The road into Naples came down through the Bristol Hills from the east with the quality of a road that had been climbing through hill country and had arrived at something worth climbing toward — the valley opening below, the lake visible at the far end of it, the geography of a place that had been growing grapes since Italian families had looked at these hills a century ago and recognized something in the soil and the angle of the sun that reminded them of something they had left behind. The vineyards were visible from the road — not all of them, but the ones on the hillsides facing south and west, the terraced quality of land that had been shaped for vine cultivation over generations, the rows visible even now in early spring as organized lines of bare wood waiting for the season to ask something of them. Mike looked at them from the driver's seat. "Still intact," he said. Shane looked at the rows. "Yes," he said.
The valley floor came up as they descended — the town of Naples small and concentrated, the kind of small that was not diminished but focused, the quality of a community that had always been what it was and had not been trying to be anything larger. The winery was visible before the town proper, a large building on the valley's south side with the practical architecture of a working winery rather than a showplace one — stone foundation, the kind of building that had been built to house equipment and process grapes and store what the processing produced, not to impress visitors. Smoke from the building's chimney. Someone was there.
Lou Restaino came out of the winery when the convoy pulled into the yard. He was in his mid-fifties with the quality of someone whose family had been doing this work in this valley for long enough that the work and the family were not separable things — the knowledge of the vines present in how he looked at them, the attention of someone who had been reading this land since before he had words for what reading meant. He was not large but had the compact quality of someone whose physicality had been shaped by decades of vineyard work, the lean of someone who had been climbing hillside rows and working with their hands in all weather for their entire adult life. He looked at the convoy with the focused attention of a man who had been tracking the approach since the trucks appeared on the hill road, then looked at Shane. "Lou Restaino," he said. "Shane Albright," Shane said. Lou looked at the convoy — at the trucks, at Tyr, at Freya, at Vidar, at the old hardened truck behind the convoy with Lenny's beard visible through the windshield. He looked at that last one a moment longer than the others. He looked at Shane. "Come inside," he said. "We have wine."
The winery's interior had the quality of a working space inhabited under pressure — the processing equipment pushed to one side, the barrel room behind it visible through an open door, the central floor space organized into the functional zones of a community that had been using the building for more than wine production since the Shroud hit. Lou poured — not water, but wine, with the practical quality of a man who understood that in a working winery the wine was what you poured when you poured something, regardless of the hour or the circumstances. He set glasses on the table, then looked at Shane, who had the thermos. Lou looked at the thermos. He looked at Shane. He said nothing about it and poured for Dave and Clint and Tom and the others, set the bottle down, and looked at Shane with the expression of a man who understood that some people did not drink and that this was a fact about those people and not a comment on his wine.
"The vines are intact," Lou said. "All of them. The hillside parcels, the valley floor blocks, everything we were running before." He paused. "We lost some of the processing equipment to the EMP — the electronic controls, the temperature monitoring systems. What we have left is what we had before electronics became part of winemaking, which is more than you'd think." He looked at his glass. "We made wine last harvest. The harvest before the Shroud we processed normally. The harvest after—" He paused. "The harvest after we processed with what we had. It's not the same. It's good." He looked at the map on the wall. "What we need is connection. Salt for preservation — not the wine, the food. The valley produces more than the valley can consume right now but without the ability to move it and preserve it correctly the surplus becomes waste. And equipment — parts for the press and the destemmer that I can't source locally."
