The next morning, I woke up just as the sun was beginning to rise, rays streaming through the window next to the bed. The air was cool, but not cold, and I knew that winter was truly over. I slowly sat up, trying to ignore my aching muscles and pounding head.

  I saw that I was alone in a strange room. I stood up and stretched slowly, noticing a mirror as I did so. My clothes were rumpled, there were dark circles under my eyes, and my long hair was wild and matted. I closed one eye. The tattoo on my eyelid looked like an exact replica of Story’s eye, dark green with black lines swirling around it.

  I took a closer look at the tattoo on my arm. It started on my right hand where Story had kissed it, and branched up, twining itself around my arm, covered in thin, long leaves.

  “I hope this is not on my arm when I wake up,” I muttered, “or I’m going to have some serious explaining to do.”

  “Maria,” I heard Keegan’s voice calling from outside of the tree house, “are you awake?”

  I walked to the window and looked down at him. The house I was in was deep in the woods and Keegan was leaning against the base of a tree, picking flowers from a vine that wound around the trunk.

  “I’m up,” I said. I found the doorway and discovered that the only way down was to grab hold of a vine and swing to the ground. I gripped it tightly and stepped from the tree.

  The wind whistled in my face, clearing my head and making me feel more awake.

  “Nice,” said Keegan, handing me some bread and a bunch of light blue flowers as I reached the ground. “I see you still have your Elk Boy tattoos.”

  I took a bite of the sweet bread, munching it as I sniffed the flowers. They smelled like lilacs. “Keegan, you have to stop calling him that. You should be more respectful.”

  “I respect the Sparkly people, I swear.”

  I groaned. “I give up.”

  We set out through the woods, Keegan leading me along the narrow pathway to the clearing where Donavan was having a heated argument with Emilia.

  “You are not coming with us,” she said, firm finality in her voice.

  Donavan sighed wearily. “You can try to keep me away, but you will not be able to. Do you really think it is worth the energy it will take to fight me on this? I will win.”

  Emilia glared at him. “That is not what we agreed.”

  “We never agreed. You assumed. It is my decision to make, and I have decided to go with you.”

  The tension between them was palpable until Keegan walked nonchalantly to squeeze in between Donavan and Emilia to the five skittish horses that were stamping and stepping about behind them.

  “Excuse me. Excuse me,”Keegan said. He began quickly loading packs onto the horses, gently steadying them in a low voice. I wondered, like I had with the dancing, where he had learned to handle horses so well.

  Donavan turned pointedly away from Emilia to help Keegan, and I walked across the clearing to the place where the captured Ravens were still bound and on the ground. They sat on the hard dirt looking fierce and defiant, although the paint on many of their faces was streaked and they all were covered in grime and blood. Every so often one would hurl an insult or taunt at the man standing guard over them, but the man ignored them.

  I closed my eyes for a long moment and felt the tattoos on my eyelids flare. When I reopened my eyes, I could see the men, understand who they were. Some of them were truly evil. They had joined Cyrus because they enjoyed bringing pain to other people.

  Several others of them had joined to protect their families, hoping that Cyrus would reward their service with mercy. I could feel their guilt about what they had been ordered to do, the confusion about whether they had made the right decision in following the evil king.

  Only four of the Ravens had been forced into service. Although it was impossible to tell from their painted faces, these four were young, perhaps even younger than me. They were feeling overwhelmed with guilt and terrified about what was going to happen to them, although they all felt that they would deserve whatever punishment the Rebels gave them for what they had been forced to do to others.

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  I didn’t want to know what the Rebels were planning for the Ravens, but I found Robert and pointed out the four to him.

  “I’ll tell the others what you’ve told me,” he said, “but their punishment will be up to the families of the killed and injured.”

  “Robert,” said Emilia, approaching us from behind, “this is the sort of thing a Trader should be doing. Can you call a Council this morning?”

  Robert nodded, his eyes thoughtful.

  “Good,” said Emilia, “Do so at once. We have just enough time for Maria to do a Trade before we must leave. The families can decide the Ravens’ fates once we have gone, but at least they will understand who each of them really is, and it will give Maria valuable practice.”

  Robert nodded once more. He placed his hand around his mouth and let out a call that sounded like a flock of birds screaming in the twilight.

