When Fig was young, not yet Fig, a man from town stumbled upon her bathing. He lingered the way stumbling men linger. He had no reason to be so deep in the wood, no sense to ignore the warnings of those whose companions never returned. There are men who feel entitled to their curiosities. There are mothers of bathing girls who feel entitled to their eyes.

It happened faster than the girl could understand. He did not have time to scream, to disturb her quiet scrubbing with his impurities. His neck was broken in moments — quick as a wing flap, a jaw snapping shut. One moment he was alive, hungering the way alive things hunger, and the next he was slack, like a doll. After laying him down, her mother took his eyes. The girl remembered the way she maneuvered just the very point of her knife, just the very tips of her fingers. When it was done, her mother washed the blood downstream. She used one hand to help her daughter out of the river, the other to roll the white spheres like marbles.

She was calm. The killing had taken no effort. The girl, not knowing what to feel, mirrored her mother’s easy breath. Men in town were people. Men in the woods were animals. There, her mother was the arbiter of what could live and what could die. She took everything she wanted.

Fig hadn’t thought of that day in a long while. The vision of her mother, poised over the man’s head with her knife. The same feeling had overcome her in the dark with Cervus. The desire to put an end to some violation. The desire to take. She felt close to her mother, aligned with the memory of her even as a chasm of distance and information gaped between them.

She had left the demon’s lair miles ago. She walked aimlessly in an effort to calm her racing heart. She did not know where she was going, to what end. There was a jitter deep within her that only movement could expunge. With each step she tried to commit to memory the details of the meeting, but the demons’ words twisted and looped like thorned vines. Occultist. Fastened. Firstkin.

Sister. The first of her mother’s blood. A witch erupted from nature, not born.

Fig clutched at the only semblance of magic she had and listened. There was a light chorus of hums from the trees, moss, flowers. There was no more foul stench, no more screaming. Normal, peaceful magic. Everything in its place. Only she stuck out in the forest — a magicless shell, the ghost of a witch who could have existed. She kicked at a tree in frustration. The pain in her foot distracted her from her thoughts.

Fig could not bear to be angry with her mother. Some desperation had brought her here and then taken her away. She had surrendered the absolute core of herself — of them both. Her silence was a protection. It had to be.

Now, with that protection ruptured, she would have an explanation for why she needed the demon’s aid, why Vaani was their enemy, why a first child swam in the murky waters of her past. Fig’s chest ached with longing. Longing for her magic, deep and insatiable, and, higher, longing for her mother’s arms, her mother’s whispers, her mother’s way of explaining the world through story and song.

The sky flushed peony pink before she stopped walking. She had been walking all night. Motion interrupted, her legs trembled. She looked around for a sturdy tree with thick enough branches to take her weight, high enough to keep her from anything prowling. She found one and pulled herself into its boughs. She would sleep for as long as sleep would take her.

She dreamed she was seated at the shore of a large lake. Cattails and wild grass guarded its edges, completely still. There was no wind, no raft of ducks, no movement at all. The sun rose in fiery shades of pink and reflected exactly on the water, still as glass. Fig shimmied to the edge. There, nestled between bunches of reeds, her own face.

She wasn’t as sharp as her mother. A rounder nose, rounder cheeks. Her face was unmarked by ink, only scattered moles and freckles like flour dusted over bread. Her eyes were tired. The curved spaces beneath them were dark like a bruise. She brought her fingertips to her eyebrows, dark and pointed. That, they had in common. She watched her reflection’s hand move to match. She imagined what her sister might look like. No father to warp her inheritance. She reached for the reflection and shifted it by skimming her fingers on the surface of the water. A longer face maybe. Sharper cheekbones. Eyes tilted up. Maybe she had short hair, maybe long, maybe no hair at all. The face she created blinked up at her. She could still see her own in it. An opening in her small universe, a crack.

She pulled her hand back. The water rippled. It began with a dot at the tip of her nose then bloomed out in concentric circles. As they grew, they puckered the glassy surface of the lake as if pulling at fabric.

