Path of the Whisper Woman

Meeting the Beloved's requirements for the delta was painstaking work. The tribesfolk worked tirelessly to turn the delta red as tree after tree was marked with blood and Tufani's people regularly flew over the delta on their storm birds to check for missed trees and errant fish. Now that we no longer had to worry about Ambervale the effort felt more pointed. We had taken one definitive step towards meeting the requirements given and everyone was eager to complete the next one.

We kept the remaining blood crystals out of the waterways but we didn't destroy them. After everything that happened with Cascade's and Ambervale's transformations—one wondrous and one monstrous—no one was eager to leave the crystals vulnerable, but the ability to lead the fish where we wanted them was too tempting to ignore. Keeping them out of the waterways met the requirement even if it felt like leaving the job half finished. Once we no longer needed them as a back up plan they would be destroyed.

The number of fish in the delta was at an all time low, now that most had been washed back into the ocean with the flood waters. Most of the tribesfolk on defensive duty had switched their focus to the border along the shoreline. Small pop up camps had formed on the walkways. Others settled in the false pines' branches with hammocks and nets too small or weak to hold up against thrashing fish, but that did just fine for resting people.

Even Tribe Master Toniva and Ana, as well as the others who kept the command post running, had shifted to a defensible spot closer to the shore so that less time would be wasted between giving and receiving orders. The whisper women had joined the defensive fight to keep the fish out as well while Juniper rode Cascade around, killing any fish they came across. Now that she learned it was possible, Juniper's fear of heights had no hold her within her home since Cascade would carry her close to the water.

Bramble Watch was left with a skeletal crew getting the few remaining trees nearby and me. Despite all of that work happening elsewhere, I was stuck recovering, which felt like it was becoming and uncomfortable habit. The Knife Dancer's Revenge didn't leave me with nearly the lingering recovery that nearly drowning had, but it did live up to its name with a brutal crash, especially given the amount I had drunk. My heart alternated between trying to beat its way out my chest and stuttering for a few beats like it might give out, but my bless mark never prickled, so I could only conclude that whatever was happening wasn't completely deadly. Exhaustion and nausea dragged at me as my heartbeat slowly settled back into a regular rhythm. The healer had nothing to do with me this time, though I wasn't sure if it was because people were just expected to sleep off the effects of taking Knife Dancer's Revenge or because she had already headed to the new base camp to take care of the injured there.

Everyone else had mostly treated my recovery in a similar manner, an inconvenience but not something to truly be concerned over. Perhaps my inability to die was finally sinking in, though I doubted Prevna would have approved of their nonchalance if she had be present. For my part, I would have rather gotten a minor injury like some of them had, rather than shaking like a leaf whenever I tried to prop myself up and feeling like I was going to puke my guts all over the floor. It was like being feverishly sick and I hated it. It was much easier to keep pushing forward when it was only one part of my body in pain rather than all of it.

Juniper, at least, did stick around for a bit before I convinced her that her energies were better used for something other than watching me lay on a bedroll. Ingrasia and Esie also both checked on me though there wasn't much they could do since they weren't healers. I got most of my information about what was happening from Ingrasia while I refused to give Esie much more than a bit of acknowledgment for helping fight Ambervale. Perhaps it was childish, but I wasn't willing to forgive her for thinking she could use me for her own ends with little to no explanation and just as little responsibility.

However, unlike the first two, Esie didn't leave. She settled against a wall in the sleeping quarters where I was resting and set about making herself comfortable. A cushion appeared from somewhere for her to sit on and a sack of tubers in need of peeling lay open next to her hip. She carefully peeled them with her knife, one by one, and only spoke when I finally couldn't resist the temptation to glare at her.

She lowered the tuber she was working on to look me in the eye. "You don't trust me. I've given you little reason to. Even now you probably think I'm taking advantage of your current state. You'd be correct. I'd like to speak without either of us running away."

I snapped my gaze up to the bottom of the root bunk above me though I could still see her out of the corner of my eye. "Nothing's stopping you."

Esie smiled regretfully. "I have to finish peeling these tubers before I can get up. Promised to have them ready for the evening meal."

"So you can keep your promises to someone." The accusation in my voice was unfair. I knew that. Esie had never broken a promise to me that I could recall—she had just left plenty unsaid.

"Kaylan says I like things going my own way too much. So I make sure I'm the one with the most information to use." Esie peeled the last bit of skin from the tuber in her hand and dropped the vegetable in the waiting sack. "I won't claim to be virtuous and say that I only have your best interests at heart. I have my own ambitions and I keep secrets easily. It's always been a necessary part of what I do."

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"And yet you expect me to trust you?"

"I hoped we could reach an understanding. We aren't so dissimilar from each other."

