I let the ice-cold water crash over me. It explodes across my head and neck, runs down onto my shoulders, spatters on my chest and thighs. I give it five more seconds, then I step out of the waterfall, shivering, every inch of my skin tingling.
It’s an incredible feeling. No matter how many times I step under the waterfall, I never get tired of it. Maybe it’s because we never had showers on Outer Earth. I never had the sensation of having water all around me until we came here.
At first I hated it–it’s all too easy to remember Fire Island, and the sick, leaden feeling that came with swimming to shore. But as the winter faded away, I started running in the hills above Whitehorse. Eric and Harlan didn’t want me to, said it was too dangerous, but they couldn’t stop me. And then one day I came across another waterfall–a trickle, really, a stream running off a six-foot drop onto mossy rocks. On a whim, I took my clothes off and stood under it. I screamed with cold at first, gasping, not sure what the hell I was doing, but when I stepped out it felt like I’d been given a brand-new body.
The water here is different from the ocean. Just as cold, but brighter somehow. I can’t explain it.
I move on shivering tiptoes to the edge of the rocks, shake off the excess water and quickly pull on my clothes. A dark jacket, a faded blue shirt, a rough pair of pants. Thick socks, and light shoes. I keep an ear out for movement in the forest–we haven’t seen the Nomads for a while, and the wolves seem to have moved on, too. But I still keep my ears open.
There’s pain as I pull my clothes on. I spent most of the winter in a hospital bed, drifting in and out of consciousness. I’d torn muscles in my back, my side. I had cracked ribs. Some of my cuts got infected–Finkler would have been furious. I don’t remember a lot about that part of the winter, but as the weather got warmer my body started to come back.
I’m still freezing. The air has a serious chill in it, even though winter is gone. A run will warm me up. I jump once, twice, relishing the almost audible crackle of my shocked skin, then take off into the forest.
After all this time, the rhythm of running still calms me, even when I don’t have a direction, even when there’s no cargo on my back. Stride, land, cushion, spring, repeat. I let the movement take me, block out everything else.
I only come to a stop when I reach the big tree.
It’s not much–it’s long dead, broken off and weathered away, but its stump still reaches two feet above my head. Its roots are huge, digging out of the earth, stretching in all directions. It should be a bad place, a dead place. But it isn’t. It’s surrounded by plants: old man’s beard and cattail, and little white flowers that bend towards it. I look up, like I always do, and can just see a streak of blue through a gap in the clouds.
Aaron Carver is buried in Anchorage. Before we did it, I tore a strip of fabric from his shirt. I still can’t fully explain why I took it. I tucked it inside my pocket, held tight to it, and all through the long winter, when the wind roared and howled and icy rain and snow buffeted the hospital and infection turned my body into a furnace, my hand kept finding it.
I didn’t intend to bury the fabric at this tree. Carver would have preferred somewhere with machinery, with a worktop and soldering iron, where he could tinker. But I wanted somewhere private, and I liked how the tree made me feel, so I pushed the fabric down into the earth, nestled it against one of the roots.
I’ve come up here plenty of times since then. I’ve cried a lot, but this time, as I sit down with my back against the tree, my face is dry. I feel like I’ve cried every single tear I have. There’s nothing left to give.
“Are you there?” I whisper. I’ve never worshipped any of Outer Earth’s gods. I don’t know what happens to us after we die. I’m just doing the only thing I can do.
No answer. Nothing but the wind through the trees.
I sit there for a few minutes, until the cold starts to sink into my muscles. Then I get to my feet, looking in the direction of Whitehorse.
Prakesh will never know what I said to Carver in the depths of the Ramona, after we sealed the bulkhead door. He can’t know. I won’t let the choice I made affect what happens next. We’ve been through so much together, and while our bond might not be perfect, it’s still strong.
One of the lucid thoughts I remember from the long winter is that I never asked Prakesh what he wanted. I was so caught up in how I’d treated Carver, and the decision I made, that I never gave any thought to what he might be feeling. I’m going to change that. He deserves some happiness. I think I can give it to him.
Maybe along the way I’ll find some of my own.
But that can come later. There’s still two miles between me and Whitehorse, and this is my favourite part of the whole run.
I head downhill through the forest, slowing when I come to the tree line. I can see the shape of the Whitehorse hospital in the distance.
Between us is a field. It’s overgrown, the ground uneven, but it’s filled with long grass. The grass flickers in shades of yellow and green, teased by the wind.
The clouds have faded a little. More gaps have opened in them, and the sun is just peeking through. I raise my face to it, let it warm my skin. The sky beyond the clouds is so blue that it hurts to look at it.
I start running. I sprint across the field, arms out behind me, pounding the ground, focusing on the in–out, push–pull of my breathing. The sun is warm on the back of my neck, the world falling away behind me as I go faster, and faster, and faster.