Page 49 of Spelunking Through Hell

And then he’d come to Buckley, and my father had hated him, and my grandparents had been wary of him, and I’d fallen in love with him practically from the moment we met, creating a weird tangle of relationships that had chafed at us all. But despite all that, we’d found our way to something that seemed stable. I think he was more excited to find out I was pregnant than I was. Which made a certain amount of sense—I was the one who was going to be grounded from hunting for weeks, if not months, and kept out of my beloved forest until I was no longer in danger of giving birth in a bromeliad patch—but was also an illustration of how much of his life he’d spent searching for a family he could count on.

So maybe he wasn’t going to want to go back to Buckley. Maybe he’d want to stay here. Or maybe he’d want to go to Portland and settle someplace near the grandkids. I understand people do that all the time. But I didn’t want to live in the Pacific Northwest. I wanted to live in the hand of my forest, letting the familiar shape of the world ease me into a future where I didn’t have to keep running just to stay ahead of my own terror.

That was the problem. I’d neverthoughtabout any of this. I’d never thought beyond finding Thomas, confirming he still wanted to be with me, and maybe, on the days when my mind was really wandering, making it back to the house and letting him stand in his own living room, letting him see that I might have failed to keep our children safe, but I’d kept our home safe. I couldn’t think beyond that point because there’d been no way of knowing how he would react. Would he reject me for letting our family fall apart in my desperate need to bring him home? Would he say I’d done the right thing and put his arms around me and tell me I’d done a good job, but I was allowed to rest now, I didn’t have to keep running forever?

I was allowed to rest.

The ceiling wasn’t doing anything interesting, so I closed my eyes and lay there quietly until I heard the door open. A lot had changed in fifty years, but Thomas still had the same basic stride: it’s something that doesn’t change much without an injury or other skeletal alteration. I didn’t move.

“Alice?” he asked softly, after a few seconds of silence had passed. “Are you awake?”

“Strange place, alone, not currently drugged; of course, I am,” I said. “Did you finish your meeting?”

“We did. You didn’t have to leave, you know.” The bed creaked as he sat down on the corner of the mattress, putting one hand on my calf. His palm was warm, as always. “You’re welcome in any of my meetings.”

“And I appreciate that, but your people are going to need some time before they feel the same way, and I don’t want to undermine your authority more than I do by existing, so I figured it was best of me to opt out,” I said. “Plus Sally doesn’t seem to like me much just yet, and I want to giveheras much time as possible.” Both of which were true.

He laughed a little. “When did you get so reasonable?”

“Oh, I’m not,” I said. “I’m extremelyunreasonable about most things. But until we figure out how to get out of here, and get all your people out in the process, I figure I should at least pretend I’m not going to make your life harder.”

“You don’t approve.”

“Oh, for—” I rolled onto my side and opened my eyes, propping myself up with one elbow. “You don’t approve of me going and getting myself skinned alive so I could survive long enough to have this might-be-a-fight, still-finding-out with you, I don’t approve of you deciding the only way you could save the people who got thrown into your backyard by the crossroads was by claiming as much territory as you could for England, God, and St. George. I think we both have some decent reasons to be a little annoyed right now. I’m still less annoyed than I am euphoric, and I can’t quite believe I’m here, and you’re here, and we’re both here together.”

“I’m having my own difficulty believing any of this is real,” said Thomas, hand tightening on my calf. “It seems a little too convenient to be believable.”

“What, that we both found ways to stop aging until we could get back to each other and go on with our lives?” I shrugged. “I always suspected it would be a possibility for you, if you thought of it in time,and as the years went by, I had to put more and more faith in the idea that you would have thought of it in time—that you’d want to come home as much as I wanted you to.”

“I did,” he said. “Of course I did.”

“Honestly, it wouldn’t have changed anything if you hadn’t. I still would have kept going, because finding your grave would at least mean knowing you were at rest, and besides, once I knew you were dead, I’d be free to go home, strap twenty pounds of C-4 to my chest, and head for Penton Hall. Show the Covenant why they should have made sure we were dead before they declared our family line extinct.”

Thomas blinked, slowly, like he was trying to process that. Finally, he asked, “You would have killed yourself if I had died before you?”

“No. Yes. Maybe.” I flopped back down on to the bed. “I’m feeling sort of unmoored right now because this is all I’ve been trying to accomplish for fifty fucking years, and now it’s done, it’s over, I found you, good show, gold star Alice and here’s your little red wagon. And now I have absolutely no idea what happensnext.”

The last word was more petulant than I intended it to be, the protest of someone much younger being told that it was time to eat their vegetables and go to bed. To my surprise and mild annoyance, Thomas began laughing.

I pushed myself onto my elbows again, glaring at him. “Hey. Wife, right here, reunited after way too damn long. Stop laughing at me if you want to get naked again any time soon.”

“I’m sorry.” He removed his glasses and wiped his eyes, still laughing. He had it mostly under control by the time he put his glasses back on and schooled his face into an expression of relative solemnity as he looked at me. “You have my sincere apologies. I wasn’t attempting to make fun of you. I was simply reacting to the absurdity of the situation. Could you ever, in all your contemplations of the possible future, have placed ushere? In this place, under these circumstances?”

“No,” I admitted, easing up on the glare a little. “You still shouldn’t be laughing at me.”

“I know.” He leaned over and kissed my forehead. “Expect a lot of inappropriate laughter over the next few days, I’d say. This is going to be an adjustment for both of us, and your demand for a little red wagon was so simply, essentiallyAlicethat the size of it all briefly loomed up and overtook me. You’ll forgive me, I hope, for being giddy and distracted?”

“As long as you’re not giddy and distracted when you’re supposed to be going to war.” I finally sat up all the way, pulling my legs in so Icould sit