A flutter from the loft, and Tom cocks his ear toward it. He already knows it’s only a bird. But will it flap its wings? Will it wake Malorie?

He finds the straps that have kept the bag tight to Malorie’s back for the duration of their walk. He lifts it from the hay with care.

He pauses. He listens. He hears nobody outside the barn.

The door does not creak when he opens it. He slips outside, already removing the flashlight from his pocket, already pulling out the rolled blanket.

Eyes closed, he moves swiftly to the side of the barn, covers himself and the bag with the blanket, secures it to the ground with his knees and elbows, and turns on the light.

He opens his eyes.

It strikes him that, even if something had gotten under the blanket with him, he wouldn’t care. He believes he’d have heard it before seeing it, would’ve had time to close his eyes.

He’s so sick of being afraid of the creatures.

Sick of living by the fold.

The white tips of the pages appeal to him like so many invitations, asking him to read, read on, read on till morning.

He knows exactly where he wants to begin. Back in Cabin Three he caught a glimpse of a section, words that jumped out at him, before he was distracted by Olympia. Those words have whispered to him since.

He removes the stack from the bag and flips through until he reaches the page headed: INDIAN RIVER.

It’s a city in northern Michigan. And the description of it is everywhere Tom wants to be.

He reads:

Indian River, Michigan, has become one of the most progressive communities I’ve yet to encounter. Their citizenry numbers three hundred. Most sleep in tents and what was once a plain, two-story brick office building. But none spend their days indoors.

Tom’s heart picks up speed. Already he can tell these are his kind of people. The kind that push back against the creatures.

A town of many inventions, Indian River is not for the faint of heart. One man claims to have caught a creature, but this was not corroborated by anyone else I spoke to. NOTE: Almost everyone I asked told me they hoped he had.

“Yes!” Tom half cries out, half whispers. He can’t help it. A whole town of people who want to hear a creature was caught?

And maybe, just maybe, one was.

The de facto leader of the town is a woman named Athena Hantz. It was difficult for me to gauge her age as she has the passion of the young and the fortitude of someone much older. Miss Hantz claims she has “wholly accepted the creatures.” She insists they no longer drive people mad and have no intention of doing so. She believes, fiercely, they have changed over time. Her words: “They don’t punish us anymore.”