Winter Omens

by Trisha Leigh

  Because they’re destroying Ko over and over again because of me.

  When Kendaja turns to face me, her smooth alabaster face betraying nothing but ecstasy, a new kind of fear slices me open. This is a creature with no anchor to reason. She hurts because somewhere deep inside, she needs to. She craves the pain, although it’s hard to believe she understands or cares why. As I watch her tilt her head back, eyes rolling up in her head while she licks her lips until drool runs down her chin, terror like I’ve never known threatens to tear me apart. Unlike her volatile brother, there’s no way around what she is, no hope of distracting her with anger or irritation.

  No hope of wriggling out from under her insane grasp, once she’s got me in her sights.

  It crosses my mind for a brief moment that perhaps I could turn the mind-invasion trick on the Others, overrun their thoughts to gather information or cause pain. If my situation spirals into something more dire, or we’re confronted in reality, that might be my final card. I don’t want to play it right now, not when they still think our only advantage is our control of fire and wind and water.

  The frightening girl steps closer, making the hairs on my arms stand on end as though she’s surrounded by an electrical charge. Then a strange event occurs. The smell of apples and cinnamon dances on a slight breeze that shouldn’t be in this room that’s not really here. A moment later, the burning scent of leaves singes the inside of my nose when I suck in a deep breath, and a pair of invisible lips press hard against mine.

  It’s Pax. The unmistakable smell of him, the overwhelming reaction of my body to his, lights my frayed nerve endings on fire. The desperation he must be feeling at not being able to wake me up pours through my veins like a windstorm. Increasing breezes whip my hair around my face as the Others yell and shout, but it’s far away. Kendaja puts a wet finger on my face but nothing happens, causing surprised rage to flicker in her manic gaze.

  The invisible kiss deepens, drowning out this room and my team of torturers. His hands trail down my arms, around my waist, up my neck, caressing me the way I longed for the first time we touched. The pull toward him heightens further than I expect, is more than I can stand, and with my last bit of clarity, I know what he’s doing—or what he’s helping me figure out. He’s aware of the chemistry between us, too, and his relentless attention heats my blood to a degree that doesn’t seem safe.

  It loans me the extra boost of power I need to melt the bonds at my wrists and ankles. I barely have to try to let the mixture of need, desperation, and horror come to the surface before the magic ropes drip from my wrists.

  And I’m gone.

  ***

  I open my eyes to find Pax’s lips pressed against mine, his tanned face pale and frantic. When he opens his eyes and finds me awake, he stops kissing me and crushes my body to his in a bone-breaking hug. Wolf limps to us, licking my face and Pax’s.

  “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Althea. You wouldn’t wake up, and you were jerking and screaming but you…you wouldn’t wake up.”

  For the first time, I notice that I’m sprawled in a snowdrift. The exposed skin on my hands is blue, and all of my muscles are spasming. From the cold. From the pain. There’s an ache in my head that throbs with every beat of my heart. When I struggle into a sitting position and Pax backs off a little, the reddened snow where my head rested stirs nausea in my gut.

  “How long—” My voice is a croaky whisper, so I clear my throat and try again. Talking makes my head pound harder, until my teeth ache. “How long was I gone?”

  “A day.”

  It doesn’t make sense that I could have been out for a day. “I want to go inside.”

  “Here.” Pax helps me stand up, then loops a strong arm behind my knees and one underneath my back, cradling me to his chest like a baby.

  I try to protest, indignant at being carried, but nothing comes out of my mouth. I have nothing left, and if he hadn’t picked me up, I’d have had to ask him to. My limbs are limp noodles, floppy and outside my control, so instead of worrying that Pax will think me weak, I press against him and draw on his strength and warmth.

  He places me gently on the couch in front of the fire, then piles every blanket on top of me. Wolf pushes into my side, leaning over to lick me every couple of seconds.

  Pax falls to his knees beside the sofa, his face a heartbreaking mixture of fear and guilt. “I’m so sorry. I’m sorry. It’s my fault, I fell asleep just for a minute and when I woke up you were screaming. I tried everything to wake you. There were times you were still, so I left you alone in case you were resting, but…I’m sorry.”

