by Dixon, Ruby
His wounds need to be cleaned, but I can’t boil water. I choke back another sob, because I don’t know if it’s worse to leave his wounds as they are or to clean them with melted snow. I don’t know what to do. He’s unconscious and he keeps bleeding and there’s no one around to help.
My poor Gren.
When I thought we would escape from the others, I never imagined a scenario like this. Gren’s always been so big and strong that I thought he’d be invincible. That I’d be the problem part of our partnership, and the fact that he’s carried me so many times just increased that feeling.
But now Gren’s hurt. Badly. And I don’t know how to help him.
I’m going to fucking try, though. I won’t give up on him.
There’s so many things that need to be done that I’m feeling slightly overwhelmed with all of it, though. My arm hurts and throbs where one of the snowcats attacked me. I’m hungry—stupidly enough—and thirsty, and neither are prepared. We’re out of chunks of frozen kitty sushi, but there’s plenty of dead animals outside. I can just butcher one and melt some snow, I suppose.
I also need to drag the other carcasses away from our campsite so other scavengers aren’t drawn here.
And then there’s Gren. He’s hurt and bleeding and I have to clean his wounds and stitch them and take care of him and…I don’t know anything about doctoring.
This is all my fault, just because I had to take a last-minute pee last night.
I sob again, letting myself cry for a moment. I’ll have one good wail to get it out of my system, and then I’ll get to work saving my beast. “You’re not going to die on me,” I tell him stubbornly even as I slap the fire-sparkers together again. “I need you.”
As if my tears have roused him back to consciousness, Gren groans, stirring.
I forget all about fire-making and move to his side, crawling over the snow in the small, frigid lean-to. “Gren! Gren, are you all right?” Tenderly, I brush a dark lock of hair back from his face.
He lifts a hand slowly, reaches up to touch my face. “Friend.”
“Your friend,” I agree, new tears leaking from my eyes as I press my lips to his palm. “I’m going to take care of you. Just lie down and rest.”
Instead of listening to me, though, he struggles to sit up. It’s clear that it’s intensely painful for him, and a new round of blood gushes from his wounds when he does.
“No,” I bellow, and put a hand to his chest, then flinch back, because I’m afraid of hurting him again. “Gren, you have to stay put!”
“Willa…” he pants, squeezing his eyes shut as if dizzy. “Meat…”
“I know. I’ll take it away from camp. You lie down and rest.” I touch his jaw, because it feels like that’s the only place he’s not shredded. “Sleep.”
He gives a half-nod and then collapses in the snow again, unconscious.
I allow myself one more choked sob, and then I swipe the tears away from my eyes and turn back to my fire. I have until the suns are high to figure out how to get this thing working. After that, I have to tend to Gren’s wounds because I can’t wait any longer.
* * *
The fire never gets started.
I give up when my fingers hurt so badly that I can’t hold the strikers any longer. My blisters from yesterday healed overnight—that must be the super-healing cootie at work—but I put so many fresh ones on them that my hands are worse than before. I give up and spend the next few hours pressing sips of water into Gren’s slack mouth and then dragging the dead cats away from our camp. One of them is gone, dragged away in the snow, and I see a lot of tracks that almost look human. That terrifies me even more—if it was the sa-khui hunters, they would have found us. They would have seen the tiny lean-to against the cliff and come for a visit—and helped me start a fire, at least.
The fact that no one came in tells me that it wasn’t one of the blue-skinned aliens, and therefore it’s an enemy.
I keep the smallest of cats and butcher it a safe distance from camp, then bury it in the snow and hope that does enough to disguise the smell. With the raw meat in my bag, I race back to camp. I don’t like being gone long because I’m terrified that those scavengers are going to smell Gren’s blood and come after him next.
Gren doesn’t awaken again, though. He sleeps, and bleeds, and sleeps some more. His breathing is even, at least, but I’m still worried.
