Chapter 173 The Ice Field

Luna left a note on my notebook.

That was sensible. If she'd left it on the pillow, I might have slept on it. If she'd left it beside my cup, Risa might have moved both to demonstrate a point about shelves.

After the morning work. Above the field. Bring a coat.

There was no list beneath it.

No route to check. No mention of a broken thing.

I read it twice.

Sera watched from the bed while she fastened her sleeve.

“What?”

“I've been summoned.”

“Have you?”

I handed her the note.

She read it and smiled.

“That looks more like an invitation.”

Risa leaned across her shoulder.

“You should probably accept. She spent longer choosing the words than you spent choosing your last three shirts.”

I looked toward the door.

Luna had already gone.

It was Day 485, and I suddenly wanted the morning to pass both quickly and properly, which was an awkward thing to ask of time.

We did Sera's treatment first.

The familiar work still needed attention. Familiar didn't mean finished, and improvement didn't mean I could begin imagining the wrong process had repaired itself because I wanted to take a walk.

Toby checked beside me.

Sera told us how she'd felt through the night, then asked whether we could stop looking so solemn over a perfectly respectable morning.

Toby said respectable mornings were his favorites.

She said he should try smiling at one.

He did, eventually.

Afterward, we went over what Pella had told him since arriving. She had slept. Eaten a little. Remained too weak for the amount of rest she'd had.

We still needed to learn why.

Toby had arranged the older records beside the new observations instead of trying to keep them all in his head.

I sat with her long enough to make the next careful notes.

Then Toby closed the case.

“That's what we can do this morning.”

I looked toward the window.

He smiled again.

“You're allowed to go.”

Sera caught me at the door with my coat over one arm.

She straightened the collar I hadn't even put on yet.

“Enjoy yourself.”

“I will.”

“You say that as though it's an assignment.”

“I'll try to be less efficient about it.”

She laughed and kissed me.

Risa sat at the table sorting the route papers into an order only she understood.

She held out my gloves.

“Before you discover love hasn't improved your circulation.”

I took them, leaned down, and kissed her too.

She caught the front of my coat for a moment.

“Tell her she looks lovely.”

“What if I was going to?”

“Then you'll survive being reminded.”

I left with their laughter behind me.

For a little while, the camp's morning noises sounded different because I wasn't hurrying toward someone who needed help.

Luna waited above the field.

Not on the steep part. On a broad patch of stone beside a shallow hollow where rain collected before draining down toward the planted ground.

There was no standing crop there. No drinking-water vessel. Nothing she'd taken from a person who needed it more.

The storm had left water in the hollow.

She had made something from it.

At first I thought the pale shapes were frost on the low stones.

Then I came closer.

Leaves.

Small clear leaves, each lifted on a thin stem of ice. Some broad, some narrow. A few curled at the edges as though caught in a wind that wasn't blowing.

They stood across the shallow basin in uneven little groups.

Morning light went through them and broke against the wet stone beneath.

I stopped walking.

Luna watched my face.

“I wasn't sure whether it would work.”

I looked at her.

“It worked.”

She had put her coat on a dry stone beside two cups and a wrapped parcel.

Her hair was tied back badly enough that one strand kept escaping near her cheek.

I remembered Risa's instruction.

Then forgot that it had been an instruction at all.

“You look lovely.”

Luna glanced down at herself.

“I'm wearing the same things as yesterday.”

“Yes.”

She looked back up.

A little color came into her face.

I liked that more than was probably fair.

Then she took my hand and led me along the edge of the hollow, where the stone stayed dry and my stick had somewhere dependable to go.

“Don't step into it,” she said.

“I wasn't going to.”

“I know. I needed to say something ordinary.”

I squeezed her hand.

That, I understood.

The nearest leaf had a flaw through its middle.

A pale line where the ice had formed too quickly and caught air. Another had broken at the tip. A cluster farther back leaned together because she'd made the stems too thin for the weight above them.

She pointed those out before I could say anything.

“I did the first ones too quickly.”

“They're beautiful.”

“You can see the mistakes.”

“Yes.”

I looked at the little trapped line of air.

It caught the sunlight differently from the clear ice beside it.

“I still think they're beautiful.”

She was quiet for a moment.

Then she smiled.

“You don't need to fix them.”

“I wasn't offering.”

“I know. That's part of why I wanted to show you.”

We walked slowly around the edge.

For once, neither of us was making a list of improvements.

