Reading the Wind (Silver Ship) (22 page)

“All of us?” I knew the answer. We never left the perimeter unless we were all together.

“We can use Windy to pack. She’s strong enough now; I’ve seen Kayleen on her back a few times, although standing still.” He winked. “After all, Kayleen told us she brought Windy for a pack animal.”

“Right. Damned hebra’s almost her dog.” The friendly green-striped beast remained her closest confidante. If I didn’t like her too, I’d have been jealous instead of just concerned. “Sure, I’ll go. We’ve got to learn more about this place sometime.”

His eyes twinkled. “Now who sounds like the roamer?”

A few moments later, Kayleen and Windy made their way up to us, sweat glistening on Kayleen’s bare shoulders and soaking Windy’s chest and withers. “Good morning,” Kayleen said cheerfully as she neared us, her eyes shining with exercise adrenaline. “I saw some of the tall-beasts near the end of the valley.”

“Did you get close?” Liam asked.

She shook her head. Our perimeter kept them out of West Home, and the herd had shrunk by two after one night when the demons bayed hunt for hours. They kept a polite distance from us, no matter how small and insignificant we tried to appear.

“Are you up for a trip?” Liam asked carefully.

Kayleen’s eyes widened. “There’s too much to do.”

We started down the path toward home, Windy picking her way carefully between the rocks just ahead of us. Kayleen added, “I don’t want to take her out there yet. She’s not completely trained.”

“She follows you pretty well now,” I pointed out.

Kayleen looked back at me. “I’m not risking her past the valley.”

“We have to explore sometime,” Liam said. “Best when we can count on the weather. We’ll hunt the valley out if we never leave.”

Kayleen kept slightly ahead of us, hiding her face. Her shoulders had stiffened. “It’s not safe out there.”

Liam caught up to her and pulled her around gently to face him. “I know you’re used to living in a town. Artistos has enough resources inside the perimeters, but we don’t. We haven’t got enough crop started to feed a child, much less all three of us.”

She pulled away from him and searched our faces. But at least, not crazy. The crazy look almost never touched her anymore. She dropped her head and looked away. “Can we wait a while? We need to build some place to store grass for Windy.”

Liam’s voice sounded soft, almost as if he talked to a child. “We’ll help you do that today. And tonight, we should pack up. We’ll only be gone a few days.”

She didn’t answer. Group decision-making had evolved into two against one when we disagreed, and Kayleen surely knew she’d lost this battle.

“Come on,” I said. “We have a big enough pile of logs to at least start a storage bin.”

She grimaced, then shrugged, as if pretending it didn’t matter to her. She took my hand and said, “All right.” As if by an act of sheer will, she moved quickly in front of us, ready to start work in the frenetic, focused attitude that drove her all day. She only seemed to feel safe when she worked so hard that sweat poured from her.

L
ate that afternoon, the shelter over half built, she and I took a short break. We perched on the rocks rimming the pool, sitting close to each other, the waterfall’s spray coating our hair with tiny jewels. She turned to look at me, droplets like freckles on her face, her legs dangling so one extra-long toe skimmed the water. Her arms lay crossed in her lap, still. Kayleen moved all the time—stillness telegraphed control and fear for her.

Her blue eyes gazed steadily at me and she spoke loudly to fight the waterfall’s tendency to whip sound into its own rush. “Chelo. You and Liam, you shut me out. There’s three of us. You can’t always shut
me out. There’s no one for me but you two, no mate except Liam.” Her words rushed out as fast as the waterfall. “And you’re in the same boat. You know neither of us could stand to be with someone unaltered.” She uncrossed her arms and her trailing foot twitched, making cross-wakes in the waterfall’s ripples.

I pulled my knees in tight to my chest and made myself small.

She didn’t wait for me to answer. “You know this. You’re our leader. Or maybe you and Liam, together. You’re supposed to see the future, see that we need to stay family.” She reached a hand out toward me, but let it fall back into her lap, turning her gaze out to the waterfall. She mouthed the word “please,” or perhaps she said it out loud and the waterfall took it, since she no longer faced me.

