Chapter 11: The Founding of Fort Stone
The nature of the country was, as they thought, so good that cattle would not require house-feeding in winter, for there came no frost in winter, and little did the grass wither there.
—Saga of the Greenlanders
Though by no means well-rested, Grace and her companions manages to sleep awhile. For warmth, they bunched near the burning trashcan, and Bennu’s egg. Falling pebbles put Fox on the outskirts of the group. She insisted she preferred it that way. It stopped raining by morning, but Dusky complained about the continued lack of sunlight. Thigh-long trenches had been clawed into the concrete ditch outside the bridge. Diana tripped and fell into one where a puddle collected.
“You’re free to stay.” Dr. Bezoar followed after them. She popped the newspaper pages she had been holding above her head into her mouth. Somehow, the satyr chewed, grinned, and talked at the same time. “Everyone needs a vacation.”
“Um, no thank you,” said Grace. The Aniwye will probably come back. Still, she had no idea where to go.
Exploiting her opposite-facing eyes, Dr. Bezoar tried holding two conversations at once. To Grace, she responded “Well if you really want to fly, who am I to interfere with your nature? Keep the agate close to your heart. Or not. It’s yours.” The same time, she appraised Fox’s stone cloud. “You know, kid, lithobolia’s a rare talent.”
“It’s no ‘talent.’” Fox made quotes with her fingers. “It’s some kinda’ curse.”
“Don’t be so sure.” Dr. Bezoar reached into a pocket. “You think poltergeist phenomena appear every day? Not on this world. If you’re ever interested in Interplanetary Geology, here’s my card.”
The paper square seemed to be stained with coffee, and one corner had been chewed. Fox stuck out her tongue, but pocketed it all the same before hauling Diana out of the puddle.
“We can’t go back to the Croatoan Archives,” decided Schrodinger. “No one’s even there to check in the scroll.”
The corvids kept away from the grimalkin, roosting on top of the bridge. “You really think we can trust this cat, Gracie?” asked Albumen. His voice strained.
“You know I can understand you, right?” Schrodinger’s tail flicked. His glowing eyes fixed on the gold canister.
“Your accent’s terrible, though.” Jackanapes moved a bit further away.
“A different dialect.” Schrodinger yawned, showing all his needle-sharp teeth. “I learned your tongue from the ibises of Egypt.”
“Is anyone else annoyed to not understand all this ‘caw caw cawing’?” asked Fox.
“Neither you nor Diana Hemlock are missing much,” assured Schrodinger. “Anyway, the library’s currently no use. Directly entering the Limbus Region brings the risk of reencountering the Aniwye. Luckily, there are other ways to traverse the Astral, some quite secret. I have a safe place in mind for us to regroup, with plenty of food. Anyone wishing to come along: shut your eyes as tight as you can. And think of lions.”
“We’re not imagining a dark box again?” asked Grace. She looked where the birds congregated, realizing how confused they must be. “Oh, right. You never traveled this way before. But I’m sure you can learn!”
“Should we think of mountain lions or African ones?” asked Diana.
Schrodinger shook his head. “Doesn’t matter. Then, picture we’re on a flat surface, like a map. Not so easy with this rubble, but pretending is one of the most useful skills you will ever cultivate. Just as grimalkins protect knowledge, lions, tigers, leopards, jaguars, panthers and other big cats guard the not-yet-known. They dwell by the far corners of the maps, and usually stay there. But, if you spot them, they see you. And you’re done for.”
“What happens?” Grace already knew she would not like the answer, but had to ask anyway.
“The guardians of the not-yet-known drag anyone who views them into the cold, empty spaces between stars. Those that return don’t have a scratch on them, but have gone completely insane. Most don’t come back at all.”
Grace gulped. Diana hiccupped. Fox frowned. Jackanapes tried to joke with the Murder, but petered out before reaching a punchline. Dr. Bezoar ate leftover stew. Schrodinger closed his eyes.
“Traveling the Astral to places forgotten by history—such as the sanctuary I plan to lead us to—is simple as moving your claw from one side of a map to the other. But, no matter what hisses, growls, queries, promises, offers, or threats you may hear, you must never open your eyes. That’s the one rule. Don’t even peek a little bit. Because then they will have you.”
“Wait,” said Fox, “if nobody’s seen these monsters and stayed sane, how would we know they look like lions?”
