“Oh! Sorry! Are you okay?”
He lies there for a second, like a fallen angel, a black silhouette on a white background.
“August?”
Shooting upward, he flings more snow at me. I leap down on him, pushing him backward, and land on top of his chest, my knees pressing his arms down.
It’s hard to say how I know he’s laughing as I shovel snow onto his head. He flicks his head back and shakes and doesn’t try very hard to escape. But suddenly he twitches upward, and I find myself flipped over on my back. By this time the snow is deep enough to form a cushion around me, like a supersoft feather bed. Kneeling beside me, he sprinkles snow from my head to my feet.
I’m not sure what is happening. We should be moving, getting as far as we can before dark, but time seems to have stopped. It’s as though we’ve both been spirited out of the world with all its horror and into a dream. The falling snow hypnotizes me. I can almost feel my blood pressure lowering as he lets the snow trickle between his fingers.
“You like snow, don’t you?” I say, blowing snowflakes from my lips. He nods, scooping up another handful. “Why?”
Makes me feel very happy, he signs, sprinkling my knees.
I feel very happy at that moment too. The snow is comfortable underneath me, and the air is cool and fresh. The fat, falling snowflakes tickle my face as they fall and decorate August’s armor until he looks like a postapocalyptic Christmas card. All the antagonism I’ve felt for him melts along with the snowflakes on my eyelids. Lying back with my face to the sky, it’s easy to forget the devastation that surrounds us, or that his people stole my world. It’s easy to forget the weeks I spent hating him and how he once frightened me. It’s easy to forget how he burned Topher’s letter. Not why, though.
You make me feel very happy.
“I thought I made you very very sad,” I say. Not cruelly, I hope, but his reply reassures me.
Happy. Sad. Happy. Sad. Then he draws a spiral on his forehead. Sitting back on his heels, he looks out into the distance. A large snowflake drifts down and lands on his face, around where his eyebrow might be. I sit up and brush it away.
“Can you feel that? The snowflakes falling on you?”
He nods.
“Do you ever take your armor off? I mean, I know you’re not a machine inside, are you?”
He shakes his head, signing. Breathing here hurts my chest. Pointing up to the mountains in the distance he continues. Up the mountains, breathing is better.
“Oh! Where the air is thinner?” That explains the Nahx preferring the high country, such a simple explanation for something that screwed us all over so thoroughly.
August nods again, looking at the mountains. Another snowflake lands near his nose. I brush that one away too. Then I pull off one of my mittens and lay my hand on the side of his head. He turns and presses his head into my hand, the way a cat would. I run my fingers from the top of his head to his chin. His armor seems to be pulsing hot and cold—some snowflakes melt and some don’t. His breath rattles deeply, like the purring of a tiger.
His left hand rises up slowly and lingers there for a moment, suspended in the air, before coming to rest on my shoulder. Seconds later he slides it onto my face.
We sit like that, snowflakes drifting down on us, for several minutes. August purrs softly, as meanwhile I have things caught in my throat. Words. Stuff I should say and stuff I want to say and a whole lot of things that are ridiculous.
August’s hand slips down from my face, slowly, and stops, curved around my breast. With my coat on and all, it’s possible he doesn’t really know what he’s doing. At least I think that until he squeezes, gently but definitely intentionally. I feel my face get hot.
“August, I . . .”
He pulls his hand away as though he’s been burned, freezes there for an instant, then leaps to his feet, striding back to where he left the pack.
“It’s okay. Really,” I say, clambering to my feet as he passes me. “Wait.”
He pauses on the road as I catch up, facing our destination, not turning to meet my eyes. I take one step in front of him, and his hand falls on my shoulder, shoving me a little roughly. We walk in silence, back into the silence that feels like punishment, though I’ve done nothing wrong. We walk until night falls, still not finding the winding road that heralds the hidden base. He stops me then, and I sit and have some water and food while he stares off into the dark.