Shane looked at the map, at Naples's position — the valley, the lakes on both sides, the hill roads north toward Canandaigua and south toward the Bristol Hills. "What can you provide," he said. Lou looked at his glass. "Wine," he said. "Which is a trade commodity, a preservation medium, and a morale resource. And grapes — the fresh fruit in season, the processed product year-round." He paused. "And the knowledge. We've been doing this in this valley for four generations. That knowledge doesn't exist in very many places anymore." Shane looked at him. "The network needs what you have," he said. "We'll get you on the relay and we'll work the supply corridor. Salt north from Retsof and Warsaw. Equipment from the network's mechanical resources." He looked at Lou directly. "What I want from you is the wine and the training — people sent here to learn what you know before the knowing is only in one place." Lou looked at him with the quality of someone who had been thinking about exactly this for months. "The knowing is already in one place," he said. "My nephew Marco knows most of it. My daughter knows the rest." He paused. "It needs to be in more places." Shane looked at him. "Then we start now," he said. Lou looked at his glass, then at Shane, and nodded once.
Lenny had found the barrel room. Nobody had directed him there — he had simply moved through the winery with the quality of someone for whom the path through a new space was determined entirely by what the space offered that was interesting, and the barrel room was the most interesting thing the winery offered. He was standing among the rows of barrels with the focused quality he had when something had captured his complete attention. Chad was beside him looking at the same barrels with the same expression. Randy was at the barrel room door with the expression of someone who had been managing Lenny's relationship with interesting things for long enough that management was simply how he occupied spaces Lenny was in.
Lou's daughter came through the barrel room on her way to the processing area and stopped when she found three men she did not recognize standing among the barrels. She looked at them. She looked at Randy. "Who are these people," she said. "Convoy," Randy said. She looked at Lenny. Lenny pointed at a barrel. "How old is this one," he said. She looked at the barrel. "That's the reserve," she said. "Four years." Lenny looked at the barrel. He looked at Chad. "Four years," he said. Chad looked at the barrel. "Four years," he confirmed. She looked at Randy. "Are they going to touch it," she said. "Probably not," Randy said. "Probably." She looked at Lenny. "Don't touch it," she said. Lenny looked at her, then at the barrel. He put his hands in his pockets. "I wasn't going to touch it," he said. "Good," she said. She walked through toward the processing area with the purposeful quality of someone who had work to do and had made a detour to address a situation and was now returning to the work. Lenny watched her go. He looked at the barrel. He looked at Randy. "I wasn't going to touch it," he said again. "I know," Randy said. "I was just looking at it," Lenny said. "I know," Randy said. Lenny looked at the barrel. "Four years," he said.
Shane had seen the women from the road on the way into the winery — a group visible at the farmhouse at the valley's end, children in the yard, the quality of people who had been in one place for longer than they had planned and were showing it. He had noted it and said nothing about it yet. After the node conversation with Lou he found Freya in the winery yard with Vigor, the dog having attached himself to her in the way he sometimes attached himself to people who were not Shane when Shane was occupied with something else. Shane came to stand beside her. He looked at the farmhouse at the valley's end. Freya followed his look and was quiet for a moment. "California," she said. "Yes," Shane said.
She looked at the farmhouse, at the children visible in the yard — the quality of children who had been in one place long enough that the place was simply where they lived now, the adaptation that children made that adults could not always make at the same speed. "How many," she said. "Lou said eleven women," Shane said. "Fifteen children between them roughly." Freya looked at the farmhouse. "And their city," she said. "The Cascadia quake," Shane said. "Coastal California. What I read in the Loom—" He paused. "The coastline dropped. The ocean filled the gap. Whatever was on bay fill and reclaimed land—" "Gone," Freya said. "Yes," Shane said. She looked at the farmhouse, at the children in the yard, and was quiet for a moment with the quality of someone processing something they had already understood and were now deciding how to carry it. "They don't fully know," she said. "They know the quake happened," Shane said. "They know it was catastrophic. They don't know the scale of it." Freya looked at the farmhouse. "I'll go," she said. Shane looked at her. "Yes," he said.
