There were more oddities and wonders in the lower half of the wind spirits’ home than just giant leaves that could hold a person aloft. There were also invisible wind slides that I only noticed due to my newfound sensitivity to the wind—and the sprites pulling some leaves into a slide’s wake. But perhaps those things would be expected in a place so full of wind.
There was also rock worn so smooth that it was like reflective ice. I could see my reflection in it better than a calm pool of water but I didn’t linger there. The wind spirits made moving pictures of people and landscapes with the various bits of plant life and dirt at their disposal. I did end up watching that longer than I meant to when the sprites opened up their vortex so I could see what they were up to. There were also spots where it looked like pieces of banners for the Warming of the Winds Festivals had been preserved and large groups of wind spirits were converged around them. Those spots were freezing cold whenever I entered them.
It didn’t take me long to realize that forcing my way downward wasn’t going to get me to a wellspring, but it did take me a little longer than I’d like to admit to give up on the tactic and try something else. The wind could be direct, but it rarely chose do so. Instead, my options seemed to be work my way all around the lower area and hope I stumbled on a wellspring or the spirits revealed one to me.
I did what I could to find the pockets with little to no wind, but there was little of that to be had below the leaf veil. What I did find felt like they were there simply due the wind spirits humoring me. I leaned hard on my ability to send the wind as I tried to figure out which way it might turn or what I could use around me to lessen the flow.
It felt like using stepping stones to cross a stream as I moved from one still air pocket another; except that the stream was more of a raging torrent and no matter what I did I couldn’t avoid its touch even when I leapt from stepping stone to another as carefully as possible. And that was when I could find another spot to leap to, which was rarely the case more often than not.
It was easy to lose track of time during this particular boon trial. We had no way to watch the sky when we were blindfolded and then, when the blindfold came off, the view was replaced by a ceiling of leaves and pine needles. Nor did I ever come across another seedling while in the lower area. The spirits shielded us from each other’s view and with the paths we could take being much more mobile than the stone ones above, it seemed they could easily manipulate where we went.
At first, I was stressed about the lack of time. Even if we were given another day, that was little in the scheme of things when it had taken me the first two just to get down to the lower level. Nor did I like that it seemed like I couldn’t make progress without the spirits’ permission: they decided what paths were available to me and I still needed their help to cross the leaf veil. Eventually, though, I was forced to push those worries to the back of my mind since they only seemed to push me to make quick judgments and idiotic mistakes.
Like with the stone paths above, I mapped out the paths I took in the lower area in my mind and that confirmed what I had suspected: the spirits were shifting the paths I knew and changing spots so that it might be different for the three different times I passed through it. The only things that didn’t change were the spots of cold surrounding the relics of past festivals.
The wind spirits were also continuing to assess me. They took in everything I did—and adapted to it. They stopped tugging on my clothes, they started to make more landscape pictures rather than ones of a family walking happily together, and slowly, carefully they allowed me to understand more of what they said to each other. I still couldn’t make out their words, but, like with the fire dancers, the meaning and feelings behind the words pressed on my mind.
They showed me their joy in playing with each other and discovering what made the seedlings tick during the trial. They poured into me their need to move and go faster until I was sprinting down a path of leaves, until I could feel how their restraint during the trial edged toward a point of pain for them. They shared with me how much they relished feeding on the cold and said I was wind bitten since they had pulled the cold out of me before. I tried to ask what that meant but all I got was glee and a sort of kinship in response.
For the most part though, once the initial excited rush of impressions passed, they left me to my own thoughts and plans. The wind spirits knew I wasn’t one to chat the time away with them nor had I entirely given up on my experiments. For all the wonders the sprites showed me, I tested myself to see how they affected my ability to feel the wind, how I might be able to use them to work my way closer to the Mother Spring. I didn’t welcome interruptions to my experiments, but I did try to learn more about the wellspring from the spirits.
They weren’t forthcoming. They muffled themselves whenever I tried to ask about it and then I had to wait until they got brave enough to communicate with me again. They didn’t share much about the other wellsprings either. I just got a bunch of impressions that basically amounted to You’ll know when you’re ready.
I thought I was ready. I consistently passed the obstacles they put in my way and my ability to understand them and the air currents were improving. The only thing I really needed was the boon and a good benefit from the wellspring to go along with it.
But I continued to move in circles and the wind sprites seemed no closer to guiding me to where I wanted to go. Frustration built. Part of me couldn’t help but feel like it was similar to when the mountain spirit had tried to twist my wish from me for her own ends. I might have my own plans, but while I was in their domain there was little I could do take true control.
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So I stopped moving. I squeezed my way through a throng of wind spirits and into a pocket of cold. Normally, I would’ve squeezed back out the other side as quick as I could since these pockets were like stepping into the middle of the cold season—and I had none of the proper clothing on. But this time I stopped in front of fraying banner made of faded cloth and twigs on an outcropping of rock.
