Out in the wastes was a town. Once it had been a towering city, standing empty and sallow in the harsh light of the desert. All those towers had been pulled down over the centuries, for need of building materials and to avoid collapse.

Nearly a hundred people lived in the town. They lived in a small cluster of houses near the western gate, where the wall was still strong and the first well had been sunk. Where the wind turbines were more patch than original, but at least they still worked.

One might be forgiven for mistaking this cluster of houses for the suburbia of the old world. The houses were large enough to be comfortable, and sat at a good distance from each other. Each had its large garden, where food was grown for the occupants.

Just by the western gate of the town was a warehouse. A shop where the residents of the town sold their excess crops and the other fruits of their labour. An inn where travellers might stop and rest and eat and drink, where traders might exchange exotic goods for local wares. There were not so many travellers and traders in this town.

In the little town of Haven, clustered against the western wall, strangers were a common sight. The residents saw strangers every day, in their neighbour’s gardens, in the restaurant just by the wester gate.

This stranger was remarkable. She came from outside of Haven.

She was tall, she was skinny. She arrived in Haven with nothing but the clothes on her back. She entered the shop, where no one commented on her newness, and bought herself the cheapest sword she could buy. And then she left again.

The strange, tall woman was all but forgotten by the strangers of Haven by the time she returned, three days later. Her clothes were torn and stained with dried blood. Her wounds were bandaged.

She entered the shop and sold a variety of shoddy clothes and weapons from a pack she had not had three days ago. She considered buying another sword, but decided against it. And then she left again.

The strange, tall woman had not been forgotten by the strangers of Haven when she arrived next, two days later. She was limping and bloody and her pack was full to bursting.

Again she entered the shop by the western gate and sold a collection of shoddy clothes and weapons. That was not all that was in her pack, but the shopkeep could only wonder at what may have remained

This time, she rented a room in the shop and disappeared into it for nearly a week. She was seen from time to time, limping around the empty old town, fresh bandages under her torn and stained clothes.

When she returned to the shop after her week of respite, the strange, tall woman was no longer limping. She wore a new outfit of rawhide and smelled very distinctly of smoke. She sold nearly ten kilograms of dried meat and her old sword. She bought herself a new, slightly nicer sword, and left.

The strangers of Haven were starting to wonder aloud to one another where that odd, tall woman might have ended up by the time she returned. It had been more than a week. The shopkeep, though he would never admit it, had worried that she was dead.

Everyone in Haven knew that the wastes outside were not safe.

Her rawhide was ragged, but her wounds were shallow. Her pack was bulging with all sorts of exotic and interesting things. The strangers of Haven kept their distance, but no one could deny their interest.

This time, the woman sold scraps of electronics, copper wire, an ancient electric engine, and the most beautiful dagger that the shopkeep had ever seen. And then she asked a very difficult question.

‘How would one go about buying land in this fair town?’ the strange woman asked the shopkeep.

The shopkeep struggled bravely against his discomfort, but he was forced to admit. ‘I don’t know. I don’t recall it ever happening.’

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The woman nodded, turned, and left.

For the first time in living memory, a town meeting was called. Strangers flinched and grabbed weapons when they heard a knocking on their doors to find the shopkeep, expression sheepish, inviting them to the warehouse near the western gate to try to work out how one might buy land in this fair town.

The town called Haven did not have a formal leadership. It had a set of social expectations that were enforced by a collection of nearly a hundred strangers. No one knew of the last time someone had moved into the city, though everyone could remember the last time someone moved out.

It was a difficult and lengthy meeting. There was much argument and forgetting of names. There was much discomfort and bristling of weapons. But in the end, the strangers of Haven were forced to come to an agreement.

When the strange, tall woman finally returned after much worry and anticipation, she looked quite different. Metal plates were strapped to the remains of her ragged rawhide and she wore a mask made of wood and steel in the shape of a bird’s face.

The shopkeep could not contain his nervous excitement and before she could show him her most recent acquisitions, he announced: ‘You may purchase land at the price of five dollars per square metre.’

It was impossible to read the woman’s expression behind her bird-face mask. ‘Acceptable,’ she said. ‘And do I need to purchase it all at once?’

This had not come up at the meeting, but the shopkeep was confident in his answer. ‘You must purchase at least twenty metres at a time.’

Tengu, as the shopkeep dubbed the woman in his head, sold rawhide, dried meat, small metal sheets, copper wire, and some of her frequent assortment of shoddy clothes and weapons.

She and the shopkeep left the shop near the western gate to have another look around the empty old town of Haven. After some half an hour of consideration, Tengu bought sixty square metres of land on the outskirts of the little town around the western gate.

And then she left again.

This time, the strangers of Haven did not grab up their weapons when there was a knocking on their doors. The shopkeep gave every one of them three dollars, including the few children in the town, as their share of the purchased land. For being the broker of the deal, the shopkeep pocketed nine dollars.

Rather than buy any of the ancient building materials still left in the shop, Tengu returned to Haven the next day with rawhide and patchwork sacks full of ash and sand. She left and returned several more times that day, returning with planks and sticks, with bags of gravel, with more copper wire and scraps of electronics.

Tengu worked through the night, digging a foundation into the sandy, rocky dirt of Haven. Only once the hole had been re-filled with concrete made from ash and sand and gravel, and smoothed out with a big plank, did Tengu lay down on a pile of rawhide and patchwork in the afternoon sun, and go to sleep.

By her very presence, Tengu was already the most interesting thing to happen in the living memory of any of the strangers in Haven. The rapid construction of her little house was the most activity anyone had had ever seen in Haven.

The strangers of Haven watched Tengu’s progress from their own houses, at first. Interest started to get the better of some of them, though, and they watched from their yards and gardens.

It was the children, of course, who came over to try to work out what Tengu was doing. And of course, their parents wanted to make sure everything was safe, and so they came over too.

Tengu very patiently explained everything she was doing to the few children of Haven. She was making a smooth floor with cement made without gravel. She was building wooden forms for concrete pillars. She was framing the open walls of the house from planks. She was putting up rafters, she was making clay roofing tiles. She was digging a huge pit to use for a toilet.

By the time Tengu’s house was built, with bare inside walls and overlapping planks for siding, the few parents in Haven no longer thought of each other as strangers. They had learned each other’s names, and exchanged pleasantries every day, supervising their children’s supervision of Tengu.

There was no danger of returning to being strangers once Tengu’s house was done, either, the children made sure of that. Even when Tengu disappeared for another week once the construction was finished, the children and parents wandered around the town together, when they weren’t otherwise busy.

Within a week, this walking group had grown to include nearly a third of the little town clustered around the western gate. Some people had even started to greet each other, when they spotted each other out and about.

It was a strange and worrying development.

Someone, the shopkeep was surprise when Tengu asked another difficult question. ‘Can I just wire my house into the transformer? Or do I have to pay something for it?’

In panic, the shopkeep made a critical error. ‘Well, no one else pays for power,’ he said. ‘Same with the water.’

Later, as the strangers and walking group of Haven watched Tengu dig powerlines over to the transformer, the shopkeep’s partner made a very rude comment.

‘You could have charged her and just not told anyone.’

The shopkeep held his head in his hands and sighed.