Hunter had been outside the Willard Redoubt before. His house was right up against the northern wall, and when the Pols gave the all clear two years ago, Hunter’s dad expanded the farm past the wall and the river, out into open space. He’d been outside as often as possible actually, running through the fields, “helping” his family work the farm, doing anything other than huddling in the same cramped, walled town he spent his first seven years of life. But when Hunter was nine, the whole family got together, his Mom and Dad, his little brother, even Uncle Ernie who’d been out in Wichita, and they went to the Festival.

That’s when Hunter realized he’d never really been outside. Sure, he’d been on the other side of the wall, but maybe that wasn’t the same. First they lined up at the portal that appeared in the center of town, one the adults assured him wasn’t a Slide, high danger, run and report. Instead, it was a doorway the size of a house, made of shimmering, cascading water, and for a few minutes it was the most beautiful thing Hunter had ever seen. Person after person stepped through the portal, each vanishing with a dull flash, until finally it was his turn. He kept his eyes wide, his head up, he wasn’t going to flinch just because he was about to teleport thousands of miles and between dimensions in an instant, and he stepped through.

His first thought was big. Everything was simply enormous, from the crowds, to the colorful, towering tents the size of five maybe six houses, even the avenues stretching out from the portal in eight directions had to be at least as wide as the river. Hunter ran around the shimmering door, darting between people simply popping into existence from all over the Midwest, and took in the sights. He skidded to a stop after a full revolution, rejoining his family with a false look of chagrin on his face, when he suddenly had his second, more important epiphany from the Festival. He couldn’t see the walls of Willard, for the first time in nine years.

Life in the redoubt was safe. That’s what it was for. Hunter knew, intellectually, that the thirty foot tall mish-mash of wood and earth mingled with high-tech magical metals was for a good purpose. Twelve years they’d stood, twelve years since they’d been raised by a mass of refugees with hard work, precious little engineering knowledge, and otherworldly talents they’d just gained without understanding how or why. The walls and the people manning them were the first and last defense for Willard, protecting Hunter, his family, his friends, and literally everyone he’d ever known from monsters they couldn’t possibly understand. Hunter knew that, but he was nine, and now he felt free from them, somewhere deep inside, and he didn’t have the words for it yet.

If he did have the words, if he wasn’t a small child, if he knew a little more of the outside world, he’d be able to put his thoughts in order. Hunter just knew that he could see the walls from his bedroom, he could see them from the schoolhouse, he could see them from the fields and while floating on the river, and now he couldn’t. When you’re outside the fort-like walls, you keep them in view need to know which way to run, don’t hesitate but he couldn’t do that, and he couldn’t tell if that feeling building up inside was panic or calm.

It must have looked like panic on his face, because his mother put her hand on his head, ruffled the mess of his red hair and suggested they go find some food before he ran off to join his friends. She could find him at any time, some kind of mystic schoolteacher power, which didn’t feel nearly as oppressive as the thought of those walls. Also, food sounded good, new and interesting food that he had no idea where it came from. The feeling, that weird, unencumbered sense, faded as he ate a turkey leg what’s a turkey as big as his thigh, but it never went away.

“Red!”

“Schmidt!” he heard simultaneously as he stumbled, overfull, out of the food tent. Hunter looked around, first on his toes, and then with a little hop, and saw his two closest friends approaching. Miracle was easier to pick out of the crowd, twelve going on thirteen, dark-skinned and tall for his age, waving both arms over his head as he continued to call out Hunter’s last name. “Schmidt, we almost won a pet!”

“Hey guys, a pet, wha-oof!” Hunter managed to say before being tackled by Ellie, the smaller of the approaching pair, but still taller than him when did that happen. She wore an oversized t-shirt with a picture of one of the tents and some squiggly letters he figured was Infra across the chest, the sleeves hanging down past her elbows. Curly brown hair hung down, framing her face as she sat on his chest and yelled to drown out the two boys.

“They have games, with prizes, Red! And jugglers, and musicians, and-”

“And aliens!”

“Oh right and aliens! Lots of them, and they’re weird but really nice. One of them lives in Kansas City and s-s- zhe might come visit the redoubt!” Ellie slumped onto her side on the grass, panting, catching her breath with a grin on her face. Miracle sat on Hunter’s other side, helping him up with a hand on his shoulder.

“We even found a tent with rides, but I said we gotta wait for Schmidt for that one.”

“You were scared!”

“Was not, Ellie! The guy at the entrance said the sign said “Ride of Your Life” and do you really want to do that without Schmidt? Yeah.”

