After the procession, I didn't have to watch my siblings as much. They were left to fend for themselves amid barrels of fishing spears and hooks, carving stations stained red, and the old people's gossip while Mother drilled every last scrap of information about our religion into my head. I wished I could join them, sink my feet into the sticky clay at the edge of the lake and relax the tension knotted along my shoulders and neck. Instead I got a headache that pulsed deep behind my eyes and that never quite went away.

Learning wasn't the problem. I knew I needed to prepare any way I could for whatever secretive madness the Seedling Palace employed to train those that disappeared inside it. I liked the way my head felt heavy with facts and stories about the sects and our goddess at the end of day. Liked the feeling of progress, the knowledge that every step I took closer to Her, the further I was from Mother. Even if she didn't know it.

The horrible part was sitting on the faded brown cushion in the corner of Mother's shop. The way her eyes shot to me any time I moved. The twisting of her mouth when I turned my head to catch whatever bit of gossip or laughter trailed by outside. The spark of hope I couldn't quite crush every time I answered a question correctly, but that she quenched with no effort at all. I can't remember a time that she smiled, not even to the twins.

Questions, answers. Religion and herbs. Mother's disappointment, Mother's impatience. The eighty six basic characters written and read over and over in the dirt. The faded cushion. A throbbing headache. That was my next three years with one exception.

A few days before my twelfth naming day Mother decided it was more than time we learned what my gift was. Everyone else in my tribe already knew theirs, never mind that wasn't such a difficult problem when they all had the dots on the inside of their wrists—A bit of fire for them and everyone else. The only thing they really had to figure out was if they were a Spark or Candle, and that was as simple as snapping their fingers and seeing if flame lit up across the way or on their fingers.

Nor did my Mother care for the fact that my blessed mark wasn't Named, and its power didn't seem to care to easily manifest itself as had some girl's power from across the river. Hearing about her ability to call down birds cut the last thread of Mother's patience. I was dragged out to the lake's edge and was commanded to yell at fish and bugs and a sparrow that flew by for the next while. Then she had me punch and kick a log, jump, hold my breath under the water until I thought I was going to pass out and drown, jump 50 times, sing, scream, stare at the lake, will fog into being, and other exercises that made me look and sound like an idiot. She wasn't very efficient about it.

The lakeside was graying and dark with only a thin silver of red daylight to light our way as we made our way back to the tents through the fishing area. Mother had fallen into her second look of disappointment. The brooding one that drew her eyebrows down and clenched her jaw. I was silent too, but more from exhaustion and the satisfaction of not hearing her voice.

We were nearly halfway through the fishing area when I took a step forward and felt something hard and wrong slice through my foot. I looked down and saw a large fishing hook impaling my right foot. I sank down to touch it, one finger outstretched. Pain bloomed as soon as I wiggled it and a moan of pain escaped before I could swallow it back down.

"Mother," my voice was as even as I could make it. No tears, no weakness.

She turned and squinted at me in the growing dark. "What are you doing? Get up."

My foot was pulsing now. "My foot. A hook..."

"If you want something you're going to have to talk louder."

I cleared my throat and forced the threadiness from my voice, "There's a hook in my foot."

She beckoned. "Then stop wasting time on the ground. All of my herbs are back at my shop and there's not enough light out here."

Mother turned and continued toward the tents. I gritted my teeth and followed her. When I hobbled into her shop it was a shock to find none of my teeth had cracked. She made me sit on the faded cushion and then began to push the hook through without warning. I growled at her, but refused to scream. An eternity later she packed the bleeding open wound with herbs and wrapped it in cloth.

It still got infected.

No doubt because of the mud and fish guts I was forced to limp through.

