Chapter 163 Somewhere to Come Back To

The woman on the ledge was called Ossa Vey.

She told Luna while we lowered the empty carrier. Then pointed to the man beneath the blankets and said his name twice, as though she was afraid we'd remember hers and forget his.

Merrin Shaw.

First wave. Both of them.

Names that had stood on Wren's list without an underline or a cross.

I repeated them back.

Ossa nodded.

Then she asked whether the new stone would hold Merrin's weight.

“It will,” I said.

She looked at my face for a long moment before letting go of the carrier's edge.

We brought Merrin up first.

His left leg had healed badly before something newer had happened to his knee. I could see enough to know he shouldn't try to stand, and not enough to do anything sensible about it while he lay on a ledge in failing light.

Luna explained each movement before it happened.

Risa held the lamp. Ilse and Corr worked the line. I kept the carrier steady where I could see it, taking some of the weight without lifting it free of their control.

When it reached the turn beneath the overhang, Merrin shut his eyes.

Ossa leaned forward too quickly.

Luna caught her shoulder.

“He's still there,” she said. “Look at Risa. She's watching him.”

Risa lowered her face into the light.

“I've got him.”

Ossa watched her.

I watched the carrier clear the stone.

Then it was on the upper shelf, and Ilse was kneeling beside it, and one of the two names had become a person lying somewhere we could carry him from.

Ossa's hands were worse than she'd admitted.

Rope burns. Swollen fingers. A wrist she kept tucked close to her body until Luna asked her to show it.

She'd climbed for water with that wrist.

Written the message with the other hand.

Waited below because climbing again might have meant leaving Merrin without anyone to bring the water back.

We didn't ask for the rest of the story while fitting the sling.

When she reached the shelf, she looked for him before she looked at the sky.

Ilse shifted so she could see.

Ossa sat beside the carrier and put her good hand on his blanket.

“Still here,” Merrin said.

“I can see that.”

Her voice broke on the last word.

Luna gave them a moment.

We needed two trips.

Both survivors had to lie down. There was room for them and Luna beside me, not for everybody and the equipment as well.

Risa would wait with Corr and Ilse on the open shelf. Dot's wing remained above the approach. They had lamps, water, and ground we had already checked.

I knew every part of the arrangement.

I still disliked it.

Risa saw me looking from the skiff to the shelf and back again.

“Lucas.”

“I know.”

“What do you know?”

“That you're not being abandoned on a mountain.”

“Good start.”

I touched the clean edge of her sleeve.

“I'll come back.”

“I know that too.”

She stepped close enough to kiss me, briefly, with one hand against my chest.

Then she looked at my face.

“Come back able to fly. If you need to rest first, rest.”

I nodded.

She let go.

It was a harder kindness than telling me to hurry.

The first journey home was quiet.

Luna sat where both survivors could hear her. She told them when we turned, when the ground would drop away beneath us, when the lamps ahead were ours.

I watched the open air and kept the hull level.

At the last rise, Ossa lifted her head.

“That's all people?”

“Most of the lights,” Luna said.

“How many?”

“Thirty-eight humans, now you're here. Dot and Old Son make forty people.”

Merrin opened his eyes.

“Kits?”

“Yes.”

He looked as though he had more questions than strength.

Luna tucked the blanket where the wind had lifted it.

“You can meet them when you're settled.”

Toby was waiting.

Wren stood behind him with a slate. Holt had cleared the path between the landing place and the beds and was enforcing it with the offended patience of someone whose simple instruction had apparently been too complicated for several people.

We carried Merrin in first.

Ossa wouldn't let us take her somewhere she couldn't see him.

There was no reason to.

We put the beds beside each other.

I told Toby what I'd seen and what I hadn't tried to change. Luna gave him the rest while I sat down and drank.

Sera came to the doorway.

Not hurrying. Liam was beside her, keeping his hand available without putting it under her arm.

“You're back,” she said.

“Risa's at the shelf with Corr and Ilse. I'm going again.”

“I know. Dot told us.”

She crouched carefully enough to make me start getting up.

“Stay there.”

I stayed.

She touched my cheek with the backs of her fingers.

“You've got dust in your eyelashes.”

“Everywhere else too.”

“I can see.”

She kissed the clear place beside my mouth.

“Drink the rest. Then bring them home.”

I brought them home.

By the time we landed again, the sky had lost its last color. Risa leaned against the side of the hull, tired now that she could afford to be. Corr carried the bundled rope. Ilse went straight to see the people she'd helped lift.

I had barely set my stick on the ground when Luna reached us.

