By morning, the movement Mio felt beyond the northern edge of town has left nothing we can find.

Calvin and the other children on bridge duty make their usual circuit after breakfast. Marcus walks part of the ridge with them, more because there is something to look for than because anyone expects to find a stranger standing beneath a tree waiting to be discovered. They come back with damp boots, two loose sections of fence wire, and nothing that explains what Mio sensed.

Mio pays closer attention to the edges of the valley after that.

Barryville has other things to do. One of the water-wheel buckets has split again. A farm south of Shohola sends word that it can spare more rye if someone can help repair a wagon axle. Nathaniel has discovered that food dropped from his chair produces a much faster reaction than food eaten from it, and Angela spends part of breakfast trying to determine whether he is hungry or simply conducting an experiment.

By noon, the town has settled into its ordinary work. Over the next several days, Mio mentions two more disturbances, one near the southern ridge and another west of the road. Neither lasts long enough to give her anything useful. We keep watch without changing how Barryville lives.

The next Sunday begins at the church across the bridge.

By the time we arrive, Mio is at the piano with a girl sitting beside her on the bench. The girl works slowly through the first few measures of a hymn, stops when she misses a note, then starts again while Mio waits. A few children are already scattered through the pews. Others come in as the morning work allows.

Calvin reads from Matthew today. He keeps one finger against the page and stumbles over a word halfway through, pauses, then tries it again before continuing.

Mio takes over at the piano for the hymn afterward. Angela sits with Nathaniel near the aisle, intercepting his hand each time he reaches for the hymnal in front of him. Selena and Liora sit nearby. Calla comes in late, takes the place Nora saved for her, and slips out again before the service ends.

By the time we cross back into Barryville, she is already at the ovens.

Sunday baking has grown with the market. Farms bring in rye, wheat, corn, and whatever else they have managed to harvest. Threshing can be done by hand, but the equipment James and Marcus have rigged to the river does it faster, and the grinding stones turn without someone spending half the day working them. Some of what comes through stays in Barryville for the work. Some goes into storage for winter. The rest returns to the farms as flour or moves through the market along with the bread coming out of the ovens.

The river provides its share too. Smoked fish hangs beside dried herbs and late vegetables. Eggs change hands for salt. Preserves appear from farms that still have jars to spare. Some traders come every week now. Others arrive after hearing from someone farther down the road that Barryville is a place where they might find what they need.

James and Marcus have found other uses for the same collection of gears, chains, bicycle parts, and salvaged machinery.

I find them near the old garage with the latest version of the e-bike trailer between them. They have rebuilt the hitch twice since summer. The cars will not last forever, and Marcus has become determined to produce something that can carry Nathaniel, supplies, or both without trying to overturn the bicycles every time the road changes slope.

Liora kneels beside one wheel with a box of bolts between her knees. Three older girls have found reasons to be nearby. One holds a length of leather Marcus has not asked for. Another watches him adjust the hitch until he finally looks up.

“Marcus, the short one or the long one?” Liora asks.

“Short.”

She finds the bolt and holds it out. Marcus takes it without looking away from the hitch.

“Thanks.”

One of the girls crouches beside him. “I can hold that if you want.”

“I’ve got it.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah.”

Liora reaches for the next washer before he asks. Across the yard, Selena is winding rope around her elbow. She catches Liora looking toward the girl beside Marcus and smiles.

Liora flicks a washer at her.

Selena catches it against her shirt. “What?”

“Nothing.”

Selena’s smile widens. I leave them to it.

By midday, the square around the bridge is crowded in the familiar way it has been for months. Handcarts and bicycles collect near the crossing. Children from the farms closest to Shohola greet one another by name. Others have come farther, carrying whatever they can trade and questions about what might be found beyond the roads they know. A few of the houses near the square are kept open now for regular traders whose trip takes longer than a day. They arrive with enough to make the distance worthwhile, spend the night, and start home again after the next day’s work and trading.

