The next day tasted of rain. We could see the clouds building up and gradually darken the horizon to the west as the breeze became a nuisance and brought the storm closer to us. We wouldn’t be able to outrun it, not with the weight of the tribe’s supplies and gear, even when there was care taken to keep it to the bare minimum. The herds and young children also slowed us down.

But at least on the grassland we could still move. Once we reached Flickermark a storm would stop us in our tracks as the ravines flooded and we hid out in the upper caves. So we continued along the Crossing River’s bank as it took the tribe southeast in the hope that when the storm did hit we would be on its edge.

Rawley and I spent most of the morning scouting a couple miles ahead of the tribe with the river far off to our right. There wasn’t much to hunt as everything seemed to bed down to prepare for the storm, so Rawley spent the time questioning me about the best ways to weather out a storm and other natural occurrences in various scenarios. She didn’t mention the day before, so I didn’t either. There had been an impulse early that morning to stay silent and keep ignoring her, but I knew better than to expect an apology, given how rare they were, and doing so wouldn’t have accomplished anything. Not when I did it at least.

Rawley used silence quite effectively once we had been finished with the questioning exercise for awhile and were quietly observing the land around us for any movement. I got lulled by it. The hour or so of silence was similar to the times when Rawley had me sit by the riverbank or in the hills or up in a tree in the forest with the instructions to be as still as possible and tell her everything I noticed when she returned. Then she would leave, sometime for an hour, but often longer, and there would be no one around. No judgments, no expectations but to absorb. Similar to the times Levain left her store to treat a patient or collect ingredients and I was left to go through her stores or concentrate on memorization. Focusing so throughly on the land around us during that hour I could push aside the uncertainty and hurt Rawley had caused by hugging me and pushing my sister and healing on me without warning so soon after I had thrown my beads away. I could ignore the brush of hair on my forehead and the accompanying ache in my chest. All I had to do was focus on the storm gradually coming closer, the rustle and cold brush of the wind, the glitter of the river in distance, the rise and fall of the grassy hills around us.

“Hold out your hand.”

My mentor’s voice slipped into the silence, soft but still commanding. I listened, thinking it was the start to a new lesson. Instead, my mentor pulled an object from a pouch and dropped it into my hand. Berry red, ocre, moss green, bone white beads all braided together with strands of tan leather.

My healer’s beads.

I dropped them and backed away, but unable to take my eyes off them. “I can’t have those.”

Rawley gently picked them back up. “They belong to you.”

I shook my head. “I’m not a healer’s apprentice anymore.”

“I know you can’t wear them.” She held them out to me again. “But I don’t think you’re quite done with them either, clever girl.”

I took another step back, bristling at being called clever, as one part of me wanted to clasp the beads to my chest and another was tempted to chuck them into the hills. “I can’t heal. I don’t want them.”

She gave me a piercing, long look before nodding and tucking the beads back into her pouch. “I’ll keep them until you are ready then.”

“I won’t need them.”

“Perhaps.” Rawley started walking. “But I’ll keep them all the same.”

--

It was near the middle of the day when we began to make our way closer to the river so that we would be less likely to lose our way when the storm hit. We didn’t make our way back to the tribe though. With the river joining them wouldn’t increase our chances of staying together and Rawley thought it was smart to have eyes out front as early as possible once we left the storm.

Watching a storm come closer to envelope us was always somewhat surreal. Gray, roiling clouds swept towards us, bringing with them a hazy curtain of rain as the wind picked up further. Flashes of lightning arced and lit up the underbelly of the clouds. As the storm got closer more and more of the echoing clap of thunder reached us. I settled my pack under my wool cloak as the scent and taste of rain increased, the air growing heavy with anticipation as I pulled my hood up.

“Stay close to me. If the river starts to flood we’ll have to move away quickly.”

I followed Rawley’s instructions though I had to walk behind her in order to keep her in sight since my hood blocked my vision on either side. I had never liked the sense of confinement that created but it was necessary for the hood to be deep in order for it to effectively block out the rain and wind.

I couldn’t see the storm in the last few breathes it took to hit. But I heard it. The rain was roaring hiss, loud enough that I couldn’t hear the swish of my cloak or the rush of the river. I heard when the storm hit the river though. A thousand pebbles hitting the water, over and over in the time it took to blink. A thousand plops and splashes accenting the roar of rain and wind and a deafening boom as a flash of lightning and thunder rolled near simultaneously.

The storm felt like a physical blow when it hit. I stumbled as the rain pressed down onto my head and shoulders, and then slipped as the ground became slick. I caught myself on my knee and without thinking placed my hand on my left thigh as I pushed myself up. The cuts on my mark flared in protest but I gritted my teeth and stood anyway. Already, Rawley was just a hazy blur in the rain that I hurried to catch up to.

My world narrowed to three things: keeping track of my mentor’s back, staying on my feet, and water. It felt like I was breathing it in even with my hood and I could feel my cloak gradually growing heavier as the rain seeped in and weighed it down. I couldn’t see anything but Rawley’s back, my feet, and water—rain pouring down and being blown around me, the vague outline of the river to my right, the drenched, slippery water laden ground. Even with my cloak, cold bursts of wind would slip under the hem and freeze my skin, nor did it take long for the bottom of my dress to stick to my legs with kicked up mud and water. My shoes were water resistant, but after a few hours in the heavy rain they, and my cloak, were starting to have difficulty keeping the water out.