“Fair question.” Schrodinger’s eyes stayed shut, but he grinned. “Millennia ago, they left statues of themselves in front of various temples, palaces, and tombs around the world. These were the original sphinxes, and written on them were curses threatening painful deaths to anyone who defaced them. Lots of Napoleon’s soldiers came to unpleasant ends in Russia that had nothing to do with winter. I’ll leave it at that.”
Even if the Murder refused to trust a cat, Grace convinced them to also close their eyes. But she could not tell if they kept them shut. She pictured herself inside a map, one that could fold in on itself, so they might cross to wherever they needed to in a moment.
“Psssst,” came a hiss. Hot breath hit the back of her neck, plus the sound of a tail swishing. “Got a riddle for ya’. Answer right, and I’ll grant your most cherished desire.”
“Leave me alone, sphinx. I’m not listening.” Grace kept her eyes shut as instructed, but Schrodinger never said she needed to keep silent.
“You know, it’s impolite to not make eye contact with someone you’re speaking to.”
“For one thing,” Grace responded, “I’m not speaking to you. You came up to bother me. For another, my ears and mouth work fine without my eyes. My Grandmam says sometimes I talk in my sleep.”
“But you’re not at her place, are you? Wouldn’t you rather be? The pussycat’s leading you astray. Far, far from poor granny. Solve my riddle and she’ll be tucking you in tonight, all cozy and safe.”
“What if I don’t guess right?”
“Oh, you’re clever. Maybe clever enough to solve my riddle. Probably not.” The sphinx’s tail swished more, but not counting hot breath, he never physically touched Grace. “Here goes: what has four legs in the morning, two legs in the day, and three legs at night?”
Grace bit her lip. She knew the riddle from a book of myths her Grandmam read, though the old woman never finished the story. It probably had a happy ending.
“Too hard for you, little fool?”
Grace gritted her teeth. “No. I know this one. It’s easy. The answer is ‘man.’ In the morning of life, a baby crawls on all-fours. The days he’s an adult, he walks on two legs. But, when he’s old and near dark, he needs a cane to walk, and that’s his third leg.”
“Huh?” The sphinx made a surprised choke. “Naw, dude, the answer’s obviously a gecko! In the morning, the lizard’s got four legs. Then during the day, you slice off two legs. By night, the gecko’s managed to grow back one limb, but the other one’ll take ’til morning.”
“You torture a lizard?” Ragamuffin screeched. “That’s horrible. It’s wrong to hurt animals you’re not going to eat. Even then, you don’t make them suffer for long.”
“Didn’t understand that squeaking at the end,” said Fox, “but is growing back legs something lizards do?”
“For your informasssstion,” the sphinx’s words devolved into a hiss, “geckos can regrow limbs. Like if their tail’s bitten off.”
“But a tail’s different from a leg.” Apparently, Jackanapes could also hear what the sphinx was saying. “A gecko might regrow a tail easy, but a leg’s got all these extra bones, like toes.”
“Yeah,” volunteered Albumen, “your riddle should go ‘What starts with five limbs in the morning, then four limbs in the day because some jerk hacked off one, and then has five limbs again by evening.’”
“Well that doesn’t sound very poetic,” the sphinx complained with a pitiful moan.
“A gecko can’t even regrow a tail within a day,” argued Chiaroscuro, “I’ve encountered them in my travels. It takes a month, at least.”
“Okay,” added Offal, “The riddle should go ‘What has five limbs in the morning, then four limbs in a day, and then a night a month from then, everything’s back to normal.”
“No! No! No!” the sphinx stomped his foot.
“Salamanders can regrow legs,” Diana eventually said, with more certainty than usual. “But they’re not lizards. They’re actually amphibians.”
“How did you know that, Diana?” asked Fox.
“I spent a summer reading about newts because I thought I was turning into one. Of course, I was wrong. Turns out I’m just a useless squonk.” Diana began sobbing.
“Argh! I’ve had enough!” screeched the sphinx. Grace heard the sound of heavy paws stomping away, but she still refused to open her eyes.
“Salamanders,” Dusky pronounced the word slowly. “Bennu mentioned them. Can’t they live in fire like phoenixes?”
“No,” stated Chiaroscuro. “Totally different creatures. Amphibian-salamanders prefer water, not fire.”
