“Are you hurt?” Iseult asked.

Owl nodded, a stiff movement, before craning her neck toward her arms and wrists.

Iseult winced. “I know. The bindings hurt me too.” At first, it had felt like needles. Then wasps. Then fire. Until eventually she had lost all feeling in her left arm. Her right arm would soon follow. “You should try to sleep, Owl. If you can. I won’t let anything happen to you.”

Owl did not look impressed by this. Worse, white was once more spreading across her Threads. The same dangerous panic, spreading too fast.

But Iseult couldn’t do what she’d done before to calm the child. She could not give Owl a stone to focus on, an anchor to ground her in this world. It was a tactic she’d learned from Evrane of all people, and a move Iseult had first tried beside a bridge north of Tirla, beneath a moon not so different from the one outside.

Right now, all Iseult had were her words. They would have to be enough.

“Long ago,” she said softly, invoking the first words of every Nomatsi story, “when the gods walked among us…”

There was a goddess named Owl. She was Moon Mother’s youngest sister, and everyone knew she was Moon Mother’s favorite.

Each night, they roamed the forests together. Owl would take her animal form and patrol the trees and life within, while Moon Mother passed from tribe to tribe, village to village, checking on her people and ensuring they were safe.

Moon Mother did not know why, but she was afraid. Ever since she had guided the Nomatsis through the Sleeping Lands centuries before, fear had been building inside her—fear that something would happen to the people she loved so dearly.

Years of nightly searching, though, had turned up nothing of concern. Oh, the other gods had their problems. Wicked Cousin Weasel had a cruel streak, and Little Brother Trickster was always making trouble simply because he could. Meanwhile Middle Sister Swallow lost her temper too often, and Old Uncle of the Tides regularly forgot his duties because he always fell asleep. But Moon Mother did not worry about them. They were her Thread-family, and she trusted them as if their souls were hers.

One night, while Moon Mother and Owl were on their nightly patrols, Owl found herself in a forested valley—one she knew well, where mountain bats hunted and humans dared not tread. There she found a badger, dead for days and out of place upon the detritus floor. Instantly, Owl knew it was Trickster up to one of his games.