Chapter 25: Skipping Home

A bunch of information suddenly clicked into place for Arthur. A distrustful kid, one who was just a little dirtier and less taken care of than all the others. A bad attitude that was always on the defensive. A reluctance to take charity. It all made much more sense now.

“You didn’t know? What did you think?” Spiky said. “It’s pretty obvious nobody is taking care of her.”

“I thought maybe her family was poor or something. And I’ve only talked with her a few times. They… died? In a monster wave? I don’t even know what that is.”

“It’s an occasional thing. You’ve noticed the city has walls? That’s why. Every once in a while, a bunch of monsters overflow from dungeons out in the wild, which are always popping up. They group up, and start marching. If the city’s in the way…”

“They attack it?”

“Yeah. Which isn’t as dangerous as it sounds. We have a big wall. We have people like Karbo, plus everyone in the town showing up to do their part, even if it’s just throwing rocks. But that’s only if you’re inside the wall. Her parents were outside of it in the last monster wave, they were some kind of travelers.”

“And nobody takes care of her? That doesn’t seem like this city.” Arthur considered all the people who more or less shoved resources and opportunities into his hands. “Everyone talks about duties all the time. I can’t believe nobody has a duty to her.”

“Oh, we do. All of us. Everyone in the city. There are places that take care of kids like that, and half the moms in the city would scoop her up in a second if they could.”

“Then why not?”

“She won’t accept it. Says she doesn’t want charity, wanders around looking for salvage and odd work. People try to give her work sometimes, even if they don’t need the help, but she can sniff it out when the work’s fake and runs off.”

“And you can’t force her to accept help? What’s that, another duty?”

“Just a rule. People can refuse help. Even kids.”

“Huh.” Arthur looked the way the girl had gone, wondering if she’d be able to tell that he knew her background once she came back. “Don’t tell her I know, okay? Not that you would, but…”

“Oh, believe me, Arthur. I wouldn’t tell her for all the world. Why would I ruin it?”

After Spiky moved on, Arthur worked for a few more hours before closing up shop. Talking to the customers had given him a better idea of how food stands worked, schedule-wise, and it turned out that nearly every stand had a different schedule. Breakfast stands worked in the morning, sometimes even sharing space with another occupant that focused on more nighttime friendly foods. He was expected to be there several hours a day, but any worries about constant twelve-hour work-marathons vanished with the conversation. He decided to work from around the time people went to work until just a bit after the lunch rush.

Today, that meant he was still missing the initiate meeting in the park. Tomorrow, though, he should be able to make it. And it would leave him time to experiment with new flavors and new teas as well.

“We were unrelenting in our pursuit of your deaths.”

“Oh, hi.” Arthur started up, face to face with Mizu for the first time in days. “I haven’t seen you in a bit. How have you been?”

“Fine.” She slid one coin over the counter. “I would like one of your drinks, please.”

“No, no. See, when you spend two days digging that.” Arthur pointed over at the well. “You get your drinks for free.”

He saw a wave of blue wash through her cheeks as he finished talking. Was it some kind of water-demon version of blushing, maybe?

“I can pay.”

“I know you can. I won’t let you. So what will it be?”

Making one cup of tea was easy. Arthur flipped his sign to closed as he did. Mizu ordered the strongest, most caffeinated combination of things he had, then sighed as she took her first drink of it.

“This is better now.”

“It should be. I’ve picked up a lot of levels.”

“Have you?”

He flicked her over his status screen, which was only a bit more improved after the lunch rush.

Level 10 Teamaster

Stats:

STR 5

VIT 8

DEX 8

PER 12

WIS 10

INT 5

Primary Skills: Teashop Brewmaster (Level 7) Food Scientist (Level 8)

Achievements: Shop Owner, Employer (Rolling into shop owner)

“Fast,” She said, looking at the screen and sipping her tea. She wasn’t surprised that he had shown her. At the lower, learning-the-ropes levels, Milo had said, it wasn’t uncommon to share status screens. There wasn’t much worth hiding. It was mostly adults, like Eito, who hid the details of their overall screens.

“Yeah. I just put the last two points into wisdom, which I hope was the right choice. I thought about more vitality.”

She shook her head. “You don’t need more vitality right now. Eight is enough to make most days easy, in terms of fatigue. More perspective would be good though. It’s good for almost everything. Putting points there is never a mistake.”

It was one of the longest sentences he had ever heard her say.

“Can I ask you a question?” Arthur asked.

“Yes.”

“You said once that you were quiet even for a water elemental. Are there… loud ones? Like Karbo?”