“But they have the same name?” Offal made the corvid equivalent of a raspberry. “So confusing.”
“Everyone be quiet!” cut in Schrodinger. “Otherwise, I’ll only get us halfway there. Or twice as far. I’m not going back to Thule.”
There came a murmuring of apologizes from Grace’s friends. A sphinx’s hot breath never again bothered the back of her neck.
While it did not feel like riding in a car, she felt a definite lurch in her stomach, caused by movement instead of hunger. Something soft brushed her ankles. Grace recognized the feel of grass. She now stood on something less hard than cement, and the weather was not nearly as chilly as under the bridge. (If anything, she felt a bit too warm.)
“Um, Schrodinger,” she asked hesitantly, “is it safe for us to open our eyes yet?”
“Indeed.” The grimalkin purred.
The first thing Grace saw was the giant stone. It rose so high that if seven gangly men stood on each other’s shoulders, they still needed the extra height of a dwarf to equal it. Its color was mostly a mottled gray-brown, but when sunlight—yes, the sun shone with impunity in the blue sky above, without a single cloud blocking it—hit certain spots, the stone sparkled. Pieces of quartz must be embedded in it.
The stone stood atop a round hill, with a chaotic thatch of grapevines growing about the summit. Hearing water flowing, Grace turned in the tall, green grass to see a narrow river that nevertheless looked deep. Fat, silver-scaled fish with pink bellies swam its length, occasionally bobbing up to catch stray insects. The word that came to Grace’s mind was “abundance.” Reverend Stuff liked to use it. Her worries about finding sustenance moved to the wayside.
No sphinxes prowled the area. Only a grimalkin.
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
“Thank Lief we made it,” Schrodinger slinked over to Grace, rubbing against her legs.
She kneeled to scratch his ears.
“What about leaves?” Offal asked while inspecting grapevine foliage. He lost himself in devouring the dark purple fruits.
Fox picked a grape herself, but did not eat it. Only eyed the fruit suspiciously.
Ragamuffin carried Bennu’s egg, leaving Albumen and Chiaroscuro to argue over the best place to try hatching it. Jackanapes searched for a foothold on the tall stone. He perched next to Dusky, who already homed in on the spot receiving maximum sunlight.
Diana cooled her feet in the river. For the first time, Grace saw them without slippers. One foot had normal toes, but the other one was webbed. With such different types of feet, no wonder the girl was always falling over. Grace previously mistook it for simple clumsiness.
“Not ‘leaf’ as in what a tree has except during winter.” Schrodinger scowled as static passed from Grace to him. “Lief Erickson. The Viking explorer who discovered America…well, not really. There were a million other civilizations already settled here. Put an asterisk next to his name in the history books.”
“I never even heard of this Erickson guy.” Fox walked over. Her mouth was stained purple. “Just about Christopher Columbus in 1492.”
“People can forget history,” said Schrodinger, “but the Astral does not. The few villages and carved stones Lief and his friends left on this hemisphere five hundred years before Columbus came stupidly bumbling along were buried. Vikings could have stayed on this continent longer, but they gave milk to the natives, who were very much lactose intolerant. They thought they were being poisoned, and chased the explorers away! But those encounters left an echo, as with anything living creatures do. The dream version of that brief country endures.”
“We’re standing in a memory,” Grace figured out.
Schrodinger nodded. “Exactly, Grace Grey. But you can still eat, drink, and sleep here, as you would in the physical world. It’s called Vinland. Literally ‘vine-land’, because of the grapes. If you get tired of eating them and aren’t patient enough to fish salmon like myself, I’m sure there’s supplies in the Runestand.” He gestured to the tall stone on the hill. Next to his housecat-sized body, it might have been a mountain.
Grace placed a palm on the stone and walked its perimeter. Regardless of the sun’s heat, its surface was cool, especially the quartz bits. While otherwise smooth, there were letters lightly carved into it. They were too deliberate to be natural cracks. There was an “R” and a “B”, but otherwise none she recognized.
She kept touch the whole while till circling to where she started. Schrodinger stated there should be supplies inside, but there seemed to be no doors or latches, nor crevices where things might be stashed. “Are supplies buried under it, or something? We don’t have any shovels.”
Grace turned to the cat, who fixated on a spot among the grass rather than answering her.
