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The dying is the easiest part. It’s the moments-minutes-hours before of screaming agony that tear away her resolve and leave her screaming, thrashing as blood floods into her lungs. It tears the precious bits of oxygen from their place and instead fills them with a warmth that might be intended to be comfortable, but instead makes the choking worse.
She’s not even granted the liberty of dying quietly. Instead its roars of rage and screams of pain from the creature she thrashes around inside, somehow still whole as the blood drags her deeper and deeper under. Maybe she’s screaming too. It’s unclear.
The worst part is that it fucking hurts. Every second she claws at her throat and gasps for something other than blood is white-hot pain along every nerve, enough to throw question on whether her vision is blind from the blood or the torment.
At the end of that, the dying is almost pleasant.
When she wakes, it’s almost a surprise.
She’s never been religious. And even if there was something higher than her, the Rapture proved that it wasn’t kind.
But where she wakes is neither an empty void, nor the fires of hell. Instead she’s reclining lightly against something solid, something that lacks the unfeeling chill of iron. She braces a hand against the surface to sit up, and the roughness against her palms is a little shock.
It’s a texture unlike anything she’s ever felt before. Rough is perhaps the only word she can muster. It smells vaguely sweet, not unlike burnt sugar, but with a deeper undertone. She’s never smelled anything like it before. It gets more frustrating from there. Whatever this thing she’s pressed against is entirely alien.
She pushes herself to her feet, almost in shock at how easy it is. There’s no latent ache in her calves from being on her feet for too many days, no crick in her neck from sleeping in the shitty-ass chair in the console room. She feels better rested than she has in what might be years. A cursory sweep of all her faculties comes up clean. No hunger gnawing at her ribs and clawing out of her throat, no dryness lingering at the back of her tongue, no tightness clamping down on her forehead as a lingering threat of a migraine.
It’s eerie. She’s fine. She’s perfectly fine in all possible ways. She is more fine than she has ever been, except maybe when she was young.
Her hand flies up to her face.
The puckered edges of the scar are exactly where they should be.
The relief slumps her shoulders, and she leans back against the strange, solid wall. The room in front of her is circular, atrial in nature, with two knotted, gnarled arches in the wall across the room from her. They’re maybe ten yards away. It’s an insurmountably large room, especially after the cramped interior of the Galilee, the little tugboat she’s called home for months now.
Her voice is hoarse from either screaming or disuse—it’s not clear—when she calls out. Her little croak of “hello?” rings around the hollow, empty room, bouncing back in a softened echo.
The odd brown, almost rusty walls tower around her. It’s dim in here, no visible light source, but she can see across the room regardless. She scans for a flashlight, for a lantern, or anything that could answer why she can see, but comes up empty handed. The doorways are the only option.
She crosses the room as quickly as she can, eyes locked on her destination. She rests her hand on the doorway the second she’s there, peering inside.
It’s set up as a simple bedroom. A fairly large bed sits in the center, a cream-colored blanket draped over top. It’s framed, not in metal, but by a pale brown material that’s a little cool to the touch. It’s smooth, filed away to the same satiny texture as worn plastic. The blanket, at least, is something she recognizes, though it’s far softer than any of the rough sheets back home.
The rest of the room is sparse. A little table beside the bed is the only other furnishing, no dresser pressed to the wall or shelving for personal belongings. It doesn’t appear that anyone lives here, which is only a tiny bit unsettling.
The second door reveals only a long, low seat with cushions, and a second smaller chair perpendicular. Nothing else. It’s as sparsely furnished as imaginable, even when she takes a step deeper inside to check the corners.
“Looking for something?”
The voice behind her is deep, almost a rumble, and she spins frantically to face it, arms coming up in some sort of defensive pose. She doesn’t really know how to throw a punch, but no one needs to know that.
The figure steps forward, and the shape of the Convict—Simon, she corrects herself—slowly reveals itself.
“Where am I?”
There’s a heaviness to his eyes that she doesn’t remember, but he no longer looks scared. Instead, there’s a healthy flush to his cheeks. It takes her a second of scanning to catalogue all of the differences. He’s lost a few layers, in only a knit sweater and trousers. His hair is pulled out of his face, but a few loose strands dangle in front of his eyes. He looks almost comfortable.
