When I was at Miss Lilly’s, back at the very beginning, I had a lot of nightmares.  They started out with both Miss Lilly and Miss Ava chasing me, but then it turned to me and Ava and Keol, running away from her mother.  And she was always the one who saved us.  Eventually I stopped having bad dreams every night, but sometimes, after she died, I dreamt that I would wake up and Ava would still be there.  That Bayan did not take her away and that Miss Lilly did not return with an urn, that it was her and me and Nua in bed, like usual, the cat between us, maybe.  And then every morning I would wake up and she was not there.

But today, I wake up to a rumbling all around us.  Another train must be going by above us.  The tent seems to shake for a second, and then it’s over in a moment, and I roll over onto my back.  Ava’s hand falls out of mine, and I look over at her.  And I smile.

I’m still looking at her when she wakes up too, a little while later.  She shifts a little, and takes a deep breath, wrapping Nua’s arm around her a little more, and then opens her eyes.  She smiles too, when she sees me, and her voice is sleepy when she says, “Morning.”

“Morning,” I whisper, taking her hand again.  I run my hand over the second ring around her thumb, and she smiles, and then yawns.  She says softly, “I missed you.”

“We missed you, too,” I say.  I think Nua’s still asleep, but he sighs, and Ava grins a little, and then says, “Are you still mad at me?”

“I’m not mad at you,” I say softly.  “Nua might be, a little.”

She grins again, looking over her shoulder at him, and yawns again.  “When he wakes up we should go to Shan.  You have to meet some people.”

“Who?” I ask, and she stretches her legs, her feet brushing against mine.  “Shan.”

I raise my eyebrows, but Nua rolls over.  His hand hits the side of the tent, and he opens his eyes, and then sits up.  “Oh.”

“Hey,” says Ava, looking up at him, and he looks at us, brushing hair out of his eyes.  “Hi.”

“I want you to meet some people,” says Ava softly.  “Who have been helping me, who I’ve been helping.  And you can kinda get to know what happens around here.”

“Alright,” I say through a yawn, and Ava grins and sits up too.

Penny is waiting for us when we go out of the tent.  He has a little chair in front of his own tent that he’s sitting in, watching the light from the lantern on his lap flicker around.  His dog stands up to meet us, coming over to Ava and sniffing her hand.  She pets her on the head.  “Hey.”

“Hey,” answers Penny, standing and coming to us.  “Food?”

“Yeah,” says Ava with a grin.  “And the boys should meet Shan.”

“Okay,” I say, raising my hands.  “You said that the Shan was, like, the center part.”

“Not the Shan,” says Penny with a grin, jerking his head down the railroad track.  “Just Shan.  It’s an acronym.”

“For what?” I ask, and Ava grins.  “Sigrid, Haywood, Alis, and Nova.”

I look at Nua; he just shrugs and says, “How’d you get a dog down here?”

Penny laughs, touching the big black dog’s head.  “Oh, there are a few.  And some stray cats.  Nano likes me, we found her and her sister when she was a puppy abandoned, and I took care of her.”

The dog does seem to like him.  I wonder if Ava misses Shiv, and I watch the dog as Nua and I follow Penny down the tunnel.  Ava walks at his side, and just listens as he tells us a little more.  “The four main tunnels, that come off of Shan, they’re like two or three train tracks wide, so that’s where most people live.  And then there are smaller tunnels around here, too, and the entrances are only off of those.”

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“Do all the entrances have poison plants?” asks Nua, and Penny laughs.  “No, actually.  But they’ve all got something that makes them hard to get to.  That’s why they were abandoned.”

We’re back towards the intersection, the huge cavern with the four tunnels gaping, one on each side.  I don’t even know what time of the day it is down here; everything is hazy and dirty and dark.  There are still people milling about, and we pause for a second, as Nano goes to sniff someone’s foot.  It’s an older man with a greying beard, and he reaches out to stroke her for a moment before taking a sip of whatever’s in his bottle.  Then Penny leads us back towards the buildings in the middle; not really buildings, I see, just structures, made of planks of wood and sheet metal and whatever else they could find, I suppose.  

“The LeGatte twins,” I hear someone say as Nua and I enter the makeshift building too.  There are four people inside, two women and two men, standing around the same table we found Penny at last night.  I wonder where Sloan is.  They all look at us, and then one of the women says, “The LeGatte husbands.”

“My name’s Ahman, actually,” I mutter, and Nua smiles a little.  Ava does too, and says, “Aber and Nua.  Aber and Nua, this is Sigrid and Nova, and Haywood and Alis.”