I felt as if I tottered at the top of the waterfall, ready to plunge, only I couldn’t tell which way to jump to miss the worst of the rocks in the bottom of the pool. Really, I hadn’t had a clue how to answer, except that I knew Liam wouldn’t choose to be with her, not now, anyway. He was still too mad at her for stealing his summer. So I cleared my throat. “It’s not my choice to make, not entirely. I think you need to talk to Liam and me about it together.”

I couldn’t tell if the fresh water on her cheeks was from her eyes or the waterfall. She shook her head. “Not yet. I can’t talk to him yet. I can barely talk to him at all. I hoped you would talk to him.”

It took three long breaths to find words to answer her. “I don’t know how, and you’re right, it’s not time.” I stood and leapt out over the rocks into a deep part of the pool, cleaving the water cleanly and shallowly, swimming toward the spot where the waterfall plunged into the pool. I fought toward the falling water until I was completely exhausted, kicking, managing at best to stay in one place, struggling, going nowhere. The roar of the waterfall and the gritty smell of the sharp, wet rocks filled me.

I forgot Kayleen and her request, and Liam, and that Joseph was gone. I gave myself to the fall and the pool so completely that when I crawled back onto the rocks I lay, panting, unable to move.

When I sat up, Kayleen was gone.

E
arly the next afternoon, we left our safe haven and struck up the opposite ridge along a path Liam had found a week after we landed. The long climb took us nearly two hours. We stopped for a moment at the top of the ridge. Looking behind us, I couldn’t see our valley at all. Golden Cat Valley, of course, but the waterfall—West Home—all of that was well hidden. The Fire River wasn’t yet visible—at least three ridges separated us. Probably more. We’d decided to cut through the next valley, exploring, and then go along the north coast.

The cave was halfway down the ridge, overlooking a valley much like Golden Cat Valley, except twice as wide, and home to a much larger river. Herds of grazers moved slowly down the valley. Not djuri. Taller and rounder and slower. Apparently they made up what they lost in speed with an aggressive breeding program. Kayleen had spotted them first, making their way across the wide end of Golden Cat Valley in a long, fat line. She had named them “blazes grazers.”

We stopped in front of the cave, looking around. Ten meters wide and five deep, the cave was flooded with light from the late afternoon sun. “We’ll sleep here,” Liam said. “At least I know it’s safe.”

Kayleen drew her brows together. “We have two more of the long-range nodes like I have in the valley. I think I’ll set them up here. This would be a good place to hide if we ever need to.”

“Hide from what?” I asked.

She shook her head. “The dogs. The golden cats. Anything. What if our perimeter breaks somehow?”

Liam looked up and down the wide path to the cave. “Something hoofed and heavy made this path. I’m not sure how safe it really is, since there’ll be predators around any path that prey takes. Still … we might as well use the nodes.”

I peered in. A pile of wood sat pre-stacked against one wall. The floor was rocky, fairly flat, and dry. Toward the back, the cave ended in a jumble of rocks.

I turned to Kayleen, who held Windy’s halter tightly. Windy’s head was up, her eyes big enough to show the whites surrounding her huge green-brown pupils. “She smells something she doesn’t like,” Kayleen said, stroking the hebra’s neck.

“There’s some kind of small animal that lives in here, or at least visits. I spotted some tracks in the dust last time I was here.” He started picking up wood and moving it to the ledge in front of the cave. “We should keep a fire going all night.”

Kayleen started into the cave, leading Windy. A tiny low-slung animal with a bushy black tail darted from the woodpile and fled out the door. Windy backed away, snorting, pulling Kayleen back. She and Kayleen disappeared from sight around the corner. Liam and I laughed, and after a minute, we heard Kayleen’s laughter joining ours. So they hadn’t gone far. “Is that all?” Kayleen called.

Liam poked at the woodpile with a sharp stick until he dislodged two more of the little beasts, one of them hissing and snapping as it ran. At the bottom of the woodpile, he found a nest with three perfectly formed little brown eggs in it. He frowned. “Odd for a mammal to lay eggs.” He looked around. “Well, they won’t come back, now, anyway.” He carried the little nest carefully out the door. “Maybe they’ll find their eggs,” he said doubtfully, then called, “All clear,” to Kayleen.

This time, Windy came in easily enough, although she remained nervous and kept her ears pricked.

