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fit perfectly.
    â€œThere’s snowfall two miles away,” David said. “Heavy. You’re keeping it to the south, I take it?”
    â€œTrying,” Lewis said. “This whole region’s soaked with moisture. Sooner or later it’s going to start coming down. There’s only so far you can push the system before it starts pushing back, and the last thing I want is to start a winter storm while we’re trying to get out of here. How’s Mom, by the way?”
    â€œQuiet.”
    Mom? I debated it for a few seconds, then asked aloud. Both men turned to look at me as I tugged the laces tighter and knotted the right boot.
    â€œMother Earth,” Lewis said. “The primal intelligence of the planet. Mom. She’s been a little…unhappy lately.”
    I tried to figure out if he was joking, and decided—rather grimly—that he wasn’t. Great. Wardens who could control all kinds of things. Spooky disappearing Djinn. And now the ground I was walking on had some kind of hidden intelligence.
    Losing my memory was turning out to be a real education.
    I tied off my left boot and stood up, shouldering my pack. David had balanced it well; it seemed to ride nicely, with no extra strain.
    â€œI can take it if you get tired,” David said, walking past me.
    I snorted. “I’m surprised you didn’t try to take it in the first place.”
    â€œI know better,” he said. “When you want help, you’ll ask for it.”
    We’d left the campsite and gone about a mile before I broached the question again. David was in front of me, Lewis ahead of him. It was as private as this was likely to get. “David? About last night…what I said…about children.”
    No answer. He kept walking, long strides, following Lewis’s progress. I had to hurry to keep up.
    â€œIs there a child?” I asked. My heart was hammering, and I didn’t think it was from the exercise. “Mine, yours, ours? What’s going on?”
    â€œNot now.”
    â€œYeah, now. Look, the way you reacted—”
    â€œI can’t talk about it now.”
    â€œBut—”
    He turned, and I stumbled to a halt, suddenly aware of just how tall he was. He wasn’t especially broad, but I’d had my hands pressing against his chest, and I knew that there was muscle under that checked shirt. Plus, he’d thrown Lewis across the clearing like a plush toy.
    â€œWhat do you want to know?” he asked, face taut, voice intense. “That we had a child? We did. Her name was Imara. She was part of our souls, Jo, and how do you think it feels for me to know that you don’t even recognize her name ?”
    He turned, olive coat belling in a gust of cold wind, and followed Lewis up the slope. Lewis had paused at the top, looking down at us.
    He didn’t say anything, just plunged down the other side. I saved my breath and concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other.
    Imara. I kept repeating the name in my head, hoping for some kind of resonance, some spark of memory. I’d had a daughter , for God’s sake. How could I remember the brand name of the shoes I was wearing and not remember my own child? Not remember carrying her, or holding her, or…
    Or how she’d died. Because even though nobody had said it, that was what everybody meant. Imara had been born, and Imara had died, and I had no memory at all of any part of it.
    And of everything I’d lost, that was the piece that made me feel desperately, horribly incomplete.
    Â 
    Lewis led us through what I could only guess was an old-growth forest of the Great Northwest. Oregon, Washington—somewhere in there. He set a brutal pace, moving fast to keep his body heat up. We didn’t take breaks. When we finally stopped, I dropped my pack and staggered off into the woods to pee. When I came back, Lewis had another fire going, and he was wrapped in one of the unrolled