Chapter 133: Young Earthling

“Oh, Hi…” Arthur realized he had never learned the woman’s name. She had always been Mizu’s mother to him. “I don’t think I know how to address you.”

“Maar,” the woman said. “Stay here.”

With that, she stood up and walked into the house, returning a moment later with another chair.

“Here. Sit,” Maar said.

“I didn’t mean to bother you,” Arthur said. If anything, he would have rather run and jumped into the cold ocean than talk with this woman. It wasn’t just the fear of her. It was also the fact that her closed-off nature was in constant conflict with Empathetic Host, which kept trying to dig its way into what might as well have been an emotional fortress made of solid granite.

“It’s no bother. And I can tell you have something to say,” Maar said. Her motion quirked slightly to the side, in a half smile. “I see why she chose you. You don’t have much practice at hiding things.”

“Should I?” Arthur said.

“I don’t recommend it.”

A silence ensued as Arthur took his seat. Arthur had thought himself all trained up on Water Elemental silences, but quickly found out that only really applied with the one he knew the best. This silence was torture for a while.

“The tea was good,” Maar said. “Not just the effects. The tea itself. You care about your work.”

“I do,” Arthur said, glad for the safe neutral conversation territory. “It might be the only thing I’ve ever been good at. It seems worth making sure other people enjoy it as much.”

“You should warn others. About the effects. I didn’t know that was possible, and I might have been on alchemical products for an illness you were unaware of,” Maar said with the same flat tone. Arthur couldn’t read if she was happy, ambivalent, or angry at his tea.

“It actually doesn’t interact with those products,” Arthur said, before realizing where the hidden bomb in that statement laid. “Wait, you didn’t know my tea had effects?”

“No. Should I have?”

Arthur now knew that, for whatever reason, Mizu had not seen fit to inform her mother exactly how she had survived her brush with death, or even maybe that she had one at all. Arthur didn’t want to touch that one with a ten-foot pole.

“I’m not sure,” Arthur said, hoping that Mizu’s mother wouldn’t push further.

She didn’t and instead reached over to a glass and poured some water for Arthur. “Here. I purified it myself. The water in this house should be enhanced for the next six months or so.”

Arthur accepted the water gratefully. As he drank, he gained a sudden clarity for how convoluted his plan to help Mizu was. He was trying to rally the whole town behind Mizu in some way so that she could do enough to impress her mother. But here he was, in a one-on-one conversation with the woman. If he wanted to help Mizu, he had to dive to the root of the problem.

“So,” Arthur said. “It’s not my place to dig into whatever relationship you have with your daughter.”

“But you’d like to,” Maar said. It was a statement of fact.

“I’d like to, yes.”

“Well, do.” Mizu’s mother waved her arm smoothly over the darkness blanketing the town. “There’s not much else to keep me occupied. And conversation… helps.”

Arthur prepared himself to say uncomfortable things. “So, Mizu. She worked on that well for months and months. Fine-tuning things. She’d tell me about it when she had time. She’d wipe out one rune to try another, or the same rune with minor differences. Always working on some new idea.”

“I could see the remnants of that in the stone,” Maar said.

“Right. Then you saw how many adjustments she made. She started, I think, with your rune stack. It was what she had used in the city, and she wanted to make it work here. And then… do you know Milo? The sparrow?” Arthur asked.

“I saw him. Some sort of crafter?”

“A smith, and machinist. Responsible for the pumps in Mizu’s system.”

“Ah. I see.”

“Mizu saw what he could do. He’s not as brilliant as Mizu. I don’t think anyone is. But he’s very good. She put two and two together and decided to go her own way, to try something new. Which is supposed to be the point of all this. The new settlements, the opportunity they bring. All of that,” Arthur said, trying to get through everything before he lost his courage.

“Yes. I understand that much of the story. What is your point?” Maar asked.

Arthur took a deep breath and a deeper drink of his water. It really was very good.

“The point is that she did all that while telling me how brilliant you were, and how perfect your rune stack was, and how sure she was that she’d never live up to that standard. You had changed the whole world, and she thought that she had little chance of surpassing that.”

“It was foolish,” Maar said.

Arthur bristled. “See, there. That. That’s what I want to talk about. It wasn’t. It might not have worked, but it wasn’t foolish to try. You tried, at some point, right? Decided to deviate from whatever rune stack everyone used before, and after that, you somehow came out on top. Mizu worked her majicka reserves bone dry every day to give it her best try, and a few days ago it all went up in smoke, like that.”

Arthur snapped his fingers, not yelling or even changing his tone much as he spoke but too angry now to stop.

