Calley wished Beth a happy birthday as soon as they woke up. Calley had even found her a little garden trowel as a present. Her little sister, at only thirteen, must have ventured out to the grey market to get it. She probably had to pay in food she had saved from her own portion. Beth was touched and very grateful.

  And not just because Calley was the only one to mention her birthday at all.

  Beth trembled on the verge of saying something multiple times at breakfast but stopped herself every time. Beth was twenty now. She wasn’t a child. She didn’t need to be catered to on her birthday. The family must have lost track of the date. Perfectly reasonable. Under the circumstances, it really wasn’t appropriate to celebrate anyway – the day before, the new job had come through, and her father was still touchy about it.

  It was what could be expected of a minimum wage job, and Beth agreed it was more suited to herself than her father. But her father didn’t want her job at the crematorium either. Besides, the competitor had been very gracious during the introduction, and her father was not the only one in that office who had been displaced from a more prestigious position.

  Beth didn’t have to work on her birthday, so she waited at home. From time to time, she switched her phone on in the hopes of a message. Around lunchtime, she was rewarded with a text, coming hours after it had been sent. A birthday wish from Aunt Mary. Beth wasn’t surprised that Aunt Mary had paid attention to the date, given that it was Uncle Alex’s birthday as well. But for her to take that time out of her grief to think of Beth was very kind. Beth returned a message with thoughts for Uncle Alex, along with a photograph of the little memorial she had prepared to put up with Peter later. One never knew. Sometimes, things would still go through.

  Beth waited, but it would not be safe to go out after dark, so Beth couldn’t wait too long. When Peter didn’t arrive before supper, she ducked out. She added her memorial to the ever-expanding wall with reverence. Other mourners stepped in to help her hold things in place for her to stick up. They were all very compassionate and warm. Beth realised they thought she had been left entirely orphaned. She felt guilty for taking more sympathy than she deserved, but she didn’t know how to explain why she was doing it alone.

  Supper was another battle with herself not to say anything about her birthday, but she succeeded. The closest she came was a mild enquiry about whether Peter had made any plans to join them. He father impatiently brushed that off and returned to complaining about the horrors of taking the electric bus.

  It was strange, Beth realised, as she sat in her room, postponing getting ready for bed in a pathetic hope that Peter was just running late. She had built up this one day, this one expected meeting. The day she was finally going to reveal everything about The Book. Share her plans. Share the tokens. Because objectively, any day would do. There was no time limit. But Beth realised that the time limit in her head was ticking down to zero.

  She had tried and failed. She could not keep waiting and planning and hoping. She would not. Peter was not going to be her knight in shining armour. He had his own things going on. That didn’t make him a bad person. But it did make him a person she could neither rely on or trust with knowledge of The Book.

  Beth changed into her pyjamas and switched off the little rechargeable nightlight. She thought she would have felt mature and self-sacrificing for not begging for attention. She didn’t. She felt overlooked and, frankly, stupid.

  There was a fragile sort of equilibrium in her mind after that. By the beginning of March, Beth pocketed the nineth token. It was going to be the last one. As she had predicted, the backlog on the crematorium had slowly cleared. They no longer needed the additional staff. Her supervisor had pulled her aside to ask her about her future plans. It wasn’t a hard decision: allotment clearing. It was ramping up as the weather warmed, and they even had vacancies.

  Beth had asked to join the team once before, way back in January. It had been one of the ones she had been told she wasn’t physically capable of. But now she was on the inside of the system. Her supervisor was more than happy to recommend her. She might not have ever acquired the muscle power to manhandle corpses as easily as some of the others, but she had gained a reputation for being willing to get stuck in and help no matter how hard or unpleasant the job was. This time, her application was successful.

  The vacancies might also have had something to do with a recent rumour. Someone – no one could quite say who, but they swore they had a family member who had a friend who knew them personally – had stumbled across an infected who had been caught by a bear trap – or a collapsed building work or drainage ditch – and almost been bitten.

  A week later, she was dressed up in a thick jacket and heavy leather gloves that were only slightly too big for her. It was as much as could be hoped for. Beth didn’t want to assume she was invulnerable, even with The Book. The shift leader was a young man named Theo, who looked identical to every second male on the island. A little taller than her, with tightly curly hair, and deep brown eyes the exact same shade as that hair. If he’d been introduced as Alistair’s brother, Beth wouldn’t have questioned it.

