Chapter Two

Tolver

Tolver had never been made to vanish before—that sort of magic didn’t work at home.

He’d never been allowed on the other side, where the humans still lived, either.

But apparently when Nan did magic on that side of the worlds, it itched.

Tolver never thought his first adventure to the other side would itch. Or require so much disappearing.

The itch from disappearing wasn’t nearly as bad as falling. Which was what he was doing now, while also itching.

The silver-haired boy spun and tumbled through the air, his arms and legs windmilling until he landed with an oof on the wet, and thankfully soft, ground of a marshbog island so small it didn’t have a name. He’d dropped into the mud beside a thatched cottage suitably small for the tiny island. One where he’d lived with his grandmother since he was a baby.

In the distance, a bell rang on Schoolhouse Island. Closer by, Nana’s laundry flapped noisily on the line strung from her cottage roof to a post by the shore. The air smelled of salt and mud.

Home.

Like nothing had changed. Especially the mud.

But Tolver had changed. He knew that much.

Tolver scratched his chin triumphantly. His first time on the other side might have ended with him falling into a puddle, sure, but it was filled with victory. He’d followed in Nana’s footsteps and stolen his first spoken word. “Come here, Starflake!”

The white pookah grumbled at him but spat out the silver ribbon so that it landed in Tolver’s muddy lap. Regret glittered silver across the length of it. They’d taken three words from that terrible boy, and this one was his.

Tolver forgot about the itching. He’d done it all by himself! Well, almost.

“Maybe tomorrow we can go back,” Tolver mused aloud. Going back meant getting more words, which would help with every difficulty he and his Nana had.

“Tolver, you did very well! But if we have enough, we don’t need to keep going back.” Nana’s patient voice came from the sky above. “We only gather spoken words when we need them.”

“But what if we do need them? And when can I get my own switch? And . . .” Tolver bit his lip as he watched his grandmother drift gracefully to the ground. They could get printed words fairly easily. But Nan used those only for spells; they disappeared so fast. Spoken words lasted much longer, especially if they’d been really poorly used by their owners. Nan had taught Tolver everything he needed to know about that before they’d gone to the other side, but she hadn’t yet taught him how to work the spells necessary to get there and back.

Now his grandmother held the white pookah’s leash in one hand, and her basket rested in the crook of her elbow. She was much better at moving through the portal and hadn’t fallen like Tolver. “I’m proud of you.”

Tolver forgot about the itching and the mud altogether. He smiled at his grandmother. “Thank you.” He’d been practicing so hard, ever since he finished school. Studying maps of Mount Cloud, learning how to hold onto a pookah while it jumped. Which he could do now, most of the time.

The other twelve-year-old boglins had each joined their family’s lines of work. Now he’d done the same. His chest puffed out a little, fraying his torn shirt more.

“I’ll get you the mending kit,” Nana tutted at him. But she seemed as pleased as he felt. “I told you if you practiced enough with Starflake, you’d make a good word-boglin. And now you have.”

Real spoken words—the overused ones, at least—could be converted into hot air, and that helped power ships and machines. And that meant it could be traded for something big, like Nana’s island. And then maybe a fine ship, Tolver thought.

“And if I get good enough, maybe I can be a full-time word-boglin! No more delivering the mail! No more chores!” Tolver crowed. “Now that I can help you, we’ll buy your island, and someday—”

His grandmother chuckled, as if she could read his mind. “Don’t get too ahead of yourself. We’ll deliver mail, as we always have, so long as there are islands to deliver to. And we’ll do what word-gathering needs to be done, us and the pookah, both. But only what needs done, and no more than that.”

But that’s part of the problem, Tolver thought. We never have more than just enough of anything. “Delivering mail gets us eggs and fish, plus a magic word now and then, on a grimy piece of paper. That’s not going to help save the island, or—” Tolver stopped again. He’d nearly said, “Get me on an adventure.”

“Tolver. You know I want the island to be yours one day. I hope we can make that happen. But slow is how we do it. Remember your studies.”

