Next Chapter: July 14 (approximate)
Stu’s pet ryeh-b’t had emerged from her egg on a chilly morning, when the forest outside his bedroom window was dark. He’d been anticipating the event and monitoring the egg for days, so he’d been awake and ready when it had begun. The habitat he’d made for her was summer-warm, and her future meals darted around the tiny pond or crawled across leaves and vines. He hoped it would be a rich home for her.
At the first sign of movement, he’d almost sent a message to the family: “Anyone who’s awake, come and see the new life being born.” A ryeh-b’t hatching wasn’t the most important birth that would take place at the siblinghold this year, but it was still a rare small joy in their midst. He knew a few early risers would come to watch with him. They’d bring him a cup of grain tea and comment on the bright patch of red scale that was already showing. Whoever decided to stop by to witness the occasion would probably add something positive to it.
But the ryeh-b’t’s name, and Stu’s reasons for remembering a dead Avowed in such a way, had already been called odd by some of them.
He knew it was odd. And he knew these remarks weren’t mean-spirited. But he wanted to watch Alden break free of her egg and live the first moments of her life as she pleased, without anyone diminishing it for either of them.
So he never sent the message.
He was the only witness to the struggle, the brief rest she took before her final effort, and then her clumsy steps into a bigger world. She’d stretched wings that weren’t quite ready for flight yet, and Stu had felt a puff of air against his skin from her first flap.
She had arrived. Her existence changed everything around her. And Stu knew it first.
His friend, Alden Thorn, was not a ryeh-b’t hatchling. But there was something about this night that was like that morning.
More than once, Stu allowed his thoughts to split to sharpen the present against the memory as he sat under the lantern Alden had planted at the base of the Yatanger triangle’s mound. He was listening to everything the human had experienced in the short time they’d been apart.
They wore the old rings that made conversations private. Stu had been carrying them with him ever since Aymeg Dad had reminded him, needlessly, that they were not toys. Even though the rings didn’t hide actions or the motions of mouths, they were talking and acting as if there was no chance of being discovered. Both of them were taking the vision of Alden sitting on the platform above them as a promise that they were unobserved here.
“She appeared here to talk to me, and she showed you what I look like in the uniform,” Alden had said. “She might not warn me if someone was spying, but I’d feel betrayed if she encouraged me to talk about my secrets while someone was listening in. Well-dressed Alden and conversations like the one I was having with her before you decided I needed to be levitated wouldn’t happen if she knew we didn’t have privacy.”
Stu knew he was right. Even if there had been some miscalculation at first, and those things hadn’t been intended to mean it was safe for Alden to behave as he pleased, the way he’d understood them had now changed that. And Stu’s own agreement mattered, too. They’d both decided the vision of Alden would disappear if someone approached. She hadn’t denied it. The trust of a declared and an unsworn knight wouldn’t be broken over something like this.
“I’m thinking of you as an ‘unsworn knight’ now,” Stu said as Alden finished describing what it was like to sense the presence of his cat. He’d been diligent about his sensitivity training because of Stu’s recommendation.
“And I used it to find him on top of my bed, exactly where he shouldn’t have been!”
He’s still thinking of the cat. He must not have been finished talking about it after all, and I interrupted.
“I’m beginning to notice how I can sense different things happening in the gym, too. Although everything goes so fast in there that I’m not quick enough to…‘unsworn knight’? As a sort of title, you mean? Unsworn Alden.”
“Unsworn Hn’tyon Samuel Alden Thorn,” said Stu. “You’re more than a declared, but your oaths are yet to be completed. If I have a title, you certainly should.”
Alden mouthed the words “unsworn hn’tyon” to himself, then snorted and shook his head. “Who would even use it but you? And I don’t want you to be formal when you say my name.”
“I won’t use it as a title. Only when it comes up. Soon-sworn would be better than unsworn! We’ll use that.”
“I do like that better. Okay, so…now that I’ve told you how the sensitivity training is going, you understand why I need to experiment on the hot spot over there.”
“No,” said Stu.
“But what would happen if you said yes instead? I can feel that spot from all the way over here if I close my eyes and think about it.”
“What would happen is you’d burn a bunch of grass, and we’d have to apologize to whoever has been using this triangle to prepare an environment for their own casting. And that’s without thinking about how you using a Yatanger triangle would be explained.”
