"Here. Wait. Let me have that." Whalen tugged at her jacket, trying to slip it from her shoulders.
She shrugged out of it and then shivered under her coveralls. "It is cold."
"And getting colder." He paused in wiping a rag across her jacket sleeve to look at the sky. "It will storm tonight."
"How do you know?"
"The sky tells me." He looked around. "We'll need to get food before it comes."
"Does that mean r11;"
"Unless you know of something else." It had become a common exchange.
Mary looked down. She didn't know anything else. So she'd been eating the meat he brought her. He never brought the raw carcasses into the camp anymore, so she never had to see what it had been before it was killed.
He picked up the laser bow. "You should learn how to do this."
This was new. It had never been a part of the conversation before. "What?"
"If I get hurt, I won't be able to hunt."
"No! I will not kill!"
He sighed in disappointment. "All right. Another day, then."
"No. Teach me r11;" she hesitated. "Teach me how to read the sky instead. How you know to look for storms."
"I will when I get back." He put the mask on and looked at her. "But the sky can't keep you from starving."
Mary opened her eyes and went still. Sometime during the night while they slept, she and Whalen had turned toward each other. They were wrapped close, his arms around her shoulders, her face against his neck. She had to turn her head a little to get her breath.
It wasn't unusual for them to wake up wrapped together. But before this, she always found herself with her back against his chest, his arms around her while they faced the same direction. It conserved body heat, he told her.
But sometimes, after they woke up, his eyes would follow her around the camp while they did the morning chores. Sometimes she'd meet them, blue like her own, and he'd turn away muttering something. When that happened, he usually dropped was he was doing, picked up the laser bow and mask, and stomped off into the woods for a while.
She didn't understand. The touching felt good. Why didn't he like it? Why did it make him want to hunt?
She'd wondered if she was the only one who liked the touching.
He stirred slightly and moved his hands on her back, bringing her awareness back to the present. She closed her eyes. It felt good and, without thinking, she pressed a little closer.
He sighed and slipped his hands into her hair. One tangled into it and the other brushed it aside, exposing her neck and ear. Still asleep, he shifted and buried his face against the exposed skin. His breathing was heavier now, almost harsh in her ear.
Although she wasn't cold, Mary shivered. No, she realized. She wasn't the only one who liked the touching.
But they'd never touched like this before, and it felt really good and...odd. Almost scary. Like he was touching her all over instead of just in her hair. Then she felt him press his lips against the skin behind her ear. It was r11; it was r11; she couldn't find the words. She heard herself inhale sharply.
In the next moment she found herself thrust nearly out of the furs, on her back. He stared down at her, eyes blazing. "You're a witch," he breathed. "Just like the others. Just like her."
She started to sit up. "What r11;"
"Leave me alone!" Jumping to his feet, he scrabbled for the mask and laser bow.
She stood up behind him, finding his robes, trying to wrap them around him before he went out in the cold. She could not stop him from going to hunt now. She knew that. But she was surprised when he flung her away so hard she crashed against the piece of wood tacked across part of the hut's inner wall. It broke under her weight, and she fell through into the room beyond.
This seemed to panic him. Whalen dropped to his knees. "No, don't!"
Recovering from the fall, she opened her eyes and looked up. That was when she saw the skulls.
Human skulls. Real ones, not masks this time.
He had been right. He was not kind. And now she understood why.
"Mary r11;" he began. It was the first time he'd used her name, even though he'd asked when she first came to him. She ignored that, alternately shrieking and trilling as she scrambled around the edge of the shelter toward the door. When he reached toward her, she kicked out. She had to keep him away. Had to keep him, not just from killing this time, but from killing her.
She pulled herself to her feet using the doorway, and he caught the edge of her robe. "No, you don't understand, it wasn't r11;"
"Then why did you keep them!" Twisting, panting, she slipped loose of the robe. She was still wearing the coat the Edenites had given her. It would be enough. She would make it be enough.
Trilling, crying, she stumbled off into the woods. She was Outcast again, this time at her own behest. She was alone and there was only silence and the scream of her thoughts and the crunch of snow under her feet.
She didn't even notice when Whalen stopped calling after her.
She'd crawled into the hollow of a tree when she was too exhausted to run anymore. It was shelter enough for the night, but she knew Whalen could track her there very easily, if he hadn't already. She crept out of the hollow carefully, mindful. But there was only silence outside.
Creeping around to the camp from the back, she realized he wasn't even in it. Moving quickly, Mary slipped into the hut and found what she sought. A knife. Two blankets and her robe. Her hand hesitated over the cloth with the message on it, but she left it where it lay.
Quickly, she wrapped her things into a package and ran from the hut back into the woods. She looked at the sky and frowned. A storm was coming today or tomorrow, and it looked like a hard one, bringing several inches of fresh snow. She didn't have much time to find shelter.
Making a quick decision, she went in the opposite direction from her earlier trail, down toward a valley, hoping for caves. She moved quickly, stopping only to gather food now and then.
Her luck held. Near nightfall, she found an entrance hidden among the brush. It opened into a chamber that was just tall enough for her to stand up and just wide enough for her to lie down. Feeling her way around, she found an opening at the back and squeezed through, finding herself in a larger chamber that had fresher air in it. That meant there was an opening back to the outside from within here; she had a bolt-hole.
Returning to the outer chamber, she decided that there was enough overhang to keep snow and rain from getting in, and that if she was careful not to disturb the brush while coming and going, the entrance wouldn't be easily visible. Neither chamber had any sign of habitation.
It was a good place. She removed the pack she'd made from the blankets and eased it down to the cave floor. Mary herself followed, letting herself slide down one of the walls to a sitting position. She kept her knife close by. She knew she should finish setting up camp, but found herself suddenly exhausted now that the fear was fading.
Safe within the Earth, Mary fell asleep.