“Can you move any closer to the fire? Kol, can you move closer?”
I sweep my eyes around this small space. Is that the fire? A flickering light dances orange and red against a background of gray. It’s lovely, but I feel no heat from it at all.
My eyes fall closed again, and shimmering light ripples like water on the backs of my eyelids. The ground beneath me moves as if I’m still on the sea.
I lick my lips. They’re cracked and salty. I force my eyes to open but I don’t see you. “You were right,” I say. I wait but you don’t answer, leaving me to wonder if I really said the words out loud. “You have to go—warn your family. Lo’s coming for you.”
The effort of saying so much exhausts me. I roll onto my side, retracting into the pelt and into myself. The rushing of the rain rings in my ears. I listen hard, trying to hear you.
“Mya?” Beyond the reach of the firelight, I hear something like the soft shuffle of your boots against the rocky floor. Your breath comes in quick, shallow gasps. I remember you standing in the rain, pulling me from the kayak. Your clothes were drenched, and ice water ran down your face. “Mya? Are you cold?”
“Listen to me.” These words are just a whisper—your whisper, your words—from the dark somewhere behind me. Your mouth is so close, I feel the vibration of your breath on my ear. “You need to get warm. I’m trying to save you. I need you to understand this, Kol. What I’m doing . . . I’m doing this to save your life.”
I try to work through your words, to make sense of what you’re saying. But only some words catch in my mind—warm . . . understand . . . save your life. As I try to arrange these thoughts into some sense of meaning, the edge of the mammoth pelt lifts from my shoulder and something made of pure heat and life slides in beside me.
It’s you.
Your bare skin stretches along the entire length of my back. Somewhere deep inside me, a flame that was fading catches in fresh kindling.
I want to speak—thoughts light up my mind like flashes of lightning in the night sky. I try to form words. “Mya . . .” is all I manage to say.
“It’s necessary,” you say into my ear. “I can’t let you die.”
If I could, I might laugh. I didn’t know how close I was to death until your warmth pulled me back from the edge. Like a wave, heat washes over me. In my mind’s eye I imagine my frozen blood, thawing and cracking like the ice in our bay in the spring. Each spot where your skin touches mine is like a stone dropped into that bay, sending ripples of warmth radiating outward. These ripples expand, reaching my ears, my cheeks, the backs of my closed eyes. After what has felt like hours of constant shivering, my body finally goes still.
Your breath brushes over my neck, and it feels cool.
I no longer see water when I close my eyes. Instead, I see the sun. I feel its embrace.
Sleep pulls hard at me, but I fight it. I have to stay awake. My thoughts are slow and heavy, but I know I have to tell you something of huge importance. Perhaps the most important thing I’ve ever said. I search for the words.
When I remember this later, I will realize that it didn’t make sense. I will turn these memories over in my mind and I will know that I was weak and my thoughts were jumbled and confused.
But at this moment, this one word feels like the answer to every question:
You.
I feel better now that I’ve said it. I let sleep pull me from your arms.
TWENTY-SEVEN
When I wake again you are dressed and sitting at the opening of the cave, staring out through a sheet of rain and sleet. The world outside is beginning to lighten. Could it be first light already? Could you have sat up through the short, summer night, waiting for morning?
“Lo’s clan . . . They’re coming. If they didn’t turn back—”
“You told me,” you say. “I’ve been watching for them.”
I told you? I remember wanting to tell you, but I don’t remember saying the words.
Your pack lies beside you, and you pull out a small wrapped package about the size of your fist. “You should eat,” you say. “I’ll leave this with you—”
“Leave it?”
You turn to face me, your features glowing in the amber light thrown off by the dying coals of the fire.
“I need to go. To warn them—”
“Then I’m going with you.”
“You need more rest—”
“If you intended to leave me, why didn’t you leave while I was still sleeping, rather than wait for sunrise?” Something inside me wants to believe you waited to be sure I was recovered, but I know better.
“It will be hard enough to travel in this weather in the day,” you say. “At night, it would’ve been impossible. You told me the Bosha were waiting out the storm, so I waited, too. But I was watching. If I’d seen them, I would’ve left you to warn my clan.”
Of course you would have, but that doesn’t matter now.