Two days ago, a giant tree spirit asking me to find a way for her to die while making sure her parasitic mushroom-children are taken care of afterwards would not have been on my winter break to-do list. Hell, it wasn’t even on my list of possibilities that might happen by random happenstance.

  But that wasn’t who I was anymore.

  I found myself just looking at the scene, trying to make sure what I heard was correct. I don’t think it was just me. The next several minutes were spent in grim silence. The only sounds came from the mushroom children’s giggles, as they continued to play and continue to hurt the Mother Tree in the process.

  “This can’t be right,” I finally said. “I just want to make sure I heard you correctly. You want us to help you die? You know that’s illegal in New York? Right?”

  “I was here long before your laws came into being. The rules I follow are ancient, and precedes those which you quote,” She said.

  “I can’t—” I looked at the Hudson Witch. “This is the trial? This is why you called us out here?”

  The Hudson Witch was expressionless. “This is the trial, lad.”

  “To kill someone?” I hissed.

  She didn’t frown, but her eyes glimmered with silent anger. “Tread carefully, lad. This is the task given to you.”

  I took a step towards her, anger flushing out the nervousness I had earlier. “Find a different task then.”

  “Hallow, what are you doing? Stop that,” Mina growled under her breath, but I wasn’t listening.

  “This is bullshit,” I snarled, “I refuse this. I refuse this trial. This has some ulterior motive, too, doesn’t it? Everything I’ve done so far, there’s always been some strings attached to it. If this is some sick political gambit you guys are playing at the expense of someone’s life, you can count me the fuck out.”

  The Hudson Witch fell silent. She waited until it became heavy, heavy enough to crush the weight of my emotional outburst with its own.

  “Lad,” she said. “Have you never killed before?”

  “Of course not,” I snapped. “That’s not a normal thing to do.”

  “I see,” she said, “Have you had your morning piece? A bite? Tea?”

  The sudden question caught me off guard. “Uh,” I said. “The jerky. I mean, if you’re counting yesterday, yeah. I had a sandwich.”

  “What of the day before? And the day before that?”

  “Yes, and yes. I eat every day,” I said. “Most people do.”

  “Tell me what you ate.”

  “The sandwich. Before that…” I dug through my memories. “Burger and fries from the school cafeteria.”

  “Meals, prepared by other hands. Brought to you in cold trucks with emotionless drivers. Raised by hands that are paid to suck the land dry. By hearts that feel no care for the land.”

  “Ok, school lunch isn’t that bad,” I said. The joke flew over her head.

  “I tell you the truth, Jain Shin Hallow, the first of the Shin Shamans, and the last of the Hallow Diabolists. You have killed. You have killed every day since you were old enough to chew. You have killed by proxy, your hands stained with the blood of thousands; you simply do not realize it. The bacon you ate yestermorning was alive, breathing, squealing, and grateful to be alive, despite the narrow cage they raised her in. They hung her by the feet, cut her throat, and let her bleed out while she screamed. Her terror was the last thing she felt before passing on. Did you know that, Jain Shin Hallow? That the jerky you ate scarcely an hour ago was a living creature?” Her emotionless mouth twisted into a mocking sneer, and a single tear dripped down her face. “You know nothing of life. You know nothing of balance. You know nothing of the grief in my heart at knowing a friend of over five centuries must pass from this world. Struck down by cowards who crept in the dark of night.” She spat at her feet. “You have lived for a seventeen short years, and you lecture me on death? On life? You, a fledgling practitioner? I have lived thousands of your lifetimes. You have not the words for what I feel towards the balance of life, nor the burden of duty weighed with emotions.”

  I took a step back like I’d been slapped. I was wrong.

  The Hudson Witch was not empty of emotion. It was the opposite. She was full of it. The Witch had been acting distant not because that was her personality. Holy shit, she was sad and was trying not to show it to her friend, who was dying. She was trying to stay strong for the Mother Three.

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  …She was grieving.

  “Jain, apologize,” Wol said quietly.

  I swallowed and nodded. “I…” I shook my head and stood up straight. “I apologize. I didn’t know. I’m… sorry.”

  She didn’t accept it right away.

  God, I felt like shit.

  She had said a lot, and not everything had registered on me. But I did get one thing. I’d crossed a line. I’d accused her of doing something she wasn’t, without seeing the whole picture. I mean, I do that a lot, I think. I tend to walk headfirst into things without looking both ways. It bears mentioning that Wol warns me a lot against a lot of my decisions, especially when it concerns danger. But I do it anyway.

  Which speaks volumes about who I am, and what type of person Jain Hallow is.

  I wasn’t really liking who Jain Shin Hallow was at the moment.

  And at the end of it all, the Hudson Witch was right. In a sort of PETA-veganism sort of way. I kill every day. I just don’t have to think about it because it’s all so industrialized and convenient.

  I wondered if becoming a Shin Shaman meant I’d have to care about things like that. It sounded more druid-y than Shaman. Maybe that’s what the Hudson Witch was: those druids I hear about in fantasy books and games.

  As I worked up the guts to apologize again, the Hudson Witch spoke. “You are forgiven, lad. You did not know. It is expected of young practitioners.” Then she gave me a small nod of her chin.

  I gave a nod of my head, slightly deeper than hers. It didn't stop me from feeling shame, secretly hoping that I could go back in time and erase this whole thing all together.

  “So what’s the time limit?” Mina asked the Hudson Witch.

