The titular little brook of Little Brook burbled happy on by, ignorant of her foul mood. The sky was clear, the sun rising, birds chirping… none of it helped Clio. She was still homeless, widowed, an exile. In fact, if not name-already.

No doubt the village’s matrons and gossips would be all aflutter with news of her homestead burning. Soon enough, market goers would spread the news and she’d be shunned. Ostracized for daring to survive the wickedness of others.

Being scorned was nothing new.

The hunter’s path she followed spit her out into the fields before the village. Early risers, as most farmers were, raised hands to greet a traveler. A boy of no more than twelve shouted out “Who goes there?” with a smile… before it crumpled. Faces raised in greeting turned away, giving rise to uneasy mutters between ever busy hands.

Crossing the fields and stepping into the streets of Little Brook was no kindness either. Farm hands and shepherd boys exchanged for the clucking of housewives tending to their chickens and gardens. For weary glances and hidden, judging looks.

Just because she was different, because she didn’t fit in.

The small ball of shame curdling her stomach Clio ignored as best she was able.

“It wasn’t my fault. It wasn’t.”

Not then. Not now. Most days, she’d come to believe it. It was harder now, with it happening twice. Clio’s hands went around her bags and pouches, checking her venoms and tinctures.

Never again would she let them out of her sight. Twice was one time too many.

The lake of poorly concealed hostility choking her cracked and shattered at a sudden boisterous call:

“Well now! Look what the wolves chased in? You get bored of your marsh and flowers little girl?” a gruff voice bellowed.

“Byrron, you old dog.” Clio greeted back, feeling her lips curl up in a wide smile. “You still barking at every passing wagon?”

“Wagon? All you’ve got is a mule! Or do my eyes deceive me?” he asked.

Byrron Meadows was the bastard son of a bastard son of some minor knight. Of where, he never told. Whatever his blood, he was a down to earth man, over six feet tall, tall enough to match Clio eye to eye. But where she was a willow, he was a bear of a man, nearly as wide as a wagon. With shaggy brown hair and a scruffy beard, he looked more lumberjack than forester.

How someone so wide could be a hunter had to be seen to be believed. It all came down to patience, with Byrron. He’d sit his ass in a bush or a tree and wait motionless from sunup to sundown, to get his shot.

What mattered to Clio here and now was that unlike most of the villagers and like most of the hunters, he did not blame her for the foolishness of others.

As she approached the cobbler’s courtyard, Byrron lounging on the wooden fence, Clio noticed that he viewed her four legged companion with concern. Not without reason.

“No. Your eyes are as fine as the day you shot down that redtail Byrron.” she replied, pumping exuberance into her words.

Bless the man, he nodded, taking the hint.

“Well, not all of us can be as handy as you girl. Always climbing trees and whatnot. You got any more of them quail eggs with ya?”

“Not today. I do have more Still Water, if you’re interested.”

A glitter came into his eyes. “Well now… I might be.” he haggled, but Clio wouldn’t have it.

“Don’t be leading me on, Meadows! If it’s a sale you want, it’s a sale I have. You’d best buy well and buy enough, you’ll need it to last!” she claimed.

Realization flashed across his face and Clio begged with her eyes for him to move on. She was leaving. It was what it was. Besides, without her paralysis venom to deal with bears and stalkers, the life of a hunter would grow far more dangerous again.

It was a crime to hunt them, to deny the nobility their sport. As such, a way for an arrow to leave a beasty down, yet alive, was gods-sent for the small community of local hunters. One that they would soon lose.

They’d need to adapt, go back to the old ways.

Byrron knew it as well, his face darkening with displeasure.

“I have to ask, Clio.” he told her bluntly.

“Dark words and darker deeds Byrron. I’ve need of the Preacher.”

Clio was touched to see actual distress come over Byrron.

“Not to join the Covenant, surely? You’d look terrible in a habit.”

The question startled a bark of laughter out of her. That relaxed Byrron, mostly.

