Water: In her ears, in her eyes, streaming from her hair in rivulets. Jian knows she daren't breathe it in, yet she can't stop, heaving a breath despite herself, only to find air rushing into her lungs. Yet when she opens her eyes, it's as though she lies at the bottom of a frozen lake, the thunderous waterfall above battering pack ice from massive slabs into frothy masses of crystal. She can't see through all the water; the tremendous sound of destruction is twice as monstrous as the weight of the falls hitting the ice.

She knows she can't stay here, but it's all she can do to lie there and hold the breath in her lungs. Jian's fingers and toes seem to melt away from her hands, as if they intend to join the glacial mass. Arms, and then legs, follow. The weight of the falling water settles squarely on her chest as Jian forces it to rise and fall. Vision, at last, fades.

Rise, fall. Rise, fall. Keep breathing, she wills her body. You must not stop. Even if you can't feel the air entering your lungs, you must never stop.

A pinpoint of warmth. It seems to grow from nothing, in her chest, and then her lungs. Jian scrabbles for the spot, clinging to it with all her focus. The sound mercifully ends, but Jian still hears nothing, sees nothing; even the taste and scent of the lake are nothing. She knows instinctively that if the tiny dot of light vanishes, it will take her with it.

Keep going. Make it bigger.

She concentrates on that glimmer of heat, willing it to double and triple in size. Everywhere the warmth touches her chest, she breathes a little easier, and the weight of the water lessens. She wills it to grow until dappled channels of fire spread all the way down the limbs Jian thought had turned to ice. Stinging nettles pepper her entire body. She isn't sure anymore if she's hot, or cold.

Last to return is vision. Another point of light appears before Jian's blinded eyes, and then another, and another. When she blinks, the water falls away, and the bloated sphere of the moon swims into focus. The stars are falling from the sky, Jian thinks, until she feels them strike her arms and legs and sizzle into nothing.

Not stars, but dense, wet snow. It falls thick and fast upon her body and, still reverberating with heat, her skin prickles with the alighting of each flake.

She is alive. Somehow.

Jian hadn't thought it possible for the Elders to be more divided, but her second vision touched off even more speculation than the first.

"Perhaps this was the actual Path," Elder Veila suggested. "And the other simply a dream."

"This vision is no closer to what we've come to expect," one of the future Elders argued, "and the purpose of Pathfinding is to guide the young ones to a harmonious future. Taken at face value, what could Maere possibly want her to do?"

"An underwater occupation," someone else said. "Pearl diving. Harvesting from the river."

Elder Yatsura clutched the tome she had been paging through since Jian arrived. "Perhaps she has a hidden talent closer to Maere than we ever would have guessed without a second vision. The ability to breathe without air, is what she experienced. Healing."

"Surely you aren't suggesting a magical ability." Jian hadn't realized it was possible for Elder Veila to look even more disgusted than before. "Not in Elsinoor."

Elder Yatsura, undeterred, thumped her palm flat on the cover of the ancient, crumbling book. "The earliest North Islan people described magic as a matter of course. We can't discount it."

"The earliest ones came here to escape the power struggle!" Veila insisted. "Sister, we live because we left magic behind generations ago. Do not lead this child to believe that could be her Path. I preferred the version where she became a priestess!"

One of the future Elders nodded in agreement. "As did I. This vision could even be the work of some evil, couldn't it? It might not be a real Path at all. If there's truly magic involved, someone could be trying to do harm to Jian from afar. The Creator wouldn't invite her to investigate such a thing."

"What is forbidden is forbidden because the people of Elsinoor declared it so," Elder Tuina said. "If Maere wishes Jian to be the first to step out of line, you and I are the last who should lay any challenge at her feet, sister. We must support Her guidance."

"We don't know if either of these visions are true Pathfinding!" Veila argued. "Both are nonsensical. The child can't remember a thing from the first vision, and the second defies all convention. They're dreams, and nothing more."

"And yet, she's now sixteen," Yatsura reminded them. "No Path in Elsinoor's history has ever been revealed so late in life. One of these must be Jian's true future. Or, perhaps, another vision is to follow."