A voice bubbled from beneath the water. “Iraya, is that you?”

Fig retreated, surprised. The rippling smoothed from the center and ironed the water flat. She could see her reflection again. It smiled.

“Ah, Fig.” Her reflection grinned. “You’ve spoken with the demon, haven’t you?” With each moment the image shifted. Her hair lightened and pulled into curls, her face darkened and lips puffed. Fig recognized the voice, though it was smoother now. Less like a stone ringing, more like bow across strings.

The jade witch.

“Who are you?” Fig asked.

“A friend,” her reflection answered without hesitation.

“I don’t have any friends,” Fig retorted. Her own face in the water fell. Fig felt a pinch of guilt she did not understand. She returned to her anger. “You knew the thing you sent me after would take me to Cervus?”

“I had a hunch,” her reflection replied, her gaze far away. “These things aren’t exact.”

“Why do you call me Fig?”

“That’s your name, isn’t it?”

She hesitated. “Yes.”

“I couldn’t find you until it was,” her reflection replied with a certainty that Fig catalogued to puzzle over later.

“You called me Iraya,” Fig accused.

The reflection reached forward until it touched the surface of the water. It pushed upwards, first with one arm, then the other, until it found purchase on the sand to hoist its entire watery body from the lake. The edges of it wobbled and dripped. “With the sky shifting, you look quite alike.”

“You know her?”

“I think so.” Fig’s brow furrowed. The watery her’s mouth curled. “Let’s say yes.”

“Do you know where she is?”

“I think so.”

Fig gripped at her scalp and tugged. Her mother was never this way, so infuriatingly vague, so circular. When she said something, she meant it precisely. If she didn’t, she said nothing at all. The world was a dizzying place with her gone.

“I’m sorry, honey. Exacts aren’t really my thing.” Fig felt water drip from her shoulders down her back as her reflection patted the air above her. “I believe she’s further north. You’ll need warmer clothes.”

“How far north?”

Her reflection smiled but its eyes were sad. It was both her and not her: the shape of a woman molded from green water. “This is all I have for you.” She waved a hand over the surface of the lake. The reflection of the sunrise shimmered into a series of images that morphed into one another between ripples. A mountain range. Snow over stones. Low, crooked trees. A cloud of smoke against the night sky. A large white gate made of two trunks and a double crossbeam, white like the moon.

“What are those?” Fig asked.

“Memories.”

“Whose?”

“Iraya’s,” the woman whispered. “Pretty, aren’t they?”

Fig watched as the images repeated, then slipped away. A pond skipper danced across their center.

“What about my mother? Where is she?”

“I don’t know.” The woman frowned.

“Could you find out?”

The water woman’s hair was now so tightly coiled it bloomed around her head like a dandelion. She no longer resembled Fig much at all. The rest of her watery body trembled and shook like a wave about to crest.

“Our time is up, hon. We’ll talk again soon.”

Fig felt a panic rising. She had more questions. “We will?”

“Hm,” the woman pondered as her legs flowed down upon the sand. “You’re right, maybe not so soon for you.”

Fig grasped for something, anything. “Do you have a name?”

“Of course.” The woman smiled again, her eyes lidded as if she were dreaming herself. “You’ll know me as Clover. I can’t wait.”

The water fell slack, back into the lake.

Fig woke to a forest drenched in midday sun. Her tongue curled around the spun sugar magic of the jade witch, the water woman — Clover. She had a light, airy way of speaking, as if each word were an echo of something firmer, farther away. A friend. Surely to be such a thing entailed more than declaring oneself so.

The details of the dream slipped from her with each blink back to consciousness. The reality of each chirping bird or rustling leaf swept away at the lake, the reeds, her reflection rising from the water to sit beside her.

Yet, Iraya’s memories stayed. They anchored beside her own, solid. Fig surveyed them easily as if remembering them as places she’d been dozens of times before. With each recollection she tasted sugar at the roof of her mouth. Some kind of magic, then. Some kind of witch.

