They trained where the earth rose and folded like the back of a sleeping beast. Roots braided across the ground in ridges and knots, slick with a skin of moss. Water had pooled in shallow basins between them. Pale mushrooms ringed the puddles and shed a faint dust when brushed. Every step threatened a twisted ankle. It was the perfect place to learn not to fall.
Lyanna and Dacey moved within a ring that Maple had marked with ash. The ring held roots at four heights, so no stride matched the last. Dacey tested each crossing with the toe of her boot, then came on with her practice mace set low. Lyanna settled with knees bent and shoulders loose. She closed her left eye. The glade changed. Green outlines crawled over Dacey's arms and boots, a breath ahead of the present. The ghost swung right. Lyanna waited a heartbeat, slid left along a wet ridge, and felt the real blow skim her sleeve.
Howland kept his place on the rim. He did not pelt her without thought. He chose a rhythm, three slow and one quick, and let the pebbles fly from his fingers with a snap. The first kissed her bracer. The second missed by an inch and ticked a root. The third struck the ground near her heel and sent up a spray. The quick one hummed for her ear. She dipped her head and felt it pass like a gnat. "Breathe," he said. "Read. Then move."
Lyanna broke her movement into beats. Stillness to see. A single glide to answer. A new blink to see again. The future wavered if she rushed, so she did not. She let winter's steadiness fill her calves and feet. When Dacey feinted high, the green ghost showed a low sweep coming next. Lyanna lifted her weight just enough to clear a snarled root, then settled into it and let the sweep whisper under her knee.
They grew faster as the ring taught their feet. Dacey learned to ride the root-lines the way a skiff rides a current. She used the high ridges to add bite to each swing. Lyanna learned which knots would hold and which would snap. She touched the ground with her free hand to keep balance and felt the slick grain of bark under her palm. When the outline faltered, she blinked her left eye open, took a clean look at the world, and closed it again to bring the green back.
By the time Maple called halt, both women were wet to the knees and streaked with leaves and mud. Lyanna's forearms shook and her breath smoked in the cool air. Thistle dipped his head once from his crooked seat above them. For him, that was a victory song.
They washed in a creek where the water came clear and cold out of the hill. Mud streaks lifted from calves and palms. Dacey laughed when a trout nosed her wrist, then flicked away like quicksilver. By the time they reached the grove, braziers were lit and the glade smelled of smoke, leaf-tea, and honeyed roots.
The singers had set low tables of woven boughs and bark. Platters held roasted river fish split and stuffed with fern tips. There were bowls of acorn mash beaten smooth with berry pulp, and thin cakes crisped on hot stones. A hollow log thumped a steady beat while two elders played bone flutes. The sound threaded the trees and made a young eagle resting in the branches above fluff its pinfeathers and settle again.
Maple guided them to places near the front, pride bright on her face. "For the humans who learn," she said, and then in the Old Tongue sent a stream of words toward the elders. Heads bent. Palms lifted. Lyanna felt the hush like a hand on the back of her neck. A breeze turned the leaves overhead and the braziers licked higher for a breath, as if the grove itself approved.
They ate, speaking in a braid of tongues. Howland told of a ford he had crossed as a boy, green with sedge and hidden sinks that swallowed boots to the knee. He shaped the tale for the singers, using their musical words while Maple smiled at his care. The little brown lizard that rode his shoulder slid down to the warmed stones and lay flat as a coin, eyes half closed. Howland's gaze went soft as he split his mind, one thought for the talk and one for the slow, sun-drunk calm of the reptile. "He likes the heat," he said, amused. "Says the stone is cozy."
Dacey thumped her cup and claimed first boast. She spoke of the hearth ring with pride, detailing how she build it hauling the biggest stones on the island. Then she teased Maple for not putting her back into the labor, earning a few laughs from the audience.
A raccoon slipped from the brush on silent feet and clambered into her lap. It put a smooth pebble in her palm like a tribute. Dacey scratched its cheek and went pink with pleasure. "My thief has a conscience," she said. Maple muttered that the creature only wanted more of the fish skin, then fed it anyway.
When they asked of greenvision, Lyanna kept heq2qqr voice even. She spoke of the stutter-step, of closing her left eye to call the green outline, of opening it when the world had to be seen plain. "I can hold it better when I am still," she said. "If I rush, it blurs. If I breathe, it sharpens." Thistle listened from his crooked seat and tapped one twig-finger against the trunk. Maple translated the click and whispered. "He says water must settle before it reflects the sky."
