The excruciating pain tearing through my body is the first clue that I’m not dead. My right shoulder is crumpled against solid ground, which is surprising because, moments ago, I would have told you that I was underwater and too disoriented to know where the surface was. My shoulder hurts like hell, but I’m not being tumbled by waves pulling me ass over teakettle. Everything is still. 

This is good, because even in the stillness I’m so disoriented that I think I’m going to be sick. I try to open my eyes, but it’s pitch black. This doesn’t help the building nausea; I blink against the darkness, praying I’ll find something I can use to anchor my vision, and when this doesn’t work I close my eyes and concentrate on the feeling of solid ground beneath me.

It isn’t sand. It’s not even sea-polished rock. It’s a layer of pine needles and dead leaves covering the thick and gnarling roots of trees. 

I’m too busy trying not to puke to give this much thought. 

Please, I think. Please let me lose consciousness again. Just until I stop feeling sick.

The only times I’ve felt like this before have been when I’ve gotten too drunk, and passing out to escape nausea has only ever worked when I’ve already puked a couple times first. Also, I am not drunk. I’m probably concussed.

I can’t remember if falling asleep is a bad idea.

The sound of urgent voices reaches me through the trees, and some of the worry dissipates. If there are people, then they’re bound to have lights. If they have lights, I might be able to sit up without losing my balance — or whatever’s left of my last meal. Both of these are things I’d like to keep. 

I can hear myself thinking the words I should shout to get their attention. I can’t seem to get them from my brain to my mouth. I can feel my tongue against my teeth, just as I can feel my toes and my fingertips. I can’t seem to find the will to make any of these things move.

I might be more badly hurt than I thought.

“Over here, I see something!”

I open my eyes. There’s a dim glow illuminating the trees around me, and I no longer have to concentrate on the feeling of gravity in order to keep my stomach settled. 

Roll over, I think. Roll over, look for whoever’s talking, say something, let them know you’re alive — 

My body feels too heavy. The thread connecting thought to form is feather light. I barely manage to move my fingers, clenching and unclenching my hand — and the all-over pain concentrates sharply in my right arm and shoulder. If I weren’t in a heap on the ground with a major head injury, I’d scream. 

The flexing of my fingers, however, is enough.

Someone says, “She’s alive,” and then I hear feet crunching over twigs and leaves and see the ruddy glow on the trees grow brighter. Someone crouches down beside me and rolls me onto my back. Every nerve explodes into pain, and my grip on consciousness gets very weak, indeed.

There’s a lot of shuffling, a lot of people talking, and a persistent sense that staying in my body is a lot more effort than usual. Even trying to relax feels demanding. I am barely aware of my surroundings, barely hearing the gentle voice telling me I’m doing just fine, the firmer voice giving commands I can only assume are for triage. I am dimly aware of my limbs being manhandled as I’m checked over for breaks and injuries.

Judging by the sensation of someone wiping a wet cloth over my skin, I’m pretty sure I’ve been bleeding.

There is a pause that lasts just long enough that I think maybe that’s it. I hurt, but with this end to the poking and prodding and assessing, all that could possibly be left to do is sleep. I’m ready for it, too, eager to slide out of my body and away from the consequences of whatever the hell I did to wind up like this.

Just as the weightlessness begins to overtake me, there are hands jostling at my knees and my shoulders. I slam back into consciousness.

“Sorry, sorry.” As he speaks, he’s lifting me off the ground. My left arm hangs down along his side, my head resting against his right shoulder. His voice is calm and steady. “You’re all right, it’s going to be fine. It’s not safe out here. A lady like yourself shouldn’t be sleeping on the forest floor, not in your state. We aren’t going too far, just a little ways, it’ll be over soon…”

It is not a little ways. It is, I am almost certain, at least a hundred miles. But somewhere in the first twenty miles or so I finally adjust to the rhythm of his gait and the sound of his voice. He mumbles with the same soothing tone used by someone reassuring a cat in a carrier on a trip to the vet, and I know my brain is scrambled because I actually think it’s a little endearing. 

Two hundred or so miles later, we arrive. I hardly notice. It’s only the relief of finally being still that tells me anything has changed, and I immediately fall into a deep, empty sleep.

