Breck and I settled three-fourths of the way up the unstable tree. Just below the statue’s crown braid. The tips of the tree cleared the top of it and we hoped that we’d be able to scramble up the last handful of feet before the corpse gorger peeled the tree off the wall. But we also didn’t want to start at the very top in case Ulo appeared below us and we had to help her. If that happened and if we couldn’t reach the top before the tree fell, the plan was to cling to the wall and hope we could figure a way up over the lip of the smooth glass braid.
Or climb down.
I didn’t want it to come that. This statue was at least two or three times as tall as the bluffs Rawley had me practice on.
A bubble of tense silence surrounded us. Anticipation and dread and annoyance. We were both crouched, ready to spring down or launch upwards at a moment’s notice, eyes sweeping the branches around us, ears straining for every little sound.
My gaze kept getting drawn back to what I could make out of the tree’s base. The wet smacking sounds were steadily getting louder. Missing the corpse gorger’s arrival felt like a death sentence.
Despite that pressing need, every needle rustling and the distinct lack of branches cluttering the other side of the trunk pressed my nerves a little higher in my throat. Was that noise Ulo stepping from the shadows? Why did the trunk have to break and limit escape routes? What if Ulo got caught in Juniper’s situation and the pine’s trunk finished splitting and fell down into the dark before we could help her?
Ulo might be a pain in the neck and an obstinate fool, but she didn’t deserve that.
The tree swayed and my focus jerked back down to the base of the tree.
Something viscous and thick and dark covered the tree’s trunk.
The corpse gorger had arrived…and Ulo was still nowhere to be found. No rock covered in flaming cord and flung up in the air in the clearing. No telltale sounds or movement around the tree.
Just an abomination and Breck and me hundreds of feet in the air.
A creaking, cracking groan splintered the air as the branch under me dropped two inches with the rest of the tree. I yelped. Breck grunted.
“Shadow or top?” I hissed.
Breck pointed up.
I scrambled upwards and away from the wide mouth full of teeth as long as my fingers that tasted the air for prey. Breck passed by me in an instant. The pine shuddered and jerked again as the corpse gorger pulled even more of its bulk onto the tree’s trunk.
And that, of course, was when Ulo, with her impeccably terrible timing, stepped from the shadows. Two branches above the monster. Her head shifted back and forth in confusion.
So I yelled, “Shadow walk or die!”
She snapped her head up to glare at me before she seemed to register the corpse gorger doing its best to climb and devour her. But instead of stomping her heel into the shadow she started to climb up after me.
Breck had already cleared the braid and braced herself against glass wheat so she didn’t slip. “The tree’s about to fall!”
I pushed myself harder. Higher. Perhaps I could have shadow walked back, but it was difficult to concentrate on the shadows and I didn’t want to know what would happen if the tree I was using to shadow walk shattered into pieces while I was still in paths. Would I still be able to exit out of the same shadow if I couldn’t find any others? The risk wasn’t worth it, not when I was nearly to Breck.
But Ulo wasn’t even halfway up the tree and it was about to fall. Shadow walking was her only choice if she didn’t want to plummet.
The tree pulled further out of the stonework and dropped another heartstopping inch. The space between the uppermost branches and the crown had widened again. If not for Breck’s hand I doubted that I could cross the gap. I reached out, straining, while I balanced precariously on the thin ends of a couple branches. Breck clasped my wrist and pulled me across the gap, effort clear on her face, but she was more than strong enough get me all the way there.
As soon I had glass underfoot I twisted in Breck’s hold to yell at Ulo. “You won’t make it!”
“Jump!” Breck’s shout was more constructive.
Ulo didn’t waste time responding to us. Instead, she kept swiftly climbing the tree until a handful of seconds later when another cracking sound split the air and the pine started slipping away from the wall. No shuddering jerk stopped its momentum this time.
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She wasn’t close enough to leap for our hands.
Ulo stopped climbing and took the briefest of moments to glare up at me before she hit her fist against the side of the trunk and disappeared into the shadow paths.
A wet sliding pop came from the base of the tree as the corpse gorger was pulled from the broken side of the statue. Freefall. Breck and I leaned over the edge of the braid to watch the pine and abomination tumble through the air.
It didn’t scream or whine as it fell, but its mouths kept moving all over the thing’s blubbery body. Sucking, biting, tasting. An explosion of splinters burst through the air as soon as the tree crashed into the ground below. I hoped the corpse gorger had been pierced by a branch or two. Perhaps it had burst on impact too, if we were lucky.
I fervently hoped that the goddess didn’t blame us for the loss of the tree, that it could be counted as a natural loss due to time and weather. Or, if not, that the corpse gorger’s possible death might even the scales.