Winter pressed her soft muzzle to Lyanna's shoulder and breathed her scent of sweat and smoke. For a heartbeat Lyanna rode the edge of the bond and let the mare's senses wash in. The feast brightened. Each footfall thudded through the earth like drums. Fish oil and fern steam rose in clean threads. She eased back and the world found its human scale again. Across the fire, Howland raised a brow. He had noticed the slip and return. She nodded once to show it was chosen, not accident.
Talk turned to small victories. Maple praised Lyanna for learning to hold two ways of seeing in one breath. She praised Dacey for keeping the raccoon out of the cookfire all week. She praised Howland for finding the right reed to make a whistle that called ducks to the bank. Laughter passed around the circle like a skin of sweet sap.
Above them the leaves rustled in a wind that did not touch the ground. Ash dust drifted down like pale snow. Grandmother's great crown loomed beyond the near trunks, a deeper red against the night. The sound that lived in her boughs rose and fell with the drum until both seemed part of the same old heartbeat. For a while there was no battles to fight, no letters or lords, only food and song and the press of living things at ease with one another.
When the music fell quiet and the last plates were cleared, the grove thinned to pockets of talk. Fireflies rose from the fern beds and drifted like slow sparks. Maple tugged at Lyanna's sleeve and tipped her chin toward a side path where the roots lay low and the moss grew deep.
They walked until the voices were a murmur. Here the faces in the trunks watched with a kindly patience. Maple sat on a swell of root and pulled her knees to her chest. In the dim she looked very small, all leaf hair and thin limbs.
"I will choose soon," she said. The words came in careful Common. "Two springs, three. Not long. Then I must root."
Lyanna eased down beside her. "Is there a place for you here?"
Maple shook her head. Leaves whispered against her cheeks. "We are many. The island is not. Every ring of soil is mapped in song. Some are promised already. Some are too close to elders and would choke. Some are poor and will starve a young one. I am late-born for a crowded grove."
Lyanna felt the truth land in her chest like a stone in a pool. The ripples reached every face around them. "Could you go north?" she asked. "There are godswoods in half the keeps. Many hearts still stand."
Maple's mouth bent. "Men own those stone rings. Some are kind and keep the old ways. Some cut and burn. Outside the island our people are hunted or chopped. If I root where men hate us, they will kill me before my bark hardens." She pulled at a strip of moss and let it fall. "I do not wish to die for a lord's prayer."
Silence held while the grove breathed. Somewhere behind them Dacey laughed at a small joke. Winter stamped once and settled.
Lyanna set her hand over Maple's. It was cool as a leaf dipped in a stream. "Then I will find you ground that is safe. Not only you. Any singer who needs it. I will carry that work with me when I leave this shore."
Maple's eyes lifted for a moment, then fell again. In the faint light they looked almost gold. "You are a human," she said. "Men promise. Then they age. Then they forget."
"I remember the pact," Lyanna said. The old words sat clean on her tongue. "Blood for soil. Oath for peace. Your mothers kept it when mine did not. I will not forget."
Above them the high boughs stirred. A low chord moved through the trunks, not quite wind, not quite song. Grandmother was listening. A single brown leaf spiraled down and landed on Lyanna's knee. Maple took in a quick breath, a gasp of shock.
Howland and Dacey found them then, following the faint path marks Maple had set near the ground. Howland took in the set of Maple's mouth and said nothing. Dacey crouched and balanced her forearms on her knees. "What is needed?" she asked, plain as always.
"Land," Maple said. "Room to root."
Dacey looked at Lyanna. "Then we will find it. The north has room. If lords object, they can try me." The edge in her smile was very sharp.
Howland rubbed his thumb over a green stain on his palm. "There are old rings near bog and mere that men avoid. The water keeps them honest. Some elders might trade song for watch."
He lifted his gaze to Maple. "If you choose to go, I will walk the first miles with you."
Maple's shoulders eased. "Not yet," she said. "But soon."
Lyanna rose and set her palm to the nearest face. The grain under her skin felt warm. "Hear me," she said in a voice that was not quite a whisper. "If the old way is to live, it will need friends with swords as well as songs. I will be both."
The face did not change, but the moss along the root brightened, as if a cloud had moved from the moon. Maple slid her small hand into Lyanna's and squeezed once.
"Then it is a vow," Maple said.
"It is a vow," Lyanna answered.