When the goddess created Flickermark as the second trial for Her Beloved, before she earned that name, Heliquat meant for it to inspire fear and awe. It can never be said that the goddess was remiss in Her work.

From horizon to horizon it looked as if the ground had been shaken flat and then cracked like a broken jar. The ravines spider-webbed every which way. In some places they interconnected and created a dozen different short passages, and in other places the ravines might draw close but not connect for a half a mile or more. The narrow passageways never went in a straight line for than a hundred feet and often looped back on themselves to some degree. Nor did the ground always stay at the same level; sometimes it rose so that if three or four people stood on each other’s shoulders the top one could touch the lip of the ravine while other times it dove so far down it felt as if we had descended from a mountain. There was no direct route through, and each passageway was identical to the last with only the odd waterfall or rock fall to differentiate between them and get in the way.

To enter Flickermark you had to navigate your way down a steeply sloping path, passing under two glossy black, slightly translucent arms that were at least twenty feet tall each at the beginning of the path. The arms always reminded me of the last flailing attempts of a person trying to catch themselves when they fell backwards. The left hand stretched toward the sky, and I knew once night fell it would frame the twin stars that always marked the eastern horizon. The right hand reached up and outward toward a large statue of the goddess. The statue stood on one of the broken plateaus made by the maze with its back turned on the outstretched hands, pointing toward the Statue Garden. It was made out of the same black glass as the arms, but little chips of clear glass had been added to the goddess’s hair, so that whenever light touched them they shone like stars.

The message Heliquat had sent to Her Beloved when she first laid eyes on her second trial was clear. If she wanted to save herself and her people, she would have to find her own path and do it herself. But if she missed her step and failed this trial there would no second chance or saving grace. No help nor mercy from the goddess, whose trust she had not yet earned.

When we entered Flickermark, we entered with supplies and maps and the knowledge of many past generations to guide us and help us overcome any difficulty. The Beloved had none of that. The legend went that she entered Flickermark on bare feet and with nothing but the thin dress on her back. She walked the maze for days, never letting her hunger overcome her, never stopping. She found the path through the darkness and gifted her blood to the Grove that stood in the middle of the Statue Garden as the goddess bid. Then the Beloved became the first to drink the shadows and be granted the ability to walk through them. She stepped through the Grove’s shadow to Flickermark’s exit on the eastern side, skipping the need to find her way back out of the maze.

Now the extremely pious and desperate tried to follow in her footsteps. The pious tried to complete all four trials as Her Beloved had and prove their devotion to the goddess beyond all doubt. Only about one in a century managed it, and for their effort they earned a title and none of the abilities. The Beloved had become the first whisper woman and, as such, all the abilities she earned through her trials became the staples that every whisper woman—and no one else—got and earned through their initiation and training. The desperate normally tried to complete a trial in order to reach a Grove, a stand of pine trees that had been marked as holy ground, because it was said that prayers and worship made at one were better heard by the goddess. If reaching out through their blood speaker didn’t work, going to a Grove was often the only option if no mundane solution could be found.

However, no matter what anyone did, the landscape of the trials had changed some since the Beloved first completed them. No animals had yet settled in Flickermark and adapted to it when she first walked the paths and while it was difficult to confirm, some people thought that the pathways shifted and changed, so that now no one could follow the exact route that Her Beloved had taken. The Statue Garden hadn’t been the Statue Garden when she first reached it, either, as the goddess hadn’t yet punished the people for creating Grislander. Just a Grove, without the whisper women attendants and shamble men that people now expected. It seemed that shamble men were often drawn to places with concentrated amounts of the goddess’s power.

While I couldn’t imagine her handling it with anything but grace, the Beloved hadn’t had to face the maze’s exit either. The only reason for the exit’s existence was in case she failed, and the goddess wasn’t one to hold back on shattering someone already broken. The exit was a claustrophobic tunnel and on every wall and the ceiling were thousands and thousands of carved eyes, watching. Judging. The floor was one long mosaic of torture. You walked on the backs of all those Her Beloved was trying to save being mutilated and broken. Heliquat hadn’t yet put to rest Her vendetta to hurt Her sister by torturing and killing her newest creations, and the floor was full of images—gouged eyes, fingers cut knuckle by knuckle, people set on fire and flayed alive—of what She planned to do to make Her sister hurt. The tunnel twisted so that you could never see what new horror might be waiting next and the eyes pressed in around you. It was impossible to tell where the tunnel finally ended until it spit you out through the roots of a pine tree and a sky full of stars opened up over you.

Blindfolds were often put on kids until they were nine or ten and ready to start a formal apprenticeship. Levain had taken my blindfold off when I was five with the excuse that she couldn’t guide me and take care of the recently born twins even though Father was caring the majority of her healing supplies, and the twins had been sleeping, blissfully unaware, strapped to her back. I think, at that point, she was already done with touching me more than she had to. I had tried to close my eyes, but I had gotten slapped and chewed out for trying to be clever for my effort, and once I had my first glance of that tunnel, closing my eyes was useless.

But, for all that the tunnel was horrible and the maze difficult to navigate, making our way through it was worth mixing up our route and lessening our chance of dealing with Picker bands every few years. Besides, we did our best to stay on northern edge of the maze, and by keeping our distance from the entrance to the Statue Garden we typically avoided the worst of the confusion Flickermark had to offer.

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The tribe settled on the ground in front of Flickermark’s entrance to wait for nightfall. Rawley and I were sent out to gather and fill empty food sacks as much as we could with the other lone huntresses and a few groups of two Pack huntresses accompanying various tribe members. We all knew where the best yielding spots were in the area, so Rawley and I made our way to where pallip grass was common and began to gather it. The grass could be ground down to make a slightly sour tasting flour that didn’t take as much time to process as the pine nut flour people preferred to use or fed to the herds.

