“But enough of that,” Multhamurra said, “You’re a half decent listener and from what I can tell, used to be a rather clever warder. I’ll take you on too.” He clapped then turned swiftly on his feet and looked back at the bookshelf. “How many of these have you read?”

“Not many,” Kylara confessed. “Maybe three? I’m not sure. I’ve never been much of a reader. That’s always been more Yalmay’s thing.”

“Hm,” he said, “I’ve always loved books. They’re the best way to go to other worlds without being a worldhopper yourself. Any particular reason why you don’t like them?”

“They give me headaches,” Kylara said begrudgingly.

“Really?” He looked at her strangely.

“Yeah. Warder can still get headaches.” Kylara gave a little upward jerk of her chin. She knew it was unusual. Despite her studying, most people could read better than her. It put her on edge. She did not like admitting it.

Weak, weak, weak, she thought wildly. I ought to tell him everything is fine.

But she could not; not without lying.

“I’m terrible at reading,” she admitted. “You saw my attempt before, when you asked me to read you that entry. Half the words were made up or wrong.”

He looked at her thoughtfully.

“Have you heard of word blindness?” he asked.

“No.”

“The University tests for it. They don’t so much care about the reading part of it–that’s easy enough to get around, you don’t need to read to be a good warbler–but it can effect someone’s sense of direction too. That they care about. How’s your sense of direction?”

“Not great.” Occasionally she got lost in Kookaburra Creek, the place she had grown up in and lived her entire life. The only reason no one had noticed was because she always used warder’s Sight a crutch for navigation. The intuitive spacial sense pretty much made up for her deficiencies. It was going to be a bit embarrassing when she passed warding down and couldn’t find her way around.

“And your spelling?” the magsman asked. “Handwriting?”

“Also not great.”

“Vocabulary?”

“I speak four languages.” Well, four if you included the typical ones. She might be able to bump it up to five if you included Dalmayic. Maybe even six if you included Common Sign, although Kylara was barely conversational in that one.

“Impressive, but not what I meant. Do words get stuck on the tip of your tongue often?”

“Oh,” Kylara said. “No, I wouldn’t say so. I’m pretty articulate.”

“How’s your confidence?”

What kind of stupid question was that?

She was incredibly confident. She was not even going to dignify that with an answer.

“Look,” Kylara said, getting up, “I don’t think this word blindness thing is something I have, or something you can fix. And frankly, it seems like its only relevant if you are planning to go to the University, which I’m not.”

“Right.” Multhamurra smiled. “I don’t know what I’m going on about anyway. I’m a magsman. Oral stories are what we do. Books? Who needs them?” He threw a book on the floor, as if to showcase his point.

Kylara looked at the book Multhamurra had dropped. “Well,” she said, “we need them, for one. Some advise, if you want to keep a book in Kookaburra Creek, make sure you put it back in the box.” She reached down to pick the book off the floor. It wasn’t one she recognised, it must have been one Multhamurra had brought with him.

At least he isn’t roughhousing our own books, just his own, she thought.

She had a show of dusting it off, then moved to the bookshelf and grabbed a box. “We’re under the moth warren here,” she said.

“And butterflies,” Multhamurra interrupted. “The warren has both.”

“Sorry,” Kylara said, feeling like the magsman was slightly out of line. She lived here. He did not. She knew better. “The moth and butterfly warren.”

“Lepidoptera, for short,” he said.

“Right,” Kylara nodded slowly. “Although everyone here just calls it the moth warren because they’re more common. You can only summon moths, most of the entads are moth-based, not butterfly-based, gwiyalas look like moths for the most part, it goes on. The butterflies never give us any problems but the moths definitely do.”

She held up a book and shook it a bit for emphasis. “There’s a lot of moths here, even inside the houses. They will eat the paper if you let them. Maybe even the cover and spine if they are hungry.”

