These Broken Stars (19 page)

“Mmm,” she agrees, drawing the blanket in tighter around us. “Why am I always the problem? Just once I’d like to be the useful one.”

“We happened to get stranded on my turf,” I say. “That’s the way it goes, sometimes.”

“I just wish—” She shifts a little, getting comfortable again and subsiding against me with a sigh. “Well, I suppose I wish a lot of things.”

“Me too,” I say quietly to the girl in my arms.
I know exactly what you mean.

“I wish I had a really good cup of tea,” she says, with a sigh. “And some scones, jam, cream.”

“I wish I had a steak.” We both dwell on that for a moment. “Or something to boil. There’s a guy in my unit who can make food out of anything. He boiled up a shirt when we were in a tight spot on Arcadia. But he says it’s got to be a general’s shirt, because they use a better quality dye on those.”

“
Major.
” She sounds like she doesn’t know whether to giggle, or chastise me.

“Oh, don’t worry, you remove the insignia first. Otherwise it would 
be disrespectful.”

Talking again after the day’s silence is like a truce after a long campaign. As we settle in to wait to warm up, I’m careful to keep my mind from drifting toward the people she saw by the river. All of them pointing this way, at the mountains, or the wreck, perhaps. But why? I don’t want to talk about it, don’t want to think about it. For now, we’re allies again, and I’m not about to mess that up.

My internal clock tells me I’ve been asleep hours when something wakes me. The fire’s burned down to embers, and the wind outside is howling in the way only a blizzard in full swing can. But we’re wearing everything we own, including our boots, and I’m warm.

Then I realize what woke me. Lilac’s sitting bolt upright, staring into 
space. Her eyes are wild and vague—she’s been dreaming. Cold air’s leaking in where she’s pulled the blankets away from me, and I wait to 
see whether she’ll lie back down, keeping my eye barely cracked open. I 
really want to sleep. I want her to sleep too.

No such luck. She scrambles out of the blankets and onto her knees, reaching down to shake my shoulder. “Tarver,” she hisses. “Tarver, I know you’re not asleep, get up.”

Dammit.
I open my eyes. Flushed and urgent, she stares at me. I see her trembling, a drop of sweat trickling down her temple despite the chill. She looks sick with whatever nightmare woke her.

“Lilac, please. Just kill me.” I let her hear a little of the impatience in my voice, which I’m usually so careful about. But it’s the middle of the night. I was finally warm. I
really
want to sleep. “What is it?”

She tries to calm herself, but I can still see the urgency in her eyes—she’s hoping I’ll listen if she hides away the crazy. “We have to get out of here.” Her breath catches as she says it, as though she’s surprised to hear herself speak those words. “It’s not safe.”

“No kidding,” I say, hauling the blanket up underneath my chin. “And trust me, the first rescue ship I see, we’re on it. But for now, we’re as safe as we can be in here. We’ll freeze out there. You don’t screw around with blizzards.”

She hauls back the blankets and grabs my wrist, throwing her weight into the effort. I can feel the tremors racking her body. Not just a dream, then—this was one of her visions. She’s clearly beyond reason.

“Believe me,” she says, teeth gritted with effort. I don’t let her shift me, and without my cooperation, neither of us moves. “Tarver, I
know
. But we have to go, we have to go
right now
. Please, it’s not safe in here, something’s going to happen.”

“Something’s going to happen if we go out there,” I say, pulling my wrist back, which jerks her closer. “We’re going to start slurring our words and shaking, then we’re going to stop shaking, then we’re going to go mad and start pulling off our clothes, stumbling around, laughing. Then we’ll collapse, and that’s the merciful part, because that way we won’t feel it when we freeze to death. For once, please just make things easy for me and lie down, all right?”

This is the thing I’ve been afraid of. This is why I made her promise not to go running after one of those voices she hears. That’s how I could 
lose her.

“Please!” There’s an edge to her voice, hoarse and desperate—whatever’s scared her so much, she believes in it completely. “I don’t know how, but I swear to you, I know.” She closes her eyes for a moment, gathering calm, gathering steel. I know that look. When she opens her eyes again, her voice shakes with passion. “I know you lied to me back there, and I don’t care. I’ve trusted you with my life every second, Tarver. Can’t you trust
me
for one second? Just once?”

