The bridges between the second island and the third, and then the third and the far side, take longer to cross than the first two. Ma and Brand stop to discuss whether or not to stop for the night near the river, or go further inland.

  “We should just stop here,” Thirsan interjects. “We’re already out of the flood zone.”

  “I don’t like how close we are to the river,” says Ma.

  “Might be a good learning experience.” Brand nods at me, then looks meaningfully at Ma.

  Ma immediately does not like this idea. “We can get a little further away before we start that.”

  “Sun’s going down quick. It’ll be dark by the time we get there.”

  “Not if we get moving, it won’t.”

  “Even if we get moving.”

  Ma sighs, radiating annoyance. “We spent too long swimming.”

  “And we had a great time doing it,” says Puck. “And now we are all tired, and would rather stop a little early since we are in no particular rush to get anywhere. Please, love, let’s just start dinner.”

  Ma looks to the setting sun, to the forest, to her tired out crew, and says, “Fine. Akasha, come here.”

  I startle. Ma and I haven’t interacted much since the ghost fish incident, and she doesn’t seem like she’s in a good mood. But I climb down from the roof of the wagon and dutifully follow her.

  Ma goes into the kitchen wagon and comes back out a moment later with a wooden tube. She hands it to me.

  “These are wards. There are thirteen markers in here; place twelve of them in a circle around the camp site. It can be a pretty big circle, just make sure you can find them again. You’ll be collecting them in the morning. When you’re done, bring the thirteenth back to me.”

  Orders delivered, Ma turns to help Puck set up the kitchen.

  I immediately stress over how nonspecific these directions are. Does the circle need to be precise? Do I worry about whether or not the hibbovins are inside or outside of the circle? Does ‘pretty big’ mean I have to shout to be heard on the other end, or does it just mean big enough to hold the wagons and some wiggle room? Does it have to be touching the ground? I hate this. There is so much room for error that I am doomed to fail.

  I take a calming breath. Then I take a second, because the sun is still high enough that I have time.

  Right. Well. If I fuck it up despite following orders, I guess that will be instructive for both of us.

  On this side of the river, the bridge touches rock. We have stopped not far off from the bridge’s entrance, still easily in view of it and the river beyond. The wagons stand on flat, dusty stone, and Brand is placing wedges under the wheels to stop them from rolling. The hibbovins, freed from their burdens for the night, graze on tall grass growing nearer to the river. We are, for once, not surrounded by river trees — although they aren’t far away. Some of them sprout from between cracks in the stone ground, their roots tumbling around them in search of water and soil.

  The space is very open. Not a lot of places to lose ward markers. Not a lot of places to hide them, either.

  I place the first one close to the bridge behind us and try to estimate the placement of numbers on a giant clock as I walk in a circle around the wagons, paying attention to anything that might stand out so I can find them again in the morning — a tuft of grass, the patterns in the rock surface. Each ward marker is heavy and textured. I can’t tell if they are very old wood or carved stone. They are sort of shaped like discs, smaller than my palm and etched with a symbol that is half lost in the roughness of its surface. Each one gives off a sensation like waving a hand over a staticky pile of laundry. When I’m done placing them, I bring the thirteenth back to Ma.

  “Done?” she asks.

  “Done,” I answer. I hold out the the thirteenth stone to her.

  Instead of taking the marker, Ma clasps both her hands around mine.

  The static feeling emanating from the marker swells and expands.

  Instinctively, I try to pull away. Ma holds my hand in place.

  “Almost ready.”

  The static builds like excitement, like a panic attack — and then settles into place in a fine, fizzy calm.

  “There,” says Ma. “Your first real taste of magic.”

  She takes the ward marker, flips it like a coin, and puts it in her pocket.

  *

  Finch and Thirsan do their evening fishing off the edge of the bridge, coming back with only one fish large enough to feed the six of us easily and looking very pleased with themselves. It has to be cut into sections to fit in the frying pan.

  There is moonlight enough to see distant shapes floating over the water. Not many of them, only a handful scattered up and down river and on into the distance, skating through currents as long deceased as the ghosts themselves. They don’t glow. They catch the moonlight as clouds do. I watch the luminescent shapes from the roof of the last wagon while I eat my fish and a salad made of flower petals and wild greens.