“Did you bring me here to see this?” I asked.

“Mostly.”

I looked at her.

She considered the next part for long enough that I began to understand why the note had taken time.

“I wanted to do something with you that wasn't a stolen moment between other things.”

I tightened my fingers around hers.

“We've had breakfast together.”

“I know. I liked it.”

She glanced at the cups.

“I've brought more food. Apparently I have a method.”

I laughed.

That made her shoulders loosen.

Then she looked straight at me.

“I wanted to ask you out properly, Lucas.”

For a moment, I couldn't find anything to say that wasn't a ridiculous account of how glad that made me.

I settled for the truth.

“I'm very glad you did.”

We sat on the dry stone.

She'd brought bread, a little of Priya's fruit preserve, and tea wrapped well enough to retain some warmth.

No slate.

I checked before I could stop myself.

Luna saw.

“I left it.”

“All of it?”

“All of it.”

“What if you have a thought?”

“I may allow it to pass unrecorded.”

“That sounds dangerous.”

“I'm being reckless.”

She gave me a cup, then leaned against me while I balanced it on a flat place beside my leg.

The ice leaves made faint little sounds as the sunlight warmed their edges.

Not enough to be music.

Enough to make me listen.

I asked when she'd learned to shape them.

“Bits of it before we left Earth. Mostly the useful parts. Strong edges. Straight lines. Things that held their shape under pressure.”

“And leaves?”

“I've been trying those here.”

“When?”

“Sometimes early. Sometimes when everyone thinks I'm checking something.”

I looked at her.

She lifted her head from my shoulder.

“I wasn't hiding a great secret. I just didn't want to explain what they were for.”

“What are they for?”

She looked at the hollow.

A smile touched her mouth.

“This morning.”

I had to look away for a moment.

She'd made something fragile, spent time on it, and brought me to see it while it still existed.

I couldn't think of a thing I'd rather have been given.

“What would you do with a week nobody needed you for?” she asked.

I began to answer.

She lifted one finger.

“Not a week to catch up on everything they've already asked.”

I closed my mouth.

Luna looked pleased with herself.

I thought about the books on our shelf. The ones I'd brought because I needed them. The others people had saved because they wanted to read them again.

“I'd like to finish a book without looking for something I can use.”

“Which one?”

“I don't know. Something with an ending I don't have to repair.”

She laughed softly.

“I can lend you one.”

“You might have to tell me where to start.”

“At the front, usually.”

I gave her a look.

She smiled over her cup.

Then her expression softened.

“I'd like to read beside you. Different books. No one talking unless they want to.”

I pictured it so clearly that the imagined afternoon seemed to acquire its own light. Her feet beside mine. Sera drawing at the table. Risa complaining about an ending and refusing to explain because one of us hadn't reached it yet.

“We could do that before we get a whole week,” I said.

“Yes.”

Luna put her hand over mine.

“I think we could.”

The light moved higher.

One of the thin stems bent.

I saw it beginning and made the small involuntary movement of someone who could probably stop the damage if he acted quickly.

Luna's hand closed around mine.

“Leave it.”

The leaf settled into the shallow water with almost no sound.

I looked at her.

She watched the place it had been.

“I knew they wouldn't last.”

“Are you all right with that?”

“Yes.”

Then, after a moment, “I'm trying to be.”

I looked back at the broken stem.

She drew a slow breath.

“Most of my life, if I spent time making something, it had to justify the time. Preferably by being better than what someone else had made.”

“And this?”

“This can melt.”

I put my arm around her.

She leaned against me again.

We watched the fallen leaf turn clear at the edges.

“You don't have to be pleased with everything I do,” she said.

The words were quiet enough that I nearly mistook them for a continuation of the thought about ice.

I turned toward her.

“I'm not.”

She looked startled.

I thought about the honest answer she'd asked for.

“Sometimes you tell me what I've decided before I've decided it.”

She lowered her eyes.

“Yes.”

“And sometimes you're right, which makes it more annoying.”

A laugh escaped her before she could stop it.

I touched her cheek.

“I don't need you to do everything perfectly to love you.”

“I know you say that.”

“I mean it.”

She looked at me for a long time.

Then put her cup down and moved closer.

The kiss was gentle at first.

Then it wasn't a thing either of us was trying to do neatly.

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

“I love you,” she said.

I knew.

Hearing it still changed the morning.

“I love you too.”

