Vortex was coiled up in a mound when I awoke. There was light shining through the peephole on the door but otherwise the house was dark.

  “Awake, are you?”

  “Hmm, yeah.” I wiped the sleep from my eyes. “Did you find the right waterfall?”

  A little bubble of magic light rose from his location and shone on the little room. Another thing he’d skipped telling me he could do.

  “Sure, not only that, I found something better. A natural treasure and a secret garden realm that looks like it hasn’t been entered in a long time.”

  His stories for the past few days had been filled with secret, hidden and restricted realms that Mikel and the team bested.

  “Vortex, are you suggesting that you want to guide a hatchling through a secret realm before I even have my system?”

  “Of course not. I will stay with you until you have a secure place to stay, I will see how close the gem will get me to tier eight and then I will go sit under the tree under the waterfall until you are ready to try it. You don’t need a seventh or eighth tier monster drawing attention to you once you’re safe in the human habitation.”

  “I suppose you have a point. So, shall we go to the stairs?”

  “Secret cave first. You can harvest the treasure fruits and the seeds from old fruits.”

  “I will bow to your experience.” I said. “When should we start?”

  “You slept most of a day. I can lead you at night and the moon is full tonight.”

  “I’ll eat something, get dressed and we can go. Have you eaten?”

  “I have sufficient nutrition for my needs.” He sidestepped the question, meaning he probably hadn’t eaten but wasn’t hungry.

  I still had ample reserves of food from Aunt Glory’s preparations. I chose something simple and quick to eat.

  It felt strange not to have to take down my tent.

  The sun was already past its zenith as Vortex made the house disappear. He climbed up to his usual spot in the shirt.

  I was reduced to a walking pace, but Vortex had actually left quite a deliberate trail in the underbrush. He made concrete bridges appear when I needed to cross streams. I’m fairly sure he conjured them separately each time.

  It was just dawn when we got to the treasure cave waterfall.

  “Just let me check.” He said, jumping down from my pocket and moving faster than I could see. He was back in a few minutes. “I think those imps are bleeding through the walls of the secret realm. At least I will have more than enough to eat while I wait for you to grow up. If you’re right at twelve is best. Bring a few friends.”

  I nodded.

  “This way.” He led me on a very different path than the one he’d taken. He’d just jumped into the water. He led me behind the falls to a blank stone wall, down a little hollow under the ledge and into a tunnel. I would have to bring only skinny friends.

  We got inside and Vortex lit up the dark space.

  “In daylight there is quite a lot of light from a higher opening. You can see where the light hits by the way the branches grew.”

  He was right, of course. The tree had sprouted in probable shadow and grown like a tree buffeted by a constant wind.

  “I never bothered to upgrade the parts of light I see, so I can’t really tell which ones are ripe. This is an Ancient Luminous Silver Plum. The unripe plums will be small, hard and green. The half ripe ones will be pink. The ripe ones will be deep red or shiny and silver. I can smell that there is at least one silver one.”

  “Three.” I said, faintly.

  “Good. Pluck all the silver ones, all the deep red ones and the four darkest pink ones. Store them all in your storage. Where is your storage, by the way? I can’t sense it at all.”

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  “My nose.”

  “Huh. Let me know if you need a boost.”

  He set his light to follow me around as I clambered up the tree.

  I marveled a little at how sturdy and balanced my steps were. The convent had been good for me.

  I plucked the plums. They fell quickly into my hands at a light touch. I came back to the ground.

  “I kept the ones that have sprouted. My personal dimension will grow them and a spatial ring would kill them.”

  “Personal dimension? Is that a high level beast thing?”

  “It’s a high level being thing. And no, I can’t use it to process my treasure gem.”

  “Huh. Well. What now?”

  “We should get to the other waterfall before dawn. If I were the government of Melanor I would have someone watching that entrance.”

  “I would set a guard at the top.” I narrowed my eyes. “I wonder how Sir Mia knew about it.” I shook my head. Unlike Lara, Sir Amelia had never opened up and told me her life story.

  The walk was quick and remarkably easy. Vortex set one of his bridges from the shore of the pond to the lip of the cave. There was even a span of covered bridge under the water.

