The pain and loss of what I had done hit me later. When I was crouching in a tiny valley between two hills behind a bush full of berries that faded from white to blue. Frostbite berries that I could no longer use to bring relief to their namesake or numb other wounds. Not unless I was willing to risk the threat of being burned for dabbling with healing without permission and bringing the goddess’s ire. There would be no leniency. And no chance to become a healer again. To try to wear my beads again would be heresy and folly of the highest order—a betrayal of the goddess whose first tenet read “Honor Heliquat before all else” and followed quickly by the second tenet of “Suffer no betrayal.” The goddess might allow those born to healers to continue the craft as a necessary evil, but to throw away that heritage and then try to go back to it? That would be choosing life, defying the goddess, and a good, quick way to becoming a shamble man or something worse.
The loss hit me when I felt the new short strands of my hair brushing my forehead and realized the lack of weight or the clink of the beads. Years and years of study and effort and enduring Mother to learn about healing, something rewarding and interesting in and of itself, thrown away in an instant with only a fleeting sense of brutal logic and resentment as payoff.
Nothing to tie me to my childhood but the seven black diamonds marking my left thigh. Nothing I had earned.
A keening moan escaped from me even as my chest felt like it didn’t have enough air to simply breathe. I stared at the frostbite berry bush, eyes wide to keep from blinking, from crying. Another moan dragged itself from deep in my belly as I started to pant. My nails pressed further and further into my palms until I felt them cut into skin, but I wouldn’t cry. I refused to. Something she had taught me didn’t deserve tears.
I pictured a sack in my mind. This one looked like a frostbite berry with a wide opening so that it wouldn’t miss anything I poured into it. Then I tried hooking my fingers around the pain and loss, as I had when I was abandoned, but this hurt wasn’t as clear and sharp and brittle as that had been. There was still too much knowledge I wanted to hang on to, too many moments of quiet pleasure of when I got to learn about a new plant and its uses or healing mixture for the first time. So instead, I took the tears that wanted to fall and pictured pouring them in the sack. For good measure, I pictured all the future tears I might want to cry and poured those in as well. Then I tied the sack closed and pictured ice climbing up its sides until the bag was completely frozen. In my mind’s eye I stared at it a moment, before willing the frozen sack to shatter.
The hurt was still there, but the tears weren’t.
--
A Pack huntress who had been sent after me tracked me to my hiding place sometime later. She didn’t care much for minding where my nails had cut into my palms in my successful effort not to cry. She yanked me to my feet and all but dragged me back to the tribe, muttering about troublesome, idiotic children the whole way. That huntress was my keeper until Rawley returned during the evening meal.
I did my best to maintain the defiant look I had put on ever since the huntress retrieved me when I saw my mentor. It wasn’t as if I was completely unjustified for my actions just because I refused to voice my reasons. I hadn’t cried when there was no one to see, so I couldn’t break now. Rawley and I both ignored the Pack huntress’s irritated statement of “finally” as she got up and left.
Rawley drew in a long breath when she stopped a few feet away and let it just as slowly, not quite a sigh but not far from it. I felt her take in the raggedly cut hair, my scabbed palms, the defiant look one word away from breaking. She didn’t speak. Just got down on one knee and scooped me up into a hug in front of the whole tribe. Part of me wanted to cling to her as she smoothed a hand down my back and not let go until the pain twisting my stomach eased. But I knew better. Public affection wasn’t well received in general and would go along way to making us look soft, weak. So instead I stiffened up and gripped my bowl of cheese, dried fish, and berries with too much force. She held me a moment longer—my control barely shored up by my shame—before she pulled away with a look that promised we would revisit this later. It almost made me wish for the cold dismissal I was used to.
Rawley glanced about the camp, noting those openly watching us, those pretending not to, and the rest who were too busy with their own business to have any spare attention to pay to ours.
“We’ll talk in more detail tonight. But first, for the peepers.” She stood over me and crossed her arms, pitching her voice to carry. “In a single morning you have hit another apprentice, ruined and disrespected a huntress’s weapon, disrespected Grandmother, and caused trouble for the tribe when we need to focus on the run and potential threats. Your lack of foresight and discipline, and your cowardice, will cost you, apprentice. The girl will hit you as you hit her, and you will make her a new sling, promptly and without complaint. Grandmother has decided that three extra nights of offering will make up for your misstep, starting tonight, and for the insult your ill thought actions have given me I will make sure you think twice in the coming days. Do you understand?”
Her disappointment, her tone and stance, all of it was familiar, and the ease my response came with felt sickening—tinged with tiniest hint of relief at being back on that familiar ground. I let my posture sink in a bit on itself while also leaning slightly away from her. I met her eyes though, because to look down or away could be taken as inattention or the coward’s way out.