My heart’s breaking, and I reach out for her hands, but she snatches them back. “It’s not about trust,” I tell her. “I don’t know what’s happening, I can’t see what you see. But there’s a difference between making some educated guesses about who died in that pod and thinking you can see the future. Lilac, if we leave in the middle of this blizzard, we risk dying from exposure. It’s insane. We’re not going out there, if I have to hold you down myself. Give yourself a few moments to calm down, and you’ll see I’m right.”

“We don’t
have
a few moments!” Lilac is breathing hard, agitated. “You’re wrong. It’s
all
about trust. You just don’t believe me.”

I don’t know what to say, and I’m still searching for words when she snaps into action. She scrambles to her feet, grabbing my pack and wheeling around to dash for the mouth of the cave.

I can hear myself roaring in pure frustration. The blankets seem to come to life, wrapping around me and tangling my arms for vital seconds before I rip my way clear. I pound after her, leaving behind the blankets and the fire, the warmth and safety of the cave.

The cold hits me like a wall, cutting in through my open jacket. I’m thanking whoever’s listening that we slept fully dressed. No light from the strange moon makes it through the clouds and the snow swirling through the air. For long, terrifying seconds I can’t see her at all, the darkness leaching the color out of everything. Then there’s movement—she’s stumbling away from the cave, scrambling over rocks and dragging herself to her feet again—and I hurl myself after her, breath rasping, boots crunching on the snow.

I’ve been moving so slowly and carefully for days that for an instant it almost feels good to stretch my legs. I vault over a boulder and throw myself after her, driven by my fear that she’ll disappear into the night, 
or fall, or I’ll lose her in any countless number of ways. I’m not gentle 
when I catch her—I grab her upper arm and slam on the brakes, so she’s pulled up short and jerked into my arms, to hold her still and keep her from escaping again.

She doesn’t struggle, and my heart pounds as the two of us stand there, panting, the snow quickly coating our heads and shoulders.

Then a sound starts to rise above the howling of the wind, and the muffling blanket of the snow, and the harsh rasp of our breath. It’s a deep rumbling, starting as a whisper and then building to drown out everything else as the ground trembles beneath our feet. I’m forced to let go of her to catch my balance, but she doesn’t move away. She looks past me toward the cave, and when I follow her line of sight, I see the faint glow of our fire wink out of existence as the roof of our campsite collapses in an avalanche of rock.

We both stand for a few moments, still panting, still staring. It’s nothing but a pile of rubble and snow.

Our bed and blankets are buried beneath it all, as we would have been too, if we’d been inside. I know this, but somehow I’m disconnected from the knowledge. I know that our cozy shelter is somewhere under the debris, but I can’t imagine that it’s really true.

Or how she knew to run.

When I turn to walk away, she comes without a word. We can’t move far in the dark, but we find a place to wedge ourselves between two rocks and build up some of the snow to shelter us from the wind. It creates a poor shelter, but lacking any alternative, we huddle down together. We sit on the pack and wrap our arms around each other, and I don’t think either of us sleeps a wink in the few hours until dawn.

The sky’s only starting to lighten when the snow stops. My arms and legs have long since gone through the agony of losing circulation, and they’re out the other side into numbness. The feeling comes flooding back in bolts of fiery pain as I instruct my body to move.

She follows my example as I stretch, exhausted but uncomplaining. She must hurt as much as I do, but I note with a twinge of admiration that it doesn’t show up in more than a tightening of her jaw, a careful slowness to her movements. Once we’re both able to take a step without 
stumbling, we turn away from the cave.

The last of the stars are sparkling overhead, as they always do after snow, and the artificial moon hangs low in the sky. The world is crisp and beautiful. Every step is careful and testing—you never know what lies beneath the overnight crust of snow. I sink in over my ankles, and Lilac’s breathing behind me quickly becomes labored. Our progress is slow.

I don’t want to think about what happened, but my mind insists on revisiting it over and over.

She saw the folks I buried.