“So let’s go. Rides! Rides sound good.” Hunter scrambled to his feet, offered a hand to each of his friends, and let them pull him off into the loud, confusing, but interesting maelstrom of the Festival. They ducked through the edges of a crowd watching two jugglers tossing an innumerable number of knives back and forth between their half-dozen tentacles, each gave a shove to a crab-person hovering two feet off the ground calling himself “The Immovable Grakh,” and soon found themselves in front of a large, bright red tent near the middle of the grounds. A huge banner in Infra was strung over the flap, and a hawker stood next to the entrance, a squat little person that appeared to be made of stone or rock, wearing a pair of overalls and a funny hat.

“Come one, come all! Do you dare to take the ride of your lives? There are twists, there are turns, is there danger? Come and find out! You! You little human children, brought your friend, have you? No excuses now, are there?”

The three friends steeled themselves in their own ways for a moment, stepped through the entrance, and found they didn’t enter a tent, not exactly.

“Wow!”

“Where’s the… where’s the roof?”

“I don’t get it.”

Instead of red walls and a ceiling high above their heads, the same grass as outside under their feet, Hunter and his friends stepped out of a light mist to find their shoes crunching on white sand, an expanse of rolling blue sea ahead of them, and a sky filled with dark, menacing clouds. Hunter stood on a groove in the sand leading to a circle dug out just shy of the lapping waves. He took a deep breath, slipped his hands out from the others’, and darted forward.

“I don’t get it, but I’m going first!”

Whatever they started to protest was drowned out as he skidded to a stop in the circle and the air started to swirl around him in a tight circle, his clothes and hair flapping about. What felt to Hunter like a very long moment later oh I shouldn’t have done this, the vortex stilled and then roared, shooting him into the air in a tumble. He managed to straighten out and try to get his bearings, the beach and the water seemingly miles below him, right before he shot up into the cloud layer, everything going quiet and damp.

Hunter soared, or floated, his inner ear going crazy, taking deep breaths as he watched occasional flashes of red lightning coloring the surroundings, waiting to hear thunder that refused to come after. Even if he couldn’t time it, Hunter could see each burst getting larger, more of the mist around him turning an ominous red, until he almost closed his eyes because he couldn’t bear to see the next bolt so close.

At that moment, the clouds parted, and a gigantic ok I just fish flew toward him, so big it couldn’t have fit in the tent, so big it maybe couldn’t have fit in Willard, with a maw full of I can’t tree trunk teeth and flapping I just can’t insect wings instead of fins. It flew, or swam, or just hurtled toward him, only veering off to the side at what seemed like the last moment, its tail flicking past him in a rush of warm, briny air and sending his body spinning again. He flared his arms and legs out until he slowed enough he wasn’t feeling sick, still not sure if he was headed up, down, or otherwise, when the next crack of lightning went off.

It was loud. Not as loud as it should have been, seeing as it was close enough to make the fine hairs on his arms and legs stand up, but it was certainly, momentarily deafening. The arc of brilliant, ruby electricity just missed him and the fish-bug-leviathan, currently darting away, and when Hunter whipped his head around to see if he could find the source, he almost wished he hadn’t. Half as big as the fish, but still too big for any one thing to be, a great, metal lozenge came into view. It was shaped like a raindrop, or a doodle of a fish you draw with one loop, made of huge dark gray planks with rivets the size of dinner plates seeming to hold it together. The fat end was tipped with a huge spike, glowing red and crackling, while the skinny end had a blur following close behind, making a noise that sounded like it’d take Dad all weekend to fix it, whatever was wrong with it. When it flew past him, much too close for comfort, all screeching metal and burning oil, Hunter saw it had little windows along the side, with one of those curious stone men giving him that’s it I can’t a thumbs-up from inside.

The metal monstrosity plunged down after the fish terror, and Hunter fell after them, breaking back out of the clouds, unable to tear his eyes from the chase, flares of lightning going off every few seconds. Too late, he realized what comes after being thrown into the air, just as the fish crashed into the ocean with a tremendous splash, followed by the machine, so much water being thrown into the air he’d get lost walking from one end to the other. He closed his eyes the moment before he hit the tip of the plume and only opened them when his brain began to process the fact he somehow wasn’t wet.

