Scarecrow

Luna asked me a question on the way home from the ridge.

Not while we were flying. She waited until we’d landed on a flat shoulder of stone to rest, with Wren checking the next turn and Liam trying to convince a water vessel that its lid belonged on straight.

“What do you want to do when we get back?”

“Check the lower trough. Then Anja’s ankle, if she’s ready. Dot had a question about—”

“Lucas.”

I stopped.

It was Day 437. The thing in the cleft had been a fixed reflector, just as the wing had shown. Beneath it we’d found an old sheltered place, a broken fastening, and three shallow cuts in the stone pointing along the ridge.

No person. No name. Nothing that told us how long it had been empty.

We’d recorded it and left supplies. Wren would compare the marks with Ellis’s records before we went farther.

That had felt like the responsible way to come home.

Now Luna was looking at me as though I’d missed something obvious.

“What?” I asked.

“I asked what you wanted.”

I looked at the skiff.

At Liam, who had finally got the lid on and was pretending not to listen.

“I don’t know.”

Luna’s face changed a little.

Not disappointment. Something quieter.

“Think about it.”

“Is there something you need?”

“No.”

She said it quickly enough to make me look at her again.

Then she picked up her cup and went to stand beside Wren.

Liam waited until she was out of easy hearing.

“You could try answering the question she asked.”

“I did.”

“Yes,” he said. “That was the unfortunate part.”

I thought about it on the flight back.

Not enough to stop watching the hull. Just in the little spaces between checking the route and feeling the weight settle through a turn.

There were things I wanted.

Mother well. My sisters safe. A way to speak across the eleven seconds without spending three mornings on one letter. Every unanswered light brought home.

Luna knew all of those.

She hadn’t been asking about them.

When the tower appeared above the canyon, I found myself looking for three people before I looked at the watercourse.

Luna was sitting in front of me.

Risa stood beside the high path with a slate under one arm.

Sera was near the forge, sleeves rolled up, arguing with a piece of metal that apparently hadn’t been shaped to her satisfaction.

I wanted the evening to contain them.

I hadn’t thought that wanting it was something I could say.

The water was still running.

Anja wanted to wait until morning. Dot was reading and said she would ask her question later. Risa had finished comparing the field measurements, and the numbers were steady enough that no one needed me to stand over them.

One by one, the things I’d named to Luna turned out not to need the rest of my day.

I went to the forge.

Sera saw me coming and put down the piece of metal.

“Something wrong?”

“No.”

She waited.

I stood there with my hand on the stick.

“Would you come for a walk?”

Her eyebrows lifted.

“Where?”

“The high path. Not far.”

“To look at something?”

“No.”

She looked at me for a moment longer.

Then took off her work cloth and set it beside the tools.

“Yes,” she said.

We went past the shelters, where the ground rose enough to show the lower canyon without making us climb.

The evening light caught the new trough. A thin red line between wet stone and wheat. Beyond it, the scarecrow stood with its shirt moving gently.

Sera walked at my pace without making it obvious she was doing it.

I noticed anyway.

At the flat place near the turn, we sat.

For a while, I looked out over the canyon.

Sera looked at me.

“If you brought me here to stare at the field,” she said, “I could have done that from the forge.”

“I didn’t.”

“Good.”

I laughed, and some of the tightness in my chest eased.

Then came back when she moved her hand beside mine.

“I wanted to be with you,” I said.

She didn’t answer immediately.

I made myself leave the words there instead of explaining them until they meant less.

At last, she said, “I wondered how long that would take.”

“How long what would take?”

“You asking for something because you wanted it.”

I looked down at our hands.

“We sit together.”

“When you can’t sleep. When someone’s hurt. When you’ve done too much and need somebody to tell you to stop.”

“I want those times too.”

“I know.”

She turned her hand over, palm upward.

“I’d like some of the other times.”

I took her hand.

It was familiar. I’d held it on the roof, on the path, beside fires I couldn’t remember separately anymore.

This time, I wasn’t cold. Neither of us was falling. There was no wound to examine.

Her fingers closed around mine.

I looked at her face.

“I like you,” I said.

Sera’s mouth moved.

She tried not to smile and failed.

“Lucas.”

“I know that’s a small way to say it.”

“It’s a start.”

“I don’t only mean—”

“I know what you mean.”

She was closer than she’d been a moment before.

I could see the last of the sunlight in her hair.

“Can I kiss you?” I asked.

