NIGHT WAS ALREADY falling, the short spring day coming to an end, and Emily and Aidan were still sitting outside the cabin. They should be on the move, they should be running away, but it was like they were in dreamland, outside of time.
She was thinking that they should probably go inside, where it was warmer, but the stars were so beautiful: splattered spangling across the sky. She was wrapped in her sweater, but the cold was sneaking in around the edges, and into her lungs.
“I’ll get us a blanket,” said Aidan. It was like he was reading her mind. He probably was, actually.
She knew she should go in, but right then, with the stars above, she found she couldn’t move. “OK,” she said.
Aidan went into the cabin and came back out. “I think he’s sleeping,” he said. “Bob, I mean.”
Like there was another he. Like there was anyone else with them.
“Good,” she said.
Aidan had brought a blanket, which he spread over them both. He was also holding Goober under his arm, the monkey’s head poking out.
Emily frowned. She was remembering the plane, when he’d gone back for it. “You really like that thing, huh?”
Aidan looked at her, puzzled. “Of course. You gave him to me.”
A firework bursting in her heart, bright splatter of colors. She’d never have believed it—what you could feel for someone so new. Someone so small.
She scooted over—there wasn’t much space on the bench, but he was small, of course, and he sat close to her. They didn’t speak for a while. He leaned against her.
She put her arm around him and was taken aback as always by the marblelike temperature, the alabaster feel of him—he was colder than a normal person, but not because he was sick; he always had been. She didn’t know if it was part of his nature, if his kind ran colder than people, if their bodies worked in a different way, or if they just came from a warmer planet. Aidan had said it was hard to explain, that not all evolutionary strategies were the same and not all environments were the same and not all life was carbon-based, or something, but he’d lost her.
She didn’t really care—what she cared about was keeping him alive. He was the one who really needed to stay warm or they would never get anywhere, he would never get home.
“We can’t stay out here much longer,” she said.
“I know,” he said.
Ahead of them, the lake was a dark mirror, reflecting the mountains and the stars; the water so still and clear that if you were spun around, you would find it difficult to know which were the real ones and which were only a trick of the light. Above, the nearly full moon glowed through a ring of cloud, a borehole, bright in the black of the sky.
An owl called from the woods nearby, maybe the same one as the previous night—the sort of lonely sound that made you feel sad but also glad of the person next to you, of the cabin behind you. She looked down at Aidan. He was squeezing Goober tight and looking around, transfixed, his eyes wide, taking in the scene.
She looked too, seeing it through his eyes, seeing it fresh and new, as if she’d never seen it before.
“It’s beautiful,” said Aidan.
Meaning:
The lake. The mountains. The stars. The snow.
“I know,” she said.
“Look, Goober,” he said, holding up the stuffed toy. “We will need to remember this, when we’re gone.” He was being deliberately dramatic, deliberately funny, but she knew he meant it.
The words cut her, but she smiled. Goober. She didn’t know where the name had come from. Goober, though: she knew where he had come from. She’d bought him for Aidan. It was the day after he had arrived, and they were in her room.
“You have a lot of stuffed bears,” he’d said, looking at her shelves.
“Oh, yeah,” she said. “From my parents, when I was little. I used to love them.”
“What are they for?” he said.
She looked at him. “For?”
“Yes.”
“They’re not for anything. They’re just…toys. To—I don’t know—hold. And you kind of pretend they’re alive and look after them. When I was a kid, I had them all in my bed, like it was a big sleepover, and I would have tea parties with them.”
He went over and picked up a small teddy. “We have nothing like this,” he said. “Our toys are…mechanical, I think, is the correct word. To teach how things work.”
“Like toy cars? Construction sets? We have those too,” she’d said.
He looked into the eyes of the teddy. “But these are different,” he said. He cocked his head to one side, appraising the bear. “This is a toy to teach love.”
She blinked.
She’d never thought of it that way.
“Yeah…,” she said. Thinking of how she’d carried one bear, Mr. Ruffles, everywhere with her, until one of his eyes fell out and he was dirty and matted all over. “You’re right. I guess.”
When he put the teddy back on the shelf, she could see the reluctance in his movements.
“Would you like one of your own?” she’d said.
And an hour later they were in the general store, and he was picking out a monkey: Goober. That was the last of her babysitting money from Minnesota.
Now, by the mostly frozen lake, Aidan held the monkey close to him and watched the mountains. “It’s strange to me,” he said, “that instead of enjoying this place, you people always want to fight over who owns it.”
“Not me,” she said.
“No. Not you.”
They didn’t say anything for a long time. Emily could feel her muscles stiffening. She knew she needed to go inside, check on the fire, keep it burning low all night.
“You still think we can get there—to the antenna place?” she said.
“I think we can,” said Aidan. A very faint stress on we. There was something unspoken there: but not Bob.
“Not if we stay here,” she said.
“No.”
“So we should see how things stand in the morning. And then keep moving.”
“Yes.”
Emily looked up at the mountainside where they had come down, the valley and the snow field above. “They will still be after us.”
“Yes.”
“But we’ll get you home.”
He smiled at her. “Well,” he said. “My other home.”
She felt herself welling up. She hugged him. Right now, she was in an amazing place, far from home, and she wasn’t alone.
“Do you think they’ll ever give up?” she said. “On finding you?”
A fantasy: She and Aidan, exploring. Going to New York. London. Paris. She could dance, or learn to, properly, and he could…well, her mom could come along too—her dad as well, she guessed—maybe they could homeschool him and—
“No,” he said. “They’ll never stop.”
“Never?”
“They don’t understand me,” he said. “And when they don’t understand, it makes them anxious. They will not rest until they have detained me and can examine me. That’s what my…my mother says.”
“I don’t understand any of this.” Emily waved her hand at the snowy peaks of the mountains, the faint ripples on the surface of the lake. “It doesn’t bother me that I don’t. I don’t need to examine it.”
“And that’s why I like you,” said Aidan.
She smiled.
Her breath was freezing in her nostrils—she could feel it. She shivered.
“You need to move,” said Aidan. “For warmth.”
She turned to the door. “Yes. We should go in.”
“Or…,” he said. “That thing you were doing, when we first camped? When you put out your leg? Maybe you should do that.”
She gave him a look, like, Seriously? He was being coy, that was why: he knew exactly what he meant, he’d looked inside her. That thing you were doing. He knew very well what she’d given up, what she’d stopped, when they came to Alaska.
“No,” she said. “We need sleep. Tomorrow, maybe.”
“There is only now,” he said. “So dance.”