Author: Wildbow

Let Slip – 20.9 | Pale

“Doggy dog dog dog!” Nora exclaimed.  “You’re back!”

They were walking through the valley south of the ski hill, and enough feet had tromped down the snow that it was easy to walk.  Morning sunlight shone down on them, making it blinding.  Nora was wearing sunglasses with a baggy hat pulled down over forehead, ears, and hair, and Avery was wearing the sunset specs they’d liberated from Brie way back when.

Lots of people were out walking.  Some families were using the foot of the ski hill which weren’t suitable for skiing to toboggan and sled, and a lot of dog owners were out with their dogs off leash.

One dog, some sporting breed, had barreled up to the two of them, and Nora crouched to meet it, giving it full-body rubs.

“I can’t believe I just said that,” Nora muttered.

“What?”

“The baby talk,” Nora said, looking up at Avery.  The enthusiastic dog wriggled and shifted position, its body sidelong against her, almost bowling her over backwards.  Avery stepped closer, her legs against Nora’s back.

“Isn’t it more like doggy talk?” Avery asked.  “It’s good.  Match enthusiasm with enthusiasm, isn’t that right?  What’s your name?”

She put a hand on Nora’s back to steady her and crouched down beside her.  The dog threw its head back, spiraled around, and then turned the full brunt of its enthusiasm toward her.  She vigorously rubbed the dog’s thick winter coat, moving its collar to the side of its neck so she could read the tag.  “Kodiak!”

The name made the dog happier.  A tail thwapped against Nora’s knee as the two of them vigorously rubbed, patted, and scratched him.

A distant whistle called him.  He went still, then on a repeat whistle, dashed off, all happiness and enthusiasm.  Avery couldn’t stop smiling.

“You like dogs,” Nora observed.  The two of them stood.

“You like doggy dog dog dogs too,” Avery said, grinning.

“Nooo,” Nora replied, burying a face in Avery’s shoulder.  Avery put an arm around her, consoling.

Avery wanted to kiss her, but there were a few too many people around, in this wide open space, and the awkwardness of going for the kiss and potentially dealing with someone kicking up a fuss threatened to spoil the moment more the kiss would’ve created it.

“Hey,” Avery told Nora.  She poked Nora lightly in the cheek.

“What?”

“You look a little different.”

“Do I?”

Features a bit softer.  That big ‘drop everything, assess the situation’ flick of the eyes to either side.  Smiling more.

“Whatever it is, you look good,” Avery said.  “Come on.”

They cut across a bit of field that was less trampled-down, with only dog tracks and the holes made as the likes of Kodiak and maybe local wildlife had bounded through it, getting snow on their pants.  They had to pass some trees, but it cut a good five or ten minutes of walking out of their route.

They crossed paths with Kodiak and Kodiak’s owner, and the dog bounced between the two groups with an abundant enthusiasm that suggested he wanted them to be together forever.  Then they carried on.  Avery led Nora off the well-trodden path, toward the woods.

“I was talking to my mom.  She was insisting she could swing by, pick us up.  I think she’s anxious that she doesn’t have a good sense of the environment I’m in,” Nora said.

“Oh yeah?”

“I said no, that it’d complicate logistics.  We’re already ready to go before lunch, right?”

“Timed to hit this food-stall-slash-gas-station that Rowan likes.”

“Right.  Anyway, she offered to send my dad.  That’s not the problem, mom.  You’re not listening to what I’m saying, mom.”

“Yeahhh.”

“She does that so much.  Getting ideas in her head and then I have to get past those ideas to actually cover what I need to cover.  Like when I told her about me performing, she was imagining this dark indoor place with, I dunno, bikers around me doing drugs off their guitars on stage.”

“Oh man.”

“I even told her it was on a rooftop, but then a few back and forths later, she’s on the whole, ‘don’t go anywhere with these musicians, don’t go backstage, don’t take anything they offer you’.  There’s no backstage, mom!”

“There’s a back alley.”

“Don’t you dare tell her that.”

“You could show her pictures.”

“I want pictures.  I- you have to send me yours.”

“Didn’t take many.”

“Or find people who have them?” Nora asked.  “I want to print them and put them on my wall.  I’ve been trying to figure out what to do, and I was thinking it’d be really cool to, I dunno, have a grid of pictures, right?  And I start out with the one performance, and then if I ever do something like that again-”

“Please do.  You on drums is super hot.”

“-and then gradually- you can’t say stuff like that!”

“Can too.”

“You’re- it makes my brain trip over itself.  And it’s not true.  I’m not.”

“So hot.”

“Stop that.  What was I even talking about?”

“Pictures.  Walls.  Covering the wall?  Lucy did something like that with her stuff from this music subscription-”

“She showed me pictures.  She’s also sending me the link to the music thing, I’ve got some Christmas money.  I’m ordering it.”

“Nice.”

“I want it more organized.  Like… as I add more, I push other stuff out.  Maybe envelopes, holding the ones I’ve pushed out?  Until I have one picture and one envelope of more pictures for every performance?  Maybe I’ll keep it over my bed, just to keep it contained to the one space, so I can do the pushing and condensing thing?”

“You need to do a lot more performances for that.”

“Yeah.  Yeah, I want to.  I’ve got to figure out how to.  The music thing with Putnam is one way, but that’s… they’re flaky.”

“You need a manager.  Someone to really find the jobs, push you guys to, you know, emphasize practice leading up to one thing, and then getting you sorted, let you focus on playing and the music itself.”

“Putnam would be unironically great at that.”

“But that runs contrary to the whole band thing, and like you said, she’s a bit flaky.”

“Yeah.  I just noticed you’re luring me into the woods.”

Avery nodded.

“Away from people.  Is this a good thing or a murdering Nora thing?” Nora asked.

“You think I’d do that?”

“No.  But I do wonder what you do, sometimes.  Sorry, I know I said I’d chill on it.”

Avery shook her head.  Then she joked, “I meant you think I’d do something good?”

“Hah,” Nora replied.

Avery took Nora’s hand, then stepped in front of her, taking her other hand, and walked backwards.  “I’m not going to hurt you if I can help it.  I’m not that type.  And I don’t like secrets, but I’m taking the advice of a lot of people and it’s for your sake and for mine.”

Nora nodded.

“I’m not going to do bad things to you, I want to do all sorts of good things with you.  I want to see you play drums a ton.  Or other instruments.  I know you talked about bass.”

“Yeah.”

“I want to hang out a ton.  I want to… I want this.  More.  So if you ever come back, I hope you do, we’ll get you on stage again, somehow, even if I have to help make an entire thing like Christmas happen again.”

“You can pull those sorts of strings, huh?”

“Yeah, if I have to.  I want to.  For you.”

Nora pulled on Avery’s hands, to draw her close.  Avery let her, at first, then pulled back, letting go with one hand, and tugging Nora along.  “Bit further.”

“What’s a bit further?”

It really wasn’t that far.  Around a bend, down ten feet of barely-trodden path.

“It doesn’t look like a lot of people come here.  But some do?”

“Yeah,” Avery replied.

The shrine to Florescence was here.  It had started out mostly with some branches and some butchered old Christmas wreaths and old Christmas trees, and things they’d all scavenged from their childhood supplies and old bins of toys they’d long outgrown.  Then, on repeat visits, they’d given gifts.

It was as big around as a telephone pole, and a little shorter.  Branches had been set close together, bound together, and woven into a loose helix shape, sometimes double, sometimes triple, sometimes more, sometimes with branches sticking out, emulating a tree.  The wreath stuff had been placed in gaps and on the extended branches.  And in every gap, all over the place, there were flowers.  Fake.  A few tokens of pressed flowers in resin, a few laminated pressed flowers from Melissa, a ton of the leftover plastic poppies and things that had fallen to the ground and been walked on after Remembrance day.  A fair few gas station plastic flowers that were stored in the glass tubes that junkies would buy before using the tubes for drugs, somehow.

Real flowers had been given too, but they’d changed to other types.  The shrine’s influence.

Florescence lurked in the branches, glowing that shifting fluorescent white that lights could have, but decorated heavily in fake flowers and digital flowers that floated around her body like flowers on the surface of a bubbling river.  She leaned forward from the branches above, looking down, and draping hair thick with fake flowers covered her facial features.

“Wow,” Nora said.  She took out her phone, and Avery walked around behind her, glancing up at Florescence, jerking her head slightly.  The spirit could be a bit of an airhead.

The spirit moved so she wouldn’t be caught on camera.  Nora couldn’t see her normally, but cameras got tricky sometimes.  And Avery had a suspicion that what they were doing with Kennet was making the barrier to innocence a lot thinner, which was why Sheridan had clued in.  And their parents.  And why Aware were more common and stronger.

She waited, letting Nora take some pictures.  She reached into her bag and pulled out some candy and two of the fake flowers in glass tubes that were from the drive over.  She handed one to Nora.

“Tradition?” Nora asked.

“More or less,” Avery said.  “Someone comes by every morning or evening, unless they’ve gotten out of the habit.”

She planted one in the snow at the foot of the shrine.  Nora did the same, right next to Avery’s.

“Another urban legend?  Or-?” Nora paused, looking around.

“Another thing we’ve been maintaining,” Avery said.

“Oh.  Hey, this is… awkward,” Nora said.

“Yeah?”

“I kind of wanted to talk about it before, or later, but now it’s come up again, and I’m… I know I said I’d give you space, and that you said there was some stuff that you can’t really explain until a lot later.”

Avery nodded.

“And like, I have suspicions, and they sort of tie into this thing with this… project.  And other projects.  And it leaves me wondering, can I or should I talk about these projects, or look into them, if they might… give me answers?”

“I wouldn’t show you if I thought it’d get that tricky.”

“And I’ve got ideas in my head and I get the impression your friends are part of it, and it’s why you’re getting attention and the mayor wants to talk to you, and that shady guy who stopped by at the school owes you one.  You don’t need to confirm or deny, but I figure- I think of this woman that’s online, she does the same piece of art over and over again.  Different mediums, sometimes it’s graffiti, sometimes it’s a statue, sometimes it’s a stamp.”

“Sure?”

“And I don’t think that’s exactly it, because you and your friends are doing a lot of new and different things, but I get the impression you did something like a big viral thing or art project, and it’s meant to be anonymous, but a lot of people like the mayor have figured it out but talk around the subject?  And you and your friends could be famous or you will be famous once word gets out, but so far everyone’s being cool?”

“You’re thinking about this stuff a lot.”

Nora considered for a moment, frowning a bit.  It took her a few seconds before she met Avery’s eyes.  “There was this girl, she came to my high school in the second year, and she shows up a few days into the new semester, and she’s gorgeous and she has this red-blonde hair and freckles and she’s athletic and as far as I can tell, she’s really nice.  And it’s like, wow, nice, that makes my days brighter, just seeing her around.  I look for her between classes and then she’s even in my afternoon classes.  And I’m in the back and she’s in the middle and it’s like… wow.  Nice.  I hope I don’t sound creepy.”

Avery shook her head.

“She’s associating with Jeanine, and I’m- I’m spooked, I’ve heard the stories.  But she seems to be managing okay.  And she has the lesbian flag on her backpack strap and it’s like, I’m in shambles, mentally.”

“Because Jeanine?”

“No, because- because it was all easier when she was unattainable and out of reach and now she’s theoretically- I can’t handle it.  Couldn’t handle it.  And she talks to me and she’s nice and cool-“

Avery sidled up to Nora, hooking fingers in the belt loops by Nora’s hips, pulling her closer.  Nora looked up at her.  “…and it feels like every time I speak I’m falling down the stairs and ending up in a heap at the bottom.  That’s my lesbian self, just… falling down the stairs constantly.”

“That’s mostly in your head.  Maybe once in a while you trip over words, but hey, so do I.  The shower thing on Christmas?”

