The next time I wake, it’s dark and I’m thirsty. I am also, once again, stiff with pain, and I stop to rest between sitting up and standing.

  When I open the wagon door, Puck looks up from her seat at the fire. So does a man I don’t recognize. He looks enough like a human version of one of those Japanese raccoon dogs that I am ready to believe that’s just the kind of world I live in now — populated, in part, by beings with human and animal aspects. Then he smiles brightly and offers me a little wave and he looks so normal that I remember I’m probably just concussed.

  “Is there some water?” I ask, voice crackling.

  “Oh! That’s right, I was going to bring some in earlier,” Puck says, pushing herself upright and bustling to the kitchen-wagon. “I didn’t want to disturb you while you were sleeping.”

  The new man asks, “Feeling better?”

  “No,” I say.

  He laughs. “Bad’s better than dead.” Then he laughs again when I have to give this sentiment serious consideration. Puck returns with a kettle of cold water and a metal cup, then herds me back into the wagon.

  “You and Brand can chat later. You need to keep resting.”

  She leaves the door open so the weakening fire can illuminate the interior, pours water into the cup and makes me drink, then refills it when I’m done. The water leaves an herbal taste in my mouth.

  “I’ve added a tincture to the water to help with the pain,” she says. “I’ll set the cup on the chest by your head. Can you lift the kettle on your own?”

  Puck holds the kettle out while I test the strength of my left arm. It’s heavy, but manageable. She sets the kettle beside the cup and nods, satisfied.

  “You should be fine like this until breakfast, I think. I’ll check on you when I get up.”

  “Thank you.”

  She smiles at me in the dim light. “You’re welcome, pet.”

  *

  The pain tincture is so effective I sleep through the night. When I wake, I drink the contents of the waiting cup, relieve myself, then go outside.

  Brand is sitting fireside again, this time looking sleep-rumpled but still happy to be here. He has to be in his thirties, but might be approaching fifty and just carrying it well. I hobble to the seat I’d taken last night and sit quietly, smiling at Brand in greeting.

  “Sleep all right?” he asks.

  “Like a rock. You?”

  “Ooh, love to hear it. Me, nah. Kept hearing noises outside, got all jumpy.”

  “Are there animals in the woods?”

  “Oh yeah, killed a bunch yesterday. Puck’s already got some of ‘em frying. This sounded more like a —“

  He says a name I don’t recognize at all.

  “A… what?”

  “A soh-bee-lah.” Brand over-pronounces the word for my benefit, and when I still look confused he adds, “Looks like a big, floating hand drifting through the woods, eyes on its palm and the tips of its fingers. Likes to eat fresh guts.”

  I am pretty sure he’s just fucking with me, but he’s got that kind of unendingly jovial attitude that pulls legs as easily as he’d deliver life altering news. When it’s clear I don’t know whether or not to believe him, he smiles even wider.

  “It’s too early for cryptids, Brand.” Ma steps out of the kitchen wagon.

  “I’d rather be too early than too late.”

  Ma rolls her eyes.

  Finch and Thirsan exit the wagon to the right, Finch making a fair effort at looking alert, Thirsan not even trying. They, too, sit at the fireside, while Ma helps Puck prepare breakfast. Puck sits next to me again while we eat, checking in to see if I’ve taken more tincture and if I’m feeling any better. When we finish eating, she has me remain by the fire while she improvises a sling out of scrap material — and then shuffles me back to bed, which I am fine with because my new life is all about escaping pain through the healing magic of sleep.

  This is the pattern for the next several days. I don’t actually keep track of how many; when you spend that much time sleeping, time itself starts to lose meaning. After one meal, Brand measures my feet, and at the next he presents me with a pair of soft shoes made of animal skin. Once I have shoes, Puck invites me to help her mind the stove. A few days later, when I can bend over to touch the ground without feeling like I might overbalance, I join Finch in walking to the creek to wash dishes.

  “Have you remembered your name yet?” he asks, as I try to clean out a bowl one-handed.

  “Not yet.” I have been responding to anything clearly directed at me. It turns out that, when most of what you do is sleep and be injured, you really don’t need a name very often. “I tried looking in the mirror again, but… nothing’s coming to me.”

  Finch lifts the bowl from my hand and finishes the work. “Are there any names you like?”

  There are a lot of names I like. I crouch beside him and watch the surface of the creek, trying to think of all the girl names I’ve ever heard, checking them against the mental image of the face I carry now. I keep remembering Marion’s disbelief when I told her the last thing I remember is the sea. What if I pick a name that’s weird for this country? Or flat out wrong?

  I’m still contemplating as we walk back to the camp. I have not been especially helpful — my pre-washes are more like letting them soak with bonus splashing — but I don’t think I’m being sent or invited on these chores to actively contribute. They are an excuse to get my blood moving, gently test my limits, and familiarize with my surroundings. I’ll be useful once I can move my right arm again. At least once a day the question of my name comes up, too, and I’m willing to blame my inability to name myself on the blow to my head, just one more temporary disability I’m working around.

