We gathered back down in the tribesmen’s village. They had set aside a decently sized hut for the cohort to stay in though we hadn’t made use of it the night before. No one had wanted to use it before we were all crammed together for the foreseeable future—the hut might have been decently sized, but it was still only big enough for all of us to lay down to sleep with some space leftover for supplies and a small fire pit.

It made me wish for the large meeting hall back in Grislander’s Maw even if it meant no privacy and close quarters with every judgmental person in the valley. There, at least, there was enough space to walk around without tripping over someone and fire starters could be counted on to keep the warming fires going. Here, there was still no privacy and, on the especially snowy or stormy days, we didn’t have a guarantee that one of the villagers would brave the weather to check on us.

I’d have pay more attention to a fire than I ever had in my life, just make sure we didn’t have huddle together for warmth until one of the villagers did come. I was halfway tempted to stay in one of our tents, just to have space to myself, but they weren’t the family tents that everyone had back in the valley. You couldn’t stand in them and room to move would be close to what we’d have in hut, anyway. And that was even without taking into account the fact that we didn’t have the proper coverings and other things people did to help prepare their tents for the cold season.

Luckily, the hut would mainly be a sleeping space since we would still be expected to help out around the Rookery and learn about the birds. I wouldn’t be trapped.

Juniper, Wren, and Dera watched Prevna and me with varying levels of concern as we rejoined the group and helped to get our things set in the hut, but they didn’t press us about what happened right away. That would likely come later after the First Flurry blew through. Right now, making sure everything was ready for the cold season came first, even if there was only so much we could do as outsiders.

Fern, Colm, and Sid stopped by, along with the other group’s Sapling leader, firestarter, and healer, as we finishing getting our things put away and were trying to figure out what to do next.

“Now that the cold season is here we’re headed back to the Seedling Palace. You’ll have until the Dark Night celebrations to figure out flying on the birds; then it’ll be time to earn your next boon.” Fern looked us over. “I’d brush up your skills. All of them.”

She was already turning away when Ulo asked, eager, “Which boon?”

Fern kept walking and didn’t answer, but the other Sapling coyly tapped one eye before she followed Fern with the rest of their group.

Dark sight.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw Idra turn to Ento with excitement while Ulo deflated. I never wanted to agree with Ulo on anything, but I didn’t think it was the most exciting of boons, either. We could already see pretty well in low light; what difference would seeing in complete darkness make? That didn’t happen too often.

Sure, there was the time Fellen and I stumbled our way under Flickermark and she had to keep snapping her fingers for flickers of light, but how often would we be deep underground?

Her Beloved had earned the boon of dark sight from her third trial. Not much was known about she saw during that trial, but the hill that trial had taken place on was nicknamed Longing. Seven portals she had to step into, seven perfectly realized desires she had to turn away from and choose the goddess.

Not just the devout and the desperate for the goddess’s attention traveled to Longing. Rumors whispered of addicts going there and losing themselves in daydreams until they wasted away. People who wished to be handed what they wanted and taking a false reality instead. People who wished to find hints to their success to better act on their ambitions, but who lost themselves to what they saw instead.

Despite Fellen’s ambitions, I hoped I never traveled there only to see her sprawled out in the grass, bone thin and lost in a daydream she would never wake from.

Others had followed their lost family members to Longing. Intent on waking them up and bringing them back home, but no one had ever succeeded. Only the daydreamers could save themselves and, it seemed, most did not want to.

In a way that place had two Statue Gardens.

We had completed a different kind of puzzle to earn the right to drink the shadows from the Beloved. She had solved Flickermark’s maze. Would our next trial be different as well or would we follow in the Beloved footsteps in order to see in the dark?

I sincerely hoped it was the former. I wasn’t sure what kind of visions I would see, but I wasn’t sure I could pull myself back to reality if I was given my healer’s beads back, even if it was only a dream.

Fern had told us to improve all of our skills, but that might not have been necessarily for earning the boon. We might need the skills for whatever came after, like the side trip to get the glass chips from the statue.

