A sunless grey sky hangs over the town of Middal as Autumn grows near. Despite the weather, the town is lively and well. Children play outside, little girls with fabric and straw dolls and little boys chasing each other with sticks or leaping from piles of wood. Women sit on their front stoops shucking corn or tending to young children, men walk and trade baskets of produce or chop wood by their own log homes.

Amity walks along the beaten dirt path through the town, carrying a basket of bread and tomatoes home to her cottage for her mother. The rough weave of the basket presses into her forearm as she walks, and the scent of fresh baking mingles with the earthy aroma of turned soil from nearby fields.

Along the way she sees another girl outside, milking her family's goats in the pen. The wooden stanchion creaks softly as the goats shift, and the rhythmic squish of milk into the pail echoes across the small distance between them. Amity feels her breath catch in her throat, as it always does when she encounters her.