The cooks didn’t have anything ready for us right at dawn, except for a couple handfuls of the berries they were going to smash and spread on flat bread. Prevna and I weren’t exactly thrilled to find that out, even if it made sense from a timing standpoint, but we had both gone more than a morning without food before, so we took our berries and made our way to the thin paths as we ate. The walk wasn’t peaceful. Prevna kept lengthening her longer strides, so that I was forced to take twice as many steps to keep up with her, but when the brisk walk nearly turned into a race she slowed down and pretended that nothing had happened. It was infuriating, but I couldn’t comment on it without sounding like I was whining or rush ahead to beat her without looking like a fool.
Instead, I spent the time cursing her silently and planning revenge. She could smirk all she liked, but see if I didn’t ignore her for the rest of this little trip and mess up her long strides the next time we were paired in training.
Which was why when we came upon Loclen, nearly running, just beyond the bridge Prevna was smugly grinning while I glared spears into her back. I nearly ran into Loclen, I was so focused on how return Prevna’s petty behavior. She pressed back into the railing and managed to slip by me with only an inch or two to spare. We stumbled to a stop at the unexpected sight of another seedling up and about at the crack of dawn. I knew for a fact she had still been curled up on her bedroll when I had left the dome earlier. Now she was alert and..cranky with everything tucked neatly into place.
Loclen started forward in the direction we had been going with a muttered, “Took you long enough.”
I rounded on Prevna, “Why is she here?”
She offered, “Strength in numbers?”
“Really,” my face pinched into a sour look.
Prevna waved a dismissive hand. “Look, I might have mentioned yesterday that we were going to go exploring and that if she didn’t want to miss out, she could meet us here.” She shot an appraising look after the other girl. “I didn’t think she actually would.”
A bird chirped behind me and I jumped, just a little, before I spun around to find Wren making her way through the tunnel under the bridge with Chirp and rubbing the sleep out of her eyes.
My voice came out more biting then intended, “And her?”
Prevna shrugged, smile back in place, “You weren’t the first one I approached.”
“You sure made it sound like I was.”
“We both know you wouldn’t have come otherwise.”
My teeth ground together. “I could leave now.”
Wren reached us and hooked one arm through Prevna’s and—after only a brief moment of hesitation—linked arms with me as well. Instantly, my body was at war with itself. One part insisted on pulling away from the intimate, unexpected touch while another rejoiced to be touching Wren, in some capacity, for the first time and a third was stuck wallowing in dumbfounded shock behind the other two parts as they rushed ahead. Prevna gave me a look over the other girl’s head that dared me to leave even as the tilt of her head indicated that she knew I wouldn’t.
Wren dragged us forward before I could make a decision. “I don’t know how anyone gets up at this hour. Chirp had to keep pecking my head for a couple minutes before I could keep my eyes open. I mean I know why we had to get up now, time to explore and all that, but I don’t know how anyone does it without feeling awful. Do you?”
She addressed the question to me and, just like that, I knew I was trapped. My gaze caught first on her pouty lips and then, with a jerk, on her honey colored eyes, closer than I had ever thought they would be, before I felt my ears heat and I glanced away to focus on quelling the moths in my stomach. I think I managed to mumble something about being an early riser.
Wren sounded wistful. “Lucky. I might be able to stay up late, but if I didn’t have Chirp to wake me things early in the morning might as well as not happen. What about you?”
She turned her attention on Prevna and I did my best to block out their conversation. It was too much, too early into the day. I wasn’t prepared for small talk and Wren’s touch and her doing her best to treat me like everyone else. I wasn’t prepared to suddenly have three people to keep an eye on rather than one. Just like I wasn’t prepared for the complete lack of control my reaction brought.
Mumbled words? Averted gaze? Fluttering insides?
That wasn’t me, not anymore. I was better than that, stronger than that. Storms, I was Gimley now and that meant, if nothing else, that I kept control of myself rather than be under anyone’s thumb. This girl and her looks and easy nature would not break me.
