Aya never personally plans to walk into a magic, but she does sort of appreciate that there is such a thing; that desperation has this outlet. She's charmed by the stories; she doesn't believe them, but they're fun, and half of the ones in this book she hasn't heard before.

Aya likes the particular manner of storytelling displayed by this writer enough to read even the stories she's already heard, or heard variants of.

When the duke's son glances into her room and sees what she's reading, he giggles.

"What?" she asks, looking up from the book.

"That one's my favourite," he says cheerfully.

"It's good! This whole series is nicely done."

"But Aelare's the only god I feel like I'd get along with."

"If I thought they actually existed I'd probably have a fairly poor opinion of the lot, but she does have the advantage of not claiming to be involved with a grand project of guiding the whole of Tayane without any noticeable results, unlike the rest of them."

"Well, I guess that's why they're so unpopular these days."

"At least as anything other than stories." She holds up the book.

He laughs. "Yeah. I'm glad you like the book, anyway."

"I like books in general. This one's more on the 'fun' side than the 'useful' side, but I have time for both these days."

"Although eventually I might get used to the luxury of reading and drawing all day except between meals and then I'll probably organize your attic to break things up a bit."

"Good luck," he snorts.

"Berete warns me there may or may not be singing ghosts."

"I've never heard any, but then, I barely ever go up there."

"Apparently two different people heard funny noises."

"Maybe I have a haunted attic, then."

"Maybe. Whatever it is hasn't disturbed the things too much - it's hardly tidy, but it doesn't look like there's much either broken or used, if I recall right."

"Yeah." Shrug.

"Maybe you've got a clockwork cricket that used to be a regular cricket and," she holds up the book again, "took a wrong turn."

He cracks up.

"Or something. You never know. Aelare is nothing if not unpredictable."

"That," he says, "is why he's my favourite."

"Because the stories are always different? Instead of the various formulas the other gods repeatedly fall into?"

"Huh." This is starting to look like a longer conversation; Aya notes her page number and sets the book down. "Personally, if I were a god I wouldn't take her strategy or that of the more conventional pantheon, but I suppose it's reasonable to form a preference between the two."

"I mean, if I were a god I'd be turning more stones into ducks and giving fewer people frogs' heads," he says. "But I'd still want to be Aelare a lot more than I'd want to be anyone else. I wouldn't do all the same things she does, but I'd like the - opportunity? I'd like not having to be part of anything I didn't want to be. I'd like being someone who specifically gets to never have to deal with anybody's expectations." He ducks his head shyly. "I, uh, used to think about it a lot when I was a kid."

"About being a god?" Aya smiles a little. "I did that."

"Aww," he says. "Yeah. But I bet you didn't want to be Aelare."

"I didn't want to be any of the canonical bunch, no. Although I'd've taken the job title of the Queen of the Spheres."

"If I could get out of having any job title at all, ever - I mean, without causing a riot - I would. I'd rather be gem-eyed Aelare braiding moonbeams in my hair and giving people interesting bits of helpful magic than the Duke of Viore." He shrugs. "But I can't, so there it is."

"Well, I suppose once you take the title - or in advance, for the first steps - you could get married, have a kid, appoint your wife regent for your child, and abdicate to go doing whatever equivalent of moonbeam-braiding you can manage without having to actually be a god."

He shrugs. "I guess. Something tells me it'll look different when I'm Duke, though."

"Oh?"

"Sometimes it's hard to tell what something's going to be like before it happens. I think being Duke is going to be one of those things."

"You think you'll learn something new about what dukes do, or that you don't know how you'll feel about it until it's for real?"

"The second one. Well, maybe the first, too. My father is a terrible Duke as far as I can tell."

"I wouldn't know. I've picked up details of politics only haphazardly and didn't grow up in Viore."

"I think the only thing stopping him from trying to run his province the way he runs his family is that he doesn't care enough. Luckily for the province."

Aya winces.

"Yeah."

"Has he at least got competent - assistants, subordinates, who pick up the slack? He's either smart or apathetic enough to pay Berete, maybe he's got a similar setup in governance."

"He does, sort of. The 'competent' part - varies."

