"This isn't my life," I spat, scraping dirt under my nails with the heel of my hand.
"What happened to you?" I said aloud, because speaking to the empty room kept my head from sliding into panic.
My voice sounded wrong from a different throat. Thin sleeves bunched at the elbow. My fingers were small; my hands smelled of bread yeast and smoke. There was a smear of peach sap on the cuff, and a callus under the thumb I did not own.
"Name?" I tried, testing the memory. The name came in with other people's memories like a badly dubbed line. Camila. Not mine. Names I didn't expect. A girl's laugh at the river. A ledger with neat columns. A promise to marry someone called Dimitri. A pendant tucked in a wooden box beneath a mattress.
I sat up too fast, and the room swam. Mud on my knees, a coarse blanket, the window showing the hillside where the peach trees cut the sky in ragged teeth. The cottage smelled of stew gone thin. Somewhere outside a rooster was already winning at morning.
"Talk sense, Isabelle," I said. "You are awake. You are Isabelle. Remember the city, the coffee, your cramped apartment—"
The word 'city' made the name in my head cough. I had been Isabelle Schuster in my other life. I had teeth-knitting schedules and a commuter's tiredness and a rare plant on the sill. That Isabelle was not here. I pinched
