The strange country is very strange, though maybe Taldor would've seemed just as strange. It's hot, and rain never falls from the sky but pours sometimes out of the ground, in great arcs that water all the crops. The buildings sometimes have see-through walls and there are a lot of bizarre varieties of dog.

There's a trailer park out behind the crop fields, occupied half the year when there are seasonal workers in town, and a McDonalds, and a 7Eleven, and a laundromat.

No one pays her particular mind, at first, except to watch her suspiciously if she enters any of the stores. 

Probably they think she is a thief, because strange poor children without parents are usually thieves. It's also a pretty fair guess, because if she doesn't find another way to feed herself soon she'll have to start stealing before hunger makes her weaker and more likely to get caught.

It doesn't take her very long to realize that even more urgent than finding a way to earn or steal food is finding a well. If she can't do that, she'll need to see if she can get water from the field-watering-magic, but probably if she tries that someone will get angry so she's not trying it first.

The city  - at least this part of it - appears to be totally devoid of wells, and even of animals which would require a water trough; there are some constructs occasionally lumbering by at impressive speeds, and lots more still ones about, and they seem to have replaced horses entirely. 

The people working in the fields seem to carry their own water, in big colorful canteens, which are sold in the stores.

Yes, but where do they fill the canteens.

- flexible snake-like water pipe extending from that there building, when they take a lunch break.

...this is very suspicious. Does it move on its own?

Nope. It is a very docile water-snake when not spitting water to fill all their canteens.

Sure it is. She'll creep up and poke it with a stick, and when that doesn't elicit a response grab it just behind the head while she tries to figure out how to make it spit.

Little wheel over by the place where it enters the building. 

Someone sees her fiddling with it and asks a question, not obviously hostile, in the language she doesn't understand.

She'll say that she doesn't understand what he's saying, but she's trying to make the snake make water because she's very thirsty. Just in case he can understand her. She'll also try pantomiming it in case he can't.

- he doesn't seem to recognize the language at all, but he does not begrudge her the snakewater. 

It is clean and delicious and hot at first but cool after a minute.

She drinks her fill and thanks him for the water, and thanks the snake also. Does it look like he is the lord of this estate or one of the workers?

One of the workers; he is drenched in sweat from the hot summer day, and his clothes are brightly dyed and strangely made but have visible wear-from-years-of-labor, and when she is observably not badgering the snake too much he gets back to picking the fruits they are picking.

She should leave, then, so he won't get in trouble for letting her take water from the snake.

The next thing she needs to do is get food. She could help the farmers and maybe share their food, but many clans do not follow the laws of hospitality. Maybe she would get no food until she married one of the men. Or maybe the lord would see her and make her a slave - some tribes do take slaves, she knows that. But her only other option is to steal, and if she gets caught they will kill her and she will be gnawed by locusts forever. It is better to be a slave or a wife than to be gnawed by locusts forever, she thinks.

Alfirin watches the farmers for a few minutes to see what they are doing, then starts picking fruits and putting them in another worker's basket.

"I want to help and share food with you." She doesn't try pantomiming it because she doesn't know how to without risking saying that she wants to eat the fruits they are picking, which the lord would obviously not allow.

- yeah he looks kind of alarmed at the prospect that she'll eat the fruits and tries to swat her hand away. 

...then relents, if she'll just put them in the basket. Points across the field at - the overseer, must be, on a big construct-mount, and gestures to the effect that he will look and see and be angry. She can work if she can not be seen, got it?

Yeah, she gets it, if the overseer catches her she will be made a slave too. She is small, she can work and not be seen. It's not going to work forever, she'll be caught eventually, but she can do it today and come up with another plan later.

When the basket is full the man takes it to be weighed on a great metal balancing scale and exchanged for - paper? He handles it like money, tucking it away in a pouch inside his shirt, but it's paper - and gets another basket. When the day is done they weigh what they have and head over to the trailers. 

A couple people ask her questions in an unfamiliar language. They mostly ignore her when she proves not to speak it. 

