“You are real and wonderful,” I tell her. “Only sometimes annoying.”
She smiles and presses closer. “You like it when I’m annoying.”
“I do,” I admit.
Her hand slides over my chest, light and idle. “Does your shoulder hurt?”
“The shoulder will survive.”
“Good. Because I was thinking we might catch some splix later. Small ones,” she adds, eyes bright with mischief.
“Only small,” I sigh. “Some say the big ones don’t taste good.”
She laughs and rolls onto her back. “You help me talk to Carter’ez about pockets today.”
“I did promise that. He has been here once already this morning, asking how the thing fits you.”
She yawns and scratches her head. “And what did you say?”
“I said we’d come see him later.”
We lie there a while longer. The village wakes around us. Voices drift across the platforms. Someone laughs. A hammer strikes wood. It all sounds ordinary. That should comfort me. It does not.
Callie sits up and stretches. “You’re quiet today.”
“I am thinking.”
She gives me a sideways look. “That sounds dangerous.”
“It can be.”
She studies my face. “Did I do something?”
“No,” I say at once. “Well, yes. What you did was being wonderful. And then you just keep doing it! It’s enough to turn a man to despair.”
She holds my gaze for a moment longer, then nods. “All right. I’ll go see if the boys are awake. They promised to show me how the little boat floats with the extra plank.”
She slips into her garment and ties it with quick confidence. It still amazes me how easily she moves through our lives now. She belongs here. That thought brings pride. It also brings something else—a vague worry. It just seems too good to be true. She seems too good to be true.
“Don’t wander too far,” I tell her.
She tilts her head. “Are you worried someone will steal me?”
I smile back. “It has happened before.”
“Four times,” she says, and ducks out of the hut.
I frown. Four times? First when she was taken from her home planet. Then I took her. No—she told me about something called aspace stationand how she was taken from there to Xren.ThenI took her. Then Sprub’ex. Yes. Four times. I must make sure there is not a fifth.
I sit for a moment longer, then rise and follow. I do not catch up to her. I turn the other way, toward the common Circle.
Several men stand there already. Port’iz leans against a post. Veret’ax squats nearby with a cup of frit. Two others linger at the edge, watching the huts with open curiosity.
“Crat'ax,” Port’iz says. “You are healed already?”
“I am breathing,” I reply. “That is enough. You know we heal fast in our tribe.”
Veret’ax nods at my shoulder. “The irox cut you deep.”