Calla and Nora have their ledgers open at the same table they use every Sunday. The books have grown thicker over the summer. What began as a way to remember trades and promises now includes regular routes, passable roads, settlements, farms, livestock, seed, and whatever travelers report from farther out. One page notes a bridge washed out north of Narrowsburg. Another says a settlement farther south has goats but little grain. A traveler passing through the week before claimed one of the routes west had become useless and that nobody he met seemed willing to go much farther that way. Nora recorded it with everything else.

Liora’s handwriting appears through nearly as many pages as Nora’s.

I am carrying a crate of empty jars toward storage when a boy from the southern houses intercepts me.

“Mr. Voss?”

I stop. “Yes?”

He cannot be more than eleven. “The Shohola farm brought extra flour again. They want another bag of salt for it, but Calla only put one down.”

“What did Calla say?”

“I didn’t ask her yet.”

“Ask her first.”

He hesitates. “I thought you might know if it was fair.”

“I might. But it’s her trade to settle.”

He nods, not particularly surprised by the answer, and heads toward Calla’s table.

Later in the afternoon, Danielle has several of the regular watch children spread out near the bridge with wooden staffs. Calvin is among them. Malcolm stands opposite a younger boy while Danielle corrects where he has put his hands.

“Again,” she says.

Malcolm resets his grip.

A few others have joined them without belonging to the watch. They come when work allows or when curiosity wins. Most do not. Barryville has too many other things to occupy a day, and whatever concern Dominion creates beyond the valley has not become urgent enough for everyone to spend their free hours preparing to fight it.

A boy who cannot be more than thirteen has spent more time finding reasons to help Danielle than practicing. When she finishes with Malcolm, he reaches for the bundle of staffs before she does.

“I can get those.”

Danielle lets him take them, then points toward three younger children struggling with the target stand.

“They could use some help too.”

“I can do that.”

He carries the staffs toward storage first, trying not to look too pleased with himself.

Danielle catches me watching and shakes her head before I say anything. I keep walking.

A few months ago, we watched every change in the older children for signs of the fever. Now some of those same changes bring awkward glances, embarrassment, and reasons to carry things that do not need carrying. It is a strange version of normal, but I find myself grateful for what of it they have managed to reclaim.

The next disturbance Mio notices lasts long enough to leave us somewhere to look.

It comes before dawn several days later, south of town and farther from the road than most travelers would have reason to be. Unlike the others, it does not pass quickly through the edge of her mist. It moves closer, then stops.

“It stayed there?”

Mio nods. “Long enough for me to pull more mist toward it.”

Whatever caused the disturbance is gone by the time the valley lightens, but this time she can give us more than a direction.

After breakfast, Danielle and Marcus take one of their usual routes south and swing farther out on the return. They come back near noon with mud along their boots and a small piece of charred wood wrapped in cloth.

“Someone camped there,” Marcus says once the kitchen door is closed behind them. “Or close enough.”

James looks up from the table. “What’d you find?”

“Not much,” Danielle says. She lays the charred piece down. “That’s what bothers me.”

“Dani didn’t feel anything except me walking around,” Marcus adds. “Whoever was there was gone.”

They found a shallow fire pit filled and covered again, the ash scattered instead of dumped. Leaves had been pulled back across disturbed ground. A few flattened places in the brush suggested bicycles had been laid down there, but there were no cans, scraps, cord, cloth, or the ordinary debris that follows children traveling with whatever they can carry.

Angela turns the bit of charcoal with one finger. “Could just be somebody careful.”

“Could be,” Marcus says. “But they were really careful.”

Danielle pulls out a chair. “If Mio hadn’t narrowed down the area, I don’t think we would’ve noticed it at all.”

She is right. A hidden campsite proves very little. It is only the first thing we have found to go with what Mio has been sensing.

We agree not to change Barryville’s routines over it. The watches continue as they have, though we pay closer attention to unfamiliar faces coming and going. Danielle and Marcus vary their routes when work already takes them outside town.

Mio starts working at the other problem.

