---
He folded his map and put it in a leather sleeve he had stitched himself when he arrived at the village.
Fizz hovered by the door, too excited to land. "Travel clothes," he said. "A small banner for the road. A war song for when the cabbage knight appears uninvited. A pancake fund for me."
"There will be no war song," John said. "There will be quiet, questions, and a willingness to turn back if the road smells wrong."
Fizz tilted his head. "What does a wrong road smell like?"
"Like someone else's plan," John said. "A trap maybe. We still had a lot of work to do, Fizz."
Later that day…
The flag found the afternoon breeze and learned how to move. People in the lane slowed without meaning to. A child copied the whiskers into dust with a stick and, on his second try, got the spark right.