“It feels like I’m constantly falling down the stairs when it comes to y- to this girl I’m talking about,” Nora said, with the sincerity and intensity of someone whispering to a bystander that they were being kidnapped, they couldn’t get away, and to call the police.  “It’s thrilling but more than that it’s awkward and painful and embarrassing, but she makes me want to try.  And she makes me braver, and she shows me cool things.  She makes me feel like there’s music when there’s no music.  I wish I could convey to you how great she is.”

“I don’t think you need to,” Avery said.  She tugged on the belt loops, alternating, rocking Nora’s pelvis against her.  “I’m not nearly as good with words, to be able to say something like that, but… I feel the same.  I want to travel the world.  I want to go do crazy things, see wild places, meet interesting people.  I go places, I think I’m wired for it.  I’m wired to run away if there’s trouble, I’m wired to run to the rescue, I’m wired to move… I did move.  I left my friends and I love them.”

“I can tell.”

“I love them, and they love me, and I think they maybe even needed me, but I left.  For a lot of reasons, but I left.  Even them.  I left my dad and Kerry and Declan and Grumble.  Because I’m restless and I move and I go and I run and… you make me feel at ease.  You make me not restless.  You me feel like the fantastic place I want to go is being in the middle of the audience when you’re on the drums, or going to the snowy valley over there, with Kodiak’s dog hair on our legs, and the sun shining on your face and you’re smiling and looking like you’re having a good time,” Avery told Nora.

“I’m not all that.”

“Shush with that,” Avery told her, tugging on those belt loops.  “Nah.  You’re cool.  And I think about how my grandmother- my mom’s mom, and my grandfather, we call him Truck.”

“Grumble and Truck?”

“Truck was named by older cousins.  Older than Rowan.  And my grandmother got sick and Truck bailed and that was a pretty early memory for me about what love shouldn’t be.  If you got sick or something and needed to stay, and we were together like that?  I feel like I could give up on the world traveling to stay by your side.  Something about you makes me feel like I could be okay, when I don’t think it’s true for others.”

“Good thing I don’t want to make you stay put.”  Nora reached up for the back of Avery’s neck to pull her down for a kiss.  Avery slipped out of that hold, evading the kiss.  She let go of the belt loops.

“What?” Nora asked.

“Hold on.  Give me a bit,” Avery said.

“What?” Nora asked.  “I don’t care if your breath stinks.”

“One bit-” Avery said, searching the surrounding trees.

“I’m making snowballs,” Nora said.  “And if this wait isn’t worth it, I’m throwing them at you.  And you’re not allowed to dodge, because I’m guessing you’re really good at dodging.  And I’m placing at least one right in the kisser.”

“Fair.”

Nora was packing a hefty snowball between her hands with little punching motions.  “Or not-kisser.  Because that was cold.  You can’t not kiss me after all that.”

Nearby branches on nearby trees formed the footholds for people to get up to higher levels.

Avery scaled the branches.  The original base for the shrine had been low to the ground, but as the shrine had grown and changed, it had risen out of easy reach.

“I’m the lesbian equivalent of falling down the stairs and you actually pushed me down this time.  Don’t think a fake flower is going to make it up to me, I’m going to have nightmares about things feeling that nice and then the kiss doesn’t happen.”

Avery scaled up higher.  She stepped out onto a foothold, putting her chin level with the base of the shrine.  She whispered, “Hey.”

The spirit Florescence stuck her head out of a gap in the fake branches and the wire that lashed them together into a loose tree shape.

“Do me a solid?”

The spirit reached down to the flat surface of the stone- wood held up by branches, and a flower lay there, digital, glitching, then fake.  Then real.

“I’m going to have nightmares where I go to kiss you and you won’t let me, and then it turns out all this time I’ve had no teeth and there’s just body hair sticking out of my gums, and I’m a freak like that and nobody’s clued me in all my life.  I’m kind of having that nightmare right now, here, awake.  I’m not equipped to be led on and left like this.”

“Thanks,” Avery whispered to the spirit.  “You’re lovely.”

She hopped down.

“That’s-” Nora started, alarmed.  Avery landed.  “-a jump.”

“Fifteen, twenty feet?” Avery asked, looking up.  She beamed, and held up the flower.  She reached for Nora’s ear, pushing locs out of the way, and slid the flower in there, before adjusting hair for it to be nicely in place.

“A fake flower?  That’s sweet.  That’s-”

Nora turned her head.  For a moment, Avery was put in mind of a dog, chasing its own tail, unable to seize it, because the flower was at the side of her head.  Nora sniffed at the air, then sniffled because that air was cold.

“That’s real.”

Avery smiled.  She put her hands at Nora’s shoulders.

“How did a real flower get up there?  Who put it there?  In the middle of winter?  It smells nice.”

Avery kissed her, then leaned back.  “That’s-”

“More,” Nora said.  “Don’t talk.  Give me more of that.”

Avery obliged, kissing Nora again, happy to keep going until Nora was the one who’d had her fill.  Nora’s fingers toyed with a bit of Avery’s hair, almost braiding it, unbraiding it, leaning into Avery, who leaned back against a tree.

They stopped, breath fogging in the cold air.

“I had it in my head I wanted to do that thing with the flower before kissing you, but then you started saying all that great stuff, so I needed the extra few seconds,” Avery explained.

Nora smiled.  She touched the flower.  “I was going to say I’m a bit obsessed with you.  Stuff like that isn’t helping.”

Avery nodded.

“I think about you a lot,” Nora said, more serious.  “I think about that stuff.  Theorizing.”

“Your theory isn’t all that far off.”

“I don’t need you to confirm or deny it,” Nora stressed, still serious.  “But if you want it secret, I don’t want to… I dunno.  Show my parents pictures, or bring something up with Putnam, and then they clue me in that, like, you must’ve been the person behind the mask in a viral video I haven’t seen, and you got a chunk of change or something, or… whatever it is.  I don’t want to accidentally betray that trust.”

“I think you’re okay.  I thought maybe you’d think I was in organized crime or something after I talked about Mr. Pesch.”

Nora snorted.  “You?  Criminal?  I don’t see it.  You’re too good at heart.”

“But I can talk about the tree?  Or the… whatever this is?  Fake flower tradition?”

“Yeah.”

“Not prying.  I wanted to make sure I wasn’t checkmating myself,” Nora said.

“No checkmate.  I wouldn’t want to put you in that position.”

“I’m still stuck on the flower.  Why was it there?  Did you have someone plant it there?  Not plant it in soil, but plant it like a spy.  But there weren’t any recent footprints.”

Avery kissed her.

Nora went with the kiss, eyes closing.  About a second after Avery broke the kiss, her eyes opened.  “Is it a geocaching thing?”

“What’s geocaching?” Avery asked.

“How do you not know what geocaching is?  That’s your vibe.  It’s exploration, sharing coordinates and leaving prizes and stuff.”

“What?  Walk me through this.”

“You go to a website and put in your location and it’ll list caches near you, and you go to the coordinates and look for the hidden prize.  I think you take one and leave one?  And I can imagine, I dunno, a little greenhouse and someone keeps flowers alive in a hidden spot, as a thing?  I dunno.”

“That sounds so cool.”

“Do you think it’s that?  We’re not raiding a cache and not leaving something, right?”

“No, it’s nothing like that.”

“Okay.  We should do it,” Nora said.  “Over in Thunder Bay.”

Avery nodded.  “As a date?”

Nora nodded.

“Cool,” Avery said.  She thought for a second, then reached for Nora’s hands, holding them between them.  “Man.  Not even sure how to talk about this?”

“Huh?”

“There’s a chance… I’ve got something going on in the background.  And there’s a chance I’m away a few weeks.  Or more.”

“More than- weeks?  Months?” Nora asked, squeezing Avery’s hands.

“I don’t know.”

“When?”

“The new year.  Start of the semester.  And I don’t want-”

“Why?”

“I- I can’t explain.  Not easily.  I can’t…”

“Are you coming back?”

“Probably.”

“But not definitely?” Nora asked.

“I don’t know,” Avery admitted.

Off in the distance, Snowdrop sensed Avery’s emotions through the bond and sent a quizzical note, checking she was okay.

Avery sent confirmation.

She was okay.  This just sucked.

“Are you going to jail?” Nora asked.  “I know I said I wouldn’t pry, but I thought at least you’d be here, and I could see and hear, but-”

“You don’t think I could be in organized crime, but you think I could go to jail?”

“Getting caught up in something?  Or forced into something?  I don’t know.”

Avery badly wanted to clarify, but she worried that if she did, it would lead to more questions, more narrowing things down.

“Or you’re a witness?  The errands you were running for pocket cash or whatever… you could’ve seen something?”

“Nora.”

“I don’t want you to go.  I don’t want you to be gone.”

“I don’t want to go.  I don’t want to be gone either.  I want to come back and be with you and geocache and hang with the team, practice… except.”

“This is serious?” Nora asked.

Avery nodded.

“Can’t do anything about it?”

Avery shook her head.

“That… sure is a bummer to end this vacation on.  Can you stay in touch by phone?  Or video me?”

Avery thought of technomancers.  “I dunno.  I actually… really don’t know.”

“Then I think I need more info.  More answers.  Details.  You saying you can’t share everything when we’re together and I can look you in the eye and vibe check, that’s different from secrets and you being gone.”

Avery opened her mouth, then closed it.

Nora looked hurt.

“I sort of wish I’d agreed to have my mom swing by to pick me up,” Nora said.

“Don’t- don’t say that.”

“Sort of.”

Nora squeezed Avery’s hands, then let them go.

They walked back toward Avery’s house.  Out of the woods, past dog walkers, past a group of kids using their sleds and toboggans with packed snow to try to make a snow fort.

Avery helped Nora up the slope from the valley to the road.

“I’m not happy about this either, so you know,” Avery said.  “I’ll try to find a way to get messages to you.  They might be letters.”

“Most people would hear all this and look at this secrecy and say… no.  I should say no.  Go away, don’t talk to me until you’re ready to be upfront, we’re done.”

“Don’t-” Avery tensed.  “Don’t say that.”

“I’m not saying it.”

“But you’re- the words suck to hear, even if you don’t mean them.”

“Yeah.  Sucks to say.  Can you explain after?” Nora asked.

“I…”

Again, that look of hurt.

“Maybe we shouldn’t talk about this any more,” Nora told her.  “Because every non-answer makes this worse.”

“My- this isn’t me being selfish.  Or deceptive, exactly.”

“If I thought it was I’d already be walking away.  But it doesn’t feel good.  I was telling you you make me feel brave and right now the only answer that doesn’t fuck up and end one of the coolest things I’ve got going right now is me… not being brave.  Shutting up and sitting back.”

“I don’t want that.”

“Well, here we are, I guess.  It’s ass.”

“It really is,” Avery replied.

They got back to the house, and there was enough hustle and bustle that they were separated, each sorting out their things, Avery helping out her mom.

She saw that Nora had put the flower away as she’d packed up.

Car loaded, leftover Christmas food and snacks apportioned out between the two sides of the family.  Avery said goodbye to Grumble, got her perfunctory hug from Declan, a bigger hug from Kerry and her dad.

“It was lovely to see you, Nora,” Avery’s dad said.  “I hope to see you again.”

“Technically,” Avery said, feeling like she was playing with fire when things were so strained, “It might be ‘fair’ that I have a short holiday here next time and then go see her extended family.”

“That’d be Puerto Rico if it happened,” Nora said.  “My mom’s side of the family.”

If it happened.

“We’ve been meaning to get away,” Avery’s mom said, to her dad.

Sheridan snorted.  “Oh, so it’s weird if Nora’s mom comes to Christmas here, but you guys can go with Avery?”

“It’s a little different when it’s international travel.”

I travel Paths, Avery thought.

