“Have you got your basket?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you’ve got your spare skirt?”

  “Yes.”

  “And your knife?”

  I pat the pocket I’ve sewn into the interior of my cardigan, secured with a buttoned flap. “Yes. I think I’ve got everything.”

  Puck looks me over fretfully, then says to Ma, “Make sure you get her a hat, would you? And something with a hood. She needs a whole wardrobe, but she’s sure to sunburn after being in the forest so long.”

  “Hat, hood, boots,” Ma lists. “And a whole wardrobe, just in case.”

  Puck pinches her hip for teasing, and Ma smiles and kisses her forehead.

  “We’ll be back in no time. Don’t let Brand starve.”

  Brand, overhearing this, barks one short “Ha!” at the suggestion that he needs Puck’s help supporting himself.

  “One more thing,” says Puck, hurrying to the kitchen wagon as Ma, Finch, and Thirsan perform varying displays of strained patience; I am the only one of us fretting nervously about our departure. She returns in a moment, waving a rectangular shawl, which she drapes around my shoulders. The material is light in both weight and color, a washed out blue that works well enough against the muted herb green of my cardigan.

  “Here,” she says. “Pull it up over your head if you’re standing in the sun. It won’t do much against an evening chill, but it will protect your skin.”

  “Thanks, Puck.”

  “All right, we’re off,” Ma declares, before Puck can think of anything else. “Back in a few days.”

  The four of us begin walking toward the outer wall, not in a line so much as a loose company. Thirsan walks ahead as though he is itching to get on with things. Finch maintains a position halfway between his brother and Ma. I come last, but only barely, hovering a half step behind Ma and a pace to her right.

  “Once we’re up top,” she tells me, “We don’t talk about the Sunken Forest — not that we live here, not what we do here. Not even in private.”

  “All right.”

  “Don’t talk to strangers about us, either. Not even if they know our names.”

  “Got it.”

  “And if someone seems to know who you are…”

  “I insist I know who I am and it’s not whoever they say.”

  “Is that how you want to play it?”

  I nod. “Definitely.”

  If she second guesses this, all Ma says is, “Then that’s what we do.”

  Approaching the wall is the easy part. There is a barren strip between the cliff face and the line made by the tree trunks, littered with loose stone that has split off and fallen under the influence of the weather across centuries. They shift under our feet, clinking together musically as we approach a narrow opening.

  The opening is a fissure in the cliff, and I immediately hate everything about it. We can all fit into it with little trouble, but it is lit only by what light enters in from the inconsistent cracks in the cliff. After the bright indirect light of the sun and the pale blue sky above the trees, my eyes need time to adjust to the dark. This is not time anyone else feels like wasting.

  “Just feel your way forward,” Ma says. “There’s only one way to go.”

  I am in knots. I can barely see anything, let alone what’s right in front of me. I have to carry my basket — containing my clothes and several jars of various tinctures — at an angle while navigating uneven walls and Ma’s butt in front of me, and in no time at all I am claustrophobic and frustrated.

  “How’re you doing, Akasha?”

  I want to tell her I’m just going to go back to camp, actually, because I spent yesterday helping Brand manage the hibbovins and that was enough new stuff for one week, I have no capacity for more, but thanks for inviting me along.

  I can’t say that, though. I need clothes. I need shoes. I need to help sell Puck’s tinctures, as she’s a persona non grata in Holyhill.

  “I don’t like caves,” I say. This, at least, is not the self-betrayal of declaring I’m fine when I’m absolutely not.

  “It’s not so bad,” says Finch, somewhere up ahead. “It’s a little lighter once you get higher up.”

  I use my feet in my soft animal skin shoes to feel for the next step, and the next, and the next. I can barely make out the shapes around me to avoid scraping the basket against the walls, and bonk my head a couple times, which is almost enough in my already distraught state to send me into a fit of colorful swearing. But Finch is right; the opening in the fissure to the outside widens, and the thin light is enough to see by. We ascend through the interior of the cliff steadily.