“So I suppose you were just curious? Or you misunderstood . . . ?” I ask when I can stand the silence no longer. I probably should be angrier at him, but if I’m honest, I think maybe I wanted him to touch me like that. Or something.
He kneels facing me, resting back on his heels.
Sorry. Sorry. Sorry.
“I accept your apology.”
Not scare you?
“No. If I thought you were going to hurt me, I would have punched you in the face.”
He hangs his head, impressively remorseful, as usual.
“It’s really no big deal. You’re not very old, are you?”
Speak, he signs with a question hand.
“I mean, you’re not a man, quite. You’re young, like me. Just a boy. Right?” He’s always seemed young to me, and so like the boys I know, in some ways. Why else would he throw dirty dishes off the balcony?
He shrugs and nods, evidence, if there ever was, that’s he’s a teenager, who doesn’t know and knows at the same time.
“Well, anyway, boys do stuff like that all the time. It’s not exactly accepted behavior, but it’s not the end of the world either. Boys are jerks sometimes. They need to grow up.” I have to suppress a smile, thinking of Tucker’s first fumbling move on me, uninvited and pretty clueless but not exactly unwelcome. And the time Xander tried to pinch my ass and ended up on the floor of the dojo with my knee on his neck. And Topher, that time the night we arrived at the base. But that wasn’t so funny.
I don’t know whether I can laugh at August having his hand on me like that either. I don’t think such a gesture is just raging hormones or showing off for him. Who would he be showing off for anyway?
The worst part about this, the part that makes me bite back my smile, turn away to the frozen horizon, my heart skipping in my throat, is that I feel like if he tried to touch me again, I might let him.
AUGUST
Night falls, but we walk on. I guide her gently, with a little pressure on her shoulder, letting her walk in front, but leading the way myself as she begins to meander. It grows colder and colder; she hunches over as the wind rises and walks with her eyes closed, asleep on her feet almost. Finally, she simply falls. One step lands true and straight, leaving a small, sure footprint; the next crumples beneath her. I catch her, one arm wrapped around her chest, and lift her. She mumbles something but doesn’t resist as I tuck her head onto my shoulder and press her frozen hands onto my chest between us.
Her trembling reminds me of how sick she was, how she nearly died, and me along with her. She whimpers in my arms, and I realize she has fallen asleep. I make myself as warm as I can and hold her close, stepping forward, searching the dark for the high, rocky hills she has described, the entrance to the haven she seeks.
My mind is coming apart again. I want to stop now, turn off the road, and leave with her, to the high mountains, to hide away from the humans and from my people.
Step forward, still stepping forward.
The human boy is the goal. The promise.
One foot in front of the other.
The night cold dissolves the clouds, stars peek out, and the wide, icy landscape turns silver in the moonlight. I look down at her sleeping face, resting on my shoulder. Unable to resist, I lean over, breathing deeply, inhaling her drowsy warmth. She smells of . . . something . . . fragile and impermanent, like a spiderweb or a snowflake. Like a human, a forgiving human girl.
I can carry her forever and keep her from freezing indefinitely. I would do it. But her food will run out soon if we don’t
find something. The last town we passed was hours back. I could turn around, take her back there, but I promised her I would find the human boy. I promised.
Dizzy with having her in my arms again, I try not to stumble. I try to focus on the journey, on the road ahead of us, not on the smell of her, her frozen eyelashes, try to ignore the perplexing, tantalizing images that her closeness draws into my half-drowned brain.
I try to forget that the end of this journey is also the end of us.
RAVEN
I wake in the dark, bathed in warmth, curled up, my hands and face resting on something that radiates heat. So comfortable that I don’t want to move. I’m warmer than I feel like I have been in weeks, months, since we left the base to go on our ill-fated mission back to Calgary. I enjoy a brief delusion that I have somehow arrived back at the base before I come to realize that I’m actually curled up in August’s lap.