“Nora,” Kerry said.  “Nora Nora.”

“What?”

Kerry posed, pointing.

“Quack.”

Kerry laughed.  “And you have to do that next time.”

Next time.

“I’ll try to remember,” Nora said, smiling.

Kerry pointed at her.

“Quack.”

They said more goodbyes, a few second hugs were given, and they extricated themselves.  Getting into the car.  Avery took the middle seat at the back, Sheridan to her left, Nora to her right, Rowan driving, mom as passenger.  The stuffed animals they’d given each other took up too much real estate, and they could be squished down to smaller sizes, but they opted to keep them in their laps instead.

Avery could feel that drawback from Zoomtown.  It wasn’t usually so bad, because she couldn’t drive yet, but it did feel like it magnified other stresses and issues.  It was meant to make it so she was good at stunt driving and weaving in and out of traffic, and it applied to foot traffic too, but it made being a passenger more irritating.

It itched at her here.

“Hands where we can see them, you two,” Sheridan said.

“Oh my god, Sheridan, stop,” Avery said.

The car pulled out.  Avery put a hand out, resting it in the void between her leg and Nora’s.

A good twenty or so seconds passed before she withdrew her hand back into her lap.  Nora closed her eyes, and Avery rested her head back against the seat back, eyes on the side window, her attention on the world beyond the window half the time, and on the profile of Nora’s face the rest of the time.

“Oh, my baby girl,” Nora’s mom greeted Nora with a hug.  Avery lugged the bag forward, and one of Nora’s little brothers hurried forward to take it from her, the other taking the stuffed deer and backpack.  “Was it good?  Avery, do you want to come in?”

Things weren’t okay.

“I actually should get going.”

“What a shame.”

“It was good, really good,” Nora said.  “I got to perform, I told you.  And they’re doing lots of cool things around the town.  I’ll tell you all about it.  It was really cool.  Really fun.”

She turned toward Avery.  There was something in her expression-

“It was,” Nora reaffirmed, even if the expression only relented a little.

Avery smiled.

Nora stepped closer, then put an arm out.  Avery went over and hugged her, tight.

The answering hug was just as tight.

Don’t want to let this go.

I don’t know how to solve this.  When I have to go deal with Charles and I don’t know if I can be at school or around key people while stuff’s going down.

She didn’t know what Lucy and Verona had in the works.  She had her own ideas, but they were thin.

“See you?” Avery asked, still hugging tight.

Making it a question.  Because the way things were, the way Nora was considering this entire situation… it felt like Nora might say no.

And that’d be-

-that’d be fair.

Nora broke the hug and nodded.

“I’ll be in touch.  If I’m even gone that long.  I’ll find a way.”

“Okay.”

“Okay,” Avery said.  “Bye, Kate.”

“Bye Avery,” Nora’s mom said.

Nora’s dad lurked in the background, standing by the door to Nora’s place, quiet, looking in.  He knew more.  He knew they were together.  He, Avery felt, could read this whole situation.

Avery said her goodbyes and returned to the car.

“Good?” her mom asked.

“Good enough.”

“Took you long enough,” Sheridan said.

“What are you in a rush to get back to?” Rowan asked.

Her mom pulled out.  Avery buckled herself in.  The seat still had the warmth of Nora’s body heat.

“She knows I’m not telling her everything that’s going on with me.  It’s straining things,” Avery said.

“I’m so sorry,” her mom said.

Avery sighed.

“Home?”

“Actually.  Can you make a stop?” Avery asked.

“Uggggh,” Sheridan groaned.

“Seriously.  What are you in a rush to get back to?”

“I’m in a rush to not spend so long in this car that my skin grafts to my clothing and the car seat.”

“It was four and a half hours,” Rowan replied.

“Mind the lying, Sheridan,” her mom said.  She’d taken over in the drivers seat partway through.

“It feels like I’m four again.  Don’t lie, Sheridan.  Don’t climb on the furniture.  Don’t eat all the Christmas snacks.  You’ll get a tummyache for the car ride.”

“You act four a lot of the time,” Rowan said.  And to their mom, he added, “I’m not doing the wizard thing, so don’t tell me not to lie.”

“Mm hmm.”

“Seriously though, sucks,” Sheridan told Avery.  “Anything I can do?”

“I don’t know what’s going to happen in the New Year, but if Nora comes knocking to ask what’s up, cover for me?”

“What do you think is going to happen, that you won’t be around to answer?” Avery’s mom asked.

“I dunno, mom.  That’s the big thing.  I don’t know.”

“You’ll need a good cover story,” Sheridan said.  “We should coordinate, so we’re not all telling different stories.”

“I’ll think about it,” Avery said.

“Where are we stopping?” Avery’s mom asked.  “The lakeshore?  Council?”

“No.  Any place with a lot of doors, and no witnesses.”

“Nailbed home supply?” Sheridan suggested.  “There’s never a living soul around when you want something.”

“Imagine if the moment you don’t want someone around, you get three employees who won’t leave you alone,” Rowan said.

“Truuue.”

“There’s a storage lot on the way home,” Avery’s mom said.

“Perfect,” Avery said, slumping down into her seat, eyes on the window.

“I’m so sorry, honey.”

“Thanks.”

They drove for a bit.  She and Nora were in the same school district, so their houses were close, but there was still a lot of commercial real estate and flat, dull bits of city to cross.

Her mom turned to navigate her way toward the storage lot.  It had been plowed, a heaping of snow moved off to the side.  Squat, flat rows of buildings were arranged in rows, some with garage doors, some smaller ones with just regular doors.

And it was empty.

Good call, mom.

“Tell me where you’re going?  That’s the rule, right?” her mom asked.  “Timeline, who to get in touch with.”

“I… have a lot to do,” Avery said.  She’d pushed up her sleeve and was checking the various bracelets and things.  “I’m going a lot of places.”

“Give me your best shot about where.”

“…The time it’d take to list the places I want to hit… I could use that time to visit another.  Not everywhere, literally, but…”

“Everywhere?” Sheridan asked.

Avery nodded.

“Regular updates?” her mom asked.

Avery nodded.

“Okay.”

They pulled to a stop.  Rather than get out, Avery got her backpack, then used the black rope, punching her hand out while rising out of her seat.  Out and forward, around the corner.

To her family, she was in the car one moment, then walking around the corner from the end of the row of storage rooms the other, pulling her bag on.  Pulling her bracelet off.

The five doors closest to her all slammed into existence.

On a level, this wasn’t the biggest step up from what she’d already been able to do as a Path Runner.  She’d known a whole list of Paths, she could get places, she could bring people places.  But this streamlined things, opened new doors, literally, with the opportunity to just pick a path she didn’t know and investigate it.

She found a workable door, waved to her family, and headed into the rolling aisles, a grocery store aisle mounted inside massive rolling tubes.  Products big and small would fall from one shelf to a corresponding opposite shelf on the other side, slotting neatly into place.  Lips at the edge of each shelf controlled the tipping point so there’d be a shelf exactly below each product.

She tied her hair back into a ponytail, the equivalent of rolling up her sleeves, and then she stepped through, breaking into a run.

Travel three hours away from Kennet…

She ran through the aisles, chased by Mr. Stockman.  He was the size of a house, various parts of his body caught up in an arrangement of wood that bound hands, neck, contained body, and more.  The store had expanded as she’d ran it, getting more complex, and employees had come out of the woodwork – literally, with the wooden shelves.  As the various parts of the storefront rotated, shelves moving to ceiling, footing becoming more shelves below, a hail of products falling, employees used rollerskates and unicycles to navigate the ever-shifting floor, tossing things into the air.

Not dangerous.  But they’d treat any damage to products as a justification to whisk any intruder (or errant employee) to the cash, close to the entrance, even if that damage was from a product-to-skull collision.  And that required payment and basically a restart on the Path.  Simple enough.

Except the Stockman was here.  She’d hoped to be in and out fast enough to avoid him, but he’d dropped in.  There had been a lot of attempts to use his special abilities, but very few had been successful.  He increased scale and quantity.

Multiplying the size of the Path many times over, until Avery felt like she was in a nightmare, the exit always the same distance away.  More shelves, more products, more sub-areas, each rotating on their own axis, products, boxes, and employees going to and from them.  More things to consider.

“We’re understaffed!  We need more!” Mr. Stockman bellowed, voice echoing.

Boxes burst open, employees flying out, airborne.  Avery ducked her head as more came through gaps in the shelves, adding sideways-moving considerations to the constant and erratic hail from above.  Wheels hit the curved floor, skidding.

She was less in the mood for the dreamlike and fantastical than she would’ve been… pretty much any point between the end of the school year and Zoomtown, and earlier today.

There were tricks.  The products falling tended to do so in groups.  One type of product tended to all fall at once, so that would be an entire section she wouldn’t want to be standing in.  There were more unreliable products, including an aisle of greeting cards that had fluttered down at seeming random.

Didn’t want to accidentally crease one.

Didn’t want to let Mr. Stockman get her, either.

A hail of magazines barred her way.  Some dropped like darts, spines down, and others fluttered.

Avery flipped a painted coin and caught it, enhancing her movement practices, and used her wind shoes, careful to use it only when she wasn’t near anything she could knock off trajectory.

She leaped forward, sliding up what had been the floor, dropping to her knees so she could skid forward on the tile on her jeans, without the traction her shoes gave her.  She slid, arcing up the sloped, curved wall, down, and adjusted position, transitioning to a run as she lost that initial momentum.  She followed the course of a customer who was scrambling to grab things and put them in her cart.

The Lost had a good sense of these places, and following after one was a good way to avoid the worst of things- she still had to worry about the occasional thing, but…

Don’t expand the business, don’t expand the business.

“More product!”  Mr. Stockman bellowed.

Boxes slid out from beneath shelves, were scooped up by employees, and opened, product tossed into the air to join the hail.

Avery ducked through it.

Home stretch.

She broke into a run.  Wind shoes, she palmed another coin.

Disturbing the product.

Some employees turned their attention to her.  If they grabbed her, which they were allowed and enabled to do by the Path’s Law, and then she’d start from the beginning, if Mr. Stockman didn’t get her while they were taking her back.

Most were too far away.

Sacks of flour fell.  Puffs of the flour were cast into the air, while some employees did their best to sweep it up and deal with it before it became airborne and became a wider mess.

One sneezed, propelling themselves in Avery’s direction.  She stopped short, letting them pass in front of her, then broke into a run.

Another, a boy with a propeller on his hat, was navigating the intermediate space, sorting things out.  He swooped.

Too nimble in the air.  Too hard to predict.

She flipped the painted coin in his direction.

She got one for every interpersonal opportunity she turned down, sometimes immediately, sometimes on her nightstand the morning after, and they had two uses.  One was to empower movement and travel practices.  Another was that they tended to work nicely as currency here.

He caught it.  And whether he took that as restitution for damage done or a bribe, he stopped pursuing.

She reached the end of the aisle.  the wall was vast, circular, and had a normal-sized door in the middle that was awkward to reach.  Crates and cardboard boxes tumbled and rolled as the floor rotated.  Creating inconsistent footing.

The idea was to wait for the stack to form some pile that you were reasonably confident you could run up.  She skipped that, using her wind shoes again.  One skip to hurdle a puddle that was perpetually on the ground, wet floor sign skidding to stay in its proximity, and then a bound, about thirty feet up.

Into the doorway.

She kept her mind focused on her destination, even as she tumbled through the space between shelves, landing awkwardly in the midst of brooms, shovels, and various emergency supplies.  A tangle of wire attached to some kind of spotlight caught on her foot.

This Path ‘dismounted’ into any closet, larder, or supply room, close to the desired location.

She sorted herself out, changed from running shoes to boots again, putting the shoes on her charm bracelet, set herself up for the cold, and stepped outside.

