Chapter Two: The Weight of Names

  Kayla dreamed of water. Cold, rushing, endless. Then of blood.

  When she opened her eyes, the fire had dimmed to embers, and morning light filtered through the slats in the thatch above. Her body hurt less—but not by much.

  She stirred, testing the stiffness in her limbs. Her body moved like something borrowed—muscles sluggish, nerves frayed. Her right leg twinged sharply when she tried to shift it. Bandaged, she realised. Someone had done good work, even without a sterile field.

  Anet appeared with barely a sound, a bowl in her hands. "Bone broth," she said. "You need strength."

  Kayla sat up with effort and sipped. It was thin, oily, and laced with something bitter, but she drank it down. Her nurse's training told her how much her injured body needed the nutrients.

  "Thank you," said Kayla. "For helping me."

  "Wasn't you I meant to save," Anet replied, but without bitterness. "Still, you’re here. It’s not my place to argue with the gods."

  "Did Chailey have family?" Kayla asked, setting the bowl aside.

  "A brother. Gone to the marsh border for work. A mother who died birthing her." Anet's voice softened. "You needn't fear someone coming to claim the name. But that doesn't mean the name is safe here."

  Kayla folded the edge of her blanket between her fingers. "I'd rather they called me Kayla. If I have to build something new, I want at least one piece that's still mine."

  Anet grunted approval. "Then Kayla you are." She rose and returned to her bundles of herbs. "But keep Chailey close. That name has weight in this village, and questions come quicker than answers do."

  "What will people think happened to me? Her, I mean?" Kayla's clinical mind worked through the social implications.

  "They'll think you were touched by spirits," said Anet. "That the gods let you return from the veil with a task not yet done. A Seer's eye marks more than just your soul."

  Kayla touched the skin below her left eye, still faintly sore. The eye Anet said was now violet and marked her as something different in this world. "And what do Seers usually do?"

  Anet barked a dry laugh. "Stir trouble. Speak truths no one wants to hear. Change things."

  Kayla winced. She had done her share of stirring trouble in hospital meetings—arguing for better procedures, better care—but she doubted this village wanted policy reform.

  "Then I'll keep quiet," she murmured.

  Anet's hands paused over her mortar. "For a while, perhaps. But the world has a way of listening to Seers, even when they whisper."

  ***

  That afternoon, Anet helped her hobble outside for the first time.

  The air hit her differently—richer, scented with woodsmoke and something floral she couldn't identify. Behind the hut, a deeper stretch of forest loomed, thick with violet foliage that shimmered silver when the breeze stirred. Kayla leaned on a carved stick Anet had handed her, every step slow and braced. The hues unsettled her still—like walking through an inverted dream. She caught herself wondering, for the hundredth time, whether this was all some elaborate hallucination. Could a head injury account for this? She’d seen patients lose whole chunks of time to trauma. But not like this. Not so vivid. And pain this sharp didn’t belong to dreams.

  The hut sat on a rise at the forest's edge, overlooking a crooked trail leading to a cluster of thatched roofs in the distance. Beyond the village, fields lay golden and low. And past that, a haze of more forest cut by a ribboning river.

  She had never seen land like this. A dizzying mix of strange and strangely-familiar.

  "Ashvita's heartland," Anet said, noticing her gaze. "Deyel's small, but folk here are proud of what they produce."

  "Will they be angry? That I'm not... her?"

  "Some. Reborn a Seer is strange enough, I’d advise against telling everyone what happened to you was even stranger. Most here will be too scared to question. You were taken by the Lord and left broken and bleeding. That kind of trouble buys you some silence." Anet's mouth tightened. "But don't mistake silence for safety. Lord Veylen took an unhealthy interest in the girl who wore your face. He hurt her once. If he learns you're still breathing, Seer's mark or no, he'll come again."

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  Kayla's stomach churned at the implications. Her medical training had taught her to recognize the patterns of abuse and assault. The deep ache in her pelvis made terrible sense now.

  "You're safe in my hut," Anet continued. "But not in that village. Not in Chailey's home. My nephew will come in a few days' time—less than a week, if the trail stays dry," Anet settled them both on a low bench by the door. "He knows the safer paths east. My younger sister is the herbwoman for the next village over. Lord Veylen and his men are unlikely to travel that far with their questions."

  "You're sending me away?" Kayla felt a flutter of panic. Anet was her only anchor in this strange world.

  "I'm helping you live," Anet said firmly. "Chailey's death gave you breath. Don't let it end here."

  Kayla watched the old woman's hands work, deft and sure. What would it be like to start again in yet another unfamiliar place?

  "What is this Lord Veylen like?" she asked, needing to understand the threat.

  Anet's face hardened. "Like many who inherit power without earning wisdom. His father was stern but fair. The son..." She spat into the fire. "He takes what he wants and discards what breaks."

  Kayla stared into the flames. "And I'm something he broke."