The urge to shove Wren away swelled in my hands but the memory of Fellen’s crying face swelled in my mind’s eye as well along with her quiet command to be better. So, instead, I stiffened my back, set my shoulders, and removed my arm from Wren's hold as precisely as possible.
By way of explanation I said, “I’m going on ahead,” and left Prevna and Wren behind. I wasn’t quick enough to leave Chirp behind though. He winged his way onto my left shoulder with a satisfied chirp and began to preen his feathers. When I tried to brush him off the little bird gave my ear a warning nip and when I turned to tell Wren to call her bird back, I saw Prevna make some comment to her before Wren bumped her to the side, playful and embarrassed.
I killed the curiosity that interaction caused and focused instead on keeping my position between the pair and Loclen until we reached the narrow paths. Once there, we eyed our options as a group and Chirp fluttered back to Wren. The two right tracks had the ropes tied to posts at waist level, in line with the left side of each path. The inner right path was also notably thinner than the outside path. The left paths were similar though neither of them had ropes for security.
“Do you really think Breck ran across these?” asked Wren.
A bitter smile twisted Loclen’s mouth. “It’s not so impressive. For all we know she could have taken the rightmost path. And it’s not like she’s one to bluff about doing something so ill thought out.”
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Looking at the open air and flimsy looking branches below the paths, I privately thought it was still somewhat impressive. At the very least, it wasn’t something I planned on doing anytime soon.
Prevna’s eyebrows quirked as she addressed Loclen. “She do something to you?”
Her response was terse. “No.”
We were smart enough to leave it at that and turn our attention back to our own crossing. In the end, we decided taking the rightmost path one at a time was the safest and smartest course. Loclen went first after insisting that heights didn’t bother her. I had tried to take the position, but she didn’t seem to trust that I wouldn’t do something that would make the crossing more difficult for everyone else.
So, she walked across, placing each foot confidently in front of each other as she lightly held the rope and we watched, ready just in case anything happened. Nothing did. She crossed the narrow path easily and looked impatient for us to do the same.
Wren called out to Loclen. “You made it look so simple! Why haven’t you crossed on your own before if it’s so easy for you?”
Loclen lifted her chin. “Who’s to say I haven’t?”
That got my hackles up, but it wasn’t as if I could do anything about it or figure out if she already been to the other side without getting there myself first. Still, her evasive answer sent my mind scrambling to figure out why she would want to join our little excursion if she had. It didn’t look like she had tampered with the rope or it would have given out with the way Wren was leaning on it as she shuffled forward on the track. There was a bad moment when Wren leaned too far to the side and nearly fell before she caught her balance and made sure not to press into the rope so much.
Prevna went next. Before she stepped out into the open air, she made sure to look back at me with a sly smile. “Ready to catch me?”
My glower seemed to be a satisfactory enough answer for her as she huffed out a laugh and made her way across the thin path. Prevna pretended to slip twice but I only flinched forward the first time. She was never in any true danger. Rather, it seemed, she couldn’t pass up any opportunity in her new self-appointed quest to get under my skin.
I clutched the rope tightly when it was my turn to make my way across the thin track and kept my eyes on my footing. I wasn’t about to make a fool of myself when the others made it across safely. Besides, the rustle of pine needles and the rope were much more comforting than whistling wind and uncertain footing. I could run to the other side if necessary, but the wood under my feet felt much more stable than the stone in Flickermark had been. Still, it felt a bit surreal when I made it to the other side a minute or three later without anything going horribly wrong. For how long I had put off the crossing, it had been remarkably easy.
The needles from a few overhanging branches obscured our view of what lay beyond, in a way that, while natural, was also artful enough that I couldn’t decide if the effect was by choice or chance. Either way it did its job so that that the full force of what lay beyond didn’t hit until we had ducked through the needles.
A healer’s haven.
No, a poisoner’s paradise.
A sprawling tree like I had never seen before dominated the upper left of a wide circular platform. Rather than the cone shape silhouette of a pine, it had a thick trunk and branches that spread out above in a dome-like shape. Its roots reached out and curled around the entire platform, creating pockets where soil had been placed and various bushes, grasses, and flowers grew. The roots even outlined a pool of clear water on the right side of the platform. The whole tree was made out of smooth brown amber sap and tendrils of ice vines curled around the tree, feeding the pool of water and the amber baskets full of different plants hanging from the tree’s branches. The gentle plink-plink of water dripping from the vines was nearly swallowed up by the rustle of pine needles around us.