  His horrified, despairing expression splits me in two. Pax looks as though he can’t bear to know what his transgression has cost me. Cost us. It pushes tears down my face as I unearth my hands and tangle them roughly in his hair, forcing his eyes to mine.

  “Pax, stop. You fell asleep. It’s not your fault. Please. It’s not your responsibility. I can handle it.”

  He takes a deep breath, expression calming into a more familiar mask of confidence. “You can handle anything, I know that, but watching scared the life out of me, Summer. I don’t know what I would have done if you never came back.”

  “I did. You got me back, it was all you. I didn’t have enough strength left to melt my bonds until you, um, heated me up.”

  Pax tucks my hands back under the blanket, then runs shaking fingers through his hair. “I’m sorry I had to kiss you again. It was the only thing I could think of that could make you hot enough to save yourself.”

  That smile, the slow, sneaky one, steals onto his lips and crushes the breath from my chest. We’re going to be okay, the smile says. Together. If that’s what I want.

  I’m too out of sorts to think about what I want from Pax. The way he’s looking at me heats my face again, and I lie back against the couch with a teasing sigh. “Well, since it probably saved my life, I’ll forgive you. This time.”

  CHAPTER 16.

  I debrief Pax on the happenings in the hive, softening the torture experience as much as possible. He doesn’t need to feel worse than he already does, for one, and for another I’d rather not remember it too clearly, either. We’re going to have to face the Others again at some point, and the kind of fear I felt with Kendaja bearing down on me isn’t going to be helpful when I need to call on courage.

  His eyes cloud over at the news of Ko. The disgust swirling in my stomach turns into a furious storm when I think of the months he’s been used as their leverage.

  “So, they know where we are?”

  “No, I don’t think so. But they know we’re together. And that we’re headed for Portland.”

  “We’ll stay here like we planned, then, for a couple of days while you and Wolf finish healing. And we’ll figure out what to do next.” Pax runs his hands through his dirty hair, pinching the ends in frustration.

  Disappointment that I couldn’t have held out longer breeds a growing anger inside me. We have to find a way to protect our thoughts all the time, even while asleep. But if Ko and Cadi can’t withstand the Others’ mind torture, maybe that’s shooting a little bit high. An idea flashes like a bulb in my brain and I chew my lip for several minutes, making sure it’s sound before blurting it out and getting our hopes up for nothing.

  “If they get us in the tunnels again, or if they find a way to restrain us in the real world, we can’t fight the torture. The pain is…” His eyes cloud over and I finish quickly. “It’s too much to think about blocking them at the same time.”

  “Okay, so, we have no chance of hiding.”

  “Well, we know Cadi said the Others can wall off certain things from their ability to communicate. What if we, I don’t know, walled off our sinum so they’re disconnected from their tunnels?”

  It sounds naive now that it has voice, but Pax doesn’t laugh. “That way even if you went there when you fell asleep, they couldn’t get in?”

  “That’s the idea. But I haven’t the slightest idea how to
accomplish such a thing.”

  The silence claiming the room tells me he doesn’t either, but we can’t figure it all out at once. Sometimes, when I was younger and the homework for Cell was new, it would take time for the lessons to make sense. It would worry me when I couldn’t figure it out right away, but then I’d be taking a walk or staring at the ceiling before bed and it would all just click, like my mind worked out the problem without my knowledge.

  Maybe the answer lurks in there somewhere now, waiting for me to relax. “I’m going to take a soak, if you’ll help with the snow.”

  The best thing about the ranger’s station is the cleansing room. Instead of a shower, which graces every cleansing room in the Sanctioned Cities, it boasts a long basin with clawed feet, similar to the one Cadi had in the building outside the Danbury boundary. She let me soak in the hot water while she scrubbed the skunk smell from my skin, and the experience of being submerged in warm, fragrant water ranks among the most pleasant of my life.

