No one likes dipping in the eel weir. White bubbles froth whenever you move through water viscous with their slime, and the bravest eels nip. That’s why the low dams are there. Not just to separate our backwater inlet from the river, but so workers can stand on submerged walls and have the water’s flow barely splash the toes of their boots. No one wants to wade in, not even me.

  Still, I almost look forward to problems that can’t be solved from above. They might be nasty and likely to break skin, but everyone else hates them so much I can trade a bit of wading for a whole day’s work. My younger sister is too young to work unsupervised, and everyone older is busy with apprenticeships. Now that I’m fourteen, I have the most chores of anyone in my family, and I cherish the times I can offload them all.

  Apprenticeships have scut work too—heck, they’re full of them. But at least that work is educational, building skills you’ll use for your whole life. Chores on the fish farm might be that for my older brothers, who might stay here their whole lives, but not for me. As the third son, there won’t be room for me here once I grow up. I’ll have to make my own way.

  My boots don’t splash because I step down gently, the way Grampi taught me. He was an adventurer way back when he was alive, and has served as an entertaining teacher and storyteller for our family’s children in the generations since. As I walk the cobblestone dams that section the inlet, I peer on either side for an eel who doesn’t fit. The workers yesterday swore an adult eel managed to slip into the glass eel section, where the eels are so young and thin, their bodies are transparent.

  That’s a big problem. Half of eel farming is preventing cannibalism, since any eel prefers live prey to the meat-and-bread paste we throw in. If not separated, a large adolescent will eat four or five glass eels a day until it’s caught. The trouble is, fresh water needs to be able to flow into and out of each pen, and sometimes eels manage to slither over or through what should separate them.

  Usually, such eels are easy to find. But looking into the young eel’s pools and through their transparent bodies, I can’t spot the brown or gray of their older relatives from up here. Arvis would say that he looked and then give up, but I know something must be killing the glass eels. No one would take on hours of my chores just to send me on a snipe hunt.

  I’m being uncharitable to my middle brother; he is more reasonable than that. But with the funk he’s been in, extending charity is hard. He expected the negotiation for his marriage to be as easy as his private courtship. It wasn’t. The worst part isn’t her family’s avaricious nature. It’s that their greed caught him by surprise.

  Courting a girl for months without feeling out her parents’ ambitions is as foolish as wading into an eel weir with loose pant legs. Kneeling down, I pull leather strings from my pockets to tie my pants tight around my ankles and my sleeves to my wrists. You have to be cautious, Grampi tells me. He’s told my brother that too; I’m sure of it.

  Cautious is not the way my brother brought his intended’s family and ours together to the negotiating table last month. He treated the marriage like a done deal already, as though how gaily he and the girl spent their time would transfer to the formality of the negotiation table. He expected a week of relaxed talks and an easy engagement announcement. He had no idea that her family would ask for a decade-long contract as her bride price, one that would give them an ongoing portion of the farm’s yield. What an insult. Land rights aren’t bought and sold.

  I splash into the glass eel corral and am grateful for my growth spurt. Fingerling eels, those the size of a finger, brush up against my neck, but by tilting my chin up I keep my face clear above the water. Last year I’d had to bob to breathe, and there’s nothing that ruins your day quite like a fingerling investigating your nostril’s qualities as a burrow. There’s worse things, like being bitten, but none quite the same. There’s also, I’m learning, nothing that sours your mood quite like bitterness between family.

  As a little kid, I’d laugh when Grampi said family matters are always complicated and most often bitter. Now, I can see that he wasn’t entirely joking. My middle brother scandalously asked Dad to scorn tradition and agree to the deal. Of course he was shot down! None of our fish farm is part of his birthright; land rights always go to the heir. To indulge Arvis’s infatuation, Dad increased his offer to what Mom calls an outrageous sum, but got in trouble with her for nothing. The avaricious family wouldn’t budge.

  I take a deep breath to calm myself, and a deeper one for more practical reasons. I kneel, dipping my head under the surface. There’s loose mud and pebbles across the whole corral for baby eels to burrow in, but we keep the silt layer shallow enough that older eels can’t fully hide. I bend down further, pressing my chin into the mud so my eyes sit just above the substrate, and look carefully across the bottom. The dirt is uneven, but there aren’t many protrusions large enough to hide an eel as large as the workers described. Eyes open, I stand up to take a breath and fishing spear. So long as it can’t switch hiding spots, I can poke them one by one.

