Jane was finishing her cleanup when a knock sounded at her front door. She opened it to find her aunt standing there, looking considerably more like herself than she had the day before and holding a cloth bag that smelled strongly of breakfast.

  "Bella sends her regards," Cecelia said, brandishing the bag. "And her food. She’s a very good friend, if you didn’t know. The best ones always come with food."

  Jane had already eaten two breakfasts, but her life in Glenfall had changed her metabolism in ways she could hardly believe. Back at the academy, she could go half a day on nothing but tea and determination. Here, her body seemed to have developed entirely different expectations about regular meals. By the time they finished their work, or maybe even before, she’d be ready for that third breakfast.

  It's probably all the walking. And the baking. And the magic use. And everything else. My, but it’s a busy life.

  "Yes, Bella’s great.” Jane turned to the rack and reached for the coat Allen had given her. “I’m definitely keeping Bella."

  "I like all your new friends I’ve met. I’m more glad about that than you know.” Cecelia’s eyebrows rose as she watched Jane shrug into the down-filled coat. "That's a fine piece of work. Where did you get it?"

  Jane fastened the front and immediately felt the warmth around her. "Allen made it for me. It's such a good coat. I've never been cold in it. Not once."

  "He made that?" Her aunt stepped closer, examining the stitching and the way the quilted sections overlapped. "The craftsmanship is excellent. All those little pockets for the down, keeping everything in place. I want one."

  "I'm sure he'd make you one if you asked."

  "I intend to. Find out what he charges for something like this, won’t you?” Cecelia fixed Jane with a knowing look. “And don't let him refuse to charge me. You know how people are sometimes. This is the kind of work that deserves to be paid for properly, even if he's terrified of me. Which I believe he is.”

  "He is, I think. But he's coming around.”

  They stepped out into the morning air, which had enough bite to it to make Jane grateful for the coat. A few people nodded or waved at Jane as she passed, including people she didn’t know. In her old life, she’d been used to people knowing her by reputation. She didn’t particularly want to get used to it again.

  But there was no point in mourning her lost anonymity. The best way to get it back, or something close to it, would be to let herself become old news. Once people were familiar enough with her and with her magic, perhaps she wouldn’t stand out as much.

  Cecelia kept up a steady pace, her longer legs eating up the distance in a way that forced Jane to trot beside her.

  "You move fast.”

  "I've had practice." Her aunt glanced over at her. "You're keeping up well, though. All this walking around town has been good for you."

  "I've developed calluses. I quite like it, really. I feel much stronger now."

  "That's the spirit."

  When they reached the tram platform, they found the iron cage sitting empty at the top of its track. Jane felt her stomach clench in memory of that first nauseating ride.

  "I hate this thing,"

  "The tram?"

  "It's terrifying. All that open space below, and nothing but some gears and poles to keep you from falling. Allen said it's safe, that it just stops in place if anything fails, but it’s still just so wobbly.”

  Cecelia studied the contraption for a moment, then turned to look at the long drop beside it.

  "We could use magic to get down instead, if you prefer.”

  Jane knew just what her aunt was talking about. Cecelia was wind-aligned more than anything else, which was part of why it had been possible for her to get to Jane so quickly in the first place. This particular incantation, which made a pillar of air that slowed one’s fall, was part of a family of spells that were Cecelia’s specialty. She had used it to entertain Jane as a child. It would certainly be much more comfortable than the tram.

  Jane considered the tempting offer, then shook her head. "No. I know we’ll be using magic down below, but it’s too visible up here. We should avoid using more flashy magic than we have to within sight of the town.”

  "It's not particularly flashy, dear."

  "It would be flashy enough." Jane looked across the lake at Glenfall. "People are going to see magic and assume something else like the dragon is happening. I don't want to cause a panic just because I'm scared."

  Her aunt regarded her for a long moment. Cecelia’s eyes were filled with something like pride.

  "That's very thoughtful of you. And you are quite right. We can take the tram. If something goes wrong, I’ll catch us."

  The iron cage looked even more precarious than Jane remembered. She tried to remind herself that people used this thing every day without incident, and stepped inside.

  "Let's get this over with."

  Cecelia followed her in, and Jane pulled the lever that engaged the clutch. The tram descended slowly. Jane kept her eyes fixed on the rock wall rather than the drop.

  Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  The strange magic was there again, but after so many close encounters with the dragon’s magic, she hardly felt its less pleasant effects. She was able to breathe through it.

  Her aunt fared somewhat worse.

  "You feel that?" Cecelia clutched her stomach and turned a bit yellow. “It’s horrible. It’s the same feeling as above, isn’t it?”

  "Yes, but stronger. Although…" Jane clunked the lever, grinding the tram to a stop midway. “It’s weaker here than it was a few feet up.”

  "It is. Interesting. There's definitely a concentrated point somewhere around here." Cecelia had her eyes closed and her head tilted slightly, as if listening to something only she could hear. She held out her hand and blasted a chip out of the wall near them, a height marker of white scarred into the rock. “Pull that lever again. We’ll have to get to it from the bottom anyway. You know how it works.”

  The tram reached the bottom with another jolt, and Jane stepped out onto solid ground. Her aunt followed her several steps forward until they were in full view of the base of the waterfall.

  By the time they found a suitable space, the spray from the waterfall had already soaked through the shoulders of Jane's coat. Her aunt selected a broad, flat section of stone near the base of the falls, pulled chalk from her bag, and got to work.

