Shura is excited to see her friend! She has been up to things. She has been writing clumsy little stories, and learning spells, and making arrows to practice with. She has done rather more of all these things than would normally be expected from a child her age in the time since last Helen saw her.

"I've been getting up really early and sitting in the moonlight and the starlight and doing things," says Shura. "And my daddy took me to go on roller coasters, too, when I got mad about not being big enough to fly yet."

"Roller coasters! My spinach should take me on roller coasters," Helen declares.

"Sure thing, button," says Kas.

"They're good! You go up and up and then down," says Shura, gesturing.

"Fuuuuuun."

"And some of them go upside down!"

"Ooooh!" says Helen. "Fun fun fun! Maybe even more fun than baking cakes. I'll have to try it and see!"

"Is baking cakes fun?" Shura asks dubiously.

"Yeah! You make the stuff and it's all gooey and then you put it in the oven and wait and then it's a cake and you can eat it!"

"I know eating cake is fun," giggles Shura.

"It's more fun when you made the cake!"

"How come?"

"I dunno! Just is," she says.

"Weird," pronounces Shura.

Helen giggles.

"Where do you make cake when you're off away?" Shura asks, gesturing vaguely towards off away.

"Wherever we are. We made a little cake in a microwave in a hotel room once! It was extra fun because it was tiny and cute!"

"I didn't know you could microwave cake."

"You can! It's fun!"

"Did you put frosting? Frosting's the best part."

"We diiiiid," she giggles.

"What kind?"

"Chocolate! The cake was also chocolate. And there were chocolate sprinkles."

"Chocolate," say Shura, "is good."

"Chocolate is good!"

"Sometimes when I get up early if I'm very quiet I take a little bit," whispers Shura.

Helen giggles conspiratorially.

"I live with my daddy and brother and uncle and cousins who live together, some of the time, and they have a lot in the house."

"That's a lot of relatives!" says Helen. "Are they fun?"

"They're okay," shrugs Shura. "I like my daddy."

"Good! I'm glad," she says. "I like my mommydaddyspinach."

"How come you call him that still?"

"Because it's fun?"

"You do a lot of things because they are fun," Shura observes.

"Yeah! It's the best reason."

"Don't you sometimes have to do things that aren't fun?"

"Like what?"

"Sometimes I have to clean. Or work on stuff even if I don't want to. Or listen to my uncle even if he's boring."

"Why's your uncle boring?"

"He wants me to learn -" Shura gestures. "Mortal stuff. I don't have to go to school but I have to listen to him tell me stuff that I'd get told if I went."

"What kinds of mortal stuff?"

"Uuuugh, like stuff about mortal wars from before even my grandma was born, and science, and boring books."

"Awwww," says Helen. "I don't have to read any boring books!"

"That's lucky!" says Shura.

"I read fun books about fun things," she says. "I wish your uncle wasn't boring! He should tell you fun stuff instead."

"He says I have to learn it or I'll be badly educated."

"Do you care about that?"

"I don't even know what being badly educated is supposed to, you know, do."

"Maybe you should ask," she says. "To make sure it's not important."

"If it is are you going to start learning the boring things so you aren't badly educated?"

"I don't know!" she says. "I like learning the fun things. Maybe I can just be really well educated about things that I like."

"My uncle says that's not how it works."

"But he never said what's so bad about being badly educated?"

"No, just that being not-badly educated has to do with knowing lots of different things even if the things are boring."

"That's weird," says Helen. "Does that mean you're badly educated if you don't know any boring things?"

"I guess so!"

"What if you like everything, then are you just badly educated no matter how much stuff you know?"

"Maybe not. I'm not sure. Sometimes when I say something is boring he says it's not. He's wrong though."

"Sometimes stuff that's boring for one person is fun for somebody else," says Helen. "Maybe lots of things are fun for your uncle and that's why he doesn't care that they're boring for you."

"Maybe," says Shura. "Whatever, I don't have to do it a lot. I can just learn magic and stuff most of the time."

"Magic is fun!"

"Yeah!" agrees Shura brightly.

"And so is cake. I wonder if there are spells about cake?"

"There are spells to warm stuff up!"

"Maybe you can bake cake with some of them! I wanna find out," she says. "Who should I ask?"

"I dunno. Maybe my mom knows."

"Let's ask your mom!"

Off they go in search of Shura's mom!

"Hi, Shura's mom! Are there spells you can use to cook stuff when you don't have an oven?" says Helen. "Like cake?"

