Early in the morning, before too many people were out and about, the two of us packed up, raised our cloak hoods, and headed back out to the Gate. Síle locked the door behind us, and then we were up and away, back along the path.
"Some time I want to see An Gleann," I said to her as we passed the sign, just making conversation.
She shook her head. "You really don't. Unless you want to meet some cows."
She managed to hold it in for a few seconds, and then we were both laughing.
"Hey, I like cows!" I said with mock sincerity. She looked shocked and scoffed.
"How dare you talk about my family like that..."
Again we started laughing, after a beat.
I reached down and impulsively wrapped my hand around hers. She squeezed my hand and smiled at me.
"Are you okay with this?" I asked her, echoing her question from the hike before Midsummer.
She looked over at me for a moment, expression unreadable, before saying firmly, "Yes."
Some feeling I didn't understand came welling up inside me, and she suddenly let go of my hand.
"Your hand got really hot," she said when I looked over to ask what was wrong.
We paused on the trail and I turned my palms upward. What I saw was both exciting and terrifying in equal parts. Rainbow patterns of light played across them, almost like sunlight shining through water. The Touch wrapped around my forearms also seemed to be wavering slightly. I looked up at her, and she just seemed puzzled like nothing else had happened.
"Did you see that?" I asked nervously.
"See what?"
Welp, I thought.
"A little Fí-Réalta surprise, I think," I replied.
Síle's sunrise smile put all of the excitement back into the day. "Tell me what you saw."
I described it to her.
"The Leys," she said with wonder in her voice. "Things may get interesting soon."
We started walking toward the Gate again.
"Ohhh," I said, as if finally getting it. "Things will start getting interesting."
When we reached the Gate clearing again, I almost regretted my flippancy. The stone of the arch itself almost seemed to be writhing with energy. I didn't see anything directly, but it felt as if I would see something if I looked away and back quickly, or from the corner of my eyes.
"Alyx?" Síle asked.
"Just a sec," I replied absently, walking over to stare more closely at the stone.
Reaching out and laying my hand on the stones, I felt... something. Like maybe I could reach into it if I pushed a little harder.
"Alyx, maybe you shouldn't do whatever you're doing," she said, sounding worried. "You still don't know how it works."
I looked over at the area under the arch itself. With a kind of second sight, something I could see-not-see, what looked like a corridor of pale pink fog seemed to stretch out into the distance. Cracks and crevices had formed along that tunnel as it snaked its way between... my mind couldn't quite grasp it.
What I did understand is that this arch and the one on the other side weren't quite the same arch, and that the distance between them actually took space. Was in some kind of space. Was the space. Was no space at all?
I had trouble putting words to it, still.
What I did know...
I found a little piece of stone on the backside of the arch, a bit hard to see from most angles, and rubbed at it with the corner of my cloak. What must have been decades or centuries of dirt caked onto it began to rub off, and beneath that...
I heard Síle gasp beside me. I'd uncovered a little facet of what looked like green glass, or glass made from many layers, but also more like a sedimentary stone.
"Sky emerald!" she whispered in awe.
"Sky emerald?" I asked quietly, following her lead.
She shook her head, apparently coming back to reality, and searched around for dirt and anything else she could find to cover up the spot again.
"The last thing we need is for anyone to figure out how valuable this is," she muttered. "That explains why it was disguised."
"What's sky emerald?" I asked again quietly.
"Later," she responded tersely. "Later. For now, just work on your box."
Smaragspéir, she had said.
When she had finished her disguising to whatever satisfaction that was possible without glue, she joined me near the other side of the arch, where I re-deployed the clear container with the phone, the solar panel charger, and the homemade black box, running the cable from inside.
"Be right back," I said, feeling nervous about the arch, now that I could "see" the tunnel.
I held my breath a moment before letting it out again, then walked into the arch with the wire in my hands.
The blur was there, certainly, but it somehow felt different, knowing what the passage "looked" like. I felt somehow stretched, and I had the worst sense of vertigo yet while going through.
Catching my balance on the Earth side, I looked around the area. The arch was in a little miniature clearing of its own on the Earth side, and I could see a sort of dome woven around it. Maybe that's what kept people from seeing it? But if that was the case, how did I...?
Tick tock, tick tock.
I once again deployed the clear box, and turning on the phone brought a network connection after a few seconds. I plugged in the cable and was extremely gratified when the phone gained a connection icon immediately.
I stepped back through, feeling the weirdness again, but maybe a bit less of an upset stomach from it.
Weird. Really weird, no notes.
Síle was there waiting for me on the Shanaclair side. This time, I took a quick look at the phone, and I saw that it also showed a USB connection. I held my breath and opened up the web browser... which... worked.
I laughed in relief at first, then more heavily, before it finally transitioned to a full-throated villainous laugh.
"What is it?" Síle asked, looking like she wasn't sure if she should be worried or celebrate with me.
"The dawn of a new era, my dear," I said, relishing the feeling. "The first network between Shanaclair and Canada."
I was concerned that someone would disturb or steal the gear on the Shanaclair side of the gate. More than just the loss of the phone and the special box, I was concerned about a piece of Earth tech making its way into a black market or something.
Síle helped me dig out a hole in the ground, using the magic she'd been learning at the guild. She didn't know a lot, still, but digging a hole in the ground wasn't exactly rocket science. Just rock science.
Ahem.
I placed the clear plastic box into the hole we'd made, nearly exactly the right size for it, and then we started piling dirt back on top of it, leaving a window for the solar panels, which I'd stuck to the inside of the lid. I wasn't sure it would be enough, but it was all I could do at that moment, and I wanted the data.
Thinking about the cable itself, I wondered if it was going to have trouble with one side aging ten times as fast, in the sunlight and all. At least that part was easy to replace.
"Okay!" I said, dusting off my hands. "Let's go back."
I walked over to the Gate itself, and I felt Síle grab my hand lightly.
"What is it?" I asked her.
"I just... don't like losing the ability to talk with you," she replied quietly.
I hugged her.
"I'll keep learning so I can speak Clair without needing Danna's help," I reassured her. "But for now... it'll just be one more night for us. Then we can stay here."
"Okay."
We turned to go, but in the process of turning my head, I thought I saw something inside the Gate, in that strange pseudo-space of the tunnel. I jumped mightily.
"What? What is it?" she asked, looking around the clearing.
"I thought that..."
Out of the corner of my eye, I thought I'd seen something. The hazy fog of that strange sort-of-tunnel, but also...
A face. I'd seen a strange little face peering out from the space around the tunnel.
Or did I? I looked straight at it again, and it still made me feel slightly queasy to stare at, but that was just the angles and distances not lining up, like before, like some kind of non-Euclidean space that would never make sense without something strong in me.
I shook my head.
"It's nothing," I said finally. "Let's go."
I took Síle's hand again and led us back through to Earth before I lost my nerve.