"Being safe when someone's trying to trip you up is probably hard if you don't know which things you shouldn't say, but being safe when they're not trying to trip you up isn't very hard. Probably we could just -" he glances up at the sky. "We could practice until it's nearly sunset and then travel then. I don't know where there's food along the route back to my court and I wouldn't want to scout for it at night."

Nod. "Of the children left behind, one of them is in the town near here - he'll want to come, eventually, if he can, I think - and two of them are in the next kingdom over. Just - so you know where things are."

"I don't really know where the delineations between human kingdoms are but I expect we can figure it out. How old is the kid who is near here, can he come on his own if you leave him a map..."

"Five. I'm - not really sure. Maybe."

"You could also leave someone else a map, or a map and a note, and money. Humans do things for money, right?"

"Humans do things for money, yes. Kidnapping princes is probably worth a lot of money, but yes."

"Well I don't know how much money we have but we could try that if he can't make it himself."

"It's very dangerous if you get caught, is why it would be so much. And I don't particularly want to get anyone else killed."

"Hmm. 

We can't move him ourselves, even if we're willing to go slow enough we don't hurt him. We can't interact with slow people, or with most things they make."

Nod.

"I can think of one person who would definitely help us and succeed at it, if it meant getting to meet a fairy, though I don't have any idea whether she'd want to stay. But she's in Norway."

"And Norway is - you know, we could just draw a map -"

He does this, in the dust. He knows the coastlines south of here quite well, and west of here; east they get vaguer, and north there's not much. 

She draws lines between the kingdoms. "This one is Norway. My two oldest children and niece will be here, in Akershus."

"Well, that's not too bad." He squints. "We could be there before sunset but probably not there, and back here for the baby, and down to my court, before sunset."

Nod.

"Nothing horrible will happen to them in the next two sunsets. We could come back for them when we know more."

"And once we've found somewhere with enough food to support more people, yeah."

Nod.

"I'd like to have something to call you. - not the name your parents gave you as a baby."

"I knew there was something about names. Um. Cecilia, that's a name and isn't mine?"

"'I knew' is very strong, 'I thought' or 'I suspected' is safer. If I wanted to be difficult I'd ask, oh, how'd you know. Cecilia. That's pretty."

"I suspected there was something about names," she amends. "It shows up in lots of stories. I'm not sure what it is, though, it's different between stories."

"That was good, that's not close enough to asking to cost you anything if I decide to answer. 

Most entanglement is just about debt. If you get out of debt, that's it, now there's no entanglement. Names entangle for as long as you remember them. They mean you're a little bit connected even if you're even. That - doesn't really matter very much in this case, because we're not even, and not likely to be before you die. But it's a good habit. The name you're given as a baby is by far the most important one, but any name you hold close enough to your heart can do it a little bit, so most people give new names to strangers."

Nod. "And that's not lying?"

"Well, if someone asked what your parents named you and you answered that, that'd be lying, but that'd be - an odd thing to ask. I guess you're a human and maybe people ask odder things of humans."

"Humans would take it as a lie, if someone asked what their name was and they gave a different one. But maybe fairies only ask for things to call each other. - may I have something to call you?"

"You can call me Rána. It means 'wanderer', in my language."