It seems only days ago that Fragile the Sixbraid was living a quiet life in his people’s village, in the ancient and storied land named Goal. Without provocation, a group of soldiers from a hate-filled empire entered into it, killing his friends, his family, and all the keepers of their tradition. A Wandering Star, a lone warrior from a distant land, arrived just in time to save Fragile and the Sixbraids from complete annihilation. Finding pleasure in each other’s company, these two, a stronghoof, and an enigmatic presence named Bell now plumb the countryside for work and residence. Wander helps the people of Goal, and searches out a new home for her companion; in secret, she pursues her long-standing vendetta against a blind and destructive enemy.

-

Grainer the catchcutter and his companions stepped around trees and bushes. They carried the bodies of animals tied up to sticks and stuffed in large fibrous pouches. They carried knives cut of stone, and one hid an iron blade beneath his covering.

The snow poured on as they reentered view of their shell. Outside of it they could see light from fires springing up all around as the ones from everywhere gathered for the Centercold party.

“The catches are strong and many,” one of the Cutters said. “Many smiles will be won with them.”

“They were strong for the cold,” retort another. “We still need the hearts we cut in the warmth.”

“If we had the power of the Dry Man,” said Grainer, “then, the sparsity would not matter. We could change all the rounds to our meal, and there would be no hunger.”

A ripple of recognition went through the catchcutters as he declared her name.

“It is now said,” Grainer continued. “Did you hear it? It is now said, of the Dry Man: she slew one hundreds Larun. Fiveten by her hands, twoten by her blades. Her bendrock blades. Her To-Sidedark blades. The rest she sent to fire, and so kept the Braided Changers, who build by rivers. The Braided Changers still breath; the Braided Changers still do it - for the end of one hundreds Larun.”

“One against one hundreds,” one of the cutters muttered. “Empty-headed words. No outborn could do it; no Changer could do it.”

“I heard it was three hundreds,” another replied. “Three hundreds, all crushed, all of hands.”

“She has words, Foldrunner,” one of the catchers said. “Words from an outside place. That’s how she does great things. And she can do them. Of that, there is no question.”

Grainer’s tale persisted. “It is now said,” he said, “that the Dry Man keeps with her a lost and screaming one. A Changer who has no sight of his position; a Changer who can be lead and eaten up.”

There was whispering and great disquiet in the company.

“What kind of a Changer is he?” Foldrunner asked.

“Such a one could have no heart. He could not be virtuous. He would not know what it is.”

They went into the shell, outside which were many sweeping roofs of flax and fabric. The people gathering there all bore long thin blades or stone knives and spoke among themselves. The shell itself was made of wooden longstanding houses, and there were those around them spread out in circling appointments. In each there was a fire, and in each speaking was heard before laughing. Words came out from each, some different than the others, all concerned with jubilation. By the circles were hoofs tied up, and living meatbearers, who lowed quietly and chewed from chests of grain and salivated their smell.

They went up to a damp cell, elevated on stilts, and moved aside the block which kept its entrance. No smell went out of it. They went inside.

The meats contained within that were exposed to the air were full of dust. The cutters poked and prodded at the withered stock. Grainer brought down a segmented thigh wrapped in rough paper, placed it on the ground, and cut it open with his knife. The meat contained within had been eaten up without teeth, denatured from bone to joint to fibre. One of the catchers reached out with his finger; on pushing it, he shifted foul dust.

“Outness,” they all muttered. “Outness.”

The morning came and light went into this shed. The thing that rode on it observed their shape and the characteristics of their fear. It bled its gaze of the world around as blue light laughing, jostling silent cells that every man could feel but none could name, places where the cattle could feel their stomachs become destined for the body of another, and the spots where these men first emerged.

----------------------------------------

Once upon a time...

Near the shell of Withoutwind.

Snow fell slow and gently over the beginning of Goal’s Black Open, where the soil grew dark and gave itself especially to roots and seeds. Wander and Fragile set up camp beside a wide, flowing river as light began to subside.

Wander stalked into camp with a tusk over her shoulders. It was a massive beast twice her size or more, run over by a thick broon hide. She threw it down by their fire.

Wander held out a bag of grain and the stronghoof buried its snout inside and munched. She looked over at Fragile, who was standing shin-deep in the middle of silver rushing water. “Eating comes soon,” she called out. “What are you doing?”

An ice floe hit him and drifted around his legs. “Nothing,” he said. “I’m not- it’s- I cannot say.”

“If you stay there much longer, your water will freeze.”

He did not reply. Wander continued to feed the stronghoof. Fragile shot out his hand in an effort to grab something, kicking up cold flecks into his skin. They stung, and he exclaimed in surprise.

He repeated the motion again and again, but each time came up with nothing. A shadow bent over him and shot out a gloved hand. It seized the swimmer he was seeking by its long, slippery body. Wander plucked it up from the swirling and rushing and bubbling.

She stepped back and held it out to him. “If you wanted watermeat, you could’ve just asked,” she said.

He took it from her, struggling to keep hold as its impotent flops worked toward suffocation. “It’s not for me,” he said.

Fragile and Wander stomped back through the water into their camp. When they emerged, Fragile felt the feeling in his feet return slowly. The swimmer wriggled in his hands, its slime and scales almost winning their freedom half a dozen times. He retrieved a hoofplate from the stronghoof’s saddlebags, held the creature to it, and got down on his knees by the fire.

He drew out the littlecane from his tuskleather bag. Its edge gleamed in the firelight. He looked into the swimmer’s eye as he put the blade to its head. He was surprised when he saw blood come from his cut, colored like his own. He stopped for a moment, and the swimmer began to squirm and thrash around in pain, so he started to stab it, searching for the spot that would work. When it finally seized up, he had driven many thin gashes in and around its face and skull.

He was out of breath. Wander watched the whole thing.

“Have you ever done this before?” she asked.

He brushed tears out of his eyes. “No,” he said. “I have seen nobody do it. Not since I was a little one, when the river still ran.”

The swimmer was dead. He tried to remember what came next. He made cuts to drain it, while Wander took her own knife and began to transform the tusk.

First, Fragile cleaned the swimmer’s body and cut away its scales. He was unprepared for how delicate they were, and they spilled apart between his fingers. Wander’s knife swept underneath the back of her tusk, and she quickly pulled off its dripping, fuzzy exterior.

After he had stripped the creature Fragile began to remove the calcic twigs buried in its skin, prying them up with incisions of the cane; each torn support carried out chunks of flesh from the body. Wander whisked apart her tusk and extracted a bone the size of her thigh from its leg, and continued in like fashion until all that remained was meat.

Fragile dug his cane into the swimmer and cut it fully in half. One portion was larger than the other. He raked out lines a short length apart from one another all along each halve, producing a field of milky white ditches in the swimmer’s viscera. His hand jittered and played, bringing the flesh to squelch and ruin. Wander sent her blade through one of the tusk’s thighs, and it went through.

He glanced over at her display in envy. “I wish I could work so well,” he said. “It is a helpful craft.”

“Cutting meat is hard,” she replied. She took her blade and shaved down a heavy branchlogge into a skewer. The acrid odor of the wood’s open wound joined the bitter, bubbling nasal chorus produced by the reek of their freshly degloved corpses. “Harder, if the kind you’re cutting is new.”

“Have you cut apart that kind before?”

She nodded. “It was needed. There were times I would not be fed.”

Fragile took a pinch of tasterocks from a pouch in his coldover and sprinkled them into each line he had made. Then he arranged both halves of the swimmer on a flat stone and held them in the fire. Wander pierced the leg with her logge and stuck it next to his. The bodies cooked.

Fragile chewed his lip watching the swimmer light up with the fire’s heat. He wondered when they should be removed. He took them off once they had begun to turn light brown, and Wander removed her own soon after.

She took a bite out of the leg. She raised an eyebrow when Fragile proferred the swimmer to her.

“For me,” she said.

He nodded and proferred it again. “If you want.”

Wander took the stone. She scooped up one of the slices and stuffed in her mouth. Fragile held his knees and watched for her reaction. As she worked through the slice, a crunch split through the air.

Fragile wrung his hair and gnashed his teeth. “The rulers should refuse me,” he lamented.

“I like it,” Wander said. She continued to chew, grinding the bone into dust.

“Are you face-speaking?”

“I like it,” she repeated. She swallowed. “Does it have a name?”

He scratched the back of his head.

“The way it was cut. And then burnt and then covered.”

He unwrung his hair. “I’m not sure. I heard them say swimmer-and-grain. But that was because they had grain with it. So maybe it should be just called ‘swimmer.’”

“I like it.”

The corners of his mouth bent upward, against his will. “Does yours have a name?”

“No.”

“Did they name eatings in your home? In Shomkat?”

Her gaze flicked upward as she chomped on her leg and mulled. “Yes,” she said. “There were certain days when we would do nothing but eat. They had many names for it then.”

“What sort?”

“There was one eating,” she said. “‘Little horn.’ Another, ‘red pieces.’ My most preferred was ‘sweet sticks.’”

