Hands wrapped around my throat, monstrously big and long. Not choking but…cloying. Forcing me to watch as the mystical plant I saw while gaining the dark sight boon was plucked and shredded by invisible fingers. Long thin leaves and tiny delicate petals disappearing into the dark. Destroying its potential without a care in the world.

I knew I should I slip free from whoever was holding me in place. Their grip wasn’t tight. But I couldn’t move—it was as if, if I did, I would be the one shredded to nothing next.

A voice somewhere between a rustle of leaves, a rockfall, and the sigh of wind spoke in my ear. Something entirely unnatural even if it was made from natural things. “What do you strive for? What do you wish for?”

Plants and using my knowledge. Healing.

Disappointment. “Is that all?”

The hands tightened. Their points pricked my skin and—

My eyes snapped open to take in the ceiling of the tent I shared with Prevna. I tensed further waiting for her to shift, murmur for me to stop being such a restless sleeper, but her breathing stayed even and slow. I hadn’t woken her this time.

I let out a silent breath and took stock. Not a memory or a dream. A…nightmare, though it had felt both more real and focused than a normal one. It certainly wasn’t fading as I woke up like a normal dream did. I rubbed a hand over one cheek where the pointed fingers had bit into flesh but the skin was smooth, without injury.

Just a nightmare then. Perhaps one of realistic nightmares the Broken Spear Mountains were famous for. The ones that were strong enough to kill. I smirked a bit at that. The mountains weren’t the best at picking targets it seemed.

I glanced back over at where Prevna was sprawled out on her half of the tent, one foot pressed up against my leg and it seemed like her hand had barely missed hitting me in face when she stretched out. If I was the restless sleeper, then she was the one who needed the space of two people to feel comfortable. She always tried to keep to her own side, a bit of space between us, even after I let her know I’d be fine, but inevitably her limbs would go every which way throughout the night. Sometimes it seemed like she craved the comfort of touch even in her sleep, sometimes I just thought it was a side effect of her height.

It didn’t remotely seem like she was having a nightmare.

I eyed the tent entrance next but Prevna would definitely notice if I got up and I wasn’t sure I wanted to brave the band of Pickers on my own in the middle of the night. So I laid still, unable to fall back sleep or stop looping the nightmare through my mind, trying to figure out why it felt important, why it had consisted of what it did, how I could free myself of it if it happened again in the future. Like I would when a memory overtook me.

That didn’t as much anymore, thankfully. I had gotten better at managing the triggers, at noticing when I was in a memory and then working myself free of it. Prevna helped. She had her own little set of tools now that she used when she thought I might be slipping or to help me come back to reality. I hadn’t asked her for the help, would have preferred if she never had to worry about it, but I couldn’t deny that it did make a difference.

What did I strive for? What did I wish?

For things I could no longer have.

The speaker in the dream hadn’t liked that answer but what else was there?

I had always longed for healing and gaining more knowledge about its techniques, the plants, and, eventually, the stories she had made me learn in exchange. I did what I did now because I had no other choice. I had to become a whisper woman—for spite, for power, because accepting a shamble man’s curse sounded like a worse version of what I already had to deal with.

I wasn’t striving for anything except not to fail. My teeth ground together at that thought. It ate me in a way I didn’t like because I wasn’t sure there was anything I could do about it. Perhaps that was all the nightmare was, a manifestation of the stress and anxiety choking me over what I couldn’t have and didn’t know what I was heading towards. Nothing to do with the mountains at all.

I hadn’t told Prevna about the visions I’d had while gaining the dark sight boon. She hadn’t even hinted at anything like it either. From what I could tell, no one else had seen anything during the trial or they were all keeping surprising tight lipped, like me. Then again, the visions did feel like something private, something between just me and the goddess, and that letting anyone else know about them would be breaking some fundamental understanding between us that had been promised when She gave the unexpected challenge. I didn’t want to learn what the consequences would be for breaking a promise to the goddess, even one I didn’t know I was making, not when She held them in such high esteem.

Perhaps that held true for everyone. If it was, then the only way I’d learn if anyone else had seen something was a blatantly broken promise or a unique bit of happenstance.

I held in a sigh. I was getting nowhere with letting the thoughts spin around my head. So I closed my eyes and forced myself to work through my memory tent, object by object, decluttering memories I no longer needed to have and polishing up others until the nightmare lost the hold it had on my focus and I was able to drift off to sleep.

