The day Eka first met the Being was the day the blue barrel emptied down in the lab. And it was Eka’s turn to go out.

It was very frequently Eka’s turn to go out. The others would suddenly attest to ventures made that Eka didn’t remember, but they pointed to her head and made the crazy sign. Their lies became proof that justified their lies: that Eka was feebleminded and so should be the one to go.

They did help her put on the suit, the mask. It smelled sharp, of plastic, and she hated the way the respirator would rasp; she held her breath sometimes just to not hear it. “Stupid!” the others would cry. “You have to breathe!” They zipped her in and checked the double seals. The suit had been torn a couple of times, and they were—to their credit—careful to check the tape.

“Tell me again what you are looking for.” The woman was called Mrs. X. Mrs. X pointed some kinds of tool at her that she used to mix the food down in the lab; the tool was sharp and Eka didn’t like it pointing at her. She squirmed and swiftly forgot.

“I—I—I—”

Stupid. And a giggle.

The butt of the sharp thing stung when it hit her temple, and it didn’t help her to remember.

“BLUE.” Mrs. X’s eyes would bug out when she spoke to Eka. The syllables oozed like slime. “BLUE. BLUE BARREL. This color.” She grabbed a fistful of Illa’s blue coveralls and shook it in Eka’s direction. “This color. BLUE.”

“Oh.” She wanted to say Okay but that was all she could choke out.

In her suit, the tape double-checked, the respirator rasping, she went through the airlock. Heard the inside door lunk shut behind her and a hiss as the outside door was released. Not for the first time, she felt a murmur of terror: What if they left her out here? What if running out of the blue barrel (blue, right? yes, BLUE) was just a ruse to get her out, to lock her out?

The outer door required all of Eka’s strength to push open. Her feet pedaled at the ground for a moment before it began to move, it was so heavy. Once open, the wind grabbed it and helped. The wind cut the landscape like a saw, having long ago mowed down anything that wasn’t rock and wearing off bits of that too that pattered the suit as dust. Eka was holding her breath. She reminded herself to inhale—if she passed out beyond the doors, the others like to remind her, there would be no one to come and get her—and the respirator sounded like the wind. Maybe that was why she hated it.

This had been a food factory Before. Before the tortured Earth had bucked and left the world poisoned and ruined—whatever it took to rid itself of the parasitic people who fed at every vein they could tap. They told stories about the cataclysm and the heroics that spared a person here and there who managed to shut into some space and not to die of hunger and thirst in the deadly weeks that followed. Mrs. X came from a family that worked once in the food factory and sheltered in an underground lab. Mrs. X was the only one left, which is why she searched for and took in what strays she could find. All traces of what was once known as human life were gone, but people still wanted to be with people.

Even stupid, feebleminded people, Eka consoled herself as she walked across the barren landscape and remembered to breathe and watched for BLUE, BLUE barrels. That might mean they wouldn’t lock her out this time?

The blue barrels were getting scarce. Eka went out enough that she noticed that she had to walk farther and farther to find them. The food factory had long ago been razed by the wind and storms, consumed by the burning air, but the barrels were scattered around the area, contained in plastic resistant to the worst assaults of the environment. Inside them was something Mrs. X needed to formulate food. PRO-TEEN. But they were harder to find now. What would happen when they ran out?

There was a hill. Maybe once it had been an outcropping of rocks. It had been softened down to a mound now. On its leeward side was a tree, or the remains of one: once a massive thing and now just a twist of wood, leafless and long dead, flayed smooth by the wind on one side. It was a landmark to Eka; there were usually many blue barrels on the leeward side, but she came here too because she liked the tree. It was dead and hideous, but there was something about it that she liked anyway. She couldn’t explain, but that was about many things, not just the tree. And there were a lot of blue barrels here.

She began to touch anything rounded, brushing the dust away. An orange barrel: she tried to remember that even as she knew she wouldn’t. Orange barrels were rare; Mrs. X asked for them only every now and again. Rocks and rocks. Nothing beneath the dust but more, unreleased dust in the shape of rocks. Its turn would come, with the workings of the wind. But there! A pile of dirt blown against something; Eka touched it and blue appeared in the trails left by her fingers.

Her respirator began to rasp faster with her excitement. She carefully lowered the barrel onto its side and began to roll it back toward the shelter. Careful, careful, she warned herself. There had been a boy, like Eka, damaged in some unknowable way, who had broken a barrel once—an orange one, yes, but they were all precious—and Mrs. X had whipped him with her food-making tools till he bled and died. He deserved it, yes, Eka knew, because he’d been careless and, someday, there would be no more orange barrels and many people’s lives would end early because of him. Mrs. X explained, and Eka understood. But the smear of red on the floor of the entryway still floated up in her dreams from time to time.

So she steered over rocks and past what was left of the tree, to the windward side. Here, she had to hold on carefully so the wind didn’t take the barrel away.

She didn’t know why she glanced back. Maybe to say goodbye to the tree. (Goodbye? What was goodbye?) She liked the way it twisted up from the earth when viewed from this angle; most things only slumped flatter and flatter against the ground, abused by the wind and burning air. She held tight to the barrel as she glanced back, and it’s a good thing that she did, because there was a person standing there.

