Galathea opened her eyes to a ceiling carved from living wood. Pain mapped her ribs. She remembered the surf, the splintered mast jammed between black rocks, and a dark cat that thinned into shadow as she crawled. She remembered hands lifting her. Now she lay in a bed inside a great tree, and a man she did not know moved quietly at the hearth. She wanted to stand. She wanted to know him. She could not yet do either. He brought broth without speaking. When she tried to sit, he stepped close, braced her shoulders, then stepped back the moment she was upright. He checked the bandages on her leg and side with careful fingers. His eyes never quite met hers. She watched him the way she watched everything — closely, honestly — and noted how he treated her like something fragile he had found, not someone he had met. On the third morning she set her bare feet on the floor and pushed up. Her knees buckled. He caught her elbow, held a breath, and let go as soon as she was steady. She stood. She stayed standing. "There," she said. He looked at her then, fully, for the first time. Whatever he was trying to remember or forget moved across his face and settled. He reached into his tunic and drew out a stone pendant on a cord. A deer stood carved among leaves, the stone worn soft by long handling. He placed it in her palm without explanation. His fingers did not linger, but they did not pull away quickly either. "Keep it close," he said. It was the most he had spoken. Galathea closed her hand around the warm stone. She was no longer a patient. She was a woman standing in his home, with something of his around her neck, and a door he kept watching. The waiting had changed shape. So had she.