Thirsan called it; in the morning, Ma is knocking on everyone’s windows as soon as there is enough light to see by. She unbinds the wards and sends me to recover the twelve markers as soon as I step out the door. I am on marker duty the next evening and morning, but then we arrive at Star Point and stop in the late afternoon. As we come upon a pair of tall stones to either side of the path, Brand nudges me and says, “See those?”

  “Yeah.” They are hard to miss.

  “You look out in the woods, you’ll see another one. If you walk to that one at look around, you’ll see another. They go all the way around Star Point. Up top, they’ve got ward marks. As long as you stay inside the circle, nothing’s gonna bother you.”

  As we pass between them, I expect to feel some kind of charge of energy — like, hey, you found the safe zone, good job! But there is nothing. We aren’t what the ward stones are designed to keep out, though, so this probably makes sense.

  Brand leads our caravan a little further through Star Point before choosing a spot to set up camp. We are next to the almost vertical face of a stone wall — the jutting point of which is, I’m pretty sure, the place’s namesake. I’ve never been into rock climbing, but if I were, this would be a favorite spot. The point thrusts out of the ground at such an angle that, if you prefer to walk, you could go around the far end and climb up on foot. If, like Thirsan, you’re a natural-born gecko, your feet will barely touch the ground before you’re picking foot and hand holds out of the surface and scaling the side.

  “We’ve got work to do,” Ma reminds him.

  “I’m training,” Thirsan replies.

  Ma watches him like she’s torn between scolding and fretting, then ultimately shakes her head and turns to Puck. “Do you need help?”

  Puck looks around the campsite. “Rake up all the loose bits into the fire pit, and I’ll get a coal out.”

  Ma goes into their wagon, I assume to look for a rake.

  “Hey,” says Finch, wielding a pair of fishing rods. “Do you want to help me find dinner?”

  I gingerly accept one of the rods. “I don’t know how.”

  “I’ll teach you. Come on, this way.”

  Finch leads the way to the nearest creek, where he pulls a couple crayfish out of the water to use as bait, and then upstream to a rock which sits high enough above the water that our shadows won’t spook the fish. My stomach tightens as he kills the crayfish and starts pulling them apart, hanging bits of them from our hooks. I force myself to be cool about it. I’ve been eating fish this whole time; how did I think this worked? Anyway, Finch is making this easy, baiting the hook for me instead of making me do it myself.

  The next time we go fishing, I might have to catch and dismember my own crayfish. If not next time, then eventually.

  I wonder if it’s too late to decide I’m vegetarian.

  We lower our hooks into the water and watch as the bobbers — bits of rounded wood tied to the lines — float on the surface. There are fish shadows flitting through the current, but they are almost impossible to pick out against the reflection of the trees and sky on the water.

  A nervous, restless urge to talk almost gets the better of me. I don’t know if I’ve learned this from some forgotten movie or what, but I’m pretty sure fish notice the vibrations from talking and it will scare them off. Finch quietly minds his line, so I try to emulate him while simultaneously praying against my own success.

  No such luck. I get the first bite, and I’m so startled by the sharp tug on my line that I yank it hard, too hard, fling-fish-through-air hard, and yelp as the fish hits me square in the chest and flops across my lap. If you’ve never done this, let me tell you: it’s distressing!

  Finch laughs his ass off, which is fair but humbling, then grabs the fish before it can leap its way back into the water.

  “This one’s big enough,” he says. “Two dinners, at least.” Then he uses the butt of his knife to club the back of its head. The fish stills.

  It’s not like we have a bucket to keep it in, but I’m still a little startled by the quick brutality of his handiwork. I remind myself this is kinder than letting it gasp for water until it suffocates and dies. We’ll be eating it soon enough.

  “Ready for another go?”

  I look up. Finch has already baited my hook for a second attempt. All I can do is nod.

  My whole life, I’ve eaten chicken and turkey and fish and steak and, one time, even ostrich. Since arriving here, Brand has hunted or Finch and Thirsan have fished. It’s only now, when I am an active participant, that I’m hesitating. I knew this was coming, and Finch is still handling the ickier parts for me.

  I can take a little responsibility for my need to eat.

  We catch a total of four fish. I have no idea what they are; they all look about the same, sort of brownish with a reddish streak down the side, and Finch seems satisfied with them. I carry the fishing rods and Finch carries the fish back to camp, which I keep staring at with a new sense of humility.

  I’m sorry, I think. Thank you.

  Once it’s cooked, I eat in somber reverence. I’ll get used to this — it’s what you do, isn’t it, when your survival depends on it, which it does because I definitely am not equipped to forage enough plants and mushrooms to live on — but I understand why some people say grace before a meal. I’m alive because something else died.

  Then I wonder, unnerved, just how deeply that holds true.

  *

  We are the only group camping around Star Point for the next two days. On the third midday, a trio of wagons join us.

  Brand, seated on one of the chests Finch has pulled out of the storage wagon to appreciate the glow of the coals from our campfire, calls a greeting to their lead driver as they pass.

