Page 68 of Fable for the End of the World

“There,” I say. “That should help.”

“You’re very strange, you know,” she says.

“I know.” I zip my jacket up to my chin. “Come on.”

I push open the door, and light pours into the cabin. Wind blows back Melinoë’s hair. Standing there beside me in the threshold, shock—and something gentler, maybe wonder—works its way across her face.

“I’ve never seen it before,” she says, softly.

“Me neither,” I admit. “Except on TV.”

“Everyone says the earth is too warm for it to snow. At least in New Amsterdam. It still snows sometimes in New England, I think. North.”

She looks like a natural part of the environment for the first time: a creature of ice and snow at home in this frost-veiled world.If she were dressed in white instead of black, she would blend in perfectly, like a fox shedding its russet coat for the camouflage of winter.

The snow that spreads out in front of us is unmarred, not yet pocked with fallen branches or the prints of animals. Everything is new.

“Do you ever wonder if they’re wrong?” I ask. “The scientists, I mean. They keep telling us that the planet is getting warmer, less hospitable. That eventually it won’t be able to host any life at all. But do you think they could be wrong? That maybe there’s a chance things could get better?”

She looks at me with her dark, doe-like eyes. “I don’t think I’m qualified to say.”

“Just your best guess, then. A gut feeling.”

Melinoë casts her gaze around the clearing, and for a long moment there’s no sound except the snow slowly melting, dripping from the branches and onto the fresh sheet of frost. “I don’t know,” she replies at last. “I don’t think it’s up to nature. It’s up to people. So I suppose it depends on whether you have faith in people.”

“You don’t have very much faith in people.”

“No.” She looks down at her gloved hands. “If humans were collectively capable of compassion, we never would have gotten here in the first place.”

“I don’t know about people as a whole. I haven’t met enough of them. Until now I’d never left Esopus Creek.” A small smile comes over my face. “But I think individuals are capable of compassion. Actually, I know they are. And maybe that’s all it takes—at least atthe beginning. Just a few people who care. And that caring matters, even if it can’t cool the earth or lower sea levels or turn back time to before a nuclear blast.”

Melinoë doesn’t answer, but she does lift her gaze to mine. At her sides, her fists clench and unclench. We’re standing close enough that I could reach out and take her hand. I remember the warmth of her body last night, her arm around my waist, and I flex my fingers. I could touch her. I could—

There’s a rustling in the distance, faint, like leaves in the wind. At first I think nothing of it. But then it grows louder, closer. A Wend? I can’t smell the familiar odor of rotting flesh. A mutation? Maybe. But it would be uncommon for one to venture so near the cabin, especially in the light of day.

The snowy brush around the clearing begins to part. The cans fixed in the trees rattle like tinny wind chimes.

Melinoë’s head snaps up, as quick as a mountain cat scenting the air. All that violet color drains from her face.

And then, hoarsely, she whispers, “Run.”

I’m too shocked and bewildered to obey. The thing that parts the bushes is nothing animal—at least, nothing of the natural world. It has a sleek metal hull, a lithe rectangular body mounted on four mechanical legs. Gears whir as it stalks closer, its steps too measured, too stilted. It’s an aberration, but not like the mutations.

It’s not a creature that has evolved for survival. It’s a machine that was crafted to kill.

Before I can react, Melinoë grabs me by the back of my jacket and hauls me inside the cabin. She slams the door shut and forcesone of the chairs under the handle, jamming it. I catch myself against the table before I fall, breathing hard.

“Whatisthat?”

Melinoë has already shed the flannel shirt and has her rifle in hand. “A Dog. One of Caerus’s mobile robots.”

“But why—how—is it here?”

“I don’t know,” she says. “But it means Caerus found us.”

There’s a heavy scrabbling on the other side of the door. Blood roars in my ears. I kneel down and search under the bed, where I stowed Melinoë’s knife, not that I’m convinced it will do me much good.

With enough force to knock the breath out of me, Melinoë shoves me to my belly, flat on the floor. “Get down,” she hisses.

---