I strained my eyes to see if there was any movement below, but no matter how I looked I couldn’t make out the corpse gorger from shadow. When that failed, I looked out towards the clearing, but no flash of light signaled Ulo’s safe return.
I swallowed. “Do you think she’ll make it?”
Breck was already focused on finding the easiest route to climb the braid. “If she’s good enough.”
She let go of me as I clung to a piece of wheat twice my height. Part of me relaxed at the lack of contact while another part was surprised at her callousness. I was used to her being aloof but it struck harder after how focused she had been on helping moments before.
“You don’t care?”
Breck shrugged. “We can’t do anything for her now. Better to focus on what we can do.”
She started to climb higher used the crevices carved into the braid and the bits of wheat that stuck out and made easy handholds. I followed her lead carefully. There wouldn’t be much point in what we had just struggled through if I slipped and slid off the statue.
Another thought occurred me now that I time to do more than react. “Why did you make the call to go up? We could have been back in the clearing now.”
Breck looked over her shoulder at me. “If the tree breaking didn’t mess up the shadows somehow. Besides, Ulo hadn’t appeared yet and we were waiting on her.” And then, a few moments later, like she was compelled to say it, “Storied huntresses don’t give up midhunt.”
I gritted my teeth but kept quiet. I couldn’t deny that I wanted to take a chip of glass too. To stop Fern’s condescending looks for a moment if nothing else.
There would be a way off the statue. Climbing down would be easier in the daylight. Ulo would have to take care of herself. After all the trouble she caused she better be able to do that much.
We got to the top of the statue easily enough. It felt odd to be climbing all over a replica of the goddess’s sister, but I didn’t fear for my life in the same way I would have if the statue had been of Her. Cracks webbed out across the glass, but it was surprisingly robust. The majority of the hair was still intact despite half of the stone part of the statue crumbling.
Breck and I both took time to find a good crack that wasn’t near the edge and broke off small slivers of glass. The worry that Juniper or Fern would keep us in the clearing if there weren't enough pieces for everyone spurred me to chip off more than one. Even one for Ulo.
A tiny flare of light shot up into the air and back down from the clearing when I was still working on gathering glass. It made annoyance and irritation and something I refused to call relief flare up in my chest.
Ulo had gotten back to the clearing.
Which meant Breck and I were stuck up where we were, for now, because we tried to help two people who had saved themselves. Next time I’d remember that it was better and easier not to care.
That night I learned that Breck could fall asleep anywhere if she wanted. Cold, hard glass with nothing to stop her from slipping over an edge to lay on and she still was out between one heartbeat and the next. I didn’t even try to sleep. Instead, I kept an ear out in case the corpse gorger had decided that its hunt wasn’t done and stared up at the stars.
I didn’t know a lot of the constellations, but they did bring Fellen to mind. I knew the ones she had mentioned when we navigated Flickermark together and there were handfuls of others that had myths that I told her to help pass the time. I hoped she wasn’t stuck in some stupid situation like I was because of her recklessness. The tribe should be arriving at Grislander’s Maw soon and she should be Nole’s apprentice still. Between that combination I told myself that she was fine.
Just like Rawley and Prevna should be fine.
They didn’t need me to be there to protect them. I had my hands full protecting myself—and I was doing an terrible job of it so far between the amount of people I kept trying and failing to protect.
Everything was easier when I kept myself apart.
I knew that. I really did, but somehow I kept finding myself putting others’ safety before my own. There were reasons of course. The commander outranked me, no one else had been available to finish off the water snake, I had the skill with traps to bait the festerlings.
And I couldn’t die.
That bit of certainty made it so easy to throw myself into danger as long as I didn’t let myself think of any other consequences. And that was relatively easy too. After all, results were what mattered.
Healed patients equaled reputation for her. Proving my memory with myths had equaled a new healer’s recipe or trick. Taking the disappointment and the bitterness had equaled another day of easy sweetness for the twins.
I might have hated and envied them for it, but that didn’t mean I didn’t know the unspoken arrangement. She had spoiled them because there had always been someone else to take the blame. To punish.
I doubted the twins were as spoiled now. Not when the healing craft had been forced between them.
The night passed slowly as I thought and reflected and waited for Breck to wake up. There weren’t any other signals from the clearing, not that I would have known what they meant if there were. I did wonder if Fern had called for another hunter squad again, though it would be better if she didn’t. The same group needing rescued within two weeks? There was no way we wouldn’t fail this trial if it came to that.
The others had rescued themselves. Breck and I could do the same.