  "Chailey was," Anet corrected. "You are something new. Something marked by the veil's touch."

  Kayla rested carefully on the bench, her gaze sweeping the unfamiliar the sky. Copper-toned clouds drifting across a clear amber-blue dome. No planes. No electric wires. No distant hum of cars.

  She pressed a hand to her chest. Her heart thudded there, steady and real.

  ***

  The next morning, Anet took her to the small garden behind the hut. A low fence enclosed a patch of herbs and wildflowers. Some were familiar: chamomile with its small, white petals and golden centers, a mint that smelled almost like the kind she grew at home, though its leaves were a soft, dusky purple instead of green. Other plants shimmered strangely in the light, with stems of violet-brown and blooms in shades of yellow, emerald, and pale blue.

  "Lavenderleaf for the nerves," Anet explained, pointing to a cluster of soft-furred plants. "Feverroot for fevers. And that one's Nightshade's Mercy. Poison if used wrong. But good for the gut in tiny bits."

  Kayla bent carefully to sniff the mint. "I used to grow herbs in little pots back home. On my kitchen window and balcony railing. Mint, rosemary, basil when I could keep it alive."

  "Then your hands know more than just tending wounds," Anet said with approval. "That's good. You'll need both."

  Her nurse's mind began cataloguing the plants automatically, comparing them to Earth equivalents, thinking about potential medicinal uses. It was a small comfort, this bridge between her old knowledge and this new world.

  "Do you make teas with these?" Kayla asked, brushing her fingers over a cluster of emerald-petaled flowers.

  "Teas, poultices, tinctures," Anet replied. "Ashvita folk say teas are women's magic. Gentle work, but strong."

  "On Earth—where I'm from—we used willow bark for pain relief," Kayla said. "I think you added it to my broth?"

  Anet's eyes lit with interest. "Willowbark, yes. Good for fevers and aches. You know its use?"

  "We call it the ancestor of aspirin—a medicine for pain," Kayla explained. "The chemical compound is similar."

  "Kim-ick-al?" Anet frowned, testing the unfamiliar word.

  Kayla hesitated, unsure how to explain modern chemistry. "The... essence that makes it work," she said finally.

  Anet nodded slowly. "The spirit of the plant. Yes, we know this."

  That night, the stars seemed to press closer through the small window. Kayla identified unfamiliar constellations as Anet named them: the Fisher's Net, the Sleeping Woman, the Hawk's Eye.

  "We're in the season of the early harvest," Anet told her. "When the Sleeping Woman rises fully, the rains will come."

  Kayla nodded, storing away this knowledge of seasons, of patterns she'd need to learn. The universe above her was as foreign as the ground beneath her feet, yet the rhythm of life—planting, growing, harvesting—seemed somehow familiar.

  Oddly, even in the thick shadows of evening, she could still make out the ripple of leaves and the path where it curved into the woods. Better than she should have been able to. She blinked and squinted again, testing it. Somehow, the dark didn’t feel quite as dark anymore.

  ***

  Early the next morning, Anet returned from the village with a scowl deep as any storm.

  "A rider came through," she said, setting her basket down hard. "Didn't stop long. Just enough to ask too many questions."

  Kayla's heart jumped. "What kind of questions?"

  "About a girl left for dead being taken to my hut at the forest's edge."

  The blanket slipped from Kayla's shoulder. "He's looking for me."

  "Or something close enough. Either way, we can't wait on my nephew now. You'll have to leave today."

  Anet moved quickly, gathering dried food, a water skin, and a small pouch of herbs into a rough cloth sack. "The path behind the hut leads east through the forest. Keep the rising sun on your right shoulder in the morning. By midday, you should reach the fork where the stream crosses. Take the left path. Three more hours and you'll reach my sister's village—Neyala. Ask for Herbwoman Safa."

  Kayla's pulse raced. "But my leg—"

  "Will slow you, yes. But not as much as staying here will end you." Anet pressed a crude walking stick into her hand. "The path is well-marked. Others use it. You won't be the first to flee from a lord's attention."

  Outside, the trees stirred in a breeze she didn't know, their leaves a shade of violet that belonged to no forest she'd ever walked. The sky beyond them was bright with morning light.

  Anet grasped her shoulders suddenly, her eyes intent. "Listen carefully. You are a Seer now, whatever that means to you. When folk see your eyes, they'll expect... something. Use that. It's protection of a sort."

  "But I don't know anything about—"

  "You know what others don't. That's enough." Anet pressed the sack into her hands. "Now go. Follow the path. Find Safa. And remember your real name, Kayla. Don't lose it among all the new ones this world will give you."

  Kayla stepped onto the path, her borrowed body aching, her heart pounding with fear and determination. She cast one last look at the small hut that had sheltered her first days in this new life.

  "Thank you," she whispered.

  Then she turned towards the violet forest, leaving Chailey's past behind her.