Ressia was called back to the Seedling Palace on the fourth day of the cold season. She didn’t give a lot of detail for the reason why other than some sort of competition had begun. It didn’t take a lot of guess work to infer that a lot of Seedlings got injured during it. The goddess and, by extension, Her whisper women weren’t ones for half measures. After all, why would anyone deserve slack when what they were going through could never measure up to the strain the Beloved had endured?

Still, I couldn’t help the brush of unease that prickled on the back of my neck. If all went well, I would be at the Seedling Palace this year or next and have to face the same competition, or something similar. The thought of getting injured again was particularly uncomfortable as I was recovering from my reopened wounds. I had only recently gotten back to the point I had been at before Fellen and I went to the Grove to get our new markings sanctified.

Fellen was further along in her recovery, but soon after Ressia left with her soothing poultice the itching of her healing wounds nearly became unbearable. I had to tie her hands together in between meal times so that she wouldn’t absentmindedly itch them and even then sometimes I caught her rubbing her legs against the floor or doing something else stupid to try to get at an itch. She knew she shouldn’t do it, that if she scratched too much she would reopen her wounds and we would be back where we started—but without a healer. The urge to scratch an itch didn’t care too much about logic, though, and Fellen wasn’t the best at restraint.

So I resorted to what tricks I knew to deal the problem that didn’t fall too close to the healer’s domain. I tied her wrists together, I distracted her with competitions of who could hold different objects for the longest in both hands, and I asked her questions about her past, her interests, her favorite meals. Anything to get her mind off the need to scratch.

I learned more than I had ever wanted to know, and my mouth tasted sour as she went on and on about how attentive her mother was. She didn’t have too many other people to talk about. No siblings, no friends. I didn’t listen too closely about her father. I caught that he was one of men who ground the flour and did other manual labor and tuned out after that. Her mother, though, was another story. She was one of the women who wove and felted the tribes’ clothing, blankets, tent insulation, and other various necessities. Not the highest status work, but definitely not the lowest. And she doted on her daughter.

Fellen spent hours at her mother’s side, learning various bits of the craft and practicing, while her mother patiently coached her through it. Her mother asked for her opinion, hugged her, let Fellen know when she done a good job. Even when Fellen started to complain about her mother the worst she had ever done seemed to be denying Fellen a meal as punishment. Fellen did try not to talk about her too much—I think because the memory of my last interaction with her still stood out—but her mother was often still at least tangentially related to whatever she had decided to talk about instead. Like when I learned roasted mushroom and boar was one of her favorite meals because her mother liked it too.

Fellen tried to get me to talk about the time before we met too, but I put her off by saying she had already seen what it was like. I had no desire to comb through the past; what I was going to become in the future was what mattered. Besides, I had the training and restraint not to itch my wounds. I didn’t need the distraction.

As soon as the healer left, the sense that we were imposing on the whisper women tripled. I didn’t doubt that they took her departure as a sign that the goddess was no longer interested in us and thus, we were well below the threshold to be worthy of their time and space. They had fulfilled their ceremonial obligations, so now they wanted us gone. They set their fire starters on a rotating schedule to bring us our meals and help us to the hidden latrine. Other than that we were left to our own devices as the whisper women increasingly gave us the side eye to see if we had walked on our own yet.

Sometimes, we sat at the tent entrance to take in the sight of the barrier overhead and the whisper women working to clear the area of weeds. They walked between the rows of shamble men without fear. They would also disappear down the path we arrived on and return with fish, vegetables, and winter fruit. Once, a pair even returned with a bane carcass slung over one shoulder. We weren’t allowed to watch when they practiced their combat art or when all of them gathered in the Grove. They held their secrets close, and they didn’t want us knowing more than we should. Only whisper women had the privilege of learning how to use a weapon dedicated solely for combat. I wouldn’t be surprised if their prayer ceremonies operated differently than ours as well.