*

I wake up in a bed wedged between three walls. There are frosted windows set along the length of the bed, diffusing gray daylight. I turn my head, hiss in pain, and then try again more slowly. 

Along the side without a wall, there are curtains bunched together at the head and foot of the bed. The ceiling outside the bed nook appears at least a couple feet higher than the ceiling over my head. The room is dark, but I can make out trunks and boxes and a wooden stool nearby in the weak light from the windows set high in the wall to the left. There is a pervasive scent of old wood. 

Absolutely everything hurts. Some things hurt worse. Sitting up is a long, slow process as I discover what is and isn’t willing to move. My right shoulder throbs constantly, and most of the muscles of my core protest at being forced to work in these conditions. By the time I make it from horizontal to sitting on the edge of the bed, the only reason I stay upright is because I’m not sure I have the energy to lie down again. 

It is also around this point that I notice I am in the wrong body.

I’m wearing a dress shaped like a very long t-shirt made of unbleached fiber. My thighs stretch the material to its limit as they spread over the edge of the bed; thick thighs have never before been among my charms. Nor have full breasts, either, but I have a fine pair of those hanging unencumbered by a bra. I tug at the buttons down the front of my dress and notice that even my hands are no longer the knob-knuckled and scarred things I remember. These fingers are slender and soft. 

The shirt-dress falls open and slides off my shoulders. My right shoulder is black with bruises, but I am more distracted by the discovery that I am, indeed, no longer flat-chested. I crane my neck (gently, so gently, every muscle in my shoulders bellowing like a school principal at a kid with a lit firecracker) and discover the tattoo I got when I turned eighteen is missing from my right arm. 

At the far end of the room, the door opens.

A man stands in the doorway, backlit by gray daylight and a merrily burning bonfire. He freezes in surprise — possibly to see me awake, possibly to see me half unclothed, staring back in confusion. 

“Uh,” he says. “I’m. Um.”

And I, only a little more eloquently, ask, “Who am I?”

For a count of three, we only stare blankly at each other. Then he turns his head and yells over his shoulder, “Ma!”

*

Ma is, in fact, not his mother. This is the first thing she clarifies. Her skin is darker than mine, and her hair is black and steel pulled into a tight bun. She is thin-lipped and flint-eyed and, when the man in the doorway tells her I’m taking my clothes off and don’t know my name, she sighs like this is all she needs and says, “Get out of the damn wagon. I’ll be there in a minute.”

The man backs hurriedly out the door, closing it behind him, and I hear him stumbling off the edge of the steps. Someone else laughs. 

When Ma comes in, she makes me drink some water, informs me her name is Marion — “Usually just Ma” — and then sits down on the nearby stool. “Can you stand up?”

I very carefully reach my toes to the floor and ease my weight onto them. Ma observes this with a clinical eye, then says, “Drop the dress for a moment.”

I do. She checks over my naked body, then lifts the dress back up and helps me arrange it into place with more gentleness than I expect. 

“How’s your head?” she asks.

“Sore.” This seems obvious. 

Ma reaches out with cool fingers to touch the side of my face. “How about here?”

“Ow!” I pull back, then groan in pain at the electrical jolt that charges through me at the sudden movement. There’s a wound on my temple, and now I am keenly aware of it.

“Sorry.”

This sounds more like a polite thing one says than a sincere apology, but I keep the thought to myself. I ask, “What happened?”

“You fell off a cliff. You must have a thick skull, surviving a drop like that.” Ma is teasing. She doesn’t look like someone who does humor, but her mouth quirks in a way that might generously be called ‘good-natured’. “What’s the last thing you remember?”

There is no possible answer to this question that is going to be useful. I remember plenty. It just doesn’t apply here. Despite this, I decide to tell the truth. “I was in the water. I think I got caught in a rip tide or something. I went under and couldn’t figure out which way was up anymore.”

Ma’s flinty eyes spark. “You were in the river?”

“The sea.”

“The sea.”

I almost nod, feel a warning twinge in every muscle of my cervical spine, and instead say, “Mhm.”

Ma stares critically and repeats, “The sea?”

