We get to work cleaning away the bugs in silence. It goes quickly, Iris and I breaking a sweat trying to keep up with Meng. When we get a nice, half-foot pile of the wisps lining all of the campsite, Meng tells us it’s time to get the food and start cooking. He tells Iris where to find the food in the cabin. I can tell he doesn’t want to go in there with William still inside.

“Minnle is doing a lot better,” Iris says when she comes out with leaf-wrapped meats and what looks like a bundle of potatoes with leaves growing out of them.

“Prophet probably healed him,” Meng says with a bite behind his words.

“I don’t think he’ll want to leave either,” I say as I help Iris take the food out of the cabin. “Prophets never come without a purpose.”

“He’ll have to live with disappointment. Iris, get the metal pot out of my cabinet inside. And the water skin. We’ll make a stew.” Meng gets a little table, fashioned in a similar way as the stool inside the cabin, and sets it by the rock-lined fire ring. He pulls out a knife and starts chopping up the food Iris brought out. “Wisps put the fire out. Get a fire started while I start work on the stew, okay?”

“Sure.” I take my own piece of flint, luckily saved in my pocket, and use it with my knife to light a bit of brush. In no time, I have a blazing fire. I race to make it bigger, starting from that tiny spark and adding wood and timber from the nearby forest as quickly as I can.

“Hold it there,” Meng says after a while. “That’s big enough. We need it to burn down so we can cook.”

“Right,” I say, trying not to pant.

“So you really want to live here, do you?”

I wipe sweat off my brow and sit beside the fire on a large rock. “Ever since I first heard of you. I started this group, you know? I never thought my dream might come true.”

“It won’t. Stop thinking it will.” Meng chops vegetables with an irritated force behind his knife.

Iris, glancing up from putting together a stand for the pot, gives him a hurt, almost angry look. She stops working, letting out a sigh. “Look, Meng, did you ever think that maybe you don’t have a choice in this?” she asks.

“I have a choice,” Meng says without looking up from his cutting board. “I can help you or not. Since I’m not going to help you that means most of you will die out here. Maybe you’ll live maybe you won’t. But your best chance is to leave.”

“You won’t help us if we stay?”

“I didn’t come here to start a colony, girl. I came here because I had no choice.”

“Is that why you came back then?” I ask.

Meng stabs the knife into the cutting board, nearly breaking it. He stares icily at me for a few terrible moments, then pulls the knife out of the wood and gets back to work.

“Is that stand ready?” he asks.

“Yes,” Iris says as she puts the pot and stand over the fire. I help her fill it with the water skin.

Meng doesn’t say a word as he carries the table over and dumps the meat and vegetables into the pot. “Stir.”

I take the ladle Meng hands me from one of his pouches and stir the stew, fragrant aromas bombarding my senses. I hadn’t realized how hungry I was. The chore of stirring becomes a tempting task as I longingly watch the stew cook.

Meng sits on the rock I’d been sitting on and visibly relaxes, putting his hands behind his head. “What do you have back on the continent, Burin?” Meng asks.

“Excuse me?” I reply.

“What’s your life like?”

I cough, reluctant to answer. “My family was able to keep our property after the revolution. We, um, we have a good amount of land that we operate plantations on. We’re only allowed to hire Mills, but they thought we operated it better without much interference so we, um, get around the rules a lot.”

Instead of the disappointed or even angry look I expect, Meng only nods. “So what’s made you want to abandon that?”

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“It, well…”

Iris comes to my rescue, saying, “He wants the same thing we all want: a life with purpose.”

I nod and say, “Yeah, that. I’m sure I speak for everyone who came here, every Meng member back on the continent, when I say that we all felt dissatisfied with our lives.”

“Dissatisfied,” Meng says as if trying to get his mind around the word.

“We felt that trying to build a colony here, honoring your example, was much more meaningful than working at a mill or a farm.”

Meng takes a long sniff, sighing with satisfaction at the aroma of the stew. “Hmm. It’s almost ready. So hunting and farming and eating and breeding, these aren’t worthy things unless you’re on Wilds?”

“We’re following your example, Meng.” I laugh. “You’re being pretty ridiculous. Anyone else would see what we’re doing as a great honor and you keep throwing it back at us.”

“You want to follow my example?” Meng leans closer to me, gripping his knees with his hands. “Don’t. There’s nothing here better than what you have at the continent.” He leans back. “You think I’m being ridiculous? I’m not the one who threw away a comfortable life to scratch a living off the surface of Wilds.”

“There was no meaning in my life.”

