5

But I’m not eating anything before I find soap, water, and something decent to wear. I won’t spend another minute looking like I’ve been dragged across all of Maford in the rain. I’ve remained in this village long enough for the daystar to slip across the sky and drift down to the horizon in the west. Which means that the Ealdrehrt cottage sits at the southern edge of town. Good to know if I try to escape.

While Jadon returns Milo to Gery, Olivia hands me a bar of soap, a washcloth, a large brown tunic, a pair of dark boots, and a blue dress. “You’ll need to fit in more if you want to avoid Narder’s attention. Not wandering around naked will help.”

“You think?” I ask, a smile playing at the edge of my mouth.

“You can sleep in the tunic,” Olivia says. “It’s Jadon’s old shirt, so it’s a little big but more comfortable than wearing just your muddy breeches and bandeau. And tomorrow, you can wear the dress. It’ll be a little short on you, but once you’ve bathed, we can see where it falls so that I can adjust or find you something else sooner rather than later.”

She leads me to the other side of the barn, entering a dark nook with a barrel of water hidden behind a wooden divider. “For a little privacy. You can wash up back here, okay?”

After Olivia wanders away, I peel off my breeches and bandeau and set them on the closest bale of hay. The cold water makes me shiver, and the soap smells like licorice and vinegar, but the washcloth helps scrub the mud away along with some of my anger and frustration.

Clean now, I tug the short-sleeved peacock-blue dress over my head. Its hem is lined with yellow felt circles and diamonds. The dress is tight around my chest and hips, and I wince—sore from the jailer’s kick to my ribs—but there’s give in the sleeves. The blue material scratches against my skin, but I’ll survive. As Olivia predicted, the hem skims the middle of my calves and hits the cuffs of my borrowed boots.

Olivia returns to the nook, and her gaze immediately snaps to my dirty clothes.

I know what she’s thinking without even listening.

“I could try them on, just to see — ”

“Don’t even think about it.” I throw her a scowl that tells her, promises her, that my hands will wrap around her neck again if she even touches my last two possessions.

She slips her hands into the pockets of her skirt. “I was just admiring the circles on your lovely scarlet bandeau. And those elks on your leather breeches? Absolutely fabulous.” She then angles her head as she peers at me in the dress. “Not perfect, but it’ll have to do. No one here in Maford is as tall as you. Except Jadon.”

I turn this way and that, looking at the pattern on the cloth as she pulls strings and fastens buttons. “What do the circles and diamonds signify?”

“Huh?”

“Strength? Wisdom? Holiness?”

She blinks at me. “I think they’re pretty.”

I wait a beat, then say, “You just put shapes on your clothes because they’re pretty?”

“Umm… Yeah?” Olivia plucks the seams on my shoulder and sleeve. “I’m guessing that circles and diamonds mean something wherever you’re from.”

I stare at the elks on my breeches and nod, wishing I knew more about their meaning. But I do know they mean something.

“Good clue,” Olivia says, tapping her chin. “You can’t be from Pethorp. They see even less meaning in things than we do. Or maybe—” She gasps. “Chesterby! It’s far, far north of here, high up in the mountains past Baraminz Spires. We got word not too long ago that Chesterby was totally destroyed by an earthshake, and that a fire spread across the mountains, and that people from Chesterby and the small towns around it were displaced.”

Chesterby. My body shivers just thinking the name.

“You know what else?” Olivia leans in, lowering her voice to a harsh whisper as if she’s sharing choice gossip. “They say that a lot of strange animals folks had never seen before lost their homes in the woods and started wandering south looking for new forests.” She straightens, and her face brightens with excitement. “Maybe you were trying to escape the fires and a giant eagle that used to roost in those trees spotted you, thought you were food, picked you up, flew around looking for a place to eat, and accidentally dropped you.” She places her hands on her hips, obviously proud of this story.

I want to smirk at the image of a giant eagle, but I can’t shake off the sensation of falling. It wouldn’t explain the great light in the sky, though. But still… Chesterby . The name pricks like needles in the back of my brain. I cock my head. “I think you’re onto something. And those people saw meanings in shapes?”

