Welcome to Gaia! ::

She’d come back, finally, with gardening shears and heavy work gloves and green yard waste bags, and the rose garden on the hill was in as much a tangle as she remembered it. Teide picked her way over the busted cobblestones, stepping carefully over the uneven ground. She would begin at the top of the garden, she thought, and work her way down, leaving the part that was closest to the edge, the part that scared her the most, for last.

Maybe it was a lost cause, she thought, kneeling beside the the first bush. There were so many roses, and they were so overgrown, and maybe they were all dead… but she’d seen the Dowager give the old her, the last her, a pair of pruning shears and tell her that the Wonder needed to know her, that it only respected hard work, and…

She sighed, snipping away at the overgrowth. She had to try.

That didn’t mean it wasn’t backbreaking work, though. Teide felt like she’d been trimming for twenty minutes and she’d barely made any progress on the bush in front of her! Sure, she could go faster, but she’d already gotten cuts on her forearms by being careful. She didn’t want to find out what sloppy looked like.

And then, after what felt like forever, the last dead branches fell away, and she saw that the heart of the plant was a alive.

Teide collapsed backwards onto her rear, tears welling behind her eyes. The roses were alive. They were alive, below all of the dead branches and brambles. She just needed to cut enough away--

Raising her head, she quickly surveyed the garden. There had to be hundreds of bushes here - clearing the overgrowth would take forever. But.. she’d finished one, and there was life underneath. It could be done.

But now, she was exhausted.

Teide got to her feet, knees crackling after kneeling for so long, and turned towards the house on the hill. The crystal doorknob turned at her slightest touch, and she set her shears and gloves gently on the table in the foyer.

“Hello!” she called. She’d seen… she’d seen the Dowager, in her visions of her past life, and it was silly, really but she thought the old woman might still be here.

Of course there was no reply. Teide laughed to herself and hunted around the first floor, checking the lay of the land. Here was the parlor with its carefully-fitted slipcovers, a heavy brass star map in the corner, its clockwork articulations covered in dust. She blew on it, sending motes dancing into the air, and laid her hands carefully on the tiny spheres, tilting her head to look at how their armature wires twisted delicately around each other.

She saw, in a flash, a crank on the side. Teide got back down on her knees, feeling around the star map’s base until her hand caught on the crank. She turned it experimentally, hearing the ancient gears creak together… but nothing seemed to be catching, so she turned it again, then kept winding until the mechanism was tight with potential energy-

Then stopped, began to get to her feet-

A wave of dizziness propelled her forward again.

Teide ripped the chain from her neck with one hand, palming desperately along the back of the star map until the hidden compartment popped open. They would be here -- they would be here soon and --

No time to think about that. She shoved the necklace into the drawer and pushed it shut. It clicked into place. “Stay here,” she said. “Stay here. They won’t find you here.”

She got to her feet, spun round, just as someone knocked in the door--




Teide came to her senses with a yelp, her breathing fast although she hadn’t moved from her position. The house was quiet around her, the only noise coming from the star map’s delicate clockwork. She did her best to get her bearings, breathing unsteadily in fits and gasps until it evened out. She’d hidden something here, whether it was for herself to find, or just so no one else would… Something important. A you.

Sucking her lips in thoughtfully, she inched forward, peering around the side of the star map’s base. A hidden compartment wouldn’t be much good if it wasn’t hidden, so she proceeded slowly, pressing carefully against the wood. Maybe, she thought, feeling like this was a fruitless endeavor, the drawer had jammed in the intervening centuries. Maybe there had never been anything in the first place, or whoever her old self had been so afraid of had found it--

The wood sank below her fingertips, and the drawer slid free with a soft pop. Teide peered through the shadows, told herself she was being silly to think the secret compartment might have teeth, and stuck her hand in. Her fingers closed around cobwebs and… something else. Something solid. Teide withdrew her hand, the golden chain and its delicate charm trailing behind.

She held it up to the light - it was a tiny glass globe, the star map replicated in miniscule inside. The gold pieces were still, perhaps never-moving, but… it was warm to the touch, as if it thrummed with inner life.

“You,” she said softly, watching the globe turn. She bit her lip. “Who are you?”




”There is a great deal of magic here,” explained the Dowager, taking long strides down the hall. Teide walked double-time, trying to keep up - it didn’t seem like it should be that hard. The house wasn’t that big. She’d been all over by now, paced this hall dozens of times, climbed the stairs at least twice a day, made nests in every room on the first floor to work on her reading and her arithmetic and the other coursework the Dowager assigned because a knight of Teide must be learned--

Everywhere except the sanctum. That door remained closed to her.

“As you grow into your power, you will learn new spells to help you in your duties,” said the Dowager. They were in her bedroom now, although Teide had difficulty imagining her sleeping. She suspected that she sat, straight-backed, on the edge of the immaculately-made bed and stared at the wall until morning. “Many of these spells are tied to physical objects that help in their casting.”

She held out a necklace towards Teide, a star map encased in a glass globe, suspended in an impossibly thin golden chain.

“This was my husband’s,” said the Dowager, “And now, by your rights as the Knight of Teide, it is yours.”

Teide inclined her head. The Dowager fastened the chain around her neck.

“Someday,” she said, “You will unlock Magec’s power for yourself.”

“Magec?” Teide asked.

“The summons of the house of Teide,” said the Dowager. “When you have earned its aid, it will come to you.”




Teide fastened the necklace around her neck.

“When I have earned your aid,” she said, pressing her mouth to the globe, “You will come to me.”

The glass was warm beneath her lips. She could have sworn it heard her.

✩