She took the lamp from Risa's hand and put her free hand on my shoulder.

“All back.”

Risa closed her eyes for a moment.

“Yes.”

We stood like that while people went past with the ordinary things a rescue left behind. Empty vessels. Blankets that needed washing. Tools nobody would find tomorrow unless somebody put them away tonight.

Luna's fingers tightened once.

Then she let go and asked whether we could manage soup.

I could have managed almost anything that didn't involve flying it somewhere.

Sera had waited at her shelter.

There were four bowls on the little table.

That was what undid me.

Not the danger. Not the weight of Merrin's carrier or the sight of Ossa's damaged hands.

Four bowls, with something over them to keep the heat in.

Sera looked up as we came in.

“I wasn't sure whether you'd be hungry or too tired.”

“Both,” Risa said.

Luna sat down on the floor beside the table.

I sat opposite her and discovered my hands were shaking a little now that there was nothing they had to hold steady.

Sera slid my bowl closer.

Nobody asked me to explain.

We ate slowly.

Risa told Sera about the ledge. Luna corrected one part of the route, then apologized because it hadn't mattered to the story.

“It matters to you,” Sera said.

Luna looked down at her bowl.

“Yes.”

“Then say it.”

So she did.

The turn beneath the overhang. The place where the line had been wearing through. The way Ossa had kept watching Merrin instead of watching her own footing.

I listened to Luna tell it without having to make the telling into instructions for somebody else.

When she finished, Sera reached across and touched her wrist.

“You got them out.”

“We did.”

Luna looked at all three of us when she said it, though Sera had never left camp.

Sera didn't argue about whether she'd earned a place in the sentence.

Afterward, Risa took the bowls outside.

Luna went to check that the night watch had everything it needed.

I stayed beside Sera.

She had been waiting quietly for something, and at last I understood that it wasn't another report.

I moved closer.

“Were you frightened?”

“Yes.”

“I said I'd come back.”

“I know what you said.”

Her voice wasn't angry.

That made me listen more carefully.

“I can believe you mean it and still hate waiting for the sound of the skiff.”

I took her hand.

She looked at our fingers together.

“When I was at the forge this morning, I thought about what I wanted to tell you tonight. A hinge. That's all. I thought you'd laugh because you think I care too much about the hinge.”

“I don't think—”

“You do. It's all right. It's a very annoying hinge.”

I smiled despite myself.

“Then the search became a rescue. And I wanted you to go. Of course I did. But I still wanted my evening with you.”

I put my arm around her.

“You can want both.”

She leaned against me.

“I'd like us to remember that before somebody gets ill next time.”

I asked about the hinge.

She told me.

The pin wasn't the problem. I'd made the surrounding parts too exact, without leaving room for the small changes that came when the metal warmed. She had been trying to explain it for days before the shaking started, and I'd kept improving the wrong bit.

It was a very familiar account of something I'd done.

I apologized to the hinge.

Sera laughed against my shoulder.

Then she kissed me.

Not the brief kiss before somebody left. Not the careful touch beside a bed while we both tried to decide whether I was frightened enough to stop being affectionate.

She put her hand in my hair and pulled me nearer.

I went willingly.

When we drew apart, she rested her forehead against mine.

“There,” she said.

“There what?”

“You've stopped looking as though you need to mend me.”

I swallowed.

“I love you.”

“I know. I like this part of it too.”

So did I.

Risa came back with clean bowls and a cloth.

She took one look at us and put the bowls down without making the joke I could see arriving.

Instead, she handed me the cloth.

“Your face.”

“I've been told.”

“Repeatedly, from the look of it.”

Sera moved enough to let me wipe the dust away.

Luna returned a little later. Everything that needed doing tonight had somebody to do it. Toby had the two newcomers settled. Neither needed me sitting awake beside them inventing a treatment through exhaustion.

She stood in the doorway after telling us that.

“Come in,” I said.

“I was thinking I should let Sera sleep.”

Sera looked up.

“I'll tell you when I want to sleep.”

Luna hesitated.

Then came in and sat beside us.

There wasn't much room.

That had never seemed like a problem when I'd been alone. A bed, a place for boots, somewhere to put a cup that wouldn't be knocked over in the night.

With four of us, somebody was always sitting where somebody else's feet ought to go.

Risa folded her legs beneath her.

Luna leaned against the support by the doorway.

Sera kept my hand.

“We need another bench,” I said.

“No,” Risa said.

I looked at her.

“We can have another bench. But don't make a bench instead of saying what you're thinking.”

I hadn't known I was doing that until she said it.