Hunter was in a bubble, floating lazily down toward a spire of yellow and red intertwined, a cross between a termite mound and a tree, something he knew there’d be a name for but wasn’t coming to him. All around the bubble was the sea, intensely blue and calming, the exact color of weightlessness, and he looked around with a lazy sort of detachment. The battle he witnessed in the clouds seemed so far away, even though he could see it occurring in variations around the tower as he descended. Fish in every shape and color swarmed and schooled in patterns he couldn’t discern, every so often turning to swallow one of those metal lightning spewers, or to be vaporized from one of the red bolts.

It was too big to frighten him anymore. One of those fish could feed the entire Redoubt for years, or crush it in an instant. Their imposing walls would explode into particles from that red lightning, and he had no idea what could dent that metal if a fall from that height couldn’t. There were simply bigger and scarier things in the multiverse than he had ever imagined, and when his bubble touched the spire and popped, he was still trying to come to terms with that.

Hunter stumbled, found himself safe on his feet just inside the entrance to the tent, his elbow clutched firmly but kindly by another of the little people. “Thanks,” he mumbled be polite, it’s easy, let himself be guided to a chair just his size and quickly found a cup in his hands. He sat there a moment, sipping something that turned out to be crisp, refreshing, and completely unidentifiable, until his two friends joined him, looking not equally but similarly dazed. He looked across the low table in front of him at another of the small, stone people.

If he had to guess, this one was older. He had a similar face, protruding nose, wide ears, and rounded eyes that were black from edge to edge, but the grayish-brown stone making it up looked craggier. The lines around his mouth and eyes looked deeper, and Hunter thought he could see veins of another color when he changed expressions. The man wore a soft-looking hooded robe the color of the clouds Hunter had just hurtled through, and he smiled at the children as he pulled the cowl back and spoke.

“That was a partial replica of Siege on the Ocean Gargantuan, one of the high divine sources on our home planet. That particular experience might be fairly intense for unintegrated minors, but my brothers and I are accomplished illusionists, and you were never in any danger.”

“That was amazing, but-” Miracle started.

“Amazing,” Ellie chimed in.

“But I don’t think I ever want to do anything like that, ever again. Thank you.”

“Totally. Never.”

The stone man chuckled, a low rumble. “I understand. Among the Stone Dwarves, our people, that source is seen as a rite of passage. Not many clear it completely, but simply experiencing it is an important step for those that want to be seen as true adventurers. It’s perfectly understandable that you’d find it so daunting, and you have our apologies.”

“I think,” Hunter started, then sat back for a moment with a frown. “I think I’d like to try it again. Not the ride, not now or any time soon, but I think maybe I’d like to be the kind of person who can do it for real.”

“Well then, young man. If you ever find yourself on our planet, Mountain Home, feel free to look up the Four Corners Guild. It might be a long way off before you’re ready to leave the Earth, but it’s something to look forward to. That’s important, don’t you think?”

Hunter walked along with Ellie and Miracle, eating lemon-flavored rock candy on a stick, and checked his pouch of crystallized essence. Between the Ride of His Life, playing that fishing game enough times to win Ellie her auto-pixie, and buying enough candy for at least a week, he was running low on what his parents had sent him off with.

“Hey, guys. I think I can only do one more tent. I don’t know what ‘tip what you’d like’ means so I’ve been tipping a lot.”

Ellie looked up from the small jar they’d won, still trying to figure out how to make the little orange sparkle hop out of the top and follow her. “Yeah, I’m a little short too, Red. We should find a really good one to finish on, right Miracle?”

The taller boy struggled with his own rock candy and the “Willard” pennant he had made, finally shoving the little flag down the back of his shirt to check his own pouch. “I can do one more, sure.”

Ellie closed her eyes, spun around a few times, and then pointed, “This way!”

After a few minutes of walking, Ellie grumbled something about the auto-pixie, stuck it in one of the wide pockets on her pants, and said, “So I’ve been thinking about something.”

Miracle grinned at her. “The farmer thing?”

“Oh the farmer thing! Red, you have to hear the farmer thing.”

“The what?”

“Ok so you know how Mr. Jenkins over on the west side has all those cute robots that help him do his farming? So I thought someone could do the same thing, but with skeletons. With magic!”

“I don’t… I don’t get it, Ellie?”

“You could dress them up in overalls and straw hats, and the tallest one could be a scarecrow, and they’d work all day and night and then you make more when they fall apart.”

“I mean, yeah that’s pretty cool.”

“And then, at harvest time,” Ellie paused and grinned even wider, “you’d have the spookiest pumpkin patch in the whole state!”

“Halloween Hay Rides at Skeleton Farm!” Miracle shouted.

“Oh. Oh wow.” Hunter boggled for a moment. Ellie might be a genius.

