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I haven't finished up where I left off with Indigo's story. I don't really need to -- turns out she'll be just fine, but I guess I should mention a happy ending for someone.

I had a lot of faith in the Oread. She has been healing people for a long time, and Indigo was still breathing, even if it took magic help. Teal looked pretty worried, but then he always looks a little worried.  When the Oread got there, everyone started talking at once, trying to tell her what was up. She just laughed and asked for Robert-Etienne. "Wolfie" she called him, with a smile. It turns out Indigo visited her, just paying respects when she was out jogging in the hills during a visit to Amber's house, but the two got to talking and the Oread knew all about Robert-Etienne.

What we had all missed is that a magic like the one that struck her needs an old fashioned cure. The same one that worked for Snow White. Just that no one has dealt with that kind of undead in a long time, and the binder was dead (as if he would have told us how to cure the problem). So the Oread told Wolfie that all that we needed to do was give her a kiss and she would wake up. We all turned to look at him (hey, don't look at me, I wasn't about to kiss her). He looked like someone might have as well shot him, but he gave her a kiss anyway and she woke right up, smiling, though a little confused. Teal looked so relieved I almost didn't know whether to laugh or cry. I think he has started to think of Indigo as one of his kids. Tinda had been absent until Indigo awoke, and then he showed right up.  Guess he did not want anyone asking him to kiss sleeping assassins. Later I found out that often the sleepers wake up swinging, remembering only the last fight.

Robert-Etienne then started blushing and Indigo asked him what was up. He blushed even more. I did not know he had it in him. Then we told her and she hugged Teal and Amber so hard Amber later told me she was glad she still had her armor on.

It was after that we all reported to the school administrators at our respective schools, though Tindalasse's father appeared with the Einjharer in his formal position as the Bitter King, and I think you've all heard how he got us a second chance to finish our school-work. I saw Indigo just briefly before we took off on our adventure and she smiled at me and gave Amber another hug, kind of getting caught up in Amber's cloak. Said she might come visit us in a month or two, when she finished up her other project. I'm not sure of all the details, but she and Wolfie are off on a trip to the weavers. They had some thread to deliver (even if we didn't need it any more) and some people to see.

In the late fall, the week before Thanksgiving, there had always been a fair.

It was the time that those who had been out trapping and hunting and trading came home for the winter and met those who had decided to spend the winter away from home trapping and hunting and trading.  It was a time to be started home for Thanksgiving and it was the time that the city had always had the fair.

Some cities have a bazaar, or a suk or a  flea market or a mushat or some other place that always is, and some have a fair, perhaps the fair, that travels from place to place.  But the weekend before Thanksgiving is when it came to the City.

I shouldn't be so hard on Amber's story telling style -- she got off to a great start, until now when she calls me "the girl." Guess that is better than "the little girl" (or is it?). I'd had my rope for a couple weeks or so and I could feel it. It wasn't in danger of fading away, but it was more of a cord or twine than real rope and it just felt fragile. It was like a living thing that had been starved for a long time and still couldn't eat much. Like those famine victims who are starving, but who can barely cope with food, so fragile.

Now the girl decided that she needed more for the rope than just her hair.  It was still too thin and she worried for it.

So, she took all of the money she had saved all year, and went to the fair to find just the right threads to weave into the rope.

She searched all over.  

Going to the fair to look for more threads to weave into the rope seemed like a good idea. I didn't have the slightest experience finding magic thread to fix a magic rope and my hair wasn't growing back fast enough to make a difference -- not to mention it had gotten all the hair I had. The fair had always seemed magical, the rope was magical, the two just seemed to go togehter.

Now in the fair there are gypsies, the Roma, wain riders from Charlemagne's time who have lived in their wagons.  Every fair has a few gypsies.  There are also others who travel in wagons, or wains, or trailers and who are found in the fair, and they sell almost everything from their traveling booths.

The girl came to one, a real wagon, with pictures of Ki-Rin on it, with someone, maybe eighteen, maybe twenty-eight, maybe timeless, with almond eyes, and almond skin and midnight black hair.

The lady working the wagon is hard to describe, she was like porcelain, only finer.  Some people are just so elegant it is hard to describe them, but she is the kind of person I'd imagine riding a Ki-Rin with the wind sliding aside for her to avoid disturbing her hair.  

Now the Ki-Rin are magical creatures whose magical mountain is about the same place in the magical world as the eastern Himalayas are in our world.  They have horselike heads, with the same beards as chinese dragons have, cloven feet like the mountain goats, a busy mane like a lion (and a long flowing stream of hair like a horse), busy tails and puffs of hair about their ankles.  They also have armored scales on their bodies, twice the size of a large silver dollar and a single horn twisting from their foreheads.

They range from their mountain eastward, all the way to the ocean east of Japan, and sometimes to other places, stalking down certain types of evil and rewarding innocent good.  On the high mountains the Oreads collect their strands of hair which sears evil on the touch and which can trap or bind magic power.

