The Trail

She woke up hungry.

That was the first thought. Before the signal, before the clearing, before the pale stone and the question she'd left unanswered. Hunger. Her stomach had opinions about the last few days and it was making them known.

The fire was dead. The salt meat was in her pack and she ate a strip of it slowly, chewing until it dissolved, trying to make it last. Two strips left after this one. She did the math without wanting to. Two strips, no fruit, no bread, and a forest full of plants she'd never seen. She'd need to figure out what was safe to eat today or start walking back tomorrow. And walking back meant three days minimum with nothing.

She stood up and her right hand reminded her it existed. The flap of skin had stuck to the bandage again overnight and pulling it free made her eyes water. She unwrapped it, looked at it in the early light. The flesh underneath was pink and tight and hot to the touch. That was… probably bad. She rewrapped it with the same cloth because there was no other cloth, and she tried to make a fist and couldn't, and she stopped trying.

The clearing looked different in daylight. The dark soil was darker than she'd thought, almost wet-looking, and the pale stone at the center threw the morning light back in a way that made it hard to look at directly. The circle of trees around the perimeter stood perfectly still. No wind here. The ferns and undergrowth that choked the forest floor everywhere else stopped dead at the tree line.

She put her hand on the stone again. Left hand.

The signal was still there. Still open. She'd half expected it to close overnight, to go back to the muffled version she'd been living with. It hadn't. The paths were still visible, the depth still distinct, and Mother was still everywhere in this place. If anything, it was clearer in the morning. She could feel the trail heading east, deeper, past where she could follow.

Not yet.

She pulled her hand away. Drank some water. Thought about what to do next.

The practical answer was food. She couldn't follow Mother on an empty stomach and a bad hand and two strips of salt meat. If she was going further east she needed to eat, and that meant figuring out what in this forest wouldn't kill her.

She walked the perimeter of the clearing, staying inside the tree line, looking at what grew there. The ferns were no help. Back in Donath she'd eaten fiddleheads in the spring, but these ferns were different. Wrong color, wrong shape, too large. She didn't trust them. The vine with the hand-shaped leaves had small dark berries clustered at the base of each stem. She picked one and smelled it. Nothing. She squeezed it between her fingers and the juice was deep purple. She touched it to her tongue. Bitter, sharp, immediate. She spit it out and wiped her mouth.

Keep looking.

Further along the perimeter she found something more promising. A low-growing plant with broad leaves and a thick stem, growing in clusters where the dark soil met the forest floor. It looked ordinary. Unremarkable. And at the base of each stem, half-buried in the soil, a tuber. Pale, firm, about the size of her fist. She pulled one up and broke it open. The inside was white, dense, starchy. It smelled faintly sweet. She knew she was guessing. She also knew she didn't have much choice.

She ate a small piece and waited.

Nothing happened. Her stomach didn't cramp, her mouth didn't burn, her vision stayed clear. She waited longer. Still nothing. She ate the rest of the tuber slowly, then pulled two more and put them in her pack. Food for now. If she woke up sick tomorrow she'd know.

That left the hand.

She unwrapped it again and held it over the stream that ran along the eastern edge of the clearing. The cold water burned against the raw skin and she held it there anyway, letting it clean out whatever had gotten into it overnight. The flap was going to be a problem. It needed to be held down flat against the wound so the skin could knit, and she had nothing to hold it with except cloth that was already dirty. She tore a fresh strip from the bottom of her undershirt, the last one, and wrapped it tight, pressing the flap down, tying it off with her teeth and her left hand. It was clumsy and it hurt and it would have to do.

She went east.

The forest thickened again past the clearing, but something was different. The signal was still open, still clear, and she could feel Mother's trail ahead of her, pulling. She followed it without trying. Her feet found the gaps between roots, the flat stones in the stream crossings, the natural paths through the undergrowth. The signal knew where to go and she went with it.

The ground rose. Slowly at first, then steeply enough that she was climbing with her left hand, grabbing roots and stone edges, hauling herself up. Her right hand hung at her side. Useless. She climbed with one hand and her legs and her teeth when she needed to grip something while she found her footing.

An hour. Maybe two. The forest thinned as the ground rose, the massive ferns giving way to shorter, harder growth. The trees were smaller here, twisted, growing at angles from the rocky slope. The soil was thinner. She could feel stone underneath.

And then the trees stopped.

She came out onto bare rock. A ridge, running north to south, dropping away on the far side into a valley she couldn't see the bottom of. The wind hit her for the first time in days and she stood there and let it. It was cold and it smelled clean and she realized she'd been breathing forest air for so long she'd forgotten what open sky felt like.

She stood on the ridge and listened. On the approach, through the forest, Mother's trail had been a single thread heading east. Here, on bare rock with the wind pulling at her clothes, the signal opened up in all directions. She could feel the relay stone behind her, still gathering, still concentrating. She could feel the Shake damage running through the top. And east, past the valley, past whatever was on the other side, she could feel something new.

Another gathering point. Another relay. Further east, much further, but unmistakable. The signal collected there and concentrated before continuing on, and the shape of it was the same as the stone in the clearing. Same function. Same design.

There were more of them.

She stood on the ridge and felt the signal spread out beneath her. The relay stones weren't rare. They seemed to form a system. Spaced deliberately, each one gathering and concentrating and passing the signal east to the next. Someone had placed them. Or they'd been there since the beginning. Either way, they were here and they had a purpose.

Mother's trail went straight toward the next one.

Kai looked east. The valley was deep and green, full of the same primordial forest she'd been walking through. On the far side, more ridges, rising higher. How far to the next relay? A day? Two? She had two strips of salt meat and some tubers she wasn't sure about and one working hand and no map and no one who knew where she was.

She thought about Donath. About Mary watering the cutting. About Ace at the shipyard, looking up every time someone came through the gate, checking to see if it was her. About Tomin and the game board and "your mother could read six." She thought about all of it and held it and then she put it down.

She started down into the valley.