“Ah, finally!” Schrodinger clawed through some vines to reveal a wooden trapdoor. It had a rusty metal ring covered in the same foreign letters. He bit and pulled at the ring, and it swung open.
Whatever they were doing before, the rest of the companions were drawn to inspect the uncovered hatch. When Fox crossed into the standing stone’s shadow, her cloud of rocks shot into the air. Dusky, Jackanapes, and Offal scattered. Ragamuffin dived on Bennu’s egg while Chiaroscuro and Albumen continued arguing. Diana rolled into a ball to protect her masked face. Grace cringed, but no rocks hit her.
Rather, the pebbles spiraled upwards until they could not be seen. Diana insisted they would “Rain like bullets,” but not only did this not happen, no new stones materialized above Fox’s head. Strangely, Grace felt like something important was now missing from her friend.
“The Runestand’s magic still holds,” Schrodinger explained without having to be asked. “If you call lithobolia a ‘curse’, Tatum Levinson, then this stone is protected from it.”
Beyond the trapdoor, only darkness was visible, not that it was especially known for being easy to see. Schrodinger had his glowing eyes, however, and fearlessly leapt in. He did not return.
Corvids flocked around Grace. “Wonder what’s down there,” Jackanapes not-quite-asked.
“I’m happy up here,” insisted Ragamuffin.
“Where there’s plenty of grapes,” volunteered Offal.
“And sunlight, too,” added Dusky.
“We must guard Bennu’s egg,” reminded Albumen.
Chiaroscuro growled. “Well, if you lot won’t explore, I will.” The raven, too, was lost to blackness.
Fox and Diana did not understand what was going on between the birds (in fact, they could barely tell them apart) but Grace caught them up.
“It could be another prison down there,” said Fox, “like the Institute.”
“Or a torture chamber!” speculated Diana.
“It’s abandoned, though,” pointed out Grace. “Or it’s supposed to be.” In her pocket, she felt the warm agate. In that moment, she did not need to fly, but it would be nice if something helped her not plummet straight through the center of the Earth, to rest with the dust and worms. I’d feel braver with some lights she thought while jumping.
She should not have worried. Past that initial black, she found enough light to see by. It did not come from torches or lanterns, however. Instead, a chain of mirrors from the standing stone’s peak all the way down reflected off each other, an unbroken sequence. Wait, not mirrors, exactly. Crystals: the quartz imbedded on the stone’s outside filtered sunlight, brightening the insides! Grace had thought the Runestand—as Schrodinger called it—was a solid mass, when in fact, it was hollow. Probably the largest geode in the world.
Her landing kicked up dust, but the clay beneath her felt soft enough. On the floor, a wooden ladder had been knocked to its side, which she promptly propped up. Even if she failed to convince the other girls to come down, she could use it to get back up. While she could not see them, she called up to her friends, informing them she was okay.
Jackanapes flew down to her shoulder. Ragamuffin followed, taking Grace’s other shoulder. Albumen was at their heels, insisting his younger siblings slow down. Dusky came next, with Offal only lagging behind because of being stuffed with food. Diana slipped down the ladder like it was a slide, probably unintentionally.
Fox climbed down last—very deliberately—with something bulging under her sweaty coats. This turned out to be Bennu’s egg, which she tossed to Albumen.
“I spied out the place.” Chiaroscuro flew to them from an earthen corridor leading deeper into the hill. “Seems clear. Couple spiders, maybe, but none big enough to eat us.”
Schrodinger waited for them in a wide, open chamber down the way. He traced his claws around a stone ring with an ashy depression inside. A fireplace. Grace looked to find where smoke could safely exit from this underground place. Directly above was a pinhole in the stone, too small for any sunlight to get in.
“This is the hearth,” Schrodinger said when everyone stopped bustling. “A cat’s second favorite place to nap, other than a human’s lap. In prior ages, they were the center of every home.” If he meant to say more, he was interrupted by Chiaroscuro plucking the phoenix egg and dropping it into the fireplace.
“If our friend Bennu’s to hatch…or re-hatch,” Chiaroscuro danced in the charcoal, “this’s a good a place as any.”
“Surprisingly, I agree,” said Albumen. “But I’d like to suggest that, if this will be our new home—at least for a while—we should give it a proper name.”
Ragamuffin brightened up. “Yeah, something inspiring.”
