Rosamund
I woke to the rattling of wood beneath me and a damp rag pressing against my tongue.
For a moment, I didn't know where I was. I lay still, letting my eyes adjust to the semi-dark moving enclosure until my mind began offering fragments of memories. Trees. Darkness. The face of a woman hidden in shadow. The ground rushing up to meet me. They came in jagged pieces, like broken glass that refused to fit together.
Then everything came back at once.
The mill. The forest. The path that led nowhere. The woman turning on me. My fist connecting with her jaw. The rock splitting the skin at her temple. Running, and then something slamming into my back with a force that no human body could produce, and a cold so deep it had swallowed me from the inside out.
I gasped and tried to sit up. My skull cracked against a low wooden ceiling I hadn't noticed in the darkness. Pain burst across my forehead, and I fell back, eyes watering, biting down on the rag to keep from crying out.
