There was plenty of long and boring before we hit Magalat. The details are sketchy, to be honest; my brain shut off most of the time. It’s honestly really hard to sustain any level of interest in walking for hours on end. I can’t even say where my mind wandered but it was seldom in the same direction as my feet.

One thing I will say is that I continued to learn about myself. I had already discovered that I hate long silences when others are around. I had already found that I can be a grouchy pain in the butt when sleep deprived. The next thing the journey taught me about myself was less shocking. In fact, it was something that I had long suspected: I am not an outdoors person. This might be a bit counter-intuitive, given that I have spent most of my life scraping around in the dirt for vegetables, but it is very much true. See, you can do a day of work on the farm, or haul sacks for the carts going to town, or even muck out a stable somewhat happily, as long as you know that at the end of it all you get to go home! You get to lie down in a semi-comfortable bed, and shake-off the day.

What’s more — and I was just learning exactly how important this was to me — you get to take a bath! Mud, crud and sweat are facts of life on a farmstead, just as they are on the road, but Glade it makes a difference when you haven’t got a week’s worth of it tattooed to you. The irritation it caused my skin was only outweighed by the irritation of knowing Tabatha was going to be smug as Glade that she called it.

I stopped smelling myself on day six — and thank Plough and Hammer I did, because my eyes were starting to water. I only stopped smelling the others about a week after that. I’m not going to claim that’s definitely what caused the friction between us, but I’m pretty sure it contributed.

To my shame, the friction was actually only between myself, Alicia and Clive. Hinny lives in some pasture fields removed from her actual body, and Mirra seems utterly unflappable — which drove me mad at times. That left it up to our trio to do the bulk of the bickering and moaning. We groused and grumbled, sniped and sulked, and generally did a pretty poor job of adulting.

I had my own share of complaints — food, temperature, the stink, the constant humming, the way people exist — but the most frustrating part was acting as translator between Clive and Alicia. The two hated each other. Honestly, I’ve never seen such animosity between two peo—living things that can’t even understand what the other is saying.

“She walks funny. Tell her I said that.”

“What a pompous dandy. Tell him to stop flouncing around.”

“Why does she chew so badly? I’ve got a beak and even I chew more gracefully than that.”

“How is he not bald? There are feathers everywhere!”

So it went on.

The long and short of it is, I was already in a pretty fowl — sorry, foul — mood by day nine, and was very much looking forward to the end. Even given that end might also mean my own.

When night came, I set my bedroll up at the edge of the camp. The aim was to get as far away from the others as possible, whilst still just about within reach of the fire’s meagre warmth. I’d given up trying to pad the bedroll with leaves and blankets by now, and just accepted that lying down was going to be almost as painful as not sleeping at all.

With some muttered profanities that would make my mother weep, I tried to pry some grit from my fingernails. I was compelled to do it, even though I knew good and well the crud would magically reappear come morning. I was wrestled from this gripping task though when I heard voices. Lots and lots and lots of voices.

“Lovely evening.”

“Lovely!”

“Ooh, a bug.”

“Ah! A frog!”

“Would anyone like to have sex? Anyone?”

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

“This is the best leaf I’ve ever eaten!”

“Sex? Sex? Anyone at all.”

“Sex?”

“Sex!”

“Busy eating. Maybe later.”

I felt my heart catch in my throat. “No. No, no, no,” I said. “This can’t be happening.”

“Mel, we’re trying to sleep. Save your complaints until morning,” Alicia said, her back facing me.

“I’ve got a problem, Alicia. I have a big problem.” I squatted on my haunches, hands over my ears, eyes everywhere and nowhere.

Bless her, Alicia reverted to full aunt. She hoisted herself on one arm and faced me. “What’s the matter? Are you hurt?”

“I can hear them. I can hear all of them!”

“Hear who, Mel? What do you hear?”

“Everything!” Every insect, every vole, every bat, every living and breathing thing. They were talking, and I could hear them all. I was a druid who could hear animals, and I was surrounded by the demons. “Why is this happening? Why is this happening now?”

