I gazed at the horrific mass of metal and leather woven into the flesh of the dead Mirage Lizard. “What is that for?” I asked, unable to tear my eyes away.

No response came so I looked to mom. She was pale as a sheet, tendons bulging from the scarred hand wrapped around the pommel of her sword.

“Mom?”

She met my gaze, her face clouded by an unfamiliar expression. It couldn’t have been fear, could it? Mom wasn’t afraid of anything. “Nothing good,” she said. “Let’s go.”

I looked at the huge pile of meat and crafting materials that we’d sacrificed most of a deer carcass for. “But what about-”

“Now,” she commanded, already moving away.

I followed as she picked up speed, heading perpendicular to the way we’d come. We came to the edge of the copse and she leapt onto a band of exposed rock where the snow had melted. We jumped from one rocky stretch to another, slowly changing course back towards home, careful not to leave a single footprint on the snow.

Eventually we came up to the edge of the rocky plateau, where a rock face jutted straight up. Rather than climb, she waved her hand, a ring on her finger flashing, and part of the wall started dissolving. Her illusion ring!

We entered the cave and she pulled a heavy cloth off what appeared to be a pile of rocks. Another flash of the ring proved my assumption wrong. A gear cache. One I’d never seen.

Mom pulled to large packs from the pile and started loading them. Sleeping roll, tarps, ropes, a mana lamp, needle and thread, extra leather to repair our gear, and more. I felt her erect a barrier at the mouth of the cave before collecting mana in her fist. She slammed the earth, sending an explosion of dirt and rock in every direction. Thankfully, I’d already covered my face. From the pit, she pulled a box. A freeze box, of course. She’d been storing emergency rations using the natural cold of the earth to keep the temperature stable.

I caught a stick of jerky that she chucked at me and gave it a taste. Sure enough, this was from last year’s batch. We’d run out of maple syrup for the glaze, and the unrepentantly salty flavor that resulted was unmistakable. It had seemed like we went through that batch way too fast, but I hadn’t complained since it was kind of nasty.

My eyes never stopped watching as she packed our bags like a tornado of organization. One less I’d learned the hard way years back was to always make sure you knew what you were carrying and where it was in your pack.

As she finally shut the packs I returned my eyes to the gear pile, which was now half covered in dirt. What remained was a collection of weapons. We trained with everything—spears, shield, swords, axes, and the bow, obviously—but she never let me carry anything besides my knife outside of training.

“Put a hatchet on your belt and strap a sword to your back next to your quiver, then grab a spear. I’ll carry the shields.”

I nodded and complied, noting the satisfying weight of wearing proper weapons with a grin. That feeling lasted for a moment until I remembered what we were doing. I still couldn’t unsee that look that had come over her face. “Mom, why are we running?”

She finished strapping on shield to her pack and hefted the other, fitting it onto her left forearm. With a sigh, she answered, “I’ve only seen something like that once before, right before an entire settlement was destroyed because we couldn’t stop a hoard of evolved orcs.” We? I almost never hear her talk about other people in anything other than the abstract. “Those harnesses are bonded to the rider. They’ll know that someone killed it, and where.”

“But home is really well hidden, isn’t it?”

She ignored me and hammered the wall with her fist, shattering stone. “Damnit! I should have been more cautious. Predators don’t just move into new territory for no reason. All these years and you’re still a fool, Casandra.”

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“What about my books?” I knew what I said was foolish, but you have to understand, when your entire life is shared with just one other person, no matter how amazing she is, you need something more. Books were my escape. A window into a time when the world was whole. When kids my age would be at school with other kids. I had no idea what it was actually like, and mom claimed that stories made it all sound much better and more exciting than it really was, but some part of me yearned for the kind of connections I read about.

She shot a hard look at me, and I just stared back. She must have seen something on my face because her expression softened. After another minute of looking at each other she let out a heavy breath. “I suppose we still have time before they find the cabin. It wouldn’t hurt to activate the storm circle and grab a few more things.” She pulled her hair back and tied it loosely. “Plus, if we take the sled this will be a bit easier.”