Mother pulled Jian a little closer, wrapping her up in a beaded shawl. Neither had spoken since the debate between Elders began. "I've never heard of a Path being divided into multiple visions," Mother said.

"It's unprecedented," one of the future Elders agreed. "Maere visits each child once only."

Elder Yatsura drew herself up. "Until now."

"Until now," Mother echoed faintly.

Elder Tuina looked to the one person in the room who had yet to speak. "Aselun, what do you make of this?"

Jian followed Tuina's gaze to a woman sitting quietly on a pouf. Aselun appeared more than old enough to be an Elder herself, but the grey-haired traveller could never be, as she wasn't Elsinooran-born. Jian didn't know if Aselun had followed a Path to their village, or if Aselun's travels selling her wares had led the potter to the northern lands by chance, but she had arrived long before, and never left again.

What mattered most, Jian knew, was whether the woman believed in Jian's visions. Aselun, too, had violet eyes, and it was no secret the Elders believed her to be favoured by Maere. No Human recorded in the northern lands had ever been born with any eye colour but green or brown; none possessed hair in any spectrum beyond brown or red. The sight of young Aselun's hair, a sparkling silver before it had gone grey, caused a panic in Elsinoor. Here was a being, the villagers thought, who had come straight from Homeland. Touched by the hand of the Goddess.

Even in a place where none considered themselves to be above any other citizen, not even the Elders, a certain reverence was reserved for Aselun.

If the older woman felt uncertain, Aselun's expression never betrayed a hint of doubt. "We must take both visions seriously, though I can't say for certain what they mean. As you say, there's never been anything like this, and in my travels and my home village, I've never heard of Her visiting twice, or showing different Paths on different nights. Of course, there is the possibility of the involvement of magic, if Jian's Path one day brought her to the southern lands."

Elder Veila choked out a half-strangled guffaw.

Aselun tilted her head, her earrings shimmering in the harsh sunlight that streamed through the open roof. "The image of the Creator you saw, in particular, interests me. Tell me more, Jian, if you're able. Can you remember anything else from the dream? You are certain you saw Her face?"

"Not really," Jian replied. She couldn't remember what she saw with any certainty at all. "Not the face or even Her body—I only remember those purple eyes, just like yours. And that there was a voice speaking to me in a language I didn't understand. And then there was the water."

"The water reappeared last night, in the new vision," added Elder Yatsura.

"There are others with eyes like that," Veila pointed out. "Perhaps the child is foreseeing the arrival of someone else, from the south. Someone with a connection to the Creator is coming here, as you did, four decades ago, Aselun."

"Perhaps not." Aselun peered curiously at Jian as if seeing her for the first time. Jian shifted uncomfortably under her gaze. "I think that's unlikely, don't you?"

"Then she could be meant to go south, herself. To meet someone with the old-world powers," Yatsura said.

"It's possible."

Aselun's words knocked the air from Jian's lungs. Go south? Leave Elsinoor? She'd never considered such a thing. Her palms began to sweat.

Mother objected immediately, to Jian's relief. "Alone, on no more than a guess!? I won't hear of it. Jian belongs here. We are northerners, Aselun. We aren't like you."

The rest of the women fell silent, exchanging looks amongst themselves, but Jian could see that some agreed with Yatsura's suggestion. The Elders-to-be stole glances at her, perhaps thinking back to their own Pathfinding visions, and whether they had spotted Jian amongst their flock. The thought made Jian angry, but not as angry as her disappointment with Maere. After all, she'd done everything right. Jian had trained all this time to be self-sufficient and strong, as Mother instructed. To hope for a partner and children, but prepared to live without. To use her gathering skills and her book-smarts for the benefit of Mother and their neighbours, and for the village to prosper.

What Jian wanted was a normal Path and a normal life, not a tremulous future as a kneeling priestess or a wandering traveller or a rabble-rouser, bringing about the end of times.

But no one in Elsinoor's history had ever dared defy Maere's wishes before.