“Yes.”

The first kiss was brief.

Partly because I was nervous. Partly because she smiled against my mouth and I forgot what I was doing.

When she drew back, I was still holding her hand too tightly.

“Sorry.”

“Don’t.”

“For your fingers.”

“Oh.” She looked down. “You can loosen those.”

I did.

She laughed quietly, leaned toward me again, and kissed me a second time.

That one lasted long enough that I stopped trying to work out whether I was doing it correctly.

When she rested her forehead against mine afterward, the canyon was still there. The unfinished work. The people waiting on us tomorrow.

Nothing had gone wrong because I’d wanted this.

I hadn’t known how afraid I was of that until it didn’t happen.

There was something else I needed to say.

Not because the moment wasn’t enough. Because it was, and I didn’t want to put a hidden thing beneath it.

“Sera.”

She drew back enough to see my face.

“I care about Risa. And Luna.”

Her fingers stayed in mine.

“I know you do.”

“Not only the way I care about the others.”

This time she was quiet for longer.

I waited.

The wind moved a loose strand of hair across her face. She tucked it behind her ear with her free hand.

“I thought so,” she said.

“I don’t know what to do with that.”

“Talking to me is better than deciding for me.”

I nodded.

She looked out over the field.

“I’ve watched you look for them. I’ve watched them look for you.”

“Does that mean this—”

She turned back.

“No. Don’t take the kiss away while I’m still thinking.”

I stopped.

She breathed out, slowly.

“I want this. With you. I don’t want you telling me I was the only person you wanted because you think that’s the answer I’m supposed to need.”

“I wouldn’t.”

“You nearly do it with everything else. Tell people the version that lets them stop worrying about you.”

That was true enough to hurt.

I looked at our hands.

“I don’t want anyone left wondering what I’ve promised someone else.”

“Then don’t make promises you haven’t talked about.”

She shifted closer until our shoulders touched.

“And don’t make me speak for either of them.”

“I won’t.”

“Good.”

We sat like that until the light left the lowest terrace.

Liam saw us coming back.

He looked at our joined hands.

Then at Sera.

Then at me.

For a terrible moment, he said nothing.

I found that much worse than anything he’d said on the ridge.

“At last,” he said.

Sera lifted her chin.

“Not a word.”

“I used two. Very restrained.”

“Liam.”

He held up both hands and moved aside.

As I passed him, he lowered his voice.

“You look happy.”

I looked at him.

For once, he wasn’t making a joke.

“Yes,” I said.

He nodded, then went back to the fire.

Risa found me the next morning beside the water slate.

She had a cup in one hand and the overnight record in the other. I was trying to add a note about grit in the upper trough, and had written the same word twice.

“Your heart’s been doing something irritating,” she said.

I nearly dropped the pencil.

“That isn’t fair.”

“No.”

She set the record down.

Her smile was there and gone before I could decide whether I’d imagined it.

“I didn’t come to ask about that.”

“What did you come to ask?”

She looked at the slate, then at me.

“Whether you have time after breakfast.”

“Yes.”

“You don’t know what for.”

“I’d still like to.”

This time she smiled properly.

“All right.”

We sat above the path where the sound of water was louder than the camp.

Risa put her cup between us. She had brought nothing to measure and nothing to write on.

For a while, she watched the stream.

“Sera told me you talked,” she said.

My stomach tightened.

“About us. Not every word.”

I nodded.

“She said I should speak for myself.”

“I said I wouldn’t ask her to do that.”

“Good.”

Risa folded her hands together.

I remembered them in the gym. The fine control in her fingers. The injury she’d hidden. How certain I’d once been that caring gave me permission to decide I knew what had happened.

I didn’t want to make that mistake here.

So I listened.

“I’ve wanted this for a long time,” she said.

“This?”

“Sitting with you without having to produce a reason you consider important.”

I looked at the water.

“I’m learning.”

“I can see that.”

She waited until I looked back.

“And I wanted you to kiss me. That part isn’t new either.”

I forgot how to answer.

Risa’s expression softened, though she looked nervous now in a way I’d almost never seen.

“You don’t have to say something kind because I said it.”

“I wasn’t trying to think of something kind.”

“What were you trying to think of?”

“How I missed that.”

She laughed once.

“I’ve asked myself the same thing.”

I moved my hand toward hers and stopped where she could choose whether to meet it.

She did.