"How so?"

"Father cares more about deference than competence. He only gets rid of people when they're caught lying to him or taking bribes from the wrong people or buying themselves fancy rugs with money they were supposed to send on bridge repair. As long as they're subtle about whatever they're doing wrong, they can keep right on doing it and he won't notice. And if someone who is good at their job forgets to call him 'your grace' one too many times, out they go."

"Ah-huh."

He shrugs. "Anyway, I'm going to go see if Berete will let me help with something. I feel like cooking."

"Have fun."

"You seemed to like the drawings."

"You drew me a copper fox," he giggles.

"Of course."

"Thank you. I'm going to put this on a wall as soon as I find some tacks."

"I haven't used up that one box yet." She rummages around, turns up the container of decorative tacks she's been using to hang pictures on her own wall.

Aya grins.

He twirls around a few times, hugging himself, then sits down dizzily on a couch.

"You're more excited than I thought you would be about me doodling you a fox."

"I don't know that I'd say it's about you. It's about something you said you like."

"I don't mean it's a drawing of me, exactly. But it's what you said, it's about something I like, something that's important to me - I don't get many gifts like that."

"Hence the attic full of things you don't care about, I guess."

"Yeah."

"Well, now you have a fox."

"I do! I have a copper-coated fox. I love it."

"Maybe I'll draw you a magpie to match."

"I'd love that too."

"Clearly. I don't think I have ever managed to make anyone this happy before in my entire life."

"Aww," he giggles. "Well, now you have."

Aya starts giggling helplessly.

"My very own cake, wow, maybe, sure!"

"...What happened to you?" he asks, startled.

"I -" Ow, her lip isn't happy about that; she tries again. "I went downstairs to see how the cake was going. Fell, got dizzy, got lost, fell again - there's - a damaged painting -"

(He winces slightly at that last. Falling down isn't pleasant, but breaking things in this house can be dangerous in less immediate ways.)

She leans on the nearest wall. "I didn't know what to do. So I came back here."

He shrugs. "I'll find the painting and take it to Berete and tell her I broke it. It might end there."

"It might not?"

"It might not," he confirms. "But I'm not going to let you get in trouble for this unless for some reason you really want to."

"I... don't, but I don't want you to, either."

"Well - I can't say I want to, but I'd rather it was me than you. I'm deciding to."

He nods - glances wryly at the cake - turns to go.

Aya manages to get to the couch without being away from the wall at any point, flops onto the couch, and waits till her head stops spinning before she guiltily takes a slice of cake.

"It's lovely. How long is it likely to hang over your head?"

He shrugs. "Until Father finds out, I suppose. If I haven't seen any trouble over it by a week from now, I don't think I will. But it's hard to know for sure."

Aya sighs and nods (carefully; her head still hurts a little).

"I'm glad you like the cake," he adds.

"It's really good. I love coconut."

Aelare grins at her.

"You seem awfully pleased about having made me a cake."

"Well, you like the cake," he explains.

"Yes, I do. You seem inordinately happy about having made me a well-received cake."

"Am I? I think I'm exactly the right amount of happy."

"Why is the right amount of happy so exuberantly large?"

"Because that's how happy I am."

"Does that mean if you were some other, perhaps smaller, amount of happy, that would be the right amount too?"

"Sure."

"Why this amount and not that amount?"

"I don't know. I guess I'm just the kind of person who really, really likes," he waves a hand vaguely, "things like this. Getting drawings of foxes and giving cake."

"You get so excited."

"Seems so."

"I started your magpie," she adds. "Before I went downstairs."

He smiles. Happily.

Aya giggles.

Well in that case, so does he.

Aya finishes the magpie the following morning (after having a slice of cake for breakfast). She tucks it under his door.

Aya relaxes a little when he returns unmaimed from dinner. She works her way through an encyclopedia of geography.

"You could hardly argue I didn't bring it on myself," he points out, rubbing his eyes. "I'll be fine. I'm not sure I'm even bleeding."

"Do you want me to check?"

"You're not bleeding," she confirms.

"It's - let me know if there's anything I can do," she says, only just loud enough to carry.

