caressed the skin at her jaw, I steeled myself to never touch her again. I had no right. When she stood before me, unveiling one of the shards of her torture and reminding me that the Ikma Scabmal Kama, repulsive and abhorrent to me as she was, was still of my race and people and the power behind my civilization, I realized I had no place in her future—at least not as anything more than a traveling companion.
I could only ever be a reminder to her, a connection to her torment and the person responsible for tethering her to life by repugnant means. I had seen her expressions; I knew how she felt about the shel.
Revisiting my decisions, I questioned their morality. Had I the right to save her with the warriors’ sacred shel without my people’s permission? Should I have let her walk into the Fields of Shegoshel to find her eternal respite?
The answers fluttered away like so many nonsense flies, and I resolved to stop asking. My decisions were my own, and now I must endure their consequences, and that truth pierced like a blade, because so, too, must CeCe endure consequences from decisions that were not her own.
“VELMA, send the robot through the Mother Stream Canyon and have it bolt anchors once it reaches the crevasse in Switch Tail,” I said, accessing one of my familiar maps and indicating the points in my helmet visor.
“Complying,” she said, and the robot broke into a smooth run, leaping effortlessly over boulders and scaling ledges with ease until it disappeared into the mouth of the canyon.
“When we’ve cleared this range, we’ll come out at the mouth of the Magnetic Burst Field,” I said. “Perhaps VELMA could show you sight-capture of the area. Once we cross it, we will be at the entrance to the Agothe-Fax Tunnel.”
When I looked back, CeCe nodded but said nothing.
It was as I feared, my attempts to comfort were clumsy and foolish. I would do better to say nothing at all.
We hiked through the trickle of water at the bottom of the canyon known as Mother Stream in silence, and as the second sun cleared the sky above, the canyon descended into blackest night though the sky shone pale orange in the narrow strip of sky above. When we reached Switch Tail, I shone light up the wall and saw the robot’s anchored bolts.
Here, I paused. Should I lead or follow? Resting my hand on the rock wall, I shifted to look at her.
“How fare you?” I thought to ask. I should have done so earlier; it had not been five days since I’d found her starving and trembling from torture.
“I’m fine,” she said, her voice calm and devoid of strong emotion. “Let’s keep going.”
Thus was the power of the shel combined with her own fortitude; I was not much surprised, I thought with a frown. Satisfied, I tugged on the dangling human-crafted rope and paused to appreciate its fine texture, weave, and strength. Not only had VELMA used the robot to sink bolts, but she’d run line, as well. It would shorten our travels. Affixing my harness, I turned to help CeCe, but she had already donned one of her own and was ready to clip in. I stood back and gestured that she should go first.
I waited until she was halfway up before I started and concentrated on my claw grips in the rock. The rope and bolts were more for her benefit, though I didn’t tell her so.
How did one recover from—how did one come back to life? I had no experience in such things, save only my solitary existence after the death of the little infant, my heart mate, Ikfala. And my life was hardly the example.
Should I encourage CeCe to make more decisions, to lead? Would she prefer to be sheltered and protected, to rest from hardship? Goddesses knew Ikthe was nothing but hardship and toil from suns up to suns down.
I would ask, but I feared I had already pushed far enough, perhaps too far. We climbed.