“But no, I was thinking about something else. You guys know how none of this is real? I mean, it’s real like you can touch it, but it’s not a real place?”

Miracle nodded, Hunter mirroring him a little later. It felt real, but so did that terrifying flight into the clouds.

“Like, we can keep walking, and there’s always going to be tents, and there’s always going to be people. Plus, we didn’t know where the rides were, but we wanted to go on rides, and then we found the tent with rides.” Ellie’s face was all scrunched up like she was thinking hard while she talked, and Hunter thought maybe his was too.

“So the thing I was thinking was,” she paused here, took a breath, and held up a finger, “we want to see something really cool.” Another finger. “We don’t know what it is, but we know there’s a lot of tents full of cool stuff.” A third finger, after managing to get her thumb to hold down her pinky. “So instead of thinking about rides, or candy, or magic dancing Halloween skeletons, we just think it has to be cool. Like, the idea of cool. What cool means.”

Ellie held out her arms and stopped the boys when she finished talking, and Hunter looked up to see a small, dark purple tent wedged in between two much larger ones. The ropes holding it up were sparkly and golden, and two shimmering lamps hung on either side of the entrance, lit up even though the entire Festival had been as bright as any summer day so far. Most interesting of all, however, was that when Hunter glanced around, he couldn’t see anyone milling about for the first time all day, like the three of them had found their own little private spot.

“Cool. For sure, cool.”

They stepped into the tent together, into a small, dim space, to see the grass tamped down with carpets, and three cushions on their side of a wide, low table. The person opposite them was hard to make out, their face dark and triangular, almost featureless except for a ridge near the middle and three eyes underneath, hazy and lit up like embers in a dying fire, if embers glowed green. The figure extended a limb, tapped the table with something between a claw and a pincer, and spoke with a voice that sounded like a million beetles had gotten together, learned English, and discovered that the low, clicking hum of their wings all beating at once made them sound like a kindly grandmother.

“Come, human children, and take a seat, if you’d like your fortunes told.”

After winning the quick rock-paper-scissors tournament and the quicker argument that he hadn’t done anything first yet, Miracle took a seat on the middle cushion, then took a deep breath.

“Yes, please. Umm, one fortune, please.”

Hunter felt the hairs on the back of his neck tingle as the fortune-teller laughed with a soft, musical chirping, then watched, immediately fascinated, as she held up a large deck of black cards in one of her spindly, excessively-jointed hands, and then began to shuffle them in a complicated pattern.

“These are Infra Cards, children. They know all, but they do not tell all. They are secretive and shy, afraid that if they empty their cup of knowledge into yours, both would break. Luckily for you young things, I know how to coax them into spilling at least a drop, perhaps more. Even more luckily, this whole Advancement Festival is for children just like you, and the cards, I think, are feeling generous. I will tell you two fortunes each, one about yourself, and one about the world you’ll find yourself in. Please cut the deck.”

Miracle leaned forward and with a steady hand I’d be shaking, am I shaking, made two piles out of the cards, which she quickly scooped up and began to deal. She held up the first card, a mountain with grass growing at the peak, the green blades swaying gently in a breeze, and all three children let out a soft ooh when they realized the picture was moving.

“Your first card is The Mountain with New Growth. It tells you what those closest to you think of you, what you are in others’ minds. The Mountain is strong, sturdy, always in view and always has been. You are dependable, reliable, even at your age. People look to you just to remind themselves that you’re there. The New Growth says you were probably the first born in the village where you live, maybe one of the first in the whole world since Infra came. What happened to you all was hard, but still those shoots grew from the soil.

“Your second card is the Calm River, Slowly Widening. This is what you want from yourself, what you see of your strengths and your goals. River cards imply change, the water always moving, but the Calm River means that the change you enact will be steady, not tumultuous. You want to make yourself and your surroundings bigger, Slowly Widening, and better. It will take time, but Rivers are patient, and every year you’ll try to see things are more improved than the last.

“Now, this is interesting. Your next card is The Mountain with New Growth again. The third card is the mark you can make in the world. Some might say this is an ill omen, that what your friends and parents think of you will be the defining part of what you do. But the Mountain and the River complement each other, they are strong parts of nature. You can be a hopeful presence of strength for others, reinforcing your circumstances with your actions.”

The fortune-teller had set down the first three cards in a vertical row in front of Miracle, Mountain-River-Mountain, but she placed the fourth to the left of center.