He’s sitting, cross-legged, in a windbreak dug in the snow, his arms slung over me, my head resting on one of his thighs, my own legs drawn up with my feet tucked under his other thigh. In the moonlight I see his face above me, his head hanging. I watch for a moment as his shoulders rise and fall with his breaths. It’s mesmerizing, staring at him like this. The moon behind him creates a kind of blue halo where it reflects on the few shiny parts of his armor. His breathing is rattling and slow. In between his breaths, in the silent stillness, I hear something else, a kind of low tapping noise. Shocked, I move my head slightly, careful not to disturb him, and press my ear onto his abdomen.
His heart. I can hear his heart beating.
He has a heart.
For a tiny second I’m tempted by the rhythm of it, tempted to surrender myself to the comfort of his warmth, his selfless devotion, to give up my fragile humanity in exchange for his monstrous security, for the safety of his arms. He could protect me in this terrifying new world. Maybe he’s the only one who could really protect me.
“August,” I whisper. He takes a breath and turns his head to look at me. “Were you asleep?”
Think, he signs. Then points off into the distance.
“Your thoughts were far away? What were you thinking about?”
He lifts his arms from me and rests them on his knees. After a moment he raises his left hand and suspends it in the air for a few seconds before letting it fall again. I slide out of his lap and face him.
“I’ve never seen you sitting before.”
Feel broken, he signs, awkwardly pulling himself to his knees. He taps the armor over his hip.
“It hurts to sit? Because of your armor?” He nods a little, then looks away. “Thank you, then, for keeping me warm.”
Happy.
But he doesn’t look happy. He looks miserable and defeated, his shoulders sagging as he turns his head and looks off to the side. I follow his gaze and make out dark, craggy shadows to the north of us. They have the flat, hacked-off tops I remember. “I think those are the hills.”
He nods slowly. His left hand drifts up for a second and then falls again. He’s thinking of her.
“How did she die?” I ask. “The girl you loved. What happened to her?”
Topher, he signs after a second ticks by.
Somewhere under all my clothes and sweaters and coats, I feel a little prickle. “Topher? In the city, where you found me? Topher killed her?”
August shakes his head. I watch him inhale and exhale slowly.
Repeat, Topher, he signs.
He uses repeat to mean “the same” sometimes. Alike. Someone like Topher.
I imagine I hear a rumble, an avalanche gathering in the cliffs above us.
“He looked like Topher?” I whisper. I can’t seem to get my vocal cords to work. My voice comes out like paper rustling in a bottom drawer. “Someone who looked like Topher killed her?”
August nods, hanging his head.
I close my eyes and calculate, but I can’t think. I can’t count the weeks and months since we found Tucker with a Nahx dart in his spine. It feels like forever ago and yesterday. “S-s-summer?” I splutter. “It was summer? The end of summer?”
August reaches for me. I high-block his arm, hard enough that the crack of his armor echoes across the snow, and the pain of it zings up my arm to my head, blowing the truth up like a firework.
“You killed him, right? You killed the one who killed your girlfriend?” I’m on my feet, backing away.
Stop. Stop.
I look down at the indentation between us, where we curled up together. My brain empties itself of everything except the few bits of information that I need to put together like puzzle pieces. But I can’t make my thoughts obey me. I bend down and hold my head in my hands, moaning as the memory of Topher’s vengeance quest fills me like poison, like a hallucinogen. I feel like I might vomit.
“Have you been following me all this time?”
No. I don’t know.
“How can you not know!?”
He hisses as I turn and take two long strides in the snow, breaking into a run. I think I’m still going in the right direction, though it’s dark and I don’t know where we are. Going in the right direction doesn’t matter anymore, only that I run away from him. Barely conscious of his footsteps crunching in the snow after me, I smash my shins into a rock or something and fall face forward, landing hard on my elbows. I manage to crawl to my feet, blinded by tears, and stumble onward. I veer into the dark, and the ground drops out from under me. Falling, I think of Tucker in his grave.
