The trip to the entrance was quick. Todd went through first. Grandmother tried to nudge the little boy through the entrance by himself. Blinded by the room he sat down and cried. Grandmother handed the little boy to his mother and told them to walk through together. She sent Jeremy next, before stepping through herself.

  “Did the baby arrive ok?” Grandmother asked Todd when she stepped out into the transport room.

  “Yes,” Todd responded, “happy in his mother’s arms. Tessa said he was upset on the other side.”

  “I was a bit worried,” Grandmother admitted. “We’ve never sent two through together before. I was afraid she might drop him on the way out. I’ll ask Ellen to make a baby sling next time.”

  They stepped out of the transport room into the association hall. Tessa was sitting on the sofa, bouncing the toddler on her knee, while Jeremy was scouting the room. There was a sudden commotion in Grandmother’s pocket. The nuisance climbed out and walked up Grandmother to her shoulder, where it yawned and stretched.

  “I forgot about you, girl,” Grandmother said. She felt her pockets but couldn’t find any remnants of the travel bar. Todd handed her one. She smiled at the warrior and broke off a piece, offering it to the nuisance. The nuisance rearranged the chunk of food in its mouth with its front paws before running off, down Grandmother’s cloth armor and across to the collapse. It ran up the tree roots that were intertwined with the structure debris and disappeared above.

  “She just wanted a ride,” Grandmother offered.

  “Right,” Todd commented. He watched as Grandmother broke the remaining bits of travel bar into pieces and set them down on the table in the furniture cluster.

  “Are we staying here?” Jeremy asked.

  “No,” Todd replied. “It's a short walk, then a ride in a cart. This is where the structure wood crafting classes will be held. Tessa can have a look at the workshop before we leave.”

  The team spent a lot of the late summer and early fall upgrading the association hall in preparation for the school. Their first workshop was a single room housing all crafts. They expanded that to individual workshops for wood, leather, fiber and metal. There was still a joint workshop for glass, pottery and stone sculpting.

  They didn’t have any instructors for those crafts this session, but Grandmother wanted to add them in the future along with enchanting and Asher’s chemistry. If they could figure out what that was exactly. Although Ellen told her about it, Grandmother still needed to talk to both Asher and Valin about it. Grandmother thought they needed to think about Valin’s jewelry crafting as well. She wasn’t certain if it was a separate craft, or a kind of compound art that combined metal working, stone sculpting and even fiber crafting. The complex knot on Todd’s red tassel was supposed to increase the chance of making rare finds.

  The wood workshop came equipped with a set of tools. In addition Grandmother’s group added small tables arrayed across the center of the space, each with a set of starter tools laid out on the surface. Tessa handed her child to Jeremy and inspected nearly every tool in the room. She picked up the hand tools and ran an appreciative hand over the larger shop tools.

  “Be careful using your own tools in this room,” Grandmother warned Tessa. “A certain number of tools are bound to the room and can’t be removed, but others can be picked up and taken away by anyone. The tools wear out, even the bound ones. If a bound tool breaks it is replaced in six days, but if another tool of the same type is in the room the binding will jump to it, so you can’t remove it for six days. Tools in here have the same degradation rates as in a square, but for everything else, including works in progress, they degrade like this is wildspace.”

  “I’m not that familiar with wildspace,” Tessa admitted. “How long does something last there?”

  “When we get to the ship I’ll show you how to access the User Manual. It has an entire section on degradation in the structure,” Grandmother said. “For now just remember not to leave any scrap, projects in progress, or finished products in this room. Put all that into the storage room, secured storage, or take it back to the ship. I’ll show you the storage next. The storage room is free, but anything left in there can be taken by anyone, including someone just wandering through the space and not affiliated with the school at all.

  “Items put into secured storage can only be taken out by the person that put it in, but it costs coins. Taking it back to the ship is more secure than the storage room, but not the absolute safety of secured storage. It doesn’t cost anything, but structure items deactivate when you cross the boundary. They can’t be used there, only stored. They reactivate when you bring them back into the structure,” Grandmother explained. “Come, I’ll show you the storage room.”

  The storage room was equipped with rows of shelving. At one time during the build out these shelves were full of components. Now there were fewer components here than in Grandmother’s apartment in Londontown. Grandmother made note of that. She should bring some of the extras here. Especially if they decided to build out another rest to handle transportation traffic that was just passing through. Across sections of the empty racks Sarah inscribed different craft names, marking where each class should store their items.

  You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

  “The secure storage is in the back,” Grandmother said. They walked to the back wall and Grandmother demonstrated how to use it.

  “Is there wood scrap available?” Tessa asked. “I don’t see any here.”

  “Yes,” Grandmother said. “It’s all in group digital storage. There is an inventory access point near the entry courtyard. I don’t know what the plan is to get it here in the morning. That may be something we’ve missed. When we get back I’ll introduce you to Ellen, she is organizing these structure crafting classes. She probably has a plan I’m unaware of.”

