It was close.
The twinges grew stronger as Illya slid silent as a secret through the moon-dappled foliage. The mossy bark of the giant Lunga trees was slick with starry dew. She protracted her claws to keep herself from slipping while she hurried along the enormous branches on all fours.

A twig snapped somewhere off to her left.

She shrank into the shadows and held very still, heart pounding far too loudly. A nightjar emerged. Its head cocked curiously at the skittish elf before it lost interest and moved on. She let out a sigh of relief and resumed her journey.

The Wind whispered in her ears as she went, fragments of news, of warnings, of rumours from near and far. Sometimes it warned her of danger happening a thousand miles away, sometimes it told her the secrets of people she’d never met. Occasionally helpful, frequently misleading, other times completely silent when she needed them most. To hear the Wind’s voice was a very rare gift, but she couldn’t trust it to help her, especially not tonight. She had to keep her own eyes and ears alert.

Illya reached her hideaway just in time. The moment she parted the thick screen of ivy, and slid into the tree hollow, a wave of contractions bent her double and left her breathless. She curled into the nest that completely filled the tiny space and waited for the pain to subside.

The moss lining was soft and cool against her cheek. She’d gathered it with painstaking care over several weeks, slipping away whenever she could. Hardly an easy task when she was second-in-command. But bit-by-bit, with a few minutes snatched here and there, she had found this hidden little nook, cleaned it, and lined it with the best leaves and mosses she could find.

The hollow lay far away from any trails, but this did little to ease her anxiety. Her fellow Rangers patrolled far and wide around the perimeter of the forest every night, guarding the borders of the hidden kingdom. She could only hope none of them happened to pass close by tonight.

Another wave of contractions snatched her breath away. Was this much pain normal? Childbirth for elves was supposed to be easy, what with how tiny their babies were. Her abdomen had only the slightest bump, invisible unless she took off her clothes and arched her back. Why, then, did these contractions leave her shaking and gasping, drenched in sweat?

What if something was terribly, terribly wrong? Would she die tonight, alone in this hollow?

She squeezed her eyes shut, taking deep, even breaths as the contractions wracked her body. Tears blurred her vision when she opened them again, but they weren’t from the pain. She wished Ariht was here with her. She wished they could be a normal family, that he could carry his child around on his shoulder with pride.

But he couldn’t, of course. Rangers weren’t supposed to form attachments. Or have children.

That hadn’t kept her from falling in love with him. It hadn’t kept her from sleeping with him, though she’d had at least enough sense to stop short of forming a mating bond. When one elf dies, two elves die. The bond was so strong an elf rarely survived the death of their life partner. With how dangerous a ranger’s job was, taking a mate would be cruel. So instead, this was her reward — to be alone, in pain, an unattached mother about to give birth to a child she couldn’t keep.

The contractions eased, and she gulped at the air. She scarcely had time to recover, however, before the next wave started. This time, it felt different.

It’s coming.

Shaking, she pulled off her clothes and balled them up, stuffing them under her head as a makeshift pillow. She lay down on her back, knees drawn up, and started to push. The pain was sharp and intense. Her claws dug into the splintery walls of the hollow as she braced herself against it, fangs clenched so hard she thought they might crack. Something warm and wet slithered from between her legs, so sudden it took a moment for her to realise it was over.

She reached down and scooped up the slimy bundle. Instinct told her what to do without thinking: she carefully pierced the amniotic sack with a claw and cleared the fluid from the baby’s mouth and nostrils. She was so focused on her task, she barely noticed the afterbirth come out. Undoing the leather thong from the end of her braid, she tied it tight around the umbilical cord before snipping it with her sharp canine teeth. The baby let out his first mewling cry, and the enormity of the moment crashed into her.

Here was a life, an entirely new life, laying in the palm of her hand. No bigger than a day-old kitten — healthy, and precisely the size a newborn elf should be. The tiny tail was twined around chubby legs. Miniscule baby claws slid from fingertips and curled against her palm.

‘Hello, Baby’, she breathed. ‘Welcome. Welcome to the world. I hope it will be kind to you.’

She carefully turned Baby over, too preoccupied before to check the sex.

‘You said “he”’, Ariht had said when she first confided she was pregnant. ‘It could be a girl.’

‘Ha!’ Illya had snorted, ‘Aren’t you optimistic?’

‘Well, one of us has to be.’

