*

New cold winds had arrived and were charging the air around them, turning it buzzy and sharp. The Community built the campfire a little larger that morning and pulled their skins from their bed. Soon the animals would retreat to the mountain foothills and they would follow, congregating in the hollows until the snowmelt raised the rivers.

They had been in this camp too long. It was too easy to stay in the Valley. The game was good. The river was close. To some of them, it still felt like home. They were avoiding making their next walking plan when they saw a figure approaching. Assuming it was a Ranger coming to tell them to leave, a few groaned, and they all went back to staring at the fire, eating their porridge.

But as the figure got closer, they could see it wasn’t a Ranger. Too small. Not in uniform. No truck.

The Originalists and Newcomers all touched the place on their bodies where they kept a knife or a rock, whatever weapon they held onto for safety.

As the person drew closer, they could see it was a middle-aged woman, soft around the middle, with a sensible haircut under a deep brimmed hat and good hiking boots, the kind a Ranger would wear. The kind someone would wear who knew the kind of walking necessary in the Wilderness State. The exact opposite of the footwear the Newcomers had arrived in.

The stranger’s face was in shadow, but she moved quickly around sage and rocks like she knew the terrain.

“Is she one of yours?” Carl whispered to Frank.

“No.”

“Must be a new one then. Why didn’t they tell us someone was coming?”

Frank shrugged. “Don’t ask me.”

Carl rose to greet the stranger, his hand on his knife.

Agnes slunk to a rock, ahead of Carl. She felt a need to get closer. She watched the stranger approach. Her pulse quickened. Her neck prickled.

The woman finally overtook the edge of camp, her face obscured by the hat. She walked toward Carl, who had been briskly approaching, but slowed, suddenly full of uncertainty.

The woman tipped her hat back off her face and then they could see her. The camp hushed. Even the birds hushed. The deer huffed, stamped, and bounded away.

“Well, don’t all say hello at once,” said Bea, her hands on her hips. She laughed from behind a scowling smile, a kind of laugh they’d never heard from her. Her breath turned to smoke in the cold morning air.

Part V

Friend or Foe

Agnes watched her mother that first day from the depths of a dream. At times seeing her felt as jarring as a nightmare.

Bea had walked up to camp like a dangerous stranger. Like a Ranger. Laughing and gruff. Her back and neck tight. Ready to start citing violations, threats. Her breath fogged out of her mouth as though she were a furious winter animal. But Agnes had known before anyone else who it was. When they still had their hands on the knives or stones, Agnes was cowering, trying to disappear.

Carl had greeted her mother first.

“Well, look who it is,” he cooed, embracing her longer than necessary, laughing in her ear, then strangely listing with her as though they were slow-dancing.

Her mother frowned. “Am I in the right place?” she said over his shoulder.

“Yes,” he said. “Everything’s different now.”

“No shit,” she’d murmured as she pulled away and looked around. People had begun to gather. Curious faces peered at her.

Her mother ducked her head and lowered her voice as though to tell a secret, and it was in a way. Agnes could not hear it.

“In off the waitlist,” Carl said, sweeping his arm toward the rest of camp. “We’ve doubled in size!”

“That’s a lot of people to feed.”

“Nothing we can’t handle,” he said, taking Bea’s hand.

Agnes saw her mother frown again. She looked around the camp for something, casually at first, then frantic, as though fearful she wouldn’t find it. Then her eyes locked on Agnes. Flashes of emotions crossed her face. They quickly resolved into a frown. Then a tearful smile. But Agnes could only see the frown, her mother’s hand kneading Carl’s absently as she gazed at Agnes.

Her mother floated to her, drawn like a magnet.

“Hey, you look great,” Carl called after her, licking his lips. He looked famished.

Agnes froze on the stone where she perched and willed herself to become the stone, or become stone-like, a wall of stone. Stony in the face of this person. Even as her heart thumped and her eyes watered as though she’d eaten something bitter and sour, unripe. Play dead, she instructed herself.

Agnes felt a hand on her shoulder and realized Val was there next to her. Perhaps had been next to her the whole time, watching Carl and her mother, perhaps feeling as bewildered as Agnes did right now. Agnes looked up at Val. Her face was twisted, disappointed, no doubt, to be looking at Bea again. Val had a much clearer sense of her feelings. Agnes tried to conjure a similar clear disappointment, but she couldn’t.

Her mother stopped a foot away from Agnes, her face a mask of emotions, none of which Agnes understood. Her mother didn’t reach for her. Agnes’s stoniness had kept her at bay. She shivered there perched on her lonely rock, her knees up and hugged to her, her toes gripping.

Finally her mother cleared her throat, and Agnes instantly opened herself to whatever her mother would say after so long.

“Why is my daughter so skinny?” she barked, eyeing Val.

Agnes blinked. She is not even talking to me.

Val squeezed Agnes’s shoulder hard. “She’s always been skinny.”

Bea looked around at all the new faces gawking at her. Her face was accusatory, but her eyes were welling. “She’s skinnier than every single person here,” Bea choked.

“I hadn’t noticed,” said Val.

Bea nudged Agnes’s chin up with her knuckle. “Why are you so skinny? Are you not getting enough food?”

Her voice lashed Agnes’s ears. Her nudge felt like a blow.

Agnes pulled her face back down. She was embarrassed. Scared. Angry. She clamped her mouth shut.

“What the fuck is going on here, Carl?” Bea was saying, walking away from Agnes.

“Calm down, for fuck’s sake,” Carl muttered, all the warmth of his first greeting gone. “You sound like a damn lunatic. Agnes is fine.”

Her mother’s voice had dropped, hushed to make her words private, though they weren’t. “So help me if you’ve been keeping food from her. Where is Glen? He better not be wasting away too. You motherfucker, Carl.”

Agnes looked down at herself. She thought she looked normal. Like she always did. Her stomach growled as it always did. Didn’t everyone’s? She pulled at her smock and let it drape back.

Carl grabbed her mother by the arm and leaned in close, hissing something into her ear, his finger at her neck, as though it were the point of something more cutting. Her mother’s face flickered through emotions, and then she gasped and recoiled from Carl, her face filled with disgust but also sadness. She watched Carl walk away, a slight tremble in her hand. She looked around at all the people watching her, all the new eyes. Agnes noticed the Originalists were pretending to be busy, their ears perked, their heads down, much like Agnes herself had been. But the Newcomers were at attention, their jaws slack, staring unabashedly at Carl and her mother’s exchange.

Bea straightened and turned back to Agnes. Her face was bloodless. She moved slowly toward her. Breathed cautiously as though catching her breath. “But look at you,” she finally said, her voice pitched high. “You’re grown up now. I go away for a little tiny bit and you’re all grown up, I guess.”

Even with feigned pleasantness, Agnes could hear accusation in her voice.

“I guess—” said Agnes, faltering. She tried to steady her voice, but it was coming out haltingly, as though she might cry. Her throat was heating up, and soon, she felt, she might be sputtering and she did not want that. “I guess you’ve been gone awhile, Bea,” she muttered, and the tremble calmed slightly when she saw her mother wince. Even Val breathed in sharply. Or was she stifling a laugh?

Her mother recovered. “I think I still prefer Mom,” she said, smiling again. “Besides it hasn’t been that long, has it?” She looked from Agnes to Val, then around to see if anyone was watching.

Everyone was watching.

Val said, “It’s been a very long time.”

“No,” Bea said, her voice insistent and irritated. “Not that long.”