The next lesson began with the Tree Speaker moving Torren farther from the edge.
Torren looked at the distance between himself and the drop, then at the old man. "You know, if you move me any farther back, I'll be learning from inside the camp."
"You nearly crawled off a stone last time."
"I slid. There's a difference."
"There is a difference when you are alive to argue it."
Torren had no good answer for that, so he sat where the old man pointed. The cord went around his wrist again, loose but present, the other end looped around the Tree Speaker's hand. It made Torren feel like a goat tied outside a tent, which was probably the point. The old man did not trust pride unless it had a rope on it.
Below them, the herd had found a long strip of exposed stone where wind had scraped the snow thin. The old female stood above the others, chewing with the same stubborn patience as before. One younger goat tried to push near her and got a hard shove for his trouble.
Torren nodded down toward her. "Still friendly."
"She is not friendly. She is simple."
"She threw me out twice."
"You were rude twice."
Torren gave him a look. "Are you teaching me or defending the goat?"
"Yes."
The Tree Speaker settled beside him with a quiet grunt. "Today you stay longer. You do not steer unless you must. You do not grab. You do not push. You sit behind the beast and learn how long you can remain without forgetting which body is yours."
"That sounds easy until you say it like that."
"It is not easy. That is why I said it like that."
Torren exhaled through his nose and looked down at the goat.
The hidden voice spoke from the back of his mind.
Extended contact increases disorientation risk. Anchor recommended.
Torren flexed the hand with the cord around it.
I have one.
Physical anchor present. Cognitive anchor also recommended.
Torren almost asked what that meant, then decided he did not want the long answer. Instead he chose something simple: his own name, his own body, the cold stone under him. Torren. Sitting. Ridge. Cord. He repeated the words silently until they felt dull enough to hold.
Then he reached.
The goat opened around him faster this time.
Snow. Stone. Hunger. Breath steaming from a blunt mouth. The ache in old joints. The younger goat too close. The sour smell of him. Wind from the left, carrying pine, cold, and something dead far below where men would not smell it until they stood on it. Torren did not push. He did not try to make her lift her head. He settled in behind the old female's senses and let her world take shape around him.
The goat moved.
Her hooves found places Torren would not have trusted with his hands. A ridge of ice became something to test, not fear. A cracked ledge became a road if crossed at the right angle. The mountain was not large from inside her. It was immediate. This stone. That step. Food under snow. Herd behind. Sky above. Danger somewhere, always, but not yet close enough to run from.
Torren felt the cord faintly in the other body.
Not in the goat's body. In his own. Far away, like a memory tied to a wrist.
Torren. Sitting. Ridge. Cord.
The goat lowered her head and scraped snow aside. Grass appeared, dry and half-frozen. She bit. Chewed. Bit again. The taste was bitter, tough, wonderful. Hunger folded around Torren's thoughts and made them smaller.
He forgot Perwyn first.
Not fully. Not gone. Just distant. A thing buried under snow.
Then the names went thin: Pale Dog, Red Measure, Tree-Blood Boy. They meant nothing to a goat. A goat did not care if Stone Crows carried feathers or Red Smiths gave bronze pins. A goat did not know Harrag's silences, Hokor's coughing, Maera's blind eyes, or a white tree on a high peak.
There was only grass.
Grass and stone and cold and the shove of the younger goat coming too close again.
Torren butted him.
Not with his body. With hers. A sharp, hard knock of horn and skull. The younger goat stumbled aside, offended. Torren felt satisfaction, clean and brief.
The cord tugged once.
He ignored it.
The goat had found another patch. Better grass. Higher up. She wanted it, and Torren wanted it with her.
The cord tugged again, harder.
Come back.
Torren pulled away, or tried to. The goat's hunger held him, not like a hand but like weather. He had no reason to leave. Leaving meant cold thoughts, old worries, human noise. Here, each need ended at the next mouthful.
The cord jerked.
Pain flashed in Torren's wrist.
He came back with a gasp.
His own mouth was moving.
The Tree Speaker was staring at him.
Torren clamped his jaw shut. "What?"
"You were chewing."
"I was not."
"You were."
