“I’m not hungry,” he said.
“You have to eat.” Not pleading. Stating a fact. “Fresh rabbit. I made a stew.”
“How bad is it?”
“Not bad. I’m a good cook.”
He shook his head and forced a smile. She knew what he meant.
“It’s pretty bad,” she said. “Sixteen broken bones, skull fracture, second-degree burns over most of your body. Not your hair, though. You still have your hair. That’s the good news.”
The woman dipped a spoon into the stew, brought the spoon to her lips, blew gently, swiped her tongue slowly around the edge.
“What’s the bad news?” he asked.
“Your ankle is fractured. Fairly badly. That’s going to take some time. The rest . . .” She shrugged, sipped the stew, pursed her lips. “Needs salt.”
He watched her dig into her rucksack, searching for the salt. “Grace,” he said softly. “Your name is Grace.”
“One of them,” the woman said. Then she said her real name, the one she bore for ten thousand years. “I have to be honest. I like Grace better. So much easier to pronounce!”
She swirled the soup with the spoon. Offered him a sip. His lips tightened. The thought of food . . . She shrugged and took another sip. “I thought it was debris from the explosion,” she went on. “I never expected to find one of the escape pods—or you in it. What happened to the guidance system? Did you disarm it?”
He thought carefully before he answered. “Malfunction.”
“Malfunction?”
“Malfunction,” he said louder. His throat was on fire. She held the canteen for him while he drank.
“Not too much,” she cautioned him. “You’ll get sick.”
Water dribbled down his chin. She wiped it for him.
“The base was compromised,” he said.
She seemed surprised. “How?”
He shook his head. “Not sure.”
“Why were you there? That’s the curious thing.”
“I followed someone in.” This was not going well. For a person whose entire life had been a lie, lying did not come easily to him. He knew Grace would not hesitate to terminate his current body if she suspected that the “compromise” extended to him. They all understood the risk in donning the human mantle. Sharing a body with a human psyche carried with it the danger of adopting human vices—as well as human virtues. And far more dangerous than greed or lust or envy or any of those things—or anything—was love.
“You . . . followed someone? A human?”
“I didn’t have a choice.” That much was true at least.
“The base was compromised. By a human.” She shook her head with wonder. “And you abandoned your patrol to stop it.”
He closed his eyes. Perhaps she’d think he passed out. The smell of the stew made his stomach roll.
“Very curious,” Grace said. “There was always risk of a compromise, but from within the processing center. How could a human in your sector know anything about the cleansing?”
Playing possum wasn’t going to work. He opened his eyes. The crow had not moved. The bird stared at him, and he remembered the owl on the sill and the little boy in the bed and the fear. “I’m not sure she did.”
“She?”
“Yes. It was a . . . a female.”
“Cassiopeia.”
He looked sharply at her, couldn’t help it. “How do you . . . ?”
“I’ve heard it a lot over the past three days.”
“Three days?”
His heart quickened. He had to ask. But how could he? Asking might make her more suspicious than she already was. It would be foolish to ask. So he said, “I think she might have escaped.”
Grace smiled. “Well, if she did, I’m sure we’ll find her.”
He let his breath out slowly. Grace would have no reason to lie. If she had found Cassie, she would have killed her and had no reservations in telling him. Though Grace not finding her was no proof of life: Cassie still may not have survived.
Grace reached into her rucksack again and took out a bottle of cream. “For the burns,” she explained. Gingerly, she pulled the blanket down, exposing his na**d body to the freezing air. Above them, the crow cocked its polished black head and watched.
The cream was cold. Her hands were warm. Grace had brought him out of fire; he had brought Cassie out of ice. He’d carried her through the undulating sea of white to the old farmhouse, where he removed her clothes and plunged her freezing body into warm water. As Grace’s hands, slick with salve, roamed his body, his fingers had worked through the ice encrusted in Cassie’s thick hair. Removing the bullet as she floated in the water stained pink by her blood. The bullet meant for her heart. His bullet. And, after he pulled her from the water and bandaged the wound, carrying her to his sister’s bed, averting his eyes as he dressed her in his sister’s gown; Cassie would have been mortified when she realized he’d seen her unclothed.
Grace’s eyes fixed on him. His eyes fixed on the teddy bear on the pillow. He pulled the covers to Cassie’s chin. Grace pulled the blanket to his.
You’re going to live, he told Cassie. More of a prayer than a promise.
“You’re going to live,” Grace told him.
You have to live, he said to Cassie. “I have to,” he said to Grace.
The way she cocked her head as she looked at him, like the crow in the tree, the owl on the sill.
“We all have to,” Grace said, nodding slowly. “It’s why we came.”