“I understand.” Simple, reflective of her words, and stated with subordination, but not softly or broken or hesitant.
A spark of anger flared in Rawley’s eyes, but that was within expectations. I just had to wait a few more moments to learn which part had sparked it and adjust—her gaze snapped past me and to my right, and I relaxed slightly when I realized that her anger wasn’t pointed at me.
Rawley motioned for me to stand. “Finish your food as we walk. I have to check in with the other huntresses.”
I got up and turned to look at who Rawley had glared at as she began to walk away. Levain and Father were having a meal with the twins. Father was laughing as Levain helped Adley with something. I swallowed down a painful knot in my throat and turned my back on them to follow Rawley.
--
I was silent as Rawley made her rounds through the camp. She stopped by the cooks’ fires first and got a thick slice of toasted bread topped with cheese and honey along with a bowl of dried fish. We ate as we walked and she checked in with the other lone huntresses, Fenris, and Ghani. It turned out that I was the only excitement of the day. Fenris tried to provoke Rawley about that, but Rawley let the insult roll off her with a shrug and a bland comment that I wouldn’t make the same mistakes twice. The last stop we made was for me.
We found Fellen with Nole on the other side of camp. Neither of them looked great. Fellen’s cheek had swollen and she had a black eye. Nole’s clothes hid her bruises and bandages, but the way she moved was stiff and careful. They both looked up from their discussion as we approached and Fellen went from earnest to snooty in a heartbeat.
Rawley put her hand on my shoulder when we reached them and spoke to Nole. “My apprentice is here to receive her due.”
Nole nodded after giving her apprentice a quick glance. “I’m sure Fellen said some things she shouldn’t have that contributed to the situation, but violence unchecked within the tribe can’t go unanswered. Nor can such blatant disrespect of a huntress’s tools.”
“Gimlea will be making Fellen a new one under my supervision. In the meantime, I hope my spare sling will serve her well.”
Nole held up a hand to stop Rawley as she moved to take the sling from one of the pouches at her side. “My apprentice already has another that she will be using until her new sling is made.”
Rawley nodded and pushed me forward a step. “I think it’s time we get the messy bit of business done then.”
Nole gave Fellen a look of assent and the other girl couldn’t keep the gloating off her face. I kept myself impassive, not wanting to give her the satisfaction of flinching. She squared up, drew her arm back, and threw her whole body behind the punch. It hit me in the jaw and my teeth clicked together audibly. I stumbled to the side but didn’t fall like she had. I smirked at her as her face blotted red with anger, but then had to stop as the expression pulled on my cheek and intensified the pain beginning to pulse through my jaw.
Rawley turned back to Nole. “We’ll be back in a few days, at most, with Fellen’s new sling.”
We left the pair and I could feel Fellen glaring at me as we walked away.
--
“Go sit inside the tent and wait for me.” Rawley caught me opening my mouth to question her, but she didn’t leave room for quibbling. “Go.”
I went. Even though it wasn’t our normal routine of instruction as Rawley repaired a bit of gear or tinkered with a new trap design. Entering the tent was always put off until the last moment as it was a cramped, smoky smelling thing only good for keeping the rain off and the cold out. Rawley couldn’t sit upright in it without hunching over and she always had to curl onto her side, so that her feet didn’t stick out when she laid down to sleep, while I puzzled myself around her in order to fit. She could have gotten a bigger tent, but she brushed me off the only time I had mentioned it by saying she didn’t want to bother with something that took longer to put up and had more air to warm. I set out my bedroll and sat in the very back of the tent so she would have room to enter when she came back from wherever she went.
I didn’t entertain the thought of trying to spy on her this time. I was better able to gauge my skill against hers now, and that alone was enough to keep me in my place. She would notice me trailing her within twenty heartbeats unless blind luck saved me, and even then I didn’t yet have the skill to move without catching the eyes of all the tribe members still doing their business about camp. Grandmother had also been thorough with the offering earlier in the evening. My thigh still ached from the amount of times she had me use my prayer needle to keep the cut I made on my mark open and bleeding. Grandmother hadn’t threatened me with my blessing again—though she did comment that she thought my hair looked prettier now without my beads.
