All the Dust that Falls

Chapter 93: Dead Tired

The first trip back to the farm was fairly uneventful. Bee took Trent and Tony, but Void stayed behind, and she assumed it was looking over the kids and Mary. They made it to the farm, each leading an animal with a harness on. This time they would load up the animals and themselves, but also they would try to make a sled to help them transport more.

The farm looked just as they had left it. Without the bustling energy of a full family running around, though, it felt far too quiet. Trent seemed a little sad to be leaving the place this time, but Tony comforted him. "We were going to leave it for the winter in a few weeks anyways. What's the big deal?"

"I just have the feeling that we won't be coming back here for a very long time. And if we do make it back, it won't ever be the same." Trent said morosely. With nothing left to say, they each took the animal they were leading and started loading up more of the harvest from the barn. All the personal stuff had been brought with them on the first trip. It turned out that they didn't have too many sentimental items, and a lot of the practical items they might need were already in the castle.

After he loaded up the mule, Trent trudged into the house to do one last sweep. One of the kids had left a particularly shiny rock behind, but more than that, he wanted to make sure there was nothing more important left behind. This left Bee and Tony alone in the barn moving bushels of wheat.

"Hey, can I ask you something, and you won't tell anyone about it?" Bee asked.

Tony looked up at her, surprised. "Sure?"

"So I had an odd interaction with Miranda yesterday. She asked me to teach her magic. When I agreed and told her what to do, she ran away crying. What's up with that?"

Tony started to chuckle. "I was wondering why she was so upset yesterday…."

Bee was getting more and more confused. "Wait. Was it something I said? We had a perfectly normal conversion. I didn't mean to offend her or anything…"

"Yeah, it's not your fault. Don't worry about it. She will come around eventually. She's just embarrassed." Tony reassured her.

Bee, however, still didn't understand. "Why is she embarrassed? I don't understand."

"I'm guessing when you agreed to teach her magic, you gave her a book to read?" Bee nodded with her eyebrows scrunched together, trying to make the connection.

Tony realized that she still didn't get it. "When we moved all our most important belongings to the castle, did you see a book among them?"

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Wordlessly, Bee shook her head, comprehension dawning. "Exactly, she can't read. None of us can, actually."

"WHY DIDN'T SHE JUST SAY THAT!?" Bee yelled in frustration. Why couldn't people just come out and say what they meant? As much as she was glad to be around others again, it was also frustrating. Void was much easier to understand than this, and it couldn't even speak.

Tony laughed at her. "It's not easy to admit that. Especially to someone you look up to. People think less of you if you can't read. At least, they do in Greg."

"Well, I can teach her. That should be fine." Bee stated. Tony kept chuckling. "Good luck with that. My older sister learned to read, but Maranda was too embarrassed to even accept lessons."

"What about you? Can I teach you to read?" Bee asked Tony. She thought he had said that he couldn't read either. Tony shook his head. "Nah, I don't need to learn."

"Why not? You weren't too embarrassed to admit you can't read."

"I don't need to read. What could reading help me as a farmer? I know everything I need to do, and the system speaks to me just fine." Tony said and continued under his breath in a voice Bee wasn't supposed to hear. "Even if it is a bit pushy."

Bee considered Tony's point. It didn't add up. "But you are not a farmer. Not anymore."

Tony didn't have anything to say to that, and they fell into silence. Luckily Trent came out of the house soon after. He was carrying a ragged teddy bear. When Bee cocked her head at him, he explained. "Leanne forgot her bear." Forgot was wrapped in air quotes. "She brought her second and third favorite toys instead. When we got back, she threw a tantrum, and Mary made me promise to look for it. That girl is too clever by half."

Bee noted that Trent didn't seem annoyed by his youngest's scheming ways in the least. Trent, though, wasn't done. He grinned mischievously. "Luckily, she is only seven, probably didn't even realize how much leverage she's giving us. A lot of chores will be done to earn this back."

---

I was babysitting. At least, that was what Beatrice called it. I neither sat nor were there any babies. But her explanation was clear enough. I wasn't able to clean it as it was taking all my effort to track the movements of all six kids and Mary with my Advanced Sensors. I had promised not to let any of them be harmed.

To my shame, I had already failed once. One of the boys, a little smaller than Beatrice, had fallen and scraped his knee. I just wasn't fast enough to catch him. At the time, I was across the castle, preventing the littlest from touching a hot stove. Next time I wasn't going to agree to this; it was just too complicated. Give me a huge puddle to clean any day over this.

