"We’re touring all the towns on the teleport network," Allidi added, carefully polite. "In one of them, perhaps, we’ll keep a house to go to during longer holidays."
"Oh, a summer house," Lira said. "Cassandra talks about getting one of those every winter, though she hasn’t yet."
"What would it be called when it’s winter where the house is?" Allidi asked.
Lira shrugged, and three pairs of eyes immediately turned to Laura. Sight Sight need to know in triplicate. Mildly amused, Laura explained the difference between a house you visited to get away from the heat of summer, and a holiday house—that presumably would be located where it was summer during Arcadia’s winter.
"So Cassandra is using the word wrong?" Allidi asked.
"I suspect deliberately changing the meaning," Laura said. "Do you like Meziath?"
"Yes," said Allidi.
"No," Haelin said, glanced at her father, and continued: "It’s not terrible, but I don’t like being at the bottom of the trees."
"Everything feels a little loomed-over there, doesn’t it?" Laura said.
"Like standing with grown-ups," Haelin said absently, then pointed. "Look, the airship’s already at the dock. Let’s run!"
They ran, an effortless thing in the game, although their avatars still took on plummy hues and panted. Laura laughed as they flung themselves aboard the gondola just as the mooring ropes were cast loose, and cheered Lira, who was last to make the leap.
"Well done," she said, hugging the girl. "Even in the game it’s still scary jumping a gap like that."
"I would have fallen a long way," Lira said, gazing interestedly over the railing of the gondola. "What is Mris?"
"An island a little closer to the main point of damage," Gidds told her and—since Lira obviously hadn’t spent any time on the game’s backstory—explained how a strange object had fallen from the sky and struck the island of Ramara, and a burning miasma had rapidly spread, fracturing the land so that most of the island had vanished beneath in-rushing water. Mris was starting to see small spots of this corruption.
There were other passengers, most of whom directed only disinterested glances their way, but one pair listened to Gidds' explanation as attentively as Lira. Laura smiled at the way he shifted so that they would be able to hear him more easily.
The trip between islands was barely long enough for Gidds to set out the basics, and then they were spilling out of the gondola onto a mooring platform above a walled town, clattering down wooden stairs, and heading straight out into orchards.
Laura, as ever, thoroughly enjoyed the chance for a scenic walk and this was particularly lovely: long rows of trees, the sweet-sharp scent of fruit ripening in sunshine, and strange drooping…were they insects or birds? White gossamer puffs of down that could well be dandelion seeds, except that they would whir off whenever anyone strayed too close. She was glad to see Allidi and Haelin drop some of their formality and join Lira in trying to get close enough to see one properly. Gidds caught at Laura’s fingers again, and she smiled at him, knowing he was pleased.
"Do you think they have a teszen, Unna—Angharad?" Lira asked, trotting back. "But we’re not hunting new teszen at the moment, right?"
"I expect if we met one we could ask it to lend us its power," Laura said. "But no, we’re here to find damage to the island and try to repair it. Look for…" She paused, and then pointed in the direction that the downy puffs had fled. "I think what we’re looking for might well be over there."
The puffs had gathered in great numbers around a collection of grey dimples that interrupted the neat grass stripes separating the rows of trees. The puffs perched in branches, or spiralled in small clouds above each dimple, and although the air smelled sulphurous, it wasn’t until Laura was standing nearly on the rim of the nearest that she understood that they must be attracted by the rising heat.
"It’s called grey scar," Allidi told Lira, pointing to watermelon-sized pocks spreading from the edge of the dimples. "We should be able to close the little ones on our own, but we’ll have to work together to get the bigger holes to go away."
"Nimenny knows what to do," Lira said confidently, and proved it by holding her hands out toward the nearest pock mark and conjuring a swirl of water. In moments the grey-black patch had been erased, smoothed out to the healthy brown of rich, fertile earth.
Laura, who now had two novels' worth of backstory to draw upon, concentrated on the paw print branded onto her wrist, and asked the kirr-tut teszen to lend its strength. All the teszen were aligned to a series of elemental wheels—a combination of the typical water strong against fire and weak against ice configuration, but intersecting with sharp and fast and silk and other complexities. A kirr-tut was aligned to bone/fast, and when Laura asked for aid it flickered into existence and seemed to fill in a pockmark by scratching surrounding dirt into it.
The larger dimples of the grey scar were not so easily dealt with, since they required carefully timed elemental combinations, and reacted to attempts to close them with little jolts of force and gusts of rotten-egg miasma that had to be shielded against, blown away or dodged.
It was a tricky form of combat, and far harder to master than clicking through skill buttons, but it was not too long before the last of the dimples closed over, and only healthy earth remained.
"We did it!" Lira cheered, then sat down. "I feel tired even though I’m really just lying down."
"That took a lot of concentration," Laura agreed. "I think we scared all the puff balls away, too."
"What is this?" Haelin asked, using the toe of her boot to expose a dully-glinting object buried in the soil.
"Melted glass, perhaps?" Laura suggested. "I know you’re supposed to get crafting materials as a reward for repairing damage."
Haelin nudged to expose it further, then picked up an elaborately whorled blue-green object that resembled a blown-glass decanter.
"Musical instrument?" Lira suggested. "Like a horn to blow through?"
"Dzo, there’s something…" Allidi began.
Dzo'—short for 'dzozen'—was an equivalent of 'dad, and she turned to Gidds, who responded with a nod, and his brief smile.
"Too hasty," he told Haelin. "It is a trap, not a reward. I can feel it waiting to trigger."
"Don’t try to put it down," Allidi added. "I think that’s what sets it off."
"Not crafting material?" Haelin shot Laura a reproachful glance.
"I wasn’t warned of traps at the Hall of the Weaver," Gidds said, ignoring a sudden jut to Haelin’s lower lip. "Is there any mention in the books you’ve been reading, Laura?"
"Nothing. I think I’ll ask Julian—he’s been playing a lot more than I have."
Laura: Hey kiddo. In Red Exchange, what do you do with weird bits of glass left behind when you clear grey scar?
Julian: Gems, Mum. Get them made into necklaces and they’ll boost your teszen’s strength.
Laura: Not gems. Something like a vase or a glass horn.
Julian: ! Is it kind of bruise-coloured? Send me a screenie.
Laura obediently emailed him an image of Dakal and her whorl of glass.
Julian: Star Claw! OMFG, Mum, where are you? Give me your map coordinates.
Laura: So demanding. So unexplainy.
It was surely Laura’s imagination that brought her Julian’s exasperated cry all the way from his bedroom. She read the detailed response that followed, and then told Haelin: "You’ve thrown Julian into a welter of excitement. This is apparently a rare item that will trigger a major event. Still, unfortunately, a trap. He says to not give it to anyone else, or leave the immediate area. Both will trigger it."