“‘Sweet sticks'?”

“A very rare eating. It was… a heart, I think, cooked and given to dust. It made pleasant moves inside your mouth.”

“How did these things become?” Fragile asked. “It is as though they were not in being one day, until they jumped up and became what we are.”

Wander laid against the stronghoof. “It is spoken of on papers,” she said.

“It is?”

“Hm. My papers. Papers in the Sidedark. Papers in Ard Makaris. Many papers in all sections where there are mouths for food and eyes to see it.”

“What do yours say about it?”

She wondered. The details were murky. “That eating comes out of all moving things, and that they must be tended to in a right way,” she said. "Their water should be completely released, and they should be touched by a man with words. By this way, the thing it was is ended, and after that it is an eating.”

“What are the words he says?”

“There is an offering to He, who is adored and sang about.”

“Why is it done?”

Wander scratched her head. “I don’t know. I can’t explain all their songs.”

“Ih.”

They sat in silence. “Why?” Wander asked.

“I just...” Fragile replied. “I don’t know why it would be done.”

“Food fills and enjoys.” Wander looked at him. “It did.”

Fragile shuffled uncomfortably. He felt as though he was pressing up against some nerve that he could not see.

Wander watched him squirm. “Your kind has one or two goods. Eating is one. Why wouldn’t one sing?”

“I was not told it,” Fragile said.

Wander waited for him to say more.

“The hearts we eat breath,” he continued.

“Yes.”

“We have stopped them,” he said. “We have hurt them. There was never joy in this. There was never a smile in this. It is ending.”

“What is eaten is not like riverborn,” Wander replied. “Or like breathers.”

“What is its difference?”

Wander rubbed her chin. “The eating has no words. No eating offers. The eating has no I. It does not remain.”

“‘I?’”

Wander curled her fingers. “You don’t know this word?”

He shook his head.

“When the rulersland is in fire, the I is what will progress. To the rulers’ house.”

“It is…” He was mumbling. “…it is not so.”

She raised her eyebrow. “Then what is progressed?”

“The body.” He hugged his knees. “Carried on the wind. That is the reason for fire. Or passed down the river, towards a lake, and towards the water-plains, which are unending. That is the reason for waters.”

She shook her head. “So you will arrive to your rulers in the way of ash.”

He nodded excitedly.

“Ash cannot speak,” she said. “Have you ever seen ash with words?”

“The rulers are strong. They hear what we can cannot.”

He took a charred stick from the fire and waddled on his shins over to the ground before her, where the flames and her heat had thawed out the dirt. He scrawled the symbols of the thought ruler in it. “And some of theirs, we can only see.”

He laid down the stick. “The word,” he said. “The telling shape, it is theirs. One day we will hear it, and we will not need its names anymore.”

He nodded to himself and made some trailing consemes on its periphery. She watched him as he did it.

She pushed out her finger and contributed a shape. He opened his mouth in surprise.

She traced another letter in the snow and he followed it with one of his own, and they continued to mix and adjust their respective symbols.

“I think eating may be like a word,” he said. “Like speaking. We have water like eaten things do. When we are put to fire, we smell of it. Perhaps that is what the rulers hear.”

Wander tilted her head. “I think it may stand. A word is put inside the ear, like meat. The thing becomes of you, and some part knows of it. I think it may stand.

They continued to draw.

-

Morning arrived. Wander awoke to Fragile fully clothed and scrubbing clean one of her pots, into which she had rendered down the other parts of the tusk. She pinned on her vest and shoulderskin and strapped her weapons to her back and hip.

Fragile brushed his hand across the three-string and threw it on his back. He hung his tuskleather bag over his shoulder. He dusted the tails of his coldover.

Wander unrolled her guide and chewed on her pipe as Fragile unhitched the stronghoof and brought it down to the water. The paper was crusty and mouldy and rough. She looked at a black line on its corner section, delineating the regions after it with special intensity, and a thick dot that sat on its border. She realized that they had almost penetrated it. She rolled it up and stuffed it in her pocket.

They drowned the fire’s floundering embers in dirt and snow and leaves. The stronghoof shook its back, rattling its comports, and brayed. Fragile handed Wander its lead, and they urged it away from the river and into the trees again.

The path was long. They became visited by a gang of howls, who lurked between the woods around them. They trailed along Wander and Fragile in the half-dark, directing hungry eyes at the stronghoof. They only stopped when Wander hurled a stone in their direction, which produced a thunderous crack as it embedded itself in a trunk and scattered their group.

They found speckled wings picking at the ribs and face of a dead roothead, pecking away its eyes and entrails and all that was well-preserved by the cold. One of the wings fell over and became quiet as they passed, and the other wings poked at its motionless body wordlessly with their beady, gaping eyes.

On their approach to a shell of many houses, they walked up a hill and were enabled to see a broad part of the Goalish country they had thus surpassed. On its edge they could grasp the beginning of a cutset, which stripped the hills naked and bare. As they went higher Wander could see the distant stabs of Eighty and everything desecrated by the bites of Throat Giver.

They encountered a Goal on their way up to the houses and columns of smoke and smells. She wore bone ornaments to bind her hair, which was long and thick. She leaned on a tall sharp shaft covered with white rings, an ivory figure, and knotted rope. “You’d call me Foracts,” she said. “Will you speak your aim, outborn?”

Wander considered her aliases. “I am Star,” she said. She gestured to the stronghoof and Fragile. “These help me. We search out work.”

Foracts looked at them warily. “We know well the work of stars.”

“It is not mine,” Wander said. “I am alone. It is mine to blow out trouble, and the frames of its creation.”

Foracts chewed a root between her teeth. “The shells here are burdened by great trouble,” she said. “One of ending times, which produces hunger.”

“Will you tell me of it?”

Foracts chewed. She looked at the Walls surrounding her, who were men, and carried stone swords and shafts and sacks filled with sharp rocks. She handed her spear to one of them.

“Bring out one from the others,” she said. “I must tend to this.” He scurried away.

“We know this as the place Withoutwind,” she told Wander. “We are hearts that change. Follow me, outborn.”

-

They were entered into the shell and watched closely by Foracts and her kin. They walked past the leather housings propped up by sticks of those who had arrived, and were sat around fires drinking water and huddling in cloaks. Wander watched birthmen drink water and Walls drink water, slaking emptiness after thirst with skins and bowls and chipped, mottled cups of wood and clay. Many appeared strain-faced and tense, and she could hear their intestines twist and shrink up. A woman nursed her daughter at her breast, and her children also drank milk.

Wander estimated perhaps thirty roundseats throughout the whole settlement, and over a thousand people to roam its bounds. The buildings, built of clay and wood, were arranged in intentional corridors and spaced more widely than those of the Unders or the Threeheads. They arrived at a round open space where sat a stone carved with Larun words. Neither Wander nor Fragile were let be to look at it, for their attention was claimed by another.

A meatbearer had been brought out from the pens of the shell. It was a big animal with a short tail and folding ears and a pink coat. Crowds had begun to gather in Withoutwind’s speaking place, which took the form of an intentional square in which all building dropped away from lines delineated with piled stones. In its center, men gathered with sharp sticks and secret blades.

Two ropes were fastened around the meatbearer, which lowed and groaned, and they were tied around wooden shafts that had been wrest into the soil. Its leader coaxed it onto the ground with an eight-pointed leaf. It snorted and munched on its prize. Many of the men laid their hands on it, taking a firm grip of tufts of hair. One laid his head against it.

Two men went to its front. A blow was delivered to its skull with a rock and it began to thrash violently. The men held it in place. Many more blows were struck and it fell silent.

The meatbearer’s head was held up and a bowl laid beneath it. A broad-bladed littlecane was hooked into its throat and used to produce a cut. Its blood was thick and it dripped down into the bowl through dropping, honing strands. It began to roil and coagulate and knot as it landed; as soon as the bowl was filled, it was replaced and distributed to the crowd, where some people took it on to drink or chew.

Soon the wound ran dry, and the work was complete. The men with canes went up to the carcass and hit with their blades. They sawed out parts of it and gave these to a nearby fire, and then the stumbling and wrinkled and coughing among the shell-dwellers were lead up to the body by the steady and put their teeth to it while its heartbeat ebbed. They were followed in the feast by their companions and then their children. Some managed to push the body down, and others vomitted.

Fragile’s eyes widened in terror. He drew closer to Wander. “Is this your custom?” she asked the Wallwoman.

“No,” Foracts replied. “It’s the only way we can eat. There is nothing else will stay.”

Wander raised an eyebrow.

“The catchers will uncover it. The Lodges will uncover it. Follow me; we are drawing near the place.”

They passed away from the biting, choking crowd, and followed the path until they drew upon a large hall at a place in slight earshot of the commotion. The seat was tall, and its entrance was a maw higher than each of them. It was unadorned with signs or scripts. The twisting light of fire leaked out its entrance and played wildly on the snow.