  “Fawn, hey! Finally joining us down river, huh?”

  Fawn has sun-browned skin and sun-bleached hair. She smiles brightly. “Hey, Brand, been a while! Anyone else here?”

  “Just us for now.”

  “Let me get the hibbovins loose, and I’ll come chat.”

  I watch this exchange from an open window of the storage wagon, Brand waving to her and to the other drivers and passengers as they pass. Finch leans down to peer through beside me.

  “Do you know them?” I ask.

  “Fawn’s crew? Yeah. They’ll probably go to the far end, she doesn’t like being too close to the heart. Gets too loud at night.”

  “Are we close to the heart?”

  “We’re around the corner from it. Keeps the noise down, but we aren’t on the fringes.”

  Finch is still helping me clean, scrubbing at anything that my height or my shoulder can’t handle, when Fawn comes back around and sits on another trunk. She and Brand strike up an amiable conversation.

  Noticing her arrival, Finch looks to me and asks, “You ready to meet Fawn?”

  I’m immediately overcome by shyness, and try to cover for it. “I want to finish cleaning first. Just so I don’t get distracted. You can go, though, if you want.”

  “I’ll help you finish. We’re almost done.”

  The interior of the wagon is, indeed, looking a lot better. The grayish cast on its every surface is gone. There is a richness to the wood’s color that catches the eye. It’s still a little dark, but with the fogged glass windows propped open the interior is more cozy than oppressive.

  If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

  Finch collects my bedding from where it’s been airing out on a line tied between wagons, waving to Fawn before ducking back inside. I arrange the blankets to my satisfaction and place my spare clothes on the stool beside the bed.

  “Wow,” says Finch. “You really don’t have much, do you?”

  “Nope.” Except for these few things, everything else has been moved outside. There are cupboards to either side of the door, and even these have been propped open, emptied, and cleaned. It smells like soap and fresh air. Our voices resonate in all the empty space.

  “Right. Well, you won’t have to worry about trunks cluttering it up for a little while; we’ll use them for seating around the fire, and if it rains we can just shove them under the wagon instead. When we get going again, maybe we can free one of them up so you’ll have a trunk to store things. Once you have things to store, that is.”

  There is space above my bed for storage, and I almost suggest I won’t need anything else — but when the wagons move, everything needs to be secure. Clothes or blankets can go in the open shelf safely. If I want my own wash basin and water pitcher, I’ll probably need a trunk, too. So I nod, a little self-conscious at the idea of taking something for my own use when it’s already got a purpose.

  Then Finch says, “Come on. Let’s go say hi.”

  I’m still not ready, but I say “Sure” anyway and try to sound like I mean it.

  Fawn looks at me curiously as soon as I step out of the wagon.

  “Ooh. New face. Hey there!”

  I wave and say “Hi” and feel impossibly awkward. The last time I had to meet new people, I was starting at my job and the manager was making an entire ordeal out of introducing me to the team one person at a time. It was one of those “we’re like a family here” routines, wedging me into the work family as if any family has ever worked that way. I was just there to debug code with the vague promise I would eventually be able to do it from home — a promise which kept getting delayed.

  This situation is not the same. This is just evidence that some things about me haven’t changed, after all; I’m still not good with meeting new people. But a person can overcome being shy, can’t they? So maybe, as Akasha, I don’t have to keep this piece from my old life either.

  Which is really cool of me to decide, but that doesn’t mean I know how.

  Brand steps in and saves me a painful conversation. “Fawn, this is Akasha. Picked her up at the edge of one of the walls. She doesn’t know shit — ” he laughs — “so don’t ask her anything.”

  Fawn, surprised, looks from Brand to me and back again like she, too, is uncertain if, in his perennially jovial nature, he is making a joke or telling the truth in good humor.

  “It’s true,” I say. I show her the scar on my temple.

  Her brown eyes widen in surprise. “Oh wow. What happened?”

  “I have no idea.” I smile benignly.

  Fawn laughs. “Right, that’s fair. How about you two, do you know?”

  “We found her on the ground,” replies Finch, taking a seat on the edge of one trunk and indicating the other half is free. I sit beside him, feeling a bit like I’m hiding in his shadow but not minding it at all.

  “You and…?”

  “Me, Brand, Thirsan, Ma.”

  “And no one saw what happened?”

  Brand answers. “I saw her go down. Took us a bit to find where she landed.”

  This is news to me. It hasn’t mattered; whoever it was who did the falling, she was gone when I arrived. It wasn’t the mysterious part of my circumstances I was interested in. Should I have been more curious about this? It didn’t even register to me as important — I’m not an amnesiac, I’m an entirely different person. As far as I’m concerned, what happened to her had nothing to do with me.

  I wonder if I should have asked. An actual amnesiac would’ve, wouldn’t they? Do I want to know what happened to the previous resident? Or was her story a little too close to mine?

  Finch says, “What have you and yours been up to, Fawn?”, which puts an end to that subject and opens up the stage for Fawn to tell us all about traveling down river from some point much farther away. Her crew was a few days behind us, but on a different route. She is both lead driver and crew leader, traveling with her younger sister, the sister’s partner, and a couple friends.

