Movement caught his attention out of the corner of his eye. Hen reached for the paring knife, currently settled between his waistband and hip bone, and turned westward slowly. Small figures, perhaps a full mile down the beach, definitely human. He pulled his feet out of the surf and slithered backwards, keeping low and clutching his sack to his chest. If the people saw him skitter across the rocks and then the sand, they gave no indication. They buzzed about their business, occasionally shouting at one another, running back and forth between the sea and the treeline.
That night, Hen toasted his little stars and purple-fingered sea-insects over his wood-fire. The stars were tough and rough, impossible. The insects, on the other hand, came out of their hard shells on the first bite and, though chewy at first, had an almost sweet quality to them, their meat delicate and tastier than anything he’d had in…however long it had been since Kass had been taken.
Days? Weeks? Not a moon, surely.
He stuck the little fish on a stick to sit by the fire overnight. It seemed logical: smoked fish sat in smoke for a while, right?
Not-Kass appeared again at last, rolling his eyes and saying, You’re going to poison yourself.
Hen shrugged. “If I die, I die. If I don’t, I don’t. It doesn’t matter. It never really did.”
Stop feeling sorry for yourself. You should’ve gone down the beach and talked to those people. They might’ve been able to help you.
“I don’t need help.”
You do. You need me.
“Yeah.” Hen would never deny it before, and he certainly couldn’t now. “But you’re not here. So I’ll make do with nothing.”
*
If Hen sat very, very still, he could see the little rodents in the trees, now. He’d started recognizing them, like rats but fluffier—squirrels, he was sure he’d heard them called, by farmers in the Ag District. They came out of little holes in the trees up high and ran across the branches, tails high, no fear at all. Their eyes seemed disproportionately large, like a cat’s but glassier, harder. One that kept to his clearing (at least, he was pretty sure it was the same one, because of the dark stripe down its tail) liked to chuck sticks and seeds at him when he wasn’t paying attention.
And you say I’m a figment of your imagination? Not-Kass said with a laugh.
Hen shrugged but didn’t smile. Didn’t laugh. He had to stop doing this to himself. He had to either commit to the disorder and decide to keep Kass with him, in his mind, for the rest of his life on the edge of the evil dark forest. Or he had to embrace the truth, which was that Kass was dead and gone, and if Hen ever saw him again, it’d be when he was dead, too.
Except he didn’t even believe that. He never had, not in his heart, so how could he now? If he couldn’t touch it, feel it, how could it be real?
Is that really what bothers you? That you can’t touch me?
It was a fair question. However long Hen had existed in the liminal space between sea and dark forest, now, it had been long enough to meet his own physical needs every day with energy to spare. Again, time didn’t really matter, and yet old habits died hard in his soldier’s mind and body; he craved routine and activity as he ever had.
He craved Kass’s company, too, yes—why else would he be imagining his voice in his head? But for the first time in years, so many years, he didn’t crave Kass’s body. Sometimes he dreamed of it, of the slide of sweaty skin against his own, of lips raining kisses across his chest, his belly, his hips. He’d wake, wash himself and his shorts in the sea, leaving them even stiffer than they had been with night-spend. But that was as close as he came to reliving their many and varied moments in each other’s arms.
Kass’s body was gone. He’d seen it drained of life, pale, broken, and bloody. The sight had drained Hen, too, somehow. Except in his dreams.
“No,” Hen finally answered, perhaps hours later.
But Not-Kass didn’t reply. And though Hen’s chest ached in the silence, he couldn’t bring himself to mind. It was hard, imagining Kass here with him like this. It would be better if Kass could find peace in Hen’s mind as well as reality.
“I’m sorry,” Hen said after a long time, opening his eyes and watching the stars through the gap in the treetops above him. His little fire flickered, casting warmth against his right side where he stretched on the grass beside it.
What for? asked Not-Kass, but quietly.
“I was too blind to see what was right in front of us. I was too stupid to save you.”
Save me from what?
“From the See. From the masters. From the priests. From a torn throat.”
What could you have done?
Hen licked his lips and took a deep breath, trying to order his thoughts. “I could’ve told you that I didn’t want you to go. I could’ve begged you to stay with me. Like I wanted to.”
And you think that would’ve worked? There was something knowing in the voice, something too-sharp and ironic.
“No,” Hen admitted. It was why he had never brought himself to say it in the moment, either. No matter how much he hurt, no matter how much he wanted, Hen never would’ve admitted it to Kass. He’d hated himself for admitting even part of it to Piret. “But I still wish I’d tried.”
And when I told you no?
“I wish I’d tried again. And again. And again.”
And when I refused to give up my birthright? When I broke your heart into a million pieces by forcing you to hear my denials?
“It was your heart to break. Not theirs.” Hen squeezed his eyes shut. “You were mine to protect. And I failed.”
Could he have succeeded? He’d never know, now. Because he’d never really tried.
*
The sun rose and set. The moon waxed fat, and its full, silver light gave Hendrik an itchy feeling under his skin. This was the time of inheritance, right before the full moon services. Had Kass died for Stone City, for Hen’s weakness, for his people, for nothing at all a moon ago? Or had it been two, now? Not-Kass didn’t come as often as he used to, even on nights when Hen was well-fed and snoozing beneath his leafy canopy on a warm evening.
Hen taught himself to be still, to observe the fluffy rats, the squirrels who threw things at him from the branches. He lured one down with a handful of seeds another rodent had left near his tent, then jumped at it with a sharpened twig in hand. The thing screamed, tiny and indignant, before it died on the skewer.
Hendrik had already tried to eat his smoked fish with the scales on, and it had not gone well. He sharpened his little cheese-cutting knife and attempted to skin the squirrel before toasting it over his fire that night. The tearing of muscle from skin and then bone made him gag. He kept from retching; he might be eating enough to survive now, but not enough that he could waste any on vomit.
He was well into eating the small beast when he realized why the act of killing and skinning it, time-honored and necessary human traditions in the City to say the least, had bothered him. The fish had bled, but not like the squirrel. Not like something with hair.
