Diggen’s Point lay near the Verdant Lunagree. The term lunagree, you should know, refers to the places where the twelve moons hang in the sky around Tress’s planet in oppressively low stationary orbits. Big enough to fill a full third of the sky, one of the twelve is always visible, no matter where you travel. Dominating your view, like a wart on your eyeball.
The locals worshipped those twelve moons as gods, which we can all agree is far more ridiculous than whatever it is you worship. However, it’s easy to see where the superstition began, bearing in mind the spores—like colorful sand—that the moons dropped upon the land.
They’d pour down from the lunagrees, and the Verdant Lunagree was visible some fifty or sixty miles from the island. That was as close as you ever wanted to get to a lunagree—a great shimmering fountain of colorful motes, vibrant and exceedingly dangerous. The spores filled the world’s oceans, creating vast seas not of water, but of alien dust. Ships sailed that dust like ships sail water here, and you should not find that so unusual. How many other planets have you visited? Perhaps they all sail oceans of pollen, and your home is the freakish one.
The spores were only dangerous if you got them wet. Which was rather a problem, considering the number of wet things that leak from human bodies even when they’re healthy. The least bit of water would cause the spores to sprout explosively, and the results ranged from uncomfortable to deadly. Breathe in a burst of verdant spores, for example, and your saliva would send vines growing out of your mouth—or in more interesting cases, into your sinuses and out around your eyes.
The spores could be rendered inert by two things: salt or silver. Hence the reason the locals of Diggen’s Point didn’t terribly mind the salty taste of their water or food. They’d teach their children this ever-so-important rule: salt and silver halt the killer. An acceptable little poem, if you’re the sort of barbarian who enjoys slant rhymes.
Regardless, with the spores, the smoke, and the salt, one can perhaps see why the king who the duke served needed a law requiring the population to remain on the Rock. Oh, he gave reasons that involved important military phrases like “essential personnel,” “strategic resupply,” and “friendly anchorage,” but everyone knew the truth. The place was so inhospitable, even the smog found it depressing. Ships visited periodically for repairs, to drop off waste for the compost vats, and to take on new water. But each strictly obeyed the king’s rules: no locals were to be taken from Diggen’s Point. Ever.
And so, Tress would sit on her steps in the evenings, watching ships sail away as a column of spores dropped from the lunagree and the sun moved out from behind the moon and crept toward the horizon. She’d sip salty tea from a cup with horses painted on it, and she’d think, There’s a beauty to this, actually. I like it here. And I believe I shall be fine to remain here all my life.
THE GROUNDSKEEPER
Perhaps you were surprised to hear those last words. Tress wanted to stay on the Rock? She liked it there?
Where was her sense of adventure? Her yearning for new lands? Her wanderlust?
Well, this isn’t the part of the story where you ask questions. So kindly keep them to yourself. That said, you must understand that this is a tale about people who are both what they seem and not what they seem. Simultaneously. A story of contradictions. In other words, it is a story about human beings.
In this case, Tress wasn’t your ordinary heroine—in that she was in fact decidedly ordinary. Indeed, Tress considered herself categorically boring. She liked her tea lukewarm. She went to bed on time. She loved her parents, occasionally squabbled with her little brother, and didn’t litter. She was fair at needlepoint and had a talent for baking, but had no other noteworthy skills.
She didn’t train at fencing in secret. She couldn’t talk to animals. She had no hidden royalty or deities in her lineage, though her great-grandmother Glorf had reportedly once waved at the king. That had been from atop the Rock while he was sailing past, many miles away, so Tress didn’t think it counted.
In short, Tress was a normal teenage girl. She knew this because the other girls often mentioned how they weren’t like “everyone else,” and after a while Tress figured that the group “everyone else” must include only her. The other girls were obviously right, as they all knew how to be unique—they were so good at it, in fact, that they did it together.
Tress was generally more thoughtful than most people, and she didn’t like to impose by asking for what she wanted. She’d remain quiet when the other girls were laughing or telling jokes about her. After all, they were having so much fun. It would be impolite to spoil that, and presumptuous of her to request that they stop.
Sometimes the more boisterous youths talked of seeking adventure in foreign oceans. Tress found that notion frightening. How could she leave her parents and brother? Besides, she had her cup collection.
Tress cherished her cups. She had fine porcelain cups with painted glaze, clay cups that felt rough beneath her fingers, and wooden cups that were rugged and well-used.
Several of the sailors who frequently docked at Diggen’s Point knew of her fondness, and they sometimes brought her cups from all across the twelve oceans: distant lands where the spores were reportedly crimson, azure, or even golden. She’d give the sailors pies in exchange for their gifts, the ingredients purchased with the pittance she earned scrubbing windows.
The cups they brought her were often battered and worn, but Tress didn’t mind. A cup with a chip or ding in it had a story. She loved them all because they brought the world to her. Whenever she sipped from one of the cups, she imagined she could taste far-off foods and drinks, and perhaps understand a little of the people who had crafted them.
Each time Tress acquired a new cup, she brought it to Charlie to show it off.
Charlie claimed to be the groundskeeper at the duke’s mansion at the top of the Rock, but Tress knew he was actually the duke’s son. Charlie’s hands were soft like a child’s rather than callused, and he was better fed than anyone else in town. His hair was always cut neatly, and though he took his signet ring off when he saw her, it left a slightly lighter patch of skin that made it clear he usually wore it—on the finger that marked a member of the nobility.
Besides, Tress wasn’t certain what “grounds” Charlie thought needed keeping. The mansion was, after all, on the Rock. There had been a tree on the property once, but it had done the sensible thing and died a few years earlier. There were some potted plants though, which let him pretend.
Grey motes swirled in the wind by her feet as she climbed the path up to the mansion. Grey spores were dead—the very air around the Rock was salty enough to kill spores—but she still held her breath as she hurried past. She turned left at the fork—the right path went to the mines—then wove up the switchbacks to the overhang.
Here the mansion squatted like a corpulent frog atop its lily. Tress wasn’t certain why the duke liked it up here. It was closer to the smog, so maybe he liked the similarly tempered company. Climbing all this way was difficult—but judging by how the duke’s family fit their clothing, perhaps they figured they could use the exercise.