It turned out that finding Jin wasn’t our first task. Finding food was—not that it was that difficult to locate unlike our new mentor. You could smell the food cooking from the housing platform and spy bits of the bulging branch the odd cook fires sat on from there as well. Rather than errant broken branches and brush the cook fires, if they could be called that, looked like oval boulders. Two had completely flat tops while the other two had divots of different sizes dug into the stone. All four gave off hazy waves of heat and there was no mistaking the fire starters moving around them, slipping pots into the divots and flipping cuts of meat on the flat stones with long tongs. All the fire starters there were male, but I saw others moving among the branches—chipping off ice from the vines that melted unnaturally quickly or carrying baskets of supplies—that weren’t. Each one wore a uniform that consisted of a plain orangish-brown tunic and brown pants.

The cooking area was one of the first places I found during an afternoon of exploring. All you had to do was climb up onto the bridge—there were hand and footholds hidden to the right of the tunnel—made by the overlapping branch and take the right branch at the first major fork. That took me to a spot where the path split into four different branches, but only one really kept going. The far right branch wasn’t very long and formed the cooking area, the next one over was the one that kept going while the other two also terminated early. The leftmost branch dove down and tucked under the branch next to it which was the one that formed the eating area. I ignored the small pile of cushions piled in its center in favor of more exploration.

When I followed the branch that continued from there, I encountered my first obstacle. A short ways past another fork a fire starter sat on a cushion, carelessly leaning against the sap railing. He was tossing a couple of small pine cones from hand to hand in a weak attempt to juggle. A hooked staff rested next to him along with a simplistic hand bell.

He stuck out a foot as I attempted to stride past him. Given that he was reproachfully tall and the branch wasn’t that wide, his leg nearly reached all the way across. Not yet willing to commit to idiocy of stepping over him, I glowered instead. The fire starter reluctantly rested his hands in his lap and looked up at me—it seemed his hesitation was more from a desire to continue juggling than any intimidation from me.

“Password?” he drawled.

I was used to being treated poorly, to being thought of as ill-omened and dangerous, but I had thought that here, at the heart of the goddess’s territory, the usual divisions in proper society would reassert themselves. That I would no longer be at the very bottom of the pecking order. But the young man in front of me was exuding the air that I was wasting his time rather than the other way around.

I drew myself up. “I am—”

“Not the password,” he cut me off. “Come back when you know it and I can let you past.”

I scoffed. “Why should—”

“You’re one of the new Seedlings, right? Just arrived today?” He gestured to his staff and bell. “Well, I’m one of the guards assigned to keeping you to the allowed area. Until you know the password, I have the authority here.”

He looked genuinely pleased with his final statement. I tried to step over his leg but he just raised it higher. When I shifted to step through the small gap left in between his foot and the railing he moved too, stretching forward so that his leg touched the other side.

“Don’t make me use my staff.”

I glared at him for another long moment as my teeth ground together. “Your juggling sucks.”

It wasn’t my best retort, wasn’t even close, but it did the trick at making him irritated as well. Not that that helped me; he still refused to let me past. It galled me to have to listen to the cocky young man, but now that I was in unfamiliar surroundings and recently arrived, I didn’t want to cause an incident before I got my bearings. So instead I committed his insult to memory with a mental promise to return the favor, turned on my heel, and left.

I met a few other guards after that, but they were all more respectful and attentive than the first. I couldn’t begrudge them for doing their assigned task though the curious part of me was already making plans to try to figure out the passwords or get around them.

I also found a handful of interesting places that I could go within the boundaries set by the guards. The first was clearly an oval training area; it was at the end of the left side of the fork that led to the four fingered area. Stuffed practice targets stood at one end while locked trunks of varying sizes crowded the other side. Close to the middle, but irritatingly off-center, presumably to give the target practice more room, was a large oval ring sunk down into the floor of the platform and covered in springy grass. After trying my hand to untie several of the complicated knots holding the trunks closed and slinging a few pebbles at the targets I moved on.

When I crossed to the other side of bridge and took several branching paths I found an area covered in abnormally long, draping needles. In the glow of the pine cone lanterns they almost looked like strands of blue-black and purple hair, too delicate to climb and creepily out of place. The uncanny feeling of the place was increased by a strong scent of lavender even though I couldn’t see any of the flowers around. I searched through them, however, on the off chance Jin was hiding in their depths, but she wasn’t so easily found.

Another branch in the area brought me to a platform with several ice vines covering parts of the floor before continuing on. They all had smaller vines that split from the main stalk and fed into an irregularly shaped pool at the platform’s heart. The ice seemed to melt upon touching the pool but when I dipped a hand into the water it was more chill than warm. Still, I had little doubt this was to be our bathing area based on the steps that led into the pool and benches cut into the sides. It’d be odd not bathing in a stream or lake but I welcomed shedding the silly worry that a fish would nibble on my toes.