“Ah, so that’s why you keep all your books in boxes!” Multhamurra exclaimed, his face radiating joy like a child getting a present. “I didn’t even think when I put mine in earlier! Very clever. Anything else I should know? Pemulabee already gave me a run down of the Laws and major rules, but in my experience there’s always some things that the welcome ceremony misses.” He folded his hands together and leaned forward excitedly, as if he could coax it out of her.

Kylara looked around the room. “Keep your clothes in that chest,” she pointed. “And don’t make the bed in the morning, just take everything off and throw it in the chest. Any kind of fabric and the moths will try to eat it.”

“And my bag?”

Kylara looked at it. “Leather, right? That should be fine. Most of the time, its days like today. You’ll see a few cutworms, or an apple looper, or a group of cotton webs but not an overwhelming amount. It’s really only when you get swarms of them that you need to worry.”

“Is that what you call them?”

“Hm?”

“A swarm of moths? I was thinking something more… exciting.”

“Like what?”

“Oh, I don’t know. A mob of moths?” He frowned. “No, that’s no good. Mobs are humans. How about a multitude of moths? Or a muster? A mingling? Oh! I know! A menagerie!”

Kylara just stared at him. Dear gods, Yalmay would love this man. She wasn’t sure she wanted to see what kind of puns and wordplay they got in to together.

“I just call them a swarm,” Kylara said. “That’s not really my thing. That etymology stuff is more for my sister.”

“Etymology? No. Perhaps entomology though.”

“Just… don’t get too worried if you see a–”

“Menagerie.”

“–A menagerie of moths. I think Ella did a pretty thorough de-mothing before you got here, but if you see any, it’s nothing to worry about. They don’t bite, and they’re not poisonous, and they don’t sting. They’re a screen on your window if you want to open it and leave a candle on, and that little pouch over there–” Kylara pointed, “has some herbs to keep them out. They don’t like the smell. It’ll be best at keeping them from stored furs, but any wool is still effective. Oh, and if you don’t want to put your clothes back in the box, you should air them out before putting them in the closet. They don’t eat holes though any of the Wanderer’s clothes, so I think they like sweat.”

This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

Multhamurra looked amused. “I’ll try not to sweat then. Anything else I should know?”

“Well, if you do see too many, you can try to kill them. There’s a swatter,” she looked around, “ah! Right there.” Kylara picked it up and gave it a little twirl. Made with paperbark wood, it was old and well used, with a smooth grip and a tightly woven mesh grid at the end of the handle. It made a funny noise when she swung it through the air.

“It can be fun if you don’t mind killing insects. And you can vanish the dead ones. Here, try it.” She raised her hand and whispered, “Burrud-dyara.”

A dead bogong moth appeared in her hand, and Multhamurra did the same.

“Burrud-dyara.”

“Now wanuya-ng, that’s the word to vanish them.” As she said it, the slight weight in her palm disappeared. Multhamurra did the same.

“Neat,” he said.

“I know it’s a bit of an unusual summoning, but I like it.”

“Moths?”

“Well, usually its something like a plant or a material, right?” She’d been to plenty of countries before, and she had only encountered a two with animal summonings. One place that could summon small crabs, and one place that summoned ants.

“Moths aren’t weird,” Multhamurra said. “Giant, man-eating slugs are weird. Psychic spiders are weird. Regular, ordinary moths–that’s just a normal summoning.” He paused. “In fact, I’ve been somewhere with a moth warren before. In Warrung, there’s this fabric called silk. Only the very upper class wear it, but that’s made in a different moth country. Connected to this one, of course,” he pointed up at the ceiling–it was convention, although the warrens weren’t strictly above them, some people called them the upover– “through that warren there.”

“That’s good,” Kylara said. “Most outsiders are a bit unsettled by them, so I thought I’d just make sure you weren’t.”

“I’ve also been to a country with a spider connection. Instead of rain, it would rain spiders. Like snow. Trust me, moths are not that bad in comparison.”