“To the left, the sinister, you have The Barren Field with Sickly Boar, your opposition. You may take this card at face value, of course. Your village, it’s a farming village, yes? Mountain, River, now Field, you’ve aligned yourself close to your Earth, you express yourself through those images. Any good farmer knows that a poor crop or unhealthy livestock can ruin your plans. The Barren Field to the left of the Calm River, however, reminds you that the change you want from yourself, the growth you hope to achieve, can’t come at the expense of others. The river will nourish the field, and the field will nourish you.

“Completing the cross is your ally, in this case The Goatherd carrying Kid. If your opposition is what you should be worried about while growing, this card is a worthy goal to progress toward. The Goatherd can mean many things, but is fairly unambiguous when carrying the Kid. Every step you take helping those around you, shouldering their burdens, is a step away from the Barren Field, and the River will run clear and wide alongside you.

“That is the basic Infra Cross. A firstborn human child, steadily growing into the beacon of hope his parents named him, leading his people away from ruin. Any questions, or shall I complete the pattern and fill in the world around you?”

Miracle just shook his head, mouth open slightly as he stared down at the cards. Hunter found his gaze torn between the boy and the table, wondering how much of that was real and how much was wishful thinking on their part. It sounded real, though.

“Then let us continue. At the top left is the inciting opposition, something that happened before you were in existence but remains a threat to your sense of self, and yes. I should have guessed that. It is The Calamity. Your planet was invaded just before your birth, the dangers that were spawned took someone close to you, and even though everyone says things are much safer, no one says that they’re safe. This close to Infra integration, we find The Calamity everywhere, and for that you have my deepest sympathies.

“Your second world card is The Aggressive Bull, Pulling a Plow. Across from the inciting card makes this your helpful foundation, somewhere steady for you to put your feet before you climb. Your village, or perhaps your planet, has leashed their inner violence and made it work for them. I see this card on new planets often, as well. One thing to remember is that this isn’t The Tame Bull, and he is not working for his best interests. He is angry, ready to break from the plow, to exert his full strength. The power you rely on wants to be free, not shackled.

“On the bottom left we place the oncoming. This is something that is yet to pass, that may affect you directly, and may not. It is neutral, but it is still a warning, and therefore on the sinister. Your card is Two Herds meet in The Valley, one of goats, one indistinct. There will be a merger of people, or villages, or ideas in your lifetime. If you are not involved directly, the ripples of this change will certainly reach you. It is said that a neutral card laid on a neutral space like this is an invitation or an opportunity. Keep that in mind as you go forward.

“Finally, your last card is The Mountain in Full Bloom, in the contemplation space. This doesn’t tell your specific future or reveal your dreams, even my magic can only go so far. Take your time, thinking about the first eight cards, what they have revealed, what they have implied. Then, find where the last card fits, and you’ll see where you fit. Oh, and one last thing, because you’ve been such a good audience.”

She drew a final card, spun it in her claws, and slid it across the table to Miracle. At first, it just looked like another Mountain card, but then as Hunter and Ellie leaned over to peer at it, the view began to zoom in toward the summit, quickly refocusing on a man standing on the peak, bearing a shield on one arm and staring out of the card.

“Oh wow, Miracle, that’s a grown-up you!” Ellie pointed at the scar through the man’s eyebrow, exactly the same as the one Miracle had from falling off his front steps when he was younger. Then, the bottom of the image rippled and formed the words, [Miracle Guillen, Firstborn Defender of Kansas].

All three kids sat back on the cushions, speechless, while Miracle fumbled in his pouch and emptied the entire contents onto the fortune-teller’s table. She laughed once more with the same unearthly timbre, took two of the little crystals and slid the rest back toward the boy.

“I didn’t come here to be greedy, child, but I thank you.”

Ellie went next, her card proclaiming her [Eleanora Hernandez, SysPol’s Greatest Detective], and then sooner than he was prepared for, it was Hunter’s turn. The fortune-teller shuffled the deck once more, asked him to cut the cards, and then dealt the first one in front of him, but it remained curiously blank.

She made a low, humming chirp and said in a softer voice, “My goodness, child. That is certainly unusual. Invalid. I haven’t seen that in quite some time.” A quick flick of her wrist tucked away the deck of cards and drew out another set. “But I promised you a fortune, so we will have to do this in the ancient manner.”

The woman set the cards on the table, and then started to spread them around, both hands darting back and forth as she made more of a mess than a pattern. “This deck is called The Dance of the Burrowers. Long, long ago, my ancestors would seek guidance by finding burrower nests, knocking upon them with their walking sticks, and interpreting the burrowers’ reactions. Eventually, they recorded every omen onto stones, and then onto cards much later. Now, we can emulate our cousins’ portents without agitating them so. Please, gather up a few cards, as many as you’d like.”