“But strong and solid,” insisted Jackanapes. Dusky and Offal also joined the discussion, but kept talking over each other.
Schrodinger drew foreign letters in the dirt surrounding the hearth. “I’ve always just called this location ‘the Runestand.’ Yet, as a base of operations for organizing and returning library items—and maybe stop a brain plague if we have time—our sanctuary merits a fresh moniker.” He stopped and explained to a confused Fox and Diana what the corvids were discussing.
Diana blinked. “First, I just thought it was a big boulder, but it’s really a fortress down here.”
“Let’s call it Fort Stone!” suggested Grace. The Murder shifted from debating to an excited round of agreement. It was even obvious to non-speakers the birds felt pleased.
Fox rolled her eyes. “How clever. A stone used for a fort. Wonder how much thought went into that?”
“Oh, you’re just mad you didn’t get an agate, too,” said Jackanapes. The other birds, and even Schrodinger, laughed.
“I. Don’t. Understand. You.” Fox spoke each word individually. “Are they really speaking a language, or is Grace just pulling our legs?”
Grace felt her face getting hot. “I’d never lie about something so important.”
“I never lie, period.” Fox moved to the hearth. “So don’t go ganging up on me, especially in languages I don’t know! Every adult says lying is wrong. But it’s so confusing how they tell you one thing in public, but in private they act the opposite way! Why not make up their minds?”
“You weren’t just being honest,” Grace snapped back, “you were trying to hurt my feelings.”
“Behaving rudely and speaking bluntly and are not the same thing.” Schrodinger rolled his eyes. (Which is a sign of high intelligence. Do it whenever your teacher is speaking. She will surely be impressed with you.)
“Yeah?” Fox choked back something. “When people ask to spare their feelings, they really expect you to be dishonest. Nobody should take things so personally. Or else, they should grow thicker skin.”
“But Tate,” Diana’s voice was soft, “if your skin isn’t that thin, why do you need a padded coat?” To the others, she asked “Is there a private W.C. here? The hill outside’s pretty exposed.”
For all her sour words at the start, it was clear to everyone except Fox that she appreciated Fort Stone. With plenty of grapes, salmon, and clean water, nobody starved or dehydrated. Dotted under the hill was a complex of corridors and rooms, so everyone could have their personal sleeping quarters.
The Murder, though, invariably camped near the hearth Schrodinger taught them to light, while also shunning him when he asked for his gold scroll. By instinct, they still did not trust cats.
Nights felt temperate, but during hot days, the girls felt they were overdressed. “Now that I’ve seen the sun again,” declared Fox, “I’m not that impressed. It’s too bright.”
“Well, yeah,” Dusky said from his perch above. “That’s what it’s kinda known for.”
Grace did not bother translating. She focused on what supplies the Vikings stored a thousand years ago. It contained a surprising variety. Early on, Schrodinger warned against several jars of gold liquid called “mead.” Unless it became polluted, they would solely drink from the mouth of the river. (They only ever washed themselves downstream.)
Several dozen cloth bags hung on a clay wall. When Grace opened one out of curiosity, she found dried grain. Another held thumb-sized walnuts. Still another contained salt. She found a heavy jar needing both hands to carry, but that only held a pick of pickled eggs and onions, which nobody wanted, not even Offal. Beyond food, Grace found what picture books taught her was a spindle. She made sure not to prick her finger. Nearby, she found several wool blankets hopelessly tangled with a bull’s hide, its wide-horned skull still attached.
A short metal hammer, whetstone, and box of nails lay on a pile of charcoal high as her knee. The last of these stoked the fire that would hopefully bring Bennu (or Bennu Two?) out of his shell. Eventually, she counted everything, and turned bored.
After a brief period of sunburns, Fox and Diana—who, other than her ski mask, went about with more loose skin exposed than anyone preferred—lost the sick paleness from years trapped indoors. Dandruff and pollen had yet to end them. If an observer did not know better, they would suppose the two were having fun. They even played catch with the rocks Fox materialized, outside the shadow of Fort Stone.
Grace sat these games out. There were so many more important things. Schrodinger needed to reclaim his gold scroll and translate it, Bennu’s egg needed to hatch, and the fungus rotting out bird’s brains needed to be eradicated! Only then could she finally return home. While waiting, she tried catching up with her oldest friend. “Hey, Ragamuffin, I wanna’ hear what you’ve been up to. Like, how’re your mom and dad? Did Mr. Aitvaras ever come back to give them trouble?”
