From Stillness to Steel

She came awake with mud under her cheek.

For one blind, blank second, Rue thought the ceiling lighthad burned out again.

Then cold wet seeped through the side of her face, andsomething sharp pressed into her palm, and the air in her nose smelledwrong—green, raw, full of leaf rot and rain instead of bleach, plastic tubing,old linen, hand soap, reheated broth.

Her eyes flew open.

No ceiling.

Branches crossed the dark above her like black ribs. Watergathered on a pine needle and dropped, striking her temple with a cold littletap. The ground beneath her was slick and uneven. Ferns brushed her wrist.Somewhere close, rain moved through leaves with a hush like whispered silk.

Rue stared up at the trees and did not understand a singlething she saw.

This had to be a dream, except dreams had always betrayedher body in one of two ways. In them she either flew, easy and laughing, withno weight at all—or she woke inside the same prison she always inhabited andnothing worked there either. Her dreams had never bothered with damp earthunder her skin. They had never smelled like moss.

She tried to turn her head.

She turned it.

The motion snapped through her so fast and clean that shegasped. Her cheek lifted from the mud. Her neck worked. Her spine answered.Panic hit her in one solid wall.

No. No, no, no.

She told her hand to move because that was the old test, thecruelest one, the one she still sometimes performed in the dark when the hallhad gone quiet and there was no one to witness hope making a fool of her.

Her fingers clenched.

Mud packed beneath her nails.

Rue made a sound she had never heard from herselfbefore—small, jagged, animal. She rolled onto her back too hard, slipped on wetleaves, flung out both arms by pure shock, and nearly sobbed when they caughther.

Arms.

Hands.

Elbows.

The whole impossible length of her.

Rain touched her throat. Cold slid beneath the collar of therough shirt she wore. Her chest rose so sharply it hurt.

It hurt.

She sucked in another breath, deeper this time, and coughedon it. The air was knife-clean. It cut all the way down. No machine hissedbeside her. No pulse monitor kept count. No mattress held the shape of hercaptivity. She breathed again, and again, and each breath opened her wider.

The forest answered with noise. A drip from the branches.The far-off caw of something harsh-throated. Wind moving high overhead. Her ownragged inhale. The hammering of a heart she could feel in her ribs.

She lifted both hands in front of her face.

They trembled. They were dirty, scratched, alive. Theknuckles were a little larger than she remembered, the palms faintly callusedin places they had never had the chance to earn. Her skin looked like skin, nota thing washed and turned and tended by other people. There were tiny crescentsof soil under each nail. One sleeve had torn at the wrist.

Rue spread her fingers, then curled them, then spread themagain.

A laugh burst out of her, cracked in the middle and almosthysterical. It went nowhere. The trees kept their own counsel.

“Okay,” she whispered to no one. Her voice came out rusty.“Okay.”

The word did nothing. There was no shape to put around this.She had gone to sleep in a hospital bed with the evening aide humming under herbreath while she adjusted Rue’s blanket. Rue remembered that much with fierce,useless clarity. The aide had smelled faintly of orange peel hand lotion. Rainhad tapped against the window then too, but city rain, thin and exhausted. Ruehad counted the beeps from the machine beside her until the rhythm dulled intosleep.

Now she lay in a forest dressed in someone else’s coarseshirt and trousers, with dirt on her skin and a body that obeyed.

Fear found the edges of wonder and started picking.

What if this was the last dream before death? What if herbrain, starved of air or flooded with whatever came at the end, had built her amercy? What if she moved too quickly and woke in the old bed, mouth dry, eyesburning, fingers still and mute under the blanket?

The thought hit hard enough to freeze her.

She lay still while rain stitched the leaves around her. Herheart would not slow. She could hear every warning voice she had ever builtinside herself, each one practical and mean: Don’t hope. Don’t ask for what youwon’t get. Don’t look too long at the door.

But under all that, another feeling pushed up, stubborn as aweed through stone.

Even if it was false, it was hers for now.

Rue swallowed. Her throat worked. She set one muddy handflat against the ground and felt the pebbled grit, the soaked mat of oldneedles, the cool drag of earth against skin.

Then, moving like she was handling something wild that mightbite, she bent one knee.

Her leg came up.

A sound broke out of her again, this one closer to a laughthan a cry. She touched the knee with shaking fingers, then ran her hand downher thigh, her calf, the wet cloth clinging to her shin. Muscle. Bone. Theshape of a limb that had belonged to her in name and nowhere else.

“Oh my God,” she said to the trees.

Nobody answered. A drop of water slid off a branch andlanded squarely on her mouth.

She sputtered and would have wiped it away if she had notgone still in pure stunned delight. She could feel the cold of it, the shape,the absurd insult.

A bubble of laughter rose again, wilder this time. Itsnapped off when she looked around properly.

Forest in every direction.

