Elevation of Mana Chapter 27 A Plan

I had dreams of shining cities of steel and glass, beautiful in form and in function, sadly I was very limited by my materials.  Currently I was looking at a mostly destroyed village barely into the stone age, and trying to think about what kind of improvements we might make.  For now was the time for improvement, it was sad the people we'd lost, and the houses, and with winter oncoming too much work would be bad, but if we were going to make something better, it should be now.

"You're up to something again, I can see it in your eyes," Auntie Atie said, frowning.

"I am, but I need help," I replied.

"Oh?  Well, you know your mother and I have something we want from you.  Perhaps if you were to share your secrets we'd be willing to help out," she said.

We spoke as we worked on our newly regrown hut.  Mother had whipped it together in an afternoon, and was currently working on others.  Normally people would have to pay for their new huts, but being an emergency and all she was willing to replace those lost, albeit with slightly lesser versions.

"We need a wall," I finally said.

My aunt looked at me blankly for a few moments before she began to laugh.

"We don't have anywhere near enough people for us to get a wall, and where would we get the stone anyway?  It would be nice, sure, but walls are hard to make, and we don't have the people."

"Do you know much about them?"  I asked.

"Only from the stories of travelers.  They say Atal has walls like cliffs, sheer stone all around the whole place.  Then again it might not be a good idea to make one, since I also hear that all places with walls tend to stink."

That told me two things that I needed to get around.  One, everyone pictured walls as stone, or something similar, while I wanted wood it might be a bad idea for some reason.  Two, sanitation was something that would need to be thought of before building, though on that front I had some more ideas as well.

"We don't need stone, wood will do just fine," I said.

"It will rot," my aunt argued.

"Eventually, but it will give us safety and time while it does."

"I don't think most people would like the village to stink either," she tried.

"That can be fixed I'm sure.  We just need to make it so the things that stink can wash away."

"You're not giving up on this are you?"  Auntie Atie asked.

"No, no I'm not," I replied.

Mother and my aunt had not forgotten that I knew how to make shiny purple beads.  It was currently a sticking point between us, but after a rather heated, if private, argument they'd stepped back for the moment.  My suspicion was that they'd find something I wanted to trade for the knowledge.

Father had eventually heard, and stepped in to stop them from trying to force my secrets out of me.  I'd never seen him angry before, but he'd made it very clear that if I didn't want to tell them, and refused to give it to them in trade, that was tough.  Even my mom had been stymied by how hard he'd put his foot down, something he almost never did.

I'd never paid too much attention to dad, but now I started to look more.  He didn't get loud often, didn't take sides in much.  Larus led the hunters, often declaring when and where things would happen, but he also listened with my father spoke, everyone did.  The thing was, dad may not have been as front and center as mom or Larus, or anyone else, but that didn't mean he didn't do things, he was always there, putting forth a gentle influence, and making connections.

People came to dad with their problems, and with things only he could provide.  Oftentimes he did, or at least advice on how to get what they wanted.  Those he turned away were told why if they needed to be, generally because what they wanted was dumb or too much of a pain, but sometimes because they just irritated him.  He seldom chose to use the soft power he had, but that didn't mean never.

Reflecting on this, as soon as I finished my work for the afternoon I went to see him.  He was currently near the center of the village, repairing some of our many lost tools and helping Isha figure out the very basics of her casting.  She was like him, someone who needed to perform in order to do magic, and frankly, their magic was a bit weird.  They could both make things from nothing, with some restrictions, and mold things in ways that I just couldn't without a lot of effort.  It also seemed more feeling based than knowledge based, and did a lot of other weird bits and bobs here and there.

"Hi dad," I said as I approached his little knapping area.

"Elian, care to help?  I need some more handles," he replied pointing to a pile, each was sized and laid out near what he would be attaching to it.

"Sure, but I've got something I want to do, or something I think we should do maybe?  Kind of like the cold room,"  I said sitting down.

Many people would think that a good handle would be circular, or close to it.  Those people needed to spend more time around hammers, a good handle was a rounded rectangle, with a slight bulge for the center of the hand.  There was an art to it, one I was only passably good at.  That said, magic at least made me fast, I could carve the general shape with planes of force in seconds, then get down to much more delicate work.

"What's that?"  He asked.

"I think we should build a wall."

"Not thinking small are you son?  I don't think that's possible right now."  His reply was instant.

"I know stone is too hard to do, but what about wood?  Even if it doesn't last forever, it should help, and I don't want more monsters wandering into the village," I tried.

"A good thing to want, but where would you get the wood?  Too much to take out of the forest without almost everyone involved, and your mother can't grow that much at once, it would destroy the ground.  She won't do that, and the trees would die before making it to full size.  Even the huts we use are pushing what's possible."

We bounced ideas back and forth for awhile while I used reeds to sand my work into the exact shape I wanted.  It was a bit meditative, and I understood why dad didn't just use magic for all of his work.  Not something I'd be doing full time, but something I could do for the moment.  It allowed me to go back through my memories for something, anything.

I remembered an old T.V. show, in which a group had spent time in Africa.  They'd stayed in a place surrounded by thorns to sleep, though the exact construction had been a bit unclear.  There were a few thorned plants around here, some more nasty than others, and one that nearly reminded me of the brambles that were a constant hazard in the childhood of my first life, sans the berries.

"What about a net of spiky bushes around the village, enough to keep larger animals out.  Is that possible?"  I asked.

"Hmm, maybe.  It won't keep anything really big or really determined away, but it should at least slow things.  You know what your mother will want in exchange for helping with this though?"

"Let's find out if it's possible, then if it is what others think.  If all that goes, auntie is the one working with clay anyway, I don't really care that much beyond wanting to be left alone."  That got me a chuckle.

"Good answer," he said.