The sun woke Vah, blaring down with cold brightness. He lay on his back beneath the sky, the sound of bubbling water and his brothers' voices near.

"Then what will we do?" Isecan asked. "How can we survive? Every day it is colder. There is no food in this desolate land."

"Vah is awake."

Vah sat up, but Findel's back was to him. How did he know he was awake?

"Are you well, brother?" Vah asked him.

"I am well. I am full of life." Still, Findel did not turn to look at him.

Vah struggled up and stepped around in front of Findel. Both of his brothers were kneeling, their legs tucked under them, both facing the pool of water. They leaned to the sides as Vah obstructed their view.

Findel looked anything but full of life. The strange colors on his hand and face had faded a bit, but they were not gone.

"You drank the water," Findel said, now looking Vah in the face, as if searching for signs there. "Did you sense nothing?"

"It was just hot water."

"It is not just water. It is the end of our journey."

"Vah is right to be concerned," Isecan said. "We must stay. The matter is how."

"Let us go to our people," Findel said. He reached out a hand and Vah took it, helping him to his feet. Whatever life Findel felt, his body was still frail.

"Where are our people?" Vah asked. They were alone in the Vale, and no one remained atop the crest.

Isecan pointed east.

"Elnwë and the others have found a stream in a sheltered place."

Together, the brothers trudged up the slope and across the broken landscape. A tir hill rose a few hundred feet to the east, a great jumble of rock. They circled around it and found a stream flowing over stones. There, the people sheltered in the lee of the hill from the westerly wind. Near the stream, the grass was greener. Seabirds wheeled overhead, keening. Vah had yet to see any other creatures in the land besides seabirds.

"Are you well, Findel?" Elnwë called.

"Well, friend," Findel answered, offering a frail smile.

"We found lichen," Elnwë said. "It is palatable. At least, I think it is safe. We have saved some for you." He held up a tuft of lichen that Vah didn't recognize.

"Thank you," Findel said, reaching out and taking the plant. The lichen had a fibrous stalk and a bulbous root, and its leaves were variegated with jagged shapes. "How much is there?"

"Not enough for everyone."

"Is there any yet growing?"

"We have gathered it all."

Tessiel stood among those who had gathered near. The legs of the babe in her arms hung limp. Vah hoped it was asleep.

"We have come here to die," she said. "We must go to the sea. There will be seaweed there, at least."

Vah looked at her with relief. Maybe others had retained their wits. There may yet be hope.

"No!" Findel snapped. Vah flinched at the sudden vehemence in his voice.

"My babe will die!" Tessiel shouted. "I am going to the sea. Alone if I must. I thought we would find life here, but there is no food. The water will not save us."

She turned to leave, and more than a few others rose, prepared to follow.

Findel raised his voice to a hoarse shout:

"Be still!"

A few hesitated, but Tessiel strode away. A handful followed her.

Findel raised his hand toward her, as if he could pull her back. The strange crusted markings on his skin glinted in the sunlight like fish-scale. A grimace crossed his face.

"Be still," he said, but he didn't shout it. His tone was flat.

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Somehow, it worked. All the folk stopped moving. They didn't even turn to look—they simply stopped.

"We have found something here," Findel said in the same tone. "Something that is not to be forsaken. Give me one day. One day to meditate. Here!" He held out the lichen toward Tessiel. "You can have this."

Tessiel did not move. No one did. She didn't even turn to look at him. "Take it!" Findel urged. "The rest of you rest. Give me until tomorrow."

At that, Tessiel turned. She walked up to Findel and snatched the plant from his hand.

"It is not enough," she said. "I must eat. I have no more milk."

"I will search for more," Vah said. "I will go search."

Findel glanced at him, and then nodded.

***

A little more lichen grew between rocks on a lower hill to the east. He hunched as he picked the lichen, cradling the little bundle against his body. Why the others had heeded his brother's words, he did not know. Vah would have gone to the sea, anyway. At least, if he were Tessiel. He would not abandon his brothers, but if he had a babe? Why Tessiel stopped, he could not fathom. Findel had always been beloved. It was easy to like and follow him, but could that explain it? Tessiel had looked on Findel with eyes of mingled despair and anger that must have cut his brother's soul. And yet she had stayed.

With the hillside picked bare and the wind whipping bitterly, Vah headed back, fearing that his legs may give way. What little lichen Vah had found, he brought back to Tessiel. She did not speak to him or meet his gaze. She cradled her babe in her arms. The child was quiet, its eyes closed.

