WILLA

This has been the worst night ever.

I wipe tears from my eyes, sniffling, as I try unsuccessfully to make a fire again. Dawn is approaching, and light is starting to spill over the world. Thank god. Maybe when it’s bright outside I can see what I’m doing. I gaze at my torn-up hands, but the pain throbbing through them doesn’t matter. I glance over at Gren, who lies in a bloody heap in one corner of the sagging lean-to (that I’ve managed to somehow pull back together). The snow underneath him is dark with blood, and his fur is matted and crystallized with ice.

His wounds need to be cleaned, but I can’t boil water. I choke back another sob, because I don’t know if it’s worse to leave his wounds as they are or to clean them with melted snow. I don’t know what to do. He’s unconscious and he keeps bleeding and there’s no one around to help.

My poor Gren.

When I thought we would escape from the others, I never imagined a scenario like this. Gren’s always been so big and strong that I thought he’d be invincible. That I’d be the problem part of our partnership, and the fact that he’s carried me so many times just increased that feeling.

But now Gren’s hurt. Badly. And I don’t know how to help him.

I’m going to fucking try, though. I won’t give up on him.

There’s so many things that need to be done that I’m feeling slightly overwhelmed with all of it, though. My arm hurts and throbs where one of the snowcats attacked me. I’m hungry—stupidly enough—and thirsty, and neither are prepared. We’re out of chunks of frozen kitty sushi, but there’s plenty of dead animals outside. I can just butcher one and melt some snow, I suppose.

I also need to drag the other carcasses away from our campsite so other scavengers aren’t drawn here.

And then there’s Gren. He’s hurt and bleeding and I have to clean his wounds and stitch them and take care of him and…I don’t know anything about doctoring.

This is all my fault, just because I had to take a last-minute pee last night.

I sob again, letting myself cry for a moment. I’ll have one good wail to get it out of my system, and then I’ll get to work saving my beast. “You’re not going to die on me,” I tell him stubbornly even as I slap the fire-sparkers together again. “I need you.”

As if my tears have roused him back to consciousness, Gren groans, stirring.

I forget all about fire-making and move to his side, crawling over the snow in the small, frigid lean-to. “Gren! Gren, are you all right?” Tenderly, I brush a dark lock of hair back from his face.

He lifts a hand slowly, reaches up to touch my face. “Friend.”

“Your friend,” I agree, new tears leaking from my eyes as I press my lips to his palm. “I’m going to take care of you. Just lie down and rest.”

Instead of listening to me, though, he struggles to sit up. It’s clear that it’s intensely painful for him, and a new round of blood gushes from his wounds when he does.

“No,” I bellow, and put a hand to his chest, then flinch back, because I’m afraid of hurting him again. “Gren, you have to stay put!”

“Willa…” he pants, squeezing his eyes shut as if dizzy. “Meat…”

“I know. I’ll take it away from camp. You lie down and rest.” I touch his jaw, because it feels like that’s the only place he’s not shredded. “Sleep.”

He gives a half-nod and then collapses in the snow again, unconscious.

I allow myself one more choked sob, and then I swipe the tears away from my eyes and turn back to my fire. I have until the suns are high to figure out how to get this thing working. After that, I have to tend to Gren’s wounds because I can’t wait any longer.

The fire never gets started.

I give up when my fingers hurt so badly that I can’t hold the strikers any longer. My blisters from yesterday healed overnight—that must be the super-healing cootie at work—but I put so many fresh ones on them that my hands are worse than before. I give up and spend the next few hours pressing sips of water into Gren’s slack mouth and then dragging the dead cats away from our camp. One of them is gone, dragged away in the snow, and I see a lot of tracks that almost look human. That terrifies me even more—if it was the sa-khui hunters, they would have found us. They would have seen the tiny lean-to against the cliff and come for a visit—and helped me start a fire, at least.

The fact that no one came in tells me that it wasn’t one of the blue-skinned aliens, and therefore it’s an enemy.

I keep the smallest of cats and butcher it a safe distance from camp, then bury it in the snow and hope that does enough to disguise the smell. With the raw meat in my bag, I race back to camp. I don’t like being gone long because I’m terrified that those scavengers are going to smell Gren’s blood and come after him next.

Gren doesn’t awaken again, though. He sleeps, and bleeds, and sleeps some more. His breathing is even, at least, but I’m still worried.

After I give up on the fire officially, I decide I have to clean his wounds. My shallow scratches are already scabbing over, so his need to be cleaned before his cootie kicks in. I melt a waterskin full of snow against my belly, ignoring the discomfort, and then rip the sleeve off my tunic, using it as a fresh towel to clean him. I don’t have soap, either, and I’m full of despair at how primitive we’re living. “What I wouldn’t do for a good aloe vera plant,” I tell him, thinking of Mama’s favorite cure-all. Well, that and a bottle of whiskey. I’d take that, too. A shot for me to brace my shredded nerves and then the rest to disinfect Gren’s wounds.

His injuries look bad, so bad that I feel completely incompetent and helpless as I reveal them. He’s got bite-marks and chunks of flesh gouged out of his hands and lower arms. Deep, horrible slashes cover almost all of his skin, so I press cool snow to them and hope that it helps ease some of the pain. I’ve never seen anyone so cut up, and as I touch the gouges on his mouth, I try to remember how many of the cats I dragged away. Seven? Eight? Does it even matter? He was outnumbered, but he just waded in to save me. For a moment, I hate everyone back at the old camp who thought he was a monster. That’s not even remotely the Gren I know. The one I know is wary to trust, yes, but so loyal and protective that it takes my breath away.

This is my fault, I know. He went out to save me and now he’s suffering.

I keep hoping as I swipe away blood and clean his fur that some of the gore covering him belongs to the cats he killed, but most of it is his. I don’t know how one person can bleed so much and survive, but he continues to hang in there, even if his breathing is weak and rapid. I’m taking that as a good sign. Gren’s a big, strong guy. He’ll have a lot of blood.

He’ll be fine, I tell myself. Just fine. He’s just resting.

The wounds look worse the more I clean him, some so deep that I wonder if I should try stitching him up. The problem with that is that I don’t have string—I have leather, and I don’t know what that’ll do for infections. I’m hoping his cootie will kick in and fix things faster than me mucking around will. “Get to work, cootie,” I whisper to it. “I need him back.”

Not because of sex. Not because I need him to take care of me.

I just want my friend.

I keep bathing him over and over, until my hands are numb with pressing snow to his wounds and my stomach hurts from melting the contents of my waterskin. At some point I pass out and wake up with my cheek in the snow, my body sprawled next to his. He sleeps on. The suns have gone down and now it’s completely dark. I shiver, worried, and creep a little closer to him. I hope no more of the cats come here, because I can’t defend him the way he did me. One, maybe. More than one? We’re both fucked.

“Y’all can just stay home,” I tell any critters outside. “Leave us alone.”

“Willa,” Gren groans, voice faint.

“I’m here,” I tell him softly, leaning closer. “Do you hurt?”

“Stay,” he whispers, and reaches out for my hand in the dark. “Friend.”

Does he think I would leave him? I’m horrified at the thought. “I’m not going anywhere,” I promise, and gingerly hold his hand. “You and I are together until the bitter end.”

The “bitter end” part might be coming sooner than I’d hoped.