She smiled, then looked almost angry with herself for how much she needed to smile.

I kissed her again before that expression could turn into an apology.

Her hand found the back of my neck.

Somewhere beside us, a little piece of ice broke.

Neither of us looked.

We talked about ordinary things afterward.

What she liked to read when she wasn't looking for an answer. Whether she actually enjoyed the tea or had simply decided it was what there was. A person she'd known in the dome who used to whistle while trying not to be noticed, which had defeated the purpose.

She asked about my sisters.

I told her about Garnet insisting a thing belonged to her because she'd named it, and Genny producing evidence that the naming had happened after the taking.

“Who won?”

“Mother.”

Luna laughed.

Then she asked what I thought they'd make of us.

“All four?”

“Yes.”

I considered it.

“Garnet will ask questions nobody else has thought of. Genny will have thought of all of them and wait to see whether we answer honestly.”

“Terrifying.”

“They're very small.”

“That doesn't improve it.”

I smiled.

She put her head on my shoulder and asked me to tell her another story.

So I did.

By the time we stood, half the leaves had fallen.

The others were changing while we watched. Ridges softening. Thin edges becoming beads of water. A narrow branch bowed until two leaves touched the surface together.

Luna packed the cups.

I helped fold the cloth.

Then I looked back at the hollow.

“Would you make something like this again?”

“Yes.”

“For me?”

She smiled.

“With you here, if you'd like.”

“I would.”

She took my hand for the walk down.

We left the water where it could drain toward the field when the last ice melted.

Nothing to carry home except the empty cups and the fact that she'd asked me to come.

I found I remembered every leaf anyway.

Sera was drawing when we returned.

She looked from our faces to our joined hands and smiled without asking for a report.

Risa was less merciful.

“Well?”

Luna hung up her coat.

“Very successful.”

“That's how you describe a bridge.”

“It was a very good morning,” Luna said.

Risa looked at me.

“It was,” I answered.

She studied us for another moment, then nodded.

“Good.”

There was real pleasure in the word.

I crossed to her and kissed the top of her head.

She caught my hand before I could move away.

“Did you tell her she looked lovely?”

Luna turned.

I looked at Risa.

Risa smiled without remorse.

“I was going to,” I said.

“I believe you,” Luna answered.

Then she came over and kissed me in front of both of them, which ended the discussion in a way I approved of completely.

The afternoon belonged to the camp again.

Neri needed the support beneath her leg adjusted. Aven wanted to know what he could do without making his shoulder worse. Toby had new observations from Pella and no miraculous explanation to put beside them.

I worked with him for a while.

Pella watched us reading.

“Are you allowed to look less worried?” she asked.

Toby looked up.

“Sorry.”

“It makes me wonder what you've found.”

I closed the book long enough to answer her properly.

“We haven't found the cause yet. We're trying to work out which differences matter.”

She nodded.

Then looked toward the strip of cloth Bram had tied where she could reach it.

“Could somebody read those back to me?”

“The songs?”

“The beginnings. I want to see whether I remember the rest.”

Toby set his notes aside.

“I can try.”

He was terrible at the first one.

Not the words. The tune.

Pella stared at him for a moment, then began laughing so unexpectedly that he stopped and looked concerned.

“No,” she said, catching her breath. “No, I'm all right. It's just not like that.”

She hummed the beginning.

Only a few notes. Then paused to breathe.

Priya, passing outside, stopped.

“I know that.”

She came in and sang the next line quietly.

Pella closed her eyes.

Her hand moved once against the blanket, keeping time.

We didn't turn it into proof that she was better.

It was something she still had.

I sat beside the bed and listened until Priya reached the end of the verse.

By supper, someone had remembered a second verse.

Someone else insisted it belonged to a different song.

This became an argument worth having, and for a little while the newest arrivals were people with opinions instead of people whose injuries we were learning to describe.

Bram accused Iona of forgetting words on purpose when she didn't like them.

She said that was called improvement.

Holt, passing with his cup, supplied a version nobody considered appropriate near Nessa and was told so by three people at once.

He looked pleased with himself.

Toby had acquired Wren beside him.

She sang one quiet line into his ear, and he laughed before trying it again, no better than before.

Across the path, Liam and Anja sat with their shoulders touching.

There were forty-five of us now.

For once, counting felt less like checking a wound and more like listening to a room fill up.

I found Sera at the forge before the meal was served.