  The call was echoed again and again, through the forest, creating a cacophony of sound. Soon people began to come out of their homes in the trees. Many of them had not changed out of their wedding clothes, which were now rumpled with sleep.

  Robert quickly explained what he needed me to do as a large crowd of the villagers gathered in the clearing. They stood around the Ravens, eyes hard with the pain of loss.

  “We have here a Trader,” said Robert, loudly enough to be heard by everyone, voice taking on the formality of a legal proceeding. “Will the families of the deceased and wounded please approach?”

  Eight people left their places among the crowd and came to stand in front of Robert. As each one stepped forward, Robert asked what grievance they had against the Ravens.

  The first man who stepped forward, a fair forest-dweller, said, “These men killed my brother. I demand justice.”

  “Justice will be fulfilled,” Robert replied.

  One by one the others stated the harm done to their family members or friends. Three more of the wounded Rebels had died in the night, bringing the total number of deaths to five.

  When the ceremonial accusations had been completed, Robert turned to the Ravens. “Do any of you have anything to say in your defense?” He glared down the row of men, looking each one in the face.

  Several of the men glared back at him, but most refused to meet his eye. I could tell that some of the younger ones wanted to apologize, but were too frightened to speak up.

  “Very well,” continued Robert. “The Trader will now do an Exchange of Feelings.” He turned to the eight people who would pass judgment on the Ravens. “Consider how each of these men feels. Allow that to inform your decisions.” He turned back to regard the prisoners. “Part of your punishment will be to feel the pain of these people. May it bring you shame,” he said, his voice hard, almost frightening. “Bring the prisoners forward,” he called.

  The man standing guard and several others hauled the Ravens to their feet and marched them, hands still bound behind them, to the center of the clearing, shoving them to their knees.

  I nodded for the first man whose brother had been killed to stand next to me. I felt uneasy about what I was going to do. My exchange the day before at the wedding had not gone as I had planned it, and I was worried about what might happen here.

  I took a deep breath to steady myself, and allowed myself to feel what the man was feeling. His emotions were so overwhelming I wondered how he could be standing there, seemingly calm. Inside of him was a torrential mix of deep sorrow over the loss of his brother, devastating guilt for not protecting him, and fierce anger at the men who had killed him.

  I could feel tears spilling from my eyes onto my face, but I ignored them, allowing the full effect of the man’s emotions to engulf me. I took them and magnified them as much as I could. The weight of them became crushing, and still, I amplified them. I turned to the Ravens, singling out the two most evil men among them. I split the colossal feeling inside of me into two, and hurled it at them.

  I heard both men gasp as the murderous hatred was yanked out of them and replaced with the devastated man’s feelings. I felt their hatred filling me up, and I gritted my teeth, splitting the feeling eight ways as quickly as possible and sending it to each of the family members.

  As the feeling filled them, their eyes narrowed, and I could feel anger at the two men surging around me.

  I repeated the process over and over. I kept the feelings of those who had lost a family member concentrated, splitting it only once or twice so that each of the prisoners would truly feel what they had done to these people.

  I had to pull each emotion into myself in order to split it the right number of times and to direct it to where I wanted it to go. I didn’t trust myself yet to manipulate emotions completely outside of myself. With each exchange I felt more and more exhausted, more like I would never have a feeling of my own again. A thought came to me that I was destroying myself, but I ignored it and pushed on.

  Each prisoner reacted differently to the exchange of feelings. Most of them looked mortified, or at least ashamed, when they received the feelings of grief from the Rebels, but a few simply sneered, and one even laughed.

  The four young Ravens, the ones who had been forced into serving Cyrus, were overwhelmed with guilt and regret over what they had done. When they received the emotions of the villager whose son had been killed, one broke down sobbing. I made sure to transmit the full strength of their remorse to the villagers.

  After exchanging the emotions of those who had lost their family members, I gathered up all of the feelings of those who had a wounded family member. The swirl of emotions was mind-numbing. Anger, sadness, worry, relief, and hope all collided together in a jumble. I sent them tumbling into the prisoners, but instead of returning the strange mixture I received from them to the villagers, I absorbed it into myself and sent the villagers instead my strong desire that they be just to the prisoners and judge them fairly.

  As it left me, I turned away from the clearing and stumbled through the trees, back towards the place where I had slept.