Stitching Snow

by R. C. Lewis

  When my face broke the surface of the water, I gulped icy air. A roar filled my ears¸ but Dane’s voice sliced through it.

  “Move, Dimwit, get her out of there! Essie? Essie, hold on.”

  If I’d thought the air cut into me before, I was wrong. As Dimwit and Dane both dragged me onto solid ground, my body shook like I was having a seizure. Then Dane began groping at my clothes, and instinct took over. I rolled away and pushed myself to my feet.

  “D-don’t touch m-me,” I forced out.

  “Unless you want to die of hypothermia, you need to get out of those wet clothes, now. Do it yourself or I’ll do it for you.”

  Blazes if he wasn’t right, and blazes if half of me didn’t consider freezing to death over the alternative. Self-preservation won in the end. I turned my back on him and forced my rebelling limbs to start stripping off the layers of sodden fabric before they turned to ice.

  “D-Dimwit, f-fire.” Building fires was one thing the malfunction was good at—it had nearly burned down my shack three times. It raced around, gathering a respectable pile of wood before I’d gotten more off than my coat, scarf, and boots.

  I heard movement and reflexively glanced back. Dane had moved closer, prompting me to choose between punching him and running. Both options dissolved when I saw he’d removed his outer coat. He held it between us, like a curtain, and a quick flicker of warmth clashed with the cold as I realized why. He was trying to let me keep a little dignity while staying close enough to help if the cold overpowered me.

  That level of chivalry didn’t exist in the mining settlements, ever.

  Dimwit had the fire burning by the time I peeled off the last layers. Dane’s sharp gasp elicited new panic, but another glance confirmed his coat was still between us. The most he could see was maybe my shoulders.

  My shoulders…the mark.

  “What, never s-seen a t-tattoo before?” I asked gruffly.

  “I—No, you’re bleeding.”

  “Grapples aren’t m-made for grabbing p-people, are they? It’s not b-bad.”

  Once I was naked, he wrapped his coat around me. It was much too large, but I was glad for that since it more than covered me. Then he sat me in front of the fire, working his fingers through my hair to encourage it to dry. If the drone hadn’t built the fire so quickly, my hair probably would’ve frozen solid already. The convulsing shivers eased to a more normal level as I absorbed the heat. Half of what remained might have been more about Dane’s closeness, the way he touched my hair. I shoved the thoughts away and focused on warming up.

  Dimwit made itself surprisingly useful, rigging lines above the fire to hang my wrung-out clothes and dry them. It didn’t botch anything.

  “You aren’t going into shock, are you?” Dane asked.

  “Don’t think so. Why?”

  “You’re just very quiet.”

  “Because I usually talk so much?”

  His hand paused before continuing through my hair. “No. I guess not. It’s…it’s an interesting tattoo.”

  “Nothing special,” I muttered. Last thing I needed was him digging into that. An elaborate S with filigree around it. Nothing more than a sentimental design, unless someone knew what it really meant.

  He fell quiet, and I willed both time and heat to move faster. When my hair finished drying, he released it and scooted away from me a little. I appreciated the space. I’d have appreciated it even more if he’d scooted all the way back to the shuttle, but I didn’t have the strength to demand it.

  Sitting up took more strength than I had, so I shifted to lean back against the nearest tree. Only the crackling of the fire interrupted the silence of the woods. My eyes closed, just for a little rest, and the flickering flames lulled me into a doze.

  I jolted awake, startled that I would let my guard down like that. Nothing had changed. Dane hadn’t moved, still huddled in front of the fire, which Dimwit still tended.

  “How long was I out?”

  “A couple of hours, I think,” he said. “You should go back to sleep. You’re exhausted.”

  “No, I should get home.”

  I pulled myself to my feet and checked my hanging clothes, finding they were dry. My plan was to get out of the light of the fire and dress as much as I could without removing the coat entirely. Dane had different ideas.

  “Stop. Here, stay where it’s warm.”

  He stood and held the coat to shield me again until I was ready to put on my own. I wordlessly shoved my feet into my boots before looking over my shoulder and meeting his eyes, just briefly.