Still, there was some satisfaction in preventing the children from making too many messes, and my passive effect was still improving the state of the castle as things organized themselves. I spent most of my time in the kitchen. Mary was pretty good at not making too much of a mess but left the cooking equipment in the wrong place all the time, and then she complained she couldn't find anything.

That wasn't the only reason I stayed near the kitchen when there was no emergency to take care of, though. The little humans all centralized themselves around Mary.

As the little humans had been here for a little bit, they had gotten inquisitive and started exploring the rest of the castle. This was an issue as there were hazards everywhere. Suddenly my sensors picked something up, and I needed to zip up to the next floor and prevent the little human around Beatrice's size from exploring the alligator pit.

I positioned myself in front of the small human and gave him a chastising beep. When he tried to peek past me, I bustled and nudged him away until he got the message. I had watched Beatrice feed those alligators once. I doubted that they would have any more problem eating a human rather than the bucket of dried deer intestines that were thrown into their pit every few weeks. The twirling was unpleasant and sent water and blood everywhere.

Once I had taken care of that, another thing cropped up. There were endless issues. These little humans seemed determined to get hurt in any way possible. They were almost falling downstairs, playing in the armory, letting a bunch of bats loose, and discovering a group of rotting humans that had showed up outside. I barely had time to get from one disaster to the other after. Between buffeting the bats back into their room with my Air Manipulation and shutting the portcullis on the strange humans, I barely had time to zoom off and rescue the cat who had gotten itself cornered.

I could not wait until Beatrice returned.

---

Tony was quiet for the rest of the day, and Bee left him to it. All of them had finished loading up as much food as they could and put the rest away, so picking it up on future trips would be much simpler. Then they began the long trek back to the castle in comfortable silence.

Things were uneventful until they made it back to the main road. Bee was leading in front, and when she poked her head out and looked both ways, she motioned for the others to back up a bit.

"There are some undead around the castle. Not too many, but it seems the portcullis is keeping them out." She whispered. Trent's face paled slightly, and he gripped the ax he had brought along. Before they could say anything, Bee continued, handing her reins to Tony. "Wait here a minute. There are only a dozen or so."

Before they could protest, she was gone. Trent moved to follow, but Tony put a hand on his father's arm. "Trust her. There isn't much we farmers can do to help."

Bee heard Trent mutter something along the lines of, "but she just has a broom." Tony responded with something more, but she couldn't make it out as she charged the group of zombies. It was true that she only had a broom, but it was an improved broom her master had given her. A powerful gift. The last zombies she had faced wouldn't have been hard to deal with if she had this version of the broom.

As she got into range, she used Scan on the crowd. There was a large range of levels, the highest being 23. This group seemed to be younger than the last group that she had fought, with the average level being around 14. As Bee closed in, she thought to herself. If this was going to be a common experience, she would need to do some research on zombies and prepare some magic for them. The library was mostly demon centric, but there would probably be some general information she could use.

Leveling the broom at the zombies, Bee darted the sharp point at the closest one. Unfortunately, it wasn't the highest level one, as that one was in the front pounding fruitlessly on the iron gate. The former kitchen knife took the zombie in the back of the head, meeting no resistance and dropping the unmoving corpse to the ground.

The zombies were slow to turn around and notice her. With a few more thrusts, she was able to reduce their numbers even further. She made to sweep the legs of one to the right but paused for a second and jumped back. One of her skills was telling her something. Improved Pathing was trying to get her to go for the one on the left first with a slash to the neck. She was going to listen to it.

As the nearer ones finished turning and started to shamble forwards, she suggested the path changed, suggesting she circle around. It seemed this skill was giving her a combat sense of some sort. Navigation skills were known to be overpowered, but the question was if she could trust this one. Bee hadn't forgotten its track record. This was the skill that had tried to lead her through every mud puddle and leaf pile it could.

Still, it was worth a shot. Bee didn't feel particularly threatened, and if it failed, then she could ignore the suggested path at any time. Deciding to try it out, she circled to the right as instructed. The zombies moved to follow her but started getting tangled up with each other. Listening to the next suggestion, she lunged forward to strike one in particular that was tripping over a slower zombie in front.

Grinning, Bee hopped back before they could right themselves and watched as one more foe fell to the ground in front of her. Twirling her broom, she prepared to fully engage.