Not a person. Something more. Not a squat human, walking with low, swinging strides, pulled along by hungered and tethered to this horrible life by some unnamable fear of the alternative. No, this was a Being, something upright like the tree and always, no matter what—even in this place—alive. She saw hair that rippled upon the wind and bared flesh and eyes that were bright with something that wasn’t the Great Light that made the acid air even hotter. How—? The Being, Eka realized, didn’t wear much in the way of clothes, much less a mask, yet the burning air did not harm it.

She heard a keening inside the respirator: the noise she made when excited or frightened. She couldn’t hear herself making it till the others began to beat her for it.

There was a slight incline, and the blue barrel began to slip away. She felt it under the heavy gloves, pulling at her. The sound became louder, frightened. She grabbed tight to the barrel.

When she looked back, the Being was gone.

Eka knew what happened if a person went out into the burning air. When Mrs. X came and found her, Eka’s father was still alive. There was a crime Mrs. X punished Eka’s father for. Mrs. X explained to Eka, but Eka didn’t understand; it had to do with her belly getting big. So Mrs. X put on the suit and used one of her poisons to make Eka’s father sleep and then tied Eka’s father to a stake outside in the burning air. Mrs. X brought him in later. It didn’t take long. His skin was mostly gone and his lungs were burned but it still took him a while to die. Mrs. X made—let, she said—Eka watch. He burbled for a long while, waving feebly at the air like he was trying to draw death down to him. Then he collapsed into a pile and died. Then Mrs. X rescued Eka, took her away.

“ORANGE.” Mrs. X’s eyes popped out as she leaned into Eka’s face. She snapped her fingers in front of Eka’s nose—snap! snap!—twice. “Do you understand me? ORANGE.”

“Ar,” said Eka, meaning to say orange but halfway through, her tongue forgot the rest. But she could see it: The lively color appearing beneath her gloved hand, over near the tree. Just the other day.

This time, Eka had volunteered. When Mrs. X came up and said they were out of a barrel for making food and the others began to shift and hem and haw, then Eka blurted triumphantly and the others bugged out their eyes at her in surprise and their mouths hung open and they were almost nice as they dressed her in the suit and reminded her to keep breathing in the mask.

I’m not stupid. The thought appeared without warning. Eka stumbled back from the force of it and was chided by the boy checking the tape that patched the suit.

She didn’t even really care about the barrel, although she liked to eat and Mrs. X was the only one able to formulate the food. She wanted to see the tree and the Being. She hadn’t been able to stop thinking about the Being. There were pencils in the shelter but only Mrs. X was allowed to use them, for calculating the products she put into the food formulations, because there weren’t many. But Eka—who didn’t know how to read or write or numbers—suddenly wanted to hold one and draw the Being and put it beside her cot to fall asleep to. But she didn’t dare.

Outside the shelter, Eka began to plod across the rocky ground. It had rained, and water sizzled in puddles; Eka wove around them. They would eat right through your shoes. The boots were heavy and hard to lift, but she pushed on as fast as she could, till she reached the leeward side of the hill and the twist of tree pointing at the sky. There was just a low sheet of clouds there, thick like felt and yellow-gray. But the tree pointed there anyway, like it was remembering something else beyond the interminable clouds and the Great Light that came once a day and made the air boil.

Eka remembered where the orange barrel was. It hadn’t been that long, after all (she told herself). It would be a while before she was missed, so she ducked under the arch that was formed by the tree. She liked it there. She didn’t know why. It felt like something that deserved to be liked without reason. On the underside, protected by the hill and from the worst of the wind and air, there was still a memory of bark, a faint pattern. Or no—there was nothing there. Eka touched it with her glove; it was smooth. But for a moment, she remembered—what, exactly? Bark. She had no notion what that was, but she had remembered it.

And when she turned, the Being was there.

He was a boy. She could see that now. She hadn’t been sure before, but his shirt was very thin and flat over his chest. He was tall. She was stunted next to him. His hair streamed on the wind like a banner (banner?), and his face was full of sadness, but it wasn’t because of hunger or pain. It was because of something Eka couldn’t even imagine.

You, she breathed through the respirator.

He reached up and touched the tree. It was tall there but he could still reach it. Where his fingers pressed, she could see again the pattern of that bark. She could remember hundreds, thousands of little green leaves quivering on the air. Little sticks scratching at the sky that was BLUE.

Then his hand dropped and it was just a twisty dead tree in the leeward side of a slumping hill and a thick matted sheet of clouds overhead.

But he was still there, the Being. He took her hand. His skin wasn’t so much as pinked by the burning air. He had five perfect fingernails on that hand with a little white crescent at the base of each. And when he touched her, the world came alive.

She saw that the place had once been full of trees. A river flowed there, and there were a dozen waterfalls. The air was full of the roar and the chime of water. Willows nodded over the streams that fed them; they had long, trailing, silvery leaves. They pebbled the surface of the water with their reflection.

It was an ancient place. There were stories contained in there, heroes of the sort that were obliterated with the world. Eka watched a man and his twin sons and his beautiful daughter sit down around a table full of shapes and colors—and then they ate the shapes and colors! It was food!