It was unlikely Tolver would forget his classes on School-house island: Trading and Economics. Ethics. How to behave when you visited the big city, Felicity. Boglin history. Nana, who was the eldest goblin in the marshlands, taught that one herself. He hadn’t wanted to go to a city for further study like she had, though. He’d been eager to start work with her, ever since he realized that boglins could buy things like islands and ships. “What I learned was that we’d need to shift from slow and steady to faster progress if we want to keep the island, Nan,” he grumbled.

Other islands were already becoming extensions of the city—with factories and warehouses rising from the mud. Only those boglins who’d bought their land back from the city had managed to stay independent: Schoolhouse, Roe Island, and Wanderer’s Reach.

If I manage it, Tolver thought, Nana won’t have to worry so much. And I won’t have to feel guilty when I go on my own adventures one day.

Nana shook her head, “We’ll get there.” Starflake, the white pookah, grunted agreement.

No matter how tradition-bound she was, Tolver loved his Nana, and the pookahs too. If they would just take him seriously. “Once we can stop giving our earnings every half year to the city and stop worrying that they’re just going to move a factory here, then we’ll be able to go slow, I promise. I mean, look at the prospectors—they’re full time. And the city can’t tell them what to do—”

He regretted saying that much when her smile faded.

“The prospectors! I don’t want to hear another word about those miscreants. Reckless, obsessed with expensive, dangerous machines . . .” Nana tried to keep her voice light, but she was nearly bubbling with rage. “No more about them, Tolver. They take too much of everything because they’ve gotten so big. And because they’ve gotten so big, they have to take more. I refuse to deal with them.”

Tolver bowed his head. “I know, Nana.” She was talking about his parents. She’d had to worry a lot about him, in addition to the pookah and the island’s rent, once his parents had disappeared on a lost prospector ship.

As an apology, Tolver removed Starflake’s leash and saddle, then brushed the sweat from her back while the white pookah snuffled and grunted loudly. From behind Nana’s cottage, a black pookah and several small baby pookahs emerged from a fenced paddock and mud bath.

The family of pookahs—which looked a lot like pigs—nuzzled each other while Tolver tried to clean himself up at the pump. He brushed off his clothes after the pookahs trundled back to the mud. Some boglins liked mud a lot more than others. Pookahs, it turned out, liked it most of all.

Then he handed his first word over to his grandmother. She took two more ribbons out of her basket. They said Sorry and Apologize. “Maybe this will be enough,” he said hopefully as she poked through her basket, making sure nothing had been left behind.

“Maybe,” she murmured hopefully, not looking at him. “If they haven’t raised the price again. But even then, eventually we will have enough.”

Tolver sighed, some of his exultation draining. Learning word-gathering was slow going. Tolver had been clumsy at first and hadn’t realized how hard it was to find mis-used words, even with a pookah’s help. Which was why Nana wasn’t teaching him magic yet.

And though they both daydreamed about buying the island, musing about it over supper and out in the mail boat, the longer they took getting enough to trade, the more the cottage seemed to cost.

He tried one more time. “We only need to be a little more efficient, to have a plan when we go foraging, to use some of the new machines,” Tolver said. He’d heard rumors, the last time they were in Felicity, about something better than pookahs and switches and magic words.

Nana clucked at him, then patted his cheek. “You’re a good boy, looking out for me. But word-gathering isn’t something that is done well if it’s done fast. And well is the way we do things.”

“I know, I know. It’s always the way we do things. Switches and pookahs and portal-words.” Tolver tried to smile, but his heart sank. It was too slow. His gran wasn’t getting any younger.

The prospectors used ships and machines to help them get everything done faster. They had, he’d heard, big metal word hogs. Ones that could sniff out the best word wasters on the other side twice as well as regular pookahs.

Everyone knew pookahs were slow. Even the pookahs knew it.