The light had the dim, heavy cast of dawn buried behindclouds. Great trunks lifted out of ferns and bracken. Moss crawled over fallenlogs. No path cut the undergrowth near her. No road, no building, no sign of acity, no traffic murmur, no electrical hum. She might as well have fallen outof the sky into the first morning of the world.

Panic came back, sharper now that it had something solid togrip.

If this was real—and the mud, the pain in her lungs, thechill in her soaked clothes all argued for real—then she was alone and ignorantand very likely in trouble. She didn’t know where she was. She didn’t know whohad dressed her, moved her, left her. She didn’t know if there were animalshere that could kill her, or people, or cliffs hidden under the trees. Shedidn’t know whether the water collecting on leaves was safe to drink or whethereating the wrong berry would finish what whatever miracle or madness had begun.

Fine, she thought, with a raggedness that almost felt likeanger. Fine. Be terrified later. First things first.

The thought steadied her because it was practical, andpracticality had kept her sane when hope could not. In the hospital there hadalways been first things: ask for the itch on her nose to be scratched; savethe better part of her breath for speech; memorize the schedule of the kindnurses; endure mornings; endure nights; endure the indignity of being washedlike a child; endure the silence after visitors left. She knew how to surviveby inches.

A first day was still a day.

“All right,” Rue said, stronger now. “Inventory.”

Speaking aloud helped. It made her feel less like a soulfloating loose from its body.

She patted herself down. Rough shirt, rough trousers, lacedboots caked in mud. That detail stopped her cold. Boots. On her feet. Shestared at them as if they might vanish. The leather was scuffed. The laces wereunevenly tied, as though by impatient hands. She flexed her toes and nearlychoked on relief when she felt the damp squeeze at the ends.

No pockets with anything useful, though one held a bit ofstring and another a smooth gray stone. No knife. No bag. No food. No clue.

She rolled carefully to one side and planted both hands. Themovement was clumsy. Weakness trembled through her shoulders at once. Ofcourse. Whatever body this was—hers, somehow hers—it had never been used by herbefore. Waking to ownership was not the same as earning strength.

Still. Hands. Shoulders. A belly that tightened when shepulled. Legs that shifted under her.

Rue pushed.

She made it to all fours and froze there, breathing hard,mud soaking into her knees through the cloth. The position felt obscene in itsfreedom. Weight stacked through wrists, hips, ankles. Muscles firing inuncertain bursts. Her hair fell into her face and she shook it back, thenlaughed once in disbelief because she could. Her whole life, people had movedher. Lifted, turned, transferred, adjusted. Now she knelt in the dirt under herown command like a newborn foal with too much pride and not enough balance.

“Graceful,” she muttered.

The joke helped more than it should have.

She sat back on her heels too quickly and tipped sideways.One hand shot out to catch her. The jolt ran up her arm. She sucked air throughher teeth and grinned at the pain, then hated herself a little for grinning anddid it again anyway.

Next came standing.

That word had lived in her head for years with all the softcruelty of a fairy tale. Stand. Such a plain verb. So ordinary in other mouths.Stand here. Stand still. Stand up. As if it were as small and casual asblinking.

Rue looked at a nearby sapling, thin but rooted, its barksilver-dark with rain. She crawled to it, every movement a trial ofcoordination. Wet leaves slid under her palms. A twig stabbed the heel of onehand. The smell of crushed fern rose fresh and bitter.

At the tree she wrapped both hands around the trunk andpressed her forehead against the slick bark.

“Please,” she whispered, though she did not know to whom.

She tucked one boot under herself. Then the other. Shepushed.

Her legs tried. That alone nearly undid her. They shook likebad scaffolding. Her knees wobbled. Her arms locked so hard around the saplingthat the bark bit her skin. For one dizzy second she rose halfway and droppedback with a grunt.

Rue closed her eyes. Rain tapped the back of her neck.

Again.

This time she set her feet wider. She leaned more on thetree. She pushed with everything she had, teeth bared, breath hissing out ofher.

The world lurched.

Then held.

Rue stood.

Not well. Not pretty. Bent half over, clutching a tree likea drunk clutching a friend, legs quivering, chest heaving, she stood. Theground was far away in a way it had never been. The forest changed shape fromup here. Ferns no longer towered; they crowded her shins. She could see betweenthe trees farther than before. A pale strip of sky showed in one gap.

Her knees buckled. She clung harder.

And because there was nobody to tell, nobody to witness,nobody to soften this for, she began to cry.

Not neat tears. Not cinematic grief. Her face went hot andugly with it. Snot threatened. Her shoulders shook. She laughed once in themiddle and that made it worse. Years of wanting rushed through the breach allat once: every doorway she had stared through, every pair of running shoes thathad felt like an insult on television, every spring afternoon she’d smelledthrough a cracked window and imagined against her skin, every hand she’d had toask for.

“I’m standing,” she told the bark.

The bark offered no congratulations.

Good, she thought with a fierce, wet hiccup of a laugh.Good. Let this belong to me.

