her. “I hope.” There’s a copse of distant, flippy pink trees that sway in the breeze. They’re not much of a shelter, but they’re something, and so I point at them. “Let’s head in that direction.”
We do, and each step feels like more of a slog. I’m exhausted and panting by the time we reach the trees, and I cling to one for support, not caring that it’s getting sticky sap all over my gloves. I just need something to hold onto, and I know it can’t be Brooke—she’s just as tired as I am. I scan the moonlit snow, my heart hammering. “Where are they?”
“They’ll be here soon. Maybe we should keep going.”
“Not yet,” I tell her. “Please.”
She hesitates, and then nods. “All right. Five minutes. But then we really need to move on.”
“Five minutes,” I echo gratefully. “Gotcha.”
The minutes tick past almost unfairly fast, and when Brooke glances over at me, a silent question in her eyes, I know the time has passed already. I swallow hard and glance back one more time…and see a dark figure moving. “Wait.”
She makes a sound in her throat, her voice full of relief. “That’s Taushen.”
My heart plummets as he staggers toward us, his walking uneven. It takes me a moment to realize that he’s walking strangely, and something large and white is slung against his shoulders.
Then…the color ripples and I realize he’s half-carrying my J’shel.
I bite back the cry that rises in my throat and rush out to meet them—or I try to. I stumble over my snowshoes, then stagger forward. It is J’shel, I realize, his color bone white except for the arm that hangs limp at his side, covered in dark, half-frozen blood. He looks up at the sight of me, and a smile curves his mouth. He lifts his weight off of Taushen’s shoulders and steps forward to meet me, then stumbles to his knees.
“Babe!” I keep my voice to a low whisper even as I move forward and press kisses to his face. “Oh my god, you had me so worried. I love you so much.” I pepper his brow with kiss after kiss. “Why are you bleeding? What’s wrong?”
“It is done,” he murmurs, sounding dazed. “Old Grandfather…there is an egg… I was going to push it out but there was no time…”
“That egg is someone else’s problem,” I tell him authoritatively, then touch his wounded arm. “Let me see this.”
“Quickly,” Taushen says, looking around. “We must get going.”
“And we will in just a moment,” I tell him. I don’t like that J’shel is shivering. “Are you hurt anywhere other than your arm?”
“That is enough,” he says, a half-hearted chuckle escaping him.
“He has lost a lot of blood,” Taushen says. “It has made him light-headed.”
I nod, sucking in a breath as I dab at his wound with the edge of my tunic and see the extent of the destruction. It looks…bad. Finger-deep gashes have been torn down one arm and it’s swollen near the elbow. I take one of the layers off of my clothing - the one around my hips and gently bind his arm. “We’ll clean this when we stop,” I reassure him. “And what we can’t handle, your cootie will. And Veronica will check this out when we get home. Can you walk?”
J’shel just gives me a glassy-eyed look. “I wanted to come home to you,” he says softly. “You are my everything, H’nah.”
“And you did,” I tell him in a firm voice. Later I can gush over how brave he was and tell him how frightened I was about losing him. For now, bossy Hannah takes over. “Let’s make a sling for this arm and Taushen will help you walk if you need it, all right? Where’s your spear?”
“Gone.”
“That’s fine,” I say crisply. “We can make more. Let’s get you patched up and get back to the beach, all right?”
I bind his arm and make a sling out of strips of an under-tunic, then take off his cloak that I’m wearing and toss it over his shoulders. I make him sip some water, and I’m grateful when Brooke pulls out a pouch of chakk leaves and offers it to me.
“You took some?” I ask her, amused.
“I figured if shit went south, it’d be a good time to get really, really high.” She nudges them toward me. “But he can probably use them right about now.”
I nod and offer them to J’shel, caressing his face and insisting when he tries to say that he’s