Solene #2
My knee hits the pavement underwater. The jars rattle. One tips. I catch it against me, dirty street water splashing across the glass, and Boris is already there, already lifting me by both arms, already pulling the flat away from me with one hand while hauling me upright with the other.
"Last one." His face is inches from mine. Rain runs into the corners of his mouth. "You good?"
My knee throbs. My lungs burn. Every jar survived.
"I'm good."
The koji flat goes in clean. Every jar upright, cultures safe, glass fogged with the transition from warm rain to enchanted cold.
I arrange them on the second shelf with spacing precise enough to ensure airflow between each vessel, rotating the labels forward out of pure habit, and when I step back to survey the icebox's contents, a small knot between my shoulder blades releases.
Everything accounted for. Everything salvageable.
Except.
"The marrow squash."
Boris stands at the stairs, water pooling around his boots in a widening dark mirror on the stone. He pushes soaked hair off his forehead with the back of one massive wrist.
"What?"
"The marrow squash. I left the crate on the cart.
It didn't make the last trip." I'm already moving toward the stairs.
"Sixty pounds. Heirloom cultivar from the Bellwether Farm, irreplaceable before the festival, and if I leave them in a dead kitchen overnight the skins will sweat and the flesh will go mealy by morning. "
"I'll get it."
"It's sixty pounds, Boris."
His expression flattens. One tusk catches the blue glow of the runework.
"It's sixty pounds, Rostova."
Right. For him that's a bag of flour. But the crate itself is the problem.
The Bellwether squash are packed in a hand-built pine box reinforced with iron bands because the farmer is a paranoid dwarf who builds shipping containers like siege equipment.
The thing has no handles. Just flat planks and sharp corners and a weight distribution that shifts every time the squash roll against each other inside.
"We carry it together." I hold up a hand before he can argue. "The stairs are wet. The crate has no grip points. If you try to take it solo and it shifts, you'll go down the steps backward and I'll be scraping you off the cellar floor. Together."
He looks at the stairs. Looks at me. Something moves behind his eyes, quick and unreadable.
"Fine."
The street crossing is brutal. The water has risen another two inches.
My ruined clogs provide zero traction and the current tugs at my ankles with real intent now, as if the storm has decided to stop being atmospheric and start being personal.
Boris wades ahead, one arm extended back, fingers open.
I don't take his hand. I don't need to. His body breaks the current like a boulder in a creek, and I walk in his wake where the water runs calmer.
The crate is on the cart exactly where I left it. The pine is dark with rain. I grab one end. Boris grabs the other. The squash inside shift with a heavy, organic thud, and the weight settles into my forearms like wet concrete.
Back across the street. Down the alley. Through the tavern's side entrance where the cellar stairs begin their steep descent into the earth.
"Slow," I say. "One step at a time. I'll go first. You control the weight from above."
"I know how stairs work."
"Do you? Because your solution to my locked door suggests otherwise."
A sound rumbles out of him. Not quite a laugh. Not quite a growl. Something in between that I feel in the soles of my waterlogged clogs.
I take the first step down. Wet stone under my foot, slick as river rock, the cellar's mineral cold rising to meet the storm's warmth in a band of humid air that fogs my vision.
I grip the crate's near edge, fingers hooked over the iron band, and lower my center of gravity.
Second step. Third. Boris fills the doorframe above me, his end of the crate tilted up, his arms fully extended to keep the angle manageable.
"Fourth step has a groove in it," he says. "Left side. Watch your foot."
I find the groove with my toe. Adjust. Fifth step. Sixth. The blue glow of the icebox runework paints the walls in shifting light below us, and the squash shift again inside the crate, sixty pounds of dense flesh rolling toward my end with lazy, devastating momentum.
The weight doubles in my hands.
My right foot slides.
Not a stumble. A full hydroplane, the smooth sole of my clog skating across wet stone with zero resistance, and my knee buckles and my hip drops and the crate tips and I'm going backward into nothing.
Boris lets go of his end.
Both arms come around me. The crate hits the steps with a splintering crack that echoes off the stone walls.
Squash tumble free, heavy shapes bouncing and rolling into the darkness below.
None of that registers beyond the periphery because the central fact of my existence has narrowed to the wall of heat pressed against my back, my spine flush against him, his arms locked across my ribs, my feet entirely off the ground.
His breath hits the wet skin behind my ear. Fast. Hot. His heartbeat hammers against my shoulder blade, and mine answers, slamming into my sternum with enough force to shake my vision.
Neither of us moves.
One second. Two. Three. The rain drums somewhere far above. The runework pulses its cold blue light. A squash rolls to a stop against the far wall with a soft, final thud.
"Rostova."
"Put me down."
He does. Slowly. My clogs find stone. His arms open. Cold air rushes into the space where he was and every nerve ending along my spine screams at the loss.
I don't turn around.
Above us, a massive gust of wind catches the heavy oak cellar door. It swings in a wide, violent arc and slams shut with a crack that sounds like a rifle shot. The iron latch drops on the outside with a clean, final clank.
Darkness swallows the stairwell. The only light left is the soft blue pulse of grandmother's runework, painting us both in ghost-light.
Locked in.