"If you don't have an oven, you can cook with magic," says Shura's mom. "It would never be worth the trouble if you did have one, though. Lot of runes."

"I want to learn how!" she says. "I like cooking and I don't have ovens all the time!"

"You're not up to runes yet," says Shura's mom. "Too fiddly for little witches. You'll start them when you're nine or ten depending."

"Awwww," says Helen. "Not even if I try really really hard and learn really really well?"

"You'd have to be a little prodigy," says Shura's mom.

"Well, how do I do that?"

"You'd need to learn all the verse and herbs you're supposed to learn before getting to runes," says Shura's mom. "And convince whoever would be teaching you runes that you are responsible and not reckless."

"You're off away from witches a lot," says Shura. "Unless you are hiding a mom somewhere off away." (She gestures again to off away.)

"I am not hiding any extra parents anywhere!" she says. "I only have the one. But that's why I wanna learn an oven spell, see, because when I'm with the clan I can cook at Charlie's house but when I'm off away sometimes there isn't anywhere to cook at all!"

"Maybe I am!" says Helen.

"That's pe-cu-li-ar," says Shura, sounding it out.

"I don't remember. I read it someplace."

"It's a fun word! Pecuuuuuuuuuuliar," she says, giggling again.

"Peculiar peculiar," echoes Shrura, and Nicoa adds an iteration. (He's on her shoulder as a squirrel.)

"Pecuuuuuliaaaaaaaaaaaar," trills Kalavar, climbing up Helen's hair as a teeny tiny dragon.

"You're so often dragons," Nicoa comments to Kalavar.

"I like dragons! Dragons are fun!" says Kalavar. She flaps her flame-red wings.

"In some years we'll be birds forever," says Nicoa with mixed feelings.

"Maybe not," says Kalavar. "Not everybody settles. Petaal didn't!"

"That's pecuuuuuliar," says Shura.

"Yep," agrees Shura.

"He's the peculiarest!"

"I wish I could be a dragon," says Kalavar. "I like dragons."

"Dragons aren't birds," says Nicoa. "Maybe if you were a feather dragon."

"I could be an archaeopteryx!" she crows.

"What's that?" asks Shura.

"It's a like this," says Kalavar, shifting.

"Looks like a bird to me!" says Nicoa.

"It's a dinosaur sort of!" says Kalavar.

"But it looks like a bird," Shura says.

"It's like the first bird there ever was or something," says Kalavar, draping her long feathered tail over Helen's shoulder.

"Wow!" says Shura. "I guess there weren't witches around then, huh?"

"Nope!" says Helen. "But there were dinosaurs and stuff!"

"I think lots of dinosaurs were too big."

"No way," says Helen. "The biggest ones are the most fun! I saw a T. Rex skeleton once that was so huge it could've eaten me up in one bite!" She giggles.

"I don't think getting eaten up in one bite would be very nice!" protests Shura.

"Nooooo. But it was still really cool to look at, since it wasn't alive and wasn't going to eat me."

"I guess," allows Shura.

"It was! I loved it," she beams.

"I still think they're too big. Some of them were very very big."

"I like big trees," says Shura.

"Me too! They're fun to look at."

"When we get older we can go get cloud-pines off of really, really big trees," says Shura.

"That'll be fun!"

"And then we can flyyyyy!"

This time, they wander across Canada. Now that Helen is a little older, Kas is letting her be by herself more, as long as he's nearby; he takes hotel rooms near libraries so she can go down the block and have lots of books to keep her company, or sits in the outside sections of restaurants while she plays in the park across the street.

"Not exactly," says Helen. "I know where I am, I just don't know where my daddy is." (She has learned that the 'mommy' and 'spinach' parts are best left out when talking to strange grown-ups, because they get terribly confused and it's a bother to untangle them.)

"I don't have one," says Helen.

"But he'd be in the men's room," says the first witch. "We can find him for you, you needn't worry."

The witches do not expect that she will find her daddy in the ladies' room. They wait.

"We know plenty of magic," replies the first witch reassuringly.

"I know lots of magic too!" she says. "But I don't know any daddy-finding spells. Will you teach me one? Or are there runes and things in all the ones there are? I don't know runes yet."

"Lots of runes," says the second witch. "If he's very hard to find it might even take a sparrow or a pigeon."

"Can I watch?" says Helen, fascinated.

"I suppose," says the first witch.

"What are your names? I'm Helen," she says. "Helen Ianthe."

"I'm Kana Setira and this is Loviisa Lerandi," says the first witch.

"It's nice to meet you!" she says. "Where are you going to do the spell to find my daddy?"