We could hunt in Flickermark, but there wasn’t a lot of plants in the ravines that the sheep and reindeer could eat. So the tribe had been gathering as we made our way down river, but there was also only so much that we could carry. The herders would be taking the sheep and reindeer to a nearby stream and encouraging them to eat and drink their fill.

Rawley and I stayed quiet as we harvested. I still hadn’t given her a direct answer to her invitation to be more open with her, but I didn’t think she expected that to happen any time soon. Rawley wasn’t very prone to talking unless she had a lesson to teach or observation to make, and even then she was as likely to let a look and silence carry her meaning rather than words. She made the silence comfortable and easy, rather than an oppressive bubble, and I often slipped into it with her without thinking.

After Rawley dropped me off with Old Lily and the other wards whenwe were done harvesting, she went to go join Grandmother and the other leaders as they consulted and refreshed their memories on the best strategies to have the run through Flickermark go well. She wouldn’t be allowed to stay with them long, if Fenris had anything to say about it, but Rawley would be given the orders for the lone huntresses so she could share them with the others, and I didn’t doubt that my mentor would gain more than a bit of insight into how things were progressing when she did.

Old Lily set me to separating the pallip grass seeds from the stalk with the other wards. The others did their best to studiously ignore me as they chatted and I sat a bit apart from them. It was gratifying to see that they still hadn’t forgotten the tongue lashing I’d given them during my first few days in Grandmother’s tent. My life was better when I didn’t have to worry about all of their curious prodding and judgment about my origins. Fear was easier.

Still, it was difficult not to notice the group dynamics when all I had to do was separate seeds from the chaff. The boy with the club foot, Cil, was the oldest at fourteen, but Aris, a serious girl about a year older than me, was the clear leader. Raya and Gran were siblings closer to Fellen’s age that had a hard time sitting still for any length of time. Aris had to keep reminding them to focus on the seeds. The last and youngest member of the wards was Delly, an earnest six-year-old who seemed to have a hero complex for Cil. Apparently, Cil had protected her from a couple of bullies.

Gran and Cil both seemed to have crushes on Aris, but the girl never seemed to notice their little rivalry or their attempts to get closer to her. She only had eyes for becoming Grandmother’s apprentice though Grandmother had yet to reward her for her enthusiasm. It was a bit of an open secret that Grandmother was going to pick Aris as her successor once she finished her current apprenticeship with Ghani’s aide though some people were worried about the delay. Grandmother was already getting old, and apprenticeships to the role were typically the longest in the tribe and started at a younger age, but no one was willing to question Grandmother about the decision.

Delly was likely to become Aris’s Echo—she had a bit of Old Lily’s qualities in her and Aris was always more patient with her than anyone else. Besides, Delly didn’t seem to be suited to any other specialty and she was always seemed the happiest when someone asked her to help with something. Even now, she was being the most diligent about the seed work.

I had little doubt that Raya and Gran would end up with fisher folk apprenticeships once the tribe was back at Gabbler Shore during the next warm season. They talked about the various varieties of fish and ways of filleting them too much for anything else. They also never stopped going on about how excited they were that Cil was going to cook the fish they prepared. Normal apprenticeships only lasted until the apprentice was fifteen, so as long as Cil passed his final test in a few months he would officially become an adult and a new cook when he completely his apprenticeship.

I scowled down at my grass as Cil told a joke like it was the easiest thing the world and they all laughed. I would have my own friends to tell jokes to once I was a whisper woman, and they wouldn’t know to treat me differently because of my background. They would respect me without me needing to make them afraid.

Night fell quickly as the Gabbler Shore Tribe finished making its preparations to enter Flickermark and the whistle sounded for everyone to form the column in front of the archway the two arms made. In the starlight, the arms and the statue of the goddess seemed to become a deep blue and glow faintly. Rawley and I ended up at the front of the column with Nole and Fellen. Apparently, the leaders were confident that we wouldn’t act up with our mentors there and they wanted their best trackers up front. Fenris and Yolay with Bluebell were also a part of our small advance group. Bluebell would be able to sniff out dangerous predators that might be lurking around a corner and she worked best with Yolay. Fenris liked the prestige of being part of the advance group, and trusted her second in command to take care of the rest of the Pack as they worked to protect the normal tribe members. She was also the best tracker that the Pack had to offer.

The rest of the tribe would be in the middle of two Pack groups, including the herds, in case any danger came from behind or got past us in the front. The advance party wasn’t to get too far ahead in case the passages did actually move, or the maze confused us in a more mundane way, so it wouldn’t be quite the same as scouting. Mainly our job was to make sure that our passage lined up with the maps, and to quickly find the next best route if a rock fall or some other reason prevented us from following the outlined route.

There wasn’t a ceremony when it was time to enter Flickermark. Instead, the twin stars’ position in the outstretched hand was double and triple checked to make sure all our maps were oriented correctly, and then the same whistle that sent us off on our seasonal run was taken up. The only special thing we did was that as every tribe member passed under the arched hands they took their prayer needle and flicked a few drops of blood onto the ground two times, once in a prayer thanking the goddess for averting Her gaze and once in a personal prayer to Her Beloved. It wouldn’t surprise me if most did the sensible thing and asked for her guidance through the dark paths below.

We didn’t use candles or torches as we descended into Flickermark. The light from them would ruin our night vision and make the stars a lot more difficult to see. Still, I heard more than a couple people stumble and curse in soft whispers behind me. The ravines had a way of carrying sounds farther than they were meant to go. I stayed close to Rawley and did my best to ignore everyone else around us. It didn’t take long for the stars overhead to become a ribbon of sky, like a second pathway, as we followed the steep, winding path down and the ravine walls loomed ever higher.