  I don’t pay close attention to what she’s saying. She speaks as though we are all familiar with who everyone is, and because I’m not, it’s hard to keep track of who did what. She’s also a lot more invested in her hibbovins than Brand ever seems to be, and while they are still big nightmare creatures, they are also indistinguishable in appearance and temperament. I can’t follow her conversation and, after a while, stop trying.

  She’s nice. She’s pretty, too, and animated, probably Ma and Puck’s age but her temperament is younger. I’m just too unaware to be a good audience.

  I zone out staring at the fire while Fawn, Brand, and Finch chat. Another crew wheels past, everyone waving and greeting each other, and they reveal a third crew had set up camp before they even got close to us. Fawn’s sister comes by to drag her away for dinner, and says another site has been occupied not far from theirs, riding in from one of the channels on this side of the river.

  “Got enough heads of crew to get the heart fire going tonight,” Brand observes. “Wonder if anyone else’ll show up.”

  “What’s a heart fire?”

  “Big fire where everyone gathers to visit, play music, dance, that kind of thing. The heads’ll get together around the heart fire to talk business during the day, but at night? It’s a party.”

  *

  A couple more crews arrive through the afternoon, taking up positions at nearby campsites in the woods. As the sun sets, orange lights and happy chatter rise around us to illuminate the woods. The trees here are younger and grow more thinly — even so, the forest goes dark well before the sky does.

  Finch returns from some light hunting and peeks into the open door of the wagon. In his absence, I’ve given up on overcoming my shyness and instead lie ruminating in bed, listening to people come and go past the open windows.

  “Almost sunset,” he says. “Come on, they’re about to light the fire.”

  I’ve been contemplating how I am supposed to socialize when I have nothing I can talk about that happened before approximately the last seven weeks, and most of that boils down to, “I felt pretty shitty and contributed nothing." I have no history to draw on and no shared culture to bond over, which means I’m pretty locked in to being the shy, quiet weirdo any time I talk to strangers for the foreseeable future. I don’t love this.

  But participating in group activities like lighting the heart fire is exactly how that changes.

  Okay, I think, Pull it together. You’ve got this. I close up the windows and follow after Finch.

  The heart fire is in the middle of what looks like an ordinary campsite clearing, only the fire pit in the middle is much larger. Two of the crews have positioned themselves very nearby and hung lanterns from the corners of their wagons to everyone’s benefit. Some people have brought things to sit on, stools or crates or broken logs. Others sit on the ground, hands clasped with their arms around their knees, chatting while they wait.

  Brand and Puck wave us over. Thirsan appears from behind us. Everyone gathers in loose clusters reflecting their crew affinities, although the conversation flows freely between groups.

  Ma and the other six heads of crew filter out of the woods, each of them carrying dead branches for firewood. The seven of them place their collected wood into the fire pit. One of them uses a device which is approximately a lighter to get the fire going.

  I turn to Finch, who bends down to hear me whisper the question, “Why doesn’t Ma just light it?”

  Finch snickers, and whispers back, “No way she’s got that kind of control.”

  As the fire catches, everyone falls quiet.

  “How many heads are gathered tonight?” calls one of the leaders. He’s an older man, a ring of gray hair around his balding head, and though his voice is softening with age he speaks with authority.

  “Seven,” answer the remaining six.

  He continues, “When heads gather, we light the fire of the heart.”

  “Over the heart, we unite our purpose.”

  “What is our purpose?”

  “To balance the scales.”

  “We balance the scales for the good of all.”

  All together, the heads of crew say, “No power goes unchecked.”

  The older man raises his arms, smiling in satisfaction. “The Spring Quarter Meet at Star Point commences!”

  Several people “Woo!” in response, and someone starts passing around bottles of liquor.

  “It won’t get interesting for another few days,” Finch says. “More people will show up. But now the heart fire’s lit, and there’s almost always someone out here telling stories or sharing rumors.”

  Someone pulls out an instrument that looks enough like a guitar to call it one.

  “Although,” he adds, “With so many crews showing up together, it should get pretty lively.”

  That was the part he had told me about a week ago — people coming together, trading, dancing. The part that sounded exciting until I realized I didn’t know how I would fit into it.

  “What was that exchange?” I ask. “The thing Ma and the other leaders said?”

  “So if two crews meet in the woods, it’s basically just coincidence. Right? Unless they planned it, but even then, no big deal. If three crews meet, though, it probably means something’s going on. That doesn’t happen by accident. So any time three or more heads get together, it’s a formal gathering. They build a heart fire for their crews. The ceremony is a way of declaring common ground.”

  I think about what, exactly, they had said. “What does it all mean? What’s the stuff about balancing the scales?”

  Finch shrugs. “It’s just what we do.”

  This is too vague. He has to know how vague this is. But then someone passes a bottle of liquor our way, and Finch takes a swig and hisses at how strong it is before offering it to me.

  And look, I know a dodge when I see one, but I’m not saying no to a party.