But, like everything else, the prospectors liked to keep their technology to themselves and charge others for using it. Those word hogs, Tolver guessed, probably cost more than an island.

Meantime, with only a switch, two pookahs, and a few magic words, Nana had kept everything around the tiny cottage going. She’d fenced the mud bath all on her own, before Tolver had come to live with her, when the pookahs decided they liked it. She’d even built her own hot air converter after studying with the inventor on Brightside island down-marsh.

Tolver had heard that the prospectors had better converters. Ones that could turn any word to hot air, even if it wasn’t really mis-used. But whatever the prospectors used would upset Nana.

At least boglin pookahs were good at sniffing out mis-used words. Starflake had traced the boy who’d been wasting those words so easily. He’d been wasting them for a long time. The scent of it was all over the neighborhood, even on the Little Free Library. Even Tolver could smell it a little.

Once they’d found the boy, Nana had set up a careful trap. Tolver had watched every step. But the setting of the trap, and the gathering of each word, did take a lot of time.

He wished they could be faster, that’s all.

“Do you want to do the honors, Tolver?” Nana stood by the converter, holding one of the ribbons out to him. His word.

Tolver jumped at the chance. The family’s converter was a bit wobbly, and it leaked. But Tolver had always loved converting the words Nana brought home, and now he’d get to do his own first word.

He carefully put the ribbon into the brass cup on the top of the converter and closed the lid. Nana began to turn the crank on the side, and Tolver waited for the canvas bag on the other side to fill with hot air, like it always did when Nana came back from one of her adventures.

Instead, the bag stayed flat and the converter made a clicking noise.

Nana flipped the lid open and examined the ribbon. “Hmmmm.”

Then she opened the side of the box, carefully. “HMMMM,” she said again. This time sounding gruffer, the way she’d changed her voice to scare the boy.

“That’s not good. A cracked gear.” She lifted the ribbon from the cup. “We’ll have to take the words to the Depository and get them weighed there.”

Tolver groaned. That would be at least another day, if not more. The Depository was in Felicity. And the Depository charged a fee for weighing and storage. Which would make buying the island even more of a distant dream.

“There, there.” Nana patted his hand.

She’d always done that to make him feel better, and usually the touch of her fingers on his skin did calm him. But today, Tolver pulled his hand away. “It’s not fair.”

“We’ll ask Julius if he can help fix the converter. Don’t worry. Meantime, it’s just a little longer wait.” Julius was the inventor on Brightside, and Nana’s friend. Nana smiled at Tolver, and then put a hand to her forehead. “Oh! I made a tea cake before we left! You must be starving.”

Tolver sighed as the old woman carried her basket into the cottage. He was hungry, but that wasn’t the problem. He tried to do what Nan told him. She was the wisest person he knew. But she had lots of rules about what was good and what was bad. Slow and steady? That was good. Getting ahead of yourself? Bad. The marshbogs and the pookahs and the way things had always been done? Good. The prospectors who sometimes came through the marshlands on their enormous ships? They were bad.

Nana emerged from the cottage with three plates. She put the largest plate on the stoop. Gilfillan and Starflake snorted happily and trundled over. Pookahs loved cake.

Tolver took a bite and felt his mood ease. “I wish we could have gathered more words. Maybe even taken a few from that woman with the sparkly cane—”

“Leave her out of this,” Nana said quietly. She put her cake down. Her creased face seemed to close in on itself just a little.

That was strange. “Do you know her?” The woman had seemed to know Nana.

“Not in the least!” Nana gave her cake to Starflake. She wasn’t smiling any longer. “She reminded me of someone I met long ago. A mistake I made once. Plus, she got in our way!”

Even stranger. Nana rarely got upset. And she never made mistakes.

Strangest of all, Tolver had enough schooling and training from Nana to know that word-gatherers weren’t supposed to do things that might get them recognized by humans.

