I passed the time outside Grandmother’s tent by working on Fellen’s new sling. I knew that I was supposed to making it under Rawley’s supervision, but it was already coming close to the deadline we had given and there most likely wouldn’t a better time to work on it for a while. Not with the funerals that would likely take up the rest of the day and the need to make up the distance we lost as we traveled for the next few days. Rawley could check the sling when she got back and that would have to be good enough.

It took me longer than it should have to make the sling. I measured all the strips of leather at least three times before I cut them down to the correct size and I kept fiddling with my braiding of the cords to make sure there weren’t any odd lumps or turned strip of leather. If I was going to make something it was going to look and work perfectly, even if it was going to Fellen of all people. Levain had encouraged that attention to detail at every step of learning the healer’s craft. After all, if you mixed a majority of the herbs and ingredients we used—she used with incorrect amounts it could render the whole recipe impotent or worsen what you had been trying to fix.

To annoy Fellen every time she used the sling, I carved the first character of my name in into the sling’s pouch. All in all what should have taken around a half an hour to make at the longest took me nearly triple the time. My hands ached by the end of it, the cuts in my palms complaining at the constant movement, but the look on Fellen’s face when she took the sling would be worth it.

Whistles sounded that the midday meal was ready but I didn’t trudge toward the cooking fires with the other wards. Experience had taught me it was best to wait a while until the crowd thinned to go get food. People had never thought well of a healer’s daughter trying to get the freshest, well cooked food. Going right away was a good way to be humiliated by being told by one of the male cooks to go to the end of the line with no choice but to listen. Or being ignored and treated like a ghost while others got their plates filled all around me.

Old Lily paused as she walked by me to follow the wards. “Are you alright, child?”

I held the sling out with a slight smile. “Just concentrating.”

She nodded, her eyebrows still furrowed a bit with worry. “It looks beautiful. You’ll let me know if you ever need help with anything?”

I softened my smile with a bit of gratitude. “I will.”

She smiled back. “Good. Make sure you eat something before all the food is gone.”

“I will.”

Old Lily left then and I let out a breath of relief. It hadn’t taken me long to figure out that pretending to open up to her was the best way to keep her distant, but playing the part still made my skin itch. Kindness wasn’t nearly as clear cut as I’d like it to be, and I hated the feeling of not knowing what I was supposed to do, how to respond. Keeping to myself and focusing on learning were preferable. Easier.

Rawley found me on the edge of the community area around the cooking fires eating the midday meal. She let me know that she and Yolay had found the two missing boys. Bluebell had sniffed out Mel’s son with a couple more errant sheep in a natural niche in the side of a hill that was hidden behind a bush. A short distance away Rawley had picked up a trail of reindeer tracks and found the other herd boy and two reindeer in a similar niche. Apparently, the way water ran down and around the hills a few miles away made the small pockets common there. Both boys and beasts had been returned to their parents and herds alive and well. Old Spinner had also been found by another lone huntress, but he wasn’t in the best condition. He was found sprawled out on the edge of the flood waters down stream with a thready pulse and bad fever. The huntress had to carry him back because he didn’t wake up when she shook him. It didn’t seem like he would last long despite Levain’s ministrations. I knew that I should feel bad for the old man and his family, but the more vindictive part of me was focused on the blow Levain would take from failing to save him. It would be proof that she wasn’t infallible.

And perhaps some part of her would wish that she still had her assistant that she had trained for nearly a decade rather than two useless crybabies who knew nothing.

I forced that thought out my head as the lack of weight from the healer’s beads reminded me that Levain couldn’t take me back even if she wanted to—even if I wanted her to. Which I didn’t. Instead, I showed Rawley the sling I made and she looked it over with a critical eye before leading me to the edge of camp and testing it out. It was a bit on the short side for her, even for a short distance sling, but no stones fell from the pouch and each stone hit its target. I was sent to collect the stones and when I returned them my mentor gave me her feedback.

“It’s good make and strong. You did a good job of braiding the leather evenly and tight. The cords shouldn’t break on her until after a few years of hard use and the pouch is well formed.” Rawley tapped a finger next to my initial. “But what is this?”

