CHAPTER 15
APRIL
If his leg hurts this morning, Valmir's very good at hiding it.
I eye him lurking on the fringes as I finish my breakfast and rinse my bowl out near the fire.
Everyone's talking in soft voices this morning about all that needs to be done.
There are temporary tents to be put up at the far edge of our little cove, and damage to be assessed on the one hut that's been hit so far.
Devi's excited to get back down to the beach, and it's N'dek who hands her food to ensure that she eats.
He hands a second bowl to his son, ruffling his hair with an affectionate smile.
I squeeze past them and contemplate one last cup of tea before I head out, but Valmir has been pacing a short distance away for several minutes now. He's clearly impatient and ready to go.
I study his figure but he's not limping, which is a relief. We could always put this off another day, wait until the snailpocalypse is over, wait until he's well and rested, except...no. I already feel completely frayed at the edges. I need to get this done and move forward with my life.
Enough stalling. Time to take control once more.
I have a bag of supplies I packed waiting for me, and I swing out of the group to go retrieve it.
Makana is tucked against my chest in a wrap that I've seen others use to hold their babies strapped to their fronts.
He's curled into a ball just below my boobs and his head is hidden.
I tried adjusting the leather so he could poke his head out, but I think he likes being buried, because he immediately burrowed back in.
I reach in and scratch his nose, and he makes a soft chirrup of happiness.
It's going to hurt to let him go. I won't keep him if he wants to be free, though. There's no happiness in keeping something if it's going to be miserable.
That applies for both Valmir and Makana, I think.
Maybe it's why I feel so defeated over this resonance.
Valmir doesn't want to be in my life. He wants to fuck me, but outside of the furs?
He's not interested in anything that I'm committed to.
It hurts, but I won't force him to be something he's not.
It's not hard to find Valmir. I note where the majority of the tribe is and look in the opposite direction. Sure enough, he's seated a good distance away, leaning against a boulder and pretending to watch the waves. Alone, like always.
I approach Valmir with my bag in my hand. "Ready to go?"
Valmir takes the heavy pack from me and grunts at the heft of it. "What did you put in here?"
"Rocks," I lie brightly. "I figured we'd need an entire bag of them."
He shoots me a look.
"It's supplies for a hike in case we run into trouble. Some food, water, extra fur wraps, little this, little that."
"Feels like a lot of 'this,'" he grumps as he puts the pack on his back.
I hold a hand out to him. "I'll carry it if you're going to complain."
He pushes my hand away. "Complaining is what I do best. Allow me my moment of glory."
Cute. Valmir's clearly trying to tweak my temper. But I'm so sad over losing my pet and the state of our resonance that I can't seem to crack a smile. "This might take a little time. I want to find a really nice clearing with a lot of shrubs and let him go there. Someplace special."
He doesn't try to shoot me down. "We can do that."
We head out, and I keep an arm around Makana as I hike so he doesn't get jostled.
It's a nice day, with a gentle breeze and the sun out.
It makes the strangeness on the beach even more jarring, and I wonder how many shelled monsters are going to show up on the sands today.
Fifty? A hundred? I was tempted to put off my plans to release Makana, but at the fire last night, Liz told us all that there was nothing to do about the nautili beaching themselves.
All we can do is sit and wait. The huts can't be moved, but they can be rebuilt like they were before.
Since I'm too restless to sit and watch mindless tentacle monsters drive their shells over our houses, releasing Makana seems as good an idea as any.
I'm lost in thought as I hike alongside Valmir.
We're not talking, but I suppose that's not surprising.
We haven't had much to say to each other lately.
Not since he got injured and I realized that I can't keep stringing him along on increasingly dangerous missions.
Meeting Aidy and Corvak and seeing their delight at being part of the group just emphasized to me how much of a loner Valmir is, and reinforced that if he wanted to be part of things, he would.
It made me realize we want very different things out of life.
If I picture my life five years from now, do I think—
"You surprise me," Valmir says, interrupting my thoughts.
His quiet words jerk me back to the present. I flush, feeling disloyal for thinking about the future when I should be focused on right now. "What do you mean?"
