“Let us start at the beginning so you can grasp the scope of what I am asking of you. Have you ever wondered how there was a world for the goddesses to wake to? How there were pines and suncrest vines, sun and sky and dirt when your stories give the sisters credit for the creation of all things other than the sea itself?”

Out of the darkness pine trees, suncrest vines hanging off their branches, rose to encircle a small disk of land full of tall yellow grass and the more scrubby green grass I was used to. The Grove, where the goddesses first woke, according to every myth ever told. There was nothing before it and everything after.

The entity didn’t wait for me to answer as she kept on with her one sided lesson. “The void, the world, whatever word you might like to call it, wished for something to fill itself with. It ached with such strength, such desperation, that it tore pieces of itself off and formed the Grove. But the plants and the sky and the endless waters surrounding all were not enough. Nothing could see the world, shape it as it did, give the void the definition it craved. To the darkness all the things it had created might as well have been more darkness, if differently shaped.

“The world wished for more. And if scraps weren’t enough than it would tear itself apart for its wish. It nearly tore itself asunder with the great handfuls it took from itself next as it willed awareness to spark in its newest creations. This time the spark caught and burned into twin infernos, only truly comparable to the world that made them.”

The silhouettes of two girls appeared in the Grove, identical in every way and completely defying description. I couldn’t decide if it was they truly did change from one moment to next or they…embodied too many shapes and sizes and features at the same time that I couldn’t categorize them. Looking at them hurt my mind though it didn’t last for long as the silhouettes morphed into what I knew the goddesses looked like.

Short in stature but with a dominating presence, dark blue skin and hair like a night sky, Heliquat looked out of the Grove towards us. Despite the realistic image I knew it wasn’t the goddess Herself from the lack of weight behind her gaze. Azabel stood next to her, taller and full figured with pastel colors covering her skin and antlers crowning the top of her head. Seeing them together added to sense that I was watching not real. They were never depicted together that I knew of, especially not after Azabel’s betrayal of creating humanity.

“They settled into their preferred forms and answered the call of the wish that made them. The sisters took what the world had already created and molded it, used those creations as inspiration for their own and expanded their territories.” The entity’s rootlike fingers curled tight around me. “The more they created the more they understood. They discovered their own strengths and weaknesses and curiosities. They discovered what bound them and their wishes became all the stronger for it.”

Mountains and great plains, plants and animals appeared before me as if they gave the goddesses no more trouble than the time it took to think them up. For all the entity’s words I didn’t see them struggling with much of anything.

Still, she continued, “Then they created the Lady Blue and your people, and they realized they weren’t alone in their ability call upon the power of wishes. The world was still everywhere with power to spare despite all it had given them. Perhaps not enough to create another goddess, but enough to answer a true wish here and there, especially when the power would return upon the wish being fulfilled.”

The entity paused as if she expected a comment or a question. I kept my silence. She had her tale she wanted to tell and while I—reluctantly—found it fascinating, I was also trying to come up with an answer she would find acceptable. I had already given her the stone and I refused to stay asleep for eternity.

Nor did I really understand why she cared. Why lay out this explanation for me? Why insist I learn what bound me? If the village men were to believed she was a mountain spirit, and, even if she was something more than that, it didn’t make sense why she would fixate on me even before I pulled out the stone.

Her tone took on a nostalgic tone. “Was that not how I came to be? At first.” The entity’s voice shifted suddenly to something more hostile and dangerous. The points of her fingers pricked my belly. “They wished to hoard all the possibilities. Make it so only they could affect the world in any meaningful way. The sisters gave their own gifts and wishes have been forgotten.”

The image before me swirled before resolving into the goddesses, Heliquat perched on a towering pine and Azabel on top of a mountain, high above an massive crowd of kneeling to them. Praising them and wondering at their power.

Then the scene was swallowed by the black void surrounding us.

“But the world is infinite and the sisters are not. Know what binds you, wish for that which you cannot have on your own and what you would tear apart your soul for, and why should the world not answer? We all have the spark.”