Olivia shrugs. “No clue, but I think I’m onto something, too.” She smiles and pats herself on the back. “Good job, Olivia. So now, we just need to find someone who can tell us what elks mean and if the people who lived in the northern mountains believe that circles hold a mystery. Or we can find someone who’s been to Chesterby.”

“Is there anyone in Maford who can do that?”

She laughs. “Nope. All the sages left this town ages ago. Jadon may have an idea. We’ll ask him over dinner.”

My muscles ease now that I have a few, very real possibilities.

Olivia tugs at the hem of my borrowed dress. “Jadon and I will be leaving Maford very soon and settling in Vinevridth next. There’s no sickness in the kingdom city. And there’s more food. Cleaner water. He’ll start another forge, and I’ll open a shop—I’ll have you know that you’re wearing an original design. Soon, I’ll be known throughout the kingdom for my dresses, and I’ll dress all the fancy royals in O.E.C. originals—that’s Olivia Ealdrehrt Creation.”

I trace a finger over the tight, even stitches on the sleeve cuff. “I’m sure you will.” Really, the needlework in this dress is impressive. Customers would probably even sit through her winding monologues to wear dresses this well-made.

“I’ll clothe regular people, too,” Olivia continues, her expression soft and dreamy, “but the rich… They’ll be able to introduce me to merchants who sell silks as soft as butter. And they’ll commission gowns decorated with the finest jewels in the realm. You know, the wealthy have so much stuff they don’t need, they practically toss their jewels out with their bathwater. So why not use them to fancy up a gown? Wouldn’t that be amazing?”

She circles me and clucks her tongue. “Maybe you wouldn’t be surprised by what the wealthy do. Maybe you already know about that kind of life. Because maybe you’re from one of those fancy places and not some mountain town like Chesterby. Maybe even a different empire. Like Brithellum—I can see you there with your great taste in clothes and…” She clicks her teeth and bites her upper lip before saying, “Okay, don’t take this the wrong way.”

I steel myself for whatever offensive thing she’s about to say.

“But…what are you?” She studies me, eyes narrowed. “Half human and half what?”

My belly fills with prickly heat, and the breath from my nostrils singes my top lip. My words flow like slow lava across my tongue. “What kind of question is that ?”

“Because,” Olivia continues, oblivious to my anger, “your eyes are this really weird gold. And then your hair. What color is that? Seriously, it just looks impossible. ” Olivia must not sense the danger she’s in, because she reaches out to touch my impossible hair.

I swat her hand.

She hisses with pain. “ Damn! Why’d you hit me?”

“Don’t ever do that,” I say, finger in her face.

Wide-eyed, she nods, then goes back to observing me with a probing gaze.

But I take a breath and ask myself the same question. I can hear the thoughts of people, and I somehow survived a fall from the sky. Maybe that does mean I’m more than human.

“Or maybe…” Olivia fluffs out the skirt of the blue dress and yanks away another loose string. “Johny kept calling you ‘Dashmala,’ but you don’t have those bone things on the sides of your face. Maybe you’re a mage-in-training. You look like you’re around my age. You’re what, twenty? Twenty-one? Definitely too young to be a full-on sorceress.”

It’s a good suggestion, and probably closer to the truth than me being inhuman in some way. Because if I were more than human, why am I here? Why is my body so weak? That woman with the silvery glow saw something in me and gifted me with hearing the thoughts of others. I doubt she’d give that ability to just anyone. Maybe she knows what the elks mean.

I need to find her.

“It’s a good suggestion,” I say, “me being a mage.”

Olivia’s skin flushes, and she jams her lips together. “If you are,” she whispers, “you can’t tell anyone . Don’t suggest it. Don’t even say the word ‘magic’ or ‘mage’ or anything that would suggest such an idea. You’re safer being a barbarian than a mage. The mayor and Father Knete forced all the magic-makers out of Maford, never to be seen again, including the sage who could’ve told you about the elks and circles. I’m being very serious right now. Please don’t say anything. You’re already in trouble.”

Pulse racing, I nod and say, “Okay.” I take off the blue dress and pass it to Olivia to make her adjustments. Then I pull on Jadon’s old tunic.

