The scent of more “traveler’s mash” heating up woke me

  from the most restful night’s sleep I’d had in decades. A yawn cracked

  my wolfish new face, feeling like it could swallow somebody’s head. I

  rolled to my feet and stretched, arms above my head, legs lengthening

  all the way onto my tip-toes, and gusted a great sigh. “Wow. I feel

  amazing!”

  I also felt rather a breeze.

  Coming back down to a normal posture, I tugged at the

  bottom of my simple tunic. It covered my whole torso while I wasn’t

  stretching, but not by a whole lot. My hands brushed down the soft

  fabric, over the firm curves of my new body. Kiri had absolutely been a

  muscle-mommy, but she wasn’t missing the ’mommy’ part either, however

  poorly that matched to wolf anatomy as I’d known it back home. I felt my

  tail wag uncertainly at the thought. I suppose I would have missed

  having breasts, as inconvenient as they could be sometimes. Still, the

  shirt didn’t leave a lot to the imagination.

  “Hey, Ever, is there—more to my outfit somewhere?” I asked the cat cooking breakfast.

  She glanced at me apologetically, her ears going flat for a

  moment. “Sorry, Anne. We had to burn what was left of your clothes

  after the fight yesterday. I have your—Kiri’s—armor tucked away, but

  everything else she brought along is in your pocket.”

  Ever and Fiddle wore similar plain shirts, with practical

  pants, and now that we were getting ready to leave camp even La'a had

  supplemented her brief loincloth. She now wore a drapey robe-like

  garment in varied greens that covered her from elbows to knees, with a

  long criss-cross of laces down her back that let the sharp red-gold

  ridges along her spine poke out. None of them seemed blessed with

  pockets.

  I got it after a moment. “You mean like the magic pocket Fiddle put Peachy’s body in?”

  Ever nodded.

  “You still have it,” Fiddle explained, “But you won’t be

  able to access it until you have a fairy of your own.” He’d pointed out

  last night that there were two good reasons to find a grotto as soon as

  we could, both to lay Kiri’s fairy to rest and so I could meet a new one

  to bond with. I wasn’t sure how I felt about the idea of becoming

  permanently connected to another living being as soon as I met them.

  Sounded a bit too much like some TLC reality show. But since it

  apparently came with a side of cool magical powers, excitement was

  winning out over concern for now.

  My bowl of mashed vegetables, rehydrated meat, and

  softened something-suspiciously-like-hardtack (clack-clack) was handed

  over, along with another steak like the ones I’d wolfed down last night.

  I noted that Ever also supplemented her breakfast with a steak, if

  rather smaller than mine, and felt slightly less bad about my oversized

  share of their resources.

  We ate in near silence, and were on the road in just a few minutes, leaving nothing behind but scuffed dirt.

  “Actually,” Fiddle began, as we walked away from the empty

  campsite, “While I was investigating the Great Library last night, I

  spoke with my dad too.” The others made happy noises at that.

  “Your dad’s in the magic library?” I asked.

  “He was there for a while last night, at least,” Fiddle

  answered helpfully. “He’s a mind mage too, as you might guess. And he

  has the honor of being the Royal Librarian of Ulthara” There was love

  and pride in his voice in stating his father’s qualifications.

  “Wow, that’s very cool. Makes you a pretty big deal then,

  mister son of the Royal Librarian?” I said. “Should I call you my lord?”

  I wasn’t sure how well even gentle teasing might translate, but Fiddle

  had seemed like the friendliest and most open of the bunch once he got

  talking last night, so I figured it was worth a cautious attempt.

  Might not have been a good idea, as my sortie was met with

  an awkward silence from everyone. I let it hang for a breath or two.

  “Sorry. Not the right form of address, I guess?”

  “I’m a big deal!” Fiddle blurted, and I was

  pretty sure I could see his cheeks turning red even under the grey fur.

  “My dad really isn’t either. I mean, he’s a respected scholar in several

  areas of study and no slouch with magic—he’s a blue adept—but that

  doesn’t mean he gets a title or anything.”