I land facedown. My chin slams into something hard and I taste blood in my mouth. When I roll over, I feel pain shooting through my ribs. As I struggle to take a breath, I look up and see something dark falling toward me. This time I’m not going to resist, I tell myself. This time I’m going to let him kill me. But when my eyes focus, I see the shackles in his hand.
“No!” I kick out, connecting with his shoulder, knocking him off balance. “Don’t you dare!” I kick his hand, and the shackles fly off into the dark.
He hisses and growls as he leaps for me, and I scramble pathetically away. I can’t escape. He’s too fast, too strong, too determined. He lands on top of me, pinning my legs down.
I’m not even sure how it happens. All I hear is the ring of steel on leather. There is a flash of moonlight and star light on something metal, and my muscles move, coil up, and spring out, seemingly of their own volition. When stillness and silence return, we are locked together, pressing knives into each other’s throats. I’m vaguely aware that I drew first, though only by a millisecond. Somehow I am pushed back against a rock or tree, or ice, pushed back and held in place by a Nahx with a knife.
“Go ahead,” I say. “If that’s what you want.”
The plates on his face pulse, revealing a glimpse of the sharp spikes hidden beneath. He doesn’t move his knife. Neither do I. But he pulls one hand away, making signs so firmly they whistle in the cold night.
Look. Listen!
“How long have you known? How long have you known who I am? Who Tucker was?” I can feel the armor plates on his neck giving under the blade of my knife.
Listen. Please.
“You killed Tucker,” I say into the cloud of mist between us, though of course I know he knows. “He was running away. You could have let him get away.” I don’t even know how I can say this. If it had been the other way around, I would have chased Tucker’s killer until one or both of us collapsed from exhaustion. But I don’t need to chase him. I have him. I have my knife at his throat just like I planned the first moment I met him. If I had known then who he was, I would have done it.
He starts making signs, quickly but clearly, like he’s enunciating as to be sure I understand.
If you kill me, you die. You freeze.
“Maybe it would be worth it.”
I die fast. You die slow.
“I don’t care.”
He puts his hand on his head for a moment, then signs again, now taking his time, his fingers fluid, almost like a dance. But
he growls as he signs.
You die fast. I die slow. He takes the knife from my throat and signs with both hands, incorporating the knife into the word somehow, giving it power, presenting it like a challenge as he makes the shape around my outstretched arm and the blade at his own throat. It’s a new word, one I’ve never seen before, but the meaning is clear enough.
Choose.
I’m paralyzed, noting that he doesn’t let go of his knife as his body relaxes out of its defensive stance. That’s because if I choose a fast death for me, he will make it happen. A fast death for me, and a slow, lonely, heartbroken death for him. How long would it take? Would he hurry it along somehow? And if I choose the other, would he let me put the knife through his neck, even though it would mean I freeze out here? I’ve been assuming he would never let me be the architect of my own death, that when it came to it, he would put a stop to any stupid, reckless impulses, but maybe that’s finally changed. Maybe he’s had enough of me, though perhaps not enough to stop doing my bidding, whatever it is.
Please, he signs.
“Please what?”
He lowers himself to his knees, slowly enough that I can keep the knife at his neck. Kneeling, he looks me as he tucks his own knife into a holster in his armor. In his long, mournful sigh, I almost hear another noise, like a whimper, as though he has overcome his muteness with a tiny vocalization, an expression of . . . what . . . surrender? Resignation? I half expect him to tell me I can just walk away. He holds his hands out at his sides for a moment, palms up, then signs.
Please let me give you a life for a life.
“Whose life?”
Your life. Please. Choose.
His hands fall back down to his knees and are still. His shoulders droop, his head tilts to the side. He looks tired, suddenly, exhausted.
“Why were you going to shackle me, before?”
He shrugs. My mind is broken.
Zero Repeat Forever Page 26
