Steel People Chapter 4: The Bottom of Winter
Hello, if you missed the previous chapters you can find them here:
Something wet landed on my head. In my semiconscious darkness it felt like a cold finger touching the corner of my forehead, right at my hairline where it met my temple. The brain freeze spot. I filed it for later and sank back into unconsciousness.
A second drop hit my pinkie finger. I gave up and forced my eyes open.
The river flowed pale and blue past our beach. Little white flakes drifted down from the sky and vanished into its depths, or stuck to the dirt shore before us. The dirt was coated in pale white flakes now, with more coming in steadily.
I leaned over and kissed the back of my partner’s head. She mumbled something in her sleep and arched her back against me. Then buried her head under our blanket and fell back to sleep I shook her. “Maybelle!”
She rolled over and stared at me, except the blanket was still over her head. “What?”
“Snow.”
She threw off the blanket and looked. Her eyes went wide. “We should have left last week.”
“Your leg wasn’t ready,” I said, even as fear crept up inside me at the snow billowing around. “I still don’t think it’s ready, you’re in pain whenever you put weight on it.”
“All because I was too clumsy when running and too afraid of the steel people to look where I was going.” She scrabbled out of our little shelter.
I followed her. We’d erected a little triangular hut big enough to sit upright in, one of us at either end, and plastered it with tree bark and thick, packed dirt. I emerged from it and the cold air bit my bare skin. I stood upright and let it pinch me awake. For weeks now, since she’d been strong enough to stand, we’d taken turns going out at night and standing in the river, getting us acclimated to the ever-increasing cold.
“It wasn’t your fault,” I said.
“You distracted them, then confronted them face to face. I just ran off and broke my leggy,” she said and scowled.
“I knew what they’d do because I was a steel person. You didn’t. We only got this far because of you and all you know about surviving,” I said and grabbed her shoulder. “Please. We’ll be fine.”
Maybelle scowled, then draped my fur cape, made from the seal we’d killed in Dallas, over my shoulders. The warmth was immediate. I grabbed hers out of the hut. It was made from the nylon and insulation blanket we’d taken out of the canoe. I tied it around her pale shoulders.
“Can you walk far?” I said.
She looked down at her right leg. It was thinner than her left, barely a pale stick with the faintest trappings of muscle. I’d found an image of a brace in the medkit, then spent a week fashioning one from three carved pieces of wood and a leather strap and sanding it smooth. It now adorned her knee. Then she grabbed up her spear and planted it hard. She strode the length of the beach, turned around and came back. “It will hold awhiles, thanks to your fine work,” she said and rapped the spear shaft on the dark wood.
We gathered up our supplies. Our food stores, we’d sunk into a hole in the ground lined with rocks. I’d killed several rodents, a bear, and a pair of wayward seals over the last few weeks. She’d sun dried the meat to preserve it for the trip while we ate the quicker spoiling fish we’d caught. We’d also pounded a couple containers worth of berries had
The kills had netted us each a poorly fashioned robe of seal fur that turned out to be shockingly warm when I pulled mine on. I added the poncho on top. The bear, a poor and sickly looking black bear too weak to eat, was our blanket.
I shouldered an extra bag and wrapped her in the bear blanket. She had her own poncho and a skirt fashioned from the other canoe blanket.
“Ready?” I said.
“Wait.” She dove into the synthetic backpack from the canoe. She came up with our most valuable possession for our trek: a firestarter kit the bag’s owner had carried with them. Flint, steel, a bundle of dried plants for tinder, and a half-empty box of 100 matches as an emergency start. “I’m just making quadruple sure its there,” she said.
“Good thinking,” I said and patted her head. She stood. We’d braided her hair after it had frozen over one night upon emerging from the water. Now it was tied back, and down with a leather cord around her neck.
She extended her hand. I locked us together, then stuffed my other hand in the folds of my cape.
