I couldn’t sleep. Akmuo and Medis struggled to sleep but eventually fell into their dreams. I hoped they were of a kinder world. One without cruelty. One where the whole clan loved us, and we spent long days in the Meadow with everyone else, but also with our fathers and mother.

  I had cried all the liquid I had in me. My throat was tight and my cheeks were raw from rubbing away my salty tears. I got up and crept away from them, out into the night.

  It was cold, but I didn’t care. Winter was coming, and with it the trees would turn to looming skeletons and everything would turn brown and dead. But the moons revealed the autumnal hues tumbling from tree to tree. All the trees that circled our village.

  But MotherTree’s leaves never fell. I stared at Her in the distance. No leaves were lost.

  I looked away from the village. Didn’t want to be reminded of what happened to us there. No one had ever tried to hurt me before. I shuddered and shivered but not from the cold. I tried to listen to the sounds of the night, but it became quieter and quieter the closer we came to winter. No insects chirping and few birds singing. Even the squirrels and other animals hid away.

  Hurt and afraid and alone, I thought of my mother as a girl and headed straight for the forest. The trees grew high and dark. The breeze rustled their leaves but so many had fallen. It turned their branches into arms with hundreds of claws. The shadows they cast from the moons were long and dark and sharp.

  I came to their edge and stood there a long time. Just standing. I couldn’t see into the forest, but I wasn’t afraid of the darkness that would close round me. It was like I was waiting. Waiting for the song to come to me.

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  So angry and hurt, I wanted it to reach out to me. To spread its love over me. For the moon or something to call out and say my name, embrace me.

  Then, in the distance: howling. It was faint, but it rang in my ears.

  I pulled in a long breath and held it, then jumped into the darkness of the forest, and let out my breath.

  Nothing was different, but an enormous barrier had been torn down in that single moment.

  The forest was no longer the edge of my world, closing me in, but a new world to explore.

  Despite this discovery, I didn’t venture wide or explore too much. Afraid of getting lost.

  I walked straight ahead, trailing my hands at my sides. My fingertips grazing the hard, cold bark of the trees. Each tree felt different, though they were all just trees. Their bark was like—look at your thumb. No, the other side. See all those lines cycling? Circles inside of circles or maybe just a huge spiral on a small surface. Trees are like that too. When you look at a tree, it looks like the bark forms ridges that run straight up and down, but it’s more complex than that. It’s something I never would have understood had I not jumped into the darkness of the forest and let myself be slightly blind to the paths I was walking. I felt them. Their bark was like an identifying mark. A way for me to come to know who they are and how they’ve lived so long in the forest.

  My heart was racing with possibility and my eyes strained to see everything I could. I kept walking till I came to a bubbling little stream. Then I turned and walked straight back to my home without stopping or turning back.

  I had conquered something. Something hard to name but I knew it was important. Knew that few had done what I just did. Knew that those awful girls would never even dare to walk into the forest alone at night.

  Akmuo sucked his thumb and Medis’ lips kept forming shapes without making a sound.

  I burrowed into their entwined bodies and shook with excitement.

  Then I woke with no memory of falling asleep or dreaming.