The women nod, and then the men, when Ava gestures to them.  Penny leans his hand on the table and says, “They’re in charge down here.  What are you talking about today?”

“Alis,” says one of the men, looking at the other.  “We’re sending the women out for shopping.”

All four of these people are older, my parents’ age, perhaps.  My parents are older than Miss Lilly, I think.  Sigrid has dark curly hair that falls to her shoulders, and Nova has long straight black hair tied back in two braids that reach down to her waist.  Haywood’s skin is as dark as Sloan’s, and his hair is big and puffy.  He has his little finger looped around Alis’, who nods.  “Marissa’s been craving peas, that’s really the only new thing.”

“Alis deals with food and supplies,” says Haywood, looking back at me and Nua.  “Figuring out what things we need, like water and batteries.  I’m in charge of our information runners.  You know Sloan, right?”

“Yeah,” says Nua.

“She’s one of mine,” says Haywood with a slight smile.  “Sigrid organizes the women, and Nova deals with the people down here, if there’s ever any fights or conflicts.  She was a lawyer.”

Nova grins at me, but Nua’s looking at Sigrid.  “The women?”

Sigrid looks at Penny, who shrugs.  “They just got here.”

“Our moneymakers,” says Nova quietly.  I raise my eyebrows, looking at Ava, and she shakes her head.  “I can’t go up there, my mother would drag me back home.”

“Most of the people down here are men,” explains Haywood.  “As you can assume.  Boys and men who ran away from their wives.  But we have some women, too.  Like Ava, and like these two, and a few others.  Most of the men don’t feel comfortable going to the surface, they’re afraid of getting caught.  So it’s the women who have to go up.  Do the spying, do the shopping, earn the money in the first place.  And a lot of men up there, you know, they don’t have wives, but they want women.”

“They,” I say slowly, and Sigrid shrugs.  “They sell sex.”

“Sigrid, please, he’s eighteen,” says Ava, and I flush, glaring at her.  She just smiles a little, and Sigrid shrugs.  “I just help them.”

“And we have people who work for us down here,” Nova continues, as if the conversation in the last few moments was the most normal thing in the world.  “Help us organize who gets what to eat, who lives where, clothes and things, anything that people need.  And most people just hang around.”

I take a deep breath, and then breathe it out slow.  Nua takes my hand and squeezes my fingers, and I just nod.  “Who gets to go up?”

“Not you,” says Ava immediately, and the whole Shan group looks at her.  She raises her hands.  “Well, I can’t go,” she says, “because my mother’s probably got people everywhere looking for me.  And don’t assume she wouldn’t have eyes out for you, too, and grab you too, to lure me out.”

Nova gives a grudging nod.  “That makes sense, actually.”

“Sorry, boys,” says Penny with a slight smile.  “Girls only.”

“Most people don’t go to the surface,” says Haywood, his eyes sympathetic.  “I’m sorry.  Penny’s right, it’s mostly the women, and even then a lot of them don’t want to go up.  Ava can’t, like she said, nor can Marissa, because nobody’s seen a pregnant woman in decades-”

“A pregnant woman?” asks Nua in surprise, and I furrow my eyebrows, looking at my wife.  “You said-”

“She came to us with her husband when they found out they were pregnant,” says Alis with a smile.  “Her mother was…well, she was like yours, Ava, and they didn’t wanna tell her, or raise the kid with her.  So they came as soon as they found out, which was around three months ago.  We’re assuming they have around five left, and then we’re gonna have to deal with a birth.”

“No one’s given birth in,” says Nua, trailing off because he doesn’t know the answer.  Alis laughs.  “Decades,” he says again.  “We’re in for a fun time.”

“Woah,” I say, and Haywood smiles.  “You alright, kid?”

“I wanna go home,” I say quietly, sinking into a chair.  Sigrid looks at Ava.  “He doesn’t mean…”

“No,” I say.  “My home.  My parents.”

“I know,” says Ava, coming to me.  She touches my shoulder, and I move over on the chair so she can sit next to me.  “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” I murmur, and she smiles and leans her head on my shoulder, taking my hand.  “Can you stay with us for a little bit?”

I look at her, and she sighs.  “I’ve been trying to find out what happened to your parents, but it’s a little hard from down here.”

I look at Haywood.  He said he was the one who dealt with all the information.  He shrugs in agreement.  

“Right now this is the safest place,” says Ava softly.  “Shan will take care of us.”

Nova smiles a little.  Penny scoffs.  “And Penny.”

Ava rolls her eyes, and her brother comes over and taps me on the shoulder.  “Come on.  Let’s get something to eat, and we can just relax.”