We followed the shoreline best as possible. Sometimes the trees grew too thick and we had to dip away into the woods. I kept one eye on her the whole time. She walked ‘step, step, crunch’ as she planted the spear down. Her teeth gritted with every step. Yet, her leg held fast. I’d never broken a bone before. From what she described, the act of moving itself hurt, and she felt the break every step.
Soon, all our steps crunched as the snow got thick enough that when the forest exposed the ground, it was white.
We ate on the walk, tearing through chunks of seal meat, then washing it down with some dabs of berry paste. By mid-afternoon, the snow was deep enough to reach our toes. I thought of the rodent pelts in out bags. We had two. That was one pair of sandals we could cover.
That was when she stopped short. “Look.”
Up ahead, a tree had been cut down, and its too stripped of branches and buried in the dirt. Smaller branches had been carefully cut and leaned on the sides. We closed in. The branches had been tied by cords together.
I ducked inside. The branches were dry, and the remains of the leaf covering lay all around it. “This hasn’t been used in a while,” I said. “It will do for us tonight.”
We threw the bear blanket over the top, then she lit the fire and set the fish traps while I fixed up the shelter and scoured for any signs of river people. The ground had a few scattered fish bones. I checked the trees.
The tree across from the shelter had a little fish carved in it. They’d drawn a catfish with all the scales and whiskers in flowing detail. “Maybelle!” I said, and waved her over.
She dropped to her knees. Fog burst out with every breath.
“Looks quite pretty. I mean, there’s no symbol of river people but who else would build a shelter like that or carve this?” she said. She looked around, then scooped up one of the bones. “Also, this is something we make.”
The bone was actually a fish hook, broken at the base. I breathed out hard and mist engulfed it.
“We’re definitely in the right place.”
“Yeah, but if they’re building a temporary shelter here, we’ve probably got much further to go,” I said.
The snow had stopped the next morning. We rose, cooked and ate the single catfish we’d caught overnight, ate it with some fatty seal meat for energy, and headed off.
My feet sank several inches into the snow before hitting the ground. I had to yank each of them out before taking the next step, just for them to crunch back down. I looked over and saw Maybelle swinging her whole body to yank her leg out.
“You okay?”
“No,” she said. “Can’t stop though.”
I nodded. “I never saw snow in Boston. Something about the ocean being too warm and the hot air keeping it away,” I said.
“Yeah. Why is it so cold here, then?”
“Inland there’s no water to regulate the temperature. So it gets far colder in the winter and hotter in the summer,” I said.
“Learn any other facts?” she said.
“Yeah, but that’s the only one I remember,” I said.
“You remember a good one,” she said and grunted as she swung her body again.
“Want to stop?” I said.
“No. Let’s get to sunset at least,” she said.
“I’m just worried,” I said. She took another step and I followed along.
Something cracked. I stopped short and looked around.
I’d wandered on a ledge where the river had eroded soft ground around a boulder, leaving an overhang projecting into the water. I realized the danger and froze. Then I took a slow step back towards safe ground.
Another crack rang out. Then the ice vanished beneath my feet. My hand ripped away from hers as I fell. The water grabbed me like a frozen hand and pulled me under. It snuffed the fire from my heart. It drained the warmth from my chest through my arms, and let the cold move into my core to freeze me over.
I kicked back to the surface and burst out with a gasp. Except the current had already carried me away towards the middle, leaving her limping after me on the shore. I was a decent swimmer. I turned and kicked towards the shore fast as I could.
Except the water had ahold of me. It had been barely moving from the surface, but now that I was in, it was so strong. Every kick just too me further down, past drifting tree branches.
Then I was back in Boston, helpless as millions of tons of steel and concrete churned together around me. Screams rose from the rippling water. I kicked harder.
Except everything was getting heavier. The frigid water drained me. It sucked the warmth out of my chest through my limbs like straws.
I dove under and saw the bottom far away. I kicked down, hoping the current would be weaker beneath the surface. Indeed, the force holding me back weakened, and I kicked forwards towards the sloping bottom. I kept going until my lungs burned. I went vertical and reached for the bottom. My toes swiped it. Then panic took over and I kicked for the surface.
