“Howling, Feral, one of you get the backpack,” she said, her voice raspy and her throat full of phlegm.
Feral ran to the back of the bus and dragged the backpack to the front, groaning with effort. “Come on,” said Vern, and hoisted the backpack over her shoulders with a wince. Grateful to be rid of the reek of bologna, chewed gum, and floral-scented shampoo, Vern exited into the fresh air and walked with her children toward the taxi stand. Pride put a pep in her otherwise impaired step as she navigated the station. She’d never spent more than twelve consecutive hours off the compound or outside the woods, but this world did not intimidate her. She’d brought her children hundreds of miles, from city to city to city.
The final leg of the journey took them down a two-lane road out of town into a terrain of blond grasses and deciduous conifers. Luminous silver mountains edged the horizon, and had Vern not known better, it would’ve been easy to think there was nothing on the other side of them.
The world was full of false edges, false endings. Vern’s mam thought there was nothing for her outside Cainland. For a time, Vern believed there was nothing for her outside the woods, but nothing was ever settled and done, not on this four-point-five-billion-year-old planet. Earth had witnessed the rise, proliferation, and fall of more than five billion life-forms in her time. Vern learned that from one of Carmichael’s fun facts.
If Vern could ever be said to have a religion, that would be it: the bigness of it all, the mutability. One article Carmichael read argued one trillion species were alive today and that humankind knew about only one-thousandth of a percent of them. Even conservative estimates—ten million to fourteen million active species—suggested a world too vast for containment. God, if there was one, was that vastness.
* * *
COLD SPRINGS was a small town on the edge of Sugar Mountain County. Buildings no higher than five stories lined either side of the main drag. It was a bleak day, the air gelid and the sky gray, but people milled the street undeterred. Vern didn’t see anything around that looked like a house.
“Can I help you?” someone asked.
Vern wrapped an arm around Howling and Feral each and pulled them toward her, aware it was unsafe to be someplace where she so readily stood out as a newcomer. “I’m looking for 7131 Osage Road.” Vern kept her head bowed, her face disappearing into the generous fabric of her hood.
“Yeah, hon, you found it. It’s right there,” said the passerby, pointing to a red storefront with large windows, cursive lettering on the glass. Howling and Feral pulled from Vern’s grasp to press their faces against the window, and Vern followed suit. Inside, people, patrons presumably, dined at tables and chairs.
“I don’t und— Are you sure? This is 7131 Osage Road, Cold Springs, Sugar Mountain?”
“And has been for the last twenty years. Look,” they said, pointing to the brass numbers affixed to the top of the door. Vern stood closer so she could see. “Best burgers around, but don’t tell Bridget I said so.”
“It’s a restaurant?”
The passerby mistook Vern’s bafflement for disdain. “It may not be fancy, hon, but Auntie’s is the real deal. Good, fresh food.”
“Auntie’s?” Vern felt on the verge of retching.
“Yes. Auntie’s Diner, though it’s more of a soup kitchen than a restaurant. Flexible pricing, if you get me. It’s the only place some folks can get a hot meal in winter. Food is free for those who need it to be.”
Vern had stopped listening at diner.
“Miss?”
Vern was not a girl easily undone. She’d known it was unlikely that Lucy or even Lucy’s auntie lay at the other end of this journey, but she hadn’t prepared herself for the possibility that Lucy’s auntie, at least the version of her that Vern had conjured in her head, never existed.
“Miss? Are you all right?”
Vern wasn’t sure if her memories were distorted or if Lucy had deliberately obfuscated. “Thank you for your time,” said Vern to the person helping her, and pulled the children into Auntie’s. A bell dinged as they entered, and Vern waited by the door to be sat down. Across the diner, inside the kitchen, someone called out to Vern. “Yeah, sit where you want. I’ll be right with you.”
Howling poked Vern’s thigh and whispered, “Is that Lucy?” Vern shushed him and led the children to an empty booth.
“Electricity food, electricity food, electricity food,” said Feral, banging his fists on the table rhythmically. Vern had only $3.17 left after paying bus fare for her and the children. “Electricity food!”