There’s a myth I learned when the tribe was hiding out in caves while Flickermark flooded from a thunderstorm so loud it sounded like the sky itself was cracking in two. Of course, she didn’t care about that. All that mattered was cramming my head so full of stories that, if nothing else, I would have a couple handfuls of grains of truth when it came to whisper women and history whereas most people, other than Grandmothers, had a dozen grains to build with at most.

The myth she pressed close and shouted in my ear that day didn’t feature the goddess or the Beloved or even those foolish enough to rebel against them like so many of the common tales she told me. This one featured a boulder. A boulder so big and tough and hard that nothing could break it. Not even the strongest bear, determined to make the sturdiest den, nor a lightning strike so large and bright that it blinded every creature for a mile around. The boulder stood up to earthquakes and flash freezes, creeping vines and the tools of all who wishes to take a piece for themselves. Nothing could harm it. For years and centuries it sat in the same place, perfectly round and smooth, perfectly unchanged. Until a stream wandered its way close and began to carve its way through. It took more centuries for the water to wear its way through the rock and do what rain and lightning and bears could not. The boulder became an arch.

I think the lesson I was supposed to learn that only time and effort can change something, perhaps with the idea that even if something changes it can still endure. The boulder might have become an arch, but it was still as round and smooth as it had ever been.

The impression that wouldn’t leave me, however, after she told me that tale with the rain pouring down, the air thick with moisture, was that water always wins. It might not have won as rain or ice or snow, but it kept changing and trying until it found the boulder’s weakness. And that was even leaving aside the fact that nothing I knew could survive without it.

I couldn’t hurt the trees or the ice vines or the goddess’s shrines in my revenge unless I wanted to feel Her full ire and truly know what it was like to die, I knew that even as my rage made my blood pound. In fact, it was the boulder my thoughts swirled around as I stomped through an unfamiliar section of the Seedling Palace on shaky legs. How did I make them all pay when I couldn’t harm any of my surroundings? When if I took anything too far I could lose my chance at becoming a whisper woman?

Well, I had already attacked a whisper woman.

But that wasn’t enough. They still needed to learn that there were consequences for hurting me. For trying to break me and treating me like I was nothing.

Perhaps, if I hurt one more particular whisper woman they would all get the message. After all she wasn’t called the Enforcer for nothing.

How to bring her to me though? What could I do that would make them call her quickly? Would they even call her or would the other whisper women simply punish me themselves?

Then my eyes caught on the small, nearly enclosed platform I was passing. The answer was really quite simple: make it personal.

Yule sat on a bench sipping from a water skin with three blurred rectangles hovering in the air in front of her. Her back was to me and all of her attention was on the rectangles, no doubt the way Jin and her had spied on us before. Part of me wondered if she watching me right now on one of them, but the rest of me doubted it. Watching me read or grind herbs would hardly be exciting to an outsider and if she could see me sneaking up behind her, she would’ve at least twitched.

Everything hurt, but I kept low and steady like Rawley taught me. Indulging the pain could come later, if ever, when I didn’t have something important to do. She brought the water skin back to her lips right as I reached her.

Knowing an opportunity when I saw it, I snaked my hand around the pouch and squeezed. She sputtered and choked as more water than she expected suddenly forced its way down her throat. I allowed myself a small smile.

Water always wins.

While she was still busy sputtering and trying to figure out what was going on, I punched her in the lower back, right where I knew the kidney was. She went down, hit her head on the floor in the process, and her rectangles disappeared. I kicked her in the stomach and then wrenched one of her arms behind her back when she reflexively tried to curl up. After forcing her onto her stomach by putting weight on her captured arm, I put my knee on her neck and trapped her free arm against her body with my other leg.

Yule finally got herself together enough then to try to struggle against me, but I had the leverage and resolve not to lose it before I got what I wanted.

“Tell Jin to join us.”

“It’s not instantaneous, you little fool,” she snarled.

I filed that information away for later even as I applied more pressure to her arm and neck. “I’d still send the message if I were you.”

She sent a message. It wasn’t to Jin.

A little buffet wind picked up the words “attacked” and “help” and whisked them away from the shadowy platform. I cursed and still tried to make her send a message to Jin but it took less than thirty seconds before half a dozen whisper women appeared from the shadows and pulled me off her.

I struggled but, while none of them used their blessings, I wasn’t any match for six full grown and trained whisper women. Yule stood with a huff and straightened her clothes while the whisper woman with the most muscles merely hugged me to her chest. I couldn’t break free of her arms or the humiliation.

As a consolation prize, neither could Yule, for the latter at least. Once I was caught and they saw her assailant was a mere seedling more than one ribbed her for the failing. She rebuffed their satire with a grimace and shot me a look that clearly stated she would get revenge later. I smirked back. That nearly sent her after me right then until she caught herself at the last moment. I can only assume remembered that attacking a captured seedling would make her look even more a fool in her companions’ eyes as well as the fact that the whole scenario contradicted the sleek, collected image she liked to project.

They took me through the shadow paths down to the Seedling Palace’s roots. Some of them curled back on themselves or over each other in such a way that they created deep pits. They threw me in one and left without so much as an explanation or threat. The closest thing I got was Yule’s perverse look of satisfaction when she saw me lying in the snow at the bottom. There was no controlled temperature here.

I laid there and stared up the branches blocking the sky while I thought about the boulder myth and the fury in my gut cooled. I had been hasty and retroactive. Both of which were the opposite of what I needed to get the results I wanted. If she had been there to witness what happened there was no doubt about which look of disappointment I would receive and that the words “you were supposed to be better than this” would accompany it.

