For the next few days, I sit with Finch but we stick to safe subjects. No family stuff, no personal history. A lot of companionable silence. It rains almost constantly, light but steady, so we spend a lot of time sharing his cloak and acting very normal about it. Nothing to see here. Just a young man and a young woman keeping the rain off while their thighs are touching.

  I feel like I owe him. I want to tell him something about my back story in exchange, but I’m not supposed to have one. So instead, if it seems like our shared peace has gotten a little too ruminative, I start asking him about things around us — which is mostly plants. He describes many of them in terms of how Puck uses them.

  When we cross the bridge which is partially repaired by river tree, I ask, “Do you know what happened here? Why it’s a tree and not stonework?”

  Finch shrugs. “Dendrolic mage fixed it after something broke it. Fallen tree sweeping down river, if it was big enough, or maybe a cryptid. Now we just maintain it once in a while.”

  “Do you get earthquakes?”

  “Earthquakes?” He looks puzzled.

  “When the ground shakes…?”

  This suggestion seems to be more alarming than contextualizing, and he shakes his head. “Never seen that happen.”

  “It’s not common,” I say, about to elaborate that maybe an earthquake caused it decades or even centuries ago — then remember that if he doesn’t know what an earthquake is, it might be very weird that I do.

  My unfinished thought hangs between us. I cut myself off too sharply. He can’t know, obviously — the truth is so much stranger than anything he might dream up — but that had to sound shady and he must suspect something. I take too long scrambling for a distraction.

  “So you’re a Dendrolic mage? That’s tree magic?”

  “Yeah… yeah. Not as good as whoever fixed the bridge in the first place, but I’ve helped reinforce it over the years.”

  “What do you mean by reinforcing it?”

  “I sort of reach into the tree and make it grow where it’s needed. Keep it upright, make sure the bridge stays stable, add to the root system if the river’s washed the dirt away. The roots for the tree supporting the bridge connect to the roots from trees on the islands, so they aren’t just standing in the water, clinging on to rocks and dreams. A lot of the roots grow into each other, here; if they started as different trees, they’ve grown so close together they function as one.”

  With this, I understand better his sweeping motion when he made saplings spring out of the ground. Speed-growing trees from an established root system was probably easier than hoping there were seeds nearby and getting them to sprout on short notice.

  “And you can just feel that,” I say. “Touch a tree and know its connections.”

  “I don’t even have to touch them. It helps, yeah, but all I really have to do is… it’s something like listening. When you know where something is even if you can’t see it. But it isn’t like listening at all because it has nothing to do with sound. Or knowing where the fire is with your eyes closed because you can feel the heat, but it isn’t about touch, either. I don’t know how to explain it — it’s a different sense completely. It’s always there.”

  The miles and miles of forest we have trekked look different as I contemplate the possibility that some people are aware, through a whole additional sense, of the trees we pass through and the root system that renders the many into one.

  “Can you feel the whole forest?”

  Finch shakes his head. “Not all at once. Whatever’s right in front of me is easiest. Sort of like knowing Holyhill is west and a little south of here, and Coritha is way, way south, or Irngate’s on the east side and a little north, near the sea — I know it’s there, and I know the route to get there, but there’s a lot of other stuff in the way so I can’t see it. Maybe it’s better to compare it to a crowded square; if it’s right in front of me, I can work with it no problem. It’s harder with two hundred people wandering around and talking. If I’m working with another Dendrolic mage, and we’ve got a plan, we can kind of send messages back and forth, but that takes a lot of coordination. Even then, the range is pretty limited before the message gets lost.”

  “Not the best way to organize a heist, then.”

  Finch doesn’t laugh. If anything, the quiet ease with which he’s been describing his magic to me ices over. “What?”

  “…not the best way to organize a heist? A… complicated theft. Because it’s so imprecise. I’m sorry, I was trying to be funny, it was a bad joke.”

  I can’t figure out what land mine I stepped on, but it ruins the mood a lot faster than talking about his fucked up parents did. Finch stops talking immediately. I almost apologize again, in case insinuating he’d participate in a heist somehow offended his pride, but he closes off so hard I’m afraid to even speak.

  When we stop for the night, back on the western side of the river, Finch leaves me with the cloak and the weakest of smiles as he practically drops down the length of the ladder and bolts. I descend more cautiously, mindful of the wet rungs against my shoes — little more than slippers and already starting to get a bit worn through. The ground is wet but not sodden, and the network of thin roots prevents it from getting truly muddy, but I walk to my wagon like I can think myself lighter. I look back only for a moment and see Finch talking to Ma, who listens with brow furrowed.

  I don’t know what to do about the cloak. Whatever it’s made of, it doesn’t absorb water but it isn’t totally hydrophobic, either; it is still dripping and damp, and there’s no heat source in the wagon to help dry it off faster. I prop open a cabinet door and hang it from the corner, then take off my shoes, crack open a window, and drape them over the edge of a trunk lashed against the wall, hoping that even damp moving air will help them dry faster. Then I sit on the edge of my bed and sulk.