I burst out and gasped for air. Half a mouthful of water poured down with it and I gagged on it. I spat it back up, then aimed for shore.
I kicked but my legs were sluggish. As I paddled, my arms got weaker.
“No,” I gasped and reached out for shore. Except it retreated away from my fingers. Then I couldn’t kick at all. Everything was cold as the river pulled me under.
Arms wrapped around me and dragged me back up. I saw a tangle of braids.
Maybelle had been born on a boat. And in water, there was no weight on your injured legs. She cut through the water like a torpedo carrying me with her. I didn’t feel individual kicks, just a steady push that carried me forwards.
My shoulders hit the riverbed, and fingernails dug into my back as she pulled me up. “Get up,” she shrieked. “Please.”
I didn’t stand, I rolled over and half-crawled, was half dragged to dry land. She kept dragging me over the snow. My cape and robe acted like weights dragging me down, and sucking the cold into me.
She got us to the tree line peeled my soaked clothes off. “Get up. You’re going to freeze.”
I stood, and the air bit down on me.
I got a shove. “Walk, please. I lost your backpack but I’ve got mine.”
I staggered forwards, my feet burning in the snow. I saw her crouched, shivering as she fumbled with her backpack. The matches came out, then the tinder.
I looped around. She left the backpack and ran, limping and bowlegged into the trees. I kept stumbling around it as she snapped branches with a crack
She came back with a small pile of dead wood and stacked it up, then dropped the tinder atop. Then she grabbed the matches. The first one dropped from her fingertips.
“They’re too numb,” she gasped. She glared at them for an instant, before grabbing another and striking. This one snapped below the tip and a screech burst from her lips.
She grabbed a third one and struck. A little flame flickered. It was long enough for the tinder to light. The orange flame rose up. I walked to the center and dropped to my knees beside her.
Our clothes were soaked inside and out. We piled as many branches around the glowing flame as we could, then wrapped our arms around each other. She held my face in the warm crook of her neck, and wrapped her arms and legs around me. I shivered in her grasp and huddled against the tiny protection she offered.
“I love you,” she whispered in my ear, then pressed her wet lips to my cheek.
I didn’t have words, I whimpered back.
“I had to get rid of your brace to jump in, I’m sorry it was a master work and we lost it so soon.”
I nodded back.
“I love you,” she said.
I nodded. Her hair was beginning to freeze to her neck. I closed my eyes.
“Eyes open. No sleeping until our clothes dry off.” She pinched under my arm, where she was gripping me.
I opened them. First thing I saw was her hair caked in ice.
She grabbed something and unwrapped me. Her arms went up and a shock went through me as her hair dropped awa
“It was freezing me,” she said with a sigh. “I spent years growing me
“You’re still beautiful,” I tried to say, but I heard only incoherent mumbling through my frozen lips. She threw her arms back around me.
“No sleeping,” she said.
Sunrise the next morning brought a bit of warmth to my shivering limbs a pale blue sky. I looked up and yawned. Mist flooded from my lips.
“We made it,” she said and tapped my back.
“Thank you,” I said.
She left me and went to check on our clothes. Somewhere, she’d hung them all from a nearby tree. She walked up and wrapped her hands around the pile.
“All still damp and cold. We’ve got to freeze a little longer.”
I nodded, and hugged my knees to my chest. I still felt cold inside, like the river had snuffed the flame out, and I was already dead and cold. I looked over my shoulder and saw it lazily drifting by, hiding the currents within from my eyes, waiting for me to set foot back in.
Maybelle dropped into the snow beside me. “Here. The food is wet but its still edible.”
It was a sodden mess, yet I was so hungry the seal meat was delicious on my tongue.
She looked at me, then looked out into the river.
“My mother told me that you don’t know the rivers until you survive your first drowning. I almost died when I was a little girl, so I’ve had much longer to know the river.”
“What happened?” I said.
“I went to grab a fishing line and fell off her canoe. Except I’d been wearing a heavy blanket and it wrapped around me and dragged me straight down. Mother dove in after me. Apparently I was twenty feet deep when she grabbed me,” she said. She shoved our meat supply at me. “Eat, please.”
