He followed me.

  Of course he followed me. I had just disintegrated a spirit beast with my index finger and he had the survival instincts of a moth flying toward a lantern. Following the woman who could do that probably seemed like the safest option available. Or the most interesting one. I wasn't sure which motivation was worse.

  His footsteps were loud. Every third step, a twig snapped. Every fifth, he stumbled over a root and barely caught himself. His breathing was heavy — part exertion, part the lingering adrenaline of almost dying, part the fact that his swollen ankle was making every stride a negotiation with pain. He was not built for stealth. He was built for talking.

  "Hey! Wait!"

  I did not wait.

  "HEY! I'm talking to you!"

  I walked faster. Not meaningfully faster — I could have been on the other side of the mountain before his next breath — but faster enough that he had to jog to keep up. His basket, bounced against his back with each stride, producing a hollow wooden clatter that harmonized poorly with his footsteps.

  He caught up. Fell into step beside me. Slightly behind, slightly to the left, like a dog that hadn't yet figured out where it ranked in the pack.

  "What was that?"

  Leaves crunched under my feet. The morning light shifted as the canopy thickened, dappling the path with coins of gold that nobody would spend.

  "What did you do? You just — it was there and then it wasn't. How did you do that?"

  A bird sang three notes from somewhere above us. I recognized the species. I had heard its ancestors, back when the melody had fewer notes.

  "Are you a cultivator?"

  There was a bend in the path ahead where the ground sloped downward toward a creek. The water would be cold. I considered walking through it, on the assumption that he wouldn't follow through cold water on a bad ankle. Then I considered the possibility that he would and that he'd slip and that I'd have to listen to him splash.

  "Why are you out here alone? Nobody lives out here. Trust me, I know — I come out here all the time and there's nothing. Just trees and beasts and mushrooms. And you, apparently."

  I stepped over a fallen log. He climbed over it, badly, hooking his good leg over first and dragging the swollen ankle behind him.

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  "What's your name?"

  "No."

  He paused. For exactly one and a half seconds — I counted — he was silent. Then:

  "'No' isn't a name. That's not how that works. I asked what your name is, not whether you have one. Everybody has a name."

  My jaw tightened. One syllable. I'd given him one syllable and he'd turned it into a doorway. That was the danger of answering — any answer, any response at all. A crack in the wall through which he would now pour himself like water.

  "My father says that if someone won't tell you their name, it means they've done something they're ashamed of. Have you done something you're ashamed of?"

  The creek appeared through the trees. Shallow. Clear. Stones on the bottom, worn smooth. A salamander perched on one of them, unafraid.

  "You don't look like someone who's ashamed. You look like someone who's tired. My mother looks like that sometimes. After harvest season, mostly. But that's a different kind of tired."

  I crossed the creek. The water came up to my ankles and felt like nothing, because temperature stopped mattering around the same century that names did.

  He crossed behind me. Splashing, causing a salamander to flee.

  The silence lasted four steps. Then his tone changed.

  "My father is sick."

  The pitch dropped. The rhythm slowed. Still a child's voice, but one that had learned a register that no child should know. He wasn't asking anymore. He was explaining.

  "He— he coughs. Blood, sometimes. The herbs from the market stopped working months ago and we can't afford the ones from the city. So I come to the forest. I collect what I can. I bring it home. I make the medicine myself."

  He was quiet for a moment. Not for effect — he was gathering the next sentence from somewhere deeper than where the others came from.

  "The harvest was bad. The rain came wrong — too much, then none, then too much again. Half the village lost their fields. We had nothing saved. My mother sells baskets at the crossroad market, but that's two hours' walk each way. She leaves before sunrise. She doesn't always come back with money."

  The forest opened into a small clearing. Sun fell through the gap in the canopy, warming a circle of grass that hadn't been trimmed by anything but deer. Wildflowers grew at the edge — small white ones, the kind that closed at dusk and opened at dawn, keeping their own quiet schedule. The air was warm here, sheltered. Almost gentle.

  I stopped walking. Not intentionally — my feet made the decision without consulting the rest of me.

  He stopped too. Three steps behind. Breathing hard.

  "Winter is coming. You know that. The first frost is a month out, maybe less. After that, the forest is empty. No herbs, no mushrooms, nothing. If I don't find something that works before then..."

  He didn't finish the sentence. He didn't need to.

  "You killed that beast with one finger. You have to know about herbs. You have to know which ones are right."

  I stood in the clearing. The sun was warm on my hair and meant nothing.

  "I thought I saw someone. In the forest, before the boar came. You looked at my mushrooms. At my basket. You had this expression like — like you already knew something was wrong with them."

  Quiet. He was watching me. I could feel his gaze the way you feel a hand hovering near your shoulder — the heat of proximity without the commitment of contact.

  "They were wrong, weren't they? The mushrooms. They were the wrong ones."

  The answer sat in my throat like a stone. I didn't owe him anything. I didn't owe anyone anything. I had stopped keeping accounts approximately four thousand years ago, give or take a dynasty.

  But the mushrooms. The wrong ones. The ones he'd bring home to someone who'd drink the tea and smile and say it was working.

  I said nothing. I walked.

  He followed.