When Heather and Akari rejoined them, Danielle got them to add the new mint patch (hopefully) to her map. Then Danielle and Akari each took a pair of the cutting logs from Sadie and Heather picked back up the unsplit log, and they headed back to the maintained roads. They decided to follow the east/west road to the river, where the guide had told them they would find “the old bridge.” Ranger Miriam had given them to understand that the good fishing spots were to be found further north or south from the bridge, but it still seemed like a good landmark for navigation.

  They hadn’t taken into account that the Ranger hadn’t given them a distance. It took over two hours just to get to the bridge from the corner of the Dome road and the Rooms road. By the time they were staring down from a thirty or forty foot cliff into a rushing stream of water as wide as any Inside swimming pool and longer than they could properly fathom, it was already 4pm.

  “That’s a long way down,” Akari said.

  “That’s a lot of water!” Heather said. “And it’s all moving so fast! I know that’s what a river is, but I never really thought about it being fast. How do fish actually live in this?!”

  “It’s not like the aquaculture pools back home, that’s for sure,” Danielle said.

  “More important, how are we supposed to get them out?” Sadie said. “Even if we had fishing line, it would be way too fragile to go all the way down there, wouldn’t it?”

  “Using more length doesn’t actually make it more fragile though, does it?” Akari asked. “Just more likely to tangle, maybe. That’s what the reel on a regular camper’s fishing rod does, it handles the length so it doesn’t tangle. We’d have to do something like that too, but it would be OK, I think.”

  “Well, we know the good fishing isn’t supposed to be close to the bridge,” Danielle said. “I bet if we go further north or south like our guide said, there’ll be less cliff and it’ll take less twine just to get down to the water.”

  “But we’ve been out here for a long time and we’re at least three hours from home! We already don’t have much time to do anything here, and if we go even further, we’ll just have to turn straight around anyway!” Heather objected. “You said it was four, right? So we’re already not getting home until seven and we’ve got to skin the rabbit and stuff, and – “

  “I don’t want to do that back by the Rooms if I don’t have to,” Akari broke in.

  “What?” Heather gave her a startled look.

  “I realized, when we built our cook fire in sight of the building, anyone who’s not having much luck with their snares could be watching us cook and getting jealous and desperate, you know?” Akari said. “If I’m out dealing with the rabbit in the close woods, anyone who’s trying to trap or hunt too close to the buildings could run across us; or even someone who did go further out could run across us coming back. If we don’t want to advertise that we’re doing OK on food – you know, to people who aren’t – then we should do as much of the rabbit prep out here as we can.”

  “What if we just go far enough north to find a place where you can put the fish trap, and you do the trap while Akari helps Sadie skin her catch; then we put a few jerky shreds and maybe a rabbit foot or something in the trap for fish bait, and go home. Tomorrow, we start our day with a hike out here, and see if there’s fish; if so, boom, food for the day.” Danielle watched Heather’s face, trying to gauge whether she was pushing too much.

  “No bait in it tomorrow, maybe,” Sadie suggested. “We just do this hike twice a week – once at the end of a day to put in bait, once early the next day to harvest.”

  “I think it’ll depend on how much we actually get out of it,” Akari said, “but baiting it with some bits of rabbit we don’t want to eat sounds like a great idea. The sun doesn’t go down until nine, at least this week, so we can afford to be here until six – that’s two hours, right?”

  “Minus however much time we have to spend finding the spot, and then walking back from the spot,” Heather said with a frown.

  “So we walk for half an hour, see if we find a spot. If not, we admit defeat, maybe take a short break, and head home,” Danielle said. “If we do find a spot, we have an hour to do the trap and the skinning before heading back.”

  “Danielle,” Heather said. “I hear you, and you sound all sane and reasonable, but we have done four hours of walking already today. And spent two hours picking tomatoes. And we have another three hour walk ahead of us. And you want to add one more. In what possible world is this sane?”

  “Well, in the world where we get our food by going out where people aren’t killing each other over places to put snares, and catching fish and rabbits,” Danielle said. “And I realize that might have sounded like a good way to drive ourselves to collapse as recently as three days ago, but we’re not carrying our entire lives on our backs today – “

  “We’re carrying the water, and these logs, and all the tomatoes!” Heather exclaimed.

  “ – and frankly, I think if your Body stat can stealth-level without showing on the interface, then we probably all leveled sometime Saturday or Sunday. I’m just the only one who can see it.” Danielle concluded, refusing to be derailed.