She cannot bring the edges of her mist closer without giving up the warning they provide. Instead, she begins trying to hold more of it across the same ground, enough that the next disturbance might give her more before it disappears.

Outwardly, Barryville changes very little.

About a week later, Mio wakes me sometime before dawn with her hand against my shoulder. “Gabriel. South.”

I open my eyes. “What is it?”

“Three, I think.”

That clears the last of the sleep from me. I sit up beside her while she concentrates. “Together?”

“Close. Not together.”

“Moving?”

“One was.”

We wait. Mio says nothing for several minutes, her attention somewhere beyond the southern houses. Eventually she exhales. “One’s gone.”

The other two remain longer. Whether they are together or simply near enough that Mio can feel both at once, she cannot tell. One disappears first. Several minutes later, she loses the last.

Mio rubs two fingers against her temple. “Headache?”

“A little.”

I hand her the water from beside the bed. Three separate people in the same part of the valley is new. Whatever they were doing there, they are gone before daylight.

Marcus goes south after breakfast. Mio can narrow the area enough to give him somewhere to start, but he returns a few hours later with nothing to show for it. No campsite. No discarded food. No tracks he trusts enough to call tracks. By then, Barryville is well into its Sunday routine.

Calla catches James and me after the service. “Nora wants to show you something when you get a minute. She’s at the ledgers.”

We find her later at the table where the market records are kept. The books occupy one end beside the day’s bread tallies and a list of trades still owed from previous weeks. Nora has three of the older ledgers open in front of her.

Calla stands beside her. “Show them.”

Nora turns the first book toward us. “This boy came through three Sundays ago. Said he’d come down through Narrowsburg.”

The entry includes a first name, what he traded for, and several notes about the road north. Nora taps one of them. “He said there was a washout south of town. Then this girl came through the next week and said the same road was clear.”

James leans over the page. “Someone could’ve cleared it.”

“That’s what I thought.” Nora pulls another ledger closer. “But Daniel came through between them.”

Daniel trades here often enough that his name appears across pages of the books.

“He said there wasn’t a washout.”

Nora turns several pages. Once she started looking, she found others. One child claimed to have spent two nights near a settlement west of Honesdale but knew almost nothing about it when Nora asked what they traded there. Another described a bridge as open after regular travelers reported the same wrecked truck had blocked it since spring.

“How many?” I ask.

“Six I’m pretty sure about. Two more maybe.”

“She came to me yesterday,” Calla says. “I checked the ones I knew.”

James looks through the entries. “Same kids?”

“Different every time.”

“Any of them come back?”

Nora shakes her head.

Calla folds her arms. “Some kids lie. I know that. But this is a lot of people getting things wrong about places they say they’ve just been.”

Especially when Mio felt three people south of town only hours ago.

We do not settle the question beside the market table. There are too many children moving past us, too many trades being called across the square, too many ordinary things still happening around something that may not be ordinary at all.

We talk about it that evening at the house James, Angela, Marcus, and Danielle share.

“The campsite, people moving around outside town, now this,” Danielle says. “It’s Dominion.”

“Most likely,” James says.

“Then they are being careful about it,” I say. “We have had travelers coming through here all summer. Narrowsburg. Honesdale. Settlements south of us. None of them have reported Dominion holding a town anywhere nearby.”

“Doesn’t mean they’re not here,” Danielle says.

“No. But if they are, they do not want anyone to know it yet.”

Marcus looks toward me.

“I don’t have a better explanation.”

James sits with that for a moment before asking, “Do we leave?”

The question catches me more than it should. Barryville was never supposed to become a destination. We arrived near the end of winter because there were children here who needed help. There was always another problem after that, another thing worth staying long enough to finish. Spring became summer without any of us deciding Barryville was home.

“Not yet,” Mio says.

James nods. “Didn’t mean tonight.”

“The trailer’s almost done,” Marcus says.

Danielle looks at him. “Actually almost?”

“A few days.”

“You said that last week.”

“It was almost done last week.”

That earns a brief smile around the table.

“Finish it,” I say.

