Chapter 39: The River Journey

Chapter 39: The River Journey

Two weeks later, Mira received an unexpected letter from her last living aunt. Their grandmother Lira—Emilia’s great-grandmother—had passed away. That meant there was no one left in the village to care for the ancestral land, and the graves and symbols of their lineage would soon be forgotten.

The remaining relatives decided to gather a modest sum of money, and since Mira lived closest, she was the one who had to go and pay the village mayor to ensure the land would be maintained.

They also planned to offer anyone willing to settle there and take care of the ancestral estate a contract—if a family agreed to live there for a hundred years, they would inherit the old family house and fifty decares of land.

It was a generous offer, and everyone expected Mira and her husband to be the ones to accept it. The family gathered and discussed it for hours, unable to reach a decision. The children didn’t know, but Mira and Ronan were thinking about Emilia’s future. She crafted valuable talismans, and she would need a large city to grow her skills. Could she really have a future in some small forgotten village?

Still, Mira had to travel there to arrange the funeral and ensure care for the ancestral grounds. She decided to take Emilia with her—to see with their own eyes how things stood.

…

Two days later, Mira spoke with Vitari and delivered the finished cloth she had been working on. She found a neighbor, another seamstress working with Vitari, to handle the remaining two weeks of orders. It meant losing fourteen silver coins, but the money sent by her relatives would cover ten of them.

After that, the two of them rented a cabin on one of the departing river ships. Ronan brought a whole chest of clothes and food.

“We’re leaving for just a few days,” Mira protested. “Why do we need so much food and clothing?”

“You never know what might happen,” Ronan insisted.
“Emilia, take a few bark talismans—those will keep the food fresh.”
“Oh, sure, now we’ll be carrying a whole chest and tree bark... Emilia, don’t pack your brushes and talisman tools. They’re too expensive. What if something happens to them?”
“But Mom, I’ll have plenty of free time. I can’t just stop working.”
“You’re still a child. You don’t have to work.”

After a bit more arguing, Emilia suddenly remembered something and hurried off to the butchers. She bought three kilograms of mana-rich meat and a few small animals for the ancestral offerings. The creatures were kept in tiny cages, and she paid an apprentice boy to deliver them to the docks.

“Emilia... while your father and I are arguing, you’re out buying more things?”
“You’ll rent a cart,” Ronan said calmly. “You’re not walking to the village all day on foot.”

Emilia, who had no desire to walk an entire day, quickly sided with her father.
“Mom, the forests are dangerous. We should hire a cart and a driver who knows the area. What if we get lost?”

“How would we get lost? I used to help my grandmother there every summer when I was a child. I’ve walked that road many times.”

“That was years ago. Things change,” Ronan insisted, giving Emilia a quick, secret wink.

In the end, Mira gave in—though she muttered under her breath, eyeing the heavy travel chest and the cages full of animals.

“If we’re taking a cart anyway,” she finally sighed, “we might as well buy some small gifts for the neighbors and the mayor.”

The three of them hurried to the market, wandering the merchant street to buy small presents—paper money for the funeral, a few large copper and silver coins for the mythical ferryman Charon, who was said to carry souls across the River Styx, and candles and ceramic jars filled with fragrant oil for embalming Grandmother Lira’s body.

The ship set off slowly, carried by the river’s steady current. The wind blew against them, so the sails remained furled. It was a river vessel—not large, with low sides and a wide deck—built for calm waters rather than the sea. Its hull was dark wood, smooth and reinforced with iron rivets. The bow bore a simple carving, barely suggesting the form of a bird. Instead of tall masts and grand sails, there was only one sturdy beam, with a rolled-up canvas hanging from it—useful for when the wind decided, for once, to be on their side.

On the deck lay a jumble of chests and bundles, and along both sides were the slots for the oars—long, smooth, wooden, worn down by years of use.

There was nothing unnecessary aboard—just ropes, hooks, and a barrel of tar for patching the hull. The ship looked sturdy, plain, and reliable.

Emilia roamed about, eyes wide with curiosity, peppering the sailors—and even the captain—with questions.

“Why don’t we unfurl the sail?”
“Are those oars heavy?”
“What’s that black sticky stuff in the barrel?”
“Why is the ship’s bow shaped like a bird?”

She stopped for a moment, got her fingers covered in tar, and tried to lift one of the oars. A sailor sharply waved at her and warned that if she touched it again, he’d tear her ear off. She quickly learned what a tailwind meant—and that women were sometimes considered bad luck on ships. And birds, much like ships, wanted to be carried by the wind: one with its wings, the other with its sails.

Her mother was growing anxious. Emilia had far too much energy. At last, Mira couldn’t take it anymore—she grabbed Emilia by the arm and asked her, as gently as she could manage, to let the crew do their work.

Once she calmed down, Emilia found herself a spot beside a chest full of coiled ropes. She took out two wax tablets and began solving equations to train her skills. When that bored her, she started practicing the languages she remembered from Earth, writing down the few words she still knew. “Hello” in English, Spanish, Japanese, Chinese, German, Russian, even Polish. The strange exercises looked childish to anyone else, but her Skills grew with surprising speed.

After a few hours, once she had grown used to the ship’s swaying rhythm, Emilia drew out a piece of magical bark and began slowly inscribing a Talisman of Strength. The challenge wasn’t just the ship’s motion—it was also the thick flow of water mana in the damp air.

She failed twice in a row. Frowning, she stopped and switched to simpler exercises, drawing straight lines and experimenting with the flow of her mana. Then, gathering courage, she wrote a single isolated glyph. Encouraged by that, she attempted another talisman—only to fail again. Frustrated and disappointed, she sat cross-legged and began to meditate, reflecting on her mistakes.

The cycle repeated several times, until at last—on her seventh attempt—she succeeded. The differences were subtle, but the bark was highly sensitive. If one of the lines overloaded the pattern of magical pathways, the entire piece would burn out instantly.

After that first success, things began to flow more smoothly. Emilia learned several valuable lessons. She noticed how the ship’s conditions distorted the aura of energy streams. Through years of trial and error, she had built a working system—but here, in this new environment, it failed her. Hours of meditation and analysis forced her to reconsider not just what she needed to succeed this time, but the very framework of the methods she had built over time.

She thought about it for a long while, lost in quiet contemplation, as the sun began its slow descent toward the horizon.