I didn’t have long to stare in simple wonder at the giant snake before questions started pressing up at the back of my throat. What was the Water Frond Snake made of? How did it work? And, still most important of all, what price would Juniper have to pay to awaken it?

Kaylan spread her arms as if to say she had nothing to hide. “When learning about a new place or culture, especially one of their secrets, first observe them. They will tell you all sorts of things with their actions that they might try to hide with their words. Pay attention to the details. Then if what you are curious about is a certain thing or event go see it for yourself. Don’t let others’ experiences substitute for your own. Finally, when you’ve gathered the basics, ask your questions, but listen for what is said and what is left out and compare both to the things you’ve observed.”

A step by step summary of what she had guided me through on our journey here. First, observing the outpost and then the fight in the killing ground, though the latter might not have been by design. Then visiting the Den and literally walking on the Water Frond Snake to get my own experience of it. Now, apparently, was the time for questions.

I didn’t ask outright what the price was for waking the Water Frond Snake. After all, I was supposed to learning how gather information on my own rather than having it handed to me and I wanted to see if I could put the pieces together myself.

I decided to start with the thing I knew the least about. “Why do the tribesfolk here think waking the Water Frond Snake will solve all their problems? It’s only one thing and it looks like it would have difficulty fitting even in the larger waterways.”

Kaylan smiled at the question even as she plopped herself down onto the snake and dangled her feet over the side. Completely at ease, despite the significance of what we had tromped all over. “It can change sizes. Shrink down to slither through the smaller waterways and expand to take on even the largest of the Lady Blue’s creatures. It’s nearly indestructible and what damage the fish do manage to do repairs over time. That, combined with its ability to control the water around it, forcing fish up into the killing grounds and turning their natural habitat against them, makes it the greatest threat to the horde in delta.”

I glanced down at the snake beneath my feet with renewed appreciation but I didn’t allow myself to become distracted. I could guess the answer to my next question but needed to be asked regardless. “Why not use the Water Frond Snake all the time then? If it’s such a destroyer of fish, surely it could stop them from wasting lives?”

“The cost. Each awakening of the Water Frond Snake makes it more likely that the ultimate cost will be incurred, and the longer an awakening is prolonged the more likely that outcome is too.”

The ultimate cost? I took note of her word choice and packed it away with the other clues tucked into the back of my mind.

“Where did it come from?”

I hoped she didn’t say a wish, but I also doubted that was the case. The goddess wouldn’t suffer for it to exist if that was the case, no matter how much it helped to protect the river leading back to First Shore Lake and Her Seedling Palace.

Kaylan shrugged. “No one knows for sure, but people here have a story. They say that when the world was younger and even fiercer than it is now, when the goddess was still recovering from the Era of Night being broken, a group made their way from the east and settled here. They say that at the time the goddess was too preoccupied to take care of interlopers in land too waterlogged for Her preferences and so they were able stay and grow. By the time, She was paying attention they were defending Her land and the Beloved was able to temper Her, so they were allowed to stay until Swirling Waters delta became what it is today. They also say that the Water Frond Snake was created in a time of dire need when the group still had the knowledge of their homeland, but the goddess had yet to bestow blessings on those living here.”

I had to sit and process that for a bit. It boggled the mind—not the least because the story implied that the people in the delta had come before the Beloved when it was common knowledge that her group was the first to settle in the goddess’s territory. Little was known about the Era of Night and even less of the years after, but it was difficult to believe that the goddess would allow anyone to reside in Her territory before the Beloved came.

I also wasn’t sure how anyone could survive without access to the common blessing or the Carvers’ Embers, and those people would have had neither. Theoretically, I knew it had to be possible because the people in Azabel’s territory wouldn’t have a blessing by Heliquat, but I had no idea how to make a fire without those. Perhaps a fire had started accidentally and then they never let it go out? That’d be quite the feat if it was true.

Still, the story confirmed a suspicion of mine even if it directly contradicted what Juniper had told me. She had claimed that the pearl was a boon from the goddess and that it had been passed down so that they could help the guardian protect the waterways. As if the Water Frond Snake was a living creature that protected them on its own. Standing on it now, I could safely say that was a lie, possibly to stop outsiders from asking awkward questions.

More likely, and what I had suspected since the Envoy had shown interest in her pearl, the snake and pearl were the same as all the Envoy’s jewelry and the harp. Objects that somehow held their own blessings. If the Water Frond Snake could really do all the things that Kaylan claimed and the pearl was the key to activating it, and the Envoy somehow knew that or at least recognized that the pearl was meant to activate something, it was no wonder he had tried to drag Juniper back with him. Not when his mission apparently involved stealing things that used his territory’s blessings.

It was still interesting that the goddess kept the relics and allowed their use, but perhaps it was similar to how She had treated the Dawn Crawler in the inner valleys. Reminders of Her sister could be pitied, tolerated, or obliterated depending on Her mood. In the case of the Water Frond Snake, perhaps She found it amusing for something with Her sister’s touch to defend Her lands, or perhaps She merely tolerated since it helped against the Lady Blue…guessing at the goddess’s motivations was a fool’s errand and a habit I should stop.

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So, what did I know? The Swirling Waters tribe was full of fighting folk who’d rather keep fighting themselves than use the tool supposedly made to help them defend their home. From what Juniper had said only certain people could use the pearl and she got a degree of respect for being the pearl bearer. Apparently, she had awoken the Water Frond Snake once before and now everyone was acting like she was good as dead if she did it again. Perhaps the people here had actually been hoping for a frozen coast.