My answer came out a little defensive and I chided myself silently for it. “A marker’s mark.”

She flicked my forehead in light rebuke and clicked her tongue. “There’s no need for such things. Let’s try not to antagonize her further, hm? There’s no reason to show off that you know your characters when most of us don’t. I’ll wait while you turn your ‘maker’s mark’ into a pine branch.”

The pine branch turned out a bit awkward, but recognizable. My mark on the sling went from a taunt to a small blessing and there wasn’t much I could about it under Rawley’s calm, observant gaze. She checked my work when I finished and nodded.

“Good. We’ll deliver this to them tomorrow.”

She delivered me back to Grandmother’s tent and left to go check in with Ghani again and help where she could. The news that Old Spinner had passed away came a short while later. That left Grandmother with another round of Mourning Rituals before she could call the whisper women and the funerals could start. I bided the time by trying to think of different things I could pass off my blessing as. Granted, the goddess would know what my blessing really was just by looking at me, but it was likely the whisper women wouldn’t have that same ability. I could always say that I hadn't learned what my blessing was yet, but I had a nagging feeling that they would test me to figure out what it was then, and that wouldn’t put me in a favorable light to become one of the goddess’s chosen. I needed something that would help me climb the ranks but that was also simple or vague enough that I could pull off having it as a blessing. Having the knowledge of the blessing I did have spread wouldn’t do me any favors, and given the way the last two times it had come up had gone I didn’t relish experiencing a third.

I toyed with the ideas of pretending to have a blessed memory or resilience or sling throwing, but for every idea I come up with at least five different ways it could go wrong, be discovered I was lying, or not help me get to my goal. By the time Grandmother was ready to make her way to where the bodies were laid out, I wasn’t any further than where I started.

Grandmother stepped out of her tent in full ceremonial wear and everyone in eyesight froze. Her gray hair was pulled back in intricate braids that were held up by bone pine branch pins that had green veins painted over them. Her pitch black robe swirled into yellows and oranges on the sleeves and bottom hem like a roaring pyre against the night sky. To further add to that image little white bone beads where stitched into the black fabric like the stars caught in the goddess’s hair. A crimson under robe peeked out from the outer robe as a reminder of blood spilled and prayers owed. More face markings had been added and earrings with multiple red beads like drops of blood hung from from her ears. She carried a pine branch as long as my arm in front of her chest.

Grandmother walked forward, slow and methodical, Old Lily shadowing her to her right. As the other wards and I fell in step behind her, other tribe members falling in step behind us, Grandmother began to tell the story of the creation of the Silver Forest and the Ever Dark and the virtues and vices that sent you to one or the other.

“When those of us chosen by the goddess were still few in number and newly come to Heliquat’s hand, we were not yet accustomed to Her domain and power, and died quick. Our dead cluttered Her lands and the goddess was quick to realize that She could not grant immortality to all like She had to Her Beloved. First, She sought to lengthen our lives and in Her mercy granted us fire.”

Old Lily hit her rhythm sticks together with a sharp crack and as one all those in the procession lifted their arms above their head so that their wrists crossed and the dot on the inside of the left wrist could be seen on all but my own.

We all called out the response Grandmother’s words demanded, “May it light our path so that we can better see the shadows!”

Grandmother continued, “But the dead still had nowhere to go. Our spirits wandered and wrecked havoc in their search for release. But the ground was too frozen and hard to bury them beneath the earth, we were too new and unskilled to hew stone and cover them above. So the goddess, in Her great wisdom, looked to our small dung and moss fires, to the smoke trailing into the sky above, unused and untouched. She looked to her sacred trees and thought of wild fires.”

“May Her sight be always be clear!”

“So, the goddess gave us one last mercy and rent Her domain in three! The ground remained as it was, a place for us to live and carry out Her will, but She split the sky in two. Each star became a tree and together they formed a vast forest of plenty. A place for those who carried out Her will and lived their lives honoring Her to rest and rejoice! The Silver Forest. The second place was hidden beyond the light of the stars, only visible through a small hole during the moon’s absence. The Ever Dark. A place for those who strayed from the goddess and violated Her ways.”