As I follow Olivia to the front of the barn, I cast my eyes toward the rest of drought-choked Maford where the sky has forgotten how to cry—at least until I arrived. Perhaps I should forgive this place. Thirst can turn men into monsters, with every act of kindness received with hostility, scrutinized for the dagger hidden beneath the thoughtfulness.

Are the towns beyond this place just as dry, just as angry?

Olivia dashes into the cottage to finish preparing dinner just as Jadon returns to the barn from Gery’s with a new bale of hay. Seeing me again, he double takes and says, “Oh. Hey.” His eyes linger on his brown tunic now on my body.

I blush and hold out my arms. “Hope you don’t mind. Olivia loaned it to me—”

“No,” he says, shaking his head. “I don’t mind at all. Looks better on you anyway.” He smiles and continues tidying up the space.

Right as I find a clean bale of hay to sit on, I catch my reflection in a cracked mirror placed near the barn door. The world spins, and my mind pops. There I am! My hair is a cloud of mulberry-sapphire-blue and cinnamon-hued curls. No wonder Olivia’s fascinated.

My reflection in the mirror blurs for a moment, and my brain hums. I blink, concentrating on my image as it gradually comes back into focus along with a hard truth.

“My name is Kai.” My voice sounds distant in my still-fuzzy brain.

Jadon meets my eyes in the mirror, and my breath catches at his intense stare and rigid posture.

Olivia strides into the barn carrying a pot, looking from me to Jadon and back again. “What?”

“ Kai ,” Jadon says, shoulders relaxing. He smiles. “That’s pretty.”

Olivia grins and places the pot on Jadon’s worktable. “You remembered your name?”

I nod, still studying my reflection.

She runs over and hugs me. “That’s wonderful! Aren’t you happy?”

Near tears and shaking, I let out a long breath and fan my face. “I am.” Knees weak, I sink onto the bale of hay and clutch my elbows. Remembering something as simple as my name has sapped all my energy.

“Kai: that’s a little strange for this part of the world,” Olivia says to Jadon. “Don’t you think?”

Jadon nods. “What about your family’s surname? Kai… what ?”

I level my shoulders and force myself to will the shakes away. “My surname?” I start to speak—the answer is right there, on the edge of my memory, and I can almost touch it, but there’s blank space there and thick quiet. I shake my head. “ Kai have-no-idea.”

Olivia snorts.

Jadon says, “Ha.”

“Would that name come from Chesterby?” I ask.

Jadon frowns. “Chesterby?”

Olivia nods. “We think maybe that’s where she’s from.” Then she offers her theory about the destroyed town, the eagle, the symbols on my clothing. And now, my name.

Jadon says, “Hmm. They kept to themselves in Chesterby. Didn’t want outsiders coming in. They had a lot of old customs, I hear, and a different belief system. Now we just need to find someone who knows more about all that.”

“But first,” Olivia says, “we’ll celebrate over bowls of soup!”

We aren’t eating dinner in the house. Instead, Olivia and I sit on the cleanest of the smelly bales of hay in the barn’s doorway, balancing bowls of soup on our knees while Jadon huddles over his bowl at the workbench.

The food looks rank and the surroundings ranker.

The wood of the barn creaks and groans. Not a pleasant sound. A slight breeze brings with it the stench of a dying river and ailing horses. From the farm next door, a woman coughs. She sounds really sick, and her coughs are deep and wet, like she can’t breathe. A man from the same farm joins her with his own cough. His cough doesn’t sound as dangerous as hers, though he’s not too far behind. Annoyed with the newest sounds and smells of Maford, I shift my gaze from the colure above the door to the soot-covered ground and then down to my bowl, filled with a pasty white substance that I’m supposed to eat. Oh, sacred paddle-circle thing. Protect me from this place and from this meal.

The coughing next door starts up again and makes this goopy soup look even nastier.

“Why are we eating out here?” I ask. “Wouldn’t it be easier for you, Olivia, if we ate inside? That way, you wouldn’t have to go back and forth, carrying a heavy soup pot and bowls.”

