Fa-Ray-Me was shocked to find Enchanter herding a group of newcomer younglings into the school's dining room. It was the morning after Fa-Ray-Me’s arrival at the mage’s tower. He was up late last night, energized by the fast travel, but the fine pebble shore in his rented room left him feeling fully rested.

  Enchanter was famous in a way that Fa-Ray-Me could only dream of. Fa-Ray-Me was one of Enchanter’s failed apprentices. As a youngling he didn’t have the patience to draw the enchanting symbols over and over, until he reached the perfection Enchanter was looking for. As an adult he used the beginning enchants he learned to help build his place as a stone sculptor in Whitewater. The square was highly competitive. The small amount of enchanting he did know was enough to distinguish his work.

  “Enchanter,” Fa-Ray-Me said in greeting. “It surprises me to find you here.” Fa-Ray-Me waited until the younglings all ran off to their first class before speaking to his old master. Enchanter looked at Fa-Ray-Me in puzzlement.

  “Do I know you?” she asked. Enchanter asked the question in the newcomer language. Fa-Ray-Me only realized then that she did not wear a translation ring like he did. He reached up and took the translator off his own head, thinking maybe she didn’t recognize him because he wasn’t using his own voice.

  “It is I, Fa-Ray-Me. I was apprenticed to you when I was young,” Fa-Ra-Me responded.

  “Fa-Ray-Me,” Enchanter sang, she continued on in selkie. “You have grown up youngling. Did you find a craft more suited to you?”

  “I am the premier stone sculptor at Whitewater,” Fa-Ray-Me reported with pride.

  “Good for you,” Enchanter replied. “Have you come to teach? The Elder is looking for someone to teach stone sculpting and pottery. Do you know any potters willing to come?”

  “No, umm…” Fa-Ray-Me said, stumbling over his words. He felt a bit like the youngling he was when he last saw Enchanter. “I mean I didn’t come to teach. I was at ‘Home Square’ for the challenge day and heard of the teaching community. I asked Blue if I could travel with him to see it.”

  “Blue? Oh, you mean Alex,” Enchanter responded, mixing in the newcomer word into her selkie. “You’ve made a mistake then, letting the Elder see you. She will remember you. Next year her team will show up at Whitewater to collect you. Tell her you need better facilities. You will still be teaching next year, but at least you have a better workshop.”

  “Do you teach?” Fa-Ray-Me asked. He was startled by her statement that the Elder would come to Whitewater. Before he came here, he did not think any newcomer would dare to enter the selkie capital. Perhaps they would if they had access to the elf’s disguise.

  “Not yet,” Enchanter replied. “I have a different agreement with the Elder, but she is working on me. I’ve only escaped because Sarah is a craftsman enchanter and can teach all the early skills.” Fa-Ray-Me was startled by this new newcomer name inserted into Enchanter’s selkie.

  “Who is this ar..?” Fa-Ray-Me stumbled on the name, unable to say it.

  “Sarah,” Enchanter said. “You can call her Yellow. She is a member of the Elder’s pod,” Enchanter responded. “Come,” Enchanter said. “Let me show you the teaching devices. They are very good at teaching pronunciation. The newcomer device won’t last long in the structure. You’ll need to speak the language to teach newcomer younglings.”

  Fa-Ray-Me followed the old selkie to one of the small moving rooms. “Education laboratory,” Enchanter said out loud in the small room. The room began to move. Blue and So-La-Do taught him how to use the room to get to his housing, the dining room and the exit to the outside. They told him other things to say and where it would take him, but he did not understand all of it.

  They stepped out into a new hall. Many of the walls on this hallway were half glass. Enchanter led Fa-Ray-Me down the hallway past several occupied rooms. Younglings sat behind tables. In some of the rooms there was an instructor in the front, but in others they were looking at squares of glass mounted on the tables.

  Fa-Ray-Me caught sight of an instructor he thought was the Elder. Today she was dressed in the same fabric Fa-Ray-Me wore. He was issued the selkie version of a ‘ship’s uniform’ at his arrival. So-La-Do described it as a courtesy, since his integrated clothing was inactive. He came to verify that this Elder everyone was talking about was really a lesser god. So far he saw no real proof of it. He decided to ask Enchanter.

  “Is the Elder really a lesser god?” Fa-Ray-Me asked.

