They come to me as soon as the gates open. The weak, the sick. The afflicted. They come with their sores, with their pain, with their addled children, their confused elders, and I touch them all. One after the other. Their heads, their hands. The words I mutter mean nothing, they are jargon, worthless rhymes that my masters create for me to make it sound convincing. The words mean nothing.

But they are healed anyway.

Healed with my hands, healed with the touch of my fingers, with my breath on their skin, on their wounds. The mothers weep, the fathers pay. Gold flows into my master’s purse, and I know that, tonight at least, he’ll leave me alone. My cell will have bread in it tonight, meat too, since there’s more gold than silver today.

Some days, when there’s more copper than silver and gold is as scarce as a winter’s sun, he leaves me nothing but stale crumbs and a solid beating.

I touch the head of a bent old crone, whisper something that sounds like a blessing, and she straightens up to thank me, her pain relieved. For a moment, anyway. I kiss her forehead, let her weep into my hands, and try not to cry myself. Tomorrow, she’ll curse my name to the heavens. They always do, I know it. But I’m never here to hear it.

I wish I could be. I deserve every curse for what I’m doing to them.

My master looks at me, a frown flickering across his face, and I move on to the next poor soul. The children stare at me, as if I am a ghost or a demon or a god, and I smile at them. I’m not a demon, although I feel like one some nights. Not a magician either, although that’s what people whisper. I am a sideshow, a circus freak, and their healing is for entertainment only. Entertainment and wealth.

It will not last. Although I wish it would.

A storm is coming. It’s on the edge of the wind, in the smell of the leaves and the heaviness in the air. The animals already know about it, and even Alexander is restless. He’s only a hedgehog, but he’s never liked the rain. Not when he was little, and maybe less now that he’s old and bad-tempered.

I love rain. I love the whisper it wakes in the trees, the new life it brings to my meadows and ridges, and the smell of it in the mountain air. It rains the most in the spring, after all the snows have melted and the passes are clear. Spring will always be my favorite time of year, even before autumn, with its ripe hazelnuts and hazy, hot sun on ripe grass. It rains in the fall too, of course, but it’s a cold rain, weepy and gloomy and lonely. I like the spring rain best.

But Alexander doesn’t like either. He’s already nosing at my hands, nudging my fingers and nibbling them gently to remind me that he doesn’t like to get wet. It’s time we were home again.

The trees are already whispering when we take the paths home. The wind has risen, and I can hear their voices around me. Muffled, murmuring voices, all of them different, all of them unique. I can hear the oaks down in the valley, with their deep, throaty grumbling, and the high singing of the aspens on the ridge, and the low, murmuring sighs of the willows by the river. I don’t have time to listen to their stories today, not if I want to be under my own roof before the storm hits, but I am tempted. Tempted to pause, tempted to stop and sit beneath the oaks and listen. They tell the best stories. The oldest ones. The aspens have lovely, flowing tales that seem to go on and on forever, but their lives are nearly as short as my own, and they talk only of the wind and the color of the sky. The oaks tell stories of the deep loam, and the roots of the mountains and the wells beneath the stones. When I listen to them, I hear things that I can’t see myself or learn on my own.

They’re waiting for me at the house. I always bar the door when I go out to keep the woodchucks and squirrels out of my stores, and the first of the rain is already falling. My hair is wet. I push the door open, and they all scramble in.

Oliver is the first to hide under the bed. He’s a fox, but I have never held it against him. He hates thunder, and secretly, I think he’s afraid of the rain as well. Two of the squirrels hide in my coat pockets, and Alexander trundles off into the corner behind my spinning wheel.

I sit by the window. I want to see the rain come in, watch it shroud the mountains with mist and listen to the songs it wakes from the trees. My fawn lies down next to me, with her head in my lap. She hasn’t told me her name yet, but she will soon. Once she’s more comfortable here, once she’s sure she can trust me.

For now, we’ll just watch the rain.

Black sand. I haven’t seen black sand in years, not since I was at home on the beaches in my world, watching the waves crash against the cliffs and walking barefoot with my friends. I’ve been to worlds across the galaxy, visited more planets than most people can name, but this is the first time I’ve found black sand in any of them.

A lump rises in my throat.

I’ve been away from home too long. That’s the problem. I’m a scientist and a botanist; a professional. I should be over this by now, should be used to hopping from planet to planet, to living my life on our ship. My crew is my family, and I left nothing behind on my world. Not really.

Nothing but black sand, beaches filled with memories, and waves that are lonelier now. Nothing else. Nothing like what I have here. My work is my life, or it was supposed to be. I should know better than to be so sentimental about something I’ve left behind.

I crouch down, running my fingers through the sand. The others will be back soon, and we’ll have to leave. But I have a few minutes. Maybe I’ll bring some with me in a jar, keep it by my bed. The memories aren’t too painful, not anymore, not since I started working on the Galactic, and it would be nice to have something to remind me of home.

The waves are reaching higher on the beach, white foam swishing over the black pebbles, over the sand. It’s beautiful here. The cliffs aren’t as high as the ones at home, and it’s colder here than I’m used to, but I can pretend. Pretend I’m at home, that the birds screaming in the clifftops are gulls and razorbills and gannets, the ones I’m used to hearing and not strange life on another planet. I’m supposed to document them, really. Supposed to study them and find out what makes them different, what makes them unique, but all I want to do is listen. They’re so beautiful. It makes my throat ache, and suddenly, unreasonably, I want nothing more than to be home. Even with no one there waiting for me. The seagulls would be there. And the ocean, the waves, the salt air and the early sunrises. I have all the family, all the friends I need in my crew, but I miss my planet.

My home.

Fynn is the first one back. His bag is full, specimens spilling out of his pockets, and the grin on his face reminds me why I love working with him so much. With all them, really. He knows something’s wrong before I even open my mouth, and his smile slips a bit. He always knows. Always. It doesn’t matter if it’s me or someone else. He always knows, and somehow, he always knows what to say too. “You should take some of this back, you know.” He squats down beside me, tracing patterns in the black sand. “For research.”

I nod. He seems to know I need space and rises, saying over his shoulder, “I’ll get you a jar.”

I want to say thank you, but it won’t come out right. Instead, I ask quickly, “Label it too. What did Will say the inhabitants call this place?”

“Earth,” he calls back. “Hurry up, Helen. We’re on a tight schedule.”

I barely hear him. Earth.