Death wasn’t ideal, but it was well within acceptable terms for most instances, especially if it was for the good of the tribe or seen as the goddess’s will. After all, being closer to death was preferable to gaining life. I didn’t want to see Juniper die, but it was a bit of surprise for everyone to be commenting on the direness of the cost if that was what it amounted to.

I glanced over at Kaylan. “What am I missing?”

“A good question.” She stood back up. “Follow me.”

We followed the snake’s spine through branches and snow until we reached its head. From our new vantage, I could see that its eye sockets were empty. Even carved, it looked more akin to the skull of a long dead beast, something had lived once, rather than something made. Here, on its head, there was a sense of…anticipation that had been lacking before. Like if I looked away and back again I might find that its jaw had snapped closed or something else shifted.

Kaylan reached down, hooked her hand onto the bottom of the snake’s eye socket, and swung herself into its mouth with little fanfare and less warning. I gaped, despite hating the way my mouth hung open. She always seemed to have a bit disregard for proper procedure, but treating the tribe’s great protector like a climbing rock went beyond that.

She popped her head back out of its maw to grin up at me before reaching her arms out like I was a child she was about to catch. “Need help?”

I scowled. I might not have the reach she did, but I wasn’t helpless. Besides, if I thought about this like it was the time Breck and I had to climb down the half destroyed statue of Azabel, it didn’t feel nearly as sacrilegious. They even came from the same source.

I used one of the fronds coming off the snake’s forehead to balance myself as I reached for the eye before I slowly lowered myself down and swung into the snake’s mouth. To my annoyance, Kaylan steadied me as I landed and I noticed that there was a walkway leading up to the snake’s mouth that we could have used for easier access.

The reason for the walkway was readily apparent. A shrine had been set up in the back if its mouth. The shrine lacked a stone slab depicting the goddess’s aspects, but the bone bowl was a clear enough indication along with the trinkets filling up the space around it. Dolls and carved animals, bits of food and drink, dried flowers and scorched ground. A place for remembering the dead.

Just like shrines for praying directly to the goddess, these weren’t common given how often tribesfolk tended to move around throughout the year and the fact that they could just talk to their tribe’s Grandmother. But sometimes, people wanted to be alone in their grief and there was a place full of enough meaning that they would return to it again and again with little tokens that reminded them of the person they lost or why they kept going despite the loss. Those places became shrines of remembrance where the mourners offered blood to the goddess and a bit of fire as an echo of the pyre that should have bore them to the Silver Forest.

Most often shrines of remembrance were used for those who were lost to accidents or weather and their bodies never recovered. Those that had likely become shamble men.

Kaylan’s easy attitude shifted to something more serious as she saw me take in the shrine. “Every time the snake settles they build the shrine anew. To remember the sacrifices made and the minds given.”

The final piece of the puzzle clicked into place at her words and I looked at Kaylan in horror. “Are they always lost?”

“If given enough time.”

I swallowed down the horror, though her answer wasn’t much of a relief. Death might not be ideal, but there worse things.

The Water Frond Snake didn’t have a mind or a will. No matter much we stepped on it or swung from its eye socket it couldn’t move to defend itself or attack. It was an object.

But it was also true that fighting and driving off the horde was what the Water Frond Snake was known for. How then did the snake move and bite and attack? The answer was simple: the pearl bearer gave the snake a mind and a will. Their own. How such a thing worked I couldn’t even begin to guess, but all that was really important at the moment was that when the fish were driven off and the work was done, the pearl bearer wasn’t always able to move their mind back to their own body. And the longer they spent as the snake and the more times they ‘awoken’ it, the higher the chance became that they wouldn’t be able to return to themselves. They’d be trapped and the tribesfolk would be left with a body they might be able to burn, but there’d be no soul to lift to Silver Forest on the pyre’s smoke, just like a shamble man.

“They go mad.” Kaylan kept her voice quiet. “When there’s no fish to fight and they can’t return to themselves. They say it feels like a need, more important than eating or breathing, neither of which they need to do as the Water Frond Snake. Fight, fight, fight. That’s all that matters, but then there’s nothing to fight. Sometimes they turn on the tribesfolk, sometimes they tie themselves into knots so they can’t. Eventually the snake stops moving. The tribesfolk can’t say exactly why, but then the pearl bonds with someone new and it starts over again. Sometimes the pearl bearer knows their next time will be their last so they…die early, so as not to risk turning on their own and the next bearer has to hope their first transfer isn’t their last.”

I opened my mouth to speak but I had wet my lips before any sound came out. “Juniper?”

“Her first time awakening the snake was a long fight and she was young, inexperienced. No one expected her to be the one to bond with the pearl. The rumors say she had difficulty returning, but she’s determined to do better now and convinced that she’ll be able to stop herself from turning on the tribe if she can’t return. No one will tell her otherwise when the only other option is for them to lose their precious ‘Little Lady’ to the Silver Forest.”

Only one would stand in the end.

That’s what Kaylan said was a common saying in Juniper’s tribe. It was a war cry against the fish, but it was also hope. Hope that the pearl bearer would stand on their own two feet and not be lost to their guardian.

It made me want to rage. There was no reason Juniper should have to sacrifice herself to drive off the fish. No reason why she should be proudly marching straight towards her doom. There had to be other options. Surely, I—

Kaylan flicked me on the forehead and caught my gaze. “I see what you’re thinking, but you should know that you can’t always be the sacrifice.”

That wasn’t—I hadn’t—if it had been me—

If it had been me I would have walked as proudly to my doom as Juniper was. Better me than everyone else, right? Better to be the one making the choice than the one waiting to see how it played out, except this time I didn’t have a choice. I wasn’t the one with the pearl.