parents kept hiring at a ridiculous turnover rate.

She gave absolutely no indication that she would enjoy shoving Ens against a wall and nibbling on him.

If Ens had never met anybody who wanted to do that, he probably would have liked Kizi very well. He probably would have been ecstatic that his mother had had the wit to find this pleasant girl near his own age with compatible interests instead of some fourteen-year-old twit he'd have to wait forever to even consider touching or some insufferable new-money who only thought about calligraphy and horse racing. Ens had been threatened with an example of each, before, in probable jest.

Kizi was perfectly nice. She was good company.

She was... amenable.

Optimistic.

She wasn't even bad-looking. Especially not after Ens did her makeup; he could get practically anyone past "plain" into "fetching". She was sort of shapeless, but that was just Ens looking for reasons to be picky besides just:

She didn't want to be here.

She didn't seem to have, as Ens had, somewhere else she'd rather be; she was not actively unhappy about any part of the situation. But she didn't look at Ens like she wanted to lick his throat or wrap her entire body around his or lace her fingers through his hair. There was literally zero attraction. And Ens had watched Sanuar look at him. Mercy and grace he'd watched Niomah look at him.

Ens could have tolerated Sanuar and Niomah getting each other to themselves while Ens saw to concerns of familial approval and converging dynasties - if it didn't mean never being looked at like that, ever again.

But Ens didn't know what to do. She'd gotten a barely legible telegram from Niomah one time when she'd idly sent a message to Sanuar's house though Sanuar was out: hi ttwrok plegse tlgramm samuaar beek ltsr that my nees ws born cmnt leive nute herz, it said. Characteristic of somebody whose Gath wasn't that great to begin with trying to figure out the code, unable to see the letters as they came out incorrectly on the other side. This was the only news she'd had from her in weeks.

Dutifully, that evening Ens typed back: Please give the telegrammer to Sanuar.

It's me.

Niomah sent earlier what I think was supposed to be "hi artwork please telegram Sanuar back later that my niece was born can't leave note here".

Oh, that's good! Sometimes I get bits and pieces from the cook, Niomah was worried about that.

My mother wants me to marry Lady Kizi Indabar.

Long pause. Long pause. Ens sat on her hands so she wouldn't bite her nails. Was he going to suggest that this sounded like an excellent idea and by the way I've been wondering how to tell you this but I'm tired of you? Was he going to say that Ens had better withdraw her entire year's worth of spending money in cash and elope with Niomah and deal with the great yawning void of incomprehensible nothing that loomed after it whenever Ens considered this option? Was he going to say so how does Lady Indabar feel about straws and chocolate milk?

Which would be nice to know in theory. If she actually wanted Ens, if Ens actually wanted her.

The reply, when it came, was How are you doing about that?

I'd like her fine if it weren't for you and Niomah.

I mean, pause. There's an and in there.

She's nice but there's no anything. She's nice but I don't dare tell her.

Tell her?

You, Niomah, being sometimes a girl.

Oh. Yeah. I'm sorry, I don't think I have any advice, I don't know.

Relief and despair all at once. Sanuar would not be telling her to do any of the horrible options that existed. Sanuar would not be relieving her of the burden of agency. What was she going to do?

Can I come visit sometime? Do you have any days off? she tapped.

Don't you have school?

I'll fake sick. I'll fake sick and pile pillows in my bed and sneak out and walk all the way there if you have a day off.

I think I'm actually sick. I'm sorry.

You are? With what? Are you okay? demanded Ens, alarmed.

I could be actually sick enough to stay home and you could come see Niomah at least if you need to that much?

Are you okay are you okay

I'm fine, I just keep losing track of time and feeling tired.

I love you. Go to a life mage if you need it.

My teacher has a life secondary and he says it's from ever being expected to show discipline for once in my life.

Ugh.

I'm okay it's not that bad. I can leave little notes for Niomah if I phrase them vaguely, do you want me to put anything in for you?

The thing about Kizi I guess. That I told you about her niece. That I love her. I love you too.

Love you. Father wants the telegrammer sorry

So Ens bundled up all the tape and shredded it and put the telegrammer back where it lived and flopped into her bed and stared at the ceiling.

Sanuar

"Mother?" said Sanuar softly at breakfast one morning.

"Mm?"

"Can - I change my mind about having you teach me? Or Father. Father would be fine."

"You were very emphatic that you wanted to be taught by someone you weren't related to, Sanuar. I offered three times."

"I know. I'm sorry. I think I made a mistake." He'd been smothered in parental expectations that he learn magic for his entire life. He hadn't wanted to see what they were like once he was actually in progress. But at least his parents wouldn't hit him. They would probably not insult him nearly so often. His mother had actually been fairly gentle about the "soft" water specialization. It sounded practically idyllic now to sit in her office and listen to her advise him on painting beads and meditating and the efficient use of mana.

"We can hardly pull you out now. It would insult the Sixth Archmage. Besides, neither your father nor I does water and he at least His Learned Excellency has it as a secondary," said Mother.

"Isn't there any way -?"

"Honestly, Sanuar, what's going on? Why the sudden about-face? You know the Sixth Archmage is very well-respected. He's written excellent books and it's really somewhat unusual that he'll take apprentices from outside his family at all."

What was he supposed to say? I'm tired. I'm occasionally swatted with bead-painting combs, which stings quite a bit even though it leaves no marks you could check. I don't know what happened to yesterday morning, I started meditating and then it was lunch and I couldn't remember what was going on and my mana was still so out of order it was like I hadn't even begun.

"Never mind," Sanuar murmured.

"Of course you're having a difficult time, you're late-onset," tutted Mother. "You'll find your niche eventually. Go on, work hard. Have some fun."

"Yes Mother."

So Sanuar went to his lessons and half the day disappeared into his bowl of water, but he did manage to make a spell bead roll of four correctly. It was the same general water control spell he'd stolen from his birthday present when he and Ens had broken into the plumbing exchange, and he owed Father two of the slices to pay him back for that stunt. One went to pick up his meditation water and make it do a lap through the air around the room and settle back in its bowl, to prove that the bead was done right. But one he got to keep or sell.

There was a bead store next door to the mages' tower. Sanuar went in with his last, precious bead, and the shopkeeper gave him six hundred seventy-five balances for it and dropped it into the inventory.

Six hundred and seventy-five balances was a lot of money. He'd need to sink more of it into paper and ink, since now that he'd pulled off a bead it was no longer a pure educational expense but rather a resource investment he could pay for on his own - but it was a lot of money even after he handed back fifty balances for a bottle of ink and pack of ten short-length four-width papers.

If he could get it right on anything like a regular basis he could make so much money.

He could save up enough to buy a little house and an enormous bed and then he could whisk Niomah and Ens both away and they could all live in it and he could spend a few hours a day painting beads and a few more putting his mana in order and to hell with his teacher and all of their parents.

To hell with Niomah's very angry father, to hell with Lady Kizi Indabar, to hell with His Learned Excellency The Sixth Archmage Golar Absam. Sanuar would teach himself to make a small array of beads, out of books, and he would support his girlfriends on it and so what if he was never archmage material.

Sanuar was feeling rather chipper about this when he went back up in the tower and found Tasnan working on a bead of his own. Absam was off somewhere, mercifully enough.

Since the desk was occupied Sanuar couldn't make another go at a second bead roll right away; he sat down at his water instead. Putting his mana in order. Using it disturbed its structure, like shaking a bottle of layers of colored sand; letting it settle by not touching it made it cranky, in addition to taking months or years; meditating smoothed it out. In theory if Sanuar did nothing but meditate for a week he could get his mana into the state of perfect order it had started in when he'd woken it up and imprinted it, but for most practical purposes he just needed to get better at using it from a more maintainable level of mild disarray.

Plus, meditating felt nice. It was like all and only the good parts of sleep. (Tasnan had disputed this description; Tasnan, it seemed, had pleasanter dreams than Sanuar.)

He concentrated on the weightless, restful sensation of the water for a solid half-hour, then opened his eyes again. Tasnan was done. Absam was still out. And Sanuar actually felt like he'd been meditating for thirty minutes. Maybe he was just better at meditating when he wasn't freaking out about the possibility that a comb would swat him on the arm.

"Do you really have a girlfriend?" asked Tasnan, looking up wistfully from his textbook on applications of perception magic.

"Yes." Two. Two and I'm going to get us all out of our houses and make beads to keep us all three in a little cottage somewhere because whatever Absam thinks of my talent, with decent luck and a steady hand I can make a bead in four minutes that the shop next door will buy for more than Niomah makes in a week.

"How'd you meet her?"

"In a bar." If for some reason Tasnan decided to talk to Sanuar's parents and spread rumors and Sanuar couldn't think of anything better he could say he was making it all up to impress his co-prentice.

"Yeah? How'd you convince her to go out with you?"

"It's... complicated." Was it ever.

"I keep striking out. It's lonely, I don't mind telling you that. I want a girlfriend. Hell, I want to get married," said Tasnan. "Do you want to get married?"

"That would. Also be complicated."

"Well, I do. Give me some advice. That isn't 'be tall'."

"I don't think being tall has anything to do with it, really. I don't know though. Uh, she approached me, first."

"Lucky bastard."

Sanuar spread one of his new bead papers out on the desk and picked up a paintbrush and the first comb. "Sometimes."

Niomah

The baby was adorable. The baby was loud. The baby was expensive.

I want to make enough beads to buy a house and then you and Ens can move in with me, said the note under Sanuar's pillow.

She could not write back. She did not happen to wander by the Vayars' telegrammer when Ens was writing in again. Finally, finally the Sixth Archmage had his wedding anniversary and Sanuar was home, all day. Some of it he spent staring into a bowl of water, some of it she spent actually doing her job, but in between they could talk.

"Cannot leave home," Niomah told him. "New baby, little brother still with bad eye, grandfather sick, cannot leave."

"I could give you more money," Sanuar said. "I could double it, easy -"

"No," said Niomah, "have to explain money. Suddenly come home with thousand balances father thinks precious daughter whoring for cash."

"It's not - it's a minute's work, and some meditation to make up the mana ordering, it's not just because - we aren't even -"

"Thinks precious daughter whoring for cash, is not far wrong," said Niomah severely. "Not offering beads money to neighbor down street from me, not offering beads to homeless Behadze, offering beads to me."

"I want you to be able to leave," pleaded Sanuar. "If it's money, if it's keeping your income for your family -"

"- is for little niece to know me growing up, is for father not thinking I am good as dead, is for mother knowing I have place to be all day am not turning delinquent like brother fired from job months ago -"

"- are you happy?"

Niomah pursed her lips. "Other things exist."

"Besides being happy?"

"Yes besides being happy."

"So - you're not."

"Will be so happy when lost boy finds himself and wonders what useless girlfriend is for?" Niomah snapped. "Will be so happy when cleaning little cottage instead of here not being paid besides in rent and groceries then suddenly rich Mainlander boys losing interest. Happens, rich Mainlander boys losing interest. Not you, lost boy. But rich powerful water mage cannot remember being lost, him, cannot remember the point of me."

"You - you think I'd - Niomah I wouldn't -"

"Job is for having money to keep for working," Niomah said softly. "Money to keep for showing up cleaning things going home to family. If I lose job my family will help me. If I lose you and you are what is feeding me, only thing feeding me, family all lost forgotten hating me?"

Sanuar was silent. Niomah lifted the edge of his bedspread and swept debris out from under it.

"I wouldn't," he said, softer.

"You wouldn't. Rich powerful mage, though, going to make real promises?"

"What, do you - what do you want to do, get married?"

She felt her lip trembling and turned away. "But priceless artwork."

"Yeah," murmured Sanuar.

"Most priceless of artworks cannot remember how priceless without price tag," sighed Niomah. "Forget how priceless like that," she snapped her fingers, "if being extra..."

"She would, wouldn't she."

"Yes."

"So you want to just - do this, forever? Just like we have been."

"Do I look so all-knowing!" exclaimed Niomah. "Oh lost boy, I only know what we cannot do."

She swept the heap of dust out of his room and into the hallway and Sanuar didn't follow her.

Ens

Ens turned seventeen.

She managed to finagle a sufficiently formal invitation to Sanuar that his parents let him have the afternoon off his lessons to attend her party. This was a small bright spot in a sea of confusing catastrophe.

Kizi was invited too, for one thing, which meant that there was next to no chance of Sanuar and Ens sneaking off alone for truly serious conversation even if they did manage to talk.

For another, Ens's principal gift on the occasion of her coming of age was a modest fraction of the Riawae landholdings. She wouldn't know exactly which ones until the party was in full swing, but her mother had warned her at breakfast that she was getting some - "ones under adequate management, you won't have to lift a finger, these are more or less for practice". So she wouldn't be surprised perhaps to the point of an impolite reaction at her party. Ens's sister had gotten mostly farms, but she actively liked farms, while Ens had no discernible land ownership preference because the entire thing sounded terrifying.

For a third, her entire self was screaming it's LADY Riawae, damn it! as loudly as possible and she was about to be called Lord more times in the next few hours than she usually suffered in a week.

Kizi arrived first. She'd brought a present - midsize box draped in patterned cloth, she'd been fishing for ideas and had seemed to settle on resupplying Ens's makeup kit but the technicalities of surprise had to be observed. She chatted happily to Ens's mother and put it on the side table that wasn't designated for refreshments and then drifted over to Ens.

"Happy birthday, Ens!"

"Thank you."

"Are they testing you for mage potential?" Kizi wondered. "It's your seventeenth."

"I don't have a mage ancestor for three generations back on either side," Ens said, shaking her head. "No point."

"My birthday is in a month and I'm getting checked again just to be sure."

"The Fourteenth Archmage's son Sanuar Vayar is coming to the party," mentioned Ens. "He came up with late-onset mana himself."

"Oh, lovely. Perhaps he can tell me whether to hope I have it or hope I don't."

"I'm - not sure what to expect him to say on that." They hadn't seen much of each other since Sanuar had started lessons. Ens didn't know much about how he felt about the subject. Telegrams were too - filtered; Sanuar did not generally type out the slump in his shoulders or the droop in his eyes.

"So I'll ask him, then, if there's a chance."

"Mmhm."

"You're probably getting some of your family properties, aren't you? I'm afraid of getting mine, apparently managing them is legitimately difficult and I don't feel prepared at all. They don't teach it in school!"

Ens nodded.

More guests arrived; Kizi had been early and everyone else was politely punctual. Even Sanuar. Sanuar arrived between Ens's sister's fiancé and one of Ens's father's colleagues, bearing a cloth-covered box and a tentative smile. He put it on the table. He looked around and then made a beeline for Ens.

"Happy birthday."

"Thanks. Sanuar, this is Lady Kizi Indabar. Kizi, Sanuar Vayar," said Ens, feeling inane. Sanuar must have guessed. Kizi could have too.

"A pleasure," said Kizi, shaking Sanuar's hand. "I'm coming up on my own seventeenth and my grandmother is a mage, any advice?"

"Uh," said Sanuar. "Not especially. Maybe - pick a specialty in advance, in case?"

"Oh, I have, I'd want to be an object mage."

"Okay. That shouldn't require much, uh, setup, you could just imprint your mana on like one of your shoes, or something."

"I might bring some personal object just for sentiment, but yes."

"...Do you have a teacher lined up?"

"My grandmother said she'd do it."

"Okay, that's good. I mean, if you like your grandmother," said Sanuar.

"I do," Kizi assured him. "Oh, but we're ignoring the birthday boy."

Ens tried not to flinch. She didn't know if she managed. "It's quite all right, I mean, I'm glad you're getting along," she said. I wanted him to hate her. I want a reason to hate her.

The food was delicious, Ens's suit itched, Kizi stayed at her elbow and made charming conversation with everyone who came by with birthday wishes. Sanuar didn't loiter. Ens couldn't chase him, couldn't kiss him, couldn't even give him some more socially acceptable reason to stay with her because if she did that eventually she would kiss him. He milled through the crowd just barely taller than the next tallest guest, visible wherever he went, and she tracked him with her eyes when she couldn't stop herself.

Sanuar had to leave when everyone else did; only Kizi had an excuse to linger. He said goodbye, first.

"I'll see you next time we're both free," Ens said.

"Telegram me," said Sanuar. "The housekeeper can take messages if I'm not home."

"Of course," said Ens. "Thank you so much for coming."

"Thank you for inviting me. Happy birthday," murmured Sanuar, and then he had to go meet his carriage.

"You're close friends?" asked Kizi.

Ens nodded mutely.

"Which present was his?" Kizi wondered.

"Theater tickets for when school's on break again." In sets of three. Very optimistic of Sanuar. There was a letter hidden under the tickets that Ens hadn't had a chance to read yet.

"Ens?" asked Kizi softly.

"Mm?"

"You act like you like him, and before I wasn't sure, but now I'm pretty confident you don't like me, even as friends. I'm not expecting flowers and stargazing but if you don't even like me, why haven't you asked your mother to call it off with mine?"

"I." Ens swallowed. "I can't tell her things. It sounds like you can - talk to yours. I can't."

"Why not?"

Ens shook her head.

"I can go to my mother if you want but I need to tell her something. I can make something up but I don't want to accidentally get it right and ruin some secret you're keeping," Kizi said.

"I just."

Ens's parents were off elsewhere; her sister was at her fiancé's house. The servants were all in the adjoining building washing the party dishes. The Riawae home was deserted except for the two of them.

"I just..."

"Ens, please, I'm not going to - I hope I've at least proved myself fairly harmless even if I haven't managed likable?"

"I," began Ens again, and then she snatched Kizi's present off the table and headed for the stairs. "I want to show - let me show you something."

"Okay..." Kizi followed her. Ens went all the way up, up to her room, with the preexisting makeup kit, with the dress in the back of the closet, with her sister's room full of jewelry just down the hall if she couldn't sell the effect without it.

"Just - just sit on the bed and for goodness sake don't say or do anything or I'll lose my nerve," said Ens. Kizi obeyed. Ens grabbed the package out of her closet, went into her bathroom and sat at her mirror, and opened the present and the old kit and went to work.

Line the eyes, contour the face, special attention on the jawline, stain the lips, color on the cheeks, shadow and highlight -

Step into the dress -

(it felt so good why did it have to feel like that if Ens had never known rightness then she wouldn't be so tortured when things were wrong wrong wrong)

Ens listened, but there was no sound of anyone entering the house. It was just her and Kizi.

Kizi, look, you can't marry me, I'm a girl too.

Kizi, look, you can't marry me, I'm clearly delusional.

Kizi, look, I'm pretty, I want to show someone else but you're all I've got right now.

Ens opened the door.

And Kizi's jaw dropped.

Niomah

Stairs down.

Stairs up.

Hesh Linnar.

"Hi, Niomah. Let me carry your water for you."

"How kind." He already knew where she lived. The Timrar fountain worked, if one day he took the water hostage.

"It's no problem." He fell into step beside her. "Look, I really like you."

"Oh, nonsense, nothing to like -"

"No, really," he protested. "I like you. You're funny and you're pretty and, and I've been talking to your grandfather..."

ugh

"...and he said it'd be okay if I courted you, you know, properly. I have my own place. It's not that far from where your family lives, even."

"Give the water."

"I can carry it, it's no trouble."

"Give, need drink."

With that Hesh released the jug and Niomah swigged a mouthful to get the taste of that idea off her tongue. "Prefer," she said, after that, holding tightly to the handle, "that you did not."

"What? Why? I've got a steady job and everything, and -"

"Please, no."

"- and look, I'm a damn sight better than the usual sort of guy you'd pick up living here, your grandfather said so himself."

"Terribly kind but no."

"Why not? You've got to give me a reason."

"Do not care for company."

"Then why've you been letting me carry your water every day, huh? Got you."

She was being polite. What a stupid mistake, assuming that politeness would be correctly identified as such instead of having its head swapped with a different animal and labeled as yet a third creature that had never existed. "Then stop carrying water. My arms work."

"But I want to help you."

"Help by not asking grandfather any more things."

"I can go to your dad if that's more traditional? Look, I know your family's not isolationist, your grandfather brought your niece to work the other day and she's half and half."

"Is different."

"Yeah, how?"

"Is." Her Gath was failing her. She was not sure she could have gotten through to Hesh Linnar even if he'd spoken fluent Arnysh. "Please go."

"I'm not some random Mainlander who doesn't know anything, come on, you're not going to convince me that it matters that your niece's dad is the Arnysh one instead of the other way around. My step-grandmother's the mage down the street -"

Oh, the mage down the street. The life mage. The one they were going to pay to fix her brother's eye.

Oh great.

No wonder Grandfather liked him. If they fixed the eye they could then fix Grandfather's leg, he could go back to his old job which paid better -

"Yeah, now you like the idea, huh? She does family discounts when she can and everything."

My lost boy is a mage. Her lost boy was barely trained in his water specialty and hadn't even chosen secondaries. Last she heard. She could not explain having the son of the fourteenth archmage on call. And she didn't, even. She just worked in his house and when he was home they argued.

"And I have my own place," he repeated, "and a job -"

My priceless artwork is heir to a fortune - Her priceless artwork would be disinherited probably if anyone found out that he had ever kissed Niomah.

"And your family likes me."

To which she had no reply even in her thoughts.

"Let me carry your water."

Mutely, Niomah handed over the jug.

Sanuar

Swat. Sanuar's hand stung like he'd touched a hot stove. "Agh -"

"Oh, shut up," snarled Absam. "You know what you should be crying about? The deplorable state of your mana. How long were you sitting there? What were you doing, daydreaming?"

"No, sir, I meditated -"

Swat.

Sanuar bit his lip.

"Don't lie to me. Sit back down and actually focus on your water. Put your mana in order. Don't embarrass me, you lazy, pathetic excuse for a mage, just do your work."

"Yessir."

Absam swatted him one more time for good measure and then turned around; Sanuar collapsed on his cushion. He wanted to pull a little water out of his bowl to cool the mark on his hand but that would probably just make it worse. Meditating. Meditating. Suspended with effortless focus -

Swat.

"Augh!"

"Quit your whining. You've been there for hours and what have you got to show for it? If anything your mana looks worse!" roared Absam. "That'll land you a slot next to mine and your father's for certain, won't it, what an innovation, meditating backwards! Get out of my sight."

Sanuar didn't have to be told twice. He scurried past his meditating co-prentice and bolted from the tower.

He squinted at the sun. His ride home wouldn't be along for another two hours or so. He could walk, but not fast enough to catch Niomah; he could go to Ens's, but she'd be at school until the point at which he'd have to meet his carriage. He couldn't make beads when all his paper and ink were up in Absam's office - he could buy more but it was pretty windy outdoors and he didn't have a set of combs of his own - he had nothing to do.

He went to Ninden's house. Ninden, who had "helped" him awaken his mana in the first place because he couldn't admit it was Niomah. Ninden was sort of all right company, could be explained if his parents found out he'd been visiting him.

Ninden was home, and answered the door when Sanuar rang. "Oh, hi," he yawned. "How're you?"

"Kind of terrible."

"D'you want to come in?"

"Sure, why not."

Sanuar flopped onto Ninden's couch. "So what's terrible?" Ninden asked.

"My magic teacher."

"Who've you got?"

"Archmage Absam."

"Haven't heard of anyone liking him."

"Yes, well."

"You still just water? Are you going to pick up pure mana, like he does?"

"I don't know. I don't think so."

"My primary's pure mana too," said Ninden. "I thought it'd be the best thing, but it's all theory stuff. I don't even use it when I'm making mana spots, you can do those with anything."

"You can?"

"Sure. I mean, you'd probably have to adapt them for different specialities."

"Oh." What had given Ninden the idea that Sanuar wanted to hear about mana spots in the first place Sanuar didn't know, but at least Ninden was low-effort to interact with in that way. "...Is it, like, easier or faster or something to meditate on your own mana...?"

"No? I mean, I usually don't. It's easier to focus on breathing than to get a fix on my mana now that I have the air secondary. There's nothing better about pure mana meditation. If I had it to do over again I'd go empath primary."

"Oh." There went that hypothesis.

"Hey, do you want to learn to make spots? It's dead easy. Just promise you won't sell them north of here and I'll teach you."

Sanuar did not know exactly how much mana spots sold for but he didn't think they were likely to be a better revenue source than spell beads. All they did was supposedly provide the floating feeling of meditation without requiring focus to drop into the trance or being a mage to begin with; they weren't even particularly black-market to drive up the price.

But it would be sort of nice to learn something, anything, when no one was going to smack him with a comb. "Okay."

So Ninden walked him through it. It was as promised very easy, just painting blobs and imbuing them with mana the same way one did to the stripes on a spell bead. And then Ninden pasted half of the demonstration batch to his own arm and keeled over in an armchair, and Sanuar let himself out.

He met the carriage, no one asked where he'd been for the last hour, he touched the perfectly folded corner of his bedspread.

He grabbed the telegrammer. This is Sanuar, please give the telegrammer to Ens.

Just a second, someone tapped back, and then, This is Ens and I'm really freaking out are you alone

Yes, Sanuar replied at once, and, What's wrong, are you okay?

I mean kind of mostly basically but

What is it?

So I uh pause. I did something dumb. I told Kizi about the girl thing.

You don't mean Niomah, right, you mean

I mean I put on my dress and a faceful of makeup and showed her

Did it put her off did she tell your parents??? asked Sanuar.

She liked it came the reply.

Sanuar stared at that, and then another one spooled out. She liked it, Ens repeated.

She liked that you were a girl?

That's what she said that's what it looked like I don't know what to do

I mean does this actually solve any part of the problem? Sanuar asked.

No? Not exactly? She was like pause. I don't know she didn't look like she wanted to pounce on me pause she said she wanted to clarify that this did not make me more attractive just more relatable pause what does relatable mean

I guess she likes hanging out with girls more or something, typed Sanuar, reeling.

This was not part of the plan sent Ens.

I know I know I'm trying to think of something useful to say

She was supposed to decide that this meant we could not possibly get married and then go tell her mom

I know, Sanuar answered.

I can't tell her about you or Niomah

I mean she's met me and could maybe guess even if you were vague, tapped Sanuar. So maybe not me, but tell her about Niomah without saying her name...?

But what if

Sanuar waited, but there was no new tape spooling out. What if what?

I don't want to marry her. I don't want to marry somebody who's just my friend.

And your mom won't budge?

No. Kizi's will but only if Kizi has something to tell her pause but if the straws in the chocolate milk business doesn't do it pause then I'm out of stuff, out of excuses

So you don't want to spend your last excuse in case it doesn't work?

Yes which is stupid, replied Ens, because it not working would look like her wanting to marry me even though I have a girlfriend and a boyfriend.

But that wouldn't be what you wanted.

Maybe, answered Ens, it's the best I can hope for.

Sanuar swallowed. I had an argument with Niomah the other day.

What no why what about?

I can make a lot of money with beads. I don't even have to be very good at it, Sanuar tapped. I want to save up and buy us all a house and we can forget about all our parents.

What yes please let's do that right now I mean as soon as possible. Pause. I mean I already own some buildings, they're not very nice yet but I already have them and maybe we could renovate them pause birthday presents pause tell Niomah let's do it there's an empty apartment in my block on Ninth and Prism.

Niomah doesn't want to.

Why?

She thinks we'd dump her and leave her jobless and disowned. This was not a nice way to put it but that was what it boiled down to, wasn't it? She thought that Sanuar was making promises he wouldn't bother keeping.

But we pause. I can't even give her the building. They're tied up in a sort of trust thing, I can't freely sell them yet.

You could move into them without your parents' permission though?

I can do most things with them as long as they don't change hands but nothing that'd be really reassuring

I could give her a house if I bought it but it'll take a while to have enough. I didn't even think of that. Pause. But she still thinks we'd dump her and a house won't be enough to live on by itself.

Crap, replied Ens.

Sanuar almost typed that they could just move in together without her.

Sure, and then they'd never see her again. He couldn't do it.

I don't know what to do, Sanuar tapped instead.

Me either, Ens replied.

Niomah

Maybe Hesh was lying.

Maybe he was not, in fact, the step-grandson of the mage down the street. Or perhaps he did not get along with his step-grandmother particularly well. Niomah would not expect to draw from a copious well of favors if her grandfather remarried, after all.

Maybe Hesh was full of hot air and she could clock him across the face with the jug of water he wanted to carry so badly.

So Niomah went the long way around so he would not encounter her on her way home from work, and went to the mage's house. Life Mage, it said in Arnysh on the door, and under that Substance, Emotion, Energy and Coadah Tira.

There were people in the waiting room. Someone with a swollen foot, someone with a howling toddler. Niomah took a seat and tried not to look like she thought her business was urgent.

Eventually the child was seen, and then the fellow with the foot, and by then it was well past dinnertime and Niomah was going to be in trouble but she waited. Someone came in with a cough - deep pockets, had to be, to come in for just a cough; he ought to save enough to move out of the ghetto entirely instead of being such a hypochondriac - but maybe it was worse than it looked, so Niomah waited for him too.

Finally she was the only person in the room and wrinkled old mage whose arms looked like driftwood and whose eyes looked like black peas stuck her head out of her workroom and said, "Mm?"

"I - hello, I'm not sick, it's only," Niomah swallowed, "are, are you Hesh Linnar's grandmother?"

"After a fashion," said Coadah Tira. "If we assume my lover's family's contagious. What ails you, child?"

Oh so many things.

"I, I'm not sick," Niomah said, and can't afford to pay you just to fix the blisters on my feet, "but uh -" Oh, the mage was Arnysh, she could just talk Arnysh, probably, right? Arnysh it was. "He very insistently wants to court me and he's talked to my grandfather and he said you were his step-grandmother and I just wanted to, to see if that was true."

"And why is that so interesting?" asked Coadah in the same language.

Gulp. "He said you do a family discount."

"You're not sick, child, you said yourself. Does something run in your family?"

"No ma'am," said Niomah. "It's only, my brother."

"You want a family discount for your brother because you're considering courting my lover's grandson?"

She sounded incredulous. Oh, hell. Oh, thank goodness. "It's his eye."

"My fees are posted on the door, child."

"Yes ma'am. I know. I'm sorry for bothering you."

"It's no trouble. You waited very patiently. But courting Hesh isn't a good way to get much of anything from me. Isn't a good way to do anything, far as I know."

Niomah nodded. "I don't, I don't really want to, it's only."

"Your brother's eye."

"Yes."

"I'd like to give more discounts than I do. No one's convinced me to move out of the ghetto where I'm so needed yet, and the rent is a pittance. But you saw how long the wait was when it's yea expensive."

"Yes ma'am."

"I'll tell you something, child." Coadah wagged her finger. "I listened to my daddy for thirty long years, and I got married, and it didn't turn out he was right all along, it didn't turn out I'd grow into it, it didn't turn out to be anything but what it always looked like."

Niomah swallowed. "Then what?"

"Then my husband died and I met a lady whose worst fault is that her baby brought Hesh into the world, and while that is a rather grave misdeed - judging by the look on your face when you mention him, poor girl - it's one I can live with, instead of one my father could."

A lady.

Niomah nodded rapidly, eyes wide. "I'll, I'll think about that, ma'am."

"Good girl. Run along now. Tell him he needs to cultivate better ways to attract girls than being arguably related to me."

"I'll. I might, ma'am." Hesh was not one of the leering groping armed-to-the-teeth soldiers who'd been prowling over the summer but he might not be totally safe to talk back to like that.

"What was your name, child?"

"Niomah Mihi," said Niomah, smiling slightly, and she let herself out.

Ens

"So what are you right now?" Kizi asked.

"I'm kind of tired of answering that?" said Ens.

"Sorry. It's just really interesting."

"It's really not."

"Sorry."

"It's - it's fine. I'm the one who told you." He hesitated. "What does relatable mean?"

"Oh - I don't really know myself. It's just the word that came to mind? Occasionally I've wished that I could marry a girl, if you really want to know."

"Because girls are relatable?"

"...Okay, I don't know how else to explain so it's theater analogy time!" said Kizi. "You know how in Sleep Soundly the main character's sister spends half her first song talking about how little she wants to, um...?"

"...half of the song is about how she wants to live on the beach, so I assume you're talking about the part where she really doesn't want to sleep with men?" Ens said.

"Yes! That. And I heard that song and I was like 'how interesting, neither do I', and then in the second act it turned out that she did want to sleep with, what was her name? That one girl."

"Um, I'm still shaped -"

"No, no, let me finish. And then I was like 'well, that is less interesting, because I don't want to do that either'."

"...Uh-huh."

"I just don't," shrugged Kizi. "But I do want to get married! I want to get married and have a designated somebody to be around all of the time and I think I will maybe like kissing if I try it and I don't think I will mind awfully if whoever I marry wants to have sex some of the time and I think I'd like to be a mom! And in the very loveliest of worlds I could marry a girl, because that's just... more appealing, I guess? But it's not the worst thing ever if I only get most of what I want. And you're sometimes a girl!"

I am all the time somebody who wants to be wanted in exactly the way you don't want people, oh help. "Oh."

"...I'd really rather you didn't tell anyone," Kizi said. "I don't think it could possibly help if my mother were fretting about it, and explaining that I'm quite fine with how things are would require explaining you, which I don't think you want."

"I won't - I mean," Ens swallowed. "I won't."

"Thank you," said Kizi.

"You're welcome."

"Thank you so much for telling me, too," she said. "For trusting me with it. Oh - do you want to come to my mage test?"

"It's - next week?"

"Yes."

"I - will be there, sure."

It's not the worst thing ever if I only get most of what I want, but what if I barely get any of it?

Sanuar

Ask her, Sanuar telegrammed to Ens, hypothetically if since she doesn't even want to ever have sex if it would be all right for you to He sent that one off before he ran into the message length limit, but before he could send another, Ens's reply came in:

I did!

What did she say?

She said no. She said people would find out sooner or later and it would be humiliating

Oh

She said it's still cheating, that just because she's whatever she is (pause) (why are so many of the people I meet things) (pause) that doesn't make it okay to cheat on her and and she has a point? But.

Yeah, Sanuar answered helplessly.

She said since she didn't expect to, you know, mind, there was no good reason.

I'm so sorry.

I don't even want to sleep with her! I want an unsupervised afternoon with you and Niomah and a stupidly huge bed.

Sanuar wasn't sure if he was glad that Ens couldn't see the hot blush on his face or wistful that she couldn't.

I love you, Sanuar wrote.

A weekend, elaborated Ens. A year, a forever. Instead I'm in school all day and then after Kizi and her mother are new block bringing me along for kicks while they go around showing Kizi buildings new block for her own coming of age presents. For all I know we'll walk right by Niomah's house. New block. I don't think she owns Niomah's house? New block. Mine are all hands-off as I got them but Kizi needs to do actual work managing hers.

I love you. I have to go to my lesson now. Sanuar ripped up all the accumulated telegrammer tape, hid a quick note for Niomah catching her up on Ens's situation as clearly as he dared, and finally answered his impatient mother's calls that the carriage needed to be on its way now if it was going to be back in time to take her to her appointment.

His Learned Excellency The Sixth Archmage Golar Absam was in meditation of his own when Sanuar quietly opened the door. Tasnan was at the bead table, painting. Sanuar tiptoed to peer at his instruction sheet and hand him combs. He wanted to be alert, not half-awake in his bowl of water, when Absam was paying attention to the world again.

When Tasnan painted the last line and the bead was rolled and shellacked and dried and sliced and tested -

"Hey, Tasnan?"

"Yeah?"

"Do you know if there's any way to change teachers?"

"You're not a huge fan either, huh?"

"Uh, no. He doesn't seem as hard on you."

"That doesn't mean I like him. I looked into it, there's basically nothing, no archmage or mage-in-good-standing will take you if you leave an archmage. I only have another few months, though, you're late-onset -"

"Yeah." Sanuar swallowed and flipped through his own textbook of bead instructions. There was one he hadn't tried yet for filtering large amounts of water that would go for plenty of money - resold to someone managing a reservoir, presumably, or a fish farm or something - but it was longer than he'd pulled off before. He decided he'd rather try that when Absam was actually out of the room instead of while he could emerge at any moment from meditation and start yelling.

Tasnan went on, "And if you don't have your accreditation or a teacher you can't sell to a halfway decent bead store because they think you'll give them duds and vanish into the night. Your parents might take you? Since they're your parents?"

"No such luck. I suppose I could just drop out and make mana spots," grumbled Sanuar.

"You know how?"

"It's really easy," Sanuar found himself saying. "And you can do it with any specialty."

"Huh."

"I can show you if you want, real quick."

"Sure, why not, he's in deep. And I have a friend who likes them for chronic pain," Tasnan said.

"I didn't even know they worked for that."

"Sure, especially muscle tension stuff. C'mon, let's see."

So Sanuar took a scratchpaper end of a failed bead out of the wastebasket, which would work just fine for mana spots, and painted a line of four while Tasnan watched.

"Kind of boring," remarked Tasnan.

"Like I said it's really easy," shrugged Sanuar. He put them in his pocket; he could give them to Ninden later if he didn't meet a chronically pained beggar on his lunch break or anything.

"Guess so. You should probably meditate."

"Why aren't you meditating?" asked Absam, slowly rising from his meditation cushion. "Vayar, are you moving on from wasting your own time to wasting Aprol's? Was it not efficient enough to ruin half the bead paper you go through, somehow by impossible sleight of mana meditate in reverse so that you barely have the mana to justify the ink, and display such perpetual disrespect -"

"Sorry sir," squeaked Sanuar, as Tasnan flung himself in the direction of his prism to start meditating back the orderliness of mana he'd spent on his bead roll.

"What were you even doing?" asked Absam disgustedly.

"Nothing, sir, wasting time, I'll go meditate now," said Sanuar.

"Try to do it correctly," growled Absam.

"Yes sir."

Sanuar sat. Sanuar looked at his bowl of water.

Why didn't it work?

Sometimes it worked. He had not, he thought, just totally failed to learn to meditate in the first place. He was successfully focusing on the water and orienting his mana at it. And then it just - didn't help. The water was still and his mana was in constant chaos, barely usable. It had been sort of difficult to dribble it into the spots, for crying out loud, and there was no finesse to those at all.

He liked meditating when it worked and it just barely ever did, anymore.

He was definitely not going to get away with this, probably not even once, but -

Sanuar reached into his pocket and pressed his finger to one of the mana spots.

One was a low dose. Ninden used half a dozen at once, sometimes. One was barely noticeable. Maybe half the strength of meditating-when-it-worked, but infinitely superior to meditating-when-it-didn't. Breathe in, breathe out. There was no concentration to maintain; he kept his sense of time.

Sanuar heard Absam's footsteps behind him.

He felt warmth radiating down onto his scalp from Absam's hand.

And Sanuar's mana - rippled like it was being used, like its order was degrading.

The mana spot shouldn't be interacting with his actual mana at all, it was the packaged feeling of meditation, not the effect. He wasn't doing anything to his bowl of water. He wasn't impregnating the already-dry ink of the mana spot with more magic. It should not be doing that.

Why was Absam standing over him?

Why was Sanuar's mana doing anything -

- why was it doing exactly the same thing it always did when he meditated, while he wasn't even -

No, not always.

Only when Absam was in the room. Where, pure-mana specialist that he was, he could just steal the stillness out of Sanuar. Where, pure-mana specialist that he was, he could reach into Sanuar and take whatever he wanted while Sanuar was helpless.

Without further thought, Sanuar grabbed the entire sheet of four mana spots in his fist. He surged to his feet, knocking Absam's hand aside, and stared down at the Sixth Archmage's startled, furious face.

Before Absam could shout Sanuar into timidity again Sanuar slapped his teacher on the forehead with the sheet of mana spots.

Absam slumped to the floor, face slack, and Sanuar bolted from the room.

Niomah

Niomah had walked all the way to the Learned Sanuar's Parents' house for work only to be told that they wanted her to hurry and go home early so that she would not be lurking when The Learned Sanuar's Father's sister came for a visit. Apparently it was poor form to have a a housekeeper lurking (lurking) with a guest over. So Niomah rushed through her cleaning - truth be told, she could get her work done this quickly on any day if she had to; the Learned Sanuar's Parents were just used to the speed she adopted when Sanuar was home from her initial hiring.

And she went home in the midafternoon and perhaps she would bypass the very definitely "lurking" Hesh Linnar.

But there was no such luck. There he was with Niomah's second-oldest brother and a couple of other Arnysh boys, loitering in that inimitably teenage boy way on the street corner. One of the boys she didn't know was bouncing a rubber ball loudly against some poor person's wall. Her brother was in the middle of trying to perform a handstand. She wished he'd find a job again.

"Hi, Niomah!" called Hesh. Her brother echoed him a beat behind.

"Afternoon," said Niomah tightly.

"Hesh says you're courting!" Niomah's brother chirped, falling and rolling with some grace to a sitting position on the sidewalk.

"I? I am carrying water," said Niomah.

All the boys laughed.

"Let me carry it for you," said Hesh.

"Oh, no, feeling underworked today, home early, I will," said Niomah.

"Come on, I always carry your water."

"What a very long time that is to do a thing. You must be tired."

"Come on. Give it."

"No. Am courting this water. Planning to marry it. You are probably most disappointed."

Hesh laughed, but there was an edge to it, and he grabbed for her arm.

Niomah dodged, but her back collided with another boy who'd circled around. Her brother was still sitting on the sidewalk.

"Just let me carry your water," said Hesh. "Don't make a big deal about it."

"My hand is glued to jug. No cure, permanently forever. So sad," said Niomah through her teeth. "What affliction, you should not want to marry into it."

"I always," he said, reaching for her arm again and connecting this time, "carry your water."

Niomah looked at her brother.

"Why are you making a big deal of it?" wondered Niomah's brother in Arnysh. "I'll tell Father that's all you let him do, if he wonders about your honor."

"There are so few things I care about less than my -" Niomah lurched away from Hesh; her arm chafed but she broke his hold. "- honor right now -"

"Heh," said Hesh. "I speak enough Arnysh to have the gist of that. What-all do you think your brother could cover for, huh?"

"Oh no. No gist," Niomah said rapidly in Gath. "Nothing to understand private family joke no no -"

"He could tell your dad we just went for a walk," said Hesh, stalking towards her. "And then we could... just go for a walk."

"Brother should be chaperoning all times very angry father -"

"Let's not have a chaperone," said Hesh, "and say we did -"

"Do you have ears -"

Hesh reached. Niomah dropped to the ground to evade; the jug went skidding out of her hand but didn't break. She rolled and looked involuntarily at it - at the moment she had immensely greater concerns than its fate but in her head Hesh was still marked will not leave my water jug alone -

A pale Mainlander hand closed around the handle of her water jug.

And picked it up.

He was so tall.

Niomah scrambled in Sanuar's direction. "Help," she hissed desperately.

Sanuar nodded, stone-faced.

He uncapped the jug.

"Is my real boyfriend," Niomah snarled at Hesh and her brother and the extra boys. "Is my water mage boyfriend. Touch me and drown. Do you have ears?"

"You have another boyfriend?" Hesh exclaimed, outraged.

Yes but that's not important right now you idiot. "Have this boyfriend, have never wanted you in my entire life, will not be any amount of sad if he has to drown you," Niomah said. "Try something. Water mage."

Sanuar hefted the jug casually in his left hand. He put his right in his pocket.

Hesh and Niomah's brother and the extra boys looked him up and down. He was a head taller than the tallest of them, he looked completely unthreatened.

"You're her boyfriend?" asked Hesh uncertainly.

"Yes. The question is will I actually drown you if you hurt her," said Sanuar, slowly, levelly. "That's also a yes."

Boys looked at the jug of water.

Sanuar pulled his hand out of his pocket and wiggled his fingers at the jug. A thin stream of water spiraled out of the mouth, hovering obediently in midair.

One of the extra boys ran first, and then the other one and Hesh and Niomah's brother too fled a step behind.

Sanuar pooled the water back in the jug neatly, and set it down, and then Niomah tackle-hugged him, only avoiding knocking him over by the sheer fact that he was twice her size. "Sanuar how are you being here did you learn telepathy and find my being upset and then be here so fast by enchanted horse why are you here?"

"Oh," said Sanuar, hugging her and lifting her just a little off the ground and then letting her feet touch down again. "Um, I may have drugged my teacher and run away from the mages' tower without telling anyone and then meditated at a pond for three hours and then decided to come see if I could find your house, and warn you that I probably have to leave home and sell mana spots for a living."

Niomah blinked.

"He was... stealing my mana," Sanuar mumbled. "But I can't... prove that."

"Stealing it? Does he not grow his own?" asked Niomah indignantly.

"I didn't ask him why," Sanuar said in the smallest possible voice. He picked up the jug, looked up and down the street like he expected Hesh and company to return. "I just, I, I needed him to not be doing that. And I had mana spots in my pocket."

"Oh my lost boy," breathed Niomah. "Oh look at you, you're shaking."

"I," Sanuar said, and then he stopped, lips pursed, hand tight around the jug of water.

Niomah hugged him tight.

"Brother knows about you now," she said. "Of times to run off now is fine."

"We should stop by Ens's," said Sanuar. "She's got buildings, we could all go - live in one of her buildings and figure out what's next. If she'll come. Or loan us an apartment if she won't come."

Niomah nodded. "You know the way?"

"Yeah. Do you want to, I don't know, grab anything from home while you're here?"

"Like what?" said Niomah, shaking her head. "No, nothing. Run away with me, lost boy. Rescued girl in danger, customary thing."

"Maybe my co-apprentice will back me up and maybe it will matter," Sanuar said softly. "I just can't count on it."

"So maybe you live in home and I live in priceless artwork's pricey building and am visited there. I do not want to be at home now. Family is not so good at the protecting."

"They wouldn't have -?"

"One of those boys was my brother," she muttered with a fluttery gesture. "Oh so helpful."

"One of them was - oh, hell. Okay," Sanuar said, and with the hand that wasn't holding the jug he caught Niomah's hand and squeezed it. "Okay, I'm in for it, you're in for it, we'll check on Ens."

They walked. Niomah led the way to the relevant exit from the ghetto and Sanuar took over from there.

They were a couple of blocks from the fuzzy edges of the Arnysh neighborhood when Niomah squinted at some pedestrians coming the other way. "Is that -"

Sanuar squinted too. "...Is that Ens? And Kizi. Yeah."

"Oh, Kizi. Poor priceless artwork."

"Poor Kizi too, after a fashion, but yeah."

"Should... we...?"

"I think Kizi's already keeping some secrets," said Sanuar. "Also if you let go of my hand now I might die, but follow Ens's lead about - Ens-related things?"

Niomah squeezed his hand. "Yes."

In the distance, Ens's chin lifted, and he turned to his accompaniment to say something, and broke into a run and skidded to a stop in front of Sanuar and Niomah. "What are - what are you doing here? Aren't you supposed to respectively be at -?"

"- work ended early," Niomah said.

"I assaulted the Sixth Archmage and bolted and am still standing up through sheer force of Niomah," Sanuar said.

Ens looked incredulously at Sanuar. "What?"

"...There was context. But Kizi's almost within earshot now."

"...okay. Um I haven't decided to tell her about... anything."

"Secrets are safe," Niomah assured Ens.

Ens nodded, then looked over his shoulder at Kizi. "I was right, it's Sanuar," he said.

"Hi again, Sanuar!" said Kizi. "And who's this?"

"My girlfriend Niomah," said Sanuar.

"Hi, Niomah, it's nice to meet you," said Kizi.

"Hello," said Niomah with a toothy smile.

"What, uh, brings you here?" Sanuar asked.

"My mother and I were going to go tour some of the things I got for my birthday and some of those things are near here. And I thought we could bring Ens along, because why not. Mother stopped to rest a few blocks back and we thought we'd go on alone," Kizi explained. "What about you? Just visiting Niomah, I guess? Wow, do your parents, um, know?"

Sanuar shook his head.

"I mean as far as I'm concerned that's your business," Kizi assured him. "I was just wondering."

Silence.

"So," Sanuar said. "You've had your birthday, then?"

"Oh, yes! I'm a mage," nodded Kizi. "They're not kidding when they tell you that it's disappointing to go to normal-ordered mana after the perfect start, are they? But I'll get used to it."

"And your grandmother's teaching you."

"Yes. Although mostly she's having me learn from books and meditate for hours. She's very old and tired and stopped taking students she wasn't related to ages ago."

"...Um, Sanuar," said Ens. "There was a telegram from your parents at my house. I didn't read it all because Kizi's mother was waiting but I have the tape."

Sanuar held out his hand.

Ens gave him some telegrammer printout, which Sanuar had a bit of trouble reading with only one hand (he could put the jug down; he did not have this kind of liberty with Niomah's hand) but he managed.

In a dozen blocks of message: Honored Riawaes, this is Learned Lady Vayar. We have received disturbing news about our son's conduct. We know he is friends with your son, and if you happen to encounter him we would like him to know that His Learned Excellency Absam is furious and that everyone we could think of to propose Sanuar as a student to has blacklisted him. For that matter, his behavior, from the sound of it, was sufficiently shameful that hometeaching him is no longer an option compatible with our ongoing careers; it will be generally understood that if we could not raise him to age seventeen without leaving him well-behaved we will be similarly unable to teach him magic without grievous mishandling. He has left our hands completely tied and may return home solely on the condition that he find some way to salvage the situation with a replacement teacher so that we may assure our fellow mages that he is not being left to go rogue nor under the apparently inadequate tutelage of his own relatives, although we have no idea what we could possibly have done wrong that would have precipitated the events. We have no idea where he might find one who will even consider the idea but it is just barely possible. Thank you in the event that you relay this message, honored Riawaes.

"Your parents didn't read this, did they?" asked Sanuar, horrified.

"No," said Ens. "I read the first three blocks and then tore it off to take with me."

"Thanks," said Sanuar. "Well. I guess that answers that."

"So much fancy language," Niomah objected.

"I can't go home unless I can find a mage teacher," said Sanuar. "Sounds like Kizi's grandmother isn't an option, either."

"Oh dear," said Kizi. "I'm sorry, she really isn't."

"...I know a mage," said Niomah. "Arnysh, in ghetto, not too far from my family's home."

"Is he, um," said Sanuar.

"She," said Niomah. "She is I think very nice."

"Is she taking students?"

"Maybe. May want to pick up extra kinds of magic to help with her business. She does not like to have such long lines."

"I can do that," said Sanuar.

"Oh, the question for Ens, anyway," said Niomah, snapping her fingers.

"Oh right," Sanuar said. "Ens, you own some, some buildings, right, Niomah is on the outs with her family right now -"

"Oh - um -" said Ens. "Yeah, I can finagle something. It wouldn't be near here though. Near your new teacher or any of her family Niomah still wants to see."

"I own some buildings hereabouts," said Kizi. "You just want an apartment?"

"Maybe move in some of sisters," sighed Niomah. "If they will come. But yes one apartment would be so lovely, but cannot ask -"

"Look, I - Sanuar, can you vouch for her - Niomah, how old are you -?"

"Yes," said Sanuar.

"...seventeen," said Niomah, "almost eighteen, what? This matters for apartment? I have job, could pay rent on very small -"

"I can't just hand out apartments, my parents would think I was crazy," said Kizi. "But I can - how much do you like your job?"

"I. It is a job," said Niomah.

"So, not that much?"

"Cannot hardly pay rent if I quit -"

Ens's expression, though, was one of slowly dawning comprehension.

"No, I mean," Kizi said, "apparently my parents've had trouble with apartment buildings managed by non-Arnysh people in the Arnysh ghetto? They wind up clashing with the tenants, it's kind of awful? There is a building that needs a new property manager yesterday and I know so little about hiring that going with the 'Sanuar likes you' evaluation process is probably better than nothing."

Niomah blinked. "Me?"

"It comes with an apartment," wheedled Kizi. "I mean, I understand if you'd rather just live in one of Ens's, if he's offering, but I don't know where else to even start looking, I can't just wander up and down the streets yelling I need a property manager, can I?"

"...What is job of a property manager?" asked Niomah.

"You'd have to collect the rent - I'll give you some leeway if people need to be late, they have every reason to be upset with how this has been handled in the past - and take a note of any repairs that need to be made and I'll give you a budget to get them fixed, and if a spot opens up you'd need to evaluate new tenants, and keep track of the keys. The building I have in mind doesn't have any landscaping so it should be... doable? What am I saying, I wouldn't even know where to start -"

"Which building?" asked Niomah.

"Fifty-one Timrar?"

"I know where to start," said Niomah, grinning fiercely. "I know. There is a broken window, first of all -"

"You know the place! Oh that's perfect, okay, excellent, can I hire you right now, I was kind of dreading walking by there without a solution in my pocket?"

"...Sanuar?" asked Niomah.

"What?" he blinked.

"If you are going home, because you get along with the mage -"

"Oh! Oh - but if I get along with the mage," he laughed, "then I'll just, be in this neighborhood all day, anyway, it'll just be the other way around. Right?"

"Right," said Niomah, smiling again. "Excellent, lovely, yes, hire me right now, Sanuar, tell your learned parents I have replaced job. ...Tell them this when I have been set up in building for at least ten minutes."

"That's really good," said Ens in a soft voice. "That way you're, you're there in your own right, yeah?"

Niomah and Sanuar simultaneously turned their heads to look at Ens. "Oh, pr- oh," said Niomah. "Oh was so generous of you offering but - appreciating very much, but -"

"Ens," said Sanuar, and he trailed off.

Kizi looked between the three of them.

"What is going on?" she asked.

No one answered her.

"Ens, you've obviously met Niomah before..."

"We've met. She's Sanuar's girlfriend," said Ens. So quiet.

Kizi continued peering at Ens, at Niomah, at Sanuar. At Niomah and Sanuar and Ens.

"Kizi," began Ens, almost voiceless.

"Okay," said Kizi. "First of all, Niomah's brand new job is not on the line here, I will still be completely helpless to find Arnysh property managers no matter what you say. Second of all, I know something is up and you aren't going to convince me that I'm imagining it. What is it?"

Long, long delay. Ens looked at her shoes. Sanuar looked at Ens. Niomah looked at Kizi.

"Ens," said Sanuar again.

"Priceless artwork," dared Niomah.

Ens looked up, at that.

And glanced in Kizi's direction.

"I hope you're telling the truth about Niomah's job," Ens said, "because I really would rather not marry you."

"All right," said Kizi. "I have been telling you all along that I can go to my mother about it! I can tell her - I don't know, I'll tell her I want to find a mage husband and have magic babies."

"Uh, don't lean too hard on the, the magic babies thing," said Sanuar.

"I won't lean on the babies. I will lean on the concept of them for my mother's benefit," Kizi clarified.

"...I could maybe set you up with someone," Sanuar added. "Old co-prentice. Perception primary. Mage family, not landholders, but decently prominent."

"Lovely, that will probably placate Mother enormously even if I don't work out with whoever your friend is in the end," said Kizi. "...Am I completely on the wrong page or are all three of you dating? That puts some things Ens has said in so much context."

"All three," murmured Sanuar.

"Three straws in a chocolate milk," said Niomah, tossing her hair.

Ens was smiling just slightly, now.

"Well," said Kizi. "I'll just have a conversation with Mother this evening, then. I think I'll sandwich it with the good news about the property management and the mage boy, what's his name?"

"Tasnan Aprol," said Sanuar.

"My grandmother's best friend is an Aprol, that works nicely," said Kizi. "All right. This has been one heck of a day."

"Say that again," said Niomah emphatically. Sanuar just squeezed her hand.

"Why don't we all go together," Kizi said, "and show you your new home?"

"Best part of entire day," said Niomah.

And they turned and went back into the ghetto, Ens taking Niomah's other hand, Sanuar carrying the water for just-in-case, and Kizi briskly trotting alongside.

Rings

"Mom," said Celia. "I'm gay."

Maureen blinked at her daughter. It was a very classic picture: mother sat on the sofa. Daughter stood across the coffee table from her looking nervous and determined. "I'm - I will always love you," Maureen said, "and, and I accept this as part of who you - I don't really know what to say here, but I'm fine with it, Celia."

"I wasn't finished," Celia said. "I'm gay and I have a girlfriend and I love her and you can't move me to Montana, I won't leave her, you can't -"

"Celia," Maureen interrupted. "I didn't know that when I took the job, and even if I had, it wouldn't get me my old one back. I didn't know when I closed the deal on the house -"

"I won't leave her! I'll move in with Dad!"

"Your father can barely take care of himself, let alone you."

"He has an apartment. I'll help uncle Joe check up on him and sleep on the couch. I'm seventeen, Mom, I can feed myself and make sure Dad doesn't skip his meds -"

"Celia," sighed Maureen again. "You and - I'm guessing it's Shula, is it Shula?"

Celia nodded, jaw tight. "I love her."

"You'll be able to talk on the phone and -"

"That's not enough!"

"- and then you'll go off to college and I'm not going to object if it's the same one -"

"She isn't going to go to college right away, she's going to take a year off and travel, you're not even paying attention -"

"- but we are moving to Montana, I have sole custody for a very good reason, and while I am sorry to be taking you away from your girlfriend, I already knew you and Shula were close and it doesn't outweigh -"

Celia drowned her out with a shriek. "You're impossible! What am I, furniture? It's easier to unbolt me from the wall than even consider my feelings? I'm going out with Shula, don't wait up." She stormed out; Maureen didn't try to prevent her.

Shula was waiting in her car at the curb. "Did it work?" she asked through the open window.

Celia got into the passenger seat, slumping aggressively. "No. I really thought it would. She's fine about the lesbian thing, but it didn't help and - I thought it would help."

Shula put a hand on her shoulder. "I thought so too. You don't think that with a little more time she'd come around...?"

"No." Celia shook her head. "Maybe if I'd told her months ago before she told me we were moving. Like that's reasonable." She hugged Shula's arm. "Where are we going?"

"Dinner. You'll see," said Shula. "Put your seatbelt on."

Celia did. "You're not going to dump me over the long dista-"

"Oh no sweetie of course not," exclaimed Shula, pulling into the street. "I was never going to dump you. Did it sound like that?"

"It sounded pretty dire when you were telling me I'd better come out in case that helped."

"I'd come out if it would help get us moved to Montana with you, but my parents would be harder nuts to crack than yours."

"And you've got a sister, she has a fiancé, it'd be just the same for her -"

"Amrika could move out if she had to, she could get a different job if Dad moved the company, she's nineteen. It's not like you where you can't stay behind. She wouldn't let you move in with your dad?"

"She has full custody for a very good reason," said Celia in mocking imitation. "Honestly, he's never hurt anybody."

"I would be worried, a little," Shula admitted, "but you could just sleep over at my place whenever you wanted if it got dicey, as long as my parents didn't know what was going on, and they're good at not knowing what's going on."

"Well, she's not going to let me. I don't want to talk about this anymore. What's for dinner?"

"You'll see," said Shula.

Dinner was Italian. Fancy Italian. Celia wasn't sure how Shula got the money to take her to such nice places when her parents thought they were just friends - sure, the Alis were rich, but didn't Shula have to account for her allowance's disappearance? - but the food was delicious and the waiters were too well-trained to remark on their holding hands across the table. Candlelight flickered in the little rubies set in the stacks of yellow-gold rings Shula always had around her middle fingers, and in her dark, dark eyes.

They didn't drive anywhere right away after they'd finished their tiramisu, just sat in the back of Shula's car, cuddled together like they might fall asleep, Celia breathing the hot ginger smell of Shula's shoulder and Shula with her fingers tangled in dishwater-blonde waves of Celia's hair.

"I guess we could probably do this at my house, now," Celia mumbled.

"But only for as long as your mother wanted to let us," Shula said. "I don't believe it's any of her business how long I want to hold you."

Celia giggled. "You're so warm. I could doze off."

"So doze off," Shula purred.

And Celia closed her eyes and nuzzled her girlfriend and did exactly that.

Carefully, without disturbing Celia's position, Shula lifted one hand to her mouth and twisted the ring close to her knuckle around until the ruby was palm-side.

Abandoning her faintly accented English in favor of, not her parents' Arabic, but another language entirely, she murmured into the ring.

"Lyne."

"Princess?"

"I need you to come down. In the next twenty minutes if you can, in the next two days if you can't."

"Yes Princess. I'll be down in ten. Alone?"

"Alone. Have someone trustworthy standing by at your station, you'll be here for a while."

"Yes Princess."

"Report in when you arrive. Buzz first, don't talk, in case I'm accompanied."

"Yes Princess."

"And bring a sleeper. ...Two. And an English ring, American standard, the best one you can get, delay arrival if you have to for that."

"Yes Princess," Lyne said again, and the conversation was over. Carefully, gently, Shula turned the ring back around, and stroked Celia's hair, and breathed slow, deep breaths to calm herself.

"It'll be okay, sweetie," she murmured.

When Celia woke, she was in the passenger seat, wearing her seatbelt, in her driveway.

Shula was standing on the doorstep, talking to Maureen. Celia rubbed her eyes and let herself out of the car.

"Hi sweetie," Shula said. "I hope you don't mind that I thought I'd give talking to your mom a try."

"Um, that's fine," Celia blinked. "Hi Mom."

"Hello, Celia," Maureen said. "I'm sorry about earlier. Look, I'll investigate some alternative arrangements, all right? And keep you up to date on what I find. There might be a way for me to work remotely for the first few months, sublet the house, something like that. If it can't last until you've finished high school or at least turned eighteen, then I'll reconsider letting you live with your father, as long as your uncle Joe thinks it would be all right."

Celia stared. "Uh. Okay. Um, that would be great." She looked wide-eyed at Shula - what could Shula have possibly said? She was persuasive, but convincing someone else's mom to reverse apparently firm plans was a bit beyond winning in debate club. "Really great. Thanks Mom." She found Shula's hand with hers and squeezed. "Thanks, Shula."

"Hey, I'm not letting you disappear without a fight," Shula said, kissing Celia's temple.

Celia giggled and hugged her. And then Shula kissed her goodnight while Maureen slipped into the house. Shula left. Celia, in a burst of filial gratitude, did math homework she'd postponed all weekend, and went to bed.

Maureen woke up in the dark.

The air smelled faintly sulfurous, she was on some kind of cross between a down comforter and a beanbag, she couldn't remember anything after Celia had gone to dinner with Shula, and there was no light at all.

She squinted, she squinted harder, and finally she gave up on her eyes and started feeling around on the beanbag-thing. It was comfortable enough, but she didn't have one of these at home. Where was she? In all places within immediate reach there was only more beanbag-thing, more darkness. She crawled in a random direction: beanbag, beanbag, beanbag - wall. Stone, flat but not polished? That roughened kind of glass? She wasn't sure. She patted herself down for the lighter she sometimes had in her pocket, but on inspection these weren't her clothes. They didn't quite fit. T-shirt, jeans, socks, no shoes. The underwear might have been hers, she couldn't be sure without looking.

She coughed into her hand. This wasn't getting her anywhere - what, was she expecting a lightswitch, when she'd obviously been drugged or something - "H-hello?"

"Hello, Ms. Lister," said a voice from somewhere to Maureen's left. It sounded British. "Do you need something?"

What a bizarre question. Did she need something. "I - light? And -"

Before she could name another thing she needed, lights came up - sconce flames, blindingly orange, in slanting rows on each wall. She flung her hands over her eyes and tried to peek in little increments. "And - and where am I, what's going on?"

"You are the guest of the First Princess ya Fahai," said the voice. Maureen squinted between her fingers. There was a dark shape; she couldn't focus well enough in the firelight to make out whether she was dealing with a CIA agent or a little green man.

"...Why?"

"The Princess's reasons have not been disclosed to me," said the figure.

"What does the - the princess - even have to do with me?" wondered Maureen, bewildered. She could open her eyes most of the way, now. The shape was definitely humanoid, probably male, wearing black floaty robes that were only slightly darker than his skin and close-cropped hair. "I've never heard of any princess."

"The Princess is courting your daughter."

"...Shula kidnapped me?"

"The Princess did not personally lay a hand on you," said the persony-sort-of-thing. There were some people who naturally produced that much melanin, but they still tended to have whites in their eyes: he did not.

"Had me kidnapped. Shula? Where am I?"

"In her private estate."

"Well, I - don't want to be in her private estate. Who are you, why did she kidnap me -"

"The Princess did not personally -"

"- why did she have me kidnapped, and since when is Shula a princess?"

"The Princess was born a princess," said the black-eyed... person. "Naturally. And I am Cait."

Which was apparently a boy's name for black-eyed persons. If this was a boy. "And why. Why did she have me kidnapped." It would make perfect sense for the answer to be because I'm dreaming but it didn't feel like a dream.

"The Princess's reasons have not been disclosed to me."

"Is this about the move to Montana? Why does a - a princess care if I move to - Oh my God is Celia all right -"

"Your daughter's safety is absolutely guaranteed, Ms. Lister."

"Right now that's not very reassuring!"

The black-eyed thing - Cait - was impassive.

"I want to go home."

No reaction.

"I need to go home, take me home."

"You are the guest of the Princess."

"This is not how you treat a guest!"

"If you require something that I can provide, of course I will bring it to you," said Cait the black-eyed thing.

"Who's watching my daughter? Shula can't watch my daughter, Shula's barely older than she is -"

"You have been replaced for what is likely a temporary period," Cait said.

"Replaced. Replaced?"

"Replaced," agreed Cait serenely.

"With what?"

"Another of the Princess's servants has assumed your shape. You may communicate with her if you wish to make it easier for her to avoid alarming your daughter. The Princess has suggested that her ability to coach your replacement may be incomplete."

"If I wish to - excuse me?"

"It is possible that your daughter will notice any failure of your replacement to mimic you," explained Cait. "You may speak to your replacement while your daughter is not present in order to prevent her from being dismayed."

"I will do no such thing!"

The lights went out.

Maureen woke up in the dark. The air smelled faintly sulfurous, she was on some kind of cross between a down comforter and a beanbag, she couldn't remember anything after Celia had gone to dinner with Shula, and there was no light at all.

"It's weird, though," Celia told Shula at lunch on Monday, picking at her baked beans. "What did you even say to her?"

"I don't remember. I'm sure it was very sappy but I can't recite it," laughed Shula.

"It must have really been something."

"I was really motivated!" Shula giggled.

"Maybe I should have tried talking to her longer last night instead of stomping out of the house?" Celia mused. "...You didn't offer her money, did you, please say you -"

Shula shook her head. "Not a penny. Besides, I didn't have a chance to ask my parents about it. They don't give me enough spending money to justify that. I think she just really had a change of heart."

"It's pretty amazing. You're pretty amazing." By longstanding agreement they didn't kiss at school, just knocked their shoes together when it was on their minds. Celia bumped her sneaker into Shula's boot and Shula smiled at her.

"Come over after school today," Shula suggested.

"Today? Right after Mom's big three-sixty?"

"One-eighty."

"One-eighty? It'd seem like I was ditching her."

"Really? I mean, she approves of, you know, us," said Shula. "I don't think she'd mind. Call her and ask if you want." A little kick to the side of Celia's shoe.

Celia blushed. "Okay, I'll call her. Your folks won't mind?"

"Nah."

"Okay," Celia repeated.

When European history let out at the end of the day Celia dialed home and asked, and Maureen said that of course she could see Shula whenever she liked, and by the way, uncle Joe said this would be a fine day to visit her dad if she wanted to get dinner with him and she wasn't expected home until bedtime.

Okay. That was nice.

Maybe she's just overcompensating for not knowing what to do with a gay kid?

Celia called her uncle Joe, who suggested that they could get Chinese food, and since the day was already going so well Celia threw in, "Can I bring my girlfriend?"

"You want to bring a friend?" asked Uncle Joe.

Ugh. "My giiiiirlfriend."

"Has your dad met this friend before?"

"A couple of times, yeah," sighed Celia. If he was going to be willfully obtuse about it then yelling I'M A LESBIAN into her cellphone wouldn't improve the situation.

"Then sure, bring your friend, if he knows her. Chinese for everybody."

