The Headwaters of the Pasidon stretched before us in a vast, shallow inland sea. The prows of our boats parted water as smooth as poured glass, and the slosh and drip of our oars was the only sound—until, every so often, the surface of the lake erupted into a series of frothing springs. The pristine reflection of blue sky and drifting clouds shattered and the boats rocked, but my companions plied their oars without falter.
We’d left Hessa and Imnir on the western shore, along with a handful of priests and priestesses who dwelled around the White Lake. Goodbyes had not been easy, but by unspoken agreement they’d been brief. We’d exchanged crushing embraces, then pushed off from shore. My parents were, to their core, forged by loss—they didn’t turn to empty words and impossible pledges of safe returns.
Instead, they’d sent Nui. Or rather, Nui had charged out through the shallow water after us, leapt into my boat and refused to leave again. So now the dripping mass of hound sat behind me, resting her head on my shoulder. She had become our tenth companion.
Late afternoon, we dropped our packs on the eastern shore and began to pull the boats into a thick stand of cedars. I set my pack on a rock and made to grab the prow of one of the vessels, only to find Seera’s hand already there.
“Let us,” she nudged me aside and hefted the dripping craft. “And don’t wander off alone. This isn’t Mount Thyr.”
“Of course it’s not—” I cut off my retort as Esan hefted the other end of the craft.
He glanced between my cousin and me. “You two are going to make this miserable, aren’t you?”
Seera swore at him, but kept hold of her end of the craft. They bore it up into the safety of the trees and left me to stew.
I busied myself ensuring each pouch was fastened to my pack and nothing had gotten damp in the crossing. I shouldn’t let Seera’s disdain under my skin. Yes, I was no warrior. I was a pacifist in a people whose legacy was bloodshed and martial prowess, who still carried a fallen Goddess of War in their name. In the eyes of everyone here, I was a liability, someone who had to be guarded and couldn’t be trusted to guard them in return.
But I was not here to fight. I was here to heal.
Nui trotted up and nosed under one of my wrists, sniffing at my hand for food. I bent and took her head between my hands, peering into the creature’s eyes. She looked back at me plaintively, and I cracked a smile.
“Well, it won’t be long before Seera cuts herself open or catches a fever,” I muttered, low enough that only the hound could hear. The urge to rage swelled, crested, and passed. “Then who will she come to?”
Once a campfire was blazing, I turned to gathering the night’s wood, trudging through the forest as Nui darted around me, overjoyed to be in a world of new sights, sounds, and smells.
The forest itself was calm. Demure. It showed no signs of being any different than the woods in which I lived, save that this one was a little less rocky. Perhaps the years since Nisien’s visit had softened this wilderness. Or, perhaps, we were simply not deep enough to see its true threat.
I stared upward at the canopy, where dark cedar bows met the brighter green of an oak and the myriad fluttering coins of a birch. A small bird darted from branch to branch, and the blue of the sky beyond had only just begun to seep into the deeper hues of a delayed northern dusk.
A branch cracked. All my calm dissolved and I spun, snatching my knife and horn from my belt. I could blow it as I ran, praying that Berin heard me. The knife—it wouldn’t do much good against anything bigger than a rabbit, but if I went for the beast’s eyes—
“Yske. Yske! It’s me,” Berin laughed. Seeing my petrified expression only broadened his grin. “Gods below, you’re skittish. We’re barely out of sight of the shore.”
My cheeks burned. Nui trotted up to nose at the dead grouse in my brother’s hand, and, holding it out of her reach, he said, “Come back to camp with me if you’re so nervous. Someone else can gather wood.”
“Nisien said he’d bound a demon near here,” I reminded him, eager to legitimize my reaction.
“So? We brought a priest.” He nodded at the dangling grouse, its head limp on a broken neck. “Come on, you can pluck this for me. I’m terrible at it.”
I frowned at him. “No, you’re just lazy. I’ll finish my own task, thank you.”
He shrugged and vanished into the trees with the grouse still held high, Nui trotting behind him.
I found a dead pine and took my frustration out on its branches. Finally, hair dusted with crumbled bark and arms laden with more wood than I could comfortably carry, I went back to camp. I met no unbound demons on the way, nor saw the Binding Tree where Nisien and Estavius had imprisoned theirs. No strange beasts stalked me—to my knowledge—and no poisonous vines crept out to snare my ankles. I was almost disappointed by the time I deposited the wood near the fire and stretched my sore arms.
“What’s it like out there?” Ittrid glanced up as she plunged Berin’s grouse in and out of a pot of boiling water. My brother himself was, predictably, nowhere to be seen. “You’re covered in… something.”