Three hours today in an uncomfortable car ride, wedged between Sheridan, never the funnest person to be stuck beside in a cramped car, and Nora, where things were strained.

Then back to Kennet.

She was in a shack at the edge of the valley.  One that the caretakers of the cabin used to store salt, shovels, and other things for the upkeep.

She felt out for Snowdrop, who she’d left behind, and then navigated her way from Kennet above to Kennet found.  Across the way, over to the hill behind the residential area.  It wasn’t as big as a ski hill, but it was a good size, and a good hike up.  Avery used the black rope to shortcut her way up to the peak, overlooking Kennet.

Snowdrop was sitting in the snow, sweating, wearing an open coat.  The shirt beneath read ‘An Ugly Sort of Beautiful’, and she had her headphones down and around her neck, the music turned up.  Luna stood by, hands folded in front of her, messenger bag hanging from a branch, and some Kennet below kids and goblins were milling around them, with some Lost at different junctures below.

Cherrypop’s slide was a nearly straight shot down from where the bigger group was, above.

“Oh no, you’re here,” Snowdrop said.

Cherrypop stuck her head out.

“Heya.  Missed you, Snow,” Avery said.

“What path did you take?” Snowdrop asked, pulling her legs up, and hugging them with hands that had fingerless gloves pulled over regular gloves.  The warmth of her legs made up for the fact her coat was open.

“Rolling Aisles.”

“I’ve heard of that one,” Snowdrop said.  Cherrypop was climbing her for a higher vantage point.

“Turns around.  Stuff falls off shelves.  Store employees using unicycles, rollerskates, and other unconventional means of getting around.  Mr. Stockman’s the big issue.  Jude said you can usually get to the exit before there’s any issue, and even if the big guy drops in, he’ll usually change something that isn’t the size of the store.  But he did it three times in a row with me.  Kind of the way the day’s going.”

“He makes the Path bigger?”

Avery nodded.  “He multiplies quantity or size.  Picks store, employees, stock, or other things.  But if he gets his hands on you, he either multiplies you, in which case you’re Lost and you’ll need to work for him, no more humanity, no going home until you’ve paid off your uniform and training, or he picks a random thing about you and grows it.  Or grows all of you.  Usually it’s a random body part, grows from five to five thousand percent.  And yes-”

The goblins had perked up.

“-There’s pretty much always that joke.”

“I wanna be big!” Cherrypop shouted.  “Take me there!”

“It’s a random part, usually.  You could end up with a huge nose or huge feet.”

“Yes!”

“No.  And Snow and I have stuff to do.  If that’s okay, Snow?”

“Nah.  Screw off,” Snowdrop said.

“I gotta be- I need to be Cherrypop five percent thousand!”  Cherrypop tripped over her words in her excitement.  “Cherryfive thousand!  Popcent!”

“Do you even know what a percent is?” Avery asked.

“Bigger!” Cherrypop clambered over Snowdrop’s head, nearly falling into Snowdrop’s lap before grabbing hair to stabilize herself.  “I thought you were useless but you can make things big!”

“A dangerous Other can.”

“Bigger Cherry!” Cherrypop exclaimed.

“It’s a good idea,” Snowdrop said.

“Bigger!”

“I- I just spent three hours in the car with Sheridan, Rowan, my mom, and a very justifiably angry-at-me Nora.  I think my tolerance for screamy little goblins is pretty low, sorry.”

“You called?” Tatty asked, scrambling up a bit of snow to poke her head up.  “Tatty low tatty?”

“That doesn’t even make sense,” Avery told her.

“Bigger!” Cherrypop screamed.

Snowdrop put Cherrypop on the side, checked down-slide, and then let Cherrypop go down the iced up slope.

Pretty good design.  Cherry banked off the curve at the bottom and shot out over the more horizontal section at a good fifty miles an hour, before a sharp zig-zag and a ramp saw her shot airborne, disappearing into another Kennet as she flew into the trees.

“Thanks.  Been a crummy day, not up for much.”

“Couldn’t tell.  Want to take the slide?  That might make things better.”

“Hmm.”

“There are points,” Tatty said, smiling her jack o’ lantern smile at Avery.  “I’m the best points keeper.

“Biased,” a goblin Avery didn’t know hissed.  Bigger, knee-height, compared to Tatty, who was halfway between doormouse and knee height.  He wore a baby’s one-piece snowsuit, that looked like it made it awkward to put his arms down straight at his sides, with tacky fake gold chains around his neck and biker patches on the snowsuit.

“Wanna fight?” Tatty asked.  “Want to fight, bitch?  Calling me biased?”

“Yeah, I’ll fight,” the goblin said, trying two times to get one fist to connect with the palm of his other hand, with the suit limiting his movements.  When he succeeded, he cracked his knuckles

Tatty backed up a step, eyes widening, smile falling away.

“Where and when?”

“I name Avery Kelly as my champion,” Tatty said, pointing up.

“No,” Avery replied.

“Uhhhh,” Tatty looked around, looking for bigger goblins to help her out.  Everyone avoided her gaze.  She looked up at Avery.  “You have to, don’t you?  Guardian of Kennet!”

“Uhhhhhhh.”

Tatty shuffled over a foot, until she was by Avery’s boot.  She tugged on Avery’s pants leg.  “We’re friends, right?”

“Name one of my family members.”

Tatty looked at Snowdrop, pointing.  “She counts?”

“She’s like family, but I mean one of my human family members.  I’ll help you out here if you can.”

“Barrrr…”

Some goblins were shaking their heads.

“Spew…. butt….”

“That’s a goblin name, Tatty.  Think hard.”

“Jelfry.”

“Not a human name.  Look, I’ve got places to be.  So-”

“Todd!”

“That is a human name, and I think you’re thinking about it because Biscuit keeps talking about Barneys and Todds.  The whole drunk person and their goblin thing.  Bye, Tatty.”

Tatty shrieked.

“Do me a favor?  Don’t hurt her?” Avery asked the goblin.

“She didn’t get it right,” the goblin said.

“Yeah, well… don’t hurt her?”

The goblin reached awkwardly behind himself and pulled out a piece of paper.

It was a Kennet found thing.  Payment for deeds.

Avery crouched down and signed it, being careful not to touch the paper.

“Little mercenary.  You remind me of my sister.”

“I’m a gangster,” the foot-high goblin said.

“So long as you’re good.”

“I’m a good gangster,” he said, before waddling away, paper clenched in a fist that was more or less stuck jutting out to one side.

“I could’ve taken him,” Tatty said.  The goblin stopped in his tracks.

“Not saving you again, here, Tatty!” Avery called out, walking away.

Avery and Snowdrop descended the hill, helped by the fact that Avery could jump down from any height.  Snowdrop went small for parts, and the music cut in and out as she turned human and opossum again.

“That part of the slide, it doesn’t go to Kennet below.  See, if you look through those branches?  You can’t be airborne or you’ll run out of slide.”

Avery judged the space, then signaled Snowdrop, who went small.  Avery leaped off the edge of a large rock and hurdled the branch arms shielding her face and Snowdrop.

She landed in soot-stained snow.  She followed the slide.

Snowdrop’s feet hit snow.  “-and the slide?  This part, it’s dangerous even though it doesn’t look scary.”

“Cool.”

“And then there’s the straightaway.  This is the part that they don’t warn you about.  No razors embedded into the ice of the slide, see?”

Avery could see the broken little razor blades.

She jumped as a Kennet below kid landed violently on the bowl of one part of the slide, through the scary-looking narrow part that zig-zagged, with outcropping rocks on the side.

“Uhhh-” Avery grunted, ready to move.

The kid whooshed past- pressing on one side of the slide to move to the one side, the razors a foot beneath their armpit.

“What about Cherrypop, or goblins and kids like Cherrypop?  Doesn’t she forget?  I know she helped design the slide…”

“She doesn’t forget.  She’s big enough she’s safe, it won’t do that much damage if it catches her.  And it’s not like the rocks back there, right?  If you’re big and the rocks are right in your face?  And the design of the slide, it sends little ones like Cherry right into the path of it.”

“Right.”

Avery looked closer.  The glints and texture of the ice hid it, but the slide had divots and depressions.  Something small like Cherry would fit into one and zip around the razor blades.  Like larger people zipped past the rocks, not quite close enough to do damage.

“There’s nobody at the top to signal goblins to run down and remove anything like this first.  So if someone like Luna gets pressured into doing this, she’s gotta deal.  And we tell her we removed them when we didn’t,” Snowdrop said, smiling.

“Good,” Avery said, mussing up Snowdrop’s hood.

“No other protections.  And then we gotta stick with this part…” Snowdrop explained, excited.

Avery took the cue, going to Kennet found again.  There was a nice view through the trees.

“And this part-”

Another nice view, of Kennet above.

“And then this…”

And then the jolting return to Kennet below, more dangerous stuff- it looked like some of the detritus from the old arcade the others had talked about.  A sudden scare, more than anything.

“Gotta keep your head up here…”

And scrap metal arranged and painted, probably by Bangnut, to portray a two dimensional opossum and little red goblin, hanging from an archway that was made of one jaw of a very large bear trap, ends stuck in the snow and ice.  The two scrap metal figures dangled.

“Dangerous stuff in Kennet below.”

“And then it’s nice and cool for Kennet found,” Snowdrop said, tugging.

“This really is a seam for a lot of the knotting.”

“It sucks so much, god damn,” Snowdrop muttered.  “I found it, not Cherry.”

“Kudos to Cherry.”

“She didn’t like the rocks here before they were covered by snow.  She kept trying to take rocks and use them to shore up the big rocks here from breaking away and rolling down the hill to hit the houses.”

“I see.”

Avery could imagine Cherrypop having the time of her life, banging rocks against a rock face that would take hours or days to properly dislodge and roll downhill if the person doing the work had a jackhammer, gleefully imagining the destruction.

“She can be pretty bloodthirsty.”

“She’d like it if it happened.  Dangerous little critter,” Snowdrop said.

“You think?”

Snowdrop shrugged.

The ‘nice and cool’ part of Kennet found’s sections of the slide were some ramps.

A masked girl from Kennet found came speeding down, just in time to hit the ramps.  Her arms flailed while she was midair, she landed against one curved ramp, did a sharp turn, and got air off the next ramp.  The slide formed a funnel shape, catching her on the second landing, carrying her under snow.

“This seems like so many health and safety hazards.”

“I know.  It’s terrible.  All the blame falls on Cherry.”

“It gets a lot less fun if someone dies.”

“This might be on of our irreconcilable differences.  But I’ve got a job as a future goblin sage, Avery, and I need to make dangerous things to win them over.”

“How does that work?” Avery asked.

“I don’t have access to goblin magic and stuff that’d work here.”

“Like what?”

“Like stuff to make it more lethal.”

Avery nodded.  “How’d you figure that?”

“Charms.  Sometimes goblins don’t want the blood and spectacle, they want death, and maiming.  So that’s what we’re doing.”

Avery clapped a hand on Snowdrop’s shoulder.  “So, spooky, scary, twisted metal and razor blade stuff for Kennet below… not my vibe, but okay.  Then ramps and jumps-”

“No loop-de-loops under the snow.”

“Right… wow.”

“It’s pretty disappointing.  I’m not so proud of that part.  We’ll fix it later.”

“And Kennet above?”

“It’s easy.  See, what we really want to do is have airborne, bleeding goblins and kids on display, so what we do is we have things slow down and get boring, the slide’s victims passing by in plain view of the roads and nearby houses.”

“I see.”

“I won’t show you that.  You can maintain plausible deniability.”

“This way?”

“No.  Stay over here.”

Avery went to the Kennet above version.  It looked like the slide did its most intense section, sliding between trees, which provided coverage.

Down into Kennet found.  A jump.