“If I used the spell that heats stones instead of the candle lighter?”
“The result would be similar.”
Alden thought for a moment. “What if I called the memory of sunlight, but in that wrong way I told you about—the one that made a huge flash, exhausted my authority, and made the air in my dorm room smell like it was burning?”
“We’d survive if we positioned ourselves correctly within the triangle, but is flash burning everything else in sight really something you want to do?”
He laughed. “No, I don’t. It’s such a nice Rapport now that it’s not sweltering. And when Esh-erdi encouraged me to explore I doubt that was what he had in mind. But it’s something, isn’t it? To be able to figure out that the potential for big heat is there and have more than one spell that can interact with that potential? Three spells! I’ve got three that can make heat.”
He beamed at Stu, holding up three fingers. “Sincerely, though, I wouldn’t have tried it even if you hadn’t shown up. I’m a careful wizard. Respectable. Not like a LeafSong student who runs out of the insight chamber without waiting to thank his instructor at the end of a once-in-a-lifetime learning opportunity.”
“Whose fault was that?!”
“Completely yours.”
“I asked Hn’tyon Esh-erdi what you two were doing and if you were well, but he sent back messages like, ‘Alden is throwing sausage into the river.’”
“For the terackerin. Her name is Ploomp.”
“And, ‘Alden is trying to justify his affection for the number fifteen.’ I know his sense of humor is as it is, but those descriptions of your activities didn’t help me convince myself that you were thinking clearly!”
He let the full extent of his grievance into his voice. He had waited until the lesson was over, but then they were all supposed to thank their teacher in order of seniority. He was going to be one of the final three among hundreds to bow to her and say a few words of gratitude.
“Leaving after receiving instruction like that might be as rude as leaving in the middle of class. I’ve never had to consider which would be worse because I never thought I would be so inconsiderate. Calassa Mom may erupt if she hears of it. I don’t know what I’ll say in apology to the Master. Amantha may assume the best of me and tell her that I must have gone in a rush to Emban’s side. I’m ashamed to hope for that, but I do. When you are welcomed as a hn’tyon by all the Triplanets, I can go explain the truth to her.”
Stu drew closer to Alden’s self so that he wouldn’t misunderstand and think the frustration was directed at him.
This is a way I didn’t know we could communicate with each other a couple of weeks ago.
Alden welcomed the closeness as easily as any friend or family member ever had.
“I didn’t know it was that bad,” he said. “All right. It was eighty percent Esh-erdi’s fault, ten percent yours, and ten percent mine.”
“You’ve given him such a large portion.”
“He’s not here to defend himself,” said Alden. “It’s unfortunate for him, but that’s how it goes.”
He was still smiling. He’d been smiling ever since Stu arrived. He’d told Esh-erdi he wanted to live in the Rapports and work toward defeating chaos. It was an important truth, if not every detail of his truth.
He’d decided it. A stretch of wings.
He’d spoken it. A puff of air.
“If you went now, is there any chance you’d be in time to thank the Master wizard properly?”
Maybe there is a small one. But such a small one.
“I’ll stay here.”
Something more important was happening here.
“That’s good for me,” Alden said happily. “Can I show you my spell abbreviation here, or should we go farther from the triangle?”
“We should be safe as long as we’re not on the platform,” said Stu. “But let’s go down the trail. Just in case.”
“Let’s do it.” Alden sprang up and grabbed the lantern. “When I sent you a picture of myself holding this, you were supposed to think, ‘How natural Alden looks in Rapport III, going for a nighttime walk with his light on a stick where lights belong!’ What did you think instead?”
“That a gorfal lantern resembles some of the weapons you devised in MPE last term, and that you were about to reenact your defeat of Winston for Hn’tyon Esh-erdi’s entertainment. And that, after drinking everything I thought you drank, you might say something like, ‘This is how The Bearer of All Burdens does it!’ to finish your demonstration, leading to unknowable consequences and regrets.”
Alden raised his eyebrows. Vatha and their shadows flapped around him.
“I was letting my fears eat my reason,” said Stu.
“It happens,” said Alden. “I know you know I’m not an idiot.”
Stu nodded.
They headed for the trail. The image of Alden walked ahead of them. Stu was a little disappointed that its coat had been exchanged for the sleeveless blue top Alden sometimes wore, but it still had some pieces of the uniform. And watching the tattoo on its arm change was interesting. Alden had settled on the design and location of the tattoo he’d share with Esh-erdi, but he was enjoying trying different symbols above and below it.