“May all those who wander there remain lost!”

Grandmother stopped in front of the three bodies laid out on a patch of flat, dry ground. “Thus, the dead no longer troubled this realm until the folly of the unnamed who rose Grislander. But that is a story for another time. For now, let us thank the goddess for Her mercy!”

“We thank Her!”

Prayer needles were pulled and blood flicked onto the ground as Old Lily hit her sticks together for the last time during that sequence. The tribe fanned out around the bodies half oval as Grandmother stepped around them and laid the pine tree branch down so that it created the largest possible shadow. The other wards and I followed her so that we formed a line next to her like we had during the Traveler’s Offering ceremony. Old Lily handed Grandmother the offering bowl and one by one we repeated the offering until she had enough blood to drink.

“I gift this blood to the Goddess so that She does not have to take in the coming days. May it grant Her strength.”

The tribe was silent and expectant as Grandmother tipped the bowl back and drank, blood staining her upper lip. This time, however, she also pricked her wrists and her palms, holding her arms out in front of her, before speaking. “This blood speaker asks the goddess to speak to her Scales and send us three trees for the final fire so that our dead may forever rest.”

The blood flaked away and long minutes passed. Then, from the shadow of the pine branch the tip of a tree trunk appeared, covered in a Carver’s Maze, clasped in two pale hands. Arms followed and a head wreathed in smooth dark hair and lips of the darkest black. The whisper woman put a knee up as her torso emerged and pushed upwards like she was stepping out of a deep pool. The rest of the carved tree trunk and another whisper woman with light brown skin and short brown hair followed her. They were elegant and beautiful and the whole tribe barely dared to breath as they set the first carved tree at Old Spinner’s head before disappearing back into the branch’s shadow.

They carried two more carved trunks from the shadow and did a complicated series of gestures to open all three trees. The inside was like the smooth inside of a fresh water oyster.

They turned to Grandmother, who crossed her arms and bowed her head. She said, “We thank you.”

The first whisper woman bowed her back, not as deeply. “May the Scales balance well in their favor. You do your duties well, Grandmother.”

Grandmother repeated, “I thank you.”

The whisper women disappeared back into the shadow and this time as they went we all pricked our marks and cast the blood after them in blessing. Grandmother and Old Lily then carefully lifted up each body and placed them inside the carved tree trunks. Then they watched over them as tribe members came up and placed different items inside for the dead to take with them on their journey. A favorite blanket, a bit of food, a ball of thread. After a long minute when no one else approached, Grandmother went to each body, said something too quiet to make out, and closed the lid of their tree, locking them within the Carver’s Maze with a thunk of something locking into place.

Then fire moss and twigs were placed on each to create small funeral pyres. Grandmother bled us three more times, once for each of the dead, and spilled the blood over each trunk’s Carver’s Maze as a final offering to the dead and thanks to the goddess for allowing us to use her trees.

Grandmother had the three closest women to each of the dead come forward. Voni stepped forward for her sister and though her gaze looked a little hollow, she still had enough presence of mind not to cry outside of tent walls.

Grandmother gave the final words of the ceremony. “May the goddess and those that went before welcome them well into the Silver Forest.”

Three snaps sounded and the moss on Old Spinner’s and Yalin’s pyres began to smolder. Voni was a Candle, so she had to walk forward to start the first flame on her sister’s pyre. Three more snaps followed as Grandmother cast her own spark onto each of the pyres. Old Lily followed, walking to each one and placing her fire in a spot far from where the current flames were licking.

The tribe followed suit and the evening air was filled with the sound of snapping while I could only watch the flames burn higher and higher. I ignored the little ache of feeling…out of place, as the tribe repeatedly displayed the ability to do something so simple. It didn’t take long for the flames to begin to roar and crackle. The tribe seemed to breathe a collective sigh of relief as the fire continued to burn and the threat of the dead rising again as shamble men eased.

I was among the first to drift back to the camp, but I wasn’t able to sleep until Rawley collected me from Grandmother’s tent and led me to where she had set up her own on the edge of camp.

All she said to me before we went to sleep was, “You did well.”