Fig’s heart pounded like horses’ hooves upon the dirt. She had landed on one of her knees, hard. She tried to straighten that leg and winced with pain. All around and beneath her was dirt. She opened her arms and touched dirt walls with outstretched fingers. Above, a rough circle of sky. She was in a hole at least twice her height, perhaps taller. She cursed. A trap of this size was not built for an animal.

She took the weight off her injured leg and hopped closer to the wall. The dirt was dense and hard as stone at this depth. She felt around for protruding roots or rocks she could use to climb out. Instead, beneath her palms, green sprouts burst from the dirt. She jumped back. They were small at first, like heads of grass, but then twisted longer, wider into thick, thorny vines. She scrambled backward, but they grew faster than she could dodge to wind around her wrists, waist, ankles. As the vines constricted they sprouted pink flowers. The stench the blooms released was volatile, sharp. The more Fig pulled, the more the vines tightened. When the blooms reached the width of a palm, they wilted as quickly as they had unfurled — orange, tan, then brown.

Fig opened her mouth to scream but choked on magic instead. Sour, hostile — the magic of decomposition, of breaking apart. Strength sapped from her as if each thorn were the mouth of a leech.

“Occultist,” a voice hissed, “what game are you playing?”

“What?” Fig called, squinting into the sun. She saw nothing but burning brightness. That word occultist felt wrong, here, evoked in the light of the sun rather than in the darkness of the demon’s lair. Her skin itched.

“I know your kind. Where are the rest of you?”

“Let me go,” Fig protested. She thrashed her arms against the tightening tendrils.

“There is always a game.” Dirt rained upon her face as if kicked from the top of the trap. “There is always a pack. Never just one of you, is there? Never.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Where are the rest?” the voice shouted.

The thorns pressed deeper into her skin. Fig gasped with pain, “I’m traveling with two companions.”

“I know about the unattuned meddlers in town. I am handling them. I am asking after your pack.”

“What have you done with them?” No answer. She grew desperate. “I don’t have whatever you’re speaking of. A pack.”

“No pack?” The silhouette of a head appeared in the light. “A liar or an outcast. Now, which is worse?”

The witch, for that is what she must be, spoke in a lilting rhythm like a maniacal song. Fig grit her teeth. Cervus had named a so-called pack in relation to her mother, but the word meant nothing here. This was nonsense. As she struggled she felt the vines grow to match her movement. But she could muster enough strength, she might buck her hip up and get at her knife.

“If you are packless, what is your game? See how you prolong us by pushing us in circles, occultist? Like the stubborn moon around the sky?”

“You’re the one going in circles,” Fig shouted. “I have no pack, I have no game. I have no magic. I am not who you think I am. But if you have hurt my companions, I will not need magic to do you harm.” She spoke her final line with all the spite she could sharpen into its edges. She felt an unfamiliar rush of something — something hot.

The figure recoiled.

“Ah,” for the first time it was quiet. “What a very strange admission. What new game is this?”

Fig heard popping, cracking, then the flutter of wings. She squinted as wind blew dirt and rocks at her face. When she opened her eyes, a large vulture, its head pink like the inner flesh of a strawberry, peered at her from a vine roost newly burst from the dirt wall. The black bird was large, almost as tall as her, its beak curved like a nut.

“No magic,” it squawked. “No magic.” Its talons scraped along the branch to shift closer to her. When she met its eyes they were red as blood. It spoke again, clearly now, in a human voice. “Where are you hiding your magic?”

She felt the vines travel through her pockets. The one holding her left leg released to rummage through her pack. She opened her mouth to object but bit down on green, bitter flesh. Her belongings scattered across the dirt — waterskin, carving knife, dried rabbit meat. The vines brought each item to the nose of the vulture, who dismissed them with a peck.

“No, no, no, no, no,” it squawked, head bobbing upon its thin neck.

Before a vine could wind its way to her sheath, Fig kicked off the ground with her free leg to bring her hip up to her hand. Tugging harder than the vine could react, she clutched her knife and sliced the tendrils that bound her upper body in an arc. Sap clung to the blade and the skin of her hands as she dove for the vulture, even with one of her legs fastened in place.

