Wind screamed and howled, sounding more like a cornered beast rather than a force of nature, but my hair still didn’t stir. The fog was clearer here—a thick haze rather than the engulfing cloud. I could make out the rest of our small group easily enough along with two unfamiliar women were crouched right next to the tent. Both had the hoods of their cloaks drawn up with their hands clasped over top where their ears would be to block out the noise. I quickly followed their example.

At first, I hadn’t been sure about wearing the cloak and the bulky coat, but since there had been the chance we would be gone for a week I had opted to wear both rather than leave one behind. As soon as the sound was muffled I couldn’t have been more relieved for that decision. I couldn’t block out the howling air completely, but it no longer felt like my ears were trying to shrivel in on themselves.

Everyone else had taken measures to block out the noise as well. Most used the cloak and hands method, but Hattie and Mishtaw fished out small wads of something from their things and stuffed that in their ears instead. When Hattie noticed Mishtaw do the same thing as her, she grinned and pointed, saying something that was lost to all of us. Still, Mishtaw shook her head at the other squad leader, somewhere between irritated and amused, and gestured to the women huddle by the tent. Hattie rolled her eyes and her way over to them before starting a mostly one sided conversation with gestures. Her squad members could only nod or shake their heads without risking their hearing.

Juniper and Idra didn’t look happy to be caught in the same predicament. It felt…vulnerable to have to choose between protecting our ears and doing anything else remotely useful with our hands. Still, they seemed to be communicating easily enough with just their expressions and a handful of glances. I kept my own features as impassive as possible. I couldn’t see all of Idra’s face and they made no move to shift and include me in their silent conversation, so there was no reason for me to try and catch their attention.

We already had our plan, regardless. Collapse the cave entrance and hinder whatever the fish were planning on using the caves for.

Hattie’s silent conversation finished quickly. Based on her gestures and the others’ answers, the last two members of her squad had been out on patrol when the fog rolled in and hadn’t returned. And the screaming air pointed us in the direction we needed to go. Hattie took the information in stride before gently bumping her fist against both of their shoulders. They brightened at the gesture.

Mishtaw and Hattie had another quick, silent exchange and then we were ushered into a line. Mishtaw in the front, Hattie in back, Idra in the middle and Juniper and I sandwiched in between.

The cave entrance was a surprisingly short walk away. I’d have thought that the outpost would be farther from the shore, but given that they had been on the forest’s edge and this particular shore ended with a steep cliff, perhaps the placement made sense. Granted, the fish had tried to climb the root wall, but that was, somewhat ironically, more bumpy and prone to making hand holds than this rock face. If not for the root wall’s unusual properties and immense height other materials would likely have been a better defensive choice. Not that we really had the tools to shape and move whole walls of smooth stone.

We crawled the last handful of feet to the edge to help prevent the enemy from spotting us before carefully peering over. The cave entrance formed a smooth arch in the rock face. I couldn’t see inside, but no fish broke the surface of the water or hovered beneath it that I could see. And I could see far, as far as I could on a normal day without fog covering everything.

The reason for that was simple.

There was no fog out over the clear water.

Instead, an invisible column of air carved a trough out of the ocean as it was funneled into the cave entrance. Waves from it crashed against the cliff, but the noise was swallowed by a region’s worth of wind being pulled into an enclosed space. It wasn’t difficult to assume that all fog down below had already been pulled into the air stream.

I stared at the impossible scene before me for long minutes. Knowing that we should get to work but unable look away from the ocean nearly being split in two. I would have thought it impossible or the work of a blessing if I didn’t know better. Were they doing all this simply to steal our long distance communication? Could we use it to our advantage? Were they so confident in their plan that they didn’t see any need for a look out? Could they not stand the noise?

I shook my head mentally. We didn’t have the means or time to answer those questions right now. I felt Hattie shift next to me and she winked when I glanced over at her. Then she shifted closer to the cave. The others stirred and followed as we began to move.

Crawling was difficult when you couldn’t use your hands, so I moved away from the cliff’s edge, out of sight from the water, before I stood and walked after her. Hattie noted my changed position, seemed to note she could do the same, and then continued to crawl anyways. She had full range of motion with her arms though, so she didn’t have to do an odd wriggle the whole way.

Mishtaw and the others followed my lead. We probably could have over taken Hattie, but she was the one with the blessing we needed, so we walked along near her, keeping an eye out for any sneaky fish. Juniper looked like she wanted to drag the squad leader up and forward—and I couldn’t deny a similar sentiment—but hierarchy and indecision held us back.

It felt like an eternity before Hattie was positioned over the cave entrance. Mishtaw kept us back, well away from where the cave was supposed to collapse. Hattie peered over the edge, one finger held up near her face like she was testing the flat air. She twitched the finger, this way and that, before a trace of a smile stretched across her face. She twirled the finger.

I didn’t feel a change but I didn’t doubt that there was now a hole in the cliff face. A moments later and the finger twirled again. And again and again.

