Book One · Signal Green
Table Net-Caster
Twenty minutes, and everything in it came out of a kitchen. In Chapter Eight the Roost throws a grapnel ninety feet and a rolled-up bridge goes out…
5 things out of a kitchen · 7 steps
The other page at the back, free
Ten things to build
on a kitchen table.
One a volume. Household junk, numbered steps, under thirty minutes, and a number the child writes down at the end — because a build that produces no number is a craft, and these are not crafts.
Book Two · The Impossible Rig
Siphon
The Roost's water ran uphill for two miles and then downhill into a tank, with no pump and no power at all — and then one morning it ran backwards.
5 things out of a kitchen · 9 steps
Book Three · The Salt Run
Balance Beam
Twenty minutes, and everything in it came off a kitchen table. No glue, no fire, no tools.
6 things out of a kitchen · 6 steps
Book Four · The Collar and the Key
The Gate Knot
Here is the other thing this book is about. The Tally builds a band you have to file off.
4 things out of a kitchen · 6 steps
Book Five · Nine Small Thieves
Sending something light up first
You cannot carry a rope to the top of anything. So you send something light up first, and let it drag the heavy thing after it.
6 things out of a kitchen · 10 steps
Book Six · The Long Note
A bull-roarer out of a tub lid
A bull-roarer. The loudest thing you can make out of a lid, and exactly how Holly's rig works: a shape, some moving air, and no power at all.
5 things out of a kitchen · 8 steps
Book Seven · Say It Again
Two-Cup Line
Sound is a shove travelling through something, and it travels through tight string very well using no power at all, which is why the best machine in…
5 things out of a kitchen · 8 steps
Book Eight · The Far Map
Knotted Cord and the Pace-Count Map
Every Far-scout carries a knotted cord, and every one of them learned the same two rules before they were let out of the Gate. Keep moving.
4 things out of a kitchen · 8 steps
Book Nine · The Law of the Roost
The one-pin release
Every rig at the Roost comes off the animal wearing it in about a second, with no person and no tool. One pin holds the whole thing on.
8 things out of a kitchen · 7 steps
Book Ten · Nine Minutes
Passed Minute
Two hundred yards of hillside, twelve children lying in a line with one hand flat on the ground each, and a minute handed up the slope and handed…
4 things out of a kitchen · 7 steps
Every one of these has a safety block and it is not boilerplate. The rule the whole series runs on is printed under the last step of the first build: nothing points at a person. Read the block before you start, and do the builds that need it outdoors.