The lullabies had been meant to haunt her dreams and scare her away, any dumb thing could figure that. Chittering and cooing to make a dreamer think her ear was being invaded by something awful. To feel unsafe. But they had soothed her. They were sounds she understood. They were a blanket to keep away thoughts of her mean mother who had run away. The meanest of them all. Perhaps she’d never been anything but a mean mother and every kiss had been cruel, meant to eventually cause pain with its absence. Agnes bolted from her bed. The camp was singing already.

Agnes hadn’t believed her mother had gone. Not at first. Hadn’t believed it as she watched her mother leap across that dumb driver, who screamed and acted as though a beast were clawing him. Had believed the truck, once it started rolling down the road, would stop, turn around, or maybe that the door would fling open and her mother would come running back on all fours, so frantic to return that she’d evolved into her true self. Sniffing and snorting into the air, trying to locate the scent of her family.

Agnes didn’t believe her mother was gone until the dust from the truck settled and she saw that the road was empty. And it took a very long time for the dust to settle. She didn’t know how long. Maybe it took days. The dust had made her lose time. And maybe some nights in her middle sleep, she thought she’d felt the blanket pull back on her at the foot of their bed and felt her mother warm the bed like no other could, sliding her foot to Agnes so Agnes could clutch it for safekeeping. Only to wake grasping at air.

Now, though, she knew her mother had left and was not coming back. And so what? Those were the words that came to her after she let in the word gone. There were other mothers to be had. They stepped in right away and gave her more mothering than her mean mother ever had. That’s the way she thought about it at the time, at least.

That truck, though. That truck, silver-barreled, claw marks of black paint across it, headlights like the sun glinting off their best knife, the metal underbelly dull and hard like a bad storm coming. And its spew of dust. So much dust. That truck followed her in dreams. Just before she woke, that truck had run over the prairie dog singing in her ear. Guts across the broken asphalt. Carl scraping it up and feeding it to her and the other children as dinner. She’d liked the singing and so would not eat it. They tried to make her. But she woke up before they pushed a tiny drumstick past her clenched lips.

Breakfast was made by Debra, and she made the best breakfasts. Agnes found a bowl in the bowl bag. The bowl she liked to use because of the knot in the wood where she could hook her finger through. No one else used that bowl because they knew she liked it. She brought the bowl to Debra, who scooped mush into it and then, putting her finger to her lips—Secret—sprinkled something over it.

“Something special,” she said.

There was nothing there. There never was. Debra always sprinkled nothing because there was nothing to sprinkle. Agnes knew that. But she also knew that if Debra didn’t do that, it would not taste as good, even though the only thing she added was air and maybe some dirt from her hands. Agnes couldn’t even imagine what there was to sprinkle, but Debra seemed to have an idea. Something from another time and place. Debra was oldest and had seen more ways of the world than any of them. She certainly had seen a sprinkle or two.

“Mmm,” Agnes said as she took a bite. And Debra cackled as though she’d gotten away with something wicked.

Agnes squatted next to Glen and put her head on his knee quickly in greeting.

“Hey, kiddo,” he said, his face briefly rounding as he smiled, then going long again. His eyes took in the horizon.

They would be leaving this place soon and she was glad. Soon the horizon Glen stared at would be new and he would not be looking for her mother. Glen didn’t have a replacement for her mother like she had.

She wolfed her breakfast and licked her bowl and returned it to the bag. She sucked her spoon and put it in her sack. She rolled up their bed and tied it to Glen’s sling. She pulled her own blanket out and tied it to her sling. Her mother and Glen usually carried everything together, but she would have to help now. She was glad. She could finally show how strong she was. She felt a lightning bolt of happiness that her mother was gone. Glen appeared behind her, his arms useless by his sides.

“I’ll do it,” she said, allowing him to just stand there. She brushed the ground, moved some stones around. Stood back a moment to take in the scene. She found a twig from a sage and tossed it into the middle of it all.