“This is our Changinghouse,” Foracts said. “What enters does not emerge in its own way. Wait while I secure your entrance.”

Foracts entered the Changinghouse and left the two of them outside. They kicked at snow for a while as the sounds of the feast drew down and went away.

After some time, Foracts reemerged from the maw. “You may enter,” she said to Wander. She nodded to Fragile. “The helper must stay.”

“Do you have a place for animals?” Wander asked. Foracts nodded and pointed to a spot across the way, where lie a distant smudge filled with stonehoofs and more meatbearers.

Wander handed the lead to Fragile. “I’ll meet you outside,” she said.

Fragile scratched the stronghoof’s chin and tugged it toward the pens. It nuzzled her with its head before leaving and she followed Foracts through the gap.

-

The inside of the Changinghouse was round and lit by fires. It was unlike the houses of the Unders and the Sixbraids; there was no sign of domestic habitation or equipment for offering. It was filled with an assortment of men and women. “Wall woman,” one dressed in hanging yellow bones called out to Foracts. She stretched out her arm. “Reveal to us the things you carry.”

“I carry a star,” Foracts said. “She offers to blow out our problems.”

The Changers gasped in surprise. “You are a star?” the woman asked. “The star? The one who walks?”

“We have heard of you from our kind in the Light,” a man said. “That there is a Dry Man of words, who moves around with a hoof, a braided one, and two strange canes.”

Before Wander could respond, the Changers went up to her and placed their hands on her blades, hat, and shoulderskin. “The Dry Man?” they whispered.

“The Outborn. The Outborn of words.”

“The Outborn of two strange canes.”

They moved back and watched her, their big red scratched eyes dressed in filthy overs looking at her with fear and awe without exception. Every body was in the same way, whether it curved or rippled.

“I am such a one,” Wander said.

There was gasping among the Changers. “Then you are a one who blows out problems,” Foracts said. “It is retrieved.”

“I have rarely done it,” Wander said. “But I would hear your plea.”

The voicewoman who had spoken moved toward Wander and crossed her hands. “My name is Movingone,” she said. “Our stock has lost its flavor. It has dropped all water and become heartless before its time. And there are so many of us who have come here to eat, to be enjoyed at the greatest part of the cold. All other hearts that we have obtained have continued in like fashion. We fear that our gathering may be forced to end in a season, if it persisted.”

Wander thought. She lifted her hat, revealing her brown hair, and thumbed the rim. “It is a singular problem,” Wander said, “and I am unsure I would find out its ways.”

“You are outborn,” Movingone said. “You wear the words of Athad. You are like the Dry Man, who has come by our rounds to fight Laruns.”

“Great gifts should be replied, outborn,” a catchcutter added. “We will give you teeth, which the Laruns seek, and adorable waters. We will give you the fur coverings of our best catches. We will give you the city rocks we have.”

“I will not take that reply,” Wander said. “I have one urgent concern, and I would leave all for it.”

“Tell it to us,” Foracts said.

-

Wander emerged from the Changers’ seat and saw Fragile waiting dutifully by the entrance. She walked over to him.

“Your friend has been given a place,” he said. “A cell. The house it is given into is covered, and thickly-built.”

“I’ve arranged for your residence,” Wander said. She took her gloves off and stuffed them in her vest pocket.

Fragile balked. “You have?”

“Yes. There is a family here that has lost men to the cold. They’ve offered you their seat.”

He looked aside. “So…”

“So, our arrangement is complete. You can stay here now. There’s a place for you.”

“I-” Fragile stuttered. He’d been unmoored.

“What?”

“I…” He tilted his head. “I do not really… have to.”

Wander said nothing. She looked at him unblinking, as though she expected him to speak further.

“If it please you, I would follow,” he said. He bent his head. “I mean, I could. Or I could stay. It is what you offered, and you have given me all and more of it. But I wish that you would know – I have smiled very much in your company. I liked your teaching. And there is still much I do not know.”

She paused before speaking. “You will stay,” she said. “I’ve put you in many dangerous places, and there are only ones more dangerous. You’ll be safe here. They have many strong breathers and there will come those who know Sprak. They’ll teach it to you.”

Fragile struggled to retain his composure. But he relaxed and bowed to her. “You were a great friend, star,” he said. “I hope you find what you are looking for.”

“I will,” she said. “I hope you will be well, Quiet Feet.”

She curled her fingers once and then left the seat quickly, accompanied by Movingone. She kept her gaze away and twisted in no direction.

-

Fragile was left alone in the roundseat. There were eyes on him. The bone carvings in the walls shivered. He was like an alien and had the feeling of it.

He would’ve wondered further, but the ways in his mind did not permit him. They moved continuously as the hiding pumped and prodded them fresh again. It wracked his center.

The Walls and other Changers emerged from the house and approached him. He sought to run away or shrink himself, but before he could, he was addressed by the Wallwoman, Foracts. “The outborn says you keep ways.”

“I do, eldsister,” Fragile replied.

“The Seeders have asked me to speak of needs,” Foracts continued. “If you would not keep by a Lodge, I will offer my name to you, and give you in to their position.”

Fragile nodded, his head bowed. A small Changer emerged from the others - a young boy with yellow clay figures hitched to the shoulders of his over. “Come with us,” he said. “Come with us, eldbrother. They call me Willow. Move with us, now.”

Fragile accompanied Foracts, Willow, and three other Changers out from the Changinghouse, and they passed among the shell’s roundseats. The ones he was surrounded by smelled differently and had a dialogue among themselves which Fragile could hear but not understand. Each had a bone or a hanging around their neck.

Willow’s voice lit up the shell as they walked. “Ih, the rulers who are always full and continued, bring now us water for new meat!” Nobody commented on the matter, and Fragile anticipated that it was only a new way to himself.

The group approached a cluster of roundseats by Withoutwind’s fields. The winter had laid white over the rise and decline of all things in the Changers’ sector of the world, and it was difficult to tell a growing place from another in the way that it had been covered. They seats were guarded by howls who put barks at them, raising up the hair on Fragile’s neck.

They went up to a seat in the center of the population. On passing into it, the light of the world faded, replaced by dense darkness lit only by small flames. A large man sat on a cushion in the center of the room, beside several women; they sat among themselves and drank water. He wore a cover that closed up his eyes.

Willow, Foracts, and Fragile approached the retinue, and they fell silent. One of the women whispered in the man’s ear, and he looked upward.

“Aie, Wallwoman,” he said. “What has sent you in to the Seeders? Who are the ones you have brought?”

“I bring you gentle ones,” Foracts said. “The wet-handed thing, who is here already, and a new and moved one, who has no place anywhere.”

He raised his hands and beckoned. “Send them in.”

Foracts shoved them inside and departed the seat. Fragile looked back at the Changer in fear before the little Seeder tugged his Coldover. He went toward the gathering.

There was silence. Fragile looked at the great Changer. The other Seeders gazed back at him, and muttered to themselves about the Sixbraid.

“I am Over, new one,” he said. “The Seeders are in my seat. Are you one who needs others?”

He grit his teeth and bowed. “Yes, eldman.”

“By what way have you come?” Over asked. “I cannot place the curve of your word. Are you from the dawn?”

“I was one of six braids, eldman,” Fragile replied. He gripped his breeches, exploiting the Changer’s condition to avert his eyes. “Heartless ones came. Mine have gone away from this land.”

Over and his companions bowed their heads. “It has been told. What are your works?”

He fidgeted. “I can shape rock, eldman,” he said. “Wallrock. Littlecanes. I can seek out some good hearts in the rounds. I can carry-”

Over held up his hands and Fragile fell silent. “Come close,” he said, “son of catchers.”

Fragile leapt to do as he was told, but Willow put a hand on his arm, tugged him back, and shook his head. He went up to Over and knelt down. “I am closer, eldman.”

“Bring the river-brother to Hoofspeaker, little one. He will be shown tools. This one sounds a kind like yourself. I would offer your kind to him.”

Willow nodded. “It will be done, eldman.”

He stood and retreated. The two of them bowed, and Willow tugged on Fragile’s sleeve. They departed the shell.

“Preference,” a woman standing next to Over said to him, “this one is hardly a man. Is this what you will for our kind?”

“The river-hearts have been eaten up,” he replied. “It is their virtue we need, eldwoman.”

-

Wander was brought to the Changers’ meatcutting place by Movingone. Goals stood, sat and smoked there, lingering around the heaps of spoiled carcasses and charnel excavated from their stilted redoubt.

“The catches were kept here,” Movingone said. “Those who can catch made this a seat for them – that they might rest, and that the price of them might be read.”

“You read their price?”

“We must. We send some away to other places, in the city.”

Wander stepped up to one of the piles surrounded by men. She reached inside and pulled out a large bone, akin to those of the tusk she had slaughtered. She snapped it open and poured it out; a light dusting of mineral powder spilled over the other carcasses.

“This happened right after some movers arrived, outborn,” one of the Changers said. “Not ours. A different kind. I hope you will go and have it out from them, so that we may be taken from this awful arrangement.”