“No, no.” She waved him off. “Though many may call for it, when all is done.” Clio grumbled.

“Clio, what has happened?” he finally asked.

Smoke filled her lungs, the smell of burning flesh. Blood, on her hands, on her boots. A man’s scream, a woman’s wail.

“Sin and worse. Leave it be. I’ve naught wish to darken your day with my troubles.”

“Yours?” he asked. It was a knife to her ribs, but he had to ask. She knew it. It helped.

“No.” she growled. “That honorless cur Grutt. Ruin of both our houses.”

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It took him a moment to follow the path. Grutt, ruin, honorless and the Preacher. Byrron paled where he stood. “No.” he gasped. Clio could see and hear how multiple watchers all but leaned in, listening in on their conversation. Such was the lot of villagers.

“What of Nat?” he asked and wasn’t that the question.

Clio was a widow. She should be in mourning. Torn up, wailing, crying. She wasn’t. It wasn’t in her. She’d been passing fond of her husband, in his better moment, and furious with him as he was with her, at times. But whatever their differences, they’d made it work. Were making it work.

Nat was dead. Dead and his bones, his body was still out there, left out for the wolves and birds because Clio had to take care of the living. Her bones were suddenly made of lead. They dragged her down, knees hitting the hard packed earth.

“He’s dead Byrron. They’re all dead.”

From out of nowhere a balloon in her chest burst, and with it, so did her tears.

It wasn’t the best life, but it was hers. It had been hers.

Now it was all gone.

Even if she wanted to leave, thought about it, planned it? Gone over and back between leaving or staying and trying to make the best of it?

Never like this. It was never like this.

As if called down by some malicious god, a familiar voice sipped poison in her ears:

“Destroyed another family, have you, witch?”

Bile seeped with every word, marring her grief but before Clio could gather herself Byrron was quick to answer:

“It was your own man’s fault, what happened to you and yours, so you’d best walk and keep on walking, Mistress Whitebell.”

“A poor friend you are, to side against a widow.”

The familiar refrain only made it all worse. Shame and grief mixed and pulled her down, keeping Clio on her knees in the dirt. Derren had taken her skinned kill and sold the meat to a Lord. They’d been up against it, after a hard winter. But he hadn’t checked, he hadn’t asked.

Clio was a trapper and sold her skins to tanners. But she hunted wolves with envenomed arrows and some venoms were poisonous. It was mercy from the Lord, that Derren was the only one to lose his head. It had beggared his family and only Clio’s begrudgingly accepted contributions had kept them fed.

She’d paid the wereguild thrice over, but it was never enough. Not for the villagers that had gotten raised taxes for the year… and not for his wife.

Maryam Whitebell looked down on her, face scowling. No great beauty, the lean years had made a blade of her pointed chin, and her eyes were, as ever when looking at Clio, spears filled with blame and wrath.

But for once, she did not get her way. Usually, hunters ceded the village to villagers. Not today.

Byrron came over the fence with an ease that belied his stature, standing between them and cutting off that painful look.

“I am siding with a widow. And a friend.” Which you are not, Clio heard, unsaid as it was. “If you don’t get to walking, Mistress, our friends will be taking our needlework elsewhere.”

It was a hefty threat to levy, just for her. Clio did not wish for it. Maryam had three children who’d starve right alongside her, innocent of her wrongdoings.

There was a loud clack, one that took a moment for Clio to place. It was the sound of teeth slamming together. Maryam Whitebell strode away, her arms clenched, stride furious. But she spoke not a word, and spared Clio not a glance.

It was an absurd thing to be thankful for, yet thankful she was.

When she could gather herself, Clio tried to convince Byrron to take her venom in thanks, but the stubborn man wouldn’t hear of it. In an absurd turn around, he kept arguing her up, to pay more for her last batch.

Finally, he silenced her with an undeniable point:

“They’ll all want some, as supplies ran out, and I’ll be the only seller left. Don’t worry yourself over my coin purse lass. I’ll do just fine.”

That?