The man she's been working with sits down at a camp stove, where someone's frying tortillas and adding beans, the expensive beans with bacon bits mixed in, and has some kind of apparently very entertaining conversation about her. It doesn't seem hostile, exactly, and he's made no wife-related moves. When the tortillas are done he hands her one. "Okay? We even?"

"I still don't understand you but I am very grateful!"

More (probably friendly) laughter. Incomprehensible conversation from there. They have lights, here, even though these people otherwise seem like ordinary laborers; they turn them on when the sun goes down all the way, and stay up talking a little longer. 

One man offers her a place to sleep but probably not in an entirely friendly way.

No, she has not tried enough other plans to marry one of these men yet. She will find somewhere else to sleep. (Somewhere else might be the ground).

His friends laugh. He seems mildly annoyed, but not all the way to angry. She can sleep on the ground. It's not that cold, and the ground is nice and dry. 

She sleeps curled up with her two possessions (the spellbook that got her here and a bone knife) inside the front of her shirt where they'll probably be harder to steal.

In the morning is she joining them for work again? They start at dawn, in the next field over. Same fruit - it's some kind of berry.

They eat porridge before work; no one objects to her taking some. One man is also frying bacon; that he is not sharing.

Sure, she will join them today; it means food and snakewater and time to learn the language and a place to sleep where she won't be attacked by wild beasts (even if it is just the ground).

If she's joining at the start of the day she can get her own basket and exchange it for her own paper when it's full. (The farmworkers, mostly men, are stronger and faster than her, and their baskets fill faster, but she can still get some paper by the midday break.)

She spends a lot of time staring at her paper when she gets it. The men are treating it like money. It's all painted on both sides, and so thinly that she can't feel the paint. Most of the painting is exactly the same, apart from being worn or torn. There's only a few small places where they're different. There's a lot of writing on them. Probably they're magic. Maybe the face of the king or emperor or whatever on the one side is watching her. Maybe the eye on the other side is. She carefully folds it all up in a way where none of the eyes can see her.

It's a well-run farm, after a fashion; the workers do not complain and the overseer has in fact had no occasion to beat them. They are shouted at if they dawdle about their lunch break, but otherwise left nearly alone. Everyone gets paper by the weight of their basket. The field is nearly all plucked of fruit by evening, and there's only one more field. 

The workers don't offer Alfirin free food tonight; she has money, now, and can pitch in if she wants to share.

She'll watch to see how the rest of them are turning their papers into food?

Well, some of them are doing a Costco run in one of the vans but this won't necessarily be very comprehensible. They come back with bulk tortillas and rice and beans and goldfish crackers and chocolate pop tarts and some of the one-dollar giant churros.

It's comprehensible enough; they took the beast to the market and bought food. Can she give them some of her papers for some of their food?

Sure, why not. Usually people put in orders in advance, but they mostly remember their first season in a strange country, and more than half of them have kids back at home, and they are not inclined to make a fuss if she wants to buy a share of the cooking, or a bag of goldfish or a churro, even though she didn't say because she can't because she doesn't speak the language for some reason.

She will do that! She is working on learning the language and manages a "gracias" by imitation.

This churro is amazing???? She did not know that there was such a thing as food this sweet and delicious????

Someone who has a daughter about her age sits her down and tries to explain the money to her. She made eight dollars today. A churro is one dollar. She shouldn't just live on churros, but she can buy one every day there's work. ...there isn't work every day. They'll be heading out from here in a few days. If she's smart she'll save some of her money for when they're looking for work. 

He has no idea how much of this she understands.

She understands that the papers are "dollar" and she knows her numbers and can figure out the numbers in this language by holding up fingers. Tortilla one dollar? Tortilla two dollar? Beans one dollar? Beans two dollar? Rice?

This whole stack of eighty tortillas is three dollars. This many beans a dollar. (It's a lot of beans.) This much rice a dollar. (It's a lot of rice.) 

There is more than enough money for food - enough money for the people with family at home to send money to family at home - when there's work. But she should save it for when there isn't work.

