Training continued and more weeks passed. We continued practicing with the intermediate shoots, but after Dera’s accident no one was overeager to move onto the advanced ones except for Breck. Working on our control and ability to react quickly seemed more important than sliding down new shoots for now.

It was interesting getting to know the birds better as well. Anore didn’t seem to trust my survival instincts now that she had plucked me up from the middle of a snow storm. A few times a week the large bird would find me and check me over to make sure I was fine—it didn’t matter how much I protested or what Tufani, Wren, or the handler in charge of taking care of the area with her nest said. Apparently, in Anore’s mind, I was a silly fledgling who needed more guidance than most and the humans couldn’t be completely trusted to keep an eye on me since she had already saved me once. Even storm bird fledglings knew that only experienced adults with strong wings could safely leave the nest in that kind of storm.

It got to the point that I had to explain to Prevna why a bird kept following me around everywhere. I made sure to focus more on how it felt to fly and less on the humiliation of dangling from a beak like a dead fish. Prevna shared the story with the rest of the cohort and soon I was on the receiving end of looks of envy, irritation, admiration, and disbelief. It didn’t come as surprise to anyone that Ulo had the worst reaction, but even Wren seemed a bit disappointed that she didn’t get to be the first one to fly. Chirp didn’t like that Anore kept coming around so much and twittered at me for snacks to repay him for the disturbance. He got a palm full of berries for his trouble after two days. I couldn’t stand listening to his begging longer than that.

Other birds got more interested in me too after they noticed Anore’s attention, but that normally faded after a quick inspection or until Wren captured their focus. All the birds loved talking with her—to the point that she had to set aside time every day to just to interact with them so that they didn’t interrupt our regular training. I wasn’t sure if it was because the storm birds grew up around people or if they were just more intelligent and sociable than the wild birds I had seen Wren talk to.

Barra took the others to the practice grove two more times to work on their shadow walking. Prevna had half a mind to try to skip out on the practice so I wouldn’t be at the Rookery alone, but I convinced her that she shouldn’t waste the opportunity and I’d be just fine on my own. Which I was.

I liked the quiet after constantly being shoved together with the others for practice and in our sleeping quarters. I didn’t have to deal with the glances and looks that they sent my way or the speculation about why I had run out into the storm. Peaceful solitude instead of tactics training with Juniper or the beat down that was weapons practice with Breck. She tried to give advice, but I think she knew how to use her weapons best more on instinct than logical thinking.

I used those days to mainly practice my shadow walking as well. I might only have one goddess grown shadow to work with but I figured that was a challenge that might help me improve my abilities in the long run. After all, most of the time we shadow walked, I doubted that we’d have a convenient goddess grown tree on the other end.

So, instead, I focused on traveling between the normal shadows along the Rookery’s edge now that my control had improved. I noticed that it was more difficult to change my impression of what the shadow felt like the lighter the shadow got. With the regular shadows I could change my mental image from a tied tent flap to a pool of water within a handful of seconds now, but when I tried the same thing with a lighter shadow it took longer and sometimes it felt like the water had a film over it that still kept me from entering the shadow. The really light shadows, like the ones made by a handful of needles or so at the top of a tree, refused to change images at all. Those had the impression of an impenetrable rock wall like the shadow I tried to enter in the storm.

The small shadows also made things more difficult too. The size of the shadow didn’t affect my ability to change my impression of the shadow, but the smaller it was the more constrained I felt trying to enter it. To put it another way, entering the shadows of the goddess grown trees felt like walking through a giant archway, a regular adult pine tree was stepping through the entrance of a family tent, the thin shadow of a sapling was like squeezing through a tunnel just wide enough for my shoulders, and anything smaller than that was impossible.

Really, when putting it all together, it was little wonder that the Sprouts who had taken the cohort down from the Seedling Palace for the game Hunter’s Quarry had had such trouble. Taking another person along would make both of those factors more difficult, not to mention the fact that creating a path was difficult enough. I wasn’t sure if I could bring another person with me into one goddess grown shadow, much less create a path to another location with them. Especially one I couldn’t see.