  For the first time, I noticed that the bridge was in the air, not pressing into the bank of the pond. I wondered if that was different or if I had just missed it every other time. I didn’t question. I just quietly crossed the bridge. The stairs led silently up into the dark. I expected Vortex to get small and sit in my improvised pocket, but he didn’t.

  “Ever seen a flying carpet, hatchling?”

  “Only in tales.” And only tales from my former home.

  Vortex huffed. “Mikel made this one. I’ve never seen a motion device like it. Sit. I’ll steer.”

  I sat and he coiled himself around my waist.

  By the height of the mountain I expected to be climbing for a few days. The flying carpet was fast. A few minutes into the flight, Vortex ducked into a side tunnel near the ceiling. I was not expecting the move and I gasped. He chortled with glee.

  “I searched all the passageways. There’s a guard and a door at the top of the stairs. This one comes out in an underground tunnel that has a few staircases to human doors.

  Now that the carpet could go straight up instead of turning and dodging constantly we got to the top quite quickly.

  “Why didn’t we just use this? Why did I run for days?”

  “Why should I ruin your genuine adventuring experience?”

  I decided not to get mad. At least he didn’t make me walk up those stairs and get caught at the top. Then again, Sir Amelia d’Moore’s name might have given me passage. Hard to say.

  The tunnel was dark. Vortex steered to the only open doorway and landed. He put up his magic spell light.

  “Pull out that lantern. We should rest here until you’re ready to go into town. There is a bricked off doorway in the next room. We should be secure for now.”

  “Why don’t you go ahead and use your treasure?”

  “What will you do?”

  “Set up camp and rest.” I shrugged.

  “You won’t be bored or scared of the dark?”

  “Set your house up against the open doorway and nest inside. I have books and craftwork and plenty of things to occupy my time.”

  “Are you trying to get rid of me?”

  “Don’t you want to get rid of me?”

  “Nope.” He hissed after, and I suspected there were words in there somewhere.

  “I don’t have to rush to town. We’re safe here and I have plenty of food for months.”

  He hissed. “Set up your camp. I’ll keep watch while you do. You can think about it until you wake again.”

  I nodded, but I had no intention of changing my mind. I wanted to study the book from the safe and I didn’t want anyone to know that I had it.

  I set up a much more elaborate camp than ever before.

  Aunt Glory had provided a desk and chair, a recliner chair that I would happily sleep in, an elaborate mana powered kitchenette, all the comforts of home. And of course I had a magic chamber pot. Even the poorest beggar had one of those. The imperial bureaucracy gave them away.

  With a nice lantern on desk and near chair I was quite comfortable and ready to study.

  I started with the book from the safe. I carefully opened it in just the way Kaia had always handled books at the library.

  I even put on a thin pair of cotton gloves. The book was a book of runes, just as I had seen. But there were few or no words to describe or explain anything. The pages were numbered, though, and not numbered one per page. The same number might be on five or six pages in a row. It was when I realized that the little flowers next to the numbers meant something that it clicked.

  This book was a compendium of atomic description runes.

  I actually closed the book and walked away for a breather. For the first time since Vortex blocked the door I was sorry I couldn’t get outside.

  I paced around the space for a few minutes. When I returned to the desk and I began piling my notebooks onto the table. All those books I filled with English words in my toddlerhood in the palace.

  I hadn’t dared to look at them in the convent. They were completely unorganized. The numbering system was strictly chronological.

  I got out a sheet and began making an index of topics. I didn’t bother to alphabetize, I just started with book one.

  My handwriting had changed considerably since then. I moved methodically, helped by my long standing habit of writing the title of the books referenced on the inside cover.

  It took me two days, but I finished and I whittled the books down to four useful books on runes, enchanting with runes and talismans in particular.

  As I read my notes I remembered even more of what I had read so quickly back then.

  I took that information and attempted to draw a talisman to produce a bar of gold.

  When I tore it, nothing happened. It didn’t even destroy itself. I burned it anyway. I was using blood for ink after all, I needed to minimize the random drops of blood someone else might use against me someday.

  The answer to the riddle came when I flipped through one of the notebooks. There was a talisman to make an ice cube like you would use in a drink.

  The diagram showed twenty of the same symbol for water that was in the atoms book. I studied it, teasing out what each part did.

  It clicked. I drew a new talisman for gold. This time a cube about two centimeters tall clinked on the table and the paper burned up. I was in business!