  She asked him about the rumours of hidden infected.

  “Well, yeah, no, it’s all a big bag of nonsense, you know?” said Theo. “It’s not like Pines even has any bears.”

  “I don’t think that’s the bit people are most concerned about,” said Beth dryly.

  “Still absolute horse crap,” repeated Theo. “I know the names of every soul on the clearing teams. Not one of them was bitten by so much as a tiny shrew. Maybe some moron managed to sneak through the quarantine line into Greenmouth and then had to lie about it. But no, I think it’s all just a fairy tale.”

  Beth allowed herself to be reassured. The Book was reassuringly silent about any outbreaks of the infection anywhere else on the island. And Beth knew for herself that there weren’t any new bodies coming in.

  “But, you know,” said Theo, “You still don’t want to go sticking your arms and legs all careless-like into things. You want to be careful of rusted metals and ditches and masonry, even without the zombies. You do have all your tetanus jabs, right?”

  “Ah, yes?” said Beth. “I mean, I think I was given one at school. Do they need a top up or anything? Do we still have any vaccinations left on Pines?”

  “Yeah, no, I’m sure you’re fine,” said Theo.

  If he was so sure, why had he brought it up in the first place? Beth sighed. There was danger everywhere, and it was made significantly worse by the shortage of medicine and medical equipment. But humanity had somehow managed to survive all that time before it became common place. She would just have to pay attention and be careful.

  Their first destination was a park on the edges of the town. Just across the road was an actively managed farm, but the green area on their side had been left to deteriorate. The corridor on either side of the river would be left wild, but the section on the other side of the muddy path – at one point used for picnicking– needed to be cleared out. With no traffic left on the street, just that barrier of twenty metres was enough to give the illusion of absolute wilderness.

  Her first team was six people: herself, Theo, and another four she nicknamed Jumpy, Cranky, Chatty and Silent. Cranky was the only other women, but she was much more solidly built with visibly more upper body strength. Silent and Chatty made up one normally talkative person between them.

  Jumpy did, in fact, jump at everything. Every movement was something that he was sure to want to crawl up his clothing. He picked up some wood to move it to the wheelbarrow and promptly dropped it again with a scream. What had previously been the bottom surface was now exposed. It was full of holes, with creatures the size of a child’s fingernail crawling in and out and over.

  “Cockroaches!”

  “Those are baby crickets,” said Cranky repressively. “They aren’t going to harm you.”

  Beth stepped away from the sight, the back of her neck crawling. She was with Jumpy on this. They looked like cockroaches. Green cockroaches with wings, but cockroaches. And there were some smaller ones still black and scaly. But she didn’t say anything. Either way, they were still harmless. But Beth wasn’t volunteering to pick up the wood either.

  A short time later, a loud rustling started on one tree, then ran down the length of the river, high above their heads.

  “What was that?” asked Jumpy.

  “I don’t know,” said Cranky. “A squirrel. Some bird. What does it matter?”

  “What if it’s something dangerous? There haven’t been humans here for ages. It could be a wild creature. What if it’s a bear?”

  “It’s not a bear,” said Cranky. “There are no large predators on Pines at all. Hell, we barely have any small predators. There definitely aren’t any bears.”

  “Of course there must be bears,” said Chatty. “Remember that zombie who got trapped by a bear trap? Why would anyone put bear traps out if there aren’t any bears?”

  Beth tried not to laugh, but she just ended up snorting into her hands.

  Cranky insulted Chatty’s knowledge, common sense and general intelligence, while Chatty returned insults about her personality and appearance.

  Theo glared at them all before reassuring Jumpy that there were no bears, no bear traps, and anyway, they were still safely within city limits. And could everyone start clearing out the brambles now? They reluctantly returned to the task and Beth ended up working next to Theo.

  “How did you get the job?” Beth asked.

  “Well, it was family pressure, you know?” said Theo. “Mum and Dad wanted me to be off doing something useful with my life. Before everything collapsed, I was in the civil service and all. Then I got promoted into clearing brambles. I don’t think that’s quite what they had in mind. Mind you, I suspect a good half of my family thought this was exactly the type of job I’d end up with, so there’s that.”

  Beth laughed politely before giving into her curiosity. “Do you know the de le Hayes? Alistair and Catherine should be about your age, I think.”

