Chapter 7: Dani

The river valley was kinder than the plain. Water ran clear over stone, and the banks were green, and the trees along the ridgeline broke the wind that had been pressing against us for days. The group settled into the valley the way the settlement had settled around Hul: gratefully, almost involuntarily, the way tired bodies find the shape of ground that will hold them. Within two days, the temporary camp had acquired the habits of permanence. Shelters. A fire ring. A place where water was drawn and a place where waste was buried and a path between the two that was already wearing into the grass. Maretti had chosen well. The practical competence of his judgment was not in question and had never been. The river valley was a good place to stop. What troubled me was not the destination but the mechanism by which we had arrived at it, and the mechanism was becoming invisible, the way mechanisms do when they work smoothly enough that nobody thinks to examine them. Her name was Dani. I want to say her name now, because names matter, and hers matters more than most, and I want you to hear it while the hearing is still clean. I have watched the young arrive at things they believe in. They come lighter than the old. They carry less. Their weather is clear the way a bell is clear before the first crack runs through it: whole, resonant, carrying everything it was cast to carry. This is not innocence, exactly. It is the state before the world has tested the metal, and the state is beautiful, and the beauty is what makes it fragile. I did not know, when she arrived, what would test her. I only knew she rang true. She came from…