The Hinta woman’s name was Chetanzi, and as much as Tavi was glad to be free and well away from the rest of her cannibalistic tribe, he wished he could have picked a friendlier traveling companion. She hardly spoke, she never put her bow away, walking nearly all day with an arrow on the cord, and she smoked constantly. When they were walking, it was a shorty little stubby thing, and when they rested, she’d pull the big bone pipe out, stuff it full of some tacky, brown dried leaf, and knock the ember from the little pipe into the big one. No matter whether Tavi walked in front or behind her, somehow the cloying smoke ended up in his face.

Halfway through the first day of tramping southward through the wooded hills, he walked right into a thick cloud of the stuff just as he came over a rise, and it was thick enough to leave him coughing and sputtering. “Do you have to smoke that all the time?” he asked, eyes watering.

“Yes,” she said, and kept walking. A full handspan passed without her saying anything else.

“You might at least try for some groundfowl or a hare if you’re going to carry that bow the whole time,” he said later, pulling abreast of her to escape the cloud of smoke behind. “You haven’t loosed a single arrow all day.”

“If you are hungry, I have some dried meat,” she said, scanning the hills ahead. “You will have to wait until we stop so I can get it out.”

“I’m not hungry,” he said. “I was thinking ahead. We’ve got a full moon or more of walking ahead of us. We should catch what food we can and save the dried stuff and journey meal for when we really need it.”

She shook her head impatiently. “I am not hunting.”

Tavi bit his lip. He might as well have held conversation with a dewdrop monkey. “Then why have you kept an arrow strung since sunrise?”

Chetanzi gave him a baffled look, as if he’d told a joke she didn’t understand. “In case we run into someone.”

“You’re a pleasant one, aren’t you?” Tavi muttered. He said it more to himself than to her, but he didn’t bother saying it all that quietly.

“My tribe is hated.” She stated it like a fact and didn’t sound all that bothered.

“Maybe that’s because you run around eating people.”

She stopped suddenly, and Tavi tensed, worried he’d pushed her too far. She didn’t draw on him, though – she merely stowed her arrow and slung her bow across her back with more force than was necessary, puffing her little pipe angrily. “Are all the lesser tribes like this?” she said. “So desperate for this world that you run from the greater peace?”

Tavi batted a branch aside and kept walking. “If you mean would we all rather not get cooked and chewed on, then yes, I’d call that a universal. Seems pretty obvious to me.”

“But the peace,” she insisted.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. The peace of being dead? I’m sure that’s nice and all, but I’m in no rush to find out.”

She pulled her pipe from her mouth, eyeing him uncertainly. “You were not told of the Union? Have you no loremaster?”

“Sure we do,” Tavi said, “but he never said anything about a paradise you can only get into if someone eats you.” He pointed to a clearing he could see down the hillside slope, perhaps another handspan’s walk to the south. “That could be a good spot for stopping tonight. What do you think?”

Chetanzi shook her head immediately. “We will need to sleep in the trees until we reach the place where the leaves turn yellow.”

“Why?” he asked.

“The spirits cannot climb trees,” she said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

He laughed, throwing up his hands helplessly. “Of course.”

She frowned at him. “They will crawl into your mouth while you sleep. I have smoked as many out of you as I can, but if too many overpower you, I will be forced to cut your throat and deny you the greater peace.”

Tavi sighed and wished he had some way he could be sure of escaping this woman that wouldn’t end up with him trussed up or dead. She’d slept there in his prison hut the night before, waiting until the dead of night to sneak him out without the other Hinta seeing, and any time he’d so much as twitched she’d awoken and reached for a weapon. “I’m not going to be overpowered by spirits. What would that even look like?”

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“Floating off the ground, foaming at the mouth, speaking spirit tongue, glowing eyes,” she said, ticking the symptoms off on her fingers.

“I can promise I won’t do any of those,” he said. “I’ve tried sleeping in a tree before, and I don’t want to do it again.”

“Fools,” she said quietly to herself, stalking forward. “All fools.”

He followed after her, bemused by her earnest concern. Mostly he just hoped that if they kept talking she wouldn’t put the pipe back in her mouth. “Do spirits not like trees with yellow leaves?”

She shook her head. “That is the end of Hinta lands. They have no interest in the world beyond.”

“Because…?”

“They wish to destroy the true children of the Lost.”

Every word she said inspired another double handful of bewildered questions, but Tavi found he had reached his limit of superstitious nonsense. “Sure. Makes perfect sense.”

Chitanzi nodded once and clamped her lips back around her pipe, apparently satisfied that she had educated the benighted jungle boy. I guess the Hinta aren’t much for sarcasm.