That was something she hadn’t considered. Clio felt foolish for it. She was better than this. If she was to travel as a peddler, as were her dreams, she had to be better than this.

***

The village store had a shrill voice haggling away in it. Clio went right past it, kept on walking. She didn’t need or want an audience for that talk. Instead, she skipped the shop and moved on to her next destination. Little Brook wasn’t large enough to have its own Church, but stories say that sometime during the Third Sapphire War a wandering Preacher wandered in and never left. His humble home now served that purpose, in practice.

Clio found the Preacher on his knees, pulling weeds from the garden before his home. His back was turned to her but that didn’t stop the somewhat unnerving man from greeting her:

“Welcome Child. You bring great sorrow to this house of Lords, and yet…” Familiar bitterness enveloped her, but Clio wouldn’t let it stop her from doing what was right by her man.

“I’ve Sin to relay to the Holy, Preacher. I’ve no time for shrouds or weeping.” she replied, unashamed. She’d never been welcome to his sermons or his house, for all the man had married her. It was only by long standing law that he hadn’t, couldn’t, refuse the bride’s request that her side of the aisle have the Maiden, the Mother and the Crone present.

Just another way in which she was different than proper women. “At least this one is merely foreign, not cursed.” The Empire may not have endured past the Tyranny of the Sun, but it’s laws and customs had outlived it. For all that her home, the Land of Birds had very firm notions on how girls and women should behave? The Empire had rammed the custom that all On High were worthy of reverence down their throats through a century of strife. Lords and Ladies.

These days, denying a woman her choice of which to cleave to was like as not to get a mob going, if not two. Best not to tempt tempers. Thus, for all her House cleaved to the Father, her own preference had ever been for the Mother. The provider, the caretaker. And yes, the last guardian of home and hearth.

Even Grutt had not been fool enough to spit on Clio’s prayer plaque, bearing Her Visage.

The Preacher regarded her as he ever did, and somehow it was comfort. He was ever disappointed that she would not abide being a proper Bird of the Land of Birds, all pretty feathers and ever pleasant singing voice. Clio didn’t mind those, so much. It was the blind obedience she took issue with.

Still, the man thought he was doing well, trying to help her. That was the thing with the Preacher, he always pushed but never far. Now, again, he saw she would not be moved in this and moved on.

“You’ll not gain many admirers with that, but your life is now your own, Lady Clio.”

Hearing the respectful address, even if the Preacher made it somewhat chiding was surprising.

“I am, aren’t I.” Clio realized. There were few enough Ladies in the Land of Birds, it being very much a traditional land full of Lords, but as Head of House, even if she was a House of one, she was a Lady now. Doubly so since she cleaved to a Lady On High.

“You do not seem pleased.” the Preacher noted.

A cutting word was at the tip of her tongue when he continued. “Well and good. I’d not wished to believe that of you, Clio. The girl I watched spend so long playing with grasses and flowers would not do such a thing.” the Preacher lamented, shaking his head.

“I did kill them.” She admitted, expecting, perhaps in part, wanting to be lambasted.

“And did they deserve it?” The Preacher asked knowingly, opening his doors to her.

It was still not welcome, but perhaps, she didn’t need to be. The man would never accept her. To him, she was simply wrong. But he was not so small a man to shirk his duties, and to record law breaking and especially Sin was his charge. The Preacher did not judge. That was not his place. He listened.

Even to one so many called witch, he listened.

Such was the respect of his role, that while Clio noted many feet approach while she told her story again, not one intruded. It was… a weight off her soul.

***

Having told her story and sworn sacred oaths on the Mother’s Visage that she spoke true, Clio left the Preacher’s home. Four women and two men she somewhat knew in passing from the village had gathered on the green not far from his door, waiting to come forth with their own matters.

They did not regard her at all. It was not shunning, not yet, not in this holy place, but it was not far. The Preacher may hold to his duty and station, but rumor would poison too many ears for her to ever stay here. She needed to go.

Clio’s feet took her to the village shop, her mule placidly following her lead.