Freya walked to the farmhouse alone, Vigor walking with her — the dog's company an unannounced addition to the walk that Freya accepted without comment because Vigor's company was simply present when Vigor decided it should be present. She came to the farmhouse yard. The children saw her first, the way children saw Freya first in most situations — not because she was trying to be seen, but because children were good at reading the quality of presence and Freya's quality of presence was not a thing that required effort to register. A girl of about eight looked up from what she was doing. She looked at Freya. She looked at Vigor. She looked at Freya. "Is that your dog," she said. "He belongs to a friend," Freya said. The girl looked at Vigor with the assessing quality of a child deciding something. Vigor looked back with the attentive quality of a redbone coonhound reading a new person — not threatening, but reading. The girl held out her hand and Vigor leaned forward and touched his nose to it. "He's nice," the girl said. "Yes," Freya said. "He is."
A woman came to the farmhouse door — early thirties, with the quality of someone who had been carrying something difficult for a long time and had arrived at a functional relationship with the carrying that was not peace but was adjacent to it. She looked at Freya with the attentive quality of someone who had been registering new arrivals for months and had developed a thorough understanding of what different kinds of arrivals meant. She looked longer than most people looked, the quality of recognition arriving in stages — not immediate but building, the way recognition built when the person in front of you was someone you had seen in a context so removed from the current context that the mind required time to bridge the distance. "You're—" she started. "Jessalyn," Freya said. "Yes." The woman looked at her. "Jessalyn Ingalls," she said. "Yes," Freya said. The woman looked at the farmhouse behind her, then at Freya. "Come inside," she said. "I'll get the others."
They gathered in the farmhouse's main room — eleven women, the children outside, the older ones watching the younger ones with the responsible quality of children who had been asked to take care of each other for long enough that taking care of each other was simply what they did. Inside, the women looked at Freya, at the quality of Jessalyn Ingalls sitting in a farmhouse in the Finger Lakes valley in the spring. Some of them had seen her films. Most of them. The famousness present and the ordinariness also present and the two things requiring adjustment. Freya let them adjust. She did not perform anything. She sat with the contained quality she always had and looked at the room and let it find its footing before she spoke.
A woman in the back — dark hair, the quality of someone who had been waiting to ask something for a long time and was going to ask it now that the opportunity had arrived. "Do you know what happened," she said. "To California." Freya looked at her, then at the room, and did not look away from the question. "Yes," she said. "I know some of it. I'll tell you what I know." She paused. "It is not easy to hear." The room was quiet. Freya looked at the woman who had asked. "The Cascadia fault," she said. "The earthquake was over nine on the Richter scale. The largest Cascadia event in recorded history." She paused. "Coastal infrastructure built on bay fill and reclaimed land — the shaking liquefied it. The coastline itself dropped in places." She looked at the room. "The ocean moved into the gaps the dropping left." The room held that. A woman near the window closed her eyes briefly. Another put her hand over her mouth. "Our city," the woman in the back said. Freya looked at her. "Where was it," she said. The woman told her. Freya looked at her for a moment and did not look away. "That area was on the coast," she said. "Bay fill and reclaimed land through most of the developed sections." She paused. "I am sorry. I don't know exactly — no one knows exactly yet. But what I know about where you are from and what the quake did to that coastline—" She stopped. "I am sorry."
The room absorbed it — not dramatically, but in the quiet way of people absorbing something they had been carrying as a possibility for a long time and were now holding as a probability, the difference between those two things present in the quality of the silence. The woman in the back was quiet for a long time. Then she said: "The kids don't know." Freya looked at her. "No," Freya said. "I imagine they don't." The woman looked at her hands. "How do you tell them," she said. Freya looked at the room, at all of them. "Carefully," she said. "And not alone." She paused. "Which is what I want to talk to you about."
