Prysmcat
The red dot among the bck of the quincunx was on the right this time.
The water-loving trees that grew along the edges of causeways and isnds, the most common ones simir to willows both weeping and non- from my limited knowledge, broke up any line of sight, and it didn’t take very long for me to feel like I was completely alone.
I whistled Peter Gabriel’s ‘Solsbury Hill’ to myself, hoping that I was on my way home.
I tried to keep the sun in roughly the same position, but that was the only consistent point of reference I had. The sky was clear and there were no clouds, and the Gss Shallows were short on tall ndmarks that I could use to orient myself. The road I was on branched several times, splitting across causeways and bridges that were footpath-sized, even fords and stepping stones in pces, and I was very grateful that the high red boots Terenei had given me were waterproof. The rest of my clothes got spshed intermittently, but that I could ignore.
I must have gotten turned around. No one would have a garden, and a small neat house that just might be portable, inside the immediate grounds of the Quincunx. That was frustrating, but at least whoever lived here should be able to point me in the right direction.
The garden was all marked out into separate beds and sections with lines of white stones. I didn’t recognize more than two or three pnts growing in it, but then, there hadn’t really been much opportunity for Serru to teach me about Gss Shallows gathering, and cultivated pnts were probably not the same anyway.
One person was in sight, vigorously wielding a hoe and so intent on her garden that she didn’t notice me. Her hair, in a single braid with a few strands straggling loose, was probably something like pine green, originally, but was so washed out by the liberal white that it was hard to be absolutely sure; her sleeveless tunic showed sinewy muscle on her upper arms, while the frame under that and her long skirt, which was hiked and tied above her knees, was generally rather lean and athletic.
“Excuse me,” I said. “Sorry to interrupt you...”
She gnced up, then her gaze went immediately back to her hoeing. “Hello,” she said. “Yes?” She sounded short of breath and distracted, but not unfriendly.
“I got badly turned around, I think. I know this is a really odd request, but could you point me in the direction of the Quincunx?”
“That way,” she said, and gestured. “I’d show you to a path that will take you straight there, but I absolutely must get this work done before the tide comes in.”
‘That way’ told me which way to go at the next branch that I could see. It might be enough, if I was careful. The sun was getting low and that was actually going to help more.
Or I could offer to help, and remove any uncertainty afterwards.
She looked stressed and anxious, and I wasn’t sure how long she’d be able to maintain her stamina, given the energy she was putting into it.
I didn’t really want to dey, but I didn’t want this woman to kill herself, either, and getting lost again would lose more time...
“Can I help? I’m afraid I don’t know much about gardens but I’ll do what I can.”
She raised her head again and blinked at me. “A second pair of hands would be extremely useful, thank you. These are all coastal pnts, they need the tide, but right now, I need not to have the tide’s interference. There were some injuries in the recent storm and the alchemists are short on several key ingredients used in the local alternative formution of Quickheal, in particur, but others as well. Many of these aren’t ready yet but that isn’t a difficult problem, as long as I can finish before the tide.”
It sounded like a difficult problem, but what did I know?
“Right. What do you need me to do?”
I had no idea how weeding and hoeing and generally tending to the desired pnts was going to get them into useful condition any more quickly, or what the tide had to do with anything. There was a time I would have humoured her but assumed that she was delusional and this would accomplish nothing. After this long in this world, I was willing to allow the benefit of the doubt that there was a reason I just didn’t understand.
And I was right.
As we finished, my companion picked up a rge metal watering can from the workbench that held a variety of tools, and filled it from the nearest irrigation ditch. Setting it on the ground, she held her hands as though cupping it, or maybe hovering over it, but a short distance to each side so she wasn’t actually in contact. Eyes closed, she hummed a tune that, unsurprisingly, I found unfamiliar.
A faint greenish glow spilled out of the top and the nozzle of the watering can.
