In the middle of the night, I’m awakened by a weight materializing under my tongue. A pip, given as a reward from the gods. Careful not to swallow, I sit up and spit into my palm. In the lightless room, my hand is indistinguishable from the black, but the gift is visible. The white, pointed bead is as big as the tip of my pinkie and inexplicably wondrous. I’ve heard it said that even species who don’t wield cards covet pips. Seeing one cradled in my palm, illuminated but not illuminating, I know I would too.

  Two more form under my tongue, one after another. With three close to one another, each is brighter. Placing them in a leather coin purse, I pull its drawstring shut. A few seconds apart, flickers of their white light brush through the bag. I’m glad my father locked the house tonight in anticipation. Our workers are loyal, but each pip is worth a season’s work from a hired hand.

  With these three, I own five. Gods willing, there will come a day where I swallow each, absorbing their power and choosing branches of my summoner abilities to improve. But until I have a deck worthy of blessed summoning, wisdom is to hold on in case selling is better. These pips may be the last the gods form under my tongue. Few people successfully upgrade a card to Honored.

  Too excited to sleep, I make use of the time. I crack open my room’s shutter and wrap my blankets tighter around me as cold air flows in. But the gap needs to be there on the turn’s start for me to summon a creature on the other side of the wall. I awaken my deck, hoping my Bog Hawk will be in my starting hand. Two cards fly out to six inches in front of my eyes, visible to my soul regardless of the blanket pressed against my face, but I’m disappointed. They’re both mana.

  I play one, as there are still more chances. If my summon were the card displaced from my deck as the price of its awakening, I would send my deck straight back to slumber. The Mud mana I played guarantees that I’ll be able to play my bird as soon it’s drawn. Quickly, I close my shutter to preserve my room’s warmth between turns. Five minutes later, I crack it open again.

  Draw. Another mana. By poor luck, Bog Hawk had been at the bottom of my five-card deck. I push my deck dormant rather than draw a summon with no turns left to make use of it. Better to leave it an undrawn card that doesn’t add its hour of recovery to my deck’s forced dormancy.

  Before closing the window again, I spy where the moon hangs in the sky.With just three cards for my deck to recover, I’ll be able to try again before breakfast instead of after.

  Wind blocked out, I curl under my blankets and consider sleep. It’s too darn cold. Grumbling under my breath, I shamble with a blanket wrapped around me through the hall to the dining room fire, which shares a wall with my room. Stoking it and adding a few pieces of cordwood, I spread my blanket to soak its warmth before wrapping its heated side inward and returning to my bed. Burying my reddened nose in the smokey cloth, I’m glad we have wood. The peat most our employees use is cheaper fuel, but smells much worse.

  Morning comes. Before breakfast, I try my luck again, this time drawing Bog Hawk early. Everyone says that speaking to low-rarity cards is pointless, but there’s no reason not to while you wait for one’s materialization to finish. As its summoning outline fills in, I tell it, “I’m going to the bog again. You’ll be checking the southern traps I set. Hopefully there will be something worth carding, but most likely they’ll be empty. The traps can’t be triggered by anything small.

  “You will tell me about any carded in the area you Scout, your keyword makes sure of that, but also try to let me know about anything else interesting, alright?”

  The summoning outline vanishes, and my Bog Hawk is not much to look at. Being captured dulled its plumage to card-flat colors. After one indulgent brush against its feathers that halfway sinks into its phantom feathers, I send the mental Order its keyword allows me. Scout East.

  Six minutes from now, the knowledge it gathers will bloom in my mind. That’s enough time to put on a pot of oatmeal and start frying some venison strips for the family. Dad will appreciate those. Eric would too, if he were still living in the main house, but my oldest brother moved out to the other side of the farm so he and his wife can have space of their own.

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  A faint tug under my lungs tells me it’s been six minutes since I awakened my deck. As soon as I feel it, I draw, the act also refreshing my Orders. Bog Hawk is still occupied with Scouting, but Grampi says habit is everything. Someday, losing a few seconds here or there will matter.

  Soon enough, awareness from its Scouting arrives. Before processing it, I Order again. Scout South. A higher rarity card might have diverted to investigate something it found and need slightly different directions, but basic cards are as consistent as sunrise.