He glances back at her, and then steps into his room and closes the door behind him.

There are shelves, and cabinets, and boxes, and chests. Some have things on or in them; many don't.

She finds some that don't have any things on them, drags them to a relatively clear area close to the door into the place, and starts attacking piles, sorting them into categories as best she can.

Well, that's - enormous. Aya doesn't think she wants to try to move it. Musical instruments can remain sovereign over this corner.

The standing tower starts playing that song. If she looks, she can see its keys pressing themselves.

It replies with a blatted chord that sounds remarkably like a snort.

"You are clearly magic, but I would like to be able to distinguish between 'magic human, retaining all reasoning faculties' and the possibilities between that and 'magic trained mynah bird'."

A little sequence of high fluttering notes that you could imagine might be a laugh, and then it plays the requested song, although only the line she named and one more after it.

"Okay. I'm going to go get some paper and a pen and come up with a code so you can talk to me without reference to my relatively limited song vocabulary. Back in a minute, possibly with a companion."

It giggles again, if that was a giggle.

Aya goes back downstairs (carefully, carefully) and looks to see if the nameless son of the Duke is in his room.

Aya knocks.

"I found the singing ghost."

"Really," he says. "What is it?"

"Magic human turned into a set of standing tower pipes. Can apparently hear. I'm going to work out a code so it can communicate complicated information."

"...I definitely didn't expect that," he says. "I wonder - where it's from, how long it's been that way. Is it that huge one that kind of looks like it fell out of a magic? I always thought the designer was just really eccentric. It's never sung around me."

"It's the hugest set of tower pipes up there. Do you want to see if it'll sing around you now?"

"Sure."

Aya collects papers and pens and goes back up, presumably with him following.

He does indeed follow!

The pipes greet them with a cheerful little tune.

"Hello again. So, I'm not much of a musician and definitely not blessed with perfect pitch - you?" she asks her companion.

"As you can maybe tell from the attic full of instruments I don't play, I'm not that musical either."

"For all I knew you used to take lessons, or sometimes go through phases where you sing - the question is how good we are at distinguishing pitches, it'll affect how complicated and therefore how fast the code can be." Aya starts writing out the letters of the alphabet. "For myself, I think I can tell apart - anything actually too low for me to sing, anything I'd have to sing more in my chest than up in my throat, anything higher than that still in my range, and anything too high for me to sing. So that's four possible recognizable starting pitch groups, and I think this set of pipes easily exceeds what I can get out -" Aya sings aaah as high as she can, then as low as she can, demonstratively.

The pipes echo her with a pair of notes respectively much higher and much lower. So that's a yes.

"I'm not sure what I can tell apart just listening," he says thoughtfully. "But we could watch the keys, too, couldn't we?"

Aya peers at the keys. "That might work too, but I'd want to label them. Whistle once if you object to that, twice if you don't?"

A soft huff of air through the tower that doesn't sound a note in any pipes, and then two high notes.

"Okay." Aya starts counting the keys to see how many there are.

"There's enough to have one for every letter in the Esevi alphabet and then some. Are you literate in Esevi?" asks Aya.

The pipes choose to answer this question by piping a popular alphabet song.

...Well, now somebody's giggling.

Aya giggles too. She starts folding up her written alphabet so she'll be able to tear it neatly. "Can you see? One whistle for yes, two for no."

Three whistles.

"...Sometimes?" guesses Aya. "Badly? Echolocation?"

On 'Badly', one whistle.

"Short range? But can you see your own keys?"

One whistle per question.

"Okay, so you won't have to memorize which letters I'm putting where." Aya remembers seeing a pair of scissors somewhere, and a jar of paste as part of some kind of kit elsewhere; she fetches them and cuts along her folds. "Okay if I glue these down?"

Another sigh-like huff, and then one whistle.

Aya pastes letters to keys, gently and carefully. She leaves gaps between them in the hopes of being able to eventually have a guess at what letter she's hearing without peering intently at the instrument. "There you go." She has more paper, ready to transcribe anything the instrument tells them.