His expression crooks into half of a smile. “Where do you think?”
It’s almost teasing, and that sends a rush of anger welling up in her throat. He’s treating this like a game?
The feeling subsides as quickly as it comes. She’s never seen Simon truly relaxed, and based on the easy slope of his shoulders, he doesn’t seem even slightly upset. Even at his calmest, curled in the corner of a cell while he waited to be chosen and stuffed into the sub, he was never this lax. Never smiled. If he’s calm, then either something is very wrong, or there really is no danger.
She settles on the former. That makes more sense.
She raps solidly on the nearest wall. “What kind of metal is this?”
Simon presses his lips together, eyes alight. Something about it makes her want to shrink back in shame, but she presses forward anyways. She takes a step further into his space, expecting him to mirror her and step back. He doesn’t.
“Guess again.”
Instead, she shakes her head. He’ll pull no more stupid guesses out of her. Not now. Not in this strange place that he seems to know and refuses to explain. Instead she turns, walks deeper into the room and drops onto the low couch. Simon doesn’t follow.
She crosses her arms firmly over her chest, jaw set. “Are you going to tell me where we are or not?”
Simon takes a slow step into the room and folds himself into the smaller chair, one leg tucked under him and both hands resting on his knees. It registers in the low light that his left hand has faint swirling designs, the same as on the bedposts in the other room, and the fingers are unnaturally still. Wrapped around that wrist is a leather cord that she vaguely recalls having pulled a glass disc from, tossing it to the pile of other tokens she’d taken from Edenites over the months. He taps his fingers on his left hand rhythmically on his knee.
Finally, he leans back a little and takes a deep breath. “The Last Tree.”
He says it like a title.
“You told me it died.”
There’s a flicker of something, maybe surprise, hand he nods. “It did. This one is new.” At this, he stands, crosses to behind her. She shifts in her chair but doesn’t stand.
Simon presses the palm of his left hand against the wall, and slowly the opacity fades away until a circular section of the wall is as clear as a pane of glass. Through the dim lighting in the room, she can see something shifting at the base of the window. She straightens, craning her neck.
Outside the window, the blood ocean roils gently around them. The waves are stiff, enough that wherever they’re staying should be rocking and shifting with it. Even the Galilee, with her notable size, was still usually at the whims of the waves. Instead the floor is solid beneath her feet.
Simon moves his hand, and the wall fades back to solid, unyielding darkness. Wood, she guesses. If this is a tree, then the walls are wood. That explains the unfamiliar texture, but very little else.
“We’re in a tree?”
It sounds stupid even spilling out, but Simon doesn’t laugh. It’s a far cry from his desperate pleas, which can’t have been any longer than an hour ago. “I think so. As best I can tell, yes. We’re inside the Last Tree.”
“You’re saying it like it’s a title.”
Simon cocks his head. “Isn’t it?” He blinks, then composes himself. “The tree we’re in is the last one alive, as far as I can tell.”
“So am I alive?”
That one causes him to pause, fingers stilling. “I don’t know.”
She folds her legs up under herself, suddenly feeling overwhelmed. She keeps her spine ramrod-straight, eyes narrowed in what she hopes is a show of force and not weakness. “Wait. Where did the tree come from?”
His hand jumps to his left wrist, almost unconsciously, gripping the leather cord tied around it. She recalls the contents of the little glass disc she’d taken, the little seed inside. There’s no way a seed like that could become a tree in a matter of moments, though, and he hadn’t even had one in the first place. She had been the one to see to that.
He seems to read her mind. “There was a second. In the panel beside the computer. The guy you sent down before me left it there.” There’s a bite to his words, but it’s not as acidic as she expects. “Whatever’s wrong with the blood must have made it do,” he pauses, looking around. “This.”
It drags a hollow chuckle from somewhere deep in her chest. “Right.”
He’s drumming on his knee again, a staccato beat that grates at her ears. This time it’s his right hand, dancing along the curve of his knee as he stares a hole in the wall beside her head. He doesn’t exactly seem like he has much to say.
“I’m fairly certain I’m dead.”
She’s not sure what pushes her to say it. Maybe it’s to draw a reaction out of him, to see a little glimpse of the rage she’s used to. It’s easier to predict than this odd sort of calm. She’d rather they fight than whatever this bullshit is.
