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Adelaide pulls the old man through the wall of flame and into her bedroom.

He struggles, clawing at her back, his neck twisting from side to side. He juts his head forward but does not make contact, and Adelaide buries her head into his neck as he labors beneath her.

The dogs wail at the bedroom window, unable or unwilling to brave the broken glass and enter her burning cabin, as she tightens her embrace around their master.

The old man releases a sound that bubbles from his mouth, as though he is underwater.

It is not that Adelaide doesn’t feel the pain of the fire—it is the worst pain she’s felt in all her life, like her skin is splitting and peeling away from the muscle. Maybe it is. She wants to run from this kind of pain, scream through it, feel hate and anger at it. Even so, the burning of her flesh is nothing compared to the torment of being pressed against the old man. But every lick of fire that pops against her skin burns him as well, and she embraces him tighter.

This man who entered her home in the middle of the night (eyes frenzied and aglow, ripping her clothes, pinning her down) is beneath her very body right now, ablaze.

She hopes he feels helpless and violated. She hopes he wants to vomit. She hopes he feels alone. She hopes he wants to die.

She’d told him to stay off her goddamned property, but he didn’t listen. He didn’t listen.

The old man gags, the sound so close to her ear that she feels the wetness of it against her face. He kicks the wall, and the clock tumbles from its nail, whispering a simple tick-tick-tick before exploding against the floor.

Adelaide looks past the flames, and locks eyes with River.

The girl stands bare as a wild animal amid a ring of fire, the light glistening off her damp skin like moonlight on the water, Adelaide’s secret spot. The girl’s hair is untamed like the ferns that grow below the canopies in the spring.

Adelaide wishes she could say something to the girl, but she has so few words left, and River wouldn’t understand them anyway. So Adelaide smiles, and hopes that is enough because it is all the two of them have left to share.

In the kitchen, the ceiling collapses. River flinches but does not move. Adelaide wants to scream at her to go, but the smoke has rendered her throat useless.

The living room window implodes, showering the girl with glass. Still, she does not move. River watches, captivated, her arms limp on either side of her torso.

The fire is at Adelaide’s throat now. Her sleeves are aflame, and her eyes burn. She squeezes them shut. When she opens them again, everything has clouded over. But she can still see River.

And something else.

Something galloping on all fours.

A wild mane of black matted curls—the wild woman scooping up her daughter, carrying River out of the cabin and into the night.

Adelaide wants that to be the last thing she sees, so she closes her eyes.

Beneath her, the old man has gone silent. He no longer moves. Adelaide clings tighter to him still, and smells her hair burning. She exhales the stench, unsure if she will draw another breath.

She will not.

Her chest closes, and her throat closes, and her mouth closes, and Adelaide is no longer there at all. Not really. Adelaide is in the river now, where the water forms a symphonic eddy, and red leaves drift somewhere high above her. The water is warm.

It is magnificent.

The girl stands with mother beneath brother’s favorite tree—the one that has the curly flowers now that the pale rain is gone, and together, they watch the place where the cabin once stood.

The girl looks to the trees, which are now the color of the sky at night, and she looks to the garden, where brother still sleeps in the dirt. And she thinks of the woman who loved her like a mother, and knows that the woman isn’t hurt anymore.

When the girl was in the cabin, she felt when the woman’s hurt went away. It was when the woman glowed like the sun, like a piece of tree from the fireplace. When she hugged the man, down on the ground, and he became like a piece of tree from the fireplace, too. That’s when the woman’s hurt went away.

Mother leans down and pushes her forehead against the girl’s forehead, and River pushes back.

River is hungry. She hopes mother takes her to find the plants with the curly green leaves that stick out from beneath the ground. Or the fat, creamy roots shaped like fingers that are buried under the plant that no longer has the fuzzy flowers. Because even though the pale rain has passed, it is still very cold, and they must dig and hunt every day, otherwise they will not eat for many days and many nights. And then they’ll be buried in the square forest like brother.

Something dashes across their path and mother nearly attacks, but the girl holds her back.

It’s not food, the girl says.

Mother says, Yes, it is.

Trust me, the girl says.

And mother does.

The two of them stand quietly and watch the chicken hunt for bugs beneath leaves and in between rocks.

This is the woman’s chicken. The girl can say chic-ken now, and she does, and mother beams and smiles at the strange word. They watch the bird scurry this way and that, excited by everything he sees. And then he dashes away, disappearing beyond the trees.

The girl squeezes mother’s hand and asks, Can we come back here again?

And mother says, Perhaps another day.

She has told her mother about her new name, and she hopes mother can learn to say it. She will tell mother about brother’s new name, too.

Perhaps another day.

She practices her name as they walk.

“Ri-ver.”

“Ri-ver.”

“River.”

The girl smiles at mother, and mother smiles back.

Above them is the bird that makes the yeep sound.