  “Yes, I went to school with Alistair. How did you come to know him?”

  “I wouldn’t say I know him,” said Beth. “I’ve only met him twice. My brother is dating his sister, Catherine.”

  “Oh,” said Theo. “Oh.”

  “Oh… what?” asked Beth.

  “Oh… no, nothing. I just realised I’ve met your brother as well. Peter, right? I didn’t realise he had family here in Pines.”

  That hadn’t sounded like a nothing. That had sounded like a great deal like a something he didn’t want to say aloud. She wouldn’t pursue it, although she was dying to know just what her brother’s reputation was for him to garner that reaction. Beth wondered if it was gossip that he had received his position based on his relationship to the de la Hayes. Still, even if that was true, that didn’t mean Peter wasn’t stepping up and doing an excellent job.

  “Yes,” said Beth. “We were on holiday on the mainland and ended up being evacuated here. Since Peter had the space to take us in, we were lucky enough to be registered as residents. Alistair was willing to step in for the affidavit as a favour for him.”

  “That’s— is that an oak tree?” asked Theo.

  That was one of the most unsubtle changes of subject Beth had ever heard.

  “It does have acorns under it,” said Beth, dryly. “Does that mean it’s protected?”

  “Oh, no,” said Theo. “That’s not to say we don’t have a bunch of protected oaks, mind. We do. Some very famous and beloved trees. But we have a list of them and there’s none here. No, you see, I ask because they want us to mark decent trees for the lumber team to come in and harvest. You know, seeing as we’re the scrubland clearing team and not the woodland clearing team.”

  Once more, Beth laughed politely at the small witticism.

  Beth was distracted trying to move a long bramble vine without taking damage herself. Even the heavy gloves weren’t enough to keep the thorns out of her hands. The assurances that this was much easier in winter than it would be in summer was not particularly helpful.

  “Does the woodland team get chainsaws? Or strimmers?” she asked, “Or even better, some heavy machinery?”

  “It isn’t the equipment,” said Theo. “I could talk to someone and get whatever tools we need. But, you see, we don’t have ration cards for petrol.”

  Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

  “I guess I should have guessed that,” said Beth.

  “That might be changing,” said Theo. “There’s a tanker coming, you see. Due in three weeks. No guarantees on whether they’ll throw any our way, but I will be fighting for some.”

  “I wish you luck,” said Beth.

  Beth was surprised. She was under the impression that global trade had completely ceased already. Perhaps that was an exaggeration. She supposed there was a difference between planes being grounded, and ships no longer being able to leave the countries that could produce their own fuel. In fact, didn’t those trips take months? Enough months that it would have already left before the height of the zombie outbreak? Or more cynically, perhaps it wasn’t coming, and Pines was just lying to prevent panic. She supposed she’d find out.

  In the meantime, they were stuck with hoes, mattocks, and secateurs.

  “What about pigs and goats?” asked Beth. “Aren’t they supposed to be excellent at clearing land?”

  “It was discussed,” said Theo. “They’re running a bunch of experiments, or so they say. But you need pretty solidly grown goats and pigs to make it work, and most of the farm animals have already been turned into meat, you know. No chance for this year. We’re already running really late. We really wanted people to be planting already.”

  They were interrupted by a long high-pitched screech.

  “What was that?”

  “It’s the spirits of the dead looking for someone to take revenge on,” said Cranky sarcastically. “They target the loudest person around, so please, do keep screaming.”

  “It’s probably a fox,” said Beth.

  “There aren’t any foxes on Pines either!” said Theo, indignant.

  “Then a cat.”

  Better a cat than a dog. Better a spirit than a dog. There wasn’t any record of people getting hurt by spirits. There were plenty of records of people getting hurt by dogs.

  As she worked, Beth thought she could smell something familiar. Taking the chance at the next break, she pushed her way towards the river. She’d been right. All along the bank was a carpet of wild garlic. She did recognise the leaves from that long ago foraging video, but the video hadn’t exaggerated – the strong garlic scent was what made it easy to identify.

  “Theo?” she called out.

  “What is it?” asked Theo, coming towards her.

  “Wild garlic,” said Beth. “The leaves are edible, and really do taste of garlic.”

  “Really?” asked Theo, taking a leaf.

