“Just a little farther north,” Gian said. “That’s when the plateau breaks off into the sea.”

They followed a game trail the rest of the day, keeping the sea to their left. Lilia spotted a treeglider staring at them from the lowest branches of a rattler tree, its eyes bright. Somewhere distant, Lilia heard the familiar hulking crash of a walking tree.

They drove deeper into the plateau. Gian kept asking her if anything looked familiar. But Lilia saw no signs of her old village – no decaying cocoons or the charred remains of seedpods.

Then Lilia saw it.

A gray spur of rock jutting up from the weeds on the other side of a broad clearing. She knew that ledge. She had played there. It didn’t look nearly as tall, of course. What a foolish child she’d been, to think that she could fly if she just had enough faith.

Lilia hurried across the clearing, looking for the remains of the thorn fence. But there were no bunches of sticks or charred root balls. All she saw were the shriveled poppies, their leaves browning with the coming of low autumn.

Gian called after her. Lilia kept going.

She scrambled around the rock ledge and up the low hill, following the creek. As she came over the rise of the hill, she half expected to see the massive webbing that protected her village. She was out of breath and wheezing hard, harder than she had the whole trip.

Lilia gasped and stumbled. Caught herself on a nearby tree. Ahead was a grove of birch trees. Massive butterfly cocoons as long as Lilia’s arm hung from their branches. A few of the cocoons were as large as Lilia herself. She saw scattered seedpods on the ground, just big enough for a small child to hide in. In the distance, on the other side of the hill, she heard the thrashing of walking trees and shuddered. There was no webbing here to keep them out.

She saw no broken old trees or char in what should have been her village; nothing had been touched by fire here for hundreds of years, at least. The grove itself was not inhabited. She saw no paths. No stone structures.

This place had never been her home.

Gian came up behind her. “Is this it?”

Lilia nodded. Her chest hurt.

“I need my mahuan powder,” Lilia said, wheezing.

Gian retrieved the powder. She bent next to Lilia, mixed the powder with water, and made her drink it.

Lilia coughed and coughed. She pointed to the chalky outcrop below them, obscured now by the woods they had traveled through. “That’s where I saw… the riders. The Kai and her militia. It was… It was right here.”

“Strangled heart,” Gian said. “Don’t you see, yet?”

“Hey there!”