His gaze shifts to her, but not much else. “Probably.”
“It hurt like a bitch.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
They aren’t quite looking at each other, but neither are they fully looking away. She finds herself fidgeting, spinning the ring on her right index finger around and around. It’s mindless, but not quite soothing. “You?”
“Do I hurt, or am I dead?”
She shrugs. “Both?”
He takes a second to mull over the answer. It gnaws at her, how civil it all is, but she can’t quite muster the ability to yell. That fact alone should scare her, but it doesn’t. Which just drags her deeper into her own head.
“I think I’m dead too.” Simon abruptly drags her back to the moment. “It did hurt, but it doesn’t anymore.” He flexes the fingers on his left hand again. “Any other questions?”
Yes. That’s the easiest answer so far. She’s got maybe a thousand questions all starting to stir, but none of them quite bubble up to the surface. Instead she presses her thumb into the edge of her ring and shakes her head. “No,” she adds for extra emphasis. Just in case he was worried.
He doesn’t seem to be. He just nods, unfolds himself from the chair, and exits silently. She doesn’t follow.
Time seems to warp and stretch around her, at least in the little sitting room. Planting her feet flat on the ground at least offers some bit of grounding.
She supposes that word is more appropriate now than it’s ever been.
It’s not like she’s ever had the luxury of anything earthen under her feet. She’d been born on a claptrap station hovering some thousand miles away from Earth, trapped between there and the moon. She’s even further away now, and there’s no hope of soil to feel. For many reasons, the foremost of which being she’s still fairly certain she’s dead.
That vague, burnt-sugar sweetness still lingers as she wanders back to the bedroom. She isn’t exactly tired, but she gets the sense that she could fall asleep if she tried. She stands at the side of the bed for a second, looking down at her grease-stained jumpsuit and then the clean white sheets. She hasn’t seen fabric this pristine in years.
She drapes her jacket over the post at the foot of the bed. It’s definitely not the small sort of mattress that the C.O.I. have standard issue in every bunk. She doubts she could reach both ends at the same time unless she splayed out fully.
Fuck. She’d feel awful if she stained the sheets.
She folds the jumpsuit gently, placing it on the table next to the bed in a neat stack. She’s about to turn and climb into bed when she feels the air shift. Something stalls in the doorway. Despite still being covered from wrist to knee, she feels oddly exposed. Simon doesn’t move from the doorway right away, seemingly frozen.
“Can I help you?”
It comes out snappier than intended, but she lets the sharp edge of the words settle into place between them, a bristled barrier.
“I was going to rest.”
She hums. “You’ll fit on the couch.”
“I might.” He takes another few steps in the room, grabbing at the back of his shirt. In response she drops down on the bed, staring daggers at him while he approaches. He pulls his shirt off over his head and drops it on the floor somewhere near where he’s toed off his boots.
“What are you doing?” She hates the high note that creeps into her voice at the end, bordering on horror.
“Resting.”
The answer is level, frustratingly so, and he lays down almost immediately, back to her. He doesn’t offer any more elaboration.
She chews on her bottom lip, still stock-still at the opposite edge of the bed. When a full minute passes with no movement save for the rise and fall of his shoulders, she eases further onto the mattress.
Time doesn’t seem to exist here, which means that it does not matter that it takes her nearly five full minutes to lay down and drag the covers up and over her. She turns onto her side and faces the wall, pressed to the very edge of the mattress.
She doesn’t wake up feeling refreshed. Something gives the impression that that may no longer be in the question. Instead of moping, she slips out of bed, ignoring the figure still as a statue beside her. At least the bed is pleasantly warm, a fact that she misses the minute her feet hit the floor.
It’s not that the wood is cold. It’s cool, somewhat pleasant, but it’s not as cozy as the bed. She forgoes her boots, leaving them neatly lined up in front of the bedside table, and ventures out into the atrium again.
Nothing has changed. She’s not too certain why she expected anything to, but it’s almost disappointing. All she can do is shuffle into the little sitting room in the bare amount of light they have.
It’s untouched, same as it should be, but the flat wall behind the couch catches her attention. She recalls Simon pressing his hand to it, and the way the—she struggles to remember the exact word. Trunk is close, but not quite. Whatever—became a sort of window. She presses her palm flat against the rough surface and watches it fade until it’s clear as glass.
