Priscilla poked her head into the circle of adults and smiled up at them. "You guys didn't get it? The Alchemists are the means to reach our goal and the goal itself. It'll all work out if we do it together like that, you'll see," she said.
The rest of the group looked at her. "What does that even mean?" Fyojhan whispered to the vampire sovereign. He shrugged and turned back to his horses. He slung his pack back behind his saddled and stuck a foot in his stirrup and turned back to them. "I don't understand exactly what she means, but they always say to listen to wisdom from the mouths of babes so I'll go with it." He hefted himself in. "I guess that means we're to travel together, to no particular destination, but if we find the Alchemists along the way that would be a good thing, so I'm up for that."
Priscilla shook her head. "No, he said we are going to Siberia," she said. She held up a dragon scale scarf. "He gave this to me because he said 'the rest of that lot will be fine in the cold, but I want you to wear this so you can stay safe over in Siberia' so that means he wants us to go there, doesn't it?" The group had to agree that was probably where they were meant to go, though a few muttered protests against how confusing and convoluted their directions were for their trip but continued for the rest of the day as they made the preparations necessary to cross to the Original.
A night passed as they toiled away. Come sunrise they finally had a magical gate ready to take them through the Divide. Pris stopped to ask them what their plans were when they got there. "You know, Siberia is actually a very big place. I know it's just one part of a single country, but it's about as big as the Western Wastes and Great Forest combined into one. Do you really think it will be that easy for us to just walk in and find where the Alchemists are posted?"
The rest of the group looked at her. They'd been so caught up in taking the leap to get to the right planet, they hadn't kept track of how they were going to find their goal once they got there. Jackie pulled out her cell phone. She'd needed to get one when she'd been assigned to become a student at Tybolt Hall so she could fit in. Over time she'd grown to like the device and now kept one on hand all the time. "It has a navigation function. I can probably use this to help us figure out where we are over there," she said.
Daerick shook his head. "That will be insufficient. It is one thing to know where we are; it is another thing entirely to figure out where they are. The whole point of this expedition is to locate the Alchemists, not ourselves," he said.
Jackie drooped. "Oh, you're right of course." She stopped. "I don't know if they get reception in most of the place anyways, I hear it is a wilderness."
Priscilla nodded. "Oh it is. Siberia covers seventy-seven percent of Russia. Siberia is so expansive that it would be the largest country in the world even if it separated from the rest of Russia. Even so, Siberia has a population density of less than eight people per square mile so it wouldn't be economical to have a ton of cellphone towers all over the place," she said. The rest of the group just looked at her. "I do read things, you know. It's more weird that you guys haven't," she defended herself.
Cillean shrugged. "You aren't unusual for knowing a lot of random factoids. Kids do that a lot. It just seems odd that you know so much about a different world that all information about it is supposed to be restricted from the access of children," he said.
She blushed. "I sometimes ask Durin about things I don't know, so I haven't actually read everything I know about. But I still have learned a lot, so I'm still very smart!"
Jackie patted her on the head. "It's okay, kiddo. I know you're smart, you know you're smart, and Durin even knew it so well he decided to contract with you a decade or two before most kids your year would. There's no need to be defensive over it." Pris just pulled her dragon scale scarf over her head to bundle deeper into it in response.
"How are we going to find where the Alchemists are hiding, then? I assume they've likely enchanted their base camp so it would resist being found by the typical means, magical or physical," Alabastor said.
Cillean had to agree. "It's likely that we won't be able to find them in an efficient manner, with or without cell phones. It will be nice to have yours around, just in case, to know where we are, but I feel if Russia is anything like the Lumila in our world which I think is the corresponding Shade of the Original's Russia, then most of the Mundanes' electronics will not work well there. It might even break your phone if you bring it."
Jackie clutched hers to her heart at that. "I will not be taking my baby there if that would make it die," she told them all. "Scratch the cell phone plan; we are going to have to go in without the help of GPS. Does anyone else have any bright ideas on how we can make sure we aren't going over the same places we've already been again and again, though? That was the main point of taking this along."
Darien scratched his head. "I suppose we could lay out a Trouver Trail then." He brought up the image of a glowing ball of yarn on a quick scrying screen. "It's like the