When Eka surfaced, she was making the sound, and the Being was fading. She could see the rocks through him, like he was losing strength. But in the place of the sadness on his face, there was a smile. The sounds she made at his memories, they brought him joy.

They used to eat things out of the ground, and there was water that flowed down the rocks and the air was sweet with the smell of flowers, and people used to take in great gulping lungs full of it, without dying.

Each had a little plastic pot of food, carefully formulated by Mrs. X, and a straw. They ate together, lining either side of the long room that was behind the entranceway and above the lab, with their barracks to either side. The cupped the little pots in their hands and swirled the straws to extract every last drop. The only sound allowed was the harsh rattle as they sucked up the dregs of their supper. Mealtime was when they told stories.

Eka thought maybe she would tell this one, about the world the Being had showed her. No—not the Being anymore. The Quen. She had decided that that was what he was called. A Quen. She didn’t know where the word came from, but it reminded her of what she thought water sounded like when a drop plunked into a still pool and made the water leap up. The leaping water, that was the Quen.

Quen, Quen, Quen, she had been whispering to herself. It made the others laugh at her, but at least it didn’t make them angry the way the other noises she made did.

Quen, Quen, Quen. She was saying it now, even though Povo was telling a story and Eka was supposed to be silent unless she was sucking up the last of her meal in her straw. Mrs. X was sitting beside her and put her hand on Eka’s wrist to quiet her. Mrs. X could be kind like this sometimes.

Eka thought she might tell her story—how surprised they’d all be at all the words she knew! then probably embarrassed for all the things they’d said in front of her, assuming she didn’t understand—but even she knew the story was wrong for them. Their stories were about heroes, who were people who clawed atop other people and lived. Sometimes, other people lived with them too, like Mrs. X, who rescued lots of children from the places around the food factory. Some of the others told stories of Mrs. X; she always nodded slowly when they did, as though remembering something, and her eyes got hooded and sleepy with pleasure.

But the stories of the land of the Quen featured heroes of a different sort, who went forward and died instead of others. Eka couldn’t quite settle the idea of a hero with someone who died in the place of another. That was the very opposite of a hero; if it was known how a hero died, then his or her story stopped being told. It was imagined that the heroes were living forever, somewhere in the world, going forward and clawing through others—who often died—and going on living. There would be one hero at the end, and he would be strong enough to remake the world—or that’s how the legend told it. It wasn’t like the Quen’s heroes at all.

So Eka kept her story to herself. She listened to Povo, whose stories always had showers of blood in them, and let the sound fill her thoughts like her own heartbeat: Quen, Quen, Quen, Quen. Like a rainshower on a river.

The next time, the Quen led her away from the tree.

He was stronger now and could go out farther from his tree. There was a slope a little ways away that Eka had always been afraid to climb. It wasn’t steep, but she worried that if she slipped and fell she might break something in her body and die out there, breathing in the acid air the way her father had. She imagined that in minute detail: the feeling of her lungs melting away; the pressure of the air in them that could not reach her body; the slow drowning, in blood and pain.

But with the Quen, she was not afraid. He took her hand and led her carefully up the slope, past the rubble. This had been a cliff once where a waterfall tumbled over; she saw that in his memories. He returned to his memories, even though they both comforted and hurt him: comforted because they’d been, hurt because they were gone. It was like how Eka might press at a sore tooth with her tongue. The pain almost felt good.

There was a hollow metal thing there. The air had devoured most of the four rubber tires, but the metal frame had a scalded look but still remained. The Quen led her around and knelt on the earth. Eka just squatted; she knew the earth was sharp with stones that could tear her suit, and even the smallest tear would welcome enough burning air to form an ulcerated wound in the time it took her to run back to the shelter. The Quen was brushing away the earth, and the rocks didn’t cut his hands.

There was something stubby and fleshy—a pale stalk—pushing up there.

The Quen broke off a piece of it. He said a word of thanks to the being—for it was a being, even though it didn’t look that way, Eka was certain—and then put it in his mouth and ate it. His eyes fluttered closed, and his mouth turned upward in a smile. His face nearly glowed with joy.

Eka leaned in close to his joy the way she might huddle near something warm. Suddenly, she wanted that look on her face. She wanted to know what that look felt like. Not just a pot of formulated food and a straw; not just a pat of kindness on the wrist, a beating not prolonged for being too noisy or slow. Suddenly, she wanted the heroes from the Quen’s stories, who might have shaped a life unimaginably different from her own, who might have died so she might live.

Under her mask, the tears came hot and fast. The sounds coming out from her respirator would have earned her a sharp blow between the shoulders back at the shelter, but the Quen merely opened his eyes. So close to hers, pity shimmered there like a shadow on the water, then bright joy again. He kissed her, respirator and all. Her lips tingled, like he’d actually touched her flesh with his mouth.

He broke off a piece of the mushroom. It lay chalky in his hand. He said a thanks to it, the pity shimmering again, for with two pieces gone now, it would almost surely die. Eka slipped her mask over her head. Opened her mouth and let him place it on her tongue.