I knew it went against Esie’s advice but I still found that I got the best results when I traveled to another tree that I could picture in detail. Which meant I mostly hopped around from shadow to shadow in sight of each other unless I decided to go to the feathered tree. I wasn’t sure how else to focus my intentions like she wanted me to do or what ‘trust the blessing’ was supposed to mean. I used the blessing and it worked or it didn’t. It didn’t seem like a whole lot of trust was needed for that to be true.

All in all, my experiments with shadow walking helped me improve, but I could tell that there was something I was still missing. Something that should let me travel farther to places I couldn’t picture as clearly or didn’t know what they looked like at all.

The rest of the cohort improved as well. From what I heard, everyone could successfully travel between the trees in the practice grove now including Juniper, though she seemed to do better at traveling to different points in a single shadow even though that was supposed to be harder than traveling between shadows. Prevna said that Barra looked more confused by Juniper every session.

I spent some time practicing traveling through a single shadow too, but my focus wasn’t into it. However much I practiced though I knew I wasn’t the clear forerunner when it came to shadow walking any longer. I wouldn’t have guessed who the new lead was if given the chance either: Dera.

My bet would have been Wren or Loclen, but apparently making a path felt very similar to using her boon to manipulate bone. Dera was the only one who could travel to regular shadows out of sight and, when she returned to the grove, it was always to the tree she intended. Her accuracy for appearing where she wanted in a shadow sounded like it was improving too.

Loclen was in second place. Similarly her shrouding boon seemed to help her have more affinity when it came to using the shadow paths. Wren might have been further along, but Prevna said that her main focus was on being able to bring Chirp with her into the shadows. I was probably in third place now with Prevna, Breck, Andhi, and Idra making up the middle of the pack.

I didn’t like losing my position, but it made sense that I wouldn’t be able to keep up the same pace of improvement as the others when I didn’t have anyone to point out what I was missing. And while I could ask the others for help, I doubted they’d be very eager to after the big scene I made about sharing my own advice. I had Esie’s advice; I could figure it out on my own.

Another snowstorm hit, but it only lasted for a day and Tufani wouldn’t hear a word of me staying anywhere but in her hut where she could keep an eye on me. The upside of the awkward situation was that I didn’t have to worry about the fire going out, I got hot tea, and Tufani passed a good portion of the time telling stories about her birds and the various missions whisper women had taken them on. The downside was being under the scrutiny of the Tamer and Tracker—when Barra joined us in the main room—and the time Tufani decided to test how many of her bird facts I remembered. Reciting them wasn’t nearly as exciting as her stories, but I could tell I surprised her with the sheer amount I spout back to her. It took time, but I had committed to hanging them in my memory tent as little bird carvings since I knew that was one of the few areas Ulo had a chance to win at. Later I might have to clear them out for more essential information, but I didn’t see why I should let her win when I had the tools to stop her.

Tufani tried to press me about how I could recall so many facts so clearly when she hadn’t mentioned some of them more than once weeks ago, but I refused to elaborate more than my answer of “Practice.”

During the stretches of silence, while Tufani and Barra focused on projects of their own, I let my mind brush over the other areas in my memory tent and the plants covering the landscape outside it, refreshing my memories even as it made my mouth go sour and my skin break out into a sweat.

It might have been smarter to let my healing knowledge fade, but I couldn’t bring myself to abandon it, even knowing I could never use it again. There was still some…comfort in going over what I knew about the various plants and tinctures and methods despite the panic and fury that wanted to well up too. I couldn’t use it, but the knowledge was mine. That fact was enough to keep me from sinking into another spiral at the loss.

Nor did the goddess strike me down for indulging in the information. Which meant She had more important things to pay attention to at the moment or She didn’t care about me having the knowledge as long as I didn’t practice it. Of course nothing had happened when I reviewed the knowledge before but I hadn’t been sure if I was placed under stricter limitations after the trial.

I couldn’t practice healing, but at least I could think about it. Which was something. My skills would probably still get dull but there was little I could do about that.

Overall, the weeks of training leading up to the Heartsong Festival went smoothly and passed by quickly. We got used to the rhythm of the different lessons and knowing what to expect, though curiosity and restlessness rose as we got closer and closer to the festival. Everyone was ready for a break and eager to see how similar the Rookery’s version of the Heartsong Festival was to the ones we had grown up with. It didn’t take long for the first day of the festival to arrive and we got to find out.