I didn’t immediately meet up with Fellen, Rawley, and Nole that night. Fellen had informed me earlier that her mother had put her foot down and insisted that she got time to spend with her daughter when she wasn’t already exhausted. Fellen had argued at first that was what the last night of the festival was for, but then she relented when she saw how much it meant to her mother. We would meet up later in the night after she had spent a few hours with her parents and family friends.

Without Fellen to even out the dynamics I felt like an extra piece of luggage hanging around my mentor and Nole, so while we were getting ready I had prompted them to spend time with the other huntresses and people they were friendly with. I think Rawley saw through my lie when I said that I had plans and would be fine, but she still went along with my prompting. I told myself that would be like the night before, that I could enjoy the solitude.

But it wasn’t. And I could feel difference as I stood by Grandmother’s tent and watched the tribe split into smaller groups, spreading throughout the camp, smiling and laughing. Some went to man food stations while others gathered friends into dancing groups or friendly competitions of various skills. Some stood in loose circles gossiping or playing group games like Remember the Tune, where each person had to repeat the notes of the players who had already gone before adding three of their own. A few people were eying where Grandmother had disappeared into her tent with Old Lily to change—hands suspiciously hovering near large pouches or the edge of a tunic, places where a fox or rabbit tail could easily be hid.

I recognized them all. They all had a place; there wasn’t any need to hesitate over what they would do or who they would spend their time with. And I was not, and never been, counted among that number. The night before I had been one of a couple thousand, surrounded by people I had little or no ties with. I had a place as one of the girls with the trial marks as well as one of the audience watching the performers on the rise.

But tonight? Tonight, surrounded only by people who knew my history, I was reduced back to the former healer’s daughter. The one they ignored or pitied or scorned. I wasn’t welcome among their groups even as a curiosity and, having given up the company of the few who would welcome me, I had nowhere to go. I expected they assumed out of habit that I would slink away into the healer’s tent or along in her shadow as I had in years past, but those weren’t an option for me even if I had wanted them. My mouth tasted sour as I watched the tribe enjoy their evening while I felt like I had unexpectedly stepped into some soiled trap.

So I stood awkwardly in place, caught between my ruined excitement for the night and uncertainty about whether I should wander through the camp anyway or disappear from this place that didn’t have room for me until it was time to meet up with the others. I didn’t want to catch hints of the snickers and gossip that would surely come if I stayed, but it also felt like a defeat if I left.

“Isn’t this your tribe? Why are you still standing there?” Prevna stepped up next to me. Her tone sounded genuinely curious, but her questions needled all the same.

I gave her a sidelong look and challenged her back. “Why are you?”

She shrugged, a little defensive, a little sarcastic. “No one wanted to get to know the gray lipped horror.”

I smirked. “Exactly.”

Prevna snorted. “Your lips look ordinary to me.”

I could have kept it from her, but the uniform pressure from the tribe that quietly said you don’t belong among us made me want to throw my childhood in her face and see if she would join in with their disapproval. I pulled out the tuft of hair Rawley had tucked away under other strands—it now fell about eye level and was annoying when not pulled back—and twisted to face Prevna.

“Try the recently beaded horror.”

Prevna’s eyes widened and then narrowed as she worked through the implications of what I said. From the way she drew back slightly I knew that Picker bands were also thorough in their training about getting too close to life-ridden healers. However, her question that followed did surprise me.

“Why did you cut them off?”

Most would have simply assumed I had made the wise personal choice to no longer be imbued with so much life or that I had failed in my training. But I wasn’t about to spill the whole sequence of events that pushed me into cutting off my healer’s beads just because she thought to ask.

I faced forward again, leaving the cut hair to blow freely in the breeze that brushed by. “I was forced to.”

“You didn’t want to?”

I didn’t dignify that with a response; what I had said already answered her question, and if she was smart, she knew that. Nor was I in the mood to explain the thrill of successfully treating a wound or illness, the feeling of discovery as I learned about a new plant and its uses. That would just welcome the aching longing for what I could no longer have, the dangerous itch to test how all seeing the goddess really was—and she wouldn’t understand anyway. For her and the rest, even the majority of healers, the healing craft was simply an unwelcome but necessary burden. Who would find joy and feel enriched by such a thing?

When it became clear to her that I wasn’t going to answer, she spoke up, “Look, I wanted to say that I didn’t poison you by choice and that last time, if I could have taken it back sooner, I would have.”

I snorted. “Have you even been poisoned by Black Root?”

“I ate it by accident as a child. That’s how I found out about most of its properties.”

“Good.”

She gave me a sour look, but I ignored it. I had no reason to care about her feelings or let her weasel her way out of her guilt. There was always the chance that if she still felt guilty about her actions she wouldn’t poison me if she got another opportunity.