Fig clung to the sections of their conversation that most troubled her. Clover knew her sister, knew of the demon, knew her “name.” More invasion of a lifelong privacy, beaten and overcome like a dam shattered.

And so these new strangenesses haunted both her waking hours and her sleep. She had found a path to her mother, but it was winding and uncertain. Follow the memories north, find her first child, hope this strange sister had the answers to what crimes were committed, what punishment lay ahead, where her mother and a traveling enchantress may have disappeared to. Get this stranger working, whatever that may mean, and reconvene with the demon’s foul, screeching magic to reunite with her own. Abandon either, both, and have no path forward beyond a vast desert and deadly, pulsing sun.

Fig groaned in frustration. She felt like a rag squeezed dry and pinned to the line. She stretched over her branch and fantasized about absorbing sunlight like a plant, of rejuvenation as something innate and immediate. It did not work. She gulped water from her bag.

North, then. She believed the demon to be truthful, albeit slippery and evasive. She believed Clover to be earnest, albeit confusing and vague. For the first time in her life Fig was alone in the world, unmoored and adrift. She had nothing to orient by except her beliefs and the sun. She climbed down from her tree and stretched her legs. She began to walk.

As she’d guessed, the forest surrounding the demon's lair was similar to her own. Fig did not need magic to understand its rhythms, to skirt danger like choosing which stones at the river could take her weight. Here, a poisonous fern that would burn her skin. There, a patch of brown sand that swallowed creatures who stepped upon it. She heard her mother’s voice explain each hazard as she moved. The cadence of it came easily and calmed her. To think of her mother as a witch was as bizarre as thinking of her as a spirit, a figment of her imagination. All she knew, all she had been taught, was grounded in walks like this, in the reality of their life. A plant’s effect, a cicada’s song, a blade’s path through muscle — these things were true because they were always true. Her mother did not warp reality like Vaani, travel through dreams like Clover, twist her words like the demons. She was real and solid and present. Fig enveloped herself in that feeling as she walked. To move without sensing for magic was to feel close to her former life.

Thus, after a few hours of traveling, it was with her normal ears she heard a boy’s yelping. She froze and focused on the noise. It came from her left, below a ridge she’d been following in parallel. The voice rose in volume and panic, though she couldn’t make out its words. She crested the ridge and looked down. Fifty paces beyond were two figures, one short and the other far shorter — no, half submerged in the ground. The shouting one was tugging at the torso of the other who was frozen and stiff with shock. She grimaced. Clumsy, uncareful. Nothing good could come of it.

She knew travelers were often lost to the wilds, but she had never seen it up close. All those who did not return to town, all their companions whom they sent for but never arrived — this could be how it happened. Foolish, preventable deaths. Her mother would have left these two to die. Fig felt that truth as easily as she felt where to place her feet as she walked. Unprepared travelers were intrusions upon the natural order of things.

She knew this, and yet she couldn’t make herself turn away. The man who had watched her bathe — he had transgressed. He had succumbed to something animalistic and impure. Even so, that was not the reason he fell. He fell because her mother wanted him to die.

Fig realized as she watched the boy pull and pull at his companion, she did not want them to die. She descended the ridge.

She approached the pair from behind. She was only a few steps away when she heard a loud, ripping crack. Something had stepped on a fallen branch. Something heavy. The echoing sound overpowered even the pulling boy’s panting and yelling. He stopped. Fig spotted the source before he did. A bear thrice her height lumbered out of a hollow nestled into the rocks of the ridge. She cursed herself for allowing the scene to distract her. Of course she was not the only creature in the wood disturbed by the boy’s yelling. The bear was a deep brown flecked with green, its skin mottled with patches of moss. The heat of its breath steamed like smoke. Despite its size, it picked up and dropped its mighty paws with an unusual uncertainty. Each movement, slow and ungainly, shook the ground. Fig bent her knees for stability. Something was wrong. She searched the animal’s face to find it empty. Where there should be eyes, a snout, there was only an uninterrupted plane of fur that curved into a gaping maw lined with teeth. It snapped at the air as if trying to rip a scent from it.