Landing in Kennet below.  For the sudden transition into the end part, a final jump over a mess of jagged rocks.  And then the landing zone.

Cherrypop was talking to other goblins.  She saw Snowdrop and raised her hands, shouting a distant, ‘aaaaaa’.

Snowdrop put her arms up and screamed back.

Cherrypop started running over, clambering over snow.

“Wow.  That is actually pretty amazing.  Scary and concerning.”

“Especially with the goblin charms to make it deceptively lethal.”

“Right.”

Bangnut was down on the ground, with a camera.

A horn sounded from up the hill.

A few people from nearby houses stepped outside.

“What’s going on?”

“Keep guessing, I want to see if you figure it out on your own.”

Avery closed her mouth.

Others were scrambling down the hill in a tide.

“Who?” Snowdrop asked.

“Butty.”

They stood by, watching.  Some of the faster goblins were going alongside, or had been further up the hill and rushed from one vantage point to another.

Butty, with razors stuck in skin, leaving a streak of blood behind him, came down the slide about five times as fast as anyone else had.

He worked hard, rubbing one arm frantically against the ice, trying to adjust his trajectory.  He gradually drifted- too far.  He hit the ramp, hit the pole that was holding up the makeshift ‘finish line’ flag with a sickening wet sound, banked straight down to the jagged rocks at a high velocity, and skipped over the upper surface of them to the landing zone.

His slick, icy body still had enough momentum that it coasted across that bottom-of-the-hill horizontal plain of packed snow, still leaving a streak of blood behind him.  Starfished-out and face-down, unmoving, he went under the railing and onto the black ice of the road, where he kept going until he hit a gradual downhill part, where he picked up speed and kept going.

Goblins began cheering and talking about all the points Butty deserved.

“Not champion material,” Snowdrop said, shaking her head.

“You’re having fun?” Avery asked.

“It got old so fast.”

“We make it better!  And bigger!” Cherrypop exclaimed.

“I’ve got to borrow my opossum, actually,” Avery said.

“After!”

Snowdrop looked at Avery.

There was that sinking feeling again.  The reminder.

That there wasn’t necessarily an after, here.

They were up against so much.

“Want to come with?” Avery asked.  “Gotta stay in fork form.  As a just-in-case.”

Cherrypop nodded.

“Where to?” Snowdrop asked.

“Checking in with Lucy and Verona, catching up on what we missed.  Seeing Raquel.  But then… lots of places.”

“Bummer,” Snowdrop said, picking up Cherrypop, who had turned herself into her rusty fork form.

Avery put her arm around Snowdrop’s shoulder.  They walked in the direction of Verona’s place, passing a still-prone Butty in the process.  Snowdrop paused to give him a prize- a cool rock on a string with some goblin-y things.

She walked through the lobby of the building.  It was eerie.  She kept seeing faces she recognized, but without the usual stuff they had with them.

The apartment building was at the outskirts of the city, and they weren’t consolidated.  The way it had been explained to her, they’d settled down here, on the fringes, where they had elbow room and the ability to step away and not be in someone’s backyard, but they’d also spaced out enough that they didn’t want to murder one another.

The building here was as close as they had to a real headquarters.  There was one corner store on the ground floor, staffed by family members, one commercial property at the back, which was for the family business, and then a whole lot of lobby and a rentable space.  Not every apartment above was theirs, for financial reasons, but Avery suspected that the way things were, they’d phase it in gradually so it would be.

And then some houses on the same block and some houses five to fifteen to sixty minutes away, depending on tolerances, were also members of the family.

“The big question is… if that happened to the Whitts and the Belangers, how far are they willing to go with my family?”

Peter Garrick nodded.  “We can do what we can.”

“Anything is great.  I don’t want to get you guys wrapped up in this, but… I’m desperate,” Avery admitted.

“You came through, Avery,” Peter said.  “The stuff the Wolf brought up- it was designed to sow doubts, complicated stuff came up.”

Avery wasn’t sure if she was supposed to acknowledge or ignore the Peter stuff.  She played it safe.

“But you came through.  We talked it out.  Honestly, we’ve been so busy, with so much to get into, we don’t have the energy to be mad.”

“Then, if this hadn’t been a success… would you still be okay with me?”

“Me?  Personally?  The Wolf’s words bit me too.  I’m more sympathetic than some.  Some are mad.  Some might even be a bit mad now, but… what are they going to do?”

“That feels…” Avery paused.  “…Maybe like it’s the same logic that got you in trouble with Shane and Kimber.  Ignoring the underlying feelings.”

“Not holding back, are you?”

Avery sighed.  She scratched a sleepy Snowdrop.  “This is more serious than when you dropped into the situation with Musser, offering to help the practitioners get out of Kennet.  I keep running into- can I even afford to not be totally honest?  Can I afford to hold back?”

“Ahh,” he sighed.  “Tough ask.”

“My family might Awaken.  My sister is at least interested in learning to practice.  A bit too much on my plate to really tackle that right now, but…”

“You’ve got two, right?” he asked.

Avery frowned, and she stopped petting Snowdrop.

“What?”

“I just can’t shake this sudden feeling that you know that because you all have discussed arranged marriages and this exact potential scenario, where my family members get awakened.”

“Hah.  What a thought.”

“Isn’t it?  You guys salivating while you discuss who could theoretically marry who?  Or a potential inter-family marriage network?”

“Hahaha. I won’t deny there’s elements like that in the family.  But it’s different now that we’re where we are.”

“Are those elements, I dunno, ninety percent of the family?”

He sighed again.

“Give me an estimation?”

“It’s complicated.  Hard to pin down.”

“My kid sister thinks making my girlfriend quack is the funniest thing,” Avery told him.

That word, girlfriend, hung in the air.  Now she knew it was tied into a whole bunch of family crap and history.  And the unfair treatment of Cliff and Peter’s uncle.

“So it’s the younger one who wants to get into the practice?”

“Dude.”

“Just asking.”

“It’s the older one.  Sheridan.  A couple years older than me.  And we talked about learning it as a family.  You realize this is personal in a way that, if you mess with it, or try to get her to agree to a deal behind my back, it could ruin this relationship?”

He sighed and nodded.

“Anyway.  That’s a whole thing I’ve got going on.  Jude didn’t mention it?”

“You give him the OK to?  I think he’s more focused on being your friend and ally than being a Garrick.  Which isn’t the worst thing.”

“Ok.  I didn’t, I just wondered.”

“There’s a process.  You don’t have a Lord, I remember.  You went hard, fighting not to have anyone successfully declare themselves Lord.  That clears one issue.  Normally you’d have to get their permission, work with them.  The family gets so much crap heaped onto their plate, it controls their growth.”

“My friends and the local Others know, but I haven’t had a big sit-down with them to hash it out.”

“Technically, if we talk strictly about what’s on paper and what’s out there, you’re on competition.  You might need to negotiate things in the Finder political space.  But… fuck, if you’re getting a fraction of the attention we’re getting over this, they’re not going to fucking make an enemy out of you right now.”

“I met a practitioner from India, I think, who recognized me and Snowdrop on the Star Crossed.  Knew my name.”

“Sounds right.  Could you recognize ’em?”

“I… don’t know how I would.  They had a lot.  Seemed confident.”

“We’ll get you materials so you can recognize the big ones.  And teaching stuff.  Let’s be allies, not competition.  Open sharing?”

“It’s all I really wanted from the beginning?”

“You prefer working through Jude, when you aren’t coming to meet us face to face?”

“Yeah.”

“Keep doing that.  Keep us in the loop about what your family’s doing?”

“Okay.  I don’t think they’re all going to be Path Runners, Peter.”

“Okay.  You think they might do associated work?  There’s other stuff that ties into Paths.  So long as you’ve got resources, it’d be easy to sort out.  Gatherers, grounded, whimsies, Lost souls, dream gardeners, the transient, Losers, the Curious.  Hell, you’ve made your mark as a Founder, essentially.  There’s some that do that professionally.  Different scenario, usually they’re trying to capture and divert the power, not encourage it, but…”

“Yeah.  We ran into a transient.”  Marlen.  The motorcycle woman they’d kept prisoner.

“There’s lots of options.”

“I’ve got so much to deal with, I don’t know.  I haven’t dwelt on it.  I think it’s really up to them.  My older brother seems to be easing himself into the idea.  My older sister’s interested, but I don’t know what’ll catch her interest.  Kid siblings don’t know, I think the vibe is we’ll break them in gradually.  It’s really not- there’s so much coming at me, it feels like a speeding train, I’m in a tunnel, there’s no space on either side of the tracks.”

“She’s Aware?”

Avery nodded.

“Complicated Aware?”

She shook her head.

“Don’t awaken her and introduce her to practice while you’ve got this crap on your plate.  Even her being Aware, it makes her vulnerable.”

“The Carmine’s ex-Forsworn and their apprentices went after two families.  Wiped out their setups.”

“You said.  And they’d go after your family?”

“I don’t know.”

“Just going to float the idea,” Peter told Avery.  “Send ’em our way?”

“My mom’s got work, my dad’s got… so much family stuff.”

“Okay,” Peter said.

They stopped by a water installation in the lobby.  Peter groaned and sat himself down at the edge of it.  Little droplets of water specked at his back and shoulders from the spray behind him.

“I’ll treat you like you’re one of our own in this.  My suggested breakdown?”

“Yeah?”

“First off, try asking.  Can’t hurt.  Make a deal.  Words have power.  Hell, you know that, the stuff you were doing with markets.”

Avery nodded.

“Second?  Bring the older two to us, here.  We’ll treat them like royalty.  Give them the rundown, fill them in on the basics.”

“Royalty do a lot of arranged marriages, huh?”

“And-” Peter held up a hand.  “While you’re getting them packed, I’ll hold a family meeting.  We won’t bring that up.  We won’t discuss it.  You don’t need to worry about us sniping ’em.”

“Education, protection?”

Peter nodded.

One of Jude’s female cousins smiled as she passed by.  Snowdrop raised a paw, as Avery smiled back.

She met Peter’s eyes and remembered the fact the Wolf had outed her.  She wondered what was going through his head.

Peter explained, “I won’t lie.  There’s some ulterior motives.  If they’re really exploring other practices, I’d rather take a shot, run some of this Path stuff by them.  Give that stuff the chance to catch their interest before other stuff.”

Avery saw Jude get out of the elevator.  He was wearing the corner store outfit, with apron, but had a jacket on over it, like a very ‘I’m not on duty yet‘ sort of thing.  He had a hat.

He stopped in his tracks as he saw Avery.

“Hi Ave, hi Snow.”

“Heya,” Avery replied.  Snowdrop raised another paw.  She was trying not to doze off again.

“Am I interrupting?” he asked, as he approached.  “When you said you might swing by, I didn’t think you meant now.  But I guess that’s a thing we can do now?”

“We could ever since we knew a few Paths, right?  This just… really speeds it up.”

“Yeah.”

“You working?”

“Soon.  Pocket money.  Convenience store snacks and basic Finder equipment, under the guise of supplying hikers.  You?”

“Scrambling.  Feeling like I’m-”

Avery shifted her feet.

“-There’s this wall in front of me.  And the time I have to climb it is approaching really fast.  And as it gets closer, it’s just bulldozing all this other stuff.”

“There might be a Kelly family practice,” Peter said.

Jude nodded, diplomatically not saying anything.

“My girlfriend knows I’m hiding stuff.  I can’t tell her, I don’t think.”

“When you’ve got this much shit careening at you?” Peter asked.  He heaved out a sigh.  “No.  Definitely not.  I’ve been there.”

“You’ve been there?”

“My wife, Leona.  She wasn’t aware or awakened for the first while.  Let’s- what do you say about making that part of the game plan?  I hold a family meeting, we discuss bringing your older siblings over.  Education, protection, you can focus your resources on the people who have to stay.  And I’ll talk to Leona and a few of the others, and when and if you need it, you and her can have a sit down, talk about how you tackle this.”