Finally, I spoke, “I never said I wanted to wish for anything.”

The entity spun me so that I faced her and, where there had only been shadows before, her face stood out in stark contrast against the void. She looked like the old woman I had seen in my visions during the Dark Sight trial. Covered in scars but not broken. Never broken.

Instinctively, I knew it wasn’t the entity’s true face but she spoke with the old woman’s lips and tongue anyways. “You are always wishing.”

I glared back at her and didn’t rise to the argument she seemed to be baiting. She spun me around again and a new image rose in the dark.

My memory tent. Not the real healer’s tent full of her presence and demands, but the one held every last memory of every plant, tincture, salve and other component of healing I had ever learned. The one with the sack stuffed full of memories of Prevna I refused to look at too closely. The one that held reminders of all the myths and the legends I had heard over the years, the poisons Rawley had taught me, the lessons from the Seedling Palace.

Each and every thing I never wanted to forget.

The entity repeated her assertion, “You are always wishing. But it is undefined. Weak. You don’t know what you are reaching for.”

I gave the answer I had decided on since before we stepped into this cursed cave a second time. “I want the power and authority that comes with being a full whisper woman.”

She scoffed. “Perhaps. But why?”

I didn’t want to admit that to some entity that thought she could manipulate me just because she could force her way into my dreams. “Why not?”

“So you would be satisfied if you were seen as powerful authority figure? Someone with influence simply because they completed tests that hundreds of other women have passed? You wouldn’t wish for more if there were still murmurs about your background and eligibility to be a whisper woman? You wouldn’t try to spite them all because there was still something missing?”

I opened my mouth, closed it. Tried again but still couldn’t quite find the words to curse her or defend myself or demand that she get to her point already.

The entity continued to press me, “No? Then think. What do you think comes with power and authority? What does a good tribe leader, Pack Leader, and Grandmother all have in common with whisper women? How are they viewed? What do you want?”

They were all looked to for their skill, their expertise in their particular field. Others looked to them for direction, even if that was only how least inconvenience them when it came to how the tribes interacted with whisper women. They were feared, res—

Respected.

That was something I had never had. Not with healer’s beads in my hair or when Fellen and I had survived Flickermark or when I killed the water snake or any other occasion. Everything always came with caveat. How impressive, but what if she has too much life or she’s too young or it must have been luck. If it wasn’t that, then it was the fact that my tongue or actions had done me no favors so I was too disliked to be respected.

Even if I craved it.

People who were respected could hold their head up high with shame or fear. They weren’t constantly questioned and judged and found lacking. Others didn’t see those they respected as less than them.

“Good.” The entity brushed a gentle finger over my cheek. “You begin to understand, don’t you? But a wish needs to be specific, strong, measurable. Something the world can grasp ahold of and act upon.”

My desperate thoughts stopped in their tracks.

Why should I give this entity what it wanted? Why should I take the risk at possibly setting myself up against the goddess through using some kind of power that She might have hidden away? Why help this entity when she couldn’t even let my thoughts be my own?

I had delivered the stone. My thoughts had obviously provided an answer she liked, and I did not need waste time here when the others might still be trapped.

I repeated my realization aloud in case that was a loophole the entity was exploiting. “I’m bound by my desire for respect.”

“Yes, and now—”

“And now you will let me and the others go since I’ve given you my answer. That was the deal—and if you don’t, by the storms, I swear my only wish I will strive for is to make it so you never existed.”

Frustratingly, I could still hear the smile in her rock fall of a voice as she answered, “A mighty wish, indeed. But what you say is true: my question now has an answer that isn't completely lacking. Perhaps, if we speak again, you will have a better understanding and more patience then. Wake and, if the others can do the same, they will join you.”

My eyes snapped open to see the statues of the Silver Forest overhead. I cursed and shot to my feet only to hear a crocodile hiss. Klus glowered up at me from where he lay a few feet away. The chamber was empty besides us and the statues. Tike and Prevna were still in the entity’s clutches. I cursed more strongly and promised myself that I wouldn’t enter this stupid cave ever again.