"If I'm staring right at you, that fast is fine. If I'm distracted I won't catch it. I don't know about him. If you want to pick out some words you're likely to use a lot, we can use blank keys for those."

"I caught it all," he says.

Aya giggles. "How come you never sang to him, then?" she asks.

H A V E Y O U H E A R D W H A T H E D O E S T O H I S F U R N I T U R E

(He laughs.)

"...Is that just a coincidence, or do you prefer Piper to whatever you were called before?"

I T W A S A L O N G T I M E A G O A N D N O T I N E S E V I (pause) P I P E R I S E A S I E R (pause) A N D I T H I N K I T I S C U T E

"It is definitely cute."

She plays a giggly ripple on some keys that aren't taken by letters, and adds a definitely non-giggle-sounding T E E H E E, perhaps to clarify.

"I could designate a key for signaling a toggle between communicating letters and making music for other reasons, if you like."

Aya nods, writes a music note symbol separated by a slash from the first and last letters of the alphabet, and pastes this slip of paper to the chosen key.

Toggle note - giggle - toggle note.

"You're really cute."

T H A N K S Y O U T O O

Aya laughs. "Would you rather," she asks, "stay up here, or do you want us to try to haul you down the stairs?"

I W O U L D L I K E M O R E C O M P A N Y (pause) B U T I R E M E M B E R B E I N G C A R R I E D U P H E R E (pause) A N D I T W A S N O T T H E M O S T F U N I H A V E H A D I N M Y L I F E

"You do look pretty heavy, and I can't even reliably get myself up and down stairs without mishap, but it'd be easier to talk to you if you were down closer to us."

I F Y O U L E A V E D O O R S O P E N (pause) A N D W A I T A L O N G W H I L E (pause) I C A N G E T D O W N T H E R E B Y M Y S E L F

"...Really."

I C A N M O V E M Y S E L F (pause) E X T R E M E L Y (pause) S L O W L Y

"...Will you fit stably on a stairstep?"

I H O V E R

"A flying self-playing pipe tower."

"Apparently. Okay, I think we can leave the doors open if you want to move in - next to the bookshelves is probably best. Do you need help besides a clear path?"

I T H I N K I C A N M A N A G E

"Okay. Anything else best addressed now before I start getting objects out of your way?"

N O T T H A T I C A N T H I N K O F

"Okay." Aya starts getting objects out of her way.

While she is doing that, Piper starts to rise into the air. Very slowly. Not very far. Just about far enough not to bump into any uneven spots in the floor, in fact - about an inch.

Aya observes this with interest.

Once she's gotten a good bit ahead of Piper, Aya starts making trips to group various objects-she's-moving with others of their type in the nascent organizational system.

The duke's son takes up where Aya left off clearing the path, and when he reaches the ladder he climbs down to open the door.

Aya heads down to the next floor before Piper gets there; she doesn't think she or Piper would enjoy it if she fell on her.

Yep. Aya moves a couch a few inches to make a space for Piper to hang out where her keys will be clearly visible from said couch and she'll be out of all the walking paths.

And then some more waiting. He chooses to wait sitting on that couch, rereading his book of Aelare stories.

"I may have run out of thematically suitable things to draw for you the next time I want to draw you something," remarks Aya.

"Well, that's the beauty of Aelare, isn't it? You can draw just about anything, and I'll know."

"All right," Aya giggles.

He grins at her.

"Do I get a cake every couple of drawings?"

"Maybe. I don't know. I'll make cake when I feel like making cake," he says.

"Nothing to do with the drawing, then? Aelarish whimsy?"

"Oh, it was definitely about the drawing. It just won't always be about the drawings."

"What else would it be about?"

"Aelarish whimsy, maybe."

"You get a lot of that?"

"What else would you call deciding to make you a cake just because I'm happy and I feel like it?"

"I didn't say it was an unreasonable label."

"Then yes, all the time. I'm the Aelare of cake."

"Just cake? I wouldn't like to wake up one day and find all of the furniture in my room stuck to the ceiling and my feet replaced with wheels."

"Cake and things like cake. Nice things."

"That's much pleasanter. I'm a disaster on feet, I don't think wheels would improve me."

