By the time I make my way out of the house and into the courtyard, a few stars have begun winking into existence. A cool breeze combs through my hair. I close my eyes, letting myself take a long, slow breath for the first time in a long time, and for a moment, I can pretend that I’m back in Mara, crouched outside my mother’s old home in the shanties around Newage, listening for the croaking of frogs and trying to bring one home in a jar.

If I look to the horizon right now, would I see that house silhouetted against the night? Would I see the glow of warm light spilling out onto a dirt path?

I open my eyes. The home behind me is not my home; the steps leading up to the back entrance are unfamiliar, and the flowers in the garden are not the ones that my mother would have spent lazy summer days gathering in a basket.

I stand there for a moment, letting myself feel the loss. Only after a while do I realize that I had closed my eyes and dreamed not of Basea, but of Mara. That somehow, the country of my childhood was not what appeared first in my mind, but the place that I’d defended with my blood and sweat.

There had been a time when I would fall so deeply into the pit of my memories that I never wanted to climb out again. But now I turn away from the house and back toward the rest of the sprawling garden, searching idly for Red. Maybe he doesn’t want to be bothered, and the realization makes me hesitate. I don’t know why I’m out here looking for him. I should be getting a couple hours rest too, before we have to head out into the flames again.

As if he sensed the uncertainty trickling through me, Red’s voice appears in my thoughts.

There’s a hidden grove in the back of the garden, he says.

His voice warms me, and I find it easier to push away the pain of old memories by following him instead. In the darkening night, I head through the winding path carved through the grass until I reach a thicket of trees lining the end of the mayor’s property. The breeze is cooler here, funneled through the tree trunks, and I follow the current of it instinctively until I find myself staring at a pomegranate grove at the end of the thicket. Their bushy branches grow so close and thickly together that they seem to form a wall. Fruit hangs fat and red on their limbs.

Here, Red’s pulse becomes a more pronounced drumbeat in my chest. I crouch, finding a small opening in the grove, and step inside.

It’s darker in here, the branches crowding out what light might be filtering over from the house, but I have no trouble seeing the small clearing of thick grass in the center of this grove, then the figure curled tightly within it. Red is sitting with his legs crossed, his torso freshly wrapped with bandages underneath a coat, and his face is tilted up at the sky.