The rest of the first week passed quickly. Corey rose to legendary standards on the second day by arriving in a red velvet skirt, tights, and a snug blouse. She insisted her name was Courtney, and that she be referred to as she. After two days as Courtney, Corey was back. The principal tried to get her into trouble, insisting she couldn't constantly switch back and forth. He/she quietly pointed out that since she was biologically female, they couldn't prevent her coming to school in girl's clothes . . . and since male fashions were largely unisex, they couldn't stop her from wearing male attire without also suspending half the female student body.

Principal Higgs had walked away with his lips tightly pursed. Most of the students thought it had been an epic prank and victory for Courtney. Amanda alone seemed worried that Courtney had made an enemy of the principal, which could potentially lead to trouble.

Amanda's week contained no great victories, but thankfully few losses. A couple of girls cornered her in the bathroom and told her "helpfully" that she should really take a shower every day. A few of the boys decide on the third day to revive the unoriginal nickname "Fatty," but when she didn't react, they gave up.

In the last period, a couple of the girls toward the front of the classroom were discussing going to Madison, Wisconsin, to the mall over the weekend. "They have some awesome shops," was the consensus. One of the girls said, "Much better than here, or even Davenport."

"Really?" Erica had asked. "I've never been there."

"Oh, you should come with us," the girl said. "My mom won't mind."

Amanda scowled. If she had made a comment, she was sure the girls would not have invited her along. They would probably scowl and say something catty.

As if on cue, Erica looked over at Amanda. "You been to Madison?"

"Yeah," Amanda said, "lots, but never the mall."

"You go to Madison?" one of the girls asked unbelieving.

"My aunt has a farm just past Madison. We go all the time," Amanda replied. "I am going berry picking this weekend."

"A farm?" one of the girls asked archly.

"Yeah," Amanda said defensively, "she takes me into town some too, but she's not much for the mall." She looked over at Erica, mostly to not have to stare down the girls who were acting like she was an interloper in their conversation. "You know how some adults are."

"Yeah, I know how that goes," Erica said. "'Your aunt? Is she as pretty as you?"

Amanda was still trying to figure out if Erica was being serious and what she was trying to imply when the bell rang.

"See you Monday, Amanda," Erica said as she slid out of her seat. The other two girls had already dismissed both Erica and Amanda and were back to planning their weekend as they left.

She met up with Jay and-judging from the jeans and t-shirt-Corey at the entrance of the school, and they walked part of the way home together. "You guys doing anything exciting this weekend?" she asked.

Jay made an up-and-down motion with his fist.

Amanda arched her eyebrow and said, "Do I want to know?"

Corey laughed. "Hammering," he said, "Mom and Dad, both sets, keep saying that it doesn't matter how warm it is now, fall is just around the corner, and we really need to get our cabin up soon. So we have been roped into doing manual labor all weekend. You could come too, if manual labor sounds like fun."

"No, I've got my own labor," Amanda groused. "Berry picking."

"That sounds like fun," Corey said brightly.

"It's not," she assured him. "We go to Aunt Maggie's farm every year about this time, the whole extended family does. She has three acres of brambles. We pick blackberries and make blackberry preserves all weekend. It's a huge operation."

"And then," Jay added licking his lips, "Uncle Darren trades a case of preserves with us for some of our produce. They're the best preserves ever. So I, at least, appreciate your effort."

Amanda took the long route home, walking with Jay and Corey until they came to the gravel road that led to the Tomei's farm. She was tempted to walk them all the way home and then backtrack, but Uncle Darren wanted to leave this evening and get to Aunt Maggie's late tonight so he could help with early setup tomorrow.

Two blocks after she parted ways with her two friends, and five blocks from home, there was a small town park. As she walked along the sidewalk next to it, she heard a noise coming from the bushes. She eyed them suspiciously. The bush erupted and a man stepped out. He was big, not as big as her uncle, but he was easily a head taller than Amanda. His hair was blond and scraggly, and he had a thick beard. His clothes were tattered and torn. The sneakers on his feet had ragged holes in them. He stopped at the edge of the sidewalk and inhaled deeply through his nose.

Amanda edged slowly passed him, trying to keep to the far side of the sidewalk. He sniffed again, and his eyes fell on her. They were dark and feral and the look he gave her was one of pure malevolence. A cold wave washed over her, and she started to shake. She turned to face him, not wanting him behind her, but continued to back slowly away. His eyes traveled up and down her form. He let out a low growl that was almost inhuman in pitch.

She abandoned any pretense of backing away, turned and ran as fast as she could toward home.

