I should have been more concerned with my own reaction. When Grandmother appeared over the lip of the hill leading down into the valley, disappointment and worry washed through me. Even with the distance still between us I saw her note the reaction, and I forced the uncalled for emotion back. I didn’t understand the reaction, but I also didn’t have the mental space to examine it at the moment. Nor was this tenuous meeting the best place to do so. For her part, Grandmother looked mildly surprised to see us standing there in the snow. Her reaction strengthen on seeing Fellen more so than me.

The woman who bustled past Grandmother was full of emotion, all of it for Fellen. She barely glanced at me as she rushed up to Fellen, hands and voice shaking, as she checked her over and asked question after question about her health and journey without letting Fellen get a word in. I assumed she was Lendra, Fellen’s mother, and it took me a couple moments to also place her as the crying, frantic woman who had to be dragged with the tribe after the bridge broke. She would have looked similar to her daughter, if Fellen was prone to being a blubbering mess.

Fellen also had tears in her eyes, and she hugged Lendra as soon as the woman stopped twisting her about, gasping about her wounds, but I could forgive her those. I knew how much her mother meant to her, and she, at least, was still keeping a modicum of control. Still, the scene sent the worry and a sense of loss tumbling through my stomach again. Even knowing that I was going to lose her, I hadn’t thought it would be as soon as we got back.

I swallowed as I realized my choice of words and consciously revised them. I wasn’t losing anybody. She wasn’t close enough that I could lose her. We were just going back to our rightful places. She would live her life, keeping busy with her mother and Nole, safe, while I went on the the Seedling Palace to become a whisper woman. It was the way things should be.

Grandmother turned to the huntress who found us and the one that guided them. “They are who they say they are.”

She took several steps forward and gripped my jaw, lifting my chin to the light. She examined my new marking for several long moments before pricking her wrist and swiping a drop of blood over the mark with her thumb. The mark prickled, like my blessing did when it activated, and I saw the huntresses’ and Grandmother’s eyes widen. Lendra and Fellen were still too caught up in their reunion.

Grandmother looked impressed despite herself. “You truly completed a trial. It seems I have a new story to learn.”

I grinned, pouring as much strength as I could into it. “You do.”

Grandmother nodded before addressing the first huntress. “How did you recognize it?”

“My aunt is Grandmother of the Roots clan. I was always interested in the markings—when she was still deciding on who was to be her apprentice she taught a few of them to me.”

While Grislander’s Maw was nearly surrounded by the Root Mountains, I knew the clan she spoke of didn’t take their name from them. Rather, it came from the trees—and their incredible amount of roots—that gave both the mountains and the clan their name.

The three tree clans of the mountains worked a little bit different from the runner or water hole tribes. They were the most sedentary of the tribes, having no need to travel to another location to survive the cold season. They also valued the familial connections between different tribes more highly, which led them to identify by clan rather than tribe. Last year, the Root and Branch clans had around three to four hundred tribe members each while the Spire clan only had little over our two hundred. Also, rather than having a Pack Leader, Tribe Leader, and Grandmother for every tribe, they opted to have those roles encompass the entire clan, as they mostly functioned as one group anyway. Others could be appointed as minor leaders to help deal with everyday affairs as well. The part I always found most interesting though was that the Branch clan lived off the ground, in the trees, while the Roots Clan’s domain was the ground below. The Spire clan lived on, and tend to, the east side of the mountains, where it was said the trees struggled to grow. They thought it was their duty to make sure Grislander didn’t break from his bonds. They were less common to see in the valley.

Grandmother nodded in response to the huntress’s explanation and looked about to comment when Lendra seemed to catch up to the conversation. The sudden lack of movement caught my eye as her gaze caught on Fellen’s new mark.

“My girl has the same mark. What does that mean?”

Grandmother made sure her ire at being interrupted wasn’t lost on the woman. “Don’t be daft, Lendra. They both completed the trial, so they both got the marks, however…odd that it is, that they managed to do so.”

I glared at her. “We didn’t cheat.”

She snorted. “I doubt you would be standing here if you tried.”

Lendra looked like she was about to faint. “What trial?”

Such a weak woman. It was little wonder Fellen got bullied.

Fellen answered her mother. “Flickermark’s trial.” I saw her about to go into more detail before she took in her mother’s shock and modified her response. “We made it to the Statue Garden and made an offering to the goddess in the Grove there. We were given these marks as a reward.”

Lendra took a few long moments to process that while Grandmother ignored her in favor of speaking with the first huntress about her experience as a Grandmother apprentice candidate. She also dismissed the second huntress and, even though the woman wasn’t under her guidance through role or clan, she obeyed quickly. After all, the role of Grandmother was the highest one could obtain without being a Realmwalker or whisper woman. That fact gave Grandmothers more than their fair share of authority—not that the goddess or anyone else had much patience when it came to fairness. The Beloved’s trials had been anything but fair, and she still persevered. As such, one of the unspoken rules of the tribes was to make the best of the lot you’ve been given—and if you wanted to improve it, you best prove your worth at least twice over.

Lendra gripped Fellen’s wrists. “The Statue Garden? Did any shamble men touch you?”

Fellen shook her head. “We were careful. Besides, one of the fire starters there said that that myth wasn’t true. The whisper women walked through the shamble men every day and nothing happened.”

