Wokehaad

~ Alexis ~

Alexis was in love. Not with a boy, but with Wokehaad Farms. Legate d'Mourne had taken her on the fast train, north across the border into Blaxland Province, to a town that supposedly had the same number of people as Mourne, but was different in almost every way. Where Mourne had mostly single-story buildings, every building in Wokehaad had three or four. Where her hometown sprawled out lazily, Wokehaad was compact and laid out in a grid, with a wall around the perimeter. Where Mourne was mostly poor, everyone in Wokehaad seemed relaxed and well-off. And the most important business in town was Wokehaad Farms, run by a master orchardist named Nelis.

Maestro Nelis wasn't just some orchardist who happened to teach. He was a genius who turned the profession on its head. The book that had so ignited her imagination mentioned him several times, but only hinted at what she was seeing now. The production orchards occupied zones with several kinds of soils supporting a variety of trees, and a broad family of companion plants accompanied each type. They had to tour the farms by horseback just to see them all. An arc girl rode next to her and did most of the talking while Alexis asked eager questions. Maestro Nelis and d'Mourne stayed far behind.

"Down here on the valley floor, there's good soil on top but a layer of clay just below. Most apples and pears do well in this zone, so that's our canopy layer. We grow shade-loving greens in the herb layer in summer and fall, and plant a type of clover for the winter ground cover. If the summer is expected to be hot enough, we plant Meritage beans and let them climb the trunks." A tall platform on wheels allowed people to work on the fruit-bearing trees without trampling the ground-level plants. "See those shrubs along the north border? They yield a stimulating seed in the fall. Goes for a good price, but they're finicky. We can only grow them in certain places."

"Some of your trees are covered in webs." She pointed to one example, where the lowest fork in the trunk was a white mass of thread.

"Don't freak out, but we keep spiders. They're huge, too." The guide placed her palms nearly a foot apart, and Alexis shivered involuntarily. "I know, right? But they eat most insects that would normally go after the plants, and they mostly leave the pollinators alone. There's a magician in town who's trying to cross these spiders with silk-producing ones, but no luck so far."

"Let's show them Dimwood," said Maestro Nelis from behind.

"Dimwood it is." The arc girl, whose name was Willemien, turned onto a road that led toward a creek and urged her mount to walk a little faster. "He must like you. He doesn't show Dimwood to most visitors."

The creek entered a deep channel between two hills, where the water burbled along with the echoes of horses' hooves. Above them, spindly trees grew among spreading ferns, clinging to the hillside and struggling for sunlight. The path was paved in crushed stone, but didn't look like it was often used. Their mounts had to weave around chunks of fallen wood and rocks littering the ground.

After a while, the path climbed steadily uphill until it widened suddenly into a dark green meadow shaded by surrounding hillsides. Long grasses and bulrushes marked the creek's trail, interrupted by a crooked line of weeping willows spaced far enough apart for the wide canopies not to crowd each other. Tips of their graceful branches trailed in the slowly moving water.

Drawn to one tree in particular, Alexis rode ahead and dismounted just out of reach of its branches. The willow's aura shimmered with mana that welled up from the roots and trunk to flow down every branch and leaf. As she put her hand near enough to feel its aura, several of the branches reached toward her and did the same. Soon, a dozen nimble branches were patting her all over, making her laugh. It tickled, and the harder she laughed, the more branches the tree used on her.

"Stop, stop!" she laughed uncontrollably. "I give up!" The branches twitched playfully at her as she backed away. She saw d'Moune opposite her, one hand raised and covered with the vine-like appendages, his other hand on his sword in case the tree became aggressive. He was letting the tree's mana flow into him, and giving back some of his own. Watching them felt like she was intruding on something … intimate, but she couldn't bring herself to turn away. Two vastly different life forms were communing, and something told her she shouldn't interrupt.

After d'Mourne withdrew his arm, he glanced at Nelis and gave him a nod of respect. Nelis acknowledged it with a satisfied smile.

The return trip took them to the far end of Dimwood and up a winding trail that put them on a ridge overlooking most of Wokehaad Farms. They could see Dimwood and five other growing zones, plus the experimental farm they had heard about but hadn't visited yet.

By traveling along the ridge, they came down an easy path that dropped them near the orchardist's mansion. Maestro Nelis's house put the Mourne ancestral home to shame: five stories framed by massive beams stained with a dark-colored preservative. The spaces between the beams were packed with bricks made of straw and clay, and then covered with clean white plaster. It was the same construction as every building in the nearby town of Wokehaad, but on a grander scale. The drive in front doubled as a depot for wagons loaded with rows of benches, ready to ferry workers who lived in the village back to their homes.