She offered it to me by the handle. “The ones we’ve been tending to. Water them, quickly. We’re running out of time and the tide will dilute the power. They don’t need a rge volume, just a small spsh each.” She moved a basket out of the way on the ground and retrieved a second watering can, this one more dented.
I did as she asked, hoping that I was correctly estimating a small spsh.
By the time I finished a row and came back to the top via the next, the first pnts I’d watered were visibly much rger and bushier.
I ran out; she handed me the second can so I could continue. It took a third for me to make sure that they all got a taste of her magic water. I definitely had questions, but this was clearly not the right moment, so I saved them for ter.
“Done,” I said, returning with an empty watering can for the third time.
She nodded. “We’re done that stage. They’ve grown much rger. But we need some to flower. Some of them need to fruit as well. Start there,” she gestured, “those ones will need more time and a second round of water.” The watering can she handed me had a very faintly yellow gleam emerging from the openings.
“Different water. Right. Got it.” If they were at the wrong stage of growth, what was more water going to do?
It was, as it turned out, going to make them move into the next stage of growth. They began to flower, in abundance, bright colourful blooms forming and opening like a sped-up time-pse video in real life.
With the pressure of the tide, and my companion spending all her energy on doing whatever she was doing to the water, it meant I had to water a lot of pnts very quickly, and they definitely got variable amounts. At least I couldn’t overwater them. Probably. And once each had a single drink, the ones that needed to go all the way to fruit needed a second one.
“No pollinators?” I asked, on a trip to get another can of water.
She shook her head and passed me the full can in trade for my emptied one. “No time. The seeds will be sterile, rushed like this, but they will form, and their other uses will be intact.”
With the tide starting to edge in, turning the fields wet and muddy—well, wetter and muddier—we both worked hastily to harvest into baskets as much as possible of the flowers and the fruits as she said we needed.
“Enough,” she said finally. “We’ve gathered far more than I had any hope of by myself, and I’m very grateful. There are multiple combinations of ingredients to create potions like Quickheal and the like, common ones that everyone needs access to, and this will help considerably with the shortfall after the storm. I appreciate it.”
“Not a problem, you’re very welcome.”
“You wanted the path to the Quincunx?” She set the st basket next to her workbench, above the high-tide marks, and beckoned to me. “Come with me, I’ll show you.”
“Thanks. It’s very easy to get turned around if you aren’t used to the area.”
“We don’t all have the supertive multi-dimensional aquian sense of direction. Sometimes familiarity has to do.”
We followed the path near her house, the way she’d originally indicated, but she stayed at my side, her strides strong and sure. At the edge of the water, I took a moment to swish my feet around to wash off the considerable mud; she paused to wait.
“Would it be rude to ask how you made the pnts do that?” I asked.
She chuckled. “Not rude at all. I charged the water with magic. First to encourage growth, and then to force development. There are other water-magic skills one can learn, but my love is only for my garden.” She sighed softly. “Which I shall now have to repnt, but it’s for a good cause. Watch your step, these stones are slippery when they’re underwater. Now. You want that path there, not the one over here, and you want to follow it past the first turn-off and over the wooden bridge. Once you’ve crossed that, take the next right, and from there, you can’t possibly get lost as long as you stay on the main path and don’t wander onto any of the side-branches coming back in the opposite direction.”
“Straight, over the wooden bridge, then turn right and stay on the main path.” I’d followed worse directions. Getting back out might be interesting, though.
“Exactly. And whatever’s taking you there, good luck.”
“Thanks. I hope your garden recovers quickly. And all the people who needed potions after the storm.”
“They’ll be fine.” She turned around and started back the way she’d come.
I paused for a drink from my water-gourd, and munched on a travel-bar that resembled very dense grano while I continued on my way. After all that exercise, I figured I deserved it.
The water level around me kept rising, and that meant that sometimes the pathway was submerged, but it was never by much. Waterproof footwear was obviously essential in this part of the world. I wasn’t sure my own boots could have held out, but the ones Terenei had given me stayed dry inside.
