Chương 20: Chapter Twenty: Crafting

Hollis took a break to watch the others fish and get his Breath meter back to full. Without the swarm of skipagans, the crater pools surrounding the river and beaches were beginning to see other, larger fish return. From up high on the cliff, he could see the larger fish as they navigated their way into and out of the main stream of the river, like cars in traffic. His mind was mostly focused on the root back in his pack. He had left it where it would stay dry further up the canyon toward the base camp.

The sour gum root had saved his life. He intended to turn it into a proper walking stick. The question was how. His Crafting skill was too low. In the game, players could simply bring their desired wood sample back to the master woodcrafter in order to get back their desired staff. He was going to be his own woodcrafter. Of course, he had an advantage. He still had seven unassigned skill points.

"Put a point into Crafting," he whispered. The crafter down the road on the island where you grew up worked day and night. You watched him breathe onto a green stave and coax it into the shape of a boathook. You watched him press a dry leaf against a bucket until the leaf's water-shedding passed quietly into the wood. He paid the neighborhood kids to help, as long as they stayed out of his way, and you learned what you could. [Crafting lvl. 3] → [Crafting lvl. 4] Hollis waited, as if instructions for crafting a proper magical walking stick would pop into his head on their own. It didn't happen. No, the inspector followed his thoughts, not the other way around. How do I craft a walking stick? he thought to himself. He knew he needed both Cultivation and Crafting, but he didn't know much else. The answer came to him not as a vision but as a story typed out letter by letter on the inspector's screen. He read it while sitting at the top of the cliff, regaining his strength.

A long, hot day turned into a shadowy sunset. You had worked at Thompson and Son's Crafting since shortly after Thompson Jr. got called off to war. The senior crafter had taken to you in his limited way. His growls to you were softer than to his other helpers. His criticisms almost sounded like teaching.

"Bring me a fire wand," he said to you as he removed his red bandana and wiped the sweat off his brow.

"A new wand, a green, wet one. And be quick about it." You ran to the wooden cabinet with dozens of small, square drawers and pulled them open until you found the fire wands. Those at the bottom were dry and crumbled like old cigars. They would be good for one big burst, if you were careful to throw them far away shortly after use. The wands on top still smelled of the garden where their components were grown. The leaf wrapping was still tight and leathery. You quickly shut the drawers and ran back to your master.

He examined the wand as soon as he had it in his hand and said nothing. You smiled. When he said nothing, that meant you had done well. He walked out into the greenhouse behind the woodshop and even held the door open for you; well, he didn't slam it shut behind him, at least. You were so quick to follow that you almost beat Thompson Sr.' s own shadow through that door. He waddled over to a workbench, past the many clay pots where walking sticks grew. Some were the size of twigs, others were nearly ten feet tall.

Their leaves only grew on the bottom, strangely. Thompson preferred it this way. He grew the trunk of the plant upward above the bush of tree leaves near the dirt. You had long wondered whether that was why his handiwork was renowned for its quality. Perhaps if leaves grew from the tops of the growing sticks, like in an ordinary tree, the wood would bend and warp to follow the light, you theorized. Perhaps the walking stick would grow feral if allowed to become a normal tree.

You had many ideas for why Thompson stuck to this old practice. Your eyes couldn't help but stare at the dense little bushes in the clay pots and follow the walking sticks upward as your mind worked.

"It keeps the leaves from getting all over the floor," Thompson growled as he followed your gaze. Huh, you thought. What a mundane explanation. Fallen leaves would stay in the pot if they grew at the bottom of the plant. Thompson grabbed a hunk of old, dead wood. All of the wood he worked with was dead, at least until he did his magic with it, but this wood looked especially dead. It was dry and cracked as if it had not lived in decades.

"Deadwood," Thompson said plainly.

"Not dead wood, deadwood. Rare and valuable stuff. Looks like it's rotten to its core, yes?" You agreed.

"Looks unsuitable for the blade. Looks overlong for magic, eh?" the man asked, his ebony skin already glistening from sweat again. You nodded.

"Well, you are wrong. This was cut from the live plant this morning," he said. He held it out to you, not to touch, but to look closely. You had seen firewood in better shape even after it had burned a bit. He took it back and set it on a metal tray on the wood bench. Then, he hobbled over and grabbed one of the walking sticks left soaking in a large tub next to the bench and handed it to you.

"I mean to burn this piece," he said.