A tremor shuddered through the ground.

Hattie twirled her finger one last time.

A cracking groan, loud enough to pierce through the wind, rang out as the ground beneath the squad leader began to shift. Hattie leapt to her feet and started sprinting toward us. Memories of the rock bridge collapsing rose up in my mind, panic bubbling in my gut. Just as quick I recalled her gloating about dropping fish into muddy holes from the top of the wall and I realized her predicament was entirely of her own making.

She probably could have collapsed the cave entrance from where we had been.

A wild grin lit up the crazy squad leader’s face as she outran the localized destruction. Water sprayed upwards as large rocks plummeted into the waiting water. The ground shuddered with each new one that fell and the wind whined higher as it was forced through a smaller and smaller gap by the second. Soon there wasn’t space for all the wind to fit through.

A breeze rushed past us and caused me to stumble back after it was deflected off the fallen rocks. Hattie stumbled as she reached us from the same gust and let herself fall to the ground. I couldn’t hear her, but based on her shaking shoulders I thought she was laughing.

As the dust and water settled, the wind’s howling died down as well though it didn't disappear completely. I frowned as I gingerly took my hands off my ears. It no longer hurt to hear the sound, but I didn’t like that it was still making that noise.

A new shudder trembled through the ground, more distant than Hattie’s destruction but rapidly getting closer. I shared a look with Juniper and then water erupted from where the cave entrance had been, cutting off the whistling wind and blowing rock into the air. The rocks crashed loudly into the ocean beyond. The water sprayed a couple more times but each one was less powerful than the last, like the water was settling.

Once no more water erupted from the cave we retraced Hattie’s mad dash to look closer at what she had wrought. The cave wasn’t completely closed off. The fallen rocks blocked off easy access to the ocean, but there was still space between the cave ceiling and the pile up, where the wind kept being pulled through and then the water blasted out. From the looks of it that water backlash had opened up the space even wider. If I wanted I could slip through the gap without needing to duck under the ceiling. If fish wanted to climb over the rocks and keep carrying out the Lady Blue’s plan, there wasn’t much to stop them.

Success, when it came to the wind, but not complete when I was forced to consider my original task.

Mishtaw let out a grunt of frustration and I turned to look at her. The squad leaders were trying to use the released wind to contact their squads as well as the main camp.

Mishtaw caught my glance and grimaced. “The winds are still too chaotic for me.”

Based on the odd gusts that continued to buffet us and the thin fog around us that was being torn to shreds as other clouds were being pulled disturbingly fast across the sky, I couldn’t blame her. Hattie wasn’t having any better luck. I didn’t know how talking on the wind worked, but recent circumstances certainly weren’t helping.

Idra and Juniper kept their gaze on the ocean as the tribe leaders continued to try to wrangle the winds. We could have headed back to Hattie’s women and the shadow path, but the opening in the cave gave us all pause. We didn’t want to leave only for the enemy to start sucking in the wind again.

There was some talk about Hattie collapsing the cave even more, but given that the entrance wasn’t completing covered the first time around, we weren’t sure a second round would do the trick. And there was the lure to investigate the cave even more to see if we could figure out how and why the fish had done what they had with the wind as well as what else they might have been planning.

Well.

Everyone else was preoccupied and the new entrance to the cave was a perfect height for me. I could go a little ways down the rock pile and see if the water in caves had washed up anything good.

I climbed out onto a sturdy rock before stepping down onto another. Some spots took a little more maneuvering than others as most of the broken rocks were bigger than I was tall, but I was able to find spots where they came together that shortened the gap. If anything, I could jump on my way back up and my fingers should reach the edge.

As soon as I got low enough to see where the water met the rocks in the dimness of the tunnel I regretted it. A mass of fat gray scaled fish bodies with spiny crests greeted my eyes. More than I would have thought they’d be able to sneak into the cave system. A win for the whisper women, but it still made my stomach roil.

I made my way back up the rock pile as quickly as possible, cursing the couple spots where I had to try multiple times to leap and elbow my way up onto the next rock. Mishtaw was waiting for me when I returned.

She raised her eyebrows, the look on her face both censure and expectation. “Find anything interesting?”

I glanced back at the cave. “A lot of dead fish. The ones the regular fish were bringing in.”

She nodded. “Don’t go off on your own without permission next time.”

I pressed my lips together and didn’t answer.

Mishtaw gave me a long measuring look before accepting my silence as answer in itself. She amended her warning. “Don’t risk the squad.”

I squared my shoulders. “I won’t.”

Her lips pursed slightly but she nodded again and turned away.

Mishtaw and Hattie were having another quiet discussion about what to do next when Juniper spoke up, warning heavy in her voice, “Incoming.”

I looked past the cliff to see a swell of water rising ominously as it headed straight for the demolished cave entrance. My fingers fumbled for my spear. Weird wave of water or unfortunately large creature, a part of me was very tired of the amount of resources the Lady Blue seemed to have to throw at her problems.