Hunter leaned forward to scoop up a small pile, peering at the designs on the backs of the cards. He squinted and held them closer and closer to his face, but was unable to make out what the slender gold patterns signified. By the time he gave up, the fortune-teller had cleared the table and began speaking again.

“Lay out your cards in any pattern, but set the last one aside. The Dance of the Burrowers is as much about the shaman swinging his walking stick as what comes after.” Hunter put down two horizontal rows of six cards each, one directly above the other, slid the thirteenth card to the side, and she continued. “Ah, that particular form is called The Walk and the Work. Below, the six toes that brought you to this place, and above, the six fingers with which you’ll do what needs to be done. It is a simple deal, but strong and precise. A good choice for a beginner. Please, start from your bottom left and flip the cards, one by one. I will tell you what they reveal.”

Hunter turned the first card over, revealing a slightly abstract picture of it’s just a hole in a patch of dirt. “Oh, Collapse. Yes, of course. Collapse can have many meanings during a reading, but as the origin of your walk, it’s analogous to The Calamity in your friends’ fortunes. A great injustice was done to your world, and a new path was carved for every human to walk on after.”

Hunter flipped the next card in the row when she finished speaking and frowned at the image. It depicted two dark red bugs, perhaps beetles, with four horns and four legs each, and even though it was a still painting, it gave him the impression that the bugs were dangerous rushing at him. “Attack. The burrowers send their best and fiercest out to chase the shaman off. I wonder, young human, if you aren’t telling the story of how your people arrived at this point in time, rather than yourself. No? No matter, please proceed.”

The next card showed one burrower standing on two legs on top of its nest, raising the other two, except the picture was upside down. “Defiance, inverted. Defiance is also sometimes known as Victory when dealing the dance. At this point in the walk, it signifies misfortunes survived, but inverted means it isn’t a proud survival. Humans endured their apocalypse, but they don’t feel that they conquered it, do they?”

Fourth, the burrower nest, covered in similar bugs, but lacking horns. This card wasn’t the right way up, either. “Activity, inverted. Day to day life becomes more normal, there is a routine established. The burrowers live their lives ignoring the stick, admirably. However, it is inverted once more, because life can never really be the same. You have food, shelter, entertainment and more again, but you do not have what you lost.”

Next, the nest again, alone. “Nothing. The shaman wonders if it is a dead nest, a deaf one, or simply full of apathetic cousins. I can’t help but think you might be thinking too negatively, child. Your world wasn’t defeated or quarantined, and I sincerely doubt that this card represents a true appraisal of where you are on the walk.”

He flipped the last card, and on this one, the nest was dwarfed by a bug breaking out of the top. It had more horns than the attacking burrowers, and iridescent wings sprouting from its back. “Hive Queen, a rare card. Shamans faced with this result seldom lived long enough to carve her likeness onto a rock. It signifies upheaval or a turn of luck, and in your case I think it might be a fitting card to represent your Overlord. This is quite the interesting festival he has engineered, and after the devastation and apparent desolation you’ve gone through as a people, it might be just the push that is needed.”

Hunter sat and touched each card in turn, his fingertip taking the walk the fortune-teller described, imagining the little bugs as people he knew or knew of. The hole in the ground could be Omaha, where his grandparents lived before the Slides opened. The horned burrowers he saw as his Uncle Ernie, scarred and mostly quiet, or as Miracle’s mother who passed before he had a chance to really get to know her. Neither of them really seemed victorious, when he really thought about it, but sadly defiant, maybe that fit. He saw the memorial, almost every day, that Miracle’s dad had incorporated into the new eastern wall of the redoubt. It was sturdy this will, it was mournful never fall, but the fortune-teller was right, it wasn’t proud again. He thought about his father, a farm boss without farmhands, and how even when his hard-worked crops came in full and healthy, there was never any joy in it. Hunter knew survival was the first, most important goal, he had learned that from a very young age, when he saw what failure to do it meant. He remembered Miracle, older and bigger than him, and the boy’s father even moreso, and how they just seemed to break. Hunter blinked away sudden tears, his finger on the fifth card, promising himself that he’d find something else to work toward in his life other than bare, knife-edge existence.

He let out a little sniff, then tapped the last card. “Miss? Can I ask a weird question? How’s this guy supposed to help me, or us, when all dad says he does is collect taxes and sit around on his fat, umm, butt?”

