‘Turns out she’s an elder arbomancer.’ Liska grinned as Lug pulled the exact same face she had earlier. ‘Her family created the treekeepers back home. Edda is actually her uncle.’

‘An elder?’ Lug blinked in disbelief. ‘I thought she would t-turn out to be a sapsmith. Or maybe even a vermispex like me. But an elder . . .’

‘I know.’ Liska spread her hands and shrugged. ‘And – even better – we’ll have a giant tree person on our side when we have to fight Thresher. If Elowen finishes the spell in time.’

Looking up at Nammu, Liska could see that Embla had begun the process of changing. Her back, where it pressed against the tree, seemed fuzzy and blurred. As if she had started to merge with the bark. Her eyes were firmly closed, and Elowen was still making gestures and signing lost songs that sounded like lullabies.

‘It’s hard to believe treekeepers were once p-people,’ Lug said. ‘I used to think they just were. Like the m-mountains and the sky.’

‘Maybe you should rest some more,’ said Liska. ‘It’s going to take a long time and night has just started. I’ll keep watch and feed the fire.’

Fishbone was already asleep, a deep purring noise coming from his throat. Lug snuggled back down in his blankets and was softly snoring in a few seconds.

Liska smiled over them both, then stoked the fire up and got ready for a long night of waiting.

*

At some point in the early hours, she dozed off, and was awoken with a jump by the snap of the fire.

Her hands went to her cloak hood, expecting to see Thresher leaping out at her, but there was only Fishbone, twitching as he dreamt of catching plump mice, curled next to the blanket mound that was Lug.

She turned around to see how Elowen and Embla were doing and was shocked at the change.

Blue light bathed the pair of them, and it was difficult to tell where Embla ended and the tree began. Strips of bark and tendrils of root were coming out of Nammu, wrapping and plaiting themselves into new arms and legs, swallowing up the human form of the elk herder and rebuilding it as something new.

As Liska watched, her left arm came free from the tree trunk with a slow, ripping sound. Embla gave out a low moan of pain and Elowen made a swirling gesture with her hands, building up the streaks of blue light that filled the air. More bark crawled over the fresh raw limb, coating it in new wooden skin.

It almost seemed wrong to be watching such a personal, private moment and yet Liska couldn’t tear her eyes away. This must be what happened to the treekeepers back home, she thought. All those hundreds of years ago. This was how they were born.