We weren’t even in dense woodland or anything, just a small clearing off the road. The amount of life was staggering though. Just in the space of our camp there had to be millions of creatures, all with their own thoughts and, Anvil curse them, their own conversations.

Clive cocked his head. “I thought it was just chickens you could talk to.”

“Why would it just be chickens?” I snapped, but I barely even heard that over a platoon of ants discussing how irritating it was that they had to route their highway around my bed to get at the scraps of our dinner.

I fancied I had caught little snippets of chit-chat at various times along the road, but nothing quite like this. It was normally a rabbit we had startled, or a bird that had to move off the path for us. A panicked yelp or a throwaway insult had been about the worst of it. I’d never before been privy to entire conversations between every living creature in this Glade’s cursed land. Why this was happening now was a mystery, but then I remembered that I hadn’t always been able to speak to animals and felt the cold, burning realisation that this was probably just the natural progression of my abilities. Just like when you first tune into the ambient chatter of the marketplace, I would never again be able to unhear the mating calls of woodlice.

I’m not ashamed to say that I cried. I cried big, ungraceful tears, and sobbed loud enough that I could hear the owls complaining.

“Try and shut it out,” Alicia was saying. She was rubbing my back now. “It’s just background noise.”

“I can’t! I can’t, I can’t, I can’t.” I knew I sounded pathetic, but I couldn’t help it.

“There must be a way. Iffan must have known how, right?”

“Then he should have lived long enough to tell me!”

Alicia stopped rubbing my back, but only for a moment. “There must be a way,” she said.

“I’m sorry, Auntie. It’s just so loud. You have no idea. It’s maddening. It’s impossible.”

“It’s not impossible, Mel. If druids couldn’t shut out the noise then they would all have gone doolally.”

“Maybe that’s why they tried to kill everyone,” I sniffed. I’d meant it as a joke, but it felt like I’d touched on some dark, forbidden truth. I asked myself then what I would be willing to do to make this torment stop, and my answer chilled me.

“What if we try and drown it out?” Alicia suggested. She then launched into a high, nasal rendition of an old lullaby.

Some species of burrowing beetle switched its own song to match Alicia’s shrill notes.

“Please don’t take this personally,” I said, “but I beg you, shut up.”

“Okay, okay. No offence taken.” She looked around helplessly. “Can we shoo them off? Let’s try that.”

Alicia — bless her — pranced about the camp waving a sheet randomly at the entirety of nature. It was as effective as it sounds.

“A little help here, Mirra,” Alicia said.

Mirra was sat cross-legged on her bed, and I suspect she had been for a while. She watched me from beneath her heavy lids, as usual, but her smile had lost its warmth. I wondered if maybe I was scaring her.

Clive was equally useless, but in his case it wasn’t hard to discern why; he was preening. I debated letting Mirra turn him into dinner after all.

“What are they saying?” Clive said from his armpit.

“Nonsense. It’s all just nonsense. They won’t shut up about the damn weather, and everything that isn’t eating is trying to get laid!”

He looked philosophical. “Doesn’t sound like nonsense to me. What do humans say that’s so different?”

I was too battered and beaten to start a slugging match with Clive now. “I just want it to stop,” I sobbed.

It didn’t stop.

A thousand times a second, I heard:

“Yummy.”

“Pretty.”

“Warm.”

“Scary.”

“Beautiful.”

“Tasty.”

“Tired.”

“Sex?”

“Careful. I think she can hear us.”

“Nice.”

“Quickly.”

“Sex.”

Wait.

“I think you’re right.”

Hang on… “Alicia, stop!” I said.

She froze, brandishing her cloak like she were mid-laundry. “Why? What’s wrong.”

“I’m listening.”

“I’m not sure that’s a good idea, Mel.”

“Shh. I heard something.”

It was a while before I heard the voice again. Either they were keeping quiet, or being drowned out. Eventually, there was another whisper of, “She knows. What do we do? Should we leave them?”

“Never,” a voice much like the first said. “These are juicy. Let her listen. It won’t make any difference. We will have our feast.”

“By the Anvil,” I cursed.

“What is it, Mel?” Alicia near pleaded.

“We’re being hunted.”