  “Oh yes,” Enchanter replied. “She touched the crystal at Seagrass and frightened Ray-Do-So almost to death. We are blessed that she is interested in trade, not conquest. I fear what may happen in the future when she grows bored. Keeping her entertained with her educational gathering will benefit us all in many ways.” Enchanter opened the door to an empty room and took a seat at one of the tables with a glass panel rising from it. She ran her hand across the surface of the desk and the glass panel lit up. It looked a bit like his personal interface, only the icons were all wrong and underneath each of them was scribbles that Fa-Ray-Me thought might be newcomer writing.

  “Sit there,” Enchanter said, pointing to the next table. “I’ll walk you through how to launch the early language lessons. Run your flipper hand over the desk top,” Enchanter instructed after he sat down. “Did the Elder set up an account for you?”

  “I don’t know,” Fa-Ray-Me replied. He set the translator ring down on the table. He was carrying it in his hand since taking it off his head in the dining room. He mimicked Enchanter’s motion touching the table. The glass panel lit up, but Fa-Ray-Me thought it was displaying something different from what Enchanter’s did.

  “It is telling you to wait,” Enchanter explained. The two of them watched the glass panel, waiting for something to happen. A monotone voice with just a slight note rise at the end came out of Enchanter’s table.

  “I am with Fa-Ray-Me,” Enchanter answered back in selkie. “I’m trying to set him up on the language program. He will need to speak newcomer to teach.” Fa-Ray-Me was surprised the old selkie was talking to an inanimate object. He realized he should be wearing his translator ring. He hastily put it back on his head.

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  “I’ll clear him for the language courses as a visitor. Tell him if he wants access to further lessons he has to pay the tuition or accept a position with the academy,” the table said.

  “What is the cost for tuition?” Fa-Ray-Me asked Enchanter. He was surprised when her table answered him.

  “It is two iron a day for access to the educational machines alone. At the class break I’ll add an option at the room payment panel,” the voice responded.

  “Thank you, Elder,” Enchanter responded. The image on Fa-Ray-Me’s glass panel changed.

  “How was that the Elder?” he asked Enchanter.

  “The newcomers can all talk to each other through the tower,” Enchanter said. “The tower must have told her we were here.” The old selkie shrugged this off as if it was nothing. Fa-Ray-Me thought that sounded like the tower was a kind of god. Enchanter pointed to an icon that appeared on Fa-Ray-Me’s panel. “See how that one there looks like a newcomer head? Touch it.”

  Enchanter was especially helpful at the beginning. Giving him examples of sounds she could make that weren’t tones. She explained to him that the newcomers used this kind of sound, not tones to communicate. Fa-Ray-Me took his translator off. The table talked to him in both selkie and newcomer. It listened to how he said things and gave him suggestions on how to move his tongue or lips to correct the sound. It kept showing him symbols and images that went along with the sounds. It congratulated him when he got a sound correct.

  The table played little sound games with him. Some of them were in competition with Enchanter. She won all the games easily, but it was still fun. Fa-Ray-Me was certain he hadn’t learned a thing.

  “Do you do that every day?” Fa-Ray-Me asked Enchanter as they made their selections for lunch.

  “I finished those lessons months ago,” Enchanter said. “I do still spend time on the educational machines. They have numerous subjects. Their use is free for all employees,” she replied, as she picked up her order of fish. “Recently I have been reading myths, since Alex told me he got the name selkie out of one. There are other things to do. I will show you the pool this afternoon. It is not deep enough, but after a morning sitting I need to stretch my flippers.”

  “Where are all the students now?” Fa-Ray-Me asked. After the buzz of the dining room that morning, its calm now was unexpected. The tables were only lightly occupied by the adults.

  “They have lunch earlier or later,” Enchanter replied. “They have three lesson blocks in a day. Most of them take two subjects, one which is one block and the other that is two. The set up is nice because it gives all the rest of us a quiet lunch.” After saying that the old selkie led him over to one of the occupied tables.

  The two newcomers already there exchanged greetings with Enchanter, proving that they were known to her. “This is Fa-Ray-Me,” Enchanter said, introducing him to the table. “He is a stone crafter from Whitewater. This is Ayla and Silas,” Enchanter said to him. Fa-Ray-Me was surprised to realize he could hear some of the sounds he learned that morning in the newcomers' names. He didn’t think he could say the names himself, but he might recognize them when he heard them again.