  “An hour. But you may not consult those we left behind,” the Hudson Witch said easily. She reached into her worn satchel and brought out a tiny empty hourglass. She mumured something I didn’t quite catch and placed it on one of the fallen branches near her. The hourglass, now full of dark green sand, began to drain rapidly into the bottom.

  She turned and approached the Mother Tree. The two began to share in a conversation too quiet for the rest of us to hear.

  While I was distracted, Mina punched me on the shoulder. The burnt one. I hissed and jerked away from her.

  “Good job, Hallow. Now she’s upset,” She said, her voice low. “Do you have a death wish?”

  A death wish? “No,” I muttered. The small interaction with the Hudson Witch had mollified me for the time being. Mina, Victor, it didn’t matter who, I didn’t feel like getting into it with anyone at the moment.

  “This is difficult,” Victor said calmly, staring at the Mother Tree. His eyes flicked over to the mushroom-children. His hand flexed like claws and relaxed, repeating the motion a few times. “She wants to die.”

  “Figured that out now, did you?” Mina said in a tone reserved for little kids who got a hundred on their spelling test. “Let me guess. You’re going to burn it all down?”

  Victor gave her a blithe stare. “I have to think.” Then he walked away from us until he found a large branch and sat on it. He seemed to be lost in thought.

  “Well, I guess I should be preparing, too. Though I already have an idea.” Mina said. She stretched. The night was right in between that awkward phase between ‘late’ and ‘early’.

  She found her own branch to sit on, leaving me alone with my thoughts.

  I limped over to one that left sufficient distance between Mina, Victor, and me and sat on it with some balancing. I sighed and rubbed my unbandaged hand over my face.

  “I didn’t expect this,” I said to Wol.

  Hwari slunk out of my shadow, leaving her body half submerged. Wol stayed in the snow, giving me a look, then at the branch next to me. It took me a beat to realize what he wanted and scooted over. He leapt up and sat contemptuously as cats tended to do.

  “What you said earlier tonight, it is true,” Wol said. “The scales have been tipped towards our favor.”

  I nodded along. “Any other trial and everything was tipped against me. But like this… It’s literally just matching wits.”

  “And practice,” Wol said. “Do not disregard the fact that they have prepared for tasks like this for their entire lives. Just by being more experienced, their minds are better equipped to deal with situations like this. And having a more advanced practice means more possibilities.”

  “More options to choose from, meaning more ideas they can come up with,” I agreed. “It’s fine. I’ve been against those kinds of odds all my life. So I think it’s fair to say that this trial is as even as it could get.”

  Wol gave me a look. “There it is again.”

  “Again”

  “You are overly confident, too much for a fledgling practitioner such as yourself,” Wol said, repeating the Hudson Witch’s words. “I undertand you’ve had a hard life, Practitioner and that you are used to fighting against odds. Granted, you’ve beaten them many times. Probably more so than the ones I’ve seen you.”

  “Nothing as threatening as a daeamon, but yeah,” I said.

  “Exactly my point, Practitioner. In your world, losing at your odds meant perhaps a lower score on your exam. But in this new world you find yourself in, it could mean the worst.”

  “Death?” I offered absently, looking in the Mother Tree’s direction.

  “You will hear this many times,” He said, “There are things worse than death.”

  I turned my head sharply back to Wol, and he continued.

  “Jain, you have talent. That is not in question. But you do not yet have the foundation to catch up with that talent, and that is not your fault. However, you cannot simply charge headlong into every situation believing that you know everything. Even after years of study, you will never know everything,” Wol placed a paw on my leg. “The Hudson Witch, the daemon… You must learn to see things differently and consider the fact that perhaps you are not the smartest one in the room.”

  Something hot and nasty came welling up from my chest, and I immediately stopped myself from saying it into existence. Because I was doing the same thing from before: assuming that I knew what he wanted to say and why it was wrong. I basically got the same lecture from the Hudson Witch not five minutes ago. I wanted to give him the automatic teenager ‘I know, mom’ out of reflex. But that kind of thinking was exactly what he was talking about.

  “I know it’s not an excuse,” I said, slightly frustrated, “It’s just that I’m used to—”

  I stopped myself from saying ‘doing everything on my own’. Homework, team assignments, high school applications, college applications… I never took advice from anyone. I did it all myself. Hell, most kids get advice from their parents about college and what kind of options are out there. Accounting, finance, what to do after you graduate…

  Me? My dad just seemed happy that I was applying at all when he bothered to be there. Taking that out on Wol wasn’t fair.

  Wol was smart. Wicked, bloody smart. Smarter than Spark, Seoul, Exanguin. That’s who he was.

  And he definitely knew he was reiterating what the Hudson Witch already said. So he must have known I knew that too. My familiar thought it was important enough to mention it anyway.

  Damn. Not even five minutes, and I was about to repeat the same mistake.

  Pride before the fall, Jain. Pride.

  “I read somewhere that if you’re the smartest person in the room, you’re in the wrong place.” I lifted my hand in surrender. “I’ll be better. I promise.”

  Wol smiled. “Practitioners should not make promises easily. Even the smallest ones carry power.”

  “I promise to try,” I corrected.

  “As long as you know,” he said. “But from now on, we exercise caution?”

  “Yassuh,” I said gravely.

  Hwari’s body bobbed from side to side. I think it was something like a little jig of happiness.

  “Ok, back to the Mother Tree?” I offered.

  Wol nodded.