Dance grabbed one side of the duffel bag, and I took the other. We turned our backs to the fire, to the man and the others. The bag was awkward between us, but it was not the first time I had run with it. We carried the bag up the hill without looking back at the scene in the valley.

There was no thought of going back for anything else, no discussion. Everything else was gone. I concentrated on climbing, on not breaking the light in the bag. It might be our last one. All the others were in the fire.

I waited for the icy hand of the man on my shoulder, or for a claw in my hair: his women hauling me back, forcing me down onto my knees like the women in the forest, Jamey’s friends we had not saved. Halfway up the hill I realized I didn’t hear footsteps crashing through the snow behind us, I didn’t feel anyone following. They were not coming.

“Wait,” I said. I spun around and looked back.

Everyone was right where we had left them in the valley by the stream. The man with the skeleton tattoo, the others in white. They had not even attempted to follow us; they had not cared. Together, they knelt in a line by the bonfire. Orange flames flickered against the white banks. The fire looked dark and greasy. Smoke billowed into the sky. The man and the others had taken off their tops, their coats and blankets, the sheepskin, all their white things. They were bare-chested, even the women. Their skin looked raw against the snow.

I saw the women who had greeted us, the ones who had wrapped us in blankets. They had closed their eyes, put their hands on their knees. They looked like they were mediating.

Except they were going to freeze.

“What the fuck are they doing?” Dance said.

“We gotta go now.” I picked up the duffel bag again and Dance followed.

The fire roared on behind us, and we did not speak. It seemed like years before we reached the campsite.

Grayson was gathering kindling by the tree line. He dropped the load in his arms when he saw us. “You got it! You got it back!” He looked behind us and saw there was nothing else. We were lugging only the single bag. “Just one light? Where’s everything else?”

“Gone,” Dance said.

“Get in the truck,” I said.

We shoved the bag in. There was plenty of room in the bed now. The engine was already running, tailpipe streaming exhaust. I thought of the fire; I tried not to think of the fire and the smoke and the people stripped bare. Burning their things. Their appointment in heaven. Dance got in the passenger side, and Grayson and I took the back, beside Starla.

Starla was by herself.

Jamey turned around from the front seat. “Seat belts on, everybody?”