My ribs ache, a nagging throb on my right side, and I wince with each step—the pain growing worse, the adrenaline long gone. But I keep peering over my shoulder, listening for the sound of horses—for the men with brands burned into their forearms to appear through the trees. Coming after us. After me.
But there is only the cold rain against my face, and no sign of them.
We need to find a road, a path, a town. Anything.
We drop down from the meadow into a dry creek channel lined with oak trees and sagging willows, limbs like curtains, the air smelling of sage and lichen. An odd scent. We follow the barren creek, and the day peels away into evening, until I catch a flash of something up through the trees… a flicker. A wink. Glass reflecting the fading sunlight.
I climb up out of the creek.
“Vega?” Pa calls behind me, but I keep walking, legs taking me through the sparse, water-starved oaks, my eyes afraid to blink, to lose sight of the vibrating light.
My ribs throb in time with each exhale, my ears quake and pulse, but at last I see it: a farmhouse.
And behind it sit rows of blooming trees—an orchard. The sun-ripened scent of apples so rich and thick that I almost drop to my knees.
“Wait here,” Pa says, swinging the rifle from his shoulder and holding it out in front of him.
But I don’t listen—my legs keep staggering forward, needing to know that it’s real. That the farmhouse isn’t a trick of the dappling rain and shooting pain in my side.
I reach the back door, left open, and stop to listen for the echo of voices, for children’s footsteps racing down a hall. But there is only the wind howling through the doorway, rain pattering against the roof, and the cold hint of ghosts stirring inside.
Pa looks like he’s going to tell me to wait again, insist that he go in alone, but I step forward and walk across the threshold into the house, my boots breaking apart the dead leaves that have blown onto the kitchen floor. No one has been here in a while. No broom has swept across this floor in months. The place is abandoned.
Still, I move cautiously from the kitchen into the living room, feeling relieved to be out of the rain, but hesitant of anything that might be hiding in the dark: feral creatures nesting in the shadowed corners. Against the far wall rests a stone fireplace, burnt logs left to rot. My fingers trail along a low wooden couch, carefully stitched cushions, and a wool blanket left folded at the armrest. It smells like rain and rotted leaves, but at least it’s dry. Back in the kitchen, wilted flowers sag in a clay vase left on the wood table, summer blooms from last season, and Pa is eyeing a steep set of stairs that must lead down into a cellar. “Hello,” he calls into the dark, just to be sure, before he moves down the steps. I follow, and in the damp, cold cellar, we discover shelves filled with dried and canned apples. A stockpile. More than a family could eat in three seasons.
The family who lived here had been orchardists, tending to thecrop out back. But they left and never returned—consumption, most likely. Maybe they fled to a town, seeking help, or maybe their bodies are buried somewhere beyond the apple trees. A coldness slides down to my toes.So much death. This farmhouse feels like the remains of a life deserted, only a few scraps left behind that tell the story of who they once were.
I climb the stairs out of the cellar two at a time, needing to be free of the dark, and walk to one of the kitchen windows, wiping the dust away to peer out at the falling rain. My breathing slows, calms, and I notice a small creek meandering through the neatly spaced orchard rows, keeping the soil damp and dark. But… there’s something else.
At first I think it’s another deer, like the one we saw in the woods—but a leather halter is cinched over its gray-speckled head. “Pa,” I say just as he appears at the top of the cellar. “There’s a mule out back.” It’s wandering untethered through the rain, pulling up the tall grass beside the creek.
Pa steps out through the back door into the orchard, but I don’t follow—I stay in the dry house—watching as he carefully picks his way through the trees, and when he reaches the mule, he runs his hand gently down its neck, the rain streaming over them both. The mule nuzzles his hand, unafraid, and Pa begins checking its hooves for cracks or damage, to make sure it hasn’t foundered since it’s been left on its own.
Whoever had lived here left in such a rush, they didn’t even take their mule.
I scan the kitchen, trying to imagine a family seated at the table, eating breakfast, telling stories, and I wonder if they knew what wascoming? I wonder if they knew death was knocking on their door, if they left the house knowing they wouldn’t return—like when I left the valley. I never truly understood the importance of home; I had never longed for it until I burned it to the ground.
With rainwater still dripping from the ends of my hair, I turn away from the window and walk up the stairwell, everything smelling of dust and the subtle, faraway sweetness of apples. Down the windowless hall, I find three bedrooms with beds still made, quilts tucked into mattresses. No bodies rotting in any of the rooms—thankfully.
In the last bedroom on the left, wooden toys are lined up beneath a window in a perfect row, and in the room directly across the hall, hand-sewn dresses sit folded in a closet for a girl half my size. A doll with hand-stitched mouse ears left on the sunlight-yellow quilt folded at the end of the bed. Everything tidy and neat. In its place.
I stay too long in this room, losing myself in a daydream, imagining what a childhood might have been like in a house like this. Summer mornings with the scent of apple jam rising up from the kitchen, hands making shadows against the wall in the moonlight.
A simple life, where the decisions your ancestors made don’t haunt you like ghosts hissing in your ear each night before you sink into sleep. Stories that are not bedtime riddles but roadmaps. The echo of my mother’s words an itch, a nagging prick, never far away.
A life without ink cut into raw skin.
I leave the room and walk back downstairs—not wanting to imagine it anymore, a different life, because I can’t change who I am. Or who my mother was.
I find Pa on the front porch, staring out at the longdriveway that disappears into the forest of dark, shadowy oaks. The rain has started to let up, and I wonder how far the driveway stretches before it reaches another road and connects to other towns. Other people.
“The mule is in good shape,” Pa says, pulling out the tobacco and pipe from his coat pocket. “It’ll help us carry supplies.”
I nod and try not to think of Odie, of where those men might have taken her. I tilt my eyes to the sky, the rainclouds pushing north, revealing a few fragments of constellations—reminders of home. “Can we stay the night here?”
Pa tugs at his beard, exhaling deep through his nostrils. He’s worried—I can see it in his eyes; he hasn’t felt safe since we left the miners’ cabin. I don’t feel safe either, but I’m craving a soft bed, something that feels like home—and not the cold, wet ground. “This place is well hidden,” I point out. “Doesn’t seem like anyone knows it’s here.” The house is untouched, the jars of apples in the cellar unpilfered.
He stares out at the road, like he’s waiting for men on horseback to come riding up the drive, looking to finish us off. Or take me with them. “All right,” he says, cool and quick, like he might change his mind.