  “Thanks.”

  “Don’t thank me,” he said. “Thank Dimwit. I was too far away.”

  “You didn’t tell it to grab me?”

  “No, he did that on his own.”

  I almost corrected him calling Dimwit a “he,” but it didn’t feel right at that moment. Instead, I watched the drone putter around to put out the fire.

  “Maybe I should stop threatening to use it for spare parts.”

  “I think that would be fair.”

  “Come on, Dimwit, let’s go home.”

  Three steps along, I felt Dane on my heels and stopped. “Your shuttle’s that way.”

  He stopped, too, but didn’t turn back. “You got halfway home and fell into a sinkhole. I’m making sure you get the rest of the way safely.”

  I knew I had a better chance of winning a cage fight blindfolded than talking him out of it, so I left it at a grunt and walked on.

  We reached the settlement without further incident, but then I had another problem. I couldn’t very well make Dane hike an hour back to his shuttle in the middle of the night. Or I could, but what if he fell in one of those sinkholes?

  Oh, tank it.

  “Go on, there’s a cot in the lab. Get some sleep.” I went into my bedroom and closed the door before he could respond. He probably wanted to point out that we could’ve avoided all this if I’d just agreed to stay in the shuttle.

  But the shuttle was his. The shack was mine. It was different.

  My mother’s notebook lay open on my bed. I studied the sketches for twenty minutes, but not even the dragonfly could shut down my inexplicable anxiety. If anything, it made it worse. My brain knew Dane wouldn’t try anything—he’d had plenty of opportunity out at the sinkhole. But knowing it wasn’t enough.

  The trunk at the foot of my bed was plenty heavy, full of old gadgets and nonsense. I dragged it over and blocked the door. Blocking Dane out, blocking me in.

  Alone. Better.

  I dreamed I was down in the mine as it flooded with water, yet the heavy machinery kept banging away. When I woke, I was relieved to find air instead of water in my lungs.

  The banging, however, was real—someone pounding on the door of the shack.

  Jumping out of bed brought a wave of lightheadedness, followed by pain as I stubbed my toe on the trunk. I’d forgotten it was there. I had to drag it away from the door to get out of the room. By the time I did, the pounding had stopped, and it was obvious why.

  Dane had opened the front door, and Moray stood on the other side.

  Bad, bad, bad.

  I tried to shove Dane aside, but he stood firm, so the most I could do was stand next to him. Moray didn’t like that, if his sneering glare was any indication.

  “Oh, I see how it is, Essie. Not too good for the offworlder, are yeh?”

  My face burned at what he was thinking while the rest of me froze, remembering what he’d aimed to do two nights before. I wasn’t sure how much Moray remembered, what story he told himself to make sense of why he’d changed his mind…or if his microscopic brain had guessed what I was.

  “Certainly too good for you,” Dane said. “Don’t you have a mine to work?”

  Moray’s eyes stayed on me. I held back a shudder. “Aye, I do, but another of yer blazin’ drones mangled itself runnin’ from a harri-harra.”

  He reached to the side and pulled Cusser into view. One of its four legs was dead as a ro
ck, forcing it to stumble along.

  I shook my head. “You blew out that actuator again, didn’t you?”

  It swore and tried to kick Moray with one of its operational legs.

  “Come on, get into the lab. I’ll have it fixed by tomorrow, Moray.”

  “Yeh’ll fix it now,” he insisted. “We need it down in the mine with the others.”

  “You do not. You can manage with the five of them running the dumb-drones below.”

  He glared, taking a half step forward. Dane took a half step of his own, blocking me. Moray shifted his glare to him. “Not with the massive gap they’re leavin’ in the northwest quarter, we can’t.”

  Helpless blazing miners.

  The transmitter I usually wore on my wrist had been botched in my unscheduled swim, but I had a spare in the lab. That meant turning my back on Moray, which I didn’t like, so I retrieved it quickly.

  “Whirligig, reconfigure for operations with team of five. Keep an eye out for more harri-harra.” A pair of beeps told me the drone had gotten the message. “There you go, Moray. They’ll be pulling merinium out of the northwest quarter by the time you get there. Have a sparkling day.”

