Drawn to the music festival, Heket wanted to come with us when we left Whalesong Landing. Jaelis, who had come to the inn with Serru to share breakfast in the courtyard, and lingered to walk with us out to where Peace and Cheer were enjoying the sun, agreed that it would be easy to find someone coming back this way who could give her a ride or a coach to get a seat on.

  It wasn’t like we didn’t have room—or like we wouldn’t all be happy to have Heket’s company for another cycle or so.

  On the way, I spotted an aquian with skin of a deep graphite grey and short raggedly-cut hair of a dark carmine red, with no body art and no jewellery, only a sarong in splotchy dark greens and khakis. En was watching us from across the street, and I couldn’t decide whether that was anger or disgust in the body nguage. Meeting my gaze, en rolled ens eyes and threw both hands in the air, then vanished around a corner into a side street.

  I didn’t mention it to my friends, any more than I’d reminded them about the note st night. At least it wasn’t a zombie this time, but there was no way I was sitting down for a private chat with anyone who created zombies or anyone who thought female forms and healer skills were worthy only of ridicule, let alone both. Why bother? It would be unpleasant, to say the least, and I wouldn’t be able to believe anything he said.

  We dropped into the cheese shop, greeting Heket’s bck-furred friend Nami and restocking on dairy products, before going out to deprive the two ornithians of their small mob of young fans.

  Serru, back in her everyday clothes, stole a st long kiss from Jaelis. “Do you need a ride back to town?”

  En just ughed. “No, I’m in no hurry and it’s a nice walk. You get on with your trip. I’ll be looking forward to a longer visit next time you’re through.”

  “I’ll do my best. Soon, I hope.” She let go of Jaelis’ hand and climbed up to the front seat next to Terenei.

  “Please be careful,” Jaelis said quietly. I didn’t think Serru heard her.

  And then we were back on the road. Early though it was, we weren’t the only ones. Ahead of us, a long open-sided wagon drawn by three enormous horses paused to let a pedestrian with a backpack and a dog climb on board together. Had someone decided to run a shuttle back and forth?

  “I feel like I’m rushing everyone,” I said, toying with my begleri. “On things that are normally a lot more rexed.”

  On the other hand, maybe while we were moving we’d be harder to track. But then, it wasn’t like our destination or the route to it were hard to figure out.

  Serru shrugged as she gnced back. “Spending longer in Whalesong Landing with Jaelis while you’re anxious about your family would not be rexed. My pace on my own is slow because I have no motivation to hurry from pce to pce. I don’t think you can say you’re rushing Terenei, since he would normally be in Coppersands.”

  “And I’d be in Alderrock,” Aryennos said cheerfully. “Not expecting to see any of my family in person until my next trip home to Honeyfell. Which isn’t that far from Alderrock, it’s on a ridge that overlooks the same river. Well, actually, I probably would have had a short trip in Honeyfell after the river, although I’m not sure if my parents are home, but I’d be back in Alderrock by now.”

  “I would be helping with rebuilding, and then returning to working on my family’s farm,” Heket said. “And both of those things are continuing without me. I have not taken time for myself for something well over a year, and I’m enjoying this little trip, tagging along with you.”

  “I don’t think our librarian could live with himself if he did sloppy research in hopes of getting to the festival early,” Terenei chuckled.

  “I never would!” Aryennos said indignantly.

  “That’s what I just said.”

  “I know where the festival grounds turnoff is,” Serru said. “I’ve camped there before, at other times of year. It’s a little farther beyond the school than the school is past Whalesong Landing, but not much.”

  “Well, we can’t go all-out,” Terenei said. “There are too many vehicles moving less quickly, and the possibility of people on foot. But I’m sure there will be ways. We’ll still get there faster than walking.”

  The maybe-shuttle drew off the road into a y-by with a spring and trough, and while the horses had a quick drink, several more pedestrians helped each other aboard; that gave us a clear stretch in which Cheer and Peace could run, until we caught up with the next wagon.

  It was simir to ours, but drawn by a pair of sleek horses. A grey-furred felid in the back ughed visibly and said something to the others in the wagon; the driver drew the horses to the side as far as possible and waved to us. Several adolescent faces watched with fascination as Peace and Cheer loped by, and the driver, a human woman, grinned at us and waved again, this time in greeting. Peace and Cheer extended more when they saw a long stretch of clear road ahead of them, and they just might have been showing off a little, heads and tails higher than usual.

  All in all, we did indeed make it to the school quickly, and we left behind a number of other travellers who seemed delighted by the glimpse of the still-novel ornithians.

  This time there was no new css of students just starting, but we’d also had nothing booked for us in advance. Communication chokers duly distributed, we dropped Aryennos off at the library, where one of the librarians helpfully offered local directions to the rest of us.

  We considered options and came up with a pn.

  Terenei took the ornithians and wagon to the park the librarian had told us about, a pce they could be unhitched for the day. Myu went along, sitting on the front bench beside him and watching her new surroundings with fearless curiosity.

  Heket and I went looking for something tasty for all of us to enjoy for lunch.

  Serru promised to make her shopping trip quick and efficient, that she simply wanted to see if she could find a few things, and if they weren’t avaible, she’d add them to her list for Crystal Pass. This was, however, a possible location to find my one mysterious missing ingredient to upgrade my alchemy tools.