A severe thunderstorm like this didn’t happen often. And when we did get caught in one it was typically closer to the mountains. Otherwise, when we got rain it tended to be lighter rain showers near the beginning of the warm season. Some people liked to say it was because the goddess didn’t like the damage more severe storms could do to Her trees, so she stopped most of the storms from becoming too strong while others speculated that She created the stronger storms to remind us of Her power like how She turned the sky to night during the procession.

Many of the legends showed that the later was true for snowstorms at least. Helindra took after the goddess and was naturally colder than Her sister’s territory, Azaldra, but the first snowstorm always came at the goddess’s hand to mark the beginning of the cold season. No one went to watch Her perform that feat, though. To do so was to invite being frozen in a snowdrift rather than protected in a meeting place like Grislander’s Maw. Also, it was said that the goddess used a line of shamble men to wish the storm into being, stretching across Her territory, and no one wanted to take the chance of getting caught in their midst. Getting touched by a shambler marked you to become one as well when you died, robbing you of the chance of ever going to the Silver Forest, a place of respite and plenty among the stars that the goddess reserved for those who served and honored her well. Shamble men didn’t have a soul so they were destined for the Ever Dark with the betrayers and those who killed for the sake of killing, if they ever got a second death.

Rawley reached back and yanked me to the side. I blinked at her as she continued to pull me away from the river before I looked down and realized that I was sloshing through more water than I should be. Flooding. The river was flooding. I spared a thought to hope that the tribe had moved to a safe distance away from the river as I quickened my pace to keep up with Rawley’s longer strides. We climbed the nearest hill before pausing as Rawley surveyed what she could see of the land around us. I wanted to help, but all I could do was pant. I might have been stronger than I was before, but I was used to having a smaller pack, even if the one I currently had was on the lighter side, with the tribe’s slower pace and bodies to block the wind and rain. Fighting for every step was draining me, and now we had flooding as well as the storm to contend with.

Lightning lit up the area around us and Rawley tried to shout something at me after the thunderclap that followed while pointing, but I couldn’t make out what she said though the rain and wind, and the area she was pointing at looked like nothing more than shadowy curtains of water. The second time she pressed her cheek to mine and I heard her as she shouted again.

“We can’t keep going! Should find shelter over there!”

I nodded back at her, and we began to follow the crest of the hill for as long as we could before switching over to another one. We always stayed on the highest part of the hills that we could, but there were more than a few times where we had to go to the low ground to reach the next hill. At first that meant we had to press through the growing floodwaters, Rawley gripping my arm to keep me from slipping, but later we were far enough away the water hadn’t reached there yet.

Shelter turned out to be relative. I had been hoping against the knowledge that we were surrounded by grassland for a cave or a large outcropping of rock, or a large stand of trees thick enough to have kept the rain from soaking the ground. Instead what we got was a ten foot or so tall pine tree that creaked ominously in the wind. There was no room or hope of setting up Rawley’s tent, so we had to settle for squeezing in among the tree’s bottom branches on its leeward side. And then we could only sit, only marginally more protected from the wind and rain, bracing ourselves against the worst of the tree’s swaying, without the options to sleep or talk or find better shelter.

Or at least I didn’t have any of those options. At point I looked over to see that Rawley had wedged herself into a secure position and dozed off. I gaped at her, but she only shifted slightly when the next roll of thunder rumbled the air around us. Then I realized I had lost control of myself and forced myself to settle back and watch the storm rage around us through the branches. I only gave her a swift glance every few minutes.

By the time the storm completely passed us I was stiff and sore with bloodshot eyes that didn’t want to stay open. It was also well into the night. Rawley had stirred awake some hours before and tried to tell me to sleep through the motions, but I hadn’t been able to manage it except in fits and starts that only happened because my eyelids decided they didn’t have the strength to open until the next thunderclap or groaning of the tree. Rawley noted my condition and came to a decision.

“We’ll have to go back to the tribe. There’s little point in scouting ahead when they’ve likely settled down for the night and you can’t keep your eyes open.”

Shame struck me and I suppressed a yawn to declare, “I can keep going.”

She reached through the branches and flicked me lightly on the forehead. “Bluffing won’t help you or me in this scenario. I can follow the stars now, and I got some rest, so it shouldn’t be too difficult to find the tribe and carry you back.”

“I can walk!”

There was her knowing look. “You can barely sit upright.” She stood and slipped out of the tree’s branches before looking back at me. “I can carry you, or you can stay here and fend for yourself until the tribe catches up. Which do you prefer?”

We both knew that the second choice wasn’t really an option. Her lesson the last time I got too tired to stand was at the forefront of my mind, and if I chose to stay I would be a failure of an apprentice, an idiot, and a fool that was likely to die of the wet and cold.

I stood, using the branches as support, legs shaking, and joined her outside of the tree’s branches. She handed me her cloak before repositioning her pack to hang in front of her. I couldn’t quite look at her as I hooked my arms around her neck and she hoisted me up onto her back like an extra pack. I settled and tied her cloak around us both and she set off. It didn’t take long before the warmth of her body heat and the rhythm of her step lulled me to sleep.