- -

The next two days passed peacefully as Prevna and I adapted to the Red Hand’s rhythms. We helped them with a variety of tasks, Prevna always leading the charge. It gained us more good will and stopped training from being the only thing we could do to stave off boredom.

We did draw a crowd whenever we did practice though. Slings, spears, hand to hand, whip and knife. The kids would watch with wide eyes as we went through forms and stances, had a handful of practice bouts. The adults would watch a little more sidelong. Most of them had some skill with a sling out of sheer necessity but it was clear they weren’t to seeing those properly trained.

Mishtaw had little patience for those with weapons but not the proper skills to wield them. So as soon we had been brought under her wing she had stomped all over Jin’s approach of ‘sit back and berate’ and had, instead, worked with us to build on what we knew. She also promptly pointed out and stopped any bad habits we were developing. We went from haphazard training to clear things we were supposed to work on on our own and together as well as steps to follow for each.

For now my focus was on being able to switch between weapons without losing them or creating an opening for an enemy to attack me. Prevna’s was to prove that her whip could be useful while polishing her skills with sling and spear. Otherwise, Mishtaw was determined to have her switch her specialty weapon.

Whisper women didn’t necessarily need to know a third weapon as slings and spears covered most fighting that wasn’t hand to hand as well as hunting, but it had become the norm as a mark of privilege. A symbol that whisper women had both the time and resources to devote to a specialty weapon while huntresses and normal tribes folk didn’t. Perhaps they could have trained with a knife, but it was considered one of the extra weapons as most people didn’t want use what they ate with to fight—and if you had time to pick something a spear would be the more helpful choice. I liked having all three of weapons with me without feeling like I was carrying anything extra or pointless.

We kept more strategic practice private and neglected practicing shadow walking. It wouldn’t be good to let the band know or be able to copy everything we knew. Nor did we want to scare them off with the reminder of the more mystical side of whisper women and their apprentices.

Still, for all our hard work Nerco and her band had become reticent with their information after that first evening meal. Like she had given us a tidbit to let us know she had what we needed, to lead us on, and she and her band were biding their time for the others to return. Sometimes we got bits and pieces: the tribe in the fog being referred to as “our sons” or “our brothers”, the way a good portion of the band would disappear every day but it didn’t seem like they were hunting and everyone got evasive when we asked what they were doing or where they were. I had more than half a mind to slip after them soon but we stood out to much for the band not to notice if one us had disappeared. Once, when I was rolling the seeds we had found between my fingers, Harup had started like he was surprised to see what I was holding but he brushed it off as a bug biting him when I tried to press him. I still kept up the tactic in case one of the other tribe members weren’t quite as good at covering their reaction.

Part of me wished we could throw our weight around a bit more. That I could twist words and trip the other person up into the giving the answer I wanted, but I also couldn’t ignore the concern of ruining our only lead by pushing too hard, too fast. So we bided our time, waiting for Mishtaw and the others to return, and I kept tight lips around my growing frustration.

Once again I wished we had gained the boon to speak on the wind. If we had we could have checked in with the others, let them know about our progress and learn how they were dealing with the death bringers. Apparently, the conditions for earning the boon weren’t right and they couldn’t be rushed.

We just had to wait. And wait. For that skill and this bit of information and anything else remotely helpful. Nothing to actively work towards. Nothing to strive for.

My teeth ground together.

I did my best to ignore the injured. A young woman with a gash down one arm and across her chest, poorly bandaged. A man not much older with another poorly bandaged puncture wound in his stomach and fever sweat. An old man with a cough that rattled his body. My fingers itched to do all the simple fixes that could save them, but the rest of me couldn’t forget the bone chilling cold of being frozen, unable to sleep or breathe.

The band and Prevna and me stepped around each other, each trying to gain more information without giving before the whole tiresome dance was taken out of our hands. The old man had collapsed and from what I could tell the younger man wasn’t far from following his example. I couldn’t stand the stasis any longer.

I rounded on Prevna in our tent. “You said they’d provide further assistance if we took their injured to a healer? We aren’t gaining anything here.”

She raised her hands in defense. “The others—”

“Are likely making the way safer. We can make it to the healer.”

Prevna cocked her head to the side like she was caught somewhere between amusement and admiration. “I think Harup was expecting to have the others when he made the offer. They might not think we can make good on the deal.”

“Their injured might as well already be dead if we don’t try.” I couldn’t budge on this.

Her smile widened. “Then we try.” She leaned forward. “Softie.”

I was still spluttering denials as Prevna exited the tent to share our decision with Nerco.