The inn’s backyard bordered a dark conifer forest.
Its trees had oddly shaped trunks, and there was little undergrowth beneath them, apart from a few stunted plants and clumps of heather scattered among thick carpets of moss.
The forest wasn’t particularly inviting, but Venya crossed the overgrown yard toward it.
The morning rain had soaked the ground, and water droplets clung to the plants that reached up to her knees.
They brushed against her dress as she passed, soaking the hem.
Over her dress, she wore a new apron Melia had given her.
At least the rain had been useful in one respect.
It had made it easy to see where water had come through the broken roof.
Fixing it would cost money.
Not that she cared.
Venya couldn’t help herself.
Her brain was already in overdrive, sorting her to-do list by urgency.
The roof could wait.
The bottom of Maslow’s pyramid wasn’t something you checked off once and forgot about.
She had food and water for now, but she needed a steady supply of them.
She also needed to get her health back on track.
And sooner or later, she would need money.
Maybe she could look for work in the village or find something she could sell.
Halfway across the yard, a familiar scent reached her.
Lavender.
She stopped, lifted her head, and breathed in deeply, trying to trace it.
The scent drifted from somewhere behind her.
She turned and followed it through the wet grass.
Soon she spotted purple flowers among the tall grass.
She bent down to take a closer look, and sure enough, it was lavender.
Rosemary grew beside it.
A straight line of old edging stones was visible in the soil.
There must once have been an herb bed here.
Some of the plants had apparently survived despite years of neglect.
Venya crouched beside the herb bed and began pulling away the weeds to uncover more of the edging stones.
The weeds were too coarse and sharp to pull with her bare hands.
She had to stop unless she wanted to tear up her palms.
Some of the stones were missing, but even the short stretch she had uncovered was enough to show that the herb bed had once been fairly large.
She was tempted to uncover the rest, but she didn’t have time for that now.
Lavender had always been a favorite of hers.
She plucked a sprig and rubbed the tiny flowers gently between her fingers.
She breathed in the scent, then tucked the sprig behind her ear.
Venya made a mental note of the spot, planning to return later that afternoon, and continued into the forest.
Inside the forest, Venya stopped beneath a tall conifer and looked up at the sky.
Gray clouds raced above the treetops, although there wasn’t a breath of wind where she stood.
She had the uneasy feeling that the wind was bringing more than rain.
She drew a deep breath.
The cool, damp forest air felt refreshing.
She reminded herself to get moving while the rain held off.
The sky looked like it might open up again at any moment.
She was here to collect resin to treat the scratches on her thigh.
When she was a kid, she had watched a documentary about the Romans using resin to treat wounds.
She had been a bit of a history nerd back then.
She never would have guessed she might actually need that knowledge someday.
Melia had come by alone yesterday.
Since she was on foot, she had brought only a cloth bag filled with odds and ends she thought Venya might need.
Among them were a small knife and the mismatched but comfortable boots Venya was wearing now.
Without them, she wouldn’t have dared enter the forest, even this close to the inn.
Venya had spent much of yesterday sorting through everything Melia and Rive had brought on their first visit two days earlier.
She had found the inn’s kitchen and a small storage room beside it.
The room had been full of rat skeletons and shelves that had rotted beyond saving.
After tearing out the shelves and clearing away the mess, she had found the space surprisingly usable.
Her thoughts returned to her modern life.
She hadn’t woken up in her own apartment yesterday morning or this morning either.
The apartment she had bought with a mortgage at exactly the wrong time.
She was still stuck in this world.
Only God, Goddess, or whoever was in charge around here knew for how long.
Hell, the thought of being here forever made her shiver.
Whether she was trapped here for good or not, she needed to learn the language fast.
She had worked on that with Melia yesterday.
Venya smiled at the memory of her enthusiastic teacher.
Although the bubbly girl was chatty and impatient, she had been surprisingly patient while teaching Venya the names of everything around them.
Venya had picked up the most common greetings and numbers almost without trying.
She didn’t remember having such a knack for languages back in school.
Then again, maybe it was because she had somehow merged with this strange body.
The face was hers, but perhaps even her brain was only ninety-nine percent hers.
The remaining one percent belonged to this world and was slowly passing on what it already knew.
She wondered what else could seep through.
Memories, perhaps?
“Ow,” she yelped as a low branch dragged across her thigh, making the scratches beneath her dress sting.
It reminded her exactly why she was out here.
She soon spotted several trees with amber-colored resin oozing from cracks in their bark and running down their trunks.
On her way through the yard, she had picked a broad leaf to collect the resin on, though she had no idea what kind of plant it came from.
She found a stick on the ground and tried to use it as a scraper, but it bent against the trunk and only smeared the resin across the bark.
When she tried to wipe the little she had collected onto the leaf, the stick tore straight through it.
“Well, that went smoothly,” Venya muttered, tossing the useless stick and torn leaf aside.
This wasn’t as straightforward as she’d thought.
She needed something sturdier.
Her thoughts turned to the knife Melia had brought.
She could use it to make a proper scraper, so she returned to the inn and headed for the small storage room.
As she rummaged through the odds and ends, she knocked a small carved box to the floor.
Something inside it clinked.
Venya picked it up and set it aside without giving it another thought.
When she turned back to the pile, she spotted the knife Melia had brought and tucked it into the pocket of her apron.
Along with the knife, she found a small chipped saucer that would work well for holding the resin.
Once back in the forest, she used the knife to carve a sturdy branch into a crude scraper shaped like a spatula.
When she was done, she wiped the blade clean and tucked the knife back into her apron pocket.
Then she scraped the resin onto the saucer.
“Okay, now we’re talking.” She wasn’t even entirely sure the tree was a pine.
Heck, some of its needles were purple.
And rainbow-colored ants crawled all over the bark.
Collecting resin was messy work.
The fingers of her right hand were coated in the sticky substance, and several tiny ants had taken an immediate interest in it.
Cursing, she tried to pick them off one by one, but their frantic struggling only left them more firmly stuck in the resin.
Despite the setbacks, she watched with satisfaction as resin began to collect.
For a moment, Venya had the feeling that she wasn’t alone.
She glanced around but saw nothing.
It was a forest.
Of course there were animals nearby.
Squirrels, birds, and whatever else lived in the forest.
She went from one tree to the next, collecting a little resin from each while keeping track of the way back to the inn.
The last thing she wanted was to get lost in the forest.
Soon she had enough resin.
Whether it would actually help the scratches remained to be seen.
A rustle interrupted her thoughts.
She froze.
Before she even realized what she was doing, her hand moved toward the pocket of her apron, where she had tucked the knife.
Then she heard it.
The sound of heavy, labored breathing.