"The almond lady" -- now that isn't a bad phrase for her. She never gave me her name, though almonds are not something I'd have thought of myself. She did have perfume that smelled like almonds though, and her face had an almond shape. Maybe Amber has something there. And her eyes were really almond shaped, in an elegant and refined way.

It so happened that the almond lady offered the girl golden silk, of a color that shifted depending on what it was near, almost as if it had been woven from sunlight or moonbeams. She had red silk that looked as if it had been woven from fire and blue silk that was the color of ocean depths.  White silk was the color of snow and blue-white the color of ice or frozen moonbeams.  She also had several types of hair, she claimed from unicorns and dragons and spiders and the ki-rin, as well as other things.

The little girl bought gold silk, and blue-white silk and the ki-rin hair, choosing the ones that seemed right.  When she was told she could have any or all of what she wanted for the same price, she still took only the hair and silk she had picked.

Now the almond eyed one may have been an oread, traveling the world. She might have been one of the deep earth Nagas, strange creatures of mixed heritage and purpose.  She might have had a gift from a Ki-rin to give a young girl, or she might have sold her wares as a test.  Not everyone who buys such things pays the same price.  And a Ki-rin might have wanted to reward innocent goodly person, or it might have wanted to assure that an unformed magic was bound to a certain path by the effect a ki-rin's hair might have.

Boy, you can tell Amber is her heroquesting parent's child when she gets to looking at something. It is sweet of her to talk about me as an "innocent goodly person" though.  I'd like to be remembered as someone who was good. I really would.

The gold silk might have been silk from silk worms or it might have been from the cocoons of the great sun dragons, of sunlight without heat.  The blue-white silk might have been from China or it might have been woven from the frosts of Cathay with a nature that traps and holds cold.

But the girl got the three things she chose and returned home to check on the shed.

The next part kind of gets back to earth from the almost etherial visit I had at the fair, and Amber's description makes it even more unearthly. But what a mess greeted me when I got back home. Those people who went after the hidden shed on our lot were bad actors and I'm sure glad of how things worked out with them.

Her house was quiet, though there was a feeling of unease and danger about things, and when she got back to her secret place, the shed was a mess.  Something had destroyed much of it and, unknown to the girl, set a doom to fall on her when she returned.  But the magic that had touched her, changed her, so that the doom missed her, seeking someone or something else.  Whoever had left behind the shed and the tools had strange enemies who struck with a broad brush.  The falling doom also sent out a ripple that was responded to by three dires and a frost fierce -- a type of elemental -- that sought to find whoever had triggered the doom, to destroy them and seek the one who had built the shed.

The girl was unaware, and put the door back on its hinges, locking it.  She then began to unwind the rope.

Had the rope realized what was going on, had it been aware, it would have resisted.  To unwind a rope is to unmake it. Had she gone too far, it would have been dissolved.  But she did not.  Then she wove in the gold hued silk and the blue-white silk and the frost breeze colored ki-rin hair.  Once she had them woven in, she began to reweave the rope.

It was then that the dires arrived, but could not pass the door.  The fierce swept through a crack in the wall and saw two targets -- the girl and the rope -- and fell upon the strongest (the rope) just as she wove it shut.

The rope wrapped the fierce within it, the ki-rin hair trapped it, and the rope swallowed all of the power and essence of the fierce.  The rope grew six inches and became 5/8" thick.

Amber does kind of catch the fact that I wandered in, didn't really notice the mess, closed the door and focused completely on the rope. I'll tell you, the magic that happened kind of startled me, and I did not realize until looking at the scrying Amber did of the events, just what had happened when the fierce was swallowed by the rope.

The girl picked up the rope just as the door burst from its hinges and the first dire broke in.

That is when I remembered things getting nasty. I'd had a beautiful harmonizing magic and then, just as I picked the rope up, this thing like a rabid dog burst in, black and harsh and poison.

The dires are a form of pooka -- animal spirits -- and they range a great deal.  These dires looked like obsidian dobermans, harsh and cruel and dripping poison from their fangs.

She struck with the rope to brush the dog back and it seized the end of the rope in its mouth.  The edge caught the dire and the power of the fierce flowed out, freezing the dire, which shattered as it fell.  The other two bounded in, one falling the same way, struck by the rope and frozen, the other trying to grab the rope from the girl, only to be entangled.  When she went to release it, it snapped at her and the rope glowed, freezing the dire solidly.  Then it unwrapped and came to her.

I really thought I could scare them away, and it was amazing to watch them just freeze and break. Of course then the shed fell down and the mess just sank in, kind of like when my mom used to point out just what a mess my room was.

The shed teetered and she ran from it, as it fell on the last dire, shattering it.

Thus the rope gained six inches and the power to freeze those it struck.

Cold just spoke to me through the rope. Like I'd like to speak to Amber if I could only get her to come back.