  “Ah.” I nodded, shuffling slowly next to him down the

  trail. “An adept?” I asked, hoping for distraction. My weird knowledge

  of the language told me it had a more specific meaning than I was

  familiar with.

  “We have a few terms for those who’ve worked extensively

  with their fairies, learned a lot of magical abilities through them,” he

  explained, seeming happy to put my misstep behind us. “Adept is just

  one step below Master. Below that is Seasoned, folks with significant

  experience.”

  “People like us,” La'a volunteered.

  “You folks are highly experienced, are you?” I asked her.

  “Sure are.” La'a puffed out her chest. “We’re all closing

  in on the fifth rank—on Adept—already. That means we’ve collected a

  couple of hundred motes each in our hunting.”

  “Wow, that does sound like a lot.”

  “It is and it isn’t,” Fiddle said. “We’ve a long way to go

  to be truly impressive. But I was saying, I talked to my dad, and told

  him all about what happened with Kiri and Peachy and you, Anne.”

  I raised my eyebrows. I hadn’t considered the idea of them

  telling anyone about me yet, but then we were out in the woods, it

  hadn’t seemed likely to be a concern for a while. Oh well. I’d long

  gotten tired of lies and their dances anyway. It was probably for the

  best. “What did he think about it all?”

  “That’s the useful bit. He’d never heard of a situation

  exactly like yours, a person’s soul being cut loose from their body and a

  different soul taking its place. But he familiar with one instance of peoples’ fairies being destroyed while they still lived, and the aftermath of that.”

  “Wait, really?” La'a cut in. “I’ve never heard of anything like that!”

  “It was about two and a half centuries ago,” Fiddle told

  us. “In the last throes of the Indran Empire. An entire flight of Ghost

  Dragons came up from the southern pole and started ravaging grottos all

  along the coast.”

  “Oh,” La'a grumbled. “No wonder it hadn’t come up in my studies.”

  I looked confused at Fiddle till he explained.

  “Talakoni, La'a’s homeland, has a strange relationship

  with dragons in general. It’s not likely they’d keep any records

  regarding ghost dragons.”

  “Okay. What are ghost dragons and what do they have to do with fairies?”

  “Oh, right.” Fiddle cleared his throat. “They’re a

  fortunately rare offshoot of true dragons that seem to survive entirely

  on Radiance itself. They are the only being known that can kill a fairy

  directly, and they love them more than any other food. Any that encroach

  on this continent have to be ruthlessly put down, or else the fairies’

  entire population might be lost.”

  “Oh, wow. So the people fighting these ghost dragons lost some of their own fairies, huh?”

  “Exactly.” Fiddle nodded enthusiastically at my guess.

  “And dad was able to point me to the records the library has from the

  aftermath of that expedition. All those who lost their fairies lost

  access to almost all the abilities they had developed, but once they

  bonded with a new fairy they regained them. The surprising thing is that

  while they regained all the powers they’d had before, the new fairies

  weren’t able to help them progress further along the same path they had

  previously walked. All three whose answer was recorded said the only way

  they could do that was by retreading all those steps. Two of the

  warriors happened to be chosen by fairies of different colors, but the

  one yellow mage had bonded another yellow, and ended up going into an

  entirely different specialty, retiring from the field and focusing on

  illnesses of the mind, since he was cut off from improving the skills

  he’d been using before.”

  “So you’re saying Anne should avoid getting a second orange, then?” Ever asked.

  “Maybe. Kiri was deeply focused on her physical

  improvements, so there are probably lots of other areas of body magic

  that Anne could pursue if she wanted to. But there’s no strong reason to

  stick with orange if it’s not what interests her.”

  “So I get to choose then?” I asked.

  “Yes and no,” Fiddle said. “In the end, the fairy chooses

  you, but what you focus on as you’re seeking her will attract some more

  than others. Kiri had a singular focus. She knew exactly what she

  wanted, and she told me that when she entered the grotto all the

  non-oranges literally fled her presence.”

  All three of them chuckled lightly. This was obviously a well-known anecdote.

  “I don’t think any of us had quite the same effect. I know I had greens, violets and reds checking me out along with blues.”