The tip of her knife sliced a thin line at the base of the bird’s throat. The creature squealed and flapped its wings backward. The vines returned with force and bound Fig more tightly. Rivulets of blood dripped down her body from each thorn.

“Always with the knives! What is it with occultists and knives? Blood, blood, blood with you lot,” the vulture squawked, it’s feathers standing upright. Fig grunted as the vines forced the knife from her hand. The bird continued in its sing-song voice, “It’s always ‘Let’s do a blood sacrifice,’ never ‘Let’s clean up our blood sacrifice!’ Leave that for ol’ Cathea; she’ll deal with the bodies. That won’t disrupt the local ecosystem at all.” The bird’s voice rose. “Leave animal entrails around, give an animal a second head, why don’t you? Lawless, lawless people.”

With a jerk of the vulture’s head, the vine around Fig’s mouth retracted.

“What do you have to say for yourself?” the witch-bird demanded.

It — she — was a madwoman. “None of that made any sense to me,” Fig admitted.

“Typical. Young folk even more clueless than their elders,” the bird tutted. “Regardless of your ignorance, you aren’t welcome here. There’s work afoot I don’t want you meddling in, magic or not.”

“The work of killing all those villagers?” Fig spat.

The vulture shrieked with laughter. “Killing? I wish. Killing them would be far easier. Not all of us are lazy like you.”

Fig frowned, more curious than insulted. “What are you doing then?”

“I’m fixing this mess. Their mess.”

“By putting them to sleep?”

The bird threw up its wings. “By trying to wake them up!” It bobbed its pink head. “I should just leave you here. You know nothing and are capable of nothing.”

Fig felt the heat of anger return to the space beneath her ears. “I am capable of plenty.”

“Hm,” the bird huffed. “Why are you here, packless one?”

The vulture stunk of scavenging and rot. If it wanted to pretend to be helping, Fig would play along. “My companions and I wanted to travel through this area. Now that we’ve seen the state of the villagers, we want to aid them.”

“More like the big one wants that and you think him foolish,” the bird scoffed. “I have ears, occultist. A lie stinks as much as you do.”

Fig had bathed just yesterday. What a hypocritical, nasty creature.

The witch stretched its neck forward. “You were telling the truth about the magic though, weren’t you? Magicless, packless. You reek like an occultist, but are you?”

“No,” Fig replied. She had thought of this often in the quiet moments of travel. According to the demon, her mother was an occultist. Her sister, the same. But she knew nothing of being one. How could she be something she didn’t understand? Vaani seemed to think she could grow into any sort of future. Yet, this witch identified her as an occultist by scent alone. Did such a thing lie inert within her? Her birthright stolen, unclaimed? “I mean, maybe,” she stammered. “Potentially.”

She had never seen a bird look so unimpressed. “No matter. Your stink could work well enough.”

The vulture heard the approaching footsteps before Fig did. She jerked her head to the sound of Quil and Wren calling her name over dogs barking. When she looked back, the bird was gone. Instead, at her feet, a mole with black hair and a twitching pink snout. Its voice was small but unmistakable.

“Your kind love deals, so I’ll offer you one. You help me, I help you. Ditch the big one; we don’t have time for his meddling. Then meet me at my cottage to the east.”

The mole clambered up the wall of the hole and dug into the dirt. The vines that bound Fig dropped, lifeless. She fell to her knees. The sound of barking intensified.

“Fig!” Quil shouted over the rim of the hole. “What happened?”

“Some sort of hunting trap,” she lied.

“Are you hurt?”

She smeared the blood from the thorn pricks over her skin to camouflage the wounds. “Landed on one of my legs wrong.”

“Can you climb?” Wren called.

“I think so,” she replied.

A length of rope dropped from the sky. She grabbed it with both hands and braced herself against the wall with her good leg. She crested the top to find three gray snouts sniffing at her face. Wren shooed them away as Quil helped her up. When she stumbled fully to her feet, the snouts returned attached to three wolfish dogs with hair gray like smoke.