She'd been showing Kellan how to examine a cooled joint for the places it had failed. No flame in her hands. No need for one to teach him what she knew.

He went to wash when she told him they were finished.

I sat beside her.

“How was your day?”

“Good.”

“What made it good?”

She looked at me, then smiled.

“Kellan found the fault before I showed him. And I finished the picture of the water model.”

“May I see it?”

“At home.”

She leaned against me.

“And you came to ask before beginning to tell me about yours.”

I thought about that.

“I'm trying.”

“I noticed.”

She lifted her face and kissed me.

I put my hand against her cheek, and we stayed together until the sound of someone calling supper reached the forge.

At the table, Luna showed Sera a small sketch she'd made from memory.

One ice leaf. The line through its middle. The curve where the edge had begun to melt.

Sera studied it.

“You should put that in the book.”

“Your book?”

“Our room has room for more than my drawings.”

Luna looked down at the page.

Then handed it over.

Risa wanted to see too.

She reached across me, and I ended up holding the lamp while the three of them discussed a thing none of us needed to turn into equipment.

I listened.

There was a pleasure in being useful that didn't involve being necessary.

Holding the lamp felt like that.

After supper, Risa asked me to walk with her.

The near field again. Her ankle was improving, but it hadn't become a different ankle just because we'd had a good day.

We went slowly.

At the bend, she stopped and looked back toward the lamps.

“I liked seeing her when you came home.”

“Luna?”

“Yes.”

I waited.

“She looked like she'd let herself have something.”

“I think she had.”

Risa tucked her hand into the crook of my arm.

“Good.”

We watched the field darken for a while.

Then she added, “I'm choosing our next outing.”

“Should I be worried?”

“Only if you've been hiding a talent for dancing.”

“I haven't.”

“That may be a problem.”

I laughed.

She turned toward me and put both hands against my chest.

“We can choose something your leg likes.”

I bent to kiss her.

She smiled against my mouth.

“There. It seems to approve of standing still.”

When we returned, Luna was outside the room.

She'd brought her cup and was looking at the narrow strip of sky above the canyon.

Risa touched her shoulder as she passed, then went inside to help Sera with the bedding.

I stayed.

Luna looked at me.

“I went back up for a moment.”

“To the ice?”

She nodded.

“Gone?”

“Nearly.”

I stood beside her.

She took a sip, then set the cup on the stone.

“I thought I'd be upset.”

“Were you?”

“A little. Then I remembered you laughing about Garnet, and it didn't seem like I'd lost the morning.”

I took her hand.

“You haven't.”

She leaned against me.

Neither of us tried to keep the last light from leaving the canyon.

Inside, Sera had put Luna's drawing beside the picture of our room.

Risa was moving the water cups to the shelf where nobody would knock them over in the night.

My notebook was already put away.

I noticed that with some pride until Sera told me she'd moved it.

Luna laughed.

We got ready for bed slowly, in the untidy way of people still learning where to stand while someone else took off a boot.

Risa claimed I had taken the wrong pillow.

Sera said neither pillow was mine if I'd left it in the middle of the floor.

Luna resolved the matter by giving me the folded blanket and taking the pillow herself.

I complained.

Nobody was impressed.

Then Sera kissed me, Risa found my hand, and Luna settled close enough to rest her head against my shoulder.

I forgot the strength of my argument.

For a little while, we listened to the singing outside.

Not everyone. Not loudly.

A few people carrying the tune when someone else couldn't remember it.

Luna traced a small shape against the back of my hand.

A leaf, I thought.

I turned toward her.

“Thank you for this morning.”

She kissed me softly.

“Come again.”

“I will.”

Sera shifted nearer on my other side. Risa's fingers tightened around mine beneath the blanket.

I had seen a field made of ice, heard a woman remember a song, watched the people I loved make room for one another without asking any of it to last unchanged forever.

The room was warm.

The singing grew quieter.

I slept.

Day 485. The ice field.

Luna left an invitation on the notebook. Brought tea. Made leaves in the rain hollow above the field.

Some broken. Some leaning. All beautiful. Left them to melt.

Morning treatment done first. Pella's cause still unknown. Care continues. She remembered the beginning of a song. Priya knew the next line.

Holt knew a different version. Strong objections recorded by everyone near Nessa.

Sera taught Kellan. Finished the water drawing. Luna's leaf beside it now.

Risa choosing our next outing. No dancing promised.

Luna asked me out. I said yes.

It was a good morning.