Somehow, despite the fact that Breck showed up in the clearing not long after me, I got the dubious honor of explaining how we got down off the statue. Not everyone crowded around either. I got the stink eye from where Ulo was under the other bicolored tree, Nii wasn’t anywhere to be seen, and Breck and I both waved off the healer, so he scurried back into his tent.
Wren pulled me over to the cooking area to sit while Chirp twittered around us. Fern met us there with a slightly pained expression and I couldn’t help but think that she wanted to blame me for making her life difficult again. Juniper was already sitting in the cooking area, staring listlessly at a full bowl in her hands, while Colm prepared food nearby. Breck settled down a little ways away, up against a tent, but no one made her fully join the group.
I held in a sigh of relief as I sank onto the grassy ground. My body ached from the strain of climbing down the statue and my hip was still protesting the two times it had been slammed into something hard. Wren settled a pace or two away. Fern sat across from us, though I think she was still able to see Breck out of the corner of her eye.
“Well?” Fern asked.
I purposefully took a few long moments to slip my shoes back on, just to be difficult. “We got down.”
Wren leaned forward, eyes bright with interest. “How?”
My gaze flicked over to Breck, but she ignored my look in favor of inspecting her lasso. I sighed and recounted the small adventure before ending with, “It looked like the goddess got revenge on the corpse gorger for Her tree. It didn’t even twitch when Breck poked it.”
Fern’s frown deepened. “She normally ignores the creatures.”
I shrugged. “It could have been a lucky hit, but from what I know She never ignores a tree’s destruction.”
Fern slowly nodded in acknowledgment. “I’ll report it. They’ll probably send a team out to confirm it.”
I nodded back. It made sense that time and effort would need to be wasted to confirm a lowly seedling’s word, especially when it came to a corpse gorger that had already claimed two teams. It wasn’t like people had been quick to take me at my word even before I came to the Seedling Palace.
Then I pulled the chips of yellow, golden, copper glass from a pouch on my belt. “We also got these. Might be the last time anyone gets any for awhile.”
I handed one to Wren as Fern’s eyes widened. Chirp swooped in and plucked the bit of glass from Wren as she focused on me, head tilted slightly to the side. “Enough for everyone?”
I dumped the rest of the chips in her lap. “You can hand them out. Breck already got her own.” I turned back to Fern. “Mission accomplished. We can go now, right?”
Fern’s features closed off again as she wiped the mild surprise away. “I’m glad you took the time to collect the glass, but, like I stated before, we leave when your team leader says so.”
I glared at her. “We saw the Rookery; we know where to go. We got the glass, and the First Flurry could be coming any day now. Why would we stay here?”
Fern gestured to Juniper’s defeated form. “That’s something to ask her.”
I had to draw in a deep breath and let it out slowly to keep from cursing at her. It was obvious to anyone that bothered to pay attention that Fern had chosen this as her hill to die on. Either we listened to her arbitrary rules and got Juniper to say that we were done with the clearing or we would fail the test, because even if we only left Fern behind I didn’t doubt that would count as splitting the group and dock us whatever points we earned when we arrived at the Rookery.
I directed my next question at Juniper, “Do you want to stay here?”
She didn’t answer. Didn’t even react other than clutching her bowl just the tiniest bit tighter while her air of melancholy hung thick all around us.
“She’s been like that ever since Fern brought her back,” Wren said.
I muttered, purposefully loud enough for the younger girl to hear, “Some proof.”
Juniper flinched. Wren glared at me.
I ignored both their reactions to turn my own judgmental look on Fern. “Looks like she’s doing just as much to make sure we finish this mission as you are.” I swept my gaze over the calm camp. A stark contrast to when we had all rushed out to the shadows the night before. “Was your plan to call in another rescue squad? So soon after the other one?”
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Fern’s chin drew up, her back stiffened. Guarded.
I let my eyebrows rise. “Oh? You expected us to figure it out ourselves? Or were you going to declare us lost and move the party on? Seedlings die out here, after all.”
Fern’s voice was tight, controlled, strained enough that I knew she was one step away from snapping. “We saw the tree fall. There was nothing a bunch of untrained seedlings and I could do against a corpse gorger that had already claimed two trained Beastwatcher teams.”
“So?” I leaned forward. “The corpse gorger was dead.” Another pause. “Were you even going to check?”
Wren cut into the conversation. “She wouldn’t have abandoned you.”
I doubted that she would have completely abandoned us too—after all it was known that I couldn’t die, so that could have counted as splitting the party, and Breck was an undeniable asset to the whisper women—but I wanted to see Fern’s reaction. It wouldn’t surprise me if she wanted to leave me to the corpse gorger’s nonexistent mercy; I challenged her authority too much.