"Garlic eggplant here I come." Celia hung up. Probably too much to hope for that everyone would react as well as her mom had. Maybe her dad would do better? Of course, maybe her dad would have another psychotic episode, that was always possible. Yeah, that would be fun. Celia, what happened before your dad started thwacking the couch with the broom? Well, Uncle Joe, I told him I was gay.

Celia found Shula in the art room, where the teacher would often let her stay late to put in extra time on her paintings - the art teacher swooned over Shula's paintings, all shades of dark and flame, swooping strange architecture against starless night. Celia had a triptych of them in her room - The Estate, The Crown, The Palace. "Shula, my mom said I can go home with you. And Uncle Joe says you can come to dinner with us and my dad."

"Great!" said Shula, and she put a thin eyelash-shape of yellow on a torch in the foreground of her current canvas, then cleaned her brush. "I can put this down here. We can raid Amrika's nail polish collection, she got some of the cool magnetic stuff."

"She won't mind?"

"Nah." Shula had her hair tied back to keep it out of her paint; she untied the ponytail and shook out a sheet of midnight. "She's never gotten on my case about it. Later!" she added to the art teacher, who waved at her as she went with Celia out of the room.

Shula drove them to the Ali household, which was an imposing manor on a lawnmower-gridded tract of green, just far enough into the suburbs to allow that much square footage and a fountain. They didn't have servants except in the modern sense of employing a gardening service and cleaning ladies, but every time Celia walked in the front door she sort of expected a butler to take her backpack and offer her a glass of water. Mr. Ali was home, in the parlor on his phone, pacing, shouting at an employee in Arabic; Dr. Ali was not in evidence; Amrika's keys were not on the hook, so presumably she was elsewhere too. Shula didn't hold Celia's hand while they walked past her dad, but made up for this lack once they'd gone up the stairs and around the corner to Shula's room.

They painted their nails with Amrika's cool magnetic nail polish - Shula in all gold, Celia alternating pink and blue. They locked the door and sat in the window seat and kissed as though Celia really was going to be spirited away any day. They unlocked the door and played chess (Shula won). They did some of their homework, Celia with her head in Shula's lap ("should we lock the door?" "nah, he won't think anything of it"). And then they got back in the car and went to Celia's dad's apartment.

David lived alone, but in the same building and just down the hall from his brother Joe. The place was usually kept to acceptable levels of cleanliness, if profound levels of disorganization; they stepped over shoes on the way into the kitchen and found Joe clearing empty envelopes and old napkins off the table to make way for takeout.

"Hi, Dad," Celia said, plopping into the chair next to her father. "You remember Shula."

"Yes," David agreed.

"Uh, when Mom called earlier did you talk to her or just uncle Joe?"

"I haven't talked to Maureen," blinked David.

"Yes you did, Dave," said Joe, putting down plates and forks. "You were on with her for fifteen, twenty minutes before you handed her over."

"That wasn't Maureen," said David.

Joe hesitated in distributing containers of rice. "Dave..."

David shook his head. "I'm fine. I'm fine."

"You talked to Maureen for about fifteen minutes, after lunch," Joe said. "And then you gave me the phone, and I said the girls here could come over for dinner. Remember?"

"I'm fine," snapped David, and he took a container of eggdrop soup.

Joe looked apologetically at Celia, then at Shula.

"What do you mean, it wasn't her?" Shula asked.

"Never mind," muttered David.

"Did, um, did she tell you anything interesting," said Celia. "Or surprising?"

David frowned at her. "Like what?"

Shula tapped her toes to Celia's twice.

Once was a kiss. Twice was remember we don't literally kiss, here. In school; under the noses of Shula's very assimilated but still quite Muslim parents; in front of Celia's dad, apparently.

"Nothing," said Celia.

They ate Chinese food, subdued. Joe kept looking nervously at his brother, who was staring resolutely at his dinner. Shula was frowning thoughtfully at David too. Celia flicked her eyes from girlfriend to father to uncle, unsure what to do. Sometimes visits with her dad went great. Sometimes this happened. Sometimes Joe could judge when it was a good day and sometimes he couldn't.

They opened fortune cookies. Celia's said You will explore new places.

And Shula took her home.

It was pitch dark.

Cait walked through the introduction pattern with Ms. Lister again. This was the second time she'd asked for a meal after asking for light, but apart from a brief back and forth about whether Cait would have poisoned the food, it didn't seem to change anything about the trajectory of her questions or her answers when he gave her bread and meat and vegetables early in the conversation. It changed nothing if he traded rings with another estate-keeper and spoke in another accent. It changed nothing if he appeared in a female shape instead, or if he moved his class marker from the color of his eyes (which she once remarked upon) to somewhere less conspicuous. He didn't have many degrees of freedom; the Princess still hadn't told him exactly what she was up to, so he couldn't make up particularly sophisticated stories justifying the need to help Lyne impersonate Ms. Lister.

Ms. Lister declined, again.

Cait wiped her, again.

Ms. Lister fell asleep after a few moments' groggy blinking. It was a reasonable hour for that in the time zone she'd come from. Cait twisted the ring on his thumb, all the way around and then halfway back.

There was a delay, and:

"Report."

"Princess," Cait said, "Ms. Lister is still unrepsonsive. Without more information about the situation or leeway on her treatment, I do not believe I can extract her cooperation in a timely manner."

"I'll work around it. You can stop wiping her and just keep her comfortable. If she'll help later that's still useful, let me know. Is there anything else?"

"No, Princess."

Cait waited deferentially for five minutes of dead silence on her end and then turned his ring back to its original position. He watched Maureen sleep in the darkness. She'd derived, several times, in bits and pieces that she'd spoken aloud, that the Princess must have kidnapped her because of her desire to move to "Montana", but Cait was not as well informed of Earthly politics as Lyne. Perhaps Montana was dangerous and the Princess feared for her consort's safety. Perhaps the Princess's consort did not wish to go to Montana and Ms. Lister had been planning to abduct her.

It would have needed to be a fairly serious problem for the Princess to be unable to address it with sufficient selective memory deletion, on her own recognizance. She needed to be limited and discreet with her use of her resources. Even having Lyne away and Cait holding down the Estate was a risk.

The Princess's little brothers and sisters might notice that she was struggling.

Celia packed her things.

Just the important stuff.

Dad's apartment was small.

One box of clothes, one box of books, all her school stuff in her backpack. Pillow, quilt, vine-print bag of toiletries, box marked "Misc." for her laptop and last-gen Nintendo and two stuffed animals and winter coat and odds-and-ends. Everything else that hadn't gone into the discard bin was going into a storage unit until Celia had her own place to spread out into. Shula was helping; so was uncle Joe. Maureen was on the phone in another room, voice low, talking to the school authorities or the realtor or her new boss or something.

"Your dad will like having you around more, really," Joe told her. "But you've got to be patient with him. You're old enough to be responsible about that, now."

Celia nodded. This was her idea, wasn't it? Sleep on Dad's couch, make sure he took his pills, do his errands occasionally so uncle Joe could pick up more hours at work, stay in town, stay with Shula. Packing felt weird anyway. She taped "Misc." shut. Shula nudged their shoes together and picked the box up to go stuff it in the back of Maureen's station wagon.

Once everything was loaded up, Shula, who had to be at dinner with her parents and sister and sister's fiancé, went home; Joe drove Celia to the apartment and they hauled everything up. Celia got to unpacking. It took a couple hours. She shelved her books in the box; she put her clothes in the front closet where her dad had cleared away a couple of shelves.

Her phone buzzed in her purse. Shula had texted: remember you can sleep over basically whenever you want!

Celia looked around the apartment and went to take inventory of the kitchen. Uncle Joe was in there, cleaning the microwave.

"If you ever need to come over to my place for a night -" he began.

"- then I'll go to Shula's instead, because you have cats, uncle Joe," Celia said. "I'd sneeze myself to death."

"I could shut them up in my room overnight, they usually sleep there anyway."

"They've been all over the apartment, it won't help. But thanks," said Celia.

"Do you want to run out to the grocery store?" Joe asked, as Celia peered into the fridge.

"That'd be good." Dad had storebought potato salad and half a premade lasagna and ketchup and a box of questionable strawberries. Wilting lettuce, soy sauce. Sliced cheese, deli turkey, pickles. "Uh, Mom said she gave you some money - or sent Dad the money, I wasn't totally clear - to cover expenses."

"Yep. Don't worry about it, get whatever you'll eat. Maybe go easy on the caviar."

"Should we wake up Dad and see if he wants to come?"

Joe shook his head. "Let him nap. Generally. Let him nap."

"Okay."

Joe took her shopping. She put everything away. Joe left for work. Celia dug into her backpack and found some homework to do.

This is weird, she thought, mechanically conjugating Spanish verbs. Why did she let me...?

She's not okay about the gay thing at all, is she. She's not kicking me out though. Technically. I asked.

She's barely talked to me since.

Better not tell Dad. I have nowhere else to live.

David woke up slowly. It was hard to tell from the inside when exactly he woke up. Everything was foggy. His head hurt. The clock said a quarter after five in the afternoon. The sticky note on the clock said in his own handwriting Celia moving in today.

Right. He sat up, rubbed his eyes, tried to control the shaking in his hands to no avail.

He looked at the wall. He ran through a sort of checklist in his head. He never believed anything that he didn't think was true, but if he believed anything that would get him in trouble if he were in a hospital, he could sometimes tell which things those were. And sometimes he could tell Joe about it. And then his psychiatrist could give him more antipsychotics and he could sleep more and shake more and let his brain erode into gray soup, but Celia had moved in, so better to be that little bit more careful.

His name was David and his daughter Celia had just moved in. Safe.

It was April. Celia's birthday was in August. She'd be eighteen. Safe.

Celia had moved in because she didn't want to go to Montana with his ex. Safe.

He hadn't talked to Maureen. About Celia moving in, or anything, not for weeks. ...Questionable. Joe disagreed. But that was David thinking something had not happened, rather than thinking that something had. Joe had never had a psychotic break in his life but he didn't necessarily have a perfect recall. Probably safe.

Celia's friend Shula was an alien with mystical powers who -

That didn't make any sense. Shula had a human family. Aliens with mystical powers would only embed themselves into human families to seek mates. Celia didn't fit the profile, so an alien wouldn't waste any time on her. David didn't have any idea why he'd thought that in the first place; it didn't hold together.

...Talking about aliens with mystical powers would probably get him in trouble in a hospital. But he didn't really believe it, because it didn't make sense in terms of Shula's motive. And he could dismiss the belief by thinking about it and realizing it didn't hold together, it wasn't a sticky delusion. Having identified the flaw in its logical coherence, he wasn't motivated to do anything about it, let alone endanger his kid. Probably just fine.

Joe would be at work at this hour. He was a security guard. Safe.

David tried to smooth his hair, gave up, put his slippers on and went out of his bedroom. Celia was in the kitchen, he could hear her. He ducked into the bathroom and came out again just as she said, "Hi Dad. Do you want some tuna?"

He smiled at her tiredly. "Love some. Thanks."

She gave him a bowlful of tuna with hardboiled eggs and pasta twists in it, and he ate it and it was good. He could do this.

Maureen was getting sort of crazily accustomed to the place.

Cait was always around; if he slept, he did it whenever she did. Sometimes he spoke into the rings on his fingers, always in a language she couldn't understand. Sometimes he would leave her alone in a room, but he'd appear at her elbow if she tried to leave; if he was going to be busy for a long enough time she was locked into whatever room she was in at the moment. After she'd been there for several days his accent suddenly went from Scottish to Southern.

It was always night. The building was warm, there were hot drafts blowing through the vents (too small to cartoonishly crawl through), it was always lit with the fire sconces. There weren't lightswitches; she had to ask Cait, every time, although he was pretty quick to anticipate her if she got up and moved.

She'd tried to make a run for it once. The lights had all gone out as soon as she'd bolted, and she'd crashed into a wall; when she'd found the door, it wouldn't open; and then Cait had come up behind her and asked if she was quite finished.

She'd attacked him, then, finding him by his voice, and he'd just sort of stood there, immobile, while she beat her fists against his chest. He was like concrete. Her hands ached. She stopped.

"I do apologize for the necessity," he'd said.

"Then let me go home."

"I cannot."

So she continued to live in the windowless firelit - place. Estate. She mostly stayed in the one room, with the cushy beanbag-esque thing taking up most of the floor; Cait would bring her food there, plain but recognizable and edible. There was an ensuite bathroom with bizarre plumbing but not so bizarre that she was forced to ask for help figuring it out. If she asked for a book or a newspaper there would be a delay but eventually she'd get it. She started asking in batches. He wouldn't bring her her own clothes, but he'd get her others, so she had changes of outfit available.

Much of the time she couldn't force herself to read. Too worried about Celia, about the carefully balanced elements of her life collapsing - what would the realtor think, her boss, what was the date, was she already supposed to be starting? It was always night; Cait didn't seem to know how to operate a calendar. Maybe it was already May. Maybe Celia had finished school, given up on her mother reappearing, gone to a foster home...? Or her father's. David meant well, Maureen supposed, but...

"So Shula's a princess," Maureen said to Cait one - night. Always night.

"Yes," said Cait.

"But her parents - I've met her parents, once or twice. Inabah's a doctor, I think Ahamad owns an electrician business, something like that."

Cait was silent.

"And they're from Yemen. I think Yemen's got a president. If it technically has kings and queens and princesses too, left over or something, they're not the kind with spooky magic servants who kidnap people for them."

Cait, eyes ink-black from corner to corner, regarded her neutrally.

"When Celia was - five or six she'd get angry at me and tell me that her real mother was a fairy queen who was going to come get her sooner or later. She was wrong, I would know. Shula..."

Cait's head tilted, just a fraction.

"...was absolutely right. And she knows it. And she can call her goons to kidnap me and hold me for God knows how long if I get in her way. What does she want with my daughter?"

"You know that I am not at liberty to answer all of your questions," Cait said.

"I've gotten that impression. How were Inabah and Ahmad convinced, is she a changeling, do you have the real Shula shut up somewhere in another wing...?"

"Apart from the Princess's servants, such as myself, you are the only person on the Estate."

"Is the real Shula dead?"

"The royal family does not condone biological murder."

"What the hell is biological murder?"

"Killing a person's physical body."

"As opposed to what other kind of murder?"

This one Cait didn't answer.

Maureen flopped backwards into the beanbag thing. It was really cozy. "Are Shula's real parents, what, paying the Alis to raise her?"

Silence.

"Turn the lights out, I'm going to sleep," growled Maureen. The fact that he was keeping her prisoner was mildly less grating when he'd respond to even the most brusque orders (within the scope of his other instructions) with smooth obedience. No Zimbardo prison guard was Cait. The sconces went out. The door opened and closed again, leaving Maureen alone.

She stared into the darkness and rolled over and wondered where she was.

Celia settled into a pattern. She looked after her dad with uncle Joe's help; she kept up all right in school; she hung out with Shula and slept over a couple times a week. Shula turned eighteen in May. School let out. They spent most of every day together; Shula bought her ice cream, and took her to movies and the water park and - one weekend, with her sister Amrika along but unobservant - to the beach. Shula tutted over her sunburns more than was really warranted so that Celia would let her put sunscreen on her. (Shula didn't burn. She wasn't that dark, but apparently it was enough. Celia put sunscreen on her anyway. "Anyone can get cancer, Shula.")

Celia called her mother once a week. The conversations were brief. Celia asked polite questions about how Montana was, but Maureen tended to steer the conversation back to how Celia was doing, so Celia told her about the creepy feeling of seaweed on her leg, the weird flavors of gelato Shula had dared her to try, how rude that one guy in the line for the water slide was. She tried to strike a balance between conspicuously not bringing up Shula and talking about her constantly despite her suspicion that her mother was not, really, comfortable. She couldn't tell if she was managing.

The summer wore on. Celia looked at colleges, thought about veterinary medicine or maybe dentistry or something, wrote scholarship essays. Shula didn't.

Celia's birthday rolled around. Shula decided to throw her a party, no ifs ands or buts - though Celia was given the choice of a big party, at Shula's house, with school friends, where they would have to be in the closet, or a little celebration picnic, just the two of them, out in the woods.

Celia wanted the picnic. It wasn't like her dad would want to come to a big crowded party, and her mom was out of state. Everybody else could send her a card.

So Shula picked her up, the day Celia turned eighteen, and drove her out to the trail, and they hiked to the picnic spot and set up cake and sparkling grape juice.

The sky was bright and full of puffy, white clouds. Celia shut her eyes and inhaled wind and pine. She licked frosting off her lip.

When she opened her eyes again Shula was beside her, down on one knee.

"Celia," said Shula. She scooped Celia's hand up in her own. "Celia Rhiannon Lister-Altman. Will -"

"Oh my god," breathed Celia.

"- you marry me?" finished Shula, looking up at her hopefully.

"Oh my God, Shula," said Celia. She was proposing with one of those gold-and-ruby rings she always wore. "Shula, we can't."

"Not here, obviously we'd have to go somewhere else. Please. I love you, you have no idea, I love you, I love you -"

"Shula -"

"Please. Let me put this on you and pretend it's a symbol of our friendship or something to anyone who asks and I don't expect to walk you down any aisles anytime soon, but -"

"Shula, I can't, we're eighteen."

"My parents were eighteen," Shula said.

"I'm going to go to college, what if -?"

"That's supposed to make me stop wanting to marry you?" asked Shula, smiling a little.

"We haven't even finished high school. There's a year left. I can't be engaged in high school."

Shula pursed her lips. "You're positive?"

"I'm really sorry - and I want, I want to stay together, honest, but it's just too -"

Shula took a deep breath.

And got up and sat down across from Celia on the other side of the picnic table, just like she had been before, and put the ring back on her own hand -

- and took three minutes of memory.

Stress evaporated from Celia instantly. She smiled. She reached for her fork, took another bite of cake.

"Sorry, what were you saying?" Celia asked.

"I think," Shula said, "we should put all the food away so we can snuggle on the picnic blanket without ants stealing our dessert. Yeah?"

Celia giggled. "Yeah." She snuck another bite of cake and then put its lid back on and put it back in the basket and flopped quite happily onto her girlfriend.

Okay. Time to try something different. Snuggles. Hair-petting.

"What if I didn't take a gap year?" Shula asked.

"Mm?"

"And we went to the same school."

"That'd be nice," Celia yawned. "Heh, maybe we could room together."

"Living in sin," commented Shula.

"Thought you were a secret atheist."

"Yeah, I am, it's just an expression."

"Sure. Living in sin, getting degrees in whatever. It'd be great."

"What if I don't want to live in sin?"

"Are you kidding? You're the one who keeps griping about all the places with beds being too supervised to sin in."

"No, silly," Shula kissed her, "I mean what if I wanna marry you."

"What, you want to elope to, what's the nearest state that has it legal? Before we even go to college?"

"I might wanna get engaged," Shula murmured.

"For real?"

"Or," Shula said, "you know what -"

She took the ring off her finger.

"Call it a promise ring," said Shula.

"Awww," said Celia. "It breaks up the set though, all your matching rings."

"No it doesn't. Unless you're planning to quit holding my hand." Shula elbowed her.

"Ha. Okay, fine." Celia presented her hand.

Shula slipped it onto her ring finger. "Mine," she said, kissing that knuckle and then Celia's forehead. "Promise."

"Promise," agreed Celia, giggling, and she tugged Shula closer for a kiss on the lips.

Shula kissed her, and, behind Celia's back, brought her hands together to twist a different ring around, three hundred sixty degrees. While Celia's eyes were still closed -

- the Earth dissolved around them.

"Ms. Lister," said Cait.

"Mm?"

"Your daughter has arrived. You may see her -"

"- just like that I can - what happened - is she all right? -"

"- on a number of conditions."

"...Conditions."

"The Princess requires that everything go smoothly for a certain critical period of time. You may see your daughter if you do not alarm her, nor allude to your having been here for the last several months. If you do either of those things she will not remember the experience, but you will not see her again soon."

"I knew, I knew I was missing time -"

"Very little of it. You have not been wiped since the first several days of your time here."

"I knew something was up. Is Celia okay?"

"She is unharmed."

"Biologically," snarled Maureen.

"She is biologically unharmed," conceded Cait.

"Fuck you all alien things!"

"I cannot bring you to your daughter in this temperament."

"I'll bet you can't." Maureen breathed deep, once, twice, counted to ten. Twenty, thirty. "What am I supposed to tell her if I can't tell her you've been keeping me here?"

"You may - not immediately, but at the appointed time in some hours - describe yourself as voluntarily present to attend her engagement party. If you would prefer not to attend her engagement party you are of course free to miss it."

"Her engagement p- what the hell is going on with this place?"

"I believe you will find your access to information much less restricted if you comply with the Princess's requirements."

Maureen's teeth ground together.

"You have time to consider your reply."

"How long?"

"I do not know exactly. I am required elsewhere, but will return when your answer is called for."

And Cait left the room and locked her in.

It actually took Celia half a minute to notice.

Shula was distracting, and they were all alone, and the promise ring thing was sweet, and Shula was kissing her -

So Celia didn't notice right away that they were no longer under the sun, on a picnic blanket.

But eventually she came up for air, and the air tasted strange, so she opened her eyes, and the light wasn't sunny and the sky wasn't blue.

"Shula?" mouthed Celia.

"It's okay," Shula said. "It's okay, you're fine, I won't let anything hurt you. It's okay, sweetie."

"What - happened? Where are we?" asked Celia, not liking how high and pathetic her voice sounded. I'm cracking up, I'm cracking up just like Dad -

"It's okay. Sweetie, sweetie." Shula hugged her and Celia leaned on her, hard, because Shula was the only familiar thing in this starless firelit midnight. Shula was calm and Celia wanted to copy her.

"Where are we?" asked Celia again, softly.

"It's complicated. Will you let me start at the beginning?" Shula was raking her fingers through Celia's hair, snugging Celia's head tight to her shoulder. "It'll make more sense that way."

"I don't understand."

"I know. I'm sorry. I'll start from the beginning, Celia, okay?" Fingernails on scalp. The air smelled like eggs and campfire and dry mineral dust but Shula smelled like ginger, just like always, it was just Shula, her Shula.

Celia nodded.

"My mom and dad aren't my biological parents," Shula said. "They think they are - they're exactly who you always thought, so is Amrika - but I'm from here. This is a different planet."

"How are we breathing?" asked Celia, and then she felt like an idiot and pushed her face harder into Shula's shoulder.

"There's plenty of oxygen," soothed Shula. "It's completely safe. My natural mother's from Earth originally, and she's lived here for hundreds of years."

Celia hiccuped, trying not to freak out worse than she already had. "H-hundreds?"

"Yeah. People live a long time, here." Shula kissed the top of Celia's head. "I'm so glad I can finally tell you - I couldn't before but now I can. ...I'm mostly human, to be clear. My mother's all human, my paternal grandfather was all human, so on like that. How are you doing...? I can slow down."

"I'm... Keep going." Shula's hand was still carding through Celia's hair and Celia concentrated as hard as she could on that, not on the sudden teleportation, not on her girlfriend claiming to be from another planet, not the people being hundreds of years old thing.

"Okay. I'm... actually older than you. Please don't be creeped. I don't think I feel older than eighteen, if that makes sense, because I've never been treated as older than eighteen in my life. But I'm actually more like, uh, thirty. I lived here for about twelve years -"

"Earth years?"

"Yeah, I'm translating, it's fewer local years. I lived here for about twelve years, and was about as mature as you'd expect a twelve-year-old to be, and then I de-aged and went to live with Mom and Dad, the ones you've met."

"But - why?"

Shula took a deep breath. Celia mimicked her. Deep breaths were supposed to be calming.

"Well," said Shula, "...you know, I practiced, I rehearsed explaining this, and it's still really hard. Can you be patient with me even if it sounds strange?"

"I - yeah." It was still Shula.

"Okay. I'm gonna sort of - zoom in from the big picture. When a planet has life on it for long enough it starts accumulating magic. We don't know exactly how long this takes - our history doesn't stretch that far back and we haven't found that many planets that have any magic sticking to them."

"Okay..."

"The native intelligent species on this planet - I'm not sure you could pronounce it. I should have translated it to English ahead of time. I'm making a total hash of this, I'm sorry."

"It's, um, it's all right."

"Call them plakti, it's close enough. So, plakti developed on a planet that already had magic stuck to it. An old planet. With an old star. The star's a black hole now, by the way, it's not night, it's just always like this. It's safe, we just orbit it normally."

"Does - does Earth have magic?"

"If it does, it's not much."

"Okay. Plakti, old planet, dead star."

"When the plakti first evolved the star was still alive, but yeah. Growing up on this planet gives particular kinds of magic - the important one for this story is shapeshifting. It turns out that if you are really dumb about how you use shapeshifting, you can forget how to get back to your normal shape, and then you can't have kids."

"Um."

"I know, I know, I didn't want to spring this on you or do it so soon, but there's - there's stuff, I'll get there."

Celia nodded numbly.

"There are no pure plakti left who can have kids. There are hundreds of millions of plakti, but no new ones. They noticed this was going on just in time to find one who hadn't done any shapeshifting, a few thousand years ago. But there was only one of him."

"Was - he your great-grandfather - or something?"

"Yes. They found another planet, Earth, with people on it, and he very very carefully shapeshifted to look like a human, and he placed himself in a human family and grew up there and married a human and took her back here and they had kids. And I'm glossing over a few years of history lessons but it wound up that he got made king of the plakti."

"Are you saying you're an alien princess."

"Yeah. I am," said Shula.

Celia sat up, away from Shula, slowly. She looked around. There were no visible stars in the sky, no moon. They were on some kind of stone platform, on a cushy plush rectangle, surrounded by torches; more fires dotted the landscape below, it looked like they were on top of a hill or a tower.

"Is this your castle?"

"This is my estate. I don't get the proper castle yet. Mother and Father are still alive."

It would be rude to ask how long they were going to live, probably. "So you had to go live with your mom and dad, and grow up all over again on Earth, and... find... me."

"Yes." Shula had a hopeful look on her face, thrown into soft shadow by the flickering torches. "Exactly."

"We're... we're both girls. We can't have kids."

"I spent long enough here first to have plakti magic, and I'm mostly human, which lets me cheat a little on the combining shapeshifting and having kids thing - probably - if it doesn't work there's a kind of a problem but we can figure something out. I can't claim it'd be the most pleasant thing ever, but it'd probably work."

"You'd turn into a guy."

"For maybe thirty seconds, below the waist, yeah. I really didn't want to spring this on you but if I fucked up any of the," she waved a hand, "traditions and protocols, before I managed to get you here, with a ring on your finger -"

"When you said you wanted to get married -"

"I meant it."

"When you said promise ring -"

"I was kind of reaching, there."

"...if you fucked up a tradition or protocol then...?"

"Then," said Shula, "my little brothers and sisters start a civil war."

David sat bolt upright.

Celia was gone.

...Safe, or not safe? If he went and told Joe that Celia was missing -

Well, that would depend on whether they found her. If it turned out she was at the movies or the pool or the mall - for that matter, if it turned out that she was playing video games on the couch right beyond that door - then, no, not safe, because it would be false and more significant than whether or not he'd talked to Maureen in the past several months (he had not).

If Celia was missing -

- then how did David know it?

He'd been asleep. He hadn't seen her disappear.

And Joe hadn't seen him sleeping. If Joe thought -

David got up and paced.

He opened his door: no Celia on the couch, no Celia in the kitchen, no Celia occupying the bathroom. She was, at least, not home.

Note on the table: Gone on a picnic with Shula. Home for dinner.

That gave him a time frame. He could wait until it was reasonably dinnertime, then go tell Joe - not that Celia was gone, necessarily, but that she had said she'd be home for dinner, and was not.

...He decided to call her first, just in case. Picked her out from the contact list with shaky hands.

Voicemail. Joe would think she'd just let it run out of battery. David knew better and couldn't say how and if he tried to explain in a hospital to a psychiatrist then -

He tried calling Shula. He didn't know what he'd say to her, but he knew she wouldn't answer, anyway -

Voicemail. He let the phone fall from his fingers.

He sat at the kitchen table and stared at the microwave clock, waiting for dinner.

"I need," said Shula, "one more thing from you, and then everything will be calmed down and I will make it all up to you."

"Wh-what do you need?"

"I need to have an engagement party, I need you to be at it, I need you to swear up and down to everyone there that we are going to get married and have babies and you couldn't be happier," said Shula. "...Saying we're going to have exactly one baby is also fine, it doesn't have to be lots, I have seven siblings not counting Amrika but that's because it took a while for the Catholicism to wear off Mother."

"The Catholicism -"

"She was a convert in the era of conquistadors. Mariche native Venezuelan. Got religion, lots of it, married Father back on Earth and got whisked off to be queen of the plakti. I'm being glib, though, the Catholics didn't have that prominent of an opinion on birth control back when there wasn't any. She just likes kids."

"And they left you with Muslims?" blinked Celia.

"The less shapeshifting I had to do to look like Mom and Dad, the better, and the comfier my second childhood, the better, so they left me with rich brown people I kind of resembled in a First World country who were being decent parents to a first daughter. This was before 9/11, they didn't know I'd have that kind of trouble. But we're getting off the subject - the party - please say you'll be at the party. I have to show you to Mother and Father and the other heirs - presumptive? They may or may not be technically presumptive under the English meaning. Anyway, the less presumptive they feel after meeting you, the better."

"I don't know how to act around - kings and queens and princes and princesses -"

"Sweetie." Shula wrapped her arms around her and squeezed her. "I've been a princess all along and you impress the hell out of me. We'll put you in a pretty dress - no heels, promise - and you don't have to step away from me for even a moment the entire time. Just smile and lean on me and wear the ring. It's so important. Not just to me."

"Why would they start a war...?"

"Usual monarchy reasons. They want the big chair. They were hoping I'd go to Earth and strike out. I had a deadline. If I didn't come back with everything sewn up by then, next eldest - my brother Meer - got a shot."

"You're... thirty, right?"

"...Yes? Please don't dwell on that, I'm not some -"

"It's not that, it's just. Your real parents are hundreds of years old, aren't they? Why did they wait so long to have children? You're the oldest."

"They needed rings for us," Shula said, taking Celia's hand and tapping the ruby. "They got mine fairly early on, but they wanted to have us close enough together that I'd meet all my little siblings before I went off to Earth, so they waited. The ones I'm wearing aren't as scarce. What you've got on now is an immortality ring."

"A -"

"Plakti," said Shula, "don't age."

"They live forever? That's why there are still some after they messed up with shapeshifting...?"

"Yes. But they can still die in accidents - or sometimes they just get suicidal. But this is much less frequent than human accidents - because shapeshifting can make a person really tough - and less frequent than human suicides - because we've got better ways of dealing with that, too. A small handful of plakti die over the course of entire human generations."

"What does that have to do with the rings, aren't the rings magic...?"

"The rings are magic, but unlike some magic they need a source. We only get new rings when a plakti decides to take their immortality and sell it."

Celia just stared, completely lost.

"They don't die right away, if they do that. They have a good few hundred years left, and it means that if they get themselves killed in some disastrous accident - falling into the black hole, say - then their immortality doesn't go to waste. The plakti know that they can't just coast forever, not without any new plakti and even very slow attrition. That's what the royal family is for. We're new people."

"If your parents are immortal then why do they need heirs?" wondered Celia.

"They're sharing a ring," Shula said. "They've got a while longer - long enough for every last one of my siblings to run out their own deadline trying to bring back a new king or queen, if it comes down to it, you're not going to be queen next month. Nobody's allowed to be in charge forever, and royalty avoids the obvious shapeshifting-buster dangers more than an average plakti. So instead of having four kids and giving each one an extra ring for a future spouse there's eight kids and I'm sharing mine with you. It'll more than halve your aging rate - you don't ramp up to full speed right away when you take it off. We can swap it back and forth."

Celia looked at the ring. "You're giving up immortality?"

"In the long run everyone's going to. The plakti are slowly replacing themselves with collateral descendants of the royal family, see? Instead of getting picked off a few at a time slightly slower and just as inevitably and the entire planet eventually being empty. I'm taking centuries of being queen - and not starting a war - and getting to have you - over maybe surviving the war and dying alone with an empty title, somewhat later, having never been to Earth. And I'm giving half of it to you."

"Never been to - is it hard to travel, am I ever going to see -"

"Oh no sweetie we can go back," soothed Shula, stroking her hair again. "Travel's easy. But if I hadn't been making a full-fledged go at the crown they wouldn't want me hanging around humans in case I changed my mind. We can visit whenever we want, but, say, my little brother Meer can't go until I'm solidly on the throne."

"Oh."

"You have no idea how good it feels to have all this crap off my chest," Shula exhaled. "I love you so much and I could barely tell you anything."

"It... sounds hard."

"But let's go get you dolled up for our party. You'll be gorgeous. I know what you like, I have a few options prepped in your size. Come on."

Shula tugged on her hand.

Celia followed helplessly down a flight of stairs lit by flames dancing in grooves in the walls.

It was five forty-five. It wasn't really dinnertime yet. David only had one opportunity to sound genuinely like he was worried because Celia wasn't back within the described time of her note rather than madly fretting for other reasons. Six-thirty at least. Seven would be better.

There was a knock at the door.

David opened it, and it was the person who'd been pretending to be Maureen.

"Hello, David," it said.

He just looked at it.

"Celia's having a party," it said. "I think she'd like it if you were there."

Stare.

"I can bring you. Are you up to it?"

Celia was there and this was not Maureen but Maureen was also there and everyone thought he was insane and they were right but he didn't think he was insane just... this... once...

"Yeah," he said.

He probably couldn't do anything but Celia was there -

The dresses were lovely. Celia was having a hard time picking. It didn't help that she kept wondering if she should be doing something other than selecting a pretty princess dress for her impromptu engagement party. Panicking? Fainting? Pinching herself? Checking herself into a mental hospital and stammering her way through a family history, because there were probably loads of psychiatrists familiar with the most recent diagnostic and statistical manual on another freaking planet. Even Dad never thought he was literally on another planet.

Shula was flitting around behind her, occasionally issuing instructions to someone just outside the door who Celia hadn't gotten a good look at, occasionally commenting - nervously? Rapidly, anyway - on the wardrobe or other incidentals. "Normally we'd have servants helping but you haven't met them and I want you to be comfortable. The shoes that go with this one are not the friendliest - no heels, but no real arch support either. It depends if you want to dance, whether that matters, I guess. Do you want to dance?"

"I don't know how -"

"It would be the kind of slow-dancing that's just swaying back and forth at most but we can skip it. Oh, here - thank you, Cait - here, Celia, put this on, any finger, this is a ring with the most common plakti language in it, so you don't have to try to learn it the long way around. There might also be Spanish and some other local languages spoken but it should be mostly this one. We can get you more rings but it might be hard to find a Spanish one quickly."

Celia let Shula put the ring on her right ring finger. Shula switched languages. Celia understood her absolutely seamlessly. It was bewildering, everything was bewildering.

"The neckline on that one won't do with the bra you've got on, if you pick it I've got a different one to go with, this sort of thing is why I wanted to measure you myself when you were looking at dresses for your cousin's wedding, remember - you'll probably want one of the ones from here anyway, you've been on a budget -"

Eventually Celia picked the sleeveless cornflower-blue thing with the tiers of petal skirt. She let Shula flutter around her putting her in ridiculously nice underthings - they'd changed in front of each other before, going swimming, in gym class.

It didn't occur to her to wonder until after Shula was zipping up the back of the dress and kissing her neck to wonder whether the ridiculous niceness of the underthings was supposed to be relevant, later. It was an engagement party, not a wedding, but - Shula probably had waited until Celia was eighteen for some reason. Was she expecting...?

Probably not. Probably it was just part of the princessly upscaleness of the entire ensemble. The dress went with ankle boots in the same color. Celia put those on herself; Shula was shucking her own clothes and pulling a dress of her own from the depths of the wardrobe, screamingly scarlet lace and backless.

"Pearls or diamonds?" Shula asked, smirking, snapping Celia out of staring dry-mouthed at the way Shula's hair spilled between her shoulderblades and flame-red tatting.

"Uh?" If Celia wanted to make the niceness of anybody's underthings relevant, later, Shula would probably be amenable, they'd talked in embarrassed fits and starts and surreptitiously swapped pointers to library books because high school health class told them nothing. Amenable might be an understatement and this was Shula's own palace-estate-thing so there was no supervision that couldn't be shooed, probably -

"Your earrings won't match your dress," Shula explained. "I have pearls and diamonds in that color, which do you prefer? You could maybe pull off turquoise but it's not a perfect match, I'd want to add a scarf... amethyst for contrast?"

"...Pearls. The rings don't match either, though."

"Gold and ruby are sort of culturally neutral. Like wearing glasses on Earth, you know? But there's time to change dresses if you only just wondered about that?"

"Oh. No, it's fine. Pearls."

On went pearls. Earrings, a hair ornament she didn't have a word for, and one strand of teardrops around the neck. Shula herself went with gemless gold - lots of it. She looked like some kind of fire goddess and Celia wanted to kiss her. So she did.

Panicking and fainting and worrying she was having her first psychotic break could wait.

David went very docilely with the thing that looked like Maureen. He called it "Maureen", and got in the car with it, and let it drive him to a parking garage in a random part of town, and pretended not to notice that it was doing magic when the lights flickered off in the elevator and they traveled to another planet.

They thought he was crazy, and he was, in fact, absolutely, also, crazy, but he'd taken his meds and he was trying his absolute hardest to separate fiction from fact from fortune-telling, because they had his kid.

David followed the thing out of the little room that was pretending to be the elevator on the other end. He didn't remark on the fire-based lighting or the smell of the air. He followed the thing and let it loan him a suit. He put on the suit. He followed the thing some more.

"You may have noticed it's not an ordinary party," said the thing.

They thought he was crazier than he was. "Huh?" he blinked. Let the thing think he walked around thinking that everywhere looked like a Hell-themed amusement park every day of his life. Or let it think he thought this was a hotel ballroom, whatever.

"...Never mind. Just remember that this is very important to Celia, all right? Be happy for her."

He nodded. He attempted to paste on a smile. Oh, this was fantastic time for an icepick of a headache.

The thing that looked like Maureen led him into a huge hall.

David started looking for his daughter.

Fire danced in bowls of colored glass marbles and burned in ropes that reached from arch to arch under the high ceiling. Fire twisted in alcoves along every wall and smoldered under glass panels in the floor. It was sun-bright, windowless, artfully designed, warm.

There were people. They were not human. While Shula was brushing out Celia's hair she'd remarked that it was very fashionable for non-royal plakti to look mostly human, but gauche verging on illegal for them to complete the illusion without strict orders to go undercover. Many of them just had completely black eyes and could otherwise have passed for ordinary in any city on Earth, but Celia saw green skin, fox tails, bat wings, antlers, elf ears.

There were also some who bore no marks at all.

Celia and Shula paused at the top of the stairs, and Shula pointed out her brothers and sisters. "Not that I expect you to remember all their names today." They would be easy to forget, too, all monosyllables, introduced rapid-fire. And their mother and father: "King Juan Luis, Queen Elena. Fall back on 'your majesty' if you forget." And aunts and uncles with one or two or three or more "greats", who had never gone to Earth and so had kept their rings; these she did not trouble to name.

"You don't have to talk much if you're nervous," Shula reminded her, "you don't have to go away from me, it'll be all right." And they descended the stairs.

"Will they be expecting me to be a girl," Celia murmured. It wasn't quite a question.

"Mother and Father know. My personal servants know. Everyone else might be surprised. I can do the talking."

"...Okay."

"I hope you don't mind but I invited your parents. They should be around here somewhere."

"...What? They're here? They can't - they don't -" What they couldn't or didn't Celia wasn't sure.

"It's your engagement party and they're your parents, I knew you wouldn't want them to miss it. If your dad reacts badly to your being gay you'll be completely safe here, we'll protect you - and besides, you have somewhere else besides his place to go, now, what's mine is yours," soothed Shula.

That didn't stop Celia's heart from trying to escape her ribcage when they set foot on the floor of the hall and one of the siblings glided up to them.

"Hello again, Kess!" he said to Shula. The ring didn't translate "kess" for Celia; she couldn't tell why. "This is... irregular."

"It's Shula," said Shula with a smile full of teeth.

"Is that her name?"

"Mine. I spent long enough earning it. She," and Shula put a protective arm over Celia's shoulders, "is Celia. My fiancée. Celia, this one is my brother Meer. Oldest after me."

"...Hi," squeaked Celia. She was talking to a prince. She'd been talking to a princess every day for a rather long time, but that was Shula, she knew Shula, and she did not know Shula's little brother Meer.

"Hello," said Meer, and he collected Celia's hand to go for the knuckle-kiss, but when Celia flinched Shula practically hissed and he transitioned into a handshake. "Are you quite all right?" he asked.

Celia was not quite all right but if she didn't act quite all right she'd start a war and disappoint Shula and "I'm fine."

"Is that so?" Meer wondered.

"She said she's fine, Meer," said Shula. "How have you been? I've had only intermittent reports through Lyne."

"Oh, it's been as always."

"Lyne?" asked Celia.

"One of my servants. She looked out for me in the early years when I was on Earth, posed as the nanny for me and Amrika and relayed messages as necessary until I could get away with wearing all my rings all the time," Shula said, stroking Celia's arm.

"But not very frequent messages," murmured Meer. "We hadn't, for example, heard of your affection for sterile relationships."

"Do you think I can't figure it out, or do you hope I can't?" asked Shula. "Eighteen years on Earth didn't unteach me to change shape." She bared her teeth at him and for just a moment they were sharp, gleaming fangs.

"Wishful thinking. You'll introduce delay, perhaps irrecoverable amounts of it - and cause unrest -"

"No one's going to find that their most urgent task is fomenting unrest about my engagement's gamete quota unless someone tells them so, Meer," said Shula.

"You might be surprised. You've been away."

"I trust Lyne's reports."

"Lyne's focus has always been on you, not on the broader situation."

"Perhaps I should talk to Mother and Father, who Lyne has also been known to focus on now and again," said Shula with a smile made of ice. "Excuse us."

Celia was ushered along by the arm over her shoulders; she looked back at Meer, who had procured a glass of something from somewhere and lifted it in a sort of toast. Celia shuddered and faced front as Shula drew her towards the king and queen.

They weren't wearing crowns, just rich elaborate outfits and perfectly human shapes. They looked like they might be sixty, but not older; the king appeared classically Spanish, his bride nut-brown with vaguely unplaceable features that made sense for someone who'd been born hundreds of years ago to a tribe since gone extinct. Celia could see the resemblance to her girlfriend. Fiancée. Shula hadn't told her to bow or curtsey and the arm over her shoulder wasn't cuing her to do so now, so Celia just smiled tentatively.

"You must be Celia," said the king.

"Yes your majesty."

"And K- excuse me, Shula - Shula convinced you to marry her without attempting to tempt you with the princess bit, the magic, the chance to explore another planet...?"

I'd so much rather Shula didn't come with those things Celia didn't say. She smiled a little wider, hoped she didn't look manic, and held up the hand with the immortality ring. This must have been the right thing to do because Shula kissed her temple, squeezed her shoulder.

"Mm-hm. And the part about heirs...?"

What an intrusive question. Celia hadn't even begun to really think about raising magic alien royalty on a starless planet and then cuckooing them to somebody else's family until they brought home somebody just like her. "Shula said she could figure that part out!" she said, too high, too strained.

"So you're not, ah, exclusively partial to girls?"

Oh god Celia didn't want this man for a father-in-law she'd been expecting Shula to come out to predictably upset Muslims and cut them off good riddance not a damned royal space conquistador - "Ah, well -"

"It's a small price to pay," Shula said. "But Father, Mother, it's so good to see you both in person again, it's been too long." She let Celia go long enough to hug each of her parents.

"I see my dad," Celia breathed.

"Oh - okay, go say hi," said Shula. "Come right back after, I don't want you getting lost, sweetie."

Celia nodded automatically and made for her dad as quickly as her dress and the crowd permitted.

David turned out to be standing near Maureen, who collected Celia into a hug. "Celia! Oh, you must be so excited," she said.

Celia hugged back without thinking about it. "I'm - it's a lot to take in - did somebody tell you -?"

"I've been filled in. I was skeptical, but, well." Maureen gestured around them.

"Are you doing okay, Dad?" Celia asked David, who hadn't spoken.

He opened his mouth, closed it, repeated, swallowed. "I'm fine," he eventually said. "You never mentioned you were..."

Celia set her jaw. Not even traveling to another planet would make her life less perpetually about - "Well, I am."

"I wish you'd said," said David, looking with vague distress at the various nonhuman people milling around and availing themselves of hors d'oeuvres.

"Well. Now you know."

"...I need to lie down," David said abruptly. "Celia, you, you probably know the place, obviously Maureen just got here and," he ran his hand through his thinning hair, took a deep breath, "but you can probably show me somewhere I can lie down, awful headache -"

"Oh - sure - we passed some empty rooms on our way," blinked Celia. "Uh, what's hers is mine, I'm sure you can -"

"I," began Maureen.

"Hm?" said Celia.

"Never mind."

"This way, Dad, up the stairs."

Shula caught her eye but Celia gestured with mild daughterly exasperation at her dad, he of the perpetual headache, and Shula nodded. Down the corridor they went. Celia found a room with no people and some furniture that looked comfy enough and led David in.

He didn't lie down. He shut the door behind them.

"Celia," he said. "How much do you know?"

She was squinting at him, confused. "Know?"

"You know there are aliens, you were just in a roomful of them -"

"I - yeah, Shula's caught me up on, on basically everything -"

"Not everything."

"She's been in kind of a hurry, if she forgot some -"

"That wasn't Maureen."

There was a silence. He could feel the skepticism radiating off her, not in the way he just knew things but in the way that he knew his child.

"What?" Celia finally asked.

"It hasn't been Maureen for months. Joe didn't believe me. I didn't know how to tell you, I didn't know how I knew, it's not Maureen, it's one of the things."

Silence.

"I know - stuff. It's not like the, the things I think I know, it's not the psychosis, I can tell them apart. At least I can now." He was tripping over his tongue, talking with his hands; he started to pace. "I could tell it wasn't her. Not her on the phone, not since a little before you moved in with me. I could tell your friend was an alien but I thought I was wrong because an alien would only have a family to pretend to be human long enough to find a mate and I didn't know and you could have told me -"

"Dad, you're -"

"I'm not - I am crazy. I'm not trying to say I'm all there - but I knew it wasn't Maureen, I knew why Shula was on Earth even if I dismissed it, you've seen now. The CIA isn't after me but I was abducted by aliens and so were you. Celia, listen to me."

"She wants to marry me," Celia breathed. "And - and if I don't then her little brothers and sisters - they'll start a war -"

"Celia," murmured David. "Kiddo. Do you want to marry her?"

"I. I, um."

"If she staked her planet's peace on marrying you - if she really did that, if she's not lying - Celia, that isn't your fault."

"I don't want to start a war."

"She took your mom. She took your mom and replaced her with an alien and didn't tell you. I don't know how I know things -"

"Earth's starting to get magic," murmured Celia.

"Shula told me," Celia said rapidly, starting to pace, "told me that after a planet has life long enough -"

"She's going to wonder what's keeping you any minute," said David. "I'll see if I can - know anything useful - see if I can direct it - find me later, make sure it's me."

Celia swallowed and hugged him and then swirled out of the room and left him behind. She pressed herself to the wall of the hallway, breathing hard.

She took my mom.

He's literally, textbook, psychotic, and he's the only evidence I have. It's Shula, for crying out loud, she wouldn't -

Mom was going to take me away to Montana where I would have been very hard to propose to and I bet Shula had all kinds of rules for how she had to handle her own foster family but none about mine.

I saw Mom. I've been talking to her.

SHAPESHIFTING ALIENS. Some of whom are Shula's servants. She -

She's Shula -

Mine. Promise.

MAGIC SPACE WAR.

Celia scrunched her eyes shut and inhaled deeply. It smelled like fire. Extraterrestrial minerals and foreign perfumes and fire.

She walked step by shaky step back to the party, steadying herself on the wall.

She thought she caught a glimpse of Shula standing near Maureen - if it was Maureen - when she turned the corner, but then there was a flurry of movement between them and Celia; when she caught sight of Shula again she was near one of the other princesses, unless Celia had misremembered whether the dramatic hat with the feathers was a sister or a cousin or what. Celia trotted down the stairs to her girlfriend. Fiancée. Girlfriend. Kidnapper. Fiancée. ...She trotted down the stairs towards Shula.

"Is your dad all right?" Shula asked.

"He just needed to lie down. I put him in an empty room. I can do that, right?"

"Of course you can. This is my sister Rai, second-youngest -"

Celia let Shula shuffle her around from small-talk to small-talk. Celia did not remember any of the siblings' names except for Meer, who'd made an impression; no one else traded barbs with Shula like that. Celia didn't try to talk to Maureen again and Maureen didn't try to talk to her. Which was its own kind of evidence.

The party went on, and on. There were no clocks; Celia had been relieved of her phone when she'd changed into the dress. She ate little snacks that indistinguishably-shaped servants offered on trays. She danced with Shula. She mixed up royalty and dubiously-noble offshoots. She stammered through a compliment on someone's curling antelope horns. She peeled off from Shula a couple of times to wade through the crowd herself, for clarity, for quelling distance between herself and Shula's backless dress (why did it have to be a backless dress) but came to no conclusions, always drifted back to Shula's side.

The crowd thinned out, slowly; then the king and queen left, and the population of the ballroom dropped dramatically. "I can send someone to bring your dad home," Shula said.

"Can - can he stay overnight? Or what passes for overnight. I don't think changing planets agreed with him and he could use a little longer."

"All right," shrugged Shula. "Your uncle won't freak out?"

"Dad goes out by himself sometimes and he's had a good few weeks. He can tell uncle Joe that he was staying with one of his friends. He has friends."

"If you say so," said Shula. "It's not like I don't have room. Your mom's going back, though, do you want to say goodbye?"

Celia swallowed. "We can always visit later, right?"

"Sure, sweetie."

"I bet she's tired. It's later in Montana."

"Sure. Straight home with her, then. Cait, take care of that, please," Shula said to a passing servant.

"Yes Princess."

Shula turned back to Celia. "One of my brothers is staying for a while too. Meer. I don't really have a good excuse to get rid of him, but if he bothers you or anything any servant will back you up, all right? They all know who you are now."

Celia nodded.

"Are you okay?" Shula asked her, pursing her lips in concern.

"I'm just a - a little overwhelmed."

"The party's over," soothed Shula, petting Celia's hair. "You can change back into your regular clothes if you want. Or another set, I have some normal things around. Pajamas, if you're sleepy. Oh, and Cait found you a ring for Spanish, so you won't be left out of royal family conversations if we lapse into it. It's with your clothes."

"I - yeah." Celia wanted her phone back, if only to be able to check the time. "Yes please."

"Can you find your own way? I need to arrange some things with some servants. I've been gone such a long time."

"I think I remember how to get there."

"Good. I've left the firelight going in all the hallways in the house since you can't operate it yourself. Just holler if you need any of it turned on or off." And then she pulled Celia into a snug embrace. "You did beautifully. I know it's all a bit much but you're doing great. Just hang in there, all right, sweetie? I love you so much."

"Love you," Celia echoed, because she did, she did -

Shula kissed her. She dipped her, right there in the middle of the deserted ballroom, and kissed Celia till she was breathless and melting and why did the dress have to be backless -

"I'll come find you when I'm free," Shula purred, voice full of promises.

Celia was practically hypnotized until Shula straightened her up again and pressed another kiss to her forehead and swept out of the room.

Celia stood in place.

And then she climbed the stairs and wound her way through the halls until she'd found the wardrobe again.

She came out of the room in a set of pajamas which she'd found in the wardrobe. Her phone was in her pocket, the Spanish ring had joined the one for immortality and the one for plakti language, she had her own shoes on again because walking on these stone floors barefoot sounded uncomfortable. And there was Meer, waiting for her. Celia stopped cold when she saw him. "Um."

"Hello again," Meer said. "Is it just me or do you seem less than comfortable?"

"Were you lurking out here the entire time I was changing?"

"Please," snorted Meer. "Don't ascribe me such motives. If I want to be around naked women I have better ways to do it."

"W-would Shula want you to be talking to me?" asked Celia, trying to sound more indignant than mousy, quite sure she was failing.

"No," said Meer, "probably not."

"Well. This. Is her estate," said Celia.

"The question is do you want me to be talking to you, and that depends very significantly on whether you want to be here. In my dear sister's estate," said Meer.

Celia couldn't think of anything intelligent to say, so she just stared at him coldly. He looked like some kind of Disney prince. One who was about to have a character arc that wiped the smirk off his face. Or turn out to be a bad guy all along.

"Did Shula tell you that you have to be here?" he inquired. "Did she spin nasty stories about how warlike her family is? Am I the villain of the piece? She's never liked me."

Celia didn't like him either. "She - wants an orderly succession."

"Celia," said Meer in a low voice. "If that was what she most wanted, she would have found a boyfriend."

"She - she's a lesbian."

"That wouldn't stop her if her priority was getting married and popping out heirs in a perfectly regular manner without letting me - or our other siblings - get within arm's reach of the throne. Would it? Marriages of convenience are known on Earth, I believe."

"She wants to marry me."

"I don't doubt that for an instant. She wants very badly to marry you, and she's gambling everything on her ability to pull it off. Including the orderliness of the succession. Which she could easily secure even without having had to locate a boyfriend by yielding with as much grace as she could muster to me. Now, I confess my experience with humans is limited to immediate family members very far from your own culture. But however fond you were of Shula last week, you do not seem to me to be entirely at your ease here."

"It's a lot to get used to," Celia said softly.

"You don't look enraptured and curious, you look like you want to crawl in a hole and forget this ever happened," said Meer.

"And, what, you want to offer your shoulder to cry on?" Celia snapped, suddenly angry. He'd noticed and this was what he was doing about it? Loitering while she changed clothes and asking her pointed questions about how comfortable she was. That was sure to improve things.

"I'd rather not," said Meer. "I'd rather just solve the problem. The political situation is neither as stable nor as unstable as Shula may have led you to believe. The population might be able to cope with you, if she can get you pregnant. How quickly do you want her to feel obliged to try?"

Celia swallowed.

"Not soon, I'll wager, and every year that goes by is more time for our parents to spend getting older a little at a time. And more time for Earth to become less like what we've grown up expecting. It was a trick indeed to slip Shula into a family. How much harder is it eighteen years along? If I tried and failed to find a queen, two more decades might make it near impossible for Tam to give it a try, at least in any remotely pleasant part of the world. We can only do so much to computer records and cameras."

"Shula found me, though. You - you don't have to try." You don't have to do this to some other girl.

"I do if her little shapeshifting idea doesn't work. Or if you're sterile. I do if, for whatever reason, you don't want to be here. If you don't want to be queen."

"What makes you think you'd be able to find somebody who wanted to be here? What, are you psychic?" Shit. Don't say that again.

Meer snorted. "Here's another question for you. Why didn't you have any inkling before you got here? Why was this a surprise?"

"...Shula said there were rules. Protocols. That she had to observe. She wasn't supposed to tell me, it would be against the - the rules."

"That's absolutely correct. Would you care to guess how those are enforced?"

Was someone listening in - No. Shula had never acted like she was being watched. Shula had made reports which contained whatever she felt like putting in them, she'd had a servant-nanny only as a child - she was not bugged while she was kissing Celia in her bedroom or knocking their shoes together under the cafeteria table.

"They're not enforced," said Meer. "Does that allay your concerns?"

"What do you want?" asked Celia.

"An orderly succession," Meer said. "One more, and then over for good. I will go, I will find a queen who will be less..." He gestured at Celia vaguely in lieu of a description. "And we will each have our own rings."

"Nobody's allowed to be king forever."

"The current model cannot sustain itself," hissed Meer. "Imagine! Imagine trying to insert your children into an Earth that has had another five or six hundred years to advance! To imagine life on other planets - and learn to keep more careful documentation of the life on its own! To perhaps develop magic, which it may begin doing at any time!"

Celia flinched.

Meer just took it as an excuse to go on, though: "I remember Mother sobbing for weeks when her little Kess was turned into someone else's baby on the eve of her adulthood. I can't say I look forward to putting her through similar again, but at least on my plan this would be the last time. Is that what you want, even generously assuming it will continue to work? For your children? And grandchildren? Shula could have ended it, but she has walked the knife edge of tradition just enough to get you exactly where she wants you. I am the only realistic ally you have in getting you where you would be much better off. Home."

She took your mom.

Meer hadn't said anything about that, but this was two sources now - Meer had no reason to love Celia. David had no reason to hate Shula. Did that add up to trustworthiness?

Her dad was crazy and Shula's brother wanted to be king -

"What do you want?" Celia asked again.

"Your ring," Meer said. "I'll give you a dummy to replace it. When Shula takes it back for her own turn she'll notice the difference and then she'll have to admit defeat - she can't have you visibly aging at human rate in front of people, even if she can cover for herself in the short term with shapeshifting."

"She'd know it was you. She knows you hate her."

"And if she confronts me about it she'll have to admit that you gave it to me, and she will be out of the running for taking an unwilling Earthling regardless. I run a certain risk here if you change your mind and then blatantly lie, of course. I know very little about your personal integrity, having only what my sister gave me to work with." He gave her an assessing look, seeming to settle on it'll do. Celia wanted to slap him.

"I love her," Celia breathed. "I don't want her to die."

"She will be looking for you any moment," Meer said, clenching his fists. Rings glinted around his fingers. "Make a decision."

"I need to think."

Footsteps. "Celia?" called Shula's voice.

Meer, scowling, disappeared down the hallway without another word.

Celia tripped on her way around the corner to meet Shula. Shula caught her. "Are you all right, sweetie?"

"I'm fine." I'm not fine. I'm not fine. I'm not fine. "I want to sleep. I'm exhausted."

"Okay," said Shula, stroking her fingers through Celia's hair. "Okay. Let's get you somewhere cozy and put you to bed. It's been such a long day."

Maureen woke up in her own bed.

This was the Montana house. She didn't remember -

"You've been very sick for months and let Celia live with her father. Celia will be fine," said a voice in her ear. "But now you're better and you're going to go in to work..."

Maureen blinked as the voice went on murmuring. That would explain -

Maureen woke up in her own bed. This was the Montana house. She didn't -

"You've been very sick. But now -"

Maureen woke -

"You've -"

Maureen woke up in her own bed, in her own home. She felt a lot better. God, the entire summer was a fog. A blank, really. Didn't help that she'd had that nasty insurance fumble with the new job, but now she was all right. She called the new boss. Well, new. She'd technically had the position for months now. But she hadn't gone in. They were very understanding, glad that she'd finally be in.

The house was disorganized, or rather organized badly. She'd want to rearrange everything. Maybe she'd been on drugs when she'd unpacked. Painkillers or drowsy cold pills or something. Whatever. She found something business-casual, she got in the car, she drove to the office with GPS assistance.

She called Celia during her lunch hour.

Voicemail. She left a brief message and went back to what she was doing. Celia would be fine. She felt very confident that Celia would be fine. She was eighteen now, wasn't she? And she'd eloped with her girlfriend, who was going to take good care of her. Maureen stayed late; she had a lot of work to catch up on.

"Dad."

David's head hurt. He was so tired. He'd swallowed the emergency day's worth of meds out of his wallet, dry, and they were a lump in his throat even after an hour's sleep. "Wuh."

"Dad, wake up. I don't know if I'll be able to keep them from bringing you home after everybody's up in the - nonmorning. Dad."

He rubbed his eye and looked blearily at Celia. "What - d'you need?"

"Did you think of anything else to tell me?"

"No," he apologized wretchedly. "Don't, don't know how to steer."

"Can you tell me if I can trust Shula's brother Meer?"

"Who?"

"Shula has brothers and sisters. One of them is named Meer. He had a - he had an idea but I don't know -"

David wrenched his attention into line. Shula had brothers and sisters, that fit. Meer. Meer was -

"Didn't lie to you," he said. Pulled from nowhere. Knew.

"He didn't?"

"He didn't," agreed David. "All true. But I don't know if he - wants good things? For you?"

"I don't know either. But it - it helps. Anything else?"

David thought -

"Maureen's home again."

Celia exhaled. "Oh good. She's safe?"

"Biologically."

"...Huh?"

"I don't know," said David. "She's - she's biologically safe, that's what I have."

"...Okay. Is there anything else?"

Think. Think. Any shred of anything could be the difference -

His head felt like it was going to burst open. His eyelids were so heavy.

"I don't have anything else," he whispered. "I'm sorry."

"It's okay," Celia said softly back. "Go back to sleep. Love you, Dad."

"Love you too," he croaked, and he fell back onto the soft thing he was sleeping on.

Celia slipped out of the room.

Before David fell back asleep he knew she was going to slide under a blanket beside Shula. He knew no details, but that one was chilling enough. He shivered, just a little, in spite of the warmth of the room.

In the morning an alien thing came to bring him home and he did not know if he had done enough. He couldn't steer. He didn't know.

Shula's favorite servants, black-eyed, one shaped like a man and one like a woman, served breakfast in the morning. Celia thanked them hoarsely and ate. It was oatmeal and Canadian bacon and fruit salad, fairly well-calculated comfort food for Celia's tastes. Celia allowed herself to be comforted as best she could. She wondered what plakti ate when they were alone. What would grow on a starless planet?

Shula and Meer were happy enough with the human food and the servants weren't eating with them - they'd left altogether after setting down the plates and asking if Shula needed anything else. Shula and her brother talked about family that she had not had a chance to fully catch up with at the party; they were almost cordial compared to their previous meeting. Celia was mostly quiet, but she leaned in to Shula's hand when Shula touched her shoulder or petted her hair.

It felt good and she loved her and why couldn't that be it, why couldn't they be shopping for new notebooks and pencils for senior year and kicking each other's shoes in the aisles? Getting brunch and wishing Islam would liberalize faster. Applying to colleges. Celia wondered if any of her schools would let her take classes by correspondence from another planet.

Shula kissed her, tasting like cinnamon, and got up, probably to go to the bathroom or something, leaving Celia and Meer alone.

Meer cast a furtive look at the door. Celia shivered.

"You will not get another chance," Meer said under his breath.

Didn't lie to you.

Had Shula lied, technically, had she ever -

Celia yanked the ring off her left hand and slapped it into his waiting palm and took the identical one he gave her and put it on the same finger. Then she took a huge spoonful of oatmeal in the hopes that the not-quite-chewing demanded by the substance would cover her facial expression. The ring had disappeared by some sleight of hand. Or real magic. Celia was suddenly aware that she'd never gotten a complete list of what-all growing up on the starless planet would allow. She only suspected that the fire was part of the package.

Shula returned a leisurely few minutes later and reassumed her seat at the head of the table (Celia at her right, Meer at her left). The rest of breakfast elapsed. The servants came back to clear away the plates. Shula started talking about how she wanted Celia to see all the best parts of the starless planet, there were museums and shows and architectural marvels -

"Oh, sweetie," said Shula. "Can I have a turn with the ring? Once a day is the best schedule for switching."

She was going to take it right now? Celia had thought it might be weeks, months even, she could have had time to come up with a story - Meer hadn't warned her -

Celia offered Shula her hand.

Shula took the ring. "It doesn't matter which finger you have these on," she remarked, "if it ever bothers you not to have an engagement ring you can use one that we aren't swapping back and forth all the time."

Shula put the ring on.

Meer was making an obviously heroic effort not to vibrate out of his chair. He'd said Shula would notice. How long would it take? Was he going to stay at her estate until she did?

Shula poured herself a glass of the water that was still on the table. It had cucumber slices in it. She sipped.

Was she not going to notice? Meer couldn't very well announce to everyone that he'd -

That Celia had -

Celia poured herself some water too and gulped it.

"Meer," said Shula.

"...Mm?" he replied.

"I know we've never really gotten along, but this takes it too far."

"Pardon?"

Shula's eyes snapped up from her glass to her brother's face. "I don't know what's worse. That you wanted me to die, or that you thought I'd roll over and do it just like that."

Meer dropped the pretense. "I'd like to see you try to get it back now. I have it secreted away in layers of -"

"I don't care if you flung it into the black hole," said Shula sweetly. "Spanish rings are cheap. Someone will happily learn the language and package up everything they've acquired into a new one for Celia if she'd care to pick it up."

"Spanish rings -"

"I'm not stupid, Meer. Why would you still be here? Why would you loiter at my estate? Brotherly affection? I swapped the rings around on her fingers in her sleep. Celia's still wearing it. Touch her and I'll blank you."

"You wouldn't."

"Wouldn't I?" snapped Shula. "You just tried to kill us both! Slowly, sure, but don't pretend you had plans to spend the first two immortalities you managed to buy on me and her once you were king. You tried to murder me, and worse, you would have gotten Celia too. Celia can't even shapeshift and you were going to make her grow old inside of a century!"

"They'll never believe -"

"You didn't even notice that Lyne isn't wearing the other end of my chat ring anymore. I gave it to Mother and told her I was concerned," said Shula. "Mother's been listening to this entire conversation. Perhaps she has Father with her, too. Or any of our little brothers and sisters who'll be fascinated to know what you think of the ties that bind."

Meer twitched.

"Get out of that chair and I will destroy you," Shula hissed.

"Shula," whispered Celia.

"This is not the time," Shula said in a voice that brooked no argument. "We will talk later. So what's your move, Meer?"

Meer sat very still. Shula waited.

"I surrender," Meer said softly.

"Lyne. Cait. Escort my brother to our parents to see what they'll make of him," Shula said. Her servants drifted into the room on cue. Lyne turned his chair around; then each one took one of his elbows and marched him away.

"Shula," Celia tried to say. Nothing came out.

Slowly, Shula turned in her chair towards her. She adjusted a ring on her finger.

"I don't know what he told you," Shula said. "I'm hoping that he just conditioned you with a few layers of memory wipes and assertions. I'm not sure when he would have had time. But I'm hoping, as awful as it would be for that to have happened in my own home. Because Celia, I don't know what I'd do if you, you of all people, were intentionally colluding with Meer to get me killed. I don't have the words. It wasn't like that, was it, Celia?"

Celia's blood was ice and she didn't seem to be able to blink, to look away from that hurt, uncertain look in Shula's eyes. I tried to kill her. Shula no I didn't mean. Oh God I literally tried to kill her. Oh God I'm horrible.

"Are you missing any time, sweetie?" Shula asked softly. "It hadn't come up before but plakti magic can erase memories, if you're close enough, and if you're not using the same magic defensively - which you can't. I wouldn't have let him near you, not ever, you're safe with me."

"I," said Celia.

"You must be so confused. It can do that if it's handled badly and I wouldn't expect him to be a virtuoso... I'm so sorry I wasn't there to fend him off. You look dizzy. Do you want to go lie down?"

"Yes," said Celia fervently, "please."

And they went back to bed, and snuggled up together on top of the covers, and Celia tried to breathe.

She'd never forgive me she shouldn't forgive me oh God oh God she can't even dump me she's staked everything on me she's stuck with me forever

"Oh sweetie," sighed Shula. "You're shaking."

"Sorry. Sorry I just. I don't know."

"We can put off the grand tour of the planet, if you like."

"Yes please."

"All right. Do let me know when you feel ready. There are so many things I want to show you. Nobody I'd rather show them to. My Celia."

She can erase memories too. Tell her to back up a day, two, forget all about -

No, then she'd know. She'd know I did it on purpose. She can't even dump me.

I just have to make it up to her on my own that's all what does she need a queen okay I can do that if I have to -

The alien thing didn't bother erasing David's memory.

What was he going to do, tell someone?

He told Joe he'd been over at a friend's. Joe didn't check.

And then David sat at his kitchen table with a bowl of cereal and tried to steer.

"Mother and Father have shut Meer up somewhere quite inaccessible. You don't have to worry about him any more," Shula said, at dinner.

"Oh. Good."

