“The wealth of a home is not counted in what its people possess, but in how many voices answer when one calls.”
— An old Elune fireside proverb
By the time the sun began to lower, Elune’s great tree had become the centre of a celebration that seemed to draw the entire valley towards it.
The hunters’ quarry had been divided among the cooks and craftspeople. Bọ́dé supervised the work with the weary suspicion of a man who expected every misplaced tool to increase his transport bill. The horns rested under an awning, reserved for later use. Children kept circling the display, trying to compare their heights against its sweeping curves.
Khepri had ideas about those horns.
Simi seemed to sense them before he spoke.
“No.”
“I haven’t asked anything.”
“You’ve been looking at them for ten minutes.”
“Observation is a virtue.”
“Then observe your supper.”
She nudged a bowl towards him.
The evening’s guests included neighbouring families, physicians from nearby settlements, former patients and people who had travelled simply to thank Dàre and the other researchers. Elune’s medical wagons remained open. Every so often someone left the feast to attend to a patient, then returned when another healer relieved them.
Khepri watched as the clan head approached the musicians with the sealed approval in her hands.
The drums softened. A cook paused with a serving spoon in hand; across the gathering, a travelling apprentice moved closer so she could hear every word.
“My friends,” she began, her voice carrying beneath the branches, “we are here because eleven years of work have reached a day that many of us once doubted we would see.”
Dàre, standing beside Làmi, raised his hand.
“I never doubted.”
“You doubted often,” Làmi called.
“I doubted the equipment.”
“Only the equipment?”
Laughter travelled across the tables.
The clan head smiled, then lifted the document.
“The board has accepted the results. The treatment developed by Dàre and his colleagues can strengthen resistance to particular diseases under defined conditions. Properly trained physicians outside Elune may now begin using it.”
Applause began, but she raised a hand.
“It is not a cure for every illness. There are questions still to answer. We must preserve it carefully, train people responsibly and continue to test what we do not yet understand. None of that makes today smaller.”
Her gaze moved across the gathering.
“Our people travel because a child in a distant valley deserves help no less than a child beside the finest hospital. Knowledge matters most when we carry it to those who need it. Tonight we honour the people who have given us one more way to do that.”
Khepri looked around.
An elderly man near the front bowed his head. He had travelled with the clan years earlier and knew how much work lay behind a remedy that could finally be carried beyond its makers. A woman holding a small girl had tears on her cheeks. Apprentices who normally whispered through every speech stood unusually still.
Beside Khepri, a stranger caught the hem of Dàre’s robe to thank him. The man held on so long that his wife gently prised his fingers free. Khepri had never seen his father at such a loss for words.
The applause swelled.
Simi pulled him to his feet.
“I know,” he protested. “I’m clapping.”
“You were staring.”
“I can do both.”
Dàre accepted the document and waited until the cheers quietened.
“I should probably begin with an apology to everyone who’s had to tolerate me during these eleven years.”
“Too late!” Bọ́dé shouted.
“Then I’ll thank you instead.”
Dàre spoke of Làmi questioning results he had grown too confident about, of Bọ́dé repairing equipment at inconvenient hours, of Sẹ́ni and the travelling healers who had gathered data from places where permanent laboratories did not exist.
“The board approved the work,” he said. “Tomorrow, we return to making certain people can use it safely. But tonight my colleagues deserve to eat without hearing another argument about storage temperatures.”
“Agreed!” Bọ́dé called.
Dàre lifted his cup.
“To Elune.”
The answer rose from every table.
“To Elune!”
Drums began again, and the music carried into the night.
* * *
Khepri found his father near a practice target at the edge of the clearing.
Dàre was inspecting the string on his bow beneath a lantern. Khepri approached with studied dignity.
“Father.”
“Khepri.”
“I have an important request.”
“Does it concern those enormous horns?”
“Not yet.”
“Then I’m listening.”
Khepri pointed to the weapon.
“Teach me.”
Dàre looked at the bow, then at the celebration.
“Tonight?”
“It’s an excellent night for learning.”
“A better night for eating.”
“I’ve eaten.”
“Then apparently there’s no stopping you.”
He took the bow from its resting place and motioned for Khepri to stand aside.
“Watch my feet.”
Before his son could ask why, Dàre moved.
Chi reinforced his steps as he crossed the practice ground. He slipped between two wooden posts and released an arrow without pausing. It struck the centre of the target. He was already moving again, planting one foot on a low platform before turning in the air. A second arrow flew and landed beside the first.
Khepri stared.
“Again.”
Dàre lowered the bow. “What did you notice?”
“Remarkable.”
“And you kept moving through both shots.”
“Good.”
“The turn changed where your weight was going. You didn’t have to wait for your feet to land to aim.”
Dàre smiled. “Better.”
“Can I try?”
“You can start by standing correctly.”
Khepri blinked.
“Standing?”
“Yes.”
“I’ve had ten years of practice.”
“Then we’ll make the next ten better.”
Dàre adjusted Khepri’s stance, repositioning his feet, shoulders and back. Every time Khepri thought the lesson had ended, Dàre found another small fault.
“Move your right foot.”
He obeyed.
“Not that far.”
Khepri moved it back.
“Relax your shoulders.”
He did.
“Stop arguing with the ground.”
“The ground has been unusually difficult lately.”
Dàre laughed, but he did not hand over an arrow.
At last, Khepri managed to hold the position without swaying.
“Good,” his father said. “That’s enough for tonight.”
“I haven’t fired anything.”
“You’ve begun to learn how.”
“A cruel distinction.”
Dàre unstrung the bow with practised care. “You know why I began with your feet?”
