Val looked small in Carl’s coat, but actually she looked healthy, plump almost. What Agnes then noticed was how skinny all the Originalists were. The Newcomers looked as though they still held onto some of their City fat. And Carl and Val looked solid and healthy. But the other Originalists were lanky, shadows of themselves. Skinniest was Glen.

She watched her mother watch Glen, and Agnes felt brokenhearted. She saw then that the Newcomers mostly avoided Glen, who had wandered back to camp for a meal, a serene look on his face as he waited in line with a bowl. His legs bowed unnaturally. His ribs showed through his hunched back. None of this was so different from the other bodies around, and it was all what Agnes had seen before. But what Agnes saw for the first time, and what she was certain her mother had noticed, was that he stumbled. His sure-footedness was gone. He walked worse than the Newcomers, who weren’t used to stones and roots, the way the ground had natural variations unlike the smooth concrete floors and level streets of the City. It was a big difference. Glen’s feet seemed to have forgotten the texture of the earth. It was the kind of thing that would be hard to come back from.

*

That night Bea joined the Community around the fire after dinner. This was the time when everyone was able to relax. The time when stories were told or reminiscences shared. Bea knew this tradition. She knew people had questions for her. Agnes imagined that’s why she had avoided it as long as she had. She had been back for three days. When Bea sat down, the group murmured. Carl announced, “Our storyteller has arrived.” There was even a smattering of applause. Bea blushed, visible even in firelight, as she took a seat. She spoke quietly, and the Community leaned in.

She had taken four trucks and a cargo plane to get back to the City. The first thing she did was shower until the water allotment ran out. Then, twenty-four hours later, she showered again until the water allotment ran out. Then she binged on spaghetti and potato chips. Then she was sick for several days. And then for several more days she felt afraid to leave the building. The City was loud and bright, the sun gleaming off every surface. She closed all the curtains and curled into bed for days. People around the fire closed their eyes, imagining doing that too. When she gathered the courage, she went out and took care of some business, she said, flinching at the memory, and Agnes knew she meant tending to Nana’s affairs. And then, she said, she explored.

“What did you see?” they asked.

“I saw some beautiful sunsets because of the smog. There’s even more smog than before. The buildings seem taller, which I didn’t think possible, and their steel and glass reflected those sunsets in a really pretty way.”

“What else?”

“There were so many different vegetables in the market, such bright colors. I could have stood and looked at the produce forever.”

“What did you eat?”

“Well . . .” She paused, embarrassed. “The lines were incredibly long, and often, by the time I got into the store, most of the freshest food was gone. You had to go early in the morning. So I mostly ate potatoes and green peppers.” She saw their disappointment. “But a few times I did manage to purchase some beautiful fruit and greens.” She brightened.

“And?”

“They were good.” Their eyes egged her on. “Perfect-looking.” She shook her head. “But not what I remember. Pretty colors but not a lot of flavor. The wild onions here are astounding in comparison.”

People began to shift uncomfortably.

“Well, what else did you see?” said Debra, a bit of an edge in her voice.

“I went into a store that sold kitchenware, and all the pots and pans are so pretty and clean.”

They waited.

“And?”

She thought and they held onto her silence. “Honestly,” she said, drooping, “I saw mostly terrible stuff.”

The Newcomers nodded. The Originalists said, “Different terrible stuff? Or the same terrible stuff as before?”

“The same, but worse.”

She told them there was more debris in the streets. The smog hung low like a fog you walked through. Lines snaked out of every shop. Fights breaking out over something like broccoli.

She said more people were squeezing into the existing buildings because there was no room to build more. “Plus, there’s no more sand for concrete.”

“What?”

Bea shrugged. “Look, I don’t know. That’s just what I heard.”

On her floor of the building, it seemed like each apartment now held several families instead of just one. But even as that was happening, she said, several of the children from the building had died. She looked at Agnes, wet-eyed. Agnes felt a lurch inside as she tried to remember the names of her friends. Glen had remembered them—why couldn’t she? They were dead now. She wasn’t.

Bea said there were many more people who lived on the street, but she didn’t know where they went after curfew.

“Underground,” said Frank, matter-of-factly. Patty’s mom swatted him. “Let her talk,” she snapped. Patty’s mom was drunk on Bea’s information. As though secretly she loved the City and all its flaws.

“Just outside the City limits, there are camps. I think they go there. I don’t know how they get through the checkpoints, though.”

Frank whispered “Underground” out of the side of his mouth, away from his wife.

“The trees, that handful of surviving trees scattered and gated around the City? All dead. Someone bombed them all. Some countercultural group.” The Newcomers nodded again. “Gangs,” mouthed Frank.

“There was violence everywhere instead of in smaller pockets. I was afraid when I was outside. People ring your bell and you can’t answer the door. It’s not safe.” The Newcomers nodded at this too. They seemed to know about it all. Bea had seen the City they left behind. There was not much new she could tell them, but still it seemed they’d hoped for something different.

Bea fell into silence, and everyone, especially the Originalists, looked disappointed. This isn’t what they hoped new stories from the City would be like.

Not that long ago, Agnes remembered, they were telling stories about her mother. They referred to her as the Deserter in the stories. They imagined the many lives she might be leading then. They called them Ballads, and they took some wild turns, as stories do. Some ended with her heading up a new Administration and tearing down the buildings of the City, though they never decided where people would live after that. That wasn’t the job of fire-time stories. Recently, after spending the season in the mountains, Juan had told a Ballad that ended with Bea opening the borders of the Wilderness State so others could come in.

“But,” Patty’s mom had said, “we don’t want that. Do we?”

They looked around the fire and shook their heads. No one wanted more people to come. The Newcomers disliked the idea most of all.

“If you let more people in, soon it’s gonna look like the City,” said Frank.

Linda had picked up the tale then, and Bea was back safely in the City, where she’d found a hovel of rats on the outskirts and was ruler of their gang. She was married and pregnant again, this time with a litter of rats with human hands. She and her rat gang were resisters looking to overthrow the Administration.

“What’s an Administration?” Pinecone had asked. No one answered him.

Agnes hated the stories at first, when her mother’s absence was fresh and hurtful. She blocked out those early stories. As time passed, and she started listening, she would think about adding to the story and realize she had nothing to say. She found it impossible to imagine what her mother was doing in the City. It had to have changed. Her mother certainly had changed. And so it seemed impossible that her mother was actually there.

That’s when Agnes started a new strain of Ballads.

“You know she never made it to the City, don’t you?” Agnes had said one night around the fire.

They were silent for a moment.

Then Debra started to nod her head. “I heard she perished in the Fallow Lands.”

“I heard she was imprisoned and now works the Mines,” said Linda.

The scenarios tumbled out of their mouths.

“She missed greens too much, so she’s gone to work the Greenhouses.”

“She was barred from the City and is hiding in the Refineries.”

“She’s sandbagging along the New Coast.”

“She’s a Meat? maker.”

“She’s on the Flotilla.”

“She’s in the Private Lands,” Val offered.

Some of the Newcomers oohed at the thought. They thought the Private Lands were real, and Agnes knew that if they’d had a choice, they’d rather be there than the Wilderness.

But Carl said, “Oh, come on, Val. There’s no such thing.”

But if there were such a thing, everyone would feel so betrayed. And Val knew that.

“She’s in the Farmland drinking milk,” said Juan.

They groaned amorously for milk.

“She’s sitting on the hill over there,” Agnes said. “Watching us.”

Deep down, they all thought this was the most believable story.