The inevitable snowfall had the enclave on edge. The adults checked and double checked their preparations, reviewing each other’s math, allowing for unexpected extremes in the weather. Sam remembered one year when one of the strange winds blew through, throwing heaps of snow into the air and collecting them into boulders that smashed roofs and devastated fields. It was comforting to see Emily and Quinn’s concrete basement shelter. 

Emily had come to sit on the edge of her bed that morning, which Sam had come to interpret as her way of initiating a “serious conversation”. None of them were that serious, really.

“So,” Em said, “Snow’s coming. A lot of long, boring days ahead of us.”

Sam nodded. Yes, she knew that.

“So I was thinking, maybe we could spend that time learning a bit?” Her fingers twisted around each other in her lap. “Can you read, Sam?”

Sam shook her head. 

“Do you want to learn? You can say no.”

It wasn’t a hard decision. “I want to.”

Emily smiled. “There are some workbooks and things around, I’ll borrow some for us. Maybe we can do a little math, too.”

Suddenly Sam wondered what Emily’s life was supposed to look like, before the storms. She figured Em was born after the whispers of strangeness had started, but she still would have thought about school and a job and those sorts of things. Sam had read a lot of books on what before looked like, but it seemed so distant from how things were now. Even ten years ago, before ’49, seemed too far away to reach. 

The children were put to work as the enclave prepared. Sam joined River and Iris hauling water from the well to the storage unit. River told her Mike Harvey had built the well, the storage, and the barn where the cows lived, some years before those kinds of supplies were hard to find. River’s fathers described him as something called a “prepper”. 

“He’s nice, though. Dad says he’s a walking contradiction.” River walked beside their small wagon to steady the containers. Iris and Sam were taking turns pulling - the little hills and potholes took a toll on the shoulders. 

“Don’t say that outside the house,” Iris said. 

“I don’t think it’s supposed to be mean.”

“Still, you shouldn’t talk too much about someone behind their back.”

River stuck out her bottom lip and looked away. Beside her, Sam heard Iris sigh. The incident with the treehouse hadn’t kept River away from Sam’s porch, but now Iris sometimes joined her. Unlike her sister, Iris was mostly content to sit in silence.

They deposited their first load and headed back for the next.

“Do you like your mittens?” Iris asked. 

Sam looked down. They weren’t extraordinary, just dark blue yarn knit into the right shape. But she knew someone had made them, so she nodded.

Iris looked down at the ground. “That’s good. I made those.”

Sam examined the mittens with a bit more attention. “They’re good,” she said softly. “They’re very even.”

It was hard to tell given the cold, but Sam thought maybe Iris’s cheeks got a little redder.

On their fourth trip to the container they realized they had a problem. Their barrels were edging outside their allotted chalk outline, and the remaining barrels would need to be stacked. 

Iris tested the weight of one of them and grimaced. “We’ll have to get someone.”

Sam wasn’t sure they should. They’d been assigned to this specific job, which meant they were expected to complete it properly. Asking for help would pull someone away from their assigned work, and Sam didn’t want to see Iris and River scolded. 

She checked behind her towards the open front of the container. Everyone seemed distracted by their own tasks, and the girls were alone within the container itself. 

Sam reached out both hand and focused on the water inside the blue plastic barrels. She could feel it reached back, pulled towards her. There was always something eager about it, an energy that made Sam a bit nervous. Firmly she guided the energy away from herself and upwards towards the ceiling. One barrel floated up, and she reached for the one beside it - two at once was easy. The tricky part was landing them without knocking the bottom layer over. Biting her lip, Sam held tight to her own concentration as she inched the barrels down, tiny movements, before they settled atop the others and Sam was confident they would stay there. She let go, stepping back and letting out a breath she didn’t know she’d been holding.

“Witch!”

Sam whirled around, catching wide eyes from Iris and River before a young man she didn’t know grabbed her arm. He pulled her stumbling towards the entrance. 

“Zach, don’t.” Iris caught Sam’s other hand, gently pulling her back.

“You don’t know her.” Zach yanked her away from Iris and pushed her out of the container into the pale light of the afternoon. Sam stumbled and caught herself, unwilling to fall in front of this boy.