Wander looked at him. “You speak with certainty,” she said.

“It must be so,” he affirmed. “I have seen all the virtuous doing of my friends in preparing for the good days. If you do not do it, we will do what we did many season ago. At that time, the heartless things arrived and took up every heart of ours that we laid down into the soil. And our creators – to keep from it – they made themselves like it. Like things in soil.” He wept openly.

“I do not want to be like it,” he said. “I will do anything to get from it. I am so hungry.”

-

Willow lead Fragile out of the house of Over and outside the roundseats, beside an area with crops and dug pits and water places that had all ben swarmed and covered up by snow.

Willow pointed to a nearby hill, where Withoutwind’s sprawl continued onto its ridge. “We can wait here until the eldman returns,” Willow said. “He is a busy one, and he is our most learned man of rocks. He would be working them for others, now. When he has returned, smoke will emerge; his ovens do not go out until he goes.”

A certain warmth settled into Fragile’s chest. “Who is your fireworker?” he asked.

Willow cocked his head at him.

“One who works fire,” Fragile said, “and attends all its figures.”

“I do not know this kind, eldbrother.”

Fragile bent his head, and the warmth slipped out. Willow noticed his brow fall and his gaze flick about. He tugged on the Sixbraid’s shoulder.

“Follow me, eldbrother,” he said. “Please, follow me. I want to show you something.”

They sat down in a hidden place, behind a ditch in the Changers’ fields. Willow cleared away the snow from a space of hard red soil and a pit of frozen water. He pried up a jagged slate rock and pulled out burnt orange figures from underneath it. Each of them resembled one of the Seeders they had just seen. Willow propped them up along the sides of the water pit.

“Is this why she called you that?” Fragile asked. “‘Wet-handed thing’?”

Willow broke open the ice with his rock and dipped his fingers inside. He took a clump of the spongy material comprising the figures and warmed it with his hands. He placed it into the water. “Yes, river-brother.”

The material drunk well. Willow rolled the material into a ball and then began to elongate it, forming extremities and a scalp. Fragile’s mouth drew open in awe at Willow’s minute, tender adjustments. “If its aim is to be adored, it is well-accomplished,” he said.

This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

“I can make one for you,” Willow replied. “I hope to make one for every kind in our family.”

Willow handed him the smallest figure of the bunch. On closer inspection, Fragile realized its little hands and arms were shaped in the way of Willow himself. “What will you do when you run out?”

“Of what?”

“Family.”

“I cannot do it,” Willow said. “I was given into this family from another. From one with more. My first birthman taught it to me; the hearts are the rounds, and the families are the lines, but these are signs that men make, not rulers. If I create every born, I would produce the birds in the trees, and the tusk-wearing hearts, and the ones with hoofs.”

“You can call these others family?” Fragile asked.

Willow extracted his hands from the water. Fragile’s figure was half-completed; its hair, longer and kept more carefully than the others, fell out from it in a cascade of orange and black. Willow had even etched out a pair of twists with his fingernail. “If I could not, I would be alone then,” Willow said. “And that is the thing I fear of all.”

He continued to produce Fragile. As his subject watched, he gave the figure eyes.

-

Wander and Movingone the voicewoman exited the Changers’ estate. They moved to a part of the shell that was packed with other roundseats. It was populated by catchers, wearing leather pelts and howlskin overs. They wore teeth of different angles and sizes, cut into twists and small figures. Goalish script had been carved into each; from what Fragile had shown Wander, the stories they told involved death and a chase.

The catchers stepped out from their houses and approached Wander. One had a blasted yellow painting in the shape of a bird on his cheek. Another had his hair moulded into a series of rings. The third missed several fingers and had a bone pierced through his left ear.

“Come, all of you, who have discovered broken eatings,” Movingone said. “There is one who would be told of that finding.”

“What is this one called?” one of the catchers asked. He was a small man with padded breeches, and a Larun missile-flinger.

Movingone turned to Wander. “I am a star,” she replied. “A way-keeper calls me Wander.”

The catcher rubbed his chin. “And I am called Grainer,” he replied.

A round platter was brought out and cushions were sat, and cups on the platter. “Although you do not know our ways,” he said, pouring out water from a pitcher, “I regret our lack of virtue. Our problem has made any right water impossible.”

She took the water. “Its way is beyond your means. If your rulers saw it right to take from you in this way, I would not put much offering to them.”

“The seeking and having are our ways alone,” he said. “The rulers are not in a stripping. They are far from us now. The losing itself is the stripping thing.”

He sat back against a cushion. “What is it you want to know?”

“All about your encounter,” she said. “Everything you can remember.”

He poured a cup for himself. “It began when we brought in gifts for the Seeder family, outborn. That is where my little one, Willow, has gone into. Ours was stock for the joy and dancing.”

“Dancing?”

“Centercold,” Grainer explained. “The passing of ice and wind from the rulersland. We need only do as we have before to reach the warmth.”

“What was the condition of your catches then?”

“The way it is. That has not changed.”

“And what are the edges of its being?” she asked. “The hearts you took from the rounds - when was it they lost their shape?”

“Perhaps one step-of-the-sun did pass, and no more time after that. Are you the problem’s voice?”

Wander cocked her head at him.

“Are you the problem’s voice?” he repeated.

“I am born. How would I speak for a problem?”

The catcher thumbed at his wrist, rubbing a scratched Larun coin he had bound up in a bracelet. “You look a kind of older days. Of the ones my birthman said. When the land knew more and spoke more. The rulers were here, and there were fewer men still.”

“Did a problem speak then?”

“They do now.”

She furrowed her brow.

“The thunder is the voice of lightning,” Grainer said. “There is a howling of howls, and a shouting of bites. The problem has a voice. But we have heard nothing of these – the greatest problems. And I wonder if the last time will still be told, or if it will creep in silent from the night.”

“What do you mean?”

“Our land is without ease,” he replied. “Some say there is a one or two who have made an ashing of the rulers’ ways, and perhaps it is so. But every season, we all enter into the rounds, and we all catch out less. Every season, we all bring up hearts from the ground, and we all cut down less. Every season, we all put ourselves together, and we all bring out less. We know that the rulers have gone away from this land; that the ways of heartless things have come upon it, and made eating of our hearts; that they do not desire we remain any longer. In the night, I hear the houses waiting for us. I can see my creators going to the last path. They are calling my name.”

-

In time, the roundseat on the hill began to send up smoke, and Willow tugged on Fragile’s shoulder.

They found the seat covered by sharpening stones, oils, a pitcher of water, a set of great belching fires, and other Changers taking canes. It had round open walls, a thatched roof, and a mud floor. It was built circular, and inside, many rooms had outward openings.

They saw Hoofspeaker they had drawn close. He was a muscular Changer with bent eyebrows, narrowed eyes, flared nostrils, and sharp teeth that they could see through his open lips. His hair was bound up in a braid and his body was in a thick flapping over stained by grease and oil. Around his neck hung the bone-complex of a human finger, rooted together by string.

They approached and he wiped his ashy fingers on a rag. “Wethands,” Hoofspeaker boomed. “What kind have you brought into me?”

“This one knows rock, eldman,” Willow replied. “He is a way-keeper. He is arrived from the braided ones. He wants to work with you.”

Hoofspeaker turned and looked to Fragile. “You know the rock?” he questsaid.

“Yes, eldman,” Fragile replied.

“I will suppose it.” He sniffed. “Go on, wet thing. This one is offered. There are other ways to keep.”

Willow bowed and looked at Fragile before departing Hoofspeaker’s seat.

“Follow me, new one,” Hoofspeaker said.

They went to a patch of snow behind the seat. The Changer went to the ground and brushed all the white away, he shifted a large rock, and brought out a pair of blades from a secret dig. He held them out to Fragile.

“Outcanes,” he said. “My outcanes. Sharpen them, please.

Fragile took one of the canes in his hand. They returned to the seat and he took a sharpening stone from a nearby table. He ran it across the blade. On his many strokes about its edge he stumbled, and then went very slowly and carefully to prevent this. Hoofspeaker narrowed his eyes at this display.

“You do not know the rock,” he said.

Fragile dropped the stone again. “Our canes were smaller, eldman.”

“You do not know the rock.”

Fragile’s careening strike sent a chip flying off the drycane. “Ih – ih, I – I can -” When he tried to further hone out his mistake, Hoofspeaker jerked the weapon away from him.

“You’ve done no wrong,” he said. “But do not touch my canes. You’ll break them.”

Fragile bowed his head and handed him the stone. He took it.

“You do not know the rock,” Hoofspeaker repeated. “So what do you know?”

Fragile blanched. “Nothing,” he said. “I know nothing, eldman.”

“Nobody knows nothing.” Hoofspeaker wiped his mouth. “Tell me your name.”

“I…” Fragile’s eyes flicked back and forth. “I am named...”

Hoofspeaker’s eyes widened when they saw his struggle. “Eh ye. Perhaps he really does know nothing!”