Word-boglins were supposed to clean up the overused words on the other side and get home fast; a service done for humanity—making sure that most of the words in circulation continued to mean something—and a help to goblin-kind as well. Poorly used words over there turned to many useful purposes over here. Everyone won. That was the way boglins always did things. Goblins who lived in the city, rather than the marshbogs? They did things differently.

Nana was definitely upset. And Tolver was fascinated. He scratched a still-itchy spot on his arm and watched his grandmother closely as she turned back to the small, bright cottage kitchen. “More tea? I’ll put the kettle on again.”

When the blue teakettle whistled on the stove, Nana finally stopped banging pots around. From inside, sipping a sweet grass tea, she said, “You are a good boy, Tolver, and you did well. We’ll be fine. Please don’t ask about that woman again, all right? We’ll do our best to avoid her.” She still looked upset.

Tolver nodded. He wouldn’t ask, but he would wonder.

Nana pointed at the carved safe box above the stove. “We’ll keep your word here until we can go to the Depository or fix the converter.” She piled her own ribbons inside, and Tolver put his in too.

Nana waved her switch over the box while reading a word she’d taken from a nearby basket: “protect.” That locked them up and out of harm’s way. She crumpled the now-blank paper and threw it in the hearth.

Nana knew so much useful magic. How to open up portals. How to organize the pookahs. How to use words to do things.

All Tolver was really good at so far was steering the mail boat and falling. “Soon, we’ll have enough.”

His Nan nodded. “These words could make years of hot air. Starflake wouldn’t lead us astray. Finding good sources is getting harder now and more expensive. Those terrible prospectors are racing to grab them all first. We’re lucky we have such lovely pookahs. We won’t waste a syllable on a broken converter.”

Nana went to rest while Tolver began his chores and had a think.

Years of hot air—with a few more words like those, even with the broken converter, they should be able to buy Nana’s island. And then, perhaps, Tolver thought, a ship. Or some machines. If they got enough, Tolver wouldn’t have to stay a mere word forager and mail-boat driver for the rest of his days.

Tolver looked out across the small marshbog island, over the water turning deep blue in the evening light, and to the bright lights of the high-and-low city in the distance.

Half of the city rested on the largest island in the marshlands, and half floated far above. The lower half was factories and practical things. The upper half of Felicity was filled with adventure. Giant ships moved around its edges, and trains zoomed between the buildings, and the Depository itself glowed from within.

The city glittered in the evening light, and Tolver’s dark eyes glittered too.

As night fell in the marshbogs, Tolver fed the pookahs and began to load the mail boat. Three lumpy sacks jangled with boxed trinkets, many bound up in ribbons and colorful seals. Every one of the packages had an address carefully lettered on it, in strange scripts: School-house Island, Roe Island, Wanderer’s Reach Island, Brightside Island. Four stops tonight.

That would take until nearly dawn.

It was safer to deliver mail at night, even if he was tired from his first word-gathering trip. Sometimes, prospectors liked to raid mail boats and take what they pleased.

Tolver knew the mail route kept them in tea and fish, and every so often, a magic word or two—the printed kind. And the pookah in cakes. Not a terrible job to have. But it wasn’t the same as word-gathering.

Tolver put the last of the sacks in the boat. For a moment, he felt very sad. “Nana, you and my parents delivered mail all over the marshlands. Now all we’ve got is a few islands.”

Nana thought before answering. In the distance, a ship detached from the floating city and began to sail closer. Were those prospectors? Coming for the mail? Tolver shivered. The old boat bobbed in the shallow water.

“Our family’s always been good at getting messages anywhere they need to go, Tolver,” Nana said, carrying the broken converter to the boat. “We’re good at staying out of sight, crossing borders, that sort of thing. We did it in the human world quite a bit, even helped set up the first mailboxes and post services. It doesn’t matter how much or how little mail there is. Only that it gets where it’s going.”

Another ship had detached from the upper city, following behind the first. While Tolver was curious about the prospectors in broad daylight, he didn’t feel as interested in coming across them at night. He didn’t want the boat to be attacked or Nana to be hurt. “We can go later. It’s just the mail.”