  “I didn’t scare anybody off as such, but I only drew in yellows,” Ever offered.

  La'a made a ’hurumph’ noise.

  “Have you been thinking about what interests you most, Anne?” Fiddle asked.

  “Hmm. Not really,” I admitted. “The whole idea is so

  overwhelming. Everything is pretty overwhelming still. Just walking

  around is. I’m not used to not needing my cane. To no pain in my knees,

  no shortness of breath. It’s great! But it’s weird too, you know?”

  “Pain in your knees?” Ever said. “Not to be rude, but how old are you, Anne?”

  I chuckled. I’d wondered when that would come up. “Fifty-two. It was arthritis. How old was Kiri?”

  La'a answered, a roughness in her voice that I couldn’t decipher. “Twenty-three.”

  “Damn. I gained three decades. Never mind magic, no wonder

  I feel so much better. Although—how many days are there in a year

  here?”

  Ever looked confused, and Fiddle answered. “Three hundred and sixty.”

  “Ah, close enough.”

  “So walking feels weird, does it?” La'a asked suddenly. I

  looked back at her and nodded. “Maybe that’s cause you’re doing it all

  wrong.”

  “I am?”

  “I was wondering about that,” Ever put in.

  “Hmph. You plant your heel every step like you’re going to

  wait an hour before taking another. It’s super awkward. And you

  straighten your knees so far too. No wonder you messed up the old ones.”

  I resisted the urge to explain osteoarthritis to the drake

  woman and concentrated on the present. “So I shouldn’t put my heels

  down when I walk?”

  “Nah. We only stand like that if we’re trying to stay

  still. Then the extra stability is worth it. But the rest of the time

  you’re just pinning yourself down. Bend your joints, loosen up

  everything, all the way up to your hips. Like you might leap in any

  direction any second.”

  I followed La'a’s instructions, looking carefully at the

  others to get the idea. They’d been moving around like that the whole

  time, I just hadn’t paid much attention. At first I felt far more

  awkward, wobbly and unbalanced. But Fiddle and Ever saw my nerves and

  each offered me a hand to help find the proper posture.

  It was just a touch like walking on short stilts, to be

  honest. But with help from the other mammals I started moving more

  smoothly in short order, and then I started to see what La'a was talking

  about. It did in fact make me incredibly bouncy.

  Before I knew it I was giggling and leaping around the

  clearing where we’d stopped so I could practice. Hopping on one leg as

  many times as I could in a row before losing my balance, and then

  scrunching down hard to spring way up and swat at a little tree branch

  ten or twelve feet off the ground.

  Once I managed to hit my target I dropped back and tried

  dancing. The jangling tune of the “Safety Dance” came to mind and I

  hopped and kicked to its remembered beat. In a minute I even started

  throwing in a couple of hip hop moves, and it was then that my huge feet

  got tangled in themselves and landed me on my ass.

  I sat there for a moment, laughing uproariously, as Kiri’s

  three companions stared at me with widely varying expressions. Ever

  looked on with an indulgent smile, Fiddle with a pensive expression.

  La'a’s lizardy features were the hardest to read, but I thought she

  looked either bored or angry. I hoped it was just the former.

  I leaned back and stared up at the blue sky above and just

  took a few long, deep breaths. The air here was amazing—clear and clean

  and so full of the smells of the natural world. I was just feeling my

  heart rate return to normal and thinking that maybe I should apologize

  for wasting their time like this when Fiddle’s voice caught my

  attention.

  “Hey, Anne.”

  “Yeah?” I looked over to see him holding up a huge fallen

  branch, probably four or five feet long, and too big for his hand to

  circle completely.

  “Could you break this in half for me?” he asked, holding the stick out.

  “Okay,” I took it, curious at what he needed it for. My

  hands wrapped around it easily, and I gave it a few investigative bends.

  The wood was still solid and produced only a few creaks and pops at

  first. I tried flexing it back and forth a bit with little more effect,

  then finally propped up my knee and pressed both ends down over it. The

  wood snapped easily at that and I handed the two pieces back to him.

  He examined the splintered break carefully, and then tossed the sticks back into the underbrush. “Interesting.”