The blood ocean is all too familiar by now. It’s the only thing she’s been able to look at for the better part of three years, save for the very brief trip up to command to report on the SM-8’s crash. She shoves the memory of that back into the little box where it belongs.
She watches the waves, watches them catch and lap at the very base of her little window. The movement almost seems playful. It roils her stomach in time with the surface of the water.
“If you’re looking for the boat, it’s long gone by now.”
A gasp catches in her chest as she whirls around. “You’ve got to stop doing that.”
Simon holds up his hands in a gesture that seems almost sheepish. He’d rescued his sweater from the floor, sleeves rolled up to his elbows, but he’s barefoot same as her.
With more of his left arm exposed, she can see the odd patterns across the surface. Some swoop like ECG waves, while others form little self-contained whorls. She must be staring intently, because Simon extends the arm slightly, rotating his palm upwards.
“What? Have you never seen a wooden arm?”
Her answering glare is withering. Simon just shrugs.
“You didn’t have that when we sent you down.” She doesn’t phrase it as a question, but it almost is. She’s fairly certain that he was entirely flesh and blood when they welded him in, but the doubt is there.
He flexes his fingers, watching them move. “No, I didn’t,” he confirms.
“Wood doesn’t usually move like that.” Again, a question inside a statement.
“No. Not usually.”
“Then what the fuck is that?”
Her frankness must be unexpected, because his head shoots up. He’s looking directly at her now, and that might just be worse. His expression is unreadable until it quirks into the smallest of smiles. “An arm.”
She stiffens, scowling again. “That’s not what I meant.”
“I know.”
“Are you always this much of a dick?”
His hand drops to his side. “No. I’ve been told I’m worse when people send me off to my death for a chunk of bone without telling me shit.” His face is colder now, brows drawing in.
“It was bigger than you. Bigger than us.”
The words ring out hollowly, empty even to her own ears. Simon scoffs.
“Was. That’s your key word. It was bigger than us. But now we’re dead. Wonderful.” He shoves his hands into his pockets and turns on his heel. He’s gone before she can offer anything else, but to where is maybe more confusing. There’s not exactly anywhere to go.
Out of curiosity, and maybe a desire to make things worse, she follows him into the atrium, only to see him across the room entirely, staring into a third doorway. One that was definitely not there just a few minutes ago. He steps inside, but the god-awful low lighting means she can’t see anything unless she follows.
Curiosity gets the better of her. There’s not exactly anything else to do.
The room he’s in is as sparse as the others. A long, low table sits near the center, and until she hits the doorway that’s all that’s visible. She has to peer inside and off to her right to see anything else.
Simon stands in front of a shelf a good foot taller than him, staring at the objects arranged on it. There’s a cube of some sort in varying shades of brown along the surface, a small box no larger than her hand, and a stack of what can only be three books of varying sizes. Simon has a fourth in his hand, though he isn’t reading it.
“What do you want?”
“What’s on the shelf?”
She watches his shoulder slump. “The cube is a puzzle. There are cards in the box, and a few books.”
He pulls away, and she catches a stub of pencil in his right hand as he sits down at the table. He pulls the book open to the first page—notably blank, and starts writing.
She allows herself just a moment to marvel at the books. Paper is a luxury. Most of her reports are digital, and with the exception of an old copy of her mother’s favorite book stashed under her mattress back on the Galilee, she hasn’t seen a paper copy of a book in a while.
Cards, however, are more plentiful, thin slices of plastic that are coveted on more remote missions. There were three decks on the Galilee. Two were in the dorm they’d reassigned as a game room, and the third was David’s own personal deck. He’d been extremely proud of it.
Still is, she reminds herself, slipping the deck out of the box. He’s still alive. He was clever, or maybe cowardly, enough to stay on the tugboat. He’s probably in charge now.
The cards are heavier than she expected, less bend to them as she shuffles. She makes it a step away from the table before one of the edges catches and sends half the pile skittering onto the floor. “Shit.”
She gathers what she can into a pile before sitting cross-legged across the table from Simon and shuffling the deck again.
“I think you’re missing one.”