Torren wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, suddenly furious for no good reason. "I was fine."
"You were eating grass."
"I wasn't eating grass. She was eating grass."
"And you were chewing."
Torren looked away. "That doesn't mean anything."
"It means you stayed too long."
"I came back."
"I dragged you back."
"That is what the cord is for, isn't it?"
The Tree Speaker's eyes hardened. "Do not make jokes out of the thing that kept you in your own skin."
Torren's anger died a little. Not all at once, but enough. He looked down at the cord around his wrist and saw the red mark where it had tightened.
The old man held up his own hand. The cord had bitten into his fingers too.
Torren swallowed. "Did I pull that hard?"
"Yes."
"I didn't mean to."
"That matters less than you keep hoping."
The wind moved over the ridge. Below, the old goat went on chewing, utterly unconcerned with the boy she had nearly kept.
Torren rubbed at his wrist. "It was easier in there."
The Tree Speaker did not answer right away.
Then he said, "That is the danger."
Torren looked at him.
The old man's voice was quieter now. "A beast does not ask who you should become. It does not care what men call you. It does not remember your dead unless they smell of blood. For a little while, you can hide in that. Some men do."
"What happens to them?"
"They come back less often. Then not at all. Or they come back with too much of the beast clinging to them, and the men around them start stepping away."
Torren looked down at his hands. They were cold, pale, scratched, human.
"I don't want to be a goat."
"No," the Tree Speaker said. "You want to stop being Torren for a while. That can be worse."
That landed too close.
Torren pulled his cloak tighter and did not answer.
...
The second attempt was shorter.
The Tree Speaker made it shorter. He tugged the cord before Torren settled too deep, then again before the goat's hunger could wrap itself around him. Torren came back annoyed, but clearer. The third time, he returned on the first tug. The old man nodded once, which from him was nearly a feast of praise.
"Better," he said.
Torren leaned back on his hands. "You say that like it hurts less now."
"It hurts the same. I am hiding it better."
"That's comforting."
"It was not meant to be."
Torren breathed out a laugh and looked down at the herd. The old female had moved farther along the ledge. He could still feel her if he reached for her, faintly now, like the aftertaste of bitter grass.
The voice spoke.
Contact duration increased. Boundary instability observed.
Torren grimaced. Boundary instability. Lovely.
You experienced partial behavioral carryover.
You mean chewing.
Yes.
Torren looked at the Tree Speaker, who was watching the goats and not him. Don't say that again.
Behavioral carryover remains an accurate description.
I liked you better when you were quiet.
Preference noted.
Torren almost laughed, then stopped when a shadow crossed the snow.
Both he and the Tree Speaker looked up.
The eagle came from the west, cutting across the pale sky with wings spread wide and still. It did not circle high this time. It dropped lower over the ridge, close enough that Torren saw the dark edges of its feathers and the pale flash of its head as it turned. The goats below froze. Even the old female lifted her head.
Torren did not reach.
He kept his hands on his knees and forced himself to breathe like a man sitting on stone, not a thing with wings.
The eagle passed once.
Then it turned and came again.
The Tree Speaker's grip tightened on the cord.
Torren glanced at him. "You said not yet."
"I did."
The eagle circled wider now, still lower than before. It was not hunting the goats. Torren knew that without knowing how. The bird's attention was wrong for hunting. It was not fixed downward in hunger. It was searching. Or watching.
Torren's throat felt dry. "So?"
"So," the Tree Speaker said, eyes still on the sky, "the lesson has changed."
Torren looked at him. "That sounds like a bad thing."
"It often is."
"You're not making this better."
"I am not trying to make it better. I am trying to decide whether refusing the sign is more foolish than obeying it."
The eagle turned again.
Torren kept still. Every part of him wanted to follow the bird's movement. Not like the goat. The goat pulled with hunger and stone. The eagle pulled with space. With height. With the clean cruelty of distance.
The Tree Speaker stood slowly.
Torren looked up at him. "What are you doing?"
"Moving behind you."
"Why?"
"So if you forget you are sitting, I can remind your body with pain."
"That is not as reassuring as you think."
"It was not meant to be."