  Heket and I returned with a collection of bakery treats, and five generously-sized servings of a fish-veggie-and-egg-noodle dish that we’d been encouraged to sample while trying to decide; the tter was even customized, with Heket’s very heavy on the fish, mine light on the noodles, and the three humans’ more banced. Food services, clearly, became much more complicated when dealing not only with humans but with felids, aquians, and all the rest as well. Of course, we had fish by itself for Myu. We’d found a fresh fruit juice mix for Serru and Terenei and I, and goat milk for Heket and Myu.

  Terenei had freed the ornithians, and they were pying in the water on the small beach with several fascinated adolescents of multiple species. The diminutive ke was, apparently, scarcely more than a widening of a river that ran from the Highnds to the coast, but right here it had a pleasant sandy beach that faded into short grass dotted by broad trees that created shady patches. It was as popur as it was beautiful, though not exactly crowded.

  It didn’t take much for my friends to persuade me to leave my choker there and go for a swim, since my final dip in the pool at the inn had been hours ago.

  I was so going to miss this.

  And it wasn’t the only thing.

  Still, this form came with that wonderful inclination to just be here, right now, appreciating the aquatic life around me and the tickle of the currents on my skin and the cool three-dimensional reality and the easy fluid strength of my own body so perfectly adapted to it.

  Possibly I was in a little longer than I intended.

  Serru was there when I came back up on shore.

  “Good swim?” she asked, with a smile.

  “Wonderful. It’s much better with the space to move than it is in close quarters like a pool.”

  “I’m sure. I stopped to peek in on Aryennos but he was so engrossed in the search that I didn’t interrupt him. He had two other librarians with him. One was looking in a book and letting Aryennos and the other both talk so fast they were cutting each other off and I’m not sure either noticed or cared. I think he might have something good for us. Meanwhile, that food smells good.”

  “Sorry. You didn’t have to wait for me.”

  “No one is that hungry,” Terenei ughed. “But yes, it does smell good.”

  It was still hot, too, in its covered bowl-like containers—except Myu’s, in a smaller and ftter container that had apparently kept her fish chunks just the right temperature.

  “Excellent choice,” Serru said, after a single bite. “So. I have a question, and I do have a reason. Your gatherer abilities, you said, include being able to make pnts grow very quickly and develop through stages, correct? Seed to sprouting, to full size, to flowering, to fruiting?”

  “I haven’t had a reason to try it yet, but yes, in theory.”

  “I have a reason for you to try. I know all the local alchemists, of course, I sell to them regurly, and my pn was to stop in each shop only to ask whether they’ve heard of morning star crystals. One stopped me on the street before I got to his shop. He was hoping I might have one particur flower, called an eclipse aster. He was visited this morning by a musician who was here for the festival. Said musician is due for her fourth pregnancy potion today, but there was an accident and it was dropped and spilled. She came to the closest possible source for a repcement. Unfortunately, that flower is an essential component, and it is unavaible locally at the moment. Normally it comes in from the south frequently, but thanks to the disruption, it isn’t expected for another two to three days. He can’t find it anywhere here or in Whalesong Landing.”

  “The additional risks created by being a few days te are minimal,” Terenei said thoughtfully. “Not zero, though. And that would probably be stressful for her.”

  Serru nodded. “I told him that I don’t but I’d check with my travelling companions to see if anyone has it.” She smiled. “I was able to find seeds.”

  “Sure, I’ll give it a try,” I said. “Do we need to go somewhere else?”

  She shrugged. “They aren’t dangerous, and if we pnt them here and harvest what we need, someone will put the rest to use.”

  “Just to flower, right? If I push it all the way to fruiting the seeds will be sterile. But I think it’s all normal if I only go as far as flowering.”

  “Just the flowers.”

  I had another bite of fishy stirfry, and brought up my dispy to look. “It works by charging water and sort of turning it into a weak pnts-only potion. One accelerates growth. It says it will take anything from half an hour to two hours go from ungerminated seed to full size, depending on the normal development speed, the conditions, and the amount of growth required.”

  “That seems sensible,” Heket said. “A tree has much farther to go than a rosemint pnt.”

  “This charges up to four litres of water. Hm, I can adjust it upwards, apparently two litres at a time, but not downwards.”

  “That is a lot of water for one or two seeds.”

  “I stopped having housepnts because I couldn’t keep them alive, so I wouldn’t know. It does seem like kind of a good way to drown it, but I don’t have to use that much.” I spun the wheel. “The one that pushes it to the next phase of growth has the same rules about volume. It takes only minutes for a pnt to move from full growth to flowering, and another watering will make it go from flowering to fruit.”

  “That would account for the sterile seed,” Heket mused. “There’s no opportunity in there for the flowers to be fertilized.”

  “I wouldn’t expect that to matter for alchemy,” Terenei said. “So, useful but only for a specific purpose.”

  Heket nodded. “Serru? Did you get many seeds?”

  Serru reached into her bag and produced an envelope of rough-looking paper. She handed it to Heket and went back to eating. “That’s how they were sold. I didn’t bother to haggle.”

  Heket set down her bowl and, with great care, spilled the contents into her palm; she reached up to adjust her goggles as she inspected them.

  “It did mention conditions as a factor. These will do best if they have ground that has been broken for them, not just scattered on the surface. A patch rge enough for these will only take me a moment to do, and I doubt anyone will mind if I break a small garden patch out of the way. If it’s of any use they can continue it, and if not, it will grow back over soon after these pnts are finished.”

  “Sounds like we have a pn,” Terenei said.

  “It sounds as though we might as well pnt all of them,” Serru agreed.