Kylara shivered. “Just wait. They can be. Last year, we had a bad season. Like, go-outside-at-night and see every wall of the house covered with them. They packed together on the walls like this huge fungus–a big, solid, moving growth. It was disgusting. Trust me, moths can be creepy.”

Multhamurra smiled in delight. “I’ll keep an eye out,” he said, “I’m sure I can handle it. I spent decades as a warbler travelling, after all.”

Decades? Kylara had thought he implied he left right after service, which would barely bring him to a decade. She let it slide.

“And those decades made you less afraid of bugs?” Kylara asked. She didn’t doubt him, but she wanted to know how he would respond. He seemed like oversharing and stories from warblers were few and far between.

“They did,” Multhamurra said proudly. “There’s very few things that scare me now. One of the most important things you learn as a magsman is that being in another country is akin to visiting a home. It requires the same levels of respect. You learn the rules quickly, the laws of the land, where you can and cannot go, the Desert borders. I’ve had people tell me about much scarier things than a few moths. You just need to take it all in stride.”

He leaned forward, and Kylara finally got the impression he was acting his age. Elders loved giving advice.

“Now, the things that they won’t tell you is that the reverse is true. When you go to a new country, it’s a mutual exchange. You come amongst them, they come amongst you. You can teach them things, they can teach you. It’s why I like being a magsman so much. Warblers travel a lot, but people don’t trust you. Everyone loves a magsman.” He smiled, as if congratulating himself.

“You’ll have to tell me if the stories they say about them are true,” Kylara said. “The warblers.”

They said an experienced warbler could do nearly anything, if given enough time. All they needed to do was open a gate. Cut off a warbler’s arm? No issue.

Warblers, or at least most of them, were fully human. They did not have the healing that warders, warlocks, and Wanderers had. They could not grow it back naturally. But it was no matter. As long as they could walk, they could open a warren and an hour or two later, they would navigate their way to a country where flesh could be summoned, or a find an entad that could regrown body parts, or make a bargain with some sort of Desert monster for healing.

“The stories they tell about them?” Multhamurra said. “Almost all of them are true. Unless I’m lying, which I might be.” He smiled at her. Kylara rolled her eyes.

“How are you summoning the butterflies?” she asked.

“Good question. Here.” He patted his pockets down, and finding nothing, looked on the table. “Ah,” he said. “Right in front of me.” He threw her a leather pouch.

She caught it.

“This is an entad?” She tried to check with her sight, but saw nothing. That wasn’t a surprise. Warders had no apparent advantage in seeing entads. That was a warlock thing. You needed training, which Kylara didn’t have.

“I found it on the way here.”

“Your Sight must be excellent. Better than mine, even.” She hadn’t realised how much the University focused on that, but she supposed it made sense.

“Oh, it’s pretty good. I was especially impressive with your constructs yesterday.”

“My constructs?”

“The ones you were made after leaving with your sister?”

Oh. The trigger wards I made to find Billy. Technically ‘constructs’ was their proper name.

“Thanks,” she said.

“Not many people at the University seem to understand that you don’t need to know any complex concepts to make an efficient ward. You can get chaos and complexity from the simplest equations.”

Kylara filled the pouch over. “How does it work?” she asked. It was a little larger than her hand and very soft. It was also quite heavy. She opened it. Inside were a few coins, mostly stamped with the crest of Warrung and the profile of their queen, but a few from places she didn’t recognise.

“You’re using an entad for storing change?” she asked.

“Well, it is a coin purse.”

“Yeah, but most people wouldn’t put anything in it because–”

“It would be absurd to use a coin purse to store coins?”

“Well.” Put it that way, and it did sound absurd.“A magic coin purse, yes. How do you work it?”

“It should be intuitive. Just think of butterflies. It'll be easy," he assured her airily. Kylara did not yet. Instead, she threw up a trigger ward. The pouch was leather and… grey kangaroo leather.

