The purple-furs were many. With eyes and mind, Tuya sensed nine of them. The Moasi Clan closed in on the little cave beneath the hill of multicolored trees, where water ran down upon smooth rocks, and three people had made a home for themselves.

Nine.

She and Batu had defeated more than that before, in a flowery meadow in the midst of hollows. But then she'd only needed to protect herself as Gurg ordered his tamers to capture her. She didn't know if she could fend nine fast purple-furs off while protecting Running Bear's clan.

"Do not fight them," Running Bear said, staying in their place on the log, releasing as much fear as any khorota being approached by their claimer. Wolf whimpered, changing into animal form, but unable to move with their injury. Tsonggo was in tsonggo form, orange hair grown over their red-tinted flesh. They shook, and Tuya wanted to take Tsonggo in her arms and tell them it would be okay.

But she didn't know that. Worse, they were here because she crossed the river.

You did this, khorota. You did this.

Stop looking behind you, Batu ordered. His eagle eyes scanned the canopy. I didn't finish making an opening. How are we going to handle this?

He was right. She couldn't look back when she needed to focus on what was happening right in front of them. But Tuya didn't know what to do. Reflexes competed within her. The little khorota who made herself small, and hoped to be left alone. The spear who killed her problems. The Chosen who flew away, and lived to fight another day. The daughter who relied on a mother to tell her what to do.

Like a trail that split in four directions, Tuya didn't know which instinct to follow. Like most people when faced with hard things, she chose the path that was easiest.

"What should I do?" Tuya asked.

"Nothing," Running Bear answered. "I will talk to Smiling Moasi."

Tuya didn't like that. Zaya being dragged through the rain by Zalmug. Yaha flying through the sky, becoming a spear of light bound toward Chimaera. Tuya did this. It should be her that dealt with it. She held it in, gripping as tightly to fear as the spear.

"What will happen if you talk to them?"

"The Moasi Clan will offer choices," Running Bear said. The lack of elaboration didn't convince Tuya to yield.

"What choices?" Tuya said and signed.

"Sit down," Bear growled, voice going deep and ursine.

Let her take the lead, Batu projected, condescending as only a master of the sky could be. She makes this choice herself. If it comes to fighting, we will do what must be done.

Taking a breath, Tuya put her spear back in its vine loop on the back of her hides. She didn't understand too many things right now. She had to trust in Running Bear and if the clan leader went to their death, that was their choice. Tuya tried to tell herself that she could live with that, that this neither-man-nor-woman wasn't one of her mothers.

Sitting on the mossy stump by the fire, Tuya did as Zaya taught her so many years ago. Inhale. Hold. Exhale. Push the bad air and bad thoughts out, breathing in the good. The spear was still on her back. Batu was here. The Moasi weren't Chimaera, nor even tamers. They might talk first. Give choices. Then they could figure out what to do from there. If the worst happened—if Running Bear was killed—Tuya would take care of Brave Wolf and Dancing Tsonggo until they could fend for themselves.

Tuya hadn't failed. Yet.

Batu waddled through the falling water behind her, his head barely fitting beneath the overhanging rock sky. He unfurled his wings, making himself big. Standing in the multicolored glow of the cave's mushrooms, the effect was incredible. He was twice as tall as Tuya and just as wide as she was tall even with wings closed.

I am impressive, he agreed. But I don't like this rock place and its glowing poison not-food. We're trapped here. No sky above.

Have faith, brother. The purple-furs don't come to hurt.

You don't believe that.

He was right.

I always am.

He wasn't, but there would be no prolonged telepathic conversation about the flaws and imperfections of Great Batu of the Flower Tree. The purple-furred moasi, four-legged creatures with sharp fang and claw, roared just beyond the waterfall edge of the mushroom cave.

Tuya didn't believe they came to just talk. Tamers didn't just talk, and the mind senses she detected were eerily similar. Nine people that turned into beasts—but perhaps were monsters regardless of the form they took—stepped into the water as moasi and stepped through it as folk with dark hair and skin the color of the giant reddish trees back in the Hollows where tamers staked their claims. They came to assault, to rape, to claim, or to kill. Tuya couldn't be convinced otherwise.

In the center of the nine, a man with long, graying hair prowled into the cave, stepping ahead of his naked clanmates with a smile. He wasn't nearly as big as many tamers of Gidiite descent, but he was as muscular as any man she'd known except for Gurgaldai ezen Celegan. Two fingers traced across his chest fast, then made a five-fingered claw. Running Bear. He hissed, his mind belonging equally to anger and thrill. This was a man who hungered for battle and had lived long enough to grow old.

Tuya tried to follow his signs, but they were too fast and too few were known to her.

