"They mean you no harm, you know," Gram Lee, the elder, said walking up behind Hadley, startling her. "Brielle and the others are just teasing you because they're as curious about you as you are about them and it's their misguided way to try and connect with you."

It was a few hours after midnight and Hadley was sitting on a rock at the edge of the Wildling camp, looking up at the full moon. She was still finding it difficult to fall asleep. It wasn't just the heartburn and constant peeing. It was also the intense and incessant thoughts about everything and everyone she'd lost in the last few months brought to the fore by that conversation with Brielle, and the uncertainty of what was facing her with the Wildlings always rattling through her mind, keeping her awake.

"That doesn't make it hurt less," Hadley replied, scootching over to let the old woman join her on the rock and accepting a cup filled to the brim from her.

"I suppose it doesn't." Gram Lee said with a sigh. She clinked her own cup to the one she'd handed Hadley. Hadley stared at the cup's contents uncertainly. "Don't worry. Axel told me about your pregnancy – congratulations, by the way – so your cup is herbal tea to help with your aches and pains and to help you sleep, while mine is beautifully strong mead I made myself about four years ago that I hope will knock off more than a few brain cells along with my pesky aches and pains."

They sat in silence for a while sipping at their drinks. Hadley was a little jealous of Gram Lee's drink. She remembered the fire taste of alcohol and wouldn't have minded shutting her brain off for the night in a blackout. She'd sworn never to drink again after her very first hangover but the thought of reneging on that promise suddenly taunted her. She was suddenly desperate for the flighty feeling of nothingness that alcohol wrought. Desperate for the memories of the first time she was drunk. Memories of her, Ruq and Jamila dancing and laughing and joking without a care in the world. Hadley closed her eyes and let herself drown in the memory of that one perfect night.

"I'm sure you already know this, but I wanted to commend you on it anyway." Gram Lee said, breaking the silence. "You're a wonderful mother, Hadley. Your son is adorable."

Son.

It was one of those words Hadley hadn't heard before but was spoken like she should have.

"My son?"

"Your child. The little boy you arrived with? The one who won't leave the dog's side," the old woman clarified with a chuckle. "He's well mannered, he listens and he's always cheery. He's perfect. You'll have to do something about that vampire dog though. They won't allow him into The Caves."

"Brownie is great. They'll learn not to fear him eventually. He won't hurt a human." Hadley replied. "And Drew isn't my son."

"Hmm..." Gram Lee mused. "I've seen you with the little one. You make sure he eats, you hold him when he's scared, you play with him and that damn dog, and you put down the rules he has to follow."

Hadley shrugged.

Jamila used to do those things for Drew, but she wasn't here anymore, so Hadley had taken it upon herself to fill in for her because that's what Jamila would have wanted. Once they reached The Caves, however, Hadley would hand the boy over to someone else who would take up the responsibility of caring for him.

Every mother in the Compound was only ever a mother to one child. It made sense as that was the only way one could give a child their full attention. Hadley would be too busy being a mother to her daughter to be able to spare any time for Drew. He didn't deserve that. She would choose his new guardian carefully.

Gram Lee took a gulp of mead before refilling her cup from a flask she fished out of her pocket.

"I've also seen how he looks at you and how he cares about everything you say or do. You're as much a mother to that child as anyone ever will be, Hadley," Gram Lee said. "Don't take that for granted. Trust me. When you misuse the opportunity to be a mother to a child who needs one, it ends up hurting a lot more than any pain you've ever known."

"Do you have a child?" Hadley asked, turning to look at the woman.

Gram Lee chuckled, her eyes stuck on the moon. "I have a few."

Hadley turned to the moon as well. That was the problem right there. Gram Lee had birthed more than one child and couldn't focus on any. Like Kiara and the twins. Hadley would have to learn more about these multiple pregnancies outside the Compound walls so she wouldn't make the same mistake. She wouldn't spread herself as thin as Gram Lee. She wouldn't let herself feel the pain that the old woman described. She'd be smart about it.