Thankfully, the nausea had been ebbing over the past hour and I had gained enough strength to sit up right without collapsing, but I didn't let Esie know that. She wanted me to say 'oh that's just how she is' and ignore every dangerous situation she had and would put me through. To agree that we all had ambitions and kept secrets and that she should be allowed to do as she pleased.

The lack of accountability grated at me, but it grated more that she didn't seem to realize it. It sounded as if she thought she was being forthright and accountable by admitting she had ambitions and my wellbeing wasn't at the top of her list. It didn't have to be—though I didn't think she'd intentionally cause me harm. It was more that she was acknowledging her ambitions didn't always come with the safest situations and that I could fully attest to given everything going on in the delta.

However, that acknowledgment ignored the fact that she didn't have to pull me into her plans or she could change how she did things. Compromise. At least give me more information on whatever situation she wanted to involve me in next.

She wanted the veneer of compromise without actually giving anything up. As she said, she liked getting things her own way, and with her smiles and skilled way of influencing others she often did.

This time I wasn't about to capitulate because she was the Lady of Calm Waters' intermediary or my mentor or simply even a whisper woman. She was used to having a higher status in our interactions but I had now realized I couldn't allow her to continue enjoying that power dynamic. Not if I wanted anything to change.

So I shoved myself upright and directly challenged her assertion that I couldn't go anywhere. "We can reach an understanding once you respect me like you want me to respect you. As I said I will not be a stone you push around the board."

Then I staggered out of the sleeping quarters and to the berry patch Prevna had retreated to previously. Esie didn't follow me—which was for the best. I didn't want to cut her off completely, but I did need her to understand that our previous dynamic couldn't continue.

I must have drifted off in the berry patch because the next thing I knew was the sharp crack of an Echo's rhythm sticks. The sky faded from evening to true dark and then a rush of wind burst over everything and within it was a voice I now knew personally. The Beloved was singing. The sky lit up with blue-green curtains of light as the wind died down but didn't go away completely.

The Heartsong Festival was here. I hadn't been keeping track of the days, at least not as far as festivals were concerned, and from the shouts of surprise coming from elsewhere in Bramble Watch I wasn't the only one.

Voices rose in song but I didn't get the chance to indulge my curiosity before the wind picked up next to my ear again and I heard the Beloved speaking to me directly.

"The goddess claims what She claims."

I lay there, dumb founded, trying to convince myself to be brave like I had with everyone else, but ultimately waiting for something to go wrong until I noticed that the wind was still grabbing at me, like hands trying to pull me up and push me forward.

After my unintended nap my recovery from the potion's crash was nearly complete, with only some minor tiredness I was sure would be gone by the morning. I followed the wind's insistent directions though I wished I could slip from its grasp. It took me up to the top of the wall surrounding Bramble Watch and immediately I saw why.

The sky lights that always appeared during the Heartsong Festival were…in the water. At first, I wanted to say they were being reflected and it was true that the more I looked the more it seemed like the lights in the sky followed the waterways below, but blue-green light also seemed to emanate from the water and light it up from within.

One unlucky fish soldier was clearly visible against the bright backdrop and a tribeswoman speared it through in a show of skill I envied. I turned to her as she hauled on her spear's rope to bring it back to her.

"Does this always happen?"

The grin I got back was bloodthirsty. "Only on years of great strife when the goddess deigns to recognize our efforts. It's said that the river must run yellow with blood so that She washes the water with light to get rid of the offending color. Others say it's to celebrate the number we killed and kept from Her territory." She shrugged and hauled the last bit of rope in before prying the dead fish off her spear.

"Either way it makes a good year for hunting."

I quickly learned that the Swirling Waters tribe didn't celebrate the Heartsong Festival like I was used to. Oh, on normal years each tribe member got at least a full day of rest and time to enjoy the usual celebrations, but they also put a much more martial bent on singing and dancing.

On the years the waterways lit up the fish couldn't hide. Even among the trees and shrubs, the light from sky and water would somehow highlight them and the tribesfolk had a grand competition to see who could get the most. They sang as they fought. Songs of fighting and protecting their home and the march of generations doing the same, and the light flowed from them too. The knife dancers didn't sing as they carved through enemy fish, but the festival light lit them up all the same as it recognized the steps of dance they wove through their attacks.

Yet even as I saw all of that from my spot on the wall, I noticed that the light made the bulbous form of the false pines even starker. They were as mundane here as the shrubs and the mud, and yet there was something sinister in the shadows they cast. Shadows that normally wouldn't have been so stark at night but that were now a potent reminder of the potential currently squandered.

I didn't hear from the Beloved again, something I was privately glad of, but I did find my spear in my now empty quarters. Esie must have abandoned her post when I didn't return. But I set the thoughts of her aside in favor of something simpler: fighting fish. It was time for me to put in what work I could to meet the requirements I set into motion.