  “Do they always stay over the water?” I ask.

  Finch, seated beside me and also watching, finishes chewing and swallows. “Mostly. The trees keep them in.”

  “What is it about the trees?”

  “Not sure. The ghost fish rarely go past the tree line — up a stream, maybe, if it’s wide enough. Even the cryptids in the woods can’t damage the trees.” He knocks on the wagon. “Damned useful.”

  I have long since pieced together that the wagons appear to be a single piece of wood because it’s true — they are whole logs of river tree trunks, carved and fitted with doors and windows, but I haven’t been able to imagine the process. “When you need a new wagon, what do you do? Are there special loggers for that?”

  Finch finds this suggestion bewildering. “Loggers? No, not at all — no one cuts the trees.”

  “You just… wait for one to fall…?”

  “Yes.”

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  “Seriously?”

  Finch points to the line of wagons, end to end. “All of these were one tree. It made a few more wagons besides these, too.”

  “But what if you don’t have a fallen tree available and need a new wagon?”

  “You wait.”

  “You wait until a tree falls?”

  “Or until you hear about a downed tree. It’s a big forest, if a tree’s gone down and someone finds it, they’ll spread the word. There are people who like carving out wagons, and there are other people who will get hold of wheels and axels and everything, so one way or another, if someone needs a wagon, it’ll get to them.”

  I almost start asking about how a person got the wagon they needed with all the appropriate customization, because the storage wagon — my wagon — was carved with one bed and a storage space above the bed and some shelves, but then I remember it’s not that hard to install what you need as you go and that I’m thinking like someone poisoned by consumer culture. Things are different here.

  “What’s the inside of your wagon look like?” I ask.

  Finch looks surprised, and then a little flushed.

  “Sorry, I only meant — what’s the layout like? Is it like mine, or…?” It occurs to me that wagons aren’t just private, but intimate. I sleep in borrowed space and I have nothing except what I’ve been given. For Finch and everyone else, these are their lives.

  “You can look,” he says. “If you want.”

  My responding “Yeah!” sounds like I’m trying too hard not to be enthusiastic, but Finch just grins and grabs his now empty plate and the lantern whose light we’ve been eating by, and he descends the ladder.

  Thirsan is sitting on the platform outside the door to their wagon, still picking at his salad. Finch jumps lightly over the three steps up to the platform, and nudges Thirsan with his foot.

  “Going in,” he says.

  Thirsan scoots only just far enough out of the way to allow the door to open unobstructed. “Whatcha doing?”

  “Just showing her the inside.”

  Thirsan assesses this too casual statement with a judgmentally raised eyebrow. “You need me to come back later?”

  “No, I’m just —”

  “Like five minutes? You won’t need that much longer, right?”

  Finch, divided between addressing the accusation that we are seeking privacy or the insult to his stamina, stifles an irritated sigh and chooses neither. “She’s just curious what the other wagons look like, calm down.”

  “All right.” Thirsan takes another bite of his salad, unconvinced.

  Finch does not acknowledge this, instead holding the door open with his right hand and holding the lantern up with his left. I climb the steps and go inside.

  I am used to the state of the storage wagon, all chests and crates and the scent of old wood mixed with something not quite dusty, but a little stale. The storage wagon, despite having a bed in it, has not been a place anyone has made into a home for a long time. Finch and Thirsan’s wagon is tidy in the way a travel-ready wagon ought to be, its cupboards near the entrance bolted and all its trunks secured, but there is a life to it which is impossible to miss. There are two beds on either side of a narrow walkway, each of them elevated off the floor high enough that I would need to use their step ladders to climb in. Finch pushes himself up onto the edge of his bed the same way he pushed out of the water earlier, twisting to sit on the mattress’s edge. He has left the wagon door open, as if to make a point to Thirsan that nothing weird is going on.

  The trunk from under Thirsan’s bed is sitting open, partially blocking the walkway. A wash bowl and a pitcher are sitting out on the shelf under the cracked open window at the far end, a washcloth hanging from a hook to air dry. A stool sits in front of it with a second washcloth draped over one of its rungs.