"All our magic things are home," says Kana. "It's not a long flight. You can sit on my cloud-pine with me."

"Okay," Helen says agreeably.

And so off they fly. The flight is a little long, but Kana happens to have a children's book on her for Helen to read.

"Well, if he is, he will soon stop," says Kana. "All done with the book?" She tucks it away again. "Do you like magic? Are you studying old languages?"

"I love magic!" says Helen. "It's so much fun! I can count to fifty in Svaaric, but I don't know real words yet."

Kalavar perches on Helen's head and becomes a gorgeous violet dragon with black-edged scales and blue-striped wings.

In they go. Loviisa starts setting up a complicated spell diagram, with lots of runes and lines, out of dark wine.

Helen peers thoughtfully at it. She doesn't really understand it, but it's interesting anyway.

"Now we wait," Kana tells Helen. "Would you like a snack?"

"Okay!" says Helen.

Kana makes her a little plate of fruit with frosting to dip it in.

Om nom nom.

And then there is tea, and Kana has more books.

She hardly has time to get comfy; only about five minutes after the spell was cast, a raven flies in the window and turns smoothly into a naked witch.

"Where's my spinach?" says Helen. "I wanna hug him! Was he worried?"

"He's back at the hotel, button," says Petaal, cuddling the now chincilla-shaped Kalavar. "I'll fly you back, c'mon."

The witches start whispering to each other.

Petaal leads Helen out of the cottage.

"Thank you for finding my daddy!" says Helen, waving to the two witches. "Bye now!"

It's a much shorter flight back, for some reason. Maybe Petaal's cloudpine is faster. Anyway, after only a few minutes Helen can see the city in the distance.

Back in the cottage, another small animal dies.

The first Helen knows of this, the branch on which she sits starts to fall out of the sky. She twists around and sees a blur of flame where Petaal should be.

"What happened?"

The witches are in flight, now, but they won't catch up if Petaal continues to make forward progress.

[What? Who? What clan?]

[Where are you?]

[Toronto.]

[Most likely the Ontario clan then, but not a guarantee - do you have any idea why?]

[Nope.]

[What did they do, just come at you blades out on the street -]

[Helen was in a park, I went to the bathroom, I came out, Helen wasn't in the park. Then somebody hit me with a death curse out of nowhere while I was looking for her. But I am extremely immortal, so it didn't put me down for long.]

[I'm going to need to tell the queen, and Helen should talk to her, too, can you bring her here as soon as you're both up to the trip?]

[Yeah, of course.]

[All right. Please let me know right away if you learn anything else that could be a clue to who it was.]

[Yeah.]

[I can't believe someone would - it's an act of war.]

[No shit,] he says. [You mean between witches, though?]

[Yes.]

[Guess they really wanted Helen,] he says, hugging his daughter some more.

[Or didn't think they'd be caught because her mother's not in evidence, I suppose,] says Ranata disgustedly.

[Sucks to be them, either way.]

[Oh yes.]

Kas cuddles Helen. Petaal cuddles Kalavar.

It's about six hours later when a sudden shock of cold descends over Kas and Petaal, freezing them solid and stuck together.

Ranata is asleep, apparently, and snores whuffly little snores.

"Ranata!" says Helen, putting her voice where her listening is. "Wake up, wake up! Something scary happened and I don't know what to do!"

"Wh- huh - Helen?"

"Kas and Petaal froze all up," she says, sniffling, "and I don't know how to melt them, and the scary witches who tried to kill him might be coming for me again!"

"How - I - where are you exactly?"

"In our hotel room in Toronto," she says. She even has the hotel address and room number memorized.

"...I can come for you, but it will take me hours to fly there. Are you all right right now?"

"Yeah," she says. "I'm just really scared."

"Okay. Don't you open up the door until you see Castarilan at the window telling you it's okay, all right? Call the front desk from the hotel room, and tell them that some witches from another clan cursed your daddy, but that someone from your clan is on the way, and they shouldn't let any witches except me in, tell them Castarilan's a broad-tailed hummingbird."

"I'll do that," says Helen. She gets out of bed and finds the phone and calls the front desk.

"Are you still - how are you talking to me?" Ranata asks. There are the sounds of silk tying on and cloud-pine brushing against and lifting from the floor.

"I dunno," she says to Ranata, "I can just do that, it's a magic thing," and she explains the situation to the front desk person. She doesn't know how to make her voice heard where Ranata is and over the phone at the same time, so Ranata does not get to hear what she's saying to them.

