The happiest clients weren’t the ones who gathered food, or even made a nice fire, but the ones who built things. Who shaped nature, even slightly, into a form that served or inspired them. A good shelter could do that: a debris hut on a cold night, with mounds of dry leaves to hold in warmth. Or a lean-to on a rainy afternoon: that damp, solid feeling of drops striking all the world but you.

One time Mara went to retrieve a client and found her in a garden made of stones. It must have been ten feet across, a labyrinth of pebbles, a spiral with waves extending out like the rays of a sun. The woman sat cross-legged in the middle, smiling, though she had no shelter or water or food. But she seemed content in a way Mara had rarely seen. When Mara gave her a bracelet, she kissed it before tying it around her wrist, and then she closed her eyes.

Later Mara brought other instructors to see the stones. Normally they took camps apart after clients left, unweaving branches and burying the remains of fires, but none of them wanted to break the maze. So they left it untouched, and stopped bringing people to that spot. Mara often wondered if the stones were still there.

For a while she told other clients about the labyrinth, hoping they’d try something similar. Mostly they were dismissive. “I’m here to survive, not play with rocks,” a guy told her, like she was the one who didn’t get it. Like surviving the night was some big achievement, when it was far easier than making something beautiful. The secret to survival, Mara thought, was that it was hard to die. Even if you gave in, gave up, just sat there and waited for it. You could be waiting a long time.

2

On her last shift before leaving for the show, Mara was assigned to supervise three Ultimates with her friend Simone. Ultimate was the most advanced package that Primal Instinct offered, and also the most expensive, though it required from instructors the least amount of work. Clients had to sleep outside for two nights without a tent, and with limited supplies: a tin cup, a knife, fishing line and one hook, matches, and their choice of tarp or wool blanket. Mara thought the blanket was better, though few people picked it. Sometimes they even declined the matches, saying they’d build a primitive fire instead. That was when Mara knew they were in for a rough weekend.

Ultimates cost nine hundred dollars per person. But no one complained about the cost, not like they did with classes and basic overnights, which were much cheaper. They expected to be transformed, and everyone knew that transformation was expensive. Clients were glad to pay. These weren’t all people with money, either. Some of them had saved for a year.

Mara liked doing Ultimates, especially with Simone. They hung out in the company van, parked in the shoulder of a dirt road, and three times a day made rounds of the clients’ sites to make sure no one was panicking or hurt. If a client wanted help or company, they offered it. But mostly they waved and moved on, or even crept by unnoticed. That week their shift started Saturday morning, after the clients’ first night. Mara and Simone left the van an hour after dawn and headed into the woods for rounds. The sky was bright, and columns of sunlight shone through openings in the leaves.