Before I could fall deeper into the implications of Fern’s words the Rookery tribe pulled the cohort into their final preparations. Some of us were given the mundane task of gathering dropped limbs and twigs and other fuel in the forest while others were sent to help corral the herds, check on storage, and help patch up any last minute repairs that needed to be done before the snow hit.

When the tribe’s Grandmother decided the First Flurry was only an hour away her Echo’s rhythm sticks sharp clacks filled the Rookery and the tribe gathered in front of her hut. As seedlings we were given a place of honor near the front of the crowd next to Tufani and Barra.

Their Grandmother looked younger than mine, but not by much, and it was clear that her Echo and her weren’t sisters. Still, she bore her ceremonial dress with the same confidence and pride that I knew so well.

“The storm comes. Do we hide from it?”

“No!”

Obviously, the tribe members new this particular ritual well. It wasn’t the start to the First Flurry festival that I was used to, but apparently this would be another year with a different start to the cold season. Part of me longed for the cozy comforts of familiar tales and the snow berry hunt—and perhaps those would still come later—while the rest of me rolled my eyes at that childish desire.

The Grandmother spoke again, “Do we fear it?”

“No!”

They should. In my experience everything the goddess had a hand in was wise to fear.

“Why?” the blood speaker thundered out.

“The storm is the winds and on the winds we ride!”

“The Beloved chose the First and the goddess gifted her Flight. What say you as the First’s descendants?”

“We fly! For wing, for wind, for glory!”

That chant repeated as the Grandmother strode forward and the crowd parted for her. Tufani and Barra fell in step behind her, interestingly side by side rather than Barra taking the lead as a whisper woman. We followed behind them as the other tribe leaders fell in behind us and the rest of the crowd followed.

The Grandmother took up shouting, “The storm is the winds and on the winds we ride!” along with, “What do we fly for?” and “What did the First and Flight grant us?”

The crowd’s answer to her call always included, “For wing, for wind, for glory!”

In between each call and response the Echo would crack her rhythm sticks together each time. That continued as we made our way around the lower lake and up one of the cliff paths. My heart sank, just a little, at the realization I’d have to travel up what I already had that morning, but this time I didn’t need to stop to rest. The Grandmother kept us to a steady pace that ate up the ground without burning through all my reserves of energy.

It struck me as we marched that the tribes people weren’t focused on their role as caretakers for the birds that whisper women would occasionally need to ride, but instead their chants placed them as the primary fliers, the ones the birds were meant for. Not that they really had achieved much glory as far as I could tell. I certainly had never heard of them. I kept my questions quiet since it was never smart to interrupt a ceremony, but I made a note of them in my mind to ask later.

The blood speaker led us up to the single goddess grown pine tree the tribe had been gifted with so that whisper women could always reach the Rookery. It was a bit annoying to realize that we could have just shadow walked here if we were more skilled rather than the long trek through the woodlands.

The pine tree grew near the cliff edge so that someone who stepped from the shadows was as close to both the bird nests with the Tamer’s hut in the middle and the path leading down to the village depending on what they needed. Of course, it wouldn’t surprise me if from there those that needed to go to the village just shadow walked again instead of taking the winding cliff path down. The pine tree had a wide canopy and every branch had several large feathers tied to it that rustled with the needles in the wind.

The chanting came to an abrupt halt as the Grandmother stopped just before she stepped into the tree’s shadow and turned around. “Let us hear the words of our Tamer and Tracker.”

Barra stepped up first to face the crowd. “Never forget that the shadows and winds reach all corners of the world including the sky. The storm birds can never fly where She does not already reach.”

She smiled softly and, again, I couldn’t quite decide if it was a threat or a mask or genuine.

Tufani’s cane thumped into the ground as she took her place by Barra’s side. “We are not a waterhole or runner tribe. We live for the birds. Do any less and we fail the trust placed in us.”

As one the three pulled out their prayer needles and pricked their marks, two on the wrist and one on the forehead, before flicking the droplets into the shadow. “We gift this blood to the Goddess so that She does not have to take in the coming days. May it grant Her strength.”

