While it was tempting to immediately try my hand at shadow walking to the statue, I wasn’t foolish enough to risk it with my current control. I’d had enough of plummeting through the air from trees and, if I did fall, I didn’t want to know what barely surviving a corpse gorger attack felt like.

Besides, I needed to make sure I could make the trip between shadows consistently and that it wasn’t just a fluke. That was the most fundamental part of the skill I had to master before it made sense to mess with anything else too much. I wouldn’t exactly be able to practice my control over my destination if I couldn’t even make the connection between the shadows.

Rather than get up and stomp my heel into the shadow like I normally did, I took the opportunity to try to will the shadow to open for me like I had during the first festerling fight.

Resistance pressed up against my mind like there was a film over the shadow that I normally kicked through when I stomped through the shadow. Like a flap covering the entrance to a tent, not an incredibly strong barrier, but enough to keep out prying eyes and unwanted guests when it was knotted closed.

I felt like I was scrambling at it with only my fingernails.

Of course, forcibly kicking my way through would be easier, but I remembered how smooth Hana’s transitions had been through the shadows, how rough Fern’s passage had been through the shadows compared to the whisper women who had taken me with them. I wouldn’t be surprised if those smooth transitions were a sign of skill with the boon. And now that I had done it once I already knew I wouldn’t be satisfied if I was merely good at shadow walking.

Hana had looked down on me. I wanted to see her face when she couldn’t deny that I was better at it than her. When I could travel through lighter shadows, smaller shadows, across the goddess’s whole territory while perfectly pinpointing which part of the shadow I stepped out of.

During the fight I had just pushed and pushed until I forced my way into the shadow. I could that again, but it felt similar to kicking my way through. Just slower. Which wasn’t ideal if I needed to escape in the middle of a fight again.

If the end of the shadow path could be controlled, why couldn’t the beginning? Maybe I didn’t need to feel like I was falling every time I entered the shadow paths. Perhaps I didn’t need to end up sprawled out on the shadow paths’ smooth floor every time. The whisper women and Fern certainly kept to their feet when they made the transition.

I pictured all the different ways I had seen whisper women enter and leave the shadows. The whisper women who had brought the Carver’s maze caskets to the tribe had risen out of the shadows like they were rising from a deep pool. Hana had done something similar when she came to deliver Flickermark’s trial to Fellen and me, and she had even left her feet dangling in the shadow. That was something I couldn’t even imagine doing right now.

The goddess had brushed the shadow aside like She was merely stepping from a large tent and the Chosen had followed her. Other whisper women had stomped their heels into the shadow or seemingly seemed to disappear into it without doing a thing.

Mental images were important. That was clear from how I managed to create my path between shadows, but perhaps that was true even before I tried to connect shadows together? I habitually pictured the shadows as tent entrances. What would happen then if I pictured something else?

Drawing on my memories, I pictured the shadow underneath me as if it was a pool of water. Not deep, not wind tossed, but cool and wet and sandy on the bottom, like the very edge of First Shore Lake on a quiet day. Like the day we all did our laundry by the boulder. To that image I added the conviction that the surface of the water wasn’t strong enough to support a body, that I should be sinking beneath the surface.

Gravity shifted and for a disorienting moment I felt like I couldn’t breathe or I would drown, but then I opened my eyes to the smoke and oil landscape of the shadow paths. I smiled to myself. No flailing, no falling. Still on my back, but I hadn’t expected to find myself standing when I hadn’t started that way.

Well, that answered one question.

After I stood up, I focused on making the pathway to the tree I had started at. The image formed quicker this time. Which made sense because it was the tree I was more familiar with—and having done the process once it was easier to do a second time.

This time when I felt the shadows connect it didn’t catch me off guard the way it had the first time, though I was surprised in a new way. Rather than ignoring the feeling of the shadow stretching toward something in the distance, this time I focused on it, connected it to my image of the tree. The path practically built itself. It felt—eager to follow that sensation, to cross the final gap between shadows. I didn’t have time to make my image of the tree nearly as detailed as I had the first time when I felt the connection snap into place and tied the shadows together.

My lips twisted at the feeling of leaving things half done, but I didn’t waste time trying to make the image more detailed when the pathway was already in place. That was what Fern apparently meant when she said it would be easier to walk the shadows with these trees.

Instead, I followed the pathway I had made until I sensed that I was on top of the second shadow. I took a few moments to debate whether I should stomp my heel down like normal or try the water trick again.

The stomp won out simply because I wasn’t sure how to go about the water trick from inside the shadow paths. To leave the shadow like it was a pool of water would I need to press my head against the ground so that I would come out head first? Press my hands through? How would I tell that they were on the other side so that I could press down and haul the rest of my body through? Did I just need the mental image of rising out of the water?