I dragged my hands over my face and didn’t bother to wipe away the melting snow they left behind. I had attacked two whisper women. No matter the reason, no one in the Seedling Palace would allow that to go unpunished. Given that Jin had given an unspoken threat to kick me out when I was refusing to hang around my cohort, I doubted they would be lenient now. Insubordination had to be a higher offense than that.

No matter that I had fallen from their stupid path and could have died if I was anyone else. No matter that they hid what we needed in idiotic spots, having a good chuckle while we passed by it. No matter that we had to deal with a mentor who didn’t know how to teach and were still expected to learn at the same pace as the years who had the previous mentor. No matter that I had yet to have a single success since coming to the place that was supposed to fulfill my life’s purpose.

The rage surged again but, without anything to rail against except for the snow, it dampened back down to lurk in the background. However, it did give me enough motivation to pull my shivering, aching body together and crawl to the edge of the pit and huddle there. The cold season air was brutal without my cloak, but I couldn’t convince my body to get up and pace when all it wanted to do was curl up for warmth.

I was going to get kicked out. What that meant I wasn’t sure, other than the fact that I had thrown away my chance to fulfill my vow I had made when I was nine years old right when I had clear direction on how to reach it, in order to barely hurt two whisper women I didn’t really know and didn’t care about.

I was glad Fellen and Rawley couldn’t know how far I had fallen after that other ill thought out outburst. A single wrist grab was enough to send me reeling with fear when before I would have been disciplined enough to jerk my wrist away, perhaps give a glare, and otherwise keep my emotions in check. But between the terror that I would mess everything up again and prove her low expectations true, and all the new information I had been learning, I couldn’t keep my focus long enough to do anything productive. All in all, being so defensive and reactive was only making my fears a reality.

So, I forced myself to focus then. Sink to the image of my healer’s tent and all the memories it contained, and put my recent activities and the things I learned in order. I might not have completely come to terms with all of it, but everything was packed away into a spot and that was better than restlessly picking at the information like a scab that refused to heal.

When I opened my eyes a whisper woman was considering me in the day’s failing light from where she sat on the pit’s lip. I recognized her. Wavy brown hair, pale skin, and a smile that hinted she knew a joke no one else did—it was the whisper woman who had brought me to the Seedling Palace.

She kept her chin rested on her palm as she spoke, “You do know how to make a woman wait.” At my visible flinch, she chuckled and waved her free hand dismissively. “Only joking. My mistress has one question for you: since you seem so keen on fighting, are you willing to do so to stay?”

There was only one correct answer to that question since I refused to become one of the unmentionables who failed out of becoming a whisper woman. “Yes.”

Her smile widened. “Good. Know you owe the Lady of Calm Waters a favor then.”

My eyes narrowed at her deliberate obscureness, but before I could ask her who or what that meant she was gone. Around a half an hour later Yule appeared with two other whisper women in the shadows at the bottom of the pit. My scowl matched her own when I realized that meant they didn’t need to throw me into the root pit earlier. The two guards grabbed me on either side and hauled me to my feet before we all disappeared back into the shadow paths.

When we reappeared we were in the Seed Landing. They marched me from the wide platform connected to the trunk of the tree, where we first arrived when we came to the Seedling Palace, down to the stage area. The whole cohort was there and none of them looked enthused to be occupying it for the second time that day. It was odd to think our meeting about Jin had happened that same afternoon.

Yule strode out front down the steps to the stage under the pine cone lanterns’ light while the other two forced me along behind her. Horror marked Wren, Dera, and Prevna’s faces while shock and possible concern marked most of the others. Ulo looked smug, like I had vindicated everything she ever thought about me, and Juniper and her group kept themselves impassive, though I thought Idra looked faintly impressed.

As soon as we reached the middle of the stage I was roughly twisted around to face them all and Yule stepped up in front of me. When she spoke she managed to sound both smug and sour at the same time.

“Gimley is guilty of insubordination and attacking her superiors. However,” here her voice twisted with distaste and then contempt, “since her blessing and skills have been found to be promising, she is being given a second chance to prove herself by fighting for the goddess. If the fight against the sea's creatures in the southwest region wraps up in one month’s time and she isn’t proven unfit for service, she will be allowed to return to the Seed Landing to continue her studies without the privilege of a mentor.”

I nearly smiled at that. Make it through a war and I could return without agonizing over what to do about Jin’s mentorship.

Prevna asked, “And if the fighting doesn’t end in a month?”

Yule clearly enjoyed her next statement. “Then she will be stripped of her blessing, banished from our goddess’s lands, and die a long, cold, starving death from lack of fire. A quick death was judged to be too easy for such a failure.”

Prevna suppressed a shudder while Juniper, surprisingly, cut in next. “She goes to the shore?”

Yule nodded, somewhat wary.

Some of the melancholy fled from the slim girl’s features. “Then we go as well. We would better serve there.”

Yule’s chin lifted. “This is her punishment to bear.”

Breck sat up from where she was leaning against the step behind her. “I’m going as well. That sounds more exciting than being cooped up here.”

Prevna flashed me a quick grin and added, “I want to go too.”

Yule didn’t look pleased to have the situation pulled from her grasp. “Like I said, the punishment is hers to bear. You all are to stay here and continue to train.”

Breck shrugged. “Real combat is the best training.”

Juniper moved her head, so that the pearl on her forehead caught the light. “Nor will you deny me my duty. This merely brings us to the point I was already going to rise to your attention.”

Yule’s head cocked to the side like she was listening to something we couldn’t hear and her mood soured even further. When she faced the cohort again she held herself rigid and spat out her words.

“Fine. You want to go and get yourselves killed? You’ve been granted permission.” She twisted to face the two guards. “Take all who demand to go.”

Then she strode away up the steps and disappeared from my sight.