--

At first there was just stabbing pain whenever I accidentally put weight on my injured foot. Mother didn't so much as assure me that it would get better, or tell me how long it would take to heal. She sat me on the cushion, placed the herbs she used in front of me, and bid me to memorize their names, properties, and common uses by the end of the day. Mother didn't see attending to the injured and sick as a benevolent act, instead each tincture and salve was a weapon in her fight for recognition and respect. The healed weren't people but conquests and stepping stones toward her goal, those that were healing were potential threats and liabilities, and those that didn't take to her administrations were unmentionable failures. She didn't need compassion; she needed results. Positive results.

So by the end of the third day, when my foot pulsed with heat and the skin around my wound puffed with angry redness, I told her that if she really wanted me to be prepared for the Seedling Palace I should be able to attend to my injury myself. Mother narrowed her eyes at me, said I could dress my foot that night after she checked my salve and that she would check how my work held up in the morning. She had me redo the herb mixture twice and berated me for the waste. When she went back to her own work I quickly wrapped my foot in cloth alone and slipped my approved mixture into the bowls of the rejected salves.

The next day, my twelfth naming day, a man came running in from one of the other tribes with news of a hunt gone wrong. After he paid my mother's first fee, the one for outsiders who made her use up her precious time to travel to the injured, she left to go save their leader's son and was much too preoccupied to remember to check my foot or thank the goddess that her child had survived another year. I thanked the goddess myself, and then time dissolved into a disorientated fog.

I remember being too chilled for the cold air to account for and not even the cooking fire could sooth all of my shivers. The twins tried to get me to play before sharing a scared look when all I could do was weakly swat at them. I think they ran to get Father because I remember his big hand on my forehead next. He swore loudly and I sank back into sleep before the shock of that could truly register.

Mother didn't swear when she unwrapped my foot and saw the weeping, red wound. Her favorite look of disappointment slid over her face and she regarded me with it for what felt like a small eternity. I could feel her weighing the costs and benefits of saving me in that look, and the moment the scale tipped in my favor. A clicked tongue and, "After all the work I put into you? Shameful."

She set to work forcing liquids down my throat, broths and boiled water cooled just long enough not to be scalding. I remember the feeling of lightning crackle up my leg as she washed out the wound with spirits and smeared it with mixture after mixture. Poked and prodded at my foot while I nearly bit my tongue as I tried to convince her to stop through my chattering teeth. She slept close and was always, unbearably there whenever I opened my eyes. There's nothing like a desperate woman fighting save the reputation she'd built over long years from one devastating blow.

I know I wasn't thinking of death that night when I decided to deceive Mother and forgo the salve. I think I wanted her to hurt where I knew the blow would strike deepest. Show her that she couldn't control everything about me, decide everything for me. Perhaps some idiotic part of me hoped to illicit that same look of concern my sister got when she scraped her knee. Or perhaps some panic. Anything but the veiled jealousy and open disappointment.

I was thinking about death as my foot continued to flame hot while the rest of my freezing body locked up from the endless shivering. I felt the goddess's watchful gaze slowly grow stronger and the brush of pine needles along my skin as moving my limbs became too much of an effort. I thought I heard the scrapping of a Carver's wide knife putting the final touches on the Carver's Maze, a delirious mix of carved symbols, lines, and interlocking branches woven around a hollowed out log—designed so that a person's soul could escape to the Silver Forest, but their corpse would be trapped, unable to rise again, even if it survived the funeral pyre.Thinking was as far as I got. Just when I thought the goddess's gaze was going to widen fully and consume me, I felt my other leg begin to burn, high on my thigh, and She sighed and turned away. Not fully gone, but no longer threatening to sever me from my body. My thigh continued to burn, but it was a different type of heat than from my wound. It felt like the pricks of a thousand needles, light and sharp, and separated into seven areas. Slowly, dully, I realized it was my mark. I waited for it to make the pain in my other leg stop, to calm the shivers, and warm me up, but all it did was pulse stronger when the goddess began to turn Her gaze back and She would turn back away.