We do not leave yet. Marcus finishes the trailer, and the things we would need if we left stop being scattered across several houses. For the first time in months, being ready to move becomes something we treat as a near possibility instead of a future one.

Several weeks pass without giving us a reason to use those preparations. Mio still feels movement beyond town, sometimes twice in the same night and sometimes nothing for days. Holding more mist across the valley is taking more from her. By evening she rubs at her temples more often, and some nights she lets the haze thin once the watches settle rather than forcing herself to maintain it.

The Sunday markets continue. Calla and Nora keep recording travelers alongside everything else, paying more attention now when something about a visitor does not fit.

Near the end of September, Liora finds me behind the ovens. “Dad?”

Something in her voice makes me look up from the crate I’m carrying. “What’s wrong?”

She glances back toward the square. “I don’t know. There was a boy talking to Eli. I don’t know him.”

I set the crate down. “What did he want?”

“Nothing, really. He asked where Eli lived and some stuff about the market.” She hesitates. “Then he asked if any of the adults here could move things without touching them.”

“What did Eli say?”

Liora looks at me again. “He laughed at him.”

“And the boy?”

“Said he was just asking.”

I pick the crate up again rather than look toward the square. “Don’t point him out. Tell me what he’s wearing.”

“Blue shirt. Gray backpack. His bike has a red bag tied behind the seat.”

“Did he see you listening?”

She shakes her head. “I don’t think so.”

“Good. Go help your mother.”

She takes a few steps, then turns back. “That was weird, right?”

“Yes.”

That is enough for her. She disappears around the corner. I wait before returning to the square.

It takes me several minutes to find the boy. Twelve or thirteen, perhaps. Blue shirt. Gray backpack. Red bag behind the bicycle seat. Nothing about him would have caught my attention if Liora had not described him.

He is not trading when I find him. He stands near one of the market tables with his bicycle beside him, watching two older children unload flour. A few minutes later he moves toward the bridge and stops where he can see the crossing. He talks to another boy briefly, then spends more time looking around than speaking.

None of that is proof of anything. I make sure he never sees me watching him. He is gone before the market closes.

That evening, James and I ask Calla and Nora whether any of the travelers they’ve been watching have asked questions that struck them as strange.

Calla looks at Nora. “Depends what you mean by strange.”

“Anything they seemed more interested in than whatever they came here to trade for.”

Nora pulls one of the newer ledgers toward her. “There were four I marked.”

One visitor wanted to know how many children lived in Barryville. Another asked how often the bridge was watched and whether anyone stayed there overnight. Someone wanted to know how people charged batteries and whether Barryville could do it every day. The last asked how far away the most distant regular traders came from.

Nora taps that entry. “I wasn’t sure about this one. People ask about roads all the time.”

“That’s it?”

She hesitates. “There were two others. I didn’t mark them with these because they didn’t make any sense.”

James looks up. “What did they ask?”

“A girl asked if any of the adults could light things without matches or a lighter.” Nora turns a few pages. “And somebody asked Malcolm if an adult could stop you where you were. Like you couldn’t move.”

James’s eyes meet mine.

“Liora heard another one today,” I say. “A boy asked if any of the adults here could move things without touching them.”

Calla gives a short laugh. “What?”

“That’s what I mean,” Nora says. “They didn’t make sense.”

“Did any of those kids come through before?” I ask.

Nora starts checking the earlier entries. We spend a few more minutes comparing names and descriptions, but there is little else to connect. To Calla and Nora, the questions remain exactly what they sounded like when they were asked: strange things mixed among more useful questions about Barryville. James and I leave them that way.

I wait until we are back at the house before telling the others what Nora found.

“Three,” Marcus says when I finish.

Danielle looks at him. “Three different things.”

“Fire,” James says. “Stopping somebody. Moving things without touching them.”

Mio has gone still beside me. We have wondered about the Dominion adults since Adrian first appeared on the television. Six adults surviving a plague that should have killed them raised the same question our own survival did.

“You think those are theirs,” Angela says.

