For those who were permitted entrance to the grove, they all came eventually to this clearing.

  A bowl in the earth, where nothing but thick clouds of clover grew. Here, stepping out from a hidden pathway, the heart of the Goddess’s forest up the mossy walls, where Kate used to view the supplicants for the first time. She looked them in the eyes, and they looked back at the Goddess; most fell to their knees, but others moved instinctively, hands raised in either fear or longing. They came alone, carrying packs and supplies and the weight of abandoning their lives for the chance at renewal. Stupid that she’d never thought to ask where they went afterwards.

  Kate stepped off the dewdrop, which continued up the walls and deeper into the forest. She’d intended to continue straight to the spring— there were no good memories here to linger for— but the clearing wasn’t as it should have been.

  Instead of pristine greenery, there was a carriage lying on its side, crashed into the walls of the bowl. Dirt and moss had been thrown wild with the crash. Broken pieces of wood y scattered about where the horse had broken free of the carriage ties, leaving behind long scraping ditches of mud in the clover.

  Upon inspection, the carriage was decadent. The paint was new, and richly applied. Not the spare stripes of accents that were most common. Someone had spent time and money to keep this carriage in fine order. Mud had coated much of the overturned side, and wiping that away revealed fine metal work. It was so out of pce in the grove that it seemed suspicious. The only damage was done by the horse, and a small fire that had started on the right side. The fire was lucky, it would be easy to tell what had happened. Kate scraped pieces of the charcoal into a bowl and thought over her preparations.

  After her unpnned exit from life at the grove, she’d once again found herself wandering. The first months back in the real world, with its different rhythms from the grove, had been torturous. With no consideration of direction, or the oncoming winter, she went north. When it was too cold to hunt and the towns too frightening, she had gotten to the brink of starvation. There were no seasons in the grove, only eternal summertime bounty. Food was never scarce. Cold was never so intense.

  Real winter had trapped her under an abandoned woodshed for two weeks, snow piled high outside and nowhere warmer to go. When fear, real mortal fear, had set in, Kate had nearly crumpled under the weight. Surviving that winter had felt like a triumph, but time had made it more obvious how close she’d been to a pointless death, forgotten by the whole world. Maybe the ignorance was what had let her do it.

  In that woodshed, she’d found fire. Fire that took her own will as fuel and burned so much brighter for it. That she could burn on the very essence that was in the air and her heart alike. Magic, will, soul, all of it could burn, and when she was already so heartbroken by her ejection from the Goddess’s arm’s, what difference did it make what she destroyed?

  The goddess had worked a green and wild magic, and she had used Kate’s hands to do it. Her body knew how to channel the magic that underpinned everything, even if her mind had never been taught. Magic was a growing thing, it gathered on itself until the sheer weight of it spilled out into the world. There had to be some that had carried with her, an enterprising seedling waiting for Kate to nudge it into bloom. It took thirteen days. At first, it kept slipping away. Magic was like a shape in the dark, look too close and it disappeared. It took a half diffused focus to keep it in sight. Once found, it now had to grow. Maybe, she thought, it would burn on her memories, and she wouldn’t know what she’d lost. She’d take some immutable essence of her being, whittle it away into action, and drive the sharp end into the ice that trapped her there. She fed it pieces of herself. And it worked! Once she had the trick, everything was so much easier, a dam broken.

  What worked best, what burned the hottest, was the magic that the Goddess had put there. The stuff that kept her body from turning its back on her and choosing instead to be a boy. The magic that had made her, more than just in her mind, a girl. Kate could die, frozen but a girl, or live, and be one step closer back to boyhood. She wanted so badly to be noble, to refuse to give that up. Let the cold win out, and let them find her corpse. Hers. Nobility died before she did.

  Later, she learned other ways to amass magic, healthy ways that were good for her and the world alike. She didn’t have them then. With cracked and blue fingers she beat her fists against the frozen dirt. Screamed and begged for another way. There wasn’t one, not that she could have ever discovered, so desperate. The ground did not yield, so she did. The skin on her hands bruised and broke, and instead of blood, sparks flew from her veins. The more beaten open her hands, the more sparks— the more heat. It crawled its way back up the vessels in her arm, the fmes licking at her heart. She’d needed heat, so she'd made herself the fuel.

  The snow boiled into steam when it touched her. She swept ice aside with a wave of her hand. Even when spring came, and the fire died inside her, there was something left. An ember, a reminder that she had given up who she wanted to be twice in a row. From then on, it was a reminder that she would do anything to survive. Some nights it was a badge of honor; others it was a shackle.

  Fire was always her nature, after that season. It poured from her, often with little control. It had to be let out, or after too long, she would explode. When she traveled, it was easiest to sneak into smithies at night and pour her heat into metal, leaving pools of molten steel in her wake. Better that than a wildfire.

  So, sitting in the clover, she returned to that core of herself. Today it was neither curse nor boon, it was simply another fact, a tool Kate could use. She added oil and wood chips to her bowl of ashes, and let it light.

  Fire danced from the bowl. Flew into the air like a swarm of locusts. It settled a moment on the carriage, taking its form, then sprung upright. A bzing afterimage of the carriage in its st moments. Her breath slow and controlled, Kate spun back the fire. The fming carriage left the clearing, a reverse of the course that ended here.

  Exhale, and watch it py out. She could see its memory from the first moment the fire was lit.

  It had already been burning when it entered the clearing. A ntern that had been hung near the driver was hit by an arrow and burst open, the mp oil inside igniting the box. Five more arrows stuck in the wood, and one hit the driver, who doubled over with pain, and was too distracted to see what happened next. A horse and rider lept from the woods and opened the door to the cab, pulling out a child. The rider was gone before the driver had come back to his senses. The horse, running blindly, afraid of the fire, had barrelled into the bowl. To avoid the walls, it flipped and ran hard to the left, sending the carriage tumbling to the ground. The driver had fallen right where Kate was sitting. In the fmes, it was too hard to make out any features. The doors of the carriage were open, and whoever had been inside was long gone by the time they reached the grove. The carriage jerked when the horse escaped, afraid of the crash and the fmes. Then, someone had come, doused the fmes and dragged the driver deeper into the goddess’s woods.

  None of this was supposed to be possible. This was a hidden pce, a haven. No one wound up there by accident. No carriage should have been within miles of this forest. If the driver was a supplicant, she would not have found a path wide enough to drive. Could not have brought another with her. She should have been safe too, no one who would dare injure a supplicant would ever find them.

  Muddying her bowl with water ended the illusion. The fmes died away. Another examination of the carriage confirmed that the arrows were missing. Most of the valuables from within had been taken as well. This was another discrepancy. Nothing that the outsiders brought with them was taken past this point. The goddess would not have allowed it.

  Behind Kate's back, there was a susurration in the brush. An inhation of magic. Too close. She'd been distracted by her recreation.

  “Release everything you carry, do not bring your burdens into my forest,” said a voice at the same time Kate relived the memory, soundlessly speaking the words, just as she remembered them. “And I may call you supplicant, worthy of the blessings.”