I took a nibble. Then hunger overwhelmed me and I tore into it. It was stiff on the surface but soft underneath and I chewed thoroughly, savoring each bite before swallowing. It left me warmer, but even more tired and I slumped back against Maybelle, and felt her whole body shake as she ate.
She finished and we wrapped around each other again. “Hey, say something please, you’re scaring me,” she said.
“Sorry,” I whispered. My words felt hollow in my chest. There was nothing that could apologize for the doom I’d consigned us to by not watching my footing like a proper steel person tramping through the woods. “I just wish I had a blanket.”
She burst into giggles, then hugged me tighter. I huddled against her and shivered
At nightfall, she went back to check our clothes. “All dry!” she said, and wrapped her cape around herself. She tossed mine to me, followed by the bearskin blanket.
They were cold, and caked in ice, but the simple barrier they offered me from the cold was utterly beautiful. I hugged my knees to my chest.
She returned and threw her blanket around our shoulders. “We’ve got maybe a day of food if we eat like this.”
“We’ll stretch it out for a few days.”
“No, we need to eat more now that we’re colder,” she said. “There could be river people around the next bend in the river and if we don’t eat enough we’ll be too weak to reach them.”
That forced me to my feet. I dove into our pile of belongings and fished through it. I’d lost my spear, and my fishing net, my backpack with half our food and a couple extra knives. Fortunately I’d saved the river person’s leather bag, though the water seemed to have permanently broken it into a shapeless mass that slumped limp in my arms. “I’ve lost everything. Do you have your line at least?”
She answered by shaking her head. That left foraging and hunting. I’d been so stupid walking out onto that ledge. “I’m going to go look for berries,” I said.
I took her knife with me. Every couple trees, I carved a quick dash into its bark. I wanted to go back to the fire, and suck in all the warmth.
I shoved snow off bushes with my bare hands. I uncovered plenty of brown, rotting strawberries. There were a few red ones beneath. I popped one in my mouth and threw the rest in my bag.
I returned with a small pile in the bottom of the bag, to find her at the water’s edge. “I got us about one meal’s worth.”
“I searched the bank, but I couldn’t find any of our lost gear. We’ve got probably two meals worth of meat left.” She then smiled at me, her lips so thin they were like a line drawn against her face. “I did find this.”
Soaking wet, possibly usable someday, was the brace I’d made. She laid down her poncho a few feet from the fire, then placed it atop.
I sat down beside the fire and opened the bag. “I found the last of nature’s gifts. Get them while they’re fresh?”
She leaned over it. “This will have to do.”
Snow crunched behind us. I looked up, hoping for some animal to have wandered into sight.
It was a boy. Ragged black hair, wide and terrified eyes, and wearing a poncho and loose pants that had been carefully knit with water ripples. He was shivering, and wringing his fingers before him. He was the most precious child I’d ever seen.
I gaped for a few seconds, before recovering myself. “Where’d you come from, are you lost?”
He nodded and hugged himself.
“Get over here,” I said. He stumbled over, looking at his feet. Maybelle opened her cape and wrapped him up at her side. Only his little face poked out.
“He’s shivering,” she said and stroked his head. “Shhh, little minnow where’d you come from?”
He buried his face into her side.
I held out the bag. “The last strawberries of the year, have some.”
He shook his head. “You’re warm,” he said to her.
“I know,” she said and grinned at him.. “How’d you get out here?”
“I was following a rabbit’s tracks and I got lost,” he said. “Who are you?”
“I’m Maybelle. We’re here looking for a rivertalker, so we can be bound together,” she said. “Here, eat something you look so cold. Those berries are fresh.”
He looked at me, then back to her. Then he snatched a single strawberry from the bag and chewed it.
“I know a rivertalker,” he said, and redness dribbled down his chin.
I looked at Maybelle. Her eyes had gotten all damp at catching sight of our destination.
“Does he do bindings outside the clan?” Maybelle said.