"If the flames get beyond my control, you use this to douse it, you understand?" You took the wet stick and nodded. You realized that the stick had not been put in the tub to soak; it had been the thing that soaked the tub. Water still dripped from the short staff long after it should have. Where was the water coming from? You didn't know. The walking stick had already produced more than its weight since you started holding it. If you gave it Breath, who knew how much water it could produce? No matter.

Thompson held the fire wand and pointed it at the chunk of deadwood on the metal tray. He looked at you earnestly.

"If I catch on fire, put it out immediately or not at all." You wouldn't realize that was a joke until you were already grown. Thompson's gnarled fingers would lead you to expect rough movement, but in your life you would never see more graceful movement as he lowered the wand closer to the deadwood, gave Breath to ignite the wand's tip, and began delicately spinning fire along its exterior like a painter.

"Deadwood hides its true form in this ghastly farce," he said.

"The only way to see its branches is by fire." The flames grew evenly and engulfed the deadwood chunk. This was not dangerous, not in Thompson Sr.' s hands. No, the fire was a tool in the employ of a master. It worked to burn and grate the wood smaller, and smaller, sending orderly smoke wisps up into the sky. If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it. You held your dripping walking stick at the ready, but soon realized you would never need it.

Thompson didn't bring you here for his own safety. He was teaching you, and you were determined to learn it all. The fire ate at the false exterior of the wood, carving away years of death and decay until, eventually, all that remained was a glowing, green branch, with leaves as delicate as a ghost's breath still alive and healthy. Blowing in the slightest breeze.

"Deadwood is a powerful plant, son," the man said.

"Capable of taking the traits of things living and dead, of spirits themselves." Thompson dropped what remained of his fire wand into the tub still filled with water, and it sizzled, sending bubbles up for a full minute after submerging. He then grabbed the glowing deadwood tenderly, as if it were a child, and carried it over to an unoccupied clay pot, with soil ready for planting. It took little coaxing for this hunk of magic wood to take root. It stood straight upward, its ghostly leaves bouncing happily.

Thompson breathed into the roots woven into the metal struts above, and they instantly sprinkled water down onto the plant in a gentle mist. He then turned to you, pondering, mulling something over. Then, he spoke.

"Don't let the fools tell you that dragons and sea monsters are the true source of power in this world," Thompson said.

"The magic of Periapt is in its great trees." Hollis fell to the ground after he finished reading the entry. He smelled the smoke of the deadwood. He could feel water dripping from his hands where he fruitlessly held the dripping staff.

"I'm being impatient," he said to Willo as he pulled himself up from the ground.

"If even a master craftsman needs to plant these trees and let them grow, then I'm not going to cultivate a magic staff in one afternoon." He gathered a full bucket of the skipagans before he climbed down the ledges, a process that was terribly simple. All he had to do was fill the bucket he had brought with water and slowly pour it out into the top ledge pool. Hundreds of the tiny shrimp-like creatures jumped right into the bucket as he poured the water out.

His Cooking skill was only level 2, but it was enough to tell him the fish were edible, calling them a tasty topping for soups and salads, "the secret ingredient of many an envied family recipe," it claimed. That lined up with what his Fishing skill had said about them being a taste of the sea. He made his way down the cliff to where the others were gathering up their haul. A bucket of tasty, but tiny, fish was nothing compared to the catch the others had pulled in, but at least he had been productive.

His mind was on planting his sour gum root as he walked the canyonside path back to the hospice. Like most of his obsessions, his thoughts would eventually turn back to the fog, but for now, he was determined.

"I hear something sloshing," Royle said as Hollis caught up with him and Dakota as they hiked back with their catch.

"Tell me, are we rich in those skipagans?"

"I have a bucketful, and there's more where this came from," Hollis said.

"Let's get them fried up before some eidolon comes bartering," Royle said with a smile.

"I have nightmares about that happening." Dakota's hoveleer chattered away as if he were really talking. The muskrat could walk on its hind legs like a human and chose to do so, much to his human's annoyance.

"You can have one of them. Just one," the fur-coated man said.

"I don't want to hear anything about it." The muskrat serenaded them with its arguments until Otis showed up. The creature didn't want to test the hound master's patience. It ran ahead on all fours and was lazily floating in the river by the time they made it back. Tawny was busy when they returned. She went through their haul of fish herself and noted it in a journal. Her brow sharpened as she did mental calculations. Her blond-gray hair was tied back tightly. The count was low; Hollis knew.