"I'd make you hover, like Piper," he says, laughing.

"Now that would be convenient if only I could move along a bit faster than Piper can."

"Well, nothing's perfect."

"I know, it's a terrible pity."

He laughs.

"That's how you can tell that I'm not a goddess."

"...Why are you looking at me like that?"

"...I think we might have different ideas about what 'perfect' means and whether or not it's a good thing."

"If it fails to be a good thing then it fails to be perfect pretty straightforwardly on that basis, I think."

"I think I'd rather live in an imperfect world than one where there are gods deciding what perfect means and changing the world to fit."

"Well. And you do."

"Yeah. I just - I don't trust 'perfect'," he says. "I'm not sure there's really such a thing. Not the way some people mean it. To me, 'nothing's perfect' is kind of... comforting. It means there's room. I don't know, maybe that doesn't make sense."

"Not a whole lot, no."

"I could try to explain, but it would probably be depressing."

"Maybe. I won't know unless you do explain it."

"...I don't think I could live in a perfect world," he says. "I don't just mean I wouldn't like it there, I mean - I'm not Aelare. I don't have a mythological exception to all the rules. And I don't think anyone else's perfect world would have a place in it for someone like me. In my father's perfect world, I wouldn't exist at all. He'd have a son who was just like him."

"I've been using 'perfect' to mean 'actually not having anything wrong with it', not 'suiting one particular person and anybody sufficiently similar to them really well'. I'm not sure whether, if the world had been made perfect by that definition a hundred years ago, you'd have been born - it's entirely possible that your father wouldn't have been and that would sew you up too; I probably wouldn't have been because my parents met the way they did; etcetera - but if someone tried to make the world perfect today, and that squeezed you out of it altogether, they'd be doing it wrong."

"Well, that's comforting. But I'm still not sure a world with nothing wrong with it is possible. Who decides what's wrong? People tend to disagree on that."

"My first instinct is that those people don't have to live near each other," shrugs Aya. "But if I were, in fact, a goddess - and didn't get a much improved set of instincts to go with it, anyway - then I wouldn't be going with my first instinct, I'd think about it more."

"Then I guess I wouldn't mind if you were a goddess."

"I'm glad this purely hypothetical tension has been resolved."

He laughs.

Oh, look! Piper has appeared in the doorway at last!

"Hello, Piper," says Aya, getting up to see if the instrument has a reply.

H E L L O

"I'm Aya, by the way. Ayabel. I don't think I said."

"I cleared a space that should work for letting us see your keys without bumping into you constantly. Just how badly do you see?"

V E R Y B A D L Y (pause) B U T I C A N H E A R Y O U J U S T F I N E (pause) I S I T N E A R Y O U

"Okay. I'll sit down, you'll want to go just to my right."

O K A Y

Aya sits, although she does crane her neck so she can continue to see if Piper has anything else to say. "I assume if you've been okay in an attic for a really long time you don't have much biology left, if any, but do you sleep?"

S O M E T I M E S I D R E A M

"I bet that helps."

I T D O E S

"How did you fall into a magic, anyway? Or did you jump?"

"Did you not know it was there?"

I W A S R U N N I N G A W A Y F R O M S O M E O N E (pause) I F E L L (pause) D O W N A H I L L (pause) I N T O A R I V E R (pause) T H E M A G I C C A M E A F T E R

"That doesn't sound fun."

"It really doesn't. Do you have anybody who might still be alive that you'd like - I don't know, sent a letter?"

N O

"Okay. Long time ago, huh? What year was it?"

W E U S E D A D I F F E R E N T C A L E N D A R T H E N

"So, a very long time ago. Wow. Do you have an estimate?"

A S F A R A S I C A N T E L L (pause) I T H A S B E E N B E T W E E N (pause) O N E A N D T H R E E T H O U S A N D Y E A R S (pause) B U T I T C O U L D H A V E B E E N M O R E

Y O U R A L P H A B E T H A S N O T C H A N G E D I N A W H I L E (pause) I P I C K T H I N G S U P H E R E A N D T H E R E

"I guess if someone left a page close enough for you to read it, for long enough, you could join up the letters to sounds if you were bored - and you've probably often been very bored."