She isn't at all sure what he's saying when he's not talking about concrete things like how many beans for a dollar. But it's clear enough that she should save her dollars, for when there isn't work or she gets sick. He probably thinks she doesn't know that because she is small and lots of kids are stupid but she's not stupid so she knows it.

They finish the fields in two more days, and then drive out a couple hundred miles to a job somewhere else. This is tree-picking, harder for a child to help with, but she's not completely useless. When she's been there five days they work a half-day to go to church, in a glorious stone building that is very beautiful and delightfully cold inside. The god is not immediately recognizable from the holy symbol. The exquisite statue of a man being tortured to death on a cross at the front might be suggestive. 

She doesn't know very much about gods, and the gods here are probably different from the gods back home anyways. It's not Erastil or Gozreh or Gorum but she knows they have other gods in Mendev and Numeria and they aren't even very far away. She doesn't do any praying in the church because the priest isn't doing any healing and of course there's the torture so probably it's not a very good god. She pretends, though, because probably if she doesn't she will get in trouble for defiance.

Defiant is not a word anyone would apply to her. She does her own work and buys her own food and goes to church and picks up the language and does not irritate any overseers and wins acceptance; people tell her, once she can understand them, of their own children her age, and of how to stay out of trouble.

(There are some children that travel with the workers. Many more of them have children at home far away, where there isn't work; they came here, where there is work, and they send money.)

They fear the local authorities. This is because being in this country without papers is illegal. Usually you do not get in trouble for it, but if you come to the attention of the authorities for anything else, they will never release you; they might send you home, or to some other place. The authorities are capricious about this; sometimes they will come to a camp and arrest twenty people in it, never minding that the rest are also without papers. Some people have heard that they cannot arrest you in a church, but of course you cannot shelter there forever. Some people have heard that there is a way to get papers, but it costs money and has incomprehensible steps, unless you marry someone with papers, or have a relative with papers who can do the incomprehensible steps with that advantage. 

They like their local god. He was tortured to death by the authorities, that's what the statuary in the churches is about. He died to free everybody of sin, and then he returned, and now he's in Heaven. 

They like the work fine, when it's not too hot and when the campsites have running water and when the wages are fair. They aren't weak, like the native people of this country who cannot do this work all day.

Where is she from, how'd she end up separated from her parents?

Their local god seems alright, then. She was afraid that he was a god that liked torture, but this is much less scary.

She is from Sarkoris, which she thinks is very far away because nobody here speaks Hallit. She doesn't know how she got here. She knows it gets colder when you go more north and warmer when you go more south, and it is much colder in Sarkoris than it is here, so she thinks Sarkoris is more north. In Sarkoris people are not weak but they are also very poor, they do not have cars or soft clothes with bright dyes and there is not running water anywhere.

They haven't heard of it but maybe it's what they call Siberia, that's a cold north place where people speak something different and which is poor. America is the richest country; it's why everyone wants to work here, even with the threat of being taken by the authorities. 

If she is from a village somewhere she will like Costco. - the market where they buy the food. She should go with them to Costco.

She goes with them to Costco. Costco is amazing! It's so big and it's all indoors and there is so much of everything - she thought it would just be food, and there is so much food but there are also clothes and she can buy a dress for less than two days of work - she does not need more clothes so she doesn't but it is amazing, it would take her months to make that, not even accounting for buying the wool -

At the fourth job they take after she joins them la migra is there. They surround the campsite in the middle of the night and then start shouting things with terrible booming amplification, demanding papers, demanding people line up. 

She is scared but she lines up if the other workers are lining up.

They load them into vans and drive them for a while; it's hard to guess the hour when their sleep was interrupted but by the time they wake up it's morning. They send the children in one direction, the adults in another. The other children are mostly younger and several of them are inconsolable.

It's a big open room full of lots of children, most of them also crying, and uniformed guards, and people with cameras, and some inexplicable hoops for ballgames dangling from the ceiling. 

They give her a slice of pizza and an apple.

