That night Thalaea’s wolves slept in the forest, long and deep. A day-long canvass of the woods in bird form had confirmed the lack of any more Minae troops; so she had ordered they stop and get some sleep before moving on to the location of the next pack. Loncra would join them there, and continue with them until they found the next pack, and the next gray wolf sentry.

They found a small clearing and curled up together. Their fur kept them warm enough but each wolf needed something extra that night. The comfort of their pack. The knowledge that they weren’t alone.

Solace, after what they’d seen and done over the past week and a half.

Still, Thalaea ordered sentries. Only one per two-hour shift. The danger was mostly past. She was merely taking precautions.

Her work done, she curled up, nose under her tail, and fell into a deep slumber within minutes.

Ruk stood above her, smiling, panting.

Come play with me.

She got up slowly, feeling a deep sadness welling up inside her, though she couldn’t say why. She smiled and leapt after her friend as he bounded away, laughing.

She chased him through the forest, intent on tussling him good when she caught him. He ran ahead of her, loping easily where her breath caught. His tail bounced, as if mocking her.

Each mile came harder, as Ruk just bounced away, laughing more.

Wait! she called, wondering why she couldn’t catch him, wondering why she felt she couldn’t breathe, wondering why she felt pain like an arrow in her center heart.

She stopped, panting, trying to catch her breath. Ruk was far ahead, running up a hill. No, not a hill. A mountain.

What was a mountain doing this far north?

Renewed vigor surged through Thalaea’s lupine form, and she put on a burst of speed. Ruk was already half-way up the mountain-side, but she was determined to catch him.

He’d stopped looking back at her, and his laughter was gone. Now he seemed just as determined as she, chasing something her nose couldn’t smell.

She barely stopped to look around as she climbed the mountainside, but now, now as she crested the summit she took a breath. Thaen stretched beneath her, wild forests and wolfhavens. She could see Spiral City to her left, in the north, and to her right, in the south lay Min. From Daetus City the machine of war marched, slowly, inexorably over the land, towards the Eronenian Mountains, towards Thaen.

Kaz led the charge, wearing a cape made of wolf’s fur, a wolf’s head mounted on the catapult that followed behind his horse.

She whimpered, and moved forward to stop it. She had to do something. Her cubs would never be safe if Min brought war to Broomgap. She’d already lost so many.

But then she could not see anymore, and before her stretched up a huge white pine, so tall it scraped the clouds. She knew this tree, though she did not remember how.

How did she get here? she wondered. She felt as if something — no, someone, were missing. That sadness that had chased her to this point tugged at her, opening up a chasm under her hearts, and she wanted to curl up in it and die.

Something pulled her on. Her name, perhaps, being called over the wind. Or a scent.

She walked into the hole at the base of the tree, down, down, down into the earth.

Thalaea woke shivering, her face wet with tears. Half-asleep, she raised her hand to wipe those tears away, and then jolted awake.

She was back in Minae form. She’d changed back in her sleep.

For a moment panic flooded her. Did this mean she couldn’t change back into a wolf anymore? Had her newfound shape-shifting power left her just as quickly as she’d gained it?

She concentrated, and soon her body went liquid, languid, loose, and she was wolf again. A massive sigh of relief shook her very bones.

That would have been a nightmare, she thought, smiling, and then stopped, suddenly remembering her dream.

The same tree she’d seen during her experience with the Ill’ll pod. Vision. Premonition. Hallucination. Whatever she wanted to call it.

Both times she’d found that tree, she went into the hole at the base of it, into the earth.

A sign?

She shook her head, her ruff continuing to move after she’d stopped. She’d think on it later, when they’d finished their mission of getting the rest of the western Broomgap wolves to safety.

Right now, it was dawn, and she needed to pee.

It felt as if there were a shift in the air, some intangible sign that the days grew shorter again.

Thalaea had not paid much attention to the world around her since fleeing Steelmint. She’d been locked in survival mode, able to concentrate only on putting one paw in front of the other, breathing in, breathing out, eating, sleeping, running, fighting, killing.

She’d ignored her witch heritage.

She had no idea where it came from, but Enendoa had been right. Thalaea was as much witch as wolf; she had to start behaving like it.

