She was so tired of not understanding. To not know how it worked made her feel estranged from the world.

Glen didn’t say more. He squeezed his eyes shut and started to hum. He leaned closer and hummed in Agnes’s ear, and it filled her up with a song that was familiar to her even though it wasn’t something that Debra or Juan sang around the fire. It wasn’t a song Patty, Celeste, and Jake had tried to tell her about when they talked about all the music they missed. It was something she remembered from when she was younger. When she was sick. A song that floated in under her closed door. A song Glen and her mother listened to on nights when they finished a bottle of wine together. When the sound of silverware clinking against the dinner plates sounded to her like a faint bell signaling the start of something. He hummed it into her ear and covered her other ear with his warm hand. And she was back in her bed, on the mattress that held a small imprint of her because she’d lain on it so much of her short life, back in a place where she had been worse than unwell, but where, she thought, she had been happy.

She squeezed her eyes shut too and her lashes collected hot tears.

Earlier that day, after the slap, after the rabbit, Jake had asked Agnes what her mother’s name was.

“Why are you asking me that?” A mote of dread had deepened within Agnes. She didn’t want to think about her mother.

“Because I’ve noticed no one—none of us new people, that is—calls her by her name. We all just call her your mom. Agnes’s mom.”

“Then call her that,” Agnes had said angrily, not thinking it could mean anything.

Now, even with eyes clenched and ears covered, Agnes could feel the tension around the fire. The stillness from ears perked and listening to the gripping rhythm of bodies, of Carl calling out “Bea,” and a sound that must have been from her mother—a grunt that sounded like it came from behind clenched teeth. Everyone wanting to be alert when something big took place, when the world as they knew it changed. Even the deer that munched dewy grass on the outskirts of the camp were listening. They bleated to their young, to their mates, to make sure they were there and safe. Then they snorted out into the night beyond their sight, Friend or foe? Friend or foe? to warn off the unwelcome. In the distance Agnes was certain she heard the wolves howl back. Foe.

The Newcomers had called this stranger who’d walked in from the desert Agnes’s mom because that’s how she had let herself be introduced.

They knew her name now.

Part VI

To the Caldera

They were waiting for the Gatherers to come back from the mountains with the pine nut harvest when a lone Ranger appeared on horseback.

They hadn’t seen a Ranger in three winters. Maybe four. Somehow Agnes could still remember that counting winters was the same as counting years, but she was no longer sure how many had passed. Things had changed since Bea and Carl began leading. Winters were milder. Fire season was longer. Water was becoming harder to find. They spent less time in the mountains. After their last Big Walk, Bea and Carl had refused to do a cross-map migration as in seasons before. Instead, they kept the Community confined to one expansive basin surrounded by small ranges. The Basin was nice enough. It had what they needed. It wasn’t beautiful exactly, but they found great comfort there. They landed in the same place twice. Three times. Five times. They hovered. Once they’d found the Basin, they just kept moving around it without ever really leaving.

But it sometimes meant needing longer excursions to harvest or hunt in the places they might, in previous seasons, simply have migrated to. When Gatherers went out to harvest the pine nuts from the foothills and mountains, it meant that the rest of the Community waited in place for longer periods of time, until the Gatherers returned. Same with the Hunters, who, depending on the season, had to track game into those same foothills and mountains. Their camps stood for much longer. At one Community meeting, there was even talk of erecting a smokehouse that was sturdier. More stable. They stopped short of calling it permanent, though that’s what they meant. No one said, We can’t. Or, We shouldn’t. Or, This is totally against the rules. They just talked about it like it was normal for nomadic people to build a permanent structure in this strictly leave-no-trace Wilderness State.

They blamed Big Walk V for that.

Big Walk V had been a hard and grueling walk. Harder and more grueling than Big Walks III or IV, which had been worlds harder and more grueling than the first Big Walk, or Big Walk II. Big Walk V had felt like a forced march. The Rangers were like coals under their feet, their heat unbearable. Whenever they appeared, the Community had to scramble and push ahead. And it felt like the Rangers appeared whenever they had stopped to take a breath. Their resources dwindled, and they were only afforded a few stops along rivers long enough to hunt and process their kills to bulk up their food stores. So they hunted to eat each day and chewed jerky and ate pemmican and hoped their bedding, skins, and clothes lasted, and when they didn’t, they wore them in tatters.

They lost a Newcomer newborn on that walk. The first baby born in some time. The first death in some time too. It was a surprisingly difficult loss for a group of people used to losses. Linda, who had not even wanted another baby, wept for days.

But what more is there to say about walking at this point? It takes as long as it takes. Is as difficult as the terrain and not more. The weather varies. Though they saw new things, they were just variations on the things they’d seen on past walks. Hills that looked as though they were moving were only different from past hills because, for whatever reason, these hills looked as though they were moving faster. And in reality, none of the hills had ever moved. Their tips seemed sharper, more like horns than the tongues of past hills from past walks. They were all still hills. And the Community was still a little breathless going up them, even after all this time.

It wasn’t that they were fatigued or bored with their surroundings. It was a privilege to experience this sameness. To be able to settle into routine. To luxuriate in one place for far too long and not be too surprised by anything. A dank, heavy-limbed forest would always be pleasurable, even if they were no longer shocked by the salamanders they found under every rotting thing. They still were going to scoop out the slippery sacs of beady eggs from every water-filled depression they encountered. Not because it was thrilling, but because they could. And because they were hungry. Had they ever really been adventurers?

If there was a bright side to the cruelty of Big Walk V, it was that they had ended up somewhere quiet, peaceful. Somewhere, it seemed, the Rangers weren’t interested in visiting. Or maybe, they hoped, the Rangers had other things to worry about. Glen sometimes worried out loud about the study. During their third winter in and around the Basin, undisturbed by Rangers or directives to visit Post, he wondered what it meant that they weren’t checking in for questionnaires and blood work and physicals. But no one else worried. No one else missed the study.

“I didn’t say I missed it,” Glen would insist, but he wouldn’t say more.

Val had finally become pregnant after the last snows fell. And she was round and red-cheeked and wobbling like an acorn by the time this Ranger showed up alone on horseback. He seemed more apparition than man. It had been so long, he couldn’t possibly be real. He didn’t introduce himself.

“You have to move along,” he muttered down from his silver speckled mare. “You’ve been here too long.”

“And you’ve been gone too long,” said Bea.

“We have a lot going on,” he said flatly. He closed his eyes as though remembering a nightmare. He sighed. “We work, you know. It’s not an easy job. So please let me do it quickly.” He pinched the bridge of his nose with fatigue. “You’ve been here too long. Time to move along.”

“What’s with the horse?” Bea asked.

“Please don’t change the subject.”

Bea made doe eyes. “What? I want to know. I love horses.” She scratched under the mare’s chin, and the horse snorted appreciatively.

“Research shows that trucks are too damaging to the ecosystem.”

“You needed research for that?”

The Ranger scowled. “Of course not. But we didn’t know the degree to which they damage it. They leave a supertrace.” His face was pained thinking about all the supertrace he’d left on the land. “So we are all on horseback now.” He slid out of his saddle awkwardly.

“That’s a big change,” she said.

“Lots of big changes with the new Administration.”

“What Administration is that?” Carl asked.

The adults all laughed at that, especially the Newcomers. While they laughed, the Ranger knit his eyebrows and took notes.

When he finished writing he said, “Get going.”

“We have to wait for our Gatherers to return,” Bea said.

“Where are they?”