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guiding mountain-climbing gigs, and going on short-term video shoots aboard scientific research vessels.
    Adventuring, her brother called it. Frittering, her father said.
    â€œI guess mostly I’m a marine videographer.”
    â€œI feel so much safer,” Gale wheezed.
    â€œYou need help,” Sophie insisted.
    â€œIf they come after me, what can you do, besides get hurt?”
    â€œI don’t know. Make some burly sailor guard your cabin door? Scream my head off?”
    A weak smile. “They’d have killed you, girl.”
    Don’t thank me or anything. Sophie bit her tongue. “Okay. Yes, those guys scared the crap out of me. I don’t want to be in another brawl. If something’s gotta try to try to kill me, I prefer it to be an avalanche or … I dunno, hantavirus.”
    â€œSomething impersonal.”
    â€œYou’re helpless. I’m responsible for you.”
    â€œResponsible…” Gale closed her eyes, long enough that Sophie wondered if she might have passed out. Then she spoke, voice cold. “You saw the bodies, the drowned fishers?”
    Sophie nodded.
    â€œWe brought that on them, you and I. They lost villagers, and half of a critical harvest. Even with aid, they’re going to have a terrible year.”
    â€œThat’s on the guys who tried to kill you.”
    â€œYou prevented the assassination, child. You kept me afloat. You meant well, but had I died in San Francisco there would have been no storm here.”
    Hot tears burned their way down her face.
    â€œIf you stay in Stormwrack, Sophie, you’ll bring trouble to your closest kin. Beatrice, me, your sister Verena—”
    â€œI have a sister?”
    Gale closed her eyes. “You are going back to your own world—to Zan Francisco—on the fastest ship I can hire. You cannot ever come back.”

CHAPTER 4
    â€œZophie,” Bastien said. “We’ve found a ship for you.”
    He was calling from the base of a low escarpment, one of the ridges that bordered the bay and essentially formed the boundary of the village. The surface was pocked but solid, an easy freeclimb, and she’d scaled about thirty feet to peer into a series of deeper pits and notches that riddled the stone.
    It was a spectacularly beautiful morning. She had awakened from uneasy dreams to find the sun bursting over the horizon, edging a postcard-perfect backdrop of long wispy clouds with gold and orange. The tide was out, revealing a stretch of beach with sands the consistency and color of brown sugar. Ralo and the little kids were already out there, scavenging for crabs and other treasure: things they could eat, things they could make into tools.
    So much had happened since she’d been rejected by her birth mother; Sophie’s mind had been chattering even before she was fully awake. It circled her memories of the fight in the alley: the men with hunting knives, Gale getting stabbed. Remembering the shock of a man’s nose crunching under her camera case made her wince. A pocket watch flying out of Gale’s hand, bouncing behind a Dumpster and the blast of wind, lifting her into the air …
    Finally Sophie had made for the rock wall and begun hoisting herself up.
    Freeclimbing quieted the interior gabble, forcing her attention back to the present. She checked her holds and balance points one after another, remembering that every foot she hoisted herself upward was another foot she’d fall if she screwed up.
    A vertical climb didn’t leave space in the mind for OMG I could’ve been killed! or How could a different world have the same moon as Earth? or Why don’t these women want to know me?
    She’d gone up the rock wall, come down again, and then tried meditating—she’d never been great at it, but she knew the signs of trauma, and it was the only treatment she could think of. When the edge of anxiety faded, she went asking for jobs. Nobody