Amanda was out of breath when she arrived at her front yard. She stopped running and looked back. There was little to fear when Uncle Darren was within shouting distance.

Not that it mattered. The street behind her was empty. She turned back toward their house, part of her mind already trying to convince her that she had overreacted. It had just been some homeless person. Maybe he had pitched a tent inside the bushes somewhere. She knew from her childhood that there was a clearing deep within the brush on that side of the park. She and Jay had played there many times as kids. She would have to remember to warn him, in case he wanted to show Corey one of their old haunts. She wouldn't want them to stumble onto that guy by accident.

She knew there were homeless people everywhere, but it had never occurred to her that she would run into one in Dubuque. She knew there were shelters downtown, but the street people who lived in tents or slept in doorways seemed to be a problem of bigger cities.

Her uncle's truck was parked in their front yard. The back was open, and he appeared briefly, carrying a stack of boxes. "Hey, you home already? Good. I'd like to get an early start, get there by supper," he said.

"I'll drop some of my books off and grab my pack," Amanda said. She ran into the house and up the stairs to her room. She scanned her planner briefly and removed the books she wouldn't need to do her homework and then grabbed the second bag she had packed yesterday with a couple of changes of clothes.

Hunter was running around the front yard, using a stick as a sword and fighting off invisible enemies. Uncle Darren was placing a propane cylinder in the back of the truck with the boxes of canning jars and camping gear. Amanda helped him finish loading the back of the truck.

When they were done, Amanda yelled at Hunter to get in the back of the extended cab. He threw his stick back into the brush and climbed in. Amanda took the passenger side up front, while Uncle Darren shut the back of the truck and the topper.

He climbed in beside her and the truck roared to life. He tapped a full sun tea pitcher wedged between them and held up a plate covered in a towel. "For the trip," he said. The plate contained homemade biscuits with a meat filling. After her short run, she poured herself a glass of tea and accepted a biscuit thankfully.

As they pulled out of town, Uncle Darren pulled a CD down from his visor and stuck it into the dash. A melodic folk ballad started up. Amanda grimaced. She had enjoyed the band well enough this summer at the fair, but not well enough to endure constantly replaying. She dug her iPod out of her pocket and stuck the buds in her ear. As the sounds of Adele drowned out the medieval folk song, she leaned against the glass. At least she had a couple of hours to pretend she was on her way to Madison to hang out at the mall with friends, shop for clothes, and gossip about school.

#

Aunt Maggie was no slight woman. She stood six feet one inch and was, in polite terminology, well endowed. It was not just her breasts; her hips overflowed with feminine curves. She had dark hair, like Amanda, warm brown eyes, and a pale round face. As she came across the front lawn of her farmhouse to greet them, her long peasant dress sashayed against her body. Amanda thought of Erica's question suddenly: "Is she pretty like you?" There was no doubt that Aunt Maggie was pretty, beautiful even. And yes, there was a family resemblance. But Amanda could never pull off the beauty that Aunt Maggie naturally had.

Amanda stepped out of the truck only to be swept into Aunt Maggie's patchouli-scented hug. As Amanda all but disappeared into the massive form and soft, comfortable roundness that was Aunt Maggie, she felt small and safe again. She and Hunter had lived here the first year after the fire. Aunt Maggie's hug instantly brought the feelings, if not the memory, of those days. The relief that Amanda had felt, the sense they had finally reached a place where she and her brother were safe, along with the pent-up grief, rushed over her again.

Aunt Maggie let her go and reached for Hunter next, who consented to a half hug before running off behind the farmhouse. "Your room is still available," Aunt Maggie said as they walked towards the house, "if you don't want to camp with Uncle. I know how my brother snores."

Amanda laughed. She was used to Uncle Darren's nighttime sounds, but her back was finally starting to adjust to a bed again, and she would be glad not to sleep on the ground this weekend.

To the right of the farmhouse, someone had set up a Native American teepee. Two tents had been set up on the lawn next to it and "Uncle Robert," who was not technically family but had been a friend for longer than Amanda had been alive, was erecting a pavilion a little farther down.

Aunt Maggie had three Great Pyrenees. Robert's eight-year-old daughter Melissa was playing fearlessly with them even though they dwarfed her. Hunter had already inserted himself into the game, alternately chasing or being chased by one of them.

In all, five families and another five individuals gathered on Maggie's farm for berry picking. At dusk she led them down a long trail behind her house to a small building constructed of logs laid end to end and mortared together. The building had a partially enclosed front porch and a heavy sod roof.

