Mara put the gun on the shelf, beside the knife. Then she unloaded her plants. Fir and yarrow, clover, sumac berries, plantain, mullein—they looked less like medicine and more like ingredients in a child’s potion. She took each plant and massaged it, breaking the needles and bending leaves until they bruised and the surfaces grew moist, and then put them all in the pot to boil.

She let them boil a long time. The water turned an almost incandescent red-brown and thickened like gravy. Mara scooped some into a cup and gave it to Kyle.

“Drink this,” she said.

It tasted sour. She had tried it. Maybe it was the yarrow or the mullein. The taste was familiar and pinched her tongue. The texture gritty, like dissolved clay.

But Kyle didn’t wince. He brought the cup to his mouth and drank it down like water. Then he held out the cup for more. Twice more she refilled it, and twice more he drank, until there was nothing left in the pot but a mound of soggy leaves.

Kyle didn’t ask if the drink would help, and Mara was glad, because then she would have had to answer. It would help as much as anything, or as much as nothing. She felt angry again, too angry to speak, and she left the shelter so that Kyle wouldn’t think her anger was aimed at him. Ashley was already in the lake, so Mara couldn’t go there. Instead she hauled branches to the signal fires, and felt great satisfaction in raising the flames.

22

Come out here!” called Bullfrog, in the morning. “Look at this!”

There was wonder in his voice and it gave Mara hope. She dropped the wood she was carrying and jogged into the woods, arriving at Bullfrog’s side at the same time as Ashley. Everything seemed normal, quiet branches, quiet trees, and Mara felt disappointed until she looked down.

The fawn was almost perfectly camouflaged against the twigs and the dirt. It was no bigger than a cat. Curled in the dappled sunlight, long legs tucked beneath it, with a perfect curve of white specks on silky red-brown fur. Thin fluff at its neck, huge ears, eyelashes like feathers. Its white chin tucked to its chest. Like something from another world. Clean. Nothing like the world here.

Maybe nature knows when you’re hungry, Mara thought, and knows when you have fish. Now that they had food, they could see the fawn. They were not a threat anymore, so they had earned the right. Or maybe the animals were coming back now that the crew was gone.

Now that the crew was gone. The ease of the words, the normalcy, brought a tangible flutter to her chest. But here was the fawn, perfect, before them. Here was a real and living thing.

“Is it orphaned?” said Ashley. She wasn’t wearing her microphone anymore. Kyle was the only one who still did.

“No,” said Bullfrog. “Its mother left it here. She’ll come get it.”