It is incredibly obvious that I have given an impossible answer, but I have woken up in a body that isn’t mine after a fall I didn’t take. There are already impossibilities at work. I don’t have enough information to even lie effectively, and Ma seems like the kind of person who would notice immediately if I tried. 

I’m pretty sure I’m right, too, because Ma says, “Huh,” and stops pressing. “And you don’t remember your name?”

I look down at my unfamiliar body. “I have no idea who I am. I thought I had a tattoo.”

“Where?”

“Right arm.”

Ma glances at my arm, and I turn carefully to show her it’s nothing but bruises now. She looks back up at my face, not quite able to hide her suspicion — and that’s fair, because I did dodge the question. I remember my name. It just doesn’t match the rest of me.

“All right. What would you like to be called?”

“What kind of name do I look like?”

I’m hoping she will say, “You look like a —,” and give me a baseline expectation. Instead, I see a flicker of skepticism, then she gets up and roots around in one of the chests lining the wall. She pulls out a round mirror. In her hand, the pads of her fingers only just frame its edge; when she offers it to me, I have to use both hands to hold it up.

The person staring back from the mirror’s surface has periwinkle blue eyes, dark eyebrows, and a horrific scab on her right temple. Her hair is thick and dark and needs a brush. I raise the mirror up and away from me, shoulders straining even from this small weight, to fit the whole face in the reflection at once. 

It’s a round face, like a little October moonrise. A thumb print of a divot on her chin. A cupid’s bow mouth. 

Without thinking, I say, “Oh wow. I’m really cute.” Ma bursts out laughing, which is the only thing that stops me from adding, “I’ve never been so cute.”

“You’ll be even cuter if that gash on your temple heals up. Speaking of…”

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

Ma pulls a box from under the bed and brings out a bottle and a clean cloth. She pours some of the bottle’s contents onto the cloth and dabs at my face, and I watch the face in the mirror contort in pain as the antiseptic makes contact and starts to sting. Even this is fascinating.

Then, abruptly, it’s overwhelming.

“I need to sit,” I say, already sinking to the bed. I set the mirror aside and lower my head between my knees, breathing slowly as a wave of dizziness turns my brain to static. Ma tucks the mirror into the box with the antiseptic and gently rubs my back. My breasts aren’t ridiculously huge, but they’re a lot more than I’m used to and I can feel them compressing between my ribs and my thighs. This is both incredibly funny and disturbingly foreign, so it probably isn’t surprising that I start laughing and crying at the same time.

“Hey, hey, shh…” Ma soothes. “You’re all right, you’re doing just fine…”

“Who am I?” My hands start to shake.

“Maybe we should get some food in you,” Ma says. “I don’t know when you last ate, but you’ve been unconscious for most of a day. I think I’ve got something you can wear outside the wagon.”

She opens another chest and pulls out a cardigan and a pair of trousers that are probably comfortably loose on her and which are snug enough on me that I barely need to cinch the drawstring. I need help with everything. She even rolls up the cuffs on the pants for me so I’m not walking on them.

“It’ll have to do,” she says, a little apologetic. “We can see about making alterations later. Maybe find you a skirt somewhere, if you like.”

After testing my ability to sit and stand a couple times, Ma helping me keep my balance, I say, “I think I’ll be all right like this.”

Ma steps out of the wagon ahead of me and holds a hand out to help me down the stairs. I am barefoot, and my right foot hurts to walk on more than my left. I have been awake for maybe an hour and I am already incredibly bored of being in this much pain. 

Someone jeers, “Ooh, la la, fancy lady,” at the sight of me being aided like a débutante at a ball. Then there is a crack, and an “Ow!”, and someone else saying, “Don’t be an ass, Thirsan.” 

I don’t care that someone’s being an ass, partly because if I am this cute then why shouldn’t I be acknowledged as a fancy lady — but mostly because I am far more interested in the fuck-off huge trees surrounding us. With tremendous care, I tilt my head to look upward at the distant implication of blue sky and mid-afternoon sun. It barely reaches us on the forest floor for the layers of tree branches and the massive tree trunks in the way. If redwoods had bigger, scarier cousins, then I was standing in a small clearing at their feet.