“And she wasn’t worried about the work,” Arthur continued. “She would do as much work as it took. She was worried about what you’d think of her water when you came. That you’d be disappointed that she had strayed from your path. And I thought, oh, that can’t be how it is. There’s no way that it could be as bad as all that. And then you showed up and did exactly what she was afraid of.”

Arthur felt a pang in his head, sharper than before, and suppressed a cough as he kept talking.

“You came here and just told her that you were upset she tried something new, something that wasn’t yours, and stormed off. And then left her alone for a whole day to live with her mother being disappointed with her, feeling like she had to choose between her art and you.”

“Arthur —” Maar began.

He cut her off. “And I don’t know how you could…”

Suddenly, an emotion squeaked out from behind the granite feelings-wall of Maar, slapping into Arthur like a thrown pancake. He felt it come into focus, expecting anger or, if he had badly misread things, sadness. Instead, what he got was intense concern. He almost got up to try and make some of the most soothing tea he could.

“Arthur. Your nose is bleeding,” Maar said.

Arthur suddenly felt an iron taste in his mouth, then lifted his hand up to his septum. It was too dark to see colors, but his fingers came away wet. And then, somehow, he was on the ground. He went to push himself up, and found he couldn’t accomplish the task, especially with a whirlwind of fear and anxiety flooding in from Mizu’s mother all of the sudden.

The last thing he heard was the quiet, dignified Maar screaming for help, just before everything went black.

—

“Arthur. Arthur Teamaster. Of Earth.” Mizu’s voice was suddenly in Arthur’s ears, and unless he was dreaming, her hand was holding his. “I can tell you are waking up. Wake up more, please.”

Wherever they had brought Arthur was much brighter than Maar’s porch, in a way that was obvious even through his eyelids. Forcing his eyes open, he saw why. It was daytime. He was in a bed, surrounded by sheets, blankets, and an absolutely absurd number of bottles of water. There must have been a dozen of them.

“I was out all night?” Arthur asked.

“Arthur, you idiot.” Mizu flung herself onto him, hugging around his neck harder than was likely appropriate for a man recovering from a sudden passing-out. “You were out for three days.”

“What?” Arthur tried to sit up in bed, only to be prevented by Mizu, who held him in place while reaching for a glass of water. “How?”

“How indeed.” Itela appeared around the corner. “Arthur, did anyone ever explain to you that you should ask a lot of questions if you don’t understand things? Especially when you had what was the demon world’s worst headache?”

“Um, it was a pretty busy day,” Arthur answered.

“It was a pretty busy months, young man. The first symptoms of majicka over-sensitivity show up months before it becomes dangerous. You didn’t notice you were coughing? Sneezing more often than was normal?” Itela asked.

“Oh, that? I thought I just had allergies.”

“The children’s disease?” Both Mizu and Itela yelled at once, before Itela continued on. “Arthur, you are, what? Seventeen? Eighteen? You are immune to allergies. There’s not a plant on this planet with powerful enough pollen to so much as tickle you. Or at least not one you’d run into.”

“On my planet, everyone gets them. Forever. Not all the time, but it’s not something that goes away,” Arthur said dreamily.

“Oh.” Itela paused. “Well, then, you get a pass on that. Don’t forget anymore. You did not acclimate very well to the abundant majicka in this area. It built up in your system in a way that would have been easily corrected by any number of drugs we sent with you, had you bothered to ask any questions at all about why you were sick.” Itela rolled her eyes, seeming to remember an army of foolish patients during her long career as a cleric. “You aren’t in any danger now, but you very nearly died before Maar managed to figure out what was going on. The runes she carved, Arthur. You should have seen them.”

“Good ones?”

“Monstrosities, every one. As inefficient as she could make them, to suck the majicka out of the room so you wouldn’t choke to death on it. Remember that when you see her. It probably hurt her to do.” Itela walked over, put her hand on his forehead, and sighed. “But I can sense I’m interrupting something more important than life and death mistakes. Before I go, what was the skill that went wrong? It must have been something.”

“Oh, yeah. It’s called Empathetic Host. In theory, it should just let me know what drinks to make people. But I ended up being mildly psychic, for a while,” Arthur said.

Itela lowered her eyelids a bit, suddenly looking very tired.

“Meaning?” she asked.

“I could read minds all day.”

“I… no, never mind. I’m not even going to get started on that right now. I’ll be back later to check on you again. Mizu, yell at him a little more, okay? There’s a scolding quota that doesn’t seem quite met yet.”

Mizu nodded decisively, then forced more water on Arthur as Itela clomped down the hallway and complained not-quietly about the stupidity of a certain young Earthling.