That made sense. Kookaburra Creek had grey kangaroos, which meant that the entad had probably come from here and not the other moth country Multhamurra had mentioned. Unless they had grey kangaroos over there too, which was always a possibility.

“Hold out your other hand as you do it,” he said, “it works better.”

“Like this?” she asked, cupping her hand.

There weren’t many intuitive entads. There were many activated by thought, but they were rare and tended to be even less intuitive in ability. Kylara had one for flying and it was a fucking pain to use.

But this seemed almost absurdly easy.

She had expected some sort of indication, a sense of completeness perhaps, or at least a notion that something had happened, but she felt none of that. There was no moment when she knew new life had come into being. She wasn’t even sure what exact thought had triggered it. But none the less, when she opened her other hand, she felt a gentle fluttering against her skin.

The little insect delicately flapped its fragile, bright blue little wings. Kylara grinned. It was so trusting, just staying on her palm. She stayed absolutely still. She wondered where it had come from–was this the first thing it had known? Had she brought it into existence, or was it just an illusion?

“A bluebottle,” Multhamurra said. “Also called a blue triangle. One of my favourites.” Kylara nodded. She knew the names of all the local butterflies, like she knew the names of everything else. Butterflies weren’t that useful form a warding perspective, but warders sometimes also doubled as a keeper of specific knowledge. If magsman were the keepers of stories and legends, and elders were the keepers of country-specific knowledge, then warders were the keepers of species specific knowledge.

Kylara examined it.

The creature in her palm was definitely a butterfly and not a painted moth like she thought it could be before. It had the distinctive clubbed antennae.

“And this is how you summoned all those butterflies at the Nest?”

“Yes,” he said. “Funny, I almost regret showing you now. It doesn’t feel like a magic trick when you know how it works.”

“Even when how it works is magic?”

“Especially so in that case.”

Kylara suddenly got a terrible feeling that he would be a dreadful warding teacher. She hoped it was wrong.

Multhamurra’s eye twinkled.

“Can I show this to my friend’s brother?” she asked, pushing her intuition back. “I owe him something neat.”

“Best not,” he said with a frown. “I’d rather keep it within my sight, if you don’t mind.” He held out his hand.

Kylara handed it back reluctantly. Fuck. She’d have to think of something else to show Billy.

“Thakengarrinya-gi.”

“What?”

“It’s what you say in some part of the Network as an apology, but without an acknowledgement of regret. More like, sorry, this is how it is. Although more literally… “I set a candle on you.” Not sure where that came from. Language is weird.”

Once again, Kylara thought about how much Yalmay would adore him. Maybe they could do cross words together. Or frolic around speaking obscure languages and talking about the University. Something like that, anyway.

They walked down the steps of the inn, the air slightly tinged with dust. There was plenty of light left for Yalmay to get a crack at reading the book.

“So tomorrow then?” Kylara asked.

“Of course, I always keep my promises. Where are we meeting?”

She looked around. “Here is good, I suppose. There’s lots of space and the lighting is usually nice. Back when I needed to work out warding equations, I used to spend hours working them out on that desk over there. I mean, it was never had anything too complicated, but the space was nice.”

“I’ll see you there then.”

He opened the door and Kylara looked outside. “I think it might rain,” she said. The sky was low and grey overhead: the clouds were moving fast, from west to east, but it seemed unlikely they would pass before letting out some of their moisture. The air felt moist already.

She turned to Multhamurra. “Be careful, after summer rains the moths sometimes come out in their thousands. This year we haven’t had much rain, so it might be worse than usual. The dogs go crazy trying to catch them and then they get sick, which isn’t the best sight. Just… don’t be too alarmed if it happens.”

“I think I like the creepy little guys.” Multhamurra said. Something about his tone made Kylara look back. Too her surprise, a moth–not a butterfly–was resting on his finger.

“Is that the entad?” She asked.

“No, I think it just likes me.” He put his hand out, “fly away, little friend.”