Ragamuffin made a gagging noise Grace never heard her make before. “Er, look Gracie, everyone just calls me ‘Rags’ now.” She spoke out the side of her beak. “No offense, since I know you came up with the name, but it’s sooooo silly. Especially ‘muffin.’ I’m a grownup now.”
“Not as grown as I’d like to be,” interjected Albumen. “For over a year, I’ve meant to leave and find a mate. Instead, I’m stuck chick-sitting.”
“Oh,” was all Grace could think to say for a long while.
“Though you lack a beak, I recognize that look on your face.” Chiaroscuro flew to Grace’s shoulder. “It’s the same expression I once saw in every mirrors. Frustration ate up most of my youth.”
“How long ago was that?” asked Grace.
Chiaroscuro stared at the sky. Still no clouds. “Well, I’m forty years old, far past a wild raven’s natural lifespan. I’ve lived long enough to see one eye go blind. I’ve never told anyone this,” he switched to a whisper, “but one prisoner to another, I was born in captivity. Least, I don’t remember any time before humans were poking and prodding me.” He eyed Grace and sighed. “If everyone could talk to birds, they might treat us better. Then again, humans understand their own kind well enough, and still torment each other.”
It was Grace’s turn to stare at the sky. “You had to have escaped at some point.”
“I wasn’t let out, if that’s what you mean. I wonder which of us had it worse, since you were imprisoned with memories of freedom. I had nothing to contrast with captivity. Only a grimy window-view of dirt and one tuft of grass. I had to imagine what it’d be like out there. I imagined a lot as a chick. Then, Qua-Qua was brought into the lab.
“When I told you I learned lockpicking on the other side of the world, well, it might as well have been for me. I’d never been allowed close to another corvid until then. She was a wild crow, and out there, she learned all sorts of clever tricks, including toolmaking. As soon as shared them with me, I broke the lock on my cage and fled out of that laboratory. But I didn’t wait for Qua-Qua to follow. My only friend, and I left her in that horrible, controlling place. For all I know, she died in captivity, which would have been my fate, except for her.”
“Surely she must have broken out some time,” Grace reasoned. “I mean, she knew how.”
Chiaroscuro turned his evil eye on her, though it did not look very evil at the moment. “Don’t think I haven’t thought of that these last thirty years. But I’ll never know for sure. Think, Grace, I didn’t even look back. You should always look back. I was young, selfish, but above all a coward. I still feel ashamed—which you know does not come naturally to a corvid. My feathers have grown white, but the most frustrating thing about age are the scars. Oh, the physical ones fade eventually. But there’s more types of scars than the ones outside, and those won’t heal as quickly. Often, they plain refuse to.”
“But Chiaroscuro, you do have scars on your body,” interrupted Offal. The Murder wanted to consult with him about what to do about the golden scroll.
Grace was left out, as she felt whenever it was just her, Fox, and Diana. While they looked so different, the girls sometimes acted like twins. They already formed a relationship by the time she entered the Institute. At home, Grace knew there were people who, for some reason, found her behavior objectionable. But speaking with birds could be done privately, while Fox and Diana’s abnormalities were obvious. No doubt frightening to strangers, and even—from what little she could gleam—their own families.
Fort Stone was probably the first place either girl could feel free to behave as they wished. In fact, Fox and Diana acted a bit wilder every day.
Having enough time to mull this over, Grace acquired an odd shame, like she was showing ingratitude. To whom, she had no idea. Her desire to leave the safety of Fort Stone were not based on selfishness. She wanted to help Bennu save his city, and for her Grandmam to feel better. But what would happen to Fox and Diana while she returned home? Would her parents be willing to adopt the two strange girls?
Unlikely. Might Director Ambrosius be hunting after his former subjects? Even willing to infect them with spore so they never escaped again? It might be best for her, Schrodinger, the corvids, and Bennu when he was reborn to leave the girls here. If, of course, Vinland was where Fox and Diana wanted to live. Besides, neither had any personal stake in the quest. Fox must be joking when she claimed she wanted to see heads exploding … probably.
Grace wished she could just fly to Nephelokokkygia now. The agate in her pocket suddenly turned from warm to hot.