She stayed there until her legs steadied enough that thetrembling moved from panic into effort. Then she shifted one hand higher, thenthe other. She tested the weight in her feet. Heels. Toes. The slick slide ofmud under the soles. The pull in her calves.

Standing was not enough. The chapter of her life wheresurvival meant staying put had ended the moment she opened her eyes under thosetrees. If she wanted water she could trust, shelter before full dark, and anychance of finding another human soul, she had to move.

The thought should have frightened her more than it did.

Instead, under the fear, a hot little spark caught.

She looked toward the pale strip of sky. The land seemed todip that way. Water often ran downhill. People built near water. Or perhapsthat was nonsense in a place she did not know. Still, it was a direction, anddirection was better than lying in the mud waiting to be found by whateverfound helpless things.

Helpless.

The word came, old and poisonous.

Rue straightened as much as she could and spat it out intothe rain.

“No,” she said.

Her first step was a disaster.

She lifted one foot, forgot she needed the tree more thandignity, wrenched herself sideways, and slammed shoulder-first into the trunk.Bark scraped her cheek. She clung, swore with impressive feeling, and thenstarted laughing hard enough to make her ribs ache.

“Excellent,” she told the forest. “A triumph. Inspiring.”

Her second attempt went better. She shifted her weightslowly, eased one boot forward, and set it down. The sensation of choosingwhere to place her foot nearly stole her breath. The ground was springy withold needles. A hidden root pressed the arch. The leather creased over her toes.She felt all of it.

Then she brought the other foot through.

Two steps.

Her grip eased from death hold to desperate acquaintance.The sapling swayed. Rue took one more step and let go.

She stood unsupported for the space of one heartbeat.

Then another.

Wonder spread through her so clean and bright it hurt.

She was still shaking. Rain had found the gap between hercollar and throat and was making a cold path down her spine. Her hair stuck toher face. Her stomach had begun to growl in a low, uncertain way. She had noanswers. No map. No proof she had not lost her mind.

But she had feet under her.

Rue turned toward the paling east—if east it was—and walked.

Not far. Not fast. Ten uneven steps before she had to stopand catch her breath with both hands braced on her thighs. Then ten more. Shelearned quickly to watch for slick stones under the ferns and fallen brancheshidden by leaves. Once she hooked her boot on a root and windmilled both armsso wildly that she frightened a small dark bird out of a bush. It shot upwardin a blur of wings. Rue yelped. Then, absurdly, she grinned.

The forest brightened by degrees, not with sunlight exactlybut with less darkness. Mist gathered low over the ground in ghost-paleribbons. The trunks of the trees showed their colors now: ash gray, red-brown,one furred green with moss. Tiny white mushrooms clustered on a rotten log likedropped buttons.

Everything felt too sharp to bear. The cold in herfingertips. The stitch rising in her side. A lock of wet hair dragging againsther neck. The smell of crushed pine when she brushed a low branch. She wantedto stop and touch everything. She wanted to run, except running was a laughableambition when walking itself made her legs wobble.

So she walked badly and stubbornly instead.

After a while she found what might once have been apath—just a thinner spread of undergrowth and two shallow grooves drowned inrainwater. Relief hit so hard her knees almost gave. People, then. Or carts. Atsome point, some kind of use. She followed it.

The trail bent downhill. The sound reached her before thesight did: water moving over stone, not far off, a quick bright chatter beneaththe hush of rain. Rue stopped dead and nearly cried a second time fromgratitude alone.

A stream cut across the path ahead, narrow but lively fromthe weather, its banks lined with slick rocks and bent grass. She crouched byit with all the graceless care of an infant learning joints, cupped water inboth hands, and hesitated.

Could she drink it? Maybe not. But thirst scratched herthroat already, and the water ran clear over pebbles the color of old coins.

“Please don’t kill me,” she said to the stream, and drank.

It was so cold it made her teeth ache. She drank again. Andonce more, greedier. Water dripped from her chin. She wiped it away with theback of her hand and sat back on her heels, shivering.

A laugh escaped her, softer now.

This was not a hospital. No matter how often her mindcircled back trying to fit rails and monitors around these trees, the forestrefused the shape. This was not any place she knew. The clothes on her bodywere wrong. The air was wrong. Even the quiet was wrong; no far siren, no planeoverhead, no distant shout from a street.

How did she get here?

She had no answer.

Where was she?

No answer there either.

But the questions no longer opened into blank terror. Theyopened into distance.

Rue looked down at her wet hands, at the little cuts markedacross the knuckles, at the faint tremor that still lived in them. She closedthem into fists and opened them again.

“I’ll find out,” she said.

The stream went on talking over stone.

She rose with effort, found her balance, and stepped acrosson the flattest rocks she could see. One boot slipped; icy water flooded overthe leather and soaked her foot. She hissed, caught herself, and then stood onthe opposite bank laughing under her breath like a woman newly introduced tobad luck and not impressed by it.

Ahead, the path climbed out of the trees toward lighterground.

Rue drew one deep breath, then another, each one fuller thanthe last, and kept going.