“Second,” he said, “utopias fall apart from love problems among members. It is important you don’t fall in love.” He was teasing me. I thought of Bay by the fire, his mouth on my neck. Dice was so much better at talking than Bay, and all kinds of considerations and judgments seemed to run in him like an underground stream; he was precise, controlled. “No couples,” Dice said, “and no children—there’s enough people on Earth already.”

We were walking now past the low twisted trees of an orchard. The dark, bone-humid night, the orange windows in the long house, the clanging bells, the piney wind: they were all his vision.

“Utopias fall apart because their buildings burn down,” he said. “We don’t bring fire into the barn.” In his voice fire sounded like far. “We don’t promise a perfect age right around the corner, either. Don’t expect New Jerusalem to come down.”

I watched a crowd of bobwhites hustle past. I hadn’t been paying full attention. I wanted practicalities.

“What about leaving?” I said. “If someone wants to go away and come back, maybe?” It sounded more like a challenge than I had intended. I still felt as though I was coming out of a trance, not quite aware of myself in my new clothes, in this new place. He glanced toward me. In this dimness, his face was just an outline.

“Why would you want to leave?” Dice said.

“Maybe to see my mother?” I said.

“Why would you want to see her, when you’re here among family that truly loves you?”

I noted distantly that I was no longer in the mood to defend my mother.

He continued on, with rules against reading and writing, phones, mirrors, soap. Rules about volunteering for hard tasks. About sacrificing for the land, facing pain for the land.

“No fake-world medicine,” he said. “No hospitals.” Especially not antibiotics, which were distorting the evolution of bacteria and creating new strains we could not defend against. He said that old witches often had the right idea: the willow-bark tea that predated aspirin, the foxglove that fixed hearts long before digitalis.

“What if someone breaks their arm?” I said.

“It’s important that we not reveal ourselves haphazardly to the fake world,” he said. “People would be threatened by our way of life and try to destroy us. We can’t be numbered.”

“You certainly wouldn’t let people”—I couldn’t say die in front of him—“wouldn’t let people stay sick,” I finished lamely.

“Beryl,” he said, his warm hand against my cheek. I hadn’t realized he knew my name. “I do not let people stay sick.”

I blushed again. “But can you fix my hand?” I said.

“Didn’t Bay?” Dice said. His tone was cross. “There’s a healer, Pear. She’ll look if it’s not better next week. Pear’s the one who fixed Bay’s arms.”