When I could walk that far, I took to sitting on the front porch of the farmhouse. There was enough to see from there to keep my mind busy and out of trouble, and when there wasn’t, I usually dozed off.

The front porch looked out on a makeshift village square with the corners filed off. It had one large tree at the center, and a scattering of smaller ones. There was a pump and a trough, and a few benches, and a charred brick firepit. There were also flowers — less thickly planted than in China Black’s garden, and less disciplined, but with something of the same feel nonetheless. It was pretty, and there was almost always something to watch: someone doing something to a flowerbed, or pumping water, or rocking a baby.

Other houses surrounded the square, in a confusion of styles and sizes. Some had been built there, some moved there from other places. Behind the first ring of houses, partially visible from my chair, was another. These, too, were a confetti of styles and materials, including cloth-and-tubing domes and some complex-looking tents. I put the number of dwellings I could see at about two dozen. If there was anything beyond those, I didn’t think about it.

One afternoon Sherrea came and sat with me. She’d been a regular visitor to the sickroom. More than that, she’d been an irregular volunteer nurse there, since her hands, for no clear reason, were among the few I could tolerate for the relatively impersonal services. But our conversations there had been short, and had brushed lightly over their subject matter.

Now she greeted me and sat on the porch floor at my feet, her arms wrapped around her knees and a half-empty mug in one hand. I could smell the tea, but I wasn’t sure what kind it was. The undisciplined mass of her dark hair dwarfed her sharp-featured little face. She wore a huge, busy-patterned cotton tunic bound with three different sashes around her hips, black leggings with holes in both knees, and sneakers with the toes cut out. It was all a concession to country life; none of it trailed behind her, after all.

I hadn’t realized that we’d been sitting in silence until Sherrea said, “Did you take a vow not to ask questions, or what?”

“Huh?”

“Oh, that’s a question. Don’t you want to know where you are, or who these people are, or why I brought you here, or anything!”

“Sure, if you want to tell me.”

She set her chin on her knees and stared at me. “What happened to your head, Sparrow?” she said. “What’s going on in there, that nothing comes out anymore? Or is there nothing to come out?”

“My head’s fine.” A thought shot to the surface: I know; I’ve met it. But it was gone before I got a good look at it.

“It is not. You never used to tell anybody anything, but at least you had a personality. Now you’re even locked that up. I’m your friend, you idiot! You can be rude to me!”