“I think they might be.”

Marcus leans forward. “So maybe the cure did the same thing to them.”

“We already had reasons to think that,” James says. “This is just the first confirmation. Why would they be asking otherwise?”

Danielle looks toward the window. “And now they’re asking if the adults here can do it too.”

Mio turns her cup between her hands. “We’ve been careful.”

“We have. So have the girls.”

Whatever the people outside Barryville suspect, weeks of watching have given them nothing to confirm it. We need to keep it that way.

About a week later, two children come across the bridge from Shohola before noon.

Malcolm finds them with the bridge watch. They had escaped Matamoras on the Pennsylvania side, worked their way north until they found the railroad, and followed it along the river toward Shohola. By the time word reaches us, Angela is already inside the community hall with them.

The older child is a boy, perhaps eleven. The girl beside him looks eight or nine. Their pants are wet to the knees, their shoes caked in mud, and both carry the particular exhaustion of people who have been walking long after they stopped wanting to.

Calla is beside Angela when I enter. Nora is bringing blankets. James follows me through the door, then Marcus and Danielle.

The boy stares at us.

“Gabriel,” Calla says, keeping her voice calm, “they say Dominion took Matamoras.”

His eyes shift back to her. Angela kneels in front of them. “When did you eat last?”

He shrugs. The girl looks down at the cup in her hands.

“This morning?” Angela asks.

Another shrug.

“Food first,” she says to Nora. “Not too much at once.”

Calla stays close while they eat. We let her ask the first questions after Angela decides they are ready.

They had been living in Matamoras with other children. Port Jervis across the river had more people, enough that the two sides traded and crossed regularly.

Dominion came into Port Jervis first. The boy describes kids with guns, uniforms, bikes, and carts, with more groups still arriving after the first. Some crossed into Matamoras while others stayed on the roads and near the bridge. Older children gave orders and younger ones followed them.

Calla asks what was on the uniforms. The girl traces a shape against the blanket with one finger. “Like a compass. With an eye over it.”

Marcus looks at me. We have seen that mark before.

“Did they tell you who they were?” James asks.

The boy nods. “Dominion.”

They told everyone the towns were under Dominion protection now. People were supposed to stay where they were, turn over weapons, and do what they were told. Some of the newcomers remained at the bridge and along the roads. Others kept coming through. The boy cannot tell us how many.

“What happened if somebody didn’t listen?” Calla asks.

His mouth tightens. He looks at the girl. She has stopped eating.

Angela moves the bowl away. Calla waits.

“Owen yelled at them,” the boy says.

“How old was Owen?” Angela asks.

“Twelve.”

“What happened?”

His eyes drop to the floor. The girl answers instead. “They shot him.”

“He said they couldn’t just come in and take stuff. One of them told him to get down. Owen threw a bottle.” Her voice drops. “They shot him twice. He didn’t get back up.”

Angela sits beside her.

The boy tells us Owen wasn’t the only one. An older girl tried to pull a rifle away from one of them near the bridge. They shot her too. Someone else ran at them with a knife. The boy saw him fall but not what happened afterward.

Others were taken away instead. One boy fought when Dominion started taking his sister with some of the other prisoners. They knocked him down and dragged both of them away. He does not know what happened to either of them after that.

Nothing in their story carries the warning I have learned not to ignore. Whatever they may have misunderstood in the confusion, they are not inventing this for us.

By then people were running. He and the girl ran too.

They hid until dark and worked their way out of Matamoras, then north through the trees until they found the railroad. After that they followed it along the Pennsylvania side of the river, leaving the tracks whenever they heard anyone ahead. It took them most of the next week to reach Shohola. They do not know who commands the force. They do not know how many came into Port Jervis or how many stayed behind. They only know that there were always more children arriving than they expected.

When the boy begins repeating details he has already given us, Angela stops the questions.

James catches my eye, the question plain enough. I give him a slight nod.

“They need sleep.” Calla nods and takes over from there. She sends Nora for bedding and asks Malcolm to clear a room in one of the nearby houses. Two girls volunteer to stay with the newcomers until they settle.

