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my baby?”
    “You’ll need him to get your milk flowing,” the Matrarc said. “A baby has just arrived who’s too weak even to suck. Do the best you can for her. Mlady Roxanne, take them in. Quickly, please.”
    The Matrarc passed Gaia’s sister to a tall, angular woman who gave Gaia a swift look through her glasses, then took the baby into the lodge. Mlady Eva was untucking her blouse as she hurried after them.
    “Wait for me,” Gaia said.
    “No, stay,” the Matrarc said. “We need to get acquainted. What’s your name, child?”
    Gaia peered anxiously through the screen door, but already the others were out of sight. She tried to follow, but her legs were still too wobbly. “Where are they going? I need to be with my sister.”
    “She’s not your own child, then?” the Matrarc asked.
    “No. Of course not.” Gaia glanced at Chardo to find him regarding her with faint surprise, as if he had been operating under the same misassumption as the Matrarc. “I would never have been feeding her rabbit broth if I could have nursed her myself,” she said to him.
    “I didn’t know what to think,” he said.
    “Obviously, you’ve been through an ordeal,” the Matrarc cut in, lifting a hand. “Let me see your face.”
    Gaia backed against the railing to avoid the Matrarc’s touch. “No,” she said.
    “Ah!” said the Matrarc in surprise, dropping her hand.
    “Mlass, you need to cooperate with her,” Chardo said.
    Cooperating, Gaia had learned, could be dangerous. “I need to be with my sister,” she argued. “Take me to her and then I’ll cooperate.”
    The Matrarc drummed her fingers on top of her cane. “You have that backwards, I’m afraid. How old are you? Where have you come from?”
    “I’m Gaia Stone,” she said. “I’m sixteen. I left Wharfton two weeks ago. Now let me in there. We’re wasting time.”
    A puzzled crease came to the Matrarc’s forehead. “Why do I know this name?” she asked. “Who are your parents?”
    “They were Bonnie and Jasper Stone.” A thought hit Gaia. “Do you know my grandmother, Danni Orion? Is she here?”
    The Matrarc touched her own necklace, and took a long moment before she replied. “Danni Orion was the Matrarc before me. I’m sorry to tell you she’s been dead these ten years now.”
    As the Matrarc released her necklace, Gaia saw the pendant clearly for the first time. It was a gilt-edged monocle, and the familiarity of it stunned her. Years ago, in one of her earliest memories, she’d seen the same monocle in the sunlight as her grandmother twisted it to dazzle her.
    “You have my grandmother’s monocle,” Gaia said in wonder. Gone was the chance to ever know her grandmother, replaced by a concrete truth: this was the place she’d been seeking for weeks in the wasteland, her grandmother’s home, the Dead Forest that Gaia’s mother and Old Meg had urged her to find. She gazed out at the big, shady trees and lush greens of the commons, proof that nothing here was dead except the possibility she would ever be reunited with Danni O.
    “Gaia Stone,” the Matrarc said slowly, testing the name. “Your grandmother told me about your family. A brother was taken away from you, I think. I remember now. They burned your face, didn’t they?”
    Everything inside Gaia slowed down, and she let her gaze drift up to the woman’s sightless eyes. It was beyond strange to come all this way and meet someone who knew, without seeing or touching her, that her face was scarred. She untucked the hair behind her left ear to let it slide forward.
    “Two brothers,” Gaia said, correcting her, as if it still mattered. “The Enclave took both of my brothers. One I’ve never met. The other left for the wasteland shortly before I did.”
    “Why weren’t you taken into the Enclave? I don’t understand.”
    “The burn scar kept me out of consideration for advancing or I might have been taken, too.”
    “Where are your parents now?” the Matrarc