Hana didn’t return after she took Ressia back to the Seedling Palace. One of the fire starters quietly told us that she wasn’t actually assigned to this Grove. She wasn’t even a Caretaker. I didn’t have much knowledge on the different sects within the whisper women, but even I knew, once I took a moment to think about it, that her ability to travel so far through shadow at such a young age was rare—and not in line with typical strengths of a Caretaker. Out of the six different sects, she was probably a Scale or Seeker, and the goddess had simply made use of her talent to get Her degree conveyed to us quickly.

The first time Fellen made a hobbling circuit around our tent on her own, we were informed that we would be taken to Grislander’s Maw within the week. Apparently, only one of us needed to meet the condition of being able to walk on our own. Fellen and I didn’t argue, even though if they didn’t take us right to the valley we would be practically helpless. Maybur’s gaze had said all there needed to be said if we had enough foolish insolence to protest, and we both preferred to have more than one day to continue recovering before we were cast out into the snow.

I refused to show it but quiet unease settled onto my chest as soon as the announcement was made. It didn’t have to do with where we would be left at and our state of recovery, but with Fellen.

Suddenly, the fact that we would be reuniting with our tribe, as well as a dozen or so others, was very, very real. She was just a rival, but given all she told me about her childhood she didn’t have much need for even that once we returned to the tribe. She would get caught up with her mother’s attentions and her apprenticeship with Nole would take up the rest of her time. The only person she had talked about as much as her mother was Nole. She was determined to become the best apprentice the huntress had ever had.

I didn’t have any place in all that.

The journey from Gabbler Shore had forced us together and now it was ending. There wasn’t anything else to bring us together. We wouldn’t have to fight for survival, and our mentors had only interacted when our path demanded the use of both their skills. I would go back and study with Rawley until I got my blooding and then I would leave for the Seedling Palace. Nothing could change any of that, so it was past time I accepted that I had put more trust into someone than I should have, because they never would stay forever.

I forced myself to swallow that tasteless truth, and then distracted myself from the unease that refused to go away by plotting my revenge on the two whisper women who had treated us poorly. In some capacity, they were still awe-inspiring simply because they were whisper women, but the knowledge that I would one day be above them in rank was enough of a buffer to let me still act.

I didn’t let my injuries limit me either. The fire starters might not be willing to directly sabotage the whisper women, but when they thought I was a shy girl wanting to show some quiet appreciation to two of the whisper women who helped me? They ate up that story like fresh bramble berries. I worked on them on my trips to the latrine and when they stopped by to check on us when Fellen was asleep. I couldn’t have her giving away the truth.

It didn’t take long for one of the fire starters to shift through my hints of what I wanted to do and become sympathetic to my story. She gathered up the small, short light purple blooms growing at one end of the Statue Garden and presented them to me. They had a refreshing scent. I told her I wanted to prepare them a little bit, so that it wasn’t just her doing all the work for the gift, and she left me alone for a couple hours.

During that time, I split the flowers into two bundles and carefully interspersed the bundles with the red flowers that grew in a patch near our tent. They were sweet smelling. When the fire starter returned she complimented me on the flowers and the bow I had tied around each bundle’s stems.

She set off to discretely place the bundles outside the two whisper women’s tents and I smiled.

Ghost petal and ember weed. Separate they both had their benefits, but together, overtime, their mingled scents caused headaches, nausea, and paranoia. They both liked to grow in cold conditions and close proximity—places where fire had burned hot in the past. They got their names because they often grew around where funeral pyres had burned—though cook fires often opened up their seeds as well before they were uprooted. A few of hours were fine to spend in their mingled scents, but more than that and the effects started to occur. I had been told to be wary of mixing them many, many times.

Three whisper women woke up the next day feeling ill and I didn’t feel the least regret for mixing the partner of one the two whisper women in my revenge. Later that evening I heard about one of them throwing up, but it took until the next morning for them to have one of the fire starters burn the flowers to get rid of them. That spread the mingled scents to the entire camp and all the whisper women dealt with headaches for the rest of day.

During the commotion the fire starter who helped me came back with wide eyes, demanding to know if the flowers were causing the issue. I shrugged, utterly hopeless, when I informed her I couldn’t know. I wasn’t a healer.

She didn’t glance at the short bit of hair I had been careful to tuck into the rest my hair before hurrying back the way she came. Neither of us got caught.