  Pleasant is something I can use right now, and thinking hurts.

  We can’t magic water into the basin like Cadi can, but if we haul in the snow I can heat it up, no problem. It works as well as I expected, although my muscles are too weak to give Pax much help with the carrying part. Twenty-five full buckets later, I’ve got a steaming basin of water to climb into.

  “Need help?” The mischievous twinkle returns to Pax’s blue eyes.

  Its appearance fills me with relief even as the suggestion twinges something strange inside my abdomen, but I don’t let him see either reaction. Now isn’t the time to worry about boys or my romantic future. If we manage to live another ten years, or figure out how to find a way to return the Earth to the humans and they let us live among them, I’ll figure out how I feel about Partnering then.

  I roll my eyes and push Pax toward the cleansing room door. “Nice try.”

  “What? You’re the Meg to my Calvin, what can I say?”

  Pax is nothing like Calvin from A Wrinkle in Time. Calvin’s limbs are too long, his hair too orange…although, now that I think about it, they do share an easy confidence.

  I shake my head, smiling. “I prefer Gilbert from Green Gables.”

  “You are more of an Anne than a Meg. Although you’re not as awkward as either of them.”

  Pax turns just outside the threshold, grinning while I shut the door in his face. Honestly, if he were a girl, the offer of help would have been accepted. I bite my lip to keep from whimpering as I shrug off my layers of clothing and ease into the steaming water. Silence slides over me, offering comfort with its simplicity. I let my mind shut down, thoughts drifting away like the tiny ripples in the dark water. My hands reheat the basin twice before I finally get out, toweling off with the bath sheets tucked under the sink.

  The ranger, or whoever lived here before, must’ve left in a hurry—everything is still in place. It’s not the first time I wonder what happened to him, and to be honest, it’s a little creepy staying somewhere that looks as though the occupant could come waltzing back in at any moment. As comfortable as this place is, I’ll feel better when we can move on.

  Except we have no idea where to move on to now that the Others know where we are headed, and gnawing worry encroaches on the pristine separateness in the tub until there’s no point in staying submerged.

  After I dry, I watch as Pax reclines on the floor in the living area, his back propped against the couch as he pours some medicine on Wolf’s cut, still open but no longer bleeding. Wolf watches Pax with reproachful eyes as the liquid runs across his exposed blood vessels. Once it’s re-bound with fresh strips of blanket, we heat up some dinner of canned vegetables and the last of the tuna.

  “I’m starting to think we should have brought the Spam,” I joke. It would be funnier if we weren’t running out of food again.

  There are provisions stocked in the ranger’s station but the supply of edible bits is low. We found some bags of flour, pasta, and sugar, some spices, and a few cans of fruits and vegetables, but nothing more substantial. Wolf better get well enough to hunt soon, or we’ll be in trouble.

  Remembering all I didn’t do for him in the woods, I decide it’s time to step into the role of protector. Wolf has been there for me, so why shouldn’t I return the favor? Between our two abilities, Pax and I should be able to corner some game in the woods. Maybe we’ll go out tomorrow and give it a try.

  Or tonight. I won’t be sleeping any time soon.

  Not wanting to lose the feeling of warmth from my soak, I curl under the blankets on the couch. Pax leans back against my legs, and the weight of him anchors me here in this place. It’s still not easy, like it was with Lucas, but being together gets more familiar with each passing day. My heart only pounds for a few beats now when we touch, instead of minutes on end.

  It might not be a good thing, the intimacy. If Pax and I are going our separate ways eventually, if he won’t be convinced that fighting—that war—is necessary, then being happy with him will make things harder. Trust has never come easily to me because I’ve always been alone and Ko had instructed me not to trust anyone in the first note enclosed in my locket. But now I do trust Pax not to leave me, to do his best to keep me safe and get us to Portland. It’s the part that comes after that worries me, and it keeps me determined to leave as much distance between us as possible. It’s going to hurt to lose him, to leave him behind if he won’t come with me to find Lucas.

