We heard the festival before we saw it.
But not as deafeningly-loud speakers drowning everyone in a single headlining band, or worse, multiple conflicting sound zones.
What we heard was an escating buzz of ughter, voices, instruments, even animals.
The road rose at a gentle angle, and crested, and gave us a view of the whole site.
A shallow rise formed a sort of broad teardrop-shaped ft-bottomed valley of generous size.
From here, I could see several stages—and I doubted any of them was more than waist high, simple ptforms, though interestingly, each had an arch over it that reminded me more of a garden trellis than scaffolding. They were spaced around the circumference, with comfortable distance between them, each on one long side of a broad oval paved with rge ft stones. Without amplification, they probably wouldn’t interfere with each other.
In between, I could clearly see a grid pattern of packed-dirt nes, and a whole lot of people camping between them without being crammed in custrophobically tight. A narrow river ran through the centre, from the drop’s point to its base, and a number of minimalist bridges crossed it. All water was clean enough to drink here; I was certain people would be doing any washing or swimming on the downstream end and that no one would be peeing in the pool.
Even from here, the breeze carried tantalizing scents, sweet and savoury, promising exotic harmony for other senses as well.
The slope carried us down into it somewhat more steeply than it had brought us to the top, and I lost that overall view, but we were quickly in the middle of it.
It didn’t feel crowded. Just energetic and bustling and friendly.
The nes were marked out clearly with lines of small white stones pced close together. Serru pointed out that the campsites, sizable rectangles, were divided by broken lines of low resilient flowering pnts that were purely ornamental but easy to see. Occupation varied from a simple campfire with a scattering of bags and often instruments around it to rge tents that probably weren’t single-use to complex wagons that were clearly the local equivalent of an RV; the tter sometimes took up two sites, to allow space for a rope-and-pole pen for the animals that provided the power, but since there were still empty pces scattered through, I doubted anyone minded.
I saw humans, aquians, jotuns, centaurs, some felids who presumably were tolerant, cervids, but also caught glimpses of people who were none of those things. I was sure I saw, from behind, a jotun-tall figure with iridescent green and blue scales and a tail and folded feathery wings. I glimpsed one figure who was slender with skin and hair in a symmetrical pattern of soft green and brown that made me think of leaves, wearing only a short skirt of highly-textured brown. Before I could ask whether that was a florian, I’d lost sight of them.
Even more than Coppersands, it was an endlessly-diverse chaos of colour and shape, gender and age and everything else, and I loved it.
We passed what I thought might be casual pick-up jam sessions, and also performers of an astonishing range warming up or just messing around or even teaching, dancers and jugglers and magicians, and a lot of people were just hanging around to watch those, not attending the performances on the stages. No one showed any sign of minding their audiences; if anything, they were interacting with them, asking for suggestions or opinions, a dancer drawing someone out to dance with him.
“I might not want to leave in the morning,” I said. “This is amazing and I’m pretty sure I could wander around here for the next week. I can’t see and hear everything at once.”
Serru chuckled. “Let’s talk about it ter.”
Aryennos hopped out of the back of the wagon and started asking people questions; a couple pointed. He came back with directions.
A double campsite held a wagon with bright fabric side walls under a solid wooden roof supported by thick ornate corner posts, and a pair of penned grey heavy horses, drowsing head-to-tail in the lowering sun. Around a fire, several people were casually pying with trio of guitars and a set of hand-drums that looked small in the hands of the male jotun drummer but probably would not otherwise, while one human man sang and others, intermittently, added harmony.
Aryennos scrambled out again and made right for them.
The current song broke off, and the singer rose. “Ary? What are you doing here? You should be in Alderrock!” That didn’t stop him from wrapping both arms tightly around our librarian.
“This should be a good story,” chuckled the jotun drummer. “What mischief did you stumble into this time?”
“I fell in the river,” Aryennos said. “The people who pulled me out and saved my life are now my friends and I’m helping them with something important, but since we were going almost right past here, well, here we are.”
“The river. I see.” That must be Aryennos’ father, considering the behaviour. I honestly had no idea whether the simirly-brown skin was in any way relevant, or the near-white pale-blue hair. How did genetics work here? Did they work? Or exist? “I think Donour’s right and there’s a story here. Well. There’s an empty site just a little farther down, where you can leave the wagon and... are those ornithians?”
“They are, and they are adorable and sweet and friendly, and they are so fast you wouldn’t believe it.”
“I’m sure they’d like a chance to rest without harnesses on. Your mother went with Andu to find food, they’ll be back by then. You can introduce us all and maybe we can find out what you’ve been up to.”