He offers her the four of diamonds, pressed between his index and middle finger. She snags it with what she hopes is a thankful smile, but freezes.
There’s a string of black leather wrapped around his left wrist. She’s known this fact. It’s not a surprise. What is a surprise is the identical cord wrapped around her right wrist. She’s sure it’s the exact same, down to the worn-down spot at her pulse point where the pendant was taken off. She snatches up the card and shoves it into the deck. “Were you fucking with me while I was asleep?”
Simon’s already back to writing, tone flat. “I promise I don’t care enough to try that.”
“Then where’d this come from?” She holds up her arm to prove a point, scowling when he doesn’t look up. She’s been scowling all morning, at this point.
“You’ve had it this whole time.”
“I have not.”
At this, he finally looks up, expression flat. “You have. It was on your wrist when you were fucking with your ring.” He pauses, gesturing in the air. “Last night? Whatever it is. I don’t know.” At that admission, she watches his shoulder slump. “It’s been there.”
“And you’re sure?”
“I’m not crazy, Ava.”
“How do you know?” she pushes. “How can you actually be sure? She’s risen to her knees, gripping the deck of cards tightly. “What if none of this is real, and we’re just in the midst of dying. How do you know you—”
“I’m not fucking crazy,” he roars, and for a second, Ava sees the Butcher of Filament Station across the table from her. His eyes are alight as he slams the book shut around the pencil and stands and storms around the table. She shrinks back unconsciously, arms fluttering to pause in front of her torso. This isn’t a fight she can win.
The Convict towers over her. His wooden hand is clenched into a fist and in a very brief, very pathetic lapse, she squeezes her eyes shut and waits for the hit to land.
It never does. By the time she peels her eyes open, he’s gone. The book is abandoned on the table, the nub of a pencil he’d been writing with sticking out of the side where it had rolled. There’s the vaguest hint of smoke in the air.
She stares blankly at the book for a long while. She briefly considers opening it and skimming through what he’s written, but that feels like a step too far. Is it a journal? She’s not certain, but the risk is there. Instead she pulls the pencil stub out of the way and tucks the book properly closed. It gets returned to the shelf next to the other three books, and she rests the pencil up against the side of the puzzle.
Still no sign of Simon.
Whatever. She deals out a hand of solitaire and tries not to think too hard about it.
In the end, she goes and hunts him down. It’s after maybe a dozen games of solitaire, and she’s getting really fucking bored at this point. Even a fight would be better than silence and her own circular thoughts, though she makes a note to stay a few steps away this time around. Just in case he does swing.
She keeps the cards on her, just in case.
It doesn’t take much looking to find him. He’s tucked against the curved wall of the atrium, legs out in front of him and head lolling against the wall. His eyes are screwed shut, and his wooden hand drums restlessly on his thigh. The dark leather cord is striking against the soft tan of the wood. It’s almost a perfect match to his skin tone.
Whether it’s a coincidence or not is unclear.
“What’s that smell? The sweet one.”
His eyes open and flicker over to her face.
“The maple?”
Her confusion must be evident, based on the way one of his eyebrows quirks up. He seems to be just a little bit more invested. The drumming stops.
“Trees make something called sap. It’s something that deals with nutrients or growth, or some bullshit I didn’t fully pay attention to.” Simon draws his legs in, crossing them under himself and sitting forward a bit. “It’s got sugar in it, which,” he shrugs. “Is sweet. You’re smelling the sap.”
That explains why it smells almost like cooked sugar.
“Can you eat it?”
For a moment she worries it’s a stupid question, but it’s not exactly something she was taught. She doesn’t exactly recall ever hearing about sap in the little bit of natural education she’d been afforded as a small child.
Instead of laughing, Simon smiles, and it’s maybe the closest thing to genuine happiness she’s seen from him. “Yeah. You can tap the trees, and when you boil the sap, it turns into syrup. We’d make candy out of it.”
Sugar had been one of the most heavily rationed things in the C.O.I., and the idea of candy was a rare one. She’d had sweets before once or twice, both times when she was young. They’d lost their allure somewhere in her early teenage years, especially when compared to far better gifts like new clothing, technology, or free time.
Simon raps his knuckles softly against the rough exterior of the tree. “I don’t think food is a concern, but I wonder if we could still make syrup.”
