For the next three hours, I ate like I had never eaten before, washing it all down with cranberry and cactus juice. Each dish had been cooked to perfection, but the most mouthwatering were the traditional desert spreads. There was javelina, whitetail deer, and a variety of desert reptiles, including rattlesnake and chuckwalla. Each meat was complemented by root and leafy vegetables, seasoned with pepper and herbs. Once our food was gone, we shifted between tarps, trying the other cooks’ dishes and sharing stories. The atmosphere took on a feeling of homeliness and warmth, and it wasn’t before my stomach was full and my eyes heavy.

Nico stayed by my side, explaining each new food and joining in on the conversation. As the night progressed, we even relaxed enough to tell the story of our journey from Karakul. Nico raised his glass, downing the juice in one gulp. “You should have seen her face when she tried a pancake for the first time!” he laughed, “you would have thought that she saw the Creator himself! She ate so much, she made herself sick!”

The table roared with laughter. I smiled, breaking off another piece of bread. Nico filled his glass again, and I eyed it suspiciously. The way he’s acting, I doubt that’s just juice.

“You shouldn’t make fun of someone who saved your life,” I said.

He laughed, shaking his head and garnering some odd looks from the table. “It’s two to one.”

I titled my head, considering. The night of the Fortress and the trip from Karakul… I suppose he has a point. “Fine,” I conceded, “but the day’s not over yet.”

Soon, other people told the stories of how they’d arrived at Bellgate. Everyone listened with rapt attention, and I had the sense that the festival was the only time of year the topic was discussed. As I listened, my respect for Bellgate’s people only grew. Many of the stories were more perilous than my own, and no one had made the journey easily: they had crossed great lakes, hiked through deserts, and survived freezing cold all while fleeing Keon’s men.

As the feast concluded, the leftovers were carefully packed away. Nico had gone to drink with his friends, and I sat by a furnace, talking with Sarah. Resting against the raised garden beds, we finally had a chance to catch up on everything we’d missed since I moved out. She touched my arm gently, asking me about life in the base, and I felt a rush of affection for her—even though we were only ten years apart in age, she was like the mother I had never had.

“Sarah,” I asked, “how did you come to Bellgate?”

She looked ahead. “I was young, only a teenager. I lived in the south, not far from Chibron. My late grandfather learned of this place from a scout, and we traveled here together. I came back for Muriel a year later.” She glanced at my face, and her eyes held melancholy that hinted at a darker part to her story. Did her grandfather pass away during their travels? I wondered, but I didn’t press.

We moved on to lighter topics, and I began to add on to Nico’s retelling of our trip from Karakul. As I told her how we had barely escaped capture, I found myself praising his strength and foresight. My mouth ran ahead of my mind, and before long I was talking about how gentle he was with the sundew and how he worried when I had grown nervous in the crowd.

Sarah smiled, letting me gush. “I’m glad you have someone to share your time with,” she said. “The captain is a good man; he has helped dozens of people find refuge in Bellgate. But…you must think of yourself as well.” Suddenly, her face grew more serious. Discreetly, she placed a brown pouch into my hands. I looked inside, surprised to see a cluster of yellow flowers, still attached to the stem.

“It is silphium,” she said, “a natural contraceptive.”

I tried to push the bag back into her lap, but she refused. “I don’t need this,” I said.

“I have seen how you and the captain look at each other, Anabelle. There is no shame in enjoying yourselves, as long as you are safe. As long as you do not make a mistake that you will regret forever.”

Blood rushed to my face. “I-”

“Shh,” Sarah said, waving away my embarrassment. “Now, continue what you were saying.”

***

I woke up at dawn, pushed against one of Gibnor’s garden beds. The furnace was no longer running, but the air inside the tarp still held some heat. I sat up stiffly, rubbing my head. Everything was stiff and sore. What am I doing here? I wondered until I remembered how, the night before, we’d decided to fall asleep under the stars. It had seemed like a good idea at the time, when we were stuffed with delicious food and drunk on conversation.

I looked around for Nico before remembering that he was off on patrol for the second day of the festival. I walked to the edge of Gibnor and let my feet dangle over the edge, keeping both hands planted behind me to still my vertigo. The air was cold, but in my long coat and snow pants it was not unbearable. For the next half hour, I watched the sun as it rose over the canyon. It was a magnificent sight, brilliant in its rawness.

A horn sounded, announcing the second day of the festival. I climbed down to Gibnor’s main ledge and joined the growing crowd, wondering what the second day would hold. An impromptu market hand sprung up along the rock wall, with vendors selling their freshly harvested goods for only pennies. I pulled out my coin pouch, determined to try as much as I could before the festival was over.

I walked down the main ledge, following shouts of “cactus juice!” and “rattlesnake jerky!” Soon, my hands were full of more food than I could eat, and I wrapped the extra in brown paper and put it in my pocket.

Within Gibnor’s halls, the festival was in full swing. Art exhibits, now fully complete, lined the walls of the caves and hallways. Nico’s plant was the centerpiece in a room filled with exotic cuttings and artifacts unearthed by the scouting teams. I strolled through the exhibits, chewing a candy made of tree sap and chatting with people I knew. Even more decorations adorned the halls on the second day, and men and women alike had dressed up for the festival by braiding flowers into their hair and painting their eyes with kohl.

The more I explored, the more I discovered. The festival had touched every corner of Bellgate. On Bushnell, the largest storage room had been converted into a theater, and groups of performers took turns putting on plays and acrobatic performances. In the canyon below, sports games had broken out: people raced on rams and chased after a ball the size of a watermelon.

It felt like only a few hours had passed by the time the day faded away. With my parcels of food in hand, I made my way down to the infirmary and visited Owen. The medics had decorated his room, and a bag of candies sat by his bedside. He was laying in bed with his bad leg elevated, holding a stein in his left hand. As he gestured in greeting, a few drops of the liquid sloshed out, staining the bed sheets red.

“Hey,” I said, handing him the parcels. “I saved some food for you.”

“T’ank you,” he said, slurring his words.

I narrowed my eyes, pointing at the stein. “What’s that?”

“Wine. Want some?”

Worry bubbled up in my stomach, and I resisted the urge to spill the wine onto the cave floor. Who gave that to him? The last thing Owen needs is to discover alcohol… but it is a holiday. “I’ll pass, but you enjoy it.”

He shrugged. “Your loss.”

He continued to drink as we shared the food and spoke of the festivities. Before long, his eyelids began to droop, and soon he was fast asleep. I pulled the stein from his grasp, poured the liquid down the drain, and refilled it with water. He’ll need it in the morning.

When I shouldered my pack and left the infirmary, the main ledge was no longer crowded. I looked around, confused, and saw groups of people crossing the canyon and disappearing through Bellgate’s arch. Not wanting to be left out of the second night’s festivities, I slipped down the stairs and joined the procession.