  It takes forever. I’m the only one carrying a cumbersome basket, which makes me even slower. We pause halfway up to recover our breaths, and I’m only grateful for it because I am definitely not built for this and am already exhausted. My ankle, which hasn’t bothered me in days, is creaking in pain. I am caught between how badly I need the rest and how fiercely I want to get the fuck out of this too-small space.

  “The way back down is easier,” Ma assures me.

  I groan. “I can’t think about that right now.”

  “One problem at a time,” she agrees. “All right. Almost there.”

  We are not ‘almost there,’ but I remind myself with every step that, if nothing else, we are much closer than when we started.

  And then, finally, we are sliding sideways out of a gap in a rock and walking up a narrow footpath to the top of the cliff. The very top of the river trees sway in the wind like the waves on a current, and I have a disconcerting moment where I think I am staring out across an ocean stretching for miles and miles. I can’t see the far side of the Sunken Forest, let alone where the river is.

  “Wow,” I breathe.

  “Impressive,” says Finch, “Isn’t it?”

  It’s impossible to tell where the fissure is from up here. I can’t even guess at where we went in; the ground is too far below to see anything I might recognize. I take a healthy step back from the edge before I get dizzy.

  “I fell from up here?” I ask, a little breathless.

  Finch nods. “Further south, but yes.”

  “I’m amazed I’m not dead.”

  “So were we.”

  “Let’s go,” Thirsan insists. “We’ve still got half a day to Holyhill, come on.”

  “A few minutes won’t kill you,” Finch snaps back. But he follows after Thirsan, again setting a pace somewhere between his brother and Ma, who waits and watches as I shake off the nerves of our cave climb and the view from above. Even as I turn, I look back at the undulating almost-waves of the forest. There is no glare of daylight off of water, but I expect to see it anyway, squinting against the sun.

  *

  I’m limping by the time Holyhill comes into view, even after spending most of the journey on a clear and level road. Despite attempting every possible way of walking to not make my ankle feel worse, I can tell I’ve aggravated something I shouldn’t have; re-torn a ligament, overworked a tendon, I don’t know. My efforts to hide it go up in smoke when it hurts less to limp than to power through, and Ma notices shortly thereafter.

  “Akasha, what happened?”

  “Ankle’s acting up.”

  “Shit.” She calls us to a halt, prompting an aggravated groan from Thirsan, and has me stand on the side of the road in the dappled sunlight glimmering through the tiny trees of the woodland lining the path. They’re downright adorable compared to the river trees. She pulls back the cuff of my soft shoe and looks. Finch stands nearby, watching, and both he and Ma wince simultaneously. Again, she says, “Shit. When did this happen?”

  I gesture at the road behind us. “Somewhere back there.”

  “…Wrong question. Fair. Why didn’t you say anything?”

  I swear what I mean to say is that I thought I could just walk it off, but instead what comes out is, “Because I’m tired of needing help all the time.” The words are so loud, I shock myself as well as everyone else. Much more quietly, I say, “Sorry.”

  Ma looks up at me like she’s trying to decide where to start, worried and parental, caught between possible lectures. She decides to start instead with the most essential problem. “Pull out one of those jars. I can’t leave this untreated.”

  My chest tightens with guilt. “We’re supposed to sell those.”

  “We have plenty, and there’s more where that came from. One jar isn’t a problem.”

  “We’re going to an inn, right?” I ask. “Look, we can see the town, it’s not that far —”

  “You shouldn’t have been walking on this for so long already,” Ma says calmly. “If you don’t start taking better care of it, you’re going to do permanent damage. Basket, please.”

  You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

  I set the basket down. Ma reaches in and takes out a jar of pain relieving tincture, opens it, dips a finger in, and starts to dab it directly onto my skin. I hiss in pain and look down.

  “Shit.”

  She’s right. My ankle is an angry red that’s starting to turn a little purple.

  “I don’t know where you got it,” Ma says, “But you’ve got one bastard of a stubborn streak.”