Batu, sharing her mind, hungered to turn the purple-furs into food. Tuya's spear itched on her back, craving the only way to control this situation. She didn't trust Running Bear's plan. Never had just talking worked with monsters like this. They needed to be made small or else they would push you around and convince you that it was your fault.

The old not-woman was very perceptive for one without wilder powers. They twisted their head from Smiling Moasi, briefly touching Tuya's eyes, pulsing with desperation. "At ease," Running Bear muttered, rising to their feet. "Today is not the day you fix this, Howler."

They signed back at Smiling Moasi. Then, the other eight Atmana of the Moasi Clan made a weird noise Tuya had never heard. It was haunting, at first low then going progressively higher and more seductive like a tamer telling a claimed how his breeder would fill her soon.

Tuya didn't like it. Gurg's warnings gnawed like little insects, stinging with venom. There was nowhere she belonged. This was just another broken land with broken people pretending to be better than they are. The monsters were still here, just had they had been in the meadows of the Hollows, in the trees with holes, inflicting pain for no reason other than they could.

They're trying to scare you, sister. Don't let them.

Tuya tried. But Batu was wrong. Tuya wasn't afraid of these purple-furs the way she'd been afraid of tamers like Zalmug when she was a girl, or the way she feared Chimaera and Gurg. This was her worst enemy, the one that stalked her, always on her heels. This was hopelessness. The specter that haunted her, telling her she should just give up and stop trying so divinedamned hard. What ever had this world given her that made it worthy of her efforts?

Focus, sister, Batu snapped. The dancing strong-tail and the wounded four-leg are worth helping. Maybe even the stupid big claw.

Batu was right. She couldn't think about all the wrong. It was those that did their best in this world that deserved Tuya's best. Little girls like Masarga. Or not-boys that jumped in front of an arrow to make somebody else's pain smaller.

Running Bear and Smiling Moasi exchanged their hand signs, Tuya not understanding the majority or even able to see what Bear signed most of the time with a backside view. Finally, Smiling Moasi nodded at Running Bear then turned his head to the tallest and most muscular of the other eight, a boy that couldn't be much older than Tuya with a body like chiseled rocks and a brutal but handsome face. Tuya immediately thought of Gurg, but this boy's flesh was reddish, his eyes dark instead of the beautiful blue of the moon, and his body smaller in every way.

The little Atmana Gurg nodded to his clan ezen then let out that same seductive noise. The other moasi followed, their voices less deep though no less animalistic. Tuya's mind traveled the distance in years and miles, going back to the meadows of Celegana where tamers rang out with, "Hoo-huh," just before they raped a girl on the day of first blood.

Her hand shook, wanting to take the spear and rid the world of these beasts.

Batu encouraged the violence. His mind pulsing with thrill and the imagery of disemboweled red folk. He flapped his wings and squawked, taking one waddling step toward the moasi. Some of them shifted into animal form in small ways: hands turning to clawed paws.

"None of that," Running Bear said, in the guttural Celegan language. She led Smiling Moasi out of the cave. "I will be back soon."

Tuya halted her killing plans. At ease, brother. We will strike at the right moment.

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Better be soon. Wait too long and these sneaky four-legs tend to surprise you by going for the nest.

Tuya had to disengage herself from Batu's hatred of those that crept into nests when parents weren't there. Oft creatures shaped like these Atmana moasi. Her mind was pulled from Batu's loathing by a flash of Celegana's lovely brown glow.

Seven of the eight remaining Moasi transformed. So many changing at once, they shimmered, brown only to Tuya's eyes, Atmana skin glowing with the color of the Earth Mother. Their muscles stretched under their red skin, bones realigning with a quiet crackling as they lowered onto all fours. Hands and feet elongated into mighty paws, fingernails sharpened into curved claws the color of darkness. A thin layer of hair flowed from their flesh until it covered their entire body in a wave of purple like the sky when the dark meets the dawn. As one, they rumbled, letting out roars deep and deadly.

They're the food, Batu pulsed, agitation rising in him with the desire to protect Tuya and prove his dominance. He never wanted to feel small again. Definitely not because of some stupid four-legs with little teeth.

Those teeth were sharp though. And Tuya didn't want them sinking into Wolf or Tsonggo, let alone herself or Batu. She soothed Batu through the link, projecting feelings of calm peace. We only fight when we must.

Those soothing thoughts were pulled up and destroyed, like young saplings by an angry tamer, when Little Atmana Gurg took his hand to his breeder and started tugging on it. Tuya lifted her gaze to his eyes, already dreading where she knew they would fall.

