We rejoin our quartet in The Ripples. Seen from much higher than they are, The Ripples look as if some great titan had scrapped a comb over the clay of the world before it hardened. Long parallel furrows stretch for a hundred leagues and more, relatively level in their cut but bumpy and irregular in the ridges in between. The land seems disturbed, with irregular soil base broken by soaring chunks of broken rock rising from the deep bedrock below.

Each furrow has at its center some kind of waterway, but they differ greatly in scale. Where a highland stream drains into a furrow it is strong and steady, with broad fertile flood plains supporting many settlements. But where only the rainfall in the furrow itself provides water it is little more than a drainage ditch: a chain of stagnate pools that in heavy rains becomes the course of a flash flood. In those dry furrows The Ripple houses a wide variety of flora, based on the soil and water below: lichens on the rock, grasses and brambles in the poor soil, and shrubs and even full trees in the patches of deeper, richer soil. And make no mistake: it is the dry furrows the four are traversing, for had there been a river between Goldknob and Woodkettle it would have supported settlements and their endurance journey would not be necessary.

But we are here to look at the four, not the ground over which they travel.

In the front is Catalina astride on her barrel, riding easily and erect in her custom distance racer’s saddle. She is the tallest of the four, being only Poly-Small: two cubits and a span with a little left over, and it shows as she sits with perfectly erect posture. Like all Gleams, even Poly-Gleams, her figure and face are striking. She is heavier than most, but wears it well, looking plump but still fit. Her eyes and mouth are large, helping her expression of calm self-assurance be clearly visible even at a distance. In carriage, expression, and visage she projects utter confidence. Her attention is focused on the land in front of her, judging the path that would benefit from the most updraft or tailwind and balancing the barrels’ greater efficiency when low to the ground with the increased time needed to rise and fall with the terrain, picking the most efficient route; she barely spares a glance for any of the scenery around her. She is dressed in her lined leather flying jacket and trousers with low soft boots perfectly fitted to her stirrups, and besides a slight reddening of cheek and brow shows no sign of feeling the wind. Her barrel is definitely the least laden of the group: two light saddlebags and the rope towing the second barrel behind.

To one side and a bit behind her is Diego, looking worn and solid in his hunting jacket and hiking boots. He is a tough, wiry man with a narrow face full of creases, toned muscles beneath loose leathery skin, and a protruding gut. His small eyes are almost lost between his heavy brow with bushy eyebrows and his high, round cheeks and bulbous nose, but they can be seen to flit back and forth over the landscape around him and down to the map pined to the barrel in front of him. His saddle is deep and high-backed and he’s surrounded by over-stuffed saddlebags, quivers, bow staves, and various other bundles, including a few strapped to the towed barrel as well. His short but very-full beard makes his expression hard to read, but his frequent mutterings and head scratching and beard pulling and looking about and tapping the map meaningfully and calling out directions to Catalina and gesturing back to Fyodor and Oisha show he is busy, and perhaps a bit worried. The comments and gestures are a bit repetitive as if he is re-treading the same process again and again to keep himself busy.

Some distance back the other two are riding side by side.

On the left is Fyodor, who’s a bit deaf in his left ear and so always keeps Oisha to his right if he can. He’s the smallest of the four, needing thick-soled boots to crest two cubits in height, but also the strongest with muscles clearly visible under his pale parchment-like skin. He’s a bit lop-sided, as often happens with age to those who carry heavy loads all day and box and bout for exercise without worrying too much about if their left and right sides get the same amount and kind of exercise. He’s wearing his most comfortable cotton clothes with his boiled leather bout padding over top, and is wrapped in a blanket because he’d not considered how cold it would be to sit still on a fast-moving barrel high off the ground for hours on end. He’s not as flexible as he used to be and is finding the wide-splayed legs a barrel saddle assumes to be difficult to maintain, so he’s shifting and moving about often. But despite the discomfort his broad open face is showing its ample supply of smile lines for he is, primarily, delighted. The Ripple is more beautiful and far more varied than he’d imagined, his wife is at his side, and he’s feeling a bit like he’s on an unexpectedly and quite nice vacation.

Beside him is Oisha. She’s a thin, fit woman who prides herself on keeping a figure better than many women half her age, and by better she mostly means less padding and more flexibility. She’s used to feeling colder than most others so when she saw that Catalina was bringing a jacket she grabbed her fox fur coat, cap, and boots; nestled in these she looks like some kind of northern princess bundled up for a tour of her lands. Only in the narrow gap between coat and boot can it be seen that she’s wearing the snug knit outfit she uses when teaching fitness classes the better to show off her form. She has almost as many bundles and packages as Diego, but where Diego’s have a rough utilitarian look Oisha’s are soft and decorative, being a mix of baked goods and produce for the trip and presents for her only son and his wife and child. Her face is the most mobile of the four: in repose it is remarkably expressionless, but it often shows happiness when Fyodor points out something he finds pleasant, confusion when Diego calls back something she doesn’t fully understand, wonder when she sees something unexpected around her, worry when she thinks they might not make it in time, joy when she thinks that she’ll soon see her granddaughter, and so on.