Lendra’s grip tightened. “Best to be careful.”

Fellen sighed slightly before smiling down at Lendra. “Yes, mother.”

I turned back to focus on Grandmother’s conversation, unable to stomach any more of the other one, but hers was wrapping up. Grandmother dismiss the first huntress before taking the three of us in. After a moment, she directed her attention to Fellen and I first.

“Eat. Rest. Then I’ll see you in my tent tomorrow. Midmorning. If I hear of you telling anyone a single peep of your story before I do, in full, you’ll regret it.” She didn’t elaborate. But then again, she didn’t need to. Even with all we’d been through, Fellen and I were still afraid of the possibilities of what she could do. She was Grandmother, after all.

Lendra only took her gaze off Fellen when Grandmother settled the full weight of her attention on her. “Act like a proper woman, Lendra, and stop kneeling in the snow. You should be supporting your daughter, not the other way around.”

I didn’t think it was possible, but Lendra’s face, already pale with shock and worry, paled further at Grandmother’s words. She scrambled upright before twitching nervously in different directions, unsure of what to do, before she had to turn around and kneel again so that Fellen could climb onto her back. When she stood again, I was little surprised that she didn’t seem to struggle with her daughter’s weight. Perhaps she was stronger than she looked.

Grandmother gave me a side-long look. “You know I don’t do those.”

She didn’t give me time to protest before she scooped me into an undignified bundle in her arms. A part of me wanted to struggle, but given how difficult it had been just to make it to the tree line I knew better than to listen to it. Fellen flashed me a smile and a look that told me she had marked this situation as a win for her. It made my chest hurt while lightening my mood enough for me to roll my eyes at her.

Grandmother led the way to the tribe while Lendra fell in behind. She gave me a knowing look as she carried me down the hill into the valley. “I wasn’t the person you were hoping to see, eh, child?” As she continued to speak I felt the disappointment and worry I had been suppressing since I saw her crystallize with clarity. “Rawley will be pleased to see you when she returns from checking her traps this evening. I heard she placed all of them past the valley entrance this year, around the area someone might walk if they were traveling from Flickermark.”

I had wanted to see my mentor and make sure she was safe as well. For all that I had put it out my mind while in Flickermark, it was true that the tribe had had their own journey to complete that wasn’t without danger. Like Fellen, somehow Rawley had become a person that I didn’t want to—not lose, that had too many dangerous implications, but that I wasn’t quite ready to separate from. That would be inevitable, of course, but even though I knew that and the dangers of getting…protective of someone, I still had slipped up and gotten attached to two people. A shudder ran through me at that realization. They couldn’t cause nearly as much damage as her, but if I didn’t start being more careful the danger was there.

I felt queasy as the need to separate myself from them fought with the desire to keep relatively close and the knowledge that, now, no matter how things went I would be hurt. The only question was of how much. In order to distract myself from dwelling on that currently unsolvable problem, I asked Grandmother how the rest of the run went.

She kept to the main points, direct as always. They left Flickermark four days after we were stranded, slower than ideal but not the worst timing in history. After that the Picker bands had been bolder than usual, and they had some trouble with them stealing supplies and a couple reindeer. So the Pack set up an ambush one night and beat up the Picker band that fell for it. No one died, as expected, that was the goddess’s domain, but a few of the Pack members got injured and the Picker band was beat up so badly, some of them couldn’t walk after. After that example was made, the rest of the run finished cleanly. It had been a light year for injuries and casualties, all things considered.

Lendra split off with Fellen once we reached the camp as their tent was not in the direction of Grandmother’s. I hated the fact that I knew I was going to see her tomorrow morning eased the tension tightening my shoulders. The tribe had managed to secure a spot not far from the west bank of the river, in between the two lakes. Most tribes preferred to be further back into the valley, where it was more sheltered from the storms, so given how long it had taken the tribe to get here this year it wasn’t surprising that we were pushed into the first third of the valley. Still, being between the two lakes was convenient, however useless they were for our tribe’s skills. The only fish they had were different varieties of minnows. Needless to say, it was impossible to spear something that small and most of our hooks were too large as well.

Old Lily hugged me as soon as Grandmother set me down outside the tent before ushering me inside and immediately starting to redo my bandages despite my protests. The other wards inside the warm tent didn’t seem to know how to react to my sudden presence and that made it easier to go back to my old habit of ignoring them. Grandmother left to go to a meeting with other tribe Grandmothers, and once Old Lily finished with my bandages she left to coerce the cooks into getting my meal done early. It was odd having so much attention pressed on to me, and I didn’t like it even though I could appreciate the benefits of it. I spent the rest of the day resting, but whenever I heard the tent flap open I couldn't help waking with a start to see who it was.

Rawley arrived right before the evening meal. I heard her voice, muffled, outside the tent with Grandmother’s before she pushed her way in. I was sitting upright when she caught sight of me. She stared, taking in every last detail, as she stepped neatly to the side so that Grandmother didn’t run into her as she entered the tent. Then she strode forward to drop into a crouch in front of me. She didn’t hug me like I half-expected her to. Instead, she leaned forward so that our foreheads were nearly touching.

“Thank you for returning, clever girl.”