This time I had already saved the plagued people. There was no reason to hurry. I needed to level up, and time was so fast for me, compared to my friends, that I could afford to spend an afternoon doing a puzzle.

  My heart felt light as I surveyed the scene. Dekka was chasing a butterfly through long grass, wild flowers nodding their heads in the breeze. The leaves on the trees rustled and then stilled as the wind blew around the clearing.

  This time there were five stones, more like pillars this time. Each as tall as my chin.

  The circle was smaller, but the stones were further apart. My footsteps were silent on the soft ground. I reached out and ran my fingertips over the closest one.

  There was no ringing sound and no BLAAT. The stone just stood there before me, silent and inert. I looked between the stones. No spiderwebs, but there was something. The grass bent way as if it were touching something. I plucked a blade of grass and poked it between the pillars. I felt a light tingling, like I had touched the grass to an electric fence.

  This was great. A completely new puzzle. I had wondered if I managed to find the puzzle if the mechanism would be the same, just with different numbers.

  Each pillar had a symbol on it. The symbols weren’t intuitive. Like three dots to mean three or an image I could understand. I walked around them, examining them more closely. Four of the five pillars were of identical stone, a smooth polished agate; the other was of a matte reddish hue. The top of each had a small depression. This implied that perhaps I needed to put something in them.

  But what?

  I took a good look at the symbols again. What if they were pictograms? Highly stylised ones.

  There was one that was a straight line with another line over the top that was a bit squiggly. It looked a bit like water.

  I retrieved my water canteen from my pack and poured a bit in the little basin on the top of the glossy stone.

  The moment the water hit the stone it began to glow from within. Ok! Go me! That was easy.

  My self congratulations ended as I walked around and couldn’t parse any of the other symbols. Dekka came up and poked me with her nose.

  “Lunch?” I asked her.

  Her tail wagged a furious ‘yes’.

  “It’s just roast best haunch.”

  Her tail didn’t slow.

  I laughed at her. She thought roast meat for most meals was the way to go. The only thing that she would like better was if we had cheese.

  Leaving a slightly more rotund terrier napping in the grass, I returned to the stones. If one were water … I should use that as a clue. There was one symbol that had looked like a group of upside down ‘c’s. Could that be rocks? I tilted my head and thought they could look like little stones.

  I hunted up a handful of small stones and poured them into the hollow. The stone flickered with the tiniest glow that dissipated.

  Not enough stones?

  I put more in. No reaction, not even a flicker.

  So that wasn’t it. I took them out, tossed them into the forest in frustration and then wiped the dirt off my hand on my trousers.

  Dirt…

  I grabbed a stick and dug in the ground until a clump of grass came free. Grasping it by the long leaves, I shook it over the stone. It flickered, but the glow wasn’t as bright as the water one. I patted the roots, and more dirt rained down. Once there was a small pyramid of earth, the pillar glowed to match the other one.

  Water and earth. This puzzle was now obvious. Fire, air, and … shit and what else?

  Maybe the other one was the non matching stone? Perhaps it would do something or something would happen when I did the others. The stone next to me had a triangle with two wavy lines over it. If I used my imagination, that could be fire.

  Gathering some twigs and tried leaves for tinder, I started a small fire on the stone. The pillar glowed immediately.

  “Yes!” I spoke more loudly that I had intended and got a small grunt in disapproval as Dekka opened an eye at me. I ignored her. I was on a roll.

  Next!

  The next one had a wavy line and small dots and then another wavy line that curled up. So this one must be air.

  Well, fuck. Didn’t that depression already have air in it? If air were the answer, it should already be glowing.

  I went over, stood on tiptoes and blew into the bowl. Nothing happened. I tried again, blowing harder. Still nothing, not even a hint of a glow.

  It had to be wind. Nothing else made sense. But how could you put wind in a bowl?

  The twigs in the other bowl started to burn down, and subsequently the glow faded. Still thinking on the wind pillar, I added more twigs to the fire pillar, and the glow grew.

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  Looking around the clearing, I noticed the trees. Their tops were swaying in a steady breeze, even though it came down less often to make the grass sway. Maybe it didn’t like my breath. I remembered as a kid I thought that trees made the wind. That they waved their branches and pushed the air all together, creating powerful forces.

  I walked out into the edge of the forest and broke off the lowest small branch I could find. Then I went over to the pillar and waved the branch at the depression.

  Nothing.

  I waved it more vigorously. There was a faint flicker of a glow. The moment I quit waving, it dimmed.

  Trees didn’t make wind, or at least not enough. My branch was a little pathetic compared to the heavier foliage higher up.

  Getting a bigger branch would require me to shimmy up there, and I wasn’t sure that was the right answer, regardless. The fire on the other pillar went out. That was fine. I could restart it once I figured out this one.

  After an hour of waving things and blowing at the pillar, I was starting to worry that I could figure it out at all.

  “Dekka?” I called out to my sleeping companion.

  She only rolled further on her back and ignored me. Her posture said, “Puzzles are your thing. Wake me when there is something to fight or eat.”

  “No really. I am totally stumped.”

  A tiny but emotive canine sigh was my response. But she rolled over and trotted over. Making a point of yawning widely as she sat at my feet and looked up.

  “Ok so see these pillars?”

  She just blinked up at me like I were stupid.

  “Hey no need to be like that.” Her tail wagged slightly. Not like an apology but like she was hoping I’d get on with it. Even without the Beastmaster skill, I was finding her very easy to read.