  There are another pair of storage trunks between the ends of the beds and the back wall. Above those and beneath the row of windows running down the length of the wagon are shelves, and on the shelves are books. The lantern light is weak and I don’t want to go digging around in their stuff, but the sight of books is unexpected. There are a pair of strings wrapping around their spines, I assume to keep them from falling, and I can make out nails stuck into the wood where the strings are anchored in place.

  The floor is clean. Not polished, but cared for. And while it smells like old wood, it smells like Finch and Thirsan and the herbal soap they use at the wash basin.

  Because I feel like I should say something, I say, “It’s nice in here.”

  “It’s usually a mess,” Thirsan calls. “Finch leaves his dirty clothes out.”

  Finch does not deny this, only adds, “And Thirsan never puts anything away. The cleanliness is temporary.”

  I shrug. “Cleanliness is always temporary.” I lean against the ladder to Thirsan’s bed, facing Finch. “It’s still nicer than the storage wagon in here. Maybe I need to clean my floors, too, and it’ll smell less dusty.”

  From the door, I hear a sarcastic, “You sure you can handle that kind of labor?” — but it comes at the same time Finch asks, “Can your shoulder take it yet?”

  I ignore Thirsan. “Not yet, I guess. What if I just use my feet? Wrap some wash cloths around them, pour a little soapy water on the floor… I would still need to move the trunks, though. I don’t want to do any water damage.”

  “When we get to Star Point,” says Finch, “I’ll help you with the trunks. We’ll probably be emptying most of them, anyway.”

  I wonder if I should feel self-conscious about having him in my space. After that first incident, when he walked in on me with my borrowed dress falling off, he has stayed out of the storage wagon completely. But for all that it’s a private space to sleep or change my clothes, it doesn’t really feel like mine and it doesn’t hold anything personal. As a matter of fact, everything it contains is really someone else’s. And now I have to wonder if there is an entire culture around intimacy among the forest dwellers and their wagons I’ve been completely oblivious to, all because I’ve had no reason to develop a sense for it.

  What if even showing me this much is some kind of ‘amnesiac’ privilege, granted because — like a child, yet again — I didn’t know any better when I asked?

  God, it’s exhausting to learn how to be a person. Asking about how the wagons are made is one thing, but the social norms are lost on me, too, and those have to be learned implicitly.

  Instead of voicing any of this, I just say, “I appreciate it, thanks,” and smile. “How far off is it, now?”

  “About two more days. If there’s more than a couple other crews there, I’ll be surprised; we’re arriving pretty early.”

  Thirsan gets up, sets his dish at the edge of the platform, and comes inside. “If you’re done ‘just showing her,’ I need to go to bed. I’m tired, and Ma’s going to wake us up at the ass crack of dawn after stopping early today.” He pulls his shirt off, throws it carelessly across his open trunk, then stands in front of me, looming, looking expectant and bored for the split second it takes me to step away from the ladder. He climbs up and drops onto his stomach as though he will immediately pass out there.

  Finch looks like he might comment on the brazen disrespect, but instead turns his attention to me. “I’ll walk you back to your wagon.”

  I shake my head. “I’m fine on my own. G’night Finch. G’night Thirsan.”

  “G’night.”

  A muffled sound from Thirsan’s bed might be “G’night” or just a grunt of acknowledgment, it’s hard to say.

  I return to the storage wagon without anything but moonlight to guide me. It’s mostly dark, but the way is clear and I am familiar enough by now with the wagon’s interior to not stub my toes on my way to bed. I undress, and set the cardigan and trousers on the nearest trunk. I tuck myself in and try not to dwell on how much of a sense of self I’ve lost in having nothing — not even a life I can return to or the people I knew there. The people who knew me are people I will never see again.

  I had never considered how much of my identity was caught up in literally everything I left behind, body and friendships and unread books included. I’ve been too preoccupied with healing and traveling to think about it. I haven’t thought about the tchochkes I left on my desk. I haven’t thought about the coat and scarf I’ve worn every winter for the last five years that had become a kind of cold weather signature. It wasn’t me, but it was a sort of extension of me.

  Now, as Akasha, that coat wouldn’t even fit.

  I’m no longer the person I used to be. All the outward signs and all the problems I once had are gone forever. So if I’m going to make it here, I need to ground myself in something other than having no idea what’s going on.