The front desk person agrees not to let any witches past the lobby unless they have broad-tailed hummingbird daemons, and asks if Helen wants a staff person to come sit with her while she waits for her clanmate.

"No, that's okay," says Helen. "I'd just be scared if it was more people I don't know. I'll wait for Ranata Ekamma by myself."

"All right. Call us if you need anything," says the front desk person.

The wind is whistling past Ranata; she's flying fast, murmuring to Castarilan about possible spells that could have afflicted Kas in spite of his largely mysterious protections from Isabella.

Helen definitely listens to that.

"I love you, Granatee," Helen murmurs in their ears.

"You're still - how does this work? I can't tell when you're listening or not," frets Ranata. "I love you too, Helen."

"I don't know how it works," she says. "I just - listen for you, and there you are. And it helps me not be scared."

"Okay," says Ranata. "I'm coming. I'll be over the national border soon."

"Good," says Helen.

"I know," says Helen.

"The queen will find whoever did it and make sure they can't ever do it again."

"It might take her a while, but she will find them."

Ranata is out of things to say, but there is still the rush of wind, and her breathing.

The time passes with an occasional 'I love you' or 'where are you now?'.

Ranata always answers her - "I love you too." With the number of miles yet to go.

"Not yet, I need to get my bearings - I'm coming up the street now."

Helen goes to it and opens it, and Kalavar buzzes up to Castarilan as a fuzzy bumblebee.

In comes Castarilan, and presently there's a knock at the door.

Ranata hugs her back hard, and says, "Let's get Kas tied to the cloudpine, and go home."

She picks up Kas's backpack off the floor and puts it on, and picks up her own backpack and holds it, and looks at Petaal's cloudpine branch leaning against the wall by the door.

"It'll be okay," says Ranata.

"Are you sure?" says Helen.

"You'll always be taken care of. And the clan can protect you from the bad witches."

"I want my spinach, though," she says unhappily.

"I know, sweetie." Ranata is out of the cityscape now and doesn't need both hands to steer; she strokes Helen's hair.

"I want to come with you," she says, with a sad glance at frozen Kas.

"How did you try to melt them?" asks the queen.

"I poured hot water on Kas. But it just froze."

"You called Ranata with magic?" asks the queen next.

"Yeah," she says. "I don't really know how. I can do a thing, where I can listen far away, and I can put my voice far away too."

Helen hugs Kalavar.

"Come along," Ranata murmurs to Helen, and she leads her away to look for Rinda. Castarilan splits off to cover more ground.

Kalavar turns into a dark red dragon with bright orange spines, and climbs up onto Helen's shoulder, and preens Helen's hair with her nose and her bright orange claws.

Helen sniffles a bit.

Kalavar curls her tail around Helen's arm and arches her wing around Helen's head.

Kalavar becomes a viscacha and flumps into Helen's arms, and Helen hugs her and cries into her fluff, leaning on Ranata.

Kalavar buzzes bee-shaped up to Castarilan, and Helen hugs Ranata and cries on her instead.

Prolonged hugs ensue.

Helen eats the chicken and also the vegetables, and she leans on Ranata, and she shivers. Kalavar turns into a mouse and perches on her foot.

"It'll be okay," Castarilan tells Kalavar.

"We're scared," says Kalavar.

Long hummingbird beaks are not very good for nuzzling, but Castarilan does his best to be comforting anyway. "You'll be fine. We'll take care of you."

"Will Kas be fine?" cries Kalavar, huddling mousily against Castarilan.

"Oh, sweetie," says Ranata. "We'll try the other clans' cursebreakers. Rinda doesn't know everything."

Helen sniffles and hugs Ranata.

She nods between sniffles.

Helen nods again and closes her eyes.

Kalavar turns into a chinchilla and huddles up to Kesathi; Helen sits between her grandparents and closes her eyes and sniffles periodically, and if she's not crying she only just barely isn't.

"Is it okay being dead?" sniffles Helen. "Is it better than being frozen?"

"Oh, it's not bad there at all," says Charlie. "I didn't stay long but - it's not bad, better than being frozen. And Kas was special to Isabella, too."

Charlie pets Helen's hair.

"It'll be okay, honey," Charlie says.

"Are you sure?" she says plaintively.

"Nobody's ever perfectly sure," Charlie says. "That's one of the hardest things there is. But that doesn't mean it won't be okay."

She hugs him some more. Kalavar nuzzles Kesathi's paw.

Helen nods and hugs Charlie tighter.

Ranata delegates hugging to Charlie and starts calling other clans.

