The warmth slides away, and my skin chills fast. Ava walks with me along the edge of the lake. Past the hole, that’s now smaller as new ice forms sealing the wound. For a moment I’m downstream and sinking, unable to breathe.
I gasp.
Ava puts a hand on my arm. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
I nod, then shake my head. She needs to hear the truth. “I was swept away, the current beneath is so strong.”
She stares at me. “You couldn’t have been. You crawled out of the hole.”
I remember being pressed to him as he swam beneath the ice. “How long was I under?”
“It felt like forever.”
“How long?”
Ava would know to the second. She paid attention to those kinds of things. “Ten minutes.”
I swallow and stare over the frozen lake. “I should be dead.” The ice and gravel along the shoreline crunches beneath our feet. “I saw something, someone, while I was under. I think the planet is inhabited.”
Ava stops walking. “What do you mean?”
“There was a man.”
“Was he hot?”
I shake my head even though he was. All ice blue and white. “He breathed in water and then breathed air into me.”
“He kissed you?”
“It wasn’t romantic.” Except for the last one when he’d returned me. My blood warms at the memory.
“Don’t jump back in okay. You won’t turn into an icy mermaid.”
“He didn’t have a tail.” Not like that anyway. I remember his legs moving, kicking as he battled the current. “But I’m not going to jump back in.”
The fire is up stream on the other side of the hole. The bags are scattered on the ice on the far side of the hole. There were only two, the others had sunk with the ship, lost forever.
“I’ll be fine.” I step onto the edge of the lake. Then take one step and then another. The ice is gritty beneath my boots, but I keep going. Another ten meters and I’ll reach the first bag. The groans and creaks of the ice are no longer terrifying. It’s almost like it’s talking to me. Whispering its secrets that no one else can understand. I scoop up the first bag and sling it onto my back.
The other one is much closer to the edge of the hole. I’d be lying if I said I’m not tempted to stare into the inky water again. I hadn’t imagined him…there’s no way I could’ve swum back on my own or stayed under that long. But cold water can slow the body’s systems.
I move cautiously over the ice, not wanting to slip into the water again. The ice is smoother near the hole where the heat of the ship melted it and it has refrozen like glass. I skid but catch myself. I have to stop looking at the water and concentrate on the ice. I moved more slowly, each step carefully placed. I’m sure I can feel the ice moving, the water gurgling and singing. I risk a glance at the hole in the ice. There’s a light in the water.
I draw in a breath and focus on the bag only a few meters away. There are cracks in the ice. Healing fractures that will be gone by morning but are lethal now. I step over one, and the ice tilts a few degrees. Maybe it isn’t worth it. We’ll manage without the extra water and meals and tools.
“I’ll keep the ice still.”
I startle at the sound of his voice—I know it’s him before I look. His voice is rough, his Basic inflected with a lilt. How the hell did an alien on an uninhabited planet come to be speaking International Basic?
His head is above the water, but beneath the level of the ice. No one else will be able to see him. “Who are you?”
“Eskar,” he says with a smile.
“And you live here?”
“Take your bag, go. This place is dangerous.”
I cover the distance in a few quick steps and bend to pick up the bag. “Our ship sunk. We’re stuck here now.”