“I am Fragile,” he said. “I am called ‘Fragile,’ eldman, just as I said. That’s it.”

“That is not a good name,” Hoofspeaker replied. “It does not sound a name given.”

“But it is mine.”

“Never have I seen yonman so smooth,” he said. “Yonman so whole. Offer me your hands, please.”

Fragile slowly raised up his hands. Hoofspeaker reached out and grabbed them, yanking him forward. He flipped them over, looking at Fragile’s palms.

“No bites,” he said. “No holes. I smell – dirt and good water. Do you cut ground hearts?”

“No. We were in the rounds, eldman. There was water there.”

He gave him back his hands. “I have seen one hundreds hand,” Hoofspeaker said. “I have seen the hands of Walls. I have seen the hands of knowers. I have seen the hands of the things without hearts. None were so soft.” He held up a finger. “Except one.”

“Whose hand was it, eldman?”

“She is gone now,” Hoofspeaker replied. “She was little when I was a little one. They threw her in water, those things without hearts. The knowing she had, the knowing she took with her, was of fire, and fire’s work.”

Fragile could not meet his gaze. He chewed his lip.

“So I have struck on it,” Hoofspeaker said.

Fragile nodded slightly.

“Why would you release virtue for this?” Hoofspeaker asked. “To hide it? The keeping of fire is a thing of smiles. We have needed it. There are surely many places for you to work.”

“It is as though I know nothing,” Fragile said. “The work I cannot do. I make bad mistakes. If you give yourself to me, you will go to the rulers, as others have.”

Hoofspeaker rubbed his chin. “Then you will show us the work, and make us know it. Can you do this?”

Fragile wrung his hands. “A little. I can try.”

-

Movingone and Wander moved out to the houses built of cloth and poles where Changers from the rounds had gathered. They heard the high cutting laughter of children, and saw men staving off hunger in sitting circles chewing mud or grass or moss. Some men and women filled large vessels and bladders with water from icy holes in the ground.

They came before a circle in the center of the Changers. There were three men there who towered over the others in height and breadth. They had seated themselves on elaborate wicker stools and muttered among one another, thrusting and brandishing paper fans. They caught sight of Movingone and Wander striding in to the spot their encampments meet. When they arrived at their feet, Movingone clasped her hands together.

“This place will not receive you, voicewoman,” one of the fan-holders said. “There is no outborn who can bring you into it.”

“We have come at her request,” Movingone replied. She extended her hand to Wander. “Here we will remain, until she has found her help in you.”

“Who is she?”

“She says she is a star,” Movingone said. “A star who has words. She says she does not know the heartless things. She seeks to blow out our problem.”

The Changers looked among one another. “She should sit,” the watching ones said. “If it will make us eat!”

“Give her sitting. Someone, give her sitting!”

“Make us eating things again!”

A sack was brought forth by a large male changer in a massive over. He threw it down before the fan-holders. “This is sitting,” he said. He pointed Wander to it, and stepped away.

Wander was taller than the men standing. All knew and feared it, and in their sitting they felt smaller still. She consented to rest on the sack and tilt her gaze up at them. This seemed to sooth the Changers, and the legs of one shifted open.

“I have need. I would learn of the way you came,” Wander said. “This problem is concealed and knowing how it arrived will help me uncover it.”

The Changers looked to one another in anger, but they nodded.

“When did you arrive?” she asked.

“Our groups moved into this no-wind place seven mornings ago,” the one in the center said. “By the third morning, we had come, and more followed in still.” He sniffed and drank from a waterskin. “Is this problem of a kind?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” Wander said. “It is not like any I have read. There are some in which eating is concerned and changed, but not in this way.”

“‘Some’?” He threw out his hands and raised his brow.

“Some problems.” Wander lifted her own skin from her hip, popped it open, and drank from it. “Did you carry your own eatings?”

“It is virtuous to do it. The shell we have provided, but in spite of it, we must catch for our own.”

“How much was brought?”

“In our group?” He scratched his chin. “Perhaps fifteen carcasses of winged meat. Twenten carcasses of roothead meat. Fourten carcasses of groundhearts. Twoten carcasses of water, off of hearts and grains and grounds.” He turned to the others.

“In our group,” the blue-robed one aside him said, “Twenten carcasses of roothead meat. Five carcasses of Howl meat. Fivten carcasses of groundhearts. Fivten carcasses of water.”

The third spoke in a low rumble. “Fivten carcasses of groundhearts. Ten carcasses of water.”

“When did it lose its smell?”

“All was lost by the second day.”

“And the bones?”

“Those, too, were emptied of all eating.”

Wander nodded.

The other Changers shifted. “Can you touch whatever eats from us, outborn?” asked the Changer to her right. “Will this knowing help you?”

“It might,” she said. “I think that something may eat from it.”

“It must be those who dwell in shells,” the center insisted. The others seated looked at him in anger.

“That is not assured, Goalman,” the Changer in blue admonished.

“Why does he say it?” Wander asked.

“You all know, as I do, that they have stopped moving,” he said. “It is not the problem all of the Laruns and their lack of virtue. They have taken out the good work of ones who move, and foisted it all on a sitting place. To the jaws of ones who come in and snatch us out to the rulers.”

“That looks a strange wrong for such a grievous mark,” she replied.

Goalman snorted. “You are outborn. You are not in the way or the shape of us.”

“Goalman is an empty-head,” said the one to the right. “And he is not the voice of our kind. But there have been such concerns.”

“The shell-dwellers stay more in their houses,” the one to the left said. “They put weapons to women when there are less men for them. This was done among the born in older days, but it cannot be done now. There are Laruns in the country, and they seek to hurt our fighters. We do not know, star, but perhaps there is a thing made angry. A ruler returned to suffer us.”

Wander looked between them for any hint of mocking, derision, or disdain. She found none.

“I will see about it,” she said.

-

Hoofspeaker returned Fragile to the Seeders’ houses and those nearby gathered about his spot at his calling.

“This is a new one,” Hoofspeaker said. “Come, all of you. All of you come, and hear the ways you have not heard.”

The Seeders drew by them. “What is this, Hoofspeaker?” a woman asked. Wander realized she was one of those who had sat at Over’s side. She carried an unfinished grass weave in her hands.“What sort have you arranged?”

“This is a new one, eldsister Vanning,” Hoofspeaker replied. “There is a keeping of ways in him, of fire and repairing. I have seen it and took it out. The many of you will need it after this problem, when our kind have been made to go out from our home, or when it has ended and the problems of hunger have called on care and right roots. The sitting and quiet of you should come closer and so find them. You should hear the ways of river hearts.”

So the Seeders like Vanning and Willow and young men wearing bracelets of bone and the middle-aged, who wore city gifts and necklaces of colored stone and etching gathered around Fragile while a cold wind rustled the bushes and countryside sprawled out before them.

Hoofspeaker crossed his arms. The others waited with bated breath to hear the words of the new one, who fidgeted and wondered how to begin.

“I was told of fire by my creator,” he said. “I was told of fire and of the pair.” He snapped off a branch from a bush and held it up to them in his hands.

“I was first told that fire is half of us,” he continued. “A voicewoman later told me of fire work and how it is aimed – that it is a building of all kinds. That it is a sort which seeks to end the problems seen by rulers.”

“A voicewoman said it to you?” asked a Seeder.

“Yes, eldman,” Fragile responded. “Her name was Wellborn.”

He took another branch on the ground and placed it aside the other. “There is an adorable togetherness of all things, and in the work of fire it is started up. I think that the fire cannot be separated from this way; it is the place from which all its parts emerge.”

The Seeders looked at each other. Small smiles sprouted up on their faces as the Sixbraid mumbled and lilted, and there was amusement at the creature that he was, hitherto unconsidered.

“We know that the fire can stop up heartswater,” Vanning said. “We know that the fire can stop cold troubles. We know that the fire can burn away little hearts, which prick upon us in the night and in the rounds. We know that fire, given to water, puts itself in it, and that their meeting will not produce bad fluid as unmet water might. What do you know that we do not?”

Fragile sweat. “I will seek it out, eldwoman.”

So he drew on the topics given into him by Peak. He spoke of the movements and observed qualities of heartswater. He spoke of the proper way to entreat a cutting rock. He spoke of the airs that the Sixbraids had noticed and written down, and of the eight stinging hearts which address all men. Some men built a fire and Fragile extracted branches from it and demonstrated the burning that they displayed and the ways to end it.

He took one of the Seeders to the ground and demonstrated on his arm with a piece of cloudrock. “As the heart explores the arm, she should begin to freeze up,” Fragile said. “That is the worst of cases. Eh ye, we have seen so many fall down by it. When it is done… well, one must first seek out another thing. You see, the heart does not persist in the arm. It is totally met by the man. But you must know, before this-”

His mind began to melt with angles of approach. At the sight of his excited vigor, the Seeders laughed. “Look at how he wanders!” cried one. “He could not be moved moments ago. Now, even when he is stopped, he is like a wandering thing! Have you ever seen it?”