“They found us in town,” Wren explained. He pet each at the base of the head while pushing them away from Fig. “They barked and got in between us and the houses. They seem to have calmed down now that we’re out here.” When he’d pushed them back enough to see her, he gasped. “You’re bleeding.”

“Just some scrapes from the fall.” She winced. One of the dogs began licking the blood away from her leg. The other two panted happily between Wren and the edge of town. Handling them, the vulture had said. Fig sighed with relief. The witch seemed unlikely to give all meddlers such gentle herding.

Quil reached to examine her knee but she waved him off. “What did you find?” she asked.

He grimaced. “We couldn’t get into every house, but I’d estimate there are almost thirty people here. They’re all asleep and stable, like the first family. You?”

“The man and his horse only passed through from the north, likely just before we met them. The villagers worked the field as recently as a few days ago. No sign of anyone else.” She kept the strange, harvested plants and her talk with the witch to herself. She tossed the witch’s offer in her mind — as well as its conditions.

Quil accepted her report. “If we consolidate and move quickly, we might be able to get the villagers to the city before we run out of supplies,” he said. “Someone there will know what to do with them.”

If the witch was telling the truth, Quil’s interference was unnecessary. Regardless, an open-ended promise of help was limitlessly tempting. This witch knew of occultists.

A buzz of excitement began to overtake Fig’s anger. She had met a witch. She had observed — well, fallen victim to — an entirely new kind of magic. She committed the scent of it to memory. Beyond discovery, bargaining with the witch was an opportunity for her to learn more about her mother, about herself.

“You’ll ride faster without us,” Fig told Quil. “Get back to the caravan and explain. Wren and I can camp here and keep watch in case anything changes.”

Wren shot her an inquisitive look. She returned it, but just for a moment. She hoped he would trust her.

Quil thought it over. He could get back to camp faster on one horse alone than the three of them could on two. The faster he returned with the caravan, the faster he could move the sick. She knew this. He knew that she knew this.

He set his face in a line.

“Stay away from this place. Keep to the edge of town,” he ordered. “If you sense anything unusual, hide. I’ll be back with everyone in the morning.”

“We understand,” Wren assured him. “Just keeping watch.”

Fig braced against the pain in her leg as they walked Quil to his mare. The horse, too, seemed uneasy. Quil took off at a gallop.

When they were just a speck in the field, Wren turned to her. The sun fell on his hair like gold. “So what’s really going on?”

Perceptive. She had counted on that. “I feel bad lying to him,” Fig admitted, a heaviness settling at the base of her stomach. She had never felt this way about deceiving someone before, but Quil was a good man. She had never spent enough time with one to think so.

“You didn’t lie, you just left something out.” Wren smiled coyly. “We mustn’t stress our elders with every little detail.”

“Promise what happens here stays between us?” Fig asked. She had considered ushering Wren away as well but surprised herself by wanting his company. She thought she would relish time alone once she was free of the caravan, but the thought of isolation in the still, half-dead town terrified her. She justified this weakness with wanting access to Wren’s extensive study of plants. Whatever was going on here, it was related to the strangeness out in the field.

“Promise.”

“There is a witch here. I spoke with her.”

“What?” Wren screeched.

Fig clapped her hands over his mouth. Her heart pounded as if Quil might race back over the hill in a panic.

“Sorry,” he mumbled. She released him. He continued in a loud, excited attempt at a whisper. “But — what?”

“She’s awful,” Fig groaned. “But she claims she’s trying to help these people.”

“Tell me everything,” Wren gushed as he flipped to a new page in his notebook.

She shared all of the tale besides the witch’s rambling about occultists. Wren had vouched for her since they met. She trusted him. But she did not intend to share that part of her, not yet.

“Pink petals? And then immediate decay? Could you describe the variegation of the leaves?” Wren gushed.

“You can see for yourself,” she grumbled, her thorn punctures pulsing. “We should find her before the sun goes down.”

“An invitation to a witch’s cottage,” Wren whispered in awe. “I can’t believe it.”

“If she’s truly helping, we help her — ideally before Quil returns. If she’s lying, I kill her.” Fig surprised herself with her certainty. Her anger from the trap pit boiled to the tips of her fingers. “And you stay out of the way.”

