I think.... It changed from moment to moment, shrinking and growing, and sometimes vanishing entirely behind the trees. Well, I have to go somewhere. I’ll bet I make it back, no matter what Tarma said. And I’ll bet he doesn’t. All I have to do is head for the Tower and watch for where we were. Or find Tarma’s tracks.

She limped off, keeping her eyes alert for signs of disturbance that marked their travel. She found plenty of little snags of wool, a sure indicator that Daren had been there. And she found traces of his footsteps, and of her own.

But she found nothing identifiable as Warrl’s or Tarma’s tracks, and though she stopped frequently to reconnoiter, she saw no landmarks that looked familiar, and no sign that the Tower cliff was any nearer. She might as well have been on the other side of the world. She couldn’t even tell if she was wandering in circles. The forest seemed utterly lifeless; the steady dripping of rain on dead leaves hiding any other sounds when she stopped and listened. She couldn’t even tell where the sun was; the sky was a uniform gray everywhere. Her head throbbed, and her stomach knotted with nausea; walking was torture, but at least it kept her warmer than standing. When she stopped to try and hear past the falling rain, she was shivering in moments.

Finally, for lack of anything better to do, she took out her belt-knife, and began to mark the tree trunks. At least this should keep me from going around in circles, she thought, slogging her way through heaps of soggy leaves, shivering with the cold rain that kept trickling down the back of her neck. As long as I keep going in a straight line, I’ll come to something I recognize. I have to find the place eventually. Either I’ll run into the cliff, or I’ll run into the path, or I’ll find the stream. If I don’t do any of those things, I’ll get to the road. I have to cross either the stream, the road or the path. There’s no other way off Tower lands.

Or so she thought. Until she stopped to ease her bruises, side aching so much she wanted to cry, and rested a while leaning up against a tree trunk. And when she felt a little less tired, and started to mark the trunk, she happened to look at the other side, first.

And saw her own six-armed star chipped carefully into the bark as Tarma had taught her; the least amount of damage to the tree that she could manage and still have the mark visible. It was still so fresh that the wind hadn’t disturbed the fragments of bark still clinging to the tree.