  I do think the concussion is affecting how well I can think at least as much as the pain does, or the amount of time I spend asleep. If existing didn’t hurt so badly, I’d be questioning the reality of my situation a lot harder. That aside: it’s like all the girl names I can think of are from people whose name I feel weird about borrowing, or are examples from my teen years — fanciful, aggrandizing, or the wrong kind of quirky. It’s not like anyone here knows what video games are, but I probably shouldn’t name myself for my favorite digital princess. Right? I mean, I’ll know in my heart what a massive dork I am, and I’ll have to remember that every time someone calls my name.

  I wish this body’s previous resident had left a note somewhere in her head.

  I wonder if she ever hated her name.

  *

  I wake up from an afternoon nap and go to help Puck with the cooking. Most of what we eat is either stored behind panels on the kitchen wagon — a lot of root vegetables — or are things foraged in the woods. Brand hunts, which means there are usually rabbits or birds, but not every hunting venture is successful and the meat only keeps so long. Puck makes it last with an enormous pot on the stove that’s always simmering, adding water and new foraged bits after every meal, putting in fresh bones and teasing out the old ones when they start to crumble.

  Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  When I help, it is to make sure nothing burns while she’s managing some other task. Her expectations are so reasonable that it’s a relief to meet them. Cooking is not a challenge, especially when my only real responsibility is moving things around in a pan or stirring the contents of a pot, and I was more than capable of feeding myself in my previous life.

  Even so, Puck regularly throws me for a loop. I don’t know jack about mushroom foraging, but she confidently tears things off of dead trees, chops them into pieces, and adds them to the pan. She identifies wild herbs and narrates things about their usefulness for various ailments, and if she doesn’t incorporate them into the meal then she ties them into bundles and hangs them from the side of the kitchen wagon for later. When she starts talking about plants I try to pay attention, but I’m not sure she expects me to remember. Puck seems very happy to keep the conversation going in a low murmur whether or not I’m there to listen.

  I have no idea how many of these plants exist in my old life as well as in my new one. I can use a spice rack, but I don’t think I could recognize most of it in a garden, let alone out in the wild.

  Puck brightens when she sees me approaching, waving me over to the stove and practically shoving her wooden spoon into my hand. “Just stir everything now and then,” she says. “I’ve got a project I’d like to finish before dark.”

  I stand idly by the stove, rearranging the contents of the frying pan and then the soup pot, as Puck vanishes into the wagon for several minutes and then reappears again with a basket. In the basket are fistfuls of cut herbs, empty jars, and a large, glass bottle of something clear.

  “I found a patch of that pain reliever herb,” she says. “Perfect time to make more tincture.”

  I alternately prevent the food from burning and snoop on what she’s doing. Puck stuffs leaf and stem of the herb into the jars without quite cramming it in, then pours the clear liquid into the space that remains. She puts on lids, taps the side of the jars, rolls them around a bit, then opens them and adds a little more liquid.

  “You have to make sure everything’s submerged,” she comments, mostly to herself. “Keeps it from rotting.”

  When she is done, Puck squirrels everything away back in the wagon. I have to wonder at the inside; the amount of things she manages to appear and disappear with is incredible, and both she and Ma somehow have space to sleep in the middle of all that.

  I haven’t seen the inside of the other wagons. I’m curious, but also keenly aware of how scarce privacy is. I am already encroaching and am of limited use; I don’t want to antagonize anyone into thinking it’s time I become someone else’s problem.

  “Hey. You.”

  I jump. Thirsan steps out from beyond some enormous clumps of ferns, looking at me like I’m the weird one for being startled. It turns out he’s very good at making himself undetectable, and it comes just as naturally to him as his Vesuvian rage.

  “I caught a fish,” he says. He holds up, indeed, a fish. “Can you cook this?”

  I look at the pan, and look back to the fish again. I don’t have room. I don’t want to tell him no, either.

  “Can you de-bone it?” I ask, because it seems an easy place to start.

  He slaps it down on the prep board and uses a knife pulled from somewhere on his person to remove the guts and the bones while I try to think of what to do with it.

  Puck saves me moments later, appearing just as Thirsan finishes. “Chuck that in the soup, love,” she advises. “Not the bones and bits, though, set those aside for Brand. He could use the bait.”

  It is disquieting, being this close to the hunting process. Circle of life or whatever, all living things eat, but most of my animal protein has been pretty far removed from what a live animal looks like. Rotisserie chickens, fish fillets with the skin still on, that sort of thing — not entire creatures freshly emptied of life. No one has asked me to do any butchering so far, but I’m terrified it’s going to happen and I’ll faint on the spot.

  It isn’t often that Thirsan comes within arm’s reach of me, so when he stands beside me long enough to drop the fish meat into the pot, I’m surprised by how much taller he is. I am definitely the shortest person in this little party, Puck only just beating me out for height, but I underestimate Thirsan every time. He has that stretched out look that older kittens and puppies get where they haven’t quite grown into themselves. From several feet away it looks lanky and goofy; when he’s towering over me I immediately remember what he’s like when he’s pissed.