Wren only nodded. He returned her gaze with more curiosity than fear.

“East, then,” she pointed. Beyond the farmland was a scattering of trees that became denser and denser until they formed a forest. Back to the known — escape from the searching, prying sun.

Fig led Wren through the trees, careful to direct him away from any hazard she recognized. On more than one occasion she turned to find him investigating some sprout and wrenched him away. She did not know how deep within the wood the witch’s cottage would be. She kept an eye on the angle of the dappled sunlight that wormed its way through the leaves.

As they walked, she realized she had never been alone with Wren. There was always some caravaner looking for entertainment, some child in search of a singing partner, Altair to the side nodding their head to the ensuing tale, riddle, or knee-drum beat. Free from suspicious ears, there was much Fig wanted to ask him. Conversation would secondly distract him from pouting over the plants she forced him past.

“The night we met, by the fire, you and Ness talked about a certain kind of witch visiting her mother’s shop.”

Wren brightened. “A mage.”

“What is that?”

“In the broadest sense, a witch who learns magic by studying it,” he explained. “It used to be that nobody understood magic at all. A witch might feel benevolent towards you, or rage against you, but their power was inexplicable. Like a sudden earthquake or tornado. A force beyond understanding.”

Fig felt pricks of pain from the thorn wounds in her skin. It was true she had never seen plants grow and warp like the witch commanded, nor did she understand the power that drove them.

“But that changed,” Wren continued. “Almost a century ago, a woman dedicated her life to studying the world, to picking it apart. She learned to piece it back together. She taught herself magic.”

“How?”

“They say she spent years studying the tides, lighting ores on fire, ripping the tails off of lizards and watching them regrow.”

“To what end?”

“To control water, to smelt metal, to cut off her arm and grow it back!” Wren’s voice rose as he spoke faster. “She understood the world so deeply, she pierced it. She pulled magic from it. And people followed the path she set ablaze. Suddenly, witchcraft was open to anyone obsessive and observant enough to craft it for themselves.”

The ache at the center of her pulsed. “That’s why some don’t think of mages as ‘real’?”

“Some people are idiots,” Wren dismissed. “Mages are the future of magic. Spinor was just the start.”

“Like Spinor’s wort?”

“Yes,” he clapped. “They say she named it after herself once it proved especially fruitful in an experiment. I’m going to find one.”

Fig wondered if her mother knew that when she taught her the name of the plant. She often wondered what her mother knew, what she did not. Fig could not decide which was worse — a cocoon of purposeful omission or the both of them scrounging in the dark.

In contrast, Vaani had spoken of magic as easily as she breathed. She had nurtured it since she was a child, described sensing it as innately as touch or smell. Fig had accepted this into her world; she lived it daily. Mage magic sounded distant from that — violent.

“Who is ‘they?’” she asked.

“People who aren’t afraid of witches share the good in them,” Wren said. “It’s touchy, of course, when some have tales of sorrow and anger instead. But there are good people and bad. It is the same for witches. Look at Ness’s mother and her lily, or Quil and his map.”

“You think I’ve judged this witch too harshly?”

“Well, she did catch you in a trap and torture you. Lightly.”

“Hm,” Fig grunted, feeling the dull pain in her knee as she walked.

“But you did about the same to me when we met.” Wren grinned. “And all is forgiven. My younger brother said his playmates’ parents grew up in a town where a witch came out of the river to teach them to dance, something about the seasons changing. Do people not tell stories like that where you’re from?”

“No,” Fig replied uneasily. “Many around me were scared of witches. Didn’t speak of them if they could avoid it.”

“That’s not uncommon.” He frowned. “There are those who resent anyone who aspires to being a mage. They see it as unnatural. But what could be more natural than investigating the world around us? Maybe witches are more in tune with what’s natural than we’ll ever be.”

Fig thought of Vaani, blooming from the grass beneath the alder. “On that, I think they’d agree with you.”

Wren grinned. “Me too.”

“Is that your aim, then? To study plants like Spinor?” Fig asked.