“Are you thinking of adding placeholder designs even if you have no other contracts yet? Would you like to have one that matches with—?”
A glowing gorfal swept toward his face, and he chirped, leaping back before he realized it was going to pass harmlessly over his head.
“This,” Alden said, deepening his voice and striking a strange pose with one fist on his hip and the lantern pointed in front of him toward the twisted remnant of a tree stump, “is how The Bearer of All Burdens does it.”
“Why are you standing like that?”
“To intimidate demons.”
“That’s a stump.”
“One of the burdens I must bear is The Maker of Narrow Ways’s lack of imagination.”
It’s not proper to call me that, thought Stu. Not until I’ve finally done it. Maybe I should say so.
But friends who’d declared did talk this way to each other when no one was around to take offense. Especially as the time drew close. His longing ears had caught similar comments shared between others.
“I was mistaken,” he said. “That’s obviously a demon.”
“Try to fan its feelings of intimidation with your fan,” Alden suggested. “It thinks you’re easy prey because of that chirp.”
Stu took his new casting fan out of his pocket with a flourish and waved it at the stump. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d done something so silly on purpose.
“Here,” he said, passing the fan to Alden when he’d finished intimidating the demon. “I know you want to hold it.”
“I do!” Alden said eagerly, bringing the light closer to see it better. “You did learn the spell, didn’t you? Even though you were worried about me? Being invited to the insight chamber and getting a casting tool sounds like something you’d be excited about under normal circumstances.”
“I learned it well enough to cast it, but I’ll need to observe others who were better focused to capture some of the nuances. It shouldn’t be too difficult to do that. Everyone who was invited will be casting the spell all over campus to show off.”
“Will you teach me how to use the fan someday?” Alden closed the tool and handed it back.
“I will. And we’re far enough from the triangle here if you’re ready to show me your abbreviation.”
He shouldn’t have been able to brighten more, but he somehow managed it. “Promise stick?”
Stu had a few. He held one between them and watched closely as Alden demonstrated his first abbreviated spell.
Two gestures. The second one was a snap that caused sparks to burst around the tip of the promise stick before it lit.
That was a lot of excess sparking for that spell. Is he disappointed?
He wasn’t.
He was grinning as he blew out the tiny flame. He immediately cast the spell again. If anything, there were even more sparks this time.
“What do you think?” he asked eagerly.
“It’s actually an abbreviation and a modification since you changed a gesture. The sparks are on purpose?”
“They weren’t the first time. They just happened when I changed the spell. But I think they’re fun, so I haven’t tried to get rid of them. I want them for this version. I can always cast the other if the situation needs it.”
“I like it,” Stu said. “Personalizing everyday spells makes your wizardry seem more considered. More artful. There’s nothing wrong with doing everything exactly as taught, but I think, for you, showing comfort with your casting might help.”
“Help with what?”
Stu’s thoughts had crawled over the question of how Alden would be viewed and treated by others many times now. If his language was farther from perfection than theirs, if his authority greetings weren’t fluent, if a thousand irritations and indignities dragged against him on his way, people still wouldn’t be able to deny great magical ability. He just needed time to develop it.
“Even during my earliest days on this planet, when I seemed like a lost cause to almost everyone but Father, people still noticed I was gifted at magic,” Stu explained. “At LeafSong, there are many students who I have almost nothing in common with, but we can still talk about spells.”
“Help with fitting in,” said Alden. “That’s what you mean. Storytelling and magic. Learning how to ride terackerins. Learning how to put lanterns in nets.”
“Magic is the most helpful of those. How did your storytelling go?”
“I told an amusing one. Not the one I wanted. I think coming here with Esh-erdi helped me figure out why I couldn’t get any farther with the story I really liked, though.”
“What was the story?”
“I’ll tell you it if there’s time. It’s…early evening according to your LeafSong schedule. And you have class tomorrow. Is Eeaner-ket’s Stuart-focused party still this weekend?”
Stu felt the reminder like cold water in his boots. “It is. He’s hired a company to do things to our student house to make it ready. It will be the last day of the weekend.”
