Something was wrong. My emotions felt it first—an offness, like when snow on the mountainside shifted underfoot. One’s body could feel the warning before the mind processed the danger.

More sounds poured in: leaves skittering across earth, rattled breathing, the pop of a fire. Dim light flickered from the other side of my eyelids. My emotions recoiled from a punch of pain—a recollection of fear. And suddenly I didn’t want to wake. I scrabbled for the comfort of darkness. Oblivion. Then . . .

“It’s time to wake, child. Open your eyes.”

One did not disobey Oma’s command.

Against my will, my body shed the sluggishness of slumber. My senses awoke—nose inhaling the crisp chill of autumn and woodsmoke. The world called, coaxed. I could not deny it.

My eyes opened.

Branches and twigs wove like a tapestry overhead with large gaps letting in bursts of sunlight that made it through the waving foliage. My eyes ached. Burned. I blinked several times and reached up a hand to rub them. My fist weighed as much as a river stone, and I barely got it to my face, the resistance of thick coat fabric along my arm feeling more like stone than cloth.

“Myrthe.” Oma sounded cautious. “What are you remembering?”

Remembering? Terror, guilt, and despair tugged at me again.

“Look at me, child.”

I blinked away the blur, but the confusion remained. I turned my head and found her form framed by a triangle slice of light—a doorway of sorts into this bird’s nest cocooning me.

“We are . . . outside?” My voice grated like a dull skate blade. I cleared my throat.

“In a crude shelter, yes.” Oma stepped into my line of sight, easing the strain of my neck. She was short enough not to need to stoop beneath the tangle of boughs, but a few stray nubs caught bits of her white hair. She didn’t seem to notice. Or maybe she didn’t care. “Can you sit up?”

Fear rattled from behind its cell door inside my chest. I ignored it. Once I unlocked that door and faced the memories, I couldn’t go back.

I managed to get an elbow beneath me. Oma didn’t move to help—this was all on me. It gave me a surge of defiant energy. But the pain in my body originated mostly from stiffness. It didn’t feel like it had when I recovered from the pox—as though someone had drained my body of its muscle and bone and replaced them with fire oak and coals.

The most pain shot from my groin and legs, bones grating against one another. They always hurt after I’d slept for a long while, though not quite to this extent. “Was I sick? How long have I been asleep?”