“I’ll follow her further than that,” he insisted. “I’m going to be a mage.” He pressed his hands to his mouth and stopped walking. “I’ve never said that to anyone but Altair.” He began to laugh giddily, then repeated it louder. “I’m going to be a mage!”

“Stop,” Fig ordered. She extended an arm to interrupt Wren’s next step. The volume of his voice had spooked an insect to skitter out from the shelter of a fern. It raced ahead of them perched on its back legs and rolling a brown clump with its front ones. “What is that?”

Three more identical insects scurried out behind the first. They pushed at spheres of material in varying shades of brown and deep burgundy. Fig watched their tiny front legs shove at the spheres, several times their size.

“Corpsebeetles,” Wren whispered, his eyes wide. “I’ve heard of them, but never seen one before. They’re supposed to be nocturnal.”

“What are they doing?”

“They’re scavengers. They collect carrion.”

Fig felt for their magic and grimaced. Whatever they pushed, it was long dead. Decomposing. A newly familiar scent. She watched the four beetles fall into a line due northeast. “They’re headed where we’re headed.”

“You’re sure?”

“Do we only do things if we’re sure, sir mage?” she teased.

Wren laughed and began the chase.

The beetles moved at an unyielding pace. Wren was out of breath by the time they ceased their rolling march and dug into the earth. Fig slowed to a walk as a break in the trees revealed dozens of such beetle groupings, each insect the ward of a deteriorating ball of muck it burrowed into the ground.

At the far edge of the clearing stood a line of tapered, curved trees — no, bones. A muddied ribcage sunk into the ground as if some abominably large creature had died on its side, half-submerged in the muck. Flaps of fabric, or perhaps desiccated skin, hung from the rib bones to form a shelter. A stream of smoke emerged jauntily from the top. Fig sniffed at the air. The witch lived here, alright. Cottage was beyond generous.

“You made it.” The vulture’s gravelly voice cawed from a branch above them. “Why so slow?”

Fig scowled and resisted the urge to throw her knife. “If you wanted us here quickly you could have given more precise directions.”

“If you couldn’t handle finding me, you couldn’t handle what I’m asking for,” the bird tutted. It leapt from the tree and transformed in a rush of fluttering feathers.

Before them stood a woman a head taller than Fig. Her charcoal hair was cropped to her chin and her skin had a strange, pinkish tone to it, as if time as a bird had stained her. The faintest line from Fig’s knife settled at the base of her throat. Before Fig could say something, the witch shook out her arms and twirled a cloak of black feathers over her shoulders. A tree root burst from the ground to meet her hand. She kicked the base of it loose to act as a walking stick. Though she had the posture of an old woman, her face was plump and smooth around a large, beautiful nose.

“Lazy,” she mumbled to herself. “What did I say? Lazy and wasteful.”

Wren was awestruck. He spoke as if barely managing to contain the words in his mouth. “Madam, it’s an absolute honor to be in your presence.”

The witch turned, noticing him for the first time. She straightened. “Now, that’s more like it. Who is this?”

“This is Wren,” Fig said. “You only told me to get rid of the big one.”

Wren spoke in a jumble, his eyes on her walking stick. “I’m an avid student of plants of all kinds, madam. The power you’ve already displayed is, well, remarkable.”

The witch’s laughter was a squawk even while human. “What a fine young man! You can call me Granny Turkey.”

“Granny Turkey,” Fig repeated flatly, eyeing the witch’s flushed cheeks.

“Not you,” she spat. “You address me as Miss Cathea. Better yet, don’t speak back to me at all.”

“Miserable woman,” Fig muttered under her breath.

Cathea was too distracted fawning over Wren to hear. “You’re quite handsome, aren’t you? And what a nice name. Have you ever wanted to be a bird?”

“I’ve never thought about it,” he admitted.

“Hair like that, you would make a fine one.”

Fig stepped forward, hand on her knife. “No one is becoming a bird.”

“Fine, fine,” the witch grumbled. “Such a bore. Your kind are usually daring, at least.”

She continued to grouse as she led them through the clearing to her home. The field of corpsebeetles busied themselves burying their burdens.