Alexis's bags were missing. She was told to leave them by the door when she first arrived, but now they were gone. "Willie, show her where she's staying. Her bags should already be there."

"Hope you like stairs," said Willemien with a smile.

"Wait. Does that mean … " She didn't know how to phrase it. Was she in? Accepted? Was she supposed to call him Master? Wasn't there a money issue to figure out first?

"Neither of us would pass up this opportunity," the Maestro said for both of them. "So leave the rest to us. All you have to do is work hard."

Alexis wanted to scream, yes! But she managed to keep most of it inside. Willemien grabbed her by the wrist and started pulling her into the house. "Let's find out where they put you. The rooms are tiny, but they're private, and the walls are thick. I'll introduce you to everyone. I hope you're okay with beastkin, because we have a few this year. You have to meet Theo! He's a pandakin, really rare, and super soft!"

"I'm okay with beastkin." She had dated a rabbitkin after all. Why wouldn't she get along with other beastkin?

Alexis swelled with excitement as the huge house and all its people embraced her with promises of a boundless future.

---

~Taylor ~

Dinner was served in a great hall where everyone in the house, almost a hundred people, ate together at long tables. The Maestro's table sat on a raised dias at one end of the room, where he was surrounded by fellow masters who helped him run the orchard. Taylor ate with them as a guest, constantly in his illusion. The food was what he expected from any farming community in summer: simple, plentiful, and fresh.

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He had to search to find Alexis, and finally spied her sitting near the center of one table, surrounded by other children slightly older than her. She was glowing with excitement and so absorbed in conversation with her new friends, she didn't notice him watching her. Bringing her here was the right thing to do. It felt a lot like playing chess against Strife when he placed a new piece in the future. He didn't have to know exactly where or how Alexis would come into play, but he knew she would. Exactly how he'd pay for it was yet to be discussed, but he could guess Maestro Nelis's price.

As soon as Taylor had his fill, the Maestro pulled him aside with a bottle of pear brandy in one hand and a bottle of small beer in the other. They wound their way to the back of the massive house, where Nelis kept a greenhouse and workshop just for himself. Bluebells sounded tiny fanfares, camellias snapped at anything that came too near, birches grew with leaves so yellow they looked like they were hammered from pure gold, mulberries shed double fistfuls of pure white fibers, dwarf maples gave volatile sap by the bucketful, and a hundred other little wonders crowded for attention.

"These are amazing. Are all of these experiments like your willow?"

"It's easier than you think, but impossible to fully control. I spent a century trying to force seeds to grow into exactly what I wanted, and I had one disaster after another. But, when you learn to let the plant and magic show you the way, you usually end up with something."

"Like enchanting an item, instead of transforming or engraving it."

"Yes! And, you must work with the seed. That's very important if you want them to breed true."

They settled at a workbench in the back of the lab, where Nelis opened both bottles and searched for clean-enough glasses. "How long have you been using magic?"

"A couple of years. As you can imagine, I have a lot of time to study." Taylor lowered his illusion and tapped his mask.

"I envy you." The arc poured for them both. "Your whole life ahead of you, and you already have mana handling. I spent fourteen decades trying to wake my mana sense. How did you do it?"

"I got lucky." It was only partly a lie. "I stumbled on a strong mana source I could feel, and worked my way up from there. But that's not what you want to ask me, is it?"

"How long did it take you to wake your girl's senses?"

"Hours." Nelis frowned at him, unbelieving. "I invented a method that's reliable and safe. I can show someone their aura, and they watch as I push their mana around with mine. It takes a while, but eventually, they learn to feel it." He drank beer while Nelis thought about what he just said.

"It can't be that simple."

"It is absolutely that simple."

"Maybe," he conceded, "if you know how to make mana visible. That's a rare trick."

"One that I possess." He smiled knowingly over his glass at the maestro. "Who is it you want awakened? Is it Willemien?"

"She's my niece, and about the only one of my relatives I'd make a bargain for. I like the rest of them well enough, and they're useful in the business, but they haven't got the talent for growing things. Billie's an arc, so she'll never have a class like your girl Alexis. There is so much I can't pass on to her until she's prepared, but I can't spare another dozen decades waiting to get started. How long does it take?"