  “What’s up?” I asked.

  “It seems far more of the path Kiri walked is locked than I would have expected.”

  “No kidding,” La'a grumped. “Kiri could leap across this

  whole clearing without trouble. Breaking that branch wouldn’t even take

  both hands.”

  I frowned, trying to imagine that. And then tried to think of anything to say in response and came up equally blank.

  “Well, all the more reason to get ourselves to that

  grotto, right folks?” Ever put in, soothing and straightforward as

  seemed to be her specialty.

  “Right.” I levered myself off the ground and followed them down the trail.

  #

  The grotto turned out to be a hole in the ground.

  We’d spent several hours making our way down the mountain

  by the dirt road before leaving it to push through wooded slopes

  following what could generously be called a game trail to this spot,

  heavily shaded by the trees around, and deeply unprepossessing. I wasn’t

  entirely sure I could squeeze my oversized body in there.

  This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

  I glanced back at Fiddle, really wanting to ask if he was

  sure about this, but not wanting to insult the group’s information

  specialist. “So what can I expect in there?” I asked instead.

  “You might have to go pretty far in before you find them,

  but just follow the lights,” he said. “It’ll be fine. Just remember to

  stay calm and be patient. The right one will pick you.”

  I took a deep breath and nodded, looking around at the

  three still-alien faces. What was I hoping for? I couldn’t say, and

  didn’t think I was seeing whatever it might be. So I just turned and

  crouched down to burrow into the hole.

  Inside was a cave much like the few others I’d seen. The

  parts near the surface tend to be pretty unimpressive, no matter what

  amazing formations might lie deeper in. I supposed this was a bit the

  same. I scrabbled carefully on all fours—a far more comfortable prospect

  with my new arrangement of limbs, though still not my

  favorite—following the only direction available, down and into the

  earth.

  What light had followed me from the entrance was soon

  lost, and I was feeling my way forward in a darkness unlike any I’d

  really experienced before. My eyes strained for any hint of something to

  see, but failed entirely. My amazingly sensitive nose told me of

  nothing but the surrounding rock and my own scent, and my ears picked up

  only my scrapings and the patter of displaced dirt. In the absence of

  all those more familiar inputs, I slowly became more aware of the faint

  fluttering of the whiskers around my nose and lips. They were nothing

  like as long and numerous as a real cat or dog’s whiskers, but they were

  there, and in the silent dark they did their job, picking up the faint

  feel of air passing by me from deeper inside.

  Probably less time than it felt like had passed when I

  first thought I saw a flicker of color ahead. I blinked a bunch, not

  sure if it was real or my light-starved retinas playing pranks. It was

  dim and dark purple-blue, something that might have gone unseen in a

  normal setting, but it was real, if faint. As I crawled toward it, knees

  and elbows a little achy from repeated impacts with the rock around me,

  it dimmed and brightened unpredictably as the tunnel curved and jinked,

  but once I’d noticed it, it never disappeared entirely, a clear sign

  that I was on the right path.

  Finally, I arrived at a point where I could see that first

  light source directly: a pinprick of indigo floating in the dark. I

  made my way closer, more slowly now to avoid scaring this outlying

  fairy. I couldn’t make out any of the complex physiology of the ones I’d

  seen close up, but didn’t worry about that. What were the chances of

  there being some source of colorful light down here?

  I’d almost reached the indigo light when I suddenly

  started to see more splashes of color on the walls around us. Green and

  yellow, red and violet, they shifted and flickered, still faint and

  unpredictable from here. I arrived almost within arm’s reach of that

  first indigo fairy, able barely to make out the rocky surface she was

  resting on. I really wanted to reach out to her, an impulse like seeing

  an unfamiliar cat curled up sleeping in a sunny spot, and knowing no

  matter how soft their fur might be they wouldn’t appreciate a touch just

  now. I held back and searched out the way forward, passing no more than

  a foot away from the tiny door-guard.

  Beyond the next bend was a miracle of rainbows.