"I gave a ballpark estimate of the wedding date in five years. It's a long engagement but royal weddings take such a long time to plan and I thought you might like the option to go to college first. You can, you know. We can move in together easy as pie now we're both legally eighteen - I have loads of money even apart from Mom and Dad if they blow their tops, there's been plakti on Earth collecting local currency for ages. You won't have to sleep on your dad's couch."

"That sounds great. Thank you."

"You can ask Lyne and Cait for whatever you like for dinner, I'm going to be at Mother and Father's. Although you could come with me, if you're feeling up to it?"

"Of course I'll come with you."

Shula smiled. She leaned over the table for a kiss. Celia kissed her back, of course, of course. "I love you," Shula murmured.

"I love you too," Celia said.

"Do you want to wear white?" asked Shula.

"I don't know, are you planning to marry a virgin?" Celia asked.

Shula laughed. "It hasn't really meant that even on Earth for years. But to answer your question - it wouldn't be my first choice."

"Yes to white," says Celia. "Yes to whatever you want, I'm sure you've been thinking about the wedding longer than I have."

"You've got that right," laughed Shula. "C'mere." And she kissed her again.

Celia kissed her back.

Lilac

This story is a sequel to Threshold.

Our mother died, didn't she.

Lyle put his pocket computer down without answering the message.

It bleeped again.

She wouldn't silicize if she was a Saint of the Soul and you're two years older than me and that wasn't a parameter you tweaked so the sim must have pulled it from reality and she's dead.

Lyle's soup had gotten cold. He had sixteen emails flagged as paperwork he needed to handle for Mercy.

Bleep.

God's everlasting sorrow Lyle just tell me!

He picked it up. He tapped the screen.

Yeah.

He looked dubiously at the soup. He'd probably regret it later if he didn't eat any. He picked up the spoon.

Bleep.

Dad?

Lyle put the spoon down. Alive, not in the hospital or anything.

Any chance he found Sainthood less compelling after his reason for conversion was gone?

Lyle snorted. No.

Fuck.

He snorted harder. I thought Conceptuals were very uptight about swearing.

That's a common misconception. We avoid swearing by everlasting torment even though for some reason that's usually considered comparatively mi LYLE LONG DO NOT TRY TO DISTRACT ME I KNOW YOU AREN'T DOING A PROJECT.

Lyle laughed. Just a little. As though she were in the next room and could hear him if he were any louder. Sorry.

Does he know about me yet?

No.

Please tell him. I'll sound like some sort of bizarre novelty scam if I contact him myself.

We don't really talk, Lyle wrote.

Surely this is important enough? He has an unexpected extra child.

You're very important Lyle began, and then he erased it. He has the daughter he always wanted was also erased. He's not like you remember, he eventually sent.

I understand, but he's still the closest I'm going to get.

We really don't talk.

If you keep stonewalling me I will have to go with the bizarre novelty scam option.

Lyle set the computer aside. He ate the soup. He ignored bleeps. He washed the bowl and put it away. He couldn't breathe right.

Lyle, what's wrong?

Was he terrible about you being trans or is it something else?

I'm new to being a sister and I don't know what you need, but he's almost sixty and that isn't exactly optimal talking-people-into-silicization age and something could happen at any time, and what I need is to be introduced so I don't have to lose both parents when this time yesterday I thought I'd have them forever, Lyle.

Are you one of those people who hates text channels? Come into the lab and I'll go on a screen. I can show you my environment.

Lyle.

He picked it up. He tapped. I'll be there in half an hour.

She looked very real. There was an extreme closeup of her hands, complete with fingerprints, as she adjusted the simulated camera-drone in the "air". She had on the sort of outfit that you only ever saw silico avatars and fashion models wearing - very put together in blue and yellow, long coat. The environment looked like a prairie with a sprawling farmhouse sort of architecture rising out of it. Mercy was sitting on a picnic blanket, crushing a square of yellow wheat gone to seed. The sun was setting behind her, either as a decoration or a day-cycle simulation. "Hi, Lyle. Can you see me okay?"

"Yeah," Lyle said, slumping in his chair. "The place is pretty."

"It's a shared," Mercy said. "The Concept of Sisterhood is supplying my runtime for amateur in-house sim engineering of the place, and they're all so nice, it's just perfect."

"It's like, what, a nunnery?"

"No, no," laughed Mercy. "Conceptuals don't do nunneries. It is single-gendered but only residentially; I've seen men coming and going since I transferred in. It's a group home sort of place for silicized Conceptual Christians who don't want the isolation of private environments and prefer to live with others who have the shared values."

"Is everything you do about being a Conceptual?" wondered Lyle without thinking.

"No," said Mercy tartly. "But my social worker says that it is a normal side effect of having recently thresholded - insofar as there is any normalcy in these cases - that some of my traits will be more dominant than they should be until I've spent more time as a person and filled in the vague impressions that are passing for much of my history. And you as my sim programmer will of course know exactly what traits those will be - the very ones you oriented the sim around."

Oops.

"Yeah," Lyle muttered, looking away.

"So this is really a very good place for me to start out, while I'm finishing school if not longer, because it doesn't matter that I cannot for the life of me remember the plots of my favorite books even though I could have sworn I read a lot, or that I cannot ride a bicycle despite being able to tell you how old I was when I learned," said Mercy primly. "But I can recite with nearly word-perfect accuracy all the important works of my reverend namesake. So I get along very well with the Sisterhood ladies. And you know what else my sim was oriented around, Lyle?"

"Mom and Dad," he said.

"That's right. If you did not want to have to talk about Dad, you should not have simulated an alternate universe in which he kept his boyhood religion as an adult. I really hope not to ever pull this card again, because I do generally like existing and I am not angry at you for simming me. But I feel like putting me in touch with Dad is on your short list of further obligations given that you have done so." Mercy snapped her fingers twice and a screen hovered in front of her hand. She tapped it; Lyle couldn't see what she was doing from his vantage point, but when she was done she had a glass of lemonade. With a straw. She dismissed the screen by bumping her hand into its side, and sipped. "Well?"

Lyle looked at the farmhouse beyond his - sister. His twin, born days ago and two mental years younger, born after her mother's death and never having drunk real lemonade in her life.

"How's the lemonade?"

"Not bad. Food's fairly common to sim and there's lots of prior art, I didn't even have to adjust it, the Concept of Sisterhood is subscribed to a standard package. You're stalling, Lyle."

"I'll talk to him."

"Thank you. If you can just get him to the point where he will in fact read a message I send him then I'll consider your obligation discharged, I don't need you to walk him blindfolded into the lab for a surprise."

Lyle snorted. "I'll do my best."

"Thank you, Lyle."

"Don't get used to calling me that. I might change it."

"Oh?" she asked, inviting, blinking at him. He didn't like to look directly at her. She looked too pretty, she looked like a bad dream, and it was his own fault. Had he been hoping she'd make major cosmetic changes once she was rendered in silico? She might have conjured up "longstanding" insecurities if she'd spent longer in sim and expected to find some, but apparently as it was she liked how she looked just fine. If he just focused on her hair - he'd never worn his hair like that.

"It's - I don't know, maybe I'll tell you later. I might change it, is all."

"That's entirely your prerogative, of course," Mercy said. "Do you want to meet any of the Sisterhood?"

Lyle shook his head.

"All right then, I'm going to finish writing up my entrance essays so they know what classes to put me in come fall, and you're going to go talk to Dad."

He nodded.

She reached for the camera drone and the picture on his screen winked out.

His - their - dad had moved to a smaller apartment after Mom died. This meant that Lyle did not have to walk through his mom's garden smelling all her favorite flowers.

This didn't prevent the elevator ride from feeling like a walk through the garden, feeling like any minute one of his parents would yell out his name.

He might change it. Again. Insofar as "Lyle" was a change.

He walked to his dad's apartment. The old man didn't like text for anything important and was too hard of hearing for a phone call. The bus and a short hike was the lesser of available evils.

Are you one of those people who hates text channels?

Yeah, sis, I come by it honestly...

Knock knock.

Come on, asshole, I looked up your work hours, have the courtesy to be home.

Lyle knocked louder, and then the door opened.

And there was Dr. Arthur Long.

Who just sort of looked at him, because of course saying son was beyond him and Lyle's chosen name had not had any of its desired effect on his parents except to strike them dumb.

"What is it?" Arthur said, eventually.

"It's kind of a big deal," said Lyle. "Can I come in?"

And Arthur stood aside and Lyle went in and sat in the breakfast nook, acutely conscious of his binder and the picture from third grade on the mantelpiece and the name his father wouldn't say.

Arthur sat across from him.

"What is it?" he repeated.

"Uh, you know I major in sim engineering," said Lyle.

"I do."

"You know if you run a sim there's a chance the people in it will notice they exist and sort of - wake up. Threshold."

"It's confusing how you say 'wake up' for leaving a sim or being self-aware in one, but yes, I read, get on with it," said Arthur.

"Someone in my thesis project thresholded."

Arthur's eyes narrowed. "Someone. Did you sim me - no, your mother, did you sim Anne - you know it's against the Prophet's law -"

Lyle shook his head. "I mean, sort of, but you and Mom were incidental to the setup and didn't threshold. There isn't a you or a her running around in silico."

"What did you do?"

Lyle swallowed. Short list of further obligations.

"I simmed a version of myself in a world where Mom had converted instead of you."

Lyle wasn't sure if he was imagining the look of disgust on his father's face. "And - the sim woke up?"

The delightful avoid-the-pronoun dance now contagious to Mercy, who was perfectly, tweakfully feminine. "She," bit out Lyle. "She's a she, her name is Mercy, and she woke up. She asked me to tell you so that she could send you a message without being written off as a liar. I hope you know I wouldn't come here for a prank." Wouldn't come here for anything except owing his sister all the favors in the world.

"I - see."

"She's very nice. Very Conceptual Christian."

"A sim of a world in which you aren't completely godless, now that's an interesting look at your mind," murmured Arthur.

"She's really not me. And I'm not sure if she believes in God as an entity or just conceptually -" Why was he letting himself get drawn into this? Mercy could explain herself just fine. Mercy was a sim eng major too. Mercy was the daughter he'd always wanted, and if having Mercy got Dad to realize that the one he'd actually raised from infancy was a son then maybe they could have conversations that lasted longer than ten minutes without devolving. Lyle stood up. "That's all I had to say."

"L-" began Arthur, and he cut himself off.

"For fuck's sake, Dad," Lyle said, inevitably, "you called me Lyle for seventeen years. Why can't you do it now that it's not short for something else?"

"You know why, and you keep asking that question," Arthur said.

Lyle turned to go. Mercy couldn't call him negligent, now, there was no reason to stay.

"Your mother wanted to name you after a flower," Arthur continued.

"We don't live in a world where you can name boys after flowers," snapped Lyle, and he shut the door behind him.

I told him.

Thanks, Lyle.

I told you not to get used to calling me that, he wrote.

Why? It's a perfectly nice name. And didn't you choose it?

He paused. He paced. The pocket computer didn't bleep at him; she was waiting patiently.

Because I thought, when I picked it, that it being a lot like my birth name would help people adjust, and it didn't.

She didn't reply immediately. Maybe she was doing sim work for the Concept of Sisterhood or something.

He added, It actually did make it easier on my friends, I think, but it didn't help with my parents at all. Dad doesn't call me anything anymore.

Well, Mercy replied, I'll see if I can work on him, once I've established some basic relationship.

The hell of it is began Lyle, and then he looked at the word "hell" and erased it and replaced it with The thing is, I really liked my name. I liked everything about it except that it was a girl's name and I couldn't keep it and get people to take me seriously as a guy. Except Mom never did and Dad still doesn't.

I'll help you if I can.

Thanks.

But of course I won't consider you obligated to pursue more of a relationship with Dad if it's uncomfortable, even if I do make progress.

Thanks, Lyle repeated. And then, If you were more conventionally my sister you'd know what my name was.

I know what your name is, Mercy replied.

Yeah, but right now I like you more than anyone else in my family and it bugs me that Dad knows what he's just barely not saying and you have no idea. He might refer to me by birth name in his messages, even.

You may tell me if you like, of course.

Lyle thought about it. Then he tapped out, They named me after a flower. Did your version of Mom have a garden?

I think so. I think I can guess. Thank you, Lyle.

He smiled. You're welcome.

Changeling

This story is set in the same universe as Visitor and Queen.

This story is also available in audio, which you may find on this episode of Wingardcast.

The last mortal wore out and Grandmama wanted a new one, so they sent Bree.

Well, first they named her Eliliand, but that was early and forgotten enough that nobody knew that name apart from Grandmama herself and Eliliand's father. And the mortal they took was once named Bree but they called her Trinket, and in Trinket's place because fair's fair Grandmama sent - well. Bree.

Bree the fairy cried a lot. She did not like her wings being tucked away with the magic of fair's fair. She did not like drinking milk, nor how hungry she got when she wouldn't swallow it. She did not like it when Trinket's human parents picked her up and rocked her and she didn't like it when they left her alone and she didn't like it when they acted like she couldn't understand every word they spoke. Bree was young but she wasn't brand new or stupid, she knew everything they said, she could read. (But she couldn't talk, or write, not until a mortal the age she was pretending could. Fair's fair.)

Bree was young enough to forget, though, exactly why all these things were the case. Exactly why they were so upsetting.

By the time fair's fair allowed her to talk, she had nothing to say on the subject. She was uncomfortable all the time and hated meat and dairy and didn't want to be hugged and she was whip-smart with a book - but she was called Bree and three years old and human, probably, right, that would be the obvious thing for her to be, look at her human parents right there.

This was why they had to send a very young fairy. If a grownup fairy were changed to look like a baby mortal, then they would inevitably act very inhuman - and then fair would not be fair.

And fair was fair.

Bree was a very obedient child. She did not whine about how her back hurt, after they brought her to a doctor and the doctor said nothing was wrong and Mum said stop complaining. She did not turn up her nose at cheese and eggs and sausage after she turned up negative for allergies and Dad said clean your plate. She was not allowed to ask for a new bicycle again or neglect writing her uncle a thank-you note or eat her entire dark chocolate Easter bilby at once or stay up past nine or talk back to Mum or interrupt Dad or let her shoelaces stay untied or or or -

It did not occur to her that it might be odd to have no choice in these matters until she had already been attending school for several years. Of course her friends said that their mums did not let them do things, and then often tended not to do them. And Bree did not have to do what her teachers said, except for Miss Hope with the tin of lollies (and everybody liked Miss Hope, largely on account of the tin of lollies, so it was not unusual to be cooperative with her).

But when Bree was eight one of her friends (Bree socialized with other well-behaved children, both because they formed a natural clique and because her dad encouraged it) did not do her homework. And Bree had heard her mum tell her to do it.

Bree did not bring this up with her friend. But she thought about it.

As a general rule Bree herself did not tell people to do things. Her dad had told her not to be bossy, once, when she was four.

But Bree had also been told, since then, Say please. And she found this gave her a bit of leeway.

She experimented.

"Please let me go to the movies."

"Please buy me that dress."

"Please don't make me go to school today."

And her mum or dad (who were named, respectively, Anne and Sam Taylor, which information Bree had memorized in case she became lost) would absently give her leave to go, put the dress in the cart, call in sick for her.

Bree didn't know why she could do this, but she did have the feeling that she oughtn't push it. Her mum and dad (and her grade two teacher with the lollipops and the one friend she had a habit of swapping lunches with) could do it right back, so she didn't think she had best bring it to mind, or it would all be very Ella Enchanted until she found a prince and Bree did not think princes were in stock at the boyfriend store.

When she was fourteen she did entertain thoughts of going to Canberra and whispering instructions to politicians, but if one did that it probably led to sinister gentlemen in suits carrying one away for sinister experimentation.

Being fourteen also led her to try:

"Please come with me to the dance."

But the poor boy stammered so as he nodded and promised, and looked so upset, that she called him the next day and said that she was not going after all and he had better find someone else and then hung up on him before she could make more of a fool of herself.

And then Bree flopped face down on her bed and cried.

She convinced her parents that she wanted to go vegan for animal rights reasons, although Bree did not actually like animals, had never liked them, they moved wrong and their eyes were wrong. Her parents let her and she ate a lot of salad and a lot of fruit and a lot of cake that foamed up with vinegar and baking soda.

Her friends thought she was strange for not liking animals. How could you not like birds. How could you not like koalas. But all Bree could think when she saw them was how uncomfortable it looked to be them, to have to move that way, to have eyes on opposite sides of your head, no hands, an unsmiling beak. To be edible.

She did like the more attractive categories of bugs. Butterflies, mostly. Dragonflies and ladybirds. They were too simple to be uncomfortable or afraid, she thought, and so pretty.

The more she sussed out how she was not normal the more aggressively Bree tried to do ordinary things. She went vegan but followed the herd in what music she claimed to like, which actors. She couldn't bear dogs or cats or parrots but she wore pink and painted her nails and grew her gold-blond hair into long, long waves, and people thought she was pretty, and pretty people could get away with eating salad if they gave the impression of watching their weight. She took the same second language as her friends.

She had to drop out of Mandarin. It was just - she couldn't even begin to explain. It just looked like English.

Well, it looked like English always did to her, at any rate. It was just words. The teacher said hello class and Bree said hello right back and the teacher said no, no, Chinese, "hello", go on, it's not so hard to pronounce and then got steadily angrier until Bree fled the room to the school office and transferred into Band and learned to force sound out of the flute.

Her parents made her practice, and practice she did.

When Bree turned eighteen, her dad said, "You're a grownup now, my girl. You can do what you want."

And Bree could almost feel something go snap.

She did not have stand up straight she did not have to brush her teeth twice a day she did not have to wake up as soon as her alarm went off she did not have to call if she was going to be late she did not have to put half of her money in savings she did not have to wipe her feet before she came inside she did not have to hug her grandpa she did not have to say excuse me she did not have to practice music thirty minutes a day she did not have to she did not have to she

did

not

have

to

let

her

back

keep

aching -

Bree squeaked and bolted for the bathroom and leaned over the sink and breathed very hard.

Had she been doing that to herself, the whole time - did someone tell her to do some long-forgotten awful thing with her shoulders or spine, or was it psychosomatic, Bree had not previously thought that "thinking about a purple elephant" sorts of orders were different for her than for anyone else but what if someone just told her that she should feel like her back hurt all the time

Bree peeled her shirt off, unhooked her bra.

And Bree wanted to stop doing the thing - whatever it was.

And just like that, just like magic, she was a butterfly-girl.

She felt entire.

Those were her wings. She could fly with them if she wanted. She could be lighter, she could be smaller, she could beat those black-edged golden gaudy wings and rise into the air, oh, she was dreaming, she was dreaming -

The wings moved when she wanted to move them. It felt at least as natural as flicking her fingers. They'd been crumpled up, smoothed away, and no doctor had ever turned them up but there they were.

Who had told her to put them away?

She made a half-turn in front of the mirror and stepped on the piece of birch-bark paper that had fallen in a roll onto the floor when her wings had unfurled.

And she picked it up.

"Bree!" called Dad. "Are you all right?"

"I'm fine!" she said, a little too high-pitched.

She stuffed the paper into her pocket.

With a deep breath, she folded her wings away, back into familiar pain, and put her top back on and left the bathroom.

But later, when she had moved into her university dorm, and had her room all to herself with a lock on the door, she took them out again.

And she read over her little roll of birchbark paper which she'd tucked into her toiletry bag.

You are a changeling.

If you have escaped your mortal captors and are ready to return home, the gate is thirteen kilometers north of the house you were left in, marked with a row of stones, and should be entered traveling due southwest. They can only keep you for as long as they can keep you; fair is fair.

Grandmama has a place for you in the Court.

Bree read it over, and over, and over, and she went to bed, because she'd signed up for early morning intro bio, and didn't want to be late on day one.

In uni the Mandarin teacher was a native speaker and thought Bree was a prodigy. She evaded his pleas to enroll in his classes; the other students would only hear English. Or whatever. She still didn't know exactly how that worked. Maybe this was why it had been so hard to learn to type; computers did not know what words were and could only accept letters. She still preferred to write her assignments longhand. Trying to spell with a keyboard was a nightmare.

She took intro to this and that. She read her birchbark note now and then.

Mortal captors. Fair is fair.

Grandmama.

What kind of place would Bree have in a court of butterfly-people?

She'd undone her transformation all the way, now. It was ecstatic to be so free of squeezing awful whatever it was; the wings weren't the only thing. Her parents had said that her joint aches were growing pains, that she felt gross and heavy because she was bombarded by media of girls thinner than her.

When she was completely free of all her - magical whatever - Bree was only one and a quarter meters tall, spindly as any magazine cover model, winged, radiantly golden. Kind of flat-chested, but she was that even under her - shapeshifting? Illusion? She kept her fingernail polish and her hair when she changed and her clothes loosened around her, like she was physically morphing, not just shedding imaginary light. It felt real. She could reach shelves with her false height, and everything.

Her face stayed the same.

She could go back, look human, and she didn't like it, it fucking hurt, although she was a grownup and could do what she liked, now, so she could take paracetamol for it and nobody said don't do that, Bree, it won't help, the doctor said it's all in your head.

She could just sprout wings and fly and slip into Grandmama's court and there was a place waiting for her there. Supposedly.

What kind of place -? She'd grown up in the same house they would have had to deposit her in. She could find the gate. She could find out what kind of place.

But she had to look human to turn up at classes, so she did.

Bree made friends at uni, and did not take snacks from them (being vegan was an excellent excuse, although apparently Oreos were vegan, who knew; she had to say she was picky too). Bree passed her classes and learned to like cheap beer and always made the runs for it herself and was very careful to keep an eye on her drink for more than the usual reasons. Bree got a boyfriend but they broke up when she wouldn't go down on him (she didn't know what counted, and was willing to risk kissing but stopped there, and she could go ask Grandmama but who the hell even was Grandmama. Bree got a different boyfriend who did not have this complaint and they broke up over her emotional unavailability and she decided not to seek a new one right away. Bree majored in civil engineering because she liked cities.

Moments of privacy were so tempting.

And Bree tried, tried, to be careful, but she knew now how to make the hurting stop, and it was so hard to go on hurting even when she was alone, when she knew how to shrink and unfold. It was only a matter of time.

"Oh my god," screamed Chloe, bedecked in fluffy bathrobe.

"Shh!" hissed Bree, slicing her wings into herself, exploding into human-gangling limbs and grabbing for her towel. "Shut up, shut up -" Just because she didn't hear the water running -

Chloe didn't shut up. Chloe wasn't her "real" name, by whatever butterfly-person reckoning considered reality; it hadn't clicked when Bree had learned it. Chloe was adopted from the Philippines. Chloe had not wanted a cookie no thank you. She didn't shut up: "What the hell, Bree!"

"Shut up shut up shut up!" Bree went around her and locked the door and this time made sure the handle wouldn't turn. "What did you see?"

"You. Photoshopped in real life. You glowed and you had wings and you were tiny -"

"Keep your voice down," Bree begged, "please."

"What are you?" asked Chloe, hushed.

"I don't know."

"Are you a fairy? You looked like a fairy."

"I said I don't know. I didn't even know until a couple years ago that I was a thing."

"How is that something you miss?"

Bree dropped her head into her hands. "I don't know! I don't know anything!"

"You know more than I do!"

Deep breaths. Deep breaths. "If I tell you what I know will you believe me that that's all I know? And not call scary men in suits to cut me apart?"

"Yes," Chloe promised, sitting on the counter, elbows on knees chin on hands, rapt.

"I was - stuck shaped normal," Bree says, voice low. "I don't know exactly how I got stuck in the first place, but I think somebody must have told me to. People can sometimes tell me to do things and I can't not, and vice-versa, I don't do anything with this except get nice Christmas gifts and once I made a guy stop hitting on me at a - I don't mostly do anything with it, anyway, it's not a big deal. So before I can remember somebody told me to be shaped human and they swapped me for - the real Bree - I was a baby I don't remember it I don't know what happened to her! - and I was stuck until my dad told me that I could do what I wanted and everything I'd ever been told to do went away."

"Do your parents know?" asked Chloe.

Bree shook her head. "Nobody knows. I don't even look weird to doctors. Even if they're looking. It hurts to be shaped like this and some of them tried to figure out what was wrong and they don't notice."

"Can you fly?"

"Probably."

"...Probably."

"How would I try it?" snapped Bree. "Where would I go? I get a lot lighter, I can flap, I could probably fly at least until I crashed into something and broke my neck, that's all I know."

"When can people tell you to do things? And the other way?"

"I'm not sure of all the rules. It seems to have to do with whether I've ever taken food from them but I don't know I haven't done science experiments with it. I can't tell you to do things, I think because you don't go by your birth name. I wouldn't have let you shout."

"How do you know you were left in place of the 'real' Bree" (Chloe made airquotes) "instead of being a mutant?"

"First time I let my wings out there was a letter folded up with them. It didn't say very much, just - that I'm a changeling and I can go back where I came from if I want. And I think I can't really be named Bree. Or more people would be able to boss me around. But I don't know my real name, the letter didn't say."

"That's a dumb definition of real name," remarked Chloe.

"I don't know how this works, okay, what am I supposed to call it, special magic ordering people around name?"

"Fair," conceded Chloe. "So when you went back what was it like?"

"...I didn't go."

Chloe looked like Bree had passed up a chance to travel to the moon or something instead of thirteen kilometers north of the house she grew up in and then slightly southwest. "You haven't gone?"

"No. I don't know if I want to. I don't know what's there, I don't know what I am -"

"You're obviously a fairy."

"- and I don't know if I could ever come back," whispered Bree.

"Of course you could," said Chloe. "Why wouldn't you be able to come back? Why would a fairy get lost in Fairyland?"

Bree shook her head, sick with wordless forgotten fear. "I don't know."

Chloe convinced her. Chloe wanted to come along. Chloe wanted to see fairies.

Chloe said, "You know where you can fly? Where there's fairies."

And Bree did sorely want to fly.

Bree had a car, and brought Chloe with her.

"Maybe you're a princess."

"Why would they give away a princess to get a mortal baby?" asked Bree.

"I don't know, but you could be. A fairy princess."

"I don't think so."

"Aren't you even a little excited?"

Bree swallowed. "Maybe the gate will be gone by now. Or there won't be anyone around, it would be all right if there were no one around. Please tell me you didn't bring a camera."

"I have my phone."

"Leave it in the car."

"Bree!"

"I don't want pictures of me flying around - with my shirt off! - plastered all over the Internet and I can't make you not put them so leave your phone in the car!"

"Fine," grumbled Chloe.

"We're bringing the compass and our lunches and that's it, we can go look around and then go straight home as soon as we see anything dangerous," said Bree firmly.

"Or what?"

"Or I don't show you where it is and we turn around and go back to school and you can tell anybody you like that I'm a fairy or a princess or the princess of fairy bread and no one will believe you."

"Ugh."

"Put your phone in the glovebox."

Chloe did. Bree drove.

They found a little park thirteen kilometers north of the Taylor residence. They found a line of stones. They identified southwest.

And they clutched each other's hands and checked for witnesses and stepped over the rocks.

It was late May winter at home, warm for the season in a way that made people mutter darkly about global warming but still sweater weather. In Fairyland it was hot sticky summer jungle. Bree had always liked warmth and rain and now she supposed she knew why. Chloe swore and started shucking layers while Bree slowly peeled off her cardigan.

The gate was marked on this side with another row of stones. Every other direction Bree could see was choked with plants. It was sufficiently dark under the thick canopy that she undid the shapeshifting on her golden glow before she had her shirt off and her wings out, just so she could see the buttons. Her skin shed enough light to see flowers sized between pinhead and hubcap, trees colonized from root to tip with enterprising mushrooms and affectionate ivy, a floor blanketed with faintly phosphorescent mosses and lichens and fallen leaves like nothing out of any field guide.

Bree shrank, and retied the drawstring on her trousers, and took a deep breath. It smelled like green.

"Oh god," breathed Chloe.

"Are you happy now?" Bree asked, but she didn't have much desire to hear a yes. There was no pain. No buzzing insects or crawling spiders. No smog, no biting cold.

I'm a fairy.

As if the wings weren't proof, but - Bree picked a curly-petaled yellow something and tucked it behind her ear and twitched her wings.

I'm really a fairy.

"Are you going to fly?" breathed Chloe.

Bree stepped out of her shoes and let her feet be tickled by moss. She looked up. Most of the really dense branches were stories up; and she was so small.

"Yeah," Bree said, and she flapped her wings and caught a branch, and then did it again, and again, until she was halfway up a huge dark-barked tree and Chloe looked like a doll.

Chloe said something, and Bree fluttered most of the way back down. "What?"

"I said I wish I could draw. Paint. I wish you'd let me bring my phone."

"I'm half-naked."

"You're winged and glowing. It'd be arty. I could go get my phone and only take pictures of plants?"

Bree shook her head. "I don't think you'd better."

"Do you think we'll get lost, if we go anywhere out of sight of the stones?"

"Probably. But it's so pretty right here."

"I wonder how people don't wander through all the time."

"You have to do it from the right angle. And it was a bit out of the way."

"If I got my phone, I could take pictures of landmarks and we could find our way back."

"How many times do I have to tell you no phone? You should have brought a ball of yarn if you wanted to do that."

Chloe sighed and sat down on the moss. "It's so quiet."

"I can still hear the traffic from - from Earth. Look, if you want to go on a bit without getting lost you probably can do it fine if I stay put in a high branch and keep an eye on you and the gate?"

"Thanks," said Chloe, and she started tiptoeing through the rainforest, pausing to pointedly not take pictures of every third growing thing she saw, picking a flower for her own hair when she found a scalloped purple one.

Bree sat lightly in a tree, like a soap bubble. By some instinct she kept her wings spread, flicking now and again to keep her balance. Watching, breathing.

Bree saw the other fairy first.

He was gold and he glowed.

He spotted Bree, and then he tracked her gaze straight to Chloe where she was examining a creeper.

He mouthed a word but Bree couldn't read his lips, and then he dove off of his branch towards Chloe and Bree gave chase but he was faster.

He touched the ground neatly; Bree didn't stick her landing, but in the process of failing to do that she stumbled into Chloe and got her a few ungainly meters of distance. The other fairy didn't seem to be attacking, though; he had his hand mid-gesture and seemed surprised that Bree was reacting as she was.

"H-hi?" said Chloe.

"Don't eat anything he gives you," Bree hissed in her ear.

"What? I thought that was just you," Chloe hissed back.

"I can hear you," remarked the other fairy mildly.

Bree whimpered.

"I'm not going to hurt you children," he said. "There's no reason to look so frightened."

"So we can go, then?" said Bree.

"I suppose," he said. He wasn't wearing a shirt either. Mercifully, he had on pants; they looked like they were made out of handspun cotton-or-something. "If I frighten you so much." He gave Chloe a look: can you believe her?

Chloe glanced between the two fairies. "He doesn't seem very scary to me."

"Don't eat anything they give you. Don't - your name is fine because - but don't tell them mine because of - the thing," said Bree.

"I already know the court mortal's name," the other fairy said. "But I'm not permitted to speak it, so it wouldn't do very well as a nickname for you. Do you have something you like better than Changeling? The last Changeling goes by Pyrite now but it took him some time to settle on it. I'm called Lamplight."

"...Changeling's fine," murmured Bree.

"I don't want to go by my name here, it gives me the creeps, now," shuddered Chloe. "Call me, I don't know, call me Seltzer, whatever."

"Now that we're all introduced," smiled Lamplight, "I suppose you can turn around if that's what you really want to do, but I'd be happy to show you to the Court."

"Come on, B- Changeling," said Chloe. "He seems perfectly nice, he's not trying to kidnap us."

Bree wavered.

Grandmama has a place for you at the -

"And then what?" Bree asked Lamplight.

"What do you mean?" he blinked innocently.

"After you show us the Court."

"I didn't have a particular agenda beyond that. There's going to be a story-reading this evening, if you find the tour inadequate hospitality." He looked so bemused and friendly.

"Come on," Chloe said to Bree, and Bree realized very abruptly that if Chloe were willing to wander through Fairyland without Bree, she'd have done it as soon as they found the gate. Chloe would have gone back for her phone and taken pictures of everything and would perhaps even now be turning her speculative looks at Lamplight's torso into extended flirtations or something. Chloe was not doing this because she thought she needed Bree, and if Bree demanded that they leave, they'd leave, unless Lamplight had a trick up his lack of sleeve.

Bree also realized that if this was what it took to send her hurtling out of Fairyland, if a polite fairy boy (who hadn't asked their names or tried to give them anything to eat) offering to show her a Court she'd known was there was all it took to scare her away - she would not ever come back.

There was an entire fairyland and she'd seen scarcely any of it.

"Fine," escaped Bree's lips, and Lamplight gave a little bow, and led them into the jungle, away from the gate.

They were called glowgolds and there were dozens and they lived in a treehouse palace.

It was neither a cheap plywood backyard hangout nor a half-plastic safety-coded public playground. It was a palace. The trees themselves had been coaxed into bridges and platforms and arches and balconies where the branches formed too dense a thicket for flight. Where there was conventional construction it flowed smoothly out of that; flower-adorned thatch and wood that joined to other wood through shape alone, no nails or glue in sight.

Lamplight found a rope ladder - well, a vine ladder, many thin tendrils dried out and braided together - for Chloe.

Bree, though, could just fly straight up, and after she'd choked down her apprehension she did.

She was not out of place for not wearing a shirt, although her fleece sometime-pajama pants were not exactly the light cottony shorts that everybody else had on. She was really a bit too warm.

When she alighted on a palace outcropping a cry went up:

"Changeling's come home!"

She was surrounded; but when she shrank away they backed off, eyes wide. "Didn't mean to scare you." "Oh look at your hair, it's everywhere, I can braid it for you." "Welcome home!" "Aren't you hot in those? Do you want a pair of mine?" "You won't remember me; I'm Inkwell, I'm the court scribe, I wrote your note -" "Oh Changeling we wouldn't ever hurt you don't look so frightened." "You're home, you're home!"

"Why are -" Bree looked around for Chloe. Chloe was halfway up the ladder, staring openmouthed at everything; but no one was trying to sneak a slice of fruit between her lips. "Why are you all so excited to see me? Why did you give me away if you wanted me here?"

"Oh, Grandmama wanted a mortal," said, apparently, Inkwell. "Grandmama likes to have one at continental meetings, and it didn't take you so long to come back."

"I'm - I'm twenty."

"Twenty-three!" corrected another fairy. "You weren't brand new when we put you down. You had to speak enough to hear your orders."

"But that's a long time," said Bree.

"Hardly anything," scoffed a third glowgold.

"You're so new," a fourth cooed, reaching for Bree's hair but retracting her hand when Bree twitched.

Mortal captors. Mortals.

Oh god she was going to live forever. She was never going to look any older than these ageless lineless faces. If she ever went home she'd have to move a million times and keep changing her name and computer records just kept getting better.

Or she could stay, but she didn't want to give them ideas.

Still, her legs were pouring sweat. "I - think I will borrow a pair of shorts. If you don't mind." In moments a set were pressed into her hands. They did not seem to expect her to want privacy, and she was already topless; she just changed without making a big deal about it. "What are all your names -?"

"Nicknames," corrected someone.

"Sorry. Of course."

And then there followed a flurry of nicknames. Night and Grassland and Spindle and Travel and Plenty and Royal and Laughter and Woodgrain. Wisdom and Boxes and Snow and Hearth and Salt. Bree could barely remember them all. They didn't snap into slots in her mind. They weren't real. Of course.

Chloe made it up to their platform.

"Who's your mortal?" asked Boxes.

"I'm my own mortal," said Chloe.

"Seltzer," said Bree swiftly. "Don't - don't try to take her or - or anything."

"We can't do that," blinked Laughter. "That wouldn't be fair."

"...Oh."

Bree did not quite understand how that worked, what exactly was the fairness inherent in swapping babies, but they had to have had some reason to give her up to get the real Bree, and it might well prevent them from collecting Chloe.

...She needed to stop thinking of the real Bree as "the real Bree". This could not possibly be helpful. Bree was both real and Bree. And the girl she had replaced was - also real, also Bree, just differently.

"You should tell us all about the mortal realm at the story-reading," said Travel.

"Yes," agreed Salt, "it wouldn't be reading but that would hardly matter, half the time it's actually only telling from memory or making things up."

"Much more interesting than listening to Aspiration again, or Invisible, let alone Quadrant," nodded Travel. Everyone groaned as though Quadrant's boringness were a well-worn inside joke. Bree smiled nervously.

There is a place for you -

Bree and Chloe ate their packed lunches, when they got hungry. The glowgolds were not offended.

There were so many of them. Most of them seemed interested in the returned changeling and her mortal friend, but only a fraction stopped to say hello, overwhelming though that fraction was; the others flew from place to place in the magnificent complex of treehouses on their own business. Bree saw glowgolds grooming the thatch, weeding the understory, carrying baskets and sacks and jugs, carving bits of wood, reading, writing, kissing, singing, cooking alien vegetables with flameless warmth and serving skewers of them to the other glowgolds. (The food was accepted without a fuss. She needed to learn how that actually worked instead of coasting on guesses made based on lollipops and snack-swapping.)

She didn't see any children.

But they were immortal, so for them not to have overwhelmed the whole of Fairyland, weighed the treehouses down until they collapsed into kindling, run out of nicknames - they had to have children very seldom. One twenty-three years ago - maybe they were all set for a century.

Bree decided that she needed to figure out how they did that, when they did it - could she have children? Could she not - with mortals - even if she wanted?

It occurred to her that she'd never been sick. This had probably never risen to her parents' attention. She'd stayed home from school, complained of aching - just not because she had a cold.

She was a fairy, a real fairy, and she had no idea how to be a fairy, and the glowgolds - the other glowgolds - were not trying to hurt her.

But she wasn't sure how to ask the question, not of Salt to her left nor Laughter perched above her head. (Chloe, to Bree's right, wouldn't know.)

"...Can I talk to Pyrite?" she asked Salt.

The last changeling. The one who'd been human, or tried.

"Why Pyr- oh!" said Salt. "Yes. Laughter, go get Pyrite."

Laughter fluttered away. And came back with another glowgold, who looked just like all the others.

"Changeling," he said. "It's odd to call someone else that."

"H-hi," said Bree. Chloe was craning her neck to see Pyrite around Bree. "...So you were the last one."

He nodded. "I came back when I thought I was fifteen."

"I wasn't out of my parents' orders that young..."

"It took some doing," Pyrite said.

"And you stayed here, when you found it?" Bree said. "I mean, right away?"

Pyrite smiled, not nicely. "Changeling, they left me with an Aborigine family. Maybe things are different now, but this was in 1902."

"Oh," said Chloe, before Bree could get any words out. "What did you look like?"

Pyrite didn't answer right away, but Laughter said, "Show them," and Pyrite winced and changed. His human disguise was tall, dark, handsome, and, of faces he could have had in 1902, probably not the easiest.

"You can stop," Laughter said, when the girls had stopped staring, and Pyrite changed back. Gold just like the others, just like Bree.

"It hurts," murmured Bree. "I'm sorry."

Pyrite nodded, not making eye contact.

"What happened," said Chloe, "to the human that got traded for Changeling?"

"Oh," said Salt, "Trinket's still here."

"Where?" Chloe demanded. Bree wished she'd shut up. Bree didn't want to see her. Bree didn't want to know if they looked alike, didn't want to form opinions about which of them deserved to live in a suburb and which deserved the verdant palace, didn't want to feel responsible for a sad human-Bree or envious of a happy one, couldn't she go meet starving children in Africa instead -

"Grandmama keeps her close," Laughter said.

"She's a status symbol when there are meetings with other courts, other fairies," said Salt.

"A pet, when there aren't," said Pyrite.

"A pet?" asked Chloe.

"A hand-fed, literally petted pet," Pyrite said.

"When you meet Grandmama you'll see Trinket," nodded Salt.

Bree would have rather been ordered to drink battery acid.

"Grandmama?" asked Chloe.

"Our matriarch." Laughter said it, Salt echoing her. Unless Bree had mixed the nicknames up again. "We call her Grandmama. You can call her Lady Sunrise."

"Take us to see, uh, Lady Sunrise," Chloe said.

No no no - why - no -

"All right," said Salt. "This way."

Grandmama lived in the central pavilion of the glowgold colony. She had a throne, narrow-backed to support her spine between her wings, made of braided ebony. The throne itself was undecorated; Grandmama, who looked too young to be a mother, let alone a grandmother, was its decoration, yellow hair elaborately coiled back behind her ears, cloth-of-gold wrapped around her waist.

Kneeling on a cushion at the matriarch's feet was a human, dressed like a glowgold but dim and tall and wingless.

She didn't look all that much like Bree, actually. Bree's disguise matched her parents, but not in quite this way. Trinket had her - their - mother's straight nose instead of their father's snub, their father's brown hair instead of mum's blonde. Blue eyes; Bree's were hazel.

When Bree alit on the pavilion beside Salt, and Chloe climbed up, Trinket spoke, smiling: "Welcome, guests. What is your business with my lady?" Trinket's lady herself glanced at the newcomers but did not seem inclined to say anything herself.

"We," began Bree, but Chloe interrupted:

"What language is that?"

"Language?" asked Salt.

"...You can't understand her?" Bree asked.

"It sounds like gibberish. You can?"

"She welcomed us and wants to know what our business with - her lady - is. What language are you speaking, um, Trinket?"

Trinket just blinked at her.

"She doesn't generally answer questions," Salt said in Bree's ear. "Grandmama doesn't like her to be too talkative."

"But why does she talk gibberish?" asked Chloe. "And why can - Changeling understand her?"

Pyrite caught up with them. "That's what happens when humans are brought up around fairies before they have a language of their own to hear," he said. "She's made up her own language, more or less. We can understand her the same way we could understand anything else. I had a book in English with me when I came back, and the last human couldn't read it, only fairy writing."

"But that means we can't bring her back," said Chloe.

All of the fairies looked at Chloe.

Trinket, obviously, could not understand her and continued to smile into the middle distance. She probably had to.

"She belongs to me," said Grandmama.

"Fair is fair," said Salt. "The parents got Changeling, and Grandmama gets Trinket. For as long as either can hold them."

"No matter that it's easier for Grandmama to hold a human than for human parents to hold a fairy," said Pyrite.

"I keep hearing fair is fair," said Bree. "What does that even mean?"

"To get a human child, Grandmama sends a fairy child in their place," said Salt. "If she only took one, with no exchange, then there would be no new children in her colony. Fair has to be fair."

"There's nothing fair about that," said Chloe.

"It's perfectly fair," says Salt. "If it weren't, we couldn't have more children."

"I get that you're talking weird fairy language and not English but that's not what fair means," exclaimed Chloe. "Their parents would never have agreed to the deal - and how is this fair to Trinket?"

Or me? wondered Bree, but she didn't really know if she wished she'd grown up here. However uncrumpled her wings might have been in the process. However beautiful the forest.

She didn't like the way Pyrite had flinched when Laughter had ordered him.

She did not think she was a fairy princess at all.

"Trinket didn't get anything," Chloe went on.

"Trinket has been looked after," said Grandmama, drawing her fingernails through Trinket's hair. "As she would have been in the other realm. Trinket was not at the stage of reasoning to have any part in the deal. You do not amuse me, mortal."

Trinket only smiled and blinked.

"B- Changeling didn't get anything," Chloe went on.

"You do not know of what you speak," Grandmama said. "Changeling, can you not control your mortal?"

"Shh, Seltzer," Bree said; halfheartedly, but Chloe subsided, glowering at the matriarch.

Bree was, supposedly, three, when swapped. She'd been old enough to understand an order to keep her wings in and her glow hidden, even if she couldn't remember it now. To grow tall, to not speak until she was older.

She had been at a stage of some reasoning.

And now here she was, under no standing orders at all, not five meters from a human whose name she knew, who belonged to Grandmama.

Why would they let her be here, let her talk, let her near Trinket?

She could steal the girl away if she said the word.

They had been doing this for centuries. They wouldn't make an obvious stupid mistake like that.

"Let's go home," Bree said abruptly to Chloe. She couldn't have said why, but she didn't like the way all of the nearby glowgolds were holding still, silent.

"What? They have - they're keeping her as a slave!"

"And we can't do anything about it," said Bree.

There was a sort of tension in Grandmama's wings. Bree was sure she'd know what it meant if she'd grown up around other fairies.

"We can't leave her! Can't you give her orders just the same as they can? We both know what her name is!"

Bree shook her head slowly. "If I try to take her," she said, "then what's stopping them from taking me?"

"I - what's stopping them now?"

"I don't know exactly how this works," said Bree. "I'm not very good at being a fairy. But I don't want to stay and find out by doing something wrong and spending eternity here. It's pretty but I would get very, very tired of it."

"She's a person," said Chloe. "We could figure something out about her not being able to speak a real language - you can understand her -"

"Grandmama knows my name," Bree said, "I'm sure of it. She gave me something in my deal and it's mine as long as I can hold it - isn't that right? - but only as long as I don't try to take anything that's not mine. Because fair's fair."

Chloe shook her head as if to clear it. "Gave you something?"

"Mortal captors," breathed Bree. "Who could not have kept me forever. The way she can. A chance to not have masters, if I don't get cocky."

None of the glowgolds were replying. Most of them weren't even twitching. Grandmama was staring her down, cold-eyed and luminous, mouth a set line. She wasn't even trying to entice Bree to stay. Maybe she thought that no matter what wonders the mortal realm held Bree would come back eventually. They were, after all, immortal.

But -

"I'm sorry, Trinket," said Bree. "But I don't think you can come home to our parents. At least, I can't help you." She swallowed. "But they would've loved you."

Trinket blinked and smiled. Bree couldn't read her eyes to see contentment or screaming or confusion or anything else.

"Come on," Bree said to Chloe, and she fluttered down from the treehouse palace, waited at the base of the ladder for her friend's reluctant descent, and lit their way back to the gate. It wasn't so hard to find the path through the jungle after all.

The glowgolds didn't try to stop them.

Fair was fair.

Queen

This story is set in the same universe as Visitor and Changeling.

This story is also available in audio, which you may find on this episode of Wingardcast.

She opens her eyes in a bubble of air at the bottom of a lake, so deep and so dark that she does not know if it is night or day at the surface, cannot discern the silver color of her own hands in front of her face.

She knows other things, though.

She knows how to breathe, speak, sit up, stretch her wings.

She knows that if she swims up from her bubble, she will eventually find the lake surface, and air and light and plants and fairies.

She knows her name.

She knows everyone's name.

She starts calling herself Bubble, immediately. It is not a very good name, but Bubble wants rid of hers as soon as possible. If she doesn't know it, she can't let it slip. If she manages to be Bubble, so hard and so consistently, that she cannot remember what she woke up knowing under the lake, then she will be safe. She thinks safety is very scarce outside of the lake.

She dreams enormous dreams, dreams the size of all the world. She picks fruit from the trees on the shore, every day, and sinks under the water to curl up in her air pocket, every night. She is cautious - but she imagines palaces and armies and consorts and everyone knowing that she reigns supreme. She is lucky, but luck will not be enough if she is not also smart. Her luck will be someone else's tool if she makes a mistake. They can't hurt her - but there are ways and ways.

Bubble will not be seduced. Bubble will not be driven mad in a cage in the dark until she will name herself just to see flowers and starlight. Bubble will not be caught off guard.

Bubble will be queen.

She explores the space around the lake. There are dozens of fairies who visit it for water now and then; a handful live at the shore. In a burrow in the sand, in a treehouse, in a cairn made out of the river stones, out in the open getting rained on once a week when clouds overtake the sky in their scheduled time. No courts interact with the lake, and this decides Bubble's initial strategy.

Bubble might be able to subvert an entire court by finding its master and whispering thereto, but she would be dealing with a fairy with practice, a fairy who had held vassals for years, centuries, millennia, who knew how to word things and how to see where there were gaps.

Bubble has no practice. Taking a whole court would be efficient if she succeeded, but she would be so likely to fail. And she is not in much of a hurry.

She takes the fairies who live near the lake. One by one. She tells them hold, makes them be still. Permits them to speak only to critique the wordings she's devised for contingencies and threats and guarantees and forbiddances and permissions.

They can think of very few mistakes. Bubble is very good at this.

Bubble works her servants over until every escape is patched, every hope of defiance or retaliation transparently worthless. She doesn't hurt them because they don't try to resist. If they can get good things by trying to please her, and it is really, completely impossible to get away from her, then they will try to please her in thought and word as well as by obedience.

Bubble connects names to faces for the fairies who visit the lake for their water, and Bubble's servants snare them for her, and then there are dozens.

And these fairies have neighbors.

Some of those neighbors have courts.

It's so easy. She doesn't take it lightly, she treats every step with care and caution, but it's easy. The Queen laughs and her power spiderwebs out from her lake in all directions.

Courts have structure.

It is tedious to give a hundred thousand fairies all personal instructions, even if you can assemble them in groups and shout. Worse when they hate you; simpler when they fear you or love you; but tedious any which way. Courts have layers and sections and branches and satellites, and the Queen's court has more than others, because her court is whoever she likes.

She winnows, after she's taken the whole great crescent island for herself. She means to go over the glittering ocean - and under it, too, there are rainbowfin courts there - but first she must get her things in order. Useless servants are dismissed - forbidden to speak or act against her or her own, but they may go about their business in bits of the land she doesn't care about, isn't using. Those with theoretical value but rebellious attitudes are punished. She isn't a sadist, or at least she doesn't think so, but she can't be facing hostility at every turn, which means it must become an instant personal disaster for any fairy to offer her any.

The Queen gains skill, between tutelage from her vassals with experience in mastery and sheer practice, in making those personal disasters terrifying by rumor and tailored to break whoever has earned one.

But not every fairy is opposed to the regime. Some of them were under harsher masters than her, eager to be eased out from under their old yokes and given lighter ones. Some of them enjoy being cogs of an unstoppable juggernaut of sovereign unanimity. Some of them admire their Queen personally, for her power, her beauty, her wit.

Courts have structure, and it is nothing if not traditional for that structure to include room for a handful of favorites.

Some of the favorites are great sorcerers, excellent multipliers of power, who defend her and build her edifices and see to her comfort and channel her resources into the finest products ever seen in the world. Some of the favorites are cunning masters - breeder matriarchs and vassal-collectors who know how to be just so with words and minds and networks, and will tell her just how, rearranging the court until it all works just how she likes it without burdensome intervention from her.

A few of the favorites are pretty and smiling and affectionate, and there would be no point to being Queen if she could not have such things.

Her favorite of favorites is a dark-eyed lace-swift going by Satin, who comes up to her shoulder. He dances, when she asks him to, leaping with slim legs and gesturing with delicate hands. He has wings like fine nets of white which can keep him aloft for months if he doesn't care to land, if he drinks rain and eats floating seeds. He seeks her out. He was in one of the small courts she absorbed, kept for his beauty there, too, and he wants her to think that he's lovely, to want to look at him, to reach out for his moon-pale face.

He is so lovely, and the Queen wants, and she has no reason to deny herself anything she wants, not ever, she is so lucky.

She takes. She consolidates. Her sorcerers pull her bubble out of the bottom of her lake for her, and she pulls her favorite wordsmiths into it with her and goes into the ocean and takes the rainbowfins. She is almost ready to go across it. There are continents and continents and she wants them all and why shouldn't she have them?

Satin is allowed to say whatever he likes. Under the stars on her balcony he strokes her arm, the edge of her wing - suggests that he could fly across first, make a present to her of all he can learn about the way the far continent is laid out.

The Queen kisses him and says he may.

She was not careful to make him honest or make him tethered.

She cannot find him anywhere.

Satin warned the fairies on the far continent before he disappeared, that a Queen was coming, that she knew all their names. This makes it slightly more difficult to colonize. Her advantage is still overwhelming and she takes and takes and takes. She will have everything and tear it apart until she finds the traitor. It is only expected that servants will object to being commanded. They must be punished, but it's all business. Satin is in another category entirely.

The Queen delegates. She organizes. She commands. She recites names until she's breathless. She sleeps under guard. She is crueler to those she has cause to harm.

He is not on this continent. He is not on the next. Satin has been fleeing for his freedom for five hundred years before a Queenscourt band of sorcerers catches up with him and brings him to her.

The Queen offers to let Constellation, one of her current favorites - there are two, neither so trusted as Satin once was, not ever again - punish Satin under her supervision.

Constellation hesitates. Too long.

The Queen bids Constellation hold and asks Lucid if she'd like to try. On Satin, on Constellation too, on anyone who comes close and will not belong to their Queen.

Lucid doesn't so much as blink before she obeys.

Lucid's kind doesn't have to sleep. The screaming lasts for decades, pausing only when the Queen wants Lucid's attention on herself, instead. Lucid switches tasks when the Queen asks, instantly.

The Queen doubts, eventually, whether this is Lucid's loyalty or her fear or her sheer fascination with sandpaper and acid -

She doesn't like not being able to tell. She does not know how to root out the uncertainty. She can command her fairies not to lie, she can even command them to spend hours introspecting. But she cannot guarantee that their answers will be right. She is terrifying. They will be terrified; or they will sublimate their terror until they can't tell her that it's there no matter how she demands their sincerity.

The true map of her subjects' emotions is not something she can take.

Lucid goes to a position of honor in a satellite court and Satin goes into the dungeon and Constellation is turned into a bird and flung out the window. The Queen takes no new lovers. She colonizes. She prunes her court. She bids the promising learn magic and the useless get out of her sight.

She has palaces. She has armies. She has all of the names in the world. She must keep all of these things or the consequences will be intolerable. She issues orders and organizes tasks.

She visits Satin in the dungeon, sometimes, and looks at him where he is kept continually drowning in a glass bowl, and she does not know the map of her own emotions, either.

The Queen goes about her business.

Sendaway

This story was inspired by a Tumblr post (warning, spoilers).

Reet Moque went wading in the surf and wondered how far out she'd have to swim before she found a sea-death. They sometimes came in as near as the shore, supposedly, but usually not, usually you'd only find any from a boat. Moque wondered how hard it would be to kill a sea-death if she found one.

Probably, however hard it was to find a sea-death, it would be much harder to track down the specific sea-death that had taken her papa.

But she could maybe find another sea-death that would otherwise take somebody else's papa, and somehow overpower a creature bigger than her house. Somehow. And drive a sword into its eye -

Well, nobody was going to sell a deathsbane sword to a twelve-year-old of no family, and she didn't know how to hold one anyway, and stabbing it with anything else would just make more deaths. Which would then eat her. Moque kicked the sand and turned around to go home.

She felt Eypa's shadow on her shoulder before the bird landed. "I haven't seen you," said Eypa. "Where have you been?"

"Papa died," said Moque, in a still, minimal voice. "I had to help our friends bury him, and say the Sendaway, and sit in mourning. What do dunlins do when other dunlins die?"

"Regular ones or me?" peeped Eypa. Eypa produced no comforting gestures; she had no fingers to run through Moque's hair and no pan of sweets to coax down Moque's throat and not enough control over how her voice sounded to lower and smooth it for Moque's ears. After four days of tenderly hovering neighbors, Moque was glad of the variety.

"Whichever."

"Well, the answer is nothing either way, the others don't scarcely notice and I am hardly friends with them since they can't speak or think to speak or think of. But if you died I'd make a human teach me the Sendaway to say for you, if you liked."

Moque reached up to pet Eypa's feathers. Eypa permitted it, though as soon as Moque's hand fell away she preened her wing to put everything back in place. "I don't know what I'm going to do now," Moque said.

"Do?" asked Eypa.

"Without Papa."

"Why not do what you usually do? Make sandcastles and go to the shrine and play with that nasty little boy and talk to me."

"He isn't nasty, he just doesn't like birds."

"But you contradict yourself. Well?"

"I could try just doing that, but I don't have a job, and eventually I wouldn't be able to buy food."

"Oh. And you -"

"I can't eat bugs and snails like you. Even though they're free and even though I'm sure you'd help me find them."

"You could catch fish, you eat those."

"I don't know how to fish. I could learn, I guess, before the money runs out, but I don't think I want to be a fisher really." Not without a deathsbane sword in case of monster attack.

"Oh." Eypa considered this. "I don't know what you're going to do either."

Papa had friends. Moque had friends, too. She could probably get someone to take her in. But none of the friends were so close, or so possessed of spare money and space, that they assumed she would ask them rather than someone else. They hadn't started preemptively moving her things out of Papa's house, started rearranging their chore schedules to include her and set an extra place at the table. So, she had time to think.

Moque could look after herself, but sooner or later a neighbor or a friend would take exception to a twelve-year-old girl living there by herself, would suggest more or less forcefully that she sell it to some nice couple looking to start a family in a place of their own and fold herself into an occupied home.

She sat on her front steps and ate her last little sandwich.

The neighbor dog trotted by. He was a shaggy salt-and-pepper shepherd who, as a one-time wizard's familiar, could speak just like Eypa. He paused, looked at Moque, and went up to lie next to her on the steps and silently invite petting. She scratched him behind the ears.

"We're all going to be the poorer for Cors's loss," he said, after a minute.

"I know," murmured Moque.

"You'll let us know if you need anything, won't you, little miss Moque?" asked the dog.

She nodded. The dog licked her face, then went on about his business.

Moque didn't want to move in with the family the dog lived with, or with the boy who didn't like birds even though he had compensatory virtues, or with Papa's friend from the herring boat who had not been well enough for sailing the day the sea-death swallowed it.

If only Moque had a mother she wouldn't be at such a loss, but Papa had always bizarrely maintained that Moque did not have such a person - not that she was dead, which would have been ordinary enough, but that she did not have one.

Presented with a dilemma that having a mother would solve, Moque suddenly found this absurdity more pressing to investigate than she had before.

Moque went back indoors.

She went into Papa's closet, and pulled out the little old box that she'd never been allowed to look inside. She didn't think he'd meant to keep the contents secret forever and now he wasn't alive to locate the edges of not-forever.

The box was nailed shut. She had to detour to the toolbag, and saw off the corners of the lid, but then it lifted easily.

Inside, she found:

A small square of fabric, dyed gold, with a longsword embroidered on it, white-bladed and silver-hilted - the Deathsbane crest.

A travel passbook from Charata City for someone named "Mr. Kelur Antre".

A cable of gold chain, anklet-sized - a wedding bangle, a fancy one.

Moque didn't know exactly what to make of all this, but finding out sounded like a better plan than moping in Papa's empty house until somebody bustled her over to their dinner table, their squishy bedrooms with three children in them already, their hearths kept too cool and their soup served too hot.

Moque got a knapsack and her best shoes. She packed the contents of the little box, and enough food for five days, and all of the money she had left.

And she locked the door, left a note stuck to it for the curious neighbors, and started walking.

She knew where to find Charata City.

Eypa caught up to her when Moque had been hiking south for less than an hour. "Where are you going?" asked the sandpiper.

"Charata City," said Moque. "Do you want to come?"

"Ooh, I don't think so. I've been there before and I came here, didn't I? Even if the only other speaking animal here is that bore of a dog."

"He's nice."

"Did I say otherwise? But no, I don't think so. Keep a lookout, will you?"

"Yeah," murmured Moque. She didn't think there were a lot of woods-deaths in the forest she'd need to traverse, but she might not be lucky, and there were lesser dangers than those which could be quite the hazard to a twelve-year-old girl anyway.

But there was no reason deaths couldn't come to the village too.

She petted Eypa and left.

Moque had been to the village just south of hers before, years ago, and Charata City was a few towns beyond that. All she had to do was walk along the beach. The weather was fine, so she slept on the shore rather than trouble the villagers for space on the hearth. The sand was soft enough and she picked up and moved on at dawn. It was - not exactly physically comfortable; her feet ached after the first few hours hiking, the sea was too cold to get sand off of herself with, and her rolls did not stay moist and chewy for long - but soul-comfortable. She was not moping at home because Papa was gone. She was going somewhere, to find something out, and then perhaps do something about it.

There was a cliff that she encountered on the third day of her walk which obliged her to climb up the beach and the hills and go a ways into the woods to get around it. She probably looked like quite the ragamuffin, sandy with tangled hair, but she wasn't planning to stop where anyone would care.

She wasn't planning on it until she heard screaming, and turned to look, and saw more than a dozen people hurtling out of the woods past her. One of them, a large man, spotted her, veered in her direction, and before she could decide which way to try to run, scooped her up with his arm around her waist and kept going in his original direction, stride unbroken.

Moque couldn't protest immediately, because the wind was knocked out of her, but when she'd gotten her breath back, she yelled. "PUT ME DOWN!"

"Woods-death," panted the man. "Got a bunker. Lit the beacon."

Oh. That was an entirely sensible reason to pick up a strange girl and carry her off, really, and explained the other dozen screaming people. Moque couldn't see the woods-death through the trees. It might be in the middle of eating someone who hadn't been fast enough, or it might be up in the canopy -

The man carrying Moque tripped. Moque landed under him and squirmed out of the way to get her own feet under her and tear in the direction of the fleeing people. Probably faster than making him carry her, slight though she was. He was up and following a moment later and made no further attempt to lift her off the ground.

The bunker was only four minutes of desperate running away from where they'd intercepted Moque. It was set into one of those foothills she'd climbed over, but she hadn't noticed the slats of the door at the time.

It was locked. A spindly woman who looked like she'd bolted in the middle of kneading bread, flour on her sleeves and an apron tied around her waist, had a key; soon they were all inside in the dark and the door was locked again.

"Do you think any of the Gressens got out?" someone asked.

"Wouldn't leave the old lady."

"Stay within sight of the door in case, they don't have a key, and I didn't see that merchant fellow either - girl, who are you?"

"I'm Reet Moque," said Moque. "I was on my way to Charata City. Can I watch the door?"

"More power to you," said someone in shuddering tones.

Moque pressed her face to the peephole. Woods. Woods and more woods. She didn't hear much of anything, but deaths were shockingly quiet for their size.

And then she spotted it.

It was completely black. There was blood dripping from its jaws, and when it touched one of its six clawed feet to a tree or scraped yard-deep furrows in the ground it left bloody footprints, but just from being in contact with the death's exoskeleton the blood had gone black, too. She could see almost nothing but its silhouette and its eye.

She looked the death right in the pulsing blue glow of its eye and she wanted to stab it, it was a huge target, Moque could have stood upright in its eye socket, she could stab if it she had half a chance but she didn't have a sword she wanted a sword -

"Do we think this thing will hold?" wondered a boy. "The other bunker, will that one hold -? My mother -"

"This one has held before," said the man who'd carried Moque, if she didn't miss her guess about his voice, "so's the other. Just wait for the Deathsbane. They'll see the beacon, they'll follow the footprints, they'll get it."

And then it would be gotten, which Moque admitted to herself was the important thing.

The death approached the bunker. Moque knew that it could have crossed the distance faster than she could scream, but it wasn't in a hurry; it slunk. It dragged its jaws along the ground and made a wet inhaling noise. Smelling their trail. Smelling them. Its eye shone like the sky on a clear day and did not blink.

And then she heard hoofbeats.

The other people in the bunker with her made whimpering noises of hope.

Moque squinted through the peephole, shaking with envy for whoever was on that horse.

The death snapped its head up and moved.

And so did the armored knight on her armored horse, sword flashing. She leapt off her horse in some gymnastic maneuver and made it onto the broad flat plate of the death's upper back. The death rolled; the knight clung to a plate-edge. When it had its claws under it again the death unpeeled a forked tail from its underbelly and whipped it up towards the knight, but she was already climbing onto its head, out of the tail's reach. Its head tossed, its eye shone, and the knight was flung against the hillside so hard that Moque could feel the impact, against her cheek, through the door.

The woods-death was distracted by the horse, flailing and neighing either in a trained maneuver to divert deathly attention or in natural fear. The death closed its teeth, each as long as one of the horse's legs, on the top half of the rearing animal. Fangs screeched awfully against barding; blackened blood or spittle smeared on the exposed mane where it peeked through the wide-spaced needles.

The knight lopped the death's tail off and the death spat out the limp horse and spun to face her.

And she plunged her sword into its eye, and the glow snuffed out.

The villagers wouldn't let Moque open the bunker door immediately, even though she assured them the death was no longer moving or glowing. They waited, and Moque pressed her face to her peephole. Finally, after waiting for a few minutes, watching the death, the knight set down her sword and took her armor off, piece by piece, wincing, hissing. She limped over to her horse and confirmed that it was dead. And at last the knight called, "Anyone in there?"

"Yes!" said Moque. "A bunch of us!"

"You can come out now!"

And with that someone finally unlocked the door, and everyone came out, squinting, into the light.

Moque ran right up to the knight, who was trying to roll her left shoulder and not getting far, and prodding her ribs with her right hand. "That was amazing," Moque said. "I watched the whole thing. Where did you get your sword? Can I hold it?"

The knight looked at her, half-smiling, then - gestured invitingly to the sword where it lay black-stained in the grass.

It was very heavy, and much of the weight was feet away from the hilt; Moque had to grip it with both hands to keep it under control. The knight had wielded it one-handed. "Wow."

"You can wipe it off on the grass for me if you like."

Moque did not do this as smoothly as she supposed the knight would have done if uninjured, but she got the death's blood off of the bone-white blade eventually, dragging it after her to fresh patches of grass twice. "I want a sword."

"Well," said the knight, "you might need to save up a bit and start with a smaller one."

"Will they just sell deathsbane swords? In stores? To anybody?"

"Oh, you want a deathsbane sword -" Someone from the village tapped the knight on her good shoulder. "Yes?"

"All our thanks, Lady. May we have your name? Is it safe to burn the death here? What about your animal?"

"I'm Deathsbane Intara. Make a firebreak, but yes, burn it here," advised the knight. "Don't let animals graze where the death has passed until after the next frost has been and gone. The bigger plates might survive the fire, and after the frost you can take them safely, if you have a use for such things. I've seen people use them in furniture and such. I'll get the armor off my horse before I go. Burn the horse too, unless you want to eat her. The ichor on her isn't going to poison you or your dogs, our horses are almost as warded as we are, it's neutralized, but it won't taste very good. Leave my armor and the horse's somewhere safe in your village. Someone will be by to pick it up within the fortnight."

"Yes, Lady Intara," said the villager.

Moque was sitting on the grass, sword propped with its hilt on her thigh, looking raptly at Lady Intara, still, who looked back down at her. "As I was saying," Intara said. "Most of the deathsbane swords in this part of the world are made for the Deathsbane family, by the family wizards - Deathsbanes who can't do field work pick up magic. I'm not even sure how much a sword like mine would cost on the open market if you found one. It might be a matter of more than saving up, at least unless you want to move all the way out of the country."

"Oh," said Moque.

"What's your name? Do you live here?"

"Reet Moque. I live three days' north. I'm going to Charata City."

"All by yourself?"

"Yes."

"Well," said Lady Intara, "I'm going back to Charata City myself. That's where Deathsbanes live when we aren't at outposts to respond to beacons like the one that brought me here, so it's where I need to be to recover from all my injuries. We might as well walk together, especially since you look about ten and I have a broken shoulder."

"I'm twelve," said Moque.

"Oh? When will you be thirteen?"

"Midwinter," said Moque.

"Hm," said Intara. "But in any case, do you want to come with me?"

"Yes," said Moque at once.

Without Intara's horse, it was two days on foot to Charata City; luckily the lady knight could still walk. Moque accompanied her, sometimes carried the sword (in its scabbard) for her, and asked questions every time Intara paused in describing the Deathsbane compound.

"There are a lot of us," Intara explained. "More every generation. Fifty years ago we could fit snugly in one big house, as long as we weren't all home at the same time, and we never are, because we have to spread out to be ready for deaths. Now we have four houses that size, and more buildings besides - training grounds and the stables and such."

"And it's only Deathsbanes who live there?" asked Moque.

"Some people marry Deathsbanes and take the name, and they can live in the compound with us," said Intara. "And we hire people to do things like cook, and fetch armor we have to leave behind like I just did, and maintain the beacons, and they aren't Deathsbanes at all. But only born Deathsbanes get the training and swords."