  Beth took off her gloves and did the same. The smell was even stronger as the leaf was slightly crushed. Beth wiped it clean and tasted a very small bit. The flavour was not at all mild like she had anticipated. It was just as strongly garlic as garlic.

  “I thought it was just the bulbs that had the taste,” said Theo. “Ha, learn something new.”

  Beth looked around. More than a leaf or two in a salad would be overwhelming, even for a garlic lover. Without reliable refrigeration, and no meaningful freezing, they couldn’t really store it.

  Beth said, “There’s more here than the whole team could possibly eat.”

  “That’s not a problem at all,” said Theo. “After we’ve taken what we want, we can exchange the rest for some bonus ceeps for the team. Just, you know, don’t go around boasting about it.”

  Ceeps had become the commonly accepted abbreviation for Contribution Points.

  “We can exchange food for points?” asked Beth. “Is that a special perk of the clearing team?”

  “Quite the opposite. Have you not come across the Food Exchange?”

  “No,” said Beth.

  “You see, there was a big problem where people hoarded more food than they could eat. Especially when the electricity stopped running enough hours for the freezers to keep it safe. So, we set up the Exchange. You hand over all the extra food in exchange for ceeps. Later on, when you’ve run out, you can use those ceeps to buy extra food. Everyone is happy.”

  If there was enough food later on to buy. Beth thought the whole system required more trust than your average citizen would have. Still, she supposed if the food was genuinely about to go off, then anything was better than nothing.

  “Now officially,” said Theo. “We’re supposed to be spending every minute of our day here clearing new ground, not foraging. But, you see, the Food Exchange is strictly no questions asked about the source of any food.”

  “We turn in the extra wild garlic leaves and then use the ceeps to buy some other types of food.”

  “Exactly,” said Theo. “Everybody ends up happy.”

  “What about the acorns?” asked Beth.

  “I did ask,” replied Theo. “They aren’t taking those. I think we have the wrong sort of acorns. Our type needs too much water to process, and even then, they still taste awful.”

  Beth vaguely remembered some advice about treating acorns by keeping them in the tank of the toilet for a few weeks. The constant replacing of the water would leech all the tannins out of them. She resolved to try it. It would interrupt the work too much to collect any immediately, especially after this break to forage wild garlic, but she could collect some on her days off.

  Theo called the rest of the team over, and they were slowly filling a spare plastic crate with leaves when Cranky suddenly yelped. Beth turned to see her spitting something out and wiping at her tongue.

  “What did you feed me?” she asked. “It feels like fire ants in my mouth!”

  “Oh no,” said Jumpy. “What if she’s allergic? What if it’s poison? Is she going to die?”

  “What did you feed her?” repeated Theo.

  “We just figured we could mix the wild garlic with the new nettles for a nice salad,” said Chatty, a little too innocently. “We didn’t realise it would have that reaction.”

  “Really?” asked Theo. “Do I even want to know how you convinced her to just stick a bunch of baby nettles in her mouth?”

  “They didn’t tell me what it was,” said Cranky.

  “Well, nettles are supposed to be good for you, aren’t they?” asked Chatty rhetorically. “First greens of year, and all. Taste like spinach. You can eat them raw. That’s in an official pamphlet, it is.”

  Beth had read the same pamphlet. “Yes, you can eat them raw. If you make sure to crush all the needles first.”

  “Well, how were we supposed to know it had needles?”

  Besides being very clearly stated in that pamphlet?

  “How were you supposed to know that stinging nettle has stings?” asked Cranky. “Are you really asking that?”

  “How are you feeling?” Theo asked her. “Do you think you need medical attention?”

  “I think I’ll be fine,” said Cranky. “It’s just itchy, now.”

  “I’m really sorry,” said Chatty. “I was sure it was safe.”

  “No, you weren’t,” said Cranky. “It was obviously on purpose. You’re not a complete idiot, as much as you like to act like one. If you were really sure, you would have eaten it yourself. You wouldn’t have given it to me without a word of warning. What are you going to do to me next? Real poison?”

  “We’ll talk this over properly when we get back to the office,” said Theo. “For now, why don’t you take a break and drink some hot water? I think hot water also breaks down with the needles. And the two of you, I think you should concentrate on clearing the bramble on the other side of the field.”