Nana frowned. “These are not just the mail. They’re our duty. They’re our neighbors’ hearts. We must be careful with them.”

Tolver scowled at a letter that had slipped from a sack. “Some are pretty flat for hearts.” But he finished settling the bags and packages in the boat. Then he held the craft steady as Nana climbed in and took the starboard oar. He wrapped his hands around the port oar—smooth from years of use. The boat had a hot-air motor that could help speed things up, but they didn’t want to use any fuel if they could help it. It was too valuable. And noisy. It would draw attention.

Water lapped the boat’s sides as they rowed, a soft, slick sound, interrupted by the occasional thunk of a larger wave. In the dark, Tolver and Nana headed toward distant lights that could have been even more distant stars. That was how delivering the mail often went. Sometimes, as they rowed in the quiet, she told him stories of the worlds before or of his parents.

This night, though, Nana was tense. One of the prospector ships had turned. It cast a shadow their way as it left the city and began circling the marshbogs. She eyed it as she thought aloud. “It’s been a long time since we’ve seen Julius on our rounds—I hope we can find him on Brightside tonight.”

Tolver remembered the inventor being kind to him when he was young, while Julius and Nana worked on projects together. The boglin was a bit of an island oddity, having gone to a university in a distant goblin city. He liked to make gadgets. Most boglins on the marsh preferred to fish or farm. And to lift the occasional word.

Not Julius. He’d made Tolver a tiny ship once that floated all on its own. Tolver had taken it apart to see how it worked and hadn’t been able to put it back together. Tolver sighed, thinking about it.

“Tell me how we quit delivering mail on the other side again?” Tolver asked to distract himself. He loved this story.

Nana chuckled, her voice calming. “My grandfather told me that we didn’t quit. We used to work side by side with humans, delivering notes, finding secret places to put messages. We were very good at it. The shape-shifters—the pookahs—were especially good at getting secrets where they needed to go. When humans started building houses all across the countryside, they set up mailboxes with our help. Then they didn’t need secret places. And they began wanting to deliver their own mail. And then-boom, said they didn’t need us anymore. Retired, thanks for your service, that kind of thing.”

“Did we steal words then too?” Tolver had never asked this before.

“Never!” Nana said. “Mostly!” She waved her arms widely, making the boat wobble. “We got a bad reputation from one or two missing secrets. A code book or two. That was when their world started to get noisy with fighting, and goblins began talking about leaving. And then all of a sudden, humans didn’t want our help, so we did leave. They changed all their stories about the mail so that we vanished. We were too small, too strange. They didn’t trust us anymore. Even though we didn’t take things. Not much.” She looked out toward the next island. “Only when it was necessary.”

Tolver rowed and rowed, thinking about what was necessary and what wasn’t. Good boglins, he knew from school, were careful with magic and words. They tried not to interfere too much in the lives of humans. “So when we left, we took all the magic with us, right?” That would be fair.

“Oh, no,” Nana chuckled. “Humans don’t realize it, but they still have a lot of magic. Their words are very powerful. When we left, they forgot a bit, that’s all. They were so busy fighting. So sometimes, we magic good places for them to hide notes. You saw the tree next to the portal this morning?”

Tolver rowed and thought back to their passage through the portal. The box filled with books—which Nana said they couldn’t steal from, because the books were in a mailbox, and they didn’t steal from the mail (much)—and beside it, a large oak tree. “Was there a cemented-up spot in it?”

Nana nodded. “A long time ago, children used to leave messages in that knot. That’s what makes a good portal—spaces where people leave things for one another. There’s a particular energy.” She quieted as they approached the first island, Schoolhouse.

She and Tolver handed over packages by the water’s edge. The islanders there and on Roe gave Nana more packages, plus a few words torn from books or a basket of eggs or fish in payment.

Then their oars splashed the water again. The stars spun in the sky, and as they paddled, the water began to glow each time the oars struck the water. They rowed between rivers of stars, stopping again at Wanderer’s Reach to drop off more packages at sleep-quieted cottages.