“I wanted to come and find you yesterday,” I said. “Before I knew what I’d say.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“Because I’d just kissed Sera, and I didn’t want to make you something I was hiding from her.”

Risa looked down at our hands.

“And now?”

“She knows I want to talk to you. That I feel this. I haven’t promised that either of you has to be all right with anything.”

“I’m glad.”

She was quiet for a moment.

“I don’t want to be the secret that makes you look guilty when I walk into a room.”

“I don’t want that either.”

“Then look at me.”

I did.

She leaned toward me slowly enough that I had time to meet her.

Her hand tightened around mine just before we kissed.

It was different from kissing Sera. Not less. Not something I could have described by putting one beside the other and choosing a word for which mattered more.

It was Risa.

When we drew apart, she looked at me for a long moment.

Then she said, “There.”

I laughed.

“There?”

“Yes. Much more useful than listening to you explain why you were too busy to sit down.”

“You could have told me.”

“I just did.”

She moved closer, resting her shoulder against mine.

I stayed until the water check was due, and then I asked whether she’d like to walk back with me.

She said yes.

Luna didn’t avoid me.

That would have been easier to notice.

She spoke to me about the southern ridge. About the glass trough. About the water measurements, which had dipped slightly when a little grit collected at the inlet and returned to normal when Corr cleared it.

She thanked Risa for the new marks on the slate.

Asked Sera whether the lamps needed fresh cells.

Then took the survey notes to the high path and sat where she could see the canyon without being in the middle of it.

I watched her go.

Sera stood beside me.

“Don’t go because I tell you to,” she said.

I looked at her.

She shook her head.

“That’s all I’m saying.”

Then she went to help Teo move a full vessel onto the slide.

I waited long enough to know whose choice it was.

Then I went up the path.

Luna had finished reading the notes.

They lay beside her, weighted with a small stone. She looked up when she heard my stick.

“Something wrong?”

“No.”

She watched me approach.

“May I sit?”

“Yes.”

I sat far enough away that she didn’t have to make room, then found that I wished I’d sat closer.

Below us, Dot was showing Old Son something on a board. Their arms moved slowly over the same page.

For a while, I watched them.

Then I said, “I’ve thought about your question.”

Luna’s hands became still in her lap.

“The one on the ridge.”

“I remember.”

“I want evenings that aren’t only the space left after everything goes wrong.”

She looked at me.

“I want to spend some of them with you.”

“Because you think I’ve been left out?”

“No.”

She didn’t look away.

“Be certain before you answer.”

“I am.”

The words came more steadily than I’d expected.

“I looked for you when we came back yesterday. Even with you sitting in the bow. I keep doing that. Looking to see what you think of a thing. Wanting to tell you when something works.”

“That’s what I’m here for.”

“Not only.”

Her jaw tightened.

I took a breath.

“I want to know what makes you laugh when nobody needs you to be sensible. I want to sit with you when there’s no route to plan. I want to hold your hand, and I keep finding reasons that would make it look like I had to.”

She looked down at her hands.

Then back at me.

“I have been in love with you,” she said, “for an extremely inconvenient length of time.”

Everything in me went still.

Luna let out a short breath, almost angry with herself.

“There. Now you know.”

“I didn’t—”

“Yes. That has been clear.”

I laughed before I could stop myself.

She looked offended for half a second.

Then her mouth moved, and the expression became something else.

“I don’t want pity, Lucas.”

“I know.”

“Or a place because you’re afraid of hurting me.”

“I want you because you’re you.”

Her eyes stayed on mine.

“That is not a particularly detailed explanation.”

“I can keep going.”

She looked at my mouth.

“Perhaps later.”

I moved closer.

She met me halfway.

The kiss was gentle, and then less uncertain when her hand came up to the side of my face. My stick slipped against the stone. I caught it badly, and she broke away just enough to laugh.

“There you are,” I said.

“What?”

“That laugh.”

Her cheeks changed color.

For once, she had no immediate answer.

I put the stick somewhere it would stay and took her hand instead.

After a while, she leaned against my shoulder.

I could feel her deciding to allow herself the weight of it.

I didn’t tell her she could.

I made room and stayed.

We talked before we went back.

About Sera. Risa. The fact that none of this could work if we all relied on guessing what had been said in some other quiet place.

Luna listened when I told her what I’d promised and what I hadn’t.

Then she said, “I want to talk to them.”

“Yes.”

“Not because you’re asking me to.”

“I know.”

“And afterward, the four of us.”