Fig felt for magic. She found the barest traces of it — the aftermath of a familiar stench. She pictured Lepocapra as she had first met him, tar-black body littered with a dozen blinking eyes that were not his own. She remembered his squeaky, horrid voice. So much to trade for. So much to take.

She was behind the standing boy in a few breaths. She pressed her hand against his mouth before he could see her and caught his squawk of surprise. She maneuvered to his eyeline as quietly as she was able and held a finger to her lips. She could see the white all around the brown of his irises. He nodded his head. She removed her hand. The clamoring ceased, the bear also stopped. Noseless, it rotated its head uselessly.

The boy gripped the arm of his companion, who had since sunk up to their armpits into the sand and fallen unconscious. Short, dark hair fell over their face as Fig pushed their head back. She motioned for the boy to move behind them and to reposition his grip to under their arms. He complied, but Fig could hear the panic bubbling up under his panting. She caught his gaze and took a slow breath in, then out through her mouth. He followed. She kept the bear in her peripheral as she pulled her waterskin from her bag. Without noise to follow, the animal hulked doubtfully. She willed it to stay that way.

She poured water as close to the sand as possible to minimize the sound of its stream. As it hit the surface, the brown grains parted to escape its moisture. She kept the stream close to the trapped companion’s body as it slowly came into view — first the torso, then the hips, legs, boots. She lifted her chin to the boy to signal when he should pull. To his credit, he heaved in silence despite his companion’s height. When they were clear from the sand, Fig stopped pouring. The pit swallowed the water and filled back in an instant. The surface was once again dry, brown, foolishly mistaken for dirt.

Their work done, Fig and the boy crouched to stare at the bear. It lifted onto its hindquarters, threw its head back and let out a warbling moan. The force of it shook the trees. Fig pitied the creature. What had the demon offered it, she wondered, to curse it so? Its ears twitched as it fell back onto the ground with a thud. It turned back the way it had come.

Fig and the boy waited in silence until it was long gone. His companion lay still, breathing shallowly. Fig plucked a deep purple stem from the many that grew at the edge of the sand. She crushed the seedpod at its tip to release a pungent, herbal odor and wafted it under the unconscious companion’s nose. After a moment, they shot up to a seat, gasping for air. The boy watched Fig with the same wide eyes he had affixed to the bear.

Upon seeing her, his companion scrambled to their feet and pulled a knife from their belt. The boy stood and held up his hands to protest. Fig was behind him with her knife to his throat before he could speak. She’d practiced this maneuver hundreds of times with her mother, and yet she fumbled slightly in finding his neck. He was shorter than her and far lower than she’d ever drilled. Her captive hiccuped in surprise and went rigid.

“Who are you?” the companion panted. A line of wet trailed their clothes as if they’d been overcome by some large snail. They were lankier than the boy, a head taller than Fig. Their feet were planted solidly enough, but their grip on their knife was too tight. Some training, but hesitation in practice. Fig could kill the boy before they got anywhere near her.

“How did you know it would do that?” the boy asked from in front of her. “The plant, I mean.” Surprised, Fig pulled her knife slightly forward so he wouldn’t hurt himself speaking.

“Focus, Wren,” his companion snapped. Wren. Fitting. The boy had wheat-yellow hair and a chirpy voice like a bird. The taller one watched her with gray eyes so pale they were almost clear. “We don’t want any trouble.”

“That’s what you call pulling a knife on me?” Fig asked. “No trouble?”

“I notice you also have a knife,” they replied dryly, “up against my friend.”

“Correct,” Fig scoffed. “So drop yours.”

A moment passed before they sheathed their weapon and raised empty palms in surrender. Their hands shook though they tried to hide it.

Fig opened herself to magic but found none. Just witless travelers, their days numbered.

“Why are you out here?” she asked. They were not experienced enough to have traveled far from some settlement. The air was muggy and wet with summer heat. For her to reach the place from Iraya’s memories, snow capped and thin-aired, she’d need villagers’ luxuries.

“We’re looking for rare plants,” Wren answered.

“Like what?”