I stared at the wonder in front of me, feet frozen, even as the others failed to recognize what was in front of them. Wren thought it was a pretty place to relax, Prevna couldn’t see the point of transporting so many plants to a place the fire starters clearly weren’t using for cooking or other work, and Loclen merely made the remark that it reminded her of the terraced gardens of her home. I hadn’t ever seen a ‘garden’ before, but from what she described after some prompting by Wren this fit.
I didn’t recognize all the plants, surprisingly, but the ones I did were all either the most common or the most versatile of what I had been taught. I could make most of Rawley’s poisons from the plants here, if I wanted. However, as I looked closer, I noticed that not all the plants were doing as well as they could have been. A few I knew were shaded under the sap tree when they should have been in the sunlit patches that broke through the branches above and others were being over or under watered from what I could tell. My fingers itched to move the plants to their proper places, to dig in the soil, and feel the leaves and stems in my hands.
“There’s more hunger in your face than I thought you capable of.” I jerked as Prevna snapped me from my reverie. Something flashed across her face as I glanced up at her but she quickly covered it with a quip. “Who’d have thought plants capable of it?”
I didn’t answer her directly, though I could think of two very different people who’d have known it. I could come back here, alone, and take the time with the plants I suddenly craved. It wasn’t something anyone else needed to be party to.
I pushed myself up from where I had been kneeling next to a bush. “Let’s move on.”
She let me brush her off and we found that the other two were also ready to see what else lay beyond the platform. We found that the branch we were on narrowed until it was impassable, but just before we would have had to turn back another branch overlaid it. That branch had a smaller one jutting out of its top that blocked us going to the left, so we took the only path we could.
That led us on a slight descent until we came across another platform that spread out from the path’s left side and rose up to create a dome, like a bowl had grown out of the branch and been tipped over on its side. A stone slab, carefully carved and smoothed flat, stood in the center of the shadowed dome. It came up to my waist. On the slab a pine tree had been carved with an eye in its trunk and flecks of stars around its branches. The tree had been inlaid with red glass, an unusual and rare choice, while the stars and eye had clear glass. A small bowl of bone, no bigger than my palm, rested in front of the stone. A breeze scented with the smell of cold snow seemed to catch and swirl in the dome before continuing on its way.
A shrine to the goddess. They weren’t that common given that Grandmothers were more reliable in getting a prayer to the goddess and most tribes didn’t stay a place long enough to warrant using resources to build them—except for during the cold season and that’s when there were more than enough Grandmothers to go around. Some people kept smaller, simpler versions of the stone on them as an extra sign of loyalty or for smaller prayers they felt the need to express but weren’t important enough to bother their Grandmother with and that didn’t need to reach the goddess.
I hadn’t thought to find a shrine in the heart of the goddess’s domain, but it made sense, in a way. It wasn’t like whisper women had a Grandmother to pass along their prayers unless you counted the High Priestess, who was likely too busy for prayers, anyway. And everyone knew that praying without a conduit—Grandmother or shrine or Grove, pine tree if you were truly desperate—was as likely to reach the goddess as a feather in a storm. Fellen’s and my prayer in Flickermark had likely only reached Her because we had been surrounded by a place made by Her power. Even whisper women had prayers to make and perhaps a shrine in the Seedling Palace was more reliable than one constructed further from the goddess.
We took turns pricking our marks and letting the blood drip into the bowl with our prayer needles. That was how I learned that Loclen’s mark lay just below her elbow, on the inside of her forearm. It was made up of three concentric circles, all broken up into dashes of varying lengths. I wasn’t sure how Wren could tell exactly where her mark was below her eye, but she pricked it with the ease of long practice.
After that we continued to explore and it didn’t take long for it to become apparent that the garden wasn’t the only wondrous thing the thin paths had hidden away.