“Because you enjoy watching me suffer.”
“Because an archer who has lost his balance cannot use a perfect bow well. A cultivator who empties his Chi through impatience cannot rely on the technique he’s imagined. Your inventions are no different.”
Khepri shifted his feet. Somehow his father had found a way to sound exactly like Ibara.
“So I need a better foundation.”
“Yes. And you have people who can help you build it.”
The idea annoyed him for exactly the reason it was worth remembering.
Khepri looked towards the arrows embedded in the target.
“Then show me Accretion.”
Dàre considered him a moment before moving a thick block of wood behind the target.
He fired once.
The arrow lodged in the block. Dàre kept his bow lowered while a faint ripple expanded from the point of impact. A second ripple followed, deepening the mark around the shaft.
Khepri hurried closer.
“You made the arrow strike again.”
“Not exactly. It struck once. My Spark lets the effect of that successful action gather force while I maintain the connection.”
“Every time you add to it, the first strike becomes stronger?”
“Within limits. The longer I sustain the effect, and the more resistance it meets, the more Chi and control it demands.”
Khepri examined the wood.
“And that’s how you brought down the animal?”
“One arrow. The first accumulated impact knocked it off balance. It charged again, and I released the next build-up before it reached us.”
“How close?”
Dàre smiled.
“Close enough.”
“Làmi said you were showing off.”
“Làmi is very observant.”
Khepri laughed.
“Can I learn that?”
“Accretion isn’t your Spark. But you can learn why a bow works and how to use it. You can learn to recognise openings, control your footing, and make a single action count.”
“So tomorrow we shoot?”
“Tomorrow, we practise standing again.”
Khepri groaned.
* * *
They walked beside the river while the music continued behind them.
Dàre listened as Khepri attempted to describe his patient carrier. The account began with the broken winch, jumped ahead to a suspension model in the research wagon and then returned to Ibara’s fourth set of drawings.
“Which part are we discussing now?” Dàre asked.
“The supports.”
“Which supports?”
“The improved ones.”
“Of course.”
Khepri stopped and traced the shape in the air.
“The outer frame carries the weight. The inner section reduces movement during transport, and the lateral restraints keep it from swinging too far. Simi helped design an access rail that opens only when the carrier is secure.”
“That sounds useful.”
“It’s very useful. She made us change the width too.”
“Why?” Find the original chapter at g.com.
“Apparently, a carrier should fit through doors.”
Dàre laughed.
“It has been known to help.”
“We tested it against a normal stretcher with the same load and route. The movement reaching the training figure was lower in most measurements.”
“Most?”
“I’m not going to lie about the others.”
“Good.”
“And we still need clinical review before anyone uses it with a patient.”
Dàre stopped walking.
“You and Simi built that?”
“With Ibara. Tàlé advised us too.”
His father’s expression changed.
“I wish I’d been here to see the test.”
Khepri glanced up.
He had expected questions about the joints or the readings. The regret in his father’s voice caught him off guard.
“You can see it tomorrow,” he said.
“I’d like that.”
“The first locking pin sticks sometimes, but I’ve almost fixed it. Then I’ll need materials for another design.”
“What kind?”
“Well, the workshop is getting crowded.”
Dàre made the mistake of smiling.
“Perhaps you’ll need a larger one.”
Khepri stopped.
“Exactly.”
“I was joking.”
“There’s room near the old storage wagon. We’d only have to move—”
“Khepri.”
“And add a second bench.”
“Khepri.”
“Perhaps a little underground space for the delicate experiments—”
Dàre began laughing so hard that he had to stop walking.
His son took that as encouragement.
Dàre had no immediate intention of authorising a workshop under the ground, but he had already begun considering whom to ask about Khepri’s next prototype. Ibara would make sure the boy had to defend his choices. Simi would insist that someone using his inventions be able to live with them.
* * *
When they returned, the celebration was louder than before. Làmi and Bọ́dé were surrounded by children asking about the great beast, while a few adults offered increasingly improbable accounts of the hunt.
Simi intercepted Khepri beside the food tables.
“Where have you been?”
“With Father.”
“I know that. You’ve been gone ages.”
“He taught me archery.”
Simi turned to Dàre.
“You gave him your bow?”
“Under supervision.”
“He hasn’t been allowed near the long knives in Ibara’s workshop.”
“An entirely different matter,” Khepri said.
“Not to me.”
Dàre raised both hands. “I promise we began with stance.”
Simi looked relieved.
Khepri scowled. “Everyone seems strangely pleased that I spent an hour standing still.”
“It’s new behaviour,” Simi said.
At the family table, Sẹ́ni inspected his hands and instructed him to wash them before touching the food. His father agreed with her at once.
“Betrayal,” Khepri muttered, walking to the basin.
Later, with a full plate before him, he sat between Dàre and Simi beneath the lanterns. Their aunt was across the table. The ivory bead in his father’s right ear caught the light while his sister argued about something Làmi had said during the hunt.
Khepri listened for a while.
Then he looked towards the great horns beneath the awning.
An idea returned.
“Father?”
“Yes?”
“Do you think one of those horns could become part of a machine?”
Simi closed her eyes.
“Please don’t.”
Dàre considered the question.
“What sort of machine?”
Khepri stared at him with sudden respect.
Finally, somebody sensible.
He reached for a scrap of paper.
“Well, first we’d need to take it apart.”
Sẹ́ni burst out laughing. Simi tried to protest. Dàre moved closer to examine the drawing.
For a little while, the bells above them rang in the evening breeze, and the only difficult problem in Khepri’s world was how to make his father understand an excellent machine.