  “I need to find out what all the pillars want. I am assuming it’s earth, air, fire, water, and something else,” I pointed around as I said the elements. “The problem is this one here.” I poked the smooth stone face in front of me. “This one is air or maybe wind. And I don’t know how to put either in a bowl.”

  Dekka blinked up at me.

  “I know!” I sat down heavily beside her and began stroking her head.

  The afternoon wore on, and I couldn’t think of anything. Waving the branches had done something. So I knew I wasn’t completely on the wrong track. Well, I probably wasn’t. I tried putting leaves in the depression. I case it was somehow not wind, and I had gotten the positive reaction when the leaves brushed the stone.

  It did not react to the leaves. I tried different leaves. I tried flowers. Much to Dekka’s annoyance, I balanced her up there. “I know you are not air. But I really have no idea what goes here. Can you pant at the bowl?” She just glared at me till I took her down.

  By this point I was getting hungry, so I made a campfire and put some beast haunch and a few veggies over it with a bit of water. After tasting Aubie’s creations, I had taken to buying ingredients. This game considered all food equal, but my taste buds still craved variety.

  I stirred the soup. My mind going in circles, frustrated with my lack of progress on this puzzle. I watched the soup, and bits of browned meat and root vegetables swirl around in my little round pot. Maybe I needed to contain the wind? Like the bowl contained the soup. I remember back in school learning something about air acting like a fluid or fluid mechanics. Maybe my wind wasn’t sitting in the bowl long enough?

  I wanted to go try right away, but my soup was getting thick and would burn if I left it. I poked the hunks of potato-like chunks with my spoon. They were still too hard. Forcing myself to finish cooking, eat and clean up Dekka and I’s bowls, the sun was setting by the time I got back.

  The glow of the two pillars bounced off the trees and lit their branches from below. When these were all lit, it was going to be spectacularly beautiful. I went up to the wind pillar and cupped my hands around the hollow and blew into it.

  Now that it was darker, I could see the glow travel. It started at the top and travelled down that stone. It didn’t reach the bottom and went out. But that seemed better than my last result. My current guess was that the glow had to get to the base.

  The fire one was dull. So even once you activated a pillar, it didn’t stay activated if the element left, or ran out. I restarted the fire, and the glow behaved just as I had predicted. It ran down the core of the stone, and when it hit the ground level, it bounced back up and intensified and settled into a steady glow.

  I squared up to the wind pillar. I tried again by blowing as hard as I could into the bowl with my fingers as a barrier. The glow didn’t hit the ground and bounce.

  There must be another way. I couldn’t blow any harder, and Dekka couldn’t blow. Was all my breath hitting the bowl? I made a tube with my hand and tried that. But that left only one to cup around the edge. What if I could direct the blowing air and cup the back of the depression to contain it at the same time?

  What I needed was a tube or a straw. I looked around, but all the grasses around were solid. Then I remembered the reeds by the river. I ran off in the waning light. Dekka splashed in the river, biting at the leaves as I yanked some reeds out of the shallow water.

  The reeds looked solid, but they had dried layers surrounding the green centre. I peeled one off. As soon as it came free, it curled back up into a large straw. Yes!

  I ran back with a wet terrier at my heels. She was energized in that way all wet dogs are and almost tripped as I got the pillar. “Careful you. I don’t want to end up on those gritty hot stones again this soon.” She ignored my reprimand and proceeded to zoomie all around the stones. Her joy was palpable. Fireflies were signalling their romantic intentions around the clearing and into the woods. The clearing was a light show to rival the night sky.

  Blowing into the reed-straw with both hands cupped to catch the wind. The glow moved quickly down and reflected back up. And stayed lit. I took a step back, and the four lit pillars glowed with increasing luminosity.

  One more. The odd, dull pillar stood out as a dark space in the circle as if it was drinking in the light of the others. Reaching out, I put my hand on it and then jerked back. The stone had pulled at my hand. It hadn’t hurt, but it had been very disconcerting, as if it were pulling my hand from within my hand.

  Hovering over the surface, I could feel the pull from within my fingertips, less strongly than when I was touching it.

  The symbol on this one was a ‘V’ with an upside down ‘c’ shape underneath. What could this mean?

  Tentatively, I laid my palm flat on the top of the pillar. Pins and needles, almost like I was touching something electric. Slowly, I pulled my hand off, watching for sparks. When I was a kid, I loved my one blanket. At night in the winter when the air was dry, I would lift it up and watch the tiny sparks jump from it to my sheets and hands. No sparks though. My face, which I had moved closer to look for the sparks, began to feel the pull. My cheek lifted off the side of my teeth.

  Yuck! That was a gross feeling. I took a step back.

  The pulling came from inside my skin. It wasn’t pulling my skin exactly. But something inside me.

  My bones? No, it pulled my cheek and not my teeth. Blood?

  I looked at the symbol. That could be a pointed weapon and a drop of blood if you squinted at it. A very wide pointed weapon.

  The basin at the top was a bit smaller than the others, but that was still a fair bit of blood when I imagined bleeding into it. Where was the ambient violent fauna when you could use one?

  Looking around, I didn’t see my dog. “Dekka, want to go hunt a hell bunny?” She popped up out of a clump of grass she must have been trying to roll herself dry in and came racing at me. After doing a fly-ball turn off my thigh, she sprinted back out into the dark woods. Grabbing my club, I followed.