“Out you get,” Terenei told Aryennos. “We can set up without you. Do you want us to take our time about coming back?”
“You don’t need to,” Aryennos said. “It’s fine.”
“Oh, we’re quite happy to meet anyone Ary calls friends,” the drummer said. “You’re very welcome.”
One of the guitarists, a curvy human woman with canary-yellow hair cut in an interesting asymmetrical flip, set down her instrument. “I know where they were going, I’ll make sure we get more food for a felid and four humans. Our treat.”
We parked the wagon along one side of the empty campsite, and Terenei took the ornithians to the river for a drink before tethering them, with Heket offering extra hands; they’d had so much pytime in the ke earlier that, he said, they didn’t even try to go into the water.
“Are you sure you’re up to being around people?” I asked Serru quietly, while we made sure all personal bags, and of course Myu, were duly in the right hands.
She looked sideways at me, and smiled faintly. “I would like some distraction from my own thoughts at the moment. You know I enjoy music. If necessary, I will excuse myself and go in search of a performance that is starting, something I can simply enjoy without interaction. But I would quite like to meet Aryennos’ parents and his father’s band. We need to make certain you get a chance to wander around and experience the festival, as well, not being courteously sociable all night. Are you going to tell them the truth?”
“I suppose I have to, really. Otherwise nothing Aryennos says will make any sense. He abandoned the job he loves and is running around the countryside with us, and since they know him, I doubt they’ll buy that it has anything to do with development of an externally-applied anti-zombie anti-mossling potion. I’m not worried. Well, not very worried. So far everyone has been fine. Probably we should have talked about it before meeting up with Jaelis.”
Serru shook her head. “Jaelis would have tried to talk me out of staying with you, on the grounds that it could be dangerous to me. It would not have worked, but would have been awkward. Once you’re home I’ll expin. Or make a gift of Aryennos’ book when it’s complete. I didn’t want to bring it up. Do not underestimate how valuable that hypothetical potion would be, Jaelis was not exaggerating that it would change everything, but I think Aryennos’ parents might find parts hard to believe regardless.” She looked at Terenei. “Are we ready?”
“I think we are,” he said.
All anyone had was their usual bags, mine currently in its satchel form, and Myu was draped around Heket’s neck. “I suppose it would be silly for me to ask whether everything left in the wagon is safe? No one will steal or damage anything?”
“Of course not,” Heket said. “Why would anyone do that? They have their own things to do, music and socializing and whatever-odd else.”
“Right. Never mind. Let’s go.”
It was a short easy stroll, past only a handful of other sites on each side, back to where Aryennos’ father and his companions were.
A woman with skin that made me think of honey and deep pine-green hair hanging loose down her back had seized Aryennos for a hug.
The instruments had been moved, mostly just nudged back out of the way, and the lingering onlookers had moved on to find someone still offering entertainment rather than a reunion.
“Why are you not at the library?” asked the woman who presumably was Aryennos’ mother.
“A lot happened fast,” Aryennos said.
“Mostly I happened,” I said. If we were doing this, then I was taking control of it. “He’s been trying to help me by doing research and also by keeping a journal to help others in the future. I’m Nathan. I’m an adult newcomer, and I’m doing my best to get home to my family.”
That got about five heartbeats of absolute silence. Hey, my second time today rendering people genuinely speechless. I was on a roll.
Then the jotun drummer ughed. “That is so like you, Ary. Have a seat. I promise we’re all friendly. Let’s figure out who we all are, shall we?”
The drummer, it turned out, was named Donour; his skin had a faintly copper sheen, not just the colour but a hint of the actual metal, and his long braided hair was metallic bronze with a greenish tint to it.
A second male jotun, who came out of the wagon in response to his name, had a simirly strong build with unremarkable light skin and strikingly rose-gold hair cut short; that was, apparently, his partner Thelsan.
Both were wearing much less than the jotun I’d seen in Whalesong Landing, Donour in rather short shorts and a sleeveless top open down both sides, Thelsan in a leather version of an aquian’s wrapped sarong and a loose mesh top with elbow-length sleeves, though both were also wearing a lot of metal-adorned accessories and straight-up jewellery in several metals. Donour’s outfit in particur showed off a lot of muscle, but proportionate to their size and heavy bone structure, I thought Thelsan actually had more, he just dispyed it less.
Donour had scattered symbols painted in deep green and dark blue on his skin, and my brain transted them for me as music symbols but I was sure they weren’t the ones I knew from learning guitar. Thelsan had a warden’s double-triangle on his right forearm, in concentric yellow and orange haloed in fuzzy-edged bck, extremely visible indication of his job, and a spiral of interced blue-edged bck knotwork around the left.