It was our turn next. Wren led the cohort forward the few steps it took to reach the shadow as we all pulled out our prayer needles to prick our bless marks. One by one we said the prayer and the droplets flaked away as more fell. The tribe followed suit after us and once the last bit of blood disappeared into the air Tufani pulled the crowd’s attention to herself again.

“The storm calls! Who answers with me?”

Four other women with more feathers than normal braided and tied into their hair pushed through the crowd to stand before her. “We do.”

The Tamer nodded and led them off towards the stretch of long grass between the edge of the woods and the nesting grounds. That was when I truly took notice of the five birds waiting there with piles of gear. One might have been Anore, the storm bird Wren talked too, but I wasn’t that good at telling them apart yet.

It didn’t take long for the five to get the birds saddled and ready to go. The rest of the tribe settled underneath the tree, wrists resting on their knees with the dots facing toward the sky, and they didn’t look remotely unnerved at the fact that soon a wall of snow and wind would be coming our way. I doubted there’d be a magical shell of protection here like there had been at the Grove last year.

The rest of the cohort and I shared a few glances as the Echo started up a steady beat with her rhythm sticks and the tribe’s Grandmother began to tell the story of the first storm bird rider and her bird, Flight. I wanted to pay attention to the story, but I couldn’t help but worry about being blown over the cliffside.

Wren tried to approach the nearest tribe member. “Um…shouldn’t we go inside the huts?”

We had always taken shelter inside the meeting hall before.

The woman she spoke to spared her a distracted glance. “Just sit under the tree with us and you’ll be fine. You don’t want to miss the first flight of the season.”

We reluctantly did as we were told even as my mind boggled at the implications of what she had said. Tufani and the others were really going to fly during the First Flurry? The snowstorm might not have the same strength as the Warming Winds, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t strong or disorienting or able to freeze person to their bones. It wasn’t something you voluntarily stayed out in on the ground, much less the sky. I didn’t want to be out here and learn if a line of shamble men guiding the storm really was true. Nor did I want to freeze again.

But the regular tribes people didn’t look remotely concerned and I had experienced the goddess lessening the force of the Winds for one of Her trees before. I could only hope that the same would be true now because dark clouds were beginning to expand over the sky from the direction of the Seedling Palace and there was no way I could sprint back to the hut now. If worse came to worst, I could always hide in the pine tree’s shadow.

The saddled birds lowered themselves to the ground and the women climbed up short ladders hooked onto the saddles before rolling them up and tying them into place. The saddles themselves were simple as far I could tell with two long handles that the women laid between and hung onto after tying a cord to either side of their belts. All in all, it didn’t look the most secure and very reliant on arm strength I didn’t have.

Only when the clouds almost reached the Rookery, a wall of wind and snow blocking out the scenery beneath, did the saddled birds begin to run. The air filled with croaking calls as the rest of the flock called their encouragement. Some followed after the other birds while others settled further into their nests and a handful burst off of their perch on the spires of stone.

The snowstorm hit just as the five birds leapt off the side of the cliff, wings snapping wide. That was the last thing I saw before—snow and cold and wind tugged at my braids, my skin, my clothes. It wanted to tug me off the ground, send me flying with the idiots in the sky, but the goddess’s care for her trees calmed the storm just enough that disaster mellowed into blind mayhem.

Then the wild edge of the storm passed and I could scrape snow and frost out of my eyes to see puffy snowflakes drifting down over a newly frozen landscape. Everything was rimmed with frost and both lakes were completely frozen over. Depending on how fast the water flowed through them that might change in the future, but the goddess was always thorough with the first touch of the cold season. None of the birds looked the worse for wear either despite the fact that they hadn’t had a special tree to hide under. They shook off the snow and kept calling to each other, sounding pleased. A few more went running over the cliffside and I tracked them up into the air.

They joined the original five swooping and diving through the falling snow. Miraculously all of the riders were still secure in their saddles and not flailing through the air. I stared as they whooped and hollered, clearly enjoying their crazy flight.

Perhaps the tribe was correct with their chant.

Being on wind and wing looked a bit glorious.