They walked in silence and smoke for another handspan, the sun sinking ever lower through the trees. Tavi wondered whether she’d try to haul him up into the trees if he refused. He could see through the trees far out over the valley they were descending into, and there was no hint of yellow to the trees. He didn’t think she’d actually kill him if he slept on the ground; she wanted to reach Xochil as badly as he did, and she’d never find his house without Tavi.

He slipped into the Song, hoping it would blunt his offended sense of smell, or at least distract him from it. It didn’t, really, but at least he could let his mind wander amid the green and feel out the way ahead. He could trace the roots and the leaves, and in the empty spaces defined by them, he could see…

His eyes snapped open and he grabbed Chitanzi by the arm, hauling her to a stop. She wrenched herself free, eyes hard.

“We have to turn around,” he whispered, heart knocking hard in his chest. “Quick. Be silent.”

To her credit, the Hinta woman immediately reached for the bow on her back and nocked an arrow, backing slowly the way they came, eyes scanning through the bare tree trunks around them.

“Faster,” he hissed, but it was too late. An enormous, furry mountain of a creature ambled into view ahead and stopped dead in its tracks when it caught sight of them. He had no idea if it was the same thing that had chased him before, but it was big and brown and had a snout full of very long teeth. It whuffed at them, pawing the earth.

“Ah,” Chitanzi said, relaxing. “It is only a bear.”

Tavi edged behind the trunk of a large tree, wondering if he should climb it. “One of those things nearly killed me before I fell in your trap.”

“The spirits will take even one of these,” she said, strolling forward. “I’ve seen it more than once.”

He wanted to call her back, to tell her to run, but Tavi was frozen, hoping it would focus on her if he stayed very still. It was only a stone’s throw away. Chitanzi crossed the space with a careful, confident grace, totally ignoring the fact that the great thing was shaking its gargantuan head and pawing the earth.

If it kills her, then you’re free of her, a small voice said in his head. Sneak away while it’s tearing her apart and count yourself lucky.

He couldn’t make himself do it. She was insane and unsafe, but he couldn’t just let her walk into the beast’s mouth. Tarek wouldn’t have done it, and he wanted to be able to look his brother in the eye when he saw him next. Screwing up his courage, he plucked a stone from the dirt between the roots and threw it at the bear.

“Run!” he yelled at her. “Come here, you stupid thing!”

Then, without waiting to see what happened, he leapt up the trunk of the tree, reaching for the lowest branches. He got a hand on one and pulled himself up, waiting to hear the roar and shake of the thing chasing him.

“Stop that,” Chitanzi said, sounding like a parent scolding a small child. “You’ll scare her.”

Hanging from the branch by one hand, Tavi looked at her, dumbfounded. She was still walking toward it calmly.

The bear-thing reared up on its hind legs, towering over her, a warning rumble reaching into Tavi’s chest and making it vibrate. He hauled himself into the tree, incredulous, and watched to see how the woman would die.

It roared, lifting its muzzle to the sky. It was definitely the same sort of thing that had chased him. He’d never forget that sound. He lifted himself onto the next branch up and wondered how much higher he should go.

Chitanzi faced the beast, a slender willow in the shade of a mountain, and blew smoke up at it. The roar cut short, and the bear fell to all fours, sneezing. Three times it spasmed, its whole body shaking, and when it stopped, she leaned forward into its face and blew another thick cloud at it.

The bear shook its head, grumbled, and sank onto all fours. She reached behind one of its rounded ears and gave it a scratch. The buzzing rumble it made this time sounded content.

Tavi’s jaw dropped. “What did you do?”

“It had an angry spirit,” she said calmly. “Nothing to fear now.”

He clutched his branch. “I’m staying up here, thanks.”

She looked up at him, something very near to a smile playing about her mouth. “They can climb trees, you know. If it wished to chase you, that wouldn’t help.” She kept scratching its head.

“I think I’ll wait until it goes,” he said.

She gave it one last caress and then patted it hard on the mountainous rump. The beast snorted, rose, and lumbered away. She looked his way, one eyebrow raised. “You said you wouldn’t sleep in the trees.”

Keeping a close eye on the bear, Tavi shimmied down. Relief warred with annoyance and disbelief. “It’s not spirits that make animals attack. They just do.”

Chitanzi gestured to the retreating form through the trees. “They don’t. Not without something driving them.”

He shook his head, unable to argue with the evidence of his eyes but unwilling to concede the point. “It was something else. It had to be. Some magic.”

“I do no magic,” she said, a metal edge in her voice. “Never say that.”

“Fine,” he said, watching the bear disappear behind a thicket of bushes in the distance. “Forget I said anything. Let’s keep going. And don’t stop smoking.”