Diamond Age or a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer

She spent a while staring at a group of travelers who had drawn their wagons into a roadside meadow and set up a camp, clapping hands round a bonfire while one of them played a reel on some small bellowspowered bagpipes, barely audible these many miles away. Then she realized that the book hadn't said anything for a long time. "What happened then?" she said.

The Young Lady's Illustrated Primer said nothing.

"Nell looked for a safe way down," Nell essayed.

Her vantage point began to move. A patch of snow swung into view. "No, wait!" she said, "Nell stuffed some clean snow into her water bottles."

In the painting, Nell could see her bare pink hands scooping up snow and packing it bit by bit into the neck of her bottle. When it was full, she put the cork back in (Nell didn't have to specifr that) and began moving around on the rock, looking for a place that wasn't so steep. Nell didn't have to explain that in detail either; in the ractive, she searched the rock in a fairly rational way and in a few minutes found a stairway chiseled into the rock, winding down the mountain endlessly until it pierced a cloud layer far below. Princess Nell began descending the steps, one at a time.

After a while, Nell tried an experiment: "Princess Nell descended the stairs for many hours."

This triggered a series of dissolves like she'd seen on old passives: Her current view dissolved into a closeup of her feet, trudging down a couple of steps, which dissolved into a view from considerably farther down the mountain, followed by a closeup of Princess Nell unscrewing her water bottle and drinking melted snow; another view from farther down; Nell sitting down for a rest; a soaring eagle; the approaching cloud layer; big trees; descending through the mist; and finally, Nell tramping wearily down the last ten steps, which left her in a clearing in a dark coniferous forest, carpeted with rust-colored pine needles. It was twilight, and the wolves were beginning to howl. Nell made the usual arrangements for the night, lit a fire, and curled up to sleep.

Having reached a good stopping-place, Nell started to close the book. She'd have to continue this later.

She had just entered the land of the oldest and most powerful of all the Faery Kings. The many castles on the mountains belonged to all of his Dukes and Earls, and she suspected she would have to visit them all before she had gotten what she'd come for. It was not a quick adventure for an early Saturday morning. But just as she was clasping the book together, new words and an illustration appeared on the page she'd been reading, and something about the illustration made her open the book back up. It showed a crow perched on a tree branch above Princess Nell, holding a necklace in its beak. It was eleven jeweled keys strung on a golden chain.

Princess Nell had been wearing it around her neck; apparently the next event in the story was that this bird stole it while she was sleeping. Beneath the picture was a poem, spoken by the crow from his perch:

Castles, gardens, gold, and jewels

Contentment signify, for fools

Like Princess Nell; but those

Who cultivate their wit

Like King Coyote and his crows

Compile their power bit by bit

And hide it places no one knows.

Nell closed up the book This was too upsetting to think about just now. She had been collecting those keys for most of her life. The first she'd taken from King Magpie just after she and Harv had arrived at Dovetail. She had picked up the other ten one at a time during the years since then. She had done this by traveling to the lands of the Faery Kings and Queens who owned those keys and using the tricks she had learned from her Night Friends. Each key had come to her in a different way.

One of the hardest keys to get had belonged to an old Faery Queen who had seen through every trick that Nell could think up and fought off every assault. Finally, in desperation, Princess Nell had thrown herself on the mercy of that Queen and told her the sad story of Harv locked up in the Dark Castle. The Queen had fed Nell a nice bowl of chicken soup and handed over the key with a smile.

Not much later, Duck had encountered a nice young mallard on the road and flown away with him to start a family. Purple and Princess Nell then traveled together for several years, and on many a dark night, sitting around the campfire under a full moon, Purple had taught Nell secret things from her magic books and from the ancient lore she kept in her head.