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NINE YEARS AGO. A young Eshonai has been told that mapping the world removes its mystery, and that the wilderness belongs to the spren and the greatshells and should not be confined to paper. She finds the warning flat-out ridiculous. Attuned to Awe, she enters a great forest near the Shattered Plains, where lifespren bob through the trees as bright green balls with white spines. Her people, the First-Rhythm family of listeners, always take the same path into this forest — a day's walk up the river, gather, return. Eshonai has insisted on leaving them, swinging around the perimeter, and crossing back through the heart on the other side. After several days of hiking she has come out at the river on the far side. Now she can cut back and bring her family a map showing how big the forest really is on one face. She has been out alone in a dozen storms in her life and survived without trouble; she has been able to shelter under the trees this time. The others worry; their dreams reach as far as one of the ten ancient cities at the rim of the Plains and no farther. She considers that small-minded. Their ancestors did not fight one another — they turned their faces to the storm and walked away from their very gods in the name of freedom. *You couldn't steal the secrets from something so strong just by exploring it. You could merely learn.*

She sits down by a rock and sketches the river's bend onto her precious paper. Her mother Jaxlim is one of the very few among the families who knows the Song of Making Paper, and with her help Eshonai has perfected the process. She walks on, judges the river's course by counting steps and resighting from multiple angles, eats steamed haspers near a bend and notices, of all things, a tree-green cremling she has never seen before — *I'll have to tell Venli.* Rivers are guideposts; you cannot get lost if you know where the river is. *What is a secret but a surprise to be discovered?* she asks Annoyance. Then she stops in her tracks. Over the gurgling, shouts in the distance — and they are wrong. Flat. No hint of a rhythm. As if made by the dead. She hurries forward, Excitement attuned, in case the others have come to find her and are at last willing to explore — and rounds the bend to find herself confronted by something more wondrous and more terrible than she had ever dared imagine. Humans.

Back at the family tents in the same week, Venli sits opposite her mother and recites all ninety-one stanzas of a song. *That was one of your better recitations,* her mother says to Praise. *A little more practice, and we can move to the next song.* Venli insists she got it right; Jaxlim tells her she mixed up the seventh and fifteenth stanzas and forgot the nineteenth altogether. The nineteenth, Venli grumbles, is barely important — it is about how to take workform and dullform, and nobody would willingly choose either. *We need to remember what we passed through to get here,* her mother says to the Rhythm of the Lost. *We need to take care not to forget ourselves.* Then Jaxlim begins to sing the song in a voice that is not powerful, but thin and sharp and almost liquid, cutting Venli to the soul. *No,* Venli thinks, ashamed, *I am not perfect. But my mother is.* The keeper of songs trails off after the tenth stanza. *Thank you,* Venli says, *for reminding me what I am practicing to become.*

She goes to the tent door and watches the family at work — chopping wood, sharpening ancient metal spears, talking yet again of striking out of the forest to take back one of the cities. Surely there is more for her than this. *Eshonai thinks we should draw pictures to represent the verses of the songs,* she tells her mother — *make stacks of papers full of pictures, so we won't forget.* *Your sister has a wisdom to her at times,* Jaxlim answers. Venli attunes Betrayal. *She should be learning the songs like me.* *Yes,* her mother agrees. *But Eshonai has a bold heart. She merely needs to learn that her family is more important than counting the number of hills.* *I have a bold heart!* Venli says. *You have a keen and crafty mind,* her mother says, *like your mother. Do not dismiss your own talents because you envy those of another.*

Venli tells her mother she thinks she has discovered something — that she has been keeping painspren close in the storms and believes the right spren is the key to recovering warform, the first listener to hold it in many generations, ever since the humans and the singers of old destroyed one another in their final battle. *Let's go speak with the Five,* Jaxlim says, standing up from the loom. Venli grabs her arm — *Maybe I should practice more. Before we tell anyone.* Her mother hums to Reprimand — *this is like your refusal to perform in public; you are afraid of failing again.* But she has already softened the ground; she has spoken to the elders about the possibility of new forms, and they are willing to try.

Venli follows her out, Excitement attuned, dreaming that warform might open her mind, quiet her fears, let her be the one who carries her people to greatness. *The Five* are gathered around the firepit talking about which boasts to make and which warriors will cast first in the upcoming raid on a city. Jaxlim sings them a full song to Excitement, a rare delivery from the keeper of songs; each stanza makes Venli stand taller. The elders are receptive — they realise that new forms are worth the risk. Confident now of acceptance, Venli steps forward and attunes Victory and begins to speak.

Then a drumming sounds at the edge of the camp. The warning drums. The Five grab their ancient axes, spears, and swords, each one precious and passed down because the listener families cannot forge new metal. *But what could this be?* No other family has attacked them out here in generations, since the Pure-Songers raided the Fourth-Movement family for weapons and were shunned for it. Venli stays back; she is the apprentice keeper of songs and too valuable to risk in a skirmish. Hopefully whatever this is will be over soon and she can return to basking in the elders' respect. So it is that she is one of the last to hear about Eshonai's incredible discovery — one of the last to learn that their world has forever been changed, and that her own grand announcement has been utterly overshadowed by the actions of her reckless sister.