“Perfect,” she said, clapping her hands together. The prairie dog popped its head out, offering an opinion before darting down again.

Agnes bent her face to the hole. “It IS perfect,” she screamed.

Glen took her by the shoulders. “Okay, he heard you,” Glen said, straightening her. She swung her sling across her torso. It was heavy, but she was determined not to show it. She watched Glen struggle under the weight of all their bedding, and made note to take on even more weight next time.

They congregated and re-wilded the fire and kitchen area. They buried charcoaled wood and ground what they could into powder to mix into the dust on the ground. Dr. Harold collected good bones to be carried along separate from anything that was pure garbage. He made a broth with them. Everyone hated his broth.

Carl lifted Agnes’s sling a bit off her shoulder. “Whoa,” he said. “Heavy load. What are you doing? Carrying all of Glen’s gear?” He laughed, smirking at Glen.

Agnes jerked away, proud and mad that Carl had announced her secret. Glen’s long face returned. She scurried ahead in the direction they needed to go, and the others followed. When she looked behind, Glen was small and just beginning to move his feet. He moved slowly as though he didn’t want to leave. Agnes quickened her pace.

She couldn’t wait to leave this place behind. She was so eager to be gone, she willed it gone from her memory. In her mind she watched the truck her mother escaped on explode in a fiery ball and disappear from the horizon. A thing she’d seen in a movie she’d sneaked one night when her mother was asleep, back in their apartment in the City. She’d seen a similar thing when lightning hit a parched tree dead center in its heart. She felt lucky to have seen fireballs twice in her short life. And now she could imagine her mother had been caught in one.

She clapped her hands. Done and done.

*

No Ranger ever showed up at Lower Post. It was as though the Community had been sent there for no reason other than to move them miles and miles and miles away from Middle Post, their lovely hidden Valley, the looming Caldera. After what could have been one week or eight, a new directive was airdropped by drone. Coordinates on a torn page of loose-leaf to a new Post on another far edge of their map, along with the words: New Pickup Location. Carl snarled, “Pick up what?” Another area they had never been to. Between where they had been and their new Post were seven upside-down Ws. Mountains. Lots of them.

There were plenty of other mountains on the map. They’d wintered in those. They’d summered in those. Mountains were nice areas for them to be. But looking at the map, they noticed the mountains they’d already spent time in were represented by two upside-down Ws, or four upside-down Vs. These seven new Ws were stacked on one another as though representing an endless expanse of them. The Community looked to the horizon but saw only flatness. Beyond these new mountains there was nothing drawn on the map until the Xs that marked the boundary of the Wilderness State. The rocky border ridges, the man-made berms, they assumed. Or perhaps another kind of boundary. But it was strange to see nothing in between.

The sun was low, but it was still hot on their faces until it was wholly gone from sight. After it disappeared, the sky blazed purple, a green glint just as the last glowing sliver sank, a trick of the eye or of the light. They’d seen it before, and Agnes had dubbed it the Wizard. Carl reminded her of that now. Agnes scowled.

“It’s just light,” she said. She wasn’t that silly girl anymore.

Having no mother meant she was an adult now. She straightened her posture and hoped the others would notice that she was important. She led the Community across the flatlands and it was easy. She was fast and sure. Sometimes she got so far ahead they called for her to stop and wait.

At the fire that night, Val squatted next to her.

“I know you’re an adult now and all that,” Val said, “but you need to stay with the group.”

Agnes blushed, and her heart skipped at this compliment and scold bundled together.

“It’s not safe,” Val continued. “And if something happened to you, we’d all be very upset.”

“You’re too slow.”

“You’re too fast,” Val said. “Walk with me and we can walk the same speed.”

“At the front?”

“Yes, we can walk at the front. I can ask Glen if he wants to walk with us.”

“No,” Agnes said, quickly enough that Val seemed surprised. “He wants to walk in the back. I know.”