Beyond the tunnel under the overlapping branch I found what could only be a latrine despite rising questions about that functioned up in a tree. However, given that I never wanted to be in a position where I had to find out, I put them aside with the presumption that the fire starters took care of it. More interestingly, I also found an area where the branch I was following artificially split into four parallel narrow tracks, all without railings though two had rope strung at waist level. The tracks were only two feet wide at most. They had the feeling of a trial, but when I peered over the edge and saw a wide berth of air and only scant chance of latching onto a branch or lower platform before the height was large enough that you would most definitely break something upon impact, I opted to exhaust my safer areas of exploration first. It reminded me too much of the bridge in Flickermark to not exercise some caution.

The last area of note that I found that afternoon was at the top of a long winding branch that twisted back on itself and then rose until it peeked out of the outer layer of pine needles. I stood frozen on the branch’s point, barely big enough for two, and took in the surrounding landscape from a height I had only thought mountains capable of. The lights from the Seedling Palace glowed onto the red shore of a lake that curved around the trees’ roots. From the way the lake continued to stretch away into the dark it gave the feeling that I was only glimpsing a small section of something much larger. First Shore Lake. It was said to be full of monsters and enough fish to feed a hundred tribes for a hundred life times. The light from the trees also glimmered on a few streams and a river that emptied out into the lake along with a wide expanse of grassland and forests of much smaller trees. I thought I should be able to make out mountains in the distance from what the myths said, but the night was still pitch black so there was limits to what I could make out. I made a vow, however, to come back soon and see the view in all its glory.

As I wound my way back to the cooking area I passed by two other Seedlings who had also decided to explore. One was Loclen, who gave me a cursory nod on her way up to the outlook, and the other was a girl from the group that had arrived as a set of three and immediately taken up residence in the leftmost dome in the housing area. She looked to be a little younger than me though she was slightly taller, especially with her brown-blond hair piled up on top of her head. A pearl dangled on her forehead from a thin cord and her clothes were plain but well made. She had one pant leg rolled up to her knee, so that her pale skin was further revealed along with the bless mark that curled around her thin left ankle like a three pronged root. An air of resigned tranquility pervaded the space around her as she leaned gazed down at the branches and platforms below us. I passed her without a sign of acknowledgment and she gave no sign of noticing me, either.

Back at the four fingered intersection I found Prevna, Wren, and their new redheaded friend enjoying their meal along with the sullen girl’s companions. I observed the two as I gathered flat bread and the nut and vegetable spread that went top of it from the cooks.

Both of them looked to be on the older side of the group and fit and very comfortable with each other. The one with wavy auburn hair, sharp cheekbones, and cool, light skin was sitting on a cushion with her legs stretched out while the one with straight black hair pulled back into a tail, prominent nose, and medium skin had her head pillowed on the other girl’s lap. They were joking and laughing with each other as they ate, seemingly oblivious to those around them.

I settled away from everyone else and ate quickly. It didn’t matter that Wren was also drawing out the shy redhead with smiles and bright conversation or that Prevna glanced my way a couple times with an interesting mix of curiosity and annoyance. I didn’t need friends or rivals or anything else and they were better off without me. As long as I kept my focus and studied every scrape of training they provided us until it was permanently planted in my mind and easy to recall I would be fine on my own.

Even if a part of me wished Fellen was there or wondered what Rawley would observe about the Seedling Palace.

To distract myself from that lonely, dangerous feeling I gobbled down the last couple bites of food before setting out to explore some more in the hopes of locating Jin. However, rather finding her or anything that could be construed as a clue, all I found were various nooks and pathways. At one frustrating point, I realized that the twisting branches had looped me back to place I had already searched through after spending a decent amount of time “exploring” it again. The branching paths reminded me a bit of Flickermark though I didn’t have a map nor could I see the stars through the needles for guidance here. In the end, I was forced back to the amber dome to rest with the taste of disappointment thick on my tongue.

This first step to becoming a whisper woman was already differing greatly from the plan I had made in my head. I was finally at the spot where I was supposed to prove my worth, show that I deserved the unique blessing placed upon me, and all I had achieved was to get lost.

Her mantra rose up in my mind as I stared at the hook the pine cone lantern had hung from and wallowed in my negative thoughts.

Ambition is nothing without discipline.

A different kind of bile rose up in the back of my throat even as the familiar phrase settled my jangling thoughts and lessened the stress tightening my shoulders. There was still truth in it, no matter everything else she had done. I would accomplish nothing if I left myself run wild with self-pity and frustration. I could—would—push through and continue my search the next day and the next until I completed the task given to me, until I did everything I needed to do to become one of the goddess’s few chosen. It didn’t matter if I got lost or had trouble as long as I remained disciplined.

Tomorrow morning I would get up early, let the other two deal with taking the pine cone lantern from where it hung on the railing outside in order to hang it back up in the dome, and continue my exploration. I would find Jin and continue my training as soon as possible.

All in all, that was my only option.