Super Supportive ONE HUNDRED FIFTY-NINE: Tenderroot

ONE HUNDRED FIFTY-NINE: Tenderroot

159

******

“How long will you stay?” Stuart asked.

The Artonan boy was at his desk, eyes focused on sothing Alden couldn’t see. And Alden, thoughts racing toward the goal of getting away from what had been shaping up to be an emotional pit of an evening, was trying to compose a text ssage to Esh-erdi to let the knight know where he was going and that he hadn’t been kidnapped from the cube.

“Shouldn’t you tell that?” he replied in Artonan. “It’s your house.”

“I have two and a half days left of my weekend,” said Stuart.

Okay. He’s thinking long visit.

Right now, that sounded absolutely fine.“I have class Wednesday.”

“If you grow tired of my company or the environnt, you may use our summonarium whenever you want to. Humans have so many different eating customs. Is there a correct number of dishes I should serve to you to be properly welcoming?”

“Stuart. This is . The last ti we spoke, we talked about a person who pees in shoes, and I showed you paper shaping, and I stood out in the rain while I wore a large garbage bag on my body.”

Stuart looked up from whatever he was doing. “I know. And you called your friend three tis. I hoped all week that you would want to share another of your school days with .”

“…you counted?”

“When I heard that Anesidora was >,” said Stuart, “and I feared for your safety, I regretted that during our previous conversations I let timing and circumstances > in my consideration.”

Alden accidentally added the phrase “loom large in my consideration” to his Esh-erdi text ssage, deleted it hastily, then said, “What does that an?”

Stuart looked back down. “Ideal human sleeping temperature seems quite cold to . Is that with or without a warming cushion?”

******

Alden rembered that he had a lot of nerves about visiting Stu-art’h and, more significantly, the rest of the art’h family about ten seconds before he wheeled his suitcase into Matadero’s in-house teleportation area.

The cube had one, of course. It was way down at the bottom, below the water line, where there were no people. One sign he’d passed indicated that he’d entered an area called Flood Trap 2.

Stuart had ended the call twenty minutes ago to finish his “preparations.” Alden had finished his own preparations by texting Kabir a request for snake care, brushing his teeth and hair, and shoving stuff into the big blue suitcase. Which was probably about to break so kind of a record for Earth-made suitcases by traveling to Rapport I.

What the hell am I doing?

And what the hell was Stuart doing? They had scheduled a specific day for Alden’s first invited visit. It had been clear that Stuart had been making plans for that day.

He was going to send clothing recomndations. More manners stuff. I was going to have a shirt embroidered so they wouldn’t think I was an ingrate who didn’t appreciate one of their most important family mber’s honors.

Now he had the school uniform he was wearing and one change of clothes. Fortunately it was the plain brown t-shirt, not sothing with writing or images on it. He’d been conscious of that since Stuart had ntioned it, and he’d brought it along because he thought he’d be spending more ti here at the cube around a bunch of Artonans.

This is just a different bunch of Artonans. No big deal.

The most important bunch of Artonans. The bunch of Artonans that had just had so kind of a disagreent with Stuart that might have been—probably was—about Alden.

There are the nerves, he thought, swallowing as he stepped into a wide teleportation alcove with an arched ceiling. Hey. Bright side. Social worries are keeping from being freaked out by the fact that this is my first ti teleporting away from Earth since February.

He rembered the person he was before, waving goodbye to Boe and Jeremy. The freshly purchased red coat. The fear mingling with excitent.

“System, if anyone on my priority contacts list calls, send it through at my expense without giving the long distance notification.”

He tried to think of what else there was a person had to do before ditching the planet.

Surprisingly little in this case.

A ssage from Esh-erdi arrived. Alden had felt bad texting the knight when he was busy cleaning up Sinker Sender magic, but he guessed he shouldn’t have, since Esh-erdi’s replies had made it seem like he was pleased with the turn of events.

Although this one said, [Do not let anyone tell you The Elder’s Croak. I will be better at it than them.]

