It took a few minutes before anyone moved. Then Chiyo sat back down in front of the fire. Iruga, after a moment, did the same. The owlbear lowered itself slowly onto its haunches across from them, its bulk settling with a heaviness that shook the ground slightly, and the three of them sat in a rough circle with the fire between them.

  "My name is Mina," the owlbear said, in the same unhurried woman's voice. "I am an Astrid. Or I was."

  Iruga looked at her. "Astrid."

  "A mage clan. One of the top clans in Havaran." The large eyes caught the firelight and held it. "We were known for our work with natural forces. Crop cycles, weather patterns, that sort of thing."

  Iruga turned this over. Then he asked the question that had been sitting at the front of his mind since she first spoke.

  "Why does a mage turn herself into an owlbear?"

  Mina was quiet for a moment.

  "I didn't turn myself," she said. "I was the child oracle for the Astrid clan. Fifteen years ago the elder mages decided that the best way to appease the gods of nature was to offer a sacrifice." She paused. "They chose me. Transformed me without my agreement. I was a child."

  Chiyo's expression had been neutral up until that point. Now it wasn't.

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  "Why the fuck does your elders need to please the god of nature?" he said.

  "The crops in the village were failing," Mina said. "Drying out season after season. The elders decided I was the only solution."

  Chiyo shook his head slowly and said nothing further, which from him carried its own weight.

  Iruga leaned forward. "So you've been an owlbear for fifteen years and you've been terrorizing these woods?"

  "Not terrorizing," Mina said, with a flatness that suggested she had made this distinction before. "Taking care of them. The ritual didn't work. The crops failed anyway. After that the clan exiled me here." A pause. "I had nowhere to go. So here I am."

  The fire popped between them. Somewhere in the dark an insect was making noise.

  Mina's large eyes moved between them.

  "Who are you?" she said. "And where are you headed?"

  "An errand," Chiyo said. "Getting something back."

  Iruga glanced at him and then back at Mina. He thought about the life essence, still out there somewhere, and the glass pigeon shot down over Syvarius, and the road they still had ahead of them.

  Then he thought about fifteen years alone in these woods. Tending them. Exiled by the people who made her what she was, for a ritual that didn't even work.

  "Since you've been stuck here for a long time," he said, "why don't you join us? I know the feeling of being stuck."

  Mina stared at him.

  "Are you nuts?" she said. "Look at me. I'm a fucking animal."

  The fire crackled.

  Iruga looked at her. Then at Chiyo, who was watching him with the expression of someone genuinely curious what he was going to say next.