Vah could not sleep that night. He drank water from the stream and set out again to search for more. At least if he died, he would die trying. He wandered in circles, making sure not to lose sight of the high tir against the horizon. The moon set, and the stars broke out from behind the ragged clouds. At last, dawn came, and it was in the dawn that Vah saw the pitiful little plant. It was a sorrel, pale and malnourished, part of its root bulb exposed in the shallow soil. It had tried to bolt, sending up a single stalk that swayed in the wind. He knew the plant; in what felt like another world, the Vien people had picked it as an herb in their native forests, though this was a meaner and stalkier variety, not something they would have even bothered with before.

The journey back to the tir took a long time; it was hard to pick up his feet high enough not to stumble on stones. An hour after sunrise he arrived clinging to the pitiful stalk, its leaves blowing in the wind.

Tessiel sat next to a small pile of stones. Her babe was missing from her arms. She did not weep. She stared into the east, past the faded dawn. Vah stood dumbly, unable to move away from the sight of the little cairn.

Findel approached. Rather than face him, Tessiel simply lay down next to the cairn, her arm folded under her head.

"I grieve with you for your loss," Findel said, standing over her.

"You did not care yesterday when it might have mattered."

Findel frowned, but then he turned to Vah.

"You should not wander off like that. I was getting ready to send others out to look for you."

"We should all be searching for food," Vah said.

"What do you have?" Findel nodded to Vah's hand.

"Sorrel." He held it up. Findel did not need Vah to tell him what it was.

"Sorrel," Findel repeated, and his mouth twitched, as if he might have smiled. "I remember sorrel."

Of course he did. Their mother had liked the tart leafy plant and had often taken them to pick it when they were little children. That was an old memory. The Vien people lived for many years, but eventually they passed on, leaving withered bodies to feed the same forests that had fed them so long. They had interred their mother among the roots of a tree near a patch of sorrel.

Vah was rubbing his thumb over the roots, knocking the remnants of clinging soil away. Findel held out his hand, and without thinking or begrudging, Vah gave him the plant. Findel stared at it.

"So frail, and yet there is still life in it."

"More than in us," Vah said, but he looked at the little pile of rocks beside Tessiel. His brother cocked his head, squinting as if confused, but whatever thought he had quickly passed.

"Isecan," Findel called. Their middle brother looked up from where he sat dozing cross-legged next to the stream.

"Help me," Findel said, kneeling down. Isecan stared as if confused. Findel looked at him again. "Help me."

As if in a stupor, Isecan came and knelt beside his elder brother as Findel scraped the earth with his fingers. There was more soil along the stream than in other places, which was probably why the grass was denser there. Together, he and Isecan worked to dig a hole in the rocky soil with their fingertips. Vah watched in confusion as his brothers scrabbled at the dirt and replanted the only bit of food their people had, as if they would start a garden of one dying plant. Madness encompassed him all around, and he wasn't sure he had anything left to fight it with.

Findel finished patting down the dirt back over the root and leaned back on his haunches, shoulder to shoulder with Isecan. They breathed as if it were hard work, so weak were their bodies. Findel looked up at the people scattered around, but few had taken note. They stood or sat or lay motionless, some of them—including Tessiel—with their backs turned to the others, as if withdrawn inside themselves.

"Look!" he called. "Watch."

Some of the weary refugees turned to look. Findel reached his hand out over the wilting, bruised sorrel. "Help," he muttered to Isecan, who reached his hand out as well. "Grab hold of it," Findel said.

"I'm trying," Isecan answered. But neither of them grabbed the plant. "I'm trying."

"Grasp it first."

"I have. I have it." Neither of them touched the battered little plant.

"Now with me."

His brothers stared at the sorrel, and Vah stared with them, a blooming horror in his stomach. He felt nothing. He saw nothing besides the sorrel. But the sorrel changed. Its wilted leaves stiffened. Its bruises healed. And it grew. It grew as if he was watching whole seasons flowing by in moments. New leaves sprouted, lush and tender. It bolted, flowered, and seeds fell. The seeds burst upward until there was a dense bed of sorrel growing and thriving and expanding.

The Vien refugees watched in silence. There was no awareness of the wind or the cries of the seabirds or the scudding clouds. Sorrel grew, infused with life as if only it existed in the world and all the focus of existence were for sorrel alone. The plants spread around Findel and Isecan and between Vah's feet and behind him, and those shoots in the center kept growing until they were impossibly huge, four feet, then five feet tall, and the kneeling brothers were hidden inside a thicket of sorrel.

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