They laughed more and pressed on him, while Fragile blanched. One strode up to the Sixbraid and pinched his shoulder. “Give us more, Fireknower,” he exclaimed. “Give us more knowing. Give us more holy ways!”

Fragile shivered and smiled. He placed a branch in the fire, and he breathed.

-

Throughout the day had the Bell been coiling herself invisibly about Wander’s skull. She could feel its wriggling pulsations in her head and received frequent, frightened twinges from their involuntary contact. She returned to the Changinghouse after she was finished with the visiting Goals, and received inquests from the other catchers and producers who sought signs from the rulers: burning shapes in wood, consulting stones, and writing into rock. Wander decided to address her aide’s condition, and called on the Bell in speaking to a scarred and spearwielding Changer from the company of Foracts.

Speak now, Wander whispered to the Bell. Deliver this one’s intention. The Bell made no reply.

“Outborn?” Her visitor reached out her hand and placed it on Wander’s shoulder.

Wander blinked. “I have to go,” she said. “We should discuss what you saw later. I need to take care of something.”

Her visitor nodded and left. Wander turned her attention to the Bell.

I know you’re angry, Wander said.

I’m not angry.

What?

I’m not angry. Why would I be?

Wander’s face did not change. We are parted from your interest.

I see. The Bell paused. The weak thing was touched. The weak thing was embraced. The weak thing was held. Now we will make him safe. The joyous one is enjoyed. I will find others.

A vague heat that she did not fully understand rose up in Wander’s chest. She suppressed it. If you’re not angry, why won’t you help me?

Help you? I cannot hear you. This place is very loud.

'Loud'?

There is much talking - much thinking - much seeing.

Who is thinking?

I don’t know. It has no name. It has words, but it will not use them. It is pushing everything.

The Changers? The meat?

It is pushing everything.

-

“Bring in the new one,” Over said. He held his hands out to Fragile. “Knower of fire and hearts. Goer of paths. River-brother. Gonespeaker.”

The day had near ended. The sun went down the horizon and dark chills ran free. The seeders sat around a fire enclosed by their seat, wrapped in blankets and coldovers that hid them from their appetites. Over’s outstretched fingers curled into a fist that he placed on his own forehead; his gesture was echoed by no others, so Fragile did nothing.

There was a long silence as Over held his position.

“You must turn it to him,” Willow whispered. “That is the right way.”

Fragile was alarmed. He produced a fist and pressed it to the base of his brow. The other Seeders’ eyes lit with vague amusement before the lot clasped their hands together shook them at one another.

Fragile’s young interlocutor scooted closer to him when the chatter had risen up beneath the soft cry of the wind. “Is it true what they have said?” he asked Fragile. “Are you a kind that meets with fire?”

Fragile tensed up. “No,” he said. “I have just been told some things.”

“There has not been a fireknower in Withoutwind for many seasons,” one named Yeller said. Fragile could see her loose, twisted teeth rise and fall in the firelight, and he questioned how she had heard them from her position at Over’s side. “We have long felt emptied of such a one.”

“You are a river-brother?” Willow questsaid.

“He is.” Another woman answered Willow’s question, sitting in a shawl just outside the light. She was half-turned out of it, and strands of thin gray emerged from her covering, and the light rolled over the creases in her face. “His hair folds. That’s the river-born way.”

“What is the condition of your like?” Vanning asked him. She too was on the opposite side of the fire, and those by her had begun to pay more attention to their calls. “We have heard they were attacked, and that they destroyed the ones who did it.”

“It wasn’t their work, Vanning,” Yeller said. “It was that one they say. The one he emerged from. The cane-carried outborn.”

“That speaking is false,” Vanning insisted. “None have said it in the same way. He is here, now. He can tell us.”

All turned to Fragile in anticipation. The earlier sense that Fragile had managed to evade the whole interest of his kin was now disturbed, and he felt sick.

“I do not know their condition,” Fragile said. “If they still walk, they are gone in the way they sought.”

“What of your fellows?” another Seeder asked. “Ones born along or from? Why wouldn’t they take your kind?”

“I…”

Fragile hid, but the whys and whynots found him out, uncovered him, and pushed it all into his eyes. He saw the rope swinging and felt it chafe about his neck; there was the voicewoman’s burnt and daggerd skin, and all subsequent visions, self-invented to remind and address him in the night.

His nerves flung themselves apart and enveloped him. He closed his eyes and tried his best to steady himself, but this took the form of silence. He felt that if he tried to send out words, he would not be able to contain the noise beneath. So he kept quiet.

The Seeders watched him bite his lip and look down and go away while he was in plain view. Some of them bowed their heads at the lamentations he would not sing, or crinkled their eyes when they saw him move in the way that their friends had moved during response, in younger days. “Let the man still,” Yeller said. “He is one who has walked with a star. Who knows what that Point did to him?”

“The one I help,” Fragile whispered.

The Changers turned toward him.

He grit his teeth and hoist up his lungs. He set them down, and tears fell out. He smeared them with the sleeve of his coldover and lived in their stickiness. “I have been learned of dry hearts and far places,” he said. “Beyond any place I was born. They have ways a far kind from ours, but I have learned that they have water like our own, and rulers who rule beyond our rounds and eyes. It was given me by the one I help. She was the one who helped us. She was the one who brought us out.”

The Seeders burbled. “What is her name?” Vanning asked.

Fragile’s eyes cast downward, beneath the fire. “I do not know,” he said. “I wish I did.”

“The name is the smaller kind,” Vanning said. “To be with a thing is to take its pain, and there is no descent in that. All words fall away. The knowing changes and remains."

The other Seeders murmured in agreement.

Fragile wrung his hands. “It sounds like an eating,” he said.

Vanning thought. She nodded.

-

The Changinghouse lit by the light of torches in nightfall and filled with the concerned Changers creaked and rumbled under the weight of the snow.

“The work in your shell is caused by fallpiece,” Wander said.

Foracts, Movingone, and many of the catchers and movers who Wander had convened with about the day were assembled in the hall’s cavernous round center. They looked at one other in bewilderment, whispering about the strange out-sounding word. “What is ‘fallpiece’?” she asked Wander.

“It is a consequential mark that cannot be seen. It is produced to affect disaster. In being, it is opposed to He, the ruler of the Rootcliff hearts,” she explained. “It does not have a limb you can cut at, or a body you can hit on. A more learned one could get help from better forces against it, but I don’t have the words for them. So these troubles won’t stop until you’ve ended your infringement of it.”

Movingone ground her teeth in frustration. “If this heart cannot speak, how could we uncover the spot of our infringement?”

“It is not a heart. All account that this problem began at your gathering’s onset. I expect some part of it is its chafe.”

The Changers chatted among themselves, disturbed.

“We needed to destroy this problem, not go out from the place we need,” a Wall said. “If we send away all others and hand them off without gifts, we would release much virtue from ourselves.”

“I’ll search for a way to hear it,” Wander said. “But you should still go. I may find nothing, so that some are lost. I do not say that leaving will send it out either; so, I send these items to you.”

The Goals nodded, although some wrung their hair and gnashed their teeth.

“If I can do my work,” Wander said, “you must burn all the eatings you have kept. They are like to return to their old appearance and present themselves as whole. But they are touched by fallpiece, so they will be a wrong thing forever.”

There was whispering. “The hearts we cut would mend?” the Wall questsaid.

“I have read of it on papers,” Wander replied. “They may appear to, yes.”

Foracts balked. “If we did that, we could all eat. We would lose noone!”

“I need to tell you what is told, and not drive you to a point of my own.” Wander withdrew her shortblade and sharpened it once with her stone. “I will catch hearts for you anyway. Your rounds are still heavy with water and bodies.”

The listeners muttered among themselves in amazement. “You cannot… you cannot feed our whole group,” Foracts said. “Not by yourself.”

“Maybe not,” she said. She hefted her blaith. “Maybe half.”

“Even if you could do this, it would keep us for a few days only!” Movingone exclaimed. “How will we eat when you have gone?”

Wander looked at her. “I will produce it,” she said. “This will be a safe and laughing place. Noone will need to go away from here. Can you hear me?”

There was lightning in her eyes and thunder in her voice. "Yes, star," Foracts said. “We can hear you.”

-

Arrived night and great decline. The heat went away, and the light. All noise died and the air settled down. There was only the patter, chip and hiss of fire to keep certain that the Changers, who were many and hungry, all remained.

Fragile stayed with the Seeder family in their seat. Wrapped up in his sleeping sack, he contemplated the lessons of the day, and memories of Wander’s warmth, the sound of her voice, and the things she would say.

So when everyone had gone to sleep he went up silently from his sleeping spot, as though it were a practiced move, bundled himself in his coldover, took up fire and his three-string and his tuskleather, and went out into the snow.

Wander returned to the Changinghouse at night, weary from catching birds and putting them in pens, and dragging out animals headfirst to be locked in the cages and patches of the Changers.

