Dan woke at the crow of the rooster outside the window. Ron was already awake and dressed while Sage was still sitting upright, half-asleep. 

“Good morning,” Dan chimed and leapt up. “I’m dressed!” 

Ron chuckled, “I see! How about you Sage?”

“No,” Sage groaned. “Especially with that tavern owner out there.” 

“Let’s get it over with, huh?”

The trio trekked down the stairs to the front area. The tavern owner was still behind the counter, chatting with one of the patrons. He nodded to a trio of paper-wrapped sandwiches at the end of the counter. 

Ron picked them up in one swipe and the tavern owner stopped him with a hand motion. “If you want to eat, you gotta earn it. And the cost of holding your beasts as well!” 

The three stared at him, mouths agape. The tavern owner guffawed and said, “You thought I’d let you off free?”

“I thought we paid for all of it,” Dan answered. 

“Nope! I need you three to fix something for me.” He glanced at the patron before sliding closer to the trio. He whispered, “I have a rat problem in my storage room.” 

“You could have asked,” Sage deadpanned, “instead of whatever showmanship thing you’re doing.” 

“I’ll take those sandwiches and lock up your beasts then.” 

Dan whispered in backlang, “What do you think?”

“I think we should do what he wants. Who knows, maybe we’re good at it, haha,” Ron laughed. 

“I wouldn’t mind knowing how to speak that puppet langauge,” Sage said. 

“We’ll talk about it in a bit,” Ron answered. “Let’s take care of his rat problem then, hm?”

“Yeah, yeah,” they sighed. 

The tavern owner lifted the counter gate and motioned the three through. He led them through a back door and down a set of stairs. He motioned to the door and said, “Through here is my basement, where some rats have taken residence. I need you three to clean them out and then clean everything up.” 

They nodded. Sage crossed their arms over their chest and asked, “Are you sure we won’t steal something after we clean it up?”

The tavern owner rolled his eyes and held up the keys. “I have your transportation locked up.” 

The trio of travelers readied themselves. The man opened the door and stepped aside to let them in. 

The basement was the size of the tavern itself and almost as tall. Dan wrung his hands and asked, “How do we find anything here?”

Everything was stacked almost to the ceiling. Chairs, crates, bags of vegetables, and kegs. Sage shrugged, “I’ve not had to do something like this before.” 

Ron put his hand on Dan’s shoulder. “We take it one step at a time. How do we check for rats?”

“Look for … droppings and chewed up stuff,” Dan offered quietly. “We had to deal with mice back home a few times back on the farm.” 

Ron and Sage started to walk in opposite directions, splitting up to look for any evidence of the rats. Dan followed Sage and asked as they leaned down, “Could you show me how to use non-lethal magic?”

“Oh, you have it down already,” Sage said. “Just keep off the fire.” 

Dan wrung his hands and started down a path between crates marked with pickles and flour. He turned a corner and found a rat with red eyes and twitching nose. 

“Whoa!” he shouted and the rat froze. He remembered one of the spells from his dream and made the signs bind, rope bind. Ropes darted out of the floor and caught the rat by the arms and legs. The rat struggled and squealed. 

“You got one!” Sage gasped next to Dan. “Now what?” They looked to Ron who jogged up to the two. “I guess we trap it in something?” Ron suggested.

“We’re so unprepared,” Sage laughed and glanced about. Ron scooped up the rat in a glass mug from one of the crates. The rat wriggled and squealed. 

“I don’t want to kill it,” Dan said, the screams of the man in the back of his mind. 

“Of course not,” Ron answered. “We’ll take it outside as far as we can to the forest.”

“We might need more mugs if we’re going to do that,” Sage said and started to grab a few out of the open crate. 

“There must be a better way,” Ron whispered. “Why don’t we take all the mugs out of the crate and put the rats in there instead?”

Sage and Dan shrugged before doing exactly that. Ron poured the rat gently onto the bottom of the crate. The rat nibbled at the binds already and wriggled with one paw free.

A skittering sound came from behind the trio and they looked to catch the tail of a rat disappearing behind a keg. “Another one!” Dan shouted. He started to make the sign for binding, but Sage stopped him. 

“You need to see your target,” Sage explained. 

“Oh, right.” 

Something plopped on Dan’s head and Sage jumped back. “A rat fell on you!” 

The three looked up and found a whole horde of rats staring down at them from the rafters of the warehouse. Some were white, others were spotted, and others were the mottled grey. 

“Do we catch them?” Dan asked as Ron put the rat into the crate. It was docile to his touch.

“Don’t hurt them!” a young voice shouted and the pair looked to see a teen younger than Sage standing in a wide ready stance and fists on hips. 

“Who are you?” Ron asked.

“I’m Mr. Tannin’s daughter, Kirin.” She stomped up to the three and took the box from Ron. “These rats are my golem.” 