I nodded.

She looked at our joined hands.

“I won’t always be good at this.”

“Neither will I.”

“That,” she said, “I had already allowed for.”

I smiled.

She squeezed my hand before letting it go.

They spoke together that evening.

I didn’t go looking for them.

It was one of the most difficult things I’d done all day, and the day had included telling three people the truth about what I wanted.

Liam kept me occupied by making me repair the uneven edge of a cup.

Then another cup.

When he produced a third, I looked at him.

“Are these all actually broken?”

“They have imperfections.”

“So do you.”

“Yes, but yours are more entertaining.”

I put the third cup down.

He became quieter.

“You know they’re going to have things to say you don’t expect.”

“Yes.”

“Listen.”

“I will.”

He nodded.

Then handed me the cup again.

We sat together after supper.

Not in front of everyone. At the flat place on the high path, with one lamp and enough room that nobody had to sit pressed against someone else unless they wanted to.

Sera took the place beside me.

Risa sat across from us. Luna lowered herself beside her, the lamp between all four of us.

For a moment, nobody spoke.

Then Sera said, “This is very strange.”

Risa laughed.

That helped.

Luna looked at me.

“We want to keep seeing you. Each of us. We don’t want you deciding that means we want exactly the same things.”

“I don’t.”

“You’ll forget,” Risa said. “So we’re saying it now.”

I nodded.

Sera took my hand.

“I want to be able to kiss you without wondering whether somebody else has been told she has to pretend not to mind.”

“Nobody has to pretend,” I said.

“That includes you,” Luna said.

I looked at her.

“If something is difficult, say so. Don’t agree to whatever you think will keep everybody happy for one evening.”

Risa traced a little line in the dust with one finger.

“I’d like time alone with you. And I don’t want to have to wait until someone’s injured to get it.”

“Yes.”

Sera looked toward the camp.

“I’d like this to be ordinary enough that we don’t spend every good moment explaining why we’re allowed to have it.”

I looked at the three of them.

At the lamp. The darkening path. Their faces, which I knew so well and was discovering I still had so much to learn about.

“So would I,” I said.

We didn’t settle every question.

We agreed to tell each other the things that changed what the others were being asked to choose. To ask instead of guessing. To make time that wasn’t borrowed from somebody’s exhaustion.

Luna said she would still tell me when I was being foolish on an expedition.

“I’d worry if you stopped,” I said.

Risa wanted to know whether that meant she could also tell me.

“You do already.”

“Then we’re making excellent progress.”

Sera laughed and leaned against my shoulder.

Across the lamp, Luna held out her hand.

I took it.

Risa watched us for a moment, then rested her hand over mine where it lay between us.

No announcement. No grand promise about a future none of us could see.

Just four people deciding not to leave this part of being alive until everything else was finished.

On Day 439, the camp still needed breakfast.

The lower pool needed checking. Ellis had another question about the reflector ridge. Nessa wanted the crutch grip shifted a little because it pressed the wrong place after she’d used it for an hour.

Nothing had become less complicated overnight.

But Sera kissed me before going to the forge.

Risa asked me to meet her after the water measurements, and I said yes without asking whether something was wrong.

Luna put the survey slate in my hand, then kept her fingers against mine for a moment before letting go.

Liam watched this from beside the cooking pot.

Opened his mouth.

Toby handed him a bowl.

“Eat,” he said.

For once, Liam did.

I wrote late that afternoon.

Not every word. Some things belonged to the people who had said them, and not to a record someone might read when I wasn’t there to explain.

Outside, water ran through the open trough. Below us, the queen had kept both model channels clear. Dot said the guide had brought the soil-marked cup to the shelf again that morning, and Luna had answered by carrying it to the field.

The peace was still something we did, one day after another.

So was this, I thought.

Then I stopped trying to turn the people I loved into a lesson about something else.

I closed the notebook.

Risa was waiting by the path.

I had said I would come.

Day 437–439. Before tomorrow.

Ridge searched. Fixed reflector. Empty sheltered place. Three marks along the ridge. Supplies left. Compare with Ellis’s records before going farther.

Luna asked what I wanted.

I answered eventually.

Sera on the high path. Risa beside the water. Luna where she could see the canyon.

Told the truth. Listened to theirs.

The four of us talked. No pretending. No speaking for someone who can answer. Time together because we want it.

Water still running. The queen’s cups still in use.

There is work tomorrow.

There was time today.