“Just like home.” I offered her a small smile, brushed off my hair and held out my hands for the grouse. “Here, I’ll help pluck. Then if you’ve an extra pot, I’ll make us some tea.”
* * *
That night I lay my oilskin and blankets next to Berin under the shelter of the cedars, between knots of gnarled roots. The earth here was soft and the canopy thick, blotting out the stars. But through the shadowed pillars of the tree trunks, the light of a sickle moon bathed the Headwaters in the barest, murky illumination. There was no movement on the water now, no whisper of a breeze or distant bubbling of springs. The shallow lake slept. The forest slept. But I lay awake for long while, listening to my brother breathe.
Eventually I dreamed of a woman, standing between me and the silent water. I could see only the shape of her—aging and lean, clad in a long tunic with her legs bare, her hair falling in waves past her shoulders. She did not look at the lake or the trees, or any of our sleeping companions. She saw only me and Berin, side by side.
In the next breath, the woman crouched over me on all fours— knees at my waist, hands beside my head. Though I still could not see her face, light awoke behind her, soft glows of white and green hidden among the branches of the cedars. Foxfire. But these trees were alive, and that made no sense. Just part of the dream, I thought.
I could smell the stranger now—the scent of old, dry wood and a muddy freshwater shoreline, half dank, half sweet. She was close enough that I felt her breath, but I was unafraid. I was simply an observer of the moment, watching her without comprehension or feeling.
Leaning down, she inhaled the scent of my skin. I felt the brush of her tongue across my lips in a slow, calculated gesture—chin to nose, rough and damp and burning like nettle.
I awoke with a gasp, raking the stink of musk and damp fur into my nose. Instinct made me freeze, my mind blank and breath lodged in my throat.
Darkness loomed over me, but it was too thick for the shadows beneath the trees. Slowly, a shape came into focus—a monstrous, furry head. I felt the brush of fur across my temples and the nudge of an animal’s nose against my chest, sniffing and licking me like Nui might a pup.
This was not Nui’s scent. No, this smell was deeper, sharper. I heard a snuffling grunt—a sound I’d heard at the base of my door enough times to know what it was.
A bear. I was lying, helpless, beneath a bear. It nudged me again, this time nearly lifting my arm with its casual searching. A huge paw landed beside my ear, and I felt the vibration in my bones.
“Berin,” I started to whisper, but bit my lips closed as the bear paused in its snuffling. My mind raced. Where was Nui? Who was on watch? And why had none of them sounded a warning?
Abruptly, the bear turned away. Its footfalls were deafening, and I thought my teeth might shudder out of my jaw. But after a few hammering heartbeats, the steps began to fade. There were no growls, no screams. Just the sound of the beast wandering off into the forest.
Finally, Nui let out a startled bark and launched out of the shadows. As if a spell had been broken, my companions jerked into wakefulness. Berin rolled over in an instant, seizing his sword and blinking in half-conscious confusion.
“What is it?” he demanded. “Ittrid, the fire! Who’s on watch? Yske, calm that dog!”
Our companions clamored, voices clashing and accusations flying. In the midst of it I sat up, testing each muscle and limb, stunned to find myself unharmed. The memory of the dream, the tongue, and the bear still clung to my skin with the prickling intensity of a summer storm, but I managed to shout, “Nui, here!”
The dog came, buffeting me as I fumbled onto my knees and wrapped an arm around her chest. She quivered, letting out several more barks before she whined and eased back into me. As big as she was, when she perched on my knees her head was well above my own.
“Hush,” I chided, stroking her chest and scratching beneath her pricked, vigilant ears. “It’s gone, you lazy hound. You could have warned us earlier.”
“Warned us of what?” The question came from Seera, stalking out of the shadows with the wordless form of Askir. She glared from me to Sedi and Bara, who looked trapped between ashamed and horrified.
Light washed over us as Ittrid turned the lifeless coals of our fire and fed it a wispy nest of birch bark, then began to add twigs. She looked drawn, and an axe lay close at her side.
“There was a bear,” I said. “It licked my face and wandered off.”
Berin stared at me, aghast. “It… What? Why didn’t you wake me?”
“There wasn’t time,” I said. My voice didn’t shake, but I hoped no one would notice how tightly I held Nui. “It was right above me, Berin. If I’d startled it, I’d be dead.”
“How big was it?” Askir asked, more curious than concerned. I was almost offended.
I thought of how the beast’s head had filled my vision, and its questing nose had pressed into my flesh. “Very, very big.”