It was a boy, a little ilvan. Of course it was. Elvae were so rare, after all, barely one in ten. She smiled with damp eyes. Nearly every parent wanted a girl. She had secretly wished for one, too, but Baby’s sex seemed so utterly inconsequential now. He was healthy, and he was hers, and that’s all that mattered.

As she gently wiped him clean with soft, dewy leaves, the wispy down feathers on his scalp puffed up like dandelion fluff. They were pale cream, like hers. When he opened his eyes to gaze at his mother for the first time, they were golden amber, like Ariht’s.

A lump formed in her throat. She cradled him to her chest, letting their skin touch.

He squirmed and mewled some more and, after a while, wriggled over to her breast and found her nipple. It felt strange when he latched on and began to suckle. Her chest, usually flat, had swelled during her pregnancy. Like her abdomen, though, her breasts never got so big she couldn’t hide them in the folds of a baggy tunic. Their heaviness still felt alien and uncomfortable, but knowing they would shrink back to flat sooner rather than later only filled her with sorrow. This would be the only meal she would ever give her son. Without him nursing, her milk would dry up quickly.

She started to cry.

Every last inch of him was perfect. Every last inch of her wanted to keep him warm and safe in her arms forever.

She wiped her eyes, cursing herself for being weak. She always knew she couldn’t keep him. Wasting tears on it would do her no good.

She continued to fight them as she cleaned herself off and pulled her clothes back on. Baby, full and drowsy, instinctively crawled up to her shoulder and pressed himself against her neck, his sharp little claws latching onto the feathers that hung down past her ears.

Every great cause demands sacrifices, she reminded herself. If this was the price she had to pay to see Ariht’s vision realised, then it was what had to be done. What any one of them wanted didn’t matter. She and Ariht were working towards a future that would bring prosperity and safety to all elves, and she couldn’t jeopardise it with her own selfish desires. She could either spend the next twenty years with her son in a stagnant world watching their species slowly die out, or she could give him up now so that someday they no longer had to fight fang and claw every moment just to stay alive.

Two centuries ago, several thousand elves had escaped their slave masters and fled into these trees, taking shelter in their giant branches where other species feared to tread. But this forest, no, this mire, was only another kind of captivity. So many died from illness, from griffons, from the venomous snakes and insects that infested every inch of this place. More than the scant few elvae could hope to replenish each year. An elf’s chances of living past childhood were–

She dared not think about it. Baby would be different. He was going to live a long, healthy life. He had to.

She gathered up the leaves and moss of her carefully crafted nest, now sticky with sweat, blood, and amniotic fluid, and crawled out of the hollow. She balanced along the curving edge of a massive branch, so thick around that three elves could comfortably walk down its length side-by-side, and tossed the nest over. She watched it break apart as it bounced off branches and snagged on vines until its shreds were scattered to the forest floor far, far below. A month of hard work, gone in an instant.

Baby squeaked indignantly, adjusting his balance on her shoulder as she leapt from one branch to another. Every tree she put behind her brought her closer to her destination. And further from her son.

The sharp scent of lavender made her pause. She shimmied down the trunk to the forest floor, where a thick patch of the fragrant flowers waved gently in the nighttime breeze. She broke off one of the blooms and carefully prised her son from his perch.

He was drenched in her scent, so she rubbed him all over with the lavender to mask it. The pungent odour overwhelmed his sensitive nose, and he started to wail. The cries were so loud for someone so small.

‘Shh, Baby, shh’, she crooned. She cradled him against her collar bone and rubbed gentle circles on his back with a finger, desperate to calm him down before he attracted predators. Or other elves.

When at last he stopped crying, she tucked him against a tree root and rolled in the lavender patch herself. Eyes watering and nose stinging, she scooped Baby up again, and he wriggled back onto her shoulder, latching himself to her feathers once more.

As she was scurrying back up the tree, she spotted a bush of parrot flowers. It was rooted in the middle of a Lunga branch, where a pocket of soil had collected in a cleft. Thick, sickly-sweet blooms weighed it down, growing in a wild riot of colours. She broke off a stem and tucked it into her belt.

When the first mists of pre-dawn turned the forest floor into a dreamy haze, Illya descended from the trees once more. She touched down on a path carved through the underbrush by centuries of swamp pigs, whitebuck, and kirin travelling to the river.

The Trail of Orphans. A safe place to leave unwanted babies without fear of repercussion.