She chirped again, softer and encouraging, and Hunter was sure that if either of his grandmothers were still alive, their laughs would be less weird but just as nice. “I haven’t met many Overlords in my time, but I have made the acquaintance of Crushes-Valiant. I can assure you that no one, as a rule, becomes or stays an Overlord by sitting on their butts.”

Ellie tipped over in a fit of laughter. “Oh man, she said butts!”

The fortune-teller let her finish, gasping and more than a little red, before continuing, “While I don’t know all the particulars of his goals or methods, there is no doubt in my mind that he is working hard to ensure your species achieves full integration. Let me make you a promise. I will dig around some and discover what I can regarding these plans of his, then find a way to contact you later. In the meantime, shall we continue the reading?”

Miracle frowned somewhat as he spoke. “You’re going to investigate the Overlord for us? Won’t that get you into some kinda trouble?”

“I suspect there isn’t some great, worrying secret, children. It might just be a matter of perspective. Would you three necessarily notice if, for instance, source extraction values were changed? I will look into it because my curiosity compels it, but no one will be troubled by a few inquiries.”

Hunter noticed that his friend seemed satisfied with that answer, and so he turned over the next card, the first in the top row. The burrower nest, this time, was covered in the little bugs, each facing outward from the center, and this picture sparked another quiet little emotion in the back of his mind. They seemed to look run scared, but also somehow don’t look back free. The card wasn’t right side up, though, and so far that had been bad. He looked up to the fortune-teller with half a smile on his face, expectant but worried.

“The Walk may have included your people’s journey to this point, but the Work won’t. This card is Evacuation. The burrowers exit the nest, orderly and practiced. It can be taken literally, but I don’t think it should be at your young age. Instead, think about the coordination they exhibit, thousands of little cousins each in their place in line, knowing exactly when and where to leave the nest, to the maximum benefit of the colony as a whole. When it is inverted, it means preparation. The shaman taps the nest, and the nest responds, ready to flee as safely and sanely as possible.”

His next card showed a larger bug leaping upward from the top of the nest, its four wings oil-slick shiny, each twice the width of the burrower’s body. “The Princess leaps up from the nest, newly-hatched and ready to take flight. An ambiguous omen to the ancients. Is she fleeing to find help from a nearby colony, or abandoning her nest to begin a new one? In either case, she leaves with purpose in her actions, but precious little actual knowledge of the outside world. She has just been born, and her first real experience has set her life on a new, interesting path.”

Hunter’s third card was the two attacking burrowers again, this time locked together by the horns, fighting each other. “Struggle. The warriors want to attack the shaman, but they cannot agree on who will have the privilege. Years ago, this card spoke of chaos, of a fight for dominance, an internal struggle that precludes the external threat. In more recent times, our scientists have determined that this sort of combat is ritualized, that our little cousins are not fighting each other with malice, but formally and honorably. If there is violence in your future, it will be for justifiable reasons, not senseless.”

The fourth card, upside down, was a simple picture of the nest, but only half of it. “The Pass card, inverted. This signifies a lull in your future, a brief period in time where the machinations of fate have chosen to leave you be. When a nest was half-built like that, the elder fortune-tellers would make note of it and walk on, not wanting to bother their cousins when they are hard at work. In that position, it is a new nest, freshly-formed, but the next time it will be ready.”

Next, Hunter flipped over an odd card, compared to the rest. The nest was blurry, out of focus in the background, but in front there was what at first glance appeared to be a very large burrower. Its limbs were longer, the carapace narrower, and its head was more distinct from its body. With a start, he realized this was one of the fortune-teller’s people, prone on the ground, stick broken and cast to the side. “Ah, Hazard, and immediately following Pass. These two cards are not often seen together, being almost two sides of the same coin, as your people would say. It looks like fortune will continue to ignore you for a while longer, but the reason will change. The shaman visits the nest, presumably taps it with his stick, and something unexpected but dangerous happens. The cousins will provide no omens, but instead of a friendly postponement, they have given a forceful rejection.”

Hunter hesitated before his last card, trying to picture what they were trying to tell him. Flee twice, fight, then defy fate twice again. That didn’t sound good, and these were supposed to be his best options. He looked up at the fortune-teller, worried he was going to cry twice, in front of his friends, but didn’t know what to say.

“Is something wrong, child?”

“It’s just, I mean,” Hunter stammered, “this is all a lot, isn’t it? I’m nine.”

