Now Jaren was the one to stop. “What do you mean?”

“Haven’t you heard of the Wandering Forest?” She clucked her tongue, but she was smiling again. “You silly, pretty thing. So much to learn.”

He wasn’t sure he liked being called silly or pretty, but he was curious despite himself. “What exactly is a Wandering Forest?”

“It’s what it sounds like. A wooded area that appears where it wants, when it wants. In the old days, a traveler who happened upon one would likely never find it again, no matter how many times they returned to the spot.”

“And what would they find there?”

“An ordinary forest. One that doesn’t interfere in the natural order of things. A normal forest is a neutral party in the affairs of its inhabitants. It stands impassively by while life and death play out the way they always have. But not a Wandering Forest. Or at least, not this one. It is a bloodthirsty thing, killing so many of its own creatures that it needs the Endlans’ songs to draw in more and their sacrifices to sate it.”

Jaren shuddered. “And the Endlans? What do they get in return?”

“Ask any Endlan, and they’ll tell you the Wandering Forest is there to protect them. As long as they sing, as long as they lure in prey and make their offerings, the Forest is happy enough.”

“Happy?” Jaren asked, trying to sound genuinely interested and not condescending. “I don’t understand.”

Lupin tapped him playfully on the nose. “You don’t have to. The Forest doesn’t rely on the likes of you. It lives in a kind of symbiosis with the Endlans, and as long as no one disturbs the order of things, it works out well enough.” A shadow passed over her face. “Except for the incantu, of course.”

“But who do the Endlans need protection from?”

“From us, the mainlanders. Or outsiders, as they think of us. It was outsiders who drove the Endlans there and killed all but the last remaining Wandering Forest.”

Jaren was trying desperately to follow Lupin’s logic, but it still didn’t make sense to him. “Why do the ‘outsiders’ hate the Endlans? Because of what happened to Maggie’s father?”

“Him, and others like him. Whether they go by accident or by choice, outsiders are killed by the Forest, if the poison of the lake doesn’t get to them first. But they were hated long before they went to the island, simply for being different. I imagine a few people were lured to their deaths by Endlans, and it was convenient to make them the scapegoats every time a child went missing or a husband didn’t return to his family. They are safer on Endla, just so long as the Forest doesn’t turn on them.”

Jaren considered her words for a moment. “What about this forest?” He waved vaguely at the trees around them.