Page 7

Chapter Seven

Fenli

I went into the forest. It was a stupid thing to do with so many hunters around. I knew it, even as I wove between trees, followed the deer trails, and took myself deeper into the woods. I could be discovered.

But I didn’t care.

Making the decision to run away had changed something in me. If I was going to leave these people, making them angry now hardly mattered. Years of wanting to fit in and be accepted crumbled away. I was giving up.

The woods folded in around me, and I felt more myself with every step.

I was at home. The women didn’t keep track of me, not so long as I was getting my chores done, so when the men who tended to the fields and to the livestock were off about their work, this was where I came.

Esska and I had spent our youths roving these wild spaces.

We’d climbed trees, built homes out of sticks and sod, jumped rocks in the rivers, and made whole stories for ourselves in the process—I, the brave explorer; Ess, the mighty hunter.

Those memories weren’t kind to me now. Just the thought of Ess and how I was about to leave her hurt my heart. And my mother, my gods .

I went faster, trying to escape the bad feelings, but they followed me to the place where the cedars grew the thickest and the ground under my feet became soft with moss.

There I found the earthen shelter Ess and I had made years ago, and I stashed my supplies—clothes and tools for my journey.

I’d packed plenty of fire starter, a bedroll I’d grabbed from the stores they’d been prepping to move, a small hatchet, rope, and a knife.

My knife. Not the one Roan had lost and accused me of stealing— asshole .

I’d bring food with me when I left for good.

By my estimation, I’d have more than enough to get me through the four-day journey Goose and I were about to make.

I tarried there for a long time. I didn’t want to leave Ess; I didn’t know what my mother would do without me.

But I didn’t have a choice. I wouldn’t be Roan’s wife, and I wouldn’t join my father’s clan, so I was going to take the only option left to me. I would leave the Caed people altogether.

The Saik lived to the east, and I was in good standing with them.

Umbra did much of their trading with my clan, and the woman had a keen eye for worthwhile mischief.

Five summers ago, she’d caught me peeking at some maps she’d brought with her and found it in her to interfere just enough to give me a start in the work.

We’d negotiated quickly and with no common language.

We hadn’t needed it, and I wasn’t much for words anyway, even if she had understood them.

That first trade, she gave me a small pot of ink and two rolls of parchment no longer than my lap in return for three mats I’d woven from lake grass and more bundles of fire starter I’d twined together than I could hold.

She’d also showed me how I could use rolls of birch bark if parchment wasn’t available or I wasn’t ready to commit it to being inked.

Then she’d shooed me away, before we could be seen .

Every time the Saik swung out to the coast to trade with our clans, Umbra had stopped in to see me, bringing more parchment and ink in exchange for everything I could think to pull out of the forest for her.

Rose hips I collected in the autumn and dried; chaga mushrooms I’d shimmied up birch trees to saw off, dry, and ground into a powder; I’d still made her grass mats and fire starter, and I’d added bone needles, bone beads, and whatever fresh edibles were in season when she came ‘round to my supply.

She’d taught me more about mapping each time, and, when my maps were good enough, she’d traded me for those, too. The space between our peoples was largely uncharted, something the Saik had been working to remedy, and they found in me a helper from the other side.

I was a Caed, but I could live with the Caed people no longer. Toke’s clan didn’t want me, and I would never let Runehall’s have me. Elsynbr and Rynwyn’s clans would turn me out, not daring to steal away the child of a different god and tempt his wrath.

The Saik seemed my only choice.

Maybe it was a stupid plan, but I didn’t know what else to do.

I made it back to the village before anyone noticed I’d been gone.

First, I visited Indi. It was the last time I would see her, and I had to say goodbye, even if I was a coward and didn’t say it out loud. She’d look back later, when I was good and gone, and she’d know. She’d realize what I hadn’t said .

Thank you, thank you for everything. You were the best mother I could have had. I’m leaving you, but I love you. I’m breaking your heart, but it’s probably because I don’t deserve you.

I will miss you the most.

She was a beautiful whirlwind, as always, so busy preparing for the move that she didn’t notice my goodbye for what it was. Not yet.

It was for the better.

From there, I should have played along and made like I was getting ready to leave like the rest of them, and I did, in part.

When it came to my job caring for the birds, I was a model clan member.

I was quick to make a plan with one of the kitchen matrons and some man they sent over who was in charge of cargo.

We decided how many birds of each kind would make the voyage north, and I slaughtered the rest in one afternoon, slitting their necks and hanging them to bleed out before bringing them to the kitchens for processing.

I also double checked their crates were in good condition and they’d have plenty of food and water for the trip.

On the home front, however, I was less obliging.

One look at my husband carrying sacks into my hut, and my rebellion surge.

He announced it was time to pack the place up, and I suddenly knew what I would not be doing that evening.

I dug in my heels; he enlisted his sister.

“Fenni,” Esska said sweetly. Too sweetly. Roan stood by the window, absolutely brooding, his arms crossed over his chest. “We have to pack your things. I’ll help you. It will be fun, I promise.”

I smiled at her. “Kiss my ass.”