  Pax interrupts my spiraling train of thought. “I was thinking about what you said earlier. What if creating a physical barrier is easier than we’re making it? You said that once you’re in their hive, it’s like everything is actually happening. Not like a dream, right?”

  “Yeah…”

  “So, what if you literally build a wall?” Pax sounds a little like I felt earlier, as though his thought might be the silliest idea ever uttered aloud.

  It does sound too simple, but maybe it’s not. “Where would I get materials?”

  “You’re in your mind. Won’t they just be there if you imagine them?”

  We sit in the quiet for a long time, hearing nothing save Wolf’s breathing and the crackle of the logs burning in the wall. It’s not uncomfortable, though, as if we should fill it up with more ideas or blather. More like this is exactly the right thing to be doing in this moment.

  My whole body still aches from the catastrophe in the Others’ hive. The residual pain and stress make me long to close my eyes and rest, to build my strength back up, but I just can’t imagine being able to sleep anytime soon.

  “Hey, Pax. Do you want to read A Separate Peace?”

  He twists a little so one sparkling eye is visible. “I’ve read it. About three thousand times.”

  “No, I mean together. And we can talk about it.”

  I’ve been meaning to bring it up for a few days, since I read it for the third time, but to be honest it’s a lot harder than the rest of the books to understand. Not that I don’t get the words or the story, but it’s that they go deeper and mean more than they seem to on the surface. To be fair, there are a lot of foreign concepts involved, too, chiefly the distant but looming war.

  It turns out war means a giant fight between countries—I’m not entirely clear on what those are still—with weapons and huge armies of men killing one another. The whole business sounds terrible when described that way, boiled down to its essence, but in the story the idea is abstract and far away. A little easier to swallow.

  We read the book through the night, and in the morning, our eyes bloodshot and weary, we watch the sun spill rays of winter light around our blanketed windowpanes.

  “Who do you like more, Gene or Finny?” My voice sounds rough to my ears, tired. I don’t even want to think about what I look like.

  “I don’t think I like either of them.”

  The pause is full of unspoken clarifications, ones he’s maybe trying to figure out, so I wait in silence. Pax has read this book so many times; he probably knows Gene
and Finny so well they feel like friends maybe he’d rather get rid of, if he had a choice. Still, envy tickles me at his having friends of any kind his whole life. Characters in a book are better than nothing. In my limited experience, they’re better than some people, too.

  “Gene, he’s a liar, I think. Like a lot of the story is all skewed because he’s telling it the way he sees the world, as a place where everyone is out to get you. But Finny, he’s in denial. Gene thinks Finny has it right, the way he never sees anyone as an enemy, but that’s obviously not the answer. Some people are enemies.” Pax shrugs. “If they were one person, they’d be pretty solid.”

  He’s right about both characters, although I had more of an affinity for Finny than Pax seems to, but maybe that’s because, like the carefree character, I want to believe beings are essentially good. That the Others might have that capacity, even. The idea that we’re headed for a battle—the three, maybe four of us against them—seems like an impossibly tall mountain to climb. I want to bury my head in the sand like Finn, like if I say the war doesn’t exist, that it’s made up, then maybe we can find Lucas and rescue Deshi and the four of us can live happily ever after in the woods for all of our lives.

  Pax looks at me, sadness weighing down his gaze as though he can read my mind. “We can’t ignore the fact that the Others are stronger than the humans. They’re in control of this planet now, and you know as well as anyone what happens when we get in their way.”

  “But how does that make you better than Finny? Not fighting what you know is wrong is the same as pretending the fight doesn’t exist, isn’t it?”

  “Not if it wouldn’t make a difference if you fight or not.”

  “How do you know unless you try?”

  Silence returns, this time thick with disagreement. A Separate Peace gets under my skin and festers. The more we talk about it, the more I think I agree with Pax about not really liking the story—it’s sad, and no one is right, and the entire situation is rife with grief and the loss of innocence. Yet their tale will never be far from my heart, which makes it a worthwhile thing, even if it’s hard to read about.