A warm breeze lifted her hair and carried voices from nearby. Easy chatter and laughter, the kind never heard at the lodge. The hairs stood up along Twelve’s arms and her heart began to pound.

“Starling?” a woman’s voice called through the trees.

Twelve stood, the voice a knife twisting in her gut. When she was awake, she could barely remember her ma’s voice. Here it was still vivid though.

The woman retreated and a man’s deeper tones mingled with hers, their words almost discernible. A girl’s laugh burbled.

The sounds were a bittersweet agony that Twelve couldn’t resist. Slowly, almost against her will, she walked toward them. Her eyes drank in the details around her greedily. Interspersed with the grass were wildflowers: yellow suncups and tiny pink babwinkles. Poppy had once made chains of them for her.

Poppy.

Her pace quickened and she broke unexpectedly into sunlight. A man and a woman sat together on a bright hand-woven blanket while two small girls played nearby.

None of them saw her.

The man was powerfully built, his beard thick and dark, his eyes a stormy gray. The woman next to him was tall and solid. Everything about her was firm and capable, except her hair, which was almost ethereal: a gleaming blue-black cloud floating around her strong-featured face. Her quick, clever fingers wove dried grass into a basket while the man lovingly sharpened a pair of axe blades.

Twelve drank the pair in hungrily, stepping so close that she could have reached out and touched them.

“Well, what should we do, then?” the woman said, glancing toward the children and lowering her voice. “If we don’t sell the wheat crop, then we won’t have enough to see us through winter.”

“I know,” the man said heavily, “but there’s trouble all across Ember and the safe paths aren’t safe anymore. The forest clan is raging over burned home-trees; their tree whisperers say the fires were started on purpose. Chief Torrent has withdrawn all her floating villages to the riverlands. The mountain gliders haven’t been seen beyond their own lands and the desert folk have pulled right back into the Scour’s sandstorm. Everyone’s uneasy about what might be . . . beneath us.” He glanced down at the ground and his face darkened, a thundercloud crossing the sky.

“If we can’t use the safe path, travel up the Embrace or through the forest, then we’re cut off,” the woman said, biting her lip. Birds trilled and swooped, chasing insects across the clearing as she thought. “We’ll have to sell to Rifkin,” she said a moment later. “He won’t give us a fair price, but he’ll be the one taking the risk, not you.”

“Rifkin?” the man snorted, his nostrils flaring with temper. “We won’t get half of what it’s worth!”