It almost feels like a tentative offer of peace. Deck of cards still clutched in her right hand, she sits down a few feet away from him on the floor and fans them out slightly. “Know any card games?
“I was raised in a cult, not under a rock.” He gestures for the cards, shuffling a few times. “Gin?
“Gin rummy?” she clarifies. Simon nods, and that’s good enough for the both of them. It takes a good five minutes for her to realize that she’s far more of an even match than either of them had expected. Simon is quick and clever, and she isn’t given a single moment of sitting back and letting the game play. He’s competitive too.
They vow not to keep score.
Simon wins six out of their thirteen hands. She gives up and tosses her cards into the floor in a good-natured huff by the end of round thirteen.
Ava feels oddly light, looser than she has in a while. The spicy sweetness of the tree around her is soothing by now, and she leans back on her arms while Simon scoops up the cards and shuffles them.
“What’s the rough part of the tree called?”
“Bark.”
She raises an eyebrow. “The sound a dog makes? You’re making that up.”
“Swear on my life I’m not.” He tucks the cards into his pocket and hauls himself to his feet before offering her a hand up.
“You’re fucking dead. Doesn’t mean much,” she grumbles good-naturedly. She takes the offered hand and lets Simon drag her to her feet. His hand is cool against her palm, smoother than skin and with no give. His fingers twitch against the back of her hand as he pulls.
“Guess not.”
She’s about to respond, trying to load up some snappy retort when the awful droning sound of an engine shudders through the room. They both swing wildly to face the wall, Simon laying his right palm flat against the bark. She does as well, left hand against the rough surface.
The window spreads out between them, and at first all that’s visible is a wall of metal and rivets, stained deep brown with old blood. It chugs along, sloshing waves up and over the window, though the blood never blocks their view.
She knows the name on the side before it comes into view. She knows the Galilee like the back of her own hand. There’s only two ships on AT-5 anyways, at least at her last count.
Simon’s gone tense, and she only realizes this when he squeezes her hand. Neither had thought to let go.
Instead of letting go, she squeezes back.
The Galilee pulls to a halt less than a hundred yards from the tree, at enough of a standstill that they must have cut the thrusters and potentially even dropped anchor. There’s movement on the tiny upper deck, and she barely just catches David’s dark hair and the glint of silver off of his jacket. He’s gesturing towards what can only be the branches of the tree.
Then someone brings out a saw.
Her grip goes slack as Simon pulls away, his half of the window fizzling out of existence. The speed with which he’s gone leaves a cold pit of dread sinking lower in her stomach and sends a shiver down her spine.
Ava whirls around the second she realizes he’s gone, tearing away from the window. He’s gone from the atrium, and his shadow doesn’t darken any of the four doorways. She doesn’t know where he is. But she does know with complete and utter certainty that she needs to find him.
There’s a dizzy rush as she scans the room again, dark walls blending together and bleeding red at the edges. Wind howls in her ears—it’s always strong here, gusts so fierce that she’d ordered the crew to stay below decks as often as they could afford.
Simon is only a few steps ahead of her, the subtle green of his sweater a smear of color against the near-black bark and soft red leaves heavy around the two of them. She’s completely unsure how either of them ended up here, but that’s a question to be addressed when Simon looks far less murderous and no one is screaming.
“Simon!”
Her voice is drowned out by the howling wind, and she pushes further. The wind snatches at the few strands of hair that have escaped from her braid and the exposed skin where her shirt won’t stay flat. It’s not exactly cold so much as it just. Is. She screams out his name again, now close enough that she can hear bits of the exchange happening.
“—enough of that! Tell the C.O.I. they can fuck off.”
David is harder to hear, snatches of sound between gusts. “Alive? You can— Research, Convict. This is great—”
She doesn’t need the rest of the sentence to know how the mantra rings in her bones. She grabs Simon’s shoulder the second he’s in reach. “What is he doing?”
“Sawing off a branch. Ava, please. Call him off.” Even over the roar of the engines and the ocean and the wind, she can hear a note of desperation creeping into his voice. “Please. Leave it alone.”
David’s arms are crossed over his chest. He’s closer than it seemed from the window, maybe twenty yards out. Close enough that she can see the frustration rising off of him in waves, the way he’s maybe a minute from pacing or swearing or tearing at his hair. His eyes blow wide when he sees her.