"Oh."

"Still stuck on that, huh?"

"You killed it," said Moque fervently, as they approached a farmhouse. Lady Intara, unlike a wandering girl of no particular family, had a good chance of being offered a place by the hearth for herself and a traveling companion if she knocked on any door. "If you hadn't killed it it would've just - kept going. A sea-death killed my papa," Moque added, as though she needed additional reason to hero-worship Deathsbanes. "They all need swords in their eye and you got hurt and you could've died but you showed up anyway."

"We don't have a very good way to hunt down sea-deaths, yet," said Intara.

"Still."

"Hm," said Intara, and she knocked at the farmhouse, and talked to the woman who answered the door, and they were indeed offered pallets near the fire ("for you and your little squire", and Intara was kind enough not to correct her).

Moque lay awake staring at the rafters in the firelight and wanting the weight of the sword to belong to her.

They reached the city the following dusk, just as the city lanterns were being lit. Intara was recognized, greeted: "Thank you Lady!" "Knight! Look, darling, a knight!" "My lady, some water for you?" She nodded at everyone, took the water, led Moque through winding streets that were knobbly under their feet.

Moque looked at a juggler, a busker, a cart selling baked apples - and wrenched her eyes away to jog after the knight.

"What were you going to do once you got to the city?" asked Intara. "If it's not eat baked apples."

"I - I don't know," said Moque. "When Papa died I went through some of his things, and there was a passbook for somebody I never heard of, from here."

"Who?" wondered Intara.

"I don't know how to pronounce it exactly -" Moque dug out the passbook. "Kelur Antre? Do you know a Kelur family?"

"I... don't know the family," said Intara. "But I've heard of one person by that name. Your family is Reet, right?"

"Do you know Reets?"

"Only you, little squire. But we can ask the other Deathsbanes, how does that sound? All together we know a whole lot of people."

Moque nodded.

"Do you really not want a baked apple, or did you just not want to lose me in the crowd?" Intara added, with a faint, warm smile.

"I kind of want a baked apple," Moque admitted.

Intara bought her one. Moque savored the treat and followed Intara as they cut through the heart of the city to reach the Deathsbane compound.

It was beautiful. Not opulent, nor even particularly cunningly designed - Moque doubted very much that people went to stare at it for its architecture. It was plain and the corners were sharp and the layout was simple. It was a set of buildings designed, with ruthless clarity, for its efficiency at housing and supporting Deathsbanes so that they could efficiently kill deaths.

There were a few people crisscrossing the yard. Someone with a basket of laundry. Someone with a horse on a longe line, in a fenced section by the stable. Someone leading a group of little Deathsbane children, all younger than Moque, all going for a jog, chanting call-and-responses together as they went.

The man with the laundry stumbled and scrambled to catch a square of fabric. Pale gold. Embroidered with a sword.

Intara led Moque to a front entrance of one of the buildings. There was no entryway, they just stepped immediately into what looked like a living room - fire in the middle, roaring high and hot, and knights and children and old mages resting around it.

"Family," Intara said, addressing them all with one fell swoop. "This is Moque. She's looking for someone who might have known a Kelur Antre."

The Deathsbanes all looked at Moque. Moque stood up taller and held out the passbook.

And then she got out her fabric square, and her wedding bangle.

And a woman sitting close to the fire got up, and came close, and knelt so she was eye to eye with Moque.

"Go get patched up, Intara," she told the lady knight. "I'll take it from here."

"Of course," said Intara, and she went back out the door again.

"H-hello," said Moque.

"Hello," said the woman, taking the passbook, the fabric, the bangle. "Where did you find these?"

"In Papa's secret box. After he died."

"Come sit by the fire with us." She led her to the couch; it had just the right amount of squash in the cushions. "Where did you grow up, Moque?"

"Five days' walking north of here. On the beach. What does this have to do with anything?"

"It might have a lot to do with everything. How old are you exactly?"

"I'll be thirteen Midwinter. Lady."

"No need to be so formal." But she didn't give Moque another name to use. "What did your papa look like?"

"Like me. Well, but taller and a man, and he had his hair longer. I have his eyes."

"Moque," said the woman, "will you bear with me for a minute if I tell you a story?"

"All right," allowed Moque.

"About fourteen years ago a Deathsbane lady knight named Mirials wed outside the family. She married a fellow named Kelur Antre and they were very happy and soon enough they had a little daughter and named her Alcessa. And it is customary for newborn Deathsbanes like Alcessa to be knighted right away, even though they won't be full knights until later. But Antre didn't like that at all. He wasn't supposed to find out - it's a Deathsbane thing and he wasn't supposed to see. He was in the wrong place at the wrong time. And when he saw, he decided to kidnap Alcessa and run away with her and go into hiding. Mirials looked - and so did her brothers and sisters and cousins and parents. It took months to track Antre down."

There was a shiver creeping up Moque's spine. "Then what?"

"I was the one who cornered him, and it was way up north, at a huge waterfall. And I said, 'Give back the baby, Antre, and we'll have no quarrel', and Antre held the baby over the edge of the river."

Moque gulped. "Wh-why didn't he want to give her back," she murmured.

"He didn't say. He just said that the Deathsbanes had better stop looking for him, that he wasn't letting us get Alcessa back, not ever, no matter what."

The shiver was turning into a spider of ice across Moque's back. "Did he mean it?"

"We don't know," said the knight. "Maybe it was an empty threat. But we let him go."

Moque clenched the bangle and the golden blanket in her fist. "And he moved to a fishing village and changed their names and told her she didn't have a mother, until a sea-death ate him."

"Hello, daughter," said the woman, and without either of them clearly deciding to do it first, they embraced.

Deathsbane Alcessa, Moque to her friends, had a sword on its way.

The forges were hot and her grandfather was hammering it into shape while her third cousin, once removed, layered spells into its blade. She would be old enough to really use it in five or six years, but old enough to start catching up on learning how as soon as it was cooled. Moque had her own room in the dormitory wing with the other Deathsbane children and she ate three meals a day all of which were delicious and none of which she had to cook. She was studying like mad, because there was a curriculum and she'd only get busier once she had her sword, and she'd missed twelve years of it thanks to Kelur Antre.

Deathsbane Alcessa, Moque to herself, had a mother.

Mirials loved her and wanted to hug her, rocking, and sing her a song - "Just once, please? I know you're a little old for it but I never got to" - and showed her where everything was and introduced her to all the Family and brought her along to convey their joint gratitude to Intara, laid up with her broken ribs and shoulder in the infirmary. Mirials started teaching her to ride a horse and assemble a suit of armor and memorize how to get to all the outposts in the country for when she was sent, one day, to park close to a far-off cluster of villages in case one of their beacons went up in flames.

Deathsbane Alcessa, Moque to her papa - did not see how this added up.

"I don't understand why he would take me," she told Mirials, sitting beside her at supper after having raced the other children all afternoon to improve her conditioning. "What's so bad about knighting a baby Deathsbane?"

"Oh," sighed Mirials. "...Perhaps I'd better just show you."

"Show me what?"

"The sword we use to knight the new ones."

They finished their dinner and Moque dragged tired feet after her mother and they went up to the highest part of the oldest building in the compound.

The attic was low-ceilinged, but clean, and there was a cloth-draped table dominating the space, and on it was a Deathsbane sword. Unremarkable as those went.

Until it spoke.

"Mirials. Alcessa," rumbled the sword.

Moque knew that animals could talk, if wizards used them as familiars. She did not know that swords could talk.

"I've brought Alcessa here to explain about knighting," Mirials said.

"Talking sword," Moque mouthed but didn't voice.

"I will tell you the story," the sword said. "Sit, children."

Mirials sat at once. Moque followed after a moment's stunned hesitation.

"The first Deathsbane was born almost two hundred years ago," said the sword. "He was a mage as well as a knight, and he had already performed a great triumph in making a weapon that could kill deaths without multiplying them. But he saw how few people wanted this task. He could have made a dozen more swords, and those willing to take them up even in crisis, let alone make themselves ready to fight deaths, would have been few, perhaps none. And he would not live forever."

Mirials had her eyes closed and nodded along to the story. She had heard it before. She liked this story.

"And so he worked a still greater magic. Animals may become people, exposed to magic, but they are new people. The first Deathsbane wished for his sword to become him and give his drive and his will to those who took it up, because every death slain was dozens, even hundreds of lives saved."

Moque closed her eyes too.

"He succeeded. His personality was copied into me. And when an unformed mind contacts me, the same personality goes into them. The first Deathsbane's three daughters were the next generation, and their children the next, and on and on, until now."

"So what Papa saw," Moque murmured, "was -"

"Was me holding a sword over you and saying part of the Sendaway. It's only one verse. You didn't die," Mirials said, just as softly. "You were never even scratched. A Deathsbane sword only cuts what its wielder wants cut. But it's part of the ceremony out of respect for who you would have been unknighted. Antre came in at just the wrong moment, and he didn't understand, when I explained."

"Oh," said Moque.

"Depart now," said the sword. "I will hear the evening's reports soon in privacy."

"Yes, Grandfather," said Mirials.

Grandfather.

Mirials took Moque's hand and pulled her to her feet and led her out of the attic.

The new sword was ready.

She could collect it and turn up for her lesson at six in the morning and learn to make it part of her arm. She could stay, where everyone knew just how to teach kids like her, just what temperature she thought soup should be served at, just how she'd like her hair cut, because for two hundred years, these things had all been just so, and she was just the same.

She could run away like Papa. She could wait a week, for her new cousin to be delivered, and snatch the babe before he or she was sent away in favor of a new Deathsbane.

A new baby who'd pick up their own sword and wait in outposts far from home for weeks on end just in case someone needed Deathsbane expertise to kill a death that would otherwise eat their babies. She could stop the baby from growing up like that and instead she could put it on a doorstep in the middle of nowhere and it could farm oats.

In the end it wasn't much of a choice.

Deathsbane Alcessa took up her sword.

Muse

This story is also available in audio, which you may download as MP3, FLAC, or OGG, oration by Grognor.

Ananda decided that she wasn't going to tell anyone that the captain read her dramatic reentry-into-normal-space speech from notes taken on lace-bordered stationery.

"Today," Lata Kamdar intoned, aiming at the nearest audio pickup, "we reattain the stars. Today we reach our hands out to our neighbors, not to bid them goodbye before we scatter in a hundred directions, but to reconnect the broken graph of human colonization. Today we have carved a path from our home to our neighbors', and brought with us the tools to draw one back, so that before the month is out, it will be as easy to get from one planet to another as it is to travel between continents. Today we lay the foundation for a web of exploration and trade that will surpass all the glories of lost Earth."

"Today," muttered Hari, "if they're unfriendly we explode in orbit rather than let them find our families back home -"

"Shhh," said Ananda.

"Today," concluded the captain, "we begin to undo the Scatter." She switched off the microphone. "Randhawa, if you wrecked my recording with your commentary -"

"The mic didn't grab anything but you, Captain," promised Ananda.

"Good. We don't expect to have to explode in orbit. We expect to be greeted politely by people with even more incentive to form a friendly relationship than we have. We're the ones with the boats."

"Captain Kamdar," said Ananda, "we're getting radio spillover."

"Brilliant," replied Kamdar. "Let's eavesdrop. Did you send our greeting broadcast?"

"If they're listening, they'll get it; I sent several repetitions," confirmed Ananda. "We'll be within chatting distance in a few hours, and then we can say something more substantive than this is the crew of the Spindrift from the colony Satyameva Jayate on a peaceful contact-establishing mission in forty dialects." And she drummed her fingers on her control screen and the ship's computer selected a stream of radio to share.

Music sighed into the bridge. It began mid-phrase but resolved into an ecstasy of orchestral harmony and then careened into a choral section, and everyone caught their breath.

No crewmember moved or spoke or coughed until the piece was over. The radio went on, in barely recognizable colonial-bottlenecked Greek, for a sentence before Ananda switched it off.

"Put it back," breathed the translator. "Put it back, I think it said there was another song next -"

"Belay that, Mehta," the captain told Ananda. "We'll be here all day with our mouths hanging open. Can we find a station with something more informative than the colony's excellent musical taste?"

Ananda flipped through the radio band, listening to snippets in her headset until she found something without any tune to it, and let it fill the bridge audio channel.

"Pradha," Kamdar prompted the translator. And when that didn't get his attention: "Dev."

"Yes, Captain, sorry, Captain," said Dev, and he listened, and typed. His control panel was textured; it made a clicking sound against his nails when he reached for certain letters. Ananda got up to peer over his shoulder as he translated: celestial holiday (?) feast and sculpture festival (?) this concludes (?) cultural event news rain in (?) province this (span?) warming under less cloud cover (?)...

While Dev worked on that, and Jyoti went to fix everybody lunch, and Hari performed a nav check to make sure they'd approach the colony at the right angle, Ananda got the computer cataloguing the rest of the radio band as best as it could. She might want to listen to more of the local music later during her downtime.

The Spindrift swung within chatting distance of the colony. It had been designated with a number when it was settled during Scatter, but the crew had been trying to avoid using it, presuming that the colonists of this planet - like those of their own - would have renamed it in short order. Ananda prodded her control panel until she managed to raise somebody who'd talk back, then kicked them over to Dev, who'd been working on picking up the colonial Greek. Nobody shot at them. They were invited to land on the planet (which was named Muse). It was a good day, Ananda thought, the best possible reception they could have hoped for. Muse had not yet reattained spaceflight but was only too delighted to receive neighbors who had.

Dev shadowed the captain when they landed, muddling through Greek that had spent hundreds of years on Muse evolving away from the original and that he'd had to study from books that themselves had been translated a few times to keep up with Satyameva Jayate's own linguistic slide. He introduced the crew to the Muse colonists; Captain Kamdar shook hands with Muse's governor, and, through Dev, complimented the music they'd picked up. The governor said something about how if they liked that they should come to a live concert.

Ananda hung back, mostly; she wasn't a diplomat and her Greek was negligible. She'd gotten on this expedition for other skills, with some help from extensive networking. She'd taken the job to say she'd been there, to be listed fourth or fifth when someone wrote textbooks about Reestablishment or whatever they wound up calling colonies getting back in touch after Scatter.

But she was as excited as everyone else for the concert. Parvati, just waking up for her overnight shift, volunteered to stay behind on the ship, claiming not to like music. (Jyoti tried to convince her; she was unmoved by the statement that it was really good music.)

It was spectacular. If it made any sense to describe a concert as orgasmic, it was orgasmic. The natives in attendance seemed less impressed; Ananda, looking around during intermission, thought she had seen more enraptured ticketholders when she took her nephew to a children's theater production with last-minute props and primary-school-quality writing. The only thing that could distract her from the movements of the sound was the architecture. Everything was beautiful; the armrests of the chairs were carved, each one different, and the arches of the music hall swooped with achingly perfect curves, and there was statuary tucked everywhere with room. She'd closed her eyes when they'd boarded the train to go to the show, fearing motion sickness, but now regretted it - she must have missed dozens of buildings and maybe some of them were this beautiful.

She let herself get sick, when they went with the governor back to a local hotel to spend the local night (none of the Satyameva Jayate visitors were tired, but they were trying to adjust to daylight in the time zone where they'd landed). It looked like the entire planet was a museum, or at least the whole capital city. The colors alone threatened to seduce her into learning Greek and staying forever and having her wife sent after her. Tara would like the place, Ananda thought. Tara liked lovely things.

The hotel rooms had murals on the walls and dizzy beauty latch-hooked into the carpets and frosted flowers on the window glass and Ananda was afraid to touch anything.

She slept, eventually, embroidery scratching her skin.

The crew of the Spindrift were united in their fascination with the artistic output of Muse. Muse was keen on the gifts they'd brought, likewise; so the governor toted them to landmarks and galleries and gardens and ballets that brought Ananda at least to tears, and Dev did his best to translate the scientific papers on propulsion and other technical offerings for the governor's entourage of interested parties. Dev had brushed up particularly on his technical vocabulary for exactly this reason.

The members of the party who couldn't understand even half a conversation in Muse Greek could not participate. So they had to occupy themselves shuffling around looking at the art, moving hither and thither in tourist-mode, and this was no hardship. Every public place had music playing. Even the conversations of the passers-by were pretty; Dev's Greek halted and croaked slowly from his lips but the natives just about sang it, fluttering their hands, closing their eyes as though to more clearly see whatever it was they were trying to describe to one another. Nobody looked at the visitors for more than a moment; Ananda had expected space visitors to be very interesting, and instead there was unbroken politeness and personal space.

"I feel like I'm on a movie set," Ananda told Jyoti, when they were ahead of the rest of the party at a hall of sculptures. "Even just walking down the street. It's inorganically gorgeous."

"Have you noticed how abstract it is?" Jyoti asked. "I've seen a handful of portraits, landscapes, but mostly they seem to pull pretty out of thin air and skip turning it into a shape you'd recognize."

Ananda hadn't actually noticed that. "Now that you mention it. But they're all wearing makeup, they acknowledge beauty in the human form."

"Not all of them, some of them seem to do veils instead."

"I don't think Dev wants to waste his time asking how to say who does your eyeshadow in Muse Greek, though."

"Fair. I'm so glad they're a colony of friendly artists. I was scared they'd be armed to the teeth and mad about something and we'd have to blow ourselves up just to prevent them from taking the Spindrift and finding Satyameva Jayate. Instead we get to take pictures and - oh Ananda look at the shoes on that man -"

They admired his shoes until he'd gone by, and then Ananda picked up: "I wasn't worried, really. I knew it was in the mission parameters, but it's an edge case. I'd go on another one of these, even, when we come back crowing about our success and build another dozen ships to find more neighbors. If they don't come to us first."

"I hope nobody comes to us. Even odds they'd be invaders. I'd rather be in the middle of a lot of spokes we put down ourselves."

"Fair enough."

The party caught up, and Dev expressed that a museum docent had told him that they shouldn't talk over the music if they could possibly avoid it please, and they moved on to look at more of the marble and wood and glass.

It was a week into their visit before anyone thought it was worth making Dev figure out how to ask about the history of the colony. It was small, much less populated even after two centuries to establish itself than was Satyameva Jayate, and while they'd gotten infrastructure like trains and plumbing set up, they seemed to be so heavily focused on art that Captain Kamdar figured there had to be some cultural reason.

The Muse colonists - Ananda had yet to think of a better demonym than "Musicians", and this was not fair, since some of them were painters or landscapers or something else instead, in addition to it being an awful pun - had a very limited understanding of their own colonial history, it turned out.

Satyameva Jayate had had its own psychological problems when its colonists landed and it began to sink in that they could not get off their new rock, could not with current technology get in touch with anyone else. But on Muse...

"I can't decide if I'm depressed or inspired," Hari remarked later, when they were all crowded in the captain's hotel room with room service (prettily plated and garnished on patterned china).

"How do you get the colonial psych mix so wrong," said the captain, "that half the people who land commit suicide in the first six months? Dev, are you positive you got that right?"

"Positive," said Dev. "They don't know and neither do I how the colonists were picked - maybe people bribed their way on, maybe there were stowaways, nobody was trying to write historical primary sources when they had twice as much work as expected getting the farms going and building houses and burying the dead. Which couldn't have helped in itself, either."

"If half the people who'd landed on Satyameva Jayate had killed themselves," said Ananda, "I don't know that we'd have managed to establish a colony at all instead of - starving, handling the equipment wrong -"

"There was mishandled equipment - if everybody who knows how to use this or that terraforming item offs themselves, somebody has to try anyway, apparently a lot of people wound up blinding themselves or neglecting their hearing protection," said Dev. "The governor's aide was very awkward when she explained that." (Everyone glanced at Dev. Dev, of course, didn't notice.)

"But they've done beautifully," said Kamdar.

"Literally," said Jyoti, and that got a laugh.

"Maybe the survivors included a critical mass of artists, and now they're just really inbred," suggested Hari.

"It could be my Greek," said Dev, "but I don't get the impression that they think they're talented at all. Even the professional artists, let alone the hobbyists."

"The governor was doodling while we talked about what to name the supraspace path between here and Satyameva Jayate," said Kamdar, "and he was about to throw it away, and he laughed at me when I asked if I could keep it. He let me, though." She unrolled the drawing and showed it off.

"I guess we're going to be exporting strictly non-creative work," said Ananda.

"Don't let Parvati hear you calling tech stuff non-creative," advised Jyoti.

"What's the path going to be called? When it's carved in both ways?" asked Hari.

"Litha. Muse Greek for 'truth' - their language, our planet's name," Dev replied.

The Spindrift was expected to turn around after spending no more than three weeks at their destination, and Ananda missed Tara something fierce by the time Kamdar ordered them all to pack up to go. There would be more trips - for that matter, Muse now had the plans for a ship of their own in the same model, if they could divert enough attention to mining and manufacture. The next order of business was to get home, get plenty of Muse Greek into the hands of linguists other than Dev so they could parallelize, and report success.

The governor gave them all a little local spending money for souvenirs and Ananda bought a glass desk ornament, champagne-gold with ribbons of blue writhing inside it. She had the impression that the governor thought her choice (all their choices) tacky, but she didn't care, the desk ornament was just about the prettiest thing she'd seen that she could pick up unless she counted Tara.

The trip was going to take fifteen days in supranormal space, and except for Hari and Parvati making their regular round-the-clock checks of all the systems, there wasn't going to be much to do. Ananda fiddled with their recordings of Muse songs until she could get the formats to translate, and reasonable-quality versions floated through the cramped ship corridors and into their rooms. Parvati confessed that it was, indeed, lovely music, as music went.

Ananda didn't notice anything wrong until they'd been in supraspace for two days and she found the captain borrowing Dev's camera vest, with the grid of buzzers that let him "see" where obstacles were.

"It doesn't fit you," she told Kamdar.

"I know," the captain replied. "I'm just getting a feel for how long it'd take to get used to it. Dev doesn't mind, he's napping."

"Is there something wrong with your eyes...?"

"Medically? No."

"If your eye color was bothering you I'd think you'd get contacts or dye, not borrow Dev's vest."

"No, not that either. Not that mud brown is anything to be particularly pleased with," snorted Kamdar.

"Brown is a perfectly nice eye color, Captain. My wife's got brown eyes," Ananda said. "So have I. So have most people."

The captain shrugged and took off Dev's vest and put it back where he left it when he was sleeping.

And Ananda let it go.

She worked on Muse Greek, because they had the materials to make that feasible, and when she took a break, she looked at her desk ornament, following the ribbons of blue with her gaze.

There was a twist in one of them that she didn't like, on reflection. It had seemed perfect when she'd picked it out.

She went back to studying.

The next ship-morning, when she picked up her textbook again, she fiddled with the settings on her screen until she'd found a font that didn't make the Greek letters look like - like segments of bugs, scrabbling around in millipede-rows. There was one that was tolerable. She suspected it wouldn't have come up if she wasn't starting to see the letters as text more than arcane symbols. Probably a sign of progress.

Jyoti didn't have lunch ready when Ananda went to the ship kitchen. "Is Jyoti sick?" she asked Hari, who had brought his screen into the dining nook with him.

"Don't know," Hari said, distracted, around a mouthful of rice. "We haven't talked. There's extra from yesterday and some ready-made."

Ananda mounded rice and chicken and sauce on a white plate - who'd picked these dishes, she wondered, would it have killed them to put a design in the plastic? - and heated it up. "What are you doing?" she asked, peering at Hari's screen. "Is that a painting?"

Hari's hand twitched, leaving smears of ochre on the screen, and he gestured to undo the mistake. "Don't look. It's not done."

"Feeling inspired?"

"I used to paint, in school, a little. I wasn't very good." He drew more careful ochre lines, then undid it again, went into the color picker, switched to a less saturated and browner shade. "Thought I'd try to get to 'decent'..."

Ananda's lunch was hot; she took it out. She rummaged in the spice rack - Jyoti would scold her, but Jyoti wasn't there - and found something, she didn't know enough about spices to say what exactly, that looked nice sprinkled on the pale orange sauce. She shook a little on, then poured some into her hand so she could pinch it into place more exactly. Almost symmetrical, not quite. She neglected to put the herb jar away and sat down where she could see Hari's screen and ate.

"I said don't look."

"What do you want me to look at? There's nothing to look at."

"It's not done! I'm crap at this, stop watching me!"

Dev came in - he had his vest on; Captain Kamdar wasn't still borrowing it. "What are you yelling at each other about? If you've got to shout can't you at least turn the music up, Ananda?"

"Oh, good idea," Ananda said. "I'll do that. One second." She bolted down her rice and flung the plate into the washer and went to fuss with the volume. The music swelled.

She didn't like this song as much as she'd liked the last one.

Let alone the first one.

But it was better than yelling; so she didn't bother Hari again. She was bored. There was something wrong with her Greek font.

She missed Tara. Tara she could stare at for hours, if Tara wouldn't giggle and push her face away.

Jyoti didn't fix dinner either. The captain went looking.

Jyoti was dead.

There was a note. Jyoti had found a calligraphy program buried in the screen software and left a note that almost didn't hurt to look at, until they actually read it.

It rhymed.

There was something wrong something wrong something wrong, with the colors and that little burr in the high register of their audio and the bleak deserted expanse of space of the walls the floor the ceiling the air -

And Jyoti couldn't take it -

And realizing it didn't help.

"Parvati didn't get out of the ship," Ananda heard herself saying, and her voice was ugly, why hadn't she taken choir when she'd had the chance to smooth away the twang? But she couldn't find the calligraphy program and write it out pretty if she wanted Dev to know what she was saying.

"Go wake her up," murmured the captain.

"If it's an infection," said Hari.

"She's already exposed. She overlaps her dinner with our breakfast," said Kamdar, "but if it's something else, if it was in the food or - or something - then - Mehta, go wake her up."

Ananda went. She detoured to turn the music louder. Why didn't she bring any pictures of her wife -? She navigated to Parvati's room with her eyes closed and hated the half-visible sparks that clouded her vision as afterimages.

"Parvati." What a name. Who gave their child a name like that? It was so full of - of sounds.

"Ananda? What?"

Ananda hated her own name too. Ananda hated everybody's name. "Jyoti committed suicide," she forced herself to say.

Parvati opened the door. On Muse doors glided open silently. This door - did not. "What?"

"Don't make me repeat myself." Ananda's eyes were still scrunched shut.

"Jyoti is dead? Why the - is there a note?"

Ananda nodded.

"Ananda, what's wrong?"

"We." Ananda swallowed. "We may have caught something, on the planet. Do you have it yet? Is there anything - anything beautiful, on this entire ship -?" The answer was no. There was nothing. Her desk ornament was probably as good as it got and Ananda kind of wanted to smash it.

"Math," said Parvati. "I was doing math when you interrupted me. Are you delirious?"

"No. No, it's only." It was too hard to explain out loud; raising her voice to be heard over the music was worse - and Dev wasn't there. "Let me borrow your screen."

Ananda had to open her eyes to do it, but she found the calligraphy software and when she typed the letters swooped into place, forming acceptable ligatures and decorated descenders. She had no talent for poetry; she did not make it rhyme.

We're all in a bad way. Everything's painfully ugly, that's why we have the imported music turned up so high, it drowns it out a little. Hari's trying to paint and I think the captain wants to put her eyes out and Jyoti's dead and I don't know what Dev's doing, yet, it might be that he's fine because he can't see to begin with, but I don't know that any of us are going to be much help with getting home.

"I can fly the ship myself if I have to," said Parvati. "The question is do we go home, if there's an infection aboard. We might have to quarantine ourselves."

"Oh stop talking," breathed Ananda.

"This is important," said Parvati. "Half the Muse colonists lived, right? Initial batch, no selction for resistance to the pathogen, half of them lived and established a civilization. A very, very arty civilization -"

"We could turn around," said Ananda suddenly. "We could turn around and we could stay there and everything's almost tolerable, there -"

"We need to finish carving the path so nobody thinks we met an army on the far end and panics," said Parvati. "And then we report in, or I do anyway -"

"You might have it."

"Oh," said Parvati ruefully, "I definitely have it. This puts all the math I've been doing in perspective. But I'm in the surviving half, all right? I'm - channeling it. And we tell them what happened from a safe distance, and then we can turn around and live in an art museum and tell them they're all infected so they don't let anyone else land."

"My wife," said Ananda.

"What about your wife?"

"I need to see her. She's beautiful and it feels like there's nothing beautiful and I need -"

"We can get some pictures or video or whatever you need bounced up without exposing her or anybody else to whatever the hell we've got," said Parvati.

"I can see the pixels, on the screens," breathed Ananda. "It's not going to be enough."

"You can't see the pixels, I promise you can't, not really. We will get you very high-resolution photos of your wife and in a few weeks you'll be back on Muse surrounded by acceptably pretty things, all right?"

"We thought they were artists," said Ananda. "They're - it's barely a coat of paint -"

"I know," murmured Parvati. "I have it too. I know."

Parvati steered Ananda back to her cabin and Ananda sat there, staring fixedly at her kitschy, pathetic desk ornament, until she managed to sleep.

On the eighth day the captain blinded herself.

It wasn't a surprise. She'd been going with a blindfold on, borrowing Dev's vest, teaching herself Braille at his control panel. Parvati had made a token attempt to supervise her and forestall the outcome but simply couldn't be everywhere at once. Parvati was barely getting the ship function checks done when she needed to be proving lemmas or whatever she was up to when she sought to satisfy the bottomless aesthetic need. Hari couldn't help her, he was completely wrapped up in trying to get his paintings to come out right.

On the ninth day Dev told Ananda to turn the music off.

"What - no - I can't - Dev the ship makes noises we're all breathing I can't I can't -"

"Turn the music off," Dev said, "or I'm going the way Jyoti did, I have a song, I have a good song, it's better, I can make it good, but I have to have quiet to work -"

"There's no way to get it totally quiet, the ship noises -"

"Stop talking!" screamed Dev. "Turn the music off and I'll make us better music than this rubbish -"

"No no no -"

Dev slapped her and Ananda fell to the ground, sobbing, feeling even more disgusting, like a suppurating abscess on the skin of the world. "Turn. It. Off. Give me an hour. I need to write my song."

"Do it yourself."

"Your screen's completely flat and my vest doesn't have the resolution to read it. Turn the music off."

"Make Parvati do it."

"I can't distract her. She's spread thin making sure we don't disintegrate into supraspace and I don't want to die unless you don't let me compose my song - I can almost taste it, Ananda, it's perfect, it's better than anything we heard on the planet, it's going to be beautiful, really, really, beautiful, but I need quiet. Turn the music off."

"Beautiful?"

"Yes," said Dev, and there was an awful longing in his face, when Ananda could stand to look at him long enough to read his expression.

"An hour," she said, and she turned the music off, and took the screen into her room with her and locked the door so the captain wouldn't be able to override her. If Dev thought he could make something really, truly beautiful -

Kamdar beat at her door, howling, but while her captaincy would have let her bypass the lock, it would require more finesse at navigating blind than the captain had managed to pick up so far. Ananda stayed safely ensconced, earplugs in, trying not to listen to the pounding on the wall or the buzz of the ship, staring at her grotesque, twisted ornament. There was no beauty. There was nothing worth looking at but she couldn't help but see and she was too afraid of pain to take the captain's way out.

Thank goodness there wasn't a mirror in her cabin.

How did Tara stand to look at her? Could she do her wife the unkindness of making her look at her again? Maybe it would be better just to beg for the photos and a video letter and not try to do a two-way conference. Then Tara wouldn't have to look at her.

Ananda knew perfectly well that Tara didn't have whatever it was, would find Ananda probably about as pleasant to look at as she ever had. But with no music to set the pace of her thoughts she was descending into a spiral of revulsion and couldn't imagine that her wife would feel any differently. She looked at her hand. It was a mistake: she'd touched Tara with that hand and couldn't believe she'd performed such a blasphemous action. She could bite her nails off, if it weren't too disgusting to contemplate putting them in her mouth, but that would only make it worse. She didn't have anything in the room with her that would let her lop off offending parts sturdier than her nails: bad foresight. If she tried to leave before piping audio into the air again Kamdar would probably strangle her.

Her screen notified her that Dev had sent her something.

She opened up the file and flooded the ship with it.

It wasn't beautiful.

They were back on Muse-sourced music. Dev wouldn't come out of his room, but he'd kick the door if someone called for him; he wasn't dead. Yet.

Parvati was short on sleep. Ananda tried to help with a check but was driven to tears by the grotesque design of the diagnostic software and wound up costing more time than she'd saved. None of them were eating well. Ananda knew how to cook, and was ostensibly supposed to take over for Jyoti if Jyoti were indisposed. No one even bothered to ask her to try.

And then Ananda had the dream.

Dev must have had a dream like this, she thought. Dev must have dreamed music; Ananda dreamed stars. An architecture of exulting slow-motion supernovae, all placed just so with the precise vagueness of dreams. She swam among the points of sharp-prickled perfect-colored heat which traveled in languid smooth curves, slid bright blurs across deep black infinite backdrop. She dreamed that Tara was there and that Ananda had made all the stars to show her and Tara loved them and they were both beautiful too and the stars were right.

Ananda woke up dehydrated from crying. If she could paint it - well, not paint, it had to be three dimensions. If she could three dimensionally model it. If she could make it real, just like the dream, then the whole thing would be worth it. All the pain and frustration and the hour of aching quiet for Dev's technically lacking composition -

...Dev had thought he could make something beautiful, too.

Ananda was probably kidding herself.

She gulped water. She cried more. She asked Hari if she could look at his painting and he snapped at her. She tried sketching out the configuration of the stars and it just wouldn't come out right.

When Captain Kamdar was fumbling her way through a meal, Ananda snuck into her quarters and found the doodle that the governor of Muse had made. It was trivial and badly-made and his hand had shaken and it was the loveliest thing in the room, just like Ananda's glass ornament.

Ananda waited until Hari left his screen unattended and looked at his painting. It was like Dev's song. Inspired incompetence.

The people of Muse were artists so that they could self-medicate without frustrating themselves into self-mutilation. Ananda wondered in a moment of near-lucidity how many children there found ways to kill themselves when they couldn't hold a paintbrush steady in primary school and despaired.

The stars were so beautiful and she couldn't make them, she didn't know how.

Ananda looked at their Muse Greek books. They were illegible to her; this was not a problem. She needed the illustrations. Music wept its inability to express its underlying revelation into her ears, but at least it covered worse noises. Pictures crept along the margins and inset themselves into the paragraphs of the books. Decently-composed, respectably color-corrected photographs illustrated concepts she was not yet able to read about. The Musicians knew what they were doing to the very limits of human technical ability. If she could live through the next few weeks - and she thought she could, if only she could see her wife - then she'd be able to live there. It wouldn't be lovely. It'd be tolerable.

They got closer to Satyameva Jayate.

Dev demanded another hour of quiet to try again. Ananda gave it to him. At least he knew how to start with nothing and end with music; she couldn't even do that for her dreamed stars.

Her dreamed fractal jewels fraying light into ideally shattered color.

Her dreamed clouds of sunrise-pink smoke and flowers.

Her dreams, her dreams, her dreams.

Everyone slept more as the infection sank its teeth deeper into them. Parvati slept through checks, seeking infinite infinities and spectacular irrationals that promised to show her their ends; Ananda heard her muttering about them. The missed checks concealed no flaws. How fortunate.

They made it home.

By the time they got within chatting distance of their planet (had it always been that sick teal color? The desert on the continent Ananda had grown up on looked like a ragged scar - the clouds roiled in logicless eddies -) Hari was dead. He couldn't get the paintings to come out right. He was convinced he was never going to get the paintings to come out right. If the paintings could not come out right -

He didn't leave a note. Everyone knew what it felt like.

Ananda was in the best shape after Parvati. She still had her eyes and ears. She was alive. She could leave her room - she'd been leaving Dev plates of haphazardly assembled meals at irregular hours, outside his door. She could talk again, if she spoke softly, modulated her voice just so, it was hideous but not enough to make her want to rip out her own throat. (The Musicians had been so polite about their ugly, undecorated visitors and their scratchy despicable excuses for voices. Ananda wished they'd been rude.)

Parvati called in from orbit. She made their primary report. Ananda didn't even listen. She was only waiting for one thing.

Parvati waved her over.

And there was Tara, blinking at her from the screen.

There... was...

It was Tara. Tara, worried, upset, confused.

There was no deficit in Ananda's ability to recognize faces, per se. It was Tara.

Ananda looked at her wife.

Ananda reached for her eyes.

Threshold

This story has a sequel, Lilac.

"Is anybody in this classroom tweaked?" the ethics professor asked. "Er - never mind, that's backwards, I'm not supposed to ask about - If anyone in this classroom is tweaked or sensitive to the subject, they may be excused for this class and Wednesday's."

"Why?" asked Mercy.

"Campus policy is that I have to warn you that the discussion topic for the day may be distressing for tweaked individuals and those close to them. And anyone sensitive to the topic for other reasons. There will be discussion of historical anti-tweaking arguments, among other related topics."

"Do potentially distressed people have to leave?"

The professor shook his head. "You can stay, I just have to warn you. If you do leave you're excused from the associated reading and the section on the test."

Mercy was tempted - she could probably make good progress on her art project with that time, or, more realistically, she could binge-watch a lot of TV - but she stayed put. Lyle, sitting next to her, nudged her foot, looking nervous.

"I think I'll be fine," Mercy said, mostly to Lyle, but the professor took her as representative of the whole class and proceeded with his slideshow ("Tweaking: Prenatal Genetic and Epigenetic Alterations").

Mercy lasted ten minutes and then snapped to the professor that she would be skipping this section on the test and gathered her belongings and stormed out.

"You're not fine," Lyle observed, following at a half-jog as Mercy fumbled her books into her knapsack and stomped away from the lecture hall.

"I thought it was going to be - I would be fine if he'd stood there and told me that great thinkers were of the opinion that I wasn't worth the expense!" hissed Mercy. "Or the health risks to Mother however much better things have gotten - or the research allocations that let them improve that much. I was expecting him to tell me that I should have been aborted. I could have coped with that. But no, he respectfully trots out and engages arguments that say I should have been born sick? That my wholeness is an affront to human dignity? That I am - that - ugh! I should have left."

"Can I help?" asked Lyle, wringing his hands. "Do you - what do you do when you're stressed out? Hit the gym? Eat ice cream? Go to church?"

Of course he'd ask about church; his project was on her religion. So she obliged him. "Sometimes I do go to church, and at another time of the week I could turn up and volunteer to help with the preschool - I should show you the church preschool sometime before you turn in your project - but the bus to the church doesn't run at this hour. And the place would be empty right now anyway. God's ministry is in words and deeds and fellowship, not consecrated dead places, an empty church might as well be an abandoned warehouse. I'll take the ice cream plan if you're buying. Is that within the scope of your research?"

"Can do," said Lyle.

He found them a gelato place. The cashier called Mercy Lyle's sister; Mercy corrected her. She got pistachio, and ate it angrily.

"...So," said Lyle. "I kind of hate to ask, but I have a grade riding on this."

"Yes, of course," sighed Mercy. "Go ahead."

"So I gather Conceptual Christianity feels very strongly pro-tweaking. Or at least has room for such opinions."

"Do you want me to quote things at you or just - talk?"

"Both, ideally," says Lyle. "You're a lay case study, not a minister, but if you can call quotes to mind..."

"Conceptual activists were actually instrumental in lobbying in favor of tweaking back when it was first viable for the consumer market," Mercy said. "It is not an exaggeration to say that but for the grace of God I would not be healthy today."

"Can I ask what you were tweaked for?"

"I don't actually know," says Mercy. "I suppose I'll find out once I'm managing my own medical care but I never bothered to ask my parents. I only know that I was tweaked at all because my father mentions it when they're saying their gratitudes."

"And why does the church feel that way?"

"That which - this is a quote, although I won't get it perfect, look it up for your project - that which God makes is whole and perfect but may be corrupted by men or by nature. To shape things more like the way God would have had them be is God's work. Deliberately preserving things in states where they have constrained potential is as evil as constraining that potential in the first place. If you would not take a healthy child and break its spine or give it a lobotomy, you must not turn aside the chance to heal one who could be born healthy with your intervention."

"Quoting who?" asked Lyle.

"My namesake. The Reverend Mercy Small, no puns please."

"I wouldn't," said Lyle.

Mercy's next class, unlike the morning's ethics lecture, was comfortably within the scope of her major. Simulation Engineering 202. There was a sign on the door when she and Lyle arrived; cancelled, continuing equipment failure, techs are on it, read chapters thirteen through fourteen.

"Wish I'd taken the practical last semester and the theoretical now when they're having all this hardware trouble," Mercy sighed.

"Do you want me to leave you alone while you read chapters thirteen through fourteen?" inquired Lyle.

"I already read them, last weekend. Routing around simulation nesting, physics engines and how to cut corners on them for computationally small projects, self-insertion and dreamlikeness or Why You Can't Count Higher Than Two In Sim. Large aside on how you never ever ever sim anyone under age sixteen no matter what. I assume I'm boring you, poor anthropologist. Dash it all, I finished my midterm project early, I wanted to run my sim, but the techs can't figure out what's wrong with these machines. I might not bother coming again Friday unless I've gotten a message saying class is on."

"Yeah? What were you going to try?"

"Releasing a tiger into a soccer practice. It'd make my lab partner laugh. I had a backup plan to make it a wallaby instead, in case the professor thought there was much chance of threshold; if we had to wake somebody up they'd resent the tiger. In addition to finding themselves prematurely silicized. I did make sure nobody on the soccer team is an Orthodox New Millennium's Child or otherwise hung up about it, first. I'm not sure what the issue Orthodox folks have is - is it literally the sim depiction, or the possibility of having an extra of someone in particular, or do they just object to threshold no matter what? You're the one studying modern religion, you tell me."

Lyle snorted softly. "I haven't made a study of New Millennium's Children, but I think I've heard it's the third thing."

"Really, threshold's not a huge risk if you know what you're doing," Mercy assured him. "Sims are started and stopped every day with no greater odds of turning into subjective experiences than an unusually bright parrot. Not that we don't have assorted protestors outside the building sometimes calling us abortionists. I suppose it's better that they're bothering us and not traumatized pregnant women. I have no such saving grace for the ones calling us soul-stealers."

"Mercy?" said Lyle.

"Mm?"

"Can I get you to ask your parents what you were tweaked for?"

"For your project?"

"Yes."

"I don't see why not. Do you want to be there?"

Lyle hesitated, then said, "No. But if you could take note of your reaction to it to tell me tomorrow I'd appreciate that."

Lyle bought Mercy brunch the next morning; her only class was sculpture, late afternoon. They both got loaded waffles. Mercy looked pensive.

"Are you all right?" Lyle asked her. "Did the conversation not go well...?"

"Oh - I didn't even get around to asking your question, I'm sorry," said Mercy. "It's - I called, and it turned out they were going to call me after they expected me out of Sim Eng, and - Mother's sick. She's going to silicize."

Lyle nodded slowly. "That would be distracting. Yeah."

"And since you'll probably ask, Conceptual Christianity is entirely positive on silicization. Words and deeds and fellowship and all still exist if you go from flesh to pattern. Mother didn't grow up Conceptual, though. Her mother's still alive - and decrepit, it hurts to look at poor Nana, I think she's starting to consider changing her mind but who knows if she will before - but anyway my mother's father actually died. Less than ten years ago! Ceased to exist, and not in a freak accident, either, he just turned away the uploaders and died. And I think Mother has residual hangups about going in silico, from her childhood? Even though she converted when my parents got married."

"She's nervous?"

"She's got a lot of very complicated feelings, I imagine, she didn't dump them all on me. It's going to be so different. Father might go with her, they were talking about how I'm almost twenty and don't really need them physically around anymore, there was a terrible joke about how she'd leave me all her recipes..."

"You're old enough to silicize too, if you wanted," said Lyle. "It'd be early, but it wouldn't wreck your brain growth."

"I know, but I might want children, one day. And it's not as though I go visit my parents too often from here regardless." She shrugged. "They'll probably rent one of those silly looking robots and decorate it with seashells and come bother me all the time. I'm just worried that Mother's worried."

Lyle nodded and poked his waffle with his fork. "I'll understand if you don't want to ask them."

"I don't have to ask them. With Mother on her way to silicizing and Father on the fence I'm expecting a little alert any moment now about being in charge of my own med-" There was a beep; Mercy consulted her pocket computer. "Yep, there it is. I'll just look it up now."

"Mercy -"

"Mercy Long," Mercy said, "nineteen, female, B-positive... here we are. Tweaked in utero for - this is all minor spellchecking -"

"Mercy -"

"Almost found it. Tweaking indicated principally because of prenatal profile indicating high likelihood of child being -" She blinked. "Transgender. Huh. I was expecting something more... I don't know."

"Well. They do tweak for that if the parents want to," Lyle said.

"I never did look at a complete list of tweaking parameters. The wording doesn't quite say what they did, where I started out. Did the tweak make me a girl or make me female, I wonder?"

Lyle didn't answer; she poked at her pocket computer. Eventually she shrugged and put it away. "Anyway, there's your answer."

"Think it was a good idea?" Lyle asked.

"Both I and Conceptual Christianity are in total agreement that trans people deserve full recognition as the genders of their souls and that their essential humanity should not be infringed upon in thought, word, or deed. That having been said, I don't see why anyone would decide to be trans if they could change it that easily and that far in advance," says Mercy. "It sounds - I don't know quite what I want to say - complicated? Exhausting? If you could have childhoods in silico I suppose it would be comparatively trivial to deal with, if pointless to include, but you can't. My cousin's wife has a prematurely silicized... aunt, I think... who got very sick when she was four, and they - I've talked to her a little, and it just - But that's beside the point. Yes, I suppose I think it was a good idea."

Lyle stole a half-strawberry off her waffle. Mercy rolled her eyes and let him.

"I thought you were going to sit with me in Sculpture," Mercy said, when Lyle turned up at her dorm suite that evening.

"Sorry," Lyle said.

"You don't have to apologize to me, you're the one with a final project on Conceptual Christianity to turn in. Not that I don't enjoy your company."

Lyle smiled a little, at that. "Hey - Mercy?"

"Mm?" she asked, waving him in and shutting the door behind him. "Oh, hey, do you want some popcorn?"

"Yes please. I've got a weird question."

"Shoot."

"If somebody simmed you, and your sim thresholded, how would you feel about that?"

She started the popcorn going and thumped onto the couch next to him. "Are you asking me theologically or personally?"

"Whichever, both - in sum, I guess."

"Conceptual Christianity holds that subjectivity-bearing patterns are people, and moreover that they are the people they think they are to the same extent that flesh people are - so, sims are generally mistaken if they think they're Christ or Napoleon, we don't have the data to sim them, but a threshold pattern who thought she was Mercy Long would almost certainly be Mercy Long. She'd be a prematurely silicized version of me, so I guess she'd be put out about not being able to have kids without enormous hassle and we'd have to go through the amicable forking process instead of trying to juggle a single legal identity, but I don't envision having a philosophical crisis about it."

"And it would be the amicable forking process."

"Why would I want to invite the hostility rigmarole? Either of me? Bureaucrats and risk of asset seizure - not that I have that much, I guess it'll be more when my parents go - and restraining orders. Ugh. I'm not saying I'd give her input into when or with whom I eventually had the kids she couldn't, or even be especially generous with my allowance, but that doesn't mean we'd necessarily fight."

"Very - practical of you."

"I do think I'd be irritated with whoever simmed me without my permission. I'm a sim engineering major, I'd have wanted to look over their parameters."

Lyle nodded slowly.

"What are you going to wind up turning in, anyway?" Mercy asked. "You keep bouncing topics all over the place and sometimes it seems more like you're going to write a book about me than a thesis about my religion."

"The format is - it's - okay, I have no idea how to - Mercy, if somebody asked you how to help escort your sim into shared silicon and tell her what was going on what would you do?"

"God, Lyle, I'm not qualified. Don't they have people whose job that is? Who've majored in social work or something and run around handling threshold cases when they pop up, in between counseling the mentally ill and looking in on fosterage arrangements and so on?"

"Some," said Lyle, "but I don't think they know what they're doing either. She'd be you, more or less, what would you tell her?"

"I'd - I don't know! Hello, welcome to the world? Our parents always wanted a second child and will be so pleased that they have one once they've gotten over the shock? So tell me about your simulated environment? I can cover part of the rent on a robotic chassis to let you take classes with me if you want? Can I call you by our middle name instead?"

"Assume as part of the sim she had a different name already."

"Well, that would be convenient, at least, but if you start changing things around I start reaching for the social workers again, my expertise goes kaput."

"Yeah, I'm getting that." Lyle swallowed. And then he said, "Hello. Welcome to the world."

"You're not funny," Mercy said, getting up to retrieve the finished popcorn.

"I know," said Lyle. He didn't take any when she sat back down and offered him the bowl. "I never told you my last name."

"Lyle, it's not funny."

"I'd show you, but you're in the middle of a snack. And you might decide you want to slap me and I'd hate to deny you the chance."

"Lyle -" Mercy looked at her popcorn.

"Count them," murmured Lyle.

Mercy tried. Picked up one kernel at a time and looked at them collecting in her palm. One two five three six four -

One two four -

One two two many -

"Oh God," she breathed. "What did you do?"

Lyle bowed his head. "I'd say," he said, "that our parents always wanted a second child, but they really didn't."

Mercy flung her popcorn at the wall and sobbed.

"You're not an anthropology student."

They were in sim engineering classroom. It was empty. The equipment would present as broken if she tried to fire it up. Couldn't have the sim nesting. Mercy had considered it thematically appropriate.

"I'm a sim engineer like you. A couple years farther along."

"I'm your, what, thesis project?"

"You weren't supposed to threshold. I didn't do it on purpose. The professor rated it less than one in a hundred million likely."

"But I'm your thesis project."

"Yeah."

"You don't care about Conceptual Christianity at all."

"I used that excuse," said Lyle, "because that's - what I changed. In baseline reality, Father converted. Not Mother."

"God, no wonder you look like me. You probably looked exactly like me until you started taking hormones; is your sim presence optimized or do you look like that in the flesh?"

"I look like this," said Lyle. "When I'm wearing clothes and my skin's having a good week, anyway, if you want to get technical."

"I did not need to get technical," Mercy said. "Did you use to be named Mercy?"

"No. They didn't name me after a Conceptual reverend because they weren't Conceptual. I'd rather not tell you what they did call me. I'm Lyle now."

"Of course. I apologize," said Mercy automatically. "When did - when did I -?"

"If you think about it - paying attention like when you tried to count the popcorn - you'll be able to get a more precise guess than me," Lyle said. "But the threshold notification popped up during your ethics course yesterday. When you got angry."

"How long were you running me before I - before I thresholded? Just from when you asked me about shadowing me for your project? Did you do that the long way around, even, is that a simmed memory?"

"I gave you twenty minutes' lead time and then I showed up," murmured Lyle. "I was really there when you met me, it's not a simmed memory."

Mercy swallowed. "Why would the sim engines have been broken - why wouldn't there have been preschool or a bus to it the middle of a Monday -"

"Yeah. Can't sim children. If they thresholded -"

"Of course. Of course you can't."

"But you're fine. You're nineteen."

"Our parents didn't want another child?"

"They weren't," said Lyle, "very happy with their first one."

"Because you weren't tweaked, because they weren't Conceptual Christians -"

"Yeah. Basically."

Mercy kicked a sim engine, not hard. It didn't really make a noise. If she thought about it, all that there was, was the impression that she'd heard something.

"Is there someplace set up for me in proper silico?" she asked. "What are - what am I looking at, here?"

"When you were in sculpture -"

"Dreaming I was in sculpture -"

"Yes. Sorry. I got the school to take a decent chunk of liability because the professor signed off on my parameters. You've got enough runway from that alone to cover standard-speed runtime and an environment - design your own or buy into a shared or get a private off the shelf, whatever you like - you can rent a chassis and test into courses - maybe not sculpture, fine motor control, but, you know - and get a degree. It'll last even if you take a gap year or don't find work right away, and the hiring market for engineers is still good even though it's a couple years later than you thought it was. I'll probably find a job this fall and I'll help you if you need it."

"I wonder what the transition'll be like. Going from - dreamlike physics-cheating sim to proper silicon," murmured Mercy. "I barely notice if I don't pay attention..."

"It's not very different from coming out of a self-insert into baseline reality - I've heard," said Lyle.

"Which I, well, remember doing. Right." She sighed. "Any reason to wait? Besides the fact that I can't slap you through a display screen? I don't want to slap you."

"Uh, I'm glad you don't want to slap me. No, no real reason if you're ready."

Mercy swallowed.

"Do it."

Lyle hugged her, once, quick, hard, and then he disappeared, and then the world followed after him.

Water

This story has a sequel, Mana.

I: Niomah

Niomah

She was pulling triple duty. The busgirl and the food runner were both out with what everybody was politely calling headaches and which Niomah preferred to think of as the condensed ball of emotion elicited by they're the owner's pets and if they steal half the booze and then call in sick with hangovers nothing will happen to them, will it. So she took orders and cleared napkins and glasses and baskets of half-eaten fried taro and she ferried to recipients uneaten baskets of fries and fresh drinks. She skipped her first break of the shift and flipped smoking banana fritters instead, when she ducked into the kitchen and found the cook necking with the dish-washer, because if the bananas burned someone was getting clobbered and it'd probably be Niomah. The other waitress would escape the misaimed cruelty; she wasn't the owner's pet, she was just paler and prettier and had options besides working at the Emerald Drop.

Niomah took her second break, at one in the morning, fruit be damned, not because she expected to be able to get away with sitting down but because she could no longer physically stand. If she'd had forethought she might have brought silverware to wrap in napkins, or a tub of new dishes to peel the labels off of, so she wouldn't be caught quite idling, but it didn't occur to her until she had her ass in a booth and getting up seemed about as doable as climbing the Crystal Mountain. Backwards.

She people-watched. A couple hours earlier the place had gone from restaurant to bar. If she'd ever taken theoretical magic she might know how the furniture and the lighting shifted of their own accord, but she wasn't even caught up on state-mandated general education. The last time someone had tried to test Niomah on the geography and language of her adopted country her father had "corrected" the bureaucrat about her birthday, so she'd gotten another four months of nonexistent spare time to study before they had to move out of town or go sublegal. More sublegal than the fake birthday already made them.

Vocabulary she might have picked up just from being around native Gathru constantly, but they talked so fast, and on top of each other, like the spoken words were a badly-observed courtesy and they were in fact telepaths. Some of them might be. Maybe the boy in the corner was actually talking to someone, not just staring into space like he didn't know where he was because he actually didn't.

Maybe he was actually lost.

With five minutes of rest Niomah was able to contemplate standing up and finding out - if she was sweet to him she might get a tip out of it, that would be something, the other waitress wasn't paying enough attention to steal it out of her apron. But she didn't stand. She was entitled to half an hour - a full one, if she called it both of her day's breaks back-to-back and pretended she was Mainlander-pale and Mainlander-rich and Mainlander-accented and entitled to the words on her contract.

She decided to pretend. But she caught Lost Boy's eye and tilted her head. If he wanted directions to the bathroom or the exit or the other restaurant down the block she could do that. She wasn't that bad with weird Gath vowels and syntax, and she could draw him a map on the bit of paper towel left from somebody's fries that she'd missed in clearing this table.

The boy blinked at her and came over to her booth.

Sanuar

That poor waitress looked exhausted. Sanuar's allowance felt like a rock in his pocket. She looked Arnysh. Didn't they have a thing about being offered money? He probably couldn't just offer her fifty balances because he thought she could use them. Could he? Wouldn't she think he'd mistaken her for a prostitute? Or was that the Behadze? (Was she Arnysh...?) But she was a waitress, uniform and all. Did fifty balances exceed plausible tipping range? He was so bad at this.

But he was still walking towards her.

"Hi," he said lamely.

"Hi," she replied. "You look lost." Arnysh accent, he'd been right the first time.

"Not really," said Sanuar. "My friends," he used the word for lack of a better one-syllable summary for people I don't like who I hang out with in the absence of a better option because our parents know each other, "are strung out on mana spots in your back alley, but it's cold out so I stepped in. I don't think I ought to go home, I should probably check on them in an hour or so. Just -" He shrugged.

"Oh," said the waitress. He liked the accent. "Tell me if it looks like they are dying when you look, there is a regular, he at the bar, has magic and can save them."

"I'll do that," said Sanuar. "You work here?" Idiot. Of course she works here, she's probably been working here for twenty-four hours solid, she's wearing an apron -

But she smiled, darkly, looking at the ceiling. "I take a break here. I will get up and work here again, soon, if my feet are still on my legs."

Sanuar laughed. He tried to read her nametag, but it was too dark.

"Niomah," she said, catching him looking. "Something to yell when you want drinks."

"Sanuar. Sorry for loitering and not ordering anything. I don't really -" He gestured vaguely.

"I might care, if owner, he ever paid me the -" She snapped her fingers.

"Commissions?" suggested Sanuar.

"Is that the word - but he does not, so I would rather if you order nothing, and I sit."

Sanuar grinned. "I can oblige. You're just sitting? Talking to lost boys?"

"Watching people. Deciding who is prettiest," said Niomah.

"And who's prettiest?" Sanuar regretted the question - what did he think she was going to say, it's you, Sanuar? - but she didn't take offense at this one either.

"Girl, she at the table with the bubble liqueur. Face belongs in museum," said Niomah emphatically.

"Are you sure that's a girl?" asked Sanuar.

Niomah squinted, then shrugged. "Face belongs in museum," she repeated. "Makeup, illusions, sit up in bed so beautiful every sunrise, I don't know, they have gods' luck at whatever, look."

"They're pretty," agreed Sanuar, "you're very good at deciding who's prettiest."

Niomah's smile flashed her teeth white in the dimness of the bar.

Ens

Ens shook whenever somebody looked at him. Any minute now one of the falsies would fall out of his shirt or it would turn out he'd missed a spot shaving or he'd have to go to the bathroom and his walk, voice, conspicuous choker necklace, would give him away. And then -

Well, nothing, probably, he'd slink out of the bar and change into the regular clothes in his purse and go home. But he wanted -

Well, that was the question, wasn't it. This had seemed like a marvelous idea the other day. Ens had imagined putting on girlhood like another garment. And... he felt like a boy in a dress. Which was an interesting change from feeling like a girl in a suit, but not right either. Damn it all, it wasn't like he had any other evenings free to try this, either, not for weeks, and what if after weeks he slipped out again and whatever fractured part of his mind had given him this idea in the first place decided to go on vacation again the minute he put on his sister's pearls?

There were a girl and a boy staring at him. Yes, this was clearly why he'd swiped jewelry, and lied about the prices of unrelated purchases long enough to save untracked money for a dress. Being tittered at in bars.

He swigged his bubble liqueur. It was okay. Heavier on the sugar than the kind served at home. Not nearly strong enough to take the edge off what Mother called "adolescent mood", but the last thing he needed was to stumble around attracting attention when he had to sneak back into the house past the night patroller without waking the butler or the housekeeper or the sister to whom he had to return the choker. So weak sugary (girly) drinks it was.

They were still looking at him, sneaking glances out of the corners of their eyes.

Well, if the next time his sister was out all night and he had a chance to take her jewelry he wanted to do this again - just in case - it might be useful to talk to some people he'd never see again and get feedback on just how ludicrously unfeminine he looked. Assuming they weren't telepaths they could only be going on his appearance, right, not the mess in his head?

He knocked back his liqueur and put the glass in a tub of dirty dishes on the next table, got up, tried to sidle towards smoky-eyed waitress and that boy who looked unfair amounts of tall even sitting down.

"Something you want to say to me?" he asked, pitching his voice as alto as he could, feminine without try-hard falsetto giving the game away.

The boy blushed, hard; if the girl did too it was impossible to see under the Arnysh brown in the bad light, and she didn't look embarrassed, anyway. "We are saying," she told him brazenly, "that you are prettiest in the whole bar."

Ens blushed.

"And are not sure," the girl went on - her nametag said Niomah - "if you are pretty girl or pretty boy. So, my father, he should be how angry at me for ungodly thoughts?"

"Ah," said Ens. He sat down, across from the two of them, suddenly dizzy. "...You know, I don't really know, myself."

"Very angry father," chuckled Niomah. "Very pretty something."

"You're wearing girls' clothes," the boy pointed out.

"Sometimes I want to," shrugged Ens. "...If I'm very lucky that'll coincide with when I can, one day."

Niomah tutted sympathetically. "You should be just so pretty in anything, I think."

The boy was looking between Niomah and Ens like he'd been unexpectedly teleported there from somewhere that made a lot more sense. "Uh," said Ens, trying to draw attention away from himself and his weird internal conflicts, "what's your name - and 'Niomah', am I pronouncing it right?"

"First try," congratulated Niomah.

"Sanuar," said the boy. "You?"

"Ens." Common enough name. Unisex, even. If he didn't give out his last he probably wouldn't be identified by random bar people. "Good to meet you."

Niomah

Niomah sat with the one and a half boys, the tall lost one and the pretty one with the museum face, until she noticed the other waitress giving her dirty looks. Then she hauled herself to her feet and slid around Sanuar out of the booth, and got back to work. She reminded Sanuar to check on his drugged friends, and he reported that they were all alive and seemed lucid enough to get home on their own. Ens asked her for another liqueur and she brought it and Sanuar paid for it, to Ens's adorable dismay. And then Sanuar pressed the rest of his pocketful of bills into Niomah's hand.

"Tab?" she asked.

"Tip," Sanuar blurted. "You look - tired."

Niomah grinned at him and ran her hand over his hair and pocketed the money. "Thank you."

"Oh thank goodness - I thought it'd offend you or -" He watched her hand when she let it fall back to her side.

"Much too poor to be offended. And now I could buy you a drink." She probably shouldn't, she should probably just smile and flirt and not actually let the bills out of her possession on anything nonessential, but they were a windfall to begin with, and the bartender would actually give her the employee discount she was entitled to.

Sanuar giggled. "I - I don't really -"

"Grape juice," she said, patting his hair again. "Say yes?"

He nodded, all shy.

"Niomah," said Ens before she could go put the order in.

"Mm?"

"Are you thirsty?"

"Eh, I get water." Clean water. She hydrated as much as she could and filled up a jug before she went home every day to have something clean to cook rice in and for her family to drink. Her brother who worked at a bakery did the same thing.

"Can I buy you a drink, whatever you want?" Ens asked. "It'll be full circle. ...Triangle."

"You can buy me a coffee." She could use one, at this hour, with the long walk home still ahead of her.

"They have coffee here?" asked Sanuar.

"No," Niomah winked. "We close in an hour. Coffee cart down the block, open all night."

"All right," grinned Ens.

Niomah got Sanuar his grape juice. She cleared the stragglers' tables. She flirted with the one and a half boys. When one of Sanuar's friends wobbled in to ask where Sanuar was, was he okay, did he take his share of mana spots after all and wander into traffic, she said he was fine. She issued the kitchen closure announcement, and the last-call announcement, and petted Sanuar's hair again before he left, and Ens loitered waiting for her while she filled up on water and linked elbows with her in such a gentlemanly way and took her to the coffee cart and bought her a coffee.

"Come by again," she suggested, batting her eyes over her shoulder. Ens belonged in a museum. "I work every day."

"Maybe I will," Ens murmured.

"Oh, maybe, trying to keep me doing guesswork," laughed Niomah, and she went home, a coffee in her hand to drink half of and keep her on her feet until she got to her bed and forty-three balances in her pocket to get a new pair of work shoes and a few days' worth of rice for her family. The other half of the coffee she'd thin out with milk to get her out of bed in the morning. And maybe they'd come back and smile at her like she was the sort of person one really smiled at instead of leering or ignoring or bossing like she was voice-activated furniture.

When she got home all her brothers and sisters and her sister-in-law and her parents and her uncle and her grandfather were asleep. She put the bottom half of the coffee away for the morning, hid Sanuar's money in her shoe lest her lazy sister-in-law or badly behaved little brother find it and steal it before she could buy needful things, and waited in the dark in silence until her oldest sister woke up to go to work and yielded Niomah her place in the big bed. Niomah fell asleep as soon as her head touched the mattress.

Ens

Ens put the pearls back in his sister's jewelry box and tucked the dress in the back of the closet and wiped off the makeup (thank all the gods that Mother considered doing makeup for the stage players an acceptably "culturing" school-break activity to fill his time, he didn't have to hide the box, just pretend he brought it home leftover from a production and make sure half of it was wrong for his skin tone).

He went to bed.

He woke up after insufficient sleep and put on his normal clothes. They were okay, this occasion, though who knew how long that would last. He shaved and combed his hair. He ate breakfast, and had his dulcimer lesson, and his Ancient Gath after that, and lunch out and a matinee concert with his sister because her fiancé was busy at the Hall of Justice all day and couldn't escort her. By the time the sun set, Ens wanted the pearls back again, but she couldn't get them because her sister was home and would miss them, because she was expected at her mother's party, because, because.

Ens wished she could treat her brain like a spoiled child asking for dessert after having turned up their nose at a perfectly good slice of cake the previous night, but then again she didn't really know what to do with spoiled children either.

So she kept on the starchy handsome boy clothes and re-combed her hair. And when Mother said "You look tired," Ens said, "I know how to fix that with a little foundation just under the eyes, nobody'll notice and I'll look presentable at the party," and her mother nodded and she scampered upstairs and did that, just that, no eyeliner, no lipstain, no boxed glamer for her cheekbones, but it made her feel better. And made her look less tired. Mother said as much when she came back down.

The party was ostensibly to celebrate Ens's sister's fiancé's promotion to District Justicar, but like all of Mother's parties it was really about collecting a lot of old money and old power in one place and introducing bits of it to other bits of it. Occasionally small amounts of newer money and newer power snuck in, and Ens could tell from long years of exasperated practice evaluating outfits and carriage that this was such an occasion. There was the manager of the shipping concern, there was the cousin of that fellow who'd married the duke's daughter in a surprise upset. There was an actress, only moderately famous, who had got an invite through Ens herself, because she always sat good and still for her paint and asked how Ens was doing, and if the nice lady wanted to rub shoulders then - Ens being the child of the principal local landowner ought to do some good for somebody, ever. There was the Fourteenth Archmage in full formal uniform robes, recently promoted on sheer skill with no connections to speak of, and his family -

At the shoulder of the Fourteenth Archmage was Sanuar.

Oh, no, not here, Ens had gone all the way to that little bar because she didn't expect anyone to recognize her and trace her back to her daytime life, her family, her - self, in the suit, combed and neat instead of pretty and pearly.

But it was too late to pretend to be abruptly sick.

Sanuar looked at her, where she was wobbling up on the balcony. Sanuar smiled. Gods, he was tall, standing up.

Desperately, Ens held a finger to her lips. Don't let on, please.

Sanuar's smile dropped. He nodded, very subtly, broke eye contact, let his - father? uncle? grandfather? - the Archmage introduce him to Ens's parents.

Ens trotted down the stairs like she was supposed to, appearing at her mother's elbow just in time for the introductions to swing around to, "And this is our son Ens. Ens, this is Archmage Vayar -" Other relatives of the Archmage were introduced, and finally - "his son, Sanuar Vayar."

Ens smiled on automatic. "It's lovely to meet you, Your Learned Eminence Archmage, distinguished Vayars," she said, resisting the urge to push from tenor to alto. "I hope the day finds you well."

"Ens," said Mother, "I think you and Sanuar are about the same age..." Which meant keep him occupied while the grownups talk. Ens was more than happy to do so; Sanuar wasn't spilling the beans right now and if he wanted bribery to keep it that way it was in Ens's best interest to find out sooner rather than later.

"Why don't I show you around the house?" Ens said, automatic smile still in place.

Sanuar ducked his head in an inexpert bow and followed Ens away from the knot of adults.