About a minute later, the official invitation to visit Rapport I arrived. Alden had been a little worried that it would look like a summons, complete with paynt and a tir. But it was an image of a handwritten letter from Stuart, hovering in front of him while the System translated the writing into English.

Samuel Alden Thorn of Earth,

Welcoming you as my guest would bring happiness. Our household would be enlivened by your presence for a day or a year. Our fires are warm, and our bowls are full.

I await your answer in the house of Jeneth-art’h.

Being his son, and of age to offer the house’s welco,

Sina Stu-art’h

It was followed by a teleportation offer. No tir.

The formality is a lot. But that’s such a welcoming invitation really.

And the Primary finally had a na. Alden would probably think of it one percent as often as he thought “Primary,” but it was still good to know.

What do I actually call him to his face if it cos up? Hello, Primary? Primary Jeneth-art’h? Hn’tyon Jeneth-art’h? Mr. Stuart’s Dad?

I was supposed to have a whole month to figure this all out. What’s happened over there?

He had no idea what to expect when arrived at the summonarium. Would there be forty knights and wizards there? Kids? The Primary and his spouses?

Is it weird to be wearing my school uniform? Should I change into the t-shirt?

He took a breath and straightened his outfit. He told himself the art’h family was not scary. He’d served so of them third al, after all.

“All right. Let’s go to Artona I. I accept the teleport.”

******

He lost awareness of his body, of anything like a world around him. He gained that clarifying awareness of himself.

And, then, he was breathing in the air of another world.

He stood in the art’h family’s huge summonarium, right in the middle of a design painted on the stone floor.

The only other person in the room was Stuart. He was wearing a nervous expression and an outfit that was a little more festive than any Alden had seen him in before. Still nothing as elaborate as the clothes so fully qualified wizards wore on a daily basis, but it was noticeable.

The gray tunic was nearly knee-length, and the wide belt of matching fabric was embroidered in a slightly darker shade. The centerpiece of the embroidery was unusual—a round shape with a lot of spiky protrusions that Alden couldn’t quite identify. And the sleeves of the tunic were wide enough at the wrists to reveal a purple lining when Stuart held his arms outstretched, as he was doing right now in order to present Alden with the physical copy of the very invitation he’d just seen a picture of.

Here we go. Guest manners on.

The last ti he was here, he’d been a freshly-affixed house wanderer—sore, covered in dirt, and nudged along by the suggestions of the Artona I kernel. Now he was here purely by choice to see Stu-art’h, just hours after hearing that he might never see him again.

If the inviter wanted this to be an occasion, then the invitee could accommodate.

Alden let go of the suitcase handle and stepped forward to accept the small paper sheet with both of his own hands. “Thank you. I’m very glad to be here. I had been anticipating our usual conversation, so the chance to see you in person is an unlooked-for treasure.”

He was super proud that he knew how to say that last part in Artonan, and that he knew it well enough to be fairly confident it t the mont.

Stuart smiled and visibly relaxed in the sa way a tense Boe might have relaxed if Alden had said, “ ’sup, asshole?”

“Here at the >, we have more than one set of house stationery,” Stuart said, obviously under the impression that Alden was staring so hard at the invitation because he was examining it, not because he was having a major epiphany about it being possible for swearing and formality to serve the sa function. “Aunt Alis, her children, and her spouses all use brown ink for their invitations.”

“I ant to prepare better before I ca to see you in person,” Alden said, looking up. “I was going to wear the comndation the way we talked about and try to learn the nas of all your relatives. And I was going to think of a small gift. A lot of humans do that—a gift for the one who invited them.”

“Your presence is the gift,” Stuart said graciously.

Alden stepped back over to get his suitcase.

“Is your leg well enough for a walk?”

“Yes. It’s not serious.”

“Esh-erdi said you almost drowned.”

Surprised, Alden whipped around. “You talked to Esh-erdi about ? When? Why?”