After I give up on the fire officially, I decide I have to clean his wounds. My shallow scratches are already scabbing over, so his need to be cleaned before his cootie kicks in. I melt a waterskin full of snow against my belly, ignoring the discomfort, and then rip the sleeve off my tunic, using it as a fresh towel to clean him. I don’t have soap, either, and I’m full of despair at how primitive we’re living. “What I wouldn’t do for a good aloe vera plant,” I tell him, thinking of Mama’s favorite cure-all. Well, that and a bottle of whiskey. I’d take that, too. A shot for me to brace my shredded nerves and then the rest to disinfect Gren’s wounds.
His injuries look bad, so bad that I feel completely incompetent and helpless as I reveal them. He’s got bite-marks and chunks of flesh gouged out of his hands and lower arms. Deep, horrible slashes cover almost all of his skin, so I press cool snow to them and hope that it helps ease some of the pain. I’ve never seen anyone so cut up, and as I touch the gouges on his mouth, I try to remember how many of the cats I dragged away. Seven? Eight? Does it even matter? He was outnumbered, but he just waded in to save me. For a moment, I hate everyone back at the old camp who thought he was a monster. That’s not even remotely the Gren I know. The one I know is wary to trust, yes, but so loyal and protective that it takes my breath away.
This is my fault, I know. He went out to save me and now he’s suffering.
I keep hoping as I swipe away blood and clean his fur that some of the gore covering him belongs to the cats he killed, but most of it is his. I don’t know how one person can bleed so much and survive, but he continues to hang in there, even if his breathing is weak and rapid. I’m taking that as a good sign. Gren’s a big, strong guy. He’ll have a lot of blood.
He’ll be fine, I tell myself. Just fine. He’s just resting.
The wounds look worse the more I clean him, some so deep that I wonder if I should try stitching him up. The problem with that is that I don’t have string—I have leather, and I don’t know what that’ll do for infections. I’m hoping his cootie will kick in and fix things faster than me mucking around will. “Get to work, cootie,” I whisper to it. “I need him back.”
Not because of sex. Not because I need him to take care of me.
I just want my friend.
I keep bathing him over and over, until my hands are numb with pressing snow to his wounds and my stomach hurts from melting the contents of my waterskin. At some point I pass out and wake up with my cheek in the snow, my body sprawled next to his. He sleeps on. The suns have gone down and now it’s completely dark. I shiver, worried, and creep a little closer to him. I hope no more of the cats come here, because I can’t defend him the way he did me. One, maybe. More than one? We’re both fucked.
“Y’all can just stay home,” I tell any critters outside. “Leave us alone.”
“Willa,” Gren groans, voice faint.
“I’m here,” I tell him softly, leaning closer. “Do you hurt?”
“Stay,” he whispers, and reaches out for my hand in the dark. “Friend.”
Does he think I would leave him? I’m horrified at the thought. “I’m not going anywhere,” I promise, and gingerly hold his hand. “You and I are together until the bitter end.”
The “bitter end” part might be coming sooner than I’d hoped.
12
GREN
I am dying.
The thought floats through my head as I awaken. Faint morning light trickles into the lean-to. My limbs are heavy and everything aches, and when I try to stand, I feel weak and helpless. Nearby, Willa is curled up, her mouth slack with sl
eep. She clutches a now-stiff bloody fur that I have vague memories of her using to bathe me. She must have fallen asleep while tending to me. I do not awaken her, doing my best to get to my feet.
If I cannot walk, I am dead for certain. Worse than my own death, I will take Willa with me, and that cannot be borne.
I need to get her to safety.
I manage to get to a low crouch, panting, and blink rapidly to shake the dizziness from my head. I am weak from blood loss, but there is more, I think. I feel overwarm and achy, as if I stand in a swamp instead of on a wintry planet. I stretch, and I can feel my fur sticking to the dried blood oozing out of my many wounds. Willa has tried to cover the best of them—I am bundled in tied bits of leather up and down my arms and thighs, and it looks as if she has destroyed layers of her own clothing to protect me. Foolish female. This is not good. She needs warmth and layers to protect her naked skin. She does not have fur to protect her. I touch one wrapping that aches like a sore tooth, and pain shoots up my arm.