The summers were bountiful, but the winters forbidding. They needed to gather more if they would be ready. It seemed like the failure of their hoveleer ranch had been a real setback. She did let out a smile when she saw the skipagans, though, even if it was strangled by her hard features moments later. He had intended to ask permission to grow his walking stick near the small orchard of trees the hospice had maintained on one of the ridges in the canyons.

They had lemons and small pitted fruits, plums that cleaned their eaters' teeth and visually similar plums that worked well as rat poison (they were clearly labeled). It was a humble but well-loved collection. He chickened out before he could ask. Sure, it would be convenient if his walking stick could be nearby and cared for at the same time as all the other trees, but he felt ashamed to ask these people for anything. He would grow it upriver instead.

There were sunlight ledges that could be used to grow plants with a little coaxing. He would need to bring up some good soil and make sure the plant wouldn't cause a rockslide by growing its roots deep into the canyon wall. All of this, he would do on his own time. The residents at Tawny's hospice still looked at him like he had that new Kazier glow. He was polite in return, but truly, he felt foolish and awkward around them. They hoped so much for what his arrival could mean.

What it ultimately meant was that Hollis had played an old, cursed video game. He hoped his presence would mean more than that one day. He left before dinner while there was still enough light to work. The ledge he chose was about a mile further into the canyon. He knew it would be right because some small bushes had already made it their home. He dug into the dirt and mixed it with his bucket of garden soil. It was the same one that had been full of skipagans. He would have to wash it out before he used it again.

While his intention had been to collect some fish heads to fertilize his walking stick, he realized that Otis fed those to his dogs. He couldn't steal from them. That was okay. He spent the next thirty minutes using his own survival gear to catch a fish from the river. It was a lanky fish that was physically difficult to pull out of the water, as if it had some ability to grip onto the rippling river itself.

Hollis had to grab the fish with one hand and cut through the stretching strand of water that held onto it like a tar-covered anchor rope. As soon as he sliced through it, the water fell down into the river like normal water again. [Naturalism lvl. 6] You have captured a weedy reed fish. Water sticks to its flesh like globs of muddy river weeds that keep it hydrated and provide a defense. It can hold itself in the water against much force, though larger fish eat it with little difficulty.

Cool power, but there were more fish in the sea. He cut the whole thing into fertilizer and buried it at the bottom of the hole he had dug and augmented with garden soil. Next, he took his little cutting of sour gum root and planted it in the soil, leaving enough of it exposed to air that he could confidently manipulate it. It took little effort for the root to dig down deep for water. It took much effort to get the root to grow upward. Hollis gave it Blood and Breath. He guided it with Mind. It didn't budge.

He felt as if he were arguing with a toddler. [Cultivation lvl. 4] Growing roots on a proper piece of wood is easier than the reverse. You need more than Blood to make this leap. Roots are the thirsty mouths of plants, but the true wood is something special. Was he even trying to make true wood? Sour gum trees had medicinal properties that could be useful for a healer's staff, but Hollis was after the roots' water-manipulation properties.

However, the water staff in the craftsman's story wasn't specified as either root or trunk wood. He sat on the ridge and thought for a moment. If he were to grow true trunk wood from the sour gum tree, he could then grow roots from that base. It was a little convoluted, but he may have to take the long way around. Grow the roots into a proper tree, then give the resulting walking stick its own roots. But then how could he make the jump from roots in the ground to a proper, if slender, tree trunk?

In his heart, he knew the answer. Well, in his soul, at least. He needed to give the roots Spirit. He needed to give it proper life, not just Breath that could animate it, but something more. He needed to give up a little bit of control. What, exactly, did it mean to give something Spirit? If he gave it, was it renewable like Breath or Blood? How long would it take? Hollis thought back to his video game experience. Spirit was not a large part of the tutorial. There was only one way to find out the truth.

He had to experiment. Hollis put his hand to the small root's surface and tried his best to will Spirit into it. He failed. He reasoned that perhaps he couldn't do it because it was, essentially, dead. The Breath he had given it had faded by the time he attempted to spend his Spirit. So, he gave the taproot Breath, and it came to life, digging its roots even deeper. He gave it Blood and Mind, for whatever that was worth.

He would have given it Bile too, just to be thorough, but Bile perplexed him as much as Spirit did in this situation. Finally, he attempted to give it Spirit, to connect with it on a higher level, to nourish it with some deeper part of himself. Nothing worked. Willo flew around the bare root as if he were trying to help. The sun was setting. There was no point in giving the plant life if the thing it lived for was setting behind the horizon.

"What's the secret?" he asked the blinking Willo. But if the Ghost Light Beetle knew the secret of giving something Spirit, he kept it.