“You told him you were worried I wouldn’t be able to call because you were at the place humans call Matadero. His > reasons for contacting were to let know that he had t you, that you were receiving care for your physical injuries, and that there was no reason for to avoid calling out of respect for your perceived busyness with more urgent matters.” Stuart paused. “I wasn’t going to respect your busyness anyway, though. Before I heard from him, I was planning to teleport ho from school early to insist that Evul help check on you.”

I should have realized, thought Alden. Talking to Stuart had been on the sa list of requests as school attendance and Tiny Snake food. Esh-erdi had decided to see to all of those things.

“The unstated reasons for his call were slightly different, if I didn’t misunderstand his >,” said Stuart.

That was a concerning way of putting things. “What did he insinuate?”

“He…I hope our visit will lead us to that depth of conversation,” said Stuart. “But first, I’ll take you to your >! And we should discuss our >.”

I get a cottage? And an itinerary?

“If it sounds pleasant to you, as it does to , we will eat together,” Stuart continued as he led the way to the summonarium’s door. “Seven forty-three post ridiem in your human ti is good for your third al, isn’t it? It coincides with when I usually have second al.”

That was just over an hour from now. “It’s a good ti,” Alden confird.

“I ordered a few atpetal dishes since you said you—”

“atpetal!”

“—liked that,” Stuart concluded.

******

Stepping out of the summonarium was surreal in a way Alden hadn’t expected it to be. He’d been in a strange state of mind during his one and only other ti here. His mory of the trees and the mirrored buildings hidden among them had a clarity to it, but he’d sohow completely missed details that now leaped out.

Three of the towering, dark trees that stood around the summonarium had limbs that grew together above the building in a way that looked more like a product of intention than nature. Like they were weaving themselves together to form a second roof.

Another tree, a short ways up the path, had cone-shaped baskets hanging from high branches. They were large enough for people to sit inside, which he knew was at least one of their functions since a trio of Artonans were leaning out of the circular entrance hole in one of them and looking down toward Alden and Stuart. He considered waving, then decided against it.

In a house full of wizards and knights, I guess the lack of ladders leading up to the tree baskets isn’t much of a problem.

He sniffed the air. “It slls really good. Like food?”

Like burnt sugar actually.

“They’re making flatseed candy on the other side of the house,” Stuart said. “Everyone spends a lot of ti outdoors in the sumr.”

So hoy. “I looked up the climate for this Rapport one night when I couldn’t sleep. Your sumrs are so comfortable for humans.”

“It’s pleasant for you today?”

Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

The sun was shining down through the tree branches, and it felt like it was in the low eighties. “It would be perfect if my school uniform had short sleeves, but yes. This is good.”

“It’s pleasant for us, too. When he’s ho, my oldest living brother spends the entire season trying to be >. We don’t see him until the > chills the world.” Stuart stopped walking and looked around with a small frown. “Where did she go? I told her to stay at the door.”

Before Alden could ask who he ant, Stuart shouted, “Aaaaalden! Here to !”

Then he waited with an expectant look on his face. No ryeh-b’t appeared.

Alden wondered if he’d ever stop thinking it was funny and aweso that there was a ryeh-b’t running around with his na. “Maybe she didn’t hear you.”

“She has excellent hearing. Soone’s probably playing with her. Every ti I return ho from school, I have to remind her and whoever the latest > is that she is at an age where she needs structure.”

He whistled piercingly.

A mont later, Alden followed his gaze to see that a red head had poked itself out of the occupied tree basket up above them. Stuart pointed at the ground beside his feet.

The ryeh-b’t took her sweet ti erging from the basket. Stuart kept whistling and pointing.

Finally, she took to the air. The webbing of her wings glowed like a lantern with the midday sun above her.

“She looks amazing!” said Alden.

“Keep your arms at your sides,” Stuart said. “She doesn’t have her claw blunts on, and she’ll shred your sleeves if she lands on you.”

Alden put his arms by his side, eagerly waiting for Stuart’s pet to land and not particularly minding if he got climbed on and slightly shredded by a flying dinosaur. She hit the ground and whistled—a lot like Stuart just had—at the sight of him.

Yes, he thought, delighted as the animal ran toward him. She rembers !

