A Fortress of Pebbles

As the weeks passed, everyone in the Fortress seemed to come to the collective agreement that the Earth was stabilizing. Fewer mugs of cider could be seen, fewer haunted expressions and dead eyes. The daily council meetings became weekly ones.

Cassandra hoped that being a chosen one meant that she could, perhaps, follow Nessassa around wherever she went. But as it turned out, Nessassa was constantly busy communicating with heads of state and leaders from around the world. This apparently meant that the proper place for Cassandra was in school.

So Cassandra found herself spending most days with the Master of Maps in the Room of Sand – the place that had once inspired Orion to hurl a handful of dangerous map pebbles at once. She wore brown robes, along with the rest of the students in the class. She learned to use map pebbles to unlock or lock doors, create water to wash her hands, heat up her cider (which she was making plans to quit), manifest granite bricks to be used as paperweights, and even create small arcs of lightning.

The Master of Maps gave her a pouch of map pebbles, each flashed with an operating system that required working out various mass and energy equations before you could make it do anything. It was much more difficult than the gamified system that the Master of Language had been using to coax her and Orion into the Fortress ranks. This one had been deactivated. And now, whenever Cassandra got the equations wrong, the pebble usually went up in smoke. The first time she lost a pebble this way, she decided that (before quitting cider) she was going to stay up all night every night and master the Laws of Pebble Magic.

By the end of the week, however, her pouch of pebbles was empty, and she had to walk glumly to the office of the Master of Maps. Here, there were two other students in brown robes waiting in the hallway. She wasn’t the only one in need of a refill.

When she joined them, they stopped talking. It was several minutes of awkward silence before one introduced herself as Emily and said, “You’re the girl who lives with Nessassa, right? What’s she like?” She had an accent like she was from England, or maybe Australia.

Cassandra stammered something about how she hardly ever saw her, which was apparently a disappointing answer because it ushered in several more minutes of silence. The students here, Cassandra was coming to realize, weren’t like the parrots back home. They were quieter – more somber.

The Master of Maps opened the door and bellowed cheerfully, “Next! Ah, Emily. You’ve torched another pouch of pebbles?”

“Yeah, but he can go first,” said Emily. She swapped places with the student behind her and nudged him forward.

When they were alone, Emily whispered, “Is it true you get to live in Aissaba’s old room?”

(Blink: Aissaba sat around a campfire with Tassadu and cat-Styxx’s simulation – which was dead again. Her stomach growled, so Tassadu plucked a life pebble from a nearby root and asked her what she would like to eat. “Nothing,” Aissaba muttered.)

Cassandra shook off the blink. She’d been trying to avoid them lately – in part because she’d been feeling quite certain that whatever was happening to Aissaba and Tassadu was her fault, and because she didn’t want Aissaba finding out. And also, whenever a blink occurred, fake-Orion looked at her suspiciously – as if he could sense that something was happening, but not precisely what it was.

The fact that no one seemed to know about the blinks freaked her out more than anything else.

“You okay?” said Emily, glancing at Cassandra’s cider. “I’m surprised they let you have that. Must be nice having Nessassa as your mom.”

Cassandra stammered that she wasn’t her mom, that she was being temporarily housed in Nessassa’s suite.

“So you are in Aissaba’s old room,” said Emily. Leaning in, she whispered, “My friend Koti is older, and she says that Aissaba and Tassadu used to be in love. But when he became a dragon, she was so sad that she tried to erase her brain.” Cassandra tried to say that there was probably more to the story, but Emily had already moved on. “I can’t wait until I get to pick a better name. Emily is so boring that I could die all over again.”

This, it soon became clear, was something she said frequently. If she managed to destroy another map pebble, she would die all over again. If she had to hear Benjamin fart in class one more time, she would die all over again. “Hey, where’d you die?” Emily finally asked. “Was it in the apocalypse?”

“Bus crash,” said Cassandra. “In Montana.”

“I,” Emily announced, “was muuuurdered.”

