Rosa came back down the stairs, holding out some leather straps. “Bind that split skirt close to your legs. More mobility.” Giselle noted then that Rosa had done exactly that already, and followed her example. “I don’t want anyone to stop us from leaving or try to go with us, so we’re going to sneak out of camp.”

“Probably best.” Giselle made a face. “No matter how many times we prove otherwise, the men don’t seem to believe we can take care of ourselves.”

“Which is ridiculous,” Rosa agreed, “Especially when you consider how many settler women over there on their frontier are doing just that.” The wagons were always placed at the outside of the camp, so it was a simple matter for them to slip across the strip of meadow between them and the forest, then find a game trail into the trees. It was going west, not north, but once they were under cover, Giselle made a dim little light, just enough for them to pick their way among the trunks and start going in the right direction.

What was it that Rosa was feeling, anyway? If Rosa could sense something amiss, and the sylphs could, surely she could. As Rosa led the way, she extended her senses, or tried to. Earth Masters were typically very sensitive to the “health” of their Element. That might be because their Element doesn’t move about, she considered, still unable to “pick up” whatever it was that was making Rosa so anxious. Had the sylph actually sensed the danger too, or had she reacted out of experience?

Probably experience, Giselle decided, as Rosa struck a game trail that was going in the right direction. Sylphs were not particularly known for anything but “living in the moment.” As long as a danger stayed in one place, and it was a place they could avoid, they really didn’t much care or think about it. It was only when you reminded them of it, or asked them to go there, that they reacted with distress.

“What do you think it is?” she asked, in a low voice, but not a whisper. The sense of the forest here was . . . not oppressive, but not welcoming either. Wary, that was the word she would have used. As if all the Elementals here were not quite sure of them or their intentions.

Then again, there was a farmer here. Elementals didn’t care for farmers. Farmers tamed things, and although there were “domestic” Elementals, like brownies, they were rare. Most Elementals were creatures of the wild, and like creatures of the wild, they did not approve of anything that went about taming the wilderness.

Giselle didn’t blame them, actually.

“Well,” Rosa said, after a long pause, as they picked their way down into a little gravel-strewn valley and back up again, still following the game trail. “Whatever it is, it’s affecting mostly the Earth. I gather you aren’t feeling anything?”