Sanuar

"So you're the Fourteenth Archmage's son," Ens said, levelly, stiffly, when they'd slipped into a hallway and could assume they would go unheard.

"Uh. Yes," said Sanuar.

"And you hang out at midscale bars babysitting druggie friends."

"I don't really - they're not my - my mother knows their parents," shrugged Sanuar. "I didn't have anything else to do. They're not bad, just..."

"Are you a mage too?" Ens asked.

"If I am it didn't kick in when I was little. They can test me for late-onset in a couple months," said Sanuar. "...I guess I don't have to ask what Lady Riawae's kid was doing at a midscale bar."

"You don't," said Ens. "...Please don't."

Sanuar blinked, surprised. "I'm not going to tell anybody."

"Oh." Ens relaxed, fractionally.

"Promise," Sanuar added. "Why would I do that?"

Ens shrugged.

"...You have a nice house," Sanuar went on, feeling terribly inane about it.

"It's all right. As houses go. Just..." Ens shrugged again and Sanuar wanted to hug him. Her. Whatever. "You're really not going to say anything?"

"Not a word," said Sanuar. "We can have just met. Nothing about the Emerald Drop or - or pearls or Niomah."

"You haven't seen her again, have you?" asked Ens.

"No. I thought I might go back tonight..." It wasn't like he had anything else to do with his suddenly quadrupled allowance. Feeling glad about Father's promotion seemed a little like trying to be grateful for suddenly sprouting wings that could in theory let one fly but in practice mostly made it difficult to sit in chairs and fit through doors.

"Oh."

"If - you wanted to - you're the one who -" Niomah had said Ens was the prettiest person in the bar, not Sanuar, Niomah had flirted with Ens more -

"No - go ahead," said Ens, shaking their head.

"Because she thought you were pretty and -"

"Go, ask her out, date her for three years, marry her, have a dozen children, you might as well if you like, you have freedom of movement and your parents aren't trying to betrothe you to somebody appropriate," said Ens, shaking their head. "It'll be cute. Invite me to the wedding -"

"That's - a little premature. A lot actually," said Sanuar. "And I thought she liked you more -"

"Very angry father," Ens replied, rolling their eyes.

"Only if her father found out. About the thing, I mean, he'd probably be fine with you being a Riawae, if he's got any sense."

"Are you trying to convince me to hit on the girl you like?" Ens asked.

"It'd be cute," mumbled Sanuar.

"I can't, though, I can't get out of the house."

"It looked to me like your mother wants us to be friends."

"...You're offering to cover for me hitting on the girl you like. Pretend we're going on an overnight skiing trip or something and actually go buy Niomah coffee and get her to crack jokes at us."

Sanuar squirmed. "I thought she liked you more. If I can go back and you can't - I don't know, if she said she liked me too I'd always wonder about what she'd have done if you'd been there again to compete."

There was a silence. Privately, Sanuar wondered if Ens could be convinced to doll up again for such an outing, and then it wouldn't matter much even if Niomah laughed right in their faces. Maybe. Maybe Ens would laugh in his face if he noticed Sanuar thinking it.

"You want," said Ens, "to enact some theatrical plot in which a girl we have each met only once chooses dramatically between us -"

"If you don't like her -"

"I like her," muttered Ens.

"Then - well, what would you rather?" asked Sanuar helplessly.

Ens... shook their head, and shrugged, and said, "Let's pretend we're going skiing."

Niomah

Niomah slumped against the front wall to the Emerald Drop and wept until her eyes were swollen and her throat was raw and she'd cried herself thirsty.

She'd just bought new work shoes, too, with that nice boy's money, because her old ones secondhand from another waitress had a broken lace hole on the left and a hole worn through the sole in the right, and they were the shiny green leather the Emerald Drop required, she had no other use for green shoes, her thick brown boots were still good, she didn't need pretty shoes for anything else. She'd have to try to return them, probably for half their price, and stretch the money as far as it would go. And look for another job. Or give her father all of the money and jump off a bridge and then she wouldn't eat her family further into poverty during her job hunt. Finding the waitress job had taken a month and a half, and she hadn't had it long enough to think that the field of available work had changed since. Probably there was nothing.

Her sister-in-law would probably tell her to bring charges against the Emerald Drop for her last week of wages. And Niomah would say me and what solicitor and the sister-in-law would gape at her like a stunned cow and take a solid day to absorb the fact that she'd married into a family that didn't have a solicitor. The sister-in-law might be more useful if her parents were still alive, but if they were then Niomah's brother would have moved out, not moved his wife in -

Footsteps. Niomah should have chosen a more secluded place to have her breakdown. Unless she was driving business away from those criminals by making a scene on the doorstep, that might be good -

"Niomah?"

She looked up. Sanuar the lost boy and Ens the pretty museum-piece, she wasn't sure which had spoken her name. She didn't want them to see her so pathetic. She scrubbed at her eyes with the end of her sleeve.

"Oh, hello, fine morning. So nice to run into you again. Don't give those bastards your money," she advised hoarsely.

"What happened?" asked Sanuar.

"Fired me. Without my last week's balance."

"What - why?" Ens.

"Hiring a Mainlander boy. Speaks Gath better. Said I am lazy, but lazy Mainlander waitress still has job -"

"I -" said Sanuar. "I can get more -"

Niomah shook her head. "Is nice - helped - but drying out a boat that is only half a boat. Worked seventy hours a week, six balances an hour, do you have that to give away? And, angry father, he wonder where money comes from, if he finds out, supposes you make confetti out of precious daughter's honor, so much more important than rice and water and heat -"

"And - no, I can't match that wage. Right," murmured Sanuar.

"They can't fire you because you're Arnysh," said Ens.

"Can. Did."

"I mean, if you took it to court -"

She laughed. "Sister-in-law will say same thing. Sister-in-law also Mainlander. Of course you say it."

"My father's looking for a housekeeper," blurted Sanuar.

Niomah looked up and blinked tears out of her eyes.

"I can't promise - I don't have hiring authority - but I don't think he actually knows what he's looking for and if I recommend somebody, if you go before he puts out the ad -"

"Where, when?" Niomah demanded.

"It's - east of here, thirty minutes walking, big stone house with a green roof. Now, if you like, he should be home for the next -"

Niomah lurched to her feet, dabbing away residual tears from her eyes. "Now. If your father will not steal my money or put his hand in my shirt -"

"Gods, no," said Sanuar, blanching. "...I don't think so. Do a lot of people...?"

She shrugged. "Some. Too many." She started walking east; Sanuar and Ens fanned out to either side of her like they were about to break into synchronized dance step. "You put your hands wherever you like, lost boy, but not your father."

"I -" Sanuar blinked rapidly. It was cute. "I what?" Niomah managed to smile at him.

"Ens, don't you think Sanuar, he is very charming?" Niomah asked. This was more her element, this made her feel more like herself, like a human being. Human beings flirted, human beings embedded themselves in groups of other human beings who liked them. Human beings did not cry on the sidewalk because they were short a few hundred balances from where they needed to be because of racist managers. If she flirted and smiled and teased she could be a human being.

Ens coughed. "Uh."

"You are on a date today?" she wondered. "Were about to get two straws in a chocolate milk? Did not mean to make pass at your boyfriend, beautiful. Oops. Or your girlfriend, lost boy." She giggled, twirled.

"We're... not," said Ens.

"Aw. Would be cute." It would, too.

Sanuar coughed.

"Hmm?" smiled Niomah.

"We, uh," said Ens.

"We were wondering if you liked one of us, actually," said Sanuar.

"Oh, no," said Niomah, walking backwards to watch them flinch, then she went on, "much too greedy. One of you. Silly."

They looked at each other.

"Not so greedy as to never share," she smirked.

They blushed. Niomah grinned.

Ens

"This isn't an Arnysh thing, is it?" Ens said.

"Oh, no, not that," said Niomah. "Very much not. It is a Niomah thing. Oh, if Father knew such anger about the confetti honor."

"And - to make sure I understand you -"

"My Gath is not so bad, I think."

"No, no, your Gath is fine. But when you say you're too greedy -" Ens's head was spinning.

"Is simple," said Niomah. "You come here, wondering, does Niomah want to pick one or the other to put second straw in chocolate milk? And my answer is there is room for three straws. Why not?"

Sanuar started laughing, almost hysterically.

"Is it funny?" she asked, tossing her hair.

"It's," said Ens, and she didn't know what to say next. It will never work. It's fantastic. My parents would throw a fit, your parents would throw a fit, his parents would possibly throw fireballs from the palms of their hands. Sanuar doesn't like - whatever I am - probably - does he? -

"It's perfect," said Sanuar.

Ens wasn't expecting that.

"It is?" she asked.

"Why not? I can probably get Father to hire her - she'll be in my house - you can come to my house whenever you like, can't you? It works." Sanuar was shaking his head as though in disbelief of his own words.

"It works?"

"Why not, beautiful?" asked Niomah, still walking backwards ahead of Ens and Sanuar.

"Because - three - and I'm -"

"Yes, good question, what are you," says Niomah. "Would like to know what to say after dear diary, turned seventeen..." She was looking almost predatory.

"...I'm whatever makes you look at me like that." Like she wanted to shove Ens up against a wall and nibble on her until only Ens herself was left, no shell of Riawae and starch and expectations. "Happy birthday," she added.

"So, dear diary, turned seventeen, have boyfriend and priceless artwork, lovely," giggled Niomah. "Boyfriend, priceless artwork, housekeeping job, very good day."

"I can't promise the job," said Sanuar.

"Better chance than applying everything everywhere. Much faster, if it works," said Niomah.

"And I'm pretty sure he won't grope you," Sanuar nodded. "Just - if it doesn't work -"

"You try, I believe you will try," said Niomah. "Dear diary, boyfriend attempted to murder good mood while it was a small baby mood in a small baby mood cradle."

Ens giggled. "I like how you talk."

"Good. Tell everyone my accent is beautiful," says Niomah. "Start trend. Publish decree."

"More your turn of phrase than your accent," said Ens.

"I like the accent," chirped Sanuar.

"Dear diary, priceless artwork and boyfriend very charmingly complimenting."

And with that Ens couldn't but kiss her.

Sanuar

Three straws in one chocolate milk indeed. Sanuar felt more like he was in line for two different fairgrounds rides simultaneously than like someone had stolen his candy, like the way he would have expected if all he'd had to go on was contrived serial magazine stories and not a real three-straw situation. Although it would probably be unwise for him to kiss Ens while Ens looked boylike in public, and nearly as unwise for him to kiss Niomah on the same block right after Ens did it. Still. Soon they'd be at his house and Niomah could be interviewed and he could catch up with Ens and then Ens would eventually go home and Niomah would be housekeeping on a regular basis and he had express permission to put his hands wherever he liked -

Ens and Niomah broke apart, at length, gasping like they'd been underwater. They seemed to have the same instincts about what was and was not reasonable public behavior as far as lip contact was concerned, but Niomah looked sultrily at Sanuar over her shoulder while lacing fingers with Ens, and Ens -

Did something with their face, one moment the Riawae scion cut out of the masculine aristocrat's template and the next moment as much a girl as Niomah was, batting her eyelashes at him.

Sanuar swallowed and did his best to lead them the rest of the way to his house without walking funny.

It was a good walk. Niomah did most of the talking, but Ens seemed to have unfurled like a flower, and laughed and kept squeezing Niomah's hand and tapped Sanuar very familiarly on the shoulder when she wanted to point out a cloud shaped like a frigate. Sanuar got warm and took off his jacket and Ens swiped it, smirking, to somehow magically wear more like a girl borrowing from her boyfriend than like a young man dipping into a friend's wardrobe, how did she do that.

Niomah found a centibalance coin on the street, and complained of having no pockets with her apron left back at the Emerald Drop, and she put it into Sanuar's back pants pocket.

Eventually they reached the new Vayar household. Big stone house. Green roof. Freshly bought in a neighborhood designed by a hotshot architect with more budget than restraint, very appropriate for a newly promoted archmage and hopelessly impersonal for said archmage's son. Maybe Niomah would get a decorating budget and make it look like anyone lived there. Sanuar let them in.

"Ens, you can - park in my room, up on the third floor on the left it's the one with the window seat - Niomah, I'll go with you as far as introducing you to my father but he might want to talk to you alone."

Ens nodded and disappeared up the stairs, boy creeping back into their walk with every step beyond the threshold of the house.

Niomah schooled flirtatious features into seriousness. "Boyfriend business is dear diary, not dear Sanuar's father, yes?"

"Yes. Sorry. Uh, and he's Archmage Vayar."

"Archmage is - Eminence? Excellency?"

"Either actually, just stick a 'learned' in front of it, 'Your Learned Eminence' is I think the one he likes better. He might let you shorten it later."

"His Learned Eminence Archmage Vayar. Yes. What else?"

"...Let's pretend I met you through one of the mana spots friends? Uh, Ninden, if he asks."

"He does not know the mana spots friends himself?"

"He doesn't. It'll hold up."

"Okay," said Niomah.

"And... let's see if he's in his workroom."

Sanuar resisted the urge to hold her hand as he led her into the house.

Niomah

"Father," Sanuar said, "I found somebody who may suit for the housekeeper job. Friend of a friend."

Niomah supposed this was even true, if one inserted Ens between her and Sanuar. She curtsied. "Your Learned Eminence," she said, fighting her accent with every syllable. Sound native, even if she couldn't look it, sound like she wasn't sublegal amounts of educated.

Sanuar's father looked a lot like his son: tall, slender, strong-chinned, gray-eyed. He was in his formal mage robes, heavy dark indigo with a white stole that had fourteen dots on one end of it. "Oh? What's her name? Qualifications?"

"Niomah Mihi, Your Learned Eminence," said Niomah. "I have been a waitress. Filling in for busgirl, sometimes." The busgirl. Or a busgirl? Was getting that wrong worse than having forgotten it altogether...?

"Availability? Expected wage?"

"Any time, Your Learned Eminence." And - name her actual floor price or try to ratchet up? She didn't know how much competition she had. And didn't want to sound like she was ignorant of the job market by getting too far from the figure he had in mind in either direction. She went with, "I have been earning six balances an hour plus tips." The tips threw in enough uncertainty. She hoped.

"Mm. Do you work pretty quickly?" asked the Archmage.

"Yes, Your Learned Eminence."

"Six hours a day, eleven an hour?"

Less than she'd been earning on a decent tip day at the Emerald Drop, but for fewer hours - if a longer commute - and less subject to randomized customer spite; she could pick up side shifts somewhere else, seasonal fruit-picking in summer with her brother maybe. Or let Sanuar give her his pocket money, poor lost boy didn't know what else to do with it. "Yes."

"And you can clean and tidy, do laundry, set up rooms for guests, and help the cook, possibly fill in for him if he takes days off...?"

Unless the cook took off on her first day of work or didn't want to teach her, presumably he could show her how to throw together adequate meals for the odd vacation day. She could probably even make something up if she were thrown into the kitchen unprepared, as long as rich Mainlanders still ate rice. "Yes."

"All right. Sanuar can show you where things are and introduce you to the cook," said His Learned Eminence, waving a hand. "Come in tomorrow morning, before breakfast time, and you can start then."

"Yes, Your Learned Eminence," said Niomah, curtsying again.

II: Ens

Ens

Ens drew eyeliner on the lead actor's face and was called a talented young man and wished she would die.

Two hours more. Two hours and I can go to Sanuar's. It always cheers me up -

Ens ate lunch with his family and thought about the dress in the back of his closet and wished he would die.

Just swallow the dessert and wait to be excused. Just wait. I always feel better when -

Ens got into the carriage and told the driver to take her to the Vayar house and wished it would overturn on the way and crack her skull in half.

Half an hour. Half an hour and I can put my head in Niomah's lap and Sanuar will pet me and I'll be -

The carriage stopped outside the house. Ens got out. She knocked on the door. Niomah answered, broom in hand, smiling when she saw who it was. "Ens! Come in come in - Sanuar's up in his room." The wink accompanying this pronouncement meant and I will be too when I've finished sweeping.

And Ens didn't - feel - any - better -

Niomah wouldn't hug her until she was squirreled away in Sanuar's suite where nobody would see. That was probably all. When Ens got as far as Sanuar's rooms -

But she got there, and Sanuar hugged her, and Sanuar asked her what was wrong, and Ens said, "I don't know," and Niomah turned up a little while later, and asked what had made her priceless artwork so sad, and Ens said, "I don't know -"

"Nothing changed?" Sanuar asked.

"It's all the same. Except usually I feel better here," said Ens, mumbling into his shirt.

"All the same," Niomah said. "Well, why not be sad about that, sameness, your sameness?" She scritched her fingers through Ens's hair at the back of her neck. "Secret priceless artwork under a sheet, hiding, hiding, pretending to be all boy always. More reason than me."

Sanuar and Ens both looked at her, then, and she wouldn't make eye contact.

"Niomah?" murmured Sanuar.

She shrugged. "Is nothing. Nothing. Have good job for solid month. Have boyfriend and priceless artwork. Have family. Passed language test! Nothing, nothing. Stupid. Teenage girl nonsense, sister says, goes away soon."

There was a silence, Ens leaning on Sanuar and Niomah petting her hair, until Sanuar said -

"Am I contagious?"

In the smallest, most trembling voice.

Ens lifted her head to look at him.

"You're -?"

"I don't know if I'd call it sad," amended Sanuar. "And who ever heard of moodiness being contagious anyway. And I've got less reason than either of you -"

"Tell," said Niomah.

"It's better when you're here," Sanuar said earnestly. "It is, really."

Ens swallowed, and said, "You can't be contagious. It can't be your fault - before I even met you - well, I thought dressing up would help, and instead I met you both and you helped -"

Sanuar kissed her forehead. "We aren't helping anymore?"

"It's not that. I'd rather be here than there. I just - keep remembering that I have to go back. Live in their house. Lie to them every day and watch them look at me wrong - even when they're right it's by accident."

"What are the odds?" wondered Sanuar bleakly.

"Very good odds," muttered Niomah. "You, I talked to you because you looked lost. Ens, talked to her because she trying to look right and came out so pretty, but she could only do it with strangers. Very good odds."

"Now what?" wondered Ens. "What does knowing get us?" And the others didn't have an answer for her.

Sanuar

After Niomah had to start walking home for the night, and Ens's carriage came to pick her up, Sanuar was left alone.

He wasn't, exactly, sad. He didn't know how to describe it, had failed utterly at explaining to his girlfriends.

Niomah called him "lost boy", sometimes, still. He was that. He was a lost boy, wandering around in a confusing dreamscape, tired with nowhere to lie down, bored with nothing to do. And when his girlfriends were around they distracted him. Sometimes he stalked Niomah through the house while she was working, just watching her wash dishes or dust knicknacks with inimitable Niomah flair, stealing kisses when she moved from one room to the next. Even though Ens was able to come over most days to pursue their parentally-approved friendship Sanuar wrote her long letters on the in-between days and the evenings, about everything and nothing - and posted them, too - to fill time. It was better than studying his astronomy or accidentally running into his father at the wrong moment and listening to a forbidding lecture about how he'd better turn up with mage potential when he had his retest. He was just spinning his wheels until the late-onset retest. If he had magic he'd have, well, at least a clear default option. If he didn't would his life be wheel-spinning forever -?

Having no significant responsibilities would have been very liberating, if there was anything he wanted to do with himself besides leech off Niomah's good humor and Ens's beautiful fleeting smiles when they were available, and stare at the ceiling when they were not.

And now he felt rather like he was probably responsible for wrecking both of them.

Why did they even tolerate him? Apparently after dating him for a month Ens was irretrievably miserable, and Niomah, too, sad for "no reason". Why didn't they just -?

Oh, right. Niomah needed a job - needed, not in the sense of finding it inconvenient not to have one but actually spending her week's pay, every week, on food for her family. And Ens needed somebody, anybody, who wouldn't tell her parents about the "her" thing, who she was authorized to visit.

Of course.

Sanuar didn't think he ought to break up with them. They did, actually, need those things. Ceasing to provide wouldn't make that go away. And if Niomah was right there how could he not try to make her laugh - if Ens was right there how could he not reach out and touch her? If they were going to be around he didn't think he knew how to stop from - empathically parasitizing them.

...His father would have made very sure that his null result on his early mage potential test wasn't a misprint. Sanuar was definitely not actually empathically parasitizing his girlfriends. Not that this technicality would make them any happier. For that matter, if he were doing it in the conventional way he could give back what he'd taken. Instead he didn't even seem to have it anymore. He was some kind of siphon attached to a sieve.

Gray gray gray.

Sanuar stared at the ceiling and waited for sleep.

Niomah

No reason. No reason.

Niomah went home, routing around a protest going on along her usual route (something about water quality, good for them, she hated having to haul water home from Sanuar's every day, so heavy), and helped her sister make dinner. They had enough to eat. They were all healthy, except for Grandfather's bad leg and her little brother's eye, and those were stable chronic issues, not things they needed to see mages about right away; they could save bit by bit. Except for her falsified birthday, which probably no one would ever discover, they were legally in the clear; another two years without missing any key requirements and they'd have full irrevocable residency. Her lost boy and her priceless artwork loved her and she loved them and there was practically no risk that anybody was going to find out, when they all had ironclad excuses to be at Sanuar's house, in his room.

(Well, Sanuar's mother had seen him with his hand on Niomah's ass once, but she'd just tutted that he was growing up and might want to learn discretion - which might have outraged Niomah if his hand hadn't been exactly where she liked it, which fact Learned Lady Vayar did not know - but anyway it had apparently fallen into the disciplinary category of negligible boyish carelessness, not serious departure from parental authority. Niomah was not in trouble for letting him, either, for seducing the Learned Sanuar's Parents' son.)

So: no reason.

Her family ate rice and spicy goat and cherry compote. Niomah slept in the big chair in the sitting room; they'd had to shuffle sleeping schedules when her work hours changed. It was worse for her neck, slouching in something not designed to be slept on, but better for sleeping straight through the night, not being next to kicking sisters and snoring Mother. In spring, it was less stiflingly hot; she might mind more in the winter. All in all not such a problem, not now.

No reason at all to keep going back to the idea she'd had a month ago: or I could jump off a bridge.

She could go jump off a bridge and her priceless artwork would cry, her lost boy would cry, her family would cry and go hungry.

But Niomah could not help but notice that all her reasons were about people other than herself.

No reason to jump off a bridge. Several reasons not to, all of which were located outside of the would-be jumper.

She felt less and less human every time she woke up in the morning. Her usual cheats were wearing thin. She'd called herself sad, but she didn't know the Gath for it. She didn't know the Arnysh for it. Her sister had said teenage girl nonsense. Like it was part of the life cycle: get your blood and grow six inches and feel like jumping off a bridge and then get married and have five babies.

Niomah wanted to believe her.

Niomah did not want to make her lost boy and her priceless artwork and her family cry. Possibly she could cause the first two to stop caring somehow, but the family would mourn the loss of the money no matter how beastly she was to them as a person, so.

And the bridge would still be there in a week.

She slumped into her chair and closed her eyes against the city lights filtering through the thin curtains, and she slept.

Ens

Ens got as far as holding her razor to the skin of her wrist before she managed to consciously wonder what in the fuck she was doing.

She pulled the blade away. She folded it back up. She looked at the unbroken skin of her arm.

The smart thing to do would be to get rid of the razor, at this point, dispose of it somewhere, simply not have anything sharp around. If there was nothing sharp, then even in moments of inattention she couldn't try to prune herself off her oblivious family tree.

If she got rid of the razor, she would grow a beard.

There were glamers in her makeup kit that would hide a fair amount of stubble. In last winter's production of The Minstrel of Crystal Mountain a secondary character needed to appear in the second act with a few days of growth he didn't have in the first, so Ens would put the glamer on him before the lights came up every night and peel it off again at intermission, and so she knew, by feel, that the glamer wouldn't do texture. If she touched her face or just bent her chin enough, she'd feel the scratch. And this would only be tolerable about fifty percent of the time.

Lord Riawae had imagined he was teaching his son to shave, but it had been his subtle second daughter who'd paid rapt attention to the lesson.

So - keep the razor, try to keep herself under some semblance of control like a sane person -

Or last about three days before she snapped in the middle of dinner and picked up a carving knife from a meat platter, and tried to cut the stubble and her throat in front of everybody?

No contest.

The razor stayed where it was.

Niomah

She snapped awake. It was pitch dark. No one was supposed to be coming or going until near-dawn. Was somebody up to sneak a drink of water from the carefully rationed bottles, or -?

No. Whoever was making the noises was not also making an effort to be quiet. They were stomping. Not even the neighbors would be so rude.

Niomah unfolded stiffly from her chair. Some kind of inspection, maybe? She padded to the door, ready to answer it, cough up whatever bribe or fee or fine they wanted this time.

The door opened without her touching it, which meant either burglars or cops. Matching uniforms on the men behind the door meant cops, although possibly cops who aspired to burglary. They didn't seem like normal cop uniforms; possibly some kind of special force. Niomah curtsied without making further assessments. "Sirs -"

"On the ground!" one of them shouted, and she dropped to the floor, hands over her head, blackly terrified - if they didn't want money what did they want?

There were three of them, she counted feet. Had one of her brothers gotten caught shoplifting or -? What was going on? They weren't eager to tell her, at any rate. They stomped into the room with the big bed, woke up the entire family, went into the second room with the smaller bed that these days had her parents in it by day and her brother and sister-in-law by night. Her father would still be at work and her mother snuggled up in the big bed for the second half of her time spent sleeping - there she was, the cop had her by the hair, she hadn't gotten on the floor fast enough for him.

Once the entire family was awake and cowering the cops tore the apartment apart. Niomah had no idea what they were looking for. Was one of her sisters dealing mana spots? (And not sharing the money, if so -!) Had they found out, somehow, about her birthday?

Niomah's sister-in-law tried to talk to the cops. Niomah's sister-in-law was Mainlander, close enough to native, they didn't hit her for trying, but they didn't answer the questions she asked either. Not until they'd ripped open both mattresses and the chair, dumped the stack of sideways crates and all their contents out on the floor and kicked through them, stuck their gloved hands into the big sack of rice as though they'd store imaginary contraband in their food.

And when they'd been everywhere and touched everything and patted down everyone in their nightclothes and destroyed half the apartment, Niomah's sister-in-law could be heard:

"What are you looking for...?"

"You're all very lucky you didn't have weapons stored here," said one of the cops. "This neighborhood's on lockdown now. There's going to be a strict sunset curfew unless you have a signed work permit - if you're out and an officer asks who you are and where you're going you will respectfully answer -"

He went on like that, ignoring pleas from Niomah's oldest sister to please slow down, repeat himself, she doesn't understand. Niomah was going to have to translate, after they went, into Arnysh which her sister-in-law didn't speak, concepts which her little brother with the otherwise best Gath didn't know like martial law and riots. They were not cops at all, but soldiers, Gathru army squads so not technically invaders. Not on a national level. They were military amounts of afraid of this little Arnysh immigrant neighborhood, didn't say why, she didn't dare ask.

The soldiers eventually left to shake down the next family along, and on, and on, and Niomah stumbled through translating an explanation.

She didn't try to go back to sleep.

She left for work as soon as it got light, earlier than usual, eager to get out of the neighborhood. She had to tell a soldier on what seemed like every corner that her name was Niomah Mihi and she did housekeeping for His Learned Eminence Fourteenth Archmage Vayar, that she expected to be home before dark, that her home was at thus and such an address. Two of the soldiers who stopped her patted her down for weapons. They all insisted on pointing weapons at her. None fired - on her. She could hear yelling from the other side of one block -

Once she was past the bridge there were no soldiers, just normal streets, people going about their business.

She didn't even know what happened. She was too afraid to ask.

Sanuar

She looked like she'd been up all night. Like she'd had the last week of sleep frightened out of her.

"Niomah, what happened?" Sanuar asked, when she brought him a tray of breakfast at his desk in his room and then collapsed across the foot of his bed as though about to weep.

"Oh," she said in a ghost of her usual laughing voice. "I stole hard candy out of cook's dish. That happened. Kiss me, steal it back, lemon, I hate lemon, why did I take it -"

"Niomah." He handed her a tissue; she spat the lemon candy into it rather than wipe her eyes, looking sicker than a candy could possibly warrant.

"Soldiers. In family home, middle of night," she said, rolling over to look at the ceiling instead of at him. "Tear everything to bits and shout and point weapons everywhere and hands on all of us, don't like how one looked at oldest sister. Soldiers, soldiers, tried to leave this morning, tell them all where I work, they threaten to shoot me for I don't know what -"

"What - why?"

"Oh, lost boy. We are Arnysh."

Sanuar didn't like the hoarseness of the words. He ignored the breakfast tray, went to line up next to her on the bed and hold her. He had questions - what, did this happen every week, since they were always Arnysh? Oh gods, what if it did, what if she was actually being terrorized constantly and he'd done nothing about it and had no idea because she was so used to it that it only sometimes showed in her face? He didn't know how to ask that and not sound like he was completely unaware that being Arnysh sometimes had effects on Niomah's life. Maybe later he could ask Ens, see if Ens knew.

She went on, after a silence, snuggling into his shoulder. "Don't know why. Someone caught doing something. Someone thinks someone doing something. Don't know. Soldiers didn't say."

Sanuar hugged her. "Do you want me to - ask my parents, see if they know anything?"

Niomah hesitated, then said, "Yes. - And ask, can Niomah stay here, live-in housekeeper, room next to cook, maybe. In case."

"In case -" He didn't finish the question. In case her family were all targeted and she had nobody to go home to. In case it was too dangerous for her to walk to and from work through an occupied neighborhood. In case somebody took aim directly at his girlfriend and her concern still had to be how she was going to collect her balances because she needed them. "Yeah. I'll ask. Not for tonight, right?"

"Right. Only in case."

He didn't get up, until Niomah said, "Your breakfast, it will be cold," and then he kissed lemon flavor from her mouth and stood and looked at the bacon and eggs and taro.

"Did the cook feed you yet today?" he asked.

"No."

He got her to eat a few bites, but she didn't seem to have much appetite.

He didn't either.

Ens

There were protestors outside Ens's house. She couldn't read their signs from her window, or make out what they were saying, but there were a lot of them, and most of them looked dark enough to be Arnysh. Was Ens going to be strung up for making confetti of someone's daughter's honor...? (She hadn't, even! Yet! Quite! What counted as making confetti of someone's honor anyway? Someone should make confetti of Ens's honor, she wasn't doing anything with it...)

This was an awful lot of people to be concerned about Niomah's honor, though, and Ens didn't think she was planning on telling anyone about the slight honorific crumpling she had so enjoyed, and surely Sanuar was the more obvious target.

Ens went downstairs.

"Did the riffraff out there wake you?" asked her sister from the breakfast nook. "They've been hollering for almost an hour, now. They're obeying the security perimeter so far but I'm scared to go out."

"I don't think they woke me. What are they angry about?"

"I don't know. Aren't they always angry about something? Sooner or later one of them will do something out of line and they'll all get taken away. Mother's trying to get police on the scene but they're busy with another protest just like this one. Maybe more."

"That sounds like a little more than them always being angry about something," said Ens. "Thank you," she added to the cook, when he brought her breakfast.

"Of course, milord," said the cook, and, "It's the water in the ghetto."

"What's the water in the ghetto?" asked Ens's sister.

"What the protestors are angry about. The water quality in Arnysh neighborhoods," said the cook. "Milady."

Ens closed her eyes.

Ens opened his eyes.

"Do we own any of the land in the Arnysh ghetto?" he asked.

"Not much of it. Let alone anything to do with the water," said his sister. "Just a couple of apartment buildings with shops under them, I think. Don't ask me why they're bothering us. I couldn't sleep. Don't they have jobs?"

"Who should they be bothering?" asked Ens.

"Nobody?" suggested his sister. "Gods it's so early."

She was no help. Ens ate his breakfast as quickly as he could without getting a reprimand for his table manners and went looking for his mother.

Lady Riawae was looking disgustedly at her telegrammer. There were message slips in a heap on the desk for the maid to deal with later. "Hello, Ens," she said. "Did they wake you up too?"

"I'm sometimes up this early anyway. Look, who does handle the water in the Arnysh ghetto? If it's not us?"

"It's not us. Honestly, Ens, at this hour of the morning? I wouldn't be complaining if whoever it was had poisoned those people thoroughly enough to keep them out of our yard in the first place. Doesn't it rain? Can't they be bothered to walk a few blocks to get water from the fountain? Parasites." And she started tapping out another message to the police.

Ens wanted to go and see Niomah, ask her, but he didn't think he'd be able to go anywhere soon. He couldn't get the driver to take him past the throng and if he tried to walk the protestors might decide he'd make good target for their frustrations, and there were a lot of them. He went to a window closer to where they were clustered. Niomah wasn't among them, or he might have tried going out anyway. Probably she was already on her way to Sanuar's.

"Mother?"

"What is it, Ens?"

"Can I use the telegrammer when you're done? If I'm not going to be able to visit Sanuar today."

"Oh, of course. Here, you can have it now, the police aren't budging any further," sighed Lady Riawae, and she got up and swept away.

Ens consulted the code chart on the table and tapped out Sanuar's address. They had a telegrammer, he'd seen it. This is Ens. Please give Sanuar the telegrammer.

Sanuar

Niomah brought the telegrammer up to Sanuar. "Priceless artwork writing to you," she said. "Walked by mopping, saw. How does it work?"

Sanuar took it from her and peered at the message tape, then tore it off and put both it and the device on his desk. "You have to learn a code. There are more expensive ones that do written text but they only work if both people have them so they've not caught on - Ens's family might have one but we don't."

"You know the code?" asked Niomah, leaning her chin on his shoulder.

"Yeah. It's sort of tedious but not that complicated." Taptaptaptaptaptaptap. This is Sanuar. What is it?

There was a delay, then more tape spooled out. I may not be able to come over today. There are protestors outside my house. Are you alone?

Taptaptap. Niomah's here. Otherwise alone. Protestors?

"What are you saying?" Niomah mumured.

"I said it was me and asked what it was - said you were here and no one else, asked about the protestors."

Ens's reply came: Reportedly they're angry about the water quality in the Arnysh ghetto. Mother says we don't have anything to do with the water but I don't know who does.

"Well, of course," said Niomah. "No one wants job of getting us water. Doesn't work at all, stinks, salty, always something. Who wants to fix it? No one. Not Lady Riawae, not anyone. That is why such fuss? About water?"

"I guess," said Sanuar. Niomah says it's not clearly anyone's job. There's been trouble in her neighborhood from soldiers last night. He told her what he was writing as he wrote it.

Delay, delay. Is she okay?

"I'm not hurt, priceless artwork," murmured Niomah. Sanuar tapped that out for her, appended she says, and added But she was scared.

Delay. If the water's always a problem, why now?

"I don't know," Niomah said.

I'm going to ask my parents, Sanuar tapped. About that and about if she can switch to being a live-in housekeeper if she needs to.

Look after her, Ens replied.

Niomah

Sanuar's Learned Parents did not know anything about the situation in the Arnysh ghetto except that it was "a travesty", when they returned home from the evening and Sanuar asked. They said they would have to think about letting Niomah live in their house. His Learned Eminence drew up a work permit for Niomah and signed it. When Sanuar saw how she clutched at it he got his father to make the paper glow so it would be properly unambiguous. Niomah pinned it to her sleeve so she'd be able to walk home and show it to the police without having to put her hands in her pockets. She snuck a kiss from Sanuar and walked out.

It was a hot night and the water she had on her back was heavy. She took showers at Sanuar's house every morning when she showed up melted in the eastern sunshine and then enjoyed a day in the mage-cooled house; but it was still just as long a walk back and while her family's apartment technically contained a shower it wouldn't improve the situation. (Once her brother's friend's house had burned down and the friend had stayed with them for a night and had tried to use it before anyone was awake and the rash took days to go away. Niomah was not sure if they were still friends.) Gross. Gross and frightened and tired. If she made a sudden movement when she reached the men at the corner would they make her abruptly less gross and frightened and tired or would they make it worse?

She reached the first checkpoint. It was dark; the soldiers had bright lights that hurt her eyes, but her permit glowed and they didn't need to swing them around to read it. They let her by, but not without one of them landing a swat on her rear that made her eyes sting.

Do not try to scratch his eyes out do not scream do not kick him in the balls do not cry do not do not do not just go just go just go -

She didn't manage not to cry, but she went on, their chuckles burning her ears.

The other checkpoints passed without comparable incident. She got home. Her mother almost cried when Niomah handed over the water. "Your brother was fired," she sobbed in Arnysh.

In context - oh, damn, the bakery job, the other way they got water. What were they supposed to do, send the half-blind little one to the fountain to stand in line and walk six blocks, twice a day -? The fired brother would have to look for new jobs and couldn't do it...

"It's okay, I'll carry more tomorrow, I can do it, Mama," Niomah said. If it came down to it Sanuar might get her some kind of cart to put jugs in and who cared if it was conspicuous favor from her boss's son. See what her father cared about Niomah's honor when the soldiers did what they liked anyway, see if he could resent her lost boy when his entire family was going thirsty.

Niomah's mother divided up the water so very very carefully and everyone had their share to drink (some put away for whenever they got home from work) and they had just enough left to make rice that was cooked with the syrupy peaches intended for dessert in it to stretch the liquid.

When Niomah's grandfather hobbled home from the liquor store where he worked, almost an hour late and his cane missing and a bruise on his cheek, he knew what all the fuss was about.

"A couple of our boys from two blocks over tried to break into the place where the plumbing all connects up," he said, eating his peachy rice. "And swap some pipes around. Show the rich people what we live with. But they got caught and the cops killed them both, didn't even arrest them, those boys are dead. Their friends and parents protested at the police station, one of them is dead too now, the rest arrested or beaten - it's gone from there."

Niomah's recently fired brother looked like he was probably going to find a protest to join too with his new free time that he ought to be using to find new work. She didn't like the look on the half-blind little one's face either. They will get tired and find other things to do and leave us alone if we wait she didn't say. They will only stop when they are satisfied we are done stepping out of line. Wait and earn money and save it up and we can get out one day but -

Niomah shivered. Such thoughts from someone who had wondered an hour earlier what it would take to get a soldier to murder her so it wouldn't be her fault. She stayed silent.

Ens

Sanuar, do you still have the telegrammer?

Pause. Pause. Yes. Niomah's gone home, it's just me.

We finally got a news dispatch here. They're not telling us everything, but I think a couple of Arnysh kids broke into the plumbing exchange. I don't know enough about plumbing to say if they could've even done anything - you'd think the problem with the ghetto water would be farther downstream than that - The telegrammer cut him off when Ens got that far and she had to start a new message. but then they were caught and the cops thought they saw weapons, I'm not sure if they really did or if they were just tools or something, and killed them.

That's awful.

Ens scowled at the telegrammer. It was not very thorough about communicating emotional tone. She'd have to fill in from knowing Sanuar. Yeah. And now they're focused on making the Arnysh shut up and sit down instead of just fixing their water and apologizing about the kids like they would if it was anyone else.

I think those exchanges don't need mage labor to do basic changes but that doesn't mean I know how.

Could you find out? Tell your father you want to do plumbing with magic if your test comes out positive next time?

Pause. Pause. Ens got up and paced until the telegrammer spit out more tape and then she threw herself back into the chair to read the reply.

Probably.

I know how to do makeup, Ens said. I could make us pass for Arnysh in bad enough light.

Why?

Ens's heart was stammering like a stage-frightened introductory schooler. If we get caught she tapped slowly, and she paused to look over her shoulder, making sure her parents and sister were not in evidence, and we look native we just get sent home and nothing happens. Message break. Water doesn't get fixed, soldiers keep attacking Arnysh people, maybe Niomah.

Pause.

Pause.

If we get caught and look Arnysh at first glance they murder a couple of rich Mainlander kids by accident and our parents get up and do something? Sanuar replied.

Yeah. We can leave Niomah all our stuff.

Pause.

Pause.

Pause.

Ens was a terrible person how had she even come up with this idea she was suggesting what amounted to the anemic version of a suicide pact she loved Sanuar and he shouldn't die but he shouldn't be sad either and he was sad sad sad at least Niomah would probably feel better if there was running water in her home and if the authorities would stop hounding her but Ens didn't know what to do for Sanuar besides -

Okay.

III: Sanuar

Sanuar

Sanuar studied plumbing.

"Water's not a particularly dignified specialty," his father had said, when asked.

"I'm late-onset - if I am at all -"

"If you are not a mage at all that will be the greatest disappointment of my entire -" Archmage Vayar shook his head. "Well, it's not likely, son, not with both parents -"

"I know. But I'm behind most mages, anyway, and water's easy, right? So I think I might want to take water as my specialty." Sanuar didn't actually have the first clue what he wanted to take as his specialty. He felt kind of bleah about all of them. Water was reputed to be easy, and he could pick up secondaries later. It wasn't like he was committing to giving up something he loved the idea of learning in order to get his hands on a book about plumbing.

Sanuar studied plumbing in between prepping for his second mage test. Not that it really required prepping. His mother seemed inclined to fuss about it.

"We've already found someone whose birthday is half a year from yours to orient your mana," she said.

"That's good," said Sanuar, because she didn't want him to say if I even have any mana.

"And it's the simplest thing, dear, I don't want you to worry a bit."

"I'm not," he said, because he wasn't. That would require a lot of emotional energy, probably. She was worried and he wished she'd stop.

"It's the simplest thing, you'll just go in and hold his hands - it's Ninden, I know you like Ninden."

Sanuar hadn't found himself obliged to hang out with Ninden in weeks. Ninden spent his time on manufacturing mana spots and giving them to all his friends so they'd like him, and occasionally enchanting furniture to maintain a certain level of genteel poverty since his mage mother's accident. "Mm."

"And Ninden won't even be doing a speck of magic, it's really the simplest thing, you'll hold his hands and reach for your mana just like we explained when you tried this when you were little, it will be so easy, Sanuar -"

Nod, nod. It would be easy if it was there at all. Unless it was in fact possible to have mana and not grab it, at seven or seventeen, in which case Sanuar was guaranteed to screw it up, but there was no point depressing his mother with this prediction.

"And then your father says you think you want to do water? We can have some water ready for your mana to imprint on right then. But you have a whole year to pick secondaries, do give those some thought, Sanuar, don't be careless."

"I will."

If he lived that long.

Sanuar studied plumbing.

Ens

The protests didn't stay around Ens's house for very long. People peeled off, exhausted, arrested, too hungry or thirsty to keep going. First they stopped camping out overnight, then they thinned out and disappeared even during the day.

Ens had gotten as far as asking the cook to make a tray of drinks and sandwiches to bring out to the protestors before her father had demanded to know what she thought she was doing. She'd had to listen to a lecture about how those people out there were out-of-control, subhuman, and would hurt her if they saw her out there unprotected, yes, even if she was bringing them food, yes, even if she didn't personally control anything they were protesting about, they would just hate her and want to attack her, animals parasites trash - Ens had to flee to her room and cry when her father let her go. Niomah Niomah Niomah, Sanuar had better survive Ens's stupid stupid plan and marry her because damned if Ens was ever going to make her suffer through the Riawaes as in-laws.

The protests ended. Ens was free to go. Presumably huge numbers of Arnysh people were desiccating slowly in their ghetto but Ens was not the least bit inconvenienced and she caught herself holding her razor in the wrong grip twice and forced herself to put it down, wait, wait, go look Arnysh in the dark at the plumbing exchange and do something halfway useful with your lordly parasitic self -

Ens brought her makeup kit to Sanuar's.

She hid it under the bed. She pretended in front of Niomah that everything was normal. Niomah was not live-in, yet; Sanuar's mother had ultimately said no, they wanted that extra room for guests. So when Niomah left at the end of the day Ens would telegram her parents, ask to stay overnight, tell Sanuar's parents that she had permission whether she did or not. Sit up with Sanuar until dark, work her half-magic half-art on their faces, and go out with him. His house was easier to leave than hers.

They'd leave notes under Sanuar's pillow and Ens fully intended for Sanuar to come back and rip his up and telegram a copy of hers to her house so that it would look like she'd tapped it over herself rather than implicate himself in her death. Stupid plan. Stupid stupid -

Sanuar looked at her expectantly, after Niomah had kissed them goodbye.

And Ens blurted out, "Not yet."

"Why not?" asked Sanuar.

Reasons. Reasons that weren't because I'd rather go home and bleed out in the bath alone. He'd stop her, she was pretty sure, he'd do she didn't know what but something.

"Wait until your mage test," she said. Sanuar's problem was partly lack of direction, wasn't it? If he had mana when they checked again he'd be all set. He could take some predictable job and know exactly what he was doing with his day when he woke up in the morning, and marry Niomah and keep her safe, and forget all about Ens, goodbye Ens, isn't it sad, we were somehow under the impression that she was very attractive and valuable, so alas.

Sanuar put his head in Ens's lap.

"If you say so."

"I do say so." She brushed curls away from his face.

She left her makeup kit under his bed so she wouldn't have to smuggle it again. She stayed overnight in one of the guest rooms - not the one the Vayars were keeping Niomah out of, heartless bastards, give the poor girl someplace to sleep where she can have the basic creature comfort of a glass of water at midnight - and she stayed most of the next day and went home and did not slice her neck open no not yet not yet wait wait wait your plan is stupid wait until they're okay wait wait wait then.

Wait wait wait -

Niomah

It was almost Sanuar's birthday and he was probably going to be all magical after it and Niomah wanted to get him a lovely present. The fact that she was going to be doing this with the pocket money he slipped her notwithstanding. The trouble was she was going to have to figure out how to do this with the soldiers on her block familiar with the range of times at which she was likely to come home from work, who would want to know where she'd been if she came from a different direction or even fifteen minutes late. This was not enough time to browse and make a purchase, even if she didn't factor in time to be cornered by bullies who wanted to spit on the little Arnysh bitch or police who wanted to supplement the soldiers and question her about what she was doing out of her ghetto and inspect her little glowing note.

In a pleasanter world she could have taken Ens along and they could have gotten Sanuar birthday presents together. That seemed like the most perfectly conventional benefit of a three-straw situation to the point where Niomah wondered why such arrrangements were not more seen in shop advertisements: "Bring one boyfriend along while you both shop for the other!" Of course in a pleasanter world she would not be constantly wearing attention, valid target on her face all of the time and people observing such a message if she did choose to scrawl it on her cheek would not take the bait.

Niomah contemplated her options for being out of her home and able to buy a present. She could leave work early, if she spent less time flirting with her priceless artwork and her lost boy and instead actually cleaned all day. She could arrive late. She had been very punctual so far; would the Learned Sanuar's Parents take it amiss if she were tardy or left sooner than usual? She did not know and could not well inquire of Sanuar himself about the matter of how she might purchase something for him, not if she wanted to be a surprise. She could risk trying to go home later in the evening than normal, hope that the soldiers didn't perceive her as a threat and weren't looking for something to nibble on just for the hell of it in the way they sometimes pawed at her as she went by.

She did not think she could very well wake up earlier than she usually did, not on the kind of sleep afforded by constant agitation on the streets outside. She did often wake up at four in the morning, listening to soldier dogs barking at some hapless person who was confused and senile and wandering, or who had wanted to go to the corner shop for overpriced hard candy to get their saliva flowing, or who tried to go across the street to check on their sick neighbor. But when she woke then it was with a kind of blind hatred for the entire universe that did not seem conducive to loving present-shopping.

She decided to risk the late return to the neighborhood. She could not lose her job. She still had an unemployed brother, still had to bring home water every day (Sanuar had given her a little cart, thank goodness), her grandfather had had to dip into family savings to get a new cane when his had been broken, and her sister-in-law was now pregnant. And it was her lifeline to Sanuar and through Sanuar, Ens. Could not lose the job. She would show up on time, every day, she would leave when she had always left, every day, and she would go past the guards whose names she knew and try to smile at them and hope they didn't shatter her water jugs or slap her or haul her into an alley to "search" her.

Of course this prospect was terrifying, so she kept putting it off.

And then some idiots, presumed Arnysh, blew up the bridge.

Sanuar

Niomah didn't come to work the day before Sanuar's birthday.

Sanuar noticed that she didn't bring up his breakfast; he wandered down to see what was going on. Maybe the cook was ill and Niomah was throwing something together and this was taking a bit longer.

The cook was there and his breakfast was waiting for him on the table. His parents were already eating.

"Where's Niomah?" he asked.

"Who?" asked Sanuar's father.

"The housekeeper," said Sanuar's mother. "I don't know."

"Oh, the housekeeper. The ghetto's sealed up tight. Nobody's going to come out of there for a while," said the Archmage, turning a page in his news dispatch. "Don't worry, whenever they do whatever it is they're doing to pacify the troublemakers she can still have her job. I don't want to have to find someone else, she does fine work."

"...What?" said Sanuar.

"Some Arnysh blew up the bridge. I assume it wasn't Nimah."

"Niomah. She isn't the blowing up bridges sort," said Sanuar.

"So I assumed. But they have to figure out who did blow up the bridge and make sure they're not going to do it again, eh?"

"...Father. Niomah brings home water every day. The water there is undrinkable. If they can't leave what are they going to do?"

The Archmage blinked. Then he laughed. "Well, I guess I know what you're going to do with your mana when you get it tomorrow. I'll take you up to the weather tower! You can make it rain. Very public-minded of you."

"I can't learn to make it rain fast enough for nobody in there to die of thirst! You -" Sanuar's mind spun. "You don't want to have to hire a housekeeper over again, I know you don't either of you do water but you know people who -"

"We know three people who do water, they're all also Archmages," said Mother, "and the Archmages have been strictly enjoined not to interfere with the situation in the ghetto at all. I believe the idea is that they won't hide the terrorists if this will cause them to get too thirsty. It should keep the whole mess short, at any rate. It would be something of a sneaky move to even have you doing it, Sanuar."

"And what if I don't even get mana -"

"You'll get mana," said Father, sipping his coffee. "Mark my words. You'll be a mage this time tomorrow."

"And while I'm trying to learn to control the weather people will die."

"Haven't they heard of boiling water?" wondered Mother. "You'd think they would get around to trying it."

"Sometimes the plumbing doesn't work at all!"

"Really?" she asked with mild interest. "Then they ought to be able to find the terrorists pretty quickly, and then I'm sure they'll let the Arnysh out to their various occupations."

Sanuar stared at her, then quickly averted his eyes and bolted down his breakfast and fled to the telegrammer.

This is Sanuar. Please give the telegrammer to Ens.

Ens

"Here," Ens's sister said, leaning into his room with the telegrammer in one hand. "It's for you."

Ens took it. This is Ens. What is it?

The reply was almost immediate, and had short followups; apparently Sanuar was too distressed to send in longer bursts. The ghetto's locked down. Pause. Niomah's inside. Pause. Nobody's allowed to leave. Pause. Even to get water. Pause. Even if I'm a mage -pause- I can't make it rain -pause- not fast enough -pause- we need to go tonight -pause- tonight.

Repetition being the only way to produce emphasis, on a telegrammer.

Ens looked at the message tape.

He read it over again.

Of his various terrible ideas, going and trying to fix the plumbing and, if they failed, at least having a chance of arousing their parents' ire against the soldiers enforcing the lockdown, seemed the least bad.

I'll come over.

Niomah

This had been her last day to buy Sanuar's present.

Now she couldn't even go to work and rinse the wasteful disgusting sweat off her skin and drink three glasses of water and kiss her lost boy, let alone buy him a present.

There was no bridge to jump off anymore. It wasn't going to require nearly that much will to get herself killed.

Hell, it wouldn't even be her fault.

What Niomah didn't think she could bear was watching her family dry up with her. Her oldest sister had gone without a drink of water at home last night. She worked in a plant nursery and could drink from the hose, though she wasn't allowed to take jugs with her, and she'd let the others have her glassful. Now she was trying not to cry and lose more water.

Hell, her sister-in-law was pregnant. Niomah could not stand to watch a pregnant woman die. Or to watch her body collapse in around the baby because this was not a world fit for babies.

And if Niomah could not even buy her lost boy a birthday present there were no bright things to struggle on for anyway.

She was going to sneak out after dark, she decided. She would tell her family she was going to try to get water, and she would go out through the back door and under the fence, and she would try to get water, but she was also going to come back with something nice for Sanuar if she died trying.

In the meantime she waited in the apartment with everyone else, too hot, too thirsty, too angry, too ragged around the edges.

She would find him something nice and he would tell her she was silly for having tried and she would kiss him and probably think of something very funny to say that she couldn't call to mind from this misery pit at this time.

Ens

She tried to act normal. She and Sanuar played board games. She ate dinner with the Vayars and made small talk about the state of their garden (thriving) and the upcoming masquerade ball at which they would next see her parents (thrilling).

Night fell.

She stayed up with Sanuar. They pled special exception to Sanuar's bedtime on the grounds that he would be a mage the next day. (They didn't say "probably".) His Learned Eminence laughed and ruffled Sanuar's hair and let them.

They waited until the Archmage and his wife were fast asleep, and the live-in servants too, and then they turned on all the lights in Sanuar's room, and wrote notes to their parents, which Sanuar went off to hide someplace they wouldn't be found right away even when they were noticed missing - and Ens got to work.

She couldn't make them look really Arnysh in full daylight. She didn't have that much paint. But she could deepen shadows, and gel Sanuar's curls, and wear a hat over her own paler hair, and she could pencil in key features around their eyes and noses and lips and chins and then smooth them out, and then she turned off most of the lights -

"You're sure you're not a mage?" breathed Sanuar.

"Not a bit," said Ens. "Not even worth testing me for late onset. This didn't even take boxed glamers, it's really just painting, I have a lot of practice. You think it'll do?"

"I think so," Sanuar said. "Okay. Let's get out of here."

"Don't touch your eyes," warned Ens. "Most of the rest will stick if you don't rub at it but don't touch your eyes."

"Okay," said Sanuar, and he led her out of the house, tiptoe-careful, and they started the long walk.

Don't die don't die save Niomah let me die but don't you die, Ens thought, following him closely.

"You know," Sanuar pointed out, when they'd been walking for about ten minutes, "you don't have to be along for this. I'm the one who knows plumbing. You already did my face."

"I'm coming," said Ens.

They walked.

"Why?" Sanuar asked.

"I can be your lookout," she suggested.

Sanuar looked at her over his shoulder - she was mildly impressed with her own work; she could tell it was Sanuar, but the streetlights weren't bright enough to make it clear that it wasn't a mysteriously Arnysh version of Sanuar. "You're sure you want to come?"

"Yes."

"We might die."

"I'll be your lookout."

"Ens -"

"Oh - and if I die and you don't please telegram my note to my house, say it's from me, it won't look any different -"

"Ens -"

"I'm coming."

"I know you're coming. Will the makeup be ruined if I kiss you?"

She blinked. "No."

And he kissed her. And they walked the rest of the way holding hands.

Niomah

She was out!

She was smug. And high on adrenaline. And alive, as opposed to dead. And she still had to figure out how to get back in but that was a separate problem. While most of the Arnysh people in the city lived in the ghetto, this was not the case with all of them; to anyone who did not personally know her family she now looked potentially like the sort of Arnysh who had Made It and lived somewhere the water worked. With the lockdown she actually noticed she was being harrassed less walking the streets looking for a likely place to get a present, because she wasn't, to the casual guesser, one of "those" Arnysh. (Getting water would be harder. Needing water was suspect.)

She had no idea what she wanted to get him.

So she walked, and walked, and stopped at the fountain and drank greedily, and then her musing about whether Sanuar would like a magic book or if that would be too much of a Sanuar's Learned Father kind of gift was abruptly derailed because what were her boyfriends doing there.

That was them. That was how they walked and that was the way they held hands and that was a hat Ens owned. They looked oddly swarthy in the lamplight but she hadn't gotten a good look at them. Had she misidentified them? What were they doing here?

Maybe she was wrong about who it was, but if it was really Ens and Sanuar, out for a moderately illicit midnight walk, she needed Sanuar to take her home and hide her in the garden shed until the lockdown was over, because on closer inspection the hole under the fence had a lot of old buried wire at the bottom. It hadn't made much noise scraping Niomah's belly when she'd squirmed through but it would make a scratching sound if she tried to push water over it in any container she could reasonably get her hands on. She could not get more water to her family without getting caught and killed, but if she could be somewhere else they could split the remaining food in the apartment fewer ways; that would keep them going a little bit.

She went after her boyfriends, but they were both taller than she was and she was used to them slowing down to accommodate her. She kept them in sight but wasn't close enough to call out without attention from bystanders. Why were they out so late? Was this a habit they'd developed without her? If they were going to have a cute midnight walks thing she wanted a different cute thing with each one of them to be fair.

And then they turned the corner and when she followed after they were gone.

There wasn't even anything here. Closed restaurants, houses -

Municipal Plumbing Exchange Facility.

The place was guarded! She walked past, swearing under her breath, lest she loiter looking at the building suspiciously long. How had they disappeared so fast? How was she going to get in after them and tell them not to do stupid things?

Sanuar

Sanuar hadn't realized there would be quite so many guards around the Municipal Plumbing Exchange Facility, but he supposed in retrospect that it made sense. Fortunately, he was expecting that it wasn't very likely he'd survive the night, and had therefore taken the liberty of swiping a few of his father's spell beads in anticipation of never having to hear about his displeasure.

"You didn't tell me you were going to turn us ghostly," Ens said, when he'd pulled her through the wall.

"I didn't know I'd have to. I had them in case we needed them to get in," Sanuar said.

"Do you have more?"

"Not ghost ones," said Sanuar. "But when I was getting these I found what's probably Father's intended birthday present, and I took that, and it'll help with the pipes."

"When did you even do this?"

"When I hid the notes. They're in the bottom of the bag of taro in the kitchen, if you need to get them out without me."

"I will not -"

"Just in case."

Ens growled.

"We probably want to go downstairs," Sanuar added.

They went downstairs. And there was an absolutely massive labyrinth of pipes.

"I'm surprised there aren't any guards inside the building," remarked Sanuar.

"Ghost spells are outrageously expensive," said Ens. "Which you'd know if you'd ever had to go into a magic shop, I suppose. Nobody they know to be worried about can afford them."

"Still. I guess I'll get started. You're going to be my lookout?"

"Yeah. What other spells do you have?"

"I have a shouter and a couple of water spells from my early birthday present. That's all."

"Give me the shouter. You might wind up going too far in there for me to yell."

Sanuar gave her the shouter bead and went into the maze.

Niomah

Stupid boys stupid boys stupid boys. Niomah had circled the block twice. She was sure she'd be recognized by the guards if she did it a third time. Stupid boys, stupid boys.

She could not fight, sneak, or talk her way past the guards; they were alert and there were no quietly overlooked holes under any relevant fences.

...But it was a plumbing facility.

Niomah made a face, but she stalked along looking for sewer grates.

Eventually she found a storm drain. It would not be comfortable, it would not be clean, but it was not bolted down tightly. She made sure no one was looking, and she got the cover off and climbed down the ladder into the dark.

It was pitch black, but she found a wall and shuffled along, relying on her sense of direction and the fact that this did have to lead to the place. (Didn't it?) (If it did why weren't they guarding it? Were they short on guards because they had the ghetto surrounded or did they not think of it or was she wrong and about to take a misstep into a waterfall and float away to the reservoir?) (That was pretty similar to jumping off a bridge. She could deal with that, although she hoped the stupid boys would stop whatever stupid thing they were doing even if she did not personally tell them.)

And eventually there was a flicker of light.

Niomah climbed up another ladder and peered up and through this grate there were a great many pipes.

And her lost boy, peering at them.

"Sanuar!" she hissed.

She startled him so badly that he fell over and clonked his elbow on a pipe. "Niomah?"

"No, the Duchess Mother! Of course it is me, what are you doing!"

"Trying to figure out all these pipes," said Sanuar sheepishly, getting on his hands and knees to undo the clasps holding the grate down and let her out. "Where does this go?"

"Grate in street. How did you get in?"

"Ghost spells -"

Niomah's jaw dropped.

"I stole them from my father, and Ens has a shouter, I didn't have that kind of money lying around -"

"Money is not what I think! Bringing water to ghetto invisible walking through things -"

"...Oh."

"Oh! Stupid boys! Where is Ens?"

"She's keeping watch, over there -" Sanuar pointed. "I don't have any more ghost spells, though. We can get out through your grate."

"Yes. And not get my stupid boys killed! And listen to very angry father shouting about ghost spells!"

"...But first I want to try to fix the pipes."

"Yes," grumbled Niomah, "all right, do, fix pipes, smart pipe fixing stupid boy."

"Sorry," mumured Sanuar, putting the grate back over the hole in the ground.

"And! And why are you done up like my uncle!"

"Ens did it. If we got caught and they killed us, uh, our parents would be mad."

"Mad at who!"

"The soldiers."

"The soldiers and those animal Arnysh making trouble complaining getting nice Gath boys in such a bad trouble," snarled Niomah. "Always blame Arnysh! Grasshoppers eat crops, blame Arnysh! Crowded mall! Blame Arnysh! Always!"

"...We'll wipe it off before we go."

"Yes you will. But fix pipes."

"I'm not totally sure what to do," Sanuar admitted. "I could break a lot of things. I could even fix some of the things I could break. I just don't know how to put them back differently, not without magic."

"Well, too bad it is not tomorrow, then. Could wait here until it is tomorrow?"

"No, I need the stuff they have set up for the test -"

And then Ens's shouter went off.

Sanuar

Niomah shrieked at the top of her lungs.

Sanuar grabbed her by the hand and took off; he didn't really know his way around but his eyes were probably better adjusted to the light and he'd seen some of it on his way inward. He almost yelled Ens's name, then thought better of it and yelled instead, "Artwork?"

"Here!" called Ens. "They saw me!"

Sanuar veered towards her and caught her other hand in his and then turned and ran some more.

"What do we do?" moaned Niomah, panting. "Back down -?"

"Did anyone see you go in it?" Ens asked.

"Don't think so."

"Then y- AUGH -"

Vents opened up and mist poured into the room. Whether this was scheduled or the guards trying to hinder the intruders Sanuar didn't know. Ens coughed; Niomah gasped. Sanuar couldn't see a thing. He had the water spells, but they'd been intended to keep the water in the pipes instead of flooding the basement when he started disconnecting things; he couldn't do anything with the mist that way.

"STOP WHERE YOU ARE AND WAIT FOR APPREHENSION," said a booming voice from nearer the entrance.

Sanuar squeezed his girlfriends' hands.

"Wish it was tomorrow," muttered Niomah.

"It's after midnight," said Ens, rubbing condensation off her watch and squinting at it from up close.

"DO NOT RESIST ARREST," roared the voice, closer, approaching.

"That doesn't help," said Sanuar, "I need to hold hands with someone with a birthday half a year off from mine -"

Niomah was suddenly clenching his hand very tightly. "Mage?"

"They don't have to be, but -"

"Hold my hands."

"Your birthday was two months ago!"

"No it wasn't. Hold my hands."

Sanuar dropped Ens's hand and took Niomah's other one -

It was the easiest thing in the world.

There it was, deep and hiding and just about ready to come out -

Sanuar pulled.

And he reached for the water all around them. This, see, he told his mana, look, it's your favorite thing, and the brand new mana, being very impressionable, believed him instantly.

"Did it work?" Ens asked in his ear, her hands on his back. He was still holding tight to Niomah's.

"Yeah," Sanuar breathed.

"Now what?" Ens asked.

Sanuar cleared the mist out of their way and started rushing them through the maze of pipes again. "Now we get out of here."

"Look," said Niomah, as they skidded to a halt at the end of a path and veered left.

"Timrar?" asked Sanuar.

"Street in ghetto. Old fountain on it, doesn't get water any more. Water in that pipe?"

"Not right now," said Sanuar.

"Time to fix it before we run run run?"

Sanuar gathered the mist and clustered it around the guards chasing them thick enough that they'd have trouble breathing if they tried to do anything strenuous. Like run. "Maybe."

He took one of the stolen water spells, and cast it, and wrenched open a likely-looking valve. With the pressure under control he could twist open the Timrar pipe and steal a connector from another empty pipe and eventually -

"There," he said. "I think that's got it."

"STAND DOWN," snarled a frustrated guard.

"Nope," whispered Ens, and they ran back to Niomah's sewer grate and ducked into it, Sanuar remembering to close it behind them.

Niomah led the way and they came up in the street, damp and panting.

Across the street was a man with a dog who didn't look at all interested in reporting them to the police. The place was otherwise deserted.

"We've got to get this makeup off," said Sanuar. "If someone thinks we're Arnysh and we don't leave corpses -"

"Right, right," and Ens reached into her pocket for some kind of debatably magical cleaning cloth and wiped off Sanuar's face and then her own.

"And we must get away from this grate," said Niomah, hauling herself to her feet.

They all went briskly in a random direction, trying to calm down and not look suspicious.

Ens

"What," asked Ens, "are you even doing out of the ghetto? If you weren't in it when it locked down why didn't you go to Sanuar's -?"

"Was in," said Niomah. "Snuck out."

"You could have died," breathed Sanuar.

"Oh, who is talking? Would have died in there, no water. Lost boy, hide me in garden shed? Cannot bring water back, it would make noise, no more ghost spells."

"I - of course," said Sanuar. "I can probably get away with it for at least a little while, I don't know how often I'll be able to get away from magic lessons now but there's the garden hose -"

"Good. Maybe fountain in Timrar working, maybe not, better if I am not there eating everyone's rice. And you will be in so much trouble about the spells -"

"Well, yes, but I think he'll be too glad I'm finally a mage to actually strangle me or anything," said Sanuar. "I think I'm going to pretend this didn't happen and just try to look like I'm finding my mana for the first time, when they test me. I'll - ugh, I don't know what I'll say about the spells -"

"Were the ghost spells and shouter near your birthday present?" asked Ens.

"In his kit, yeah."

"So, you went looking for your birthday present and found it and those too and took them intending to put them back to - I don't know, to feel like a real mage? - and went for a walk and dropped them and they got lost," said Ens.

Sanuar made a face. "I have never done anything like that in my life. He will buy it completely. I'm still probably going to be in trouble for the next few weeks, though."

"Rich parents," muttered Niomah.

"Are you going to be in trouble?" Ens asked Niomah.

"They knew I left. Will be angry about worrying, later, but not for leaving."

"And I'm in the clear, unless the guard saw me better than I think he did and can recognize me without the makeup on," said Ens. "Although if Sanuar's in trouble I might not be able to visit."

"I don't think they'll forbid me the telegrammer, anyway," said Sanuar. "I could be wrong."

They turned right twice and headed back for the Vayar house.

"I'm going to learn to make it rain," Sanuar mentioned.

"Good," said Niomah. "Even with the Timrar fountain, if it's there - good. Put jugs and funnels out, plenty to drink."

They walked. They walked. They took the detour around the destroyed bridge.

"Are you still sad?" Ens asked.

"Who?" asked Sanuar.

"Either. Both."

"...Not right now," Sanuar said slowly.

"Ask when less tired," groaned Niomah.

"...You?" Sanuar asked Ens.

Ens thought about this question.

"I can," he said, "imagine not being sad."

"Good," said Niomah. "Imagine not being sad, all grown up and done with parents being terrible and we will all live in a house and have so much rain and damn damn damn still did not get Sanuar birthday present."

"You were going to get me a birthday present?" asked Sanuar incredulously. "While you were - besieged?"

"Don't know word, don't care, was going to buy present. Still birthday, still time... everything closed now..."

"Please," said Sanuar, "for my birthday, all I want is -"

"You can sign mine when we get back to his house," sighed Ens.

"- is for you to be safe and not dying somewhere because people are terrible," says Sanuar. "The garden shed will do. For my birthday please hide in the garden shed."

"Will. Will also give Ens some balances and sign his present," said Niomah, and then she checked for witnesses and then kissed them both, Sanuar and then Ens, on the cheeks.

Ens put her arm around her and kissed the top of her head.

"Happy birthday, lost boy," murmured Niomah.