  Flipping the venison strips, I consider what my scout found. All the buildings of our fish farm are still standing, not that I expected otherwise, and Bog Hawk doesn’t have the rarity to peer inside. There’s only one creature with a card outside nearby, a human. It must be Eric’s wife. She’s from north of here, and though otherwise sane she’s crazy enough to sip lavender tea outside before the early spring dawns. She calls the time before sun melts frost “invigoratingly brisk.”

  Further afield, Bog Hawk did notice a lone moose, along with the unavoidable bevy of rodents, lizards, and small birds that it reports whenever told to look for interesting animals. Those are useless to me, but creatures it preyed on when alive. The sole trap I set near home is empty, as expected. So near human bustle, I set it more for hope than practicality.

  Plating the sizzling venison, I receive my second Scouting report. Southeast of here, I’m unlucky. Of my three traps, two are empty, and the third holds fast an elk corpse. There’s no carding the dead, and an alligator all the way from the river got to the live-trap first. I’ll have to move that trap, and perhaps others, if our few local alligators are learning to recognize them and check for easy prey. West, I Order Bog Hawk.

  There’s not much bog that way, which means I can force my deck dormant early again. Though that will unsummon Bog Hawk before its work finishes, which interrupts its scouting and sacrifices the later half of the scouting it did do,by practice I know that the shortened report will cover the bog’s edge anyway. If the bog’s border didn’t curve away from the river south of here, I’d have to weigh completing the scouting against my deck’s next awakening being delayed an hour to recover the extra card drawn.

  Overall, Bog Hawk reported nothing of interest in that direction, so I can travel to the northern bog today with clear conscience. If only my summon had seen the Bog Elemental far south, it would be as pleasant a trip north as imaginable. Alas. The formless, living mud has been uncomfortably friendly with me since I imbued it with a card. I only did so the language of intent all carded creatures share could tell it that its curious prodding of my insides was drowning me, which it often forgets is a bad thing for creatures of flesh!

  My honest sentiment towards the elemental is that if I never see it again, that will probably have been too long, but any given today is much too soon.

  Breakfast is a warm, companionable, and quiet affair. My paternal great-grandmother came out of her wing of the house to join us, and we honor her too much for petty conflict to surface. At the meal’s end, Mom sits back and closes her eyes. One of her pip upgrades is to summon a single card without awakening her deck. Summoned this way, the creature will never expire from time.

  If there weren’t so many drawbacks, I would chase that upgrade myself. But circumventing deck dormancy, a summoner’s main limitation, demands several caveats. One of the more minor ones is that the initial summoning takes eighteen minutes. In the meantime, I do dishes and pack a bag of jerky and bread for my day’s jaunt out. I also pack a carefully-wrapped block of fat we made when cooking the venison.

  A more serious caveat is that Grampi, when he appears, has abilities comparable to my Bog Hawk, a full two rarities weaker than when he’s summoned the usual way. Still, the way he blinks and looks about proves he still has the mind and will of his proper rank.

  Unlike Bog Hawk, Honored cards can be affected by non-Ordered words. Mom tells him to advise and defend me, and he nods in response even before her official Guard order.

  “What aspect of Grampi manifested, Mom?” From his appearance, he’s not the Amiable Storyteller he usually is when she summons him. She must have made changes to her deck yesterday to bring other features of his story to the fore.

  “He’s Old Adventurer today. He manifested with Vigilance, so Ambushes and Traps won’t catch him off guard. If he warns you about something you can’t see, heed him.”

  “Yes Mom!” I go to the big winch we use when it’s harvest time for a batch of eels. It can haul out a net holding an entire corral’s worth at once. Compressing a spring I can swap into a triggered trap is trivial. Despite trusting the cylinder's lock, I delicately orient it in my backpack so that if it does release early, it’ll rip out of the bag instead of into my back. “Ready to go to the bog, Grampi?” Specifying that it’s a bog we’re going to is only polite, I feel. Even Honored cards don’t readily remember more than vague impressions of their past summons.

  He turns a judging eye on me, taking in my spear, the knife at my ankle-holster, pant legs tied over my boots to keep the mud out, and my backpack tight against my back, all held or attached the way he taught me for balance if I need to move quickly. With his terse “That’ll do,” we’re off.