She rolled her eyes and dropped the act, which I appreciated.

“Well, you can’t stay here,” Roan said. “We’re all leaving in two days’ time. You’d be all alone. ”

Esska instantly crumbled in on herself. “For Toke’s sake, Roan. Do you have any idea how unhelpful a thing that was to say?” He only frowned, so she continued. “Being all alone is your wife’s dream come true. Pay attention.”

“Is it also her dream to go insane, because that’s what happens to people who live hidden away from others.

” He turned his focus to me. “You’d wake up one day ten years from now and realize you’d lost touch with reality.

You’d also find yourself overrun by dogs because the two you started with had multiplied into a hundred. Is that what you want?”

“Yes,” I said quickly, then turned my attention to Esska. “Yes, that.”

“You know,” she said, looking serious, “whenever you did up and die, all those dogs would eat your body down to the bones.”

I took a moment to think. “Worth it,” I decided.

She nodded slowly, seeming to come to terms with it as well.

“Never mind,” Roan said. “You two have clearly already lost it.”

Esska turned to him. “Brother, will you go and steal us something sweet from the kitchen? I’d like to talk with this one on my own for a bit.”

He looked unimpressed but headed for the door. “I’m not stealing you sweets,” he told her.

“Honey rolls are preferable!” she added, leaning forward to watch as the door closed behind him. When she was sure he was gone, she slapped her palms down on her lap and smiled at me.

“Oh no,” I said.

“You’ll never guess my plan.”

Fear and dread coursed through me at those all too familiar words. Esska was nothing if not a troublemaker disguised as the sweetest of all Toke’s children .

“Well, count—count me out.”

“That’s fine.” She leaned in and whispered, even though we were the only ones. “You’ll be missing out on all the fun, though. I’ve decided to start hunting. Same as the men.”

Well, piss and shite.

I glanced at the window, suddenly afraid she’d spoken too loudly.

“Just like Rynwin’s clan,” she continued. “Their women have always hunted, and I want to as well.”

She’d brought up the Rynwin’s huntresses multiple times over the past years, but I’d never thought those comments would somehow lead us here.

Rynwin was the goddess of land and forest, and her clan was unlike Toke’s.

The clans expected a great deal of diversity between themselves.

Just as people differed from one another, as were the gods.

We were all Caed, but we’d been set apart for different deities, split into four when we used to be one.

We were tolerant of the other clans and their ways because the gods themselves had made them so.

But inside the clans, unity was expected and enforced.

That Esska was considering something so unlike our own clan was a dangerous thing. We were to be people of the sky, Toke’s children. What she was proposing: it reeked of the earth.

She read the shock on my face.

“Don’t be like that,” she said. “Hear me out. If I could prove myself, maybe I could bring about some kind of change for our clan. I could pave a way for other girls who want the same things.”

My mind was sputtering.

“Like you. With your maps.”

Like me. With my maps .

“They’d have our hides.”

“I don’t care.” She waved me off. “I can’t keep dying the fabric. This clan is stuck in the past, and I’m not going to sit around waiting for the future. In the goddesses clans, the women have choices. It’s time the gods extend the same freedoms to their women.”

Blasphemy .

I liked it, but it scared me all the same.

“I agree,” I confessed. “Of course I do.”

And she nodded. “You’ve been wronged more than any of us.”

But I wasn’t thinking of myself just then. Realization was dawning as I put the pieces together.

“You stole the knife.” Of course it had been her. She’d helped carry them in, and I’d seen her toying with one. “Roan’s hunting knife.”

There was that smile of hers again. “He noticed?”

I gave her my most withering stare. “And blamed me.”

She laughed. “That’s ridiculous,” but she didn’t seem bothered by my marital stress because she breezed over it. “It’s a great knife. Nothing like the fingernail scrapers they give us girls. The blade is—”

But she was cut off when the door opened and her latest victim walked back in.

“Honey rolls?” she asked.

He tossed two across the room and she caught them both.

“I didn’t steal them, just so you know.” He glanced at me and looked away just as quickly. “I asked for them.”

“You’re too good for the likes of we miscreants,” she said with a mock bow. She handed me one and tore into hers, a look of utter satisfaction on her face .

And it dawned on me that this was exactly the outcome she’d been counting on. Roan, who was too honest for his own good, would use the opportunity to teach her that stealing was no way to get what you wanted. In doing so, she would get exactly what she wanted.

Damn, she was clever. It was part of why she was so beloved, despite being an absolute fiend.

I hoped, for her sake, that the streak wasn’t nearing its end. Maybe she could make a change here in this clan. Maybe she could carve out a place for herself and for the girls who came after her.

As much as I wished it, I knew I wouldn’t be here to see it.

There might be hope enough for her, but it was too late for me.

There was no reconciliation coming that could right the wrongs and clear the way for the kind of life I wanted.

I was already in too deep, a thorn in the elder’s heels.

I was tolerated, not beloved, and the gap between what I had and what I wanted was too great a chasm to bridge.

I was leaving my clan and heading out on my own.

And I was doing it in just two days.