by R. Lee Smith
The second-worst winter would probably have to be the one two years before her mother died. It had been Bo Peep’s last real effort to kick the drugs, and even though everyone knew how it would end (except maybe Nicci), they all went through the same tired motions. Every night, Amber had to walk home from the bus stop with filthy snow seeping in through her shoes and her back aching from a full shift at the factory, not knowing whether she’d find Bo Peep passed out on the floor or fixing dinner. The bad nights made the good ones impossible to enjoy; the good nights made the bad ones worse. Hope and cynicism fought a constant, gut-wrenching war which finally ended on Christmas morning, when Amber came out of her room to find that all the presents beneath the tree (their first tree in years and how much fun it had been, flinging tinsel over plastic branches like a bunch of kids and laughing) gone, along with the TV, the rent money, and the microwave, of all things. Nothing left but wads of wrapping paper and Nicci’s gift for their mom—a picture of the three of them together—tossed on the floor.
In fact, on the list of Bierce’s Bad Winters, the one Amber spent in a cave with an alien didn’t even make the Top Ten. If only she had enough good memories to make a Bierce’s Best Winters list, it might actually be there instead. The cave was warm and a little homey. The food was monotonous but plentiful. Meoraq helped her keep busy (one way or another). Some days, it was more than just killing time. Some days, she was happy.
So why had she hiked all the way out here again, across the whole valley and up the south side of the mountain, skirting ledges no wider than her boots and climbing over icy chasms and fallen trees, just so she could stand here and look at the pass? It looked exactly the way it looked three days ago. And two days before that. And six days before that. The snow that filled the sharp V between the slopes was maybe a little more compact, but even she didn’t try to kid herself that it was melting.
She couldn’t understand that. It had to be melting somewhere. The little fall where they drew their water every day had tripled in size and sprouted a dozen brothers and sisters. The trees were warming up, or at least, they gave off a greenish sort of scent if she broke off a branch. And the animals were coming back after a long, scary absence.
Well…not so scary. In the first days of her imprisonment (he hated it when she called it that), Meoraq had announced that they were each going to get two full wardrobes, which meant that not only did he want the two of them to pee in a bucket and keep it, but he also killed pretty much every animal he saw. She called it wasteful and kill-happy and bitched about it right up until the time they got snowed in for thirty-three days straight. They still had two whole xauts and half a kipwe packed in snow, and yet, when she’d left the cave this morning, she’d told him she was going hunting and he didn’t argue. He didn’t believe her—he’d made that plain with a hard stare and flat spines—but he didn’t argue.
They did a lot of not-arguing these days, which was not the same as not arguing, but it wasn’t arguing either, so that had to count for something. And arguing, she had discovered to her surprise, didn’t have to be the same as fighting. They hadn’t fought in forever, not even when they’d been snowed in for so long. This was due in large part to Secret Rule Number One: No matter what ass-headed thing he’s going on about, if his neck turns yellow, shut up and apologize. It worked, mostly. Oh, there were nights when they managed not to touch even in that narrow bed, but they always woke up tangled together. She wasn’t out here now because she was mad at him or felt like proving that he wasn’t the boss of her or anything like that. She just…wanted to see the road.
And now she wanted to climb down and stand in it.
So she did, creeping along with pained care. The wind had blown all the loose snow around, hiding all the nooks and juts where she needed a handhold, hiding deadly pockets of ice as well. She’d had a couple of bad falls just walking the well-traveled trail between the cave and their waterfall; she wasn’t getting stupid clear out here alone.
The snow at the bottom was hard and crusty on top, soft and slushy underneath. She balanced on its surface for only a second or two before punching through and sinking in past her knees. Undaunted, Amber pulled her snowshoes off her back and stepped into them. Now the snow held her.
She walked out a little ways, testing each and every step with her spear before she placed her snowshoe, but she didn’t go far. Snowshoes had been her idea and even her first clumsy pair had worked great, but they tricky to walk in and hell on her ankles. Looking at the pass, she tried to imagine using them not just for an hour or two—difficult enough—but for days on end.
She could do it, physically. She hated using the fucking things and she probably wouldn’t be able to stop bitching about them after the second day, but she could do it. What she wasn’t sure about was what would happen if they got two or three days out and then the snow started melting. Snowshoes did not work in slush.
Lost in thought, Amber did not see the thuoch until it was nearly on top of her, which could have been very bad except that it hadn’t seen her either. It trotted along the eastern slope in defiance of gravity, its long body rolling in its unnatural, humping gait. She watched it, admiring its effortless speed and slinky grace over the icy rock and snow.
When they’d first come to the mountains, the thuochs were still mostly brown, but now it was whiter than the old snow it walked on. Meoraq had killed two white thuochs for her, saving the pelts because he said he wanted to make her a ‘good’ coat. Better, presumably, than the overtunic she was wearing now, which she’d made from the kipwe hide. And which in all honesty looked like a total shit-cake after she’d scraped all the quills off, but it had been the first thing she’d ever made all by herself and she was proud of it, damn it. It didn’t need replacing, not even with a pretty, soft, white thuoch-fur coat. Although she could probably make a much better one now that she’d had some practice. And it would almost certainly be warmer.