Only for Other Alden to head straight for his suitcase like it was the only thing of interest in the whole forest. He had to pull his foot out of the way so she didn’t stomp all over his squishboot in her eagerness to sniff the bag.

She chomped on a zipper and tugged.

“No!” said Stuart.

Other Alden looked at him. She seed to consider the instruction for a mont before tugging a little more.

“No.”

She finally let go and proceeded to climb on top of the bag instead.

They had to fight her for it to get going again, and Stuart ended up apologizing several tis while Alden the human tried to coax the pet into acting like he was as interesting as his luggage.

Stuart led him down a path that existed, like all the others surrounding the main house and outbuildings, only because it had been worn by passing feet. And so small thing with wheels, Alden noted as he saw the faint marks of ruts crushing the leaf mulch ahead of them

He looked up at the trees.

Their soft, blade-shaped leaves seed to start small and grow up to the length of his forearm. All the ones on the ground were brown. Dead. But the one he’d been using as a bookmark for months was still a healthy shade of green with a silvery back.

“How long does it take for the leaves to turn brown after they fall?” he asked.

“They don’t fall until after they turn brown,” said Stuart. “Usually.”

Other Alden was flapping around ahead of them, doing battle with what looked like the remnants of so decoration or toy that had been tied to a branch.

They had passed three cottage-sized buildings already, only one of which had been in use, if the presence of a worktable and tools beside it was sothing to go by.

“Are most of these peoples’ houses? Or offices?”

“It’s a mixture,” said Stuart. “Father, Aunt Alis, and Uncle Tesen imagined their children and grandchildren all residing together in one large house when they decided to live as a >. But they either underestimated the number of children they would have or they overestimated everyone’s willingness to share space. Soone brings up adding another floor or > every day, but it’s so much less > to build the cottages.”

Uncle Tesen was probably the third triplet in the set with Alis and Jeneth, Alden thought. The one who died.

“The cottage I’ve claid for you is my favorite of the empty ones,” Stuart told him. “It’s near the stream.”

They traveled for a couple more minutes down a gentle slope, then turned aside from the well-traveled path toward another building with no path leading toward it at all. It was small and rectangular. Built very close to the base of a tree, it was camouflaged by its own mirrored sides and the coat of fallen leaves on the roof. Out front, two dark wooden chairs faced down the slope, which steepened suddenly as it approached the stream Stuart had ntioned.

“Our closest neighbors, the en family, live in that direction.” He gestured toward the stream. “Our families have long been > to one another. One of my parents was forrly an en.”

Alden’s attention was captured. Stuart called the Primary his father, using the word that indicated a male Artonan who had both sired him and given him care. And a few tis, he’d used words the Systems usually translated as “parent” or “parents,” implying that he considered at least a couple of others in the house to be important caregivers in his life. Most likely the people his father had marriage contracts with, but not necessarily.

He’s never used the word for birthmother, though.

Alden didn’t want to ask outright. But he did feel like now that he was actually standing here in their forest he needed to at least know the nas and relationships of the main few adults in Stuart’s life. So that he could make a good impression.

“Before you introduce to your parents, I’d like to know a little about them. To help rember who everyone is to each other and you.”

“Do you want to be introduced to them?” Stuart asked, turning suddenly to the cottage to place a hand on the mirrored wall. “Because if you do, I will add it to the itinerary. But I don’t think any of them deserve to et you today.”

He had such a snippiness to his voice that Alden might have been amused by the sudden shift if not for the words themselves.

“Am I not here to et your family?” he asked slowly. “At least partially…?”

“I was looking forward to introducing you to them all during the visit I was planning for December.” A hidden door slid inward and sideways to reveal the cottage’s interior. “This afternoon, however, I am looking forward to not being around them.”

Oh boy. “Are they…angry I’m here? Or is it sothing about Privacy of the House? Evul-art’h said they’d found out about that, but—”

Stuart stepped over the threshold. “To be truthful, my unwillingness to have you sworn to Privacy of the House was the start of extended > warfare. But it would only have been a small disagreent at another ti. For a long while now, they have been digging in > fields for the > that they could hold above the reach of a rich but starving man.”