  They complained but obeyed. Once they were out of earshot, Beth turned to Theo. “I have to say it was an excellent idea not to let us chop down trees. Someone would definitely have chopped toes off already. Either their own or someone else’s.”

  “Nothing for it,” said Theo glumly. “I have hordes of people I can hire that have not a single clue what they’re doing. Competent people? They’re rarer than hen’s teeth. They all get scooped up by the more ‘important’ teams, you know? And that’s if the military doesn’t just make off with them.”

  “Not everyone,” said Beth. “I know someone who used to run a commercial market garden. It isn’t quite the same thing as clearing new ground, but she probably has more experience than the whole team combined.”

  “A refugee?” asked Theo. “Is she registered yet?”

  “Yes, permanent address and everything.”

  “Bring her over if she’s interested,” said Theo. “I suspect we’re about to be at least one teammate down.”

  Gwen was interested. Beth didn’t even have to talk up the advantages of earning ceeps – Gwen already knew. Within days, she was part of the team. Chatty had been encouraged to find other work, while Jumpy had, surprisingly, argued to stay. Cranky had reluctantly conceded that Jumpy had probably been an innocent pawn in the whole thing.

  “How is it going in the garden shed?” asked Beth as they headed off to a different stretch of municipal land, just sufficiently inland from the sea to be considered arable.

  “Ah,” said Gwen. “I might have moved into the house proper.”

  “Gwen!”

  “I know, I know it looks terrible. But I swear to you, it’s perfectly safe. He’s not that kind of man. Besides, his brother and sister-and-law are staying in the house as well. He’s not even there very much. He’s off teaching refugee kids up at the Uni.”

  “Are there really that many kids in the refugees?” asked Beth. “Can’t they just join the existing schools? That seems a little discriminatory, even for them.”

  “There are when you consider the kids from Greenmouth.”

  “From Greenmouth—oh. Because children don’t get infected. They’ve come out of quarantine?”

  It was a grim reminder about how unnatural the disaster was. Other people might be speculating about just what about a child’s immune system stopped them from contracting super-rabies, but Beth was pretty sure she already knew the answer. The aliens protected children from infection because it wanted an ongoing replacement for their forces.

  “They have indeed,” said Gwen. “A few of the older ones had to be pulled out, but the rest made it. So now Pines has six litters of kittens and only one sack.”

  “No living adults?” asked Beth.

  “Some had relatives elsewhere on the island, but some don’t.”

  “What’s that?” asked Jumpy, from further along.

  “What’s what?” asked Cranky, with a sigh.

  “Can’t you hear that? That’s definitely a zombie! Listen to it groaning. Don’t try to tell me that’s a cat, this time. You can just about make out it swearing.”

  “I don’t think fully infected people speak at all,” pointed out Beth. “Not even to swear. This is public land. It must just be a perfectly normal human.”

  “Shh! Listen.”

  They obediently did, and this time Beth could hear it. It did rather sound like the theatrical moan from a low-budget zombie movie. She could easily imagine the noise as a guttural ‘brains’.

  “See? That doesn’t sound like a healthy person.”

  “You’re right,” said Cranky. “That isn’t a healthy human. Or a cat. It’s a puffin, you moron. Haven’t you ever heard them before?”

  “Oh,” said Jumpy. “Yeah, I guess it could be a puffin.”

  “We’re pretty close to the cliffs here,” said Theo.

  “But isn’t it too early for puffins?” asked Jumpy after a pause. “I thought they only arrived at the end of spring.”

  They all froze at that.

  “It is pretty warm for March,” suggested Beth. “Might be an early arrival.”

  “Or some other type of bird,” said Cranky.

  None of them thought it was an infected, not even Jumpy, not really. But they did mutually redirect their clearing in the opposite direction.

  Beth put her all into the work. Silent and Jumpy did not. In Jumpy’s case, it might have been a genuine fear of insects and dangerous plants, but Beth still found it a little convenient that his nervousness always happened to coincide with hard or dirty work. Silent was more overt about it. He did the bare minimum not to get reprimanded. He never arrived early or left late or spent his lunches with the team. He didn’t ever do the very least in the team, but he didn’t do more, even in circumstances where a male had obvious advantages.

  Gwen and Beth did have been an awareness of being less secure in their job than the others. But Beth thought it wasn’t that big an influence. It was honestly satisfying to do a good job. And the work was meaningful. Depending how well they did, people would either be able to grow crops easily or struggle and fail and go hungry.