Berin sheathed his sword with a frustrated thrust. “Askir, Seera, make sure it’s gone.”
The pair faded without a word, and my brother turned to glare at Sedi and Bara. “You fell asleep,” he accused.
Bara’s stricken expression was answer enough. Sedi turned and walked away, hiding her face in the darkness, and compassion tugged at me.
“It’s our first night,” I soothed. “We lowered our guard, but now we know better. No one was hurt and all is well.”
Berin ignored me. “Sedi, don’t walk away from me. You realize what could have happened? This is our first night. Our first night, and you can’t even manage to stay awake for a few hours? My sister could have been killed!”
“Berin—” I tried again, stepping between him and our faulty watchmen.
My brother pushed me aside and advanced on Sedi and her husband. “I should send you back across the lake.”
“I wasn’t asleep,” Sedi broke in, turning around. “Bara was, and I didn’t have the heart to wake him. But I was awake, Berin. The whole time. I saw nothing. I heard nothing. I don’t know how it happened.”
Berin scoffed, his temper rising. “You think lying to me will make this better?”
Suspicion, unformed and vague, drifted through my mind. Leaving Berin and the others to fight, I moved to pluck a birch branch from the stack of firewood, lit it in the flames as Ittrid watched curiously, and went carefully back over to my bedroll. As oily birch bark curled and warm light flooded over earth, I made out the shape of the bear’s tracks—the puncture marks of huge claws and the curve of footpads. Nui trotted up, distorting the markings, but not before I’d seen what I needed to. A little disappointment trickled through me.
Berin and the others continued to debate.
“What is it?” Ittrid asked me, voice low.
I glanced over at her. “Is it… is it possible the bear was Aegr? We are looking for his people, after all, and if Sedi was awake… Aegr is a creature of the High Halls. It might explain why she and Nui didn’t sense anything.”
Ittrid shrugged, eyes wide and cautious at once. “I don’t know. Have you seen him before?”
“No.” I stared at the paw print. It was huge, but perhaps not huge enough. “But my mother did, when she was a girl. He saved her from an unbound demon.”
“He does that,” Ittrid agreed with a distracted nod. “Perhaps he saved us from something?”
My thoughts drifted to the dream, of the woman and the burn of nettle. It had been a dream, of course, but…
I let the thought go as Ittrid’s gaze drifted to where Bara and Sedi stood shoulder to shoulder, watching with dread as Berin conferred with Ovir and Esan. There were tears in Sedi’s eyes, and I caught the threads of Berin’s conversation. They were still discussing sending Bara and Sedi home.
Sedi met my gaze and I saw a flicker of pleading. My stomach dropped. If she thought I might be able to persuade Berin because he was my twin, she’d already been proven wrong. I was the one who’d been in danger, and Berin would not back down. But what else could I do?
Words came to my tongue without bidding. They burned there for a moment, flush with pending shame. But I still spoke up. “It was the tea.”
They all turned to look at me, and Berin furrowed his brows. “What?”
“I put sweet tear in the tea to help us sleep,” I lied. “I didn’t think about how it would affect those on watch. Or I added too much, I don’t know.”
Bara cut me a startled look. “But I didn’t dri—”
Sedi elbowed him discreetly, her gaze fastened on me.
“Sweet tear soothes the nerves and encourages deep sleep,” I explained, speaking over him. “Like I said, I didn’t think about it, and I must have added too much.”
Berin’s expression rapidly shifted through anger and disbelief to uncertainty, and finally settled in a cold mask I’d no doubt he’d learned from our mother. “That was stupid of you.”
“I didn’t think,” I repeated a third time. The disapproval and incredulity of my companions made my stomach knot in discomfort. But there was relief in Sedi and Bara’s eyes, and it gave me the strength to go on. I might not be able to persuade Berin to have mercy on them, but he would be merciful to me. “I’ve never done this before. I drink it nearly every night at home and—”
“Enough,” Berin cut me off. He grabbed the burning birch stick from my hand and tossed it back into the fire with a whoosh of sparks. “Go back to sleep, all of you. Askir and Seera can take watch when they return; I trust them to have the discipline to stay awake. There are only a few hours ’til dawn anyway.”
I felt ill as I settled back onto my bedroll, avoiding the gazes of the others and the mutters passing through them. Even Sedi joined in, her relief fading into faux indignance. But just before I lay down, Bara crouched beside me.
“I didn’t drink your tea,” he murmured, lending me the impression of a smile. Gratitude etched around his tired eyes. “And I doubt you gave any to the hound. We owe you a debt, Yske.”
I gave a wan, secret smile in return, and he slipped away.