“Stand down, Captain,” she roars.
David takes a step back.
“You’re dead,” he states. It sounds like it’s meant to be helpful. It isn’t. She already knew that. “It’s been a week since the SM-14 exploded.” He presses a hand to his face. His voice drops from a yell to something that might be only for himself, but she hears it with perfect clarity regardless. “This is what I get for not sleeping.”
A younger woman comes up from behind him, a saw in her hands. Ava feels that icy fear take hold in her core again. They’re close enough that she can take hold of one of the lower branches.
She sets the saw against the branch and pulls, and white-hot agony spears through Ava’s chest. Someone’s screaming. It might be her.
The pain vanishes as quickly as it comes, and she realizes that she’s on her knees, arms wrapped tightly around her stomach. She’s retching, dry heaves that don’t even summon bile, and gasping for air. There’s hands on her shoulders.
“Ava.” A demand in a low voice, distinct over the wind. “Ava, open your eyes.”
She does. The wind settles the slightest bit. The roar of the Galilee’s engines is dimmer, distant, an afterthought.
“Can you move your arms?”
Breathing is an effort, something she has to put thought into as she pries her arms away from her midsection. Simon’s hands are cool where they rest on the base of her ribs. His face is tight.
“David?”
He shakes his head and starts to his feet. “Not an issue. Can you stand?”
For a moment, she wonders why he seems so concerned. Then she tries to stand, and the act of even straightening sends a lance through her fourth and fifth ribs. Simon’s face crumples into something akin to a frown.
He slips his arm under her knees, the other flush against her back, and he scoops her up before she has a chance to protest. Not that she does much of that anyway. The motion spikes the pain again, and she screws her eyes shut. Simon is murmuring something soft and apologetic near her ear.
She pries her eyes open with no small amount of force. She knows they’re moving, but it takes a moment of orientation to realize they’re moving down. Simon’s hurrying down a set of stairs—when did they get stairs?—as fast as he can without jostling her.
She’s still not exactly sure why they’re in such a rush, or why everything fucking hurts.
They emerge from a doorway to the left of the bedroom, nestled between it and the door to what she’s taken to thinking of as the game room. She doesn’t recall the doorway being there, but that’s not exactly a priority at the moment. She’s more focused on the shocking tenderness with which Simon lays her down on the bed.
“Simon?”
He tilts his head, a signal that he’s listening. She takes it as a sign to go ahead.
“What happened?”
His hand is vaguely sticky where it squeezes hers. “You scared the shit out of David,” he says, the faintest hint of a smile breaking through the sheen of worry. “There might still be a chunk of metal up there.
“How?”
That same stickiness is warm against her ribs, right over the epicenter of the pain. That comes second to answers, though.
His fingers drum on the mattress next to her hip. He’s thinking hard. “I’ll tell you what happened,” he offers, like it’s a deal. “But you can’t ask me how it happened. I don’t know how. Fair?”
She nods. That has to be good enough.
“When the girl—the one David was ordering around—started sawing, you screamed and dropped. One of the other branches swung around and knocked her and David to the ground while another went for the hull of the ship. They turned tail right after that. Ava, may I help you take your shirt off?”
“What?”
She looks down at the stain spreading across her ribs. It doesn’t carry the deep warm tones of blood. She knows what bloodstains look like, and this isn’t that. She nods, and Simon helps her sit upright through the spike of pain. The fabric sticks to her skin, and she grits her teeth and pulls it away.
There’s a pause as they both look down at the gash that sits atop her ribs in a perfectly straight line, curving from just under her breast and across her sternum. It weeps a pale golden liquid, too diaphanous to be pus. With her shirt out of the way, the soft, woody, burnt sugar scent of sap makes itself known, and she laughs in shock.
It’s a sharp sound, more of a bark than anything else, and based on the way Simon’s eyes widen ever so slightly, he’s picked up on it too.
“Looks like a saw blade, yeah?”
He nods. “How bad is it?”
“Hurts.” She prods at the edges, wincing only slightly. “Not as bad as you’d think.”
Simon nods, draws himself upright. “I’ll be right back, okay?”
