We weren’t able to keep up with the shamble man despite its slow pace. It didn’t need to rest, we did, and even with Fellen’s support it didn’t take long for my legs to completely give out after we entered the tunnel. I could have crawled using my arms, but the dozen or so feet that gained wouldn’t have made a difference, plus the indignity of it stung three times over without the excuse of a slippery incline and a long fall. The goddess could be watching, and there was also the risk that She might view too much of such behavior—that hinted at weakness—as an affront to Her Beloved given that we were doing this trial to honor her.

Fellen needed a break too. Helping me continue as well as her own injuries were taking a rather large toll on her. When I dropped to my knees, she was shaky and pale, and, unsurprisingly, some of her wounds had reopened and were bleeding. It didn’t take much for me to convince her that we couldn’t continue.

Relief was apparent in her voice—despite her attempt to hide it—when she slumped down next to me. “We could completely lose the shamble man.”

I leaned back against the tunnel wall. “We could, but with the condition we’re in, even if we somehow found away to go any significant distance down the tunnel, it isn’t likely that we’ll be able to keep it in sight or dodge it, if the shamble man did decide to turn around.”

“So we take a nap and hope that we’ll be able to catch back up once we regain our stamina?”

Neither of us really wanted to see the shamble man again, but desperation trumped fear in this case. “Something like that, but you’ll be sleeping and I’ll take watch. I just need to rest my legs.”

Fellen’s eyebrows furrowed. “But—”

“I’ll be fine. You’re the one who can die, not me. Sleeping will serve you better, and I can keep pressure on your hip to get it to stop bleeding again while you sleep. We’ll have a better chance of catching back up if we only take time for one of us to sleep, too.”

Fellen’s worried look became more pronounced, “But will you really recover enough if you don’t rest?”

“I will.” I put as much conviction in my voice as I could.

She didn’t look entirely convinced, but the conviction in my voice was enough for her to at least let the issue drop for the moment. “I guess I’ll sleep then.” She cast her gaze around for the best place to lay down, but with smooth, hard rock all around she didn’t have a lot of great options.

After a hesitant moment, I patted my lap. “You can lay down here. I’ll be to reach your hip then, too.” I felt her eyes go to where the teeth wound on my thigh was hidden by my dress, so I added, “Just lay down, you won’t get bloody.”

“Won’t it hurt?”

“You won’t be laying directly on it—just lay down, so you can sleep and we can continue. The less time we take searching for the Statue Garden, the better chance we have.”

“The better chance I have you mean.”

I glared at her. “I meant what I said. This whole stupid day should be proof that if you weren’t here to help me walk, I’d likely be stuck somewhere by the river unable to make much progress until I got too weak to move. I might not be dead then but, with no one to find me, I might as well be.”

“Oh.” She blinked rapidly for a couple seconds before smiling in a gratified way. “I’ll take that as a win then.”

My glare intensified. “And you wouldn’t have even made it down here without me.”

She shrugged and then spoke as she shifted to lay her head on my lap, “Fine, you won the ‘gathering food and water’ contest, but I won the ‘ability to walk’ contest despite having more clawed up legs than you.”

I held in a hiss of pain as she settled, facing me, so that she wasn’t laying on her bad hip. “I’ll win it next time.”

Fellen snorted and closed her eyes. “We’ll see.”

I let her have the last word and reached over to carefully press a part of her skirt that wasn’t completely bloody to her hip. Her breathing slowed and deepened into sleep after a few minutes. I watched the tunnel for any sign of the shamble man returning or another one coming, but nothing disturbed the quiet glooming passageway. The only light came from the fake night sky, but that did little to light up where we were in the tunnel. Without Fellen’s flickers of flame everything was mostly shadow, but I kept my ears alert as well as my eyes.

The weight and closeness of the tunnel pressed on me, now that my attention wasn’t completely absorbed by the task of putting one foot in front of the other. My breathing turned a bit ragged as the tight bands that had wrapped around chest ever since we entered Flickermark tightened. But if I could handle the thin ravines and Flickermark’s exit tunnel, I could handle this. I had to handle this. There wasn’t another way for us to go, and Fellen was counting on me to keep watch while she slept.

The dark helped. It made it so I could pretend the tunnel was bigger than it actually was. I also did what I could to ground myself in the present before the stone walls started to feel like leather and the quiet of the tunnel turned into the quiet of a study session where she was just waiting for me to give her any excuse to snap. I focused on the cold, hard stone of the tunnel, the ache and itching pain of my injuries, the burning of my mark, Fellen’s warmth and weight, what contest I could beat her in once we got out of this mess. The pressure eased and my breathing returned to normal.

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It still felt surreal that the goddess had actually responded to our prayer—even if Her answer had only made things more difficult. Even blood speakers often only had the blood flake away as a sign of acknowledgment, but then again, the goddess was known for never doing anything that remotely involved Her Beloved in half measures. I shouldn’t have included the line about trying to honor her, but there had also been the worry that She would think we were ignoring Her Beloved in a sacred place made for her, which would have also undoubtedly ended poorly.