He perked up. “Spinor’s wort.”

“You won’t find any of that here.”

“Shows what you know,” he replied slyly. “We’ve already found two.”

“Show me,” Fig commanded.

He began to lean forward but remembered his situation. “Altair, can you grab them from my bag?”

The companion, Altair, eyed Fig warily. They did not move.

Wren waved them off. “She saved your life. Cut it with the caution.”

“You could afford to be more cautious,” Altair spat. “She has a knife to your throat!”

Fig said nothing, but observed them with confusion — were they really fighting? After a frenzy of layered, unintelligible conversation, Altair pulled two green stalks from a bag at their feet. Each was dug up carefully from root to the bright blue puff at their top.

“That’s Spinor’s folly,” Fig noted. “Spinor’s wort only grows surrounded by still saltwater.”

“What?” Wren tried to lean forward but she squeezed his chest.

“As you can see,” Altair spoke slowly, “we have nothing of value.” Her captive began to object but they silenced him with a look. “Shall we agree to part ways?”

“Are you traveling alone?”

“Yes.”

“No.”

They replied in unison.

Altair cursed. “Yes, we are alone.”

Wren spoke louder, “No, we’re with a large group.”

“Would it kill you to follow my lead?” Altair barked. “Maybe I’ll let the feral forest lady bleed you out.”

“She’s not feral, she got you out of the pit.”

“Fine.” Altair threw up their hands. “We’re traveling with a caravan. South.”

“We’re going north, Altair.” Wren corrected brightly.

They snapped straight. “Do you want to die? Why don’t you tell the armed stranger the saga of your entire miserable life?”

They descended into further bickering that Fig ignored. If the rest of their traveling party were as competent as this pair, they were no threat to her. She needed clothes, new foot coverings, and perhaps, if she were truly desperate, some sort of trained creature to ride. Domesticated animals made her uneasy, but each sunset passed was time lost.

She dropped her grip on Wren. He immediately ducked for the purple stems at the edge of the sand. She watched with confusion as he dug at their roots with his hands. Altair only sighed.

She spoke to them as she sheathed her knife. “I want to join you.”

“What?”

Fig tried to summon Vaani’s light way of speaking. “I happen to be traveling north myself. I want to join the — whatever you called it. Caravan.”

“She poured water to separate the substrate,” Wren whispered to himself. He had withdrawn a notebook from a leather satchel and had begun to draw charcoal diagrams of the purple stems. “How do you get nutrients?” he asked them.

Altair ignored him and looked pointedly at Fig’s belt. “You’re a little blade-happy for my taste in companionship.”

“I could say the same to you,” Fig replied.

After a few tense moments, Altair exhaled. “It’s not our call. You can talk to our leader if you so wish. No more knife.”

Fig mimicked the way they had raised their palms earlier. “No more knife.”

“Do you have other, secret knives?” They eyed her warily.

“Yes.”

“Do you plan on doing anything with them?”

“No.”

They huffed. “I suppose we’ll take your word for it.”

“Try ‘thank you,’” Wren drawled. “‘We’d be bear food without you.’ Things like that.”

Altair kicked at him before looking around. “There was a bear?”

“What was left of one,” Fig frowned.

Altair paled.

Though their dark hair was streaked with gray, Fig guessed they weren’t much older than her. Their brows drooped moodily and they kept their arms folded to hide their shaking. Though Wren was shorter, he didn’t seem much younger, just slight of build. Both of their clothes were plain, clean, and smelled faintly of rosemary. Neither had been traveling for long.

Fig couldn’t remember the last time she had talked to someone around her age. The townsfolk had pushed their young indoors when they saw her and older apprentices were rarely allowed to handle trade. Most adults had cursed at her or avoided her outright. The bravest spoke to her in as few words as possible to lighten her of wares from the wood. If she had not brought trade goods to market, she doubted anyone would have spoken to her at all.

She felt a pang of yearning for her time with Vaani. She shoved it away.

“We should move,” Altair said. They gave the sandpit a wide berth. Wren had begun to work at the dirt at its edge with a pronged wooden tool. They looked at him with disgust. “Get away from there.”