That is, so long as you weren’t caught doing it.

She found a soft patch of ferns and lay Baby down on it. As she folded the ferns over him, he tried several times to crawl up her arm and onto her shoulder. Each time she had to push him back down, a jagged splinter dug deeper and deeper into her heart.

Finally, he grew tired and curled up in the ferns. She pressed the leaves over him with an awful finality. Tugging the parrot branch from her belt, she stuck it in the loamy earth next to him and clambered up the nearest tree before she could be tempted to snatch him back out.

She settled on a branch within view of Baby’s hiding place and waited. He started to cry. She dug in her claws, willing herself to stay put. His sobs grew louder. He must be cold. And confused. The splinter turned into a dagger.

The Wind tittered around her, curious about what she was doing, trying to distract her with meaningless gossip from places she’d never seen and never would. She ignored it, kept her ears pricked and eyes open, scanning the forest for predators. Her gaze darted from the canopy overhead where an owl griffon might be gliding silently by, to the branches around her in case of a prowling panther, to the forest floor where swamp pigs and wolves roamed.

It felt like ages passed, though Illya knew it couldn’t have been more than a quarter-hour. Baby’s cries had grown thin and reedy. Dew soaked through her tunic, and she prayed the ferns were keeping him warm and dry.

What if they weren’t, though? What if he was dying of the cold, all alone down there? He stopped crying altogether. She couldn’t take it anymore; she had to go check him. She tensed herself, ready to spring down to the Trail in a single leap.

Voices were coming down the path. Illya shrank back, her grey tunic blending perfectly with the Lunga’s silvery bark.

‘It’s almost dawn. We should head back after this lap.’ Two rangers came into view through the mist, striding along at a leisurely pace. One was tall, nearly seven feet, with light brown skin and dark brown feathers that had a violet sheen to them. The other was about half a head shorter and much paler, though every inch of him was covered in dense freckles. Even his white feathers were spattered with dark speckles. She vaguely recognised them both as lower-ranking Rangers, though she didn’t remember their names.

‘We didn’t see a single one tonight’, said the speckled elf.

‘Mmm, it hasn’t been a busy birthing season this year.’

‘Nor last year. We’re going to die out at this rate.’

‘Ever the optimist, you are’, said the elf with the violet sheen. ‘Two years of low births aren’t going to kill us off.’

‘Two years, no, but if it keeps going this way— wait.’ Speckles peered along the edges of the mist-blurred Trail, his attention caught by a bright splash of colour and a heavy, sweet scent. ‘Was that parrot branch here last time we walked past?’

‘No’, frowned Violet.

Speckles stooped down and carefully patted the brush and ferns around the incongruous flowers. Baby squawked and started to cry again. Untangling the ferns, the Ranger pulled him free. ‘Oh, look at you!’ He grinned up at Violet. ‘I guess we have one tonight, after all.’

‘Oh! What’s their sex?’

‘Male. Like all the others. No elf would be mad enough to abandon a girl.’

Would I have if I’d had a daughter? Illya wondered. It wouldn’t change anything. Baby’s sex had nothing to do with her reasons, nor how much her heart was breaking.

Baby was shivering. She could see it clearly, even from all the way up in her hiding place. Speckles tucked him into his tunic, cradling Baby against his warm chest, crooning softly.

That should be me, she thought bitterly. I should be the one comforting him. Her claws bit so deeply into the bark her fingers ached.

Violet crouched and sniffed around the ferns. ‘She was thorough’, he said, scanning the ground for tracks. ‘All I smell is lavender and parrot flower.’ He stood and peered closely at the surrounding trees. Illya pressed herself flat against her branch and squeezed her eyes shut so they wouldn’t shine in the dark.

Speckles clucked impatiently. ‘Do you really need to do that? Isn’t the whole point of the Orphan Trail to take the babies, no questions asked?’

‘Only if the mother doesn’t get caught. We’re supposed to look. It’s protocol.’

Illya slit her eyes open just enough to see through her eyelashes. Violet was staring right at her hiding spot. Heart thundering, she held her breath and willed him to look away. After a few moments, his gaze shifted elsewhere. She slowly let out a shaky breath. He hadn’t spotted her.

Speckles rolled his eyes. ‘What mother would be stupid enough to hang around after they leave the baby?’

‘You’d be surprised. A lot of them linger.’