  She applies a thin layer of tincture over the whole reddened area, then dips her finger in the jar again and applies it to the darkest, angriest looking part with a little more pressure. I hold my breath against the pain, which slowly turns into a warm tingle.

  When she’s done, Ma twists the lid onto the jar again and tucks it into the bottom of the basket, away from all the other jars. “Thirsan.”

  “Huh?”

  “She can’t walk like this. You’ve got energy. Carry her, please.”

  I fully expect him to groan again, but he says nothing as he passes his rucksack to Finch and offers me his back. I put my hands on his shoulders, and he hoists me up easily, clasping his hands under my butt.

  “I can do that,” Finch offers.

  “We’ll go faster if I’m carrying her,” replies Thirsan boredly.

  “She’s not going to slow me down.”

  “You’ll slow down to show her flowers or some dumb bug or something. Anyway, you carried her last time.” To me, he says, “Lean forward and hold on tight. Don’t move around.”

  I tuck my knees around his midsection, keeping my feet high. I hear the clink of jars as Ma picks up my basket.

  Thirsan’s right. With him setting the pace and carrying me, we do travel a lot faster. For the first time since we left camp, he seems almost content.

  *

  Holyhill is built, as the name implies, on and around a hill, and there appears to be some kind of structure at its peak which is probably a sacred site. That’s not where we go, though. Once we enter the gate that marks the city limits — no guards; no walls; just a gate indicating a boundary — we take a right, and from there weave through streets and alleys until I am well and truly lost.

  “I can carry her if you’re getting tired,” Finch offers again, when Thirsan shifts to adjust his grip around my thighs.

  “I’m fine,” Thirsan replies, leaning away from Finch’s hovering. “She just keeps looking around. It’s messing with my balance.”

  “Sorry.” I turn my head forward again. “I got distracted.”

  There’s a lot to look at. The streets are cobblestones in different colors, and there are grates and manhole covers set into the ground here and there, all signs of a water and sewage system I didn’t expect to see. There are lamp posts on the busier streets but I can’t see what’s in them, and likely won’t know more until nightfall. There are shops for books and for drafting supplies and flowers, and fruit stands full of fresh produce I don’t recognize. We are in the middle of passing down a street with a variety of shops for wearables — hats, purses, coats, a variety of clothes — and I had been craning my neck at a shop window with a pretty blue dress until Thirsan called me out.

  Thirsan mumbles, “It’s fine,” and keeps walking.

  We must not be a rare sight. Thirsan carrying me piggyback through the streets doesn’t attract much more than an idly curious glance and the occasional child’s stare. The street is modestly busy with the casual conversations of neighbors idling through their own neighborhood, muffled by lines of laundry strung between buildings from upstairs apartments. We don’t look much different from anyone else, and in a town this large, perhaps it’s not unusual for unfamiliar faces to pass through once in a while.

  The inn’s front door faces out into a square, which is only sort of square-shaped, decorated with pergolas all around the border which are overgrowing with vines in full leaf and flower. Tables are positioned underneath them with chairs at odd angles where people have rested in the shade to chat before moving on. There is a space in the middle which is open to the sky, no chairs, no tables, no garden or fountain, just bare cobblestones. We walk up a path meant for foot traffic to enter the square, and I pick out two other paths leading up or down from busier places. A street wide enough for a cart divides the inn from its neighbor on one side, and there is an implication that someone has at least tried to arrange the tables in such a way as to not block the road. To the inn’s other side is an alley mostly walled off by broken odds and ends stuffed as discreetly as possible out of view.

  It’s pretty. The air is cool, and pleasant breezes blow down the shadowed paths between the buildings. The blue-and-purple flowers growing from the pergola have a fragrance that is sweet and lemony and almost minty, and I think that I wouldn’t mind spending my afternoons sitting here listening to the locals gossip while I work on stitching repairs.