Avery ran her fingers through her hair, glancing at Jude.

“They’ve been there.”

He wasn’t subtly signaling no.

“Bring your mom or something, if you want a head you trust in the mix.  And she can see what we’ve got here, we discuss what we’d do with your siblings…”

Avery nodded.

“Workable?” Peter asked.

“I really did only come to drop off my notes about the doors I’ve seen and stuff,” Avery said.

“Gladly accepted.  You’ve got ours.  Just those of us who made it that first time.  We’ll do another big Promenade run in the new year.  You don’t need to stress about helping.”

“Okay,” Avery said, quiet.

“Was that you saying you need to go?”

“I asked if certain people were free for visits today and tonight, I don’t know if some would say yes tomorrow.”

“Want company?” Jude asked.

“You want permission to get off work?” Peter asked his nephew.

Jude shrugged and nodded.

“Go for it.  I’ll talk to Reece.”

“I don’t mind company.  Not doing anything too exciting right off.  Markets.”

“I’ll get my stuff.  I’ll be… just a few minutes.”

Peter clapped a hand at Jude’s shoulder, and Jude ran off.

It was nice, having a friend.

Jude wasn’t long.  He took the stairs because running up them was faster than waiting for the elevator.  He came down in Finder kit, wearing winter clothing, hat tucked into his armpit.

“We’ve got plans for a gallery of doors.  We’re working out ways to fix certain ones in place, even when we’re not around.  A certain kind of binding,” Peter explained.  “For now, you can use the back.”

The business was empty.  It reminded Avery of the business at the reservation, but it was less nice- much more ‘we got all the lowest-budget corporate office carpet and furniture’.  Nobody was really around, except for one person steam-cleaning the carpet.  It looked boring, but here and there, she saw whiteboards with mention of Paths and other random practice stuff.

Nothing that couldn’t be explained if someone happened to wander through, but weird in the sense that she didn’t expect it.

“It feels odd, us meeting when it’s not a Path,” Jude said.

“You were in Kennet.”

“Oh.  Yeah, you’re right, but that was… that was Kennet found, mostly, and then it was all those practitioners, couldn’t really take in the normal.”

“I think this only feels weird because it’s your normal.”

There were multiple conference rooms, and the one at the back had been hastily refitted with a series of doors mounted at the edges.  The conference table and other furniture had been removed.

If a bystander came through, they’d probably think the Garricks ran a door company or something.

Avery pulled off her bracelet.

The doors appeared.

There weren’t many recognizable options.

“Crash course?” Avery asked.

“How are your nerves?” Peter asked, from behind her.

“Pretty good?  I’m not sure today’s a lucky day though.”

“Lots of doors, there’s no issue if you’re fast,” Peter said.

Avery nodded.

Jude opened the door, stepping through.

Snowdrop’s whisker twitched.  She stirred to alertness.  Wind on whisker, ear twitch.

Avery lunged forward even as Snowdrop’s sense of alarm ran through her.

Grabbing Jude by a shoulder strap, hauling him backward, shoving the door closed.

It didn’t make it all the way.

A detonation threw the door open with enough force that Avery, on the other side of it, was flung backward into the clear plexiglass wall that separated the conference room from the hallway.  A fridge smashed through the doorway, followed by a flaming car, which only made it partway, and maybe hit a fire hydrant on the way through, because water sprayed.

Water chased with oil- fire from the flaming car wreck ignited it.

Avery put the bracelet back on.  It didn’t fix the one door that was wedged open.

She reached for spell cards, pulling out one for ice, flinging it.

Quenching fire and cutting off the spreading patch of burning oil from other things.  Solidifying the mess crammed in at the door with chunks of ice.

Another explosion shook everything.  A good chunk of the car was spat forward, the door frame and remains of the door tilted and fell, and landed flat against the floor.

They were left sitting on their asses in the conference room with a demolished refrigerator, part of a car wreck, and a lot of water.

The sprinkler system came on.

“I think someone was on the Path already,” Avery said.  “Ran into that with the Star Cross.  Stuff already in motion.”

“Good footnote for the write-up,” Jude added.

“I’m not asking for soldiers or special considerations.  But I do want to reaffirm connections and make sure we won’t be blindsided,” Avery said.  “I guess what I’m asking is… do we want to formalize this?  We’ve had a few weeks of working together.”

The Dryad of Dryad Tree Market nodded.  She stretched up, skin like bark, in varying thickness ranging from something that looked as soft as skin to bristling bark where a normal person would have clothes.  She stretched easily, body blending into the tree behind her.  A whole fairy colony had set up in the branches, like a huge, miniature treehouse.

“No betrayal, no tricks, no shortchanging us on what we’ve agreed on… I want the market to keep running, if possible.  But I don’t want, I dunno, false product, or a bomb smuggled in with the goods, so some other entity can get a payday.  Not that I’m saying you would.  I don’t think you would.”

“I’m not so devious.”

“And that’s why I’m talking to you first,” Avery said.  She glanced at Jude.  She jerked a thumb at him.  “They’re more allies than business partners.”

“We are,” Jude said.

“The Kennet market is prepared to offer higher margins, for the security in the background…”

“…With six percent more profit for you guys.”

“Not a lot,” Hye said.  The fairy shifted position.  He had some of the market seniors sitting around him, many of them far smaller than he was.  “I must admit, I’m not a fairy who has ever concerned himself with numbers, but I do care about sentiment.”

“Right.  We have good sentiment, right?” Avery asked.

The fairies looked between one another.

She pulled a foot up onto the saddle, flat of one foot braced against her inner thigh, hands gripping her ankle.  Snowdrop was warm beneath her, her steed.

Jude was behind her, glamoured up into a fairy guise.  She’d given him wild hair, because it had made Snowdrop laugh.

“We’re working together okay?” Avery asked.

“We are.”

“And you divert the big stuff you’d send to the Fae markets to us, we’re taking a share of your old stock.”

“You’re getting a share of our cultivated stock,” Hye replied.

“Cultivated by the fact nobody else has bought it?  Come on, Hye,” Avery replied.  “It’s more churn.  You guys cycle through product, we try selling what you’re unable to sell, you’re doing well, we’re doing well, am I wrong?”

“You’re not wrong.”

“We just want guarantees in tense times.”

“More restrictive deals.  Will you come to me in a few months time, asking for more restriction, more control?” Hye asked.

“It’s not control over you we’re after.  That’s- if you’d visit Kennet, I feel like you’d understand more.  It’s out of control us we want to avoid.”

“It could be said those are two sides of the same coin.”

“I think they’re very similar looking coin faces, but the differences are important,” Avery said.  “Let’s make this rock solid.”

“Why focus so much on a little fairy circle like this?”

“You’re limited, you’re struggling, but I believe in ripple effects.  I believe in the little guy.”

Avery thought about what Verona had said in a dream, before things had locked down.

And how that was crucial.

They were flying blind.  They couldn’t easily compare notes and tactics, so all they had was a loose guarantee, backed by augurs, that their plans could work together.

“Insulting,” the echo-laced figure said.  He was an older man, with a very full beard, and old fashioned clothing.  More solid than a straight echo, he did have that blur at his edges.  His eyes shone with intensity.

One of the heroes of this market, that had once been heroic figures, notable figures of a bloodline, all highlighted by practice, and various fae, fairies, and others.

The market was re-establishing itself.

“I’m not saying you’re little-” though you kind of are “-I’m saying there’s those other markets out there.  And then there’s you.  You’re rebuilding, you’re healthy, you’re stronger, and I’d like to think that with what we’re doing, and with the wider coalition, more organization, organization that can’t even happen in a lot of places-”

“Most places,” Jude supplied.

“Yeah, the primeval that was lured through that demolished what you’d been building?  In another situation, where we keep doing what we’re doing, others come to your aid.  Help you rebuild without the tooth-pulling-”

A tooth fairy heard the word tooth and was pulled in closer, alert.

“-of negotiating with us, one-on-one.  In my ideal world, they’d want to help you rebuild.”

“They’re competition.”

“They’re a network.  By how you’re setup, you’ve got more supply than there is demand.  And it’s niche supply, a lot of it.  How many Others need teeth?” Avery gestured at the booth.

The tooth fairy settled on Jude’s head, interested by the conversation.  Jude pressed his lips very tightly together, lips sucked in.

“How many out there come all this way to buy fur?” she asked, gesturing at the tarnished old heroic figure she was negotiating with.  “And how many others are really supplying it?  Not all that many.”

“Time will pass, and if you get what you want, others will see the opportunity and get their own furs.”

“And won’t the world then look at their furs and then look at yours and think yours are way better?  You’ve been doing this for a couple hundred years, right?”

Appealing to his personality.

She pulled out her cards.  Why she had waited to do this one.  “The Dryad Tree Market is with me.  So is Hye’s.  I’ve got goblins we’re dealing with.  A book seller, a few scattered practitioners.  This is a chance to be among peers.”

What good was it to be an arrogant old aristocrat, building a castle and a trade enterprise, if nobody was around to recognize you?

“If meetings are held, some must be held here.”

“I can definitely float that.”

He nodded.  “I must consult others here.”

“Okay.  I figured.  While you’re doing that, is Gilkey around?”

“The poison elemental has moved.  You’ll need to travel a ways.  It’s twenty minutes on foot.”

“I’m fast,” Avery said, getting the black rope out.  “Should I loop back in thirty?”

The echo-laced figure nodded.

She checked her phone, and there was no service.  She frowned.

Technomancy?

She didn’t See any fingerprints on her phone that weren’t hers.  No tracks or traces.

Poison?  Maybe?

She pocketed it.

This was tougher than some.

Old and unyielding…

And screwed up in ways she wasn’t equipped to tackle.

Jude had gone home to work an evening shift and eat.  Raquel, Lucy, and Verona were with Avery as she ventured here.  Into more sensitive territory.

Sensitive like an open wound.

The Whitts had come, and were giving some help.  Getting some.  Some were still salvaging what they could from wreckage.

Eleven practitioners dead here in the Belanger compound.  Their most vulnerable and valuable had been preserved.

Small consolation when they’d lost homes.  And loved ones.

A dark sentiment hung in the air.

The ability to do repairs was apparently constrained because as things got darker out -and they were already quite dark- people had to leave, to go to the next town over where there were motel rooms, or places to rent.

They’d been scattered.  In a few places, reportedly, there were so many people packed into rooms that the business owner had taken issue.  So tomorrow, some would splinter off, going two towns over, or three towns over.

This could’ve been Kennet.  Kennet’s Others and people scattered, losing touch as they struggle to find a place to stop.

This could still be Kennet, down the road.

“Where do you even begin?” Raquel asked.

“Where do we begin, or where do they begin?” Lucy asked.

“I… don’t know.  Both?”

“I like that,” Avery said.  “The idea that there’s less us and them.”

“I mean,” Verona said, “I get that, I do.  But also I kind of don’t want to be too closely tied into them, if they’re iffy.  And some of this is iffy.”

“They’re not so iffy,” Raquel said, and it was a weird thing to say, until Avery spotted who Raquel was talking about.

Nicolette and Fernanda.

Avery smiled.

“Oh, some saner heads,” Nicolette said.  She looked very tired.

Raquel gave Fernanda a kind of perfunctory hug, but the two of them moved off to the side together.  Friendly-ish.  They didn’t get along super well, even though they privileged, practitioner backgrounds in common, but they had worked together in that little coalition of woman practitioners against their family patriarchy, under Musser.

They’d gotten in trouble for that, but that seemed to be forgotten in the wake of, like, everything recent.

“Status update?” Lucy asked.