She dreamed, and knew to run from the cave.

I let myself skid in a controlled slide down a rock as big as a tank, then turn to lift my arms up so she can slither down to join me. I catch her, hands braced against her sides, and when I move to release her, she grabs the fabric of my sleeve, holding me still.

I look down at her, and though her skin’s pale with exhaustion, and her eyes are two dark, sleepless circles, her gaze is locked on mine.

She wants what happened to be her proof. Proof her voices are real, proof of her sanity. She’s waiting for me to admit she’s not crazy, for my conversion.

But what happened last night was impossible. Nobody can know something before it happens. I can’t explain it, can’t let myself dwell on it. I have to stick to the task at hand, and get us out of here.

I’ve been trained to close my mind in order to keep functioning. I’ve been trained to keep moving.

I let my gaze slide away from hers, and I hear her breath catch as she stiffens. I can imagine her face closing over, but I can’t let myself look at her. She releases my arm, and I turn back toward the path.

I thought yesterday was awkward and too quiet; it pales against today. The hopelessness in the set of her shoulders as she trudges through the snow is heartbreaking.

We struggle through the snow without speaking, legs made of lead and arms protesting every moment they’re put to use. The things we don’t say grow thicker between us, and by the time we’ve been walking a few hours, the silence has set like concrete.

When we stop I reach for the canteen, only to find it gone. I look up 
to find Lilac watching me, and we realize at the same time. The canteen is with our blankets, buried in the rubble. I close my eyes against the blow of it. Without a way to carry water, we’re tethered to creeks and streams, left hoping our guts can take the local bacteria. Without water—She starts moving again first, continuing on down the slope. Maybe 
she doesn’t realize what the loss of the canteen means. Maybe she does 
know, and is just moving anyway.

When we finally make camp, we work side by side to clear a spot of snow and hunt for meager piles of grasses for our bed, picking out twigs and stones and scooping out a hole for our hip bones. Without the blankets, we’ll have to bury ourselves in whatever we can find.

We melt snow in a strip of fabric torn from the too-long sleeves of the mechanic’s suit, sucking at the water as it drips. It’s precious little, but eating snow will only increase the effects of exposure. I reach inside the pack for the flashlight to lay it by the bed, and catch sight of the small case that holds my photograph inside it. I can’t help wondering why she grabbed the pack before she ran. Why, in such a panic, would she think to get supplies?

Then it hits me. She wasn’t sure I’d come after her, unless she had my 
prized belongings with her.

Half-formed words gather in my throat, but she won’t even look at me, and I don’t know what to say.

When I curl up behind her to sleep, the curve of her spine says everything she doesn’t. Tense and unhappy, she only barely tolerates our close proximity. If it were warmer, if we had our blankets, if she had a choice, she’d be on the other side of the fire. For a moment it seems like she’s about to say something, her breath hitching with intention, but she remains silent.

Neither of us has spoken a word all day. It’s a long time before we sleep.

We wake a little later than usual in the morning, paying the price for the night before. One of the many prices. It doesn’t take long to clear up the camp—stretch, pack up our supplies, split one of the last few ration bars.

I stretch again as she tightens the laces on her boots, and when we set 
out it’s clear she’s determined to keep to the pace I set. But by the time 
we reach the crest of the pass she’s breathing fast, lagging behind despite 
her best efforts, her gaze fixed on the ground in front of her.

The view of the rolling hills before us is spectacular. They stretch out for klicks before they level off and reach a forest that’s only a dark line from this distance. Between the base of the mountain and the start of the forest lies the
Icarus
.

She’s strewn out over a huge distance, ripped apart by her descent. Though sections of it have collapsed in the unfamiliar gravity, a large part of her hull is intact, with her trail showing where she came skidding in over the ground. My heart thumps in my chest as I run my gaze along the trail of debris—ruined escape pods that didn’t detach until the ship broke apart, chunks of metal, burned streaks along the hillsides, half-melted things I can’t begin to identify.

The
Icarus
held fifty thousand souls. I wish I could believe that any of them have survived this charred disaster. Not a single pod that I can see is intact, and the ship herself is beyond all redemption.