  The double doors at the inn’s entrance are open, propped in place by flower pots growing some kind of herb that looks like a cousin to something Puck has shown me in the forest. They sprout tiny white flowers on the end of their limbs. As we enter the inn, we pass through an invisible cloud of their spiced rose-like scent.

  The interior is unlit by anything other than what light passes through the windows, filtered by the pergolas and their vines, illuminating a dining room to our right and a stairwell to our left. A bored looking older man addresses us before he even finishes setting down his book. “What can we do for you?” As he pulls his eyes from the page, his expression brightens. “Marion!”

  “Afternoon, Robert.”

  “Haven’t seen you all season, I was beginning to worry you were having all your fun elsewhere.” He smiles for Finch and Thirsan, then notices me. “Perhaps I wasn’t wrong.”

  “About that,” says Ma. “Do you have a first aid kit nearby? Something to wrap an injured ankle?”

  “I do,” drawls Robert thoughtfully, casting about the shelves around him. “Where did I leave that…?”

  Robert disappears into a back room, and after some thumping of cupboard doors and an excited, “Ah!” he returns with a case in his hand. “I can carry this up for you. Your usual room?”

  “Please,” Ma replies. “And its neighbor, if its free.”

  Robert obligingly pulls room keys from the cabinet set into the wall and closes it before leading the way upstairs.

  “I’m a bit understaffed this afternoon,” he says. “Flora’s given birth to twins and won’t be back for a while, so I’ve been trying to find quality help in the kitchen but the pair she’s been training don’t know how to function without her — and who can blame them, she’s a true force — so I’ve had them helping in laundry. I have messengers running orders to the nearest restaurants and bringing them back. The kitchen’s open for dinner, but if you want lunch or breakfast, well… Since it’s you, I won’t mind if you go in and cook for yourselves. I do recommend any of the nearest restaurants, though, and some of them keep a morning staff.”

  Robert leads us up the stairs to the third floor. To his credit, Thirsan doesn’t show any sign that carrying me is a problem. It probably helps that I’m clinging to him so tightly that the added weight is easy to balance, like an unusually heavy backpack, but until we exit the stairwell I hardly breathe for fear the motion will throw off his equilibrium.

  The hall floor is covered in a long runner carpet that muffles the sound of boots, although it does not obscure the squeak of old floorboards. Between every other room there are little walkways that lead to windows, allowing light into the hall. It’s brighter here than the ground floor, the sun reaching over the buildings and streaming directly in. The window panes are tilted open, ventilating the hallway with a breeze that smells faintly of the blue and purple flowers on the pergolas.

  At the second to last room on the left, Robert stops and unlocks the door. “For the misses, I presume,” he says, gesturing with mock grandeur.

  “You presume correctly,” Ma replies, tilting her head in appreciation. “Hey, you need a restock on pain tincture? We had to open a jar on the way here, and I’d hate to carry it back with us.”

  “I’ll add it to the kit when you’re done,” he says brightly. “Our mutual friend is excellent at sourcing her herbs.” Robert glances at me again and asks, “Are you, ah, a friend they’ve made on the road?”

  “She’s the reason we haven’t been by lately,” Ma answers, stepping inside. “Our mutual friend helped patch her back together. Still needs some patching, though.”

  At this, Robert seems to relax a bit. “You’re acquainted, then.”

  Even if I didn’t have Puck’s back story, I would have picked up from context that no one mentioned her name here. Fifteen years, and they were still taking precautions; the rich idiot she pissed off must have a long memory. “We get along well,” I say, which I think is suitably vague.

  “Mm. So easy to love, that one. Heart as big as cities.”

  Thirsan follows Ma. There are two beds on the left side of the room, one by the door, the other nearer the window; he sets me down beside the first and begins rolling the tension out of his shoulders, elbows, and wrists.

  “And you two,” Robert continues, pointing between me and Thirsan. “You’re paramours?”

  Robert flinches in surprise at the trio of “No!”s that strike him all at once — one embarrassed, one revolted, and the last, from the doorway, horrified.

