Leah walks through the drained fields as the retting has reached its end. The stink is immense.

Brownie bounds happily alongside her, tongue lolling, paws throwing up splatters of dirt and clay. The sun beats down, drying the piles of flax.

An old black mare walks on her other side, head held low, pulling the wagon along to the end of the field. They start at the end, so that the longest trips are over with first, and by the time everyone’s exhausted and fed up they only have the short trips left. This is the first day of the processing. Leah supposes she is about nine years old.

The breakers thud in the distance, chopping at the fibres. Scutchers scrape. Voices call, lilting and light on the tongue, airy and happy and so very natural. They are too far away to pick out individual speakers, but the work songs are recognisable by tune alone.

Leah hums along though she is too far away to be heard. They reach the end of the field, and Leah begins lifting armfuls of retted flax into the wagon, crackly smelly bundles of half-rotten plant stems. She is wearing her oldest clothing for the work, nothing she would miss if it got too dirty to ever get clean again.

Brownie keeps a careful watch on the woods at the edge of the field. Bears sometimes pass near the flax fields, knowing that there will always be hives nearby, and in the hives, honey.

With the strain of the work, Leah’s song falters, the beat slowing with every heaving lift, picking back up again after she’s deposited the load on the wagon.

Once the wagon is as full as it can be without risking dropping more plants than it delivers, she leads the horse around and they begin the trek home. She whistles for the dog, who twists over himself with an overabundance of energy, eager to be once again running and rolling in the bare earth. He kicks up a spray of dirt as he shoots ahead of Leah, splattering her already dirty pants.

She sets off, walking alongside the horse rather than riding to limit the weight the old girl has to haul with each load. The songs of the workers grow clearer. Leah likes this dream. She hopes it will last through the whole night. Maybe she’ll get to see her aunt Ilhe.

Her body tells her it’s sunrise out in the waking world, but she shuts it up, then looks around, hoping the pacing of the dream was not disturbed by this rude interruption.

The rear wheel gets stuck on a bump, and Leah takes the trowel from the back of the wagon to dig it out. She reaches the rock that blocked the wheel, and wriggles her fingers down either side of it, shifting it bit by bit until it comes loose enough to pull up. She clicks her tongue and the horse begins walking again. She carries the rock with her; it is a good shape to add to the wall around the vegetable garden.

Brownie is barking at birds, who fly in swarms out of the piles of retted flax. They are there for the few seeds that weren’t caught in the threshing, and Brownie is happy to take on the unnecessary task of chasing them away – any run is a good run in his opinion. Leah enjoys the threshing more than this part of things, but all parts of the plant must be used to turn a profit; the stems for their fibres, the flowers for their honey, the seeds for their oil.

The rock in her arms is getting too heavy to carry, so she sets it for a while on the wagon. The end of the field is within sight, and the swarm of her family gathered to help process the year’s crop, almost as numerous as the birds. Even those who are usually in the mines have taken the time to come away and help.

The bees hum in the hives, and Leah stays carefully away from their fronts, whistling to Brownie to remind him not to go sniffing. He has eaten many bees, and yet always seems to forget why that’s a bad idea.

Leah looks to the people working the tools, trying to figure out who is who, but the harder she looks, the more the faces blur together. She frowns. This is not how it was a moment ago.

Brownie is gone.

The wagon is pulling itself.

No it’s not, it’s just that the horse has gotten loose, a large grey creature wandering off to graze in the garden.

There’s a pile of rocks at the back of the wagon, and every time she picks one up and turns to put it on the wall, by the time she turns back the pile has moved.

How did she get to the vegetable garden? She was in the field.

The breakers and scutchers are thudding away, but when she looks at the faces of the people operating them – up close, standing in front of each one in turn and yet not moving – they are blank, and every face, and no-one’s face, and her own face. They are not human, they are gods, they are dogs, they are trees.

Black exhaust fumes carried on the wind rise above her, then a change in the weather blows them back into her face: thick fumes, diesel fumes. The old red tractor is backing up to the barn, and she leans out of the large opening on the top floor to direct the driver, helping him align the hay elevator.

She ducks back inside and waits for the bales to come tumbling in, ready to stack them. The farmhands and the family’s daughter wait with her, all of them between twelve and twenty years old. Leah and the daughter are the youngest.

Dust and bits of dry hay – grasses, alfalfa, clover, a mix of the best forage – the air is thick with floating particles, and everyone is sneezing, eyes running.

Leah can’t remember how the bales go, and she watches the others to see how they stack them; picking them up by the twine, thick old gloves protecting the thin skin of their fingers. Leah has borrowed her father’s gloves, which are far too big and are always slipping off. They are labelled “MINE,” written on in thick black marker.

The barn is dark, and lances of light pierce through gaps in the wooden boards, stretching from ceiling to floor, lighting up every dust mote and pigeon feather and pollen speck and chaff. The workers stack bales.

Leah pulls her kerchief up over her mouth as the air gets particularly thick with particles. A bale has split, and one of the boys kicks it out of the way, bits scattering everywhere. They continue to stack bales. At least the outdoor part is done, and they will not get any more sunburnt than they already are.