“I like my rings that used to be Eeaner-ket’s rings,” Alden said comfortingly. “I’ve worn them everywhere except gym so far. And my obstacle course class yesterday proved how useful hand protection could be. I broke a finger, almost got hit by a dart, and Ignacio decided I could probably catch knives and hold onto them while he called them back. I need to show you how that worked out. I used my free authority and my skill to make something cool happen.”
******
It was a rare joy. Almost all of it. The new spell, the long walk through a part of Rapport III he hadn’t seen, and hearing Alden speak with growing certainty about what he liked and wanted to have here, as a knight.
He said he felt more like who he wanted to be right now than he had at any point since Stu had first met him.
“It’s not fair how it works, Stuart. I’ve been putting the same amount of effort into doing the right thing and finding a direction all along. And if I look back, I can point at all these moments when I made progress. But every step only moved me forward about a finger’s width, and now, with more solid ground under me, the same steps turn into big leaps. I even got forward progress out of meeting Zakithee-und’h. A little boy trying to <> me for being an Avowed would have made all my worries worse a few weeks ago, I think. Today it was good for me. He said the problem out loud, and that gave me a chance to chew on it, spit it out, and step over it. It’s still a problem, but I’ll plan for it and carve around it. The life I want is this way, so I’ll do it.”
He kept pulling food out of his bag while they explored the trail, and Stu kept accepting it because he’d only had one meal this morning before entering the insight chamber.
Eventually they turned and headed back the way they’d come. They were nearing the triangle again, and Alden had turned off the lantern a while ago so that the vathas swarming them would leave.
“I’m supposed to tell you about someone,” Alden said. “But there were so many other things to talk about, and this was sad. Yaril-honn’s brother was one of the knights who was lost on Goldbush. Did you already know?”
Yaril.
Her smiles had been nervous and her hair crimped from the braids she’d taken down to prepare herself for her first oath ceremony. Stu had been hoping that he would hear from her ever since. He’d wondered if she had changed her mind about going through with first binding or if she’d changed her mind about casual interaction with an art’h. Or if someone had warned her about him specifically.
In a shameful period of self-pity one night, he’d allowed himself to imagine how such warnings were whispered when he wasn’t around. Did they tell her to avoid attachment to someone who wouldn’t be able to cope with being bound? Or did they tell her that encouraging him was the same as threatening the wellbeing of the Primary and the Quaternary?
But of course she hasn’t kept her promise to send me a message if this is what she endures so soon after her first binding. She must be trapped in pain and turmoil.
“I didn’t know,” he said. “So much has been happening.”
Alden let the news fill the silence.
“I’ve lost people I loved,” Stu said. “But I don’t know what to say to others enduring the same. Maybe it’s because my mind is different. If I’d had a normal childhood…”
“No, it’s not that,” said Alden. “Because I have my own experience, and I don’t know what to say either. ‘What’s happened is shitty. Most days in your life won’t be shitty.’ That’s what I’d say to my younger self if I went back in time. But it’s not poetry or surprising wisdom.”
“Knowing when not to use poetry is a kind of wisdom.” He would hold that in his mind when he called her and say something plain.
“Earlier, when I pretended I was going to hit you with my lantern, you were about to comment on the tattoo.” Alden climbed a few low steps onto one of the sections of the trail that was elevated above the ground. Water often stood here. At present, it was just muddy. “Were you going to ask if I wanted a matching one with you?”
“I was,” said Stu, following him up onto the narrow wooden path. “Do you?”
He didn’t answer immediately. Stu wondered why.
“I would value matching tattoos and an oath of friendship,” Alden said. “But if we want to try deepening toward inesvul, isn’t it redundant? A friendship of oath can’t be stronger than what Esh-erdi and Lind-otta have.”
Someone hopes to deepen with me. Alden wants to hold my place in reality. When I told him it meant more bindings for him, he was afraid…and he still said he would try. It’s been days now, and he’s still talking this way.
“Stuart?”
Stu had stopped to admire every angle of the wonderful question instead of answering the person who’d asked it. Alden was several steps ahead of him now, probably wondering why he was smiling down at the boards beneath his feet.
“It might be unusual to make oaths about friendship as we reach for the bond of knights,” Stu said, hurrying to rejoin him. “I was thinking of simple adornments since you seem to be considering adding placeholders to your arm.”
“I’ll think about that. What if after your party we cast spells together? The last day of your upcoming weekend will be Friday for me.”