  “Can you give me a token of this speed thing?” Heather asked, angrily. “Because I was having enough trouble keeping up, and now you’re talking about doing six-hour hikes on a regular basis.”

  “I’m sorry, it’s a Trait, not a Skill,” Danielle said. “I bet you’ll unlock it, though. I got it from my Class, but Akari got it from something else, right?”

  “Well, I actually also got it from my Class,” Akari said. “Even though it’s a different Class.”

  “Oh. I guess I don’t know if Class Traits are a separate pool from regular Traits,” Danielle admitted. “It seems generic enough that it should be a Trait you can unlock, though.”

  Heather groaned.

  “Supposing I did a bunch of exercise while you were making your fish trap,” Danielle said. “So I end up just as tired as you. Would that convince you that I’m doing this because I think the fish would be worth it, and not just to run you into the ground?”

  Heather frowned at her. “I don’t really think you’re trying to kill me, I just don’t think you’re being reasonable about what we can do – especially what I can do! Supposing my Body went up, I’m still only level 2 to your 3 – and it’s all of you now, everyone but me is level 3.”

  “Unless Danielle is right, and Akari and I secretly have Body 4,” Sadie said.

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  “Not helping, Sadie,” Akari told her with a sigh.

  “Look, Heather, you’re the one who read up on the fish trap, and you don’t want to be left alone, or I’d let you wait here; but we need you and you don’t want to be alone anyway, right?” Danielle said. “What if I promise to carry your stuff home? What will it take to get you to give this a chance?”

  Heather gave her a long, complicated look. “Do you even think you can carry my stuff all the way home? It’s gonna be three times as far as we carried everything on scavenging day, and being speedier won’t make it any shorter.”

  “I know. It won’t even make it faster, because I’m sticking with you guys. I might be miserable tomorrow. I might need a rest day and not be able to take one,” Danielle said seriously. “I still say after hiking all the way out here, it’ll be a waste if we don’t at least try to set up the trap, and a totally worthwhile effort if we try and succeed.”

  “All right,” Heather said. “But if you wake up wrecked tomorrow, I’m not carrying your stuff while we hike all the way back here to check the trap!”

  “That’s fair,” Danielle said evenly. “I have to keep working on my Body stat too, and anyway, it’s a risk I’m taking with my eyes open.”

  “OK, well, if we’re going, let’s go,” Sadie said. “We’ve wasted too much time arguing either way.”

  They turned north and started following the bank of the river. To Danielle’s relief, the banks began to lower after only a few minutes of hiking, and the river to widen and slow down – or at least, it seemed to slow. The banks were relatively open for a long stretch, too, making it relatively easy walking; at first the banks were quite rocky, and then it turned to meadow grass and wild brush but it was still better than trees they would have to work their way around. The broken ruin of an old road cut north along the edge of the trees, sometimes visible, sometimes discernable only by the straight line where the trees stopped.

  It took nearly 25 minutes at Sadie’s fairly aggressive pace, but they reached a spot where the river widened even further and divided to flow around a long, narrow island. The trees encroached towards the shore, but there was still a wide strip of grass and wildflowers between them and the water. The banks were mostly low and gradual here, and even more so along the island.

  “All right, are we really still less than half an hour out from the bridge?” Heather asked.

  Danielle checked her watch. “Yeah, just five minutes short of the deadline now, but we’re still within the half hour.”

  “This looks like a good spot,” Heather admitted reluctantly. “If we’re going to do this, this is the place.”

  “All right then! What do you want us to do?” Danielle asked immediately.

  “Sadie and I are going to work on the rabbit,” Akari said. “Here’s the bait jerky,” she added, passing the bag to Heather.

  “OK, what do you want me to do?” Danielle corrected herself.

  “Well, um. I’m going to have to go wading,” Heather said. “Take your socks and boots off and come with me, I guess, and guard me.”

  “OK, I can do that,” Danielle agreed.

  Akari and Sadie chose a rocky outcropping just above the riverbank and sat down to work, setting everyone’s bags near them for safekeeping. Danielle and Heather took off their boots and socks, and Danielle put back on her boot covers by themselves to keep a bit of foot protection. Heather hesitated, then did likewise. She also took off her sword and tools, not wanting to drag them through the water. Danielle put her knife and hatchet in her bag, but kept her sword. “I don’t think bronze rusts the way iron does,” she told Heather, who gave her a skeptical look and a shrug, and headed for the water with just the bundle of sticks. The two of them jumped down the short drop of the eastern riverbank, and started wading out.

