The trunk of the tree is rough behind Croi’s back; twigs dig into her hips. Her face is somehow crusted with mud. The tree-bark dress she’s wearing is filthy and suddenly short, and her soles hurt. Her hunger is a hollow ache and fatigue a heavy weight on her shoulders. Yet she has never felt as alive as she does at this moment, in front of someone who can destroy her so completely that even yesterday wouldn’t remember her name.

“Uaine,” the dryad breathes after one moment turgid with silence. Oon-ya. Croi looks at her cautiously, stiffening in case she tries something else.

Her incomprehension must have made itself clear because the dryad adds, “My name. Uaine.” She rests her elbows on knees she has drawn up to her chest, props her face on her hands, and looks up at Croi. “I’m giving it to you.”

Giving it? Like dessert?

“Will you accept it?” A glint in the dryad’s eyes warns against complacency.

“Why?” First the dryad tries to steal Croi’s name. Now she offers Croi hers. No one just offers their name. At least that’s what the Hag has taught her.

“Consider it a test.” The dryad seems to have recovered her equilibrium. Was she not scared at all? She gets up from the ground and stalks over. Croi tries to keep her face blank and fails miserably. “Are you brave enough to take it?”

Brave? Croi is absolutely sure she is no such thing. But if she doesn’t take the dryad’s name, what else can she do? She cannot stay here, tethered to this tree forever. Besides, how many other ways can she break? How much more can she hurt?

So before she can consider the consequences, she speaks the name, and even before the second syllable leaves her mouth, she knows she has made a mistake. Too late, she remembers the Hag’s warning: true names can only be taken by those who are stronger than the person whose name they are speaking.

The dryad is ancient—numbers surrender their meaning in the face of her age. Her experiences are vast and varied; they have rubbed the curves of her name smooth and sweetened the sound of it. On Croi’s lips, her name becomes a living thing and presses down. Croi sees visions of grand halls and gatherings of kin. She sees two faces, much like the dryad’s, laughing together. She experiences the numerous farewells the dryad has made in her life, the pulsing moments of joy and the barbed notes of despair. Croi sags against the tree trunk; she’s drowning, or she may be burning as the essence of everything the dryad is tries to subsume all that Croi is. She feels both too full and too small. Uaine’s name stretches itself all around her and then sinks deeper, through her skin and into her blood. The moment the name reaches Croi’s blood, a peculiar knowing fills her. Her chest throbs once, and the heaviness of the dryad’s name dissipates as though she has held it before, if not on her tongue then in her blood. The name finds a place in Croi’s chest, somewhere near her heart, to call home.