TWO HUNDRED TWENTY-SEVEN: Here-to-There VII

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Moving hundreds of people was easier with magic involved, but it was still a process with its share of mishaps.

“How could you not notice the syrup was leaking? There’s a stream of it going all the way back to the train!”

“I forgot my bag.”

“Hold still. I’m trying to count you all, but I only have two eyes…where’s your brother?”

“She forgot her egg collection!”

“Where’s my right sandal? Has anyone seen a sandal?”

“Ojoo fell on the steps. He was busy complaining about the rooflines.”

“Ojoo!”

“Don’t worry. The Avowed caught him.”

And so it went. What had started as an orderly unloading of people and luggage turned into Alden running back and forth across the station so many times that it started to be funny. There was always one more errand, and sometimes on the way to complete it, he needed to stop a man with firm opinions about roofing from tumbling down the stairs.

Surely this is the final trip.

After several minutes of searching, he’d found a child’s missing bag beneath a table at the stall that held the used tablets. He straightened with the satchel and looked around the station for any stragglers. It was an open space, and Leeter-zis’s paint made it easy to identify participants in the Here-to-There. But Alden spotted no coral marks on the faces he could see, and among the backs turned toward him, there was only one that he recognized.

What’s she doing here?

Ryada-bess’s sage-colored knight uniform made her stand out. So did her hair, which had followed its own ambitions and begun to escape and frizz around her head.

Alden jogged toward her to see if she needed help. She was standing on one of the poems embedded in the floor. The pale beige words were a sharp contrast to the dark brown that surrounded them, and with some help from his flashcard translation, he could read them as he approached. A line about an animal called a t’tchispa caught his eye, but Ryada’s gaze was turned upward while she watched the stories playing out high above them. The swirling sand painted images of a trio of wizards who were making a spring bubble up from the ground.

He stopped just before he reached her, realizing something.

Ryada was alone. She was more alone than he’d seen her since they left Rapport I this morning, perfectly positioned for someone to have a quiet word with her.

Their departure had been delayed so many times already. A few more minutes wouldn’t matter if someone did want to have that quiet word. Happy to have identified this opportunity before he ruined it, he reversed course and headed for one of the exits.

[Stuart, Ryada’s the last person left in the station. She’s distracted by the ceiling.] In case that wasn’t a clear enough suggestion, he added, [Maybe Emban should come and tell her that it’s time to go.]

Was it odd to be so hopeful for the sakes of a girl who’d flown paper flyers with him and another who’d shown him the tattoo she’d gotten with the squadmates she’d faced chaos with?

Those weren’t deep connections. If he disappeared right now, back to Earth never to return, he doubted either of them would think of him again unless they happened to run across a basket full of bananas.

I’d wonder about how they were doing a lot more often.

When he studied his spell book, every time he heard about a successful demon slaughter at Matadero, after his next affixation…

As he left the station, he looked around until he found Stuart standing below one of the golden flags that decorated the haulers. The vehicles had been provided by a wizard who’d met them when the train first arrived and welcomed all of the ordinary class members. It had been a warm ceremony but much briefer than the one that had set them off on their travels this morning.

Stuart saw Alden at the same time and lifted a hand.

I guess he’d make it hard for them all to forget me right away. If nothing else, there was a ryeh-b’t flapping around the siblinghold with Alden’s name. So the other members of the art’h family would have to think of him a little, even if they were just thinking how relieved they were that he’d stopped being a confusing interloper.

Alden delivered the satchel to its owner, and made his way back to Stuart slowly, trying to give everyone who saw him one last chance to say, “Oh dear! I can’t find my…”

But nobody did.

The sun was about to dip behind the irregular swoops of the white rooftops lining the street. Alden imagined they must look like tumbled piles of pillows from above. All around, people had stepped onto second and third floor balconies to watch what was happening with the Here-to-There.

It wasn’t much longer before the cheering and cries of welcome from those watchers told Alden that they were finally underway again. He’d joined Stuart and Bithe, and they were soon walking at the back of a procession that felt more like Alden’s original vision of an Earth-style parade than everything else they’d done today.

Many people had started singing. Stuart was rattling off a list of everything they had to do to houses and worrying that some of the wizards here didn’t know how to turn the blessing liquid he’d brought into a home-filling mist.

“I practiced that spell. It’s very traditional! Why didn’t everyone else learn it?”

And Bithe had his own concerns. “I think he wants Uro-bor to plead on his behalf to his mother for the second wand to be promised to him. It’s extremely inappropriate for him to make the gift a source of guilt for her.”

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“If I do a few extra houses myself…” Stuart muttered. “They can’t possibly plan to splash it on the floor!”

“All of the bors take the honor so seriously. They’re going to put the wand above their family stone. Where are Emban and Ryada? I can’t see them ahead.”

Alden didn’t know if Bithe and Stuart were comfortably carrying on parallel conversations by splitting their attention, or if they were just talking to themselves with no expectation of input from each other. But Stuart did hear that last question. He looked back toward the station’s front steps and then whispered an answer in Bithe’s ear, before adding, “Alden saw that she’d been left behind and thought Emban might want to have her chance.”

Alden gave him a thumbs up.

Stuart knew that gesture now and returned it eagerly.

“So…it’s now,” Bithe said slowly after he turned his own gaze away from the station. “That’s…this is good. Emban has to ask. She’s been holding the request for too long to do nothing. And Ryada will say the right words to make everything as sweet as can be wished for after the sour has been bitten.”