Three more boys joined the group standing at the fire as everyone else sat down. “All right, first hand-vote is for the name,” Danielle said. “We’re taking the three most generally popular-seeming options in alphabetical order: the choices are Light and Reason Party, Religious Freedom Alliance, or Shade Tree Society. Let’s start with Light and Reason Party – keep your hands up until we’re done counting please. Hand way up to vote for Light and Reason Party.” Danielle counted exactly ninety hands, and double-checking with the other hunting party leaders, they mostly agreed, though Rillian thought he’d seen 91. Danielle’s illusion Skill was still active, so she morphed the keyboard into a sign over the fire, reading, “Light and Reason Party: 91” with two question marks below it.

  “All right, hands down. Now we’re counting votes for Religious Freedom Alliance. Put your hand up now to vote for Religious Freedom Alliance,” Danielle said. It was immediately obvious that this was a less popular option; Danielle counted only 37 hands. She replaced the first question mark with the notation, “Religious Freedom Alliance: 37,” and heard some of the voters groan as they put down their hands.

  “All right, hands down. Last choice is Shade Tree Society. Put your hands up now to vote for – um, for the name Shade Tree Society,” Danielle said, stumbling over her words as she realized this was going to be the winning vote by a wide margin. “You guys will have to double-check me again,” she said to the other leaders, and started counting. When she’d finished and compared notes with the other leaders, the last line of her illusionary sign read, “Shade Tree Society, 138.”

  The crowd broke out in applause when she put up the third total, and nearly everyone put their hands down without having to be told. Danielle herself was trying not to get overwhelmed by a different total: if nobody had voted twice, that was 265 people voting. “I am pleased to announce that we are now choosing leadership for The Shade Tree Society,” she said as the clapping died down. “We have nine hunting party leaders here to represent their groups. I’m sure we have a few more people with leadership experience of other kinds to nominate; to nominate someone, please stand and wait to be called on.”

  Half a dozen people immediately popped up. Danielle pointed to the person furthest to her left, a shortish boy she didn’t recognize. “I propose Zephyr McPherson,” the boy said. “I know you haven’t been very impressed with the fact that he is a McPherson, but he’s been in a bunch of student leadership groups and also has had lots of opportunities to observe adult leaders in the real – um, I mean, Inside.”

  “All right, Zephyr McPherson, do you accept nomination to the leadership council of the Shade Tree Society?” Danielle asked.

  “Yes, I accept nomination,” Zephyr said.

  “Come up here by the fire, then,” Danielle said, silently thanking God that one of Zephyr’s proponents had finally offered a good reason for nominating him, so she wouldn’t have to argue about what reasons qualified someone for nomination. “Anyone else who wanted to nominate Zephyr McPherson, please sit down.” Half a dozen people sat, and Danielle chose the leftmost person still standing.

  In short order, the new additions to the fire had expanded to include Peter, Gideon, Arabella Klein, and Tallulah Rivera, all with the qualification of being student leaders in various interest clubs at their former schools, and Sarah Wheatley, the outgoing Student Council president from Tree of Knowledge. One by one, Danielle asked them if they accepted the nomination, and then invited them to join her by the fire.

  When no one was standing, Danielle had fourteen people lined up facing the crowd from behind her (she wasn’t sure when they’d all decided to be in a line). In front of her were, presumably, 259. She took a deep breath. “All right, now for the big one. This is the proposed charter for the Shade Tree Society, based on the charter of the SHAD Hunting Party and modified in accordance with our hours of discussion so far. This is not the sum total of all regulations the Society will ever have, but it will be our foundation, and we’ll build up from here as necessary. Since we have limited time, I haven’t added anything that isn’t pretty crucial to our functioning as a political party and as a System organization enabling trust between our members. I will now read the charter, and take a hand vote; if we get at least, um, 130 passing votes, then the charter will pass, and I will ask each of my fellow leaders to ratify the charter as founding members and members of the Organizing Council. Then we’ll break for dinner, because it’s late; then we’ll accept members in groups, and we’ll come back together to work out further details no sooner than Monday.”

  Then she took a deep breath and read out the charter. She kept her eyes firmly focused on the text in her Planner, because she wasn’t sure she could keep her cool if she let herself see the crowd listening. It was very quiet as she read the charter, more so than during the discussion period when everyone had been lining up for a chance to speak. Even the people watching from the buildings were listening quietly.

  The only part where there was any noise was when she read the added clause, “Organizing members may be members of hunting parties or other organizations, System-recognized or otherwise; however, they may not be members of other political parties. Failing to mention other political party memberships before promotion, or joining other political parties after promotion, shall result in demotion to Probationary Member; they must rectify the situation and be re-promoted according to the normal promotion rules.” One of the hunting party leaders that had come at her last call cursed and stomped off, complaining, “I knew this wasn’t going to work!” There was a lot of muttering as he left, but Danielle just shook her head and kept going.

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  When she was done, she called for a hand vote, reminding the people behind her to count too so they could double-check their results against each other. The vote was 218 for ratification of the charter, 51 against. Danielle spared a single moment to enjoy the intense relief of knowing they were almost done, and initiated the process to incorporate the System Organization according to the charter she’d just read, with the leaders behind her as the other founding members. That did involve getting all their proper names written into the heading of the charter, but it went quickly, and then the System vote was posted and the charter ratified by the chosen leadership, blessedly unanimous. The crowd, meanwhile, turned to excited conversation.