She sat herself down against a wall in the Changinghouse, locked in position with her weapon gripped and her hat over her head. She shut her eyes, but despite her fatigue, she was not brought in to the secondland. Her exhausted dark-drenched mind wondered when she would be woken by the Sixbraid’s early, fumbling bushward excursions, or when she would next watch him curl up by fire in his Goal-coat. She wondered on the next time she would hear him say something normally odd or unpalatable, and she remembered he was gone.

In search of sleep, she left the Changinghouse and went to the hearthouse.

She sat down onto the dirt floor by the stronghoof to rest. She scratched its chin. “Hey,” she muttered. It grunted in appreciation.

A floorboard creaked. She turned to the entrance and saw Fragile, his every contour shiverring and snowblasted, carrying a torch that was nearly half his size.

“Oh.” He started. “I can go.”

“What are you doing here?” she asked.

He hesitated and rubbed his torch like a pet. “I couldn’t sleep.”

“I see,” she said. She got up. “Well, I’m the one who’s intruding. This is your home, not mine.”

“Please stay!” he said. Her eyes widened slightly at the electricity in his voice, and he collected himself. “I mean, you can, if you want.”

She sat down. Fragile sat across from her. The stronghoof’s eyes flickered and then closed.

“I have been learned of this problem,” Fragile said. “The one that troubles them. Will you tell me of your search for it?”

Her eyes moved downward. “There’s little to tell,” she said. “Someone is like to have found a way to wish disaster on this places. Sometimes it can produce a condition such as this. The end to it is near revealed, but the Changers will not budge until its certainty.”

“Is it something you can fight?”

She shook her head. “Not me, no.”

“Can you speak with it?” I would walk through fire if it should help.

“You need not bother. I do not think it is a speaking thing.”

He bowed his head. She looked at him. “What about you?” she asked. “Can these ones hear you?”

The lines of his mouth floated upward. “Some of them can, I think,” he said. “They seem very precious hearts. As precious as the ones I knew”, but they are not as precious as yours, and I feel a great plummet when we are apart.

Wander looked up at him curiously. “What did you say?” she asked.

“They are precious hearts,” he said. “As precious as the ones I knew.”

“After that,” she said.

He furrowed his brow at her.

“What?”

“I said nothing otherwise.”

Wander massaged her temples. Wind pounded against the hearthouse. Fragile shiverred and gasped; his breath moved out in a cloud and he shrunk up, putting a hand close by his fire. An image leapt unbidden to Wander’s mind that put a hunger in her chest.

She got up to leave. “You should go home, now,” she said. “Get somewhere warm. And stay there.”

She stalked out into the snow, leaving him alone. Fragile watched her go.

-

The snow’s whirl and tempest became soothed for a while, and it danced rather than cut through the rise and play of the Goalish plains. Up above, the whipped, tumbling massives that birthed them continued to collect in the hard darkness of the horizon, which promised shapes to the Walls on watch that could only be sensed and not seen. Withoutwind’s tight causeways became broad canals for a sea of white powder. A group of howls galloped by the shell, placing the weary Changers on edge. They sang out songs of fruitless bloodshed from aching, unfilled bellies before moving on, in search of easier prey.

Fragile attempted to quell his nerves. He lit up a larger fire with his small one and surrounded it with rocks, and nestled in a place where the snow had not swept in so much. He plucked awkwardly at his three-string, fumbling together the lines of a half-remembered tune before he gave up. He put the instrument aside and took his head in his hands and listened to the wind whine beyond the confines of the hearthouse. He thought and briefly wept.

While he did it, he gazed out of mind at a clay bowl of hoofsgrain set down front of him, whose contents had become stale and dead. On approaching and then electing a course of action, he emptied it into the snow outside.

He took out the littlecane. He put his hand over the bowl and drew the edge over himself. He winced and bit his lip as water fell away from him.

The bowl filled up. It was agonizing, but soon it was halfway full. He bound up his wrist with shredded cloth that began to give up drops of scarlet. He bound it further and tighter.

When he set the bowl down, he saw his body in it grow red and roiling. It flashed with silent agitation and knotted itself up, contorting and producing a putrid odor. Before it could wring itself any further, the fire roared and snapped up sparks and he put it to his lips and drank.

He gagged halfway through the draught and continued. Once it had fully reentered his body, a distressed gargle passed away from his mouth. He clutched his hands to his stomach and chest and they began to shake. He fell over and shook violently on the floor and, from the deepest recesses of his gut, exhaled.

The stronghoof reached out toward him. It stamped and snorted and brayed.

-

After Wander had returned to the Changinghouse, her fatigue pursued her throughout the night. Just as she was about to secure a reasonable position in the unconscious, the Bell rose up from her brooding and pushed on her.

The weak thing, she murmured. You should...

She opened her eyes. What?

The Bell did not respond. When Wander tried to touch her, her thoughts became tangled, she grew a need to vomit, and it rose up the hackles on her neck.

She heard shouting. She slid on her blaith and got up and left the Changinghouse again. She was greeted by the dim morning light and the stone of Withoutwind and the cold, snowbound square outside the Lodge.

She went past the square and approached the gathering. She could see that the commotion was fixed around a seat at the shell’s edge, where the houses met the visiting Changers. A small shape was running away from it and cut for her path when it caught sight of her.

“There’s hitting,” Willow gasped when he got in her reach. He was out of breath, but he did not stop to catch any. “There’s hitting, star. You must go now. It’s the river brother. It’s the fire-knower. It’s the river-brother.”

She put her eyes on the group of people and heard the screams again. She quickened her pace for it.

-

As Wander and Willow approached the roundseat, the screaming grew louder and louder. It did not come to her as Fragile’s. Sometimes it was hoarse and contorted; other times, it was bright and sweet, like the voice of someone younger.

She moved around the seat, into the still-growing mass of Changers.

When they turned and saw her, the crowd - which consisted of men, younger ones, and two women - became a formation and held their backs around Fragile.

“Step away, outborn,” Hoofspeaker warned. “This is not a place for you.”

“Eldman, she has words!” Willow insisted. “She can surely help!”

Hoofspeaker turned his glare to the boy and blustered. “What have you done, Wethands? What sort have you become?”

Before Willow could respond, Wander advanced. She swung out her blaith with grace and ease. “I won’t touch him,” Wander said. “But I will see. And I would push you for it.”

Hoofspeaker licked his lips. He sheathed his cane and shoved aside the other Goals, who broke ranks. Over and the older Seeders watched from the shade at the entrance to their seat. Wander walked forward unopposed and came in view of Fragile.

The Sixbraid had been tied to a tall wingtree. Much of his skin had turned grey and murky. He had a trail of urine running down his thigh, but it produced no smell. He belted out a cry. His eyes had been covered by a blindfold.

“Why did you do that?” Wander asked Hoofspeaker.

“Scratches,” he replied.

Wander went closer to the noise. She could see inside Fragile’s mouth that his tongue had turned rigid and cold. His teeth were wriggling frantically as though they were made of flesh.

“Quiet Feet,” Wander said. “Can you hear me?”

His moaning stopped and his head turned toward her voice. She put a gloved hand on his face and he leaned into it.

She cut Fragile free and carried him in her arms to the Seeders’ seat. The Changers who had been guarding Fragile followed and crowded around the seat at its openings and see-holes. She laid him on the ground. She peeled off his clothes and visually inspected his body.

Every touch brought apparent anguish to him, even though his clamor had declined somewhat. He reached up his hand to toward his eyes. When she gently pushed them away, she caught sight of the binding on his wrist. She unwound it and revealed the gash he had made.

She continued to read him for a step-of-the-sun. At that point, the clouds collapsed on them with wash and bluster and the flats of the Black Open became driven by tides of snow. The Changers at the seat trickled and then hurried away, seeking fire and shelter in their own clothseats. They walked out of that place and when they had, as Wander heard the footsteps crunch and peter off beyond where she could hear, the color in Fragile began to slow and pause its departing, although it did not halt at any point. Wander’s eyes widened as she saw it.

“Bring more here,” she said to Hoofspeaker.

Hoofspeaker’s attention had long since decayed and given way to sleep. Willow’s shade perked up and spoke instead. “‘More,’ outborn?”

“More hearts,” she said. “Bring them from all quarters, from those who stay and those who move. The problem has a voice.”

-

Somewhere concealed, the sun pressed a glow to the clouds.

Wander hoisted Fragile up onto the stronghoof. He exuded a smell and head that were plainly visible in the morning light, and although Wander had driven the Changers from him at knifepoint, he continued to sweat and shiver.

The Changers approached Wander, risen from their panicked and hungry night. Foracts emerged from them.

“Please star,” she entreated, “where are you going?”

“The problem that hurts you is joined to hearts,” Wander replied. She looked at them briefly before returning to the stronghoof. “To their size and presence. It is not a matter of shell-dwellers only, or round-dwellers only. It was uncovered. If many of all will go away from this place, the problems are like to end.”

“So we must go?”

Wander nodded. She threw one leg over their stronghoof, behind Fragile, and lifted herself up. “I regret my promises,” she said. “I am made to have spoken falsely.”