Nicolette shrugged.  “Basically what you see.  It’s a mess.  Too much damage.  The families are working together, the Whitts managed to get this far out, they’re going to camp out in the community center and workshop, but it’s awkward.  We got attacked on the way over, and you could see how tired and spent these guys all are.”

Nicolette looked tired and spent.

“What can we do?” Avery asked.

Nicolette spread her hands.  “I feel like there’s twenty answers and I can’t come up with one of them.”

“Can you take in refugees?” Fernanda asked.  “I floated the idea, but a lot of people remember how sticky things were in Kennet.  I could convince them, but I figure… I should ask before trying?”

“Appreciated,” Lucy said.  “We could talk to some of them.  Make deals.  Sanctuary, at least for a couple days, but they need to agree not to hurt us or use the situation against us.”

“Food, sleep, getting to somewhere better, that’s all the scariest stuff.  Not that a lot of these guys would admit it,” Fernanda said.

“How… great are these guys?” Verona asked, quiet.

“Great?”

“Or not great.  Are we bringing a bunch of skuzzballs over to Kennet, doing this?”

“I can point out the Belangers who are least problematic,” Nicolette said.

“I can point out Whitts,” Fernanda added.

Nicolette frowned.  “Maybe we make it less a deal, more a thing we just sort of arrange with the right people?”

“Do the deed and apologize later if we have to, instead of asking for permission?” Verona asked.

Nicolette nodded.

“What’s the leadership situation?” Lucy asked.

“Ohhhh, I don’t even know,” Nicolette said.  She looked around.  “There’s still a council meeting at the end of the month.  It’s the big reason people haven’t scattered further.”

“You’re invested in this,” Avery noted.  “You’re not a Belanger by birth, but you’re keeping track, you’re managing this.”

“Some,” Nicolette admitted.  Then, like she was uncomfortable with the idea, she moved on.  “Wye’s the likely candidate.”

“The same Wye who bailed?” Verona asked.

“That’s what we’re up against.  He has momentum and they don’t have anyone better.”

“You?” Avery asked.

“Ohhh, that’d be a curse.  And… it’d be good, in ways.  It won’t happen,” Nicolette said.

“You could step it up,” Fernanda said.  “You’re already managing stuff.  The big thing would be you speaking up at some key moments.  Making it so when you start being loud and insistent at the meeting, you’ve been building up to it over days.”

“Anger,” Lucy suggested.  “There’s a lot of hurt here.  Hate and hurt and anger, they’re not bad.  They’re essential parts of being human, they- they can do bad, but they can also be what gets us going when we need to get going.  When we need to survive.”

“You want me to stoke the fires?” Nicolette asked.

“It’s got to be better than…” Avery gestured.

Belangers, hands numb, sorting through cold, snow-dusted wreckage in the dark.  Trying to salvage something.

“You might be underestimating how hard it is to budge generations of entrenched tradition,” Nicolette told them.

“When, if not now?” Verona asked.

Nicolette sighed.

“We need to, don’t we?” Raquel asked.  “Push?  Force this?  Maybe if you went for a council seat, pushed for… what’s her name?”

“Jen?” Nicolette asked.

“As a temporary thing,” Fernanda jumped in.  “As a get-it-done thing.”

“And when Jen’s temporary leadership is over, you position yourself to be in charge?” Avery asked.

“Fuck,” Nicolette said.  “I think that’s way harder than you’re implying.  And I’m not- I don’t want to be in charge of this.  This is…”

“Fucked,” Verona supplied.

“Yeah.”

“But you do want to be in charge?  You want to be able to change things?” Lucy asked.

Nicolette nodded.

“I’ll stay?” Raquel asked- asked Avery, it looked like.  She turned to Verona and Lucy after.

“You’re going to get involved?” Avery asked.  “A Nicolette candidacy?”

“I’m going to try.  The Whitts are a different sort of deal.  A lot of the regular Whitt leadership is still intact.  But there’s a difference between the ones who weren’t touched and the ones who lost a lot in the raid, or had people get hurt.”

Avery gave Snowdrop a pat, looking around.

“Nobody killed in the raid on the Whitt-Musser place?” Lucy asked.

“No.  They were more measured.”

“A bunch here?”

“Eleven.”

“Does that continue?  Does it become a pattern?” Lucy asked.

“They had a few of theirs get hurt,” Nicolette replied.  She adjusted her feathered hairpiece and then folded her arms.  “The attackers.  There was more pushback.”

“Two hurt, one used this fucked up escape clause,” Lucy said.

Avery nodded.  “And they’ve got Edith’s surgery coming.”

“They’re expecting us.  They’ll circle the wagons, right?” Verona asked.  “No attacks in the meantime?”

“Hopefully,” Lucy said.  “They’re a big group, they could have a loose cannon that doesn’t sit still.”

“But nothing like this, right?” Avery asked.

“No,” Lucy said.  “I don’t think.”

“Nothing I’ve Seen has suggested it,” Nicolette added, “And I’ve been doing regular readings, trying to anticipate the next move.”

Lucy seemed to take a second to absorb that, before saying, “They still could carry that murderous momentum forward.  Whatever’s going on, whoever these people are, however they were picked-”

“We know they were Forsworn at this point.  Mostly or entirely,” Verona said.

“But the students?  Or how they organized?  Did Charles free all Forsworn, or just the ones who could-”

“Have their anger stoked?” Avery asked.

Lucy nodded.

“We’ll find that out when we see them,” Verona said.  “In the meantime…”

“How is Chase?” Raquel asked.  “And the other girl?”

“Gillian,” Nicolette said.  She sighed.

“That bad?”

“Practitioner families, when something goes wrong, they don’t- practices can turn on someone.  Just about any practice has its dark side, where it takes over, or the price is paid and it’s too much, or humanity is lost.  But then there’s curses, casualties of stuff like this… there’s always victims left by the wayside.”

“That doesn’t sound like a lead-in to Chase and Gillian are doing super great,” Avery said.

“Chase is… they’d say he’s being cared for.  He’s safe, he’s sheltered, he has food, people check in.”

“What would you say?” Lucy asked.

“He’s locked away, out of sight and out of mind.  That’s the way these things usually go.”

“And how do you feel about that?” Lucy asked.

“It’s- it’s Chase.  I don’t like him.  I might even hate him.  But it’s also- my background, coming from where I do?”

“You helped Seth.”

“I want to help Chase too.  I’m not- I don’t think I’m a good person,” Nicolette said.  “I have my flaws.  I was power hungry and vicious when I was initially prowling around Kennet.  I was pretty willing to strand Avery on the trail.  Then you guys got out, you turned it around, you applied for the school, Alexander said to make nice, so I made nice.  And… I like you.  I am sorry.  But…”

Nicolette trailed off.

“But?” Lucy asked.

“…I’m still that person.  I’d hesitate before doing it again.  I’d regret it more next time.  But I’m still that person who… is probably a lot like those ex-Forsworn.  When you’re left with next to nothing, and you have to keep making sacrifices, warmth and mercy are pretty easy asks to put under the knife on that altar.”

“I think you’re not that bad,” Avery said.

“I try.  But it takes time, and I can’t- I think back and I have very clear memories of then.  When I stranded you.  When I did more for Alexander.  When I didn’t feel that bad about it.  And- that’s such a vivid recollection it feels like I can tap it to not feel bad about the next thing.  So I dunno.  But I want to help Chase.”

“Sounds like a reason to run for that council position, with an eye for a pivot to leadership,” Raquel said.  “Get Chase into better circumstances?”

“Especially if he did something good?” Avery asked.  “Bad person, but he did a good deed, that should count for something?”

Nicolette nodded.

“And Gillian?”

Nicolette gestured.

They walked around, entering the community center.  There was a table set up with soup and coffee, some Belanger women staffing it, sorting things out.  Kids were being kept entertained at one end of the center.  In another area, it looked like a massive lost and found.  Everything salvaged from wreckage.

Then through a door.  Nicolette held a finger to her lips.

People weren’t quite sleeping here, though there might have been a few, but it was a dimly lit area, with lots of people resting after hard work, or playing cards.  Unwinding.

And in the back corner, alone, was Gillian.

“Hi Nicolette,” Gillian said.  She was older than Avery, but pencil thin, with wispy blonde hair.  A blanket was pooled around her legs, with one foot sticking down and out over the edge of the bed.

“Hey,” Avery greeted the girl, voice soft.  “We’ve seen each other in video calls.”

“I remember,” Gillian said.

Her eyes met Avery’s, and Avery could see how the pupils and irises had altered.  Like a cell undergoing mitosis, forming more of an ‘8’ shape than a circle.  Like a goat’s eyes, but diagonal.

Her shirt collar was open, and it looked like her collarbone had a wave to it that shouldn’t be there.  And the line at one side of her neck, the tendon.  Almost curly.  And there were a few too many.  Her long hair hid a lot of it.

“How are you doing?” Nicolette asked.

“Sat down with one of the teachers.  I can practice.”

“Any weirdness?” Nicolette asked.

“A bit.  It’s easier if I practice with my left hand.  I got really lucky, they say,” Gillian said.  “Do you mind stepping back?”

They did.  Until there were eight to ten feet of distance.  Gillian relaxed a bit and nodded.

“Problem?”

“Just… focusing my eyes.  It’s hard.  Makes diagram drawing hard too.  But I’m- I’m happy,” Gillian said.  “Sad about some things.  Some people.  But I’m happy, it’s weird, isn’t it?”

“Is it horror weirdness?” Verona asked.

Lucy elbowed her.

“I dunno.  There’s definitely some in there.  Like feelings can turn a corner and they’re very abrupt and big.  But I did see and feel infinity.  I…”

Gillian’s expression changed.  She dropped her eyes to her lap.

“Yeah,” Nicolette said, like that was enough said.

She’d been pretty thoroughly traumatized.

But maybe, if this kept up, she could be okay?

“Did you bring Montague?” Gillian asked.

They shook their heads.

“Maybe next time?  I’d like to thank him.”

“Okay,” Avery said.

There were people on nearby-ish beds who were looking restless.

“Want to go for a walk?” Avery suggested.  “So we’re not bothering people?”

There was agreement.  Gillian got her stuff, and Avery could see how one arm was weird too, but couldn’t see how.

From what Verona had said about horrors, she’d gotten off really light.

“This can’t end with Wye taking leadership and Chase getting locked up, or it’s fucked,” Lucy muttered.

Nicolette nodded, looking like she was deep in thought.

That conversation halted as they passed through a group of Belangers and Whitts walking the other direction.

Avery took the opportunity to check her phone.

“Does anyone else have no service?”

“You weren’t in touch,” her mom said.

“My phone died, something went weird.”

“Yeah, something went weird.  They cut off our phone plan.  Our entire family.”

“What?” Avery asked.  “Wait what?”

“It’s apparently your fault,” Rowan said.  He and Sheridan were sitting at the table.

“What?  How?”

“I can roll along with a lot about this weird magic bullcrap,” Rowan said.  “But I couldn’t call Laurie.”

“Oh suck a fuck, Rowan,” Avery said.  “Screw off, you’re not that funny.”

“Hey, hey hey hey,” their mom said.  “No fighting.  Sit.”

Avery sat.  She moved Snowdrop to the next chair over.

Snowdrop became human.

Which was really weird, having Snowdrop in the apartment, now.

“Spooky,” Rowan said.

“I’m not spooky at all.”

Her mother put her phone down on the dining room table.  “Focus.  I know it sounds like a good excuse, having the phone die, but when you can’t get in touch for hours, you need to assume I am screaming at the top of my lungs in alarm and remedy that.  I had no idea what happened to you.  Where were you?  Exactly?”

“I went back to Kennet for Snowdrop, met the others, I visited the Garricks in America, hit up the markets with Jude- like, six different markets.  I visited a book seller in Quebec, I stopped in Halifax.  The Garricks wanted me to go to India- I made a contact there, but there’s too much going on.  Then I met the others, got Raquel, and we went to the Belanger compound, which was raided last night.  There’s some politics, diplomacy, trade stuff there.  Kennet’s taking in some refugees.”

