Page 54 of Katya and the Young God

That certainly answers that question, but he doesn’t let go of her hand, holding it like a vise, and she lets him.

“If I could have, I would have the moment she crawled out of the box, the moment she wasn’t decayed, the moment the Pixie aimed his gun,” he says, and Katya’s gut turns over. “Or the moment she touched Rory, or the moment she tripped over the stone because she didn’t have shoes, but I tried and I couldn’t.”

She squeezes his hand back, and he draws his knees up to his chest, resting his head against them, his eyes wide in the dim illumination of the glow stick.

“The most I could do was just break Feketer’s gun, and he has eight other knives and weapons on him in his bag,” he says, loathing in his voice. “And he’s watching, he’s going to be waiting for a chance to take her, something, he doesn’t, you don’t...you don’t need the god to be alive to hold its power, he can kill her and then carry out the corpse and —"

“So we stop him,” Katya says, and his hand is warm in hers, warm and calloused. “So we stop him, we get above ground, and we find a way to...” she trails off, looking down at the face of the sleeping child. “I dunno, get her somewhere safe? Where do you even keep...gods?”

He breathes out a laugh, and it’s a wet one. “The only one I’ve ever met was my father, and he died when I was three.”

There’s a whole other part to that, which Katya definitely does not want to get into, but there’s a whole other part to all of this, and the horror just keeps on getting deeper and deeper.

“Can she even have a childhood?” Katya asks, because the idea of someone losing that just hurts. “Can she, I don’t know, age?”

He shrugs, wildly, his eyes lost. “No one knows these things.”

And if anyone could know these things, it’d be him. Him or his brother, and his brother isn’t available to talk to until they get up and get cell signal on the top of the mountain.

If Pieter would even accept help from him.

The child in question turns over in her sleep, tucking her arms closer to her.

“Do you want me to take first watch?” Katya asks, dully, knowing she’ll need more sleep than that.

He shoots her a look.

“I mean, one of us should, we don’t want them walking over us and stabbing her,” she says, gesturing at her.

He pauses, then shakes his head. “I’ll take it, I don’t...I don’t sleep much anymore.

“I wake up easy, you won’t have to do much more than whisper,” she says, and he nods, but he’s still clasping her hand. “If anything happens, if you need to rest, just wake me up. We’ll keep her safe.”

When he doesn’t say anything else, she consciously releases his hand, before settling down on her small sleeping pack, her gun and knife neatly lined up by her chest.

* * *

“Katya.”

Someone, a child, is whispering to her, and it tugs on the back of her mind, drawing her towards being awake, tugging on her, and —

“Katya?”

Katya springs awake, and close, too close, is the child’s face, staring at her in the dim light, eyes wide.

“Katya, you need to wake up?” She says, and her voice tilts up in the end, with something close to terror trembling around the edges.

Without moving, Katya looks up, and in the glow of the rapidly fading glow stick, she sees Pieter’s silhouette, facing away, arguing in hushed tones with Feketer.

Katya nods, holding her finger up to her mouth. “Stay laying down,” she whispers, moving as little as she can to grasp the gun next to her. “Stay laying down and don’t move. Pretend to be asleep.”

The little girl nods, mimicking holding up a finger with her gloved hand. “If you don’t go over there, Pieter’s blood is going to be on the floor,” she says, voice serious in only the way kids’ voices can.

Katya pushes herself up, holding the gun up and ignoring the fact that now apparently the little kid can tell the future, and the furiously whispered conversation stops. “Hey guys,” she says, not keeping her voice quiet.

Feketer’s hand is on his hip, and it doesn’t take a genius to figure that that’s where he’s holding a weapon. “You can go back to sleep,” he says, his eyes flatly on the gun. “This isn’t anything you need to be a part of.”

There’s something in his voice, something that makes the hair on the back of her neck raise, so she steps over the child, sitting on the opposite side, still blocking her from the others.

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