The days became colder and we became less active. We wore warmer clothes. Animals skins that HoPa weaved together. It was even too cold for LoPa to play his lute. We stayed inside for much of those days, warming by the foreign stove. Mother oiled her sword and it shined from the glow of the stove.

  I cuddled beside her, “Tell me a story?”

  “What kind of story?” She kept oiling her sword.

  “A new one.”

  “New to me or new to you?”

  I thought hard about this and LoPa laughed at the expression I made.

  “What?” I said.

  LoPa smiled, “What’re you thinking about?”

  “What new story I want to hear.”

  LoPa crawled over to me, rabbit pelts hanging from him, “Maybe I can help.”

  I shook my head, “Mother’s going to say it.”

  LoPa laughed and dropped to his side next to me. He said, “Want to hear one about a dragon?!” At the word dragon, he grabbed me and pulled me onto him, then rolled back and forth growling. I laughed in his arms but tried to free myself. “The only way to escape is to kill me!” He pulled me tighter.

  “I need a sword! I need a sword!”

  Mother laughed, “Do you want to hear about your grandmother?”

  LoPa stopped rolling but I kept laughing, “Yes.”

  Mother smiled, go find your brothers and I’ll tell all of you about her.

  I got up and ran outside, hearing mother and LoPa whisper behind me. HoPa was teaching Akmuo and Medis how to build a trap to catch rabbits or squirrels or birds. There was a snare and a deadfall trap beside them. Akmuo listened attentively but Medis yawned and stared into the grey sky.

  “Mother’s going to tell us about grandmother!”

  HoPa stopped in the middle of what he was saying. His expression became dark and he looked down, his mouth a flat line. My excitement drained from me but my brothers weren’t looking at HoPa. They cheered and ran towards me. Their smiles brought mine back and we all went inside.

  Mother and LoPa were still whispering when we came in, but I only heard mother say, “No,” her voice filling the home like a thunderclap.

  She smiled at us. LoPa did too, but then got up and walked towards the door. HoPa had just opened it and the two of them whispered words I couldn’t hear for a while before sitting down. Didn’t worry about it because mother was already talking.

  “I wish you could have met my mother. She died too soon. So did my fathers. My mother was thought to be barren, and when I was finally born, I nearly killed her. Some of the clan said I had cursed them all, that it was ill-fated to have a child—even one wished for—after the gods had denied it so long. That my birth was a bad omen for the clan and for my parents. They said that’s why I grew up strange. Why I wandered the forest alone. Why I met a wolf.

  “My mother had three more children after me, and their fates were laid at my feet as well.

  “I was very young when my fathers died so I don’t remember them. But they died when another clan came here to conquer us and make us slaves. They killed our First Mother.”

  We gasped, and my heart hammered in my chest. Medis and Akmuo’s hands found each other. I could see that they squeezed hard.

  Mother nodded, “They killed my mother’s twin, too.” She smiled sadly and looked at my brothers, “She was like the two of you. She and her brother shared a face.

  “It was my mother who led our warriors against the invading clan. The invading clan, the Dragon Clan, had many more warriors than us. They even had men carrying spears like warriors. They came by surprise in the night and began killing our clan’s people. They wanted MotherTree for themselves. Many clans and tribes want MotherTree. The forest has been peaceful for a long time, but it was a place of violence before you were all born.

  “My mother gathered the remaining warriors and, in the darkness, began fighting back. Howling. She always howled. She believed we drew power from the gods we claimed. She was a wolf. We are all wolves. And so my mother fought like a wolf and so did her warriors. They saved many of the men and children, but not all. That’s when my father’s died. But my brothers and sisters and I survived, because our mother fought like a demon that night. Like a god. She killed hundreds of the Dragon Clan before the suns lit up the sky again. The village was full of Deathwalkers.

  “I was just a bit older than you, Luna. I only know the battle from stories. But my mother’s bravery and ferocity saved us all, and the clan named her First Mother.”

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  Our jaws dropped, almost audibly.

  Mother laughed, “That’s right. Your grandmother was the First Mother before the current one. Where this First Mother has had a long period of peace, my mother’s was full of war. The first thing she did, before the Deathwalkers were even finished taking the dead, was to take our war to the Dragon Clan.

  “It’s said that she killed them all. Every single one. Women and men. The children were brought back to MotherTree and adopted by the clan. That’s why some of us have red hair now. The Dragon Clan warriors always had red hair. The rest had black hair, like us. They believed their hair was a sign that they held the heart of a warrior. They believed that the hearts of their warriors never died but became reborn in new bodies. When we took them here, my mother didn’t allow any of the red headed girls to grow up to be warriors. She believed that they’d remember their dead clan and want revenge.

  “My mother was a great warrior. She may have been the greatest warrior the forest that is the world has ever known. She was an artist with her spear. The way LoPa sings and plays his lute—that’s how your grandmother was with her spear. She was mesmerizing, enchanting. It was magic, the way she moved.