“Let’s get you seated,” Ma says, prompting me to pay attention to my immediate surroundings and not the several hundred feet above my head. The ground is mostly flat and even, and someone recently raked the immediate area free of leaf litter. The network of roots rising to the surface of the ground is more of a ripple than a jab to the soft soles of my feet. 

What I can only assume is a log-sized fallen branch makes one of three benches around the fire pit. Ma makes sure I’m seated before walking across to a second wagon, where another woman is working at a stove affixed to its back end. There is a third wagon to the left and a fourth to the right, and as I look I realize they all appear to be carved from solid chunks of wood. 

The log bench to the left is empty. On the bench to the right sits the man who walked in on me, looking at me like he can’t decide if he wants to ask how I’m doing or apologize for earlier. Next to him sits a… boy? Man? Definitely the source of the jeering. He glares like it’s my fault he got called an ass, then turns his ire on the empty space across from him. Clearly, I am beneath his notice.

“Are you feeling better?” asks the man.

I again catch myself before I try to nod and say, “Yes, thank you.”

“Have you remembered anything?”

“Nothing useful.”

He smiles, and I think he’s aiming for optimistic but he can’t keep the worry out of it. “That’s all right. You’re still healing. And you’re up quick, too — you were in rough shape last night, so it’s good you’re already walking.”

“Don’t worry,” the younger guy, Thirsan, cuts in. He’s grinning irritably and still not looking at either us. “If your frail legs give out, Prince Finch’ll sweep you into his arms and — ow!”

Finch, I presume, interrupts Thirsan by plucking a cone (pine cone? Are these massive trees some sort of pine?) from where it’s wedged between the log bench and the ground, flinging it at Thirsan’s head. His aim is the studied balance of careless and precise that I recognize immediately.

These are brothers.

Thirsan begins snarling venomously at Finch to stop throwing things at his head, and Finch retorts with aggravated calm that he’ll stop throwing things when Thirsan stops acting like a jackass. Thirsan denies the accusation. Finch assures him that he can expect the pine coning to continue. I watch this exchange, noticing the same red-brown irises, the same gold-brown skin. There’s an auburn undertone to Thirsan’s heavily cowlicked hair not present in Finch’s, which lies flat and dark. Thirsan is gangly, still growing into his long and skinny limbs. Finch is not.

I stare. Wow, Finch is not. 

His clothes almost hide it, but as he swats Thirsan’s hand away I see the muscles move beneath the weave of his sweater. Yes, I can see why the younger brother is taking pot shots at his elder for carrying me through the woods last night; Finch isn’t body builder sized, but barbed words are the only damage Thirsan has a hope at landing. 

In true younger brother fashion, he lobs insults like he’s carpet bombing.

“Boys,” calls a warning voice — the cooking woman, not Ma. “Knock it off, please.”

Thirsan returns to sulking and slouching. Finch, aggrieved, folds his hands together and focuses all his attention on the fire for the length of a slow, calming breath.

“What’s the age difference between you?” I ask. 

Finch’s eyes move from the fire to me, and I see the ghost of a smile. “Seven years.”

“Six years, five months,” Thirsan corrects.

Finch, recalling they have just been scolded, strains to say nothing. 

I have not been scolded and have also recently cheated death. “And how many weeks?”

Thirsan looks ready to call death’s private number on me. “Five days.”

“Ooh. A tremendous difference.”

Thirsan launches into a tirade about how six and a half years is definitely not the same as seven and that it’s far more reasonable to round up to six and a half, during which I say to Finch, “So if you look about twenty-four, that must make him…”

To which Thirsan explodes in a volcanic rage, “I am nineteen!” and thunders into the woods. 

Finch covers his face with his hands to hide how hard he is trying not to laugh. This feels like a small victory. 

“I’m twenty-six,” he says. 

“I’m —“ I stop. I was twenty-four. Am I still? I sift through the memory of looking in the mirror, searching for context clues that might tell me if I am older or younger now, then skirt too close to the moment things got unnerving and stop before I wind up with my head between my knees again.

Finch is watching me glitch in real time, and I force a smile. “I think I’m about the same age as you, probably.”

