GLOSSARY

Rain

There are forty-seven different types of rain in Roan. Here are a few of my favorites:

ALFER—A LOT of rain. Extreme flood danger. The only rain more dangerous than an alfer is a blanderwheel.

BLANDERWHEEL—A rain of epic, monsoon-like proportions. Dangerous. Avoid at all costs.

BLIGGOT—Quite a lot of rain, and particularly unexpected.

CATERWHAIL—A summer thunderstorm.

ENMERAL—A summer shower that begins and ends with a brilliant double rainbow.

FLINNER—A rain that doesn’t appear to really want to fall at all; sort of hesitant, reluctant, a mediocre drizzle.

GENNAL—A warm rain that occurs on a bright-blue day with not a cloud in the sky from which it might have fallen.

GRIT—A rain that feels dirty and coarse between your fingertips.

HELLER—Similar to an alfer, the main difference between them is that a heller is accompanied by slightly less rain and the rain itself is slightly thinner and slightly warmer, which lends itself to a quicker evaporation rate.

LEMON—A rain that tastes and smells exactly like lemons.

MIST—A mist in Oscar’s world is the same as a mist in our world. Barely raining at all.

PLINKER—A very ticklish kind of rain that slithers down the back of your collar and crawls into the cuffs of your socks.

RETROCLINE—This type of rain is quite rare and seems to fall upward rather than downward (but that is, of course, impossible… I think).

ROUR—This is pronounced like roar and it’s basically a combination of raining and pouring. It’s raining, it’s pouring! You get the idea.

SHLINK—Just shy of a spillen. A modest but persistent rain.

SIKE—Probably the rarest rain of all, which somehow falls quite hard but doesn’t carry any moisture, so it doesn’t get anything wet.

SILK—A rain that feels exactly like silk.

SLUICE—A very cold, almost freezing rain.

SPILLEN—A steady shower.

TRANKLUMPET—A rain characterized by its sudden bursts of downpour lasting a few seconds at a time, creating a distinctive pulsating effect.

WIB—A gentle sprinkle. The nicest kind of rain. Warm and welcome.

Food

What I wouldn’t give for a good stonefruit right about now.…

BUTTER LEMON—Much like a regular lemon, although less tart; more of a smooth, buttery flavor.

DEVIL’S APPLE—A small, baseball-size fruit with vicious-looking spikes growing from its red-black skin. A single poke from one of the spikes will send a grown man to sleep for a full day. A devil to eat, they are, which is probably how they got their name.

FLACK—A flack is a type of nut known for its creamy, buttery flavor. It is often used to make nut butter.

FLOATING APPLE—A totally normal apple with a tiny hovering enchantment that doesn’t affect the taste at all.

GLAMP—A root vegetable similar to a potato.

LAVENDER BANANA—These taste exactly like regular yellow bananas, except they look a lot cooler.

MIDNIGHT ORANGE—These taste like a cross between an orange and a blueberry and are the color of the sky at—you guessed it—midnight.

OLLIN—A root vegetable similar to an onion.

QUICKBREAD—It is what it sounds like: quick bread.

SHOOTING STAR FRUIT—A wonderfully rare, sweet fruit that is a bit like a lemon mixed with a mango.

STONEFRUIT—A very rare fruit that, true to its name, looks and feels exactly like a stone. Chocolatey and sweet with just the perfect amount of tartness.

SVIN—A root vegetable similar to honestly nothing we have in our world. I can only say that it is Oscar and Bilius’s favorite food in the whole wide world, as it is versatile and yummy, and a little bit goes a long way.

Games and Sports

Flock is by far the most popular household game in Roan, and I’m not too proud to admit that I’m absolutely terrible at it.

BURGEONING BLOOMRACKERS—A popular roleplaying board game based on one of Saige’s favorite comic books.

BUZZBALL—A game much like basketball, except the ball vibrates in your hands, making it incredibly hard to maneuver.

FLAMINGO—A game that is fairly similar to our golf. Much like golf, flamingo is played over long distances, hence the need for a cart!

FLOCK—A two-player strategy game, not unlike chess, where each player receives ten pieces, each with their own complicated move requirements. First to make it to the other side of the board wins.

MESSWORD—This is sort of like a mashup between a crossword, a word seek, and Scrabble.

