I scramble to my feet, grab the empty buckets, and stagger the last few strides to our hut. Ma grabs my arm and hauls me inside.

“Right foolish of you,” she scolds. “What good would water do when we can’t even boil it under the hold?”

“The lake’s cleanish. Some water sounded better than none.”

“We’ve got plenty of purified water stored.”

“Last I checked, we had four jars.”

“It’s enough.”

“Not if the storm lasts more than a day, and with Indie being pregnant, I fig—”

“Delta!” There’s a crease in her brow, an edge of fire in her tone. I suck my bottom lip to keep myself from saying any more, and I taste dirt. “Just get under with your sister.”

I leave her to securing the door and head into the cellar, which isn’t much more than a crawlspace. We’ll spend the next few hours—maybe even days—hunched to half-height beneath the hut, old sheets pinned overhead to keep rubble and dust from falling on us. Only thing this cellar is good for is storage and sleeping. It’s cool, this far into the earth. I especially don’t mind it on summer evenings. But being stuck down here when you’re not sure when you can go back up is a kind of torture.

At the bottom of the wooden steps, I find Indie reclining on her mat, the curve of her belly heaving as she breathes. “Thanks for trying with the water,” she says. “It was kind of you.”

“It was foolish,” Ma repeats, coming down the steps behind me and yanking the door shut. The cellar is swallowed in darkness until Indie gets a candle going with the flint.

Overhead, the storm front crashes into the hut with a howl. Dust filters through the door, and pebbles gather in the hanging ceiling sheets with soft pfffits. Someday, one of these storms is going to cause the hut to collapse on us, or maybe just last so long that we suffocate in the cramped, clouded air.

Rotten place. Rotten weather. Rotten land.

We need to move.

We can’t move.

Like always, there’s no good answer.

Ma pulls our jars of water from the shelves—bottled just yesterday after boiling—and passes them out. One for me, one for her, and two for Indie. Skies damn her for getting pregnant. It’s one thing to want a romp and another to do it when the window’s not right. And with Clay, of all people. That trader couldn’t keep his mouth shut if his life depended on it, and half of what he says is a farce. I bet he jawed her ear off even during the act.

Curse him and Indie. The pack doesn’t need another mouth to feed. A fresh set of hands, sure, but the babe won’t be any real help for at least five years, probably more.