She doesn't trust it. And there's lots of people watching so she can't check if it's poison or not.

They leave the kids there for most of the day. At one point they start playing extremely cheerful music over the gym speakers. 

Eventually someone comes by with a clipboard and paper and pencil to ask her (in Spanish) her name, and her parents' names, and how long she's been here, and if she has any other relatives in the United States, and where she is from, and how old she is, and if she is blind, or deaf or hard of hearing, or physically disabled, or reliant on any medications, and whether she has ever been to school, and whether she has papers.

"Soy Alfirin. No se 'padres'. No hablo español bien. No se 'cuando tiempo llevas'. No entiendo - no entiendo."

What language does she speak?

"Hallit."

They'll try to get a translator. Have another slice of pizza. 

She is still suspicious of the pizza, even though she's getting really hungry by now.

Some of the other kids have been removed by now by harried-looking people in well-tailored clothes. The staff give out boxes of apple juice and Lunchables around when it's technically noon outside, when they've been there twelve hours or so. The other kids have eaten their pizza and none of them are apparently suffering from it. 

A person with a clipboard comes up to her and tries eight different languages, none of them Hallit.

She also speaks a little Taldane? Not that any of those were Taldane.

(None of the other kids are suffering from their pizza yet but maybe la migra are a kind of fae and if she eats their food she'll be trapped here forever. She can't think of any other reason they would capture her and then offer her pizza.)

Right. (They now suspect she's faking it.)

In Spanish, then. They want to find her mother and father. If she does not have those, they will have to give her to strangers. If she knows anyone, she should tell them, so they can give her to those instead. 

Got it?

She does not got it!

They can read off the names of the people arrested in that raid! Are any of them her parents?

She can guess what they mean by "tus padres" but it's only a guess and anyways her parents are still in Sarkoris and none of the people on the list. She shakes her head.

They leave her be, again. 

"All day? And you're just asking now? Christ, of course, but you should've called me sooner."

He hangs up the phone still muttering to himself. "Diel?"

"Yeah?" she says, though she can guess. 

       "That was Jeffords, in Clark, calling in a favor. ICE raids all across the area overnight, apparently. They've got sixty kids who've sat all day in a high school gymnasium, they've run through every local fosterer, their own team is run ragged,  and they want help finding kinship placements, foster carers, kids whose mothers they need to release on humanitarian grounds -"

"Imagine if ICE would ever coordinate with other agencies in advance so we could have somewhere for the kids to go."

         "Imagine if."

"Let me grab my bag." She brings a lot of toys and games and a lot of candy, for this. It helps the kids get un-terrified enough to talk to you. 

-----

A few hours later she finds herself blinking down at -

- they look nothing alike, actually. Iomedae had meticulously braided hair and linebacker shoulders and a polite, earnest expression like she was sincerely very grateful to answer your questions. This girl is darker-skinned and thin and wary and withdrawn.

And speaks mediocre English and mediocre Spanish and is wearing hand-sewn clothing and hasn't touched her pizza, though she also hasn't run off to give it to the poor so maybe that's not a similarity.

Maybe Iomedae wasn't lying, and there's a under-the-radar cult out there somewhere. Maybe it's in Mexico and that's why no U.S. cult experts have records. 

In Spanish, then. "Alfirin? I'm Diel. I work for Social Services. Can I ask, do you know an Iomedae?"

"Don't know Iomedae."

"Who do you know? We want to place you with people you know, unless those people are not safe for you."

"Don't know people here. Know people in Undarin. Undarin in Sarkoris. Sarkoris far away. North. Cold in Sarkoris."

Sigh. "How did you get here."

"Don't know. Not trying. Didn't walk. Just was."

"Have you heard of Taldor."

"Know Taldor. Taldor very south Sarkoris. Not go Taldor. In Taldor speak Taldane, person here speak Taldane?"

"- we may be able to get you someone who speaks Taldane. I will see what I can do. ...would you like me to eat a bite of the pizza, so you know it's safe?"

How would that prove it's safe? Fae can eat Fae food.