  Instead of apologizing for his assumption, Robert looks from me, to Thirsan, to Finch with wide-eyed interest before directing a silent question at Ma, who chooses not to comment. Thirsan rolls his eyes and leaves the room like he’s got somewhere else to be.

  “Pass me that kit, would you,” Ma says. “I need to see about her ankle.”

  Robert hands her the kit. “I’ll just pop out to open the misters’ room. Back in a moment.”

  I remove my shoes, which are looking a bit ragged after all the walking, and Ma examines my ankle. “The tincture helped; it isn’t looking as inflamed, anyway.” She points to a door. “There’s a bathroom in there. Full tub and everything. Go on in, take your time. Robert and I have a little catching up to do, anyway. When you’re done, I’ll wrap your ankle. All right?”

  “All right.”

  “Look at me.” When my eyes meet hers, she says very firmly, “No running around on this foot. Wrapping it isn’t fixing it. It’s holding it steady so it’s less likely to get worse.”

  I nod, chastened.

  “The tincture will help it recover faster and hurt less, but this isn’t going to heal completely before we leave here. Forcing an injury to keep functioning will only worsen the injury. How’s your shoulder?”

  “It’s fine.”

  “Is it? Let’s see.”

  She has me test my range of motion for the first time since before Star Point and makes disapproving noises at the results.

  “I shouldn’t have fallen off with this,” she mutters. “You didn’t break anything, but whatever you damaged must have been a lot worse than I thought. Damn. Using a crutch with this… maybe it’ll help you stretch… Might just make things worse… Hmm.”

  Quietly, I say, “It’s really not that bad.”

  Ma sighs. “I don’t know what you’re comparing it to, but this isn’t good, either.” She studies me, worried and parental again. “Whatever life you’ve forgotten, it taught you some bad habits. You can’t refuse to accept help like this. It’s how small hurts grow out of hand. I… Before… When I was younger, I was taught that weakness was private and shameful. My teachers meant well. They wanted me to protect myself if they couldn’t. But they never gave me a safe place to be weak. No one had given them that safety, either. They didn’t know how. But hiding where you’re weak or injured doesn’t make you strong or healed.”

  I want to argue with her. Whatever she went through, it was different from what I grew up with. But even if I could tell her the truth, she isn’t wrong. Growing up, if my pain was obvious, I was dragging everybody down. If I needed help, I needed to be somebody else’s problem. It was too many kids spread between too few teachers, or parents with no energy left at the end of a work day, but the result was the same: the people I needed for survival liked me best when I was solving problems instead of being one.

  So instead of arguing, I say, “I can’t stand feeling so helpless. It’s horrible.”

  “Akasha. You are helpless.”

  “No I’m —!”

  “You are,” she repeats, cutting me off. “You have no memory and you were badly hurt. You have almost no survival skills. You have walked face first into trouble and nearly tried to make friends with it. For all that you are capable, you are not well equipped. Whatever skills got you this far can’t help you now — whether that’s trying to do everything yourself, or ignoring your pain until it’s unbearable. They’re more likely to get you killed than save you.”

  As she speaks, I evaluate what this means for the foreseeable future and hate it more and more with each passing moment. “So I’m just stuck here on the third floor until we go back to camp?”

  “We’ll see how you’re doing tomorrow.”

  This is a placating non-answer and I’m about to push, but there’s a light knock on the door frame. “Sorry to interrupt,” Robert says. “The young men have established themselves and I believe are fighting over who gets to use the bath first. Shall I run down to see about meals for you all?”

  “Not yet,” Ma says. “Akasha was just about to go take a bath, herself. Let’s you and I catch up.” She gestures purposefully at the round table and two chairs beside the window.

  “Of course,” Robert says, stepping inside and closing the door. To me, he says, “There are guest robes and towels on the counter. Call if you need anything.”

  “Thanks.” I try not to sound put off by this obvious dismissal as Ma helps me hobble to the bathroom door.