The need to de-taphor that made Alden stand in the doorway for several seconds after Stuart had gone in. “You an they’ve been looking for sothing you wanted so that they could make you give them sothing they wanted?”

A bargaining chip.

“Yes. Co inside. We must make sure you have everything you need. Human bedti will co not long after your third al.”

Alden laughed a little. “You don’t have to schedule bedti for .”

“I did not schedule bedti,” Stuart said. “I have only arranged my own half of the itinerary to take advantage of your natural bedti. I will do howork silently and contemplate the day’s events for nine human hours.”

******

The cottage was all window on two sides, with a low ceiling that felt more cozy than confining. It had everything Alden needed, plus a lot of things he didn’t.

While Stuart followed him around, explaining the significance of every fruit in the “bowl of welco” that had been placed on a special stand by the door, Alden explored. A diaphanous curtain divided the main room in two. The largest bed he’d ever seen in his life was on one side, along with all the closet space and a good fluffy rug.

And on the smaller half of the cottage was the entryway with its shoe cubby, a floor table with cushions for seating, and a cabinet full of provisions that ranged from bottles of dried tea and alien cigars to jewelry.

“Are these magic rings?” Alden asked, staring at a peg inside the cabinet that was covered in the things.

“They’re bad ones. Most will probably break after a single use because the enchantnts turned out weak,” Stuart said. “But not everyone who stays feels like casting spells. This way they can quickly air out the cottage or send a ssage to the main house by grabbing a ring. If it doesn’t work, it’s not serious, but if it does, it’s convenient.”

Not everyone feels like casting spells…I see.

Alden nodded and shut the cabinet. Having seen everything, including the bathroom, there was only one thing left to do. He went back over to his suitcase and grabbed the recently chewed-on zipper.

Stuart was standing beside him holding up a pair of berries joined together at the stem. “These two red ones are prusintha. They symbolize a first eting. I know this isn’t our first eting, but since it’s the first one with the bowl of welco…”

He trailed off as Alden set aside his ssenger bag, toiletries, t-shirt, and jeans to pull out a sack made of soft brown silk. The learning cushion had been delivered in this, and he’d decided to reuse it to keep the cushion from getting scuffed.

He carried it to the stretch of rug on the opposite side of the bed, near the shorter window wall.

“You brought the learning cushion with you.” Stuart was still standing on the other side of the curtain. His bright rust-colored eyes were fixed on Alden.

“I was planning to sit on it tomorrow and—” practice so spells in my hospital room “—learn. So I had it with when you called. Of course I couldn’t leave it behind. So wandering human might have ass-abused it. So wandering wizard might have stolen it.”

Alden knelt on the rug and freed the cushion from its wrapper. Dark leather, gold and silver logograms around the edges, the hidden pocket he was going to find a promise stick for.

“It’s wonderful,” he said. Still kneeling, he looked back around at Stuart. “Thank you for giving the leather one. You had it made just a little bigger than normal, and every symbol on it ans sothing so thought-provoking and perfect. I can tell you picked them all yourself. It’s one of the best gifts anyone’s ever given .”

“You like it that much?” Stuart took a few steps closer.

“I was afraid it was going to get lost in the floods. I was more worried about it than about so of the people I t Friday night.”

“You weren’t!” His face was sowhere between horror and delight.

“I was,” Alden insisted. “And then Evul-art’h called and said you were having an argunt in the big living room, and I’d get to speak to you soon or never again.”

Stuart made an angry noise in the back of his throat. “She shouldn’t have called you just to say > things!”

“I was afraid she really ant it. And that I’d never get to tell you this ans a lot to .” He touched the cushion with his index finger. “A lot.”

“I wanted to give you sothing aningful,” Stuart said, the irritation draining away from his voice just as quickly as it had co. “Sothing that you would have with you for a long ti.”

He looked down at the fruit bowl and finally set it back on its stand, before walking the rest of the way over. He passed through the gap in the curtain, his bare feet sinking into the deep carpet, then he squatted in front of Alden until they were eye to eye.