  “I’m warnin’ yeh, Essie—”

  I slammed the door and locked it, uninterested in his warning. With the door solidly keeping him out, I exhaled the tension, surprised at how much my breath shuddered.

  “Are you all right?” Dane asked.

  He was definitely suspicious. Color rose in my cheeks at the thought of telling Dane what had happened the other night. I couldn’t do it, so I shoved past him to get back in the lab.

  Everything was in its place, and my computer lockouts were secure. At least Dane hadn’t fiddled with any of it. Cusser waited patiently by the workstation, its botched leg in the air. I crouched down and got to work on the actuator.

  “Essie, what aren’t you saying?”

  “If I told you, I wouldn’t not be saying it, would I?”

  He sighed and leaned against the workstation, too close for my liking. “How serious is the repair on Clank?”

  “This is Cusser. It doesn’t look a thing like Clank or Clunk.”

  “What? Maybe to you. Never mind. How long will it take?”

  “Under an hour, I hope. Just as well. I wanted to take an extra drone to the shuttle today, anyway. But I still need to weave code for the thrust regulator, so maybe two hours before I can head back out. You can go ahead and I’ll see you there.”

  “I’ll wait,” he grumbled.

  Grumbling, that was new. Being woken up by Moray had me feeling pretty grumbly, too.

  “Wait Essie shuttle Essie fly.”

  Dane spoke before I could. “Shut it, Dimwit.”

  CUSSER’S LEG PUT UP a fussy bit of drama, taking longer than I’d hoped. Dimwit’s constant stream of unhinged nonsense slowed my programming work as well. By the time we set out for the shuttle, I was right frustrated but still clung to the hope that I’d have Dane off the planet by the end of the day, especially with Cusser’s help.

  Then life in Forty-Two would be normal again, the way I wanted it. Yet part of me felt as cold as the sinkhole at the thought.

  “Why did you veer so far north last night?” Dane asked as we carefully made our way through the woods. “You said yourself that it’s dangerous up there.”

  “Maybe because I was distracted by someone following me.”

  He untangled one of Dimwit’s feet from some undergrowth, saving me from having to. “Or you were too tired to pay attention, and what would have happened if I hadn’t followed you?”

  “Oh, shut it. I did thank you last night, you know.”

  “I—Yes, you did. Sorry.”

  As we approached the shuttle, I ran through my checklist of things left to do. Try out the new code for the thrust regulator. Double-check the oxygen cyclers and scan-scrambler. Have Cusser rig a patch for the radiation shields from the materials in my case. Make sure the navigational subsystem hadn’t fallen out of calibration again. Tighten up—

  “Moray thinks something’s going on,” Dane said, knocking the checklist right out of my head. “I mean, with us. Not true, obviously, but why does it matter to him?”

  Feeling a blush come on again, I picked up the pace to stay ahead of him across the flats, Cusser and Dimwit on my heels. “It doesn’t. He’s just rinked because I generally crack the kneecaps of anyone who tries to set foot in my shack.”

  “I’ve caused a lot of trouble for you, haven’t I?”

  “Aye, a bit, but it’s nothing you meant to do.”

  He didn’t say anything else, just opened the hatch, and I got to work.

  The new thrust regulator code worked on the first try. The other repairs went pretty smoothly, too, probably because most of the systems were now patched enough not to botch any of the others in a cascade effect like I’d been dealing with the past few days. Or maybe the shuttle’s systems were more afraid of Cusser’s temper than mine. The radiation shields took some extra wrestling, and I nearly broke my hand on a bulkhead when navigation went out not once but twice before holding.

  Not perfect, but compared to some projects—like trying to get Dimwit to function predictably—I couldn’t complain.

  Dane had kept quiet all day, staying out of my way until I was ready to test-fire the engines. He lit them up, and I ran checks on every system, especially the scan-scrambler. A few extra stitches in the computer and some last-minute tightening, and it was set.

