I HUNCH CLOSER TO the sputtering fire. The darkness is vast, hiding countless lives, but down here the wind just coughs dust into my eyes. I close them against the grit, against the light of the struggling flames, against the emptiness around me, knowing I should sleep but afraid of what I might dream.

My thoughts have a habit of coming loose. The more I keep to myself, the more they seep from my head, catching on the stubble of my scalp and trailing out behind me like cotton. Unless I’m careful, I won’t get them reeled in again before I make Redcrop. I can’t afford that. Single words, single thoughts: no doubts and no questions.

I tug the scarf further towards the brim of my hat. Sometimes I wish for hair, thick and curling as it once was, to cover my ears and warm my scalp. I feel for the pouch at my hip. It is slack, the beads inside cold and too few. Breath. I hold one to my lips and try to believe it is what people say: a sphere of pure air from the forests of Prosper.

The bead clacks against my teeth before I bite down. The splintering plastic cuts my trailing thoughts and stops me from leaking into the night, even though there is no good oxygen within; just an empty orb and a dusting of dex-amphetamine. Enough to ease the fatigue caused by the thin air, even after all these months.

I swallow, the noise loud in my ears. Beyond the tiny fire there’s nothing. Just the wind. Some folk say the wind is alive, that it coils between the stars like a snake. Who am I to say they are wrong? Too long out here and you begin to hear the wind speak. An endless sigh that started a hundred thousand cycles before I was born.

Carefully, I drag my bag closer and bring the notebook into the firelight. The cover is peeling, and there aren’t many blank pages left, but I turn to one and take the pencil nub from the crease.

Hafsa Gellam, I write, and see her face again, eyes heavy with exhaustion as she gripped my hand. Beneath her name I draw a line and label it Child Gellam. Another line, another name: Child’s Child? I draw on, tracing four imaginary generations, until the pencil scrapes the bottom of the page.

So much potential… Life in the Barrens is hard won and easily lost, but Hafsa is a strong woman, and the child seemed healthy when I left. If the child lived, and went on to produce a child of their own and so on… I close my eyes. What if just one of those newly possible people saves another, with a word or a deed or a single, unthinking act? How many futures could that tiny, bloodied newborn carry within? How many lives could I add to the tally?