Diel is so tired. She never did get off work in time to pick up that prescription and she's now going to be wrangling USCIS about two kids who claim to possess no accessible relatives but to be from nearby villages in the middle of who fucking knows where, probably Guatamala, and to be in Nevada by complete accident, and they both have food refusal issues and are teenagers with limited English and -

She smiles at Alfirin, but it doesn't end up being a sincere smile at all. "Want to do a drawing game with me?" Drawing paper! Pencils! "I will draw my family. Here is my mother, and my father, and my sister, and my brother. Now you could draw your family, or something else, if there's something else on your mind."

Alfirin draws her mother and her father and her grandmother and her aunt Leshka and her brother Bron and her brother Jannug and her sisters Vesla and Yanka and Esik and the little one who does not have a name yet. She tells Diel their relations to her but not their names.

No dead babies.

Diel is tired and isn't sure there's any point in testing a theory further when it's not even clear what it'd mean if it were true. "Thank you for the picture. I hope we can get you home to your family. They must miss you terribly."

They probably do miss her terribly but that will not save her from a ferocious beating if they learn she stole a book of spells and teleported somewhere on the other side of Taldor.

Orrr she doesn't want to go home. 'doesn't want to go home' is one of the things you get good at reading, in children.

"It must be very scary for you to be so far from home," says the social worker empathetically. 

"Is strange. Not know how be here, is scary. Water come from hoses*, is scary. Other things scary I not have words."

*(She means 'snakes')

....the other girl was also surprised by running water. 

"Social Services is probably pretty scary," she says gently (or, she's trying for gently, but she's very tired and not a temperamentally patient person and dislikes being this confused.)

"Is scary now, don't know. Maybe like hoses, is full of water, not scary. Maybe like other thing, not know word, know and is still scary."

Awwww. "I hope when you know, it not scary. Social Services look after children with no parents, or whose parents are not able to give them a safe home right now. We want every child to have a safe home where they can learn."

"My parents are not able to give them a safe home right now? My parents is far away."

"Right. Sending children far away outside the United States is hard. I will look for your parents, and if I find them, and you want to go to them, I will try to send you to them. But it might take time to find them, because I have not heard of Sarkoris. So right now, your parents are not able to give you a safe home, because we cannot find them."

"You find them, you not keep me?"

"No! We do not want to keep children away from their parents, only make sure all children have a safe home."

"Even I eat pizza, you no keep me?"

" - if we have a safe home to send you to we will not keep you. And it will not matter at all if you eat the pizza." WHAT?

"I no speak spanish good. You say again, little words, I eat pizza you not keep me?"

"We will not keep you if you eat the pizza." WHAT. "The pizza is yours, so you are not hungry. Nothing bad will happen if you eat the pizza." Unless the kid is allergic to pizza but there is no way she is going to get into that right now.

"Why you give pizza?"

" - because we want to ...feed... the ...children?"

"Why pizza? Why no - poor food"

" - we don't want the children who are in Social Services care to feel like they are less important than any other children. And pizza is not actually very expensive, and it travels well, and it makes kids happy." Most of them. She should ask Steel about Iomedae's pizza opinions. Maybe where they're from it's like caviar or something.

She did not follow that explanation.

She's very hungry, though. She eats the pizza.

This gets her a smile that is meant to be proud and encouraging though Diel is still missing the associated actual feelings. "All right. I am going to try to find a home for you here while I try to find your parents. It will have pizza and ...hoses*...and other nice things that we have here in Reno. Okay?"

*She thinks that this is Alfirin's word for indoor plumbing.

The smile kind of makes the pizza seem more suspicious.

"Okay. Hoses only nice when make water. Hoses not nice when not water, hoses bite."

" - well, I have never heard of any hoses biting. We will not send you to a house where the hoses bite. We will send you to a house where a person who is safe and can keep a safe home will give you a bed and meals and clothes and help getting to school and all the other things a girl of your age needs."

"Okay."

"Is there any thing a house should know about you?"

"No."

Right. Time to make a phone call.