They ate in silence, each bite small and asured. The food should have tasted like ho, but now it felt distant, abstract. Afterward, Lucy and Emma helped clear the dishes while Jude and Susan prepared the floodlights for the night watch. The poles and lanterns would cast long beams over the camp, to illuminate movent, to break the night’s camouflage.
When all was ready, they planted the lights around the periter.
"Is that all?" Grace asked.
Jude hesitated. "There’s one more thing."
They turned toward him. His wife’s faces gathered there, reflecting his own fear.
He swallowed. "I want soone to stay awake with tonight. Vigil. Watch and talk. If anything happens... we’ll know."
Grace raised her hand. "I will."
Emma offered her na. Lucy followed. One by one they volunteered. They filled three shifts, four hours each until dawn.
They slept in shifts that divided the night. Jude paired with Grace first, then Lucy, then Emma, then Serena. The rest curled in their beds, one shift ahead, waiting for their turn.
The first hours were silent but safe. Moonlight swirled across the clearing as Grace and Jude sat in folded chairs, the floods casting narrow beams over sleeping forms. The wind sighed. Tree shadows danced.
Then a sound, low and prolonged, coming from the forest’s edge. A footfall. A gasp. Leaves stirring. They held their breath.
"Grace," Jude whispered.
She froze. Then relaxed. "Probably wind."
They leaned toward each other in the silence. Grace’s hand found his. He felt her tremble under his palm.
The night wore on. The wind died. The pulses of floodlights flickered. Grace leaned on Jude’s shoulder, breathing slow and soft. Soon, she slept. He shifted to Lucy’s shift, and spent hours watching nothing, fearing everything.
Around two, he felt the change. A breath on his neck. A shift behind the lights. Steely quiet. He stood.
"Grace?" he called.
No reply.
He rushed to where she was supposed to be. She’d vanished, no chair, no body, no breath. Only the empty beam of light. The silence swallowed him whole.
He raced toward the river, calling her na. The rain gear did nothing to stop the wind he carried in his lungs. Leaves slapped his face; wet branches struck his arms. No trace.
He almost turned back, heart a drum of guilt.
And then he heard her voice, soft, across the wind.
"Jude..."
He sprinted toward it.
He found her kneeling, eyes closed, by a cluster of fungi at the forest’s edge. Her body glowed in the floodlight’s fringe, the fungi glimring back.
She looked up when he was near.
"Grace."
Her eyes were wide. "I... I’m sorry."
He put a hand on her shoulder, but paused.
Because behind her, just beyond the light, he saw them. Blue sars in the trees. A shape drifted once, then dissolved.
He bristled. "Grace. Look at ."
She did. Her face did not register the fear he felt. Instead, she looked calm, almost glad.
"Sothing... touched ?"
He said nothing.
She took his hand. "Let’s go back."
They didn’t speak until they reached camp.
Jude placed her between Lucy and Emma. He watched them settle.
Then he crouched beside Grace where she lay on the straw mat.
"What happened?" he whispered.
"I don’t rember," she said. "Then... I was in the forest. I wanted to bring sothing back. I thought it was... for us."
"For us?"
She closed her eyes. "I wanted to protect us. To warn us."
He nodded, but inside his stomach twisted. She sounded sincere, not the other thing. But the other thing was there, waiting, using them.
He rose. "The shifts continue," he said. "Tonight, I’ll take first watch. Then soone else. We stay vigilant."
They nodded.
He stayed awake the rest of the night, his eyes searching the trees. His ears trying to catch the shift of cloth that wasn’t cloth, the step that wasn’t one of theirs, the whisper not caused by wind.
Dawn ca pale and slow. Camp awoke in silence. Grace sat beside the fire, staring at the embers.
Jude knelt in front of her. "What did you see?"
She reached for his hands. "Fungus... blue. I held a piece. It pulsed."
He swallowed. "Not touch."
"No," she said softly. "But I... wanted to share it."
He looked into her eyes, wanting to believe.
He helped her stand. "Let’s sit with the others."
They joined the circle, and today the record box waited empty in the center. He opened it, took out a stick and a strip of bark.
"Write tonight," he said. "Each of you."
No one spoke, but each looked at Grace.
She took the bark, wrote. Folded. Dropped it in. Then others followed.
Jude closed it, handed it to Grace. "You guard it."
She nodded, tears in her eyes.
They breakfasted in silence. Then divided tasks.
Jude watched them all, the way they moved, their faces. Each breath they took, each soft smile, each pause. He wondered. Not who they were. He already knew. But how far the other thing might reach inside them.
He went to the river to do the morning fish traps. Emma followed.
"Are you okay?" he asked.
She stopped, touched his arm. "I’m frightened."
He turned. Took her face in his hands. "We’ll stop it. We will."
She nodded, tears glistening. "Together."
He walked back with her, and kept his other eyes on the trees.
Night ca again with rain. The watchers assembled again around the box.
He knelt. "Tell everything."
Grace began. Then Lucy, Emma, the others. Each dreadful detail. Each mory gone. Each sensation. Each desire that wasn’t their own.
They filled fifteen pieces. Jude read each aloud. "Blackout after dinner, Emma. Shift in voice. Lucy, awoke tied to tree. Serena, called my na though I wasn’t there."
They shared nas, connections, events.
He placed the box between them.
"I propose," he said, "we leave the box here and walk, together. Not separated shifts. We stay close, we stay awake, we stay present. We reclaim tonight. Task: to stay together, to stop whatever it is."
They nodded.
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