‘Well, it’s a stupid rule. We want females to have more children, and so many male couples are waiting to adopt. Why should we punish a mother for leaving her baby here?’

Violet shrugged. ‘I don’t make the rules. I just follow them.’

Stupid rules, indeed, Illya thought bitterly. Oh, how much resistance she’d faced when she’d joined the Rangers. How dare a healthy young female want to join the Rangers and take their oath of celibacy when she ought to be having children! And then, to be punished when she had one, anyway. She hated this world. This cruel, unfair, nonsensical world.

The Wind laughed at her. The world has always been this way, it sneered. Her suffering wasn’t special.

‘Besides,’ Speckles continued, not even listening to his partner, ‘making sure these little acorns make it safely to the nursery is more important than chasing after their parents.’ He cooed and tickled Baby. The tiny elf gurgled happily and crawled up to his shoulder, where he curled against his rescuer’s neck.

Violet narrowed his eyes at his companion ‘You’re broody, aren’t you?’

‘No!’ said Speckles indignantly as he reached up and tickled Baby again. ‘Okay, maybe a little.’

Violet snorted.

‘You gonna quit the Rangers and settle down?’ Violet smirked. ‘Think you’re pretty enough to catch a female’s eye?’

‘I might be. You seem to think so.’

‘Mmm, maybe my standards are just low.’

Speckles laughed and pulled Violet close. His eyes fluttered shut as Violet kissed him.

It seems Ariht and I aren’t the only ones breaking our oaths of celibacy, Illya thought. Just how many forbidden couples were there amongst the Rangers? Had any of them formed a mating bond?

Why must falling in love be a crime?

Soon it wouldn’t be. Soon, Ariht would be able to put his plan in motion. Elves would be free of this deathtrap swamp-forest, and Rangers would be free to love openly.

King Quillithel was terrified of the outside world. Terrified elves would be enslaved again if they left this forest. But Ariht knew elves weren’t nearly as fragile as their King thought, that they deserved a place in the world as equals. Already, Ariht was forging contacts with humans from Falia. Plans were being laid, news was being spread, other elves were beginning to listen. Only another few decades and they’d have amassed enough power and support to overthrow the King and lead their species to salvation. Such a small span of time compared to the hundred-and-fifty years she’d already lived in these Lunga trees.

Baby will be all grown up by then.

Her heart stuttered.

‘We could always adopt, once we’ve retired from the Rangers’, Speckles murmured against Violet’s lips.

Violet sighed as he drew back. ‘The waiting list is decades-long.’ He reached out and brushed a finger over Baby’s downy feathers. ‘Not enough little alva like this appear on the Trail for every broody male couple to get one.’

‘Well’, said Speckles with a mischievous smile, ‘If, on our last year as Rangers, one baby from the Trail never found its way back to the nursery… who would know?’

‘Meiyani!’ Violet snapped. ‘You wouldn’t.’

‘Kidding! Kidding. Don’t take everything so seriously, Kettra.’

Illya doubted he was joking. As second-in-command, she should have been outraged, but she found it impossible not to sympathise with Speckles — er, Meiyani. Not that it mattered either way; it wasn’t as if she could punish him without revealing she’d been on the Trail tonight, listening in.

‘C’mon, let’s get this little one back to the nursery before he gets hungry. It’s a long way to the King’s Aerie.’ Kettra hooked an arm around his lover’s shoulder and squeezed him tight.

‘I’m putting our names in’, Meiyani said abruptly. ‘Into the adoption list.’

‘We can’t! Not while we’re still Rangers!’

‘I’d rather be a father.’

‘Meiyani—’

‘You know how long the list is. And when our names eventually come up, we’ll retire from the Rangers.’

‘But it would out us as a couple.’

‘We aren’t mated. And we won’t be until we retire. We’ll talk it out with the matron. With the King if we have to! So long as we don’t mate until then, what harm can it do?’

Kettra sighed. ‘Let’s not make any decisions right now, all right? We should think on it for a few days, until birthing season is over and we’re not addled by hormones and newborns.’

‘Okay’, Meiyani said reluctantly.

‘Good. Now let’s get back.’

Kettra turned and started walking. Meiyani lingered for a few moments more, staring idly at the parrot branch sticking up out of the ferns as he gently petted Baby’s downy feathers. ‘I’m not addled. I’ve wanted this for so long.’ He shook his head, his speckled feathers jouncing like leaves whispering secrets to the Wind.

