by Cara Bristol
“What?”
I’d attributed the draft to the cameras, had assumed they’d pushed through the door flaps. “Nothing,” I said. Darq had mistaken the cambots for insects, but Andrea wouldn’t. At her entrance, they had zoomed out of sight, two of them listing funny. They’d been trapped outside—perhaps cold affected them adversely?
“You didn’t have a fight?”
“No! I never saw him, never spoke to him. I was talking to my little nephew…”
Handsome. My man. I love you.
Oh, no…no, no. Darq couldn’t have misunderstood…could he? I grabbed my kel. “I have to talk to him!” I ran for the door.
Andrea intercepted me. “Whoa, whoa. You can’t go out there. It’s near whiteout conditions and getting worse. We’ll both have to wait it out. Darq said he’d be back for you.”
“Where did he go?” I couldn’t shake the horrible feeling he’d overheard and misunderstood the conversation. Why else had he left? If Andrea hadn’t mentioned it, I never would have known he’d been here.
“The tavern.”
He’d pointed it out. It was only across the field—not far away at all, a five-minute walk. I sprinted around Andrea and out the door.
“Sunny, stop!” she shouted.
Freezing wind and snow stung my exposed face. I clutched my kel hood and squinted at the huts horseshoeing across the way. I could barely see the outline, but I focused on the hut second from center. That was the right one, I was pretty sure. I’d never seen it snow this hard before. I glanced back at the lodge where drifts were piling up. This was crazy!
Ducking my head, I dashed across the field.
I couldn’t let Darq think a mate waited for me on Terra.
Our attraction had been instantaneous and mutual and had increased every passing day. Maybe it was love at first sight, and Apogee’s version in the ’net vids was the truth. The idea of him alone and hurting propelled me into a snowstorm even the cameras had avoided. All three had remained inside the lodge.
The wind hampered my progress, its howl sounding like laughter. Twice, it tore the hood from my head and pelted me with ice. Blinded by whiteness, I could no longer see anything, but I focused on moving in a straight line. Once I reached a hut, any hut, I could grope from one to the next until I found the tavern.
Not much farther. Not much farther. I had to be getting closer.
That’s what I was thinking when my boot skidded on buried ice, and my feet shot out from under me. My arms windmilled, and I landed on my back. Like a turtle, I flailed my limbs; I couldn’t get up!
Snow had worked under my kel; my teeth chattered.
I could die out here.
Don’t be so melodramatic! The tavern is right here. Nobody died right in front of a shelter.
Except I couldn’t see it. Panic rose, but I beat it back, rolled onto my hands and knees, and stood up. See? You just needed to remain calm.
Wind and snow had begun to erase my footprints, but as I peered back toward the lodge, I could see I hadn’t been walking in a straight line after all, but in a drunken, meandering zig-zag.
I whipped around. The small huts had vanished. Either they’d been swallowed—or I’d strayed off course. Fear sliced through me like a Dakonian knife as I realized I’d lost all sense of direction. Now I wasn’t sure…had those silhouettes been huts—or trees?
This isn’t the worst situation I’ve been in.
Yes, it is.
Stay calm.
I wasn’t lost. I was still at the meeting place. This was like the old children’s game blind man’s bluff. My destination was in reach—I just couldn’t see it.
Except nobody ever froze to death in blind man’s bluff.
Stay calm. I pivoted, scanning for dark shapes. White. White. White. Everywhere. The massive lodge had disappeared. I wasn’t even sure if I could smell the smoke anymore. Was the woodsy scent from fires? Or on my kel?
I have to go back. Close as the tavern might be, I couldn’t get there in this snowstorm. I needed to retrace my steps and hunker down in the lodge. I couldn’t see that building, either, but it was a much larger target. If I continued straight, I’d bump into it. When the weather let up, I’d venture out again, or Darq would come find me.
The snow would pass. Look how quickly the storm had moved in. We’d had clear skies when we started our hike, graying skies when we’d arrived. Now, a blizzard.
Better hurry.