SPANNER—The name of one of the pieces in flock.

TORCHBALL—A lot like our soccer, except the ball is on fire and most of a player’s time is spent running away from it, so as not to get burned.

Geography

We’ve only seen a tiny, rainy corner of Erde. There’s so much more to explore!

THE ALLEY—An apartment complex located south of the Wall, in Roan. This is where Oscar and his father live.

THE ANKLE—This is what people from the Toe sometimes call Roan Piers and Commerce City, although most people from Roan Piers and Commerce City would never refer to it as such.

BAUDELAIRE—The closest city to Roan and the largest city in Terra.

BLEAK BEACH—Located at the southern tip of Roan.

CENTRAL MARKET—A large farmer’s market north of the Wall.

COMMERCE CITY—A bustling city located in Roan, north of the Wall.

DENNIMEYER OCEAN—An ocean on the opposite side of the world. The people of Roan refer to it as the more poetic Distant Ocean because it is, to be fair, pretty far away.

DORN—A city in the Far South. The umbrellas that come from Dorn are short, thick, and square.

EAST MARKET—Oscar’s neighborhood farmer’s market.

ERDE—The name of the planet where all of this is happening.

FAR SOUTH—Where the Farsouthians are from.

GALLA—A country north of Terra that makes long, skinny, delicate umbrellas.

THE GOMS APARTMENTS—Another set of apartment buildings south of the Wall, near the factories.

GRAY ISLAND—The small island that is home to Gray Lighthouse. (The island is so small that it doesn’t actually have an official name, but this is what most people called it.)

GRAY SEA—This dark and stormy body of water surrounds Roan on three sides.

HIGH NORTH—A place on Terra where many wild creatures still roam, including woolly mammoths!

MONKLAND—A swampy country in the Far South; the only place in the world where monkwood trees grow.

NORTHERN WASTELANDS—A great stretch of land to the North of Roan.

PITEOUS PARK—A small, rather depressing park just north of Bleak Beach.

ROAN—The city where Oscar Buckle lives.

ROAN PIERS—A fancy neighborhood north of the Wall.

SUN ISLAND—An island that is as sunny as Roan is rainy. It’s known for its light, protective, and colorful sunbrellas.

TERRA—The country where Roan is.

THE TOE—In Roan, everything south of the Wall is referred to as “the Toe,” because it looks like the toe of a stocking.

VIRGINIA—This solar system contains twelve planets, including Erde.

THE WALL—The city of Roan is shaped a little bit like a stocking, and this stocking is divided into two parts by the Wall, which is twenty feet high and slices the city in half from east to west, just underneath the heel. There are three doors in the Wall: East, Central, and West.

Miscellaneous

Can you imagine how cool it would be to look at a rainbow through an Ocspectrascope??

ALDER—A tree that, in Oscar’s world, has certain healing properties.

FLOUSE—A thin rubber scarf worn around the head to keep one’s hair dry.

MONKWOOD—This special tree grows in the swamps of Monkland and becomes infused with the magic of the water there. A carving made from monkwood will take on certain characteristics of its likeness.

OCSPECTRASCOPE—A cross between eyeglasses and a monocle that allows you to see more colors than is possible with the naked eye. Farsouthian-made.

ROAN ASSISTANCE BUREAU—The closest comparison to the Roan Assistance Bureau (RAB for short) in our world would be police officers, although the RAB do not carry weapons. Individuals of the RAB are elected by public vote and are called functionaries.

SKIFF—The exchange rate of one skiff to one dollar is confusing and varies greatly depending on what you’re trying to buy. But for our purposes, let’s say it’s more or less one-to-one.

STOPENTIA—These fish used to be found in the Gray Sea, before it became too polluted to sustain much life. The fish mate for life, in pairs, and are now completely extinct in the wild. Stopentia babies are born a vivid green, then as they mature, they pick a gender and turn red if female, yellow if male.

WINDOW SAVERS—It is common for households in the Alley to keep a set of wooden planks cut to fit their windows, to use in the event of a particularly bad storm. They act as an additional barrier to help with flooding, and they also protect the glass from smashing.

YULETIDE—A holiday much like our Christmas (it also happens to be Saige’s birthday!).