He turned and followed Kettra down the Trail of Orphans. Illya watched Baby’s dandelion head bob on his shoulder until the Trail curved, and he vanished from her sight with a terrible finality.

When she first realised she was with child, she thought the hardest part would be keeping the pregnancy a secret. Now she knew that was nothing compared to watching her baby be carried away, to grow up never knowing who she was, or that she loved him with every fibre of her being.

Her claws dug even deeper into the bark as she fought the tears that were threatening to spill out again. She became dimly aware that the patchwork snippets of sky peeking through the thick foliage had become lighter.

It was time to leave.

She carefully prised her claws from their death-grip on the bark, surprised by how badly they hurt. She looked down. Little lines of blood had welled up along her cuticles. She stared dumbly at the crimson beads, only just noticing how tired she was, how sore, how empty.

By the time Illya reached her home, her own private hollow next to Ariht’s, the forest had come awake. The cheerful cacophony of morning birdsong pecked its way into her skull until it rattled. She dropped from a branch onto the spiralling wooden walkway that wrapped its way around the trunk of the dormitory tree. All she wanted to do was curl up in her nest and sleep until she forgot who she was.

Ariht was sitting on the walkway outside her hollow, his elbows resting on his knees and his fingers steepled against his lips as he stared straight ahead, deep in thought.

He heard her approach.

‘It happened last night?’ he asked without any greeting.

She nodded.

‘You took care of it?’

‘Obviously.’ It came out more clipped than she intended.

He looked up at her with eyes the same colour as Baby’s.

‘We can’t ever talk about this again.’

‘I know.’ Her eyes were dangerously wet. She wanted so badly to talk about it. To have someone hear and acknowledge her pain.

But Ariht only nodded and got to his feet. ‘Take today off and get some rest. I’ll tell the others you had insomnia and need sleep.’ He turned to leave.

‘Tell me it was worth it’, she blurted.

Ariht paused. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Tell me the cause was worth it. That it will get better. That someday I’ll see him again.’

‘Him?’

‘My baby!’

‘Illya, quiet!’ Ariht hissed. He gripped her arms, his gaze fierce, his pointed ears swivelling every which way to listen for eavesdroppers.

He softened when he felt her trembling. ‘I promise it was worth it’, he said gently. ‘I promise. King Quillithel may be a coward and a fool, but we’re taking the future of our species into our own hands. It won’t be easy, and it won’t be painless, but it’ll be worth it.’

Those same words had comforted and inspired her many times before.

But not today.

The cause or a family. A family or the cause. Never both. And if word ever got out, if any elf ever snooped too hard into the matter, it might be neither.

Once an abandoned baby reached the nursery at the King’s Aerie, complete immunity was extended to whoever had brought them into this world — so long as they never came forward, that is. No matter how much an elf abandoned on the Trail might resemble someone else as they grew, they officially had no biological parents.

But considering their positions as first and second-in-command of the Rangers, would that immunity extend to Ariht and Illya? If Baby grew up to look a little too much like them… would there really be no questions asked?

Her head spun. Her whole body was vibrating from exhaustion. She wanted to sleep. And maybe never to wake.

Ariht wrapped his arms around her and pressed his cheek to hers. She allowed herself to relax against him for a brief moment, drinking in his familiar scent, listening to his steady heartbeat, before she pulled away.

‘I’m going to get some rest.’

‘I know this was hard, but remember I love you, Illya’, Aright whispered.

‘I’m going to get some rest’, she repeated flatly.

He nodded. He gave her arm one last squeeze before he headed down the wooden walkway to begin his daily duties.

The curtain of woven vines rustled conspiratorially as she pushed through them and into her hollow. She collapsed onto her nest and curled into a ball. She lay where she had fallen in a state of complete numbness, not even bothering to pull on blankets against the early spring chill.

Something ticklish was clinging to her cheek. She absently plucked it off, ready to flick it away until she realised what it was.

One of Baby’s feathers.

The tiniest strand of pale cream down, softer than a whispered ‘I love you’ and lighter than a promise of a better future.

She stared at it for a long time.

Eventually, it slipped from her fingers, tugged away by the slightest draft where it was lost amongst all the other motes of dust. She closed her eyes. Her secret was carried on the Wind now, and whether it would keep it was out of her hands.