“Mmm, I see,” the fortune-teller spoke, her middle eye closing for a moment. “You’ve only been walking and talking for, hmm, seven of your years perhaps? And seven more to go until you integrate, and properly need to worry about these things. May I ask you a question?” Hunter nodded, and she continued, “Last week, if someone had asked you what you thought you’d be doing with the rest of your life, what might you have said?”

“Umm, a farmer maybe? I like gardening, but not a lot of the farm stuff. Mom always says I’m smart enough to be a doctor, and that’s cool.”

“What if the same person asked you the same question, next week?”

“I, gosh, I dunno.” He sat there on the cushion, his friends on either side, looking at him, each with a little, curious smile on their faces. He saw the cards they received, the heroes they might be, and he genuinely wondered what his would say invalid, if he had gotten one. He nodded, eyes down, with just a hint of a sniff. “Something different, for sure.”

“That’s all you really have to see the cards saying, then. You’ll work hard, find yourself taking a different path, perhaps with a struggle, and then you’ll do something that even fate can’t see yet. That’s not so bad, is it?” She reached out, flipped the last card over, and tapped the picture with one of her narrow claws. It depicted the same nest as the rest of the cards so far, but this time it seemed bigger somehow. “Growth. The nest shifts slightly, and swells in response to the shaman’s knock. A very good card to see in someone’s Work, especially at the end. There is no catastrophe at the end of your road, no great upheaval. I think, when you look back at yourself and what you’ve done in your future, you won’t see anything but yourself, perhaps grander than today, but no less recognizable.”

“Skeleton witch,” Ellie said, probably the quietest he’d ever heard her. “Red Schmidt, Skeleton Witch. You could still have a pumpkin patch, just in between adventures.”

“Finally, take the last card, the undealt. Place it in your pocket without looking at the face, until later tonight. When you’re relaxed and ready for bed, think back about the Walk and the Work you’ve seen laid out. Picture a person with those six toes and six fingers, metaphorically of course, and then look at the last card, your card. It will be up to you to interpret the picture, to find for yourself what it means.”

Miracle, the bravest of the three, asked, “Metaphorically?”

When Hunter finally got to bed that night, it was late. His mom and Uncle Ernie had spent the evening catching up, his dad was out meeting with the redoubt’s council, and his little brother was fussy and somehow his responsibility the rest of the night. His usual bedtime was a while past dusk at that time of year, but he had heard the last bell of the night well before he actually managed to crawl under his covers, still full of rock candy and new ideas. He dug out of his mattress a small flashlight he had smuggled into his room for reading, fished the card out of the pouch he’d tucked it in, and took a few deep breaths calm, child while he thought about the fortune he’d had told. One part of him was just as worried as earlier, one part was trying to be reassured by the fortune-teller’s explanation, and a third tiny part thought that maybe he was putting too much faith in a deck of cards. They weren’t even fancy ones like Miracle and Ellie got.

“So, worst case scenario, everything’s dangerous and scary and miserable,” he whispered to himself. “Second worst, I got bamboozled. Hoodwinked. Snake-oiled.” Hunter giggled a little as he thought of a few more of Ellie’s favorite words, then decided it was time to finally look at his card.

It showed a burrower atop its nest surprise, but it was yet another different type than those he’d seen earlier. The little bug was standing upright on its two hind legs, the front two raised up for balance, and its body was more slender than the others. If anything, Hunter thought, it looked about halfway between the regular cousins and the fortune-teller herself. The entire burrower was framed in a beam of soft light that was coming down from the top of the card, like the clouds broke solely to illuminate his trick of standing on two legs.

Hunter knew he was supposed to relate this back to the cards he’d already seen, but he couldn’t really figure out how it fit. If he squinted, the pose the burrower was in looked a little like some of the exercises his mom had taught him, the ones that looked easy, sounded easy, and felt really difficult after doing more than five or six in a row. The light itself reminded him of some of the pictures the old folks in town had hung up in their houses, all of the same guy, usually bathed in white beams from the sky. Maybe, Hunter decided, he didn’t have to know what this fancy burrower meant to him exactly, he just had to feel it out. He could do this metaphorically. He imagined that the fortune-teller did his reading just like his friends, and this was the last card she handed to him.

Maybe he wasn’t destined to be a Skeleton Witch, or a Moose Rider, or a Robot Eater or anything else Ellie and Miracle had come up with on their way home. Maybe, if he worked hard, he could be a Tai Chi Jesus like the burrower on his card. Hunter spent the last few minutes before he drifted off to sleep, exhausted and in that dazed and disconnected state where both nothing and everything make sense, wondering what that meant.