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For the first while, I wondered if the tent exile meant that Rawley was going to give me a more private version of the lecture she had thrown in my face in the middle of camp, and it took me a bit to pinpoint why that speculation didn’t sound true. Concern. There had been concern buried behind the hard edges of her voice and eyes when she left. The back of my neck prickled with the realization. Levain had at least been predictable. No praise, no fun, no motherly care. All I needed was a showing of continuous effort and the ability to recall any scrap of information she had told me within a moment’s notice. I had known when I could press her for more healing lessons or back talk. I knew when it was better to stay silent and take her rants, her disapproving looks, her comparisons of me to the twins, the dreams she had of what she had planned for me and what that would do for her. I knew the tea to make to help her calm down when she was feeling irritable and depressed. Lavender with sheep’s milk. I never got any thanks for it, not when I helped her through her pregnancy with the twins when I was five or the various times I helped her hide that she was sick, but I was certain that I knew Levain better than Father or the twins ever had.
I didn’t have that certainty about Rawley. My mentor had a tendency to go about things in the way I least expected, or didn’t expect at all. She still liked discipline, though for different reasons than Levain, and that was about the only thing they had in common. Rawley wanted me to think, to draw my own conclusions and insights about my surroundings and the skills needed to become a huntress. It was as if she wanted me to carve my own path rather than simply repeat what she had done. None of her lessons had a single correct answer, though there were better answers than others, and she was gentle with her corrections that guided me towards the better answers and she was nearly—overbearing with her approval. I still didn’t know much about her either. Everything I learned about her was from what I observed or overheard. Rawley never gave me a straight answer the couple times I tried to learn about her past and personal life. I knew that she originally came from another tribe around the time I was born and that it caused a stir. It was common for men to change tribes to be with their new wife, or sometimes to provide labor, but women, especially huntresses, normally stayed with the tribe they were born to. Her transition to our tribe was part of the reason why the huntresses mostly left her to her own business—she was still seen a bit as an outsider—but the larger part of it was her lack of restraint when it came to goading and opposing Fenris. The other lone huntresses respected her for not bowing to the Pack even if they thought it would come back to bite her one day. Some rumors floated around that Rawley felt secure in her outspoken behavior because Fenris and her were actually lovers, but in the months I’d been her apprentice I hadn’t seen any hints that Rawley felt romantic towards anyone, much less Fenris. She just had a way about her that made everyone feel off-kilter.
The tent flap was pushed open and Adley crawled inside, carrying a satchel. It took everything I had not to flinch back at the sight of my sister, so I focused my attention on the satchel instead. It looked too big for her small frame and I recognized it as the bag Levain used to carry her healing things when she had to travel to treat a patient. I braced myself as I looked at the tent entrance again, expecting the other twin to crawl through, but Kem wasn’t there.
Adley glared at me through angry tears as she sat down and shoved the bag off her shoulder. “Mother made me come without him once she pointed out what would happen to Mother’s reputation if a patient was left untreated.”
Rawley crouched down outside the tent. “Take care of Gimlea’s hands and face. Her leg too while you’re at it. The faster she recovers, the better.” She faced me. “I knew you wouldn’t go to your—to the healer’s tent, but I couldn’t let you go untreated either.”
“I could have recovered on my own.”
“Perhaps, but that would have wasted time and run the risk of your injuries worsening.” Rawley saw that I was still going to refuse my sister’s help, and cut through the last of my resistance with her next words. “I need an apprentice who can use her head and her hands. If you’re so set on not using either, I can escort you back to Grandmother’s tent with the knowledge that you weren’t worth the energy it takes to train an apprentice.”
I shoved my hands, palms up, at my sister. “Fine then. Heal me.”
Rawley said, “I’ll be out here when you’re done,” before she let the tent flap fall back into place and I heard her deliberately take several loud steps away from the tent.
Adley smirked at me through her tears. “Looks like you still haven’t learned your lesson.”
I smirked back at her. “At least I can go across camp without turning into a crybaby because my brother isn’t with me.”
She dashed the tears from her cheeks and opened the satchel with more force than necessary, scowling. I hid a wince when I heard some the bottles inside clink together. Apparently, Levain hadn’t yet drilled into her the importance of handling everything with care, no matter what you were feeling.
Adley muttered, just loud enough for me to hear, “At least I have a brother who wants to be with me.” That didn’t sting as much as she thought it would, but she met my eyes for the punchline of her statement and got to see its full effect. “I guess you’re not worth anything because no one wants to be with you.”
My jaw was starting to ache from talking, but it hurt worse as I ground my teeth together and I reopened the scabs on my palms as my fingernails dug in. Adley flinched back as I narrowed my eyes at her, picturing what she would look like if I hit her. But I didn’t, because I wasn’t that type of older sister. And because when our family really wanted to hurt, wanted to make the pain last, we used our words.
“I don’t need people to want to be with me to be worth something. To be worth more than you’ll ever be.” I pulled up the skirt of my dress and stabbed a finger into my mark. “I’m chosen by the goddess. What do you have? Mother spent the most time with me, training me, because I have potential. What do you have?”