Liam started the fire while Kayleen stripped Windy’s packs and settled her into the corner farthest from the woodpile. I set up bedding for the three of us, carefully putting us all about the same distance from each other. Kayleen looked over at me, a pained look in her eyes. “You don’t have to do that. You can sleep with Liam.” She turned her face away. “It’s okay with me.” Her tone of voice belied her words.

Liam, overhearing, glanced back at us both. “Kayleen.” He said it as if she were a child, and I sensed both concern and frustration. “This is fine for tonight. You don’t want to be alone. Well, you don’t have to be, at least not any more than we do.”

Her lower lip quivered. “Well, why do we all have to be alone?”

He blinked at her. “I’m not entirely sure what you’re asking,” he said, although I think he knew.

I knew.

As he looked at her, Liam’s gaze softened. I couldn’t read the emotions behind his eyes. Maybe affection, maybe pity. Maybe some of both. He’d point-blank asked her to be clear, and he watched her intently, patiently.

Of course the problem would have occurred to him as well. But he was going back to lead his band. Even though most relationships in the bands were one man and one woman, some were two people of the same gender. But always two. The three of us being together made sense, and some of the things the townspeople had said about the
altered
they hated and fought implied more complexity in relationships. But we had never seen it.

I, too, watched Kayleen.

Her gaze flicked back and forth between the two of us. The longer she stayed away from town, the more like herself she became. The young woman standing here now, clutching her bedding to her chest, was my friend again, someone I knew. In spite of our awkward conversation last night.

What she said was, “I love you both.” She paused, and the words sank in, sharp in their simplicity. Her eyes looked damp, but her chin was high. “I don’t want to be alone my whole life, and I don’t want to make Chelo alone her whole life. The other men, Bryan and Joseph, they’re gone. We don’t know if they’re ever coming back. So why do either Chelo or I need to be alone?”

Liam looked over at me, searching for my reaction. I bit my lip, waffling again between the two choices that haunted me. Looking at her, at them both, I was pretty sure that the key lay between me and her.

So instead of answering Liam’s unspoken question, I spoke to Kayleen. “You’re right. This is untenable, at least for long. But we haven’t given up on the skimmer, or getting home.”

I waited, letting her absorb that much. She watched me, her gaze guarded and hopeful.

I added, “How can we three all live together in Artistos or in one of the bands? We need to think about that.” Inside, I cursed myself for being a coward, for putting the choice off. But the risks! What if we tried this, and failed? What if we destroyed our friendships reaching for something more?

Liam sat cross-legged, his chin on one fist, his braid falling down his shoulder. I had seen Akashi in the same pose more than once. Liam even sounded a little like his dad. “I’ve thought about it, too. I’m sure we all have.” He looked at each of us and we both nodded. He continued. “Three of us becoming a family, more than we are now”—his face reddened, and I felt my cheeks grow hot, too—“well, it’s an intriguing idea, and maybe someday it will work.”

Kayleen’s eyes brightened, as if the answer gave her hope.

Liam must have seen it, too. He shook his head. “Kayleen.” He waited for her to focus completely on him. “Kayleen, I can’t do this, not now. Not until … until we get home or decide we can’t.”

She flinched, glancing quickly at me, pain flashing across her features, then she looked back at him. I understood his answer, but did she?

His gaze softened some as she waited for his next words. “I … I didn’t know you before this. And I started out mad at you.”

She nodded.

“Now, you and I can at least be friends. Maybe we are, except we can’t be equal until you no longer hold us hostage.”

Kayleen frowned.

If we couldn’t get the skimmer to work, she had no way to change that. He didn’t quite say so though. He did add, “Until you’re healed.”

Kayleen’s voice trembled. “I’m much better now.”

Liam looked at me. “Let time work. I’m not ready.” So now he and I were poised together at the top of the waterfall, looking to see how to jump.

But we didn’t have to jump today.

Windy shuffled and the fire crackled and we split apart, tending to the small chores necessary to sustain ourselves. As the sun lowered,
shadows crept up the wall until they filled the entire cave. We sat by the fire, mostly quiet. Liam worked on a new fishing spear he was carving, Kayleen worked on a bigger halter for Windy, and I stared out over the dark valley below us, my back to the fire and to the other two, thinking about all the possible branches of our future. I did not want to die here.