When she doesn’t protest, he slips from the room on silent feet, returning a minute later with a palm-sized roll of white fabric and a rounded wooden jar. The jar he sets on the table beside her still-folded jumpsuit, and the fabric he unrolls into strips that look like bandages. “They were in the other room,” he offers by way of explanation. He starts forward with the bandages before freezing, eyes flickering from her wounded chest to her face. “Can I—?”
“Neither of us are going to die if you touch my tit, Simon.”
That drains the tension from his shoulder, and he rolls his eyes. She doesn’t miss the little huff of a laugh that escapes as he leans forward again. “That was not what I meant, for the record.”
With nothing more than the bandage in place, it already feels better. Secure, even. She tests out an experimental breath, pleased when it only twinges slightly. “Better.”
Simon breaks into a genuine smile. “Good. I’m glad.” He swivels slightly, grabbing the jar and uncorking it before offering it her way.
“What is it?”
“Maple candy. It’s from the sap. Try one.”
The piece she grabs is firm, sticky on the surface, and vaguely round. She pops it into her mouth, humming pleasantly when it starts to dissolve into sandy, almost sugary grains. Simon takes one of his own, eyes fluttering shut while he lets it break down.
“You were raised on these, yeah?”
“Mhm. Only on special occasions. Like birthdays.”
“Or death days,” she offers.
“Or death days.”
She leans back against the pillows, brushing her hair out of her face. Between the wind, the sleep, and the fact that it’s been days since she last fixed it, her braid has almost fully fallen out. She reaches behind to properly untie it, but winces at the motion.
“Let me?”
She raises an eyebrow, and Simon sighs. “It’ll hurt if you try to braid it again. Let me.”
His hand is steady on her back as she moves slightly, turning sideways and moving forward so that he has room to sit behind her. His fingers comb through the last remaining pieces of the braid until it all falls loose around her shoulders.
“Think if I look in the drawer behind us I’ll find a comb?”
“Wouldn’t be the first helpful thing we’ve found.” She folds her hands in her lap and listens to the shuffling, the slide of a drawer, and a soft chuckle from Simon. Something blunt and gentle scrapes against her scalp, and she practically melts into the touch. The plastic comb in her room is nowhere as nice as this.
The motions are practiced as he draws her hair back into a braid. It’s not the tight sort she’s used to, but the lack of pressure is nice. He ties it off and rests it over her shoulder, and there’s a brief moment of stillness.
Simon presses the softest kiss imaginable to the back of her head before he slips off the bed. The drawer slides open and shut again, and she takes the opportunity to lie back down.
He’s hovering beside the bed, unsure, and she turns her head to level him with the most unimpressed stare she can muster. “You can lay down too. I don’t bite.”
“Don’t you?”
She scowls, but it lacks heat. Simon sighs, but again, it’s exaggerated. He slips under the blanket beside her, and she gives in and rests her head on his shoulder. His right hand curls around her bicep, drawing little lines and whirls that she imagines look like the patterns on his wooden arm. When he speaks, it’s to the ceiling.
“I should have guessed you’d get the tree mind control.”
“Why would you guess that?”
“Eye’s closer to the brain than the arm is.”
“What the fuck does that mean?” She squints up at the ceiling.
He goes still underneath her. “Forgot we don’t exactly have a mirror in here. Your scar.” Her hand goes to the warped skin under his eyes, but he doesn’t pause. “It looks like a branch now. And your eye’s gone reddish. Like the leaves outside.”
She prods at it, hoping to feel that same stiff, gnarled texture of scar tissue that she remembers. It’s almost the same, save for a slight bit of stiffness at the highest of ridges. It does feel almost like bark.
It should be shocking, but the gash in her chest from a broken branch that weeps sap and not blood somehow seems weirder than her scar looking like a branch and her eye being the wrong color. It almost pulls a giggle from her, one that hovers behind her sternum rather than escaping. “My other eye? Is that one red too?”
The fact that he doesn’t turn to check lands a feeling deep at the base of her spine. “No. Still blue. It’s more striking now.”
His breath is warm against her forehead. She lets her eyes fall shut, relaxes as much as she knows how to. The ache in her chest is dull now, secondary to everything else, including the hands splayed on her bicep and hip, grounding.
“I don’t mind striking.”