Thinking of it makes her suddenly aware of the feeling of splinters of grass stems, sticking into pink shoulders. The dust gets everywhere, up every sleeve and pant leg, down every sock, into every nail bed, behind every ear. Everyone is coated in beige-grey dust by the end of the afternoon.

The barn cats miaule haughtily at the sliding door, watching as their apartment complex is overhauled with no sense of convenience for their antics. When the humans have all left, they take their places again.

Leah waves goodbye to the parents of the house, smiles at the daughter, avoids the farmhands who are busy opening beers to share around, and starts down the driveway headed to the road. Technically her house is one kilometre away, but with the added length of both driveways it is closer to two.

The sun is setting, pink and purple and warm on her back. Sweat soaks through her shirt, and the band of her hat, and the back of her bandana around her neck. She remembers to take the mouth-covering off, and breathes in fall air.

Geese honk somewhere; landing or taking off from the nearby river, heading south in a zigzag between ancestral water sources, doubling back and looping around. Never a straight path.

When she gets to the end of her driveway, the spring peepers have started up. She can see the dog running up the driveway towards her, barking, ears flopping, tail wagging like a faulty rudder, steering him across every rut and puddle as he galumphs.

Leah frowns. This is not Ferris. This dog is much bigger, and much browner. This dog looks like the sort of dog that you would ride into battle, the sort of dog that would face down a wild boar. She stops walking. A car coming up the driveway behind her honks its horn, and she turns to stare into the headlights, wondering who it could be at this hour.

Leah sits up in bed.

*

The sun streams in through a crack in the curtains, landing over Leah’s eyes. She winces and rolls over, pulling a pillow over her head. It is a few hours after sunrise, and she only got home a half-hour before the sun rose. Her body has a deep exhaustion beyond the usual sort it has after a day of lugging boxes or scrubbing toilets or throwing hay bales.

She frowns. Where did that come from?

Leah sits up in bed.

*

Leah sits up in bed.

A car honks its horn somewhere on the street below. She feels home, for a split second, she thinks. Is this home? It looks like home. Someone has rearranged her piles of junk, but other than that it is home.

Leah sits up in bed.

*

Someone is pulling at her skull, trying to open it. She pulls the pillow over her head, rolling over to get away from them – why do people always try to snuggle in the morning? Why can’t they just let her sleep?

*

Leah sits up in bed. Something is wrong.

*

Leah sits up in bed. The bed is hard stone, and someone with a subtle Olues accent is calling her name. Something is very wrong.

*

Seffon’s there???

*

Leah sits up in bed. The sudden movement makes her dizzy, and she wobbles. The bed falls up. She falls down. Someone catches her.

*

Leah wakes up with her face against the carpet of her bedroom. The clock says it’s eight in the morning. She feels exhausted, but not from lack of sleep. Something else.

She very carefully pushes herself up and holds her head, fingers curling through her too-long hair. Memories slip out between her fingers, and she clutches and pulls.

It hurts, but in a way that grounds her. She eases up. She lets go of her hair, and raises her head, breathing deeply. Clean air. Fresh. No dust, no fumes, no rot.

Resigned to the fact that her day has decided to begin, Leah stands up and goes to make breakfast. Her head is pounding, and she can feel a zit or something forming right in the middle of her forehead. She wishes the bar’s dress-code allowed her to wear hats or headbands; then she could hide it.

She opens the pantry cupboard, takes two cereal boxes, and pours an equal amount of each one into a bowl. She opens the fridge door to look for milk, but there isn’t any left.

“Ievo hoi av na Diev habroi?” she mutters to herself. “Oha. Do habroiet. Av eta na Iessed, et na Ahol iebar.”

She closes the door to the fridge, then stares at the bowl in her hands.

What on earth did I expect to make with this?

She rustles the dry chunks around in the bowl, then sits on the couch to eat them straight, musing on the coming day.

“Friday?” She looks to the calendar and confirms she guessed right. “Nice. Family time tomorrow.”

She checks the little phone device, and the message sent from the string of numbers that belong to this world’s Mother.

“Remember it’s exact change only for the fare!! Everyone’s looking forward to seeing you, there’s going to be a bit of an event for the first night. Bring the recipe, I want to show your grandmother :^)”

Pensively, she runs her thumb along the edge of the screen. I’ll have to ask the librarian for directions to the bus stop, and to find out how much a ticket costs.

She turns the screen off and stares at the balcony doors, eating dry cereal with her fingers. I am going to see my family tomorrow.

Leah’s blood runs cold, but she forces a smile.

Well. Someone’s family.

*

Seffon has lifted her back to her feet. Leah wobbles a bit, and leans on the stone table. The lead rings lie on the floor where she dropped them, and Seffon carefully picks them up and returns them to the bowl.

“Breakers…” Leah mumbles, then collapses again. Seffon catches her and lifts her clumsily onto the table, lowering her head to the stone carefully with strict admonishments not to move.

“Of all the idiotic fucking things you could have done…” His voice sounds constrained. “And after your bad reaction last time! And during a war, where we don’t even know what our next move is! This is not the time to go messing around with unknown magic, and even you ought to know that.”

