Chap­ter 41, titled “A Small Herd” and set in 1969, cen­ters around Kya, who finds her­self in a dire sit­u­a­tion after an encounter with Chase. After flee­ing from him in her boat, she reach­es her lagoon and shack, over­whelmed with emo­tions and phys­i­cal pain, reflect­ing on Chase’s promise of pos­ses­sion and the poten­tial dan­ger his obses­sion pos­es. She is unable to seek help due to the social stig­ma and the fear that the author­i­ties would side with Chase, a respect­ed fig­ure, over her, the so-called “Marsh Girl”. As a pre­cau­tion, Kya packs essen­tials and makes her way to a seclud­ed cab­in that once was mere­ly an old log struc­ture but has since been refur­bished by Tate and Scup­per, offer­ing a fleet­ing sense of safe­ty with its basic ameni­ties and iso­la­tion.

The sig­nif­i­cance of the shell neck­lace, still worn by Chase, haunts Kya, sym­bol­iz­ing his unyield­ing hold and the delu­sion of his claim over her. The nar­ra­tive delves into Kya’s vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty and the soci­etal judg­ment she antic­i­pates, embody­ing themes of iso­la­tion and prej­u­dice. Her jour­ney through the wind-swept land­scape to the safe haven of the cab­in high­lights her resilience and the extent of her fear.

Once at the cab­in, Kya finds brief solace in its improve­ments and pro­vi­sions. Yet, her sanc­tu­ary feels more like a prison with­out vis­i­bil­i­ty, exac­er­bat­ing her fear of Chase’s pur­suit. As she sits by the creek, con­tem­plat­ing her iso­la­tion, a herd of deer presents a con­trast to her soli­tude, embody­ing a sense of com­mu­ni­ty and belong­ing she longs for, yet is painful­ly aware of her alien­ation from.

This chap­ter vivid­ly depicts Kya’s fraught emo­tion­al and phys­i­cal state post-con­fronta­tion, her strate­gic yet des­per­ate deci­sion for soli­tude, and the psy­cho­log­i­cal toll of her feared and actu­al iso­la­tion. The shell neck­lace serves as a chill­ing reminder of Chase’s pres­ence and inten­tions, inten­si­fy­ing the per­il she feels, while the cab­in and its sur­round­ings under­score her lone­li­ness and the stark real­i­ty of her exis­tence on the mar­gins.