I placed my feet in my old tracks to ensure I followed my path exactly. I was shivering hard now, my teeth making a racket. My footprints got shallower and shallower as they were filled in until they vanished, and I feared what I’d taken for footprints may have been natural depressions from the blowing wind.
The lodge wasn’t any closer. It wasn’t even in sight. I cupped my mittened hands around my mouth. “Help! Help! Darq! Andrea! Is there anybody there? Can you hear me?” I screamed at the top of my lungs, and then listened, but the wind answered.
“You’re lost! You’re lost!” it replied.
“Fuck you!” I yelled back.
I did not slog through leech-infested swamps, wrestle an alligator, work as a clown at a family pizza joint, do hundreds of push-ups for a boot camp sergeant’s amusement, jump out of an airplane at fifteen thousand feet, or clean out hog pens to expire in an alien ice box. If I could live through a monsoon in the jungle, then I could survive one little snowstorm.
Maybe the storm was a tad bigger than little, but that wasn’t the point. I had to remain positive.
I would find shelter, dammit!
It was straight ahead.
Or to the left.
Or right.
I trudged forward, hopefully in the direction of the lodge where a roaring fire blazed. I tried to keep my head up, but the icy wind burned my face, and my eyes narrowed to slits. I couldn’t see anything anyway. But I checked my progress, and every ten yards or so, I’d yell. “Help! Anybody! Are you there? Help!”
I don’t know how far I’d gone before I admitted I’d gotten lost walking across the field. If I’d been headed in the right direction, I would have come to the lodge by now.
What kind of idiot charges into a blizzard? Distances were deceptive. It didn’t matter the tavern had seemed to be right there.
I had wandered in circles. The clothes beneath my kel were wet. I had no idea which way to go. The frigid temperature and wind burned my eyes, and I couldn’t see through the haze. The howling wind carried away my cries for help.
I’m going to die.
I’m no crybaby, but I started to bawl.
A half-dozen steps later, the ground gave way beneath my feet, and the icy alien planet swallowed me whole.
Chapter Fourteen
Darq
The blizzard outside was nothing compared to the storm raging inside. Why had Sunny come to Dakon? What purpose was I to play in her life if she already had a mate named Handsome?
No wonder she had resisted pursuing any more mouth-meshing. It surprised me she’d done it at all. I doubted her mate would approve. She had lied by omission, deceiving two men—me and him. My sense of betrayal was nearly as great as my hypocrisy.
I, too, had lied. I’d stolen another man’s chit and altered records.
One’s due is paid by one’s deed, said an old proverb. Was losing Sunny punishment for my dishonesty?
I staggered to the ale shelf and refilled my tankard. Spirits had loosened my limbs but not the painful grip of betrayal. I plopped onto the tree stump serving as a seat. Ale splashed over the sides of the cup. Sunny’s promises to Handsome she’d return to him rang in my ears. She’d spoken in Dakonian, so there was no misunderstanding her words—or her loving, doting tone. She’d never spoken to me that way. The only person who ever had had been my mother when I was a kit.
Could Sunny have been addressing a…child? She’d said she’d wanted to talk to her sister, who had a son. He’d be a young bo
y, wouldn’t he? Could she have been talking to her nephew?
Perhaps I had jumped to the wrong conclusion. I had to ask her, give her the chance to tell me the truth. I would believe her because I had to. Because she meant the world to me, and I couldn’t bear the possibility of her loving another.
But she’d told him they would be together soon. It won’t be much longer, and we’ll be together again. How was that possible? She was here—and he was millions of tripta away on another planet. Maybe she had been talking to a mate. Perhaps I grasped at dried reeds because of my longing for a different outcome.
Or was I jumping at conclusions again? I’d heard only a small part of the conversation.
There was one way to learn the truth, and it wasn’t by drinking to oblivion. I had to talk to Sunny. I flung open the door. Icy wind tore it from my grasp and slammed it against the side of the hut, blasting me with the full force of the storm’s fury. Drifted snow spilled inside, and the wind threw more in my face.