“That would be a very good way to recover from whatever happens!”
“You make it sound like they’re going to throw you into a pit and force you to fight the other partygoers. You told me during our last call that it would be fine, but as the dreaded day approaches…”
“It will be fine. After Eeaner is distracted by the others, I may retreat to my room and contemplate. I have much to contemplate.”
“I saw something before you got here that made me think of you and one of your major contemplations,” Alden replied. “Are you tired of walking yet? We could call a flyer.”
“I’m not in a hurry to go back to school.”
******
Alden’s birth tree was being cared for by some of Rapport III’s votaries in a high-maintenance ingredients garden.
“It sounded like such an extreme thing for Esh-erdi to do when I first heard he and Porti-loth had bought my tree and a bunch of dirt and sent it across the universe,” Alden said. The gate to the garden swung open to allow them entry. “But this place is near his house, and my tree is almost no trouble for the votaries compared to everything else here from what I was told. They just put it in its own climate pocket, and they point an eye at it every now and then to make sure it’s healthy. And once I saw it I couldn’t believe it was allowed to live on the edge of a parking lot anyway without people complaining and trying to have it chopped down. It’s safer here.”
The path from the gate was as wide as a road, and though many of the plants were attractive, they were positioned for the convenience of caretakers and ingredient collectors rather than for viewing. Equipment had been left out, ready for tomorrow’s projects. At the end of the path, Stu and Alden had to skirt the edge of a field that was being prepared for future planting.
“A couple of the people who work here live over there. They talked to me and Esh-erdi, and they know I’m allowed to come see my tree.” Alden was pointing across the field toward the house.
“Which one is it?” Stu asked.
There were trees of different shapes and sizes at the back of the field. He only recognized one species.
“Its climate is set to January in Tennessee. Winter. So it’s lost its leaves. But it has some long seed pods hanging from the branches.”
“Oh, that one!” Stu said, spotting it and passing Alden, in a hurry to get a good view. “A lovely little tree! I wish I could see it better. At least it’s not long until sunrise here.”
“It’s not little. That’s a big tree. A big, full-grown tree. Your sense for tree size is heavily biased by a forest full of giants. Don’t rush at it if you can’t see it well.”
Stu crossed into a patch of cold air. His nose stung, and he tapped the warming rings he wore on each hand to activate them. He heard Alden’s steps behind him.
“It’s called a honey locust. I was keeping the light off so that it could make the best impression possible when you finally saw it. Maybe you won’t think the same thing I did…but look.”
The lantern he was carrying lit, and he swung it toward the tree’s trunk.
Stu blinked once at the brightness, and then again as he saw what Alden had wanted him to see. “Thorns,” he said.
Large, multi-pronged thorns grew in clusters from the trunk. They were gray or brown. Sharp. Many of them were as long as Stu’s hand.
Alden nodded at him, then reached to touch one of the thorns lightly.
“My family name in English is the word for thorn. So that was the first thing I thought when I saw them. But then I thought of you. My birth tree grew these sharp spikes to protect itself. It looks weird in some places because it grew so many. Some of them are broken, and it’s not a tree you can hug without bleeding. Doesn’t it remind you—”
Stu knew. He saw it.
“Of my patient creatures,” he said, placing a hand on one of the tree’s less dangerous spots.
“Yes,” Alden said. “Some of the smaller clusters even look like patient creatures. Slightly.”
They do. I know it’s only a coincidence. But they do.
“Two kinds of beauty,” Alden was tapping his fingers against more thorns.“I can’t tell you how significant this seemed when I saw it. I’m glad you thought the same thing. I’d have been a little sad if you didn’t.”
My friend.
“Pick one,” said Alden. “I will too. We can cut them off with a spell.”
“No!” Stu exclaimed. “How could we?”
Green eyes peered at him. “It’s a tree. It’s only two thorns. You used much more than two thorns worth of tree material recently. Remember?”
Stu suspected he was purpling now. He’d been comparing the tree too much with his patient creatures.
“I want us both to have one,” Alden said. “As a reminder. Maybe they could even be an accessory. I could replace the pin I wear on my pezyvas with something thorny if I can figure out how to keep it from stabbing anyone who bumps into me. And we’ll have an ingredient that makes a great Alden-healing potion with us wherever we are. That’s good, isn’t it?”
It was very good.
They both started searching the tree for thorns.
*******