The cold pockets were the only spots of true stillness below the leaf veil. Perhaps being still wouldn’t get me to the wellspring, but neither had moving around, and being in the cold, frozen air made me feel like it was easier to think. No longer pushed around or rushing to nowhere.
While I had no wish to think of the wish maker, thoughts of her lingered as I sat cross legged and made it apparent to the wind spirits that I had no intention on moving on despite already shivering violently.
She had always been insistent that I be true to myself, that I get to the heart of what I actually wanted, and I couldn’t help but think that this trial might be similar with how quick the spirits were to adapt to each seedling.
I was trying to reach the Mother Spring, but only because I liked the mystique of it and because I thought it’d help earn me respect. But there was a small part of me that reluctantly doubted whether that wellspring would actually be the best fit. I might take care of my own, but I had no desire to be a mother. I wouldn’t want my boon to excel at something a mother was supposedly known for.
I wanted something that would help me when the wind was scarce, something that would help Esie’s request, something unique that I could leverage to earn respect. Something that wouldn’t allow me to be dismissed and ignored.
If there was another spring that fit what I wanted and the skills I’d been developing better than the Mother Spring, then, perhaps, it was time for me to allow for that other opportunity. Mishtaw had said the wind spirits would guide us to a wellspring but I hadn’t doing a very good job of allowing myself to be guided.
My eyelashes stuck together as I opened my eyes. “Where would you take me?”
The vortex of leaves and throng of wind spirits around me went as still as the air inside the cold pocket, just for a moment, before I felt them open up a space in the air in front of me. A large leaf was pulled even with the edge of the outcropping and then another a step higher. More and more leaves came until they formed a path upward past the edge of the vortex around me. There was still open space next to that path and I could feel the wind spirits’ intent.
Will you climb or fall?
Falling would get me to the bottom of the basin the quickest and theoretically to where I assumed the wellsprings would be, but if this was less about being practical and more about the meaning behind the options, I knew what I preferred.
I began to climb.
No matter what I might wish there some part of me that could never quite escape being her daughter. Ambition wasn’t something easily forgotten.
Once I reached the top of the curving staircase I was presented with another option: enter a cave or follow a stone path further up the side of the basin. The stone path was full of shifting winds and chattering spirits.
I went inside the cave. The air was still there and thankfully the narrow entrance quickly widened out into a large cavern. From there all the paths led downward, but I had four options instead of two. Once again I was presented with the four aspects of the goddess and made to pick between them, but this time there wasn’t a statue in the middle of the room instead.
Star strewn hair was carved over entrance while another had an arch of tree roots. The third had a dark gray, gauzy cloth the likes of which I’d never seen before but that looked like moving shadow, and the fourth looked an open wound that dripped with water instead of blood.
This cave looked too permanent to be something the wind spirits shifted around as part of their trial. I narrowed my eyes at where I thought the wind spirits were crowding behind me. Less of them had followed me in the cave than the crowd I had outside and from the way the air was shifting around them, they didn’t like entering here.
“Do all the seedlings have to pick a path?”
The wind spirits rippled and I got a strong sense of denial…along with something else. It seemed that only those less…thrilled to be in constant contact with everyone else tended to make their way to the cave. The loners.
Well, the goddess wasn’t known for sharing, so perhaps that made sense in its own way.
So, to pick between the paths of night, roots, shadow, and blood. I wasn’t sure if this would actually set me on some kind of path that the goddess cultivated in her followers or if it was another symbolic choice to see what I was drawn towards, and the wind spirits weren’t much help in that regard either. They only hinted that my choice would inform the wellspring I found.
I immediately disregarded the path of blood. It was the least appealing both in appearance and in meaning. The only path steeped in blood that would have wanted was that of a healer tending to injuries and since that was closed to me that path lost all of my interest. The path of roots was interesting because it was inherently linked to pine trees and thus the shadow paths, but more likely the path of shadow had the better link to those paths. But I was also reluctant to walk down another path full of plants when it had been hard enough to finally cut my ties, as best I could, to my previous one, so I discarded the path of roots as well. The stories of the goddess using her roots to claim territory and choke Grislander into submission only reinforced that decision. I had no desire to be an enforcer like Jin.
Which left the paths of shadow and night. Part of me was drawn to the path of shadow due to the success I’d had with the shadow paths, despite that one mistake. But, surprisingly, I felt more drawn to the path of night. What that path could offer was more ambiguous than the rest, but between my blessing and the night’s connection to death as well as the little lights of the stars being points to navigate by in the darkness when I also wanted my boon from the wellspring to help in difficult times, it felt like it could fit what I wanted the best.
I decided to accept that feeling and see where it led. After all, trying to force my way forward with how I thought things should be hadn’t been working well in the wind spirits’ home so far.
All the wind spirits watched was I entered the path of night and this time only two followed me.