The stomp wasn’t quite what I normally did, however. Rather than just stomping down to break through the shadow, I pictured it more as a forceful step. There was another moment of disorientation as my sense of up and down shifted, but then I was stumbling from the shadow covering the pine’s trunk. No falling, on my feet, if a bit unsteady.

I kept the memory close in the pot in my memory tent like I had whenever I was learning about a new plant or technique. It was easier to compare to what I did differently each time that way, what worked better. Soon I’d need to make another spot to contain the memories I had associated with shadow walking. The pot could only hold so many recent memories and that way all the relevant ones would be together.

I looked up from the shadow dappled ground to find Fern, Ulo, Wren, and Juniper staring at me. Apparently, my two trips across the clearing hadn’t gone unnoticed. My smiled turned a bit more triumphant. Now the rest of the group had the unenviable position of needing to ask me for advice if they wanted help.

My smile soured a bit when I realized that meant I’d probably have people bothering me in the near future.

Fern left the side of the clearing so she didn’t have shout, her gaze searching, mouth tight. “I didn’t expect you to learn the technique first.”

I shrugged and ignored the fact that Ulo was sprinting across the grass at me. “I guess you’re a good teacher.”

Fern looked like she wasn’t sure if that was a compliment. I wasn’t sure if I meant it as one. After all, I had discovered the things that made it so I wasn’t flailing everywhere on my own. Even if she had provided the context for what I’d been doing wrong.

“You cheated!” Ulo didn’t sound like she entirely believed her own accusation, though her voice became more certain the longer she spoke. “You were worse than all of us! It doesn’t make sense that you can suddenly travel between shadows. You must have cheated.”

I rolled my eyes. “You really think I could cheat the goddess?”

Her jaw clenched tight but she still forced out more words. “That’s not what I said.”

“That’s what I heard.” I gestured to the unusual trees. “It’s Her boon.”

If nothing else Ulo could match me in sheer stubbornness. “You must have.”

I beat her in intellect though. “How?”

Ulo’s fist clenched and I wondered if she was going to try to hit me in front of Fern for asking a basic question. Wren reached us and placed a warning hand on her shoulder. Juniper kept watching everything unfold from a handful of feet away.

I could have kept pushing Ulo, drive her into a rage like I had before, but I didn’t feel like getting punched when I could still feel the rush of accomplishment. So I looked to Fern and the Sapling took the cue.

“You can’t cheat using one of the boons. You can be better at it, or worse, but you can’t cheat. Implying that is sacrilegious.”

“But—”

I cut Ulo off. “Guess I’m just talented.”

“It doesn’t make sense.” Ulo’s normally straight posture hunched in as she glared at me. “You’re life ridden.”

Of course we were back to that. She couldn’t get past it.

I smirked at her. “Another goddess given talent. Careful, if you keep pressing the issue the goddess might think you’re claiming She’s life ridden as well as an idiot.”

All the blood fled from Ulo’s face. It took her a few tries to get her mouth to work. “I..no—I didn’t—”

She gave up, angry tears brimming in her eyes.

I tilted my head slightly to the side. “You can go now.”

She left to take refuge in her tent. I was sure revenge would come sooner or later, but in that moment I couldn’t bring myself to care. When it came to words, I doubted she would ever win the fight. Her mind only seemed to work in straight lines.

“So?”

I blinked at Wren’s question. “What?”

She raised her eyebrows at me. “If you didn’t cheat, how did you do it?”

I fought the urge to sigh. Part of me didn’t want to answer because answering invited more questions, another part didn’t want to just hand over my hard work to everyone else, a third, small part wanted to answer honestly because it was Wren asking, and the last part was fine with answering but being decidedly unhelpful.

The last part won out.

“Try being stuck in a tent for years. You get good at imagining what everything outside it looks like.”

Her eyebrows drew together before she opened her mouth to say something, stopped, and then asked, “What?”

I glanced to either side and saw that both Fern and Juniper looked a little wide eyed. My jaw clenched. Something in my tone must have given away that I meant what I said a little more literally than most would.

Well, I wasn’t going to explain more. That would inevitably lead to my healer’s training and other things they didn’t need to know.

“I need to keep practicing.”

I slipped away into the realm of the shadow paths before any of them could question me further. It was only a temporary solution, but all I needed was time to come up with an answer that wasn’t the truth if any of them pressed me about it. It wasn’t like they could do anything about what happened in the past, anyways.

I took the time to review my memories of shadow walking as well. Not just the two times I managed to travel between different shadows on my own, but the times I had traveled in and out of the same one, and the times others had taken me with them. Better here in the swirling quiet than under the threat of interruption outside. By the time I finished, I had a few more theories I wanted to test.