The siblings exchange a look before their gazes lower. There’s silence until Olivia clears her throat. “It’s just more refreshing outdoors.”

“And there’s a sickness going around town,” Jadon says. “Something called Miasma. That’s what you’re hearing next door at the Gerys’ farm.”

“I’m not sick,” I say.

“But we may be.” Olivia doesn’t look up from her bowl of soup. “We just may not be in the ‘hacking up a lung’ phase yet.”

“It’s very contagious,” Jadon adds.

Olivia offers a sad sigh. “Very contagious.”

“You don’t want to risk it,” Jadon continues, “especially if you plan to leave Maford after paying your fine. You don’t know how your body would react to it.”

“If Miasma’s so bad,” I ask, my eyebrow cocked, “then why haven’t you left?”

Jadon smirks. “I don’t know where you’re from— ”

“She doesn’t, either,” Olivia adds.

“But it takes geld to pick up and relocate.” He dips his spoon into his soup and takes a bite.

All of this may be true, but none of these factors are their current concern.

“We can’t let her in the house.” That’s what they’re thinking. I don’t want to be in their dirty little house anyway. My stomach twists. I’m not sure that I haven’t caught the disease. Since washing up and pulling on Jadon’s shirt, I feel slower, constricted, and there’s this weird pressure against my chest. A feeling beyond the cold emptiness that I’ve experienced since waking up in the forest. This newest sensation, I thought, was exhaustion. Chasing Olivia through the woods. Strangling Olivia in the square. Being shoved, pushed, kicked, cursed, and spat upon by some of Maford’s finest people. Maybe it’s more than that? Maybe it’s Miasma?

I focus on my bowl of soup, lifting the spoon to my mouth, and… My skin prickles with a memory. Sitting at a dinner table, a blue-and-white tureen of steaming potato-leek soup before me. Singing? I’m smiling as a hand dips a large spoon into the tureen and ladles more soup into my almost-empty bowl. The hand, brown and slender, a woman’s hand, squeezes my shoulder. My mother’s hand?

Leeks are supposed to be delicious green vegetables—my memory of smiling as I consumed another helping of that soup tells me so. But in this soup, they’re far from delicious and have the consistency of slime falling from a cow’s mouth. Olivia doesn’t seem to care. The sound of her soup-slurping is worse than the barn’s creaking or Gery and his wife’s hacking.

“I don’t think I’ve ever had leeks that tasted like this before,” I say, attempting small talk. I poke my spoon at a brownish-gray lump also in my bowl. “And what is this ?”

Olivia bites into her own chunk of this . “Lamb.”

“Oh!” I pry a piece away with my spoon and pop it in my mouth. Almost immediately, my mouth rebukes this funky, fatty piece of meat. I gag and spit out the meat, which tumbles to the dirt. My cheeks burn with embarrassment, and I choke out, “I apologize. That was rude.”

Jadon grimaces as he chews a bite. “Not a lot of grass for the sheep to eat, so it’s a little gamey.”

A little gamey? And I’m a little tall and a little brown.

“I’m not a good cook,” Olivia says, her eyes sad, her cheeks pink, “but I do try to make the best of what we have. Which isn’t a lot.”

“It’s very generous of you to feed me,” I say, my tongue slick. “This soup is certainly…” I clear my throat to keep from gagging. “Unforgettable.”

Jadon snickers as he pushes his spoon around his bowl.

I won’t insult my host further by mentioning what I’m now remembering, what my palate is demanding: texture and seasoning. Salt and pepper, carrots, rosemary. Something, anything that crunches . Be gracious. There’s always something to compliment. I remember hearing those instructions. I remember someone tugging my braid. The owner of that slender brown hand?

I’m trying hard to be gracious and complimentary— this soup is unforgettable . And that’s the truth. I’m a guest here. No, I’m a prisoner here. Trapped in this village, my clothes and amulet held hostage. The sooner I get them, the sooner I can leave Maford and its Miasma and find someone who knows more about Chesterby’s past.

“So.” I set the bowl of soup aside. “How do I earn twelve geld?”

“First thing in the morning,” Jadon says, “we’ll put you to work.”