“Avery,” her mom said.  “You weren’t in touch.”

“What happened to the phones?” Avery asked.

“I couldn’t call my girlfriend,” Rowan said, mournful.  “We were going to make plans.”

Sheridan leaned back.  “You mean she was making plans, and you were going to go with it?”

“Maybe?”

“Dude, you need to pick up the emotional burdens here.  You can’t make her do all the planning-”

“I love that you’re giving your brother dating advice, Sheridan-”

“Despite never being on a date,” Rowan said.

“I was on one.”

“When you’re seven it doesn’t count.”

“-but there’s other concerns.”

“What happened to the phone?” Avery asked.

“It was being used frequently across multiple locations, at a rate and speed that flagged alerts.  With calls going to and from the same numbers.  It flagged something, they think you’re spoofing your phone or using something unauthorized, I don’t know.”

“Technomancy?” Snowdrop asked.

“I don’t think.  Didn’t see signs.  Could just be mundane.  Life kicking my ass today,” Avery said.  “Lots of near-disasters.”

“And one disaster.  I couldn’t call my girlfriend,” Rowan said, hangdog.

“Oh my god shut up,” Avery told him.

“It’s the best thing I’ve got going for me.”

Sheridan leaned forward.  “You just figured out your sister can do magic and you can learn magic too.  Wealth, women, power.  Priorities, man.”

“She’s more important than all that,” Rowan said.

“Fuck dude,” Sheridan said, slumping back defeated.  “I can’t tell if that’s amazing or really fucking sad.”

“It’s really sad,” Snowdrop chimed in.

“I can probably get a phone setup through Zed that doesn’t do this,” Avery told her mom, who seemed to be about one more sentence from burying her face in her hands and giving up.

“I can’t ground you, can I?  There’s too much going on?  It’d make you unsafe?”

“Yeah.”

“I need more information.  When you’re going places, where you’re going.  Lay out the plan.”

Avery nodded.

“I want you safe.”

“I don’t.  I’m done helping Avery,” Snowdrop said, helpfully.

“Speaking of, the Garricks invited Sheridan and Rowan.  You too, if you want, if you can get away from work.  If you want to pull back, get away?  Out of Charles’ reach?  They can give you a rundown, you can see more about what this is about.”

“And your dad?  Grumble?  Kerry and Declan?  What about Jasmine?  Verona’s mother and father?”

“I don’t know.  But… if we have guards and wards and other things, it’s… we can condense it down, focus our efforts on the people who can’t easily leave.  I think they’d happily host most or all of us.  We’re going to work on the other stuff, see if we can protect you all.”

“And you?” her mom asked.  “Who’s protecting you?”

“Same people that’ve kept us alive and okay for this long.”

“We’re so doomed,” Snowdrop chimed in.

Her mom sighed.

“These Garricks…” Sheridan said.

“Yeah?” Avery asked.

“They have any kids between the ages of fifteen and eighteen?”

“Yeah.  A few.”

“Are they-”

“Pretty good looking.”

“Going to America!  Woo!”

“Sit down tonight?  Longer talk?” Avery’s mom asked.

Avery shook her head.

“Why not?”

“Meeting.  Council, here in Thunder Bay.  Gotta discuss-”

“Awakening a family?” Ann asked.  She was pissed.

“Not here,” Avery said.  “Kennet.”

“You live here, they live here, correct?”

“Yeah, but our roots are in Kennet, we’d be going back there eventually.  Our family practice would be established there.”

“Immaterial.”

“How is that immaterial?” Avery asked.

“It’s the equivalent of Scobie’s cow.”

“Why the fuck are you bringing up my cow?” Nicole Scobie asked.  She had her daughter with her, who was staying out of the conversation.

“It’s trekking in outside shit, creating massive potential for collateral damage, uncontrolled elements, damaged innocence…” Ann went down the list.

“And you awakening your daughter isn’t?” Avery asked.

“I have established a pedigree.”

Nicole laughed, high and long and loud.

“My bloodline has established we know the rules and we can adhere to them.  You-”

“I’ve done more establishing than you.”

“You’ve let your parents become Aware and your siblings followed soon after.  And we’re to expect you can manage your practice around innocents?” Ann asked.

“It’s reckless,” Deb, who was covered in the burn, frostbite, and rock fleck scars from plunging into elemental Storms, chimed in.

Avery looked up at her mom.  Then back to Ann.  “Why are we even discussing this?  Do you have the authority to say no?”

“Our esteemed Lord does,” Deb said, indicating the elemental.  “And she does take our input.”

“I’ve been doing a lot.  For Thunder Bay, for Ontario.  Against our enemies.  I helped establish some trade with us and Kennet.  I thought I had your respect, at least.  Like, what the heck, guys?”

“Some things only come with time,” Deb told her.

Ann joined in, saying, “You remain a child, less than a year practiced, callow and not yet aware of certain customs and conventions.”

Avery groaned, and she turned to the Lord.  “Please go over their heads.  I don’t have the patience for this.”

“Patience is the very thing you must train and show evidence of,” Ann said, prim and insufferable.  “Perhaps after twenty or thirty years, you could request and seek permission to establish a Family practice.”

“I don’t totally disagree,” Nicole said.  “Show wisdom.  You’ve got terrific instincts, nobody will deny, you’ve got power, but… patience and wisdom.  Wisdom like recognizing that these two over here aren’t worth recognizing.”

“You say that about us, Scobie, when you muck around a barn with goats and cows?”

“You want the goat?  I’ll give you the goat.  I’ll leave it tied to your front door, shitting on your doorstep, and I’ll pray it’s you that has to clean up that shit.”

“What being would answer the prayers of someone lesser like you?” Deb asked.

“Lesser?” Nicole asked, stung.  “I think you need to look up your definitions.  The Scobie family is more than capable.”

Fifteen year old Natasha Scobie looked like she wanted to slink back into the shadow.  Or to walk into the wall of water that framed the council meeting.

Avery sympathized.  She felt secondhand embarrassment.  She looked again at her mom, who looked a little shell shocked about the proceedings.

“Look, guys, I’m tired, it’s been a long day,” Avery said.

“Maybe the goat would fuck you, Ann.  I know your husband won’t.”

Avery’s mom’s eyes opened a bit wider.

Ann scoffed.  “And we’re back to this tired old trope.”

“If we’re talking about tired and old then you’ve reminded me, don’t let your frigid, tired old cunt freeze off that goat’s cock or you could kill us all.”

“There’s a fourteen year old present,” Avery’s mom said.  “And a-”

“Fifteen,” Natasha said.

“There’s no saving poor Natasha there,” Ann replied.  “She’s had Nicole for a mother this entire time, the poor thing.  The woman’s obsessed with graphic barnyard fornication.  What does that do to a child?”

“Do not bring my daughter into this.”

“Guys,” Avery cut in.  “Seriously, it’s late.  Technically, my siblings would be going elsewhere to learn things, they wouldn’t be in your hair.  The Garricks would look after them.”

“The Garricks.  I don’t know them,” Nicole said.

“You know so many details about goat cocks, but you don’t know family names?  They’ve come up before.”

“They’re established, they’re trustworthy,” Avery said.  “Allegedly, some other families are also chiming in.  One big family from India wants to say hi, I don’t know if that’s a learning opportunity.”

“What does a so-called big family from India want with you?” Deb asked.

“We… I, the Garricks and I, anyway, we solved the Promenade.  I reported that to you guys.”

“It means nothing to us,” Ann said, impatient.

“I gave you a rundown.  Did you even read the full email?”

“Explain here.”

So you didn’t.

“We- it’s a big Path.  One that networks others.  And- can you make doors, Lord?  Please?”

The wall of water behind Avery morphed.  Three circular portals opened up.

“That works,” Avery said.  She removed her bracelet.

The doors slammed into existence, suspended against the wall of water.

“What is that?” Ann asked.

“Access to three different Paths.  I- I have a lot of access.  I’ve been to Halifax, America, various markets, I visited the Whitts and Belangers today.”

“From the Promenade?”

“Yeah.  It’s one of the things.  Garricks and I have exclusive access.  We also found constructions… the last woman we know of who found and got access to one of these constructions got to see the- she called them the levers and pulleys of the universe.”

“My dear,” Ann said.  “You poor soul.  That’s so much to manage.  All of what you’re doing is so hard to manage.”

“How very daunting,” Deb chimed in, feigning sympathy.  “With power comes enemies, it’s no small wonder you’ve been struggling.”

“Thunder Bay is behind you, I do hope you know that,” Ann said.

Avery sighed.

Okay, this at least worked.

It gave her a starting point.

How did this end?

Where did it go?

Back to Kennet.  Again.

They wanted to do it in Kennet below.  It was, even if they’d reclaimed and transformed it some, still Charles’ turf.  he’d created it.  He’d had his intent in designing it.

Maybe that was why Avery was so uncomfortable here.

It was everything she’d run away from, when she’d left at the end of Summer.

She reunited with Verona and Lucy.  Together, they went to the husk of a building that was St. Victor’s, in Kennet below.

A lot of it had been cleared up.  The way was clear, but it was open to the sky and snow.  Nearby factories spat black stuff into the air and it stained the snow.  Here, it soiled the building.  Moisture that collected and melted in the sun carried soot particles down and painted walls that had once been lighter colors, in streaks and coffee-stain splotches that were more black than brown.

It was hard to ignore that they could be attacked.  She used Snowdrop’s senses in addition to her own.  She had a bracelet to alert her to surveillance.  She had an escape rope, and the black rope, and cards ready at hand.

The truce had been broken when the Belangers attacked.  Verona and Lucy had been careful not to make the first moves.

Would it hold now?  What did that karmic weight mean for what happened here?  Or what came next?

They reached the end of the long hallway and found the auditorium-slash-gymnasium.

St. Victor’s practitioners were gathered.  Ex-forsworn and students.  The students sat on the floor and stage, things scattered around them.  They’d been here a bit.  The teachers all stood.  Some were masked- wearing masks like the one Charles had had as a summoner, back at the other cabin they’d searched.  Hiding identities.

And Edith was there.  Between the Kennet group and the St. Victor’s practitioners.

Maybe Edith’s presence was the only thing keeping the peace.  There wasn’t an immediate attack as the five of them entered.  Avery, Verona, Lucy, Julette, and Snowdrop.

Edith had asked for them to be here, a second set of eyes.

The happiness of the local Others, Snowdrop’s dreams of being goblin sage, the fact they could make goblins better and safer, the markets, the growth, the opportunity.  For individual Others.  For families to be better.  The chance for fucking Ann Wint and Deb Cloutier to get a small reality check.

Avery could feel the weight of it.  She could think about Nora and all the other things she wanted and needed.

These people, dark looks in many of their eyes, some even resentful, or capable of doing what they’d done to Chase and Gillian, to Fernanda’s family… they’d tear it down.  The best of them wouldn’t or couldn’t stop the worst of them.

Avery had come hoping to open a dialogue, and something in the air, in the looks they got, and the scale of what had happened with the Whitts and Belangers, it really left her thinking it wouldn’t be worth it.

Nicolette had talked about how hard some things were to shift.  Avery sympathized.

She couldn’t shift this.  Not as a larger group, self-reinforcing, sharing common backgrounds.

She’d have to look for opportunity.

That was what she was decent at.  Moving around the flanks, strengthening what needed to be stronger, finding weaknesses to clothesline, jab with antlers, and whack with lacrosse and hockey sticks.

“You’re here.  Thank you.  Let’s get into this?” Edith asked.

“Let’s,” one of the male practitioners said.

Avery found herself nodding her agreement.  Let’s.