Aryennos’ father, the band’s lead singer, was Kildar; those trousers didn’t leave much to the imagination, even less so with asymmetrical cut-outs down the sides, and the vest he was wearing over it might reach to his hips but it was open up the front, quite loose, and worn over what I could only call a tanktop of translucent fabric. On the other hand, it was all colourful enough to make me think of 80s gm rock.
His mother was Meridel, who was usually a teacher but sometimes contributed backup vocals. Her rather bra-like top and a fringed shawl tied as a skirt and her mid-calf heeled boots were all dripping with a rainbow of shinies and sparklies over a pink base, though the tight darker-pink leggings underneath, which showed no signs of interfering with motion, were piner.
The curvy canary-haired human woman who had gone after Meridel was Jovra, the more slender magenta-haired human woman Ethrin, and the pale-rose-skinned indigo-haired aquian who had been with Meridel was Andu—respectively, they pyed guitar and things that came across as ‘fiddle’ and ‘flute’ but they didn’t feel like smooth transtions in my head so I remained unsure what that meant exactly. Since I’d seen fully three guitars when we’d arrived, all such bels were clearly more of an official role in the band than a description of an exclusive chosen instrument. All were simirly dressed in colourful clothes that were eyecatching even for this world—although maybe less so here and now, surrounded by any number of other people taking advantage of the festival to express themselves. Why wouldn’t performers dress to get attention, anyway?
Aryennos, having completed introductions the other way as well, began a general rundown that was impressively succinct, reminding me of his summaries of his research for us.
All were, as Donour had said, friendly, and all were curious to the point of fascination, but not entirely happy, and I could guess why.
“I understand why it’s so important,” Meridel said. “But Ary, you have a history of... well, of finding predicaments to fall into whenever you’re outside a settlement. And sometimes inside one.”
“Serru spends most of her time alone on the road,” Terenei said. “Her grandmother is a master gatherer and she taught Serru everything. Nathan’s an experienced paramedic, which is really simir in both worlds, and the Quincunx has helpfully provided some abilities to bance and enhance the different tools avaible. The risks are lower than they seem.”
“Yes, but I can’t imagine that those two are taking this calmly, which adds new risks. I don’t want you in her hands.”
“Or his, for that matter,” Kildar added.
Possibly I was getting more attuned to what to listen for. It would be rude to ask, but just maybe that phrasing and the anxiety meant something, at least on Meridel’s part. Did the Moss Queen have a preference for female victims? It wouldn’t surprise me. Or it might be coincidence.
“We didn’t get that far yet,” Aryennos said. “But Nathan can heal mosslings and zombies.”
“Unless I catch a moss infection fast enough,” I said, “it’s more like a quick clean death for both.”
“Setting them free,” Serru said firmly. “That quick clean death is a rescue. Thanks to Aryennos’ research put into a new context by Nathan’s experience, we even have an extraordinarily good idea how they both developed those particur abilities and who they were before they came here, and since we know what skill Nathan is using that works, we may be able to work towards a potion of sorts that anyone could use to free someone. We might be sending Nathan home with universal thanks for giving us a way to break the power those two have.”
“There is nothing that’s going to get me back to Alderrock right now,” Aryennos said, and he didn’t raise his voice but I heard an uncharacteristic adamance under it. “I need to do this.”
I didn’t think I was the only one to hear it, given the looks his parents exchanged.
“Then go to it, Ary,” aquian Andu said. “You have skilled loyal friends and a unique chance to use your own excellent skills to be part of something that could help everyone, and that’s on top of the obvious reasons to help someone get back to his family.”
“We have other stops pnned on the way back to Honeyfell,” Donour said. “So we won’t be there if something does go wrong, but I’m sure you can manage.”
“This is dangerous,” Kildar said with a sigh, “but there’s no way you’re going to stop, and I’m proud and worried at the same time, each of them strong enough alone to fill my whole heart. Please, please, be careful. You have been getting distracted and falling off of, over, and into things since you first learned to walk, and there’s no way that’s going to just stop. It obviously hasn’t, since you found lindwurm silk to stumble into.”
“I barely got as far as Coppersands,” Aryennos said. “Can I keep going with what’s happened?”
“Please,” Andu said.
Aryennos didn’t whitewash anything about his fall down the sinkhole under the tree, no more than he had the river accident or the lindwurm cave. I saw his parents, and for that matter the others, flinch over the injuries.
“Well done on the rescue,” Donour’s boyfriend Thelsan said, speaking up for the first time. “A warden’s job includes organizing a team to act if someone is lost or trapped, but I’ve never had to find a solution for one that cramped and unstable both. I’m gd you weren’t hurt.”