“Nobody is like Karbo. No matter what kind of demon.” She smiled slightly. “I saw him forget that churches have doors once. It took them a week to fix.”

“You know what I mean, though.”

She shook her head as she sucked one of the pearls from the bottom of her cup.

“All water elementals are… calm. We speak with each other only when it’s needed. And a bit more, when we are friends. But not like others. We are learning and changing, but we still talk less.”

“Ah. Well, let me know if I’m ever talking too much. Humans on Earth talked sort of a lot. I don’t think I was an exception.”

“Don’t worry. I like listening. Tell me more about your stand.”

Arthur spent a few minutes letting her know about how things had been going, about how busy the day before had been, and how he was struggling to keep up with it. She nodded along, and seemed especially interested when he told her about employing the owl-girl. It was subtle, but he could tell she was listening, not just suffering his monologue silently.

“That is good,” she said.

“What about your work? It’s good?”

“It is. It’s not like yours. It takes time, but it isn’t hard.”

“I doubt that. Although I’ll admit that I don’t really know what a weller does. I’d love to see you work, sometime.”

“You would?”

“I would.”

She stood up from her stool, handing back her glass and grabbing him very lightly by the wrist.

“Come, then,” Mizu said.

“Right now?”

“Are you doing anything else?”

“No, I guess not.”

“Then let’s go.”

He followed her as she walked fluidly through the town, politely returning greetings to the few people she seemed to know. It turned out not to be a short walk, and Arthur’s improved stats helped him keep a pace that would have been unreasonable just a few days before.

After several minutes, they came to a small, nondescript building, one made of simple brick with a heavy metal door and virtually no other features.

“It looks like a church,” Arthur said. “The churches here, I mean.”

She nodded.

“You work in here?”

“In a way. There’s more in there than it appears.” She pulled a small token from one of her pockets and waved it in front of the door, where it unlocked with a click. “The other wellers will be home. I can show you everything.”

His eyes took a moment to adjust to the inside of the building before he could see much, and once they did, he saw there wasn’t much to see beyond a few dim lights and a staircase heading down.

Mizu didn’t hesitate, taking to the stairs and walking down. Arthur followed, seeing little besides a dim glow beyond Mizu. He started to hear more and more. There was water down there, somewhere, rushing and splashing around.

“Wow.” When they reached the bottom, Arthur found the water. It was something, not like anything Arthur had ever seen before. The room they had entered had a large whirlpool at its center, maybe five or ten feet wide at the mouth. But this whirlpool seemed to be running in reverse, sucking up water from below rather than swirling down. At the top, the water entered several channels through gates cut into the stone, from where it presumably flowed on through tunnels to provide the city with the water it needed to function.

“You did this?”

“Not me. The city has a master weller. Look.” She pointed at a place on the ground, where Arthur could see runes etched into the rocks. “He created the flow of the water here. It’s the deepest, most productive well I know of. These runes power it.”

She took his hand, pulling him down and setting his finger on the cuts in the rock. He could feel the rock humming with energy in a way he couldn’t explain or understand.

“Majicka. We add ours, every day, to keep the runes powered. And then, where we can, we improve the well.”

“How?”

“Balancing the content of the water. Keeping it clean. Even I can improve the output of this well, gradually.”

Mizu let go of his hand, sitting back on the stones by the whirlpool and looking at it. The room sounded a bit like being near a river, and the air was wet and heavy in a pleasantly cool sort of way.

“I love it here,” she said.

“I think I do, too.”

After that, Arthur couldn’t think of a single thing to say, but for once, that seemed just fine. They sat there side by side, watching the water for a long time.

“You can find your way home from here?”

After an unknown-to-Arthur amount of time had passed, Mizu seemed satisfied and led him out of the underground back into the light. Neither of them said anything until they were outside, and then suddenly the spell was broken. It was okay to talk again.

“I think so. It’s that way?”

“Yes.”

“Thanks for showing me that. It was amazing.”

“Thank you for seeing it with me. It made it new, for me.”

Arthur nodded, and she turned to leave. He watched her go for a moment, then turned to make his way back to his own home.

“Arthur?” She paused in the street and looked at him intently as he turned around.

“Yes?”

“Thank you for knowing when not to speak. It was… right.”

Arthur nodded, then walked away, silently blessing the old man at the in-between place who somehow had known just what Arthur needed when he asked for a nice place. Yes, the demon world took some getting used to, and yes, it was taking a lot of work to find his place here.

But for all that the demon world was different from Earth, he had never felt as light and happy as he did now. It was like gravity barely affected him. And he didn’t have it in him to walk back home in any kind of dignified manner.

Instead, for the first time in two lifetimes, Arthur skipped his way home.