“What are they doing?” Wren asked.

“Fertilizing,” Cathea replied. She did not elaborate.

When they reached the ribcage, Fig gagged on its pungent concentration of magic. The bones were even taller up close. their surface pockmarked, porous, littered with small hooks and frames. They curved overhead to form a roof while plants consumed the floor and climbed the walls in various stages of growth and decay — some green with new life, others gnarled and brown. A modest fire guarded by cookware flickered at their center.

Cathea gestured for them to sit on two elegantly carved chairs. Fig allowed herself a moment to appreciate the handiwork.

“Tea?” the witch offered.

“Sure,” Wren agreed with excitement.

“Absolutely not,” Fig interrupted.

“You don’t trust me,” Cathea growled. Fig said nothing. “Then why are you here?”

“If you’re truly helping, we want the same thing,” Fig replied. “But we need more information.”

“Yes, yes.” Cathea waved her hand, open like a wing. Vines burst from the ground, knotted themselves into a wide armchair, and died in place. She folded upon the resulting brown wicker with a huff. Fig kept her gaze locked on the witch but heard the frantic scribbling of Wren writing in his notebook.

“I’ve lived here longer than either of you can conceive,” she began. “The land is unique. I did not make it so, but I take from it and return to it in equal measure. We have grown together.” She gestured around the cottage, the clearing. “This area is uniquely prosperous. It thrives outside the bounds of what should be possible. If nurtured correctly, it can produce beyond its means tenfold. In turn, such abundance must be destroyed. Reabsorbed.”

“Massive decomposition proportionate to massive production,” Wren mused.

“Sure, whatever you want to call it. I oversee the former. Cleaning and undoing is my specialty.”

“Vulture,” Fig sneered, rubbing at her sore wrists. She had seen such birds circle corpses with their sprawling darkness, pick at bones with their gnarled beaks.

“Don’t start with me, little bloodmonger,” Cathea spat.

Wren looked between them with interest.

“Anyways, the unattuned settling here threw the entire system out of balance,” the witch continued.

“The who?” Wren asked.

“Those not attuned to magic,” Cathea sniffed. “They don’t feel the shifts they cause in things. So they cut the trees to build their ugly huts, hunted the creatures to wear their skins, harvested the plants to fill their stomachs. At first, I was able to counter their behavior. Who am I to begrudge a neighbor a home, a meal? But their plenty bred only ignorance. They sped up their planting cycle, slaughtered more and more.”

“Did you try speaking to them?” Wren asked.

The witch bared pointed teeth. “I’m not usually much for conversation.”

Fig drummed the edge of her seat with her fingers. “Get to the part where they all fall sick.”

“Impatient girl!” Cathea scowled, but went on. “They took from the land without returning to it. The water and soil fouled. The crops that soon filled their fields were born of this unbalanced earth. Within a moon the villagers were all at the edge of death.”

“So you cultivated the browndells to rebalance the nutrient levels,” Wren guessed while flipping through his notes from the morning. “They fill in for the final step of the land’s cycle. The one the villagers tried to skip.”

The witch smiled. “Yes, correct. What’s a good boy like you doing with a brute like this?” She shook her head at Fig.

Wren laughed. “Fig is my friend.”

Friend. Fig felt a warmth beneath her collarbones. The word rubbed up against the immensity of her loneliness.

“So how long will it take?” Wren continued. “I’m assuming once the browndells have done their work the area will be rebalanced. Perhaps you might cultivate some sort of antidote.”

“Clever. But we approach my problem,” Cathea grimaced. “I’ve grown the antidote thrice now. It’s disappearing.

“Disappearing?” Wren repeated.

“Something, or someone, is reaping it. All of it.”

Fig recalled the spindly, harvested plants at the edge of the field and groaned. Cathea watched her expectantly.

“And you don’t know what?” Wren hesitated. “Or who?”

“I was hoping when I caught your wee oaf here she would be the answer.” Cathea wiped her cheek. “But she’s clueless and irrelevant. Typical. However, being a witch of great inventiveness, I figure she can still be a solution to this whole affair.”