I was getting really fond of all three of my companions, and the two ornithians besides. Missing them was going to hurt.
The ndscape jolted me out of increasingly-morose reflections on the fact that I was going to lose something that mattered to me no matter what I did.
I paused between two head-height rough-cut stones that were not clones of each other, and surveyed the isnd beyond them. Along the high-water mark, I saw more stones in a familiar ring. The isnd itself possibly formed a perfect circle.
In the centre was the usual stone structure, three walls and a roof of rough ft stones, with deep darkness beneath.
Going underground in an area as watery as the Gss Shallows was an arming thought, but presumably the Quincunx, the most powerful magical force known, was able to cope with the pressures of water. Right?
Well, my only other option was to turn around, go back to Serru, and tell her I was giving up and staying here.
While that wouldn’t be an unbearable option, I wasn’t sure I’d ever stop missing my parents and sister and Grace and wondering whether I’d really done all I could to get home to them.
I took a deep breath, and crossed the bare ground to the dark slope downwards.
I didn’t bother taking out my lumina stone. There was just enough light radiating from the walls that I could navigate, and there were no side-tunnels, nothing to trip on. The floor below me wasn’t wet, and neither were the walls when I cautiously touched one. That was reassuring.
Unfinished stone blocked my route.
Speak your goal and enter. Pass this door and be forever changed.
So what else was new.
I id a hand in the hand-shaped indent and said, “I need to go home.”
The stone sb tilted, offering me the usual ramp.
I passed through a curtain, not of glittering beads nor of flowery vines, but of small metal discs, mostly silver but occasionally gold, joined by silver links.
The upper half of the walls of the circur room ahead of me were curved seamless gss, and beyond it was water with all the abundant life of the Gss Shallows.
The lower half was tiled randomly with hammered silver, shiny silver, frosted gss, and outright mirrors.
The floor was pale blue-white stone that was almost luminous in itself, with deeper blue threads marbling it. The furniture was polished silver metal, cushioned in white and pale blue with hints of other hues, violet and green and rose, and the rugs on the floor followed the same colour scheme. Small tables held spiky crystal confections, bowls that might be for fish or just colourful aquatic pnts, and balls that might be gss or crystal.
In the centre was a white-and-blue marble pedestal, ringed by plushy-looking rugs.
The usual glowing sphere, the size of a golf ball, was trapped under silver metal bars, in the middle of the pedestal. Around it were two concentric rings of twelve tiles each, and on each side there was a niche the width of the rger outer tiles, deep enough for two.
The same symbols showed on the inner and outer rings, and also on the pedestal around the rings. I knew the symbols, even: they were the ones that marked the corks of the potions I made and ones I used but didn’t make like the Drops that helped me sleep properly.
I tested the rings, and discovered that they rotated independently, and that the tiles could indeed slide out into those little niches.
So, presumably, the idea was to get the rings to match and line them up with the symbols around the outside. That shouldn’t be too difficult a task.
It took time, but it was hard to say how much, in the unchanging pale light of this room that I wasn’t sure was even a part of normal reality.
I rotated the smaller ring into pce, certain that I had everything in the right order, and all the symbols began to glow softly blue.
The rger ring lined up perfectly with the smaller one, and those symbols, too, began to glow.
The bars drew back from the little recess in the centre and let the ball of light float slowly upwards.
I took a deep breath, reminded myself that I’d survived this twice already and it probably wouldn’t be any worse, and reached out to catch it.
Instead of heat, this one felt cool, like a drink of ice water and a breeze on a hot day. It still made my body glow under my skin, an icy white rather than warm gold or rosy-peach. The cold deepened rapidly, less refreshment in summer than bitter wind in winter, but the heat hadn’t hurt me, and besides, it really was hard to find any room for emotions like fear with all that energy pouring into me and filling me.
I barely felt it when I colpsed where I was and the room and the cold light went away.