I could not see through the whiteness. Disheartened, I forced the door closed. I wished I hadn’t been so hasty in allowing my emotions to overcome judgment. Now, I would have to wait to see her until the storm passed.
I didn’t doubt it would soon blow over. Storms were like men prone to anger. Ire quickly raised, quickly fell. The storm would push itself across the sky and move on. But I wasn’t a patient man.
* * * *
The tavern door crashed open. Andrea stumbled in, along with an insect that zipped to a high shelf to rest among the ale jugs.
Andrea pressed a hand to her throat. “Sunny’s not with you?”
“No, she’s at the lodge.”
“She left! She was headed here.”
I leaped to my feet. “Not—not in the blizzard?”
“I tried to get her to stay, but she wouldn’t. Oh, Darq, I’m sorry. I told her something had upset you, and she went to find you.”
Whether Sunny had a mate no longer mattered. She was out there in sub-freezing temperatures because of me. “I have to find her!”
On the move, gray clouds dragged in a brilliant blue sky. Fresh sparkling snow drifted to rooftops and layered the field past my knees. Deadly beautiful.
I cupped my mouth. “Sunny! Sunny!”
“Sunny!” Andrea added her voice to mine, but even combined, our shouts wouldn’t carry far.
“Sunny!” I bellowed as loud as I could.
Silence.
“Let’s check all the huts. She probably took shelter in one of them.” I galloped to the adjacent hut and shoved open the door. Empty.
We split up and raced from hut to hut: the apothecary, the records hall, the storehouse, the emergency huts. All vacant. I double-checked the ones Andrea had gone to. I hop-ran to the lodge.
Heat blasted me as I pushed through the flaps. Fire snapped and crackled in the hearth. The room was vacant, except for two insects buzzing around my face. I struck out and sent one hurtling across the room. It recovered and zipped up to the ceiling. I vented my fear and anger on the other, aiming for it, too, but it dodged my blows.
I exited. “Not here,” I said to Andrea. “Sunny! Answer me! Sunny!” I called. There was so much area to search. If she had gotten disoriented and wandered away from the meeting place, would she stop and take shelter however, wherever she could get it? I surveyed the field between the lodge and the huts. Only my footsteps and Andrea’s marred the pristine white expanse. Near the meeting place lay the ship landing area; on its periphery stood the medical building. Beyond that, dense woods.
Other camps were closer to the meeting place than mine. But the odds of her stumbling into one of them were slim.
I could only hope to find her huddled under a tree. She said she’d done some wilderness hikes on her planet. However, I suspected the Terran wilderness and Dakonian wilderness were tripta apart.
I wanted her safe and well. Nothing else mattered. Not her mate on Terra, not anything.
“We have to expand the search into the woods, the field.”
“We need more people,” Andrea said. “My camp is close. I can go for help and be back in ten minutes.”
Sunny could be dead in ten minutes. She might already—I shook off the horrific thought. Andrea was right; we needed more searchers. “Okay, you go. I’ll keep looking.”
The sooner Andrea left, the quicker help could arrive, so I ran with her to find the skimmer. We kicked through the drifts outside the lodge.
Andrea’s foot thudded against something hard. “Found it!” she announced and motioned me away. “Go! I don’t need help. Look for her. I’ll be out of here and back in a jiff. Stay positive. We’ll find her.” She flung snow every which way. “Whistles, signal flares, shovels, neon vests,” she muttered. “On the next supply ship.”
“Sunny!” I tromped in a grid pattern, keeping my gaze moving, calling her name then pausing to listen for a reply. I couldn’t surrender to panic. I was Dakonian. A survivor in a harsh land. A hunter. A protector. I would find her. I trudged across the field then reversed then back then reversed. If she’d fallen and injured herself, she could be buried in snow like the skimmer.
Andrea pulled up alongside me. “Be back soon!” She gunned the vehicle and disappeared into the trees. It occurred to me then, I could have used the vehicle to expand my search, but on a skimmer I could ride right over Sunny and not realize she was there. However, my gut insisted she couldn’t have gotten far—the blizzard itself would have limited the distance she could have traveled. I prayed to the fates my hunch was correct.
