Try as they might, Fifer and Dev couldn’t budge Florence’s left leg. It was mostly intact and had broken off at mid-thigh, which was great. But now that they had assembled the rest of the body puzzle fairly well, they didn’t want to have to move everything all again over to where the leg was.

Fifer, sweating and breathing hard from the exertion, stood up straight to ease the strain on her back and took a moment to survey the situation and think about what to do. “It’s not going to happen. We’ll have to leave it here. When I bring Florence back to life, I’ll have her scoot down to the leg so we can reattach it then.”

“Won’t that hurt her?” said Dev. “Wow, she is huge.” He wiped his temples with the sleeve of the new shirt he’d found—a cool white linen blouse with a pattern of pale lavender flowers. While the burns on his back had healed enough to wear something over them, the work they’d been doing had broken the delicate skin in a few places, and small red splotches of blood stained a couple of spots between the flowers. He looked around, and the dead dragon nearby caught his eye. He gazed thoughtfully at it.

“I don’t think moving will hurt her,” said Fifer. “She had her legs lopped off one time before when she was alive and it didn’t faze her.” She pulled out and reread the message Aaron had sent her about how to bring Florence back to life. It was a relief to know that Astrid had made it safely back to the Artiméans and had remembered enough to tell them what was going on.

Aaron’s instructions on how he’d brought Simber back to life when he’d been a pile of sand didn’t quite match the situation with Florence, who was in chunks. But Fifer was the head mage of Artimé, and she’d find a way to adapt the spell. She didn’t want to send a reply to Aaron yet, though, because when she did, the instructions he’d written would go with it. She needed to memorize them. But now that Florence’s pieces were almost all reassembled on the lawn, she and Dev needed a break. “Let’s catch some fish. I haven’t eaten all day.”