“What happened to you?” he asked. “I heard enough from Esh-erdi to know it was a > almost as difficult as the one you’ve already endured.”

“No,” said Alden. “It was only a single night.”

After a mont, Stuart gave the smallest of nods.

“I did think a Contract was failing again,” Alden admitted. “Even though it wasn’t. Even though I knew, logically, that it wasn’t. And after Esh-erdi rescued , I still felt deep inside that…maybe Earth was on the edge of ending.”

He rembered being pulled from the dark water into the light. He had seen a mountain of death frozen against the dawn sky by the power of a single knight. He had seen the results of a healthy Contract, the Triplanets, and Avowed working together.

Just a few hundred dead from an event that could have killed tens of thousands.

He thought there was a comforting lesson there, all laid out in front of him. But it was one he couldn’t absorb, couldn’t feel, even though in his head he knew it to be true.

Stuart’s mouth opened again.

“You’re doing that thing where you take us straight to serious land,” Alden said before he could speak.

“Serious land?”

“I can’t say mode in Artonan. I had a question for you, too, though. Your sister said you were trying to explain sothing to your family in the big living room. She said none of them understood. What was it?”

Stuart stared at him. Alden had almost forgotten what a remarkable starer he was in person.

“You don’t have to tell , obviously. But I want to understand whatever it was.”

“I don’t know about that,” Stuart said.

Quick rejection of the offer, Alden thought with a wince. “If that’s how you feel—”

“I said so many things, and I thought they failed to understand most of them in the way I wished for them to be understood. I would have to repeat the entire conversation to make sure I told you whatever Evul found worthy of ntioning.”

“You can do that if you want.”

Alden watched in surprise as purple crawled up Stuart’s neck and ears toward his face.

“I couldn’t,” he said quietly. “I got very angry a couple of tis.”

“That makes even more curious.”

“I used > words for reasoning with loved ones.”

What in the universe did he say to them? He looked so embarrassed now that Alden couldn’t even think of teasing him about it.

A mont passed. Then, the Artonan rocked back on his heels and sat on the rug with a small thump. He rested his elbows on his knees. “To tell you more about myself is sothing I want to do. It’s what I planned to do in December. Now, things have shifted. You are already here. But what I should tell you before anything else is…”

“What is it?”

Stuart’s eyes didn’t leave his face. “Maybe you would like the atpetal first. I didn’t actually an to turn our conversation to serious > until after our stomachs were full and we had taken Alden for her evening flight. I was going to approach the subject of our friendship on soft feet.”

“You don’t have to worry about soft feet. You can just say whatever it is. And then we can recover by eating atpetal.”

“All right,” said Stuart. His voice was calm now. “Most of the people who know best think I’m likely to die soon.”

For a mont, in the wake of that statent, the cottage went so horribly quiet.

What are you saying, Stu-art’h? Stop.

“It’s because of a choice I’ve made. If I turn away from that choice, there would be no risk to . But I will not turn away.”

Stop.

“I’m telling you because I want friendship with you very much. Maybe…maybe even a friendship of oath so day. But you should know which way I go, and that it is not without danger.” Stuart hesitated, then added, “Do you still want to be friends? If it’s like this?”

He waited. Slowly, his expression—ever so faintly hopeful—grew stiffer.

“Ah, we could still be friends of so kind next year,” he said, looking away at last. “After the worst of the danger is past. Others have chosen to wait for that, so I do under—”

“Don’t be so stupid,” said Alden, finally finding his voice.

Stuart’s head jerked back around to face him.

“Do you think you’re going to die?”

“No,” Stuart said firmly. “I know myself better than they think. I will endure my trial. I will fulfill myself and > myself. I will beco what I have chosen. And I will live.”

That’s right, thought Alden, taking in the way his jaw was set. Shouldn’t let myself forget. This is the place where Intensity 99.9 got its na.

Just a few feet away from them, a curious ryeh-b’t was smashing its red snout to the window, leaving a trail of what looked like snot in its wake.

******

******