It was nearly noon by the time the four of them had been ready to set out and Catalina had told them they’d make the best distance on their barrels if they rode without a break. Given their size and amount of gear, with an open bung that meant something over three-hour legs, so they’d decided to lunch before leaving, and when they finished lunch and were getting ready to mount up Catalina had insisted they wait another hour; when asked why she’d said the only thing worse than trying to relieve yourself mid-flight is trying to hold it in for several hours while sitting splay-legged on a barrel saddle. So they waited for lunch to settle, visited the outhouse, then departed about two hours after noon.

They flew all afternoon without incident. Diego was familiar with the terrain for the first hour or so, after which he had no trouble with his maps, and the weather was still enough that Catalina didn’t try to take them too far off course in search of updrafts or tailwinds. They saw no sign of the kobakra, but Diego assured them that this was to be expected: by this time it had almost two days’ start on them and even if they were outpacing it fourfold and happened to pick exactly the same path as it, they could hardly expect to reach it before the fourth hour at the earliest. They saw many hares, some goats, and two packs of wild dogs, but nothing larger or more frightening than that.

The sun was still an hour from setting when Catalina started leading them lower, and none too soon: they had been skimming low over the ground for only a few minutes when Diego’s barrel gave its first gut-wrenching hiccup of a drop, nearly tossing its rider.

Diego wanted to land immediately after the hiccup, but Catalina was having none of that. You’ve got at least three or four minutes of flight left, more likely ten, she said. Is this really where you want to camp? It sounded like a rhetorical question, but it wasn’t: Catalina knew Diego was the expert in camping in the wilds and genuinely wanted to know if this was the right spot.

Three minutes? Diego echoed.

At the very minimum, said Catalina.

Diego gave the area a quick scan, then pointed. Then let’s try over there. Catalina had no idea what he saw in that direction that was better than where they were, but she fell in right beside him to coach him through any future hiccups and followed his lead. It wasn’t a smooth ride for him, nor for Oisha whose barrel started to hiccup about a minute later, but they made it to the spot Diego had in mind. When they arrived it was clear to them all why it was his choice: a smooth patch of even soil surrounded on three sides by tall wall-like rocky outcroppings with an easy, though not short, path down to the trickling brook at the center of this ripple.

Scarcely had they landed when they started being eaten alive by every manner of blood-sucking insect. Mosquitoes landed on their arms, biting gnats swarmed their faces, horseflies bit chunks out of their necks, ticks got inside their trousers, fleas lodged in their hair.

How do you stand the bugs? Oisha asked Diego, who she knew often spent days out in the wilds on his free time, as if it was fun.

They’re worst at dusk, it’ll get better later he said. And once I get a nice smokey fire going that’ll help too.

I can make a bug wall, said Catalina.

You can? asked Diego in evident surprise.

Catalina held up a small crystal as if that answered the question. It was a slightly pinkish quartz and looked pretty much indistinguishable from the other crystals in her possession to the others. Not sure it will help, though. It takes time to set up and it won’t let the bugs across in either direction, in or out.

Maybe if I can get a smokey enough fire going first? Diego suggested, uncertainly.

Worth a try, said Catalina, and she started circling the camp, muttering and gesticulating and occasionally bending over to do something to the ground.

Diego set Fyodor and Oisha to collecting as many green branches from nearby bushes as they could while he started the core of the fire.

How does Diego not know what magic Catalina can do? Fyodor asked Oisha quietly as the two worked on stripping branches from a bush.

Oisha shrugged. They’ve got a very different marriage than ours, she said.

I mean, continued Fyodor, evidently not ready to let the subject drop that easily, I get that Catalina doesn’t volunteer much and Diego doesn’t pry, but surely she had to practice the magic first?

Oh, definitely, said Oisha. I often see her in her backyard messing about with crystals and things.

Hm, I don’t think I’ve seen that, said Fyodor thoughtfully. Does she only do it when I’m at work?

Generally, yes. Dusk seems to be her favorite time, right in the middle of your evening rush.

So, Diego would be home then.

I mean, I don’t keep that close tabs on them, Oisha said a little defensively, but I think so, at least most of the time.

Huh, said Fyodor, pondering that for a bit. And Diego must have thought he knew what she was doing or he wouldn’t be very surprised by a specific incantation like this bug barrier thing being part of her repertoire.

Oisha gave a non-committal shrug-nod to this.

I think we’re going to learn a lot about our neighbors on this trip, Fyodor said. If we don’t die from blood loss caused by bug bites first, that is.

Soon Diego had a large, very smokey fire going. Standing in the smoke did offer some relief from the mosquitoes, gnats, and horseflies, but it also made their eyes sting and lungs burn. They’d stand in the smoke until they couldn’t stand it any more, then stand out of it until the bugs drove them back into it again.