So, when she smelled or sensed that shift in the air, she welcomed it with gratitude, and prayed that she could now step out of survival mode and start living again. If anything, it was clear her destiny was far from being completed, as she’d thought it had been.

It wasn’t enough to bring the wolves of Steelmint to safety. With war starting in the south, she now felt a driving need to make sure all the Broomgap wolves were safe. She hoped that what they were doing was enough.

They covered much ground that day and the next, finding several more packs and convincing them to start moving north. It would be slow going for the packs, many with young cubs still, but, since Thalaea’s recon pack had dealt with the Minae soldiers, it would be much safer.

The packs were to head to Spiral City. The Eorl had assured Thalaea and the Steelmint pack leaders that she would take as much care of the wolves as she did her own people. The witch hoped this was true.

Three days later found Thalaea and her wolves at the north-south halfway point of the western Broomgap woods. Close to the halfway point, although she couldn’t be one hundred per cent sure. It was here she called a rest for a few more days, as much to allow her pack-mates some time to sleep and hunt as to afford some catch-up time to the packs which chose to accept their invitation to evacuate. Even if it were safer, it didn’t feel right to leave them to their own devices. The more northern packs which were still in the forest could wait a bit longer than the southern ones.

The witch took this time not only to get to know her pack-mates better but also to familiarize herself with the flora and fauna of Broomgap. It was different from Steelmint, as her namesake had said in her grimmerie: far more coniferous than the southern forest and so much colder. The same species of herb that thrived in the south had trouble here, whereas plants that would suffer heat stroke in Steelmint flourished in copse upon copse in Broomgap.

She did not have her rucksack or any of her humanoid form’s possessions with her, so she could not harvest any plants and try them. Her power of knowing them instinctually hadn’t left her; she could try them later. In the meantime, she cultivated friendships with the plants by talking to their spirits.

Many of the low-growing herbs were suspicious of her; she supposed it was from lack of contact with witches, much as with the herbs in the east part of Steelmint. The trees were a bit more open, perhaps because it would be easy enough for one to fall on her if she were to offend. They spoke slowly, and rambled and drifted off quite often. Sometimes they’d lose the thread of conversation, or so it seemed to her; perhaps she was too chattery and quick for their tastes.

It was interesting to talk with long-lived beings now that she was mortal. Her interactions with trees on Terra and Tau Ceti, when she’d still had her godhood, had been easier to parse, for all they’d been few and far between.

Most of her time working on being a witch she spent in her humanoid form. The cold no longer bothered her so much, even though she was further north, and she found her witch skills were more easily accessible when she was biped.

Thalaea filed this information under “ponder the meaning later”.

She found herself missing Enendoa more and more. The older woman knew so much! There was so much she could have taught Thalaea. And now it was likely she’d never see the witch again.

Woods, I hope my actions didn’t harm her.

That was her only regret in killing the hunter. That it may have brought hardship to the people she loved.

The witch sighed, unable to enjoy the sights of the world around her. Her hearts twisted in her rib cage. Would whatever good she did ever outweigh the suffering she’d caused? Would she ever do right by the people she cared about?

And what about Etan? Jhes name came unbidden to her thoughts. She hadn’t thought about jhen since that moment with J’th, at the market, when she’d realized she could not speak aloud the correct pronouns; when she’d realized that Etan was trapped in a world that didn’t even acknowledge what jhe was.

That was part of her destiny, too. To find out what had happened to her, to Etan, to J’th, to all the gods who had fallen. To get to the bottom of the mystery and maybe help other gods get their godhood back. How, she didn’t know, and she certainly couldn’t do it alone. But for woods’ sake, Etan had to be miserable here! She could not leave jhen to jhes fate.

As if in answer to her thoughts, something tugged at her center heart. A feeling, a whisper. She turned, looking for the source, and fell, suddenly off-balance.

Silva.

Like smoke the name curled through her brain and the air around her; it shuddered reality, leaving rips and tears in its wake.

A name that should never be spoken on this planet. The name of a goddess nobody knew.

The witch drew a great gasping breath, her hearts thundering like horses across a dusty plain.

Someone had spoken her name in this time, in this place. It hadn’t been an accident.

Etan was calling her.

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