Maggie mounted the porch and then casually stripped her dress off. Clad only in her bra and panties, she opened the door, releasing a sudden rush of steam, and stepped inside. Darren was next, stripping to his boxers before entering the sauna. At school and among her "normal" friends, Amanda was almost painfully conscious of her body. She hated changing out for gym class, and showering afterward was torture. She didn't need the reminder that she was heavier and hairier than just about every other girl at school.

Here, she didn't give it a second thought. Her family had a casual disregard for both the concept of modesty and body image. Most of the women were adults ranging from upper thirties to "Grandma Serena," who was in her sixties. Their bodies sagged in places and bore the scars of their lives: stretch marks, C-sections, and other surgical scars. Yet they seemed more comfortable with themselves then the prettiest girls at school. Amanda envied their ease.

Neither did they have regard for the sexual mores of Christian society. As she came into the sauna, she heard Aunt Maggie telling Uncle Darren about the new farm hand in town that she was currently screwing. Robert was talking to Serena about his son's new boyfriend and complaining about the harassment they had faced on campus at the community college where they were taking classes. In his thick Midwestern drawl, he described an encounter with a local preacher who considered homosexuality to be a sin. "Well, we don't all go by that book, don'chya know," Robert had responded.

The front wall of the sauna contained the door and a heavy wood-fired stove. A wooden pen enclosed the stove on three sides and the pen had been crammed full of stones to retain and disperse the heat more evenly. The other three walls were taken up by wooden benches, three in a stair step pattern. A single electric lantern hung from the center beam and lit the room dimly.

The higher up you went, the hotter it was. Amanda found an empty place on the midlevel bench between Aunt Maggie and her second cousin, James.

"So who wants to start?" Aunt Maggie asked as the last person filtered in.

"I would like to do the blessing," James volunteered. He went to the stove. There were a couple of buckets of water and a small pile of willow branches on the floor. James scooped up a branch and dipped the end in the bucket. He pronounced a blessing on each of the four corners of the room and shook the branch, sending a spray of relatively cool water over them.

They called it "soo-na" using the old pronunciation of sauna to indicate the difference between this and the modern health version. It was similar to a Native American sweat lodge, except that sweat lodges were hotter, a spiritual endurance test. The soo-na was kept warm but not unbearably hot. Sweat stood out on Amanda's skin, and she gratefully accepted drinks whenever water was passed, but it was a comfortable sweat after the initial adjustment. Several people took turns speaking, some told old myths or folk stories, other told more modern tales, family stories both serious and funny.

When it was over they took turns showering off at an open air shower attached to the side of the building. Maggie opened a chest on the porch of the sauna and handed out thick bathrobes she kept there. They made their way back to the house. A huge bonfire had been set in the yard. Amanda quickly redressed in the house and then joined the group at the fire. A potluck spread had been set to one side. Amanda served herself food, found a coke in a cooler, and then found a seat next to James. They talked about how the first week of school had gone for each of them as the adults uncorked some home-brewed mead and began making toasts.

As she stared up at the starlit night, Amanda thought of the few glimpses she'd had of "normal" life in her past. A weekend at the mall wasn't worth trading this away, she decided. It was just another one of the adjustments Amanda had to make between her two lives. Every fall she felt dirty and insignificant compared to the other girls at school. She hated Uncle Darren's tiny cabin and their unconventional life. But when out with family or at a fair, she wouldn't trade the camaraderie and joy of her extended family for all the comforts in the world.

The next morning, she was roused early only to find most of the camp already awake as well. Darren and Robert had a cast-iron griddle on the coals of last night's bonfire and were taking turns making pancakes and scrambled eggs. A table was set with syrup, juice, and two carafes, one of coffee and the other with hot water for tea.

The sun had just risen, and the sky was clear. It looked to be a hot day, and everyone was eager to get the actual picking over with before the hottest part of the afternoon. As breakfast was cleared, they began to lather each other in sunscreen against the August sun. Jeans, long shirts, and/or denim jackets were the most common attire despite the heat. Amanda dug her denim jacket out as they headed for the brambles.

Aunt Maggie's bramble patch was a massive section of land. It was fenced off, though why Amanda could never understand. Each spring her aunt would go through it, with the help of a couple family members, and prune the brambles back to make paths throughout. Now they would spread out in groups of two or three to keep each other company, each carrying a five-gallon bucket, and pick the blackberries.