I started to walk away toward the edge of camp, a plan to not completely give into the tribe’s pressure forming in my head. If I stayed on the edge of camp the chance of being the target of the tribe’s disapproval would lessen, and I wouldn’t be giving in completely to the temptation to run away. Some part of me wished they were a crowd of rumormongers trying to get a good look at my trial mark and pull the tale of our time in Flickermark from my lips—I could glare those people down. I didn’t have a habit of accepting their gestures, large and small, of prejudice. Didn’t feel any need to prove myself to them.

Before I got very far from the tent, Grandmother stepped out in her regular robes, Old Lily just behind her. Grandmother called after me, “Gimley? The festival not to your liking?”

However much I wanted to, Grandmother wasn’t a person I could ignore, especially in full view of the tribe. I stopped and turned around. “I wasn’t leaving.”

Grandmother grinned a victor’s smile. “Of course not. You and Prevna are going to be my extra eyes—if someone with a tail gets within three feet of me, you can be sure you’ll be the ones struggling to recite stories.”

“You don’t even need us!” The threat of reciting stories wasn’t that big of one to me—I doubted there were many tales she knew that I hadn’t heard through my training—but trailing behind her in the middle of camp was the exact opposite of where I wanted to be. And besides, I didn’t remember her ever using wards to help her keep an eye out before—not that I had paid that close of attention.

Grandmother’s eyebrows rose. “I’m glad to hear your confidence in my skill, but the fact remains that you and Prevna will be joining me. If you didn’t want the job you should have made yourself scarce like the other wards.”

I huffed out a breath, but reluctantly gave in. Arguing with her was like beating my head against a boulder. Prevna also agreed to the job though I could tell that, like me, she would have preferred to be anywhere else but in my company, headed into the middle of the festivities. Old Lily left us to do her own rounds and enjoy herself now that we were there to keep Grandmother from getting pranked in her stead.

It was exhausting. Tension hummed through me every time Grandmother turned away from someone or a person stepped too close. The punishment might not be too bad for failing and honestly, a part of me wanted to see Grandmother get tailed, but the thought of being seen even more as a failure—as the person who failed to protect her and ruined her winning streak—weighed on me. I didn’t want to be useless.

The hours passed quickly as Grandmother went from group to group, checking in and accepting prayers, offering blunt advice or dry sarcasm as the situation called for it. A few people requested stories and she obliged, drawing in a small crowd until the tale was finished. We stopped at several cooking fires for bitter bark cakes and each cook had something special saved just in case she came by. A bowl of perfect snow berries, a steamed lattice root with ground sweet leaf, a cup of reindeer milk. She shared some of each with us, and they were best things I had tasted in a long time. I tried not to show my grudging gratitude too much though, in case she got the wrong idea.

In the end, Prevna and I stopped 2-3 people each, and I suspected that was only because Grandmother only let them get close enough for us to do so. I noticed multiple other times when she would get a knowing look in her eye and warn the person off with a small twitch of her eyebrows. However, I was proud that I had stopped three to Prevna’s two.

Old Lily rejoined her sister sometime around midnight and we were released from our impromptu duty. Prevna left—I didn’t bother to ask her where she was going or why, though I did notice her head towards the cook who had made the lattice root dish. I decided I was ready to join the others now.

It didn’t take me long to find the huntresses. Even though the random people singing, people stomping and clapping to keep the beat while others danced, I could hear the cheers and excitement coming from the river. True to being a water hole tribe, the huntresses had started a swimming competition. Whoever completed two laps of going to the other side of the river and back first won, the winner taking on each new challenger until they lost.

I stood back, unnoticed by the group as Nole prepared to take on a Pack huntress. While her wound had healed, it wouldn’t surprise me if the scar still pained her, especially swimming multiple rounds in a river nearing the middle of the cold season. From what I could tell she had won several challenges already.

Fenris stepped up between the competitors and clapped. They dove into the water and Nole came out ahead of the Pack huntress. She tailed Nole’s feet the rest of the race, not even coming close to passing her. I grinned as Nole lifted herself out of the river and the lone huntresses cheered. Rawley gave her a congratulatory slap on her bare shoulder. Then as Nole said something, my mentor seemed too pause before she cast her gaze the area. I felt the moment her eyes fell on me before she turned back to Nole, murmured something, and left the huntresses.

Rawley smiled when she reached me. “Come to join us?”

I avoided her question with one of my own. “Did you win?”

Her hair was frozen and her festival paint smeared. Rawley chuckled at the question. “A couple rounds, but then Nole beat me out.” She gestured to the group. “Come join us. Nole wouldn’t mind more support.”

I let her lead me over to them, though the other huntresses bubbled around us, not wanting to come to near. Fenris made her displeasure at my presence quite clear, but she also couldn’t kick me out like she had tried to back at the Skinning Cave—my trial mark prevented that. For all the rumors about whether Fellen and I had earned our marks, she was still superstitious enough not to want to risk displeasing the goddess by directly confronting someone with both Her bless and trial marks. So I watched the huntresses race and answered Rawley’s soft questions as she quizzed me on what I noticed about each one.