  “What do you expect me to teach tomorrow?” Jessa asked, a trace of nervousness in her voice.

  “What was the first woodworking skill you learned?” Grandmother asked.

  “I don’t really remember,” Tessa confessed. Grandmother thought the young woman probably could remember if she had time to reflect and wasn’t so stressed.

  “The first spell book Ellen wrote for woodworking was how to make a plank from wood scrap. I’d start there,” Grandmother said. “After that you can work towards some kind of end of term project, like arrows, a bow, or a storage box. I’m not a woodworker so I don’t know how hard any of those items are. I’d like each student to have the skills to make an item they can sell by the end of the term.

  “The students come from different squares so I don’t think there will be a problem flooding the market with a specific product. It would be great if you teach them something that can be sold to the vendor. There is usually some low tier item that can be made from materials bought from the vendor. When the finished product is sold back there is a net gain. It’s a way to eke out a living. If you can teach all the students something like that, it would be great. If that's too easy, teach them that and another more complex item that is sold to players.”

  “Players?” Tessa asked.

  “That’s just my way of saying anyone with coins in the structure, crafter, warrior, wizard, human, selkie, elf,” Grandmother explained.

  Todd, Jeremy and the toddler were missing when Grandmother and Tessa came out of the storage room. They followed the sound of the men’s voices to find them in the training room. Grandmother frowned when she saw them.

  “What’s wrong?” Todd asked.

  “Next year I need to find a woman to help teach the warrior classes. I just realized all my physical defense instructors are male,” Grandmother observed.

  “You're forgetting Betty,” Todd said. “She may mostly use a bow, but any hunter I ever met could also use a knife as a fall back weapon.”

  “True,” Grandmother responded. “Still, I’d like a woman skilled with a blade or spear to teach next year.”

  “There aren’t that many female warriors outside of Home Square,” Todd observed. “Although I remember many of the women in Ellensburg could imbue fire and ice into a staff.”

  “I’ll make sure Ellensburg makes the recruiting list for next year,” Grandmother commented.

  Before they left the association hall, Grandmother instructed Tessa, Jeremy and even the toddler to touch the protection crystal. She added Tessa to the group as a group leader. That would give her the ability to withdraw a set amount of material from the group inventory per day. She made Jeremy a member and their son a candidate.

  The nuisance was on the table eating one of the fragments of the travel bar. Grandmother reached out and gently stroked the animal’s tail.

  “You stay here, girl. I have a feeling you might be changed by passing the boundary and I don’t want that. I’ll be back soon enough,” Grandmother said. The animal spun round in a circle once, keeping its tail out of Grandmother’s reach, before picking up a fresh piece of food. It disappeared up the roots in the collapse.

  Tessa carried her son, while Jeremy kept a close watch on them. Grandmother led the way. She cast light to turn on every panel ahead of them, even the light panels far down the cross corridors. Todd brought up the rear. They followed one of the longer paths to the courtyard. It avoided any major holes in the floor. They came out of the structure into the courtyard to a light rain in the late afternoon.

  Tessa was cautious of the open sky above, but Jeremy didn’t even notice. Grandmother remembered Ed’s casual acceptance of it too. Most people raised in the structure took some time to adjust. Grandmother wondered if the tier five heal that took away healing addiction had unexpected side effects. The thought made her even more leery of healing the addiction multiple times.

  The cart Todd and Grandmother brought down that morning was still sitting just outside the courtyard. At first glance it looked undamaged by its day near the entrance. Grandmother didn’t want to risk the vehicles on a daily basis, but she was in a hurry today.

  She took the time to take Tessa’s box and wood lathe out of her bag. She sat them on the floor in the back of the cart. If she didn’t take them out now they would not be removable outside the boundary. The bag and contents became one solid lump.

  “Jeremy,” Grandmother said to the young warrior as the cart headed up the track. “If you want to scavenge the structure during the winter I ask that you coordinate with the scavenger instructors so you're not in the same area as the students.”

  “Thank you,” Jeremy responded. “I will.”

  “Ava was headed to the eastern villages today to hire a weaver. She thought she was going to have to recruit someone with children too. Perhaps you can get together with them to share child caring duties,” Todd offered.

  “There are about twenty residential supervisors on the Speedwell,” Grandmother commented. “Their job duties start at the evening meal and end with breakfast. If you want to make private arrangements with them during the day that is fine. The school won’t force them to work in their off time but they may choose to.”

  “This is the border,” Todd warned when the steel pillars were clearly visible on either side of the road ahead. “You’ll feel weaker when your nanobots deactivate. Your integrated clothing will also lose its color and flexibility. When we get to the Speedwell we’ll issue you a uniform you can wear outside the boundary.”