  #

  The three old friends watched in silence as Kiri’s bare

  legs and tail vanished into the hole in the ground, then watched for

  several minutes longer. Eventually they were reassured that the

  wolf-woman would not be turning around immediately, and should be well

  out of hearing range.

  Ever was the first to crack, throwing herself flat on the

  ground, an arm crossed over her eyes. “How in all the darkest places are

  we going to explain this?” She moaned. The silent communication that

  Fiddle was able to provide them with his mind magic was incredibly

  useful for sharing information, but some things just needed to be

  shouted into the sky before they felt .

  Fiddle settled down with his back against a tree, head

  cushioned by his fluffy tail. “You mean you’re not sure how to broach

  the subject to the queen that her battle-obsessed youngest daughter, on

  charging out with her trusty hunting party to destroy one more in an

  endless line of dangerous monsters was not, in fact, killed! But instead

  somehow had her soul ripped away from her body and replaced with the

  soul of a complete stranger?” He idly scratched his cheek. “Yeah, I got

  nothin’.”

  “Perhaps you should have asked that question before you

  rejected my solution to the problem,” La'a drawled, the only one still

  standing a wary guard. “Whatever color she comes out of there with,

  she’ll have access to all Kiri’s powers now, making it vastly harder to

  finish the job the scythe-tail started.”

  “For the last time, you bloodthirsty scale-face,” Ever

  began, glaring out from under her arm, “Killing her ourselves is off the

  table, and always was!”

  La'a snorted but didn’t bother with a response, a sure

  sign of her perturbation. Usually she’d happily bait Ever for hours on

  end.

  Silence fell again in the woods, the sounds of nature around them slowly returning.

  An unusually large wasp wandered down from the trees,

  bobbing in La'a’s general direction. She watched it with an unblinking

  gaze, then flicked a finger and the bug was skewered by a tiny spear of

  ice, dropping to the ground, unmoving.

  “La'a! What have I said about killing random wildlife?” Ever glared again.

  “It had the red-eye. Might have become something dangerous,” the drake answered calmly.

  Ever scowled more suspiciously. “So you can harvest from it?”

  Boomy’s little green light had drifted down over the dead

  bug, flickered briefly, and La'a cocked her head, then sang out, “Hah!

  One orange mote.”

  Ever sighed and closed her eyes again.

  “So what color do you think she’ll end up with?” Fiddle broke the silence this time.

  “Huh. Red maybe,” La'a offered.

  “You think she’s a crafter at heart?”

  “Could be. She seems very—I won’t say passive, but

  peaceful I guess. Almost Kiri’s opposite.” La'a considered for a moment.

  “She did say something about, instructing…children?”

  “True.”

  “I wouldn’t be entirely surprised if she came back with a yellow,” Ever volunteered.

  “I could see healing from her,” Fiddle agreed.

  “Healing isn’t all there is to yellow, you know,” Ever objected mildly, “But yeah.”

  “Definitely not red or violet,” Fiddle offered his own take. “Probably not green either.”

  “No, she does not seem like the sort,” La'a snickered at her own pun.

  Above the canopy, the sun crept across the sky, and

  eventually Fiddle brought out supplies and began preparing a light

  midday meal. He was just about done when scraping and shuffling could be

  heard once more from the grotto hole, and soon Anne’s head appeared,

  covered in dust and dirt. The rest of her wriggled into the light with

  rather more confidence than she’d shown going in. She stood and

  stretched to her full, towering height and arm-span, then shook herself

  vigorously, dust flying everywhere.

  “Woo, that felt almost as weird as it looks! Hello again

  all. Come on out, kid!” As Anne glanced over her shoulder, a small,

  bright fairy floated around from behind her, wavering up to hover near

  her head. “Everybody, meet Fee! I considered going with Tinkerbell, but

  that was just a bit too on the nose, you know?”

  No-one paid attention to her incomprehensible aside as they were all staring, baffled, at the fairy herself.

  “Orange?” Fiddle asked.

  “I never would have expected that of you,” La'a added.

  “Huh?” Anne glanced from her new companion to her slightly

  less new ones. “Oh, no, she’s not orange. Turns out your friend had

  almost fifty points of orange saved up for some reason. Now it’s showing

  up on Fee and kinda blotting out everything else.”