“You look a bit younger,” he says gently. I can’t tell if this is a polite reassurance or the honest truth. 

“Is he going to be all right out there?” I ask.

“Oh, yeah, he’ll be fine. He’ll probably go punch a tree until he feels better. He’s at that age.” This last bit he says with such practiced efficiency that it is clear this has been the excuse for some time; no one even thinks about it anymore.

“Were you like that?”

“No,” he says immediately, looking horrified.

From the vicinity of the stove, I hear a doubtful, “Hmm…”

“I was not that bad,” Finch defends. 

The woman who had been cooking carries two dishes over, one in each hand. “You weren’t a flash fire. You were still pissed off a lot.” She approaches me and offers one of the dishes, sitting down beside me. “Here you go, pet, eat up. I’m Puck, nice to meet you.”

“Thank you,” I say, taking the bowl with my left hand, and am about to introduce myself when I remember I still don’t have a name. I think of the face in the mirror again, holding the memory at enough distance to look at it without giving myself chills. 

My right arm is, without question, not weight bearing, but I need both hands to eat. I set my bowl on the ground and use my left hand to arrange my right hand onto my knees without actually engaging any of the muscles in my right arm. As soon as I rest the bowl on my palm, everything from my fingertips to my elbow starts ringing warning bells, but I can eat in relative peace like this.

The food is a thick stew over bread. I recognize carrots and potatoes and onions, even rosemary, but not the meat. It is not, I suspect, something usually carried in grocery stores. It’s unfamiliar, but it’s good.

“Shoulder still feeling rough?” Puck asks.

“It’s a mess,” Ma quips around a mouthful of her own dinner. She’s taken a seat beside Finch, apparently also not concerned about Thirsan’s absence.

Puck clicks her tongue and murmurs, “Really ought to put that in a sling, even if it’s not broken. I wonder if I’ve got some extra fabric lying about…?”

“Finish eating, first,” Ma says, as Puck looks like she might be about to stand up. “She’ll manage without.”

“I know, I know…”

I finish my food. Even the empty bowl feels like more weight than my right arm can stand. 

“Where should I put this?” I ask.

“I’ll take it,” says Puck. “Marion, where are the poor girl’s shoes?”

“We had to cut everything off to check her for breaks. Shoes, too.”

Finch glances at me and away again, face turning crimson. I hadn’t had the awareness to notice at the time; had he carried me through the woods while I was stark naked? Whose dress had I been wearing when I woke up?

“You might have kept something. Even cut up and repaired clothes are better than your hand-me-downs.”

“You insult my wardrobe?”

“I like it just fine when it’s on you. It’s a disservice on her.”

“I don’t mind,” I say, because Marion looks like she’s about to take it personally. “I’m comfortable.”

“There, you see? She’s comfortable.”

“Given her circumstances, of course she is.”

Puck and Marion glare at each other, a second conversation playing out in silence and subtle facial expressions I can’t hope to interpret. It ends with Marion looking away first, sighing impatiently. “Fine! Fine, once she’s healed up. No sense looking for a cobbler when she can barely stand without help.”

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

This last exchange is so terse that I can guess this conversation isn’t over.

When Puck collects all our dishes to wash up and Finch goes to help her, I ask Ma, “Is it all right if I go lie down?”

“Of course.” She still sounds annoyed, but it’s not meant for me. She helps me upright and sees that I reach the bed without falling over. Now that I’ve eaten, all I want is to go back to sleep.

“There’s a pot in the corner,” Ma says, pointing to what looks like a large, metal jar with a lid. “If you need to relieve yourself, use that instead of going out in the woods. It’s not safe.”

“Thanks.” I decide not to overthink what this means. Barring some camping trips and public events, I have always had access to indoor plumbing. That might be gone forever, and I am not ready to deal with it.

I really don’t want to think about cleaning out a chamberpot. 

Ma leaves, visibly dreading whatever conversation she’s about to go open up with Puck. I make use of the chamberpot and ease myself carefully back onto the bed, shoulder throbbing. You wouldn’t think a person could fall asleep through pain like that, but I’m out in minutes.