“And it was wrong,” said Val valiantly.

“Let me think,” Bea snapped. Then she breathed long and slow. “There needs to be water on this route. We need it.” She sounded defeated. “Let’s camp here tonight.” The Community got to work setting a quick camp. They couldn’t make a fire. Not here in this parched sea of grass. So they pulled out jerky for dinner. They unrolled beds. Most were too busy to notice when Bea murmured, “I’m going for a walk,” and then headed out into the high grasses. But Agnes noticed. She waited and then snuck away, catching her mother’s track, the subtly disturbed, parted grass she’d left behind.

Her mother was circling the grass lake, taking a long arced path, but then, after a good while of walking blind in the high grass, Agnes saw a treetop peek above it all in the distance, and just past where she stood, she saw that the grasses ended. She moved stealthily to the edge and peered between the coarse shoots.

Her mother stood before the tree with something in her hand, squinting at it. Then she dug into her bag and pulled out a little pad of paper and small pencil she’d brought back with her from the City. She jotted something, tore the paper from the pad, crumpled it up, and pressed it into a hole in the tree. She stepped back from the tree, looked up into its branches as if contemplating climbing it. Then she turned around and walked back toward the grasses where Agnes hid.

“You can come out now, Agnes,” she called into the grass lake.

Agnes flushed and slowly stepped into the open.

“You know you can just ask me.”

“But you won’t tell me.”

“Well, you can still ask.” Her mother smirked.

“What were you doing?”

“Saying hello to a squirrel friend of mine.”

“Mom.”

“Agnes.”

“What’s going on?”

“Nothing, and that is the truth. Sometimes I like to leave something behind. You never know who or what will find it. It’s one of the things that keeps me sane out here.”

Agnes knew she would not get any further with this questioning and was angry at her mother for wanting to play games.

Bea saw her anger. “When there is something to know,” she said, “I’ll tell you.” She pinched Agnes’s cheek and said, “Don’t grow up too fast,” and laughed when Agnes swatted her hand away. She had known it would anger Agnes even more, and that was why she’d done it.

She put a hand on Agnes’s shoulder and squeezed, and they walked back through the grass together like that. Her mother tried to make the gesture feel maternal, but Agnes knew she was being escorted.

Her mother shared a bed with her that night, and whenever Agnes stirred and peeked to see if her mother was sleeping, her mother’s eyes would be peering at her, bright amber and in control. “Go to sleep, Agnes,” she would say, a singsong command. Eventually Agnes drifted into a frustrated sleep, and she would not have been surprised if her mother had stayed awake the whole night just to keep Agnes from slinking off to find what she had hidden.

When Agnes woke, it was late. She felt groggy. Her body stiff. Water rationing was taking its toll. She lay trying to block the rising sun, which seemed intent to beam right into her eyes and her eyes only.

The camp was droning. People were lethargic, dried out. When they were packed up, they gathered in a droopy circle. The places where they’d slept were flattened, and it felt like they were corralled by a grass fence on all sides.

Bea said flatly, “I was doing some scouting of that cluster of lakes yesterday.”

“And?” said Carl.

“I think it’s a dead end. So I think we should do what Agnes said.” She turned to Agnes. “Follow the animals.” Bea smiled at her, her eyes gleaming with instinct. Agnes felt her heart flutter, tugging itself between pride and disgust, love and anger. Her mother was lying to the Community. But she was also putting Agnes in charge. Agnes smiled back, from deep inside. She couldn’t help it, even as her stomach began to ache. She hated how easy it was for her to love her mother. How hard it was to remain indignant when her mother hurt her. She would always love her mother. Even when her mother didn’t deserve it. It filled her with shame, and with yearning too. Agnes bit her smile to make it retreat back inside. She watched her mother’s smile retreat then too.

*

Agnes had known they were following animal trails for days before anyone else realized it. She’d seen them clearly branded into the sameness of the sage sea for a few sunsets. She saw the broken branches and, looking ahead, could see a phantom path made among their snapped-off ends. Trails like this beamed away from her in all directions. One trail crossed with another, and as she walked, they each funneled into some kind of wide avenue where hundreds of creatures had trampled through.

When they came upon their first congregation of creatures, she stopped, put her hands on her hips, and said, “See?”

A day before, a storm had come through, briefly dumping rain on them as they walked across the plain. They’d been able to collect a gulp of water by turning over cups and hats, cupping their palms or turning their open mouths to the sky. The earth sopped it up fast, though, and as quickly as it had rained, the ground felt dry again.

But here, a depression had collected much of that storm. It seemed to be a dependable water source, well visited, thoroughly trampled. Barely any sage remained.

The animals had been rendered languid by the water. Elk sat on the ground made cool by their wet bodies. Buffalo stood in the water flicking their tails. Birds dipped up and down in the air above, buoyed by the rising moisture. Rabbits cleaned behind their ears. All was quiet except for the regular chirps and squeaks of the sentinel animals keeping watch for predators.

The Community set up camp a ways off from the water source to avoid potential trampling. They set about cooking and putting their beds together in silence to match the serenity of the watering hole at dusk. They heard the clicking of bats and the humming of insect legs. The bigger animals murmured quietly to one another as the night fell. And just as everything seemed to have bedded down, there was a momentary cacophony. Elk bugled; buffalo snorted. The ducks quacked. The small vermin squeaked, and far-off wolves howled. It was as though they all were saying good night. It felt strange to no longer be alone.

When the watering hole became mud and the animals moved on, the Community packed up and moved on too. They stayed in water this way, migrating with the animals from watering hole to watering hole.

Since the grass lake, Val had ballooned and become breathless. She kept her arms wrapped around her middle as though trying to keep everything in. She lost her words in the middle of a conversation as her body clenched, beginning to begin labor. Val scowling and smiling in equal measure that it was finally happening.

She birthed Baby Egret amid the lows of the animals at their third watering hole. She called him Baby Egret as though to ensure no one confused him with one of the milk-white birds tiptoeing through the mud. The birth was easy and quick, and Val appeared very satisfied by that. Baby Egret was cleaned and wrapped in a new buckskin sling Debra had made for him. The camp bustled to make them comfortable, but soon everything calmed down and it was a day like any other. Only with a new voice in the mix. A loud, reedy one.

Agnes noticed that the animals at that watering hole were very interested in the new sound from their camp. Females, mothers, approached the camp, sniffing the air, excited and alert. They swiveled their ears. Baby Egret sounded like their babies. Plaintive and needful and demanding. Agnes knew they wanted to help. To show Val how to soothe the infant. How to feed him. How to protect him. They assumed Baby Egret was one of them, and Agnes had felt a small pang of jealousy over that.