Outcast by Michelle Paver

The Ravens gave a joyful shout and the proud, happy trees rustled approval. It was Midsummer Night, the night when the clans honored the Forest by walking sunwise around the fire, garlanding the trees with necklaces of bone and berries.
    All except Renn. To have taken part would have felt as if she were betraying Torak. Tonight was his birthnight. How could 137 she sit here enjoying salmon-liver stew and flame-blackened boar? It was nearly a moon since the clan meet; nearly two since he'd been cast out. She missed him all the time. The misery was always with her, like a stone in her chest. "What if something happens to him?" she'd said to Fin-Kedinn that morning. "If he fell and broke his leg and couldn't hunt."
"He's tough," her uncle had said. "He's survived on his own before; he can do it again."
"For how long?"
To that, Fin-Kedinn had no answer.
Since the clan meet, the Ravens had moved east up the Axehandle, and whenever she could, Renn had secretly combed the Forest for any trace of Torak. In vain. Sometimes she woke in the night and thought, What if he never comes back?
     
She had no idea whether he'd done the rite, but she sensed that something was terribly wrong. The signs were bad. If only she knew what they meant. She fingered the scar where the elk's antler had gashed her forearm. The wound had healed, but the memory was still raw. If that hunting party hadn't heard her cries ...
    Then, shortly after the clan meet, Aki had gone
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missing. His friends had found nothing but the remains of his boat. Renn had a dreadful feeling that Torak had been involved.
And nobody seemed to care. Everyone seemed to be pretending he didn't exist.
    On the other side of the fire, Bale was twisting bramble twine for more garlands. He'd tied back his hair with a strip of seal-hide, and he looked very handsome. Renn resented him. He'd stayed with the Ravens when the rest of his clan had returned to the islands, but instead of trying to find Torak, he'd gone hunting on the coast in his precious skinboat. She was disappointed. She'd expected more of him.
    "May the World Spirit walk beneath your boughs," Fin-Kedinn told the Forest. "May you grow strong, and seed many saplings!"
Suddenly Renn couldn't bear it. Leaping to her feet, she ran from the camp.
The Raven Mage squatted on the riverbank like a toad. She'd left the celebrations to cast the bones. Now she regarded Renn without emotion. "So. You seek my help at last."
    "No," said Renn. "Eve never wanted your help."
"You seek it all the same."
Renn set her teeth. Throwing herself down in the bracken, she shredded a burdock leaf. "I've been seeing signs. I don't know what they mean. Teach 139 me how to read them." "No," said Saeunn. "You're not ready." Renn stared at her. "You're the one who's always forcing me to learn Magecraft!"
"If you tried to read the signs now, you could do great harm."
"Why," said Renn.
With her staff, the Raven Mage drew a circle in the mud and placed within it three dull white pebbles. "Your talent lies in linking signs to make a pattern. Until now, your dreams have done this for you. To do it at will, in your waking life, you would have to open your mind completely."
     
Renn raised her chin. "I could do that."
     
"Fool of a girl!" Saeunn struck the earth with her staff. "Have you learned nothing? Your first moon bleed has brought a fearsome increase in your power--but it is raw, untried! To open your mind now could be fatal-- to you and to others!"
    For a moment they glared at each other, the crone and the girl, linked only by the unforgiving bond of Magecraft.
Renn was the first to look away. "Why didn't you tell him he was clanless?"
"The time wasn't right."
"How could you keep that from him?"
"You've kept things from him too."
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Renn flinched.
"He has a destiny," declared the Raven Mage. "This is part of it. So is being cast out."
Renn was about to ask more when Bale came into view on the path. She told him to go away. He ignored her.
"If this is about