When Amanda had her first bucketful of berries, she hauled it back to the gate. An outdoor production kitchen had been set up there. Under an awning there were two propane camp stoves with a table in between. James took her bucket, unceremoniously dumped the contents into a nearby barrel, and then began to fish out the cleaned berries for the next stage of processing. Hunter was there, helping Grandma Serena mash the berries to a pulp. Two women at the first stove cooked the pulp into preserves. They had a plastic tub at their feet with nearly two dozen five-pound bags of sugar and several bottles of pectin. Once they had cooked down a batch of preserves, it was set on the table. Another guy there would carefully pour it into mason jars, as soon as it was cool enough to handle, and then place lids over the jar.

The second stove was finishing the canning process with a boiling bath for each filled jar. The jars were then set on a second table and once they had cooled and dried they were repacked into the boxes the jars had come out of.

By the time Amanda returned with her second bucketful, the stack of empty mason jars on the near side of the processing center had dwindled significantly and the stack of full ones on the far side had grown considerably. Grandma Serena told her to knock off for lunch, and Amanda gratefully went to a nearby tree. There she found a small portion of the crew already sitting in the shade, eating sandwiches and drinking drinks.

She helped herself to food and then sat with Hunter as she ate. He was blackish blue up to his elbows and across his face from blackberry juice. She hoped it would wash off before Monday or else the school would probably think it was bruising and send child services around to check them out.

They quit gathering berries shortly after noon, and by late afternoon they were processing the final batch for the day. Uncle Darren brought his truck down to load the finished preserves and bring them back up to his sister's house. The kitchen they covered over in heavy tarps. They would be back tomorrow for a second round.

Most of the crew stopped off at the sauna house. They used the outdoor shower to wash the grime and sweat from their bodies. A few had swimsuits under their work clothes and a few showered in their underwear, but practicality and a lack of modesty made nudists out of the majority. They stripped down, showered quickly, and then found towels and headed back to their tents for clean clothes.

Amanda took a look at the line of people waiting for their turn at the shower and decided to make use of her privilege as favorite niece to shower up at the house. When she came out of the bathroom, Aunt Maggie was in the kitchen. "You are missing the ice cream social," Maggie said. From out of the window, she could see Uncle Robert feeding whole blackberries into a canister of homemade ice cream. Her stomach rolled with hunger.

"I just wanted to get cleaned up," she said, "get some of the stench off."

Maggie nodded knowingly. "The infamous Bee-Orn-Sen biochemistry," she said. She always pronounced the family name in the old Norwegian way and insisted on spelling it Bjornsen instead of the anglicized Burnson.

Amanda paused hesitantly then went on, "Is there . . . is there anything I can do about that? I shower every day but by halfway through the school day-" she broke off tears threatening. "Kids are saying stuff."

Aunt Maggie wrapped Amanda in her arms. "Kids can be cruel sometimes," she said. After a moment she turned away and began to rummage through one of her cupboards. "There is nothing invented by man that is a match for our unique chemistry, I am sorry to say. Here, this might help." She passed Amanda a small glass bottle.

Amanda looked at the label and rolled her eyes. "Patchouli?" she said.

"Patchouli is your friend," her aunt said.

"Yeah, I am going to make tons of friends at school going around smelling like a New Age head shop," she said sarcastically.

"The point of life isn't to make a lot of friends," Aunt Maggie said sharply, "it's to find a few true friends, people who will be there for you no matter what."

Amanda looked down, "I know, but-"

Aunt Maggie interrupted, "I know, it's hard. I don't know what to tell you. I have yet to find a deodorant or soap that reacts well to our sweat. But there are worse things to have. You could be crippled or have some debilitating genetic disease. A musky aroma is not the worst birth defect in the world."

"I know," Amanda said, "It's just . . . it doesn't bother me here."

"Because we are all a little musky," her aunt said, "and we all reek of wood fires, sweat, and the great out of doors."

"Yeah, but at school," Amanda finished, "it's just different."

"They are different," Aunt Maggie countered. "I know. I wish I could tell you some easy fix. In time it will get better. Puberty is the worst, and mine wasn't any better. The smell is sharper, more acrid. Gods, you should have smelled your uncle in those days. He didn't care much for baths either, and it didn't help. After puberty, it sort of settles into a not-unpleasant musky odor. And you would be surprised, some people like that."

"You and your hillbilly boyfriends maybe," Amanda half joked, "but no high school boy ever has said, 'I really like a musky girl.'"

"C'mon," Aunt Maggie chided her. "Don't beat yourself up over stuff that's beyond your control."

"I just wish I was beautiful like the other girls," Amanda muttered.

"You are beautiful, honey." She reached out and held Amanda's chin up, looking her square in the eye. "Don't try to be the beauty you see in someone else. Own the beauty you have inside yourself." She let Amanda's chin go and grabbed the cell phone off the table. She touched the screen and swiped to the camera. "See that?" She held it up so Amanda could see the man in the picture. His shirt was off, and he had a cowboy hat half pulled down over his face. His bare chest was rock solid and bulging. He had a piece of grass between his teeth and a smug smile on his face.