No more than ten meters away, the thuoch finally saw her. It froze and immediately assumed a posture of defense and threat, all its fur spiking out to make it appear double in size. At the same time, its lower jaw dislocated and dropped open in an unnatural gape that had creeped her out tremendously the first time she’d seen it.
The thuoch shook its fur and yowled at her, but Amber didn’t move. She kept her spear in her hand and ready, in case the beast should decide to charge, but she didn’t think it would. She could see the two tiny black beads tucked away behind the thuoch’s bristling flank that were the eyes of its half-grown cub. Those eyes were the reason the thuoch wouldn’t charge across the treacherous ice. They were also the reason Amber wouldn’t take home her third winter-white thuoch pelt to finish her coat.
The two females stared each other down, but eventually the thuoch brought its jaws together. It slunk rapidly away to the western slope, snarling, keeping itself between Amber’s spear and its cub until they were out of sight.
The wind blew stale snow into their footprints. Amber watched until all hope of tracking them down was gone. At last, with a final wistful glance at the road, she turned around and headed home.
Home. She’d have to stop thinking of it like that. She wasn’t even sure when she’d started, but she had to admit that the little cave, with all its crude amenities, already felt more like home than her memories of any of the apartments she’d shared with Nicci and their mother. So far, she’d been able to stop herself from thinking too hard about what was going to be ‘home’ after this endless hike was over, but she could feel it creeping in a little more each day. Meoraq, of course, refused to speculate too wildly until God told him what He wanted them to do, but they’d had too many snowed-in days for her not to know about his home—his House—back in the west.
It unnerved her to think of it too deeply. Not just a city full of lizardmen, but just the house itself. The place he described…a wedge of the entire city from the outer wall to the inner ring, housing hundreds of families, thousands of people. There would be serv
ants everywhere and so many rooms he couldn’t count them for her. And as much as she did not want to be wandering in this rainy wasteland full of man-eating porcupines forever, the idea of living in a place like that didn’t seem like much of an improvement. It was possible to avoid thinking about it for as long as they were stuck here, but once they were moving again…
Meoraq had admitted that he didn’t know precisely where the temple was, but he seemed to think it wasn’t far, once over the mountains. “Half a brace,” he kept saying, which meant eighteen days, give or take. Half a brace, unless something else happened, and he could finally stand there in his empty temple and meditate until he felt good about going home. Then she’d have to think about all those rooms and servants and lizardpeople everywhere she looked, but until then, she could still pretend she had options.
Until then, she could pretend they were leaving to look for Nicci.
The sun was getting low behind the clouds and the light was leaving at its usual alarming speed. Nocturnal mimuts were emerging from their craggy burrows, like furry footballs bouncing over the ice. Amber speared a few, drained them of the gross stuff, and tied them into a brace (half a brace and he’ll hear what he’s come to hear half a brace and i’ll have to give up on her forever half a brace) to carry them home.
Almost home.
Meoraq was by the fire when she came in, winding homemade sinew-thread onto a short length of stick. Restocking his mending kit, she was sure. Sometimes he went pretty far out of his way to keep busy, but this at least was something she could see the use of. Four sets of clothes made for a lot of sewing. There had been a good twenty-day stretch at the beginning when sewing, sex, and sleeping had been all they did. And fight, of course, but fighting had a way of turning into foreplay for Meoraq, which annoyed Amber no end if it was an argument she really cared about, so she’d learned to just let him be an arrogant ass…and he’d learned to let her be an unreasonable bitch, probably, but they made it work.
“Hey,” she said now, shrugging out of her furry swaddle.
He grunted a greeting and wound up some more sinew. “See anything?”
“There’s always something to see,” she replied, setting her brace of mimuts down on the hearth beside him. “I went out to the road.”
He grunted again, noncommittally. She knew he didn’t approve, he knew she knew, no more was said. They’d had that fight already.
“There was a thuoch there.”
“You should have brought it with you.”
“It had a baby.”
“Ah.” He wound more sinew. He was almost at the end of it.
“It also had brown coming in on its face.”
“It’s warming. We’ll have to finish your coat with turned fur.” He flicked his spines at her knowingly. “How was the road?”
“Still filled in pretty good.”
“Yes.”
“But I think we could climb over it if we wanted to. With the snowshoes.”
He nodded distractedly. Nodding was something he’d picked up from her over the winter and it still didn’t look quite normal on him. He finished with his sinews and set the finished spools aside so he could pull the mimuts toward him.
She watched him skin them, as easily as if they were wearing little fur jackets. Then she watched him finish the butchering she’d started. She handed him a skewer when he reached for one. She brought the pot over so he could stew the organs he liked, and the smaller pot for the brains to make the hide-cure. Mimuts didn’t have a lot of fur, but they’d be good to line her sleeves or something. She waited and he waited with her.
“You’re going to make me ask, aren’t you?” she said finally.
“Yes.”
“Big scaly jerk.”
He hissed through his teeth, but playfully. This wasn’t an argument, not yet.
“When are we leaving, Meoraq?”
“When leaving will not kill us, Soft-Skin.”