  Digging the wooden end of my fishing spear into the last hiding place stirs dirt, but the big one isn’t there. I grin. If it isn’t in the glass eel corral, then it hadn’t simply slid over the sectioning wall on accident—it’s learned to jump back and forth. I smile. I’ve found an opponent worth investing a card into.

  Bestowing a blank card on an enemy always has risk.Not only does it grant card abilities based on the creature’s activities and nature, but a living creature with a card is protected. At minimum, it will be able to shunt one serious blow to their card, leaving their body unharmed. If I had no card of my own, this would be a foolish risk.However, my own card puts me at slight advantage, no matter what power the eel gains, because it grants me a measure of protection from serpents.Its active text is “Serpentsmust pay one mana to StrikeHuman Child.”

  Living creatures are, of course, less restricted than disembodied remnants summoned from cards, and so don’t have to pay the mana, but the effect on them is, while subtler than on summons, still real. The short of it is that serpents of all typesare less inclined to bite me, and summoners have to pay an additional cost to attack. I wish less inclined meant disinclined, but I’ll take what I can get.

  Climbing up onto the retaining wall, I settle back onto my heels, glad for the warm day. Water drips off me and flows over my boots. I don’t awaken my summoning deck yet; if the eel doesn’t show before it expires, then it’ll be hours before I can call it up again. Instead, I set my fishing spear on my knees, partially unfocus my eyes, and settle in for a long wait. Sitting here would almost be pleasant, if only the ruminations on my family’s troubles left me alone.

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  The saga gets worse. My middle brother overstepped his bounds by asking our eldest about the fishing yield. Dad’s still alive. His heir’s words have no bearing.If my middle brother had the political savvy of a worm, he’d realize that his inquiry could be construed as a death wish on our Dad. Thankfully, he had at least the sense to do all his pleading in private, so that bit of dirty laundry won’t get out.The negotiation between families ended politely, if not amiably.

  Within our family, less so. I’d thought Grampi’s pessimism about family was onlyhis bitterness about his own wastrel son he complains about, but maybe it’s a truth about the whole world. Family matters are complicated.

  Twenty minutes into my vigil, the afternoon sun has beaten the wet off me. My now-dry clothes cling to my skin. And there’s movement. A grayish eel, so big it’s only half-covered by the trickle flowing over the dam, pushes itself against the flow. It struggles for two feet to reach the other side of the cobblestone, then with its head on one side and tail on the other, it effortlessly slithers to get the rest of its long body across.

  The eel’s size seals the deal for me. I want it as a card. While loosening the chords on one sleeve to fish a blank card out of a pocket hidden inside, I focus behind my ear, awakening my deck. Two transparent cards float in front of me, unreadableby anyone else. Recognizing them both takes only an instant. Luckily, one is my current summon, a different eel I slayed much earlier.

  The other card is a Water mana. If it had been Lightning mana instead, I would have to wait six minutes for my next turn’s draw. I could do it, but the wait would have been awful. Patience comes easy when there’s no disaster in front of me, but Grampi says it’s one of the virtues matters most when you least want it. He’d call my pride in it premature, since my patience hasn’t been truly tested yet.

  What I can be proud of is timing. I cast both cards without wasting a blink, the Water mana’s card condensing in my hand and floating forward as a hovering wet wisp. Mana cards take six seconds to become real after being cast, and give their summoner a mental tug of readiness on the seventh. I’m never so tardy. Nor early, which would dispel the mana.

  The wisp dims as I tap its power to summon my eel. In the water, an outline appears. The weir becomes a flurry of movement as every eel feels the pressure pulling towards the manifesting summon and hides. My eyes track the wayward eel as I wait. In exactly one minute, the manifestation will finish and I can Order a Strike.

  Meanwhile, I stretch my hand into my pocket to retrieve a blank card. My fingers find it, and I hold it ready.

  The big eel becomes bold again and snaps down on another tiny eel, its third snack since crossing the wall.Finally, my summon is ready. As still as a drawing, it doesn’t move. At its current rarity, my summon is completely dumb and immobile unless obeying an Order. For this, that’s okay. One Strike is all I expect from it.

