They spent the rest of the day climbing up into the hills. Lilia knew they entered the Woodland proper at dusk, because that’s where the formal road ended. They traveled instead on a mossy path lined in red roses and fireweed. The trees, too, changed, from elegant and well-groomed bonsa trees to tangled rattlers and stinging foreshore. The trees grew twisted and massive, like a maze constructed by a mad giant with a very perverse idea of how to channel Tira. But it was the bone trees that evoked the Woodland the most for Lilia. She saw her first in many years as they climbed through a crush of rattler trees that grew across the path, Gian’s bear chomping through what they could not clear themselves. The bone tree stood alone in a little clearing, no taller than Lilia. Its dirty yellowish trunk and spiny branches were made of literal bone, the remnants of the small mammals and birds it caught in its clawed branches. The creatures were drawn by the sweet smell of the poisonous sap it secreted. The sap killed all nearby plant life, too, hence the patch of dead ground ringing the tree. A dozen long-toothed, grinning skulls made up one branch of the tree, twisted together with amber sap and a shimmering silver webbing of organic matter. The skulls were no bigger than her palm. They were treeglider skulls.

That night, they camped in an area Gian carved out for them just off the path. The cyclone she called cleared a perfect circle of poisonous vines and biting saplings. Lilia poked around in the underbrush, looking for bladder traps or root hooks.

“How’s your leg?” Gian asked. She crushed a handful of scorch pods together and lay flat on her belly in front of their flickering light to kindle a fire.

“Fine,” Lilia said. In truth, the pain had become constant. She rested when she could but considered it a point of pride to keep up with Gian.

“Really?”

“No. But when people ask, they don’t really want an answer. They want reassurance that it’s all right not to care.”

Gian pushed herself up, wiped her hands on her tunic. “Is that so?”

“I know how people are.”

Gian unpacked sticky balls of rice and dried mangos. “You must not know a lot of people,” she said, and offered the food to Lilia.

Hunger got the better of her. Lilia ate quickly and fell asleep not long after. She woke briefly when Gian bent over her with a thick bedroll. “I brought two,” Gian said. “Get inside before the bugs eat you up.”

Lilia crawled into the bedroll and slept like death.

Gian woke her at dawn the next day, and they started out again. Gian led the way with her sword, hacking at vegetation that clogged the path.

“Tell me a story,” Gian asked as she hacked away.

“What about?”