The old man stepped behind him and tightened the cord around his own wrist. Then he placed one hand on Torren's shoulder, not gently.
"Listen," he said. "You do not enter deep. You do not chase. You do not try to ride it. If it opens, touch only the edge. A breath, maybe two. Then back."
"I don't know how to touch only the edge."
"Then learn quickly."
Torren gave a short, nervous laugh. "Very helpful."
"If you feel the sky pulling too hard, come back."
"And if I don't?"
"I pull."
"And if that doesn't work?"
The Tree Speaker did not answer.
Torren shut his mouth.
The eagle passed overhead.
For a moment, its shadow covered him.
Torren reached.
Not like with the goat. The goat had been a warm body below him, stubborn and close to the earth. This was not warm. This was wind, distance, hunger held in a sharper shape. The eagle's mind did not open like a cave or a body. It cut. It was all edge at first: sight too keen, air pressure under feathers, the small movements of wings against invisible currents, the ridge falling away below.
Torren touched it and nearly lost himself from the size of the world.
The camp was not camp. It was smoke, hide, movement, heat. Men were not men but shapes with patterns, some slow, some quick, some armed. The goats were bright with motion on the ledge. The trees were dark lines. The snow held every track like a wound.
The eagle turned its head.
Torren turned with it.
North.
Ridges folding into ridges. White slopes. Black stone. Far places the body on the ground could never see. For a heartbeat, Torren felt the old hunger of wings: not grass, not herd, not safety. Height. Air. The next current. The small living thing below that did not yet know it had been chosen.
The Tree Speaker yanked the cord.
Torren did not come back.
The eagle climbed.
The world opened wider.
A second yank came, harder, and pain tore through Torren's shoulder where the Tree Speaker's fingers dug in. The pain was human. Heavy. Ugly. Necessary.
Torren fell back into his own body with a strangled breath.
He pitched forward, and the Tree Speaker caught him by the back of his cloak before his hands hit the snow.
Torren gasped. The ridge swam. His stomach twisted like he had fallen from a great height and only remembered the ground at the last moment.
The Tree Speaker crouched in front of him. "Look at me."
Torren blinked.
"Look at me, boy."
Torren forced his eyes onto the old man's face.
"What are you?" the Tree Speaker asked.
Torren tried to answer and found only air.
The old man slapped him.
Not hard enough to injure. Hard enough.
Torren's head snapped sideways. "Ow! Gods!"
"What are you?"
Torren dragged in a breath. "Torren."
"What are you?"
"Torren, damn you."
"Where are you?"
"Ridge." He swallowed. "Painted Dog ridge."
"What has wings?"
Torren closed his eyes.
The Tree Speaker slapped the snow beside his knee.
Torren opened them again. "The eagle."
"Not you."
"No."
"Say it."
"The eagle has wings. Not me."
The old man watched him for a long moment, then sat back.
"Good."
Torren touched his cheek. "You hit me."
"You were still looking down from the sky."
"You hit me."
"Would you rather I let you keep flying?"
Torren thought of the climb, the widening world, the pull north.
"No," he said, quieter.
The Tree Speaker grunted. "Then complain less."
Torren sat in the snow, breathing hard. Above, the eagle wheeled once more, higher now. It did not come down again. It climbed until it was only a dark mark against the pale sky.
"What was that?" Torren asked.
"Not wearing."
Torren looked at him. "Then what?"
The Tree Speaker's face was grave now. More than before. "A knock at the door."
Torren followed his gaze upward.
The eagle was almost gone.
"A knock," he repeated.
"Yes."
"And if the door opens?"
The Tree Speaker took a long time to answer.
"Then you had better know how to come home."
Torren looked at the cord around his wrist. The skin beneath it was red, almost raw. He had never liked the thing until that moment.
"Again?" he asked, though he was not sure whether he wanted the answer to be yes or no.
The Tree Speaker stared at him as if he had grown horns.
"No."
"Good."
"You sound disappointed."
"I'm not."
"Bad liar."
Torren laughed weakly and lay back in the snow, staring at the empty place where the eagle had been. The sky looked smaller now that he was only beneath it.
That should have been comforting.
It was not.