Iceweasel breathed chest-heaving pants. It wasn’t just the dazzle fabric that made her dizzy. She had to keep going, but she’d be in trouble if she hyperventilated and keeled over. She slowed, used trees for handholds, rough palms of her oversized gloves gripping the trunks so ferociously they threatened to come off her hands when she put too much of her weight on them.
Nadie disappeared down the riverbank. Iceweasel was careful to eyeball the spot where she’d gone down, use it as a navigational aid. She considered running off, but she needed Nadie to get away. And Nadie could catch her without breaking a sweat.
Before she reached the riverbank, Nadie reappeared, snowsuit sheened to the waist with water. She slogged through the slush to Iceweasel, gripped on her upper arm.
“We need to be faster now.”
“I’m going as fast as I can—”
“Faster.” She pulled. She had the strength to make it mean something, and to keep her upright. Supporting both of them made Nadie stagger like a drunk, but a quick drunk. Iceweasel’s heart hammered, but she didn’t resist. She was in the world, in default, out of her cage. She breathed the same air as Gretyl. She looked at the same sky. This was what she wanted. This was freedom.
The riverbank was scored with ruts where Nadie heel-slid into the swift river. She planted Iceweasel on her butt. “Slide.” She skated into the water, knees bent like a shushing skier. She didn’t stop at the water, merely tucked deeply, then levered herself upright, braced against current, holding her arms out to Iceweasel as she skidded after her, scooting over the frozen mud on her butt, the air turning colder and wetter as she descended.
Seconds later, she was alongside of Nadie, facing upstream, wading, pulling herself with the help of Nadie’s sure grip and the branches and scrub growing on the side of the bank, some of which gave way when she put her weight on it.
The water deepened to their waists. The riverbed was uneven and slimy against her boots. They did an admirable job of keeping out the water, as had her not-tight-enough tights. But there were three places where her borrowed ninja gear failed to attain a seal—her left ankle, another right below her belly button, over one hip. The water trickled into these spots, making spreading numb-patches that started coin-sized but were quickly entire continents of burning cold that sprouted questing archipelagos every time she stretched.
Just as she thought she was going to have to demand that they get onto land, Nadie scampered up the bank, dropped onto her belly and reached for her. They locked wrists and Nadie supported her while she got her grippy soles under her and wall-walked up to the scree. She shivered uncontrollably.
“My suit leaked,” she said around chattering teeth.
“Up.” Nadie pulled.
They were further up the ravine, somewhere near where Serena Gundy Park gave way to gate-guarded complexes on its north side. Nadie led them toward the condos, ninja-suits shedding dirt. Moving briskly made Iceweasel marginally warmer. The fabric wicked away water, but still she shivered.
“Here.” Iceweasel couldn’t tell what Nadie meant for a moment, then she realized they were in a small parking lot that must serve dog walkers who wanted exercise, but not as much as they’d get slogging to the park through the service road behind the condos’ fences. There was nothing parked there, no one using the washed out trails in the middle of winter. Then a nearly silent taxi swung off the road, up the short slipway to the lot. Its doors clunked.
“In.”
The taxi’s interior was warm and smelled of pumpkin spice. There were two half-liter go-cups from Starbucks wedged in the cup holders, and a pair of machine-wrapped parcels that they had to slide over on the bench before they could sit. They were heavy.
“Drink up, should be hot.” Nadie slammed the door and the car slid into motion, fishtailing slightly as the tires tried the slushy ground, stepping through their characteristic exponential backoff dance as they sought optimal torque. It was a sensation from the days when she’d been a good girl and a Redwater, with cars from exclusive, bonded services pulling up whenever she summoned them, whisking her from a weekend cottage or a cousin’s jealousy-inducingly huge place in the Bridle Path or King City. She still reeled from captivity and the water, hypothermic patches on her skin, and near hyperventilation.
But none of those journeys had been in the company of someone like Nadie, whose microexpressions had been exchanged for a macroexpression: satisfied, flare-nostriled animal excitement. This was Nadie’s element, the uncoiling of the spring she kept wound tight during the days of guard-keeping. This brought Iceweasel to another time, that half-remembered traumatic night when she’d been taken, after the downing of the Better Nation, the look on Nadie’s face that night, how it shone. Somehow, Iceweasel had forgot that expression until she saw it again. The shine in her eyes was only a shadow of the fully awakened Nadie that took her from the woods.
Iceweasel felt a cold deeper than the wet patches under her suit.
“Time to change.” Nadie slurped her enormous latte, which reminded Iceweasel to do the same. She hated the flavor, it had been her mother’s bugaboo, a marker of bourgeois striving and the punchline of snide jokes—“PSL” was a nickname at Havergal Girls’ School for the strivers from the lower echelons whose parents had gone into deep debt to get them into those hallowed environs. The warm drink was welcome, despite her ingrained snobbery, hot and sweet with coffium tinge that eased the ache in her muscles and chased fatigue.
Nadie, meanwhile, had burst the seams on a parcel, sliding her thumb along the seal so it parted with a crackle. The tyvek wrapper slithered away, revealing neatly folded clothing.
Unselfconsciously, Nadie stripped out of her ninja suit, then out of the singlet and tights she wore beneath. Iceweasel noticed she, too, had large, wet patches on her underthings. Nadie must have been every bit as cold as she was, but gave no sign of discomfort. Iceweasel stared at Nadie’s naked body, noting the scars, one long incision that looked surgical and went around her left breast; a trio of bullet-puckers on one thigh. She was muscled and had almost no body fat, anatomical drawing brought to life, with a thick pelt of blond pubic hair that spilled over her thighs and climbed partway up her flat stomach, lush curls of hair on her legs and tufts peeking out of her armpits.
She caught Iceweasel staring and looked back frankly. “You, too. Warm clothes, warm drinks, quickly.”