I follow James outside. Mio is waiting near the steps. She takes one look at my face. “Dominion?”

“Yes.”

Her attention shifts south, toward the hills beyond town. “Still something?”

“Sometimes.”

“Pull it back.”

She looks at me.

“We will need you tonight.”

For weeks, there has always been another reason to wait. Another uncertainty. Another possibility that what we were seeing meant something else.

Matamoras ends that.

Mio nods once and heads home to rest.

Calla calls the council together that afternoon. By the time James and I arrive, Nora has the trade books spread across one end of the table. Malcolm stands near the window. Angela, Danielle, and Marcus come in behind us. Selena and Liora find places along the wall.

Calla waits until everyone settles. “They took Port Jervis and Matamoras. And I don’t think the people we’ve been marking in the books were just strange travelers anymore.”

Nora shakes her head. “Neither do I.”

“They’ve been watching us.”

I look at James before turning back to Calla. “We need to leave. Tonight.”

Calla’s expression does not change much. “I figured.”

James leans forward against the table. “We’re going to try to get out without whoever’s watching seeing us leave. If they think we’re still here, there’s no reason to suddenly rush into town. And if they do realize we’re gone later, they won’t know when we left or where we went.”

Calla considers that. “Or whether we told you anything.”

“Exactly.”

Malcolm has been quiet near the window. “What if we block the bridge?”

Calla turns toward him. “They took Port Jervis. Their army can just march up here.”

“I know. But the bridge is part of why Barryville matters. What if we make it useless?”

“We can pile things across it,” Calla says. “That might slow them down. Then they move everything and we’re right back where we started.”

Malcolm looks toward James. James has spent months working on the bridge with him, teaching him what to inspect and what could wait. “What if we destroy it?”

That changes the question.

Calla stares at him. “How? I’m not even sure we could damage that bridge enough that they couldn’t just fix it. It’s concrete.”

Malcolm keeps his attention on James. “Could you?”

James could. Danielle probably could as well. We considered the possibility months ago, when Dominion was still distant enough to discuss in the abstract. We dismissed it for much the same reason Calla is reaching now. Destroying the crossing would hurt Barryville far more reliably than it would stop anyone coming for it.

Calla does not know any of that. Whatever she thinks has changed in us, nothing she has seen would make destroying a concrete bridge seem reasonable.

“Probably,” James says.

Calla turns toward him. Malcolm does too. “Then why don’t we?”

“Because you heard what happened in Matamoras,” Calla says. “They shot Owen for throwing a bottle. They shot that girl for grabbing a gun. What do you think they do when they get here and find out we destroyed a bridge because we knew they were coming?”

Malcolm’s expression changes.

“They don’t need it to reach Barryville,” Calla continues. “So we lose the farms across the river. We lose Shohola. We lose the crossing we’ve spent months building around. And their army still comes up the road, except now they’re angry and asking who gave the order.”

“It’s our bridge.”

“You think they’re going to care?”

Malcolm looks down at the table.

I understand what he is trying to find. Something we can put between Barryville and what happened in Matamoras. Something we can break that will make Dominion decide this town is not worth the trouble.

The bitter part is that destroying the bridge would be easy.

Living with what happened afterward would not.

Calla lets the silence sit for a moment, then reaches for one of the ledgers. “The market stays. The farms keep coming. The wheels keep running. Nobody starts piling things in the road or carrying weapons around because we’re scared.”

Nora looks down at the papers beside her. “What about all this?”

“The trade books stay.”

She separates one ledger from the others. “Not those. The other stuff.”

There is more of it than there used to be. Watch schedules. Supply lists. Notes on which farms bring what and when. Drawings James made while showing the children how to maintain the wheels. Months of small decisions written down so they would not have to be solved twice.

Calla studies the pile. “They already know how to take a town. We need them to see that we’re the easiest way to keep this one running.”

James picks up one of his drawings. “Then don’t hide everything.”