  I should help set up for the evening. Place wards, find a fishing spot, something. If I don’t take a few minutes to myself, though, I’m probably going to cry, which is a little unjustified if I’m the one who said something hurtful but I didn’t know. It was a goofy remark, and for the last couple hours I haven’t been able to figure out what he could possibly have taken so personally. I’d beg him to explain it, but getting desperate and needy isn’t endearing, either, and I want so badly for him to like me.

  Thirsan snort-laughs somewhere outside. Puck says something, Brand responds, and the ordinary sounds of evening prep carry on mostly as usual. I glare balefully at my damp slipper-shoes. It’s been raining too long. I miss sunlight. I miss dry air.

  I sit until the dread-filled pressure of being useless outweighs my nervous anxiety about what I did wrong. I leave my shoes by the window and go barefoot out of the wagon, soft feet wobbling over roots and bits of fallen tree-stuff. Brand is in the doorway of his wagon, hanging up the leather straps of the hibbovins’ hitches and wiping them dry with a cloth.

  “Would you get me a fishing rod?” I ask. Fishing seems the best choice. I can sit in moody silence, not bothering anyone.

  “Finch is already on it,” says Brand.

  My heart sinks. “Oh.”

  “Maybe go talk to Marion.”

  Brand says this so casually, so normally, so preoccupied with caretaking his equipment that it almost sounds like a perfectly ordinary suggestion — but Ma is never “Marion,” so this is immediately a red flag. Something’s wrong. I don’t understand how, but I understand that I’ve fucked up something crucial.

  I look around nervously for Ma. She is helping Puck get a fire going, reaching in bare-handed to move around burning bits of stuff. I dimly acknowledge what a useful skill her fire powers must be, too preoccupied with the certainty that I’m in trouble to really appreciate it.

  In another life, I would have fled. Tail between my legs, ashamed for my transgression no matter how naively made, I’d be well on my way to Exit Strategy One: quiet, humiliated departure, and a lot of apologetic excuses about having too much homework or an early morning if anyone texts asking where I’ve gone. Living down the sins of failure to thrive in a high school environment only got easier with time because it got easier to leave. But I have nowhere to go, here, and am missing so much information critical to survival that leaving guarantees death, and I’ve decided I’d like to live.

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  I even recently decided to overcome being shy, for all the good deciding has done me.

  Since my choices are to confront my shyness and terror of confrontation or literally risk death, I hover about ten feet away and ask, with barely more vigor than I feel, “What can I help with?”

  Ma looks up at me and I seriously consider groveling. I don’t know what that look is supposed to mean, but the look in her eyes makes me suspect that I am on thin fucking ice, and I wonder if I should just take my chances with the forest, after all. I can read the ways well enough to make it to the outer wall, can’t I? From there, I just need to find a way up. Better that than whatever this is.

  “Marion.” Puck, standing beside Ma, touches her arm.

  Ma glances at her, then sighs heavily. “Let’s take a walk, Akasha.”

  I follow her into the woods. Puck smiles at me in a way I think is meant to be reassuring.

  We get several yards away from the camp, up the way we will travel tomorrow, before Ma says anything else. “Have a good chat with Finch today?”

  Instead of answering, I burst into tears. What am I supposed to say to that?

  Ma is calm. She doesn’t try to comfort me, but she doesn’t chastise me, either. “Tell me what you’re thinking, Akasha.”

  “I’m so confused,” I confess. “I don’t know what it was that I said, I was making a joke I thought, but he suddenly stopped talking and I was afraid to ask why and now everyone’s calling you ‘Marion’ so I know it must be serious but —”

  Ma actually bursts into laughter at this, which I am not in the mood to share in.

  “Sorry. Continue.”

  “He was telling me about his magic. Maybe I shouldn’t have made a joke. I think maybe I misunderstood how serious he was being. Brand said it’s not something people talk about with outsiders, and maybe that was — maybe he was telling me something personal, and I made a joke when I shouldn’t have. Was that it? I was being disrespectful?” I look up, hoping to read something in her expression that tells me if I’m at least close.

  Ma appears to be doing her level best to respect how completely undone I am while also trying not to laugh again.

  “No,” she says. “You were right.”

  I stare blankly. “What?”

  Ma continues walking. I, more confused than ever, trail after her as I try to grok her meaning.

  Neither of us says anything else for some time. Ma doesn’t stop until we reach a waterway so narrow it probably only exists when it’s raining, at which point she perches on a weather-worn stone with moss growing from its sides like a beard. I stand with my feet in the water. The air is warm, and the water is only a little cooler.

  “Where are your shoes?”

  “Air drying in the wagon.”

  “Huh. Might not get very dry in this weather. We’ll have to get you some proper boots. Do you know how to knit?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “Right. I learned, but I was never good at it. Completely hopeless at keeping consistent tension. Puck can help you with making a pair of socks, she’s got an excellent heel-turn technique.”

  This is not the conversation I expected to have, but it is a lot less terrifying than social rejection or being told I’m no longer welcome, so I watch the surface of the stream distort the shape of my feet and rub the tears off my face.

  “Earlier,” Ma begins, and I feel my stomach drop again. “When you made that remark to Finch, he got a little paranoid. All of us do, sometimes, about an outsider in our midst. What was it, exactly, that you said?”