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It was agony. All I could do was lie there, burning and freezing, at Mother's mercy, at the goddess's mercy, at my wound's mercy, at my mark's. And there was precious little mercy in that group to go around. I could barely choke down the liquids Mother gave me, much less any solids, and the shivers and pain made sleep a precious commodity. Hunger and exhaustion both wasted me thin, but I didn't die. I couldn't die, though by that time I was craving it. My mark kept me right on the edge, feeling the full ravages of sickness, hunger, and exhaustion but unable to slip into their promised solution.

Mother thinks she saved me in the end. I won't credit her with it. My mark has brought me back from more tangible things, without the use of liquids and herbs. Slowly, interminably slowly, but it has.

She started to bleed me using the fat bellied leeches in the lake. I think they would have been the fourth thing to kill me, if it wasn't for my mark, but they did take the swelling down. Mother also cut the dying flesh from my foot and smeared the rest in pulper's honey. If I had the capacity, I would have been surprised she used the expensive stuff on me. If anything started the process that brought me back from the edge, it was probably the honey. Not Mother, but the honey. Anyone with working hands could have smeared it on the wound. Perhaps in my foggy haze I had mistaken Father's hands for hers. He was more likely to care enough to use it, though perhaps Mother had gotten truly desperate. Perhaps.

--

Mother barely waited until I was lucid enough for simple questions before starting her interrogation. She watched me like a gabbler fish, circling and needle teeth sharp, waiting for the perfect moment to strike. But unlike the gabbler fish's prey, Mother knew I didn't the strength or speed to wriggle out of her grasp.

We stared each other down as she fed me the last mouthful of salty fish broth and lakeweed. I was propped up against a lumpy sack of pine cones, so Mother wouldn't have to touch me anymore than necessary. We both liked it better that way. Tired of of being treated like prey I fought off the sleep that liked to claim me after eating and waited. Mother set the bowl aside and when she turned back and saw that my eyes hadn't drifted closed her jaw set. She drew herself up as tall as she could from where she sat on a cushion next to my right hip.

"What did you do?"

I licked my lips and answered, "You did it."

Mother's second look of disappointment settled onto her face. "I saved you."

My head felt full and foggy, but I knew it was my mark and the honey that had saved me and Mother had no place in that. "You made me walk through mud and fish guts. And your salve didn't work. You did it."

Mother leaned forward, intent. "You did something. I know it. Or the salve would have worked."

I stared back at her and remained silent, too tired to work up any other form of defiance. We stayed like that for two long heartbeats before she sat back.

"Fine. We'll come back to that." Mother's healer's beads clinked as she tucked the dark hair they hung on behind her right ear. "You've been ill for nearly two weeks and you should have died within a third of that time. Your wound should have worsened even further. Was it your mark?"

I blinked up at her, as innocent as could be. "You mean your renowned healing skills failed, Mother?"

Her teeth ground together. "I saved you, you little fool."

I slid my eyes away in apparent disbelief. My voice was empty when I spoke, "Oh. Thank you, Mother."

She snarled, "Someday you will learn to be smart rather than clever, and you will not enjoy the cost of that lesson." I flinched and she gripped my jaw and forced me to face her. "Was. It. Your. Mark?" I tried to shrink back but her grip and the sack checked my movement. Mother demanded, "Tell me."

I swallowed. "Yes."

She closed her eyes and let out an aggravated sigh before pinning me with them again. "Details, daughter."

"It wouldn't let me die." Mother drew back as if she had been slapped and released me. Seeing the affect my words had, I said them again. "My mark wouldn't let me die."

"Dark Lady!" Mother swore through clenched teeth and it was my turn to reel. Mother hated it when anyone swore and she never did it herself, much less invoking the name the goddess had been called during the Era of Night. I had only heard it once before when Grandmother whispered it to me.

She gained control of herself and glared at me. "You're certain?"

"She was there, I was on the edge, but She turned away once my mark began to burn."

I saw Mother bite back another curse and I felt an odd bubble of satisfaction rise in my chest. I had a blessing that kept me from the goddess's most sacred aspect. Mother hated it, but she couldn't change what She had done and I got to see futility spasm across Mother's face and down to her twitching fingers. And for that, if nothing else, my mark made me smile despite the fresh memory of its inflicted agony. Mother leaned back, like I might bite off one of her fingers, and I smiled even wider, making sure every last tooth gleamed in the firelight.

