Read Galaxy's Edge Magazine: Issue 2, May 2013 for Free Online Page B

heart beats so hard my throat hurts. My fingers feel numb where I held the bag meant for me. No, I remember, now. The tanner is correct; it’s not for me. It’s for Rose.
    ***
    Today I am nobody.
    I do nothing. I sit and let the sounds of the creek drown out my thoughts. The leaves fall and regrow many times while I am nobody, doing nothing things. Every morning I am not Rose I am nobody. Some days I do not even check my mirror, searching for her.
    ***
    The roses are in bloom today, and I gather a few supplies to trade in town. Wild herbs and berries overflow in my baskets. The tanner is selling his hides two booths down from me. He stops for a moment to pick through my selection, and finds a few herbs to his liking. The sun streams through his blond hair, and I see one strand of silver. When he smiles I expect to feel warmth, but there is none. I wonder as he walks away who I am today. I never looked in the mirror.
    ***
    Today, I am Amber again. If I can be Amber then I can be Rose. I’m excited to discover this, and I dance around my camp. Maybe the medicine is working. Maybe I can force my body to change like I did with the bear. Maybe I can find a way to stay Rose.
    I make plans.
    ***
    “Girl of many faces,” the shaman called me. I walk the line between worlds. I schooled in the village, and the girls complimented me for my hand at mixing herbs to make pleasing scents, but no one bought them. In the reservation the women relied on me to plant the seeds for the next harvest, but criticized me for not planting in rows. Liked by all and loved by none. I was invisible in my efforts and visible only in my failures. So I became whatever people wanted me to be, and still nobody loved me. The shaman promised me the attention I deserved.
    “You try to please everyone and you please no one, not even yourself,” she said, and handed me a mirror. “The animal spirits have chosen to heal you and retrieve a lost part of your soul.”
    Then the day came when the people of the reservation moved to the South to follow the seasons. The shaman said I should stay behind and wait for my spirit animal’s medicine.
    The day after they left, I awoke to see Rose. Her hair shone a rich black-cocoa, not like my dull light brown. Her figure curved like a road that moves with the land, not like my straight narrow lines that short-cut to the ground.
    I thought the spirit animals had made me into the woman I was meant to be. I thought the medicine had worked. But then I became sick: my skin peeled, my hair fell, and the part of me I thought of as “Rose”—the part of me I would learn to be—wilted away.
    ***
    Today I am finally Rose.
    My hands tremble. This makes the basket quiver and the herbs shake. To be Rose, I jumped from a cliff by the river. After a dozen times and a dozen girls, fear of the height no longer changed me. I had to find a new danger. I fought a wolf, a badger, and thieves along the road. In the end, nothing scared me more than never being Rose again. She crept into me in my sleep.
    I look in the broken mirror to be sure, but it’s true. I am finally Rose.
    I head straight to town, herb basket in hand. I do not stop until I’m at the tannery.
    He brushes the skin of an animal and sees Rose.
    “Hello,” he says, smiling. “Can I help you?”
    I smile and take a breath. I can finally give him back his Rose. I try to remember Rose. How did she smile? How did she hold her body? How did she speak? Was it soft or loud?
    “I am Rose,” I say.
    He frowns. “Do I know you?”
    The answer catches on my tongue. He looks at me, his forehead wrinkles, his eyelids lower to slits. He doesn’t recognize Rose.
    “I’m sorry, your name doesn’t sound familiar,” he says. “Do you have a request to place? I’m afraid I don’t have any orders for Rose.”
    For the first time I notice the lines on his face around his mouth. When I come into town he is always here.
    I nod, my voice deserting me. I want to hide and not be