Luna watched me from the doorway.

I looked at the three of them.

“I want more evenings like this.”

“Without the rescue first?” Sera asked.

“If possible.”

“That would improve the attendance,” Risa said.

I smiled, then tried again.

“I don't want being together to be what happens if none of us is needed anywhere else.”

Luna looked down at her hands.

“We are needed elsewhere.”

“I know.”

“People don't stop needing things because we want an evening.”

“I know that too.”

She rubbed a small patch of dried mud from one knuckle.

Risa watched her for a moment.

“Did you want to leave just now?”

Luna didn't answer immediately.

“No.”

“Then I'm glad you didn't.”

Such a small thing to say.

Luna's face changed anyway.

I held out my free hand. She moved closer and took it.

“I wanted you to come back in,” I said. “Not because the watch was arranged. Because I wanted you here.”

She breathed out slowly.

“I wanted that too.”

We didn't solve it by promising every evening.

There would be watches. Journeys. People arriving hurt. Days when one of us wanted quiet and days when being asked to speak would feel like another task.

We talked about smaller things.

Asking before the day was almost gone.

Telling someone when a plan changed instead of assuming they'd know why.

Time alone with each of them, as well as time together.

Sera wanted to visit the forge with me again, when she had enough strength to enjoy it rather than simply reach it.

Risa wanted a walk with no equipment except what we needed to get ourselves home.

Luna was quiet until I asked her.

Then she said, “Breakfast.”

I waited.

“Somewhere the first question isn't what we're doing next.”

“We can do that.”

She looked at me with an expression so unguarded that I nearly kissed her before she finished speaking.

“Tomorrow?”

“After Sera's treatment.”

Sera squeezed my hand.

“I'll be here when you get back.”

Later, when Sera did grow tired, she told us.

We didn't make her prove it by failing to keep her eyes open.

Risa helped fold the spare blanket. Luna moved the lamp. I stayed while Sera settled, then bent to kiss her goodnight.

She caught my hand before I straightened.

“Breakfast doesn't need to be brief on my account.”

I looked at her.

“I mean it.”

“I know.”

“Good.”

She smiled and let go.

Outside, Risa was waiting beside the path.

Luna had gone to get her own blanket from the next shelter.

The air had cooled. Somewhere near Holt's chairs, someone laughed softly and was told to keep it down.

Risa put her hand through my arm.

We walked no farther than the bend where we could still see the lamps.

“I was glad you came back for me,” she said.

“I told you I would.”

“I know. I'm allowed to enjoy it happening.”

I stopped.

She turned toward me, smiling a little.

I had spent so much time trying to make promises sound solid that I sometimes forgot someone might want to hear the feeling underneath them.

“I hated leaving you there.”

“I noticed.”

“I liked seeing you when I came around the ridge.”

Her smile softened.

“There. That one.”

I touched her cheek.

“I love you.”

She leaned into my hand.

“I love you too, Lucas.”

Then she kissed me, and for a while I had nothing useful to say about distance or promises or the sensible arrangement of two trips.

When she drew back, she laughed under her breath.

“You look surprised.”

“I may keep doing that for a while.”

“I can live with it.”

On the morning of Day 463, Sera was cross about the water.

It had been left just far enough from the bed that she had to sit up and reach properly to get it. Nobody had done that deliberately. She still thought it was a stupid place for a cup.

Toby agreed and moved it.

I made the compound while they discussed the failings of furniture.

The morning check was steady. No new trouble. A little more strength returning, slowly enough that she would have liked to argue with it.

When we'd finished, she inspected my face.

“You slept.”

“Some.”

“Enough?”

I thought about the question.

“Yes.”

She looked pleased.

“Go and have breakfast with Luna.”

I kissed her before I went.

She touched my sleeve.

“And tell her I want that blanket back eventually. It's the good one.”

Luna had found a place above the near field.

Level ground. A low stone. A view of the wheat without a view of the signal slate.

She brought bread and two cups.

I brought the embarrassing realization that I hadn't known where to put my hands while walking toward somebody who already knew I loved her.

She saw me hesitate and smiled.

“Sit down, Lucas.”

I sat.

For several minutes, we ate without talking.

There was no awkwardness in it once I stopped trying to decide what the silence required.

A breeze moved over the wheat.

Luna broke the last piece of bread and gave me half.

“I used to imagine a garden,” she said.

I looked at her.

“On Earth. Somewhere nobody expected me to be good at anything.”

“What would you have done in it?”

“I didn't get that far.”

I smiled.

She did too.

