Willow was far happier now that she’d spent some time with her brother, Yew. The older boy still wasn’t doing too great by her estimation, but hopefully he could make new and better friends once they make it to their new home.

  She had never liked Rom much anyway, the older boy never stopped talking, and he constantly made her older sister Maple uncomfortable with his comments and actions. Though Willow never fully understood why.

  Mu had let her know this morning that they were only a few days away from their current destination, Darabaile. After that her family would be heading to one of the outlying villages to properly settle in.

  And then she’d have to say goodbye to them.

  Willow shook her head, clearing the depressing thoughts that she didn’t want to acknowledge at the moment.

  Instead she focused on the most recent oddity that had crossed their group's path.

  They had found a small road that they could use. Though it was in disrepair and they had yet to come across any other travellers using it, it greatly improved their travelling speed. Even if her teacher’s spirit beast still had to occasionally move some of the woodlands out of his way as he went.

  Going off of her mother’s stories, Willow had assumed most roads had people constantly bustling to and from the places the road connected to. With potential brigands and vagabonds lurking around every turn or just off the side of the road, waiting to strike.

  When she brought this up to Scholar Mu during their daily training, after ruminating on these thoughts for the majority of the day, she laughed.

  “Not much reason to use this old road for most people. If I remember right, which I do, there used to be a small village on the other end that’s since been abandoned.”

  “Why’d they leave?” The girl asked, curious.

  “Too many beast attacks, and not enough reason to stick around.” Was the swift reply. “They also had a bad year for their crops, so they were already strugglin’ before the beasties got to them.”

  Willow frowned. “Why didn’t the wanderers help them?”

  From what she’d been told, that was the exact kind of situation the group was meant to deal with.

  The wanderer woman puffed on her pipe, and Willow felt some regret in her qi. “By the time word got to us, they’d already abandoned the place. Happens sometimes, either they waited too long to call us, or things got far worse, far too quickly for my group to handle.”

  Anger was added to the cocktail of her emotions.

  “Of course, if Clan Darach did their job, then they would’ve dealt with things before it had gotten to that point.”

  A sentiment she’d started hearing about many of the clans since she learned of their existence, and it was something that was fundamentally opposite to her own world view. If the clans have so much power, why weren’t they using it to help the people they had control over?

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  It just didn’t make any sense to the girl.

  So she asked her mentor.

  “Why don’t the clans help more?”

  Scholar Mu looked out into the distance, her eyes seeing more than the immediate surroundings as she pondered the question.

  “Wish I could tell ya. Even beyond the Allied Clan Territories the story’s largely the same from what I’ve heard. Those in power doin’ little to help the ones they’re meant to protect. Even saw a little of it myself in my travels.”

  That definitely piqued the girl’s interest.

  “What’s it like outside?” Granted, Willow hadn’t even experienced what normal life was like in her homeland yet, having spent her entire life in a secluded valley.

  She was still curious what life was like in faraway places.

  Mu cracked a half-smile, happy that her apprentice was showing proper curiosity for the world.

  “I personally haven’t been to the Endless Empire south of us, or the Tribelands to the north. However I did visit the Duchy of Seasons across the mountains to the east. Beautiful landscapes, but during my time there it wasn’t a welcomin’ place for foreigners.”

  She blew out a cloud of sweet smoke and looked to the sky as a thought seemed to strike her. “Then again, they mighta been friendlier if I hadn’t stolen from them.”

  Willow stared at her teacher expectantly, sensing the start to a story.

  Her teacher chuckled. “It’s not as excitin’ as I’m probably making it sound. I needed a spirit to counteract the rotten energies of Rotter, and I hadn’t had any luck here. So I just popped over to a place that I’d heard had some powerful wood aligned spirits, found ‘n bound Restoration of Spring, and the Duchess of Spring took umbrage with that.”

  “Was the spirit a friend of hers?” Willow asked, curious why the Duchess would be upset about someone binding a spirit in her territory. Though considering how the Li and Hao clans viewed Harmony and Change as their property despite the spirits' objections, she had an inkling of where this was going.

  Her teacher smiled ruefully.

  “Apparently they were marked for someone else to bind. The Duchy has a whole system in place where spirits are let loose until someone “worthy” is found to bind them. There’s a selection process, and I just jumped to the front of the queue without the proper permits in place. Didn’t know it at the time, of course. Thought they were makin’ a fuss over nothing, so I kept pokin’ the hornets nest as I made my way back home.”

  Willow scrunched up her nose at the idea of needing someone else’s permission to make friends with a spirit. “That’s a silly rule. It should be between the person and spirit, no one else should have a say.”

  Scholar Mu sighed. “I’m kinda torn on the idea, myself. A lot of harm in the world could be avoided if certain people didn’t have access to the power spirits grant. Yet, more often than not, it’s the people who least deserve power that become the arbiters of such things. Honestly, I don't have the faintest idea if the Duchy’s system was actually corrupt or not, but my gut says they set it up for their benefit. It’s simply the way things are.”

  Willow felt her teacher’s mood take a nosedive for a moment, puffing on her pipe in thought, before it bounced back up just as quickly.

  “Enough depressin’ talk, wanna hear tales of everything I saw over there? All my proper journals are back home, but I can still paint a pretty picture with my words.”

  The girl nodded with a wide grin, always eager to hear more about the world.

  Mentor and apprentice spent the remainder of the travel day discussing far off lands, and what sights could be seen in them. Willow reciprocated with some tales of the lands she heard about in her Mother’s stories, which the wanderer spent some time trying to determine if the lands described had any basis in reality or not.

  And all the while, Darabaile drew closer.