Calla looks at him.

“If they walk in and find half the records missing, they’ll know you prepared for them.” He sets the drawing back down. “Leave the ordinary things. Trade. Stores. Repairs. Anything they’d expect a town to keep.”

“And the rest?” Nora asks.

James looks at the watch schedule in Malcolm’s hand. “Anything that makes it easier to replace the people already doing the work.”

Nora begins sorting the papers.

The ordinary books remain. What Barryville traded, what it stored, what was owed, what came through the market. There is nothing unusual about finding those in a town that has learned how to function again.

The notes about the people they have been watching go into the other pile. So do detailed watch schedules and the records that would tell a stranger not merely what Barryville has, but how the children running it make everything work.

Malcolm turns the current watch schedule over in his hands. “Should we put more people out tonight?”

“Not all at once,” Danielle says. “If somebody’s still watching us, changing everything today tells them something happened. Keep doing what you’ve been doing. Just make sure everybody’s paying attention.”

Calla nods. “Nobody goes anywhere alone if they don’t have to. If somebody sees something, they tell Malcolm or one of us. Otherwise, today looks like yesterday.”

Nora taps the smaller pile. “Where do we put these?”

That discussion belongs to them. So does what happens afterward.

For months, we have tried to make Barryville less dependent on us. I had imagined that eventually we would leave because there was nothing more here that required us.

Instead, we are leaving because staying may be the most dangerous thing we can do to them.

By the time we leave the meeting, there is little left to decide. Barryville will keep functioning. Calla and the others will make certain Dominion has reasons to leave it that way. They will watch the roads without announcing that they are watching.

And they will not know where we have gone.

Tonight, we leave.

We leave the council to its preparations and return to ours. Mio is already asleep when we reach the house. The rest of us pack without making Barryville look as though it is preparing for anything.

Marcus checks the trailer and both bikes. James sorts the tools, leaving behind anything the town can use more than we can. Angela packs medicine and Nathaniel’s supplies. The twins gather their clothes and whatever small things have become theirs over the summer.

I find Marcus near the garage tightening the final straps on the trailer while Liora holds the frame steady with one foot. Selena comes out carrying two rolled blankets, and Liora points toward the open space behind Nathaniel’s seat.

“Put those there.”

Selena’s eyebrows rise.

“Please.”

Selena lays the blankets where directed. As she passes her sister, she leans close enough to say something I do not catch. Liora elbows her, and Selena laughs as she keeps walking. Marcus watches them for a moment before returning to the strap.

Nathaniel spends much of the afternoon underfoot in the way only a one-year-old can. He can manage a few uncertain steps when he has something to hold, but the road north will mean being carried or riding in the trailer. James tests the padding twice. Angela tests it a third time and changes half of what James did.

By late afternoon, the packs are ready and hidden inside the houses. Barryville continues around us. Calvin clears leaves from the bridge drainage channel with two younger boys while Nora finishes the day’s market entries. A girl at the ovens corrects another child’s dough without asking Calla for help. One of the water wheels develops the uneven knock James meant to inspect, and by the time he walks down to look, Malcolm and another boy already have the loose piece apart.

James watches them for a moment. “They’ve got it.”

We turn back.

Calla comes by before sunset with Nora. She carries a cloth bag that Angela opens to find bread, cheese, and dried apples.

“We have food,” Angela says.

Calla shrugs. “Now you have more.”

Angela does not argue. Nora hands Marcus a folded page instead. “Road notes north and west. Just the ones from people we trust.”

Marcus opens it and scans the first few lines. “This helps.”

Calla looks at me. “You’re not telling us where you’re going.”

“No.”

“Good.”

There is no large farewell. There cannot be if we are serious about leaving without advertising the moment to whoever may be watching. A few people who know find reasons to pass through before dark. Danielle is hugged by two girls from the practice group and complains just enough to keep both of them from crying. Marcus receives a quick hug from one of the older girls who has spent the last several Sundays finding reasons to be near the garage. He turns red and looks toward Danielle for help.