“I really should have asked for a second rope so I could anchor myself too,” I admitted. “Search-and-rescue isn’t a specialty I’ve ever had a chance to get into, I work mostly in a city. But Serru and Terenei thought fast to get what I asked them for, and it worked out.”
“It did. The Highnds have a lot of surfaces to fall off and down and over, however.”
“I know,” Serru said. “One of my closest friends is in Brightridge, and when I go through there she takes a week or so off so we can go out camping and gathering. The Highnds weren’t my grandmother’s strongest territory but I’ve learned plenty from Zanshe. Enough to know how to be careful, and when to ask the locals for help. I’m still considering sending Zanshe a message in Crystal Pass to ask her to meet up with us, just for that extra security.”
“That might be a good idea. I don’t know you or your skills, but it doesn’t really matter. Having someone else familiar with the ground can prevent the need for rescues or make them more successful if they do become necessary.”
“I did promise to stay close and be very careful in the Highnds,” Aryennos said. “I really don’t want to fall down a ravine or anything.”
“You’re going to Crystal Pass? There’s a shop there that specializes in camping gear. You can get a colpsible stretcher there—a strong lightweight metal frame that sockets together securely to support a stretched leather surface. There are rings to attach ropes to or tie someone onto it or both. You might consider buying a medium-sized one.”
“I would very much like to buy one of those,” I said. “Where?”
The directions made little sense to me, but Serru nodded. “I know that shop. We’ll stop there, and thank you.”
“Anyway,” Aryennos said. “We waited out the storm in Nathan’s portable house, no one would let me use the stairs, and then we started farther up the coast road.”
From there it was pretty quick and easy, really: he’d spent the time on an isnd with Terenei and Heket until the boat brought them to catch up with us, only something like seventy-two hours ago. Whalesong Landing and the school had been uneventful aside from his impressive historical finds, which spilled over in suddenly faster and more animated speech.
“I’m not going to get into all of it right now,” he said, “but I’m going to be able to write a book that expins newcomers and those two and even some things about the Quincunx that have never been put together or were never understood or were just completely not known. And Heket’s a storyteller, she’s putting together history into performance-length stories.”
“History so far,” Heket amended. “I think the backgrounds and appearance of those two will make intense stories for the right setting.”
“Can’t wait to read it,” canary-haired guitarist Jovra said. “Or hear those stories. I haven’t the slightest doubt that it’ll be amazing and change the world. Meri can spread the word to try to make it a fundamental educational resource, from the sounds of it.”
“Oh, teachers will immediately use both,” Meridel said. “You could fill your time doing nothing but going settlement to settlement with those stories, and that book will be everywhere as fast as teachers hear about it.”
“Maybe consider recordings of those stories,” Donour said. “Let us know, we can help with that.”
“And we can all brag ,” Jovra said, “about knowing from the time that you were knee-high that you’d do something unique, Ary.”
“So each site is effectively giving you a new identity?” Andu asked me.
“A new form and a new set of abilities,” I said. “I’m still me in any of them.”
“It looks,” Terenei said, “as far as we can tell, at least, like the Quincunx is offering options for settling down somewhere and having a good life. A centaur healer, a felid alchemist, or an aquian gatherer, any with paramedic skills, could all fit in comfortably with a stable role in a community, doing something that’s in harmony with the job that matters deeply to Nathan at home.”
“Hm,” Andu said. “True. It’s limited to healing and reted skills so far?”
“So far,” Aryennos said. “But that might be more like a way to catch up quickly. If, hypothetically, Nathan stayed, that would be a good foundation that would let him explore how we treat art or music or both, with no pressure.”
That got the attention of the band, unequivocally.
“Those barely count as hobbies,” I told Aryennos, and then, to the musicians, “I taught myself to py guitar in my teens so I could py what my favourite musicians created. Also it was useful for flirting.” That made both Andu and Donour grin, and the tter gnced at Thelsan. “It wasn’t compatible with my job and I’m not particurly good, but I would like to get back to it someday.”
“Music from another world,” Kildar said. “Tantalizing. But we aren’t going to try to pressure you into anything, I promise.”
“It’s really rather fun and high-energy,” Aryennos said. “What I heard, at least.”
“Lyrics don’t work,” I said. “This isn’t my nguage. I can transte the meaning but the emphasis and vowels and sylbles don’t match up.”
“I suppose they wouldn’t,” Meridel said reflectively. “A shame.”
“So we’re caught up to the present?” Donour asked Aryennos, who nodded. “Good. Then why don’t we break out that food Meri and Andu picked up? We were pnning on taking over one of the stages for a while just after sunset, best to give a meal time to settle.”