Gram Lee sighed and turned to Hadley.

"They tell me you escaped one of the Compounds," the old woman said. "It's a long way away from the vampire Enclaves. How did you end up here?"

She'd said Compound. Not Barn.

Compound.

Hadley wondered if that was the reason why everything inside her suddenly unravelled, letting through a tsunami of emotions. Or was it the woman's soft, chilled nature? Or the relaxing tea? Whatever it was, Hadley was suddenly bawling her eyes out, falling apart at the seams. Gram Lee held her as she sobbed. They stayed like that for a long time. Hadley wasn't sure when she fell asleep. She opened her eyes at the gentle caress of the sun's rays through the canopy.

"Good morning, Sunshine."

Hadley bolted up from Gram Lee's lap, mortified.

She'd drooled.

"I'm so sorry!" Hadley stuttered, wiping the corner of her mouth and the thick crusts from the corners of her eyes from her tears last night.

Gram Lee laughed. She gently dabbed at the small drool stain on her night dress. "When you've had as many grandchildren as I have, this is the best you could hope for."

Hadley looked around. There were only a few people at the camp. The others must have been out farming and scouting for mushrooms.

"It's late! Why didn't you wake me?" Hadley asked.

"You haven't slept from the first day you arrived." Gram Lee said. "Not for more than an hour. Not until last night. I didn't want to disturb you."

Gram Lee was right. That was the best night's sleep Hadley had experienced in weeks. But why had the woman been watching Hadley that keenly?

"Hungry?" Gram Lee asked.

"Starving!"

Gram Lee made them breakfast. The old woman had a secret stash of birds' eggs that she prepared with a meaty cluster of pink oyster mushrooms that tasted a lot like bacon, served over grilled breadfruit. Along with more of the healing herbal tonic and scintillating conversation with the old woman, it was one of Hadley's best days beyond the Compound walls. Hadley told her about everything that happened from the day she stepped out of the Compound walls. When she got to the part about Mrs. Smith, however, Hadley stopped, unable to relive those days, especially that last night.

"We call her the Disemboweller." Gram Lee said, filling in the silence. "She spouts nonsense propaganda about humans coming together to overpower the vampires by using the vampires' strength against them, whatever that means. She calls it The Cause. To me, it's just another human poking at the vampires and inciting war. A few Wildlings have been swayed by her argument. She must now have an army of fifty strong at the very least. We lost two more of our tribe members to her just a few weeks ago. I'm sure you met them among the others."

Hadley shook her head.

"There was no one else in that cabin but Mrs. Smith and I." Hadley said, her brows furrowed. "She took Jamila hostage in the basement, and she had a vampire she was... working on, but that's it. There was no one else."

A flash of memory played through Hadley's mind.

"Do you know what happened to the last person who rejected my offer? It was a Wildling. She stood right where you are. My fault really. I should have known. When it comes down to it, all Wildlings are weak, bootlicking vampire sympathisers."

"You've probably noticed that, while I do have my little veggie garden, I don't have any livestock that I could break down into steaks..."

"I didn't feed her to you! I'm not a monster! But she was a great addition to the garden. Much more effective than burying a fish head under the tomatoes! This is by far my best tomato season. The fruits even brought in the wild boars. I trapped one. That's what you've been enjoying for the last few weeks."

Hadley turned to Gram Lee, a sombre look on her face.

"Gram Lee," Hadley said. "I don't think any of the Wildlings ever accepted Mrs. Smith's offer."

"She killed them, didn't she?" Gram Lee's voice shook, tears welling up in her eyes.

Hadley put her arms around the old woman as she silently wept.

"It's okay, Gram Lee. I killed her." Hadley said, pulling out of the hug, taking the woman's hand and squeezing it.