  Jane didn’t have to be told what a focusing pattern was or why they needed one. She took her own chalk and began working around the circle in the opposite direction of her aunt’s drawing. The design was complex. It had to be. Even for the Grand Archmage, parting a waterfall was a significant draw of energy. Cecelia would need every bit of efficiency she could get to sustain her.

  They worked in silence in the roar of the falls. When the pattern was complete, they circled it carefully, checking each line and connection to make sure it was stable and unaffected by the water vapor in the air. Jane found two spots that needed reinforcement. Her aunt fixed them, and they checked again.

  This time, it was perfect.

  "Ready?" Cecelia asked.

  Jane nodded. Her aunt stepped to the center of the pattern and closed her eyes.

  Jane began to rise.

  She did her best to hang limp in the flow of air, minimizing the amount of force her aunt had to fight in order to move an entire person. She felt her aunt bounce her in the air a few times, as if experimenting with her weight and shape before attempting more serious movement.

  Jane appreciated the delicacy of Cecelia’s control, and that was even before she turned her attention to the waterfall.

  With a single gesture from Cecelia’s hand, the wall of water split just in front of Jane. The invisible force then pushed further up, fighting against the cascade to create a corridor of dry air that extended all the way to the rock face behind the falls. The thunder of water split on the knife’s edge of her aunt’s magic as Jane began to move. She rose smoothly, carried through the parted curtain of water and toward the dark rock behind it.

  The wrongness hit her immediately. The space behind the waterfall was filled with a magic so foul that her stomach lurched. She pushed through it, focusing on the task as the wind carried her higher, up toward the level of the white scar her aunt had blasted into the stone earlier.

  When she reached it, she stretched out her hand and touched the wall.

  It was truly revolting. Layers of corruption had built up here over time, coating the stone like the residue in a badly maintained pipe. It didn’t look any different, but the feel of it was horrible.

  Jane pulsed her magic through the rock, trying to understand what she was feeling. Whatever this was, it had been accumulating for years, compressed and concentrated by the constant action of the water.

  After a few seconds, she knew this wasn’t the type of thing she could understand while floating in the air. Gathering some power in her hand, she placed it on the disgusting surface of the rock.

  “Let the stone itself move. Shatter.”

  The odd magic in the air undulated as Jane’s spell dove into the rock and ripped it apart, bit by bit. When she pulled her hand away, she held a grapefruit-sized chunk of rock from the dead center of the contamination.

  She let a gentle bit of magical power course back down her aunt’s column of wind. An instant later, she felt Cecelia start to reel her in.

  “Here.” Back on solid ground, she tossed the stone to her aunt, who snagged it out of the air with a shudder. “This should help you get acclimated to it, if nothing else.”

  “That’s really something.” Her aunt turned the stone over and over in her hand before dropping it into her pouch. “And it helps us, because we now know that whatever is causing this problem has been building up for a long time.”

  “That seems bad.”

  If the source of the magic had been some big, sudden thing, removing it would have essentially removed the problem. It would have been like pulling out a thorn and patching the hole. There would have been healing to do, but that would be fast once the source of the pain was gone.

  This was more like a cancer, something that had built up slowly and seeped into the the environment. There was no telling if what they were looking at was even the worst spot.

  “What about the rest of the contamination?” her aunt asked. “The rest of the wall.”

  “Destabilizing it seems to be helping. A lot of the rocks will fall away into the water, and over time, that will clean them. But it’s all going to build up again unless we can find the source.”

  “Well, then, let’s get on that.” Her aunt glanced down the river, following the flow of the water. “I think I’m going to walk that way today. Maybe for another day after that. Knowing how long the contamination stays with the river might be helpful, and I want to make sure nothing terrible is happening in that direction.”

  “Right. And I’ll head upstream, I guess. Looking for potential sources.”

  “Nope!” Her aunt reached out and lightly bopped Jane on the top of her head. “Really nope. I forbid it. I’m assuming you’ve been cleared to go back to work by the doctor, or else you might have objected before I shoved you behind a waterfall. You are reopening your shop tomorrow.”

  “I should help,” Jane protested.

  “You could help. That’s a different thing. ‘Should’ is in the eye of the beholder, and my eye is the most official one here. I’m saying you should be baking and having fun with your friends. That’s why I’m here, remember? You are very competent, Jane. If I wanted you working on this problem, I would have just left it to you.”

  “Oh.” Jane felt better, somehow, if still a little guilty. “Then you are starting right now? The walking?”

  “No reason not to. I have some rations in my bag. This hot food won’t keep, though. You’d best help me eat it.”

  They found a dry patch of rock and ate together. It was odd how comfortable Jane felt. Cecelia had always been her guardian, but lately, she was fast becoming something like a friend. Jane decided she liked it, especially since her aunt didn’t seem to be giving up on any of her guardian duties in the process.

  People can be more than one thing. I bet it’s not always true, but it’s at least true sometimes.

  When the cooked breakfast was gone, they stood.

  “Well, I booked you for the whole day, but only needed you for a little portion of it.” Cecelia pulled her niece in for a hug. “Go get supplies for tomorrow, and then do something fun, alright? Buy some shoes.”

  Cecelia pressed a few coins into Jane’s hand, arguably enough to buy a good pair of new boots and several pairs of shoes. Jane looked at them with consternation, but Cecelia immediately cut that emotion off at the pass.

  “Really, Jane. When you look this uncomfortable receiving my care, it makes me feel like I didn’t spend enough time getting you accustomed to it. Just do this for me, all right? Get back on the tram, ride up to town, and buy shoes. I command thee.” Her aunt lifted her hand ceremoniously. “In my name as mage and aunt, and on my dime, I compel you to go have fun.”