“Need help?”

“Oh, we only do dishes when there’s rainwater collected. It’s been a few days, so, it’ll have to wait.” They pointed to the counter, crammed with chipped mugs and sticky plates.

“Oh. Gross.”

“Yeah,” Nam agreed. “And these puppets are real lax on the housework. Until he snaps his fingers, they don’t do much of anything.”

Rose leaned against the table, biting her thumbnail, her leg jiggling with nerves. “Listen, you don’t think I should be worried, do you?”

“About what?” Nam scraped food scraps into a metal bucket near the back door.

“About whatever the hell he’s doing to Derrick in there.” She motioned with her lips toward the door into the hallway.

Nam followed the point, then went back to work. “Nah. He’ll be fine. You’re Indigenous, you got nothing to worry about.” They paused and scrunched their nose a bit. “I think. I mean, yeah, I’m pretty sure it’s all good.”

It was the last part that got Rose’s leg moving even faster.

That night, she was put to bed in a dorm-style room shared with five of the six Wives and Nam, all crowded on single beds or folded into large chairs pushed back against the walls. Rose wasn’t sure she’d be able to sleep. For one thing, she was worried about Derrick. For another, she was inside. She hadn’t slept indoors since she and her family had found an abandoned resort. Thinking about the Four Winds Resort made her miss Frenchie in the pit of her stomach, maybe a bit lower. Eventually, with her hand on her lower belly and her mind spinning through memories like a flip book, she did fall asleep.

✦✦✦ ✦✦✦ ✦✦✦

At all times, but especially in her dreams, Rose felt the threads. They extended from her skeleton, poking through her flesh as innocuously as birthday candles on a cake—no blood, no pain. They connected her to who she was, where she had been, where she belonged.

Every now and again, one would get tangled, and she would have to stand still, turning slow and paying attention, to figure out where it started in her and where it had become snagged. Every now and again, one would snap. When this happened, the thread dragged behind her, collecting dry leaves and hollow insect casings so that she sounded like a wedding car festooned with ribbons and cans when she walked. So that she lost her stealth, her ability to slip and deke.

Lately she had noticed a new snag, already picking up the tin and crackle of debris and celebration at once. It slowed her down, made her unbalanced so that she leaned into her walk, one side tense and pensive, the other slack and excited. It made her uneasy, changed the tone of her thoughts, made her stutter over words and steps.

The third night in the Chief’s house, Rose woke up with an incredible thirst. The last two nights had been rough, and water was scarce, since they were still waiting on rain. She spent the days sitting and talking with Derrick or scavenging the woods and ignoring the Wives as they sighed and huffed and giggled around the house like adolescent ghosts.