Willow broke from the crowd. The Walls tried to grab him before he reached Wander. He struggled against them.

“Where are you going?” Willow asked. “Where are you taking the fireknower?” There was a rumble of echoed interest from the watching Seeders. The ones who had made to grab Willow back released him and looked to Wander curiously.

“I’m taking him back,” Wander replied. “We will ride far and quickly. He has made your problem into his own, and I think he would freeze if he stayed.”

She said it as a matter of fact, and no argument was raised. Willow approached Wander and shoved a clay figure up at her.

“Please take this,” he said. “I made it for him.”

She took it, look at it, and stuffed it in a saddlebag. Willow reached up and pressed his hand to Fragile for only a moment; this caused him to recoil. “Be safe,” Willow said, “keeper of ways.”

He retreated to the watching Seeders. Wander grasped the stronghoof’s mane and guided it out of the shell, past the hearthouse, the Changinghouse, the roundseats, the shelters and their fire circles, and the houses of Willow. When they had a direct line to the rounds, she whistled and sent the stronghoof galloping off into the trees and bushes. The Changers watched from afar with a mixture of weeps and shouting. Vanning clutched at her piece. She knelt on the ground and wrote signs in the snow.

“Make straight the way of the Dry Man and the Fragile Seeder.”

-

The stronghoof brayed as it carried the two of them through the flats and thickets of the Black Open, kicking up flecks of snow. The clouds swelled and did not cease disbursing; their pace quickened and soon corralled every hill of rise of frozen dirt with new layers of ice, and flocks of sharp edges buried into the trees and soil and Wander’s face. She did not relent, and she urged on the stronghoof even as the white’s speed and depth began to bury away the countryside and herald itself with blasting gales.

Fragile clung to Wander. The hazy grey pallor that had entered his skin crept across his arms and face and covered him up. The stronghoof grunted and threw itself forward at Wander’s request. Its carries and munitions jangled more apart with every thrust of its hoofs.

After a while, the noise Fragile was making dried up. She turned his face toward her, removed one of her gloves and placed her hand near his cheek. His air was cold.

“Stay awake,” she said. She slapped his cheek with her glove. “Stay awake, Quiet Feet.”

She halted the stronghoof in a place clustered with trees and stone columns clinging to a steep ridge. She slid him off the stronghoof, faced him up, wrapped blankets around him. She dragged him and the stronghoof beneath a rock outcropping, where they could find some shelter from the blow and tumble of the storm.

She removed her blaith and timbered a tree when she could find no sticks for kindling, entombed as they were by the ice. She snapped off its branches, hauled them underneath the rocks and stacked them together into a roaring fire. It spat out hunks of swirling glitterbugs that contested the snow for space. She laid him next to the flames, wrapped him in more blankets, and coaxed him again.

“Stay awake,” she repeated. “Can you hear me, Quiet Feet? You have to stay awake. Stay-”

Joyous one, the Bell said, he is not awake.

She stopped.

She bent her head down to his chest. His eyes, half-hidden by his eyelids, were glassy.

Her head held in place. Her eyes twitched and flickered about his frozen corpse. Her fingers curled and uncurled, and her flesh felt as though it were about to sweeten and melt away. There was a ringing in her ears that sounded like bells, and she felt much smaller than she was.

She stood up, and her lungs took in air.

-

The snow fell. It found and sank into the trunks and roots and soil and longhaired flocks which passed the forests by. The last drifting waves of the sky’s crushing massives buried themselves in the Black Open of Goal, their swarms and strands blowing more distant and individual with each measure of light that slipped from the sky.

The warrior watched the corpse until the wind fell away. When it had, she emerged from her stone covering, and threw down a tree that stretched into the air. She ripped it up with her hands, which became covered in its green and sticking water.

In the plains outside their shelter, where one could more fully see the grand extent of the pathways North, she took up a pair of logs and plowed it free of snow, driving it to give way to the inky soil beneath. She assembled the wood she had chopped into a flat, prickling mound. Then she retrieved the corpse from its spot, threw it over her shoulder, and carried it through the dust.

She tossed it on the mound. The instrument on its back clattered at the impact. A fissure formed in the sky, allowing the sun to etch shine on lower clouds and on the green tree masses that threw themselves rolling over every horizon in the world circular. She lit up a fire with her mould and put a branchlogge to it. She began to set its tip over the mound.

She hesitated. After a moment, she struck the torch into the dirt and removed her short blade, setting off back toward the trees. As she did it, a brown tint affixed itself to the corpse’s skin.

-

Fragile had been sent to the air and swam there.

An aching pulsed below him, as though he were being beaten by canes. He felt afraid beyond his own fear. He felt the fear of one who touched rocks, the fear of one who touched soils, and the fear of one who touched meats. He felt the fear of things in pain, and how they were gnawed on. He wondered if he might be such a thing – a gnawed on type. A divisible shape. A subordinate species. When the thought struck, fears sheerly compelled him toward any course that would fix away from it.

The great medium through which he progressed swirled around him and pressed into everything he had seen. He saw flashes of times past.

He saw a winding river in a distant land, where the ground was not as dark, and there not words as loud and as numerous as his own. He adored the river for what was said, and what was retrieved from it. Men with braided hair, floating on it in boats, pulled nets of screamers wriggling with fins and scales from the space underneath. This was a thing adorable?

We could not see it otherwise, Fragile said. The medium moved on.

He saw the stronghoof, and the decrepit, reduced ones who had populated the stabs of Eighty, and he heard them all speak. He saw the babbling Freemen of the Couth, and their bodies hanging from a punisher on its stakewall. The face of one had been mauled, and another had been pierced by rocks. They asked him what they were.

Fragile didn’t know how to answer. And then suddenly, the impulse arrived to him - a clarified and descript substance. A moving thing was a moving thing; a dying thing was dead. A thing that should move is not gnawed on. What fear lie between gnawing things and gnawed on things! What was dead should surely be.

The medium saw the lines of Fragile’s realization, and rested.

But, Fragile said, I am an eaten thing.

The medium pressed into him.

I am devoured, Fragile cried. We are devoured. “All of my words! I linger in the shape. The shape lingers in me! The line was of men written. What is written is not real!”

The medium and Fragile pressed into and around one another. They swirled in a circle of continuing consumption. It swam through Fragile, and Fragile swam through it, stretching out his arms and fingers and skin. He had lips; he licked them. He relearned what darkness was.

His chest expanded and he gasped.

Fragile’s body bent upward, and one of his hands clutched and tore at his blindfold. He ripped it off his head and was blinded by the sun, shining in by the clouds retreating East.

His entire body was slick with freezing sweat, and he began to shiver. His teeth chattered and he put his feet on the ground. There was a clatter nearby, and he turned.

The warrior had dropped apart a bundle of hauled kindling, which had shattered on the ground. Her eyes were sharp. Her hand twitched toward her hip.

He rubbed his head. “Wander?” he croaked. He posted up the icy, creaking joints his legs had frozen into.

She remained still.

The pressure collapsed. She unsheathed her short blade and advanced on him. The world turned dark and creviced. In the distance, a bell pealed, and the torch burned.

----------------------------------------

A group on hoofs wearing gray cloaks galloped through the forests and flats of the Black Open. Their hoofs tore over wind-battered water and mounds of snow spun and wound by the wind, and buds in bushes that had just begun to realize the winter had not killed them. They passed by the corpse of a roothead and urged their hoofs up a steep slope, rising into a hilltop shell that spanned a wide part of their country. The shaking man who led them shook his shawl free of ice and dust. The tall man beside him thumbed at a dried-out tongue adorning the golden thread that braced his neck.

The shell they had entered into was lonely and quiet. They were not met by fighters as they crossed into it. On the outskirts, there was soot and scorched sticks where fire had been, and pits and cleared snow where nothing was built, and only stake debris and droppings to say that anyone had sat there once. They reached the built seats and found limping and wrinkled Goals hauling wood to new fires and searing cuts of meat over them, which dripped water and bled freely. The Laruns drove their animals through the snow, following their leader, who dismounted once they came upon an emptied covering for animal pens.

He shook and shiverred and hobbled inside the enclosure. It stunk of wild and untamed scents, of grain and feces, and of more. He reached down to the ground and brought up a bowl stained red with blood. He put it to his mask and breathed.

“Aie, eldmen,” a voice said in Goalish.

The Laruns turned to the sound. A young boy stood in the snow just outside the hearthouse. Moulded figures were kept fastened to his shoulders by wood and string.

“What are you doing here?” he asked.

The necklaced man approached Willow and smiled. “Ours is a looking, yon,” he said. “Ours is a seeing.”

“What are you looking for?”

The Laruns turned and their leader shuffled out from the pens’ dark embrace. His jivvering hand unclenched the bowl, and it shattered on the ground. Willow looked up at him curiously.

He whispered into the necklaced man's ear.

"He says," the necklaced man said, "'the one I smell on you.'"