"To open the senses? An afternoon. But that only gets you to the first rung of the ladder. There's no shortcut for the rest. I only started with Alexis a few days ago, so I haven't had a chance to train her for real." Taylor explained what happened with Prater and how their plans had to change.

"I was going to focus on training Alexis over the winter break. If Willemien is your price for accepting her, I can teach them both."

"Great minds think alike, my boy!" He poured for them both, and they drank to seal their agreement. There would be contracts and details later, but they had agreed on the important thing.

One good show deserved another, and after Nelis's tour of his fantastic laboratory, Taylor wanted to show off as well. He dug through the maestro's woodpile looking for something to shape into a whimsical art piece, but that idea was forgotten when a segment of burled wood practically leapt into his hand.

It looked like someone wanted a statue made of them. Were the gods interfering again? It was just a nudge, the barest suggestion, but Taylor knew the old folks pretty well by now.

"Do you pray to any particular god?"

"Shitukan. Why do you ask?"

"Me, too. Let me make something for you." He didn't ask the arc's permission, but took over a section of his potting bench and spread out his tools. The statue would be about nine inches tall. It was small compared to his recent efforts, but perfect for a home workshop.

Nelis watched patiently while the figure came to life in Taylor's hands, revealed in turns of knotted wood as a hooded man with a lantern. Taylor tried to pay attention as he carved, searching for the elusive sensation of that different mana used in divine figures. Not knowing what it was or how to find it vexed him. The orchardist gasped at the final investiture of mana required to turn wood into a divine figure. For once, the act didn't lay Taylor out on the floor, half-conscious.

The arc and human clapped their hands and said silent prayers to Shitukan.

"It's been a long time, old friend." Nelis touched the base gingerly with his fingertips, then lifted the wooden figure and gently put it on a shelf where the god could have a decent view of the table where he did much of his experimenting.

"I keep hearing that, but people won't talk about why they've all gone missing. I can't be the only person alive who makes divine figures."

"Most of them were sold off, mostly to rich collectors. It sounds foolish now, but back when the Empire was collapsing, every arc from the old country was homeless and desperate. People sold a lot more than divine statues to survive. Over the years, the Giving Church gathered up the ones that didn't end up in the hands of collectors. When a temple had to close, Imperial clerics were first in line to claim stewardship of its figures. Many went into storage, and their link to the gods faded from disuse."

"No prayer, no divinity."

"Exactly." Nelis nodded as if that explained everything.

"I still don't understand. The entire Arc race just stopped praying to the gods?"

"How can I explain this to someone so young? I guess, you could say we lost our faith in Erstdwerg and the other gods when we put all our faith into the emperor. You can't understand what it was like back then. It was one calamity after another, back to back. There was even talk about adding a third book of Cataclysms to scripture. Arc-Home was a client state at the time, self-governing. Our pride kept us fighting for a long time, but in the end … " He shook himself as if waking from a terrible dream. "The Empire saved us. It truly did. But it broke something in us as a people. If the gods couldn't protect us, then we'd put our faith in someone who could. And that person was Emperor Darius the Second.

"The Empire then was under siege from all sides — the fall of Arc-Home was just one of its disasters. But Emperor Darius was god-like in his power. He saved us as a people, shrank the borders, and personally defended the realm. The Emperors since then have been impressive, but none of them are a match for Darius II.

"Anyway, with our faith in the gods broken and classes solely in the hands of humans, is it any wonder we stopped making divine figures?"

"Why haven't I heard any of this before? I have a hundred books in Arcaic, and I've never read anything about this part of Arc history."

"That's because real Arc history is passed down orally. Here's an idea: When you bring Willemien back from her winter training, I'll arrange a cantor to teach you. Then you can learn our true history properly. Verbatim."

Taylor wasn't sure he wanted to learn it badly enough to memorize a ton of text. But he accepted the offer because he liked Nelis well enough to try to build a relationship. Intentional or not, the divine figure, the exchange of students, and the promised cantor amounted to carefully measured steps toward friendship. It wasn't often Taylor encountered someone so gifted who wasn't also majorly dysfunctional. As cautious as he was, he didn't want to let the opportunity slip past him without making an effort.

Late into the night, they talked of many things. They spoke of magic, life, culture, and divinity. Nelis reminisced about the sights of the old home he never thought he'd see again. When most of the brandy was gone, Taylor helped him into the house and delivered him into the arms of his servants, who handled him with amused care. Their love for their master said volumes about the kind of man he was.

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