She sighed and sat down by the fire, pulling one of the fresh pelts over her knee so she could start scraping. Now it was his turn to watch her.
“Are you angry?” he asked after a few quiet minutes.
“Not really. But I’m not happy. Look,” she said, shoving the half-scraped pelt away and facing him. “I know you’ve given up on my sister. I know you don’t even consider her a factor when you think about us moving on. I can’t do that yet.”
He didn’t argue, didn’t say anything, just waited.
“I’m trying to trust you,” she told him. “I am trying. But one of these days, I’m going to leave without you.”
He took that well, although he couldn’t quite prevent himself from rolling his eyes a little. When he’d more or less controlled himself, he nodded again and even gave her a two-knuckle nudge to the shoulder.
“I’ll look at the road,” he said. “But if I say it isn’t safe, you will submit to my judgment. At least for a few days.”
“How many is a few?”
“Six.”
No surprise. It was his favorite number.
“All right,” she said, and resumed scraping. “But if the road does look good, we have to be out of here the next day, okay?”
“If possible. I think you underestimate how much time it takes to ready supplies, now that we have them.”
“I just don’t want you running up unnecessary delays, that’s all.”
“Mm. I do that,” he agreed mildly. “I’m always losing consciousness for days at a time and laming myself…or am I thinking of you?”
“I wasn’t lamed! I just limped for a few days! I don’t know if you’ve noticed, lizardman, but there’s ice everywhere!”
“I’m not the one who wants to walk in it.” He leaned toward her and rubbed his snout up and down along her throat, letting her know they could fight if she wanted to, but he was already winning.
“Maybe we should pack now so we’re always ready,” she suggested.
He glanced tolerantly around the cave. “Some things, I suppose. I’ll see what I can do about making another sled.”
“We can leave some stuff here, can’t we? I mean, we’ll have to come back this way, right?”
“I have not been curing hides all winter to leave them behind. Besides, the cold will last another brace of days at least in this corner of Gann’s world and you can’t hold your heat.”
“Yeah, yeah. So what do you need me to do?”
He moved her hair and nipped suggestively at the scar he’d given her for a wedding present.
Amber heaved a sigh at him, but she was grinning. Every night with this guy. Twice, most nights. The only times he’d ever let her alone were when she was on the rag and he’d made it clear even then that he was humoring his silly wife by doing so. “Are we really going to do this now?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, hang on.”
At her gentle insistence, he released her and stood back while she moved the fresh hides and turned the roasting mimuts over. “But seriously,” she said, untying her belt. “What can I do to speed things up?”
“Speed is not a virtue in this undertaking, Soft-Skin.” He pulled his belt off, looped it playfully around the back of her neck and pulled her close for a quick nuzzle. Then it was all business—loosening ties, unbuckling bootstraps, peeling off outer layers, exposing inner ones. People in the movies made this part look so spontaneous, but it was actually something of a process when you were dressed for winter in the mountains. “It is not the snow that lies on the road that concerns me as much as the snow that still lies on the mountain.”
“What about it?” asked Amber, hanging up his coat.
“Ice on the ground can melt from beneath,” he explained, sitting down to work his boots off. “When that happens, the weight of the snow on top can cause it to break off in large packs and fall.”
“Yeah, it’s already happening some places. So what are you saying? We wait until the snow falls onto the road and then we walk out over the top?”
He sighed, then beckoned to her and took off his tunic and dropped it on the floor. “This is a mountain thaw,” he told her, gesturing at it. “You see how it seems to lie flat, yet there are many folds and thin places over pockets of air that reach who knows how deep? Snow can smother a man quicker than you might think, or crush him, or cut him open.”
“We’re not waiting here until the snow completely melts, so forget it!”
“Calm yourself. What I propose,” he said, gathering her against his bare body, “is that we climb out a little higher along the southern face, where the snow has already broken free, and travel on the cleared slope. It is not so safe a crossing as I would like, so I must limit the time we would spend in the open pass.”
“Meaning?”
“Patience, Soft-Skin.” He nuzzled at her shoulder again. “Patience is more than a word. It means that we will walk for every moment there is light, with little or no rest. It means we will not stop to hunt, but must have provisions to see us entirely through.”
“We may also need to conserve our energy while we’re traveling and not waste it frivolously having sex.”
“We may,” he said gravely, backing her toward the cave wall which Amber had privately dubbed ‘Meoraq’s screwin’ place’. “We’ll have to store up some of that, too. Do you want to show me your belly or your back?”
“You hopeless romantic, you.”
“Back it is.” He nipped her on the jaw and turned her around.
“Oh fine, but I get the next round in bed.”
“I’ll consider it.”
“And take your panties all the way off this time. That thing is cold as hell on a lady’s ass.”
“Demanding creature.” But his loin-plate clanked to the floor and then his arms were a warm girdle around her middle. He nuzzled thoroughly at her neck, breathing deeply and managing not to catch too much of her hair in his teeth until he deemed she’d had enough foreplay (the concept was still fairly strange to him). Without further ceremony, he tugged her hips into position and pierced her, slipping at once into that detached trance he claimed was a tribute to her overwhelming sensuality.