"It is a strenuous hike," he says, gesturing at the steep, rocky path we're on.
"I deliberately picked a treacherous one so you would comment on it.
Or so you'd cling to me like Aidy does to Corvak.
" He smirks in my direction at that. "Instead, you keep pace at my side and say nothing. I'm almost disappointed."
"Is that bait?" I ask. "Because you just insulted Aidy and she's been nothing but nice to you."
"Aidy is a nice female," he says. "But she would be the first to say that she does not like a strenuous hike. Or hunting. Or leaving camp. She is quite happy to lurk near a fire. There are several females like that back at the camp, but you are not one of them."
"I don't know how I feel about that," I muse. "It's not a compliment."
"Why not?"
"Because you're slamming the other girls while trying to make me seem like I'm better than them.
Everyone contributes in their own way. I'm not patient enough to sit with the kids.
I'm not good at sewing yet. If I can brute force my way through things, I will.
It doesn't make someone that sits at camp a bad person.
They're still providing value to the group. "
"And that's important to you? Providing value to the group?"
I eye him as I put my hands on a craggy boulder and haul myself over it.
The "path" is steep, but if he can do it with a tender ankle, I figure I can do it with two good ones.
His words seem to be genuine, so I decide to answer him in a genuine fashion.
"I love that everyone here is like a great big family.
I don't want them to feel like they must take care of me.
I want to be part of a team, and I want others to count on me, and I want to know I can count on them.
It's about being part of that big family. "
Valmir is quiet for a long moment. "I don't know what that's like."
I pause, shocked. I've assumed something so basic about him for the last few weeks — that he'd know how to act in a group. That he'd know what it's like to be part of a big unit, a family, a team. "Weren't you and the other gladiators taught to be teammates? To work together?"
His tone turns defensive and he won't look at me. "Maybe some are, but I have no memories of that."
This is so surprising to me…and yet it's not the first time he's grudgingly confessed that he's missing information. "What do you have memories of?"
"If I'm being honest, not much." Valmir's trying to be lighthearted, but I suspect there's a deeper pain there. This is something that has come up before, and I suspect it really bothers him.
It makes me wonder. Is he such a loner and so hard to get along with because he just doesn't know how?
Or am I reading too much into things? "I get flooded with memories of home every now and then.
Words I know that the translator doesn't, customs no one else knows but me.
Instead of comforting me, it makes me... lonely."
"I'm sorry."
I bite my lip. "It just makes me desperate to remember who I was. Sometimes I wish I didn't have any of that. It might be easier to have nothing. To be a blank slate, like Vivi or Natalie."
"It isn't." He pauses on the next rocky outcrop and holds a hand out for me to take.
I ignore it, because I don't need help, and anchor my fingers on a particularly gnarly bit of rock. "No?"
"No," he repeats. As I haul myself up, his hand brushes against the small of my back, as if he can't help himself with wanting to assist. I pull my weight over the ledge and adjust Makana again, then turn to look down at Valmir as I sit on the edge of the ledge.
He studies my face. "Being a blank slate is terrible.
You always wonder what you don't have, or if there's some basic information you're missing somehow.
It feels like being left out of the joke, always. "
It's a surprisingly vulnerable confession from him. "Is that really how you feel?"
His eyes narrow, and his expression turns defensive again. With one agile movement, he climbs up to where I'm at. "Nah."
The soft moment between us is gone. I get to my feet, noticing that his tail is flicking wildly, betraying his otherwise impassive demeanor.
We don't speak again for a while. The trail (such as it is) winds through the cliffs and eventually evens out into what seems like a delightful little valley.
There are bushes all along the edges of the cliffs and a trickle of water coming from a rocky escarpment that might have been a waterfall if it wasn't freezing up as soon as it hits the air.
The ground is shiny and lacquered, the snow gleaming in the sunlight so brightly that it hurts my eyes.
It's not uncommon for the snow to get crispy on the surface overnight after melting in the daytime.
It just means this valley gets some warmth.
"This looks like a good spot," I say to Valmir. "We've got food and water, and it's protected from the wind."