“I don’t know. I haven’t seen anyone outside the river in years. Where are you from?”
“I’m from Boston,” I said.
“What’s that?” he said.
“Part of the ocean, very far away from here,” I said. “Hey, listen. Did you lose a boat?”
“What?” he said.
“We found a canoe down river. This bag came from it,” I said. I held it up for him to see. He chewed his lip as he studied it.
“That’s Mommy’s bag!” he blurted out. “She was going fishing with our auntie and auntie is dumb and didn’t ground the boat right,” he said. “Where’s the boat?”
“Steel people took it,” I said.
“That’s not possible, steel people haven’t lived here for almost a hundred years. We can’t go near their old city it’s all dangerous,” he said, and looked at his toes.
“They flew down from the sky in a skimmer, chased us into the woods, and took it from us because it looked nice,” I said. His mouth was open in a precious little ‘o,’ showing off a gap where his baby teeth had fallen out
Something tapped the base of my neck, right above my blanket. I spun around.
There were four of them standing there. Two women in dresses of leather and coats of animal furs, a teenage girl, and a little one. One woman had a spear at my throat. The other held a sleek, black assault rifle. It was scratched, but very clean. Which meant she probably took good care of it and knew how to use it.
I raised my hands slowly. Maybelle threw her arms around the little boy and shielded him away. Except he scrabbled free and ran over to the riflewoman’s side.
“Where were the steel people?” she said past her rifle. She was an older lady with grey streaks starting from her scalp and flowing the length of her braids. Her face was painted with dull brown clay , with a red arrow over her forehead. She wore hand knit equipment webbing, looking like two fishing nets coming from either thigh to her opposite shoulders crossed between her breasts right over her heart. Several magazines and a canteen hung from it. The younger spearwoman had a similar setup, with a knife on her hip.
“I don’t know. It was weeks ago. My love broke her leg running from them and that stopped our journey up the river.,” I said quickly. They’d sent the kid to us as some kind of test, right? Or had he just wandered off from their party? I looked at Maybelle, and saw she’d twisted around to kneel to them. I carefully squirmed around and sat on my own knees.
“You said Boston. That’s a city from the old world. You are a steel person,” she said and swung the rifle around to point at me. The barrel was like a cavern staring at me.
“I’m renaming him!” Maybelle said and leapt up. The rifle remained on me, ready to blow my head open.
“What?” the older woman said.
“I want him to be one of us. He needs a new name now, doesn’t he Maybelle said.
“Where are you from?” she said calmly.
“The Florida sandbars,” she said.
“What’s your name?”
“Maybelle.”
“Grandma don’t shoot,” the boy said. The teenage girl clamped a hand over his mouth. He squirmed away, then fired a kick at her shin. She backed out of range, and glared at him..
Grandmother studied me and Maybelle. Then she lowered her rifle. “I am taking you both back as prisoners. Only because you proved you have a good heart.”
The younger woman came forwards, but grandmother grabbed her shoulder.
“No Manna. Let the little ones take them.”
The woman opened her mouth but grandmother was faster with her words.
“They both look like they’re about to starve to death. And they’re clearly not wild animals. Your babies can handle them no problem. Go,” she said.
The boy scampered in and extended a hand to Maybelle. “I claim you as my prisoner,” he said.
Maybelle took it and bowed until her forehead hit his hand
The little girl scrambled forwards. She was definitely his brother, with ragged black hair and the same wide smile. She was also the most precious child I had ever seen. She extended a hand. I took it and dropped into the snow like Maybelle. “I claim you as my prisoner, she said, and patted the top of my head.
As we stood, Maybelle and I took hands and locked ourselves together. Grandmother came up behind us with her rifle held over the chest, while the mother one and teenager led the way.
The boy started walking towards the shore.
“Ben, look. They’re together,” the girl said and waved my hand around. “Here, take my hand.”
“Ew no, you bite your nails,” he said. But he remained by her side as they led us along the trees.
Sometimes all we have to get us through the day are stories. I hope you enjoyed this one.