“You don’t know her,” Zach repeated, turning to Iris behind him. “None of us know her. But you all just let her run around like she’s lived her forever! How do we know she won’t stab us in the back first chance she gets? Just because she had it bad? We all have it bad. It doesn’t mean anything.”

Everyone around them was staring. Sam felt their eyes on her even as Zach directed his speech to Iris. This was a different kind of hate than she expected. She’d been shouted at plenty, but mostly because she’d done something wrong or people were irritated with her. Those kinds of words barely stung anymore. But Zach made sense, and that hurt worst of all. 

Other people had come over to see what the shouting was about. Camilla was at the front, storming up the street. “Zachary March!” she snapped as she reached him.  “I raised you better than this.”

“She’s a water witch, Mum. She has a weapon in her hand every second. She isn’t some kind of stray animal you’re keeping in a cardboard box.”

Sam had not considered being kicked out. She thought about leaving often, deterred mainly by the threat of the snow. But thrown out? Did they not want to use her for what she could do?

“He’s got a point,” said a bearded man wearing work gloves and an oil splattered jacket. Mike Harvey, most likely.

Camilla turned to him. “You touch this girl over my dead body, Mike Harvey.”

He raised his hands and stepped back. “I’m just suggesting we keep an eye on her.”

There it was. The suggestion they keep watch on her. That turned into a locked room, and then somewhere worse. Sam felt her stomach churn and tried to control the urge to run. The world warped and wavered in front of her.

She flinched away as someone approached, then realized it was only Emily. Sometime in the last two weeks she’d come to trust this person, despite her best efforts to keep herself closed off. 

Emily knelt on the asphalt and put her hands on either side of Sam’s face. The strands of yarn were ticklish on her cheeks, and the warmth of Emily’s hands poured through them. Sam’s skin tingled as it warmed.

“You’re alright,” Emily said, quiet and yet somehow loud enough to drown out everything else. “Look at me, Sam. It’s okay. Nobody here’s going to hurt you.”

Sam looked at her, but didn’t believe her. She tried to shake her head against Emily’s hands.

“I promise you they won’t. Mike doesn’t want to lock you up, baby, he’s just trying to sound manly. I don’t know who he’s trying to impress bullying a child, but there you go.”

Sam stifled a very small laugh - it probably wasn’t a joke.

Emily smiled. “They’re just scared, baby. Everybody’s a little scared all the time, you know that. Sometimes that fear makes people do awful, violent things. But not everybody. Some people deal with it by protecting things.”

Sam hadn’t cried in a long time. It was a waste, really - it took energy and didn’t do anything. But right now she wanted to cry.

Emily brushed a mitten across her cheek. “It’s okay. I got you.”

“I’m not your baby,” Sam said.

“You’re a baby.” Was it just the light, or did Emily’s eyes seem a little watery? “You’re too short, you know. You need to eat more.”

It was such an ordinary thing to say that it made Sam laugh a real, proper laugh. Funny, the laughter seemed to make the tears flow easier. 

Emily swept Sam’s hair back and wiped more tears away. “You’re safe, Sam, I promise.”

Would it be silly to ask her questions out loud? Faintly Sam was aware the other voices around her had gone silent. But she could still speak quietly enough only Emily could hear.

“Nobody’s going to lock me in a barn?” she whispered.

Emily flinched, her tears spilling over. “No, never.”

“Promise?”

Despite her soft touch and her gentle warmth, Sam suddenly saw iron in the back of Emily’s expression. “Over my dead body, baby,” she said. 

Sam just stared, not sure what to do next. Suddenly she could really see the rest of the enclave in a ragged circle around her. River and Iris weren’t far. Mike Harvey had stepped a long ways back. Their faces weren’t angry, or scared. Mostly sad — pitying, maybe, an expression Sam knew very well.

“Lot of chores in your future, young man,” Paul March told his son. “Better get started.” He put an arm around Zachary’s shoulder and turned him towards their house.

The air was still tense, but after a moment people began to move on. There was still work to be done.

“You want to stay out here or go home?” Emily asked.

Sam caught Zachary glaring as his father walked him away. “Your place,” she said. 

Emily put a hand on her shoulder. “Home it is.”