Infected.
I will be dead in days, then.
At least I have had Willa’s kindness and friendship. I touch her cheek gently, thinking of how freely she has given me her touches. No male was ever so lucky. With my dying strength, I must get her to safety so she does not die with me. “Willa,” I murmur.
She jerks awake, her eyes flying open. There are dark hollows under them and her lips are pale. “Oh! Gren! You’re awake!”
“Come,” I tell her, wishing I had the words to say that we must journey on. That I must take her back to the beach, to the others that can tend to her. They did not treat her as a slave, after all. She will be safe there.
“Lidwn,” Willa tells me, her hands fluttering over me. “Urhrt.”
I point—my arm is so heavy that the movement feels incredibly slow—out at the snow. “Come.”
“Wht?” Her jaw drops and she scrambles to her feet, sputtering a wealth of words I cannot follow.
I know she is upset. She thinks I will kill myself if I walk outside. Perhaps I will. Walking anywhere feels like the greatest task I have ever undertaken, but Willa must be brought back to the others if I am to die. This world has no med-bay, no surgical machines to fix wounds, no stims to charge failing organs into new life. I am tired and I am weak, but I will do this for her. She gave up the others for me—I would give up my life for her. There is no question. So I begin to dismantle the lean-to even as she trails after me, uttering protests in her odd language.
“Gren!” she finally calls. “Plz.”
I can hear the upset in her voice. I turn—even turning feels like a challenge—and look at her sad eyes, full of water. She does not understand. I reach up and cup her cheek, though it takes an absurd amount of strength. “Willa. Fraaaand?”
“Friend,” she agrees, her expression troubled.
“Come,” I tell her, and lean heavily on her spear as I drag the leather lean-to down to the ground. We will take apart our camp, and then I will find a scent trail from the others and lead her back to them.
WILLA
I can’t get Gren to rest.
He refuses every time I ask, even though every step seems to be hard-won. Gone is the boundless strength of the man that carried me and all of our goods through hip-high snow without a problem. I carry our pack now, and Gren leans heavily on the spear. Every so often he sways, and then I support him for the next few steps, until he gets his balance again. He’s silent, putting one foot in front of the other and constantly sniffing the air as if looking for a particular scent.
He wants to go somewhere. And because I can’t stop him, I go along with him. I’m tired, hungry—I haven’t eaten since he got hurt—and more than anything, I want Gren to put his big, strong arms around me and hold me close. I really, really want a hug. But none of that is possible right now, so I stay at his side, doing my best to be strong and capable as he plods forward, endlessly.
We leave the cliffs behind, heading into what feels like a valley, and then back up an even steeper slope. The walking becomes difficult, the paths rocky, and the climb so slanted that even my uninjured legs struggle with every step. Gren continues relentlessly forward, though. Every once in a while, he’ll pause to catch his breath, then he’ll say “Come” and keep going.
So I go with him. I won’t leave his side, even though I worry he’s killing himself.
Then again, this might be a custom of his people when they’re dying, though the thought chokes me with grief and I want to scream at the unfairness of it. In the next moment, I tell myself that he’s not dying. He’s not. He’s just leading us both safely out of the way of more of the snowcats, and that’s what he keeps sniffing for.
“Please don’t die,” I whisper to him, and I want to reach out and touch his fur, but his wounds still seep and I’m afraid to hurt him. So I keep my hands to myself, and my fears to myself, and if I want to scream and scream, well, I keep that in, too. Gren needs me as his friend right now, and by golly, I am gonna do it.
The suns start to go down and I feel a hint of panic as the temperature drops and the world begins to turn a grayish purple with twilight. We’re high up, the paths winding along the side of an even steeper cliff than before. The rocks here are icy, and where they’re not, they’re loose and it’s like stepping on slippery gravel as we move forward. “Can we go another way, Gren? There’s nowhere to set a tent up around here.”
He growls something under his breath and lifts his arm half-heartedly, trying to gesture at something. Then he stops, panting.