“What’s a breaker?”

“Hm?”

“A breaker.” Leah mimics the chopping motion, the wood handle falling to the base. The sound is so clear in her ears.

“A breaker…I don’t know, what does it matter?” Seffon returns to her side and holds her face, checking her pupils, checking her forehead. Apparently reassured that she is uninjured, his tone shifts. “Did you see something?”

“A dog. A field. A wagon. A rock. A bunch of people singing work songs. I knew it all, but I didn’t really, because none of it made sense. I don’t know what retting is.”

Seffon frowns. “Retting is part of the process for refining flax into linen. I don’t know the exact details, flax doesn’t grow well here.”

Leah hums a bit of the song, but it is slipping away. “I forgot to buy milk. What if there are songs that make up who you are?”

“What?”

“What?”

She and Seffon stare at each other.

“What happened when you touched the anchors?”

Leah frowns in thought. “It was like a dream. Like a Bitter Dream-dream. A memory, but a dream. And it wasn’t mine.”

“It was the other Leah’s?” Seffon asks. Leah nods, but feels unsure. “Flax…it makes sense. Linen is Algi’s main export; there’s no-where else in the Gulf that produces it in any quantity.”

“Can I try again?” Leah reaches out a hand for the bowl, which has been stored back away in its drawer.

“Absolutely not.” Seffon slaps her arm down with a cross face. “After what you went through?”

“What, that thing with Vivi?”

“No, you idiot, the collapsing thing.” At Leah’s confused face, he recounts what he saw, from his side. “You went into a sort of trance the moment they touched your head. You didn’t respond to your name, you didn’t respond to anything. Your eyes were open for some of it, and you seemed to register what you saw, but you didn’t react. I sent for the doctor when it wouldn’t stop.” He settles down. “It was terrifying. Please, don’t do that again.”

Leah, also settled down, nods weakly. “How long did it last?”

“A minute, maybe?”

“So like a petit mal seizure?”

“A what?”

“Epilepsy? Does that mean anything here, or do you use a different word?” Seffon’s face is blank. “Was I shaking, thrashing around?”

“No, totally rigid. I couldn’t pull your hand away from your head.”

Leah looks at her hands, but there are no marks. She feels her forehead, and checks it in the small mirror hanging on one wall, but there is nothing there either.

Sewheil arrives a few seconds later, out of breath, being led by the guard who had been at the door before. Her hands glow blue, but brighter than Leah has seen before; when she lays them on Leah’s head her body is filled with a sort of woozy calm, like a sedative, or very good wine.

Seffon explains what happened, and Sewheil listens without comment or response. She pulls the silver Y out of a pocket, and holds it to Leah’s head, same as she had done last time. Leah holds still while Sewheil considers the patterns of the blue waves rippling between the prongs. The doctor’s fingertips glow gold, and she makes a few hand gestures. The blue waves jump noticeably, and then disappear. Sewheil stuffs the Y back in her pocket with a dark expression.

“What?”

Sewheil faces Seffon. “E happen’ again. Ce hẽ fõ deseccasion.”

“Th spell taes days, I cannau jus deu e.”

“Then star e rie nau.” She faces Leah again and lays another blue-glowing hand on her forehead. Leah sinks into the feeling with a grin. Seffon, looking chastened, goes about setting up a cauldron of something, resembling the set-up he’d used to do the blood magic spell with the elemental runes.

“Oh, ‘nother birth chart?” Leah asks weakly, her tongue heavy in her mouth. The feeling is quite like being drunk, but without the looming headache.

“Sewheil said it happened again.”

“What happen’ ‘gain?”

“The brain death.”

Leah’s vacant smile drops. “Wha-?”

“Whatever you did, it caused your brain to…temporarily die, again.” Seffon’s tone is so carefully controlled. “Whether in this body or the other, we won’t know until we can repeat the elemental rune spell, and check you for contact with the desiccation. So until then…” Seffon turns back to look at her, pained and not successfully hiding it. “Do not do anything that might endanger your life.”

Leah smirks. “Why, you’re afraid I might accidentally kill myself?”

Seffon’s frown deepens. “Because the spell only detects your most recent significant contact with the element, and if you nearly die between now and when the spell is ready, we will never know if the brain death affected this body or your original.”

Leah nods, accepting this wisdom.

“You need to remain under observation, in case there are after-effects. I suppose it would be most convenient to keep you in the hospital.” Seffon pricks the back of Leah’s arm and squeezes a drop into the almost-simmering pot. “While there, you can explain to your ex-teammate why you tried to suicide yourself out of this world after she rejected your help.”

Leah had been standing to leave peaceably with Sewheil, but both women stop at that – Sewheil with curiosity, and Leah with temper.

“I wasn’t trying to commit suicide.”

“You were trying to leave this world and never return, with no promise of safely reaching some place on the other side. No?” Seffon turns to face her, arms crossed. “Explain to me how that is not suicide in every way that counts.”

Leah cannot respond. Seffon waits for a few seconds, then turns his back on her again and goes back to the pot, adding ingredients and fetching books to consult. Sewheil guides Leah away, gently, and back to the hospital.