Grunting, deep and guttural, not unlike a tamer, the Moasi boy leered at Tuya as he pulled his breeder like he would die if it didn't come off. The rest of the Moasi Clan made that horrible yowling noise.

Tuya's hand found the spear, pulling it from the loop. She didn't fly away for this. She didn't leave the Hollows to be back in the center of the meadow in a different land. Just like the tamers that tried to claim her, die, they would.

Yes! Batu projected, waddling toward them.

But the moasi didn't fight fair. Tuya recalled the girl that had shot the arrow. Lithe, even in moasi form, she lunged toward Wolf, pinning him down with her claws, teeth set to puncture Wolf's throat if Tuya fought back. Little Atmana Gurg kept pulling on himself, laughing stupidly as he did so. He made smooching sounds, then pointed at Tuya like every divinedamned tamer that thought they'd be the one to claim her.

She'd defeated better men than this, but with Wolf pinned down, Tuya couldn't just start killing.

We're trapped, Batu transmitted. We may need to let the boy die if we're getting out of here.

Tuya held in her scream as the familiar powerless rage of yore consumed her spirit. "You will all die," she told them, her voice shaking as she made the promise in the Leverian of her spear mother. "Every last one of you."

Not enough, Tuya knew. Words they couldn't comprehend did nothing. She was done letting weak cruel monsters dictate her worth and decide her life. She wasn't small anymore. She didn't need to hide from them. Only one man deserved that distinction and she'd kill him too.

Tuya pushed her thoughts outward, bombarding the entire region of forest with her mental wrath. She couldn't control, as a tamer did. But she could make ideas fall like cascading water into the minds of those near her. Images of their future, if they didn't tuck their tails between their legs and leave, penetrated their mental walls as she emitted a burst of light from her eyes that blinded the seven moasi and Little Atmana Gurg in front of her. Blinded, sustaining the light to keep them seeing only that which she wanted, she showed them the dismembering Less-than-Gurg's penis and shoving it down his throat.

In this mental projection, the girl on Wolf was shot with an arrow of thorny earth under Tuya's command, then feasted on by the great eagle, bleeding out slowly as she watched her clan die. The others, their seductive yowls turning into death howls as they tried to run, the spear always behind them, stalking, slicing, killing with a precision they could only see in their thoughts as she blinded them with light, trapped them in vines, and hunted until their gore was spread across the forest floor.

Smiling Moasi saw himself as the last of his clan. In Tuya's psionic projections, the man tried to wield fang and claw but fell as pathetically as Tokhun had. Tuya toyed with him, anticipating his attacks, staggering him with blinding bursts of light, wounding him with non-lethal cuts, savoring his final embarrassment before finally decapitating him with a howling slash across the neck.

Tuya spoke over the dead, whispering to them all, I can do this. And so much more. Leave. And never return.

Great flower tree! Batu projected, ecstasy pouring from him into Tuya.

He was the only one that seemed to enjoy the projections. Even Wolf and Tsonggo trembled. But fear burst out of the Moasi Clan like blood from deep wounds. They went silent, though not still. The Atmana pretender unhanded his penis and shifted into the cowardly little lion he was. The others shook, unable to take their eyes from her. Tuya brandished the spear, taking a few flashy steps in quetzal form to showcase her abilities. Tsonggo let out a few elated shrieks at the dancelike maneuvers but the moasi mind's kept bleeding terror, like a group of tamers bowing before the Great Ezen after a failure.

Of the eight in the cave, the only one who seemed to have any notion of pride left was the girl with her claws on Wolf. She held strong, even though her mind reeked of dread.

But the only one that mattered was the one in charge. Tuya hoped—praying to Mother Norali and her radiant light—that Smiling Moasi frowned.

She sought his mind, seeking the scent of fear. Tuya found him, and Running Bear, just beyond the next set of trees up the hill. The Moasi Clan's leader was afraid, but this fear was met with awe, like two great powers clashing to create something hideous. Beside him, Running Bear stank of desperation and shame. How Tuya knew the taste of those emotions that seemed to stalk her even to this place.

They're not going to fight us today, Batu said. You did with your mind what even my great size couldn't do. Scared little four-legs. I doubt they will ever bother these ones again.

Tuya didn't put the spear away. Nor did the moasi girl release Wolf. Wolf, true to his name, remained brave. He looked to Tuya emanating his trust and faith in her alongside love that only seemed to grow despite Tuya's efforts to wither it.

The other seven moasi kept still, some piddling between their legs, waiting quietly for their master to return and tell them what to do. Tsonggo started dancing, making gestures Tuya didn't have to imagine were taunts. One of them involved Tsonggo reaching a hand under their butt, pretending to pull something out, and toss it toward the Moasi Clan.

