Her new bow wasn't working. She couldn't hit anything, and the arrows refused to fly where she wanted. After days of trying, it was time to admit that her equipment was the problem. This st attempt hadn't gotten anywhere close to the bird. The arrow had sailed fifteen feet above its head and straight into a pond. There were even ducks in the pond, but as. The arrow sank, unbloodied, to the bottom.

  Maybe it was broken during the crash, when the burning carriage had tipped over and the horse had run off. Having the horse would have been better, but a bow was still neat.

  Besides, there wasn't actually a need to hunt in the grove, not when there were so many things growing, but hunting was such a good test. Her skills needed to be sharp, as sharp as possible. When she was a master hunter, and she could defend herself against anything, the Lady would praise her, and maybe even do what she’d done to the carriage driver and speed up her transformation into a proper girl. It was hard not to be bitter, but she swallowed her jealousy. The driver had been hurt when she’d pulled her from the wreckage, and would have died if the Lady hadn’t intervened. That she’d done so like that should have been obvious.

  In the heart of the grove, she’d dragged the driver into the magic pond. The Lady appeared in a swarm of mist and lightning bugs, misty arms outstretched. The barest shape of a real woman emerging from the water. The blood seeping out of the driver’s wounds faded into the water. The translucent hands of the Lady ran over the driver’s body.

  Despite the image of rocks just a few feet deep, the pond had no real bottom. She had to kick hard to keep herself afloat. Her spshing made it impossible to hear, but the Lady leaned down and whispered something into the driver’s ear. They had a conversation, the Lady soothing and the driver muttering, his eyes unfocused.

  Then there was light. All around them, too bright to see. A whirlwind spiraled around the Lady, shaking her mist body and dizzying her lightning bug eyes. It should have made her hard to see, but instead, her shape was clearer than ever before. The forest was just trying to fill in what was already there with what it had at hand. This body, under the illusions, was more real than anything in the whole world. The Lady looked like everything that she wanted to be, and more. The warm water thrashed around them, somehow silent. The driver’s body was changed, glowing red hot like an ember, the st heat from a fire. She was reshaped, made from the messy, dying man into a better form. A grown woman, full and complete. In seconds.

  She’d been drinking the waters every day for so long now, and her body was changing at an agonizing pace, like the seasons. She’d come here too, alone and afraid and demanding to be changed, and the Lady had told her that it would take time. This was different. This was life saving.

  Afterward, she pulled the woman from the water, and id her out near the fire to dry. The callouses and hair on her body had fallen away in the pond, leaving only slender fingers. Weaving fingers, quick and agile. She chose not to look too closely at the rest of the woman’s body. It would only make her own waiting harder. Instead, she went back to the wreckage and took what she could find. A rge bnket, some ugly boy’s clothing, a wooden club. A bow and arrows.

  Night turned into morning. The woman woke up, and despaired over her transformation. She tried to ask her to pick a new name, like the women usually did, but the driver insisted on still being called “Gamel.” A bad name, even for a man. It sounded stupid. Gamel cried and sobbed for hours, and her wounds weren’t even fully healed, so there was no way to tell her to leave the grove. The Lady had saved her life, but the wounds were nowhere near healed.

  So she hunted, tried for days and days to get better with the bow. She could fire it now, that took a full day to get right. The arrows flew slow but generally where she aimed them. Not that she could hit anything. It was definitely broken, and now she had to get the arrow out of a stupid pond. At least this one had a shallow bottom.

  Wriggled out of her yers, the water was freezing cold. The rocks underfoot were slimy and hard to bance on. A beaver would have no trouble; if she was a beaver she wouldn't be cold. Maybe the Lady would make her into a beaver, provided it was a girl beaver. The water was deeper at the center, and grabbing her arrow meant sticking her whole head in. She held her hair with one hand and hovered above the water, watching the wavering image of the arrow, nose against the surface. One big inhale and—

  “Nesta! You’ll make yourself sick, jumping in ponds!” Nesta plunged her head down, arm outstretched. Whatever else Gamel said was drowned out. Her fingers brushed the fletching— she’d gotten Gamel to tell her about those— then found purchase around the shaft.

  She pulled herself back to the surface, prize in hand. Gamel was still shouting at her, saying, “It’s going to be winter soon! The nights will be too cold for random swimming! You don’t have other underclothes!”

  Nesta ignored her, and spat water at a duck. It flew away, and she waved the arrow at it. There was a fish on the end of it. A little one, smaller than her hand.

  “Miss Gamel, is this fish big enough to eat? I caught it with my bow.”

  “No,” she answered. Damn it. “It’s mostly bones. You can bury it in your garden and it’ll be good for the pnts.”

  “A funeral,” said Nesta, nodding.

  “Of sorts.” Nesta climbed out of the water while Gamel gathered her dry clothes. She was still moving very carefully, and the branch that she’d fashioned into a crutch made her walk extremely slow.

  After she’d shaken and squeezed water out of her underclothes, Nesta led them back to her camp, the arrow in both hands, held out in front of her like a sword. The fish flopped in time with her steps, which would be funny except that this was meant to be a funeral march. “And please, stop calling me ‘Miss Gamel,’ it doesn’t make any sense, on top of it all.”

  “You’re being very slow to choose a new name, so I have to call you Miss. It’s proper.”

  “Gamel is a man’s name.” Nesta nodded in agreement.

  They kept arguing while they walked. She’d been like this ever since waking up. Wouldn’t listen when Nesta told her that the Lady had healed her and transformed her, or that the Lady wouldn’t undo it, or that Nesta really didn’t have the kind of sway that Gamel seemed to think she did. She was part way through expining this yet again when something weird crossed their path.

  It was a ball of water moving around like an animal, with little rocks and pinecones stuck in it, frozen. At the very center, there was a different liquid, glowing and spinning around in fast circles, propelling the whole ball around with it. Glowing sparks, moving like gnats, clustered around the ball, but disappeared when she tried to look closer at them.

  The thing rolled past her and back into the bushes, picking up an unlucky grasshopper as it went. Following after, Nesta swerved off the deer track they were walking and into the underbrush. Burs clung to her hair and thorny bushes pulled at her wet underclothes.

  Right as it reached a bckberry thicket, a swarm of bckbirds came swooping down from above. They swiped with their cws and spped with their wings, breaking the thing into little pieces. Voles ran from their hidey-holes and rolled onto the scattered droplets, thrashing at them wildly, until it was gone completely. The trees themselves seemed eager to drink the water up, like the forest wanted nothing more than to rid itself of whatever the ball had been. The Lady really didn’t want that ball to get wherever it was going.

  Wolves slunk out of the bushes, circling her as Gamel caught up. Their eyes were locked on Nesta. Gamel pulled her closer, afraid and not understanding. The wolves were the Lady’s voice, when she was unable to speak clearly. Nesta’d spent a lot of time with them before Gamel had arrived. They kept their distance around her, since she was so upset by them. Breaking the woman's grip on her shoulder, Nesta stepped forward. Something was wrong. The wolves usually came to her only when it was time to work, and they were never so agitated. Their fur bristled and their teeth chattered and spluttered foam.

  The rgest of them, the one who Nesta always thought of as the mother, came to her and butted its head against her stomach. It growled and Nesta heard a different cry of her duty, ringing inside her head like she’d always known it. The ball was just the first part of whatever weird thing was happening. There was more on the way, and it was all dangerous. They had to protect the forest.