Scape, it seemed, was a land of absolute systems.

  “If I’m going to accept that I’m stuck in whatever kind of madness this place is then I need to accept that I need to do something about it. So far it seems pretty clear to me that the way to do that is growing shit. I can only do so much so fast on my own. I’ve had a vegetable garden of my own in the world where I come from and I know how much work it takes. If I want to get out of here then I need to make a lot of things grow and I need to do it fast. The way to achieve that is with scale. I’ve picked up on the way you guys react to me. You seem to think I’m hot shit with my sigils and my stone band. So I think you might be interested in hitching your wagons to my horse. If that’s what you’re thinking then I have a proposal for you.”

  Maeve was nodding along with rapt, inspired attention. Pod was watching with wavering interest and bleary eyes.

  Tiller shifted his whole attention to Maeve as he wasn’t certain Pod would remember any of this the next day. “I’m still struggling with how surreal all of this is. But if I’m high on mushrooms right now or having a seizure or just dreaming, then it doesn’t cost me anything to press forward as though all of this is real. And if all of this is real then it pays me to go for it. I need to get home. After talking to the shopkeeper it looks like the best way to get there is to start growing shit. It’s like the whole world was set up for me to do that. I don’t know how much growing it takes to make ten million gold coins but I can guess it takes a hell of a lot. That means it’s going to go a lot faster with help. This is where my problem starts. If I need help it means I need to pay help. Brut paying help will cut into what I’m earning and slow me down getting to that ten mil. I’m not saying I won’t share profits or pay or whatever, but I have an idea. To do what that bird-beaked bastard was talking about is going to take something huge. I bet anyway. I don’t know what a head of corn is worth here. Maybe it’s worth a hundred bucks. But I have a feeling it’s not. So that’s going to mean I don’t need a farm, I need a factory.”

  Maeve said, “Aye, right you are, love, a gold coin would buy a lot of corn.”

  Tiller nodded, maybe momentarily disappointed. “Well, here’s the deal then. I need to build a farm. Not a family farm. A company farm. I need acres. I need corn as far as the eye can see. Or pumpkins, or peppers, or pomegranates. Whatever makes the most money. Value added too, that’s where your cooking sigil might come in. Sorry, I’m getting distracted by my own thoughts. Maeve, what I’m trying to say is I need to build something. Something big. Something that works, that defends itself, that makes a lot, hell of a lot, more than one man can make on his own. And if it works then I’ll go away. If it works I’ll go home and the farm will still be here. If I get to go home I won’t give a shit about the farm.”

  Maeve nodded, her eyes narrowing to cunning slits. “And someone would get to have the farm when you’re gone.”

  Tiller met her eyes and measured her. She didn’t seem evil or dangerous. She looked like a woman who had been buried under the savageness of circumstances her whole life while craving more. She looked like a woman, sub–four-foot and blue to be sure, who saw an opportunity. That was exactly what he was offering. An opportunity.

  Tiller braced himself. The thought was still forming in his disoriented mind. “So we need to find a way to make a deal. I need to find a way to find… people… that are willing to work with me, take a small share, until I have enough to trade with that weird bastard, and when I’m gone, they get everything I leave behind.”

  Maeve said, “Oh, love, we’ll help you to keep the farm you leave behind after you leave.”

  There was an awkward moment of silence that stretched between them. Maeve looked at him like a messiah, like the golden goose. Tiller looked back with hesitation, as though he had terrible news he needed to break.

  After the time had stretched far longer than Tiller found comfortable he had seemed to find the words he needed. “Maeve… I don’t have a handle on things yet. I don’t understand the value of things. I don’t have any sense of what ten million gold coins mean. But I have a feeling it’s going to mean a lot more than you, me and him…”

  Tiller jerked his head towards the slumped form of Pod. The drunken leprechaun was slumped where he had been sitting, snoring loudly, a thin trickle of red wine spilling from the wineskin he held in his loose grip.

  Tiller said, “I don’t have any assets right now. The only thing of real value I have is a hypothetical farm. If I go down this path, then I can’t give all of it to you and Pod. It’s the bargaining chip I’m going to need to bring others into this project. Medley sounds like just the kind of place to find people willing and able to work for profit. But I need what comes out of the land to make my deal with the shopkeeper. So the real reward I have to offer is shares in the farm.”

  Maeve’s eyes, already slits, narrowed to tiny crevices. Tiller had empathy for that. He could see she had ambition. Her ambition was more the seed of his sprouting enterprise than the packets he still held in his hand. But her vision was being corrupted by the conditions he offered. He felt for that. He needed willing participants. No, he needed eager participants. He needed people as committed, ideally more committed, to the project he had in mind than ever he was.

  “Maeve, what I’m talking about mightn’t be the kind of farm you imagine. I need to get back to my family. I have to get home. I don’t think I’m going to be able to earn the shopkeeper’s price by half-assing this. What I’m talking about here is something big. Really big. I think at least. I don’t know how much things are worth. I really need to start figuring things out, see how things work. It’s really hard to accept that I can spend a week here and it’ll only be, what, three hours at home, less?”

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  Maeve’s eyes were partly glazed. He could see her hunger for this. He glanced over to the sleeping form of Pod, then back to the little blue lady. She clearly wanted more than the life she was living here. He’d known couples like this at home. She’d hitched her wagon to Pod, maybe in a time when he was younger, handsomer, and certainly soberer. Maybe Pod had been ambitious too. But there’d been events, maybe just one big bad event. A habit had formed, the drive had winked out, and things degraded. Maeve obviously had a hunger for what Tiller was describing. She saw his stone band as something powerful and useful, something that could lift her out of this strange existence on this little island of dirt.

