Two weeks after the fever, Rem already knew every corner of that house.
He knew the hallway floorboard creaked if he stepped on the left side. He knew the back door didn't close properly when it rained. He knew Elara kept the dried herbs in the kitchen cupboard in uncovered clay pots because they didn't have enough lids, and that Aldric woke before sunrise to walk to the Aldren Estate and didn't return until the sky was already dark.
He also knew the pantry was almost empty.
It wasn't hunger—not yet. Elara always found a way. She stretched the broth, sliced the bread thinner, claimed she'd already eaten when she hadn't. Roberto recognized every one of those tricks. He'd watched his own mother do the same thing years ago, in a tiny apartment in São Paulo.
But there was no supermarket on the corner here. No meal vouchers. No neighbor who could lend them rice until the end of the month.
Here, when it ran out, it ran out.
It was on a Tuesday morning—or what he thought was Tuesday, since he still wasn't sure how they counted the days in this world—that Rem decided to act.
Elara had left early for the Aldren Estate. Aldric had already been in the fields since before dawn. Rem was alone, sitting in the kitchen and staring at the last jar of flour in the cupboard. There was enough for maybe two loaves of bread. Maybe.
He closed his eyes.
The tingling came immediately—as if his fingers were submerged in warm, fizzy water. It wasn't uncomfortable. It was as though something inside him had been waiting patiently for weeks and had finally heard the call.
He thought of seeds.
Not just any seeds. He thought of the tomato seeds he'd seen in a documentary about sustainable agriculture—one of those videos he watched late at night when he couldn't sleep. He remembered their shape, their size, their dark color. He remembered the narrator explaining how that particular variety grew quickly and produced a lot, even in poor soil.
He opened his hands.
And there they were.
Six small, dark seeds resting in the palm of his hand as if they'd always been there. Rem stared at them for a long time. His heart was pounding—not from fear, but from something he hadn't felt in a very long time. Possibility.
He closed his fingers around the seeds and took a deep breath.
It worked. The power really worked.
Roberto's mind raced. If he could create seeds, he could create tools. If he could create tools, he could create materials. If he could create materials, he could build. If he could build—
He stopped. He took another breath.
Slowly. First understand the board, then make your move.
If he showed up tomorrow with a new house and a complete garden, questions would follow. Where did this come from? How did an eight-year-old do this? And in a world where everyone had a magical ability, someone would want to know what his was. And if the answer was, “I can create anything out of thin air, with no limit”—Rem didn't need to be an adult to know that was exactly the sort of thing that attracted the wrong kind of attention.
Seeds. He'd start with seeds.
He went out through the back of the house barefoot, feeling the cold earth beneath his feet. Behind the house was a patch of ground no one used—low weeds, loose stones, soil compacted by time. Rem crouched down and began digging with his hands. The earth was hard, but it slowly gave way.
He made six small holes. He placed one seed in each. He covered them carefully.
Then he stayed there, crouching and staring at that patch of disturbed earth that looked like nothing. Six little mounds of dirt. No one would look twice.
But Rem knew what lay beneath.
The beginning.
When Elara returned that afternoon, she found Rem sitting on the back step, dirty up to his elbows.
“Rem! What were you doing?”
“Planting.”
Elara blinked. She looked at the disturbed patch of earth behind the house, then at her son, then back at the earth.
“Planting what?”
“Tomatoes.”
“Where did you get tomato seeds?”
Rem had prepared his answer. “I found them on the ground near the road. Near where the carriers stop. They must have fallen out of a load.”
Elara stared at him with that mother’s look that seemed to see through walls. Rem held her gaze. After a moment, she sighed.
“You should have been resting.”
“I rested. For two weeks.”
“Rem.”
“Mom.”
She tried not to smile. She couldn't.
“If those tomatoes don't grow, you'll have dug those holes for nothing, and you'll have to level everything again. By yourself.”
“Fair.”
Elara shook her head and went inside. Rem heard her muttering something about stubborn children and fevers that messed with their heads. But when she thought he wasn't looking, Rem saw her through the window: Elara stopped in the kitchen, looked at the nearly empty jar of flour, and then looked toward the back of the house where he'd planted.
And smiled. Small, tired, but real.
Rem sat back down on the step and looked up at the sky. It was different from the sky over São Paulo—wider, clearer, with clouds that looked as if they'd been painted by someone with all the time in the world.
Six seeds. It wasn't much. It was almost nothing.
But Roberto had learned one thing in twenty-five years of life: everything he'd accomplished had started with almost nothing.
The difference was that this time, he wasn't doing it for himself.