  “How interesting,” La'a said. “And yet she doesn’t

  demonstrate all the radii that Kiri had spent, or she’d be far brighter

  than that.”

  “We call them motes, Anne,” Ever added at almost the same time.

  “What?”

  “Once a fairy has refined the radii into units for use, we

  refer to them as motes.” Ever explained in a kindly teacher’s

  sing-song.

  “Oh, right. Sorry, it’s a lot of new terminology to get used to.”

  “But what color is she then?” Fiddle burst out.

  An odd smile crossed Anne’s long face. She held the inside

  of her arm up next to her fairy and stared at it for a moment before

  answering. “That’s a little tough to explain, actually. And it’s kinda

  too bright out here to see. I’ll show you once it gets dark.”

  Fiddle frowned at that, but Anne swept on, crouching down

  by his preparations and reaching out for a sandwich from the stack. She

  paused before grabbing it and gave him a questioning glance. He rolled

  his eyes but nodded and she finished the motion, snarfing down the

  sandwich in three bites.

  “Mm, that’s nice, Fiddle! Way more flavor than the mash.”

  She went for another but paused with it halfway to her mouth. “Speaking

  of dark, for all the poi—motes she spent improving herself, why the heck

  did Kiri never buy night vision?!?”

  Ever burst into laughter.

  #

  Ever’s sudden belly laugh seemed to break the tension for

  everyone, and the other two crowded around Fiddle’s stack of sandwiches,

  eagerly digging in. I was a bit touched that they’d waited for me, to

  be honest.

  Fiddle finished assembling the one he’d been working on

  and took a huge bite. I snagged a third while there were still plenty.

  The rolls were nice, a little crusty but soft inside, and the filling he

  used bore a faint similarity to tuna salad. The fish was entirely

  different, with a milder taste, but the sauce was rich and creamy, and

  flavored with what I’d swear was dill.

  After she finished her first sandwich, Ever graced me with an explanation. I barked a laugh almost as hard as hers.

  “Wait, you’re kidding, so just because can give

  other people the ability to see in the dark for a little while she

  wouldn’t spend anything on being able to do it for herself?”

  “Nope,” she confirmed, “Called it a waste of potential.

  Every time I brought it up she’d start listing all the things she could

  do with that much radiance instead.” She smiled sadly for a moment. “So

  do you think you’re going to give yourself night vision then?”

  “Oh hon, I already did. Actually went straight for full

  spectrum vision. Gonna wait and think a bit before I spend the rest of

  it though.”

  I finished my third sandwich and paused before taking another, not wanting to hog it all. Something occurred to me.

  “I can’t help but notice that you didn’t offer before I went into that dark hole in the ground,” I pointed out.

  Ever’s ears flattened and she turned a bit away from me,

  looking deeply embarrassed. “I’m sorry. I should have. But, well. It

  bugged me, so I made it a habit to only give Kiri enhancements like that

  if she specifically asked. You didn’t ask, so I didn’t think to offer.”

  “Hmm.” I glanced down at the plate, one lonely sandwich

  resting there after Fiddle and La'a had gone back for seconds. I picked

  it up and contemplated it for a moment. “Given that I have no idea

  what-all great tricks you’ve got up your sleeve, I’d really appreciate

  if you could break that habit.” I tore the sandwich apart and offered

  her half.

  She met my eyes again and accepted it. “Deal.”

  They waited till we finished our lunch and got back on the road before they went back to quizzing me about my new friend.

  “Was Fee able to unlock Kiri’s previous enhancements, as we surmised?” Fiddle asked.

  “Well, she can, but it turns out that she needs to spend

  some time with me, uh—meditating, for each one of them. That’s gonna

  take a few hours, so I just had her do a quick sample for me to start

  getting used to. I figured the rest can wait a bit.”

  “That seems reasonable,”Ever said.

  “What sort of sample?” La'a asked at the same time.

  “Little strength, a little speed. A couple different kinds

  of defense, because defense is good. And it seems kinda creepy, but

  Kiri put so much focus into it, so I opened the first step of her ’blood

  sword’ too.”