“Gren?” I move to his side as he hunches over, catching his breath. I touch him on the one spot on his shoulder that doesn’t seem to be torn up, and I’m shocked at how hot he feels. Not his normal toasty warm, but feverishly warm. He’s sick. His cootie isn’t taking care of any bacteria that might have gotten into his cuts. “You’re not well, Gren,” I tell him, trying not to choke on the grief rising in my throat. This is how it started with my brother, Isaiah. Just a fever, and then days later, he was in the hospital, then dead from meningitis.
There’s no hospital here. We’re all alone.
And things were never the same after Isaiah died. They went to hell and never came back. Mama got hooked on drugs. Daddy left. Uncle Dick moved in.
“Please,” I whisper to anyone that’s listening. I’d deal with a hundred Uncle Dicks if it would save Gren.
He pants for breath, and I see the hair on his head is clinging to his dark, thick brow with sweat. He tries to gesture up the slope once more, then his arm flops back down to his side, his strength nearly gone.
“It’s all right,” I tell him. “If you want to go up there, we’ll go up there.” I point where he pointed, and nod. “Come.”
“Come,” he agrees, and struggles to his feet, the effort so difficult that it brings tears to my eyes. I fight them back and slip myself under one arm. Normally I’d be too short to support him, but he’s so hunched with pain that I fit perfectly under his shoulder and let him lean on my strength.
“Willa, no,” he manages. His words are slurring.
“Willa yes,” I tell him. “Come.” And I take a slow step forward. “I’m not leaving you, friend.”
He groans, leaning heavily on the spear. “Blessurhart,” he mumbles.
“What?” I’m shocked to hear it, and then a hysterical laugh bubbles up in my throat. He must have heard me say it a few times and is parroting it back to me. I guess the context is pretty clear, but it’s so insane and yet perfect that I can’t stop laughing. “I love you, Gren, you know that?”
And then I sober, because I realize it’s true. I’m falling in love with the guy and he’s killing himself to go up this stupid cliff path. But then he leans heavily on me again and I draw every bit of strength that I have to support him and move forward, picking my steps carefully as we continue up.
A few minutes later, I see it.
There’s a reason why Gren has pushed so hard to come up here.
Ther
e’s a fucking cave.
We’re saved. Glory, hallelujah.
13
WILLA
I manage to half-drag, half-support Gren up to the entrance, and then inside. The entrance snakes around a big branch of rock, protecting the interior from the snow and wind that howls outside even now. It occurs to me as the cave opens up from the narrow passageway into a much larger chamber that we might have just walked into a bear’s lair. Or…whatever this planet has that passes as a bear. Too late now.
It’s all quiet inside, though, the only sound that of Gren’s ragged breathing and my panting. It’s not entirely dark, either—there’s a hole in the ceiling somewhere up ahead, and snow (and watery light) drifts inside. I can see lumps vaguely in the darkness, and for a moment, my body freezes in terror. I instinctively back away, and it takes a few moments for me to realize that nothing’s moving. Of course nothing’s moving. Gren wouldn’t lead me into danger. “This is where we were coming? How did you know?” I ask him.
He just sags against me, his strength gone. Mine is nearly gone, too, and I help him to the ground, then tuck my pack under his head as a pillow. “You rest,” I tell him gently. “I’ll see what we have here that we can use.”
It only takes me a few minutes to find out that this cave is a dream come true.
The lumps? They’re supplies. I find baskets full of the weird trail mix, furry bundles of blankets, and stacks of the weird poop cakes that they use as fuel. Everything we need is here…and someone’s supplied this cave recently, which means they’ll be back. I’ll worry about that problem later. For now, though, it’s ours, and Gren’s safe.
I make my alien as comfortable as I can, giving him a few sips of water and urging him to eat a handful of trail mix. He doesn’t really seem interested in eating, so I scarf down what he leaves behind and continue to give him water. I unroll blankets and tuck them around his body to keep him warm. “We’ve got supplies now, Gren. Everything’s going to be all right.”