The wolfwitch all melted and revolting to look at and her little wolfcub, the get of some demon who could eat the flesh of a god and still live. I had heard the whispers all through my childhood. The shaman and Yurters cared little for me, but, to my surprise, it was First Mother who demanded they try for me.

  “She’s only a girl who’s known no love but that of her family and now they’re dead.”

  “But—”

  “Derli, this is not a conversation. She is of the clan and she will remain here until she dies or chooses to leave.”

  From then on, second husbands were always swarming round me. Gossiping about everything, including me and my mother.

  My mother who wheezed as if barely holding on for weeks. They kept me from her, afraid what it’d do to me to watch one more family member die. They thought LoPa and my brothers were there as well, taken by Deathwalkers. They thought I had watched it all happen and First Mother was especially worried about that.

  Have you ever heard of ogres? You might know them by a different name. Berserker, maybe. First Mother was afraid I’d become one. That I’d wake up one morning and rage through the clan, ripping everyone apart.

  It’s why she never wanted me to train with a spear or weapon of any kind, really. I wonder how things would’ve gone had she not died in the storm. Had I grown under her protection. Had I even understood then that she was trying to protect me. Trying to integrate me into clan life.

  But that’s how it is being a child who has always been other to everyone she’s ever seen. Before I even had the words for it, I saw First Mother as an enemy. Ever since that first meeting when she stared at me with such unkindness while I sat on my mother’s shoulders at the base of MotherTree. Add all the words my mother spat out about her, and I had no hopes of having a friendly relationship with First Mother.

  I see that now. But then, every time she smiled at me and stroked the hair from my face, I waited for an attack. Some sign of ill will. I waited for it, and in waiting for it, cultivated my hurt. Cultivated imagined wrongs. Every word became barbed, no matter how gently she said it.

  Had she lived longer, I think we would’ve come to understand one another finally. But time, it eats you. Dead or dreaming, it eats you.

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  She took me and my mother from the edge of the forest. Symbolically bringing us back into the clan. She waited till the Twilight Days to do it though. So for that winter, we lived in the Yurts, right underneath MotherTree.

  I wandered MotherTree in those days. They wouldn’t let me see my mother. She was still gasping and barely holding on. I was fresh from the fever that nearly took me under.

  But I wandered Her great trunk. Never touching Her. Such things were forbidden, and much as I hold little sacred, I would still never dream of touching MotherTree. What surprised me most back then was how dark it was beneath her boughs. I had never thought of it on those few times I had been at Her trunk, when Her leaves were thickest. I wondered how anything could grow beneath MotherTree. Even in winter, Her branches were thick with bloodred leaves. Her bark seemed paler too. Though the wintry winds blew harsh through the village, they seemed to dissipate at MotherTree. Too, I could often walk without the need of skins to keep me warm. They said it was because I was a demon, but I think MotherTree just makes the world warmer when you’re near Her. I was given a new perspective of the god of the forest that is the world and I found it mostly strange.

  I heard no singing from the forest, not like what I heard when the wolf came for my mother. Nor was there the overpowering presence of the gods I had seen before.

  I wonder still if that’s because we’re all born to MotherTree’s presence. Humans can grow accustomed to just about anything, even the proximity of the neverending. You see that with Arcanes. The apprentices, those little boys masturbating over the thought that they will someday touch an Angel. Eventually, they grow into men who speak with the Angels. I’ve even heard that the Angels will fuck them. That Angels can take the parts of a man or woman at will. That’s the story of Soare, yeah? The great godfuckers.

  Every day I would walk round MotherTree while I waited for them to let me see my mother. I hadn’t spoken to anyone. Not since seeing the wolf. No one seemed to be in a hurry to talk to me either, but they kept me within that inner circle. No one told me not to wander past the Flower Family homes but the Yurters would position themselves to always lead me back towards First Mother and MotherTree. If they could, they did this without touching me.

  Which was fine. I had nowhere I wanted to go. Whaaloo was gone, maybe forever. My family was gone too, maybe forever. And my mother was barely holding onto life. So I wandered the MotherTree and I listened to what they all said of me and my mother.

  They watched, pretending not to. The fathers building fires and cooking food, always glancing over shoulders or from behind laughter. I stared back at them. I watched them watch me and saw how they recoiled. How they folded beneath my gaze.

  They said I had the eyes of a demon. That they burned with dragonfire. That even my skin scalded them when they tried to touch me.

  So I let them stay away. I let them watch me. I listened. And I remembered.

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