  “She trained every warrior of the clan personally. She led our many battles herself and thousands died at the end of her blade. I watched her cut through the heads of three warriors in one single swing of her spear.”

  Mother smiled into the distance and leaned back. “I can hear her voice still. It was harsh and caustic. When she shouted it was like rubbing rocks together. But it comforted me. To know that my mother was a warrior like no other. There were many great warriors of the forest in those days. Each one came to the MotherTree to challenge her in single combat.

  “Each one died. They called her the Blade of God.” Mother laughed quietly and briefly to herself.

  “She taught me to be a warrior. She told me that one day I would kill a god.” She stared off for a moment and continued quietly. “I never wanted to kill a god. I still don’t. But I believe one day I will. I must.”

  My mother smiled and turned back to us, banishing her mother’s prophecy. “My mother had no fear. She once killed a boar god and fed its flesh to the clan. She howled as we ate and performed a dance, stomping her feet, banging the boar god’s bones together, and howling.

  “This started the war between us and the Boar Clan. My first battle.” She sighed and shook her head. “She saved me, my mother. She saved us all. She always did. We fought like wolves, like demons. We were gods. Drenched in the blood of our enemies and friends, we fought through the night and captured the Boar Clan’s First Mother. They promised peace and gave us their children, who we integrated into our clan.

  “During my mother’s time as First Mother, the Wolf Clan became a name of terror. Our village swelled with children from other clans to replace the many warriors who died in battle.

  “She taught me how to fight and how to lead. She taught me that life belonged to us, if only we fought for it. We could have anything. We could be anyone. We could do anything, even kill the gods. Even make anyone a member of our clan.” She turned to LoPa with a smile on her face but LoPa’s smile was one of sorrow.

  “My mother died fighting. She was young. Too young to die. But as I held her bleeding body, she told me that she was glad to die fighting. Glad to die on top of her dead enemy. And that’s how it happened.

  “It was in single combat against a warrior from the Empire of Bauruk. One of the Dragonlords. He came with an enormous axe. The Dragonlord was nearly as big as HoPa but moved quick like LoPa. His muscles rippled and strained as he fought your grandmother. She was too fast for him, but he was too strong, and my mother was getting older. Two hundred forty and maybe a few more. Those were the number of seasons she’d seen by the time she fought that Dragonlord. She was worn by war. Tired from the constant fighting. They fought from dawn to twilight. Sweating and bleeding, gasping for breath, their battle became sloppier and sloppier. Their attacks wilder.

  “My mother slipped in mud as the Dragonlord’s axe came down into her shoulder. It was the blow that killed her. But even as the axe was driving into her, she stabbed her spear through the man’s face.”

  Mother stopped for a moment. Her eyes were wet, glistening in the glow of the fire. She nodded as if to a question unasked.

  Her voice was hoarse when she spoke, but she smiled. “I loved her. I miss her. She taught me how to live. Not only how to fight. But how to be human. She lived a beautiful life. Died a beautiful Death.”

  I threw my arms round her and she hugged me back, gripping me tight. My brothers wrapped their arms round us too. But mother wasn’t sad. She was happy. She had never shared stories of her mother with us before, and it was as if the dam was broken.

  “We are who we are,” she said. “My mother was a warrior. A goddess.”

  The rest of the night, she told more stories of her mother. Specific ones. Stories of one battle or another, of one challenger or another. For the rest of her life, she would tell stories of her mother. Not only of her as a warrior, but also as a mother. Those quiet moments so familiar to me. How my mother slept in her mother’s embrace. How her mother buried all her sons and daughter, but for my mother. All the love they shared without speaking, never realizing that it would all end.

  I loved those stories back then. I lived for them. I held them dear to me for a long time. But I came to understand as an adult that my grandmother was a maniac who never saw a fight she didn’t want to be in the middle of. She was just as likely to kill you as hug you. The entire clan was afraid of her, though they lived in the shadow of her glory. HoPa and LoPa were afraid of how my mother was so drawn to the legacy of her mother. I never heard them say anything against my grandmother, but I didn’t have to. They feared her, even in Death. Even LoPa who had never met her. He knew the story of her battle with the Dragonlord. He sang it for my mother when she asked. It’s a Bauruken song, so it’s not flattering to my grandmother, but he rewrote it for my mother. She loved both versions. Whether my grandmother was the villain or the hero, my mother didn’t care. In both versions she fought like a god, like a demon. Like a wolf.

  The rest of the surrounding clans were terrified of her, and it’s only through the First Mother who replaced her that we found peace. She released many of the abducted children back to their clans. The children of the Dragon Clan had nowhere to go, so they remained. They were never told of their original clan. Of their parents and how they died.

  My mother hated First Mother for all of this. Maybe more than anything else. More than the isolation or the way she forced us to be separate from the rest of the clan. My mother hated her because she was a woman of peace. One willing to admit defeat. One who undid the glory of her own mother.

  Even so, I hold those stories of my grandmother like treasures. My mother was so happy when she spoke of her own mother. Even now, I see her smiling as she stares into the distance, remembering how my grandmother fought so beautifully.