Charlie is a good hug delegate.

Ranata kisses her forehead. "I'm not sure what will get through the ice. It's probably better if you don't watch."

"Please?" she says. "I want to see. Even if it's going to be scary and awful. Not seeing would be worse, because then it would be scary and awful and I wouldn't know—" She clings to Charlie and presses her face against his shoulder.

Helen shakes her head vigorously.

"Stay put," says Ranata, and she leaves.

Helen starts crying and trying to get away from Charlie.

Charlie holds onto her. Kesathi wraps her forepaws around Kalavar and nuzzles her.

Kalavar turns into a flea and hops away, and turns into a dragon and launches herself into the air, flying after Ranata. She can't get very far, but she pulls as hard as she can, even though Helen is now crying hysterically.

"Helen, honey," says Charlie. "Looking won't help. Kalavar, come back - sit down - just wait. It'll be over soon."

"Mommydaddyspinaaaaaaach!"

"Oh, thank goddesses all," says Ranata, sitting heavily down on the ground.

"Did you just—? What happened? And where is my daughter?"

"They wouldn't let me see!" says Helen, the words inaudible to Charlie, unless he can hear her all the way from where Kas and Ranata are. "I'm with Charlie—Granatee, bring him here!"

"This way," says Ranata, getting up again and leading Kas Helenward. "The witches who took Helen cursed you, and it wasn't looking breakable - I was betting on your extra immortality. Isabella's afterlife if it didn't work; it let Charlie out quick enough."

Ranata sits down again. She puts her dagger in its sheath, and leans her head on Charlie's shoulder, looking drained.

"It's okay," Kas murmurs into Helen's hair. "I'm right here, I'm fine."

"Are - you - sure?" she sobs.

"Sure as sure," he says, hugging her tight. "I promise."

"I got kidnapped by some scary witches from another clan and they froze Kas into ice and Ranata had to stab him to make him better!"

"How does stabbing make somebody better?" asks Shura, peering at Kas, who doesn't look very stabbed.

"I dunno," says Helen, "but she did it and it worked." She hugs Kas tightly.

"Wow," says Shura, "I bet that comes in useful. And now you are all okay?"

"Yeah," says Kas.

"I'm still scared, though," sniffles Helen.

"The clan lands are blessed a lot. Nobody can curse us here," says Shura.

Nicoa has been being a turtle, but now he turns into another kitten.

"Can we help?" Nicoa asks.

"Any witch who's any good at magic does a blessing of the lands when she gets to be about fifty or sixty," says Ranata. "They add up. I did one myself."

Helen nods slowly.

Nicoa snuggles Kalavar and purrs soothingly.

Kalavar is soothed. So is Helen.

"I hope so," says Helen. "She should find them and make them stop."

"She will."

Helen nods.

"Yeah," Petaal confirms, wearing her witch shape.

The accused are not given an opportunity to speak in their defense; there is always the risk of verse. The queen reads off the charges - kidnapping of an Olympic, interference-spell on an Olympic, attempted murder of a relative of an Olympic. She then sentences them to death. This is open to supervision.

Kas supervises.

So does Helen.

The queen slits their throats. The associated birds dissolve into gold and vanish.

Helen turns to Kas and hugs him tight, hiding her face against his chest. Kalavar curls up in Petaal's arms as a blue-grey dragon with soft pebbled skin.

The queen sends someone to burn the bodies, clasps hands with Ranata in a sort of ceremonial acknowledgment that the damage to her family has been avenged, and departs.

"What does 'interference spell' mean?" says Helen to Ranata.

"That is how we think they found you. It's a complicated kind of spell that makes little chances add up over a long time to get something - like making you cross their path so they could take you home," says Ranata quietly.

So does Kas.

"Hardly anyone does them."

"Yeah," murmurs Kas.

"It's all over," Ranata says reassuringly. "If they hadn't acted alone, the Ontario queen wouldn't have turned them over so quickly."

Kas nods and pets Helen's hair.

It's not too long before this mess is well in the past and it is time for Helen to go up to the cloudpine forest and cut her first branch and learn to fly.

That's good! It is a time to be excited. Ranata flies her up to help her pick one out.

She spends some time looking at all the trees - they are beautiful trees, and worth looking at - before she finally starts inspecting the branches, and then picks one that is pretty and looks right, and cuts it from its tree.

It will float for her, because she cut it herself, in the way that Ranata's or Petaal's won't.

Eeeee! Helen hugs it.

"Try flying!" beams Ranata, taking a picture.