I like her, Batu projected.

Does this mean you won't snatch them up and fly them over the trees?

Not at all. I still owe her. Just wait until I clear the canopy.

Tuya laughed. She let it happen, let the moasi think that they were jokes to her. The tamers used to do this to the wilders to keep them small. This wasn't the same though. These moasi Atmana deserved it. She used this to keep monsters from getting too big. She wasn't like the tamers.

Smiling Moasi returned with a divinedamned smile on his face. Shaking his head, pointing at puddles that weren't runoff from the hill above, he gestured commands to his people. The moasi girl got off Wolf, Tuya finally letting go of suppressed tension, like dropping an enormous poop that had been held too long.

Good one, Batu thought.

Poop humor was truly the highest form of comedy for birds. And since birds flew high, they got to have final say on this, Tuya thought.

You're already there, sister. You can stop giving me reasons to like you.

Never, my beloved brother.

But the humor was only hides concealing her worries. Tuya kept her eyes on the hands of Smiling Moasi. He held up three fingers toward Running Bear then lifted his hands over his head, making a circle, then howled. The last thing he did before transforming into a purple-fur was wink at Tuya. The nine of them didn't delay long, several with their tails to pass through the waterfalls and dash into the forest toward the river.

"Well," Running Bear said as the sounds of their retreat grew distant, "we've got three cycles of the moon."

In human form, Bear returned to the fire, picked up their discarded meal and resumed as though nothing had changed. Tuya watched their children. Wolf turned their back to them and whined, remaining in animal form. Tsonggo walked out of the cave, shoulders slumped, pulsing with sorrow.

"Three cycles of the moon for what?" Tuya asked, using only Atmana sign language.

Running Bear chewed their food then let out a long sigh. "To teach you the ways of Atmana."

Three moon cycles wasn't long to learn an entire culture but that was also not long to spend if it allowed Tuya to help the Atmana defend themselves from Gurg. "What happens after three moon cycles?" Tuya signed.

Running Bear's fingers shook; they couldn't make them speak. They lowered their eyes, shame flowing from them in torrents like a flooding river enraged by the Water Goddess Dalis. Tuya held Yaha's necklace, trying to be patient like her mother had been with her. Sometimes.

"In three moons, Smiling Moasi will return. They…they will take Dancing Tsonggo to mate with Mighty Moasi if we aren't gone from the region."

Mighty Moasi. Tuya could guess which penis puller that was. But having a name for the monster faded from relevance as she felt Running Bear's pain.

Tuya knew sorrow like she knew herself. Sorrow was the song of her soul, one she'd had to live with almost every day of her life. When she felt Running Bear's sorrow, she had memorized it like one memorized the tone of their mother's voice. In all her days of pain, Tuya knew one thing that reliably made it smaller.

She went to Running Bear's side, not knowing how they did this thing in the Great Atmana Forest, but doing her best anyway. She put her arms around the old not-woman. Tuya pushed tendrils of love from her mind to Running Bear but also to their children. With her voice, speaking in Leverian as she pushed the thoughts out gently, she said, "I won't let them take Tsonggo. I can stop them right now."

Running Bear leaned away from the hug, pulsing with shame. Tuya let go, not knowing what she did wrong.

"It will not be so easy, Howler," Bear said and signed. "You may have scared them away today, but it will be all our lives if you underestimate the Moasi Clan."

She underestimates us, Batu thought. Stupid woman. Does she not understand how mighty we are?

They are scared and ashamed that they haven't been able to keep their children safe. And I am the reason they're in danger.

Nonsense. Let's hide the soft ones and go kill these four-leg nest thieves.

Perhaps Batu was right. She ignored his assertion that this shouldn't be a surprise by now.

"What stops me from sneaking into their den and killing them all?"

Bear growled. Tuya startled, leapt back, and went straight into water form, ready to dodge a feral charge.

But the old not-woman settled back into their seat, shaking their head. "Tell me, Howler, have you been able to perfectly see the moasi so far? Did this old Bear already sneak up on you when you met Tsonggo? Will Wolf be able to fight or even run if we did this now?"

Tuya shook her head. She'd been surprised too many times. She couldn't count on her mind and eyes finding every enemy in the dark forest where millions of lives and dense growth made these things hard. Bear was also right about Wolf. They could hide them, but Tuya expected these moasi might be able to track down prey with ease.

Bear said and signed, "You must first learn the forest and the bow. And you will not rush this and get my child killed or taken. Do you understand?"

Tuya pointed to herself, then signed 'understand,' touching her head and heart at the same time. She couldn't rush this. Not when so many counted on her.

"Then let us begin," Running Bear signed.

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