Hadley skipped out on the part where vampire Venom made that possible and in the most gruesome way ever, leaving Mrs. Smith hanging from her kitchen cabinets with her ribs separated from her spine and pulled outwards into a bloody set of wings. Hadley also left out the part where she believed in The Cause, just not in the way Mrs. Smith wanted to get it done.

"She's gone. She'll never hurt anyone again." Hadley sighed.

Through the retelling of her time from the Compound, one other thing Hadley didn't talk much about was Ruqwik. Even though she missed the intimate connection she'd had with the vampire and would have loved to have someone to talk to about losing her, she'd quickly realised that the Wildlings despised vampires. And it wasn't just vampires. They didn't have many kind words for Shelts either, which is what they called the humans "sheltered" in Compounds, or the Progs, the humans born and bred to become vampires. That they tolerated Hadley and Drew was surprising.

Or maybe it wasn't.

Hadley let go of the woman's hands, hugged the mug of tea in her palms and took a long sip before she spoke again.

"Gram Lee, why does everyone keep calling me Hadley Fisher?" Hadley finally asked.

The question had been on the tip of her tongue for days, ever since she'd started getting closer to Gram Lee.

This was the third night in a row they'd met together at the edge of camp for a cup of herbal tea and mead, and those late-night talks. Hadley treasured these moments. When she had been disconnecting, Hadley had never felt the need to talk about how she felt. But now, with her emotions constantly pressing strongly against her mind and completely messing with her – pregnancy making it all the more potent – she appreciated being able to unburden onto someone who genuinely cared. Gram Lee didn't just listen. She understood. She sympathised. She offered advice. She laughed and made Hadley laugh. She was a lifeline. One that Hadley didn't know she needed until it was right there.

Gram Lee looked at Hadley for a while, her brows furrowed.

"Aadya didn't tell you who you are?" the old woman asked.

Hadley shook her head.

The old woman tsk-tsked and sighed. "And she let you leave anyway?"

"She didn't let me leave," Hadley scoffed. "I escaped."

Hadley went silent, pensively thinking about being caught less than an hour after her escape. This was yet another part of the story that Hadley had kept to herself to avoid talking about Ruq.

"They call you Hadley Fisher because you're a Fisher, Hadley," the old woman said.

"I don't know what that means," Hadley replied, frustration bleeding into her voice. "And to be honest, it's pissing me off that everyone who meets me seems to know more about me than I do."

Gram Lee didn't chuckle. Hadley had thought she would. Had been inadvertently girding her emotions against it. That the old woman didn't laugh was a balm to a wound Hadley didn't even know she suffered. Her ignorance of the world beyond the walls seemed only to entertain those who lived here, all of them holding it over her, laughing and musing at her obliviousness.

But not Gram Lee.

There was a ferocity in her gaze, as if she was cursing every single one of the people who'd held this information from Hadley.

"Your family's lineage is made up of amazing people, Hadley." Gram Lee said, gently taking Hadley's hand into her own. "Three hundred years ago your ancestors, the very first to be named the Fishers, completely changed the world!"

Ancestors.

Yet another one of those novel words from beyond the Compound walls, but from Gram Lee's words, Hadley deduced it to mean others with the name Fisher tacked onto them, stretching back hundreds of years, and connected to her.

"At the peak of a global extinction event, long before the Human Error, a woman named Marie Fisher discovered a once unknown mushroom on an island about to be swallowed up by rising Coastal waters. Her whole life she travelled the world, preserving as many endangered species of plants and fungi as she could," Gram Lee continued, her eyes glazing over as she recalled what sounded like a narrative that she'd heard umpteen times before. "While studying these new fungi to know how best to preserve them, she found that the mushroom's mycelium oozed a substance that killed disease-causing viruses that had plagued humans for millennia. Marie had a choice then. She could either hand her research to a select group of people who would control how it would be used and distributed, or she could give it to every human on the planet herself."

That didn't sound like much of a choice to Hadley. Why would anyone trust the job of helping others to someone else if it was in their power to do it themselves?