“There is no meaning in life,” Meng says in the flattest tone I’ve heard any man speak. “We live. We find a way to keep living. Then we die. Searching for meaning just makes life shorter.” He turns his eyes toward the darkening forest, in what I think is the direction of the ocean. “And sometimes more painful. You want my advice? Go back to your family. Live your life and survive. You’ll find just as much meaning with that as you will here. Probably more.” Meng turns back to the steaming pot. “Stew’s done. Go get your Prophet friend.”

“He’s not our friend,” Iris says as she quickly climbs the ladder and gets inside the cabin.

I follow her with my eyes as she goes up the ladder, watching the way the muscles in her thighs tighten as she climbs.

“So,” Meng says with a light-hearted voice. “Did she come because she wanted to see me? Or because you were coming?”

“What?” I ask.

“You wanna find meaning in life well there you have it.” Meng points at Iris as she disappears down the roof of the cabin.

I laugh, my face getting warm. I hope it’s not reddening too much. “I don’t think I follow you.”

“Stop being stupid, Burin, and I mean that in the most general of ways. That girl likes you. Way you watched her walk away I can tell there’s some interest on your part. You wanna have a life of wilderness and freedom well find that on the continent. It’s all work and pain here. If there is meaning on this island, I’ve been too tired to ever notice it.”

“If there’s no meaning here, why did you come back?”

Meng glares at me, his face shadowed by the orange glow of the fire.

Iris hops off the roof and walks back toward us, shocking me a bit. “I found bowls in your cabinet. William says he’s not hungry,” Iris says, bowls and spoons in her hands.

“I guess the Prophet doesn’t need to eat,” Meng scoffs. “Let’s eat quickly before it gets dark.”

No one wants to talk during dinner, though I’m sure Iris has a thousand questions. I do too. But Meng has a sort of barrier put up around him that Iris and I don’t dare break with conversation. I feel like he’s one more question away from sending us out of his camp. Since he doesn’t have enough bowls for all of us to eat at once, Iris and I finish up quickly and fill up our bowls for Mally and Minnle.

Minnle is able to eat, though he’s not strong enough to stand. He asks us all about what’s going on outside. Meng’s attitude toward our group makes him so mad he gets on his feet and nearly spills his stew when he falls over. Mally eats well, keeping her opinions on a more level head, though Iris and I can tell she’s incredibly disappointed.

No one speaks to William.

When the sun sets and the darkness rolls in, I go outside and look up with apprehension to see that there isn’t a single star in the sky. When I ask Meng why this is, he shrugs and says, “It’s the sea breeze. The clouds come in off the warm currents and drift up when the sun goes down. Sometimes they thin out and you can see stars. Most times you can’t.”

I look up and feel a strange sense of homelessness. There’s something incredibly human about staring up at the stars. I’d hoped that Wilds would have a much better view, so south on the planet and so far away from the mills. As I stare up at the cloudy night sky, for the first time since I’ve come to Wilds, I feel a sense of sadness and isolation.

Iris and I wait, sitting by the glow of the fire, for a long time in silence with Meng. We want him to tell us stories, tales of his adventures here. After trying to ignore us, he finally opens up.

He tells us of how he first came to Wilds, how he first learned all the things about it that were necessary to know and survive. Iris and I take it in like children, clinging to every word. As Meng tells us of his trials, he seems to grow more comfortable with our company. He even smiles a time or two.

We learn all about the errors he made, the many times he neared death. He says it took him almost five years to stake a claim on the island. He says there wasn’t anything else to learn then, so he went back for his family.

It’s at this point in the story that his smile erases and he says, “I think it’s time we sleep. You have to wake up in time to get to the boat before the tides go out.” He stands and walks over to the ladder.

“But wait,” Iris says. “What about your family? What happened when you got back?”

“I got back. I came back. I kept living. That’s all that matters.”

“Did, did…” Iris licks her lips, trying to be delicate with her words. “Did your family die here?”

“No. Go to bed Iris. I’ll keep watch.”

“You’re not going to sleep?” I ask.

Meng shakes his head. “There’s not enough room in there. Besides, I’ve never camped with this strong a smell of humans. It might attract attention and we need a watch.”

“I’ll stay up with you.”

“Not necessary.” Meng grabs his weapon, the bone-handled thing he used to kill the wolves with earlier, and rests it on his shoulder. “I’ll wake you if there’s danger.”

“But…”

“I’m done talking. Tomorrow you’re going to head home. You’re going to forget about Wilds and forget about me, both of you. You’d best start that now.”