I walked along the edge of the river, listening to the crackle and crunch of the lacy ice edging the river beneath my feet, and thought of my mother. Or, more accurately, I tried to think of my mother. I couldn’t really remember her. I had only been two when she left, but every now and then, I stopped and tried to recall what she had been like. Sometimes I had a feeling of warmth and safety when I thought of her, but the feeling was fleeting and trying to hold onto it felt like trying to keep river water in my hands.

I’d been too young when she died so—besides those vague impressions—I had no memories of my own. Everything I knew about her was formed from what Tamsen had told me. He’d been older when she left and swore he remembered her.

Those memories had been told to me as secrets, whispered late at night, as Tamsen and I sat together under a blanket, listening to our father’s snores. Even knowing he was asleep, we’d kept our voices barely a whisper on the chance he might wake up. Or, worse, hear what we were talking about. Then we would hear it. He was always furious at any mention of our mother. In my whole life, I’d never even heard him mention her name. I had no idea what it was.

But if Tamsen was to be believed, my mother had been a beautiful woman. She’d had long, brown hair; big, brown eyes that sparkled when she laughed; and a small face with a small nose. Tamsen had always described her as being tall, but I suspected that was simply what she must have looked like to him as a child, because the cloak I wore now had once been hers, and it just fit me, and I was not a tall person. Last year I’d been sitting outside with my face tipped up to the sun when Tamsen had stopped and looked at me.

When I’d looked over at him, he’d had a strange, arrested look on his face.

“What?” I’d asked him.

“You look like our mother,” he’d told me. Then he’d looked quickly around. “Don’t tell father I said that,” he’d said and walked quickly away.

I’d asked him about it later, but he’d refused to talk about it again.

Tamsen hadn’t wanted to talk about her as we grew older. That had been the first time he’d mentioned her in years.

So it had been when we were much younger that I’d found out my mother was an amazing gardener. She had made flowers and fruit flourish from the poor soil of the mountain and gone into the village to teach them as well. She was—more than anything—kind.

The strangest part of all was the laughter. Tamsen had told me that she had a laugh that would make everyone around her laugh too. This was the part I found hardest to believe. My father had to have been around her sometimes, and I didn’t think I had ever heard him laugh. I couldn’t imagine it.

I looked up when the ground rumbled beneath my feet. It wasn’t technically an earthquake, more of an earth-quiver, but they had been happening more and more frequently lately.

Turning, I looked back at the Northern Peak, which loomed dark and foreboding behind my back. Today, my father would lead Tamsen to the top for the very first time.

Neither of us had ever been allowed to go much beyond the foothills surrounding the cabin. The gnarled tree a half a quarter of a league from the cabin was the hard perimeter. No one but my father was allowed past that point.

But today was different. Today was Tamsen’s birthday, and all that would change. Today, he would be permitted to go to the actual peak. Today, he would learn to tend the fire.

I felt a stab of jealousy, then a streak of guilt immediately followed. It wasn’t fair, and I felt terrible begrudging my brother anything, but the truth was that I was envious—of what Tamsen would see from the peak. Would he be able to see greater Terra? Maybe even the skyline of New Helio?

And when he looked down into the smoking mouth of the Northern Peak, what would he see? What was it like to tend the fires of the mountain? What would our father teach him?

I kicked a rock in the path and felt a jolt of sharp pain through my thin shoes. Like so many things in my life, what lay beyond the gnarled tree had always been a secret. And it was one I wished I could discover.