The room looked at her. "There is a place," Freya said. "At Onondaga — the Sanctuary. It is where Shane Albright has been building what comes next." She looked at the room. "I am part of it. I have been part of it since before it had its current shape." She looked at the woman in the back. "There are children there. Schools — real ones, with teachers who have decided that teaching is the work. There are people from every part of this country and some from beyond it. There is work and there is safety and there is—" She paused. "There is a future being built. A real one." The room was quiet. "I am asking you to come," Freya said. "Not because you have nowhere else to go — though that is true and I am not pretending it isn't. Because the Sanctuary needs what you have and you need what the Sanctuary has and those two things together are better than either of them apart." She looked at the room. "You have children," she said. "That matters. It matters more than I can explain in one conversation. What we are building needs children growing up inside it — not as a demographic fact but as the actual future of the thing." She looked at the woman who had been watching her since she sat down. "I am asking you to be part of that."
The room was quiet for a moment. The woman near the window opened her eyes. She looked at Freya. "You're serious," she said. "Yes," Freya said. "Jessalyn Ingalls is sitting in a farmhouse in Naples New York asking us to come live at a sanctuary on an Indian reservation," she said. "Yes," Freya said. The woman looked at the room, at the other women, at the farmhouse around them — the quality of a space that had been adequate for longer than adequate was comfortable. She looked at Freya. "When do we leave," she said.
The convoy loaded the next morning with eleven women and fifteen children and the organized chaos of a group that had been somewhere too long and was now moving with the relieved efficiency of people who had been given a direction and were going in it. Lou stood in the winery yard watching the loading. He looked at the farmhouse — at the quality of a space being vacated after months of occupation, the lightness of a burden lifted. He looked at Shane. "They were good people," he said. "It was just—" "I know," Shane said. Lou looked at the farmhouse. "The children especially," he said. "The children were never a problem." He paused. "Children adapt." Shane looked at the yard where the children were loading into the convoy vehicles with the excited quality of children who were going somewhere new after months of going nowhere new. "Yes," he said. "They do."
Lou looked at him. "Come back through," he said. "When the vines are in leaf. I want you to see what this valley looks like when it's doing what it does." Shane looked at the hillside parcels — the rows visible in the spring morning, the bare wood of the vines waiting. "I will," he said. He looked at Lou and held out his hand. Lou shook it. Shane went to find the convoy. Freya was at the lead truck with the woman who had asked the first question — the one in the back who had said our city. They were talking quietly, the woman's expression carrying the quality of someone who had been given something difficult to carry and was learning the first steps of carrying it. Freya looked up when Shane came near, with the quality she had when something had gone the way it needed to go and she was simply present with that. Shane looked at the woman. "We'll get you to Sanctuary," he said. The woman looked at him. "You're the roofer," she said. "Yes," he said. She looked at the convoy, at the trucks and the children being loaded and the activity of a group in motion. She looked at Shane. "Okay," she said — simply, the word of someone who had made a decision and was done making it.
Shane looked at the convoy. From the second truck's window Lenny's face appeared, looking at the women and children being loaded with the expression of someone encountering a development they had not anticipated and were processing with their full available processing capacity. He looked at Shane. Shane looked at him. Lenny pointed at the women. He pointed at the convoy. He pointed at Shane. Shane looked at the road north. "Let's go," he said.
The convoy moved out of Naples in the mid-morning with the valley behind it and the road north ahead and eleven women and fifteen children distributed through the vehicles in the relieved way of people who had been standing still for a long time and were now moving. Vigor was in the back of the lead truck with Shane and Freya and a girl of about eight who had asked if she could sit with the dog and had been told yes and had spent the first ten minutes of the drive with her arm around Vigor's neck in the total commitment of a child who had decided the dog was hers for the duration of the trip. Vigor accepted this with the patient quality of a working dog who understood that children required a different kind of tolerance than adults and was providing it. Freya looked at the girl and the dog. She looked at Shane. She said nothing. She looked at the road ahead.
The valley road ran north through the Bristol Hills toward Canandaigua and the route west toward Mount Morris and the dam and the canning factory and whatever was waiting there. Shane drank his coffee. The trucks kept moving. The vines on the hillsides behind them waited for the season to ask something of them. They would be ready when it did.