  He leaves without another word.

  I talk to Brand almost as little as I do to Thirsan, but this is because Brand is often away from the campsite. He hunts, yes, but he also collects wood for the fire, which is a task here. In an ordinary forest, the kind of fallen branches you’re likely to find on a typical walk will be good kindling; here, he needs an ax. Sometimes, though, he returns with maybe only a day’s worth of wood strapped to his back, looking contemplative, and I suspect he also just enjoys the solitude.

  When Puck comes to take the wooden spoon from me, Finch reappears to see how dinner is coming along. We sit on different logs but at the ends closest to each other so we can chat. He tells me about the rest of his day, which mostly involved doing his and Thirsan’s laundry. I tell him about watching Puck’s project and he observes, “Oh, making tinctures.”

  “That’s all it is? Just… pouring clear alcohol over plants?”

  “Basically.”

  “Huh.”

  “She would be able to tell you more,” he adds. “If you’re interested.”

  I have no idea if I’m interested, but it occurs to me I might need to learn some useful skills in the near future. I wasn’t exactly thriving in my previous life, and that was the culture I was raised in — but I’m optimistic. I miss coffee and I miss plumbing and I miss being much further removed from the processing of the dead animals I eat, but the crushing sense of having failed at being alive is gone. I can’t remember the last time I felt so weightless.

  After dinner, Ma and I go to my wagon and she has me test my range of motion. This happens once every few days, and based on what she sees she gives comments like, “Don’t hike your shoulder,” or “Keep your hips level.” After I’ve done the active motion tests, she very carefully repositions my right arm while I do everything in my power to not use any of the muscles from my shoulder to my fingers. Once, there was a truly alarming POP from where my collar bone met my shoulder, and Ma froze and stared at me like she was waiting for me to scream — but after the initial jolt, it actually felt better.

  Then, for a little bit, it felt worse, as everything readjusted around it. But with all the brown-and-green bruises and the rest of the damaged tissue, this didn’t make much of a difference. It felt like something that had been sitting out of position was finally back where it ought to be.

  I can raise my arm about forty-five degrees without much problem. I can’t quite reach ninety, and it starts to shake the closer I get. When Ma guides it up and down, with no effort from me, it gets to about a hundred and fifteen degrees before meeting resistance. Ma is careful to avoid making me wince, so she doesn’t try to push it to a hundred and twenty.

  When she has me hold my arm out at a comfortable angle and gently pushes down on it, it gives out immediately.

  “It’s looking better,” she says, helping me adjust the sling around my arm again. “Might still be a week or two before you can do much with it, but it’s improving.”

  “Have you seen an injury like this before?” I ask, fidgeting in the sling. At this rate, I’m going to have a stress injury in my neck from supporting the weight of my arm.

  “Eh.” Ma waves a hand. “Not exactly like it. Seen plenty of injuries, though. Some of them were a lot worse.”

  I debate whether or not to ask, then plunge in. “When I heal, what happens next?”

  “What happens?”

  “Do I… go somewhere? Do I stay with you?”

  Ma is surprised by the question, then sympathetic. “I’m not dropping you off at the nearest town, if that’s what you mean.”

  I am relieved, and then startled to find I’m crying. “Oh, sorry, I don’t know why I’m…”

  If I apply a little thought, of course I know why. I have no idea where I am or whose body this is. Whatever history I’m supposed to have in this place, it’s lost to me. I thought I was used to spending a lot of time alone, but being alone in a city with grocery stores and a job you hate and an underfunded public transit system is not the same kind of alone as being a literal stranger to every aspect of your existence. My survival hinges on not being abandoned by this wagon-dwelling collective, and I am afraid.

  Ma does her best to give me a hug, then she goes to the door and says, “Puck, can I borrow you for a moment?” before returning and rubbing my back reassuringly.

  “What’s the — oh dear — oh love, what happened?” says Puck, bustling inside, pulling me into her arms and rocking, hushing me fondly while Ma takes a relieved step out of the way.

  “You can stay with us as long as you want,” Ma says.

  “Of course she can,” adds Puck.

  “We’re… We’re an odd bunch. If you decide you’d rather not live like this, we’ll help you find somewhere else. Even if it takes you a little while to make that decision. If your memories return, I can see to it that you get back to where you belong. Until then, you’re one of us.”

  I don’t say that my memories will not be returning because that’s a lot more explanation than I know how to give, not without adding several layers of confusion. But Ma’s words unwind a nervous tension coiled up in my chest like the spring on a trap, and Puck is so soft and kind and reassuring.

  Ma excuses herself, and I wear out what energy I have left on crying. Puck makes me take some of the pain relieving tincture and lie down, then she sits beside the bed, humming quietly until I fall asleep.