  “Finch didn’t tell you?”

  “I want your version.”

  “Um…” I try to think of the exact words. “He had been telling me how his magic worked. He was saying he could send messages to another Dendrolic mage over short distances, but it was easy for the message to get lost. And I said it wasn’t a good way to organize a heist. Or that it wasn’t the best way. Or something. It was a stupid joke, I didn’t think about it before I said it. I didn’t realize it might be disrespectful.” I keep my eyes on my feet in the water. “I was out of line.”

  “What’s funny,” says Ma, “Is that Finch did try to coordinate a heist that way.”

  My head snaps up. “What?”

  “Failed spectacularly. We haven’t been as far south as Selvingsbrod for a good five years because of it. No one got hurt, no one got caught, but it definitely wasn’t the result he had hoped for. It was his first time leading, too, so he took that loss personally.”

  There are several things happening at once, and her words are so far from what I expected that I’m struggling to correct course. “Oh. Oh, so when I said… Did he think I knew?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh… that’s…” I stop. Is that better? Or is that worse? “I’m glad I didn’t hurt his feelings.”

  Ma again looks like she’s trying not to laugh. “No thoughts on him running heists?”

  “I have a lot of thoughts right now. Did you know about it?”

  “I taught him how to do it.”

  She watches me with the calm, confident patience of someone whose transgressive life is a perennial source of gratification, waiting for me to react.

  “Huh.” After several seconds of contemplation, I ask, “Is that everyone down here? All the crews?”

  “Yes.”

  “All up and down the Sunken Forest?”

  “Yes.”

  I remember the call and response around the heart fire at Star Point between the crew leaders with renewed understanding. “Some kind of stealing from the rich and giving to the poor sort of thing?”

  Ma tilts her head ambivalently. “I’ve never phrased it like that, but that’s about it. We enable trade between the eastern and western sides of the continent, which keeps the sea traders from overcharging. When certain members of the aristocracy take more than they’re owed, we rebalance the scales.”

  “Rebels living freely in a forest no one dares to enter.”

  “That’s the short of it. You don’t seem very troubled by this.”

  “I’ve been living with you for a while. Maybe if I’d heard the rumors first, I’d be terrified, but you’ve all been very supportive.”

  This is true enough, probably. Who’s to say? Maybe if I’d woken up after a fall off of a roof in one of the towns, I’d have heard frightening rumors about the kind of villains who live in the Ghost River, and I’d make it my life’s mission to stay as far away as possible. Or, possibly, I would have heard ‘Ghost River’ and made it my first stop. It’s not like I’m attached to this planet’s social order.

  “Unless you came here on purpose,” Ma suggests, standing and heading slowly back toward camp, “Knowing exactly who and what we are, and were determined to infiltrate our crew. Someone from Selvingsbrod, maybe, who knew about Finch’s failed attempt and spent the last five years preparing for exactly this opportunity.”

  I follow after her, frowning. “I guess I can’t deny that.”

  “Oh-ho, is this a confession?”

  “Of course not. It’s just the truth. But it sounds like so much work. You think I took a dive off the edge of the outer wall on the possibility I might survive and join your crew?”

  “Yeah,” Ma agreed. “I thought that sounded a little preposterous, too.”

  We arrive back at camp in time to see Finch presenting Puck with tonight’s meal, fresh from the water. He looks up at our approach like a startled rabbit, blatantly fearing the worst.

  “You’re too honest a thief, Finch,” Ma declares.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means you told on yourself. Akasha thought she’d hurt your feelings.”

  Finch flushes in embarrassment. “How…?”

  “She knows our business now,” Ma continues. “I wasn’t sure how I would bring it up before we got to Holyhill, so this was about as fine a time as any to get it out in the open.”

  “Were you on a job when you found me?” I ask Ma. “At Star Point, Brand said he saw me fall. You, he, Finch and Thirsan were all there.”

  “Yes,” says Ma, although this question appears to take her off guard.

  “Did you steal me, too?”

  My sense of humor, turns out, is unexpectedly provocative.

  “Of course not—!”

  “You were injured —”

  “You’re absolutely free to go any time —”

  I interrupt, alarmed. “Whoa — no, I like it here, I don’t want to leave! I was just joking!”

  Ma takes a deep breath and exhales in the controlled manner of someone steadying their nerves. “I think, perhaps, we are all a bit overextended for today.”

  “Dinner will be ready soon,” Puck says. “I think perhaps this is a good night to eat quickly and be on our way to bed. Akasha, mind the stove a minute, would you?”

  I nod, and stand over the frying pan while Puck disappears to find some greens. I keep my full attention on the fish, although it hardly needs this level of dedication, because at this point I think if I open my mouth again I may unwittingly start a fight.

  I help Puck finish cooking dinner. I sit with her while we eat. I help her wash the plates when everyone’s done, and when we return to the wagons I don’t look up on my way to bed.

  It’s nothing. It’s just that I’d taken it really poorly, Finch’s whole unexplained reaction, and I don’t like being that person — I don’t like falling apart the moment someone I really like decides to shut me out.

  And I do really like him. More than I realized. And I don’t like that at all.