Caruso spent the morning down at the poppy fields training with Ferris. It was more blindfold training, which suited Caruso just fine. He liked the blindfold. Being able to solely rely on Ferris was freeing. He was getting better at ignoring his own inner voice, and instead, listening to Ferris’s voice. As a result his walling came a lot easier. During the session he only ever missed a wall when the cats attacked two or three at a time. Ferris was pleased with his improvement. At the end of the session Ferris had once again ordered Caruso to kill one of the bound cats. This time, Caruso obeyed without flinching.

‘You’re making progress,’ Ferris said.

Caruso’s heart swam with pride. ‘I guess I can summon walls more reliably. I see the other Foresters constantly training in the clearing by the compound. When will I train with them?’

‘The skill difference is too vast. It would be like a toddler sparring against a grown man.’

‘But I know nothing about how a normal fight would go down. I would feel a lot safer if I at least knew some basics.’

‘If an Urchin is attacking you, and you try and fight back, you will be killed. All you can hope to do is run away, and use your walls to make it harder to chase you.’

‘I’m not a very fast runner.’

‘Running is your only chance. If you try and fight, you will die. Let me show you how futile fighting would be.’

They moved down stream, to where the banks where no longer carpeted in poppyshrooms and where the cats wouldn’t bother them.

‘This is a technique that any threader will employ against you. We call them defencive tethers.’

Ferris summoned a thread from the ground, it wrapped and tied around his waist. He walked a few steps away, allowing the tether to unspool from the ground and lengthen. He then attached a second tether, one that came from a different direction.

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‘Now. Try and kill me.’

Caruso knew not to question him. He followed the order, summoning a quick wall beneath Ferris that would normally shoot him up to a lethal height. But as Ferris was thrust into the air, his threads tautened and pulled him harmlessly off the walls.

‘Like I said,’ Ferris said. ‘Any threader can do this. They can also instantly untie one of their tethers, to choose which direction they are pulled in. What you should’ve done is aligned your wall to take out the root of one my tethers.’

Caruso kicked himself for not thinking of that.

‘That way,’ Ferris continued. ‘You could better predict which direction I will go in. And follow your attack up immediately with another wall.’

‘And what do I do if a threader binds me to the ground?’ Caruso asked.

‘You die. Remember you have a range advantage verse threaders. Twenty paces to their ten. Your job is keeping them at bay.’

‘And what about blinkers? They have a range of five paces, shouldn’t I have an advantage over them?’

‘Which direction is the Godshroom?’

Caruso stared hopelessly around the clearing. He pointed vaguely back towards the poppy fields where a couple of cats were lazily growling at eachother. Ferris corrected him by pointing much further to the right.

‘If you don’t know where they will blink, how could you hope to have an advantage?’

‘Couldn’t I just wall them before they get near me? It seems like my range advantage should count for something.’

‘Against a blinker, you are not their target. Your blinkshadow is.’

Caruso stared at Ferris hoping he would give an explanation. Ferris walked down stream from Caruso, and stood in a spot five paces away from him.

‘This is your blinkshadow. If I blinked from here, you would turn into red mist. And if I had a long pole I could threaten your blinkshadow from even further away. Against a blinker you need to be hyper aware of protecting your blinkshadow.’

Caruso nodded. It was a lot to think about. He felt his confidence deflate back down to more appropriate levels.

‘Everyone already knows all this,’ Ferris reminded him. ‘Everyone has had thousands of years to practice all this. You can’t hope to best anyone. If ever you get in a situation. Run. Always run.’

Ferris walked towards the stream. He didn’t bother pausing or asking for Caruso to wall-bridge him over. He simply expected it. Caruso was glad Ferris had at least that much faith in him.

Returning home, they noticed a carriage approaching the compound from the east, from Jamala. Orange had finally returned with the supplies for the cultivating challenge.