  Tiller took a deep breath. “Man, this is so fucking strange. But if it’s real, I need to make things happen. So, what’s first? I need to look at the seed packets, I need to figure out these sigils and see just how useful they are, I guess I need to dig or prepare the ground…”

  Maeve said, “You need clothes, too, love. Can’t go around like that surely can ya?”

  Pod stirred behind them, grunting and snorting as he began to shuffle around.

  Tiller said, “Where am I going to get clothes? I don’t have money, not yet. And Medley is a day away. I can’t waste the time going back and forth yet.”

  Maeve said, “Ol’ Ripper isn’t using his skin any more. Leave that to me, I’ll make something for you.”

  Tiller looked uncertainly over at the dead dinosaur and shuddered slightly, but raised no objection.

  Pod plodded past him, passing close. The leprechaun paused sniffing, and said, “You still smell fucking strange.”

  Tiller paused to smell his skin again. Chlorine. Why did he smell of chlorine? So strongly as well? He was wearing swimming trunks so it wasn’t that hard to imagine that there was a connection.

  Tiller said, “So, I have four sigils now. The way you guys talk, these sigils must be a pretty big deal. I saw my shovel sigil glow when I stabbed Ol’ Ripper. My hands seemed to get stronger, the shovel even seemed to get sharper. How does it work?”

  Pod slumped down in the earth near his wife. “Fucking strange, lad, that you don’t know how sigils work.”

  Maeve cuffed Pod lightly on the back of the head. “Pod! Something’s clearly wrong with the fella, there’s no use in making him feel worse about it.”

  She returned her attention to Tiller. “I’m sure it’ll come back to you, love, but for now let’s give you the run down. You’ve got a band, like everyone does.”

  Tiller nodded.

  She said, “Everyone has a band, most every living thing has one, not bugs or mice, or livestock, but most everything else. Clay is what most of us start with and what most of us die with. If you do really well on your path you might rise to stone, and that’s something anyone can be proud of. Stone is a big difference from Clay. Anything beyond that is a miracle.”

  Tiller said, “How strong is the shopkeeper? What difference does the level of your band make?”

  Maeve said, “Don’t know about the shopkeeper. He must be mighty high, nobody troubles him, and he’s made slaves out of iron-banded minotaurs, so it’s a safe bet he’s higher than that too. What does it mean? Well, it’s complicated. Sure feels strange to be explaining something so universal. The band affects your body and your potential, I suppose.”

  Tiller absently glanced down at his hands. They looked no different from what he’d expect, apart from the fact that they clearly weren’t his own real hands at all.

  Maeve said, “The higher your band the stronger your body is, the harder it is to hurt you. Makes you stronger, makes you faster.”

  Tiller looked at her clay band and back to his own. “So… I’m stronger? I don’t feel stronger…”

  Maeve laughed softly, “Oh, yes. You’ll see. You’re a stone band. Not one in ten folk will ever have a stone band. And, more important, it makes your sigils work better.”

  Tiller said, “Like I’ve got more mana or some shit? Makes them stronger? Or work longer? I really don’t know how anything works here, Maeve. Don’t be afraid to baby me, please.”

  Maeve said, “Aye, all of that. I don’t know what mana is, but all your sigils work better with a stone band. You can use ’em more often if they’re the kind that have limited uses, you can use ’em longer if they’re the kind that cause fatigue. That and your path make all the difference in the world.”

  “My path?”

  “The kind of band you have, love. I’m a crafter, you see.”

  She held her band up and pointed to a space alongside her row of sigils and empty recesses. There was an engraved symbol there, something he’d missed with all the confusion and flailing of his first hours in this madness. The symbol on her band looked like a bench, with a hammer and spool of thread on it.

  She said, “Crafting sigils work better for me than they would for you, or this old lump over here. I could be a smith with the right sigils, or a seamstress.”

  Tiller looked down at the engraving on his own band. The recessed grooves there formed a symbol very similar to his farming sigil, the leaves of a seedling above the line of the earth and the roots below. “So… I’m a farmer then, I take it.”

  “That you are, love, exactly. It’ll come back to you, don’t you worry, these are things everyone knows. Imagine walking around all this time not knowing how your sigils work.”

  He muttered, “I’m not from here.”

  Maeve paused at that, seeming to think about something.

  Tiller looked at Pod, “What’s your path? For that matter, what are your sigils? You’ve got two as well.”

  Pod mumbled, “Used to have more, I did.”

  Maeve answered for him as he lost himself in a bitter stare. “Pod is a Wayfarer. He used to be an explorer, but when he settled down with me, he changed his sigils and became a courier. We both used to have more sigils, love, but times have been hard and we traded them away over time. Pod’s only got two left, like me. We make ends meet by growing a little and making little things, taking ’em to Medley or one of the other towns to sell. Pod kept his bearer sigil, so he can carry more, and his fleet-foot sigil, so he can make the journey faster. That was what we decided would be best, so he could take goods into town and come back faster. Doesn’t work a damn because he gets lost almost every time he goes off. Lost, in this case, love, means pissed drunk in a tavern burning up half of whatever we’ve earned in the trading.”

  Pod opened his mouth to make some kind of protest, but he was cut off by a rough shout from beyond the edge of their island of earth and grass.

  “Hey! Pod! Maeve! Where the fuck are ye? Rent’s due.”

  Tiller saw the way the leprechauns reacted to the new voice. He turned his head and felt a shiver run down his back.

  Just beyond the edge of the grass, standing in the open whiteness, was an honest-to-god ogre.