Awkwardness and indifference ruled my interactions with the others after Tufani’s lecture. I shut down anyone who tried to ask about why I had run out into the storm. Loclen and Dera cornered me about during training later that day and Loclen’s questioned sounded more like she was accusing my lack of intelligence more than anything. I don’t think Dera appreciated her approach, but I also didn’t think either of them would have approached me if they had to come alone. I glared and glowered and made a couple of comments about the storm being more helpful than their staring in the hut. They gave up pretty quick and I let them draw whatever other conclusions they wanted.

I could have been nicer about it, I knew that, but my patience for others poking around my weaknesses had already run thin. It didn’t help that I kept getting sidelong looks from everyone too, like they were waiting for me to go dashing off into the woods for no reason.

Ulo left me alone except for shooting me a black glare every now and again. I wasn’t surprised that she blamed me for getting us in trouble or that she seemed to be having trouble letting go of the idea that I was life-ridden just because she was told to. But I continued on acting like she didn’t exist and that brought us as in balance as we were likely to get.

Prevna tried to comfort me. In her own way. But there was only so much she could do or say when someone else was always nearby while we trained and I didn’t go to my normal practice spots in the evening. I knew that she wanted to talk, that she wanted to check and see if I was alright.

But I wasn’t.

And I was worried what might come out of my mouth if she caught me in the lie. The last time I had felt similar to this I had cut Fellen’s cord and ruined what I was trying to protect. Prevna was too close, but I couldn’t push her away and I couldn’t let her in further. Which left me with…no options.

So I kept my head down, focused on training, and went to bed late so that she couldn’t pin me down in the hut while everyone was sleeping, all while trying to make something out of nothing. There had to be something else I could do other than lashing out out of habit.

I tried to think of what someone else would do in the same situation. Someone other than family. What Rawley or Fellen would do. What Grandmother would say.

Grandmother would tell me to get over myself, stop dithering, and that things were what they were. As long as I tried to be the best seedling I could be and revered the goddess, that was all that mattered to her. Everything else was wasted breath and effort. Just like when I had tried to keep my healer’s beads.

Fellen wouldn’t have had this problem, not before I hurt her, and I wouldn’t be surprised that if, when she made another friend, that she’d still stick to them like a burr. She was more willing to forgive and not treat everyone like they were out to get her than me.

Trust is a different type of strength.

That’s what Rawley had told me. That’s what she would do. She’d want me to talk to Prevna, tell her what I thinking—the fears I kept gnawing over—and work out a solution together. Just like she had teased trust and conversation out of me with her silence and patience.

I wouldn’t need to fear Prevna’s actions if I trusted her.

Which, logically, I did. I knew she wouldn’t deliberately try to hurt me. That she had helped me over and over when she didn’t need to. That she wouldn’t use every scrap of knowledge she had about me as leverage just because others had.

But the fear was still there. Filling my throat and pressing at my lungs all while insisting that if I did try to talk to Prevna all I would be doing is giving her more to work with. Letting her in further and making it that much more likely she’d hurt me.

Never mind that she knew I was a healer’s daughter and had never shared it. Never mind that she knew about the memories and my difficulty with small spaces and everything else without ever trying to use them against me.

The fear was still there. And every time I looked at her it reminded me of all the things she could do. All the things others could do if they knew. The way it would feel if Prevna was the one cutting up a hair cord I had spent weeks working on while I watched and begged her not to. After I trusted her to be a decent friend.

Besides, if I did tell Prevna about one thing then she’d want to know the rest. She’d want to know why I was so aware of how her actions could hurt me, why I needed to be in control, why small spaces bothered me, and about the memories.

And I couldn’t tell her. Couldn’t relive those years when I didn’t even have healing to cling to. Didn’t have anything to offer her other than a sharp tongue and stories, and all I’d get from her was pity.

I didn’t need or want pity.

My thoughts spun like that for two days until Barra announced that she was taking the rest of the cohort back to the practice grove we had started at before we traveled to the Rookery. Juniper had gotten stuck out in the woodland again when she was practicing her shadow walking and I think Barra was hoping she’d have an easier time with only goddess grown pines to work with.

They’d be gone all day and I was looking forward to the break even though I wouldn’t get to benefit from the training. No one wanted to accidentally break the decree that no other whisper woman than Mishtaw could mentor me. Tufani even let me off the hook for training with her so that she could focus on other tasks that had built up while she watched us.

I was a little surprised that Barra could make so many trips through the shadows in quick succession, but she only took one of the others at a time and she was traveling between the shadows of two goddess grown trees. That had to ease the strain. Also, while it had taken us three weeks or so walk to the Rookery, we hadn’t taken the most direct route and we had gotten held up more than once. The distance wasn’t what it could have been.

Still, it was irritating to realize once again that we could have been at the Rookery in minutes or seconds, and skipped all the drama, if we just had the skill at shadow walking.

I stayed in the hut after everyone else filtered out and decided to use the new space to practice some of my fighting techniques and other skills out of the snow. I could practice shadow walking later when the regular shadows were stronger.

I had just gotten through my beginning stretches and begun to work with my spear when Prevna strode back in and stomped her feet free of snow. My grip on the spear slipped but I caught it again before the mistake was obvious.

“What are we practicing?” she asked as she slipped off her cloak and reached for her spear. The Rookery tribe had been nice enough to replace the ones we had lost.