  “ALL RIGHT!” Danielle called out when the incorporation process was complete. “Everyone who needs to get food, now’s the time. Firewood would also be good, and someone please go ahead and expand the fire so everyone who needs to can cook. Once the Organizing Council all have our responsibilities settled and our dinners in hand, we’ll start voting in regular members! Give us about an hour.”

  She turned to the other leaders – Organizers, according to the charter they’d just ratified – and said, “I need to do a quick hike to the north end of the ruins, but I’ll be back as soon as possible.”

  Sadie had the rest of the party ready with game bags, and wordlessly handed Danielle and Akari theirs. “Heh, and you all tried to tell me none of our other party council members did leadership,” Danielle joked. She was already heading for the road as she said it, though, for once setting the pace herself. She managed to keep it down to the point where she wasn’t forcing everyone else to jog, this time, but she knew she was pushing some of them a little beyond their comfort zones.

  She stopped when they got to the trailhead of the Access Point trail. “All right, I know I’m rushing you all, and I’m sorry for that,” Danielle said. “Zephyr, Gideon, and I have a lot of Welcome Members to officially vote into the Society tonight, though, and tomorrow morning’s coming early, so please get your snares and whatever’s in them as quickly as possible and meet back here.”

  Danielle quickly picked up two of her snares, and dispatched a 40-point marmot at her last one. Coming back out of the woods, she almost stepped on a patch of dandelions, and since she didn’t see anyone else back yet, she started harvesting some of the leaves. A minute later, Tom came out of the woods further west, and waved to her. “Look at this!” he exclaimed. “I caught a bird in one of my squirrel snares!”

  “That’s great,” Danielle told him with a grin. “Weird, it looks like a grouse, from the Guide to Edible Wildlife, but the book says they’re ground birds. Oh, but they’ll fly into trees to avoid predators, I think – I guess this one went out of the frying pan and into the fire. Or maybe the reverse.”

  Tom grinned back. “As long as it’s edible, I don’t care how it got in the snare. I hope it tastes like chicken! I miss chicken. Anyway, we’ll have to come back here later, I got two squirrels besides the bird.”

  Sadie showed up next, her bag hanging heavy. “You won’t believe this,” she said. “I put two snares kind of next to each other, where I thought there was a game trail but it forked. Well, one of those beaver-rat-things stepped in one with a right paw, and one with a left paw! I didn’t think we were even close enough to water for – do you remember the actual name of these things?”

  “Nutria?” Danielle said. “Sounds like a diet drink? That thing?”

  “Yeah, one of those,” Sadie said. “I thought they like water, like actual beavers, but here one is.”

  “That’s weird,” Danielle said. “It’s good food, though, and hopefully you’ll have time for the hide tomorrow.”

  Sadie nodded. “I kept the head for that,” she said. “The guts are buried though, I don’t want to do that later. I’d say sorry, but I’m not last anyway.”

  “Oops, I should gut the squirrels and stuff, too,” Tom said, and got busy.

  One by one, everyone returned with meat – Zephyr had two rabbits, one of them large and green like one of Sadie’s early catches had been. Gideon and Ezra had a rabbit and two squirrels between them, and joined Danielle in picking dandelion greens. Jordan had another marmot, even though he’d been on the far side of the trail from Danielle’s spot. Heather had a squirrel even though her snare had been on the ground, and had used Find Edible Plant; her skill had netted her a bundle of miner’s lettuce. Cassy had snared a rabbit and another possible grouse. Akari had another green rabbit, and claimed to have literally tripped over another cherry tomato vine, partly uprooting it; for some reason, she had decided to finish the job and try to carry it home and plant it by the corner of the building.

  Everyone else was excited about the bountiful result, but as each person came back Danielle found herself a little worried. “What’s wrong?” Zephyr asked. “We’ve got probably two days worth of food here! This is great!”

  “It is great,” Danielle said. “It’s just that I would normally expect this on a Saturday, not a Friday.”

  “What do animals care what day of the week it is?” Zephyr scoffed.

  “God cares,” Danielle said. “We always pray that we find enough food on Saturday for us to take a day of rest and not have to dig into our backups – us Christians I mean, obviously. This seems like an answer to that prayer, but if it’s coming today, what does that mean for tomorrow?”

  “You worry too much Danielle,” Akari said. “I mean it literally. Do not fear! If God knows we’ll be too busy for snares tomorrow, and he provided for us in advance, that just means He’s on top of whatever’s going to happen, right?”

  Tom looked back and forth between them and asked, “Have you considered the possibility that it’s just a good hunting spot that nobody else is using yet?”

  Danielle chucked. “You’re right. Sorry. I’m just tired and my head still hurts, and I really would’ve liked a sign tomorrow was going to be more normal, or even more restful, rather than busy.”

  “Well, maybe it will be restful, especially because we don’t need to go hunting,” Cassy said. “If you spend all your time looking for signs, you’ll just drive yourself crazy. Anyway, like Akari said, if you believe God’s got it under control, that’s all the more reason to stop fretting. Let’s get back to our rooms and stash this stuff. Practically all of us are actually eating leftover trail meat tonight, right?”

  “I’m not sure six out of ten counts as all of us,” Danielle said. “Let’s get going, anyway, people are waiting for us.”

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