Ens imagined living in a house with just the three of them and no sneaking and no wondering if Niomah was thirsty somewhere inaccessible and no hiding her dress in the back of the closet under everything else.

Sanuar was a mage and he could probably fund this by himself, in a year or so, even assuming maximal parental evil.

Ens smiled.

Consensus

"It was a suicide. I find it incredible that this is even in question," said the spokesperson for Consensus, Ltd.

"I find it incredible likewise, but from quite the opposite position," replied the Minister of Justice, "that being why it is in question, Ms. Sharpe. Please elaborate on why you believe the Prime Minister's death was not an assassination."

"Everyone should have a copy of the - good. As you can all see, the usage patterns show a substantial fraction of the Consensus participants advising Prime Minister Pham to kill herself. We don't deny this. But it's within the parameters of ordinary operation of the product, to which Dr. Pham voluntarily subscribed. Participants can advise subscribers to do anything they like. I myself have been advised through my own - admittedly lower-profile - Consensus feed to walk in front of a bus, to donate all of my money to the United Environment Initiative, to attempt to seduce actor/author Thomas R-"

"Thank you, Ms. Sharpe," said the Third Undersecretary of State, "but that is not quite the sticking point. Move along."

Sharpe recovered momentum and proceeded. "Apart from a large number of people suggesting it, there was no harmful interaction between our product and the late Dr. Pham. The delivery of suggestions from the participant base of Consensus is precisely what she signed up for. She was free to not sign up, free to turn off her feed if it disagreed with her, and free to ignore anything her feed said while it was running. She was not assaulted or battered. She was not even in the conventional sense driven to suicide. She was not, in a word, murdered."

"You understand, I hope," said the Minister of Justice, "that neither you nor the corporation you represent are being accused of committing this murder. That responsibility would lie with the instigators of the massed voting."

"Honored minister, I and Consensus resent the implication that our product provided even a murder weapon. Dr. Pham's cause of death was suicide by overdose."

"And yet somehow I wouldn't expect the pharmaceutical manufacturer to send such a vigorous defender," said the Minister of Justice.

"I'm sure you can appreciate the magnitude of the difference between Consensus and a company that makes painkillers, honored minister. Our product depends heavily on subscriber understanding of the intended uses, and if people think that if they pick up a feed they will be murdered as though with no chance for their own desire for self-preservation to intervene -"

"Your marketing problems are beside the point, Ms. Sharpe," said the First Secretary of State. "Honored ministers, distinguished secretaries, I move that we dismiss Ms. Sharpe. Allowing Consensus a platform was a mistake to begin with. I want to hear from the so-called community leaders."

There were murmurs; the council took a vote; Ms. Sharpe, disgruntled, was ushered aside and others took her place.

"The council acknowledges Mr. Clark and Mx. Renault," said the Second Undersecretary of State.

"And," said the Minister of Justice, "invites them to explain themselves."

Clark and Renault looked at each other. It was unclear whether they both wanted to speak first or both wanted the other to take over; regardless, eventually Renault spoke. "In the event," they said, "that the council determines that the Prime Minister was killed, the question of whether she was murdered per se is separate. We maintain that at no time did we or any of the other individuals acting under the banner of Free Thriving Tomorrow intend that Dr. Pham actually go so far as to harm herself. At worst the charge would be manslaughter, and we are prepared to contest even that."

"Gentlemen," said the Minister of Justice. The Second Undersecretary of State coughed. "...Gentlepersons," amended the Minister of Justice unsmoothly, "were you unaware of Prime Minister Pham's habits with regard to her Consensus feed?"

"We hadn't examined statistics," said Clark. "We didn't know how rigidly she - anyway, she had never tried to kill herself before, so we couldn't have known that she'd do that."

"The suggestion that she commit suicide had not previously attracted fifty percent of participants, let alone eighty-eight," said the Third Undersecretary of State.

"But we were not the first to suggest it," said Clark. "Only the best coordinated."

"Perhaps you would like to tell us why you coordinated to tell Prime Minister Pham to kill herself," suggested the Minister of Justice.

"It was a protest against the pardons she issued for the usury case last New Year's," said Renault. "We felt they were inappropriate and unresponsive to the magnitude of the harm caused by the perpetrators' predatory behavior against struggling families."

"It was symbolic," added Clark. "The victims of the usurers were harassed by the lenders night and day and led to believe that if they could not pay they were valueless. Pham spent a short period of time being told that she was not valued if she could not produce justice for those victims. Several of whom were themselves driven to suicide, which is why we went with that instead of the alternative proposal of demanding that she repay the victims' debts out of pocket."

"Suggesting," called Sharpe from the side of the chamber. "Not demanding."

"That will be all, Ms. Sharpe," said the Third Undersecretary of State.

Sharpe quieted.

"Are there," said the Minister of Justice, "further questions for Clark and Renault?"

There were, but only a few verifications about when and how they'd rallied their supporters to converge on the Prime Minister's Consensus feed all at once. They were shooed to the side as well.

The next person brought forward to speak was Pham's psychologist. She was in favor of calling it murder or at least manslaughter and seemed to have been coached, or at least rehearsed. "There is no way to overstate the mental burden of believing that most of one's society would prefer that one was dead," she said.

"So you think that Free Thriving Tomorrow was, in effect, armed and dangerous," said the Second Secretary of State.

"Yes. To deliberately inflict this mob of detractors on someone is the worst form of cruelty and gaslighting," said the psychologist. "To do it to someone who has devoted her entire adult life to serving the will of the people is willful violence. It's possible that under slightly better conditions she could have survived, but in what would in a conventional assault case be called the 'eggshell skull rule', the perpetrators must be held responsible for harm that resulted from their attempt to cause harm, not what would have resulted if she had been having a better day."

"Thank you," said the Minister of Justice. "Do you have anything else to add?"

The psychologist was out of index cards. "Er, no."

"The council will deliberate in private now," said the First Secretary of State. "Peripheral attendees, please wait outside."

Sharpe didn't have to be told twice. She went out to sit in one of the chairs in the hallway and pulled out her phone. Yep - all the elected officials in the room and two of the appointees - not, unfortunately, the Minister of Justice, but one of his assistants - were looking at their feeds. Their feeds were already thoroughly in favor of calling it a suicide. Nobody in the room with a feed had less than a 70% track record of acquiescing to strong feed suggestions.

Sharpe put her phone away.

An hour later, the deliberations were over. Sharpe (and Clark and Renault and other peripherals) were allowed in to hear the Minister of Justice render the verdict, which obviously didn't please him one bit.

Clark and Renault: formally reprimanded, but not charged; but their organization was going to be investigated for possible obligatory dissolution on a moderately obscure hate speech charge.

Sharpe: not even reprimanded. Consensus, Ltd.: not even a murder weapon.

Sharpe and the Minister of Justice turned out to be parked next to each other outside.

"I want you to know that I still think your product is vicious," the Minister told her.

"Our product puts constituent opinion in the hands of people who want and need it," says Sharpe. "You might as well say a career in politics is inherently vicious."

"I might," said the Minister of Justice.

"I think you'd like Consensus if you tried it. And you'd see that you can ignore it whenever you like," said Sharpe. "You don't even need to tell the application all of the options you have under consideration. Have you ever looked at - not even the feed, the preferences settings?"

"No."

"Here, let me show you. This is mine, here -" Sharpe walked him through the filters and the inputs and the style options and the spam catcher. "If all you want to see is opinions on whether you should have toast or eggs for breakfast, you can do that. Not that this would make participating in your feed very popular, so you might not get a good picture of the population you're serving, but you could still do it."

"You're trying to say Pham used it wrong?"

"I never advised her on how to set hers up, honored minister, but she certainly wasn't taking advantage of some built-in precautions that would have - kept some of the hostility at bay. Look, can I get you a free one-year trial? No hard feelings."

Sharpe eventually got him to download the app. She helped him set it up. She made careful note of his ID number. She made very sure that he knew how to open up his settings if he wanted; she sent him to some instructions on how to make one's feed popular enough to get statistical meaning out of it.

She watched him drive away.

She navigated to his profile, brand-new, unused for now, and bookmarked it.

Just in case.

Explorers

"And if you want to proceed with the authorization, just sign here -"

"Are you not set up to take deliberate intentions?" Nuan asked. "I don't think I've been asked to sign anything since I went to a Planetary Era theme environment."

"This process isn't designed to be streamlined and convenient, Ms. Zhang, and we aren't doing it for aesthetics. You'd be surprised how many people back out between picking up the pen and writing their names," he told her.

"I'm sure. I've told you dozens of times, I'm sure."

"Then if you want to proceed, you can sign there."

Nuan picked up the pen. She signed.

"Is that all?"

"You can still decline to complete the process at any time in the next twelve subjective minutes."

"You'd almost think you didn't want participants."

"On the contrary, we desperately need them, and the quality of our research would probably be better if we could accept everyone who was willing to turn up in the first place, but this is one of the few real hazards left. Every environment has programmed safeties and even if you wander somewhere near-lawless you're continuously backed up, but this - Of course it's bristling with warnings. Most people go indefinitely without running into anything really dangerous, now."

"Well, I still want to do it."

"I'm not allowed to thank you."

"Social pressure...?"

"Precisely."

Nuan snorted. "What happens in the next twelve - eleven? - minutes?"

"Your algorithm fork will be prepared, and the cognitive rearrangement will be installed, and the result will be held static and checked over. We won't run her without your final authorization."

"Do I get to meet her?" Nuan asked.

"That depends on how she turns out. This is dangerous in the extreme, Ms. Zhang, your fork may be severely damaged by the alterations involved. She may be in no condition to meet anyone."

"But if she's not?"

"If your results are within ideal parameters, yes, you will get to meet her - if results are slightly worse than hoped for, rather than dramatically worse to the point where we have to terminate the fork, we will invoke clause nine in the disclosure packet you said you read and either require routine visits from you to help study her or permission to run an unaltered fork of you-now under contract to render that assistance."

"I don't have enough demands on my runtime to begrudge you a couple hours a week. How long will it take until you know?"

"Subjective time?"

"For this environment, yes, I'm not leaving till I know either way."

"We can rule out the likeliest failure modes in just a couple of subjective-here minutes once a fork starts running. If she asks to be terminated or evinces a total inability to communicate in any way during that time you can go straight to your home environment, all done. If something else happens -"

"And you think it will."

"We have theoretical reason to think it may. This sort of thing is hard to be sure of in advance, hence your involvement. If something else happens, you may or may not be needed to figure out the details of what."

"Right. Are you even trying to do something specific?"

"Not at this stage. If you would like to wait for a later iteration -"

Nuan shook her head.

"I'm supposed to tell you that nearly eighty percent of applicants who get this far leave the project during this final stage."

"I'm not going anywhere," said Nuan. "...Can I meet other people's forks?"

"We have no particularly encouraging results, yet -"

"But some of them can talk and don't seem suicidal. Right?"

"Yes."

"Please?"

"I... don't see why not. But this is early in the project, we aren't doing the same interventions on any two subjects yet -"

"That's fine. Something completely unrelated to what you want to do with my fork will be fine."

"Then - I don't see why not. I'll call one up."

There was a brief subjective delay, and then there was a third person in the room with them, transferred in at the project runner's mental request.

Apparently this fork could not only talk, but express complex preferences, because he was presenting as though he were physically eight years old, and couldn't have started that way. He didn't speak immediately to Nuan or the project runner, though. He had one eye closed, and sat on the floor, on his own feet, knitting invisible fabric with invisible needles.

"Hello," ventured Nuan.

The fork nodded thoughtfully.

"What's your name?" she asked.

"What's your name?" he replied.

"I'm Nuan," she said.

Nod, nod, went the little boy with his imaginary knitting.

Nuan looked at the project runner.

"Sometimes he produces intelligible conversation," the project runner said. "We haven't worked out a pattern of when yet. We don't have any results that look like the kind of transformation ordinary people might want to make to themselves specifically, so far."

"Oh."

The boy transported out of the environment.

"Did he leave himself," Nuan asked, "or did you send him...?"

"He did," said the project runner. "I wouldn't have brought a subject here who didn't have the intelligibility to be dropped back into their environment at will."

Nuan nodded. "...Is mine almost ready?"

"Very nearly."

"What do you call them? By their originals' names, or...?"

"Yours will be called Ms. Zhang, just like you, until and unless she asks to be called something else."

"I decided in advance that I wanted the fork to go by Mei. But I suppose she might not remember that, or - something."

"The alteration for your fork is not expected to affect memories in particular, but we cannot make any confident predictions in this iteration of the experiment."

"Will she have the memories of the twelve minutes of fork preparation?" Nuan asked. Of this awkward conversation, this blandly designed environment.

"They will be included, but depending on the results -"

"Right." Nuan nodded.

She could still tell them don't run her, delete it, I changed my mind, I take it back.

Instead she waited out the last seconds of fork prep, thinking to - herself.

Hi, Mei. Maybe you'll turn up so miserable that nothing I signed or said means anything and they have to quit running you at your own request. Maybe you'll turn up and you won't be able to make any sense of my memories and this message won't mean anything. But maybe everything will go right for you and you'll get to play with a new kind of mind, so different we couldn't build it from scratch or get it by conventionally poking and prodding a standard human -

There's nowhere else to go, Mei, it's all been found and processed and turned into a substrate playground, and it's plenty nice, and some people have lots of fun wandering places other people have made for them, or sims of places as they were before anyone went tromping all over them, and some people don't seem to care about finding novel things at all, but it's not the same -

Whatever they do to you will be brand new, Mei -

You get to be an explorer.

"Run her," Nuan said when he asked.

And I opened my eyes.

Hubward

"You're not in your head," said Book.

"No, you're not in our head," said Holly impishly.

"People have tried going past the Barricade before, you know. Generally they die. Or they come back hobbling along on legs they swapped from trapped birds. Or they meet gakuoso and they spend the rest of their lives in waking false-sleep and if they make it to a city without being slurped up like oysters by klaonso, they have to be behind the dreamward forever, like children -"

"When we were children, we didn't need to be there," contradicted Holly.

"Yes we did, just not for all the same reasons. We still had to learn to drowse mice."

"Someone could have done that for us," scoffed Holly. "If they knew it would work."

"What does Crystal think about all this anyway?" Book asked. "Does Crystal want to go - there?" He gestured vaguely, away and down, hubward: miles away was the Waste. At the moment there was a tiny blue sun receding in that direction, and a larger white one approaching a bit clockwise of the blue.

I want to find jewels and scrolls and traitstones full of treasures, thought Crystal dreamily.

"Crystal wants to wear the Crown of the Frozen Queen in our hair and be the darling of the Kuigao National Library," Holly reported.

"You'd look ridiculous in a crown, even with Crystal's posture," Book said. "You're too short. You don't have a remotely royal nose. You know why I didn't ask anyone if I could take your nose with me when I moved?"

"Because you hate our body?" Holly asked snidely.

"That's not fair. Crystal doesn't hate my body; that doesn't mean she'd want to live in it."

"We are still keeping that secret from Lightning," Holly warned, before Crystal panicked and reminded her.

"He can't hear me."

"I know that. And you know you want to go. But you think Lightning will think you're irresponsible."

"Well, he will. I can't volunteer to walk my cohabitor into a swarm of demons just like that."

"Let me ask him. Go to sleep, Book."

"You'd better let Crystal ask. Lightning always liked her better."

"You've not been able to see me talk to him for harvests now. He likes me just fine."

No, Book is right, opined Crystal.

Holly ignored that. "And Book?"

"What, Holly?"

"You wouldn't even let me ask Lightning if you didn't want to go." She smiled; it showed all her teeth.

Book rolled his eyes and went to sleep; his cohabitor took over with one long blink.

"Hullo, Lightning," said Holly.

"Crystal?" asked Lightning.

"No, Holly. But you can talk to her, if you'd rather," Holly sighed.

"I'd rather," said Lightning

Holly rolled her eyes and faded back. She was still aware, but only through Crystal: she knew it when Crystal thought thoughts, but didn't feel Crystal press her hands together and sit up straight - or feel how Crystal felt about Lightning. (Holly thought feeling anything for Lightning was weird. His body hadn't taken even one trait from them when Book moved, but Book still lived there, and Book was their brother, and that made Lightning their brother too, as far as Holly was concerned.)

I didn't ask to like him, you know, Crystal thought at her sharply.

I know, I know.

"Hi, Lightning," Crystal said.

"Crystal," acknowledged Lightning, yawning. "Where are we?"

"On top of the art museum. Are you tired? I don't have any mice with me -"

"Not really tired, no, don't worry," Lightning assured her. "What are we doing here?"

"Holly dragged Book up to talk without anyone listening because she - well, me too, but I think Holly will be up front for much of it - wants to go past the Barricade. And find treasure and possibly fight demons. Small demons without such thick exoskeletons, I mean. We would have to run from anything like a tuifnka."

Lightning blinked at her. Crystal waited, neither smiling nor frowning, watching his eyebrows move. He used his face in a different way than Book did - Book was still unaccustomed to it, still tended to smile and purse his lips in the ways that had gotten the best results when people had looked at him and seen a girl. Lightning had never had that problem.

Tell him we can live off the land and bring plenty of mice, thought Holly. Tell him we'll be rich. Tell him, she adds with sudden inspiration, that we can't go without him.

"We can't go without you," Crystal said, but she thought, why won't you let me alone? Why won't you properly sleep?

I don't have to. No one would if they didn't have to.

I would.

This was probably true. Crystal was nearly able to truesleep - not quite, however much she wanted to, but she had the knack of it more than Holly, who was always at least dimly aware of their body. Book could truesleep completely even before he left them; this was almost the only reason it was expected to be safe for him to move in with someone who was born alone, like most people.

"When would we go?" Lightning asked.

Crystal smiled. "After a shopping trip and letting our parents know. What else would stop us?"

--Fourteen harvests ago--

"I'm not Holly!" Book screamed. "Stop calling me Holly!"

Yeah! thought Holly. Stop calling him Holly!

"Where is Holly, then?" asked the doctor patiently. He was wearing a blue robe, very distinguished. He had a mustache. Book wanted a mustache. If he had to keep living in Holly's body he could never grow one. The doctor looked smart; could he understand?

"Holly is sleeping," Book simplified, because no one ever understood if any of them tried to explain just being faded back. "I named myself Book. Holly's asleep. So is Crystal."

Only sort of, thought Crystal.

He's trying to help, thought Holly.

"Those are the two imaginary cohabitors she's invented," said Chime, one of their mothers. Book could tell it was Chime because she sighed those little puffy sighs. Couldn't Chime tell the difference between her daughters and her son?

"I'm not imaginary, and Crystal isn't either," snapped Book.

I didn't make up anybody! I don't need imaginary friends! I have real ones, fumed Holly.

Chime said, "We humored her, we asked her if she could prove it, the way they - it was horrible, treating her like a criminal - Cloud, my cohabitor, wrote that she tried hiding a cookie, when Holly admitted to being Holly, and then 'Crystal' could find it. But Holly doesn't think that's how adults work. Holly didn't expect me to remember this after Cloud went to sleep."

"We don't sleep like grownups," Book grumbled. "We're different."

"Well," said the doctor. "If Holly and - Crystal?"

"Crystal," said Book firmly. "Holly named her. She couldn't think of anything herself."

Just not anything good, thought Crystal.

"Our parents only named Holly, not me and her," continued Book. "I kept asking Cloud what my name was and she just said Holly, over and over, and I'm not Holly."

"If they're really asleep, then when they wake up, they won't be tired," the doctor said.

"We've been up for almost ten sands," said Book.

"Well, yes, your body has," the doctor said. "But grownups learn to drowse mice, so their bodies can be rested all the time. When Chime sleeps, Cloud is awake, and when Cloud is awake, Chime sleeps. If Book is awake, and Holly and Crystal are asleep..."

"If we learn to drowse mice," Book said, seizing on this idea. "If we do that and then we can keep our eyes open all the time, swapping around, then you'll believe us?"

Why didn't you think of that? Holly thought.

Why didn't you? Book thought back.

"I think that makes sense," said the doctor genially.

"Put our tiredness in a mouse for us, then, and we'll stay up," said Book.

Chime cut in. "She'll only invent another reason why she's different, when it doesn't work."

"I admit there's a possibility that if one of us drowses a mouse for her she could claim we didn't really do it," acknowledged the doctor.

"Teach us to drowse mice," Book commanded. "We can do it ourselves."

I'm best at troportation, objected Holly. I can already change colors on flat stuff.

"Teach Holly," amended Book. "She'll get it faster."

"Well, if you'll go to sleep and send Holly out," said the doctor patiently - why couldn't he be one of their fathers instead of Reed and Mountain? - "then I think Chime and I can probably make some progress on that."

Book faded back, but not all the way, even though he could, because he wanted to learn this too.

"I'm Holly," Holly announced, surging forward. "How do I make a mouse be tired instead of me? Teach me how now."

"You think she's - actually - naturally - she was just born with several souls -" Chime murmured.

"A great many things are possible," the doctor said.

Crystal started the hike awake. They weren't likely to run into anything dangerous early in the trip, and she and Holly were agreed that Holly was the fighter between the two of them. Book was awake, and he was ranging a little ahead, hauling himself around on his walking stick over the rocks. Her body was lighter, nimbler, and she hadn't picked up a branch yet. Crystal was carrying their mice in her backslung cage and Book had the food and the pure water. Their white fox Tiag - Book still claimed one-third ownership even since vacating the body Tiag recognized as her master - trotted along after.

"Demons don't eat animals," Crystal said. "Right?"

Book would have said to leave her at home, if they did, Holly pointed out.

"Tiag's going to be fine," Book said. "She doesn't have a soul. If she did the klaonso would've eaten it the first time she took a nap outside the dreamward."

"Klaonso aren't the same as demons with bodies."

"They all eat souls, Holly. Klaonso are just the only ones who can do it without physically attacking."

"Not Holly, Crystal. I can tell you and Lightning apart -"

"Oh. Sorry. I keep being surprised when I see you in front," Book said, looking over his shoulder. "Given that you have that enormous crush on Lightning, wouldn't you want to spend more of your wake time when he's out and not me?"

"I like him. But you're still our brother," Crystal said. "I don't want to just never talk to you again. I'm surprised Lightning could do it. You were his friend, before."

Book shrugged. "Everybody has to make tradeoffs, when it comes time to cohabit. Except you."

"We still miss you," Crystal said softly.

"I'm here," Book said.

"Right. Not here. I can't hear you thinking anymore."

"Would you want to hear me thinking ugh, ugh, ugh, I'm growing breasts? I think that's most of what you missed."

"No," she admitted. "I guess this is better. You were never all the way happy."

He was so uncomfortable all the time. I bet that's why he learned to go completely asleep! thought Holly in a flash of insight.

"I miss you too, sometimes," Book said. They came to a brook and started moving along it, looking for a spot with a solid place to jump to on the opposite side. "It's very quiet in here."

"If Lightning were the tiniest bit awake, I'd have to mind my chat," laughed Crystal softly.

Book shuddered. "I'm not going to talk you into telling him, certainly. What if he said swell, let's mix some properties?"

"He's not my brother!"

"He cohabits with me. That makes him -"

"Everyone else mixes body properties. You only moved your soul."

"Yes, well, everyone else is discarding one of the bodies when they move in together. I was leaving my original behind with two people still in it. I would've liked the eye color, maybe the feet, maybe the ears, but you're using them."

"Lightning didn't get more related to me when you moved."

"Did I get less related to you?"

"No," mumbled Crystal. "You were - oh, never mind."

Book sighed. He found a good place to jump. They leapt, with Tiag clinging to Crystal's shoulders. Tiag was domesticated with a troport from a dog, but unlike dogs, she climbed around on people in a manner very like a kitten.

Tiag barked.

"What?" Crystal said quietly.

Demon? This close to home? Holly thought.

Crystal drew their knives, and Holly woke up as much as she could without sending Crystal to sleep just yet, trying to help process the forest. The nearest sun was a low red one, and it made the ground not shaded by dark-leafed trees look splattered with blood. Book had a string of miniature spears dangling from his belt; he plucked one, troported sizes between it and his walking stick, and held the weapon ready.

"Maybe you'd better let Lightning," murmured Crystal.

"Not tired enough," Book muttered back, maneuvering to stand with his back to hers.

Crystal shuddered. She didn't know how Book had given up that ability, in spite of everything - to fade back at any moment, instead of accumulating mental fatigue over sands and sands first. She didn't want to fight a demon. If one appeared, Holly would do it.

Tiag didn't bark again. She just clung to Crystal's shoulder and sniffed the air with her little black nose.

"False alarm?" Book said, after the still and red-lit forest dislodged no threats in their direction.

"Maybe," Crystal said.

They pressed on. Book used the spear as his new walking stick, since it was already grown.

--Thirteen harvests ago--

"Cloud?" Holly said.

"You need to walk Tiag yourself," Cloud said.

"Crystal did it. It's something else."

"Well, what is it - um - Book?" Cloud was not good at guessing. They had three different wristbands, now, but they faded in and out quickly enough that they sometimes didn't bother. Their black hair was too short to style differently depending on who was talking. They could always just tell people.

"No, I'm Holly, but it's about Book." Book himself was as deeply asleep as he could get. He did not want to have this conversation; he wanted Holly to do it for him, so she would.

"Why isn't your sister talking to me herself, then?" asked Cloud.

"That's the thing. Book is a boy."

Cloud blinked. "Holly, all three of you share a girl body, just like me and Chime share a woman body."

"Yes, I know, but Book doesn't like it." And it was getting worse as they grew older. Book went to sleep every time they needed a bath, and spent his hoarded suns on ugly androgynous clothes now, instead of the namesake books he used to collect.

"I suppose if I could adjust to there being three of you at all, I can start calling him your brother, then," said Cloud amiably.

"Book wants to move out," Holly said. "Into a boy."

"Oh." Cloud sat back. "I - I don't know if that's doable. You aren't the same as everyone else."

"We know that," said Holly. "But can you find someone who knows about it? And ask?"

"I suppose," Cloud said. "I'll let you know. I suppose if he wants to do that he'll have to find someone to move in with."

"I guess we have to go back under the dreamward, then," sighed Holly.

"Maybe you'll make some friends," said Cloud.

The red sun marched counterclockwise and no replacement was yet close enough to properly illuminate the forest. Holly climbed a tree, and spotted a swift green sun that was coming up behind them, high in the sky.

"Stop here for dinner?" asked Lightning. "Follow the green sun when it gets closer?"

"Yes," said Holly. "Do you need a mouse?"

"Yeah," Lightning said. "My feet are killing me."

He should have let me pick out better shoes for him, fussed Crystal.

Holly moved the mouse cage from her back to where she could reach it, and picked a gray-furred one up by the tail. Lightning took it from her hand, focused, and offered it back. Holly replaced it, and took a fresh one for her own aching knees and complaining heels, as well as accumulated fatigue. The discomfort drained away as soon as she focused on it, and herself, and the point of contact between her hand and the mouse's tail. The mouse yawned when she put it away.

"Rocks or tree bark?" Lightning asked.

"Rock's easier to troport," Holly said. "Tree bark makes for easier portion sizing. Your call, I can do either one. Didn't you go on Wilderness Survival?"

Lightning picked up a couple of meal-sized rocks and handed them to Holly, who rubbed dirt off them with the heel of her glove. "Yeah," he said. "We went rimward, though, along the canyon. There was fruit."

"You took a Wilderness Survival class that didn't cover troporting edibility," said Holly, staring.

"I told Crystal about it once."

He did, thought Crystal, last planting, in the butterfly garden.

"I'm not as asleep as you get, when she's in front. That doesn't mean I'm paying attention," Holly said. "Hand me a raisin, and one of whatever you want after I've done my rock."

Lightning unpacked a sticky, dehydrated grape. "Do you want your checklist?" he asked.

"Uh, lemme see if I remember everything on it," she said, closing her eyes. "Edibility. Large and small nutrition. Texture - in the case of the raisin, I have to open it up and touch the inside to not just get lots of solid peel. Taste."

"Smell," Lightning added.

Yes, you need your checklist, Crystal thought.

"Well, that one's not really necessary anyway," said Holly, but she let him hand over the checklist anyway. She set her rock on one knee, and touched it with one hand, and held the raisin between thumb and forefinger of the other and split it open with her nail. Carefully, she turned the rock into a decent facsimile of the raisin, and the raisin into a raisin-shaped pebble, as inedible and nutritionally worthless and hard and mineral-flavored as the rock.

"Is any of it necessary? I could just port sizes. I can do sizes, when it's just yea big," Lightning said.

She bit into her raisin, then tore off a raisin-sized piece of it and passed it to Lightning to be put away again. "Well, sure, you could just blow up a peanut or whatever, but it's got as much nutrition as a tiny one if you do it like that. People have starved to death filling up on giant food they made by shortcuts, you know. You're lucky you have me. What can I get you?" she asked.

Lightning passed her a crumb of the dry bread, and his sponge.

"Pampered housedweller," teased Holly. "You want nice bread."

"Can you make it or can't you?"

"Yeah, if I pour water over the sponge first." She held her raisin in her teeth and performed the necessary operations to trade the essential features of bread and stone, and then to move moisture from the sponge to the crustless loaf. She handed the dried sponge and the puff of bread over to Lightning.

He bit. "This is terrible," he said.

"I'm not a chef. It'll keep you going. There's a reason we don't eat food made of rocks when we don't have to carry everything we eat, anyway," said Holly. Her raisin tasted fine to her.

Maybe you forgot a step on the bread, Crystal thought.

I did not. He's just got a housedweller palate, that's all. "Don't forget to save a crumb of it, since you like it so much," she said.

The green sun began to shed appreciable light over them when Holly had finished her raisin and Lightning was through with his bread. They got up to chase it hubward.

--Twelve harvests ago--

That one, thought Book. I want to look like that.

You want to be a towhead with arms as long as some people's entire bodies? Holly thought.

Yes, thought Book firmly.

"Hello," Crystal said.

The blond boy looked up from his book. "Hi," he said.

"I'm Crystal."

"I've heard of you," he said.

Crystal sighed. "Everyone seems to have."

"It wasn't anything bad. Just odd. You're already cohabiting and you come to mixers anyway."

"What's your name?" Crystal asked.

"Lightning."

"I'm Crystal."

"I know. You said," says Lightning.

"Oh. Sorry," said Crystal, cheeks warming. "And my cohabitors are Holly and Book."

"That sounds familiar," said Lightning.

"We come to mixers because Book wants to move out," Crystal said.

"But you're a - you're girls," said Lightning.

"Book isn't."

"How's that meant to work?" Lightning asked.

Crystal shrugged. "It just happened, is all. So he wants to move out of us and into somebody like you."

Lightning looked at the little list of things to be concerned with that they always handed out at mixers. "Responsible, communicative, keeps promises, shares my risk tolerance?"

"Yes and yes and yes, and what's your risk tolerance?" Crystal asked.

"Heh, that's funny, he's got references already," mused Lightning under his breath. "I don't want to volunteer for the navy or anything. But... I don't know, I'd work it out with my cohabitor first, but I might want to do something a little dangerous someday. Go cloudwalking, or sail to Marheen, or try for the Luin Sunstone. Who knows?"

Cloudwalking has always looked like fun to me, Book thought.

Crystal nodded. "Book is about the same. He mostly studies things, but he pays attention in our knife classes, and he wants to learn spearfighting after he moves out. Cloudwalking sounds like fun to him."

"Cool," said Lightning with a left-leaning smile.

Crystal liked his smile.

"What the longdark spitting-pit is that?" shrieked Holly, running as fast as she could. She had the mouse cage clutched to her chest and her arm thrust into it so they were all touching her, and she was pouring exhaustion into each in turn, because whatever it was, it wasn't slowing down. Tiag on her shoulder was barking and whining by turns, earsplitting, afraid.

"I don't know!" Book shouted back. He didn't have the mice with him, but he had better endurance; Holly could only hope that was enough, she didn't want to have to figure out a way to transfer the mouse cage to him midstride. "I didn't get a good look at it before I started running for my life!"

"It's too small to be a tuifnka -"

It didn't have wings, did it? Crystal thought.

No, thank all the luck - Holly responded.

"I told you I don't know what it is! Except that it's obviously a demon and it's got more armor on it than the entire Sixth Fleet! There - there - see - there's a -"

"I see," said Holly, and she veered right, towards a cracked-open tree that looked like lightning had struck it. From a distance it looked like it could hold them both in the trunk, and keep the demon out of reach -

"No good," she corrected after a closer look at the crevice, and she charged down the hill; they had a few pounds on the demon if she guessed right, and their speed would benefit from the slope more. Book didn't argue with her, just followed. "Do you think it can climb?"

"I don't know! I don't know what it is!"

He can't think straight when he's scared, ask him questions, make him answer you, urged Crystal.

"Think! What could it be? Can any of those things climb?" cried Holly.

Book either lacked the breath to reply or didn't see the point. He didn't need to; after they'd run for a few strides more he found a likely-looking tree and threw himself up into its branches. Holly was shorter, and had to skid-turn to get to the other side of the tree in search of a lower handhold. The first one she tried broke off in her hand and she scanned for a second choice, frozen in place.

"It's coming! Find another tree!" screamed Book, already halfway up his.

Holly bolted. Book's tree acquired a new claw slash in its bark, right where she'd been standing. She poured more weariness into the mice, but she was running out of fresh ones; all but a handful were sleeping it off at the bottom of the cage. She ran anyway.

Finally she located a tree barely even shouting-distance from Book's that she thought she could get into. She went up: one body length, two, three, until she was well out of clawing range and short on higher branches that could hold her.

Tiag wasn't on her shoulder anymore, but Holly couldn't worry about that, couldn't think about anything except getting away from the demon and figuring out what it was and how to kill it...

She clipped the mouse cage closed, breathed deeply, and looked for the demon.

Holly had apparently gained on it while zigzagging through the woods in search of a tree. It caught up presently, though.

She had no idea what kind it was. There were a few hundred kinds of demons; she only knew the common ones, and this headless whiptailed thing, with its bladed forelimbs and caterpillar legs and segmented plates of armor all in black gloss, was not a common one. Book was the one who knew this stuff. Book would know its common name and its epithet and which foreign zoo dared to keep one and which of their scarce weapons could crack it open and destroy it.

And Book had not had a chance to inspect it.

"Go back to Book's tree," she told it. "He'll know how to kill you. Go on."

It can't understand you, Crystal thought.

I know!

The demon, which after all couldn't understand her, circled the trunk of her tree. It emitted a yowl-roar, which Holly could vaguely imagine was frustrated. They ate souls and couldn't starve to death and only ever got to hunt a handful of stupid explorers, it had to be ravenous.

That did not mean she was going to let it eat her.

"BOOK!" Holly yelled at the top of her lungs. "BOOK, CAN YOU HEAR ME?"

There was no answer. Or none that she could hear.

--Eleven harvests ago--

But you like him, Holly thought. It's in all the fact sheets, you don't cohabit with your friends.

It doesn't matter if I like him, Book thought. It's better if I don't, afterwards I never get to talk to him again,

You like us, though, Holly thought.

You I had better like, hadn't I? You I'm awake at the same time as, we read each other's minds, that's not going to be how it is with me and Lightning.

We'll miss you.

I'll still be around. We'll hang out all the time! But I - I can't do this anymore, I want to be him, I want people to look at me and see that, please understand.

Holly understood. So did Crystal, who was less inclined to complain in the first place.

Are you going to go live in his father's house? wondered Holly.

Book thought, I might hang out there sometimes. I'll still keep my books and things in our storeroom. Unless you want to kick me out of it.

Never, Crystal thought.

Holly agreed, Not ever.

You pay a third of the rent, Crystal teased.

But when the day came, Holly wouldn't walk their body into the room where the move would take place, and Book had to shove her out of the way and stomp through the door himself, and Crystal was faded far with trepidation.

His sisters hung back, listened to him think, waited.

The troporter who would be making the transfer looked nervous. She was consulting a checklist. "You are - Book?" she says. "Book and his cohabitors, and you're moving with no physical alterations in with - Lightning?"

Book nodded.

Lightning was late. Book sat. The nervous troporter re-read her checklists. "Have you considered the risks?" she said.

"Yes. It's - it's important," says Book. "We all understand. But it's important and I need you to try."

The troporter's mouth was a thin line. "You realize if something goes wrong it's not only you -"

"My sisters understand," said Book.

Your sisters will miss you, thought Holly.

"They'll miss me but they understand."

"And Lightning?" said the troporter.

"The risk to him is much smaller - right?" asked Book.

"Yes, but I can't claim there is none."

"He understands too, anyway."

The troporter asked no further questions.

Lightning arrived half a sand late. His father was with him, which one Book couldn't tell for sure. The father hung back and Lightning came forward.

Soon Book would get to see that face in the mirror, just exactly himself, the way he'd look if he weren't crammed in with -

It's not like we're ugly, thought Holly.

But, thought Book, you're a girl.

Don't let these be the last things we think to each other, pleaded Crystal. We love you, Book, and we're happy for you -

I love you too. Hey, he added, soon I can hug you, won't that be something?

Holly couldn't laugh aloud with Book in front, but she could think it.

Book was smiling when he nodded to the troporter that he was ready.

Holly had all the mice. When Book's soul got tired, Lightning could take over. When their body got tired, they needed her mice - unless they could catch a wild animal alive while stuck in a tree. Book might be able to troport food; he had the samples and Holly was just the best troporter, not the only person in the party capable of it. Holly, if she had to, could kill and open up a mouse and turn tree bark into quantities of... raw meat (except Book had her checklist, but she didn't need her checklist). She dearly hoped it didn't come to that. She had no idea where Tiag had gotten to but the fox ought to be the least of their worries...

Book, quite reasonably, was staying up in his tree, presumably not wanting to be caught off guard by the reappearance of the demon, but if he could hear her, she couldn't hear his replies.

Holly started evaluating her ability to get from her tree to an adjacent one without falling straight into the demon's claws. If she could even get a few trees over, close enough for Book to hear her, she could tell him where the demon was and he could have freedom of movement while it was busy cornering her.

She'd come from that direction. The next tree over had bad handholds or she'd have climbed it instead, but its upper branches looked plausible.

It might be that he could hear her and she couldn't hear him. Before she risked it, she hollered:

"BOOK, IF YOU CAN HEAR ME, I'M GOING TO WAIT ABOUT A TENTH OF A SAND, THEN TRY TO GO TREE TO TREE IN YOUR DIRECTION. THE DEMON'S HERE AND IT WON'T LEAVE."

There. Now to follow through.

I'm scared.

"Me too, Crystal," Holly muttered, "me too."

Her time sense was okay, but Crystal's was better. Crystal faded forward to count rapid heartbeats and watch shadows of the quickest nearby sun (low, blue, fast) lean from hubward to rimward.

It's been about a tenth of a sand. But - but wait - I'm -

"I'm scared too," said Holly, and she inched along the branch towards the other tree.

--Eleven harvests ago--

Lightning was awake first.

Crystal hadn't known to expect that Lightning would be awake first. She'd expected to be able to confirm right away that Book was there, that he was okay, that he was comfortable.

And instead she and Lightning were sitting together awkwardly, under the dreamward until it was confirmed that both of them could swap as necessary and stay awake.

It's so empty in here, Holly thought.

It's emptier for other people.

That doesn't mean it's not... empty.

"You feel okay, right?" Crystal asked Lightning.

"I feel - normal," he said. "I guess we won't know for sure whether it worked until I need to sleep. I hope I figure out how to transfer consciousness soon."

"Oh, yeah," said Crystal vaguely. "That takes practice, doesn't it, for most people?"

"Yeah. Maybe Book will be able to do it just as easily with me as he could with you, but - I can't."

But I want to talk to Book, thought Holly. I miss him, I miss him -

I miss him too. "People figure it out even without practice by the time a few days have gone by, don't they?"

"Yeah." Lightning sighed. "All my friends are going to want to know why I don't look different."

"Did you want to?" asked Crystal. "You look handsome, Book picked you out specifically."

"I didn't - need to. I just thought it'd be more of a negotiation. I didn't lose anything. I got a perfectly good cohabitor without having to compromise and make tradeoffs and I think a lot of the lectures I got about it were wasted."

Crystal giggled.

"Was that funny?" asked Lightning.

"It - yes, a little. It just means that you and Book are a good fit, you see? He didn't have to compromise either. He got his very first choice. He wanted to look like you. You work other ways, too. I'm excited for when he wakes up and - and does. I miss him and so does Holly but we're glad he's going to be happy and - and thank you."

"You're welcome," Lightning replied, sounding unexpectedly touched.

"When do you think you'll be able to sleep?" Holly asked.

He blinked.

"I faded in, I'm Holly," she said impatiently.

"Oh. I don't know - two sands?" He hesitated, then said, "If you want to come back to my house to wait you can."

"Thank you," said Holly.

It was about a sand and a half.

And then Lightning blinked and Book opened his eyes.

Holly could tell instantly and they met in the middle, trying to hug each other; he misjudged the length of his arms and clonked her on the ear but finally figured out how to manage his elbows. "Book. You're okay?"

"I'm -" Book shook his head. "I'm good, Holly." Pause. "It's - Holly, right? I never had to tell from the outside - wow, your voice sounds so -"

"Yes it's Holly, don't be silly of course you can tell -"

"Well, let Crystal have her turn -"

Crystal took her turn without Holly having to do much letting. "It worked, I'm so glad it worked!"

"I want a mirror," said Book.

"I saw one on the way in, I think -"

They managed to walk awkwardly to Lightning's house's entrance hall with the mirror in it without unhugging.

And Book looked in the mirror and stared.

"Good?" Crystal asked.

"Bit late if you want to change your mind," Holly leaned forward to comment.

"Perfect," said Book.

Holly was tempted - and urged by Crystal - to creep to the edge of the branch, crouching and holding onto another branch overhead, ready to back up in a hurry if something creaked, and then creep from the edge of her destination branch to the trunk of the new tree.

Holly thought that if she was going to fall she'd rather be in more control of her momentum than that, and was about to try to jump the distance.

Crystal shoved her back. "No, absolutely not, no."

If I jump then if we fall it's on our feet and we can run -

"You'd break an ankle." Inch, inch, inch.

I'll do it holding a mousetail in my teeth?

"That's disgusting, Holly. And you can't troport a broken ankle fast enough, the demon is right there."

It was, indeed, right there, right under them. They might not even break an ankle if Crystal slipped, they might just fall directly into its waiting claws and be torn to shreds.

Crystal didn't slip. She got onto the branch of the next tree. She shuffled as best she could towards the trunk, and hugged it. She'd gone just a few meters, no more, but -

"BOOK?"

Nothing.

How many times were they going to have to do this to get within shouting distance?

If they stayed put, how long would it take the demon to lose interest?

"BOOK, THE DEMON'S PAYING ATTENTION TO ME. YOU CAN GET OUT OF YOUR TREE AND COME CLOSE ENOUGH TO TELL ME HOW TO KILL IT."

Silence apart from demonic chittering.

Crystal maneuvered around the trunk to look for a way closer to the way she'd come.

And then she heard Book's voice, terribly faint -

"Can you hear me?"

"I CAN JUST BARELY HEAR YOU," Crystal hollered back.

"- to me," called Book. "Fire and -" Something. "- a pragsuu -" something.

Holly came forward. "I DON'T GIVE A DRAINED SHARD WHAT IT'S CALLED, HOW DO I KILL IT? FIRE, DID YOU SAY FIRE?" she shouted.

"- yes -" something "Fire and -"

"FIRE AND WHAT?"

"Fire and oil -"

"IT HAS TO BE OIL FIRE IN PARTICULAR?"

"Yes -"

"ANYTHING ELSE?"

"That's all," Holly thought she heard.

"I'LL DO MY BEST."

Holly looked at the tree she was in. If it didn't have any oil she could extract, she was likely out of luck. She also wasn't sure how to start a fire. Why wasn't she carrying the food? She could really use a peanut. And a match.

Great.

--Four harvests ago--

"Crystal, that's completely -"

I know I know I know.

"He's -"

Stop talking aloud, what if Mountain hears you?

He wouldn't believe it if I told him outright, I barely believe it and I can read your mind - Lightning. The one who cohabits with our brother.

Mountain doesn't like it when we talk out loud amongst ourselves anyway -

Don't change the subject, thought Holly.

I don't know what you want me to say. I didn't decide to have that daydream.

That utterly mortifying daydream!

Why won't you learn to sleep? Why won't you just leave me alone? despaired Crystal.

Holly flumphed onto the bed.

I didn't mean that, Crystal amended.

Yes you did. You wanted to be alone in our head, you wanted me gone.

But just for a second. I don't want you to leave. It's bad enough Book left.

It's just when I have opinions that it's -

What if it was you? What if you had a crush on Lightning?

I never would! thought Holly.

But what if you did, what if he was your type and what if he liked you enough that you sometimes thought maybe -

Then I wouldn't want you ranting, but what if I did something that made you want to rant?

You do that all the time, Crystal pointed out.

Holly groaned.

I'm not going to do anything about it, Crystal added. He'd probably think it was weird, too, I don't want people to think I'm weird. You I can't help, but...

Good.

Are we going to have to agree on who we kiss? Just because we can't quite sleep...?

I don't even want to kiss anyone, Crystal.

Ever?

You can do it if I'm not paying attention and it's not Book's face you're kissing, suggested Holly. Kissing, daydreaming, whatever. Just don't accidentally think about me or I'll notice what's going on.

Okay.

But avoid daydreaming when I'm noticing things.

I'll try, Crystal thought dubiously.

Holly was systematically scrubbing a relatively clean woodchip from the mouse cage all over her face. If they'd done a normal merge they'd certainly have gotten rid of the oily skin in the process, but here they were with what they'd been born with, and for the moment she was too relieved to be annoyed.

She scrubbed her fingertips into the wood. She got a splinter, and this was distracting enough that she paused to swap the splinter's color with a leaf so it would be easy to see and she could pick it out. When she proved unable to get ahold of the splinter even while it was clearly visible through her skin, she swapped its texture with the leaf, too, and then it was too soft to hurt much. She resumed working oil into the wood.

How much was enough? Better to keep at it until she was sure she had as much as she could collect. She didn't even know yet how she was going to set it on fire. She felt at her hair: no. Dry, reasonably clean, and too puffy to easily run a woodchip through for oil anyway. She went back to scraping it across her forehead.

When her face was raw and she had two more leaf-soft splinters in her fingers, she had an idea she thought might work for setting the chip on fire.

We'll freeze to the branch, thought Crystal.

"Do you have a better idea?"

Crystal didn't.

"Do you think either of us will come up with one if we wait?"

Crystal... didn't.

Holly put one of her splintered fingertips to the bark of the tree. She held the oiled woodchip in the palm of her hand. The demon circled below, chittering.

Most troports were swaps. If she swapped the warmth between the tree and the woodchip, they wouldn't change much. The tree might get a little warmer, because the woodchip was warmed by her hand and the tree was barely touching her relative to its size.

Some troports, like the one that had put Book's soul into Lightning's body, were transfers.

Transfers moved all of a property, not just an amount appropriate to the target object.

Holly moved all of the warmth in the tree into the tiny woodchip.

She was intensely uncomfortable, immediately, in too many ways to make clear sense of right away. The tree froze solid under her shoes; the branches stiffened and snapped. Including the one under her.

The woodchip burst into flames in her hand and she fell towards the demon and thrust the flaming thing at its lack of a face.

The fire caught. The demon's exoskeleton crackled and split; it leaked black sludge. The sludge burned. The demon writhed.

Holly staggered away from it and the frozen tree, towards warmth, towards Book. She reached for her mice. There was only one that was definitely still alive. Several of her fingers on the hand that hadn't held the woodchip were numb. She didn't dare swap it her injuries or her cold. It might die; they were going to need to drowse it to make it home. She didn't dare try to swap her chill into a different tree - then she'd be the tree's temperature, all over, instead of frostbitten but basically intact from being too near the frozen wood. If she transferred instead she might well catch fire just like the woodchip.

Crystal probably wouldn't even be able to walk if she came forward, she'd just collapse, crying. Holly took another step, and another. Book. Where was Book?

Still in his tree.

"Holly - what happened?"

"I set it," she said through chattering teeth, "on fire."

Book climbed down and wrapped her up in his arms and tried to get warmth into her extremities. The tree had been so cold - Her finger was bleeding, where the tree had taken the splinter and a chunk of flesh with it. She leaned on Book.

"Do not false-sleep on me," he hissed. "Drowse a -"

"They're dead. Except one. We need it or I'd have given it my burn and my frostbite and -" She hiccuped.

"I see two moving around."

"We have to go home."

"Yes. Drowse a mouse and give it your injuries so you can walk. You'll slow us down if I carry you and Crystal's going to have to take over sooner or later."

Where's Tiag? wondered Crystal.

"Where's Tiag?" Holly asked for her.

"Not far, I think. She'll catch up. I can drowse her if I have to."

Holly nodded and reached with creaking frigid joints for the mouse cage. Book had to open it for her. She tapped one with her bleeding finger and drowsed it and got rid of her injuries and her cold. The mouse died under her hand and she released a held breath.

"Better?" asked Book.

"Yeah. We need to go home. Tiag! Tiag -"

A distant bark.

That was good enough for Holly. She turned rimward and started walking.

"We didn't get any treasure," Holly said.

"Nope," agreed Book.

"And I'm going to have a hell of a time convincing any of you to come out again."

"Next time you might not be the one who gets hurt. If the demon had touched you -"

Or if it'd treed Book - he knows how demons work but he can't troport as well, put in Crystal. Lightning even worse!

"Well," sighed Holly. "We had an adventure, I guess."

They walked. Eventually Crystal came forward. Book noted the change in his sisters' posture but didn't say anything. Tiag caught up and slept in Crystal's arms.

They went home, nervously trading off the last mouse until they could buy more past the Barricade, following a high white rimward sun.

Double, Double

This story was inspired by a Tumblr post. If you like it, I also have other stories, although most of them are not inspired by Tumblr posts.

"There's something I have to tell you... I really should have told you before," she said, wringing her hands. "It's... it's about the baby."

"What about her?" he asked.

"Well - well, when I was a girl -"

This was backwards. Completely backwards. Forget dramatic timing. I opened the door and swept in.

"Witch!" the father exclaimed.

"...That's not my witch," said the mother.

"You had a witch, too? I had to promise her -" he said, pointing at me, "the baby - darling, I didn't realize she'd collect, I didn't think she could possibly really want the baby, I thought she was trying to frighten me -"

"But - but I had a witch - a different witch -"

"Oh, both of you shut up," I growled. "Yes, I'm actually collecting, what would I have let you get away with my singing roses for if you had nothing I wanted? I could have kept you for a pet or a statue, and instead I'm taking the child. The other witch has apparently declined to appear -"

"I most certainly have not!" exclaimed a fourth voice behind me. "Goodness, this is a mess, isn't it? D'you suppose that you could just relinquish your claim - after all, surely the mother's right is stronger than the father's, what with the three quarters of a year involved in the baby-making and such - I'll trade you a singing rosebush if that's what your business is about? I haven't got one but I know a -"

"Oh, nightshade," I hissed. "I don't want another rosebush, I have enough rosebushes at this time, the man stole a few cuttings years ago. I want the baby."

"Well, so do I, and I've been promised it just the same if not better. Is it a boy or a girl, dear?" the newcomer asked the mother.

"...Girl," whimpered the mother.

"Well, the little munchkin is clearly not staying here, whatever she's doing," the other witch said. She was younger than me, by at least a few years, no gray in her dark gold hair, dressed scarcely more like a witch than a milkmaid in dusty rose, no hat, no robes over the dress. She made a preposterous figure and I would have said she was no witch at all if the mother of the child didn't seem to recognize her. "We'll go figure this out somewhere besides your front hall, shall we? And you can get on with having another one without quite such a mess of owings on it."

"If you'd settle for the secondborn," I suggested.

"No, no, it'd never work," said the other witch. "Letting alone the possibility that they never want to repeat the process! You're more than welcome to wait -"

"Look here, I made my deal when the boy was twelve, I certainly have prior claim, she's got to be five years younger than he is -"

"And she's the one who carried the babe, isn't she, it's hardly my fault that this boy paid more than ten minutes' attention to her and you were able to track them down!"

"Weren't you going to have this argument somewhere else," said the father weakly. Probably hoping we'd duel, kill each other, and leave the little family in peace, bargain or no bargain.

"If you think I'm going to let you carry off the child -" I began.

"You can hold her, but I'm not letting you out of my sight," the other witch said. "Go on then."

I rolled my eyes and scooped up the infant out of the cradle. And promptly dropped a smoke globe, which brought me straight home. If she was fool enough to let me be the one to lay hands on the contested baby, so be it -

And she was standing in my living room.

"Tut, tut, aren't we impolite. We haven't resolved the question. Oh, this place is nice, isn't it?"

"How did you do that?" I asked.

"I'm a witch."

"So the hell am I -"

"Language! There's little ears about!" cooed the intruder.

"You still seem under the impression that you're going to have any say in what happens to the owner of those little ears. You may have followed me home, but now you're in my domain -"

"Yes, mind your hospitality obligations."

"I didn't invite you in!"

"Of course you did."

I went back over the sequence of events and - yes, I sort of had. Implicit agreement to the rules of engagement that included continuing our little custody battle somewhere else. She'd let me choose the ground, and then followed me right to it. I should have gone somewhere else.

"Look," I said, "I need this baby. I don't have any others lined up, I want to turn her into my apprentice, and the sidereal arrangements I need to seal the deal are only coming up once in the next thirty years, six months from now, too soon to trawl the continent for needy pregnant peasants. What would it take to get you to go away?"

"I'm not going away," said the other witch.

"You -"

"Look, let's do this civilly. I'm Millicent. What's your name?"

I looked up at the ceiling. I needed to string some more garlic. The baby fussed in my arms and I started swaying to soothe her.

"Orawne. What do you even want her for?"

"Same thing. I haven't got a time limit, but I do have to stick to the first child I pick. I'm not giving her up any more than you are."

"Oh, for heaven's sake -"

"But I can share."

I stared at Millicent.

"You can share?"

"I can. Look, I haven't got a permanent residence at the moment -"

"You were going to raise a baby apprentice while homeless?" I exclaimed.

"While nomadic, thank you, and with plenty of people who have roofs and owe favors! But you've got lots of room. I'll take a spare bed and save you childrearing time and she can learn both sorts of witching."

"You're mad. You're completely -"

"I bake."

"I'm sure you do, but -"

"I will do all of the laundry." This with a significant look at the baby in my arms.

"Upstairs, first door on your left," I sighed. "I keep early hours, don't clatter around after nine in the evening unless the baby needs something."

"Thank you, Orawne," smiled Millicent.

"Don't mention it," I growled.

"We're going to need to name her," she said.

"Vercari."

"I was thinking Linda."

"What in the world kind of witch is named Linda? For that matter, what kind of witch name is Millicent?" I said.

"Oh, I come from a long line of witches with ordinary names. I'll settle for middle name placement if you'll let her switch what she goes by later should she like to."

"Vercari Linda," I mused.

"Oh, and I must insist on using my last name. Apprentice reasons."

"...Vercari Linda what, then?"

"Murk. Acceptably witchy?"

"Yes. Fine. Whatever."

"We're going to get along famously, Orawne, I just know it," beamed Millicent.

She did the laundry. She made pie. Vercari liked the milky potion she fixed up better than mine. Meanwhile, I made preparations for what I was going to need to properly dedicate the baby as my apprentice - Millicent didn't seem to need any such ritual, and it made me nervous about whether mine would take, properly, with a claim on her like that. But it was too late to trawl the continent for peasants willing to bargain away their imminent children. It was hard enough to find someone who'd make the promise when they weren't already expecting.

"Honestly, what were you planning to do with a baby and all this work to do?" Millicent asked, rocking Vercari while I made straw figurines to burn.

"Not sleep much," I muttered.

"Do you even like babies?"

"They're all right. I won't be able to teach her much until she's four or so, maybe three if she's precocious. She's still cute, just - this isn't the part I was planning for as much."

"I'll have a bit of a head start, then, I have a rattle that she'll be able to get some use out of soon, not to accomplish much, just to train the right reflexes."

"How soon?" I asked. Straw crunched in my hand.

"After you've dedicated her. Don't worry, Orawne, I'm not going to kidnap her out from under you, we agreed on sharing, didn't we? I keep my promises."

"She likes you more. She -"

"I hold her more. In six months you'll be done with your straw... things... and you'll -"

"Watch her wave around your magic rattle. What kind of magic do you do, anyhow?"

"I don't know if the tradition strictly has a name. I'm from the westlands, anyway."

"And in the westlands you can follow other witches' smoke globes and make magic rattles to train babies' reflexes when they're less than a year old and make better potions?"

"But I couldn't actually use a smoke globe, let alone make one," countered Millicent. "We're differently specialized, I'm hardly omnipotent."

"Still."

"The baby will have both kinds," Millicent smiled.

"...That's why you were willing to share, is it? And to do all the laundry to get it done amicably. You want your apprentice to be two kinds of witch."

"Your apprentice too. And splitting the childcare doesn't hurt. I get up in the evening and you get up in the morning when she's crying, I do the cooking and the laundry but you're still giving her baths -"

"I have to dunk her in herb water anyway. It just makes sense."

"Are you saying you'll stop giving her baths when she's six months old?"

"Well, no."

"There you go."

Vercari was, as babies go, fairly ordinary. She developed brown hair, when she grew any at all - Millicent commented that it looked like mine, though mine was half gone gray from some combination of age and potion exposure - and her eyes stayed blue even past the point where they'd have darkened if they were going to. Like Millicent's. One could almost imagine that she was in fact our baby, despite the fact that this was on several levels impossible.

Millicent looked over the text of my dedication ritual once I'd written it out with all the names and star signs and so on filled in.

"This says that you're giving her to the stars and taking her from the moon. What's that supposed to mean?"

I looked up. "What does it sound like?"

"I don't know, I don't touch astronomical mumbo-jumbo. What does it mean?"

Well, it wasn't like Millicent would be able to use any of my spells even if I told her, since no one had dedicated her as an appropriately astronomical mumbo-jumboed apprentice when she was little. "If Vercari was a boy I'd be taking him from the sun instead, does that help?"

"...No?"

"...My kind of witch can't have children. Can yours? What are you doing getting them from mundanes, if you could just have the homemade kind?"

"My kind of witch can," said Millicent softly. "I can't."

"Oh."

"But Vercari won't be able to?"

"No. Unless you have a way of giving her back to the moon after she's taken what she needs from the stars."

"Well, I can see if there's something to be done, anyway."

"So, wait - Millicent - were you homemade or taken?"

"Homemade, if that's what you call it. There's entire witch villages in the westlands."

"And you're out here with a half-share in my taken baby because the moon wouldn't have you to begin with."

"If that's how you want to put it." She didn't sound like she wanted to discuss it.

I let it drop.

"Aside from the rattle to - train her reflexes - what is it you're going to be doing with her?" I asked, while I was feeding Vercari milky potion and Millicent was rolling out biscuit dough.

"Well, the rattle will be it for about a year, but then simple illusions are next. Then since she's a firstborn she can have a familiar, probably I'll find her a kitten or a fox pup; I don't have a familiar because I have an older brother."

"What are they for?"

"They aren't exactly for anything. Well, status symbols, if you're in a witch village, but they aren't much practical use. Don't you have anything just for fun?"

Garden and chickens for food and potion ingredients, telescope for stargazing and divination, a self-operating spinning wheel and loom to make my own robes and have something to trade to those mundanes who didn't do anything that gave me leave to extort them, nothing really for fun. "No."

"Poor Orawne. Who taught you, anyway?"

"She died. Dueling, five years ago. I wouldn't have called her fun. I had a decent enough childhood, anyway."

"Took you when you were a baby?"

"I was two, actually, and she bought me outright. Story was that my mother was in a bind when my father died."

"And your mundane mother named you 'Orawne', did she?"

"I presume not, but I can't remember what it was instead. I like my name. I wouldn't want to be called Millicent."

"I like my name too," said Millicent tartly.

"Much good may it do you. While you're looking for a way to let the moon have her back one day maybe I'll look for a way to make her familiar able earn its keep, shall I?"

"Lest she grow up complaining 'Orawne doesn't understand the point of my dearest bestest friend!', yes, by all means, work out a spell to teach cats to read or serve as divinatory focuses or whatever it is you'd have one do."

"You think Vercari's going to grow up calling me 'Orawne', do you?"

"As opposed to?"

"Mother."

Millicent blinked at me.

"There are two of us," she pointed out.

"We are in my house, and the stars will have her before you give her that magic rattle -"

"So I suppose," Millicent interrupted, "that I'll be Mummy or something like that, and that should be clear enough when she's screaming for one or the other across the garden."

"Oh. All right."

"Hear that, Vercari dear, Mother says I'm Mummy and she can have the stiff formal name," cooed Millicent.

I snorted.

Millicent finished painting egg onto the last circle of dough and put the biscuits in the oven.

I was stitching together a little dress for Vercari, so that Millicent could more easily keep up with the laundry and because it was a break from making straw things to burn. Millicent poked her head into the sewing room.

"What are you going to start teaching her, when she's four or what have you?"

"Constellations. She'll have to learn to read, too. Potionmaking has to wait for good motor control."

"But what do you do with the constellations?"

"Learn to interpret them. Much easier to make enchanted objects if you know when to do it, though actually artificing will have to come later, again."

"Oh! The spinning wheel and loom are working by themselves?"

"Of course they are. You didn't think I was operating them myself all day long, did you?"

"I did," admitted Millicent. "I was very impressed."

I snorted. "I do most of my magic with magic things. And some potions."

"I suppose that suits you."

"Better than having a pointless animal following me around and following someone else's smoke globe into their house. And making illusions."

"Illusions can be very useful if you know how to use them. And obviously so can following certain witches home."

"Obviously," I said. "What were you planning to do if I'd been living with someone?"

"Does your kind of witch even get married?"

"Not to anyone who assumes that pregnancy is the intended outcome," I said dryly. "But I could have had a lover or a co-apprentice I was living with or another taken child - though if I'd already taken one I'd have been less insistent about this one, I suppose - or could have still been living with my teacher."

"I cannot a bit imagine you with a lover. You'd chase him off with a stick."

"Him?"

Millicent blinked at me, and then either Vercari made a noise or she decided of her own accord to flee the room.

"I was married once," Millicent told me, while I was giving Vercari her bath.

"Oh, I'd been assuming you found out the moon wouldn't have you by magic."

"I don't even know how I'd do that by magic. No."

"Is that why you aren't married anymore?"

"Well, it's more complicated than - yes. It is."

"More fool him. You make very good scones."

Millicent laughed, and I almost smiled.

"He didn't want to go to the trouble of taking a baby. It's a little frowned on, in the westlands, taking babies."

"If you can homemake them I suppose it would seem like a lot of hassle, and unnecessarily antagonize the mundanes, who never seem to think ahead how they'll feel about the deals when they come due..."

"Yes, exactly."

"But if you can't homemake them -"

"Well, he can. He has done. Our handfast expired and he married someone else and they have a baby and another on the way. My brother wrote."

"You've been receiving mail at my house?"

"I live here, don't I?"

"I suppose."

"I told my brother about Vercari Linda. He might come visit."

"Might he."

"I can introduce them out in the front garden if you don't want him past the threshold."

"Can you."

"...If you don't mind, Orawne, I would like to introduce our daughter to her uncle, at some point, and later grandparents too, and if you do mind, I would still like it and will still try to manage it."

I rinsed off the baby. "Fine."

"Thank you."

"If," I continued, "you use the fancy illusion magic to make it at least tricky and ideally impossible for any of these - people - to find my house without express invitations. I don't want the place crawling with - people."

"Oh! Oh, of course - they wouldn't show up unexpectedly anyway, but if - yes, certainly, I'll make the whole place look like a bit of forest and if they show up when I'm not expecting them they'll get lost, will that do?"

"Yes. Thank you."

"You're welcome."

Vercari was all dried off. I threw the towel at Millicent's head and fetched the baby's nightdress.

When we'd had Vercari for a month and four days, Millicent's brother came by. He didn't dress any more like a witch than she did, although instead of her favored pink dresses he seemed to prefer to garb himself like a mundane merchant tinker or something, all over pockets and straps and dangling tools and herbs like he didn't know how to enchant a belt pouch. Perhaps he didn't, at that. He held the baby, he had trouble pronouncing her first name, he wanted to know who exactly I was, he found the situation with the conflicting claims on her very funny, he hugged his sister, he left. It was in all relatively painless.

"That wasn't so bad, was it?" Millicent asked, leading me through her illusion trees and managing to open the front door out of thin air. I rather liked the effect. Very secluded.

"We are all still alive," I acknowledged.

"Do you really have no friends or family at all?"

"Besides you and Vercari?"

"Yes," she said, turning a little pink. "Besides."

I shrugged. "There are people I talk to regularly in the nearest towns who buy my fabric or extra zucchini. People don't visit."

"I must be a terrible lifestyle disruption."

"You help with Vercari. You bake. You do the laundry. I don't mind you."

"Good."

"Yes, quite."

"I wouldn't want you to mind me."

"Yes, that was clearly in the forefront of your mind when you originally proposed moving in to resolve our dispute, the sincere hope that I would not mind you -"

"I needed Vercari. I can have more than one child and teach them all but if I ever give up a child I meant to keep I can't claim any more. But it's been - a while since then."

"And you did wheedle your way in offering pastry and chore details. I am not complaining," I said.

"Good."

"Of course."

"It's only - I wouldn't like it if getting Vercari meant antagonizing you. I'd rather we all - fit neatly."

"Well, I'm certainly not going to kick you out because the moon won't have you or some such nonsense," I said, putting Vercari down for a nap.

"Earlier," said Millicent, "the other week, you said -"

"Yes?"

"Never mind."

"Did I say something that had you thinking we were not fitting neatly...?"

Millicent shook her head. "Never mind."

"If you insist." I prodded the fireplace, determined that it didn't need another log, and went to where I was accumulating my pile of straw things.

"I mean it's a general question, and I wouldn't want to be misinterpreted."

"And?"

"Well, when I was saying I couldn't picture you with a lover..."

"Eh, you were probably right. I don't meet people, let alone attract them."

"And you said, 'Him?'"

"I have no intention of trying to homemake babies. It sounds unappealing even if I could."

"But it doesn't necessarily follow that..."

"That what?"

"I - don't know."

"Then I can hardly answer your general question, can I."

Millicent fussed with her hair. "In my village what with the taking of babies so out of fashion and -"

"I'm not going to render Vercari interested in acquiring lady lovers as an adult if she weren't already heading that way," I said, question suddenly clicking. "It depends on the individual witch. My teacher dated men, when she dated anyone at all. I'm just, individually, fortunate that I don't find myself a mundane expected to marry some - male, for mundane reasons."

"...Oh," said Millicent, sounding dissatisfied with this answer.

"I don't even know how I'd go about doing such a thing on purpose," I went on. "It would be much harder than changing her hair color or something."

"I wouldn't know either... I like her hair color. Leave it."

"I wasn't planning to change it."

"Good."

"Mm-hm."

I made straw things. Millicent started a chicken pot pie.

"Orawne?"

"Mm?"

"Nothing."

"All right."

"Her name is growing on me," Millicent said.

"I thought about it for a long time. It would have been Corlesen if she'd been a boy," I said. I was trying Millicent's milky potion recipe. It was like mine, but the ratios were different. Our general potionmaking seemed similar enough that I ought to be able to copy it.

"What do you think of 'Linda', now?"

"It's all right for a middle name. It still isn't very witchy. Maybe it's witchy for the westlands."

"And 'Millicent'?"

"Same thing. I suppose the sound of it would be all right if mundanes didn't use it."

"My parents sometimes call me Lissy."

"If they were going to call you Lissy why did they name you Millicent?"

"It's a nickname. You've heard of those, haven't you?"

"Yes. They just don't make a lot of sense."