  The river wasn’t incredibly deep here, Danielle was relieved to see; they were able to wade all the way to the island, though the water rose past their waists in the deepest part of the channel. Heather led the way to the island, where the banks didn’t have a drop-off at all, but a muddy slope.

  “OK, here’s how it works,” she said. “I’m going to use the sticks to make a box, and the water will flow through between the sticks but they’ll be too close together for the fish to get out – at least any fish big enough to want. Three sides will be straight, but one will have a sort of funnel shape in it. The fish come in the funnel and eat the bait, but then they can’t find the way out, because they’re on the narrow end of the funnel now instead of the wide end.”

  “So they might get lucky, but probably not?” Danielle asked.

  “That’s what the book says,” Heather confirmed. “So, um. I’m not sure how far my sticks will go, so I’m going to try and start with the funnel and then make as big a box as I can from there.”

  “I guess I’ll just hold the sticks for now, and maybe when you’re done with the fiddly part I can help with the box,” Danielle suggested.

  “Yeah, once the bundle is small enough that you can hold it under one arm and help at the same time,” Heather agreed. “For now, just not letting all my materials wash down the river will be the most important thing, though. We worked on those sticks this morning, I want to get to use them.”

  “Good point. OK, I’ll try to have a stick ready for you whenever you need it,” Danielle said.

  Heather nodded and got to work, staking the sticks as deep as she could into the muddy bottom. They stuck up into the air by different amounts, from barely breaking the surface of the water to sticking out by several inches. Danielle quickly realized that Heather needed longer sticks first, because she was aiming the opening of the trap towards the deeper water, but the box would go a bit shallower. She started trying to sort the sticks by length and offer up the best sticks for the part of the trap Heather was working on, saving the shortest ones for the back wall where it was closest to shore and dividing up the longer ones for the sides.

  Heather got into a rhythm, and soon the funnel part was done and she was working her way around the box. Danielle’s estimates were off a little, lending the box an oddly lopsided look, and Heather’s were also a bit off, which led to the funnel being off-center as the last wall had to be moved closer in order to save on sticks, but in the end the odd construction was fully in place, with no gaps obviously big enough for fish to escape, except for maybe the funnel.

  On shore, Sadie stood and stretched, then called, “Are you almost done? Ready for bait?”

  Rather than yell back and scare away any fish brave enough to still be in the vicinity, Heather just gave her a wave and a thumbs up.

  “I’ll go get it so they don’t have to wade over too,” Danielle said. “I’m sure we’ll dry out on the walk home, but there’s no reason for all of us to be wet.”

  She waded across, and sure enough, Sadie met her at the bank and offered her a slimy packet of rabbit bits awkwardly wrapped in a few leaves. Danielle thanked her, but held the packet and its red drips downstream from herself as she waded back to Heather and opened it into the square of the fish trap.

  “You may as well drop in the leaves too,” Heather said. “And wash your hands in there, even. Let the fish smell the bait in there.”

  “Hah – good idea,” Danielle chuckled. She glanced back at the eastern bank while she was rinsing her hands in the water of the fish trap, and saw Sadie stretched out on her stomach, reaching awkwardly down the bank to wash her own hands in the moving water.

  Heather and Danielle waded back across, and Sadie helped them back up the bank, which was only two feet above the water but was awkwardly more like four and a half feet high from the bottom. Danielle was confident they could have scaled it if they needed to, but she was willing to let Sadie save her some effort!

  “So how are we going to tell if there’s fish in the trap from here?” Sadie asked once they were on the dry grass again.

  Danielle and Heather both turned to look back at the trap. The trap itself was plainly visible from shore, but the inside was not.

  “We have to wade out and check it,” Heather said. “Sorry – I’d have put it closer to shore, but the diagram in the book showed shallower water, and I didn’t think I’d need the sticks to be that long. I don’t think I could’ve made the trap on this side.”

  “Actually, let me see if Sense Mana Source can see it,” Danielle said. She activated her Skill and looked out over the river. Like in the woods, it took a moment to focus on seeing fainter sources, but once she did, she could see dozens of small sources in the river, and more along the banks, both the near bank and the bank of the island.

  “I think I can see it,” she told the other two. “I can see some stuff that I’m pretty sure is on the island, so if there’s a fish in the trap, it should be visible. I might have to walk up and down the bank a little to make sure it’s – ” she turned back towards the others, and cut off as she noticed something behind Sadie. She took a step to the side, then another around Sadie, looking back toward the rock where Akari was sitting a few paces away, listening to them talk.

  “What’s wrong?” Sadie asked.

  “Akari, your sword,” Danielle said, trying to resist the urge to shout.

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