Then she blinked and I felt any significance she held for me melt away and disappear. Her wariness was instantly replaced with disgust and my grin shriveled under the realization that I wasn't even worth disappointment anymore. She spat a single word at me and rose to walk from the tent into the early afternoon sunlight.

Useless.

I should have known. Should have looked further into the future and lied, instead of gloating in a moment of satisfaction. What use would Mother have for girl whose birth denied the goddess twice over? If I had been just a healer's daughter or just a girl with a blessing that denied death, I stood a thin chance of rising to the upper ranks of the goddess's chosen. But both? To try would be to spit into Heliquat's eye. Mother knew, and I should have realized, that it didn't matter if the goddess had blessed me with the ability or not, just like it didn't matter that we learned and practiced healing because we were born into a line of healers. Everyone had their place; no matter how Mother liked to pretend otherwise with her talk of ambition and power. There was a reason she had planned to use me instead of working to become High Priestess herself.

There was little enough room for healers—who were both tolerated and feared for the life they gave in a society that had learned a healthy fear for the goddess that ruled them. A goddess who was often synonymous with death and the afterlife. There was always the chance that a healer would imbue too much life and catch the goddess's eye. Everyone knew that Heliquat didn't take kindly to the disregard and challenge of Her power that such a display of life insinuated.

I had too much life in me. And no one, not the goddess nor her priestesses, nor even my fellow tribe members would respond well to that fact. If they learned that a healer's daughter bore a blessing that denied death I would end up in a funeral pyre. The only question would be if I burned alive or not.

So I was useless. And Mother was gone.

I started to lift my arms to rub my aching head, but had to stop short and left them fall back to my sides when the aching soreness permeating my body became unbearable. I couldn't get rid of my mark or change its blessing. I could renounce my healer's heritage, but the stigma of who I'd been born to would likely still follow me. I looked too much like my mother and the years I spent learning my mother's craft wasn't something those who knew me would be likely to forget.

There was really only one solution: I couldn't be myself.

I closed my eyes and pictured a sack. It was rather unremarkable, rough brown canvas, a bit dusty, with a long, thick rope to tie it securely shut. First, I focused on the hurt cracking across my chest. It felt raw and broke a bit wider every time I glanced to the side saw that Mother wasn't there, every time I remembered her final declaration. It had been unbearable when she was there while I lay sick and fevered, and now it was unbearable when she was gone. I had been reduced from a liability to an unmentionable failure. I took that hurt and ripped it out by the roots before smashing it into a ball and shoving it into the very bottom of my sack. After that, it was easier to get rid of the other memories of Mother—being told to walk through mud and fish guts with a hook in my foot, the endless lessons on healing and ambition and whatever else Mother thought I should know. The lecture after the goddess's procession, every time she called me clever or gave me her signature looks of disappointment—they all went into the sack until it was nearly bursting. I held the sack closed and pictured cutting off Mother's words every time I wrapped the rope around the canvas. Once, twice, three times. I tied it shut with the most complicated fishing knot I knew. Then I pictured a cooking fire; I took the hottest burning piece of fire moss and thrust it onto the sack. It caught fire instantly. I watched and waited as it burned down to ash, ignoring the empty feeling that grew in my gut the more it burned. Once black ash was all that remained I opened my eyes.

When I did, I no longer felt the need to cry or whimper or beg Mother to come back. Emptiness and purpose were the only things left; I was no longer my mother's daughter.

I smiled, forcing grim satisfaction onto my face and into the emptiness. I would have what Levain of Gabbler Shore could never have. I would be what she could never be. But there had been one thing she had rooted so deep that I hadn't been able to yank it out, one saying that if I had burned it with all the rest I would no longer know how to handle myself.

"Ambition is nothing without discipline."