  And perhaps she didn’t want to let down Gwen or Theo. She enjoyed having their good opinion.

  Gwen herself was on another level, and not just in her knowledge. Beth was only very slowly starting to ignore the random scratches and welts. Gwen, in contrast, would only notice when someone pointed out that her blood was starting to drip off her. Gwen also knew how to optimise her work, and her skill with tools meant she achieved more with less effort. She was slowly teaching Beth, although Beth returned everyday tired and in pain.

  Even turning the more recently mowed sports fields into growing space was hard work. They had to cut through the turf and replaced each square upside down again. Beth had assumed singing as you worked was a musical convention, but no. It wasn’t just to help with the synchronisation when moving something heavy, although it did help with that. It also helped with the mind-numbing boredom of the rest of the work. While not everyone was a good singer, Beth found it didn’t matter if she was singing along herself. Most of them were hilariously inappropriate pop songs or sea shanties, but they were slowly coming to replace the lyrics with more appropriate words.

  “Soon may the ration-man come / and bring us barrels of grape and plum / one day when the infections done / we’ll take our leave and go.”

  One of the perks of being a part of the team was that they’d be near the top of the waiting list when allotments were assigned. Gwen and Beth pulled out the maps one lunch, discussing which one they wanted to apply to.

  “If you want my advice?” asked Theo. “Speaking just as a clearer, mind, I don’t know anything about the quality of the land for farming.”

  “Of course,” said Beth.

  Theo walked over to join them and then found the spot on a map.

  “The old Upper Valley High School,” he said. “They’ll have the water lines fixed before the allotments open, and there’s lots of other facilities right there. It hasn’t been abandoned long, so the buildings are all structurally sound, you know. And best of all, it has a very secure fence and gate.”

  Beth’s attention was instantly caught. It wasn’t just protecting her allotment from random thieves. It was an excerpt from The Book.

  Beth had a hard time imagining Calley ever being loud and disruptive, but a properly gated allotment would head off the matter entirely. Beth was an entirely separate household. She could honestly tell them that she wasn’t permitted to let them in at all. The security around a previous school was bound to be better than around a previous dog park.

  “Fences and gates might not be enough to help,” said Cranky. “You’re going to need more than that to stay safe, if the rumours are true.”

  “You mean all the ghost thefts?” asked Gwen. “No problem. We’ll just add a salt line around the walls.”

  “The salt would be more valuable than anything the ghost could steal,” pointed out Theo.

  “True.”

  “Ghost thefts?” prompted Beth.

  “Some things have been going missing in ways the guards are claiming are supernatural,” explained Gwen.

  “I’m calling it now,” said Cranky. “The guards are in on it.”

  “Maybe. But you’d think they’d come up with a better excuse if it was them.”

  “That’s a fiction thing,” said Cranky, “Too much evidence isn’t proof of innocence. Too much evidence is proof of a stupid criminal.”

  Beth did have to wonder. It was at least possible the thefts were genuinely supernatural, and the guards were being unfairly maligned. The skill auction hadn’t opened yet, but the aliens were clearly already stirring to pot in other ways.

  “Why was the school abandoned anyway?” asked Beth.

  “Oh, our aging population, you know,” said Theo. “Most of the people my age left to the cities and never came back. With fewer children coming up, we had to consolidate the schools. Upper Valley was one of the sacrifices. We had lots of plans for the space, but with one thing or another, nothing ever came of it. But now, all those fields and courtyards are just perfect for growing food.”

  “Bit ironic,” said Beth. “We’re converting a high school into an allotment, but they’re converting some university rooms into a school for the survivor kids.”

  “The kids have all been housed right there in the university halls,” said Gwen. “It wouldn’t make sense to try and transport them all the way here and back every day. They might as well make better use out of the university facilities than just as some fancy offices for the local government.”

  “I suppose,” said Beth.

  “It’s your gain, anyway,” said Theo. “The school is a good spot.”

  “I do like it,” said Beth. “Gwen?”

  “It seems like a good choice to me too,” she said.

  They filled in the rest of the paperwork, and Theo promised he’d get it placed in the right place in the queue. It wouldn’t be long now. Two or three weeks to get the allotment. And less than that before the spring equinox and the skill auction. That’s when everything would change. Beth couldn’t wait.