“If the corpse gorger had been still alive I would have been as good as dead.”
I sat back. “You couldn’t enter a shadow quicker than it could bite?”
“I wouldn’t bet my life on it.”
“So much for figuring something out.”
Fern gestured to me. “You and Breck did.”
I called it like it was. “And if we hadn’t, you would have had to contact the rescuers again and prove that you’re an incompetent minder.”
A clatter came from my far right and I looked over to see Colm had roughly set down what he was working on. “Watch your words, girl.”
I smiled at Fern, but it was the kind of smile that said pity, looks like you can’t even defend yourself. I knew how infuriating that kind of smile could be. I had been on the receiving end of it more than once.
Rather than rant at me, Fern shot to her feet, set her shoulders, and glared down at me. “We leave when Juniper says we leave.”
Then she stalked away.
After a long moment Colm’s glare stopped drilling into the side of my face as he went back to his cooking.
Wren stared at me. “Do you try to make everyone angry?”
I smirked. “That time I did.”
“Why?” She sounded bewildered.
“Why should I respect someone who can’t do anything themselves? If she’s going to risk making us fail the mission for some stupid reason then I’m not going to make it easy on her.”
Nevermind the fact that I was also sore and tired and not in the best of moods even before Fern started shoving her pointless rule in my face. Juniper didn’t want to lead, was nowhere near the right head space for it, and yet Fern was determined to stick to the ruling we made when we first started. Great. Fine. I’m sure there was a time and place for that kind of lesson, but it wasn’t when the only thing I still had going for me could be ruined because of the timing of it.
Wren looked surprised and impressed and annoyed at my answer before she was distracted by Chirp stealing another glass chip from her lap. I took advantage of the moment to move in front of Juniper.
“I don’t care if you’re feeling worthless or like a failure or that your whole life has been a lie. I’ve been there, done that, and I promise that if you can’t pull yourself together enough to utter ‘let’s leave for the Rookery’ I will make it worse.”
A long, long moment passed before Juniper looked up from her cold bowl of broth. “How?”
“By reminding you, daily, that you had an easy success at your fingertips and yet you still managed to turn it into an utter failure for yourself, for everyone in this group.”
Juniper shook her head. “No. How did you keep going? After.”
I snorted. “Spite.”
A tiny laugh huffed its way out of her chest. She looked as shocked as I felt and Wren looked out of the corner of my eye. “I can see that.”
I pressed her. “So do you think you can somehow draw up the strength to say those four words to Fern? Soon?”
Juniper looked past my shoulder. “Will you help me get better at shadow walking?”
That sounded like a horrible way to pass the time and an easy way of falling into the trap of spending too much time with another person. But we needed to get to the Rookery and Fern wouldn’t budge until Juniper gave the word to move on.
I sighed. “I can try.”
She nodded, demure, before setting aside her untouched bowl. “I’ll go talk to her.”
- -
We left the next morning.
Wren had taken the time before to distribute the glass and I had taken some time to catch up on my sleep. After that Nii had cornered me by the tents.
“I can understand why you might get glass chips for the others, but why would you include Ulo and me?” she asked.
I looked her dead in the eye. “Like I would let you be the excuse I got failed for.”
Nii considered that before she nodded and let me go.
I got to spend the remainder of the afternoon attempting to build up Juniper’s imagination. You would think that for as sheltered as she seemed to be, she would be better at it, but maybe it hadn’t been a necessary skill when she was being gifted other specialized knowledge.
When we finally left the clearing, I kept to the back of the group, away from Fern and Ulo, who couldn’t seem to decide just how much she hated me as she kept glancing at her bit of glass. That meant I had to listen to the healer natter on until I made a desperate bid to get away from him and asked Juniper if she wanted to practice picturing things as we walked. Sometime after that Wren ended up on my other side and I was caught between Chirp’s twitters, Wren’s odd looks and friendly conversation—mostly directed at everyone else in the group—and Juniper’s occasional question.
Eventually, thankfully, everyone ran out of breath to waste much on talking as we pressed ourselves hard to reach the Rookery before the First Flurry. Several times as we hiked large shadows passed overhead. The first time everyone but Fern froze as we all looked up and saw a white bird with a wingspan easily two or three times as big as I was tall. Wren’s birds had not been lying when they spoke of the Big Wings’ territory. I doubted that Chirp would have even counted as a snack to the bigger creature, but Wren made sure to keep him close by after that first sighting.
The journey went quick and smooth, and, true to Breck’s estimate, it took two days of long travel to reach the structure we had seen from the top of the statue.
The Rookery looked vastly different than how I had imagined it.