"Marie decided to give it to everyone herself," Hadley said with a shrug. "Because she could."

Gram Lee chuckled. "Choosing to take on that responsibility isn't a choice that everyone would make. Especially not with how much there was to personally gain from the alternative option. But you're right, she found a way to spread the mushroom spores to everyone on Earth, curing billions from illnesses that constantly ravaged the world's population. She eliminated what was known as influenza and all virus-caused auto-immune deficiencies. Marie Fisher singlehandedly rewrote humanity's future. She's the one who began the legend of the Fishers. From then on, they became known for one thing and one thing only."

Hadley waited with bated breath as the old woman took a long sip of her mead before looking up at the sky and studying the black, star-studded canvas. Gram Lee then closed her eyes and Hadley noticed she was pulling in long, deliberate, drawn out breathes.

Was the woman in pain?

"What? What did they become known for?" Hadley whispered, impatient for the answer.

Gram Lee opened her eyes and turned to Hadley with a soft smile, though a grimace of pain streaked through her eyes. Hadley wanted to ask about it, but the moment didn't last more than a few milliseconds. The woman took one final deep breathe before she said the words that would change Hadley's life forever.

"Fishers change the world, Hadley." Gram Lee finally said.

***

"We're finally here," Brielle said, her tone seeming a little too sombre for their journey being at an end.

"The Caves?" Hadley asked, looking excitedly around for hidden openings in the earth or crags around them. "Finally! That's great!"

It had been about a week of hiking, just as Axel had promised, and she was anxious to know if her baby was okay.

"No, not The Caves," Brielle replied. "We're still about two days from The Caves. We have to complete Gram Lee's Sunset Walk first and this is it. This is where it ends."

Sunset walk?

Hadley nodded like she understood, her ego still smarting from Brielle and the others who continued to make fun of her and her naïve view of life beyond the Compound walls. Gram Lee told Hadley that she'd have to get over herself and take it as it comes, because this was the learning curve needed to become a Wildling, but Hadley was finding it difficult to do so despite the old woman's advice.

"If you act like you know something when you don't, and then they find out later that you were just faking your understanding, it'll be so much worse! Or say they don't find out you have no idea what they're talking about and it's days, weeks or months later when you realise that you really need to know about that one thing. It'll be a lot more awkward to ask about it then, don't you think?"

Hadley took a deep breath and let it out slowly, steeling her nerves while she happily marvelled at the fact that it was the old woman's voice playing through her mind now when she was stressed or facing a big decision, not her mother's. She'd only known Gram Lee for a few days, but the woman had had an indelible effect on Hadley's life forever. She'd already gleaned an immeasurable amount of knowledge from the old woman and couldn't wait to see how much more there was to learn. With Gram Lee around, Hadley and her daughter would have no trouble finding their place among the Wildlings, and it even made the teasing from Brielle and the others almost tolerable.

"What's a sunset walk?" Hadley finally asked Brielle, bracing for laughter or ridicule.

Instead, Brielle suddenly burst into tears.

"Hey, what's wrong?" Hadley asked, pulling Brielle into a hug, holding her while she sobbed.

Brielle pulled out of the hug and squeezed Hadley's hands in her own.

"I'm sorry we've been giving you shit this past week, Hadley," Brielle said between sniffles. "It's just that this last month was supposed to be our time with Gram Lee... and then you showed up and she hasn't left your side... and that's okay... it's understandable even... you're a Fisher... she probably never thought she would... and spending time with you was how she wanted to..."

Brielle turned away from Hadley, more sobs bursting from her chest and tears falling to the ground. She attempted to wipe them away but was failing miserably. Despite this, she continued speaking.

"...how she wanted to spend this last week... and that's okay. I'm glad she got to meet you." Brielle said.

Hadley's heart began to race.

"Brielle," Hadley said, lacing her words with the utmost urgency. "What. Is. A Sunset Walk?"