"It's for - layers of closeness. The people in town call me Miss Murk, you call me Millicent, my parents call me Lissy."

"Are you saying you want me to call you Miss Murk?"

"No. But you could call me Lissy."

I considered this.

"Lissy," I said.

"Yes?"

"Just trying it out."

"And?"

"I suppose it makes sense."

"Can I help you make the straw things?" Lissy asked.

"I'm... not actually sure," I said. "If we were both my kind of witch and we'd taken Vercari together you could."

"What happens if I can't after all?"

"Then yours won't burn when the time comes, and the fire might not be high enough."

"Is there a way to find out? Your fingers look like they hurt."

"A little. I could check the stars, see if they have anything to say about it."

"I'd like to help," Lissy said earnestly.

"You are helping. You do the laundry, you cook, you mind Vercari while I'm making them."

"But right now the laundry is done and there's meatballs in the oven and Vercari's asleep."

"I'll go have a look at the sky, if you're that bored."

"It's not boredom. Just - it looks uncomfortable, doing that many of them. And you seem worried about the deadline, sometimes."

"I have to wait thirty years if I miss it. And I wouldn't have Vercari anymore, would I?"

"Wouldn't you?"

"If I didn't dedicate her? Wouldn't you whisk her away to your little westlands village with my claim expired?"

"No," exclaimed Lissy. "I mean, wouldn't you still want her - don't you like her?"

"Yes, but -"

"But nothing, I wouldn't take her from you even if she weren't going to - belong to the stars too. You aren't the stars."

"So in this scenario you and Vercari would go on living here and she'd be a westlands kind of witch, complete with rattle and pointless animal and charming illusions, and I'd be...?"

"Her mother."

"...All right. But I want to make the deadline regardless."

"Of course. Go check."

I went up to the balcony with my telescope and searched the sky. It had been a while since I'd divined anything, too busy with preparations of straw things and dedication ritual details.

I slipped into meditative focus, and swung the telescope around to focus on different constellations until the answer came to me.

I went back down and took Lissy's hands in mine and showed her how to weave the simplest kind of straw thing.

She beamed at me.

With Lissy's help the straw things were all made by the time Vercari was four months old. There was suddenly a lot more time, then, although Vercari could fill it pretty effectively, wanting to be fed or walked around or changed.

Sometimes, of course, the baby slept.

"Orawne?"

"Yes?"

"When did you know that if you were ever going to have a lover it would be a woman?"

"I don't think it even crossed my mind till I was, oh, nineteen, to list characteristics for such an improbable person, I just didn't meet enough people... once it occurred to me to ask myself the question, it was obvious. Why?"

Lissy beat the eggs in her mixing bowl harder.

"Lissy?"

"Mm?"

"You were married for reasons other than the desire for a homemade baby, weren't you? I'd hope?"

"Oh. Yes. I liked him, before he - before. Yes."

"I suppose if you hadn't, the expiration of the handfasting would be a mercy..."

"I don't think I'm quite - look - with your kind of witches no one cares, right? Since the moon won't have you it doesn't matter?"

"Right."

"So you might have heard of - is there anyone who likes both?"

"Sure. My teacher's co-prentice, he did, she told me."

"Okay."

"Are you worrying about Vercari when she grows up, again? I guess it might matter if you find out how to give her back to the moon without undoing her star gift."

"It really doesn't matter to me if she has no apprentices or makes them or takes them or whatever she likes," Millicent said.

"Good, because again, I can't change who she'd want to bring up or not bring up her own apprentices with."

"I don't expect you to."

"What's for dinner?"

"Omelettes. Orawne?"

"Yes?"

Lissy didn't go on.

"Lissy, what is it?"

"I - it's -"

"Is it about Vercari...?"

"No."

"Have I been waking you up earlier than you like in the mornings? Are you out of leavening? Is your entire extended family going to descend on my house tomorrow morning -"

"No, no, no -"

"Are you having second thoughts about staying here -"

"No!"

"I'm not going to guess, apparently, Lissy."

Lissy poured the eggs into the pan. They hissed.

"I'm afraid," she said. "That you won't react well - that if you react badly enough you'll want me to leave."

"Nightshade, Lissy, if it's that bad - what do you want me to do, promise that you can borrow Vercari to teach her on alternate days no matter what you say?"

Lissy nudged the edge of the incipient omelette with her turner. Apparently it wasn't ready to have whatever was next befall it yet. "Maybe promise that she won't be a - a pawn, if it comes to that."

"I'll promise I'll put her welfare first. I want a doubly witched apprentice as much as you do. Besides, you already told me that if I missed her deadline you'd stay here with her."

"Okay. Thank you."

"...And?"

"I'm still afraid."

"I'm a witch, not a monster."

Lissy sighed. She sprinkled cheese onto the omelette.

"Look, Lissy, whatever this is, is obviously important. Can I help?"

"I like you," she blurted. "I might be in love with you."

And then she turned away and folded the omelette, but not before I watched her cheeks turn beet red.

I waited politely until she slid the omelette onto a plate before I kissed her.

We heaped the straw things around the firebreak around the basket.

I took Vercari from the moon, which was turned away new; I burned the straw around her and when it was consumed and the air was smoky and dark I read the rest of her dedication, and our eyes adjusted, and she gazed up at the stars until one dislodged itself from the sky and fell and fell and fell and landed, tiny and cool and still bright, in her hand. It winked out, leaving only a faint white mark.

"Is that it?" Lissy murmured beside me.

"That's it," I said, stepping over the circle of straw ash to scoop up our child from her basket. "The star is hers, now. If you work out a way to make the moon take her back it won't leave her regardless, I think."

"I think I'll be able to figure something out," Lissy said, and she stroked Vercari's hair and then leaned over her and kissed me.

"Mother, Mother!"

"Yes, Vercari?"

"Cousin says stars don't do the star things."

"Cousin is only one kind of witch, Vercari. He doesn't know about the star things."

"But he said I lied!"

"Well, he's not very well educated, then, is he?"

"When I have apprentices they will know about stars and rattles."

"Yes, they will. Lucky them!"

"Just like me! Lucky me."

"Mm-hm."

"Where's Mummy?"

"Mummy is talking to her brother. If you go find her maybe she'll tell your cousin's daddy to scold him for saying you lied."

"Okay. Mother?"

"Yes?"

"Thank you for star things."

"You're welcome, Vercari."

"Aaaand thank you for the extra Mummy too. Because I like doing pictures too!"

"You're very welcome, Vercari."

Strax

"You wouldn't think it would be hard to diagnose," said the woman whose nametag read Thalia. High skeptical flutes cascaded around her, but she was automatically speaking up so we could hear her over them.

"We live in this old apartment with thin walls, we thought it was the air conditioner or something for the longest time - even after it resolved into melodies we thought it was the neighbor's stereo," my wife told her. And then we'd spent a month where I thought we were having shared hallucinations and Gail thought our daughter was cursed. Awareness campaigns are usually pointless, but we needed one - not that we'd never heard about kids emitting music. It just didn't show up in respectable sources for too long.

"What, you never took her outside?" Thalia asked. Violins? Violas? I should have paid more attention in music appreciation.

"We took her outs-" Gail composed herself. "The park near our place is close to the road. People drive by with their windows open and stereos turned up all the time. There are mockingbirds. We didn't know, but now we do."

"You might want to consider changing her name. People are going to think it's a nasty joke you made about her music, around here," Thalia advised.

"Just write Mel, on her nametag," I suggested. "We usually call her that anyway. Maybe when she's older she'll change it to Melanie or Melinda or something... Do you get jokes about being named after the wrong muse -"

"Constantly," said Thalia sharply, accompanied by growling low organ notes, and she wrote Mel Thomas on a nametag and stuck it to Melody's overalls. Gail had already written one for her and one for me.

"Sorry," I said, picking up Mel. I couldn't quite tell where Thalia's music ended and my daughter's began; they were close enough to cooperate. It was eerie that this stranger - this not particularly friendly stranger - was able to interact with my child on a level that I never would. Even if it was all unconscious drumbeats and chimes.

Mel didn't seem to find it eerie. She was being quiet as a mouse apart from the entwined songs, beaming.

"Well, enjoy the Harmony Convention, here are your earplugs if you need them but that's your own business, never ask a strax to quiet down here, that's an ejection offense if they tell security - the rest of that sort of thing is on this protocol handout, and err on the side of caution, this is our space, not yours, you're only here for Mel's sake - here's a map of the convention center, and here's the events schedule. Oh, and you get a pen."

The pen was green and said I am effortlessly talented! There were other designs in the box - No awkward silences and Automatic lullaby and Play it again, Sam and There's a song in my heart and others I couldn't read without rummaging. I considered rummaging, but instead I tucked the pen into Mel's overalls pocket and said, "Thanks."

"Let me see the protocol handout," said Gail, and I handed it over, scanning the events list.

"Is it anything more than - common sense, we are guests, etcetera?" I asked her, putting Mel down and taking her pen back so I could circle interesting panels. There was a parenting one.

"Lots," Gail frowned. "It might be easier to just - not interact with anyone - how am I supposed to remember that it's impolite to speak while three or more strax are in unison? Why is it impolite to speak when - is there even a reason for - what would we do if we didn't take choir in high school and know what unison means, what then?"

"Is it impolite to ask what unison means?"

"Uh... might fall under don't assume strax know a lot about music theory. But why wouldn't they?"

"They might not be welcome in the classes, considering," I pointed out.

"Zero tolerance policy for advocating strax-exclusive social structure," said Gail. "Trade you."

I gave her the events list. I took the protocol sheet. We were moving into the crowded main hall, now; there were a couple of food stands, and some people with petitions manning booths, and exhibits, and - yep, there was a live band, which was doing a fairly impressive job of keeping the cacophany organized. Everybody was in the same key, at least, snapping to jaunty major chords now and then when the band held a long note only to dissolve into conflicting descants after a second or two.

Melody's music was in there somewhere and I had no idea how to pick it out. I didn't know if anybody could.

Never ask a strax to quiet down. We're all very tired of requests for Freebird and Wonderwall and Happy Birthday. Please do not play any low-definition recorded music, even through headphones, while at the convention, except in your private hotel room. High-def is permissible with headphones, and singing and live instrument playing permissible in the rooms marked "6" on your map -

"Daddy! Mommy!" exclaimed Mel. I could barely hear her. She was pointing at one of the candy stalls. I wondered if we should have waited until she was old enough to, say, start school, before driving five hundred miles to bring her someplace she could meet more strax. There was a meetup in our hometown, but it was very strictly strax only and we didn't have any strax friends to escort Mel; the Harmony Convention might have a laundry list of rules, but at least "no normal people" wasn't one of them.

Non-strax are not 'normal', they're just common, reprimanded the protocol sheet.

Gail bought Mel a candy apple, probably on the hope that at least some of the apple would go down the hatch with the caramel and the chocolate. I couldn't tell in the din if the candy apple salesman was a strax or just an opportunistic vendor.

Gail said something.

"What?" I asked.

"I said, if we're going to the one on strax in public places, we should start looking for the room now!"

"Do you want to go to that one?"

"What?"

I just nodded.

Gail followed the map; I held Mel's hand and went after her through the crowd. Mel was already sticky.

It was a little bit quieter in the panel room. We found seats halfway back, Mel happy with her snack between us. The live music didn't carry this far - I could still hear the swell of the crowd's music following it through the door, but it was no longer swaying Mel or the handful of people who were also this early to the session. There was music piped in, though, presumably high-def, whispering in through speakers at the front of the room. I didn't really understand how strax cooperative music worked, but whoever had set this up did; everything was, not quiet, but smooth, drifting slowly and slidily from tone to tone such that if someone spoke up and enunciated clearly I'd expect to be able to figure out what they were saying. With any luck they were also going to make use of the projector, though.

"My music is happy," said Mel.

"We need to get one of those stereos," Gail murmured in my ear over her head. "Skip both our birthday presents, maybe ask my mom -"

"We'll talk about it later," I murmured, very much aware that we'd probably sound like some kind of fascists to this crowd if we mentioned that we liked the idea of soothing Mel's music to gentle Enya-like whispers when we wanted to sleep, or if we ever had another baby and the baby needed to sleep -

The seats filled up; the panelists filed in, were introduced, and started taking questions. The projector was indeed turned on, and there was someone at a keyboard in the corner, typing very fast whenever someone said something that didn't match up to a prepared slide. I had the impression that everyone we were privileged to hear speak today was somebody big in the strax community, that everybody in the room recognized their names and could have personally written odes to their great deeds except for me, Gail, and Mel.

It was pretty clear about three questions in that we ought not to have come to this. All the politics and history were way over our four-year-old's head, and it wasn't remotely tailored for me or Gail - I'd been vaguely imagining that this would be, say, "how to politely bring up relevant acts of Congress if turned away from the library" or "which movie theaters will let you in to see the latest Pixar offering", but it was not. I would have needed to read a few more books than I knew existed about this topic to understand anything that went on, and didn't have an excuse to slide out of the row with wife and child to find something else to do. Could the people around us tell that Mel was the only strax in the family? Even if they didn't have a particular sense for it that would probably be the only reason to bring a preschooler, wouldn't it? I stayed put, and listened, and re-read all the panel titles. (I tried to think of a way for the parenting one to be this far off the mark, but even if it was intended for strax parents with non-strax children, or something, it would probably still address the quandary of how to bring the matter to the attention of school principals, if only for the purposes of PTA meetings.)

At least Mel was occupied with the candy apple. Gail, thinking along the same lines as me, took the stick with the apple core on it from her when it was denuded of food, picked Mel up with the other arm, and shot me a look as she made for the trash can near the door. I followed her, she discarded the stick, and we kept going, until we found a nook with water fountains and Gail started rinsing off Mel's sticky fingers.

"We are completely lost," said Gail, putting Mel down again with this task adequately handled. "I can't believe I let you talk me into this. We drove hundreds of miles for that?"

"There's still the - parenting panel," I said. "And Mel seems to like it."

She did. She'd absentmindedly eaten her entire apple when usually she'd have stopped at the point where she realized it wasn't peeled under the candy. She was doing a little dance. She was smiling.

Her music was happy.

"We should have tried harder to get that meetup organizer to let at least one of us sit in," Gail said. "They ought to understand that Mel can't just be dropped off on her own -"

"They didn't expect us to drop her off on her own. They expected us to have strax friends," I sighed. "Who would babysit."

"How are we supposed to make strax friends? Even if we meet someone here, even if we can hear them talking, they'll probably turn out to live hours away. It would have been better to put the gas money towards the fancy special stereo, anyway. And some of that - gentling music. When she's - twelve, thirteen, then we could drop her off at things like the meetups, why does she need all this political junk this young?"

"If the large concentration of people like her without the political junk was on offer I'd have gone for that," I said. "It's probably not all political junk. I don't believe literally every strax carries a soapbox around; they can't, can they? Maybe there's more kids here, let's walk around."

"And then she'll make friends and be miserable when they turn out to live in Alaska and we don't have a high-def microphone to let them play over the phone," muttered Gail, barely audible over ululating orchestral follow-ons to the band. "But sure."

Mel went peaceably - no love lost between her and the panel - and we wandered. I signed a couple of the petitions - bolster the protection of this Act in that State, public subsidy for the fancy audio equipment yes please - banning volume conditioning?

"Uh," I said, trying to figure out how to draw away from that booth without violating any rules on the protocol list. "No thank you."

"Are you volume-conditioning that innocent little girl?" hissed the man with the petition.

"Listen, I don't want to sign your petition, that's all."

Gail scooped up Mel and held her, like she thought the man would take our kid away.

"Are you?" he demanded. "Does she get treats if she can pretend to be like you for a minute, two, three, keep it under forty decibels for an hour and she gets a prize? Time-out if there's brass and drums while you don't want to turn on the closed captions? What are you doing to her?"

"Listen -"

"No, you listen, you listen to your child, that girl is a gift and if you're trying to -"

"We don't! But if we were in a more delicate housing situation or if we were light sleepers -"

"If you're not trying to train her out of her music then sign the petition! You owe it to her!"

"No thank you -"

Gail was pulling on my elbow; I let her take me away rather than continue trying to get the guy to allow me to depart. He didn't chase me.

"Just - don't look like the kind of person who signs petitions," Gail said in my ear over harps and harpsichords and a pennywhistle. "It's like giving money to beggars."

"One of them was for equipment subsidy. We'd like that."

"A petition's not going to make it happen. Look, the real point of being here is for Mel's music to come out to play, right? Let's find one of the smaller rooms with instruments and singing and - let her play."

There were four rooms on the map marked 6 - Improvisational Live Music Venues. (Between 5 - Concessions and 7 - Record Points of Sale. Of all the complaints I had about this convention, its crisply organized map was not one of them.) We headed to the nearest room; empty at the moment. The next had an old man with a guitar and some people sitting in a circle of beanbags around him, most of them with their eyes closed, music cooperating. We went into that one and sat Mel on a beanbag and stood in the corner ourselves.

She seemed to know what to do, if there was any matter of knowing instead of it just all happening by itself around her. I still couldn't pick out her own tune when it was blending. It itched at me; it was like looking at a group photo and not being able to find her face. Maybe she'd be more distinctive if we'd brought her up around throat singing and yodeling and birdcalls instead of my pop and classical and Gail's baroque and Cirque du Soleil. And our mutual blues. We hadn't had any music on in the house except Mel's since we'd figured out what was making the baby cry, two years before we knew why. We left Mel with my sister or Gail's mother when we wanted to go to a concert. Because she was four. Because she was a strax. Both.

It seemed impolite - though there was nothing about it on the protocol sheet - to speak in this room, while they were doing what they were doing with the guitar. I found an old receipt in my pocket and Mel's pen and wrote, You okay here if I go look around for ~20min?

Gail nodded.

I squeezed her hand and patted Mel with her happy music on the head and slipped out the door with the event list.

Strax in the media. Strax history - what, more of it? Separate from what we'd stumbled into in the first panel? (Subtitle: It's short for "soundtracks"!) Strax around the world. Strax community organization.

I headed for that last one. I'd only be a minute late.

I found a seat close to the door, ready to bolt if "community organization" turned out to mean "picketing and writing letters to your representative" rather than "forming smaller gatherings than the Harmony Convention", but the slide up showed happy news. List of cities in the U.S. and Canada with regular strax meetups - the ones whose leaders were present on the panel today were bolded -

And my city was in big black letters.

Yep, I recognized the ginger guy on the left. And he recognized me too.

"I'm going to interrupt you there," he said to the person next to him, who was in the middle of um-ing about a question that had been asked before I came in. "I recognize this fellow and he's relevant to the topic. Mr. Thomas?"

Damn, damn. "Mr. Cole," I acknowledged.

"Right. We were just talking about different meetup groups' choices to include non-strax; if I recall correctly you took it amiss that my policy is not to admit you."

I swallowed. "Our daughter is four," I said, trying not to sound defensive.

"And that's one of the reasons some meetups admit non-strax, so they can escort their young children. There's tradeoffs to be made, obviously -" He didn't seem to be addressing me specifically anymore; just using me as a springboard to talk about his pet topic. "Obviously most strax have non-strax parents, so when they're too young to attend meetups alone they can only participate if non-strax supervision is allowed, or if their parents have at least one strax friend who'll take them. But equally obviously, it's important to strax of any age - particularly ones in the awkward period where they have to live at home but can sometimes go places alone, mid to late teens - to have a retreat from the people who constantly attempt to suppress their talents and consider them annoyances instead of a shared communication tool and plaything -"

He rambled. And rambled. Even the other panelists looked annoyed with him. I looked at my watch; I'd told Gail twenty minutes, I hadn't planned to stay for an entire panel, but Cole had gone and drawn the entire room's attention to me. If I left and the room wasn't actively on fire at the time I'd look like he'd chased me out.

I almost did leave at the twenty-minute mark, but then I found I actually had a question.

Cole called on me. The typist in the corner leaned to hear me better over the cooing high-def music saturating the room with level conversation-compatible croons.

"What should non-strax parents of young strax be doing to let them have their - I don't know what to call it, time with other strax, anyway - if they live where we live, or places with community situations like that?"

"Make strax friends," said Cole.

"But -" there are barely thirty of you in the entire metropolitan area and the only place you concentrate won't let me in.

"I agree," said the woman next to him before I could continue. "Make the effort, put yourselves out there, take the trouble to demonstrate to the child that you don't find people like her intolerable companions."

"We're -" here, aren't we?

"It's not like we're hard to find!" chuckled the guy on the other side of her, winking at the rest of the audience. They laughed; the music burbled.

"The -" protocol sheet says that if you're here for both days and see someone outside listed convention hours outside the center you shouldn't approach them just because they're making music unless their music is inviting you and what does that even mean, does that not apply at home, someone tell me how I can just make my kid's music happy without people looking like they wish our state had laxer gun laws -

"It's going to come down to that," agreed the fourth panelist. "Get to know other strax in the area. If you're here from as far away as Mr. Cole is you're obviously willing to put forth some effort for your child, and some of it's going to be social effort. Maybe bring your child outdoors more often and let people come to you, if you don't know how to close the distance yourself."

"But -" what if everyone who approaches us thinks we're training Mel like she's a puppy to keep her quiet, what if they think we hate our baby, what if they're like that petition guy -

"Next question," said Cole.

I left.

It was probably my imagination that the music snarled at me as the door closed.

When I got back to the "6" room that I'd left Gail and Mel in, they were gone, probably looking to see what had kept me or maybe taking Mel to the bathroom. I had the map; they could have gotten lost whichever they were doing. Great. I started making a circuit of the big room. I paused to look in the other "6" rooms in case they'd moved to a different one, but no, they weren't with the a capella (...as much as anybody here could be a capella) choir in the one or the lap-harp-and-an-accordion in the other. The first we'd checked, still empty. Ladies' room: line curving from it to the exit, no sign of Gail or Mel standing and waiting, and I hadn't been that late. I wished for the hundredth time that I could have afforded to replace my phone when Mel put it in the applesauce jar instead of waiting to ask my sister for one come Christmas.

I found Gail near some kind of photojournalism exhibit that I didn't pause to take in. Gail wasn't looking at it either, she was squinting into the crowd.

She didn't have Mel with her.

"Gail," I said, "where's Melody?"

"I thought she -"

"You didn't think she was with me, I told you I was leaving, I left her with you -"

"And we went looking for you and she said Daddy and pulled away from my hand and went tearing off into the crowd, I thought she'd maybe really spotted you, but I couldn't get through -"

"I haven't seen her," I said. "I haven't seen her since I left you in the guitar room."

"Oh, God," breathed Gail. I couldn't even hear her, but I could guess.

"Where exactly were you -"

"Hey, guys," said the photojournalist. "You're blocking my -"

"Not now," I told him. "Gail, where exactly were you when -"

"You can't," said the photojournalist, "you can't be in the way of the exhibit entrance -"

"Shut up!" Gail shrieked at him. "I was just by that pillar and she went that way -"

The photojournalist looked like she'd slapped him.

Every other strax within shriek-detecting radius looked like she'd slapped him.

The security guard in the convention center uniform looked like he wasn't getting paid enough, but he stalked forward and put his hand on Gail's shoulder. "Ma'am, going to have to ask you to leave."

"My daughter -" Gail began.

"Ejection offense, it was on your protocol sheet, come with me right now, ma'am. Sir, don't you start with me," he told me.

"Our daughter's missing!" I exclaimed, but he didn't seem to understand me over the roaring music.

He had his earplugs in.

"Find her," Gail cried over her shoulder as the guard pulled her away. "I'll be in the car, find her and we're leaving."

I nodded. The convention center was big, but not infinitely big, and if she'd gotten far away from it, well -

It's not like strax are hard to track down -

I tried to find another security guard, but apparently they were all placed maximally inconveniently. The photojournalist, when calmed down enough to answer a civil-by-sheer-force-of-will question, said he hadn't seen any four-year-old black girls wearing blue or any other color outfit. The people at the other stationary exhibits nearby said the same thing. She must have been quick as a wink towards whoever she'd misidentified as me.

I went back towards the entrance where Thalia, named for the wrong muse, had been, but she was gone, replaced by somebody else who also hadn't seen Mel.

Back into the center. Through it in a careful, exhaustive grid -

Past the row of petitioners.

The fellow in favor of banning volume-conditioning didn't say a word to me when I walked by.

How much of my gut feeling was about hating him for shouting at me in public about fictitious mistreatment of my daughter and how much of it was about the potentially relevant fact that he'd chosen that specific way to earn my resentment, as opposed to keying my car?

Would someone have taken her? Would he, or maybe someone who'd heard him and believed him?

Mel wasn't a hiding-prone child. We never found her curled up beneath the sink or under her bed or in the washing machine. I didn't think she'd be under somebody's booth table or tucked into the curtain behind the band. And I'd been all over this convention center twice. And if I had to listen to the music obliviously chortling while my child was missing for another hour I was going to start climbing the walls -

Where the hell was another security guard?

Eyes peeled for another one of those convention center uniforms, I stalked out of the petition booth row, only to bump into Mr. Cole.

"Mr. Thomas," he said, politely enough. "You don't look well."

"Mel's gone missing," I said, "Gail got thrown out, and I can't find security and don't know if the one throwing her out will listen to her, he had earplugs in."

"Missing? For how long?"

"At least half an hour, now, I've been looking - you've seen Mel, would you recognize her if you saw her -?"

"I think so. Not a lot of kids around. You take that half of the convention and I take this one and we meet back here?" he suggested.

"Y- wait. I had an - argument with one of the people with the petitions, back there, earlier, he shouted at me about Mel. I haven't got a speck of proof but -"

Cole nodded. "You want me to talk to him?"

"It'd be a stretch to imagine he decided to kidnap her in public, but if he's - talking to her, trying to coach her to tell someone that she needs child protection services - I swear to God, Mr. Cole, we don't volume-condition her, I just didn't want to sign the man's petition."

"No, I know," Cole said. "She doesn't look expectant when there's a lull in her music or anxious when there's a swell - I know you don't. Wait here." And he walked down the row of petitioners, and paused to sign the anti-volume-conditioning one, and I couldn't hear a word of what he said, but I stayed put.

And Mel popped out from behind the booth, and Mr. Cole offered her his hand, and she took it and walked with him right back to me.

Since she'd apparently developed a propensity to run off suddenly into crowds when merely hand-held, I scooped her up off the ground. "Thank you," I said. "What happened -?"

"He spotted her running around lost and gave her a pretzel and asked her some questions but couldn't get her to say anything incriminating," Cole said. "I don't think he'll be a problem again."

"That's good to know, but we're not staying. Gail got booted and I'm not leaving her to sit in the car for another four hours," I told him again. "And to be honest this entire day has been kind of a disaster even apart from the missing child."

"I like guitar," said Mel.

"Except the guitar room part," I amended. "If there was one of those back home I'd stand in the corner being ignored every week. But." Right. Cole was not exactly helpful in his usual territory. He'd just brought a lost kid back to her dad, not championed me in a duel.

"That's most of what the meetups are like," Cole said. "First half, anyway, and most people leave after that part."

"Great. That would do us a lot of good if -" I shook my head, trailed off.

"If you had a strax friend," said Cole.

"Or another relative or a sufficiently harmless next-door-neighbor or something or if you'd let me or Gail stand in the corner. That."

Cole squinted at me, then - fished in his pocket and came up with a business card.

"If you're in the market for a strax friend," he said, and then he moved off into the crowd.

I was rooted to the spot until Mel started pulling on my tie and I had to reassert sufficient presence of mind to not choke.

And then I headed for the door, and peeled off our nametags, and put Mel's pen back in her overalls pocket where it belonged, and met Gail at the car.

Not quite unmitigated disaster, and - something I actually knew how to do for her.

Mel's music played happy bells.

Tower

"The final step in your initiation is to leap from this tower," said the gray-robed figure.

Ven peered off the edge and gulped. "Is it."

"Yes," said the figure.

"Is it safe?"

"What do you think?"

Well, this was - as far as Ven knew - the same mysterious robed person who'd guided her through all the previous trials. And except for a bump on her shin she was fine. It was a long way down - so long she wouldn't be able to see if there was a net or a spell at the bottom.

She hesitated, a long moment, and the figure didn't stir or speak, and finally Ven flung herself forward, eyes squeezed shut, and fell -

Onto a spellcatch, soft and gentle, which placed her on her feet and held her up till her knees stopped wobbling.

"Why did you jump?" inquired another (?) gray-robed figure.

"I," started Ven, and then she paused and thought. "I trusted her," she finally asserted. "She hadn't steered me wrong."

And the gray-robed figure at the bottom of the tower nodded, and led her for miles east into a forest, where there was a hidden network of treehouses and bridges between them, and gave her a green robe, and she went among the others in the green robes and found there the kindred spirits she had intended to find. She had passed the test.

"- leap from this tower," said the gray-robed figure.

"Seriously?" said Torix.

"Yes," said the figure.

"Right, never mind then," grumbled Torix, "I'll take the stairs, sorry to have wasted your time." And he headed back the way they had come, and the gray-robed figure did not move to stop him.

At the bottom of the stairs was another (?) gray-robed figure.

"Why didn't you jump?"

Torix hadn't expected to have any further interaction with the Order, after bailing on the last test. But whatever. "Because jumping from towers is not something I do. Not for you, not for anybody, if I go thinking it's smart to jump off towers something's gone wrong."

And the gray-robed figure at the bottom of the tower nodded, and beckoned Torix to follow for miles north into a valley, where there were tidy little houses all standing together in a village, and gave him a blue robe, and he went among the others in the blue robes and found there the kindred spirits he had intended to find, having passed the test.

"- from this tower," said the gray-robed figure.

Emlin had come prepared for anything. She laughed, handed her heavier bags to the gray-robed figure, and started re-buttoning the various flaps on her outfit and pinning the edges of her cape to her ankles. And she took a running start and flung herself into the air.

A leisurely basejump later, she deployed her parachute and came to a neat landing beside another (?) gray-robed figure.

"Why did you jump?"

"Because I could," said Emlin.

And the gray-robed figure who stood where she had landed nodded, and bade Emlin to follow for miles west into the mountains, where there were caves and huts and shelters of all rough-hewn homemade sorts, and gave her a brown robe, and she went among the others in the brown robes and found there the kindred spirits she had intended to find, the test well and thoroughly passed.

"- this tower," said the gray-robed figure.

"Is not," snorted Duraun.

The gray-robed figure tilted her head.

"The other steps weren't like that. They were puzzles. Some of them were disguised puzzles, but they were all puzzles. No fighting monsters, no lifting heavy objects, no leaping off of things without reasonably expecting them to be safe. This is just another kind of puzzle; lemme figure it out."

The gray-robed figure waited.

Finally Duraun suggested, "All right - you first."

The gray-robed figure nodded and leapt without hesitation. Duraun watched her fall, and went after her after she had landed safely.

When he was on his feet on the ground too, she showed him a place miles south in the plains, a live-in library, and gave him a white robe, and he went among the others in the white robes and found there the kindred spirits he had intended to find, satisfied with his performance on the test.

"- tower," said the gray-robed figure.

"Why?" asked Myr. "What does that tell you about me? Is there a right answer to 'leap off this tower', anyway -"

And the gray-robed figure laughed, and led her down the stairs, and down further still, deep into the caverns under the tower, and gave her a gray robe, and...

Visitor

This story is set in the same universe as Changeling and Queen.

This story is also available in audio, which you may find on this episode of Wingardcast.

He didn't charm my name out of me the first time. No hungry wanderer has the wit to do that, and he was clever enough from the start to avoid the faerie food. I didn't even let him see me. I watched him, I thought he'd been here at least a day by the time I ran across him and he already looked like he'd survived an encounter with a pack of trolls. Meanwhile he watched everything. He watched the least of us tend the flowers and watched the Queen's chariot cross the sky and watched the shadows change directions indecisively under the eternal daylight of the upper Reach. He found a gatekeeper and passed her test (on that occasion she was looking for steadfastness; on another she might punish stubbornness, but he guessed correctly, and held up to scrutiny). He went home. This was common enough. The film between ours and yours is thin. You fall in, see enough to color your daydreams, and go home and have your choice of silence or dismissal.

What is not common is for the same visitor to return a second time.

He didn't charm my name out of me the next time I saw him. But that time, he did see me. I recognized him while he was moving the tiles in the outer wall of the labyrinth that protects the spring of liquid gold. I couldn't tell what he was trying to do, and moved from the shadowed areas where it's easiest to hide, to get a closer look.

And he said, "Hello."

And I said, "Good morrow, mortal." (And he smiled, and I didn't know why.) "What's your name?"

"What's yours?" he asked.

I didn't answer him. "What are you doing?"

"Experimenting," he said.

And I said, "You look hungry. Would you like a candied dewdrop?"

"Do you want a grape?" he asked, and he pointed at the satchel at his feet, full of food brought from the other side of the veil.

I laughed. "Oh! You planned this. I wondered why you had been so foolish as to fall in twice if we didn't tempt you to stay the first time."

"Three times," he said, moving the tiles again into a different pattern.

I laughed again, and he smiled, and if I couldn't have his name or be the one to convince him to take food from me, I could make him smile, and that was an opportunity too. Sometimes mortals stay on purpose, seduced by beauty. (Once they're here to stay, their few protections evaporate and they don't remain for long in their original forms - but that's all part of the fun.)

"You're a tourist," I teased him, and I clambered up to the top of the wall he was playing with. "Playing puzzles and going on little adventures with your name in the balance. There aren't games enough for you at home?"

"I'm a visitor," he suggested.

"Visitor," I allowed. "In and out twice. In a third time. If you like it here so much, why not stay?"

He looked up, met my eyes. He squinted when my wings flashed in the light. "Thinking about it," he admitted, and he smiled again. "If I found a nice comfortable place to stay where the Queen wouldn't eventually crush me."

"You could stay with me," I suggested, fluttering down to his side, getting close enough to smell him.

"Could I, now."

"Of course. Taste a dewdrop from my hand. Or give me your name. Stay forever. Look at the pretty things. Play with the tiles."

"Wind up as dinner, or a mushroom, or fog. Dance without rest for eternity to decorate your hall, or your master's hall, or your lover's hall -"

"You'd be very decorative," I laughed.

"Would be, but no."

"What do you want here, then?"

"I want," he said, looking at the tiles again and slotting the last loose one into place in the new pattern, "to know how it works."

The wall shifted aside, a new entrance into the labyrinth. He grinned.

"Stay and I'll tell you all about it," I purred in his ear.

"Come home with me, I'll make you famous," he replied, and he touched me then, one finger under my chin and I licked my lips, "everyone will admire you, those pretty wings and that blue hair, I won't even make you dance."

I laughed at him.

And I flew away.

And I followed him again when he came back, because he was the most interesting thing about.

The third time I saw him I showed myself right away. He smiled at me and went on drawing circles in the dirt.

"Are you trying to cast spells?" I asked him, peering over his shoulder.

"Maybe."

"They won't work in the mortal world. Stay with me, be a sorcerer. I'll keep you for myself, the Queen has enough sorcerers in her court not to steal mine."

"Come with me when I go. Ghostwrite a book. I won't let them cart you off to a laboratory."

I laughed. I touched his hair, made it stand up. "You aren't afraid to touch me," I said.

"You're not one of the violent kinds."

I tugged on his shoulder and had him pinned to the ground under me in a moment. He went limp and pliant, didn't even try to resist. "Are you sure?" I asked.

"If I wasn't sure," he said, "I wouldn't have let you get so close. You didn't hurt me."

I pouted and let him up.

"I'm sure you'd be very dangerous," he said, "if I let you feed me, or told you my name."

"I would be gentle with you," I cooed. "You could do whatever you liked, really. Most of the time."

"You're already nice to me," he said.

"So you can see, I would go on doing it."

"That logic doesn't even work reliably at home, let alone here."

I sighed and sat next to his circle. I wasn't a sorcerer myself, I didn't know what the shapes meant. "What are you trying to do?"

"Weather, today," he said.

I watched him draw.

"I would be kind to you," I asserted.

"Maybe you would," he acknowledged. "I'm not going to stay here. With a faerie I've met twice who hasn't told me his name."

"I don't know your name either."

"I'm," he said, and I straightened up, "a visitor." I slumped again. "Why do you want me so badly? Trick another faerie out of their name, into debt, whatever other ways there are."

I shrugged. I had faerie vassals already. "You're interesting."

He smiled at me. He drew another angle in his circle. "Thanks."

He called down rain, and I fled for cover because I hate it when my wings are wet, and he sat next to me under a tree, and he found all of the fey berries I'd snuck into his bag of food and picked them out and threw them away.

Then he tousled my hair, and drew himself a gate out, and went home. He didn't stop to ask me again if I'd come along, not when there was a door right there.

I caught him on his way in, the next time, and caught a glimpse of the other side of the gap on the veil he used - a narrow space between walls of regular, red stones, mortared with something rough and beige, paved between them with something dark and scattered with debris that was brightly colored under the dirt and rot. He stepped in, and the gate closed, and he waved at me.

"Good morrow, Visitor."

"Is that my nickname now? I still don't have anything to call you."

"You could probably think of something."

"I'd rather find out."

"What would you do with me?" I asked, leering at him.

"I'd be nice to you," he murmured.

I laughed at him. "What are you doing here today?"

"Learning things. What else?"

"Oh, I don't know, you could challenge me to a game for our names."

"Why would you even accept the challenge, if I issued it? Why would you want another layer of command over the Queen's?"

"It'd be fun," I said. His legs were longer than mine; I fluttered to keep up with him when he started walking. "If you're going to play, play for stakes."

"Is that how you get your vassals, then?"

"Most of them."

"They lose a game and you keep their names forever."

"Well, we mean forever, but sometimes they get away," I shrugged. "Forever's a long time."

"Have you been a vassal before? Apart from to the Queen, I mean."

"Probably. I don't remember. It's been a very long time, you know, we change roles, the old lifetimes become like stories and then less than that."

"Huh," he says. And then, "Mortals are called that for a reason, you know."

"I know," I laughed, "you're here and gone, barely for days. You've so little to lose."

"It's still all we get."

"Yet you keep wandering here, where everyone and everything wants to snap you up and keep you."

"You would, wouldn't you," he mused. "Even though you like me. Because you like me. You'd take my name or feed me and find something or other to do with me, maybe nice, maybe not, maybe you'd turn me into a bird or keep me as your love-slave or dangle me from your ceiling -"

"Was one of those supposed to be the nice outcome?" I leered.

"- even though you like me."

"Because I like you," I said.

"That's not what mortals do when we like each other," he snorted.

"No? You like me, what would you do with me if you could do whatever you pleased?"

He touched my face again. "That's not how it works at home. Getting to do whatever you please with someone isn't - a liking thing. It's more like this, how we are now, no compulsions, just spending time together, only at home names have no power so the possibility isn't hanging over our heads. Mortals who like each other aren't... covetous like that."

"No?"

"Well, sometimes. It's not thought to be very healthy." He dropped his hand.

"I'm perfectly healthy," I said, draping myself over his shoulder. "And I covet you. Tell me your name and I'll show you."

"If I got yours," he said, "and you were all mine, to do whatever I liked with, what would you think of that?"

"Well!" I laughed. "I'm not going to do it. That'd be losing."

"How would you feel about it?" he pressed.

"Oh, everyone would laugh at me, losing my name to a mortal -"

"And would that bother you?"

"It's all part of the same game," I said.

"I'm not hearing a yes, it would be horrible."

"You'd mean forever. It wouldn't really be," I shrugged.

"So you'd try to get away."

"Otherwise I'd just go on losing. It's no fun to lose all the time."

"It really does boil down to just a game, doesn't it."

"What else would it be?"

"Hmm," he said, and he laid his hand on my jaw. I squirmed around until I was sitting in his lap.

"Kiss me," I suggested.

"You've probably got faerie food tucked in your cheek."

"Ah, you've caught me."

"Tell me your name and I will, though," he whispered. "It'd be safe then."

"Safe, safe, safe, it's boring, Visitor."

"I'm not playing the same game as you," he said.

"Try it, it's fun."

"I don't have enough to gamble with. You're the high-roller here. You can afford the, what, eighty years if I'm moderately lucky."

"Pfff," I said, "that's nothing. That's not even worth playing for."

"Well," he remarked, and his eyes sparkled, "I'd mean forever."

"Ooh."

"That's what I'm here to try. What did you think I was here to do?" he whispered. "Do you think I can do it?"

"...Ooh."

He grinned at me.

"You're dangerous," I accused, laughing. "What would you do if you had me?"

He looked tired, for a moment. "Trust you. I would be having more fun right now - different fun, but more of it - if I could trust you. That's what I'd do."

"No locking me up in a tower as your love slave?" I leaned in close, winked.

"Is that one supposed to be the nice outcome?" he murmured.

"Maybe. Kiss me."

"Tell me your name and I will."

"Astikari," I breathed, and before I had a chance to regret it, he made good on his promise.

He was nice to me.

And he had a point, about it being more fun. He could stay longer, for one thing - food from his vassal's hand, however fey in origin, wouldn't bind him to the place, and so I fed him all sorts of confections and he knew I wasn't going to poison him and that was entertaining in its own way, how he relaxed. He still went back to the mortal world occasionally. He didn't make me go with him, only bade me run errands and be waiting for him when he returned.

And I did, and he always did return, and I was at his side always, and I began to see the shape of his plan.

He didn't want to be a visitor.

He didn't want to eventually let slip his name to some beauty and consign himself to some traditional fate.

He wanted to learn everything, and use the one advantage a mortal has in our world.

Not even the Queen knew his name, and not even she could command him, if he had enough power to face her.

The Queen's reign was meant to be forever. And she meant forever.

But it's such a long time...

Sympathy

They arrive weeping.

They look like fairies, or elves, or angels - not human, they don't want to lie to you, but close enough to have faces, close enough to be beautiful, close enough to wring their hands. Close enough to cry.

(If you betray a hint of sympathy for their plight, they will only mourn harder. They don't want to upset you.)

(But they will, because they have to.)

You get one of your own. So to speak. She's not your obedient servant; she would save you if you crashed your car, but she will not make your coffee. She will only follow you around, and, when you seem most receptive - she will offer you gifts.

She cares about you. She wants you to be happy. She wants it so desperately that she weeps, sincerely, whenever she dares - though she doesn't want to upset you . It's not for show... exactly. She wasn't born looking like a fairy. This isn't how she'd normally convey grief, and she is wearing this face so you'll understand her when she does.

That doesn't make it any less real.

What is she so upset about?

You won't take the presents.

Some people do take the presents. Those people turn into fairies/elves/angels - or whatever, because there are enough of the original visitors to go around pleading with the holdouts. Those who accept don't have to look alien and pretty and expressive if that's not their favorite thing, and the visitors don't care about shape. They care about happiness. And you don't have enough of it, and that hurts your fairy friend. It hurts her so bad for you to hurt that you wonder why she doesn't kidnap you and force delight on you.

She'd like to. Oh, she wishes she could. It would be so much easier. But she cares about you; and you won't take the presents. You would be upset if she forced you, and it would only be a technicality if she did it so fast that you never saw her coming. And she doesn't want to upset you.

So what she will do instead is follow you around whenever her company doesn't make you too furious, and make sure you don't die if she can possibly help it because she does care more about your life than your permission, and sometimes she whispers in your ear. Maybe on Christmas because everyone else who loves you gets to give you gifts then (and she does love you). Maybe when you have to put your dog to sleep and it eats you up inside, she wonders softly if you'd like to make it stop. Maybe when you're standing over gorgeous scenery and breathing delicious air and squeezing your lover's hand, your fairy and your lover's angel whisper in unison that it could last .

If you take all her presents - the big presents, not just the little ones that she hopes to tempt you with, the massive life-altering presents - then it will last. You'll be happy. You'll still be complicated (she wants you to be happy, not some simplification). You can take your lover with you, if you say yes at the same time or close enough.

Why isn't she happy? She wants to be happy. She could be happy. She wears most of her own offerings herself; if you tried to hit her she'd be unmarked, and her lovers never argue with her, and when it served her designs to take fairy form (for you, so she could better communicate with you) she could do that as easily as you can put on a sweater. She could be happy. That's what she's for; that's what they're all for; that's what they want, for themselves as well as you -

Well, she can't be.

Because she loves you, and you don't have the things she thinks you need, and she will not, will not destroy you to fix that - so she wears a face that looks like yours, and cries real tears that look like yours, because if you'd love her like she loves you, if she could only become that important to you, you'd take what she offers instantly. If you'd want her to stop crying the way she wants you to stop hurting, you'd let her change your nerves, you'd let her pour magic into your hands, you'd let her lay hands on your soul.

You won't, yet, but your friends' friends start. You don't, yet, but your town looks emptier. You haven't, yet, but the ranters on their soapboxes speaking out against the alien menace, standing in the park with their elves wringing their hands in chagrin beside them, are thinning out.

You aren't, today, but if she bravely restrains one more sniffle of misery -

Well, you like being happy, too, don't you?

DivineMatch

This story is also available in audio, which you may find on this episode of Wingardcast.

I'm not ashamed to admit that I have accepted human sacrifice. If you can't worship me at my worst, you sure as hell don't deserve my best

Pass.

Yahweh992 has inspected you, as he does every sparrow that falls! Check him out - he's a good match!

Pass. Since when was a god of everything exceptionally good for anyone in particular? She hadn't even prayed to that 93% harvest goddess, and Her portfolio included specific mention of regular weather miracles.

Don't be shy. Send It a prayer.

She wasn't really comfortable with genderless gods. It was just a preference. She didn't have to defend it to anyone.

Check out this pantheon of suggestions!

A generic father god, a generic mother goddess, one of those party gods with all His pictures full of wine and half-naked worshipers. Pass. Pass. Pass.

You have one new prophecy.

She opened it.

Hello, Luanne. Yes, I know your real name. I'm looking for a close, personal relationship with you. Don't worry that you'll be lost in a vast congregation. I'm telling you - just you - that next week, it's going to rain on Tuesday over Pensacola. You're my prophet about that, but if sharing that special knowledge with the world goes well, maybe I can trust you with more?

It was obviously a form letter, even if He had her name right. She closed it without reply.

im strict monolatry all the way if i find out ur cheating on me ill litening ur ass

Pass. Luanne didn't have any competing gods, but she didn't think monolatry was for her.

She modified her search settings to look among her fellow mortals. Some people went to DivineMatch for reasons other than its stated purpose. Of course, she could say that she was in the market for nondenominational socializing all she wanted; some people would think she was just out to be converted - but maybe she'd find someone to have a plain, secular friendship with.

_Parishoner_4_ lived a mile away from Luanne and liked waterskiing. Send her a testimony! It still called them that even when Luanne had no intention of proselytizing; she supposed the site couldn't tell.

Hi, Parishoner. I just want it clear up front that I don't want to be preached to about (Luanne checked the profile again) the Divine Kaleidoscope, although I'm sure She's great. I just wondered if you wanted to waterski together sometime. I haven't been able to find anyone else who likes it among my offline friends.

Luanne hit Send.

She browsed some more mortal profiles. She didn't find anyone else claiming hobbies in common with her, and hadn't really expected to. DivineMatch was full of mortals trying to court gods for special favor. Most people weren't going to talk about waterskiing.

Just to pass the time, Luanne started pretending she was a goddess, combing through the throng for a high priest or a crusader. Should spelling count? Did it matter if her intercessors were ugly - would it turn off other worshipers? That guy with an architecture degree wanted to build her a beautiful temple if she'd cure his cancer...

Luanne logged out.

This took her back to the DivineMatch homepage. A stylized icon of an angel invited her to make an account. "Fill the god-shaped hole in your heart, or swell the choirs singing Thy praises!"

Choirs singing her praises...

They hadn't checked to see if she was really mortal when she'd made her account. Would they check to see if she was a goddess, if she wanted to pretend?

Luanne smirked, and clicked the angel.

I am a Goddess seeking worship.

She crossed her fingers, and clicked again.

Soon, Luanne was logged in as "smallgoddess". She didn't want to go around claiming huge miracles; she'd be found out at once and reported to the God Mods. She wrote her profile as a modest household goddess.

I won't demand much from you. No tithing, no getting up early once a week, no burnt offerings... just someone to pray to when you need a listening ear.

She considered adding I'm a cuddler, but no, people generally weren't looking for senses of humor in their gods unless they were into Trickster figures, and that didn't fit with what she was trying to project.

Current number of worshipers: 15

She didn't want to claim a huge church. That would be suspicious. But even on a matching site, people steered clear of gods who nobody counted on their pantheon.

She didn't think it would be too suspicious if none of her fifteen followers were on DivineMatch. Maybe that would even be appealing; she was enough god for them, they weren't looking elsewhere to fill out their personal pantheons.

Or she was inflating her number. But she was, so she couldn't really provide much evidence against it.

After she'd gone through some more match parameters (holy days: first of each month [standard calendar]; minimum number of mortals required to gather in Thy name: 1; favored charitable causes of the church: sustainable anti-poverty efforts...) she named her ordinary mortal account as her own worshiper. Then just for kicks she awarded herself priestess status. Not "high" priestess; with only fourteen imaginary congregants to preside over there wasn't much room for elaborate ecclesiastical hierarchy.

I strive to be approachable, rather than living on a mountaintop or a distant planet, but if you're interested in knowing more about Me and don't feel comfortable with direct prayer, you can send a testimony to My priestess, lu_lu_lu.

Dietary restrictions: strictly no cannibalism, limit high fructose corn syrup, thou shalt not consume Vegemite. (She giggled to herself.) Symbol...

Luanne drew a picture of crossed skis, stylized so the only hint that her symbol wasn't an "X" was the slight curve to the tops of the lines. She scanned it, cropped it, and uploaded it.

Preferred intercessors: priesthood. (She couldn't very well send seraphs or unborn souls or imprints of her face in toast hither and thither to bear her messages.) Minimum frequency of prayers for members in good standing: 1/wk. Acceptable monetary contribution types: consult priestess.

Luanne hoped that no one was going to actually send her money; that would feel wrong. If someone asked her-as-lu_lu_lu about it, she'd suggest diverting the contribution towards a charity.

Monolatry... The buttons offered were "monolatrous/henotheistic worshipers only", "worship only within My formal pantheon" (this was greyed out, since she hadn't joined a pantheon), "polytheists OK", "kathenotheism/short term worship OK", "katheno/poly both OK", "I am a concept; this question does not apply", and a write-in box for "other/details". Luanne ticked "polytheists OK". It'd be hypocritical of her to do otherwise.

She realized abruptly that her mortal profile needed updating to reflect what she was doing; lu_lu_lu currently advertised herself as godless and had a profile full of her mostly-hypothetical virtues as a follower. She logged into that account in a different browser, and fleshed out smallgoddess's details while lu_lu_lu's page loaded and processed those changes.

Thirty minutes later, lu_lu_lu was the sole priestess over fourteen laity in the worship of a more thoroughly explained smallgoddess. (Luanne didn't have any brilliant ideas for a "real" goddess name, let alone fancy titles. The site didn't demand them, but it did prod her to add them in order to attain 60% profile completion.)

Lu_lu_lu also had a new testimony.

_Parishoner_4_ wrote: Hi, lululu! I'm in a skiing club you could join (Luanne clicked the link open in a new tab, then closed it when it announced that it required registration to read) but if you're not looking to hear testimonies what are you even doing on this site? Do you think your "smallgoddess" (doesn't She even have a title or anything?) is really enough to fulfill your spiritual hungers? I love the Divine Kaleidoscope but She's got a limited portfolio - but She's not a household goddess at least, She's everywhere, She's a goddess of colors. And protection and stuff. But I still want to fill in my pantheon some, don't you? But I guess you don't really want a testimony you just want to ski, so yeah, skiing club.

Time to think of a title, Luanne supposed.

Except everything she could think of sounded dumb applied to herself. It was all well and good for (click, click) an ethereally lovely woman with giant gaudy butterfly wings to go by "Divine Kaleidoscope"...

Luanne poked around at other deities who also listed themselves as household-type gods. Most of those didn't have titles, or had quiet unassuming ones like "The Hearthwarmer" or "Threshold's Guardian".

She decided to do without a title unless she had a really good idea later - or someone else came up with one for her - but she needed a name. Her mortal profile didn't reveal more than the first two letters of her name. She took the rest of it and turned it backwards. "Enna". That sounded like it could be a goddess's name.

My name is Enna, she prepended to her profile's freeform box of text.

She proofread both profiles, then signed out, wrote in her diary, and went to bed.

Welcome back to DivineMatch, Enna! Thou hast 312 new prayers.

Holy crap.

Luanne knew that gods got more messages than mortals - there were fewer of them, and while some mortals only worshiped one god, all gods wanted multiple worshipers. (Or if there were some who didn't, they didn't hang out on DivineMatch.) But she hadn't even uploaded a likeness yet, or issued prophecies to any mortals...

She clicked the link, biting her lip.

The patterns in these messages were different than the ones she'd gotten as a mortal, but after the first ten or so she'd gotten accustomed to the stock types. She regretfully archived the mass-distributed prayers about diseases and soccer matches and world hunger. She forwarded questions about her doctrine to the lu_lu_lu account, so she could answer them without having to worry about sounding godly. She clicked the "acknowledge this prayer" button to wordlessly confirm receipt on the surprisingly large number of prayers of thanksgiving; people were already asking for things, and by sheer coincidence apparently were sometimes getting them.

Luanne wondered if any other gods were faking.

But she didn't know how to find someone's real name to address them that way in a message. She couldn't fling lightning at anyone. She couldn't even do more household-goddess things, like fence burglars out or keep the gutters clear. Not without training a couple of dogs or renting a ladder, anyway.

Feeling deeply silly, Luanne went outside and focused on her gutters with what she hoped was a deific stare.

They still had heaps of pine needles in them. She went back in.

It was days after the start of the Enna... thing... that Luanne got around to checking her regular email. I'll be in town soon said the subject, and it was from Ramona.

Ramona was Luanne's oldest friend, which was saying very little, as they'd met less than a year ago. It hadn't been on DivineMatch, but it had been on a messageboard around a the topic of gods and religions in general. Ramona had said something clever about how mid-tier sorts of worshippers would wind up having the worst fits with their gods: undesirable mortals could worship whoever they liked best, since eventually they'd get the hint that no one would offer them special privileges. The most appealing mortals, the most beautiful or faithful or competent, could afford to hold out for priesthoods or prophethoods or consortships with opportunities to bear demigods, and be choosy between several such options. Mortals who were neither might try to hold out, and might get offers, but not necessarily from the gods who were best for them.

Luanne had remarked that gods had some insight into who would work well with them and who wouldn't, and Ramona had answered, and everything had gone from there.

But Ramona lived a hundred miles away, so the email was exciting.

I'm going to be near you for a convention on Friday, the message read. It was not Friday yet, mercifully; Luanne hadn't let the visit fall moot in her distraction. Can I crash on your couch 2 nights? I'll buy you dinner, we can hang.

Luanne replied at once. Of course. She gave her address. What's the convention?

The reply came within a couple of minutes. She'd caught Ramona online. Oh, good, you're there, I was worrying about hotels! It's a work thing, all about traffic light timing, it'd bore you to tears. Are you busy lately?

No. Seasonal work, Luanne answered. Till snowfall season I'm just sitting on the computer all day wishing I could afford to hire someone to tow me around waterskiing on my own. I don't suppose you want to go in with me on renting just a boat so we can take turns?

Ramona answered, No can do, I don't have a swimsuit, which was a flimsy reason; Luanne took it for the polite rejection of the activity that it was. I'll show up on your doorstep Thursday at 8ish!

Thursday at eightish, Ramona rang the doorbell. Luanne let her in. She'd tidied up the place, so it was no longer too embarrassing except for its size and poor repair. "Ramona!" she said happily, holding out her arms in what Ramona could choose to take as an exclamation of enthusiasm or an invitation for a hug.

Ramona chose the latter, giving Luanne a quick squeeze before dumping her knapsack full of luggage on the shoe mat. "Hi, Luanne! It's great to finally meet you in person."

Ramona was a little short, a quarter Asian, a snappy dresser. She wore most of her pantheon's neatly matched holy symbols in a charm bracelet, with the primary god of the bunch in a place of honor on a chain around her throat. She also had a halo glowing sunnily over the crown of her head.

"I didn't know you were haloed," Luanne remarked.

"It's new!" Ramona enthused, grinning. "My Lord Anthos gave it to me when I dedicated his new temple for him last week, and he's let me keep it so far. I'm so blessed! What do you think?"

"It suits you," pronounced Luanne.

"What about your spirituality? Still seeking?" Ramona asked, sidling in and sitting on the couch that Luanne had wrapped in sheets. "We don't talk enough, I doubt I'd know if you'd been made the caliph of a sun god or something."

"I'm not a caliph," Luanne said, shrugging. She sat down next to Ramona.

"Aww," Ramona sighed. "I don't understand you. Most people who've been seeking this long will at least pick someone generic to worship while they look for a better fit. My church would have you - we like to think we have something for everyone."

"I've been, you know, looking around," Luanne said.

"Didn't you have a faith when you were little?" Ramona prodded. "How long have you been godless, anyway?"

"Yeah, of course," Luanne answered automatically. "Just... you know, a while."

Why had she said that...?

"You don't want to talk religion, do you," Ramona said. "If I were you I wouldn't either. Where do you want to go for dinner tomorrow? My treat, and I can expense it, don't worry if it's pricey."

Luanne named a restaurant. They talked about food, and about travel, and about how Ramona had begun to adjust her wardrobe in reaction to the halo, and finally they went to sleep. Ramona apparently couldn't turn the halo off, and Luanne had to stuff the crack under her door with a t-shirt to get her room dark enough for sleeping.

Why had she said she'd had a faith when she was little? Most people did, but she didn't think she was one of them.

What had she been raised as? Not just religion, but in general. Culture, language - would Ramona be able to identify Luanne's accent, if asked?

It occurred to Luanne that she didn't remember anything about her childhood to speak of. She had ideas about how to answer questions regarding it. She'd name a date of birth when prompted, for instance. She gave "Smythe" as her last name on forms that needed one. She remembered claiming to have played soccer on a forum.

She got up out of bed and looked up the forum post. It was months old, but the search feature worked pretty well.

I used to play soccer, read the post. I'd look for a team now but it wouldn't mesh well with my work, which is seasonal: as soon as the snow melts, I'm busy all day.

That was backwards. She worked in the winter.

Didn't she?

She backtracked to the post where she'd first interacted with Ramona. It was posted in the summertime. The thread had gone on for a bit, diverging from the religious topic.

No, I'm not working right now. I have an autumn-and-spring-only job.

Luanne remembered writing that, come to think of it.

Why had she written it?

Luanne stared at the screen, then nudged the t-shirt out of the way of her door and woke up Ramona.

"What is it, Luanne?" her friend asked groggily, sitting up from the half-doze.

"I'm really, really sorry," Luanne said, "I know this timing is really inconvenient, but I just realized I have no idea where I came from, I don't know what to do."

Ramona blinked sleepily. "Huh? I'm gonna guess, your parents."

"I don't know if I have any. I can't remember them, I don't know how I'd get in touch with them, I don't remember anything earlier than about a year and a half ago, I've been saying things that I can't figure out why," Luanne said.

"Anthos's bones, Luanne, I just wanted to crash on your couch, please don't be a crazy Internet person," mumbled Ramona, dropping her face into her pillow. "I just wanna sleep. Anthos'll strike you down if you murder me in the night, you know, I got a halo. G'way."

Luanne stood up and drew back. She returned to her bedroom, replaced the t-shirt, and sat at her computer. Too wired to consider sleeping, she went through her entire e-mail history.

The first email she had ever sent was apparently a reply to a spam message, which included a great many terms that didn't apply to her and, randomly enough, the word "waterski".

She'd answered it with the sentence "I like waterskiing!".

What in the name of any and every god...?

Luanne paged forward. It looked like every personal trait she had came from someplace similar. She remembered typing the words, looking at the spam - it wasn't like she was trawling a stranger's account - but she couldn't remember anything significant about her mental state at the time. Had she been reminiscing about something she could no longer remember? Had she been discovering things about herself she hadn't realized, or inventing them as she went along?

When she started sending emails to recipients other than spambots, they were all the same. She was never working; she was always seasonally employed during some other season. She was never a congregant, always a seeker. She'd signed up for DivineMatch under her mortal screenname six months ago.

She had no correspondence anywhere from a landlord on her house. Her bank account was a year old and showed no paychecks or rent charges, just a steadily dwindling balance from an opening deposit of $15,775 spent on food and clothes and household objects. She didn't seem to have paid anything for her car, either.

Something was up.

It had a miraculous flavor to it.

And Luanne knew where to go looking for gods.

"Don't worry about me, the convention serves breakfast," Ramona called in the morning. Luanne was up - still. "I'll see you tonight, we'll get dinner."

"Okay," Luanne called back.

She was still paging through the gods that DivineMatch offered to her. She'd answered every parameter question offered to mortal users, trying to narrow down the field. Who could have done this to her - or made her in the first place - or done whatever had been done to cause her to be out of nowhere?

Then she made a new mortal account called "fromnowhere" and answered all the questions again, skewing her answers to attract Trickster gods, because this smelled of trick.

DivineMatch obligingly showed her pages of sneaky, mischievous gods. She took an instant dislike to each one, but none stood out, and none of the messages that accumulated in fromnowhere's inbox looked like anything other than mass mailing.

Ugh.

Luanne abandoned the computer to look through her house for physical evidence. There were books on the shelf, all of which she'd bought in the last year. There was food in the fridge and the oldest thing in her cupboards was from eight months back. Was she going to have to go to City Hall and look through records to find out who owned her home? She couldn't find a birth certificate, a Social Security card, anything like that anywhere.

She went back online.

She tried a new deity account, this time posing as a boring sort of goddess looking for a pantheon to join under the handle "allthingsbright". That didn't yield anything either. She logged out.

With four accounts on DivineMatch, she didn't type her screenname anymore, she just clicked in the box to get a dropdown menu.

lu_lu_lu

smallgoddess

fromnowhere

allthingsbright

recordkeeper

She didn't recognize that last name...

She started to log into that account, then changed her mind, logged in as lu_lu_lu instead, and searched for the profile.

I'm Unnael the Recordkeeper, a goddess of memory.

Last online: more than 1 year ago

Worshipers: 287

Preferred intercessors: priesthood

There was a link to a profile of a priest, "journalKeeper".

Luanne clicked it.

I'm Rob, priest of Unnael the Recordkeeper. This is just a placeholder profile until Our Lady Unnael returns to us. I'm not going to be checking my inbox very often, sorry.

Well, that wouldn't help, if he wasn't going to answer her mail asking what in anyone's hell was going on.

Luanne logged out.

She typed "recordkeeper" into the screenname box, and crossed her fingers, hoping her browser knew the password that she didn't.

It did.

She was in.

But there was no startling revelation associated with it. She could edit Unnael's profile, if she wanted, read all the answers to all the questions, but she didn't remember this place.

"Recordkeeper". Some recordkeeper. She wasn't learning anything more inside the profile than she could have seen from outside of it.

She started poking around in the rest of her computer. Some recordkeeper, she thought, unable to turn up anything that she didn't expect to find there. She kept diligently updated files of her past grocery lists and her budget and her to-do list, but there was nothing older than a year ago.

Ugh.

Luanne collapsed onto her bed and fell into an overdue sleep.

"I'm staaaarving," sang Ramona's voice. "Let's go out and get some food on my boss's dime, huh?"

Luanne's eyes fluttered open. "Coming," she said.

She threw on a new shirt, as she'd been in the old one for almost two days by this point, but deemed her jeans acceptable, and came out to meet her friend. "Uh, does pasta sound good?"

"I'm easy," said Ramona. "Hey, are you feeling better? You were acting funny last night, do you sleepwalk and talk about your dreams or something?"

"No, I just have no idea where I came from, as of about a year ago," Luanne said, pulling the front door open. "I'll figure it out, though. I think."

"Okay, I'll play along," said Ramona, following. "Ahem. 'Wouldn't you have noticed this earlier, Luanne?'"

"Apparently not."

"How did it happen?"

"I'm not sure. Have you ever heard of a goddess called Unnael the Recordkeeper?"

"Not off the top of my head..."

"Didn't think so," sighed Luanne. She got into her car; Ramona took the passenger seat. "Do you have enough pull with Anthos that you could get Him to help? I know it's a lot to ask..."

"I just have a halo, not a holy relic; I'm a small-time cleric," Ramona said. "Hey, I rhymed... I don't even do priestess stuff as my regular job, I do traffic signal timing to pay the bills."

"Right," sighed Luanne.

"How does someone from nowhere pay for stuff?" Ramona asked playfully; she obviously thought this was a fantasy scenario Luanne was toying with.

"Mystery fifteen thousand dollars. Mystery lack of rent or utility bills and car payments."

"What a mystery," said Ramona.

"Yes." The noodle restaurant wasn't far. Luanne parked, and they got out. "It's very mysterious."

"Is this a story you're writing, or like a screenplay, and you want to see if your plot twist is predictable...?"

"What do you think happens next?" Luanne asked. "Two, please."

They sat. "Uuum. So the protagonist is like you?" Ramona asked.

"Lots like me, yeah."

"You find the story's faith interest and He or She provides you with the revelation?" suggested Ramona. "Decent screenplay has to have a faith interest."

"How do I find the faith interest?" Luanne asked, frustrated. "Undirected prayer?"

"Maybe. I found my pantheon that way," Ramona said, touching the charm on her necklace. "You spend so much time on DivineMatch and you haven't gotten anywhere."

Luanne scanned the menu and then dropped it, making up her mind to order the usual macaroni dish. "I forgot to mention that early on I find evidence that the whole thing is somehow connected to the faith of Unnael the Recordkeeper."

"The name kind of implies that somewhere, there might be records," said Ramona, nodding and smirking.

"Yeah, I guess." But she'd already turned the entire house upside down, looking for documentation of her existence, turned her computer inside out, looking for old files...

They ordered pasta. They ate pasta. Luanne drove them back to her place, and Ramona announced that she was exhausted from a day of traffic light seminars.

Luanne sat up, staring at the login screen offering her five accounts on DivineMatch, until she drooped with tiredness again and went to grab her diary and scribble a few words in it before crashing. She'd neglected it yesterday, staying up all night.

She looked at the new blank page for a moment, and then slowly, deliberately paged backwards.

The first page of the diary was dated a year ago.

Ugh.

And it was inane, too. I seem to live in a house. I think I like it. I need an email account. No wonder Luanne had rarely thought about the time of her inexplicable origin; she'd been boring then.

That was the first page, it didn't go back any farther.

Luanne closed the diary, and opened it again. She tried to open it harder. She tried to open it like she was a god -

Paper bloomed under Her hands, reams of it, books and books and books, and Unnael found Herself again.

"Recordkeeper," said Rob, dropping to his knees. "You have returned."

"Never re-alphabetize My books again, Reverend," said Unnael. "That you are allowed to look at them is a privilege. Do you think you know better than the Recordkeeper how to order a library?"

"I am so sorry, Recordkeeper." Rob swallowed. "I did not think it could harm You..."

"It no longer can; I've seen to that. But I wouldn't go by this title if My records were unimportant. If I am ever confused into incarnating Myself again, then I will not be so forgiving after reaffirming My divinity."

"I'm sure it will never happen again, Recordkeeper."

"Come up with a good story about it," sighed Unnael. "Something that explains why I was gone and doesn't make Me sound vulnerable to shelving."

"Yes, Recordkeeper."

Unnael departed in a swirl of documents.

Assassin

"What are you wearing?" Helen asked the man at the tree-shaded bus stop, hesitating to sit down next to him on the bench. "What" wasn't the right question. She could see what he was wearing: swim goggles, a football jersey, Crocs, a kilt, a gray hoodie that was too tight on him, knee-length rainbow-striped socks, and a leather cuff around his neck with metal spikes coming out of it. Helen knew at least one person who'd have worn each item in the outfit, but would expect any pair of them to fight to the death if they were ever stuck in a room together.