Fig glowered. “What do you want?”

The witch threw up her arms in a rush of feathers. “Kill the thief! Obviously! Or scare it off, who cares? Not I. Put that stink of yours to good use. Most things around here will fear it, probably.”

“Why don’t you get rid of the thief, whatever it is?” Fig needled.

“I don’t care for confrontation.” Cathea moaned.

Fig glared at the witch. “Now we both know that’s not true.”

The witch laughed, her head thrown back like she’d done as a bird. “I caught you off guard. That was an ambush, not a fight. I prefer to deal with things when they’re already dead.”

Unfortunately, Fig believed her. Far from the village, she could feel the balance of the land around the witch’s cottage. The legion of corpsebeetles made clicking noises with their legs as they returned decomposing matter to the ground. The bloom of each living plant sang out with health. Whatever the exact nature of Cathea’s work, its harmony further emphasized the trouble the villagers had wrought. If the witch helping the people from the wondrousness of her heart was too difficult to accept, Cathea’s respect for the land was a more reasonable explanation.

And yet nothing could shake the force of Fig’s dislike for her. “So I do this for you, and what exactly do you offer in return?” Fig demanded.

Cathea grinned.“First off, the antidote for you and your people as well.”

“Why?” Fig asked. “They’re a half-day’s ride away.”

The witch threw her legs over the arms of her chair. “The rot spreads farther than you think. If they’ve foraged or burnt wood of late they’ll be unconscious before you get anywhere helpful.”

Fig met eyes with a panicked Wren. The image of Altair, huddled with their arms around their knees, passed between them. So that was why the map had pushed them further into the sickness — they were all already ill. But then why approach the area at all?

“And because I’m such a benevolent host,” the witch continued, “I’ll tack on some answers to your questions. You, wee packless one, don’t even know what you are.” She narrowed beady eyes at Fig. “It is not normal for you to be so alone.”

Fig felt the heat of anger and loss swell inside her. The witch’s words cut, and all the feeling burst at the wound. She held her breath so as not to tear up.

“So where do we start?” Wren asked, his voice soft.

“You do nothing. It would be too dangerous for you,” Cathea responded. “She’ll go on her own.”

“I won’t let her do something dangerous by herself,” Wren insisted.

“It’s alright.” Fig stood. She swallowed to calm herself. “I’ll go.”

Cathea plucked an umber stone from the edge of the fire. She cracked it in half to reveal a thick ooze and tossed one half to Fig. “Rub that over the thorn pricks and the bruising on your knee. You won’t feel them tonight.”

The stone radiated with a pleasant heat. The magic of it pulsed a deep yellow. Fig did as she was told. The energy she had lost in the trap pit seeped back into her skin.

Fig had not been alone for most of her life. Her mother’s presence — firm, tender, explosive, expansive — was as much a guide as the stars. But now, even in the vacuum of her loss, she was still her mother’s daughter. And nothing would make her feel closer to her mother here, in this perilous nothingness, than to hunt something. To protect people she cared for through violence and blood.

At the edge of her consciousness, she could hear Wren objecting.

“I could use your aid here, blondie,” the witch soothed him. “The antidote poultice will require preparation for if she returns.”

“When she returns,” Wren insisted.

“I’ll be back before morning,” Fig said slowly. She rubbed the last of the ooze across her chest.

“That’s the spirit.” Cathea grinned, revealing both rows of pointed teeth.

Wren would be safe here. It would not be safe out there, with the sun setting behind the trees. Fig’s arms itched. The inside of her head itched. She felt something brewing — something too nostalgic to scare her — something lustful and dark.

There was a danger out there. She was set to end it and save her people. She did not know when the caravaners had become her people. At the fire, in the wagon, in the dark and quiet making tentposts with Quil. Her mother would not approve of that aspect – of risking herself for strangers – but Fig was, in her solitude, more and more not her mother by the day. Perhaps that was why this surge of closeness, of alignment, felt right. When she returned, she would have a witch in her debt. She would find out more about her mother and step closer to their reunion — the reunion at the end of all of this.

What better to draw her knife for?