  “Ah, that may come in handy soon,” Fiddle commented.

  “Oh?” I felt myself tense up. “What do you mean by that?”

  He glanced up at me and smirked just a bit. “You’ll see in a minute.”

  I thought, narrowing my eyes at him. I peered at the woods around us,

  trying to sniff or listen for signs of monsters or bandits or something,

  but I couldn’t pick anything specific out of the flood of information

  my senses offered. It left me feeling just as blind as I would have been

  without them, but more overwhelmed.

  Fiddle seemed entirely relaxed, as did the other two, so I

  tried to keep myself calm. But they knew this body as a warrior badass.

  Surely some time soon they were going to try tossing me into the

  deep-end to see if I could live up to that. And I had no idea how to

  fight, in this body or any other. I mean, I took one karate class back

  in college, but that was thirty years ago, it’s not like I remembered

  anything from it.

  Then we came around a bend and I saw it. A huge pine tree

  had fallen across the road ahead. Its trunk looked like it would come up

  to about my navel from the ground, and the branches spread out into the

  brush to the side in a vast, impossible tangle. “Oh, wow. How did you

  know this was here?”

  “I’m the scout,” Fiddle replied smugly. “I’m always keeping an eye out ahead and behind when we’re moving.”

  “Oh.” I hadn’t seen him doing anything, so that claim left me baffled.

  “So what do you think, Anne, can you get it out of the way for us?” La'a challenged me.

  “Um.” Well, as tests went, it was a better one than

  fighting off brigands, that was for sure. “Let’s see, I guess.” I strode

  ahead, looking over the situation.

  The whole tree had come out of the ground, damp soil still

  clinging to the exposed root system. There was certainly nothing to be

  done now to save it. Luckily, the live branches didn’t really start till

  past the far side of the road, so I figured I could just hack through

  it at the tree line and lever the lowest part of the trunk off the road

  and out of the way so that we—and future travelers—could pass.

  Having made a basic plan, I raised my hand, making the

  gesture that Fee’s directions told me would summon the ’blood sword’

  since Kiri hadn’t been carrying around any saws in her pocket.

  Nothing happened.

  I frowned and tried again.

  “Other hand,” La'a suggested, cocking her head at me.

  I gave her a confused look, but raised my right hand and tried the gesture again, and immediately felt a rush of . It

  was like getting light-headed when standing up suddenly, but the

  feeling was in my arm instead of my brain. My hand lifted and lowered

  almost on its own, like it was pushed by a sudden gust of wind, and the

  sensation surged out of my palm and fingers and resolved itself into a

  shining sword.

  I gave it a closer look. The blade was more machete-shaped

  than anything; single-edged, with a heavy tip and a little bit of an

  inward curve to the belly. It had a large, unadorned guard wrapped

  around my fist, looking easily able to substitute for brass knuckles if

  needed. Thankfully, despite the name, it looked like normal metal, not

  as though it were made of blood or anything. It wouldn’t be a perfect

  tree-chopping tool, but it looked and…felt…quite sharp, in a wordless

  way that confused me more.

  I tried to transfer it to my left hand, but it wouldn’t

  budge. I could uncurl my fingers and thumb from the grip, but the blade

  was connected to me, through the palm of my hand, and wasn’t going

  anywhere. Presumably until I un-summoned it.

  “Well this is awkward.”

  La'a snickered. “You’re left-handed, aren’t you?” she said.

  “Yes, as a matter of fact I am.” I stared at the lizard woman, the sword falling to my side. “I take it Kiri was a righty?”

  “Uh huh.”

  “Why do you find this funny?” I asked.

  She chuckled again. “It’s not, really, it just is to me.

  Most mammals are right handed. Lefties are a small minority here. Among

  drakes, in my homeland, it’s the other way around. Eighty or ninety

  percent of us are left-handed. But I’m a righty. It’s one of the lesser

  reasons I’ve stayed here for so long.”

  I snorted. “Yeah, that is a little funny. Tough on me

  though. Fee, is there some way I can switch this thing around to summon

  it in the other hand, or is it stuck like this?”