I blinked at her and stepped out of my stance. “Shouldn’t you be with the others?”

Prevna winked at me. “My head hurts too much. I don’t have the focus to make shadow paths today. Dera is going to tell Barra.”

I set my spear aside and gathered up my cloak instead. “That’s too bad. I was about to go practice shadow walking too.”

She didn’t block the doorway but she did cross her arms and roll her eyes. “You could at least try to sound like you meant it. Why are you avoiding me?”

I froze, cloak not quite in place. “I’m not.”

Prevna snorted in clear disbelief. “You’ve been twitchy ever since you ran out into the storm. I know you don’t like to talk about stuff like this but I’m not going to just sit by and let you ignore me for no reason!”

I swallowed back the retort that immediately rose on my tongue and stared at her instead. The hut, which had been fine enough now that it was empty of everyone, felt like it was pressing in on me.

Something I did must have given it away, because Prevna put her spear back and picked her cloak back up. “Let’s go to the lake.”

We got our cloaks in place and headed outside. Prevna watched me as I made sure the door flap was in place, but I didn’t do anything stupid like trying to run off into the woods. It wouldn’t solve anything and she’d be able to keep up with her longer legs and stamina.

So we trudged through the snow toward the frozen lake’s shoreline. Prevna let me try to get my thoughts together while we walked, but that wasn’t much help. I still didn’t have a solution or anything that felt safe to say to her.

We stopped at a spot between the village and the main switchback we used. Hopefully, if anyone else decided to travel past to use it while we were talking they’d be too far away to hear. No one else was around. All the tribe members were busy with the birds and their herds, and the other tasks that kept the tribe functional.

Nor was it lost on me that the whole situation was reminiscent of the time Prevna tried to get me to open up at the end of the Heartsong Festival. This time, however, we stayed standing and I let Prevna bump her shoulder against mine so she wouldn’t think I had suddenly started hating her.

She dug her shoe a little bit into the snow. “Why don’t you want to talk to me?” And then when I still didn’t say anything, “Was it something Ulo said or…?” Prevna gestured vaguely to her head.

I shook mine.

Her voice got quieter. “Something I did? Said?”

I started to shake my head again and then stopped. “You acted like you had everything taken care of when you came back from talking with Tufani.”

“And that’s a bad thing?” I could hear the frown in her voice. The censure.

“No, but—” I cut myself off.

“But?”

“But you could have told her anything and there’s nothing I could do! You know pretty much everything about me, but I don’t—” the urgency in my voice trailed off as shame started to color my cheeks instead, “I don’t know anything about you.”

Prevna sighed. “I thought you knew I wouldn’t use those things against you. It’d be wrong.”

I kicked at the snow. “I know that. In my head.” I got another friendly shoulder bump for that, but she waited for me to keep speaking. “But right now it’s like you hold all the sticks and I’m just waiting for you to hit me with them or pass them off to someone else so they can do it…and part of me really, really wants to elbow you in the gut and steal them back, so you can’t do that any more.”

“Then you just need your own sticks, right?” Prevna sounded thoughtful and when I looked up at her, she finally had her familiar teasing smile back on her face. She rolled her eyes at me. “If you wanted to know my deep, dark secrets you could have just asked you know. No need to be dramatic about it.”

My mouth worked for a bit but no sound came out. I didn’t know what to say.

Could it really be that easy?

Prevna flopped back into the snow. “Let’s see…I don’t like storms. Not the regular storms, but the rain storms so full of lightning and thunder that it feels like the goddess was going to break the sky with them. I always thought the band was going to drown from those. More than a few people did.”

I sat down next to her. This time it was my turn to wait to see what she had to say.

“I don’t know who my father is. Don’t know if he’s alive or dead, another Picker or from some tribe. Sometimes I wonder if I met him before or if he even knows. Sometimes I’m afraid he’s going to randomly show up and try to claim me.”

They weren’t the same as the memories, but if Prevna had nothing like that then I’d be glad. Besides, it wasn’t like I had ever directly come out and talked with her about them, she just had the general idea from what I had told Fellen.

The difficulty with severe rainstorms could be like my difficulty with smaller spaces, though. Less frequent and more random, but still a difficult situation that was impossible to entirely avoid. And I could relate to not wanting to know a family member along with fathers who weren’t really fathers.

Prevna brushed a hand over her black lips. “I didn’t want to drink the shadow because I knew it would change the color of my lips. I knew it was the smart thing to do—that I had to do it—but I don’t…” She let out a big frustrated breath. “I’m still a Picker, born and bred, but it doesn’t feel the same. Does that make sense?”

I caught her gaze and touched where my healer’s beads used to hang. “It makes sense.”

She gave me a pained smile and we stayed like that, quiet, for awhile.

Then Prevna asked, “Is that enough sticks?”

She could still tell people I was healer born or my myriad of other problems, but knowing more about her helped. Not that I had any intention of using her fears against her, not now that I knew how badly that could go even when I wasn’t the one on the receiving end. But now it didn’t feel like everything was sliding out of control.

I nodded and drew in a fortifying breath to ask, “Can you tell me more about what it’s like? Being in a Picker band?”

Prevna’s smile became more real and she sat up. Then she told me a bunch of different stories from wandering over the Folds to playing pranks on other band members. She only mentioned one directly about raiding a tribe. I did my best to listen and that seemed to be enough for both of us.