The tribe should only be a few days away from Grislander’s Maw, at most, and we would be lucky to make it to the hills between Flickermark and the valley by then. If we were caught by the beginning of the cold season after that, we would need a double dose of luck to survive. My gut twisted. I didn’t like having to rely on something so uncertain. If we got our supplies back, it would make things easier, but Fellen would need treatment soon, so she didn’t die of blood loss or infection. If I still had my beads, and we made it to the hills, I could have found the right plants and…

But I didn’t. And we were in a dark, possibly sacred tunnel underground.

I needed to focus on what we could do next. Our main hope of finding the Statue Garden was slowing distancing itself from us while we rested. If we weren’t able to catch up, the next time the path split we would have guesswork and whatever little information we could muster to go on. We didn’t have stars or stones or knots in this tunnel. But half my childhood had been dedicated to memorizing every myth and legend she had ever heard and could pry from Grandmother and the other blood speakers. There had been more than one about Flickermark. Granted, none of them helpfully mentioned a huge room with a false night sky and circular waterfall with a hidden path or underground tunnels, but there might be something buried in one of them.

I jolted as the thought reminded me of the whisper woman who took all of our things. Glancing down to make sure I hadn’t woken Fellen with the sudden movement, I followed the thought. She had grinned and said not to follow the obvious paths. At the time I had thought she meant something to do with the stars, but these tunnels weren’t obvious. As far as I knew, the tribe didn’t even know about them. We never ventured into the caves except to have shelter when it rained and the ravines flooded. But something still didn’t feel…complete about that answer. Like this was one of Rawley’s questions where she asked me to describe all the things I noticed and she was waiting patiently for me to say the last detail. Like when she asked me a trick question or wanted me to recite one of the myths she told me word for word and it didn’t matter that I had heard it a week or three months ago. I was expected to know and any lost detail wasn’t acceptable.

I had learned early that closing my eyes to help me picture what I’d been told wasn’t allowed. So I had to come up with another technique to have the recall and quick answers expected of me. In my mind rose an image of the healer’s tent and shop, as if I was standing inside it and looking toward the entrance, but it didn’t have the oppressive weight of watching eyes and things were organized differently. There was the smell of lavender in the air and I knew I could step outside and see a landscape of sprawling plants if I wanted to. This version of the healer’s tent was mine, and mine alone. I turned around and went to a large, heavy pot that would be too unwieldy to travel with in real life, and pulled out of the parchment scrolls rolled upside. The pot was where I stored important recent memories until I thought they could placed somewhere safely that took a little bit longer to get to. I unrolled the scroll on the ground, and the scene with the whisper woman spread out before me.

It wasn’t my best. The edges were blurry and some details had faded away because of the stress and shock of that night, and the whisper woman and newly formed tree commanding my attention, but I could see her every action well.

She had listened to the air before she said the line about following the obvious paths.

I put the scroll back in the pot and let the tent fade away in my mind’s eye while that important detail stayed with me. Flickermark had been the second trial. The first had been the Question of Ice on Whistler Pass. When the Beloved managed to persuade the goddess to let her and her companions live for the time being, the goddess granted her the gift to hear their voices on the wind—though they couldn’t hear in return. It was supposed to be a punishing gift while she was separated from them for the other trials—to hear their pain and misgivings but not be able to reply or directly help—but in time it turned out be one of the most beneficial gifts of the whisper women and what gave them their name. For those with the gift can communicate with each other over long distances.

That part wasn’t helpful for Fellen and me, but an aspect of the gift that the whisper women never confirm, but that many people speculate about is that it also gives them an innate ability to sense the winds. There are multiple stories where a whisper women seems to know about a storm long before it’s visible or where to stand so that they aren’t constantly pushing hair out of their face on a windy day. It was small on the scheme of things, but given the windy nature of Flickermark perhaps the Beloved had used that ability along with the stars to find her way? If she had to go underground like we did, she wouldn’t have had a shamble man to follow to find the way.

I did close my eyes then, trying to sense any little movement of air. I sat like that for several long minutes before I felt the barest brush of wind tickle my cheek. My eyes popped open and I looked around, but Fellen was still asleep and no other creature appeared in the gloom. Not a puff of breath then. I smiled as excitement filled my belly. It could have been a random breeze, and following air was a far fetched idea at best, especially without anything remotely like the whisper women’s gift, but it was better than arriving at two passages and taking one on pure chance.

I shifted my back slightly to ease a growing ache from leaning over to reach Fellen’s hip. Then I began to recite the legend of the Lady Blue in my head. It was the tale of the goddess sisters’ greatest mistake and their creation of their youngest sister. They meant for her to be like them, but the divide between the sisters was too great by then. The working failed, and the Lady Blue was confined to the seas, outside both goddesses’ domains, without words or a definite form. She became something in between, greater than their other creations, but without the true gifts of the goddesses. It was said you could still hear her wail from the shore and that she destroyed any attempts to see if anything lay beyond the salty water that stretched all the way to the horizon in retaliation for the sisters forsaking her.

It was difficult to imagine natural salt water or such a quantity of it, much less the goddess failing at anything, but it was the longest legend I knew and by the time I finished it, it would be time to wake up Fellen and continue on.