I finished the grid of the field then spiraled outward. “Sunny! Sunny! Answer me!”
My circle led me behind the huts then around the backside of the lodge to the latrine area where I’d found the chit. I couldn’t see the lean-to now; it had collapsed and become buried. “Sunny! Sunny!”
“Heffff.”
My heart stopped. “Sunny!” I yelled so loud my throat hurt.
“Hefff. Hefff.”
“Sunny! Sunny!” I spun around. Where was she? Where? Wells had formed around the trees, I ran from tree to tree, peeking in. “Sunny! Sunny!” I yelled.
“Darq.” The voice was fainter; I’d moved away from the source of the sound.
“Keep talking!” I retraced my steps. “Where are you?”
“Dwn hr.”
“What?”
“Dwn hr n a hl.”
I tracked the sound. “Down here?”
“Down here. In a hole.”
In a hole? There weren’t any underground caverns and passages at the meeting place, a main reason why it had been constructed here. There was only one small pit—the one dug…for the latrine.
I crept to where the lean-to should have been. In all the snow, I couldn’t see it. “Are you all right? Are you hurt? Keep talking so I can find you.”
“I’m okay. I’m freaking cold. I sprained my ankle. But hurry. It stinks down here.”
I inched as close as I dared—falling in myself would not rescue her—then dropped to my belly and crawled. My left hand punched through the snow pack into air, and then the layers of snow around the latrine fell away, and there was my mate, with snow on her head, peering up at me.
“Oh, Sunny.” I swallowed. I’d never known greater relief than the moment I looked at her face. Maybe she’d given her heart to another, but, in my heart, she would always be mine. Even if I had to let her go.
“Oh, Darq!” Her mouth quivered, and her reddened eyes teared. “I was scared I was going to die.”
“Never. I would never let you die,” I said. “Give me your hand, I’ll pull you up.” I reached into the pit. She stretched, but our hands did not meet. “I’ll have to get some rope to pull you out. I’ll be right back.”
She wrinkled her nose. “Hurry. It stinks like sewage down here.”
It didn’t stink as much as it would have if the effluent hadn’t frozen solid. Falling into the latrine where she�
��d been protected from the elements had saved her life.
I scooted backward then scrambled to my feet. I ran around the side of the lodge to see Andrea and Groman coming through trees, followed by two men on skimmers.
I waved and shouted, “I found her!
“Where is she? Is she okay?” Andrea asked when they reached me.
“She’s fine.” I smiled, my face feeling like it would crack in the cold. “She fell into the latrine. I need a rope to pull her out.”
“Oh, ick.” Andrea screwed up her face.
“It’s not as bad as it sounds. Everything is frozen,” I said.
“Does she realize where she is?” she asked.
“I don’t think so.”
“Don’t tell her until after she’s had a bath,” Andrea advised.
“She hurt her ankle,” I said.
“I’ll examine it,” Groman said.
I looked at the other men. “Thank you for coming.” I had found Sunny, and no longer needed searchers, but they had come to offer assistance, and I was grateful. We helped one another. It was the only reason we’d managed to survive for so long.
“We’ll go back and tell the others,” one man said.
“More are coming on foot,” Andrea explained. “Our tribe only has three skimmers. I’m going to order more snow vehicles.”
“Please thank them for me,” I requested of the men.
“We’re happy help wasn’t needed, and your mate is safe,” one said.
They zoomed off to catch the others. Andrea and Groman went to get rope, and I ran back to Sunny.
Chapter Fifteen
Sunny
I reeked. I avoided speculating what had been in the hole, but smelly beat dead any day, and Darq didn’t seem to mind. He’d pulled me from the pit with a rope, hugged me hard then borrowed Andrea’s machine to take me to the medical clinic, a prefab Terran hut less than a quarter tripta from the meeting place. Andrea and her mate met us there, and Groman ran an illuvian-powered scanner over my ankle. Sprained.
After bathing my lower leg really, really well, the healer bandaged it. They offered us the skimmer, but Darq said the storm had passed, and he would carry me. “I take care of my mate.”