Without another word she set off and I followed in her wake. This time focusing on speed rather than subtlety. The storm circle would cover our tracks regardless.

The miles seemed to crawl by as I realized the difference between wearing my pack and weapons for a few minutes compared to running for nearly two hours with it. But I didn’t complain. In my experience, complaining only made things worse. Usually because mom would find a way to make things even harder whenever I did.

We had to take off our packs to fit through a slot canyon in the rock formation that served as our defensive wall. Finally, stone gave way to open space and the cozy walls of wood greeted my eyes. A thin trail of smoke was still rising from the chimney. Next to the main house was a pantry atop a tower, a smoke shack, and our sauna. A tight pressure rose up in my chest. I was going to miss this place.

Mom pulled the sled out from under the house and went inside with no delay. I followed, but slowly. Taking a moment to trail my hands across the wall of the sauna until it caught on a bent nail. We’d built it together when I was only eight. I still remember trying so hard to hit that nail in and throwing the hammer when I couldn’t. I wasn’t so good at dealing with failure when I was little.

Putting down my pack, I entered. The house was full of handmade furniture padded with thick furs. A stone fireplace glowed on the western wall with faint embers but the cots we slept on. My first stop was the collection of frayed and yellowed books stacked on and around the shelf on the far wall. Where to begin?

Mom came up behind me and set a hand on my shoulder. “You can choose five, but be quick.”

Only five?

She squeezed my shoulder. “I know this must be hard little- I mean Rowan. Once we find a new safe place we can go scavenging and get an even bigger collection.”

I nodded, ashamed at the tears that tried to fall out of my eyes. They were only books, only things. This was just one place of many. It shouldn’t matter. We’d find a new place, new things. We still had each other. It didn’t matter.

Arms wrapped around me from behind in a rare embrace. “Be strong, my son. To live in this world we must be warriors. Steel yourself and think of this as the first trial in your rite of adulthood.”

I nodded and she released me. I wanted to take the stories, the dramas, the gateways into other worlds. But I knew that there would always be more stories. Instead I picked the books that had shaped my thoughts the past few years. The ones that made me really think about what life was. Soon enough I had a pile and was set to wrap it up in oil cloth.

“Thus Spoke Zarathustra, huh?” I could hear the smile in her voice. “Oh, and is that Heart of Darkness I see? Interesting choices.”

I finished wrapping them and walked out to the sled where she had already fastened our bags and an extra duffel. The books fit nicely into an empty space at the end of the duffel.

Mom pulled out her whistle, it was black metal with a wolf head carved into it. The air trembled as she blew it. Whatever sound it made was inaudible to my ears. But the howling responses were not. We went back inside and pulled up a trap door, descending with the light of a light spell into a cavern beneath the house. A magic circle was carved into the stone, each line connecting a glowing crystal in a complex circuit. Mom poured blood out from her hand, till it filled the lines of the circle. She didn’t even have to cut skin to do so.

She was so incredible.

I stepped back as she began to chant in the strange, wordless language of magic, eyes glowing. The room filled with red light interspersed with shards of blue. The air above started to wail and whirr.

Big magic like this was way beyond me. But I looked forward to learning eventually.

Under the sound of the rising storm was another sound. I threw a glance at mom and decided to check it out.

After climbing up and poking my head out the front door I noted with relief that the wolves were there already. Sitting. Waiting for mom. Their leader was the same one I always saw with a scar on his muzzle. Scarface, she liked to call him.

But they weren’t looking at the cabin, or at the swirling storm gathering above. Instead, all of them were focused on the natural stone wall that protected us from those approaching from the south and West. The only easy access to the cabin was a slope down the other side of the mountain where the wolves patrolled.

I followed their gaze, as sinking feeling dropping my gut.

A gloved hand reached over the ledge of the wall, followed by another, then a face. A human face.

“Found ya.”