"Who's that?" Amanda asked.

"The hillbilly," Aunt Maggie replied with a self satisfied smile. "And he can't enough of this musky woman. Now let's get some ice cream, okay?"

Amanda smiled and nodded.

Berry picking fell on the first weekend in August, which also served as the closest modern approximation for the first harvest festival, known as Lammas. Several local pagan groups joined them on Saturday night for an even bigger bonfire, complete with blessings, another sauna, and drumming.

Before packing for home on Sunday afternoon, they had one more family tradition. Everyone unpacked cases of canning jars, five-gallon drums containing various items, and in the case of Uncle Darren, an oversized cooler packed with dry ice and frozen meat.

A few of the extended family had "real jobs," but most lived as Uncle Darren did. They had farms, acreages, and cabins in the woods. They worked for money, doing odd jobs or crafting things, but mostly they subsisted. They had huge gardens. They wild-crafted herbs and foodstuffs, and they hunted. They bartered with each other, helping each other out as best they could.

Uncle Darren traded away most of the remaining elk meat from last year's hunt for two-and-half gallons of honey from Robert's hives, and three five-gallon drums of wheat from Robert's small organic operation. Aunt Maggie had bundles of dried herbs laid out on a blanket, homemade goat cheese from her dairy goats, and both mutton and goat's meat available in the deep freezer in her basement.

It was evening time before the Burnsons pulled back into their home in Dubuque. Carl Perkins was sitting on their front porch waiting for them. Amanda recognized him instantly. He was a serious-looking, thin, gray-haired man, dressed in olive-green slacks and a tan button-down shirt with a ranger's patch on the sleeve. That he was still in his work clothes was hardly unusual, but he still had his gun at his belt. Carl worked for the Department of Natural Resources and was technically law enforcement, not that Amanda had ever seen him arrest anyone.

Carl was one of Uncle Darren's best friends. They both looked out for each other professionally. Uncle Darren used his woods lore and knowledge to help track poachers and keep track of unusual activity in the smaller county parks. Carl often recommended her uncle to "townies," as he called them, who wanted a guide for hunting or fishing. But the two men also went on numerous hunting and fishing trips together. Knowing that Uncle Darren was raising two kids on odd jobs, Carl paid for most of the trips under the guise of hiring Uncle Darren as a "guide" and often talked the groups into donating the meat to their guide. Most of the hunters they took were only interested in the trophies anyway, the head and antlers. They might eat a few venison or elk steaks, but they were happy to be rid of the majority of the meat.

Carl rose as Uncle Darren backed the truck up to the porch and got out. "I thought you stopped traveling for festivals once school started?" Carl asked.

"Berry picking," Uncle Darren replied.

Carl nodded knowingly. "Up at your sister's farm," he said. "Quite a woman, your sister."

"That she is," Uncle Darren agreed. "What brings you by?"

"I had something I wanted to talk to you about, actually."

Uncle Darren glanced down at the gun. "This is a professional call, I take it."

"Yup," Carl said. "I've been on duty this weekend. Got a call early today. A dead sheep."

"How did it die?"

"Mauled and eaten," Carl said. "It was full grown."

Uncle Darren's eyes wrinkled. "Full grown? Coyotes go after plenty of lambs, but I can't see a pack taking down a full grown ewe."

"Nor can I," Carl said. "The farmer wants to blame some townies living on an acreage a few miles down the road, says they have Great Danes."

"Big enough maybe. Domestic dogs will hound livestock, but I don't know about attacking it."

"I don't buy it either," Carl said. "The throat was torn out and the belly gorged on. Very clean and very indicative of a wild animal hunting for food, not of a domestic dog getting out of hand."

"So what do you think?"

"If this were in Minnesota, I'd say a wolf," Carl replied. "This far south, I don't know. I was hoping to get your opinion on the matter. It's possible a pack or even a lone wolf has come down along the river." He sighed. "A wolf in our parks would be an awesome thing, but one attacking livestock will be no end to trouble. I don't want every farmer and acreage owner in the county up in arms. I would like to figure out what it is and what we are going to do about it before word starts getting around."

Uncle Darren nodded and looked up at the setting sun. "Where is it?"

Carl listed an intersection of two county roads.

"Is tomorrow soon enough?" Darren asked.

"Yeah," Carl said, "Tell you what, stop by the office first thing in the morning, and I will drive you out there."