F R E Q U E N T L Y

(Giggle.)

"How often do you let somebody know that you're a sleeved person?"

I H A V E N O T D O N E I T I N A W H I L E (pause) S O M E T I M E S L O N E L I N E S S I S S E L F P E R P E T U A T I N G

"I'm not sure I understand."

T A L K I N G T O P E O P L E I S (pause) D I F F I C U L T (pause) A N D I T C A N F E E L E A S I E R N O T T O

"How did you do it without the letters, anyway?"

W I T H P E O P L E W H O A R E V E R Y M U S I C A L (pause) C O M M U N I C A T I N G T H R O U G H M U S I C C O M E S M O R E N A T U R A L L Y

"Even if I could distinguish every pitch and chord you can emit, I'm pretty sure I'd have a hard time getting anything detailed or complex without assigning some sort of code."

I T I S P O S S I B L E (pause) B U T R A R E

"I am failing to even conceptualize it. I can guess as far as - emotions and numbers and you managed a fairly recognizable laugh earlier - and beyond that I'm just going back to 'play snatches of music with lyrics to refer to the words'. I'm not saying it's impossible, mind, I'm saying it'd be fascinating."

I D O N O T T H I N K I C O U L D E X P L A I N I T (pause) T O A N Y O N E W H O C O U L D N O T D O I T

"Fair enough."

She doesn't say anything. Oh, look, she's almost to her spot!

"Almost there," says Aya encouragingly. "I imagine he can be trusted not to treat you like he does his furni- look," she interrupts herself, turning to the "him" in question, "Berete calls you 'Hal'; is that actually okay with you or did she pick it for reasons of her own and you haven't corrected her?"

"...more the second one," he says. "I don't like my name. I don't like any parts of my name. I don't mind it that much, either, but... I don't like it."

"I can drop right back into 'my lord' without a bit of slip-up if we're ever talking in front of one of your parents or a visitor or something, but I don't think Piper will tell anybody if you pick a name you like more, now that there are multiple people around and it would be especially handy to refer to you by a name. Will you, Piper?"

I W I L L N O T

Aya laughs. "I'm less surprised than I could be. All right."

Piper giggles.

"Speaking of Piper telling people things," says Aya, "do you want to be introduced to anyone else? Berete comes to mind; I'm sure she'd be interested to know about the singing ghost."

I W O U L D N O T M I N D

"Do you want to tell her or should I?" Aya asks Aelare.

"I don't care much either way. You can if you want, or I will the next time I catch her alone, whenever that is."

Piper, now in her spot, finally finishes settling onto the floor. (It took her some time to turn so that her keys faced in the most visible direction, too.)

"Comfy?" Aya asks Piper. "...Do you even get to be comfy or uncomfy anymore?"

N O T T H E W A Y Y O U W O U L D U N D E R S T A N D T H E T E R M

"I imagine after a few thousand years one gets used to being a pipe tower, but it must have been a huge adjustment at first, what was it like?"

I T W A S A S I G N I F I C A N T I M P R O V E M E N T O V E R D R O W N I N G

"I'd guess so. And, hey, now you're immortal."

T R U E

"How old were you when you tripped into the magic?"

Y O U N G

"Our age? Younger? Actually seventy-five and you're just comparing to how old you are now?"

Y O U N G E R T H A N Y O U

"Do you not remember how old or do you not want to say?"

I W O U L D R A T H E R N O T S A Y

"Okay. How'd you find out you could play yourself and fly - was it obvious right away or did you have to guess that it might work and try things?"

I T W A S O B V I O U S

"Can you do anything else?"

N O

"Did getting sleeved feel like anything all by itself or were you too busy drowning to notice?"

T O O B U S Y

"Am I bothering you with all the questions? I've just never met anybody even so much as embroidered before."

I T I S I N T E R E S T I N G B U T I A M N O T U S E D T O I T (pause) I W O U L D L I K E T O T H I N K B Y M Y S E L F F O R A W H I L E N O W

"Sure." Aya starts rummaging on the bookshelf for what's next.