  “Welcome,” Ayla said. It was amazing how tall and thin all the newcomers were. This one was especially so.

  “Isn’t Whitewater the center of your federation?” Silas asked.

  “Yes,” Enchanter replied. “It is a big square, very busy. It makes your Home Square on a Challenge day look empty.”

  “That sounds like something I’d like to see,” Silas responded. “How much did the transportation cost from Whitewater to Home Square?”

  “It took me four transits to make the distance,” Fa-Ray-Me explained. “All together it cost me about two greens.”

  “That is expensive,” Silas commented. “It only costs twenty seven silver for transport to Seagrass. No wonder so many selkie are showing up for Challenge day. The travel savings alone would buy you a set of armor and a quality weapon.” In a sudden epiphany Fa-Ray-Me realized that this simple economic truth was what he was sent to find out. It was why the visitor count at Whitewater was down. It wasn’t a complex long term plot to take power from Whitewater in revenge for not supporting them against the newcomers. At least not a plot by any upstart selkie square elder in the frontier. The coliseum appearing here, so close to a newcomer square was not something any selkie or newcomer could have engineered.

  If anyone was stripping power from Whitewater, it was the true god. Fa-Ray-Me shifted uncomfortably. He was barely able to keep himself from echolocating. To move against the true god was suicide. Look at what happened when the frontier council attacked the first newcomer square, a clean victory was transformed into a crippling defeat under the true god’s displeasure.

  Fa-Ray-Me needed to go back to Whitewater and report his findings. He found himself strangely reluctant to leave. The Wizard's Tower was full of surprises. He was certain he hadn’t seen them all yet. He decided to stay a few more days.

  He was supposed to be touring all the frontier shores looking for a place to retire. No one was expecting him back in under thirty six days. He made arrangements for the care of his shop and his great-granddaughter for three months. The shore elder thought it would be much harder for Fa-Ray-Me to figure out why the frontier shores stopped sending their challengers to Whitewater. It was a surprise when the first frontier shore he reached was openly talking about a new coliseum that could be reached through Seagrass. It was even more of a surprise when it wasn’t Seagrass that was near the coliseum, but a newcomer shore beyond. No one in Whitewater was even aware that the frontier squares and the newcomers were in contact again and not just in contact, but friendly cooperation.

  The newcomers were still talking. Fa-Ray-Me realized they were looking at him like he needed to say something. He lost track of the conversation while lost in his own thoughts.

  “Sorry, I was thinking of home. What did you say?” he responded.

  “Have you seen the coliseum recordings?” Ayla said. “Harry was here yesterday watching them down in the theater on deck eighteen. He was focused on his guards' contests, but there were plenty of selkie challenges recorded too.”

  “They are a little weird to watch, since all the color is missing from everyone’s armor and weapons. Well except for Grandmother, she is wearing the same leathers she always does,” Silas added. “I guess that is proof it isn’t all about gear.”

  “No, I haven’t seen them,” Fa-Ray-Me replied. “It sounds very interesting.”

  “After the swim we can go down and see the Elder’s fight,” Enchanter declared. “It is so quick it is hard to tell exactly what she did.”

  “The Elder fought in the coliseum?” Fa-Ray-Me asked.

  “She was the first one down,” Ayla responded. “It’s disappointing the Tinkerer didn’t get recorded. I guess it was all magic.”

  “Did you see the Tinkerer?” Enchanter asked. “The Elder told me it visited Ellen. My mother told me stories about the Tinkerer in the underdark. I wish I could have seen it.”

  “Silas saw it,” Ayla responded. “I didn’t go to the first Challenge day and it hasn’t shown up since. Sarah put together a model of what the Tinkerer looked like. The theater can display that too.”

  “Her model is exactly how I remember it,” Silas reported.

  “The Tinkerer appeared?” Fa-Ray-Me said in shock. The Tinkerer appeared to crafters. What was it doing in the arena? The last Tinkerer appearance was so long ago its existence was barely more than a youngling’s tale.

  “Ellen is a crafter,” Enchanter answered Fa-Ray-Me’s unspoken question. “She specializes in repair. The Elder told me it taught Ellen how to repair bone items. Have you heard of a bone crafter? The Elder might lose interest in you if you could point her in the direction of one.”