  My feet splash as I run along the dam’s top, getting close. Pushing my intent into the blank card, I throw. As it flies, the card turns transparent and course-corrects, melding into the eel’s chest. In a blink, the predator is replaced by a larger, realer version of itself. Its flank, pock-marked from trading nips with its fellows, smooths into a spalding camouflage pattern. The superreality of card and body working in concert is a striking contrast to summoned cards, duller and flatter than the world around them. For a moment as the living eel dives, I see a starburst of elongated blue spots on its snout, surrounding equally elongated teeth.

  For a smokescreen, it stirs up the mud. I jump into the water to track it. Strike, I command my card with silent will, and the faded eel rushes forward. It bites down on the other’s tail, wounding its card, but the living eel twists in a circle to retaliate. Neck bitten through, my summon fades without even a death throe. Just me and my target now.

  It lunges for me, narrow jaws trying to rip a chunk out of my thigh. I shunt the damage to my card instead of my flesh, so its bite leaves ghostly wounds and a point of damage. My card doesn’t aid my attack, but I don’t need divine aid for that. My fishing spear is enough.

  A stab, and its card drops dormant. The eel reverts to its weaker, more gangly true self. I can barely see in the stirred-up silt, so I push up and back to see the edges of the mud-cloud. Spear pulled back and arm ready, I hold my breath under the water and wait. Wait.

  There! I thrust and hit, pinning the eel to the ground. I pop up for a gasp. Retrieving the imprinted card from its carcass would be easier if I twisted the spear above the surface and let the aquatic creature air-drown, but a foe you card should be treated with honor. To best it, I pull out my knife, dive down, and dance the blade before its face to bait out a lunge. The canny thing holds off for a while, but knows it’s pinned. It tries to inflict one more wound on me, but with a final grab and stab, I end the fight.

  Then I run my hand along its flank, searching, and pull its card out of its wound. I rise, pull myself onto the dam’s low wall, and set my spear down beside me. The eel’s body hangs from the end. My hands tremble from adrenaline. There’s wiggling in my sleeve; I’d forgotten to re-fasten the chord.

  After gently shaking the glass eels to their home, I put my spear away from the water and walk straight home to my card collection. Hearing drips on the clean entryway brings me back to my senses. I step back, hang my coat outside, and wring my shirt before stepping in again.

  I sift through my small collection for my eel cards, all four of them. With my pants still sopping wet, I sit on a rock outside my door and compare them. The trick to combining cards, Grampi says, is they have to be similar enough for their stories to merge, but not so similar that the consumed card’s story adds nothing new. I’d been choosing which hunts to invest cards in based off his advice.

  Blending three cards together is the minimum to advance one's rank. I grab two gray-bordered eel cards and place them beside my new one; since Mentioned cards can do little to distinguish themselves, the three seem identical, but the card I’d wielded today had been strong and the other fast. I feed both their essences to the clever one, and the gods approve of the balanced trifecta. The plain Small Eel card gains more detail, power, and a black border. It’s Clever Eel again, regaining the rank it lost upon death. I pocket the emptied cards, both now blank.

  Then I take my remaining two eel cards, black-bordered as well. I’ve been using lightning-attuned mana when summoning them for some time now, hoping to influence their upgrade. Moment of truth. I feed them to Clever Eel with a quick prayer, and the merge glows.

  I leap up, cheering. Clutched in my hand is a green-bordered card depicting an eel cowled by arcs of lightning. I hold it close, peering at the first Notable card I’ve owned. Upon seeing a section of text without the slant of stories, my excitement doubles. It has a special effect beyond attack and defense. I can’t wait to show it to someone who can read the divine writing and tell me what its ability is.

  Hearing Dad singing while he works in the distance, I look at the trail of damp footsteps I left on the hardwood and correct myself. I can wait after all. If Mom sees the mess I’ve dripped on my floor, I’ll be working from dawn ‘till dusk tomorrow instead of enjoying the chore-free day I’ve earned. Hopefully, coming back to a clean house and a few of my card’s emptied to blanks the family can use will ease the stormcloud temper that’s been brewing in her.