“Almost done,” Nana said. Tolver’s hands hurt and his eyes were heavy. Though he was used to this route, he’d been awake for so long. The sun was nearly up. The final island was Brightside. The inventor’s island. Even from a distance, he could see lights in the factory and hear the clanging of machinery being built. Rumor had spread that the prospectors were keeping factories like the one on Brightside very busy. As if the city’s factories had spread.

By the time the mail boat ground against the shoal, two young boglins waited with lanterns in the predawn light. They grabbed the bow and helped haul the small boat up on shore. “How many letters? Any for me?” The smaller boglin child’s high-pitched question echoed through the dawn. Five more goblins emerged from the factory buildings, and another from a well-lit house. The only cottage on the island that remained dark was up a steep hill. The inventor’s cottage.

A puppy barked from inside one of the buildings. The boglins stood on shore, waiting. They were all silver haired like Tolver and Nana. But some had goat horns, and some, small wings. Two of the factory workers had skin that looked purple in the lamplight and sparkled with phosphorescence. Kobolds, Tolver thought, always liked to dress up.

He began handing out carefully wrapped packages and hand-lettered envelopes. Some had flowers and sketches of strange machines hand-drawn on the envelopes, signifying payments: a new saddle for wild pookahs; a kind of calculator that ran on curses.

A young kobold, who was missing two teeth, took a package from Tolver’s bag. “My name! Mine!” She tore it open right there in front of him. “Look!” Inside the package was a locket. “My gran sent me this from all the way across the marshbog.” Tolver helped her put the locket on. As he slipped the clasp closed, he heard a soft, sad sound. The little boglin’s mother held a letter tight and clutched a hand over her mouth. “What’s wrong, Mum?”

“Such good news.” The woman turned away. “Your brother’s all right.”

Nana bent close to the woman for a moment, talking quietly. When the woman straightened and walked down the path between cottages, Tolver noticed that Nana’s face was gray and resolved.

“What happened?”

“The prospectors took her son out of school in the city. Convinced him to work on one of the rigs. He finally earned enough fuel to be allowed to write a letter.”

Tolver stared, trying to make the words make sense. “They stole him? Like pirates do?”

Nana shook her head. “Not pirates. Not really stealing. What’s that old word. Conscription. The boy had some debts, and they said he needed to work them off. Kind of like what sailors did during human wars.” She sighed and folded the mail bag. “I’ve told you, those prospectors have too much machinery. Airships, fast ones, require more and more goblins to help keep them going. That poor boy.”

Maybe, Tolver worried, prospectors’ efficiency is hard won, and not as easy to mimic as I’d thought.

As they neared the bottom of the second bag, Nana prepared to go find the inventor. She set the converter in a basket on her back.

“I’ll stay with the boat,” Tolver offered. He hadn’t seen any more ships leave the city, but it was good to be safe. Especially given what he’d just heard.

“I’ll leave you my lantern,” Nana said. So she was worried as well. She read a word to it that Tolver couldn’t hear. “If you need me, wave it in the air and I’ll come.”

He wished she’d have given him a spell to use, but he took the lantern anyway.

The little boat rocked in the shallows while she waded ashore toward the darkened cottage on the island’s leeward side.

When her footsteps faded, the marsh frogs and crickets picked up their evening concert: deep croaks and high chirrups. Then the music ceased.

Tolver thought he heard splashing in the shallows. A low chuckle.

Prospectors? He lifted Nana’s lantern.

“Don’t come farther. I’ve got words to spare.” He didn’t, but he’d heard Nana say as much when the prospectors had come too close before.

A reply came back. “You wouldn’t waste words. You’re a boglin.”

Whoever it was, they were close. And they knew who he was.

“What do you want?” he called. “Show yourselves.”