“The roots go much further than you’d think,” she added. “They reach the bottom. The stalks only grow after the pit has swallowed something.”

Altair looked as if they might faint, but Wren stood to beam at her as he scribbled in his notebook. “How long after? In all seasons?”

“Walk and talk,” Altair ordered. They shoved Wren until his legs moved then waved her ahead. “If you’re coming with us, walk in front. That way.”

She obliged. They both had loud footsteps. Fending off an attack from behind would be no trouble. To her surprise, Wren immediately stepped forward to join her. Altair groaned.

“So, what’s your name?” the boy asked.

“You can call me Fig,” she replied. It felt less like a lie each time she said it.

“Is that your real name?”

“Real enough.”

He laughed. “I’m Wren. Back there is Altair. Real names. Thank you for saving us.” He spoke easily and with warmth. It reminded her of Vaani, without the fog of her magic. She did not have much practice with such things. It didn’t seem to disturb Wren. “How do you know so much about plants?”

“I live in a wood much like this.”

“Really?” Wren’s eyes widened. Everything about him had a curious roundness. “How are you alive?”

She cloaked her mother in the usual privacy of omission. “If you know the land and walk quietly enough, nothing will bother you.”

“Huh.” Wren leaned to watch her feet. “It’s true, you barely make any noise.”

“All the better for sneaking up on people,” Altair muttered.

Fig and Wren pretended not to hear.

“Why are you headed north?”

Fig found his tone disarmingly sweet. She had yet to speak of her journey to anyone. It was an odd collision — from speaking with demons and a dream witch to bumbling travelers in the woods. She grasped for some plausible facet of the truth. “I’m meeting family.”

He nodded as if this answer were unsurprising.

“Why are you going north?” Fig queried

“Altair and I are looking for something.”

Altair gasped from behind them and threw a rock at Wren’s back. He dodged it easily. The boy was more agile than he looked.

“For what?” Fig asked.

“Se-cret.” He drew out the word playfully.

Altair’s anger radiated from behind them. It was better if they all had their secrets.

“Have you ever found a Spinor’s wort?” Wren chirped.

Fig remembered the taste of the wind by the sea, brackish and heavy. Her mother had taken her there only when she was old enough to be confident with her knife, when she sparred cleanly enough that it was safe to leave the cover of the trees. There’s something I want to show you, her mother had said, sweat collecting in the dips of her collarbones.

Fig laid at her feet, exhausted and aching. She had spent the morning learning to wriggle out of various holds, how to duck and dodge blows. The invented enemy she trained to evade was amorphous, smoke. An imaginary enemy in an imaginary game. Reality was the glint of sun against her mother’s teeth, the comfort in the curve of her cheeks. She had thrown Fig over her shoulders and let the girl slump against her back.

Fig slept for most of the journey, awoke to the deafening rush of waves crashing. It quieted as the world got darker, as her mother ducked into a deep cave carved into the cliff by the water. In its depths, beyond the reach of the tide, a pool of still liquid. At its center, a delicate puff of blue, glowing like flame. Fig’s mother had lowered her to the ground so she could crawl closer. It’s a flower, her mother had whispered, a very special one. Fig remembered its musk, earthy and fresh like a litter of kits. Each facet of it was a small petal multiplied to form the sphere. As she reached to touch it, the petal beneath her finger glowed brighter. The shock of lighter blue fluttered through the flower like clouds parting. When she giggled the sound ricocheted off the walls of the cave and expanded into a chorus of laughter. She remembered looking back at her mother and wanting to kiss every arch of her face in that moment, light and pleased. Happy birthday, beloved.

“Just once. In a cave by the ocean,” was all she replied.

Wren pulled a wrinkled journal from his pocket and scribbled. “What about Null ivy?”

They spent the rest of the walk swapping stories of flora. Where Fig knew more, Wren took detailed notes, sometimes sketching the plant’s shape based on her description.

Altair walked behind them in silence. Fig felt the heat of their gaze on her back.