Aftermath - Ann Aguirre [73]
“We’re going to sleep at the settlement, then return to the ship.”
“Where to from there?” Hit asks.
“I’m not sure. We’ll talk about it when we get back.”
Dina disconnects then. Vel pulls two packets out of his pack, and I have to smile. This reminds me of the time we were stranded together in an ice cave on the Teresengi Basin. Like the other time, he gets out a chemical cooker and starts making soup out of freeze-dried ingredients edible and palatable to both of us. Fortunately, there is some overlap between Ithtorian and human physiology, though not enough to permit us to eat all the same things. Oranges, for instance, would kill him.
“Hungry?” he asks.
“Yeah.” I can’t remember the last time I ate, in fact.
A long silence falls as he mixes and stirs. Then he says, “The Mareq have a gift for happiness.”
It’s a blessing I did not expect. Since it’s been that way for as long as I can remember, I expected more punishment and castigation. Instead, there’s only this seamless joy. I could almost stay here, despite the mud and muck and the stink of half-rotten vegetation. Except I can’t. Not me. I always have someplace else I’d rather be, even if I don’t know where that is, yet.
“They do,” I agree, catching his eye. “We’re going to be all right.” I say the words aloud to Vel, testing them, because in the aftermath of the war, Doc’s death, my trial, the separation from March, and the loss of Adele, that’s the first time I’ve allowed myself to imagine that anything could ever be all right again.
But the world moves on, even when you don’t want it to, even when change feels like the end of everything. It never stops. That’s harsh and magical and somewhat comforting because nothing is immutable, however much we want it to be. Moments cannot be caught like fossils in amber, ever- perfect, ever-beautiful. They go dark and raw, full of shadows, leaving you with the memories.
And the world moves on.
“Yes,” he says quietly in Ithtorian. “As long as we have each other, Sirantha, I believe we will be.”
I would follow him anywhere, I realize. Once, I would’ve only said that about March, but Vel has earned my trust in countless ways. Now we sit together in silence and sip his rough-and-ready soup. It doesn’t taste like much, but it contains the energy and nutrients we need to survive.
“Where do you want to go?” I ask. “You’re still paying dues to the guild, right? I could help you take targets.”
“I am done with that life.” A flat answer, no explanations.
But I suspect Vel sees his life in chapters. When Adele sent him away, he went back to hunting to distract himself from the sorrow, and her passing marks the end of that version of him. Now he must become somebody new in order to bear the loss. I understand that completely—and whatever I can do to help him, I will.
Once the soup’s gone, I lie down on the moss and fall asleep at once. In the morning, which is just a bit brighter than the dark here on Marakeq, Dace is waiting for us. I expect a farewell feast, but instead she has something important to show us. Or . . . that’s what the chip’s telling me, anyway.
“Hurry,” she says. “The others remain in their dreams. If they knew, they would stop me.”
“Stop you from doing what?”
Vel grabs his pack, and we follow her. Zeeka pokes his head out, watching over her shoulder. He’s already bigger and stronger than our Baby-Z ever became. The synth protein might let him survive, but it wasn’t permitting him to thrive as he’s doing here, snuggled against his mother’s shoulder.
“The secret place,” she replies. “The shadow place. All echoes, no silence.”
Which tells me precisely nothing. I don’t know if we ought to be doing something that the other villagers would disapprove of, but I recognize Vel’s look. He’s intrigued by forbidden knowledge, so I fall in without protest.
Dace creeps through the village and past, in the opposite direction from the ship. March and I never came this far on our first trip, so I don’t know what’s out here. It’s raining, of course, but I swear there are, like, four days