“Mother abandoned you.”
“I guess that shows that you’re less than someone she abandoned, hm? She didn’t think you were worth training until I was gone.”
That was clearly not an angle of the situation Adley had considered before. “That’s not—that’s not true! She was protecting us!”
“Protecting you? She must have seen then that you’re just a little crybaby then who couldn’t handle a bit of censure or being on her own.” I leaned forward, so that I was right in her face. “Couldn’t handle being a healer’s daughter.”
“I can handle it!”
I leaned back and thrust my hands at her again. “Prove it. Heal me, little sister.”
Her face had gone blotchy with anger and her hands shook as she dug through the satchel and pulled out bandages and various bottles and pouches filled with tinctures and poultices and herbs. She didn’t need even a third of it. I felt a little sick with twisted pleasure as I watched her. I might not feel any remorse that she and Kem had to learn the healing craft under Levain now, especially when I was certain she would be kinder to them, but I also hadn’t meant to go as far as I had in belittling her. Of course, if I gave her a minute to think about what I was saying she would calm down and remember that she was definitively the favored child, not me. But I also wasn’t quite ready to give up my advantage, not when Adley had thrown Levain’s abandonment in my face and called me worthless.
She reached for a bottle that I knew was filled with powdered silverbell flowers, good for preventing infections and reducing inflammation, but not what should come first.
“Wrong.”
Adley stopped and started reaching for a pouch full of bark shavings from the sleeper’s dream bush. As its name suggested it was best at inducing sleep and relieving pain, but I wasn’t ready to go to sleep yet and there were other options that didn’t have that side effect in order to relieve pain, such as the leaves of the bush, nor was it what should come first.
“Wrong.”
I saw her tense up and start reaching for the bandages.
“Wrong.”
She gritted her teeth and started reaching for another clay bottle.
“Wrong.”
She shifted towards the other side of her selection and—
“Wrong.”
Another pouch. Two more bottles. All wrong.
She was crying angry tears again by the time I took pity on her. “Didn’t she teach you the basics?” I reached out and tapped the water pouch that she hadn’t touched. Mother would have already boiled the water. Then I pointed to the satchel. “There should be a clean cloth in there. Always use the boiled water and a clean cloth to rinse a wound before anything else.”
I shifted my hands over to where my bedroll wasn’t covering the ground, and Adley followed my instructions, cleaning first the half-circles my nails had dug into my palms and then the two cuts on my thigh. She wrinkled her nose at the blood, but didn’t panic at the sight of it like I thought Kem might.
Things continued like that. I had to keep correcting her and she got more subdued with every round of it even though I could tell that she didn’t like accepting direction from me. I didn’t like it either. My fingers itched to snatch the bottles and pouches away from her and tend to my wounds myself. I would have been done in a fourth of the time with better results, but I couldn’t.
Not now that I had cut off my healer’s beads.
If I was caught doing healing without them, at best I would lose a hand, at worst I’d be burned. The tribe wouldn’t take well to the risk inherent to such an action, given that healing with healer’s beads sometimes toed the line of inviting too much life and causing insult to the goddess.
Adley kept quiet until she had placed all the pouches and bottles back into the satchel and had it slung over one shoulder. Then she met my eyes. “I hope you’re happy proving your skill at something you can never use. You’re the one who couldn’t handle being a healer’s daughter and Mother said that your mark isn’t anything special. That you’re useless.” Her eyes narrowed as her mouth curled into a malicious little smile. “Maybe you should think about what happens to those who don’t make it through the Seedling Palace. Those who don’t become whisper women.”
She turned and left the tent. I didn’t go after her. There wasn’t anything left to say. I curled up on my side and ignored Rawley when she entered the tent a while later. I didn’t let myself dwell on Adley’s words, because, really, only one thing had changed. I had one more person to prove wrong, one more reason to become one of the goddess’s favorites. Someday I would return, stepping out of a tree’s shadow, lips black, back straight and strong, and it would be their turn to have no choice but to listen. They would realize they were the ones who could never measure up, the worthless ones in the goddess’s eyes. I would stand before them all, and the twins and the tribe would be sick with shame for ignoring me and treating me as if I was a bit of bad meat always on the verge of ruining their meal. But I wouldn’t be paying any attention to them. Levain would be on her knees before me, looking up with…with jealousy and respect and fear, and she would praise me and I would tell her that her praise was meaningless now that I had the goddess. Her face would fall as she realized that she no longer had any power over me and I would flick my eyes over her before spitting out that single word and turning my back on her once and for all.
Useless.
And then it would my mother’s turn to crumble and cower.