  “It’s not good as new, but it’s good enough to get you to the Ascetics if you’re still set on that, then home again,” I concluded, wiping my hands. “You’ll want to look into more permanent repairs when you get back to your clean-tech.”

  He didn’t look up from the command console. “Maybe you should come with me.”

  My stomach and heart collided in a race to my throat. “What? Still feeling that concussion, ridiculous delusions of romantic—”

  “No! That’s not what I mean.”

  Relief mixed with an unexpected sting when he said it so quickly. Of course he wasn’t thinking that. “Well, what do you mean, then?”

  “You don’t need to stay here, with the way the miners treat you. People should appreciate your work. Your skills could be useful against Windsong.”

  No matter how much I wanted Dane to succeed, I couldn’t help him. Not that way. My mother’s voice whispered in my head again, trying to argue. I let my own words drown it out.

  “Well, aren’t you single-minded? My life here may not be some grand gesture, standing against a tyrant, but I like it the way it is.”

  “Do you really?”

  “Aye, I do. Without you around, the miners leave me well enough alone, mostly.”

  “Being left alone…is that all you want?”

  All I’ve wanted for eight years. I tucked my slate into my case. “I have my lab for experimenting, and the drones give me plenty of puzzles. That should be enough for anyone.” When he didn’t say anything else, I hesitated, then patted his shoulder. “Try not to get yourself killed, Dane. It really would be a shame. And a bit of advice: the Ascetics always lie to outsiders, so don’t believe anything they say. Come on, Dimwit. Where’d Cusser get off to?”

  The drone skittered ahead to the hatch at the far end of the shuttle. I heard Dane get up and follow me. Chivalrous to the end.

  I spotted Cusser in the corner of the engine compartment, its lights dark. Shut down.

  Every alarm in my body went off.

  Something cold and metallic touched my neck. The shuttle skewed out of focus. My legs weren’t under me anymore, but somehow I hadn’t hit the floor. As my blurry world faded, I heard two things.

  “Wait Essie shuttle Essie fly.”

  “I’m sorry, Essie.”

  Someone had injected steaming mine-slag into my brain. That was the only way to explain the searing spikes of pain in my head.

  I tried opening my eyes. Bad idea. The light added two new skewers, one to
each eyeball.

  Take a breath, Essie. Get your wits.

  I was lying down, curled on my side with my hands bound behind me. The floor felt like textured metal—exactly like the decking of the shuttle. It vibrated. My equilibrium felt a touch off. It could’ve been whatever had knocked me out, but it felt more familiar than that. Familiar in a haven’t-felt-it-in-years kind of way.

  Artificial gravity. We’ve launched.

  More slowly, I tried opening my eyes again. Not so bad. My vision was still a little blurry, so I waited it out with a lot of blinking.

  I was in one of the side compartments, which wasn’t nearly as familiar to me as other parts of the ship. There wasn’t a lot in the room. Just me, a couple of storage crates, and a powered-down drone. Dimwit, not Cusser. Dane hadn’t left me a lot to work with.

  Dane…The name lit a new fire, but in my gut instead of my head. I didn’t know what he thought he’d get from taking me against my will, but I was going to show him the cost was higher than he could pay.

  He may not have left me much, but he’d left me enough—the drones were never completely powered down.

  “Dimwit, emergency protocol. Wake up.”

  Its little lights started blinking, and it rose up on its four legs. “Dimwit Essie help Essie.”

  “That’s right, you’re going to help me.” I gathered my strength and rolled myself to sit up, fighting down the urge to vomit that came with it. “Come over here. I need you to cut off these restraints but not cut my hands. If you cut me, Dimwit, I swear, I really will dismantle you. Can you manage it?”

  “Dimwit Essie help Essie.”

  That would have to do.

  I stretched my arms as far from my body as I could while Dimwit scuttled around behind me. It had a few built-in tools that could do the job, and I hadn’t told it which one to use. They were all too scary to think about coming near my skin.

  A high-pitched whirr sounded, probably the little saw the drones used for cutting off mineral samples. Not a bad choice, as long as it didn’t sever an artery.

  Two seconds later, my hands were free.

  Now what?