“What?” the puppets blurted out. 

She nodded and glanced at Sage. “You know what I mean, don’t you?”

They cleared their throat and said, “Golems don’t have to be clay. These are expertly knitted little rats, Kirin. I’m guessing each one has a word of power on the stomach? I’m Sage, th-they/them.”

“I’m Ron and this is my husband, Dan, both he/him pronouns. Is that why we couldn’t find evidence of them around?” 

Kirin stared at the three with a suspicious eye. “And why are you stealing my rats?”

“Your father, eh, coerced us into helping him with this.”

Her eyes misted and she burst into tears when one of the rats fell onto her hands. “Oh, I knew I should have used rabbits! He hates that I use rats! But they take forever to make!”

“Your father seems like a … hate-filled man,” Ron said. 

“He’s just a grump,” she said, petting the rat now in her hands. It stood to hold her fingers for a chin rub and Dan saw the black embroidered Word of Power. 

“Still. Is there any way we could help you?” Ron asked. 

“I was going to move my rats outside. I think I figured out the distance I can stay away from them.”

“You might be able to shrink them down and put them in a bag - like a bag of marbles,” Sage suggested.

“What?” Kirin asked. 

“You don’t know much about being a witch, do you?”

Kirin’s face became downcast. “Well, enough to get by,” she muttered into the doll’s back. “I’ve been reading books and trying to learn as I go.” 

The three gathered the rats into the box and Ron carried them out the back door while Mr. Tannin was busy talking with patrons. 

Outside, the four of them brought the rats to a little three-story doll house under an oak tree a few feet from the back door. 

Kirin and Sage knelt together with one of the spotted rats between them. “Now concentrate for a moment. Imagine the rat growing smaller.”

Kirin’s brows wrinkled as she struggled. The rat jumped in place and squeaked before shrinking down to  the size of a human’s pinky finger. 

“I did it!” she gasped and scooped up the tiny doll. “I could keep a few in my pocket that I use a lot! Maybe they won’t keep going into the basement when I dismiss them now.” She glanced between the travelers. “I think they were getting the back door and the basement door confused.”

“This is where you keep them,” Mr. Tannin growled. Sage and Kirin stood. “Please, dad, stop trying to kill my rats!” 

His face turned red and then splotches of purple. “You! I! I couldn’t tell the difference between one of your little things and a real thing! How was I supposed to know!?” he shouted. 

She stomped a foot and held the tiny rat up to him, “Look! Its obviously a Golem with the Word of Power on its belly!”

Ron motioned Sage over to him and Dan. The witch tiptoed around the yelling pair as their yells blended together.

“We should go,” Ron half-announced, half-apologized. “Maybe if you unlock the stable?”

Mr. Tannin waved a hand and grumbled, “Its unlocked already.” 

The three went around the tavern by cutting through the sitting garden with a goat statue next to the table. A few ducks quacked in the pond and flapped their wings as they passed. 

The stable was open and they saddled up. Bevel turned huge again for Sage to load up with its backpack and gear. 

“We forgot the sandwiches,” Sage sighed as the they set out on the cobblestone road. Dan looked through his backpack for the granola and beads he packed for just-in-case.

The sun was well above the horizon now, as it was mid-morning. Dew still settled on the ground in the shade. Deer as white as clouds bounded from shadow to shadow, disappearing and reappearing when the sunlight touched them. They headed for the forest across the fields. Their hooves never seemed to touch the ground, but disappeared into a mist instead.

“What are those?” Dan asked. 

““Daemons of morning,” Sage explained. “They lay out the dew and wake the birds, its said. Some believe they pull the sun along on strings.” 

“By the Felt, they’re breathtaking. But haunting,” Dan whispered, as if the daemons could hear him.

“Most are,” Sage answered. “They don’t seem to care about us unless they’re trapped by us or we attack them. No one is stupid enough to attack one. A lot like I imagine ghosts are.”

“You said you wanted to know about our ‘puppet language?’” Ron asked. 

“Oh, yeah. What is that you two speak to each other?”

“Its a backwards language called backlang!” Ron revealed with a huge smile. Sage cocked their head to one side. “We speak words like how they’re spelled backwards. Here. Ew keaps swords ekil woh llepsed darwkab.”

Sage’s jaw dropped. “And you just talk like that?”

“No one has ever caught on,” Dan admitted. “Although one of our friends, Haley, she has tried. You’d love her.” He remembered her trying to decipher the language one day. “She’s a lot like you.” 

Sage grinned and said, “That backwards-lang is pretty neat.” 

“It helps if you write out what you want to say at first and then read it in backlang,” Ron suggested. “How much longer until we get to Skrika?”

“Not much,” Sage answered and nodded to the horizon. There it was: A faint silohuette on the horizon.