The man looked down at himself, which was an effective enough way to see everything except the goggles suctioned to his forehead. He was bald, without even eyebrows, but looked too thickset and robust to have just survived cancer. Maybe he was a mental patient, picked out all his own hair... no, there was some on his arms. Surely a mental patient who picked at hair would've gotten that. Or not, Helen didn't know. "A MacGregor plaid kilt," he said, "a pair of yellow Crocs, a -"

"Never mind," Helen said.

"Do you know when the next bus that goes to the stop on Ninth Street will be?" he asked her, after a silence.

"Twenty minutes," she said, after a glance at her watch. "That's where I'm going, too."

"Really?" he asked. "Are you from that neighborhood? Do you know where Roger Swansea lives?"

Helen tilted her head. "Why are you looking for him?"

The man peered at her, assessment in his eyes. Helen shifted uncomfortably and moved one of her braids behind her ear; plastic ties clicked against each other. She didn't mind when people from her high school checked her out; older men she did mind.

"I suppose it doesn't much matter if I tell you," the man said finally. "I'd have seen the police report if you were going to call - well - anyway. Swansea's got to die," he said.

"Has he," said Helen. She kept her hands on her knees, but shifted her hips so her phone was pressed between her leg and the bench. It was there if she needed it.

"Well, you're not going to believe me," laughed the man, "but, you see, I'm a time traveler. And Roger Swansea invented a time machine. Not the same kind I used - I'm not stupid, I checked carefully for paradoxes - but today he's going to go forward in time, and he's going to bring forward a disease that they've eradicated and lost resistance to. Hundreds of people are going to die before they can stop it."

"So you decided to kill him," Helen said. "Why didn't you kill him - oh - last year? Since you're a time traveler. Why do it now?"

"Paradox checker didn't like it," the man said. "It said I could go back today - but it made me land in the bathroom of a diner outside town, was as close as I could get to his house by machine. I'm having to bus across to his place. Lucky I was able to print some currency and some clothes from this time."

"Lucky," agreed Helen absently. "But why do you have to kill the guy, not just convince him to skip his trip or go in a biohazard suit?"

"Because," the time traveler said, wagging a finger authoritatively, "history shows that he disappears on this day. If I just convince him to stay, he'll still be around - paradox in the lightcone. If I convince him to go in a biohazard suit... Well, that could actually work. Does he have a biohazard suit?"

"Not as far as I know," Helen said.

"There you go, it could take him more than a day to get ahold of one, that's probably why the paradox checker didn't say I could do that. It said I could try to kill him just fine, though."

"Won't you create some kind of paradox in the future he's going to bring the disease to?" Helen asked. "They're in your own past, if I understand right."

"Not quite," said the time traveler. "That is to say, Swansea technically landed outside my light cone - they lived on Europa, I'm from out on Argo. The only reason I got the news was via more time travel, and that means I can mess with the events that led to me getting it. It doesn't count if time travel was the only reason it could causally affect you."

"Uh-huh," said Helen skeptically.

"How long until the bus gets here?" the time traveler asked.

"Six minutes," she said, glancing at her wrist. "So you're just going to kill the man. You know he's got a family?"

"I'm going to save hundreds of lives," said the time traveler.

"In a manner of speaking," said Helen. She reached into the inside pocket of her coat, pulled out her miniature laser gun, and shot the time traveler between the eyes. He fell off the bench, the look of pious smugness still on his face.

Helen dragged the absurdly-clad body into the trees and took the long way home, rather than let the bus driver get a look at her to be questioned when the time traveler was found. Assuming he wouldn't just evaporate, or something. She didn't know how his sort of time travel worked.

When she'd finally walked the mile and a half, Helen knocked on the door to the basement. "Dad," she called. "Da-a-ad."

"I'm busy, Helen!" he shouted up the stairs.

"It's really important!"

"More important than the mess with the matter agitator?"

"I had to shoot a guy again, so about that important," she said.

Her father came halfway up the stairs. "What, again? Was he going to steal my newest invention too?"

Helen shook her head. "He was going to kill you."

Her father blinked. "Oh. Well then. Thank you, dear. What was he going to kill me for?"

"Apparently you're going to the future, on Europa?" Helen said, gesturing vaguely. "You're going to give some people a disease? Lots of them will die? The guy wanted to save them."

"Oh, I see. Well, I won't travel without adequate quarantine, then. And... I suppose if they don't die, then in the future the same person might well be born... mightn't he? Or he'll be prevented altogether, but either way he's unlikely to return to the past and try to kill me, so there is a sense in which you didn't truly... kill... someone who exists... but... How have we not been obliterated by a paradox? Dear, do you know? I was hoping to finish my machine today but if I need to spend all afternoon on math..."

Helen shrugged. "Apparently," she said, "it's safe if you get the information via time travel."

"I see. Will I need to brainwash a new therapist for you?" he asked, brow furrowing with concern.

"I think I'm okay," she said. "Easier the second time. I kind of wish you'd stop attracting assassins, though, Dad."

"You don't really need to take it upon yourself to protect me, Helen dear," he said, smiling indulgently. "But thank you."

"You're welcome, Dad," Helen said. "Love you." He took that as a dismissal and turned to go back into the basement, muttering about coefficients. Helen lugged her backpack upstairs and started her homework.

Earthfic

This is a short story. If you have been linked to it in lieu of a definition of its title, here is the definition of the title (though I welcome you to also read the story):

earth·fic (noun): a work of fiction which takes place in "the real world", without invention of a setting. Approximately mutually exhaustive with "speculative fiction". Compare "litfic".

This story has been translated into Russian by Sithoid. This story is also available as a voice-acted podcast courtesy of Eneasz.

"You could have the dog talk," suggested Lanie.

"I can't have the dog talk. That would completely change what it means about the character, that he talks to his dog," said Harriet. "If he talks to a dog that talks back, then he's not a guy who's lonely enough to talk to his dog. He's just a guy with a dog that, for some reason, talks. It would be rude not to talk to a dog that talks."

"I'm just saying," said Lanie, "that there are things you could do to the story to make it publishable, without changing it all that much. So the dog can't talk, but there's a hundred other things. Set it ten, fifteen years in the future, sprinkle it with some gadgets for color. Make everybody an anthropomorphic skink. Have them live on Mars in an alternate universe where we colonized it in 1983. Or not on Mars in an alternate un-"

"My story isn't about people in 2026, or about skinks, or about Martians," interrupted Harriet, breaking eye contact and twisting the ball of her foot into the carpet.

Lanie shrugged, gave up, and put the manuscript back on the coffee table. "I do like it," she said softly, and she let herself out of the apartment and left Harriet alone.

Harriet's roommate was home half an hour later, excessive amounts of Chinese takeout dangling from both hands and his mouth. "Fffoo," he said, and then he released the baggage onto the kitchen counter and took in Harriet, the manuscript in her hands, and the neatly arranged cushions that neither resident ever organized. "Food," he clarified, and then, "Your sister was here, and told you nobody publishes earthfic, just like I told you, right?"

"That's why they pay you the big bucks, Mr. Dawes, clever deductions like that," said Harriet, dropping the printout back onto the table. "You're Sherlock Holmes. Oh, wait, I can't make that reference, can't possibly have read Sherlock Holmes, because nobody publishes -"

"Harriet," said Dawes. "I'll thank you to remember that we met in Literary History. Also, the "mister" thing, not so cute."

"Fine, Mrs. Dawes," she said, getting him to roll his eyes. "People used to publish earthfic, is my point."

"People still do, to be fair, they just do it on earthfiction.net instead of in print," he said. "You could say that people no longer pay money for it, but publishing, that you could do."

Harriet scowled. Her earthfiction.net account had a bunch of short stories on it, but she was holding a novel, an honest-to-goodness novel in her hands that she wrote and so what if the dog didn't talk, it was good. "Don't you like the book?" she asked.

"Nope. I missed a midterm to find out how it ends because I hate your book, Harriet. That is how much I hate it. I hated your book so much that I'm going to punish you with wontons." Dawes handed her a carton of punishment and a pair of chopsticks, and Harriet began mechanically chewing on the dumplings, watching her roommate to see what he'd say with the sarcasm out of his system. "Look, I like earthfic. And your book is right up there with some of the best stuff I've seen, although I kinda wish you'd pick a title and stick with it. But what am I supposed to do? I don't run a publishing house."

"I know. I thought Lanie might have pitched it to her agent, but -"

"Agent?" said Dawes.

"I told you Lanie writes," said Harriet. She picked at the corner of the cover page in front of her with six crossed-out titles, wondering if she could grab someone's attention from a slush pile with something catchy. Something that pretended to an inventive setting. Something with the word enchanted or space, or some four-digit number hinting at a year that wasn't the current one.

"You told me she writes. You write. You don't have an agent," Dawes said around half an eggroll.

"And you didn't think my advance reader copies of all the Melanie Nelson books were suggestive of anything?" Harriet asked skeptically.

"Melanie Nelson... Me-Lanie Nelson," said Dawes. "Christ. You have Melanie Nelson on speed dial."

"In theory, she'll help me if I need help," said Harriet sourly. "I thought you knew. I think I've told you her married name before."

"I never made the leap," said Dawes, sounding stunned. "Wow. It must run in the family, I guess?"

Harriet huffed and tried to poke a hole in her last wonton with the end of a chopstick. "Lanie writes high fantasy. I don't."

"Why don't you?" asked Dawes. "You could just tweak the book a little. Hey, I know - the dog could -"

"Shut up," said Harriet.

He shrugged. "She can't really pitch earthfic to her high fantasy agent or her high fantasy publisher, can she? It'd be pointless. They'd be all, "Well, Mrs. Nelson, your sister certainly seems to have a solid grasp of character, pacing, word choice, plot, and mood, but this story has no worldbuilding, so please, do let us know when she writes a real book, one that's less derivative and shows that she can create her own settings" and your sister has clout, I imagine, but not enough to change their business model. The business model that puts her on shelves."

Harriet's hands clenched steadily tighter on her knees as Dawes speculated. "There's nothing unreal about my book."

"Which is the entire problem," declared Dawes. "Anybody could travel to Minnesota -"

"It's set in Montana, Dawes, you read it -"

"To a state the name of which begins with an M," Dawes continued, "and meet real live people who really talk to their dogs and really work as actuaries and really suffer from - hang on, I'm trying to think of an amusing way to get this wrong - nope, I fail. Suffer from blindness. It costs a plane ticket and some looking, but there's a dude wandering around out in the world suspiciously like your protagonist, even if you made him up."

"Does that make the story any less interesting?" challenged Harriet. "Or even less fictional? There might not be a guy like him. If there is, he's not why I wrote the character that way."

"Okay, geez," said Dawes, holding up his hands. "I am not the incarnation of the traditional publishing industry, nor do I have the wherewithal to alter said industry. Shouting at me will not help you get your novel in stores unless you also want to take my suggestion about how the dog could -"

"The dog does not talk," Harriet snapped.

"I was going to say "do math", actually," said Dawes. "It could help with the actuary thing."

"It doesn't do math either. It's a dog." She finished her wontons and shoved the box away. "I'm going up to campus."

"Okay," said Dawes. He was halfway through the fried rice. "Later."

Harriet didn't have any classes for the rest of the day. She was a week behind on reading for her Shakespeare class and hadn't run off a copy of the commentary they were using yet, but she didn't head for the library. She didn't want to stop at her usual café haunt either, because they sold pastries there, and even full of wontons she'd wind up buying one and then regretting it. Instead she went to the little cluster of trees around a bench with someone's name on it that she'd never read.

It was already occupied.

"Harriet," said Lanie, surprised.

"Lanie." Harriet tilted her head, and then sat, nudging her sister over with her knee. "You didn't go home?"

Lanie shrugged. "It's empty right now. No reason to go there instead of here, as long as the weather's nice."

"Dawes didn't know you were Melanie Nelson," Harriet said. Lanie didn't have anything to say in reply, so Harriet changed the subject again. "I don't want to change the story in some pointless way that it doesn't need to make it respectable. But I don't want it relegated to obscurity either."

"I wish I could help, Harriet. But I don't think my imprint would take earthfic even if I wrote it."

"I was thinking I could mess with the title," Harriet said. "Just the title. It wouldn't be actually wrong for the book to call it something like -"

"Harriet," said Lanie reproachfully. "If you just want my agent to read your story, print out a spare copy and I will get him to read it. You don't need to cheat your way out of the slush pile. That's not your obstacle, unless you've sprouted an objection to nepotism in the last twenty minutes. But pretending to be maybe-not-earthfic for the first chapter - or ten, I published a book that didn't have the faerie realms doing anything of consequence until chapter eleven - won't get you in print. I don't have a way to turn earthfic into a new niche."

"It doesn't need a speculative element," said Harriet, stubborn. "It doesn't need it. This is ridiculous. A hundred and fifty years ago earthfic wasn't considered so low-status."

"The funny thing is, in every other way but worldbuilding, you're a better writer than me," said Lanie.

Harriet looked over at her sister with surprise. "You're joking. I'm not."

"Well, you don't have an editor," Lanie said. "If you saw my drafts before she hacks them to bits you'd laugh. I should credit her as coauthor, honestly." She sighed and worried her lip, looking up at the trees. "I know you don't want to go to a vanity press, or I'd buy you cover art and a small print run for your birthday, but -"

"Ugh," inserted Harriet.

"But, even if this particular novel has to be on earthfiction.net only, you can still write in the publishable genres."

"I don't know," Harriet said, looking sadly at Lanie. "I'm no good at that sort of thing. I doubt I could even make a superficial change to the existing book that didn't ring false - like you suggested putting it in 2026 or something, but I don't know what 2026 will be like, it's sure to be laughably wrong if I guess. And then my decently polished, thematically whole earthfic turns into bad near-proximity sci-fi lousy with obvious, tacked-on technology with bumped up version numbers and computationally intractable imaginary features."

"I could authorize you to do shared world fiction," offered Lanie tentatively. "You can have all my notes on the faerie realms and do a Ruby Faerie Realm book - then it's not earthfic, and you don't have to tack on spec stuff to a story that grew without it, and you don't have to do worldbuilding. Although you really should learn, it's a core skill. I couldn't write earthfic if I tried, it'd be like writing a story without any characters in it."

"Shared world..." Harriet mused, ignoring the thousandth encouragement from the aggregate population of Lanie, their parents, every creative writing teacher ever, and the bewildering percentage of earthfiction.net reviewers who were looking forward to her talents being turned to "serious" fiction so they could recommend her to their friends who wouldn't suffer earthfic to clutter their reading lists.

"I kept the sharing authorization rights for Ruby Faerie Realm," Lanie said. "I couldn't let you do Spiderworld or Mercury Maze without checking with the publishing house, and they'd probably say no for a debut author - although I'll try if you'd really rather do one of those - but you can do Ruby Faerie stories all you want, and I can make my agent read them and talk my editor into backing them and they won't be dismissed as earthfic."

Harriet clutched her wrists and leaned her forearms on her thighs. "Maybe," she said, at length. "I wish this book could be on shelves."

"Harriet. I like your book. I really, honestly like it. But I'm not a Ruby Faerie and I cannot mind-control my publisher for you. What are you trying to accomplish, mourning your earthfic? You're twenty-one, for crying out loud, you have lots more books to write if writing is what you want to do. If you want your name in print you have to live with the market."

On one level Harriet knew she was being petulant, and Lanie was being more helpful than she had to be, and that while writing a Ruby Faerie book would be harder than writing earthfic, it would also be much, much likelier to establish her as a serious author among people who mattered.

On another level, she was really attached to her first novel.

"Ugh," she said again.

"Think about it," said Lanie. "I'll e-mail you my notes. You can ask any questions you want about the Realm and I'll tell you the answers. I don't know what else to do for you, Harriet - I'd offer outright coauthorship on something but I don't expect to have the time to start a new project for the next year."

"I'll think about it," Harriet agreed.

"What were you going to write next, anyway?"

Harriet muttered a synopsis of a novelette starring a med student and a single mother, but she wasn't that enthusiastic about the plot she had in mind. She did like the characters... and the Ruby Faerie Realms intersected with a fairly normal Earth in places. The characters could stay. "Maybe I could fold them into a Realm book," she mumbled. "They could do something faerieish."

"There you go," said Lanie. "That sounds great. Look, I'm starving. I'm going to go home and polish off some leftovers. You'll have the notes by tomorrow morning, okay?"

"Okay," said Harriet.

Lanie hugged her and left, and Harriet sat on the bench until it got dark and then walked back to her apartment.

When Harriet got home, Dawes was reading her copy of Ruby Faerie Prince. "I'm going to need that soonish," she said, having made up her mind to at least try putting her med student and single mom in a Realm-related plot.

"What for?" he asked. "Hey, can you ask your sister why the Prince didn't bother warning Penelope about the brackish demons when he brought her to -"

"Because there's about five thousand things that could kill you in the Realm, and she barely listened to him when he told her the most probable hazards, so he figured it'd be better overall to leave her for five minutes while he got her an amulet," said Harriet tiredly. She'd thought Dawes had known about her sister, and just didn't feel inclined to relay a lot of questions about the Realm and Spiderworld and the Mercury-goddamn-Maze even though he liked Melanie Nelson books. His lack of grilling had been half the reason she'd made friends with him in freshman year. "I'm going to need it because Lanie says I can do shared world Realm stuff."

"Really? That is awesome," said Dawes. "Hey, if your sister wrote these why didn't she sign them for you?"

Harriet stuck her head in the fridge so he wouldn't see her roll her eyes, and emerged with juice. "She's my sister. Her signature's not really special to me and it's not like I'm going to sell my books. You could buy your own copies and she'd sign them."

"I might do that, at least the faerie books you'll be using. Are you going to put the novel online or sit on it for a while hoping for a miracle?"

"I don't know yet," she said.

"Second thing, then," Dawes said.

Harriet sighed, but didn't have a retort ready. She drank her juice, and added try outlining realm story to her to-do list between attend yoga and lunch meeting with Spanish club.

Before she retreated into her room to turn in for the night, Dawes returned her copy of Prince, and she put it back on the shelf next to Ruby Faerie Regent and Ruby Faerie Usurper. (Usurper wasn't actually out yet - Harriet's was the ARC.) Next to the red-spined faerie series were Spiderworld and Spiderworld's Net and Into the Mercury Maze. Lanie was almost a decade older than Harriet and had started writing at the same age as her sister, finished a novel at the same age as her sister...

Only, Lanie'd had the fortune to choose a marketable genre. To be good at a marketable genre.

Harriet looked at the shelf of Melanie Nelson books for a long moment, and then switched off the lights and got into bed before her eyes adjusted.

Harriet had her creative writing seminar first thing the next morning, and brought her manuscript, though no one in the class had been interested before it was finished and she didn't think it likely that they'd want to read it just because it was done. It was currently titled "Seeing-Eye Dog". She expected she'd cycle through three more titles by the end of the day.

The seminar met once a week, and was worth a credit hour with regular attendance, but it was small and informal compared to most of Harriet's classes, and they usually met outdoors when the weather permitted. She found Professor Ngo sitting on the same bench where she'd met Lanie the prior evening, talking to two students who'd arrived earlier. Harriet sat on the grass next to one of them, who was talking about his space opera novelette. The other student interrupted with a comparison to her time travel short. Harriet resisted the urge to glower.

The six other students in the seminar trickled in, and Professor Ngo passed out handouts, which were about realistic dialogue. For someone who held earthfic in as much contempt as did the general population, Harriet thought, Ngo talked about realism a lot...

Every week, there were twenty minutes left after Professor Ngo's planned lesson. These were taken up by discussion about the students' own projects. Harriet had spoken up about her novel... once. Her classmates had laughed at her and Professor Ngo - sounding like she was trying to be kind - informed Harriet that she was in college now.

Harriet fidgeted in her seat, listening to progress reports on an alternate history and a steampunk romance and an urban fantasy and a post-apocalypse dystopia.

"Harriet?" asked Professor Ngo tentatively, when everyone else was done. She always asked.

"I'm going to start a new project today," said Harriet, resisting the temptation to shriek I finished a novel, none of the others ever finished a novel, damn it -

"What is it?" prompted the professor, tentatively, obviously hoping that it wasn't more earthfic.

Harriet twisted her hands in her lap. She didn't want Ngo to smile at her, didn't want to be taken seriously only because her new project wasn't earthfic.

Except that she also did. She wanted to look her teacher in the eye and name her next work and have everybody in the class know that she was probably going to be published (because your sister has connections, said Harriet's brain mutinously, but still).

The professor looked at her expectantly.

"I'm starting a new story today," Harriet said, and her voice only trembled a little bit. "It's shared-world of the Ruby Faerie Realm."

"Oh, how lovely," said Professor Ngo, beaming. "What do you have planned for it?"

And Harriet told her about the characters she was importing from the old story, and that she still had to figure out where the faeries came in, but was going to outline it right after yoga, and she avoided looking any of her classmates in the eye.

The class dispersed; Harriet heard footsteps behind her like Professor Ngo wanted to catch up to her and put a hand on her shoulder and congratulate her, but she sped up and didn't feel such a hand fall.

Yoga passed, and Harriet sat in the cafeteria, waiting for Spanish club, staring at her notebook.

She didn't think Ruby Faerie Realm stories were inferior to earthfiction. She liked her sister's work.

She didn't think they were worse. But it felt like she should, just to counterbalance everyone else.

She regretted telling the seminar about her new project. They'd looked at her like the correct response was aw, she's maturing as a writer, look, not she's trying a new area, no better or worse, just new.

It didn't help that she was mostly doing the Realm story because she thought it would get her published, rather than for the creative stretching implied by either thought.

Harriet tapped her pencil on the notebook and sighed and started sketching a loose outline of a plot that suited her characters and incorporated enough faeries that they wouldn't feel extraneous.

That afternoon, she typed up the outline and sent it to Lanie. Not expecting you to hold my hand through the actual writing, I just want a once-over on the plot skeleton, she added. Like if I missed some problem that the faeries would just fix by gemcasting something.

Lanie answered her after dinner: Looks awesome, have fun with it :). Harriet stared at her computer screen. Dawes was playing loud symphonic metal in his room. The manuscript of Harriet's novel - she'd settled on titling it "Actuation" and hadn't changed it since Spanish club - was leaning over, trying to slide out of its binder clips, in her bag.

Harriet opened the file on her laptop, updated the title, and uploaded it to earthfiction.net. She considered putting a little note in her author profile while she was there: "Keep an eye out for my next project - it's Ruby Faerie Realm shared-world! I'm authorized and you can expect it on shelves if everything goes according to plan!" She opened the editing box and the cursor blinked expectantly at her.

Then she closed it, and pounded out three thousand words of a first draft of chapter one of her Realm book, and went to bed.

In the morning, "Actuation" had two new reviews attached to early chapters. One was standard illiteracy - "u kep up the good wrk plz sequel? read my fic TEh Pet Store also r&r". The other was flaming her about some minor factual error regarding the geography of Montana, which she fixed without replying to the reviewer.

Harriet wrote another thousand words in her draft, then wrote to Lanie: What kind of feedback do you usually get on your books?

Lanie didn't get a chance to answer until midafternoon, by which time Harriet had sat through her Hispanophone Literature course and her art elective in ceramics. Lanie's reply read, My agent filters out the unreadable stuff (though he passes on the really hilarious ones) so I mostly just see nice things. Somebody named their baby Penelope after the character, people want stuff autographed - my agent has to filter a lot of that too b/c we can't provide our own postage for everything, they have to do it - somebody once told me they set the Mercury Chant to music and sent me a CD, it was pretty. Why?

Harriet didn't answer right away; she had six more comments on "Actuation". They ran the gamut from more incoherent squealing to a notification that she'd been listed on someone's recommendation hub to a glowing review of the treatment of blindness: I'm sick of reading blind characters in mainstream stuff because there's always some doodad or spell that can cure them or they have a magic power that makes them practically speaking not blind, and that's not gonna happen to me anytime soon, it's great to see a regular blind character who's going to stay that way but gets along fine, thank you :D

She answered her sister. Just curious about how it compares to the stuff people are saying on ef.net is all.

Come over to dinner tonight, Lanie wrote back. Me and your brother-in-law would love to have you. Spaghetti squash <3

Harriet tapped her fingers on the keyboard, typed awesome, pick me up whenever, and went back to her Realm draft. If she gave the antagonist enough graphite dust - maybe he should have access to a pencil factory - he could choke off the faeries' flashier powers at will... that made it easier not to solve all the problems by magic. The humans could do things. They could have realistic problems. And some of the characters would have wings and complain about there being too much graphite dust for them to gemcast, that was all.

She started chapter two. It had faeries in it. But she could still do what she was good at. She could keep most of what she liked about earthfic. Harriet chewed on her lip, then went back and edited in a limp for the female protagonist's son, which he was going to keep through the entire book.

She had a lot of writing left in her.

Expense

This story is also available in audio, which you may find on this episode of Wingardcast.

The immortal was a little grey lady in an outfit so outdated that it would have looked more suitable in a Renaissance faire than in the nursing home that would have suited the woman herself. Skirts atwirl, she swished over to her captive with a sigh and touched his face. He was generically handsome, hadn't shaved in a couple of days, and bore a look of utter panic.

"I thought you were a myth," he choked.

"No," she said kindly. "I'm sorry."

"Please let me go."

"No," she said again.

"Why do you do this?" he cried.

"If I didn't," she said, patting his hair with a critical expression, "I'd die."

"But if you do I'll die."

"That's true," she acknowledged. "It's you or me. I don't take people with families, you know. It's just the two of us."

"But I want to live!" he wailed.

"So do I," she cooed. "I think I'll get a haircut..."

"You've had God only knows how many centuries...!"

"Mmm... nine and a half," she said, after a moment's thought.

"Isn't that enough?" he begged.

"Not if you're doing it right," she said with satisfaction, looking up at the ceiling.

"I have a full life ahead of me..."

"Me too!" she said. "A fuller one, really. Without me, you'd still die, you realize. It would take a bit longer, but... if you do it right... you won't be any more interested in dying then. Without you, though, I would miss out on an eternity. Just think! So much to do and see."

"But you have no right."

"Do you?"

"Yes!"

"I guess we'll agree to disagree, then," she said, sitting down on the little stool before where he was chained up. She smoothed her skirts. "I hope the moths don't get these while they're put away... you haven't the figure for them at all; don't take that as an insult."

"Find someone else," he pleaded. "Someone who doesn't care if they die."

"Now, that would be irresponsible of me," she said severely. "Preying on the mentally ill! I hope you don't think they're less deserving than you."

This statement so baffled him that he left off arguing with her for a short time.

"I think I'm rather nice, considering," she said. "I don't kill people gratuitously. I wait until I'm good and old. I once spent forty years missing a leg, and that was before all the fancy prostheses and laws about handicapped accessibility. I could have taken another body then, but no, I waited until it just wasn't safe any more. This one's going to have a stroke any minute now, and let me tell you, it's not because I don't eat right!"

"But you don't have to kill people at all," he said.

"I do if I want to live. I tried to move into a bird once. Tried a cat, tried a few other things - doesn't work."

"Haven't you tried just not moving into anyone?"

"Can't say it crossed my mind. I'm not suicidal, you know," she says. "The way I see it, this is just self-defense. I mean, if I were to let you go, now, wouldn't you try to kill me? Or, maybe you wouldn't - but say I let you go and then had a heart attack. There's a phone on the wall. It's hooked up. Would you call me an ambulance?" He didn't answer her. "So I could let you let me die and then, eventually, after a good long run, you'd die too. Or I could move in and have - oh, you're probably good for sixty more years! And I can carry on indefinitely."

He sobbed, and she patted his cheek sympathetically. "It's all right, darling. Doesn't hurt a bit," she murmured. "Is there anything you'd liked tidied up for you after I've moved you out? Letters that need sending, charities you want me to send your things to? I'm not going to keep them. That would be stealing."

His head drooped. He muttered a nonprofit's name, and she nodded sagely. "You have my word," she said.

She laid her palms on his skull and closed her eyes.

Half an hour later, the timer on the restraints made a small beep and he was released. He got to his feet, picked up the corpse in front of him, and carried her out to the ready-made grave in the backyard.

Damage Report

Key went to the library on most Tuesdays and Fridays, but ey considered skipping the week ey turned eight. Ey turned over the pros and cons in eir mind, then finally put on eir favorite fuzzy coat and walked the four blocks to the swooping blue-glass structure. Key headed first, as always, for the computers that sat on the gappy spiral arrangement of desks in the circle of the main floor. There were books, in the basement, but although they smelled nice, that had never seemed to recommend them as sources of information.

On this day, though, before sliding into a chair and looking for something eir permissions would open that ey hadn't already studied or deemed uninteresting, Key turned abruptly in eir course. There was a librarian, not far from the side door. Key had always thought of the librarians as being there for the sorts of patrons who liked to check out books, and ey hadn't bothered with them before. But on this occasion, ey wanted to complain about being confined to the tame information on the computer. Ey wasn't allowed to retake the EQ test again for nearly four months or the conceptual sophistication test for five, and that was an intolerable wait even if ey did wind up passing on those attempts.

"Excuse me," said Key, addressing the librarian. She had on a nametag; "Lace," continued Key, remembering a tidbit from something on psychology ey'd read once.

"What can I do for you?" asked Lace, smiling. "Decided you want to go the old-fashioned route and find a book today?"

"No, thank you," said Key. "I wanted to ask about the permissions on the computers. I can't take the tests again for months and I'm getting so tired of what's on my guidelist."

"Oh, I see. What's your guide level?" Lace asked, looking thoughtful. Key told her, making a face. Then Lace asked for eir name, which Key supplied. "There you go," said Lace, tapping a few things on her own computer.

"Huh?" said Key.

"I derestricted your guidelist. The level-appropriate topics will still appear more prominently, but you can get at a wider range now, on the library consoles. Have fun, Key."

"You can do that?"

"If you didn't know I could do that, why did you come to ask me about it?" said Lace mildly. "The guidelists are only weakly-enforced recommendations. I have some discretion over what people use our library for."

"Oh," said Key, a bit stunned by this turn of events. Ey thanked Lace and resumed eir original heading, towards eir favorite computer. They were all the same, but Key's usual choice was the one from which ey could easily see the park across the road.

Ey let the computer scan eir retina, and then went straight for eir modified guidelist. True to her word, Lace had lifted the barrier to Key's further exploration: the bright blue, bolded topics were the ones ey'd read before, but nestled alphabetically between them, in gray, were new top-level topics and even new subheadings to the old ones. Key was reminded of the last time eir guidelist had expanded, but this was a far greater increase - at least four-fifths of the new links were grey. No wonder those tests ey'd failed had been so hard.

Key clicked a new link near the top, with a word ey'd never seen before: "Anesthesia".

"So guess what," Key said to eir friend Trellis when they met at the playground the subsequent morning.

"You decided what you want to be when you grow up?" guessed Trellis.

"No," said Key. "Want a hint?"

"I can guess," giggled the other child, swinging around to hang by eir knees from a bar on the climbing structure. "You're going to have a new sibling?"

"How did - your mom told you that," accused Key. "She had lunch with my mom yesterday."

"Yeah," Trellis admitted. "Is that what you were going to say, though?"

"No. I mean, I was going to tell you that, but that wasn't what I was thinking first. I was at the library yesterday -"

"Uh, yeah, yesterday was Tuesday," said Trellis. Ey grabbed the next bar and dangled from eir arms, then dropped to the ground. "You always go to the library when it's Tuesday."

"And at the library," said Key, "I got a librarian to derestrict my guidelist."

"Wow, really?" Trellis whistled, a feat Key had never been able to duplicate. "So now you can read anything?"

"Not anything. Just up a level. But it's a huge level. There's five times as much stuff now. So I spent all day reading about this stuff they used to have called 'anesthesia'."

"What's that?" asked Trellis. "Or are you not supposed to tell me? I'm not even at your same level."

"The guidelists are only weakly-enforced recommendations," said Key airily, and Trellis snorted. "It was this stuff they used to make pain go away."

"Don't we kind of need that?" said Trellis. "If I ever slam my hand in a door again I want to know about it before it gets all infected and gross and falls off."

"No, it was different. Did you go to the hospital when your sibling was born?" asked Key, and Trellis nodded. "They would've put eir neuro in right then. And then your mom and dad would've gotten copies of eir damage reports until ey passed the first prudence test because little kids are bad about taking care of themselves."

"My mom and dad are still getting copies of Arbor's damage reports. Ey doesn't test very well," laughed Trellis.

"Whatever," said Key, motioning towards the swings; Trellis followed readily, and soon they were pumping themselves high into the air. "So the neuro isn't a natural thing. They don't know how to make it so we're born with them yet. And for a long time they couldn't even make them in the first place."

"So people would just have to - what, look real carefully in the mirror twice a day to make sure they hadn't hurt themselves?" scoffed Trellis. "Come on, I'm not at your level, but I'm allowed to read about evolution. Even animals can tell when they're damaged. Our ancestors would all have been dead in a minute if they couldn't."

"What the neuro does isn't just to tell you when you're damaged," said Key. "It tells you that instead of letting you feel what they used to call pain. We only call damage "painful" now because we don't have any use for the old meaning - except veterinarians; they still use it technically because animals don't get neuros."

"Okay, so - what's the techy vet sense of pain?" asked Trellis.

"I don't know," admitted Key. "It's just some feeling that nobody liked, so they invented neuros and got rid of it and now we have damage reports without that feeling, instead."

"That's weird stuff, all right," said Trellis. "I wonder why it's at that high a level, though? I mean, if they didn't have neuros, that means none for kids either, right? So kids used to know about this stuff and actually had to feel it."

"Yeah, it's kind of weird," said Key. Ey started to slow eir swinging, dragging eir shoes, but caught a foot wrong on the ground and pitched forward onto eir face. Ey was promptly made aware of the shallow scrapes on eir cheeks: an awareness that was only unpleasant inasmuch as it meant that ey had better interrupt eir playground visit. "Now I have to go home and disinfect these," ey grumbled. With a little twist of the attention, Key's neuro let eir awareness of the injuries fade to the same background importance as the snugness of eir shoes, and ey started for home to clean up the scrapes. "I'll see you later, Trellis."

"See you, Key," said Trellis, still swinging.

Key went to the library on Thursday. Ey waved to Lace, but headed straight for eir favorite computer and picked up where ey'd left off on the articles about anesthesia. Ey was quite absorbed for the first hour or so, when ey was jolted out of this reverie by a bewildering chapter heading: "Moral Resistance to Anesthesia".

Key's first thought was that this was a pun of some kind, although ey couldn't think how. Puzzled, ey read on, and found that it was no such thing. There had really been opposition to the soothing of pain with even the most harmless of drugs, and not all of it was practical concerns about long term health.

"There were," read the screen before Key's bewildered eyes, "critics who argued that pain was an essential component of the human condition."

Eir first reaction was to dismiss those critics as obviously insane. Everybody, it had been made quite clear in eir earlier reading, hated pain, and this wasn't uninformed prejudice - there were no neuros; no one was lucky enough to escape every injury and disease; they knew what they were arguing to keep. But then - Key emself didn't know what it was. Ey'd never felt it. Maybe ey was missing something important.

Key backed up out of the anesthesia articles and looked up information on neuros. Ey found what ey was looking for soon enough. They could be disabled (and - ey checked carefully - turned right back on again). Eir derestricted access let em follow a path right to the tailor-made pixel code that, when ey looked at it, would turn off the neuro; there was a corresponding restoration page, but Key didn't want that one yet. Ey clicked the first link and verified eir identity again. An array of colors flared briefly onto the screen. It didn't feel like anything. Key reached up to eir face and pulled at one of the half-healed scrapes.

Ey couldn't help but emit a yelp and jerk eir hand away. The sensation partly subsided, but it didn't vanish completely. Desperately, ey tried to push it into the background with the familiar twist of awareness, but it didn't respond - that too was a function of the neuro. Key reached forward to the screen, staring anxiously as it loaded the second pixel code and restored power to the merciful implant. Immediately, the scratches registered only the familiar awareness that they were there and might warrant action from Key. Ey dismissed that. Ey wasn't curious at all about the scratches. Ey was gaping open-mouthed at the screen, which minutes earlier had told em that people - people without neuros, who had felt exactly that - had wanted it. Had wished it on other people. Had, knowing as they must have that they might eventually need surgery themselves, chosen to guarantee that in such a case they'd experience that. More of it than Key had. The scratches were small. Doing surgery on someone like that... Key started navigating back to the article ey'd been in the middle of. Maybe they'd had these people committed. Maybe they'd all been clapped away to receive such psychiatric treatment as had been available back then, the moment this insanity had manifested itself.

Before Key had made eir way back to the page, ey felt a hand on eir shoulder. Ey looked up - it was Lace. "Are you all right, Key?" asked the librarian.

Key didn't answer, just looked up at Lace with huge, confused eyes.

"I'd feel responsible if you were disturbed by something that I released to you," Lace said. "The computers forward access logs to the central library records. I can see what you've been looking at, if I need to."

"I was reading about anesthesia," said Key.

"And that made you scream?" asked Lace.

"Sort of," Key said.

"Did you turn off your neuro?"

"How did you know?" asked Key, staring at the librarian.

"Just a guess," said Lace, smiling faintly. "You got it back on?" Key nodded. "Good."

"Did you do it too?" Key asked impulsively. Lace didn't answer, but the little frown on her face told Key enough. "Do you know," ey continued eagerly, "why there would have been anybody who didn't want anesthesia?"

"It's hard to imagine, isn't it? There was similar opposition to neuros, when they were invented," said Lace.

"But that doesn't make any sense. Why would anybody who knew what it was like want it to keep happening? How could somebody feel something that awful and not want to make it go away forever?" Key pleaded.

"It's a mystery to me," said Lace. "Maybe it's a matter of being used to it."

"But they can't have gotten really used to it, or it'd stop working as a damage report," protested Key.

"A matter of thinking it's normal, then," amended Lace. Key got up out of eir chair, shaking eir head, and headed for the door. "See you tomorrow," Lace called after em.

"You did what?" exclaimed Trellis, after Key had joined em at the playground and related the events of the morning. Trellis was so surprised that ey nearly slid off the seesaw.

"You heard me," Key said.

"I want to try!" Trellis cried, reasserting eir hold on the seesaw handle and pushing off. Key, accordingly, descended.

"No," said Key emphatically. "You don't. Trust me. You really don't."

"You did," Trellis said.

"And now I know better. Are your parents still getting copies of your damage reports too? I'm telling you it's awful and you should never do it."

"They are not. I passed the prudence test when I was four. A month before you did, so there."

"You're five months older than me," said Key. "Anyway, just don't. You can't get at it until you pass more tests, anyway."

Trellis sighed. "Fine. Hey, when your mom went to the doctor about your new sibling, did you go?"

"Yeah," said Key. "Why?"

"When it was Arbor, my parents left me with your mom, remember? And I asked my dad why and he said he didn't want me confused about anything, which was kind of not helpful in the not confusing me department, so anyway - I wanted to know if you knew what goes on that they wouldn't have wanted me there for."

"Umm..." Key considered whether there was anything unsuitable for small children that ey'd encountered. "The doctor did ask my mom if she wanted a boy or a girl."

"They did? But nobody does that anymore."

"I guess somebody must," said Key. "I didn't know they still asked about it, though, I figured they just assumed you'd want a regular kid unless you told them different. It might have been just the one doctor."

Trellis shook eir head. "It's really weird they even let people do that still. I don't even know what I want to be when I grow up now. It's not like my parents would have known before I was even born. What do you want to be?"

"Dunno," said Key.

"I'm tired of see-sawing," announced Trellis. "Let's go to your house and make cupcakes." Key acquiesced, and the rest of the afternoon passed in a haze of flour.

Key was at the library when ey heard about the accident. Ey was taking a break from the academics, and instead simply playing solitaire and poking around at news. It was the latter activity that led em to the headline: "Mishap at Power Plant Leads to Radiation Poisoning of Local Child". In the two lines of summary between that headline and the next was Trellis's name.

Key touched the headline automatically, only managing to focus eir eyes on the text after eir mind caught up with the title. Trellis had visited the plant to watch the machines at work. Easily a hundred children went there every week, but usually with official tour groups, and there had been none that day for a reason. Trellis had ignored or misunderstood the signs, probably had to climb over some guardrails - but of course there was no one in the building to spot em and tell em why the place was deserted except for scrubber robots. And someone had forgotten to lock the door.

Key didn't bother to log out. Ey just bolted.

The hospital was only three blocks from the library, and Key was fast. A nurse held em up briefly near the entrance, but eventually supplied the room number. Trellis's parents and sibling were already there, and didn't object to Key's presence.

Trellis was awake. Ey cracked a smile when Key came in. "Did your mom go find you at the library or something?" ey asked.

"No, I saw it on the news."

"I'm glad you're here," said Trellis.

Medicine had advanced considerably since the era Key had been reading about.

It had not advanced enough.

The fellow who'd left the door unlocked was charged, tried, and sentenced to have his wages garnished for the rest of his life for the benefit of Trellis's family; his employers, for their part, moved him to a job that consisted entirely of paperwork. Trellis's parents offered Key a share of the money, which ey turned down; they offered em a few of Trellis's belongings, mostly decorations that could be expected to last for the rest of Key's life, which ey accepted.

Ey stayed in eir room for a week straight, staring at the porcelain bird and the stack of variously-sized glass cubes and the posters of the album artwork from Trellis's favorite musicians. Key's mother brought em meals for the first five days; after that, she stopped, and ey grazed on some snacks ey had stashed under eir bed until they ran out and ey was obliged to go down for dinner. Eir mother tried to engage em in conversation about what to name the baby, far in advance though it was. She stopped trying when Key snapped that perhaps she could name em Trellis.

Key stayed in eir house for almost a month. Finally, eir mother picked em up bodily and deposited em in the front garden, then locked the door behind her. Key sat beside the tomato plant until informed by eir neuro that sunburn was beginning to be a concern, and then, finding the house still closed to em, trudged to the library.

Lace was sitting behind her desk. She smiled at Key when ey came in, but furrowed her brow slightly at the stony expression on the child's face.

The computers held nothing of interest for Key. Ey walked over to the librarian. "My friend is dead," ey said baldly.

Lace's eyes went wide, and she got up and came around from behind the desk to give Key a silent hug. After a little while, Key hugged her back, and started to cry.

Noting the puzzled supervision of the other patrons, Lace stood up and took Key's hand to lead em into a staffroom. "My mom," choked Key when the door had swung shut behind them, "wants me to cheer up and go back to normal. She won't let me back in the house yet because I've been in there for a month."

"Everyone takes different amounts of time to start functioning again, after losing a loved one," said Lace carefully.

"Ey's dead. Ey's never going to start functioning again," said Key. "Ey was just a kid."

"Yes, people often find it particularly sad when children die," Lace agreed.

"And it was a stupid accident," said Key.

"Having no time to anticipate it can make it seem worse."

Key looked suspiciously at the librarian. "You sound like you're trying not to say something."

"A little," admitted Lace. "Now isn't a good time..."

"No, say it," demanded Key.

"I can't say it directly, or it wouldn't make any sense," said Lace. "Tell me - if Trellis had lived to be very old, and so had you, and ey'd still died first, of old age - say at a hundred and twenty, if you like - would you have been happy?"

"What kind of stupid question is that? Of course I'd be sad. Ey'd still have been my friend."

"But then ey wouldn't have been a kid, and it wouldn't have been a stupid accident," said Lace. "You'd have known it was coming - hardly anyone lives to be more than a hundred and twenty."

"But ey'd still be dead," said Key.

Lace nodded. "Did you know," she said, seeming to change the subject, "that there was a time when scarcely anybody lived to be eighty, let alone a hundred and twenty?"

"Yeah, of course - medicine got better. Things like anesthesia," said Key bitterly, associating that research with Trellis's death by mere proximity.

"Right," said Lace, gracefully ignoring the second part of Key's utterance. "And now people often live to be a hundred and twenty, and one made it to a hundred and forty-three, and that's been how it is for a long time now. Why do you think that is?"

"I guess people just don't get any older than that," said Key.

"It used to be that people just didn't get any older than eighty," Lace pointed out.

Key frowned. "Just spit it out, whatever it is."

"You know that there are restrictions on what you can read on the computer. Did you know that's true of everyone?"

"But if you pass all the tests, then..."

"If you pass all the tests," said Lace, "then you get the highest access level that anyone has - which doesn't let you read everything. There are certain things that are not considered appropriate avenues of research."

"You said the guidelists were pretty much just suggestions," said Key.

"Weakly enforced ones, at that," said Lace, "which is why I can talk to you about this."

"Except you're not, you're just sort of dancing around it."

"All right, then - a long time ago," said Lace, "some people thought that what we ought to be doing was working on how to make people live longer - even forever."

"Forever? But we can't do that," said Key. "People don't live that long, and anyway, then we'd be overpopulated."

"We don't, but perhaps we could," said Lace. "As for overpopulation, well - I'm sure you can think of a dozen solutions."

Ey probably could have, but turned eir face away. "We can't do it. People aren't supposed to be immortal. They're supposed to be born and grow up and get old and die."

"And now you know," murmured Lace.

"I don't know anything. You're no help," groused Key, and ey pushed eir way out of the staffroom to content eirself with mindless electronic amusements.

"How somebody could feel something that awful and not want to make it go away forever," murmured the librarian, but Key didn't hear her.

Blue Jewel

If there was some trace of evil in her eyes (they matched, he observed, the lapis lazuli that tiled every surface in her palace), Brian couldn't see it. He had not misidentified her. That much he knew. It was Davina, called still the Blue Jewel, but with such bitter irony that she might as well have been named the Bitch from Hell.

But there had to have been some mistake, even if not with his eyes nor her guiltless, perfect face.

"Brian?" she ventured. Her voice was not like bells or chimes or flutes or anything so musical. It wasn't like anything but a voice - a woman's voice, low and with just enough of a rasp to it that it could come only from real air through a real throat. She was supposed to be a monster. Why wasn't she a monster?

"How do you know my name?" The defiance and suspicion was only in the words chosen. His tone might as well have accompanied a concerned inquiry after her health. The look on his face would have been less incongruous if he'd been speaking a proposal of marriage.

"What? Brian, it's me, Davina," she said. Her face was instantly a mask of concern, but Brian's sharp eyes detected hurt beneath, like he'd wounded her and she was trying for his own sake not to be offended. "Christ, Brian, they told me you'd hit your head, but..."

"What?" That had come out of nowhere. Hit his head? Who were "they"? Why was she swearing by a god who'd been so ineffectual for the past decades that his worship had been all but forgotten? Why was he thinking such odd thoughts when he'd been to church just that morning (for it was Sunday), Davina sitting beside him in the pew?

"Brian, do you remember anything?" she pressed. Her eyes were very blue; his vision of everything save those very blue eyes swam. The background could have been white or red or beige or inky black, he had no notion. The church, he remembered suddenly, was grey stone. When he and Davina had moved to Elm Springs they'd chosen a house near that church specifically because it had looked like such a charming place, a calm bubble of the sacred in their new home.

"I remember..." The background resolved itself. Green walls and white décor and instruments of medicine: he was in a hospital (but it didn't look like a hospital, hospitals were brown and crowded and looked like - well, of course they looked like this. This was what hospitals looked like, because he was in a hospital and it looked like this.) "Davina?"

"Oh, thank the Lord, for a moment I was worried you didn't recognize me," she exclaimed, leaning over him - when had he begun lying down? Why did it surprise him that he was lying down, when he was in a hospital and had hit his head? Of course he needed rest.

Why was he holding a sword?

"They said you might hallucinate a bit. You hit your head so hard, it's a miracle you're alive, much less awake," Davina said, answering his question and jogging his memory about who "they" were. They were doctors, because he was in a hospital. He had hit his head.

The sword, clearly, was a hallucination. He wasn't supposed to kill Davina with a sword. She was his wife. Brian twitched his left hand, felt the wedding band press into the skin of his finger. He drew breath, smelled the antiseptic cocktail of fluids and people in various states of disease and disrepair that marked his location.

"Davina"?

That's all, she can do anything but change her name, someone had not told him. That someone, who he was now quite sure had never existed, had not gone on to say if you meet someone named Davina, no matter what, kill her. You're our hope for this decade, Brian. She's only vulnerable once every ten years and then it's back to the hell for everyone if you fail.

Did she have to be so beautiful? It was that that had caught his eye when they'd met in the park, before he fell in love with her for her gentleness and her sincere faith and what the hell? In love with Davina? He was supposed to

go home with her and go back to raising their children as soon as his excruciating headache went away, of course. "Where are the children?" he croaked, not "die, Blue Jewel" or "I'm not fooled by your illusions" or "prove that you are my wife, tell me your name is Sarah or Jenny or Chrysanthemum or anything but Davina".

"Ken and Lois have them," she said soothingly, taking his nearest hand - the one with the ring on it - in hers, picking it up away from the hallucinated sword. She adjusted her posture, bumping the bed with her knee, and the "sword" fell off of the bed, landing on linoleum with a clatter Davina didn't seem to hear.

The noise made his head pound and for a moment he saw two pasts stretching out as unalike as curry and custard. Of course he was Brian, husband to Davina and father to their three children (Carly, Martin, and Damien, his memory supplied helpfully, with faces and favorite colors to accompany each name), churchgoer, stock analyst, and head injury patient. Of course he was none of those things but instead Brian of Amron, alone save for his comrades in the eternal endeavor to overthrow Davina the Blue Jewel from her tyrannical reign in her once-a-decade moment of vulnerability. Orphan, bachelor, childless, godless, with no regular employment except trying to train himself to slaughter the delicate dark-haired blue-eyed (why blue? Why did her eyes have to be so blue?) woman (demon) sitting by his side looking for all the world like she wanted to feed him chicken soup. Not magically fake in him (her husband, of all people) a headache to fool him into letting her live. This version of himself was Champion. He had a sword, and he could pick it up and cleave her head from her body. He'd be hailed for a thousand generations to come as the savior of the world, and that gratitude would probably be enough to net him a house half the size of the one he owned with Davina that wouldn't even have plumbing.

And then how would he ever explain to Carly and Martin and Damien (who?) that their mother (ha! The Blue Jewel a mother!) had been killed by their delusional father because he had a funny turn after he fell down the steps of their church on his way out the door?

"Davina, darling," croaked Brian, trying to think around the headache. "Tell me your name is... uh... Sarah."

"What?" Perfect, guileless confusion crossed her face. "Sarah? Who's that?"

"Nobody. Just tell me that's your name." Prove it's a stupid dream I had when I went tumbling down the stairs and hit my head, and we can go home to our children, and I can take the week off from work, and make love to my wife, my beautiful blue-eyed -

"It's not. My name's Davina, Brian sweetie, don't you remember? I thought you recognized me..." Worry knitted that painted brow, perfect as the magically sculpted face of an immortal demon face of a woman with parents with such good genes (a decade of memories of his in-laws, charming people if he'd ever met any, marched across his mind) ought to be.

"I recognize you. What's your middle name?" he tried. That wouldn't sound so suspicious to his (enemy) wife. He'd just forgotten her middle name.

"I don't have a middle name - do you mean my maiden name?" she asked slowly.

"Yes." Anything but "Davina" or "Blue Jewel", the less appealing of his two histories told him, would be impossible for her to claim as a title -

"Blue. I was born Davina Blue," she said. "You remember your last name, I hope? Brian?"

Jewel. (Amron? No, that wasn't a last name, and he wasn't even from "Amron", that place didn't even exist, it was an imaginary city built on the imaginary ruins of Flagstaff, which was in perfectly good repair and had no ruins, and anyway he was from Chicago.) "Jewel," he said. "Davina. Love."

"I'm here, Brian," she murmured in his ear.

"This is going to sound stupid, I know, but will you just say the words 'my name is Sarah'? Please."

"Brian Ammon (Ammon? Was that where he'd gotten that imaginary village?) Jewel, you're either delusional, in which case I shouldn't do any such thing in case it makes you worse, or you're sane and I'm not going to play into whatever nonsense you've decided to worry me with today."

He tipped his head back farther into his pillow, and she moved her foot, ever so innocently, and the sword skittered farther away, inaccessible on the other side of the room. It was a hallucination anyway, so it didn't much matter where it was.

The pasts, one bitter but promising glory, one almost distressingly normal and happy and promising more of the delicious, tantalizing same, battled for Brian's allegiance.

One told him to extinguish the loving, human light in those blue eyes. One told him that the sword was not even there, that even if he killed the woman bent over him so tenderly it would be no justice and no victory but only murder of the mother of his children. One told him those children were imaginary. One challenged him to find the flaw in his memories of their births, his mental video of the lines deepening on Davina's face and then softening with pride as she held the first and second and third fragile infant.

One told him that if he did not kill her before the time was up, he would certainly die.

The other told him that for that woman, for those children, he ought to be thrilled to die. That he was no kind of man if he wanted to end his wife's life to save his own, that he was the worst kind of slime if he would take away the mother of children (not one of them more than six years old) because he'd hit his head falling down the church steps and believed in a ridiculous dystopian fantasy where she starred as the awful tyrant with the awful, beautiful blue eyes.

He didn't want to die; he didn't want to be the latest of a dozen warriors to have failed to topple the Blue Jewel from her lapis throne.

He didn't want some professionally detached messenger to tell Carly that Mommy had gone away forever, and Daddy was also going to have to go away forever because he was the one who had sent away Mommy, and to be good for Ken (Ken was of course Brian's brother, he wasn't an only child, what nonsense) and Lois and look after her brothers.

He didn't want to cut that gorgeous head from those trembling shoulders and watch the light go out in those blue eyes.

"When can we go home, Davina? Did they say?" he asked, pushing away the last of the awful fantasy and looking his wife full in the face, trusting her.

She knew when she had him, of course. He'd debated a bit longer than some, not as long as others, but she had him where she wanted him in the end.

She was kind about it, and let him have the rest of that day with the fictitious life she'd dreamed up to entice him. He went "home" with his head swaddled in bandages, kissed the empty air where her magic met his mind and told him there were children, and fell asleep curled up by her side, one of her hands idly rubbing the sore muscles of his arm - he had not scaled a mountain to get to a palace made of lapis lazuli, nonsense, he'd only fallen down some stairs, he could expect to be sore.

She let him die in his sleep, twisting his neck with a snap, quick and clean and merciful and none the less deadly.

She waited until her invulnerability was returned to her by the dawn before she threw his body from the mountaintop to advertise his failure to the world, which would remain populated by her victims for the next ten years. (And the next, and the next, and the next.)

Then she was aloft. Wind whistled in her ears as she traversed the globe, impossible speed achieved by the dark magic that blazed in her blue eyes. She had lost an entire day, and she had work to do.

Charm

Ketta flipped her hair out of her face and leaned forward a bit to study the sprite's impossibly small face. Every square millimeter was etched with lines of distress. She might not be innocent of the crime, but the only people she was hurting were the consulate's bureaucrats, so Ketta was willing to call it a worthy cause.

"So are you going to help me?" shrilled Mithnee. "Please, I don't know who I'll go to if you won't."

Ketta repressed a wince at the tinny voice of the minute fey. It wasn't Mithnee's fault that she sounded like the world's smallest teakettle. Every species had its quirks, and considering that the last time Ketta had been snapped at about her "human stink" she'd relieved the speaker of a few pints of blood, it would be fairly hypocritical of her to turn around and complain about some poor sprite's voice.

"Yeah, I'll help you," Ketta answered, leaning forward and permitting a grin to spread across her face. "You know the usual price for my assistance, right?"

Mithnee nodded hesitantly, the movement virtually imperceptible. "I don't have it all right now but I heard you had an installment plan and once I'm out of the city I should be able to move funds from -"

"Forget what you've heard. From you I want a charm."

Mithnee's gaudy green-and-gold wings whirred and she rocketed backwards about a foot. "A charm? That's forbidden magic, I can't give you a -"

"You're already in trouble with the consulate and you're not going to get out of here without my help," Ketta replied firmly. "Performing one charm before you go won't get them any madder than they already are and if you didn't think I could smuggle you out of the city safely you wouldn't be here."

Mithnee flew around in a spiral, agitated, but she apparently couldn't come up with an objection to Ketta's logic, because finally she twittered, "Fine. One charm - or I'll try it once, anyway. If they're an elf or a vampire or already in love with you it won't work. Who on?"

"I'll show you," said Ketta.

The Twisted Fork was packed any night of the week, but Ketta always went Sundays. Her own schedule was irregular - the odd jobs she did came unexpectedly and could take any amount of time - but Ennec came like clockwork, at ten p.m. on the dot every Sunday. He'd never mentioned to Ketta what he did for a living (and she'd never asked, since then she'd have to concoct an excuse if he turned the question back on her) but whatever it was offered more regular hours than Ketta's work. Since the first time she'd run into him she'd made time most Sundays at ten to drop by the Twisted Fork, but that had been less than a year previously and to hear the bartender tell it, Ennec had never missed a Sunday in almost a decade.

Ketta would never have thought to demand a special price from Mithnee if it hadn't been a Sunday when she'd careened through the air vent, having just barely lost a pack of the consulate's Chasers. A surprising percentage of Ketta's clients showed up while being actively pursued; she supposed that this would probably get her into trouble one day, but so far no one had managed to stumble into her office with Chasers close enough on their heels that they'd been led to Ketta.

I'm just lucky like that, I suppose, Ketta thought to herself as she strolled into the Twisted Fork, permitting her brow to furrow. She should probably move somewhere new, where she'd be harder to find and less likely to act as an emergency hostess for fugitives. Her good fortune couldn't hold much longer. She resolved to put away some money - not that waiving Mithnee's cash payment would help her supplement savings - and move her office as soon as she had enough that it wouldn't mean skipping too many lunches.

"You okay in there?" Ketta murmured under her breath, patting her purse where she'd stashed Mithnee, trusting the hubbub in the bar to keep her unheard, and the cut of her dress to keep anyone from noticing that her lips were moving. A feather-light, reassuring tap on her deliberately placed thumb confirmed that Mithnee wasn't likely to suffocate or be crushed by the purse's contents, so Ketta took another several steps into the room and let the door shut behind her, scanning the room for Ennec.

He didn't disappoint. In his out-of-place starched white shirt complemented by an almost painfully black vest, he stood out from the seedier crowd of the Twisted Fork like a zebra among raccoons. Ketta wondered for the hundredth time why he hadn't been assaulted, dressing like that and frequenting a place like this; she'd lived in the neighborhood for five years and it had only been the second half of that period that people seemed to have learned that she really did know how to keep drunken idiots, thirsty vampires, and miscellaneous muggers away from her and her possessions. As far as she knew, Ennec had no such skills.

Ketta slid up to the bar and caught a waitress's eye. "Zoe, right?" she asked, and after getting a confirmatory nod, she went on. "Get me a Mermaid's Tear. I'll be over there in the corner. I've got a tab running under the name Ketta Plesk." Having placed her order, she sidled over to Ennec and slid onto the stool beside him, giving him a smile when he looked up to see who it was but saying nothing yet. Sometimes he could be coaxed into starting a conversation himself; this might or might not be one of those times.

Ennec was wearing a brooding expression, staring into his beverage as though it would help him answer some ineffable question. This wasn't out of the ordinary - he rarely started off an evening looking happy, although a pleasant night often saw him stroll home with a faint smile on his lips. On this particular evening, however, he seemed even more preoccupied than usual.

Ketta jostled her purse on the pretense of reaching to take the Mermaid's Tear Zoe handed to her. "How are you this evening, Ennec?"

"I'm all right. And you, Ketta?" he replied, absently fingering the curious amulet he always wore. It was a twisted lump of gold with a small red stone in the middle - too opaque to be a ruby, but whatever it was, it was pretty.

There. Now Mithnee has a name and a voice. Should be all she needs, Ketta thought to herself. "Oh, I can't complain," she laughed cheerfully. "Have you seen that new show about the werewolf who falls in love with the vampire heiress? What was the title again..."

"I don't recall. And no, I haven't seen it. Is it good?"

"My cousin Beth says it's cheesy but the action is good. I haven't seen it myself either." Mithnee, what's taking you so long? Ketta thought impatiently. She pushed her purse sideways with her elbow as she set down her drink, and felt acknowledging taps from the other side of the fabric.

As soon as Ketta registered this, there was a loud alarm from another part of the bar. Ennec leapt to his feet and shouted something that Ketta didn't catch, because at that moment, someone hit her at the base of her skull and she collapsed to the floor, unconscious.

Ketta woke up in the one place she least wanted to be. True, she'd never been in a consulate prison before, but she'd heard descriptions, and the gray, bare cell she occupied certainly matched them.

To her small relief, she was in a single cell, and not being forced to cohabit with someone else - yet. After she was tried (and undoubtedly convicted of about a dozen different charges) she would probably be in even less desirable accomodations.

She patted herself down. Her purse was gone, and her pocket pistol with it. They'd found the knife tied to her leg and some clever person had noticed that her hair fastener had sharp parts, but at least she hadn't been transferred into a prison outfit. That was either a sign that someone working for the consulate had qualms about undressing an unconscious girl, or that there was a reasonable chance of her being released, either of which could bode well.

Leaning against the wall, Ketta waited for something to happen. There was no one immediately visible in her cell block, and she had no tools with which to attempt escape, so there was nothing to do but wait for someone to drop by to feed her prison slop, or get her acquainted with a public defender, or some similarly unwelcome prospect.

As it turned out, she didn't have to wait long. One of those spine-chilling red and violet uniforms came stepping between the rows of cells not fifteen minutes after she had come to. Ketta scooted to a sitting position and peered through the bars.

"Ennec," she breathed.

"Ketta," he replied.

"You!" she snapped. "You're with the consulate. I can't believe I - for a year - I turned down five thousand suls from that pixie -"

"Ketta," he said calmly, a phantom of sadness passing behind his eyes before he blinked it away. "Please calm down. I need to ask you a few questions."

She winced. "Considering some of the rumors I've heard about how the consulate's people go about asking a few questions, that sounds more like a threat than anything, Ennec."

He looked off to his left and stared at the floor. "I'm not going to hurt you. But I need to know who you were going to get the pixie to charm, and for whom."

"Is she all right?" Ketta asked, feeling guilty about having gotten Mithnee involved in her stupid personal life.

"She's all right. The charm failed, so we're probably going to wind up having to release her for an arrest on an uncommitted offense even though she's been embezzling from the consulate for years. We know you were going to smuggle her out of the city, by the way, so you don't need to worry about keeping that a secret."

"I take it somebody had a charm detector in the bar and traced the charm to my purse. And thought that would be a good reason to put me out of commission," she said glumly. Ennec nodded, and Ketta looked at the wall. "She was going to charm you."

He took a step back. "Me?"

"Yes."

"For whom?"

Ketta made a valiant effort to stare a hole through the wall. "Me. Now let me out."

"I don't think I can do that now," he said, sounding surprised and - afraid? Ketta had never seen Ennec afraid. "Who are you working for?"

"Look, I didn't know you were with the consulate, okay?" Ketta growled, whirling her head around to stare at him with smoldering eyes. "I don't work for anybody. It's not like I was getting a charm on you to get into the inner ranks of the system. It was a stupid thing to do, I regret it already, I should have just taken Mithnee's money and gotten her out of the city that very minute..."

"You didn't know?" he asked, taking a small step forward.

"You never told me!"

"Then why in the world were you getting me charmed?"

"Because I'm in love with you, you utter dolt!" Ketta screamed at him. "For almost a year and nothing was working and it was such a stupid thing to do and if only Mithnee hadn't come on a Sunday but there she was and sprites can do charms and I figured... I thought..." She broke off and began inspecting her nails.

Neither of them spoke for a few minutes, although Ketta huffed a little bit to catch her breath from the sudden outburst. She started picking at a bit of dry skin near a cuticle, and was trying diligently to be absorbed by this task when she heard the door to the cell swing open.

She looked up. Ennec was holding the door open and looking away from her expressionlessly. Ketta scrambled to her feet and out of the cell. "My things -"

"They'll be delivered to your apartment," he said in a monotone.

"All of them?"

"I'm afraid you may have to replace your unlicensed pocket pistol, and the pixie you had in your purse will not be rejoining you either, but otherwise, yes," he answered.

"Are you going to get in trouble for this?" she asked softly, looking at the vacant cell.

"No."

"You must be pretty up in the ranks that you can release prisoners on your own recognizance," she said with a mirthless chuckle, steadying herself with a hand on the bars of another cell.

"You could say that," he said. "I'll show you out if you like. So if you run into someone they don't clap you back in a cell."

"Th-thank you," she stammered. "Ennec -"

He looked at her with that cool expression of his, and she decided against asking - whatever she had been going to ask. She wasn't sure what her plan had been, in hindsight. "Which way?" she whispered.

He set off in a direction and she followed mutely. She wished he would say something in response to her screamed confession. She was not sure what she wanted him to say, but some kind of acknowledgement would have been more comfortable than this silence. She wasn't quite sure that he'd heard her at all.

They were finally approaching a door marked "Exit" when another man in a consulate outfit turned a corner and saw them. Ketta wanted to bolt - she was edgy enough being around Ennec in one of those outfits - but Ennec kept walking, so she followed, trying to pretend that she wasn't bothered. To her surprise, the other consulate employee didn't bat an eye at her, but he snapped off a salute to Ennec. "Evening, Consul," he said as he passed.

Ketta boggled, almost tripping over her own feet. "You're the Consul?" she hissed, after the man had left earshot. "How can you possibly be the Consul?"

"The senators hold an election -"

"I know that!" she cried. "You showed up in that uniform and I thought you were just a Chaser or a bureaucrat or something - you're the Consul. Holy crap."

"That's why I thought you were trying to charm me for... less than personal reasons," he said softly.

"Holy crap," she repeated.

They reached the exit. Ennec pushed the door open for her. She took a half-step towards it, then looked at Ennec.

"Ennec, there aren't very many things that can cause a charm to fail," she said.

"I know," he said. "There aren't very many things that can keep you from getting arrested when criminals routinely congregate at your office with a pack of Chasers following them, either."

Ketta blinked at him, and then, because there was nothing more to say, she kissed him.

"Ceet, I told you, I don't smuggle people away anymore," sighed Ketta.

"But you gotta help me, Miss Plesk! I swear I have no idea who stole the blood from the hospital, I can only feed off animals anyway, you know that -"

"Look, I might be able to do something for you, but not getting you out of the city. I'm retiring. I told you that."

"But Miss Plesk -"

"Sorry, Ceet. I will see what I can do, but I can't get you out of town." She hung up the phone over the vampire's protests and yawned. "Ennec, there's a Ceet Morul being chased for the hospital theft. I'm not saying he's innocent and I'm not saying he's guilty, but I'd have him checked for allergies to human blood before he gets put away," she murmured in his ear.

"Sounds like a sensible precaution," the consul replied. "When do you think people are going to stop phoning you asking for a ticket out of here?"

"Oh, who knows? Maybe never. I suspect someone will notice that the accuracy rate of consulate judges is going up, though. I'd anticipate a different sort of caller request in the near future."

He smiled at her - a more frequent sight in recent weeks. "It wasn't that bad, was it? The accuracy rate."

"Oh, you have no idea."

"The senators are still upset with me for pardoning the Oressy twins," he yawned. "They were so convinced it was them. I don't think they believed the story about the amphibious mermaid."

"They'll get over it. And even if they don't, what're they going to do? They can't have another election until you're dead."

"And I now have the world's best bodyguard to postpone that unhappy event."

"I won't be the best until you get me another pocket pistol, my dear," Ketta laughed, leaning over and planting a kiss on his forehead. "I'm a sniper type, I don't do hand-to-hand."

"You're irrepressible."

"You know it."

"Get a license and as far as I'm concerned you can have a military-issue rifle," he laughed.

"I think that might be a little too clunky to carry around," she said consideringly, and then laughed with him.