Two goblins stepped into the light. They wore boat clothes and canvas pants, and their feet were bare. One had a long, silver braid. The other was as broad as a cottage door and as expressionless. “Tolver Boglin—we’ve brought you a gift from Julius, the inventor.”

Tolver narrowed his eyes. He liked presents. All boglins did. But this one felt wrong. “What’s the catch?”

“No catch. Though if you’re interested in something more, let us know. Julius is making lots of things these days—most very inexpensive.”

Tolver shook his head. “My nan’s up looking for Julius now. Maybe he’ll tell her this himself.”

The city goblin with the braid said, “Aye, if he’s there. He’s got responsibilities. Perhaps you don’t need a gift. Perhaps you need a job? Wish to have adventures?”

“Not interested in a job.” Tolver leaned back as casually as he could. “Won’t leave my nan.”

The first goblin sniffed, offended, but the second chuckled and held out a small, round object. The metal-and-glass surface glittered. “No job. No strings. Just a gift, then.”

“What does it do?” Tolver asked. He tried to keep his hands behind him, but he wanted to reach out. The “gift” looked like a compass, but without any directions. It glowed faintly green in the marsh light. Or perhaps that was magic.

Tolver put out a finger to touch the compass. Just to see.

The goblin with the silver braid pulled her hand back so the compass was just out of Tolver’s reach.

She smiled. “This? It helps you find the best words all on your own. You can use it to open a portal. Julius’s own spell.”

So I won’t need to know how to do magic? Tolver’s fingers twitched, but he crossed his arms. This had to be a trap. “We don’t need that. We have pookahs. And my nan does portals the old-fashioned way.”

“This is better. Faster. Just give it a try.” The goblin extended the compass on a flat palm.

Since Julius had made the compass, Tolver was definitely curious. His fingers curled round the cool metal. “No strings?” The other two nodded.

He wanted to believe them. And that wanting was enough, at least right then, to make what the two goblins said feel like the truth.

At the sound of his nana’s shoes on the reeds near the water’s edge, Tolver slipped the gadget into his pocket. The two goblins faded into the darkness. By the time Nana appeared beside the boat, Tolver could hear the faint thrumming of an airship passing overhead. Prospectors indeed.

“Julius wasn’t home,” Nana said, sounding disappointed. “We’ll have to fix the converter ourselves. Or buy help in the city.”

Tolver frowned. That would take even longer. But Nana sounded so dejected and tired, he didn’t say anything about the compass. Perhaps, he thought to himself, I can trade their gift for a new converter gear. Or for a whole converter.

Quietly, Tolver rowed Nana back home, put the boat away, fed the pookahs, and climbed, exhausted, up into his soft bed in the cottage loft. Before his head hit the pillow, he was nearly asleep. In the room below, Nana was already snoring softly.

Well into the next day, Tolver dreamed of the prospectors and their shiny new tools. He dreamed himself onboard one of their ships that stopped off at different cities to trade goods. That’s how the prospectors knew so much more than regular marsh boglins.

In Tolver’s dreams, they offered him his own ship, and he accepted.

Near the middle of the day, Tolver woke with a start, the feel of the wind still in his hair, his heart pounding.

Nana would be so upset if he left like that. That could never happen. He would have to get rid of the gift somehow.

He tried to get settled again, but the noise of the air baffles on the dream prospector ship still thrummed in his ears. Nana snored softly in the room below the loft.

Perhaps instead of getting rid of the gift, Tolver thought as he tossed and turned, trying to get comfortable, he could take it apart and learn how it worked. Then he could build something similar. Unless his Nana taught him magic first.

Eventually, Tolver gave up on sleeping. He roused himself from the cottage loft and went outside to watch the sun rise over the island and start the next round of chores. Those were never really done out here on the marsh.

By the time Nan woke, Tolver had realized they needed more words to fix the converter. And eventually to buy the island. Just a few more was all.

“Please, Nan, just this once?” He asked over breakfast. “I’ve already asked Starflake, and she doesn’t mind.”

Nana frowned but didn’t say no. She knew they needed more words too.