  :This one is not certain, Bonded. It may be possible to adjust the summoning, but will take us some meditation to discern,:

  “…some meditation huh?” I finished the statement with her.

  “I’m gonna hear that phrase a lot aren’t I?” Fee didn’t respond to

  that, either understanding the concept of rhetorical questions or simply

  not choosing to speculate on the future.

  Well, nothing for it, I’d just do the best I could chopping with my off-hand.

  I picked my spot and started cutting a wedge into the top

  side of the downed tree, just like I’d seen on TV a few times and never

  once in person. I understood the physics behind it, I thought. The first

  swing dug in much farther than I expected, burying the blade in the

  wood rather than just setting some bark and chips flying. I tried to

  pull it out again but it was pretty well stuck in there, the pressure of

  the un-cut wood holding it firm.

  I frowned at it for a moment.

  Need to reduce the compression on the flat of the blade. I

  tried putting my other hand on top of the trunk, a few feet from the

  spot the blade had sunk in and pressing down as I pulled up on the

  handle. I felt the sword move a little bit this time, but not enough. I

  tried bouncing on my free hand some to loosen it a bit more and felt a

  little more wiggling.

  The angle was wrong to press down on the other side of the

  trunk from here, at least with my hand. Hm. I twisted around a bit and

  got my right foot up on the other side of the trunk, then shoved down

  with it and my left hand at the same time as I pulled, and the blade

  slipped partway free. I reset my stance and pulled again, as hard as I

  could, and it popped out the rest of the way.

  “Yeah.” I shook my head and hopped over to the other side

  of the trunk to make the next cut. It went in just as deep, and this

  time I made use of my crazy strength directly and twisted the blade

  sideways in the cut. For a moment nothing happened, but I kept the

  pressure on, adding my other hand to the handle, and slowly the wood

  began to creak and pop until all at once the narrow segment between the

  deepest part of my cuts gave way with an ear-splitting crack, and a huge

  wedge of wood flew past my shoulder, almost entirely intact. “Hah!”

  After that it was a simple matter of deepening the cut

  with alternating strokes on each side till it was far enough through

  that I could hack almost straight down for the last bit. Finally, when

  there was just a few inches of wood holding the two sections of trunk

  together, it began to twist and rotate on its own due to the irregular

  ground underneath it. I stepped back a bit to let it tear itself apart,

  then chopped through the last, flexible strip of bark and living wood

  once it had settled again.

  After that I was able to dismiss the sword, which

  disappeared in a cloud of sparkles, with a rushing feeling similar to

  the one that brought it out. Then it was just a matter of positioning

  myself right and rolling the—well okay, it didn’t roll as nicely as I’d

  hoped it would, there being broken bits of branch and so on in the way

  still, but I just put my back into it and heaved the damned tree trunk

  over to the other side of the path.

  Once I was sure it was far enough into the ditch not to

  roll out onto the road again, I stepped away from it and stood up

  straight for the first time in a bit, dusting my hands and feeling as

  though I ought to be breathing heavily. I wasn’t at all. Just deep and

  even, as though I’d done nothing more than carry a few groceries in

  rather than shove around a few tons of solid wood by myself.

  Damn. I could get used to this.

  The others were just watching quietly from up the trail

  thirty feet or so, waiting on me. I looked over at them and lifted my

  hands and eyebrows. “How’d I do?”

  “Interesting,” Fiddle opined.

  “Heh, yeah. Kiri probably woulda’ just tossed the whole thing out of the way,” La'a said. “You’re much more—considered.”

  Ever just nodded thoughtfully.

  I flexed one arm and patted the prominent bicep with my

  other hand. “Yeah, I’m not used to having this to fall back on. It’s

  different.”

  We got moving again.

  “But seriously, just pick up that whole tree and throw it further into the woods?” I asked.

  “Yep.” La'a replied. The other two nodded agreement.

  “I mean, that’s super impressive, but—it’d do so much more damage.”

  La'a looked at me like she didn’t understand what I’d just

  said. The other two just looked surprised, like they’d never thought of

  it that way. Now I just felt awkward.