Danielle offers none. Liora, beside the trailer, pulls one of the straps tighter than it needs to be. Selena passes with Nathaniel’s blanket and taps her sister lightly on the arm. Liora gives her a look. Selena keeps walking.

Calla waits until the others have drifted away. For a moment, she and I stand near the edge of the square listening to the river.

“You really think we’ll be okay?”

It is the first time all day she has sounded thirteen.

I look toward the bridge. Calvin is changing watch with another boy. The ovens are cooling. Someone carries the last market table inside. Across the river, a lantern moves between the reclaimed houses in Shohola.

“I do not know,” I say. “I wish I did.”

Calla looks down at her hands. “Yeah.”

“But Barryville is not what it was when we arrived. Neither are you.”

Her attention returns to the bridge. “You helped.”

“So did you.”

“More than you’re admitting.”

There is little point arguing with her tonight. “Then make it count.”

Her mouth pulls briefly at one corner. “I was planning to.”

She straightens and looks across the square. When she speaks again, her voice carries. “You should get back. I’ll make sure everyone who knows keeps their mouth shut until morning.”

I nod. “Thank you, Calla.”

“Go.”

Mio wakes a short while later. Angela makes sure she eats before she goes outside. The strained heaviness from earlier is gone, though sleep has left a crease along one side of her face.

A little mist already hangs over the Delaware. Nothing unusual for an October evening. It gathers in the lowest places along the bank and drifts in thin patches above the water.

Mio stands at the edge of the yard and watches it.

At first, the change is difficult to see. The patches along the river linger instead of thinning. More gathers between them. Farther out, where her mist has spent the summer stretched thin enough that I sometimes forget it is there, the haze begins drawing inward.

She stays there for several minutes.

“Two,” she says. “Maybe three. South.”

I look toward the darkening hills. “Still watching?”

“I think so.”

She closes her eyes again.

By the time the sun disappears behind the ridge, the Delaware is beginning to vanish.

James watches from the doorway. “We go as soon as it’s dark enough.”

Mio opens her eyes. “Give me a little time.”

Barryville settles into an evening that looks ordinary from outside. Lamps remain lit in our houses. The bridge watch changes at the usual time. Our packs move through back doors in twos and threes toward the darker northern edge of town.

The fog keeps building.

There is no sudden wall of white. Moisture gathers along the water and in the low ground where fog belongs on a cold October night, except tonight it does not stop there. It slips between houses, softens the road, climbs the lower slopes and keeps thickening.

I watch Mio as much as the fog. Months ago, hiding one campsite took most of her concentration. All summer she has stretched herself farther, learning how much she can hold and how thinly she can spread it.

Tonight she pulls all of that practice inward.

The far bank disappears.

James, Angela, Danielle, and Marcus leave first. Nathaniel is awake and quiet against Angela’s shoulder while Marcus and Danielle guide the two e-bikes harnessed to the trailer. They disappear north through the fog together.

We give them enough time to clear the edge of town, but not enough to put real distance between us.

Mio, Selena, Liora, and I follow.

Somewhere toward the bridge, a voice carries through the fog. “Lucky night for it.”

Another voice answers too quietly for me to make out the words.

Mio looks at me. I almost smile.

The nearest houses fade into gray.

“You have enough?” I ask.

“For now.”

We move north without lanterns. The western road offers too little cover and too few ways off it if someone is waiting ahead. South takes us across the bridge, toward Port Jervis and Matamoras.

North gives us choices.

For tonight, that is enough.

At the edge of town, I stop once.

The fog has swallowed most of Barryville. I can hear the Delaware and the uneven knock of one water wheel turning below the bridge. Somewhere behind the haze, Calla and Nora are heading home. Calvin has a watch to keep. Tomorrow the ovens will need tending whether we are there or not.

Mio touches my arm.

I turn back to the road.

By morning, Dominion may know we are gone. If the watchers are theirs, they may even work out that north was our only reasonable opening.

They will not know where north leads.

Neither do we.

We keep walking.