After about twenty minutes of this dancing between two annoyances, Catalina joined them. I’m ready to raise the wall, she said. Can you get the smoke to fill the camp?

The other three looked at each other, confusedly, then looked at her.

I don’t think so, said Diego. Smoke goes wherever the wind blows it.

If there’s more smoke doesn’t it spread out? Catalina asked. It does in the fireplace back home.

That’s because the chimney’s small and it has to go somewhere, Diego said. Here it can go wherever it wants, which is mostly up.

Oisha was about to correct this, which wasn’t quite true, but Fyodor was observing Catalina and put up a hand to stop Oisha.

Oh, said Catalina. So I need to make it not go up first. She looked about her for a moment, then walked over to the barrels. She jostled each of the eight spent barrels, listening as if she chould hear the flight sloshing inside, then picked one up and walked back to the fire. This might not work, she said.

We trust your judgment, said Diego before the other two could ask what might not work and what it would mean if it didn’t.

Catalina nodded. She took several deep breaths as if steeling herself for something, then pulled the bung out of the barrel and jammed the fingers of her left hand into the hole in its place, sending a shiver and grimace through her. Keeping her left hand there she raised her right up and tensed her fingers as if grabbing tightly to something unseen, then slowly, shakingly, pulled her hand down. Her face contorted in effort, her breath came in shaky gasps—and the smoke stopped rising. It pooled out, as if blocked by an invisible ceiling, and wrapped around them. The air went from stinging their eyes and burning their lungs to almost impossible to breathe. Catalina, still shakingly grabbing the unseen above and holding it down with all her might, gasped out tell me when it reaches the stones. Diego walked off through the smoke and said almost and then ten lung-burning seconds later said now! Catalina let go of whatever she was holding, pulled her hand from the barrel (which started to drift away, being now open and untethered with some remaining flight inside) and began to jog along the circle she’d traced around the camp, muttering between coughs as she did so. Finally, after making a full circuit, she collapsed onto the grass and gasped great lung-fulls of the rapidly-clearing air.

Oisha, as soon as she had stopped coughing enough to feel able, went to where Catalina lay on the grass and asked are you OK?

Catalina, eyes closed, said sometimes I hate being a Gleam.

Well, I’m glad you are, Oisha said, suppressing the instinct to correct her and remind her she was a PSG, not a full Gleam. She lifted a hand and looked about her meaningfully. No more mosquitoes, gnats, or flies: it worked!

Oh goody said Catalina weakly.

Now let me look at that hand, said Oisha, lifting her left hand and inspecting where the edge of the bunghole had cut into her fingers.

This one hurts more, said Catalina, lifting the other hand up.

Oisha couldn’t see anything wrong with the right hand, but it was so rare for Catalina to do anything approaching ask for help that Oisha didn’t dare express doubt. She dropped the left hand and moved to take the right, and as soon as she touched it she understood. Every muscle and tendon in the forearm and hand was hard and knotted, like the worst cramp ever. As Oisha began to massage them, Catalina let out a contented sigh.

Diego, seeing that his wife was in good hands, had Fyodor help him set up the tents. This done, the two of them came over to check on the women.

Good job with the bug wall, said Diego. The fleas and ticks didn’t leave, but otherwise we’re pretty well bug-free.

Catalina smiled, still lying on the ground with her eyes closed and her right hand being massaged by Oisha. It’s a wall that bugs can’t cross, she said.

It is, agreed Diego, a bit confused by her stating it again.

Fyodor, ever the good listener, understood there was more she meant. Meaning what? he asked.

Meaning, said Catalina, still smiling, when you cross it your fleas and ticks stay behind.

Oh, said Diego. Then as the full meaning sunk in he added Wow. He walked to the far side of camp, then jogged with a growing cloud of gnats around the outside and reentered near them, the gnats almost flattening across the invisible barrier. He patted himself down, then said Perfect! You really are amazing, dear.

Just a Gleam, she replied, who had kids with lice and wanted an easier way to fix that than picking nits.

You mean you put a bug wall around your house? Oisha asked, a bit jealous.

Hardly! laughed Catalina. Go through all that every day? No. I put it on one door, and only when one of them got lice. For everything else I bought screens.

The rest of the evening passed uneventfully. Catalina soon rose and joined the others in using the wall to scrape off fleas and ticks and then gathering by the fire. She didn’t contribute much to the evening’s conversation and activities, but whether that was because she was tired or just her usual laconic way was anyone’s guess. Diego made a camp stew from his jerky and Oisha’s vegetables; with Oisha’s bread and slightly-bruised fruit it made a fine meal. They then sat about the fire, Diego telling stories about various things their children had done on hunting trips of yore and Oisha and Fyodor laughing and adding in a few anecdotes of their own. It was several hours after sunset when they finally all crawled into the tents, where Catalina fell asleep almost instantly, Diego lay in happy comfort, and Fyodor and Oisha tossed and turned and wondered how anyone could think sleeping on the ground was restful before eventually falling into a shallow sleep.