“Sat there, probably. Behaved disgracefully. Left something unplanned.”

“You'd have planned where to sit.”

“Yes,” she admitted. “But privately.”

I asked whether she still wanted it.

“A garden?”

“A place where you don't have to earn being there.”

She looked out over the wheat for a long moment.

Then back at me.

“Yes.”

I took her hand.

I didn't offer to make the garden immediately. Didn't start measuring the slope or thinking about shade.

I had done enough hiding in useful work for one week.

“I love you,” I said.

Her fingers tightened around mine.

“I love you too.”

When I kissed her, she put her free hand against my shoulder and drew me closer.

She tasted faintly of the tea.

Afterward, she leaned against me and let the cups stand empty beside us.

We stayed until she wanted to get up.

By afternoon, the board had two more names beneath HERE.

Ossa Vey.

Merrin Shaw.

Wren had asked them how to spell both before writing them. Toby was nearby, listening while Ossa described the old route. When Wren finished, she rested her shoulder against his for a moment.

He didn't move away.

Across the path, Liam and Anja were arguing about whether he'd asked her to walk or offered to carry a jar in a direction she happened to be going.

Holt, in his chair, told them the distinction seemed important and they ought to settle it before disturbing everyone else's afternoon.

I left them to it.

I had somewhere to be.

The hinge took less time once I listened to Sera.

She sat beside the bench and watched while I made the change she'd asked for instead of the one I'd decided she must mean.

It moved freely.

Kellan warmed it for us with a small, careful flame. It still moved freely.

She tested it twice and looked at me.

“Well?”

“You were right.”

“I'd like that written down.”

“I've run out of paper.”

“Then use the wall.”

I laughed.

She held out her hand, and I leaned down into the kiss she wanted.

We left the forge while she still had enough energy to complain about my workmanship all the way back.

Risa came for me after supper.

No instruments. No signal records. One lamp because she had specified getting ourselves home, and the path didn't become flatter because we were trying to be romantic.

We walked to the first turn above the field.

She told me a story about a dress she'd hated and been made to wear anyway. I told her about Garnet deciding that my hair needed decoration while I was asleep.

Risa wanted details.

I regretted giving her any.

By the time we turned back, she was laughing hard enough to have to stop walking.

I liked the sound so much that I told her the part I'd intended to leave out.

She took my hand for the rest of the way.

Sera and Luna were waiting when we returned.

The good blanket was over Sera's knees. Luna had brought a different one for herself and looked unjustly accused when Sera explained why.

There was room on the bench if we sat close.

We sat close.

Sera leaned against my left shoulder. Risa settled on my other side. Luna sat facing us on the low seat, her knees touching mine, one hand resting in the space between us.

I put my hand over it.

“When we have a room,” Risa said, “I'm choosing the curtains.”

I looked at her.

“What room?”

“The one you were trying not to build with your face last night.”

Luna laughed quietly.

Sera lifted her head from my shoulder.

“Windows first. Otherwise they're just cloth hanging on a wall.”

“Windows,” Risa agreed. “And somewhere to put my things without discovering they're under Lucas's anatomy book.”

“I could move the book.”

All three looked at me.

“Occasionally,” I amended.

We talked about it for a little while. Not where to build it tomorrow, or who would sleep where, or a decision somebody had to make before the lamp burned low. Just a room we might want. Light in the morning. Somewhere for Sera to draw. A door Luna could close.

I found myself remembering every part.

Nobody had a report to give.

For once, when the conversation paused, I didn't look toward the worktable.

I looked at them.

Sera caught me doing it.

“What?”

I could have said nothing.

It was the answer I'd used for so many things I hadn't known how to admit wanting.

“I like being here,” I said.

Risa's shoulder pressed against mine.

Luna turned her hand beneath my palm.

Sera kissed the side of my face.

“Good,” she said. “Stay a while.”

Days 462–463. Somewhere to come back to.

Ossa Vey and Merrin Shaw. First wave. Both home. Thirty-eight humans. Dot and Old Son. Forty people.

Two trips. Everyone back. Toby has the new records. Their old route still needs hearing properly.

Sera's treatment continues. Forge visit. Fixed the hinge she actually meant.

Four bowls waiting after the rescue.

Sera wanted the evening. Risa wanted the walk. Luna wanted breakfast where nobody asked what came next.

I wanted all of them, and finally managed to say something useful about it.

Breakfast above the wheat. An empty cup allowed to stay empty.

Risa laughed about my hair. This may have been a mistake.

All four of us on the same evening, with no emergency required to arrange it.

Stay a while.