Cassandra felt her skin crawl as Emily went on to describe walking down a dark alleyway in the middle of a summer night in London – the smell of urine on the ground, trash everywhere, the sound of footsteps behind her, the shadow that fell over her. Before she could finish the story, the Master of Maps opened his door, and the boy walked out with a new pouch of pebbles.

“This is Benjamin,” said Emily, giving Cassandra a meaningful look. “Benjamin, this is Cassandra – died in a Montana bus crash.”

“Don’t believe everything Emily tells you,” said Benjamin after Emily disappeared into the Master of Map’s office. “No one knows how she died because it’s different every time. Told me she was hit by a car while rescuing the prime minister’s kitten.”

Benjamin turned out to be less talkative than Emily. He might not have said anything else if not for his stomach gurgling. At this, he apologized and explained, “My Fortress dad used to flash me life pebbles for my lactose intolerance, but…” He looked down at the hem of his robe. “He turned out to be a Rot Cultist, so I’m living with the Master of Mind until they assign me a new dad. Or mom, I suppose.”

Cassandra had played enough old-school RPG games on the Sega to know that she’d just been given a quest. Get this kid some life pebbles for his stomach. Cassandra put her hand on Benjamin’s shoulder and said, “I’ll ask Nessassa if I can get some pre-flashed life pebbles for you.”

He didn’t seem as grateful as Cassandra expected him to be. A moment later, he said, “While you're at it, can you try to find out what my Fortress dad did wrong? Because he always seemed pretty cool to me.”

Cassandra realized then that maybe not everyone in the Fortress was an equally-big Nessassa fan. In the silence that followed, only Benjamin’s stomach had anything to say.

When the Master of Maps finally opened the door, he stepped out after Emily, handed Cassandra a pouch of pebbles, and apologized. “Nessassa needs me to join the video call with Russia. In exchange for their cooperation in the Pacific, we’re helping them with the Siberian oil situation.” Then, he was lumbering away down the hallway – giant stone feet thudding while he whistled a tune through his teeth.

“If I didn’t know better,” whispered Emily, “I’d say he was avoiding you. Maybe he doesn’t want questions about the Montana thing.” When Cassandra’s face remained blank, Emily added: “The extermination?”

Cassandra shook her head.

Benjamin, holding his stomach, said, “You shouldn’t spread rumors, Emily.”

Emily, though, looked like she would prefer to die all over again than let a rumor go unspread. Eyes alight, she said, “I only know about it because my friend Koti is one of the janitors in the Hall of Language. Apparently, Nessassa advised a swift elimination of the Rot’s apocalypse stuff – and the United States military took that as an excuse to do… what they were already planning to do.”

“What did they do?” said Cassandra.

“This was, like, a week ago,” said Emily. “I’m surprised you don’t already know. I figured you and Nessassa must talk all the time.”

“What happened?” said Cassandra. There was a crash, and Cassandra realized she had dropped her mug of cider.

Fake-Orion looked down at the wet floor and bits of white ceramic glistening on the flagstones. “I wouldn’t worry about it,” he said. “The Rot has ways of protecting its chosen ones.”

“Did you know about this?” Cassandra demanded, only distantly aware that from Emily and Benjamin’s perspective, she was shouting at a wall.

“I’m not all-knowing,” said fake-Orion. “I’m just supposed to guide you–”

“Then, do it!” shouted Cassandra.

“Okay, okay,” said fake-Orion, “if you insist.” He didn’t move but indicated Emily, who looked like she was having the time of her life.

She put her hand on Cassandra’s sleeve and said, “I bet my friend Koti can get us into the conference rooms in the Hall of Language. If there’s archival footage, that’s where it would be.” In a whisper, she said, “And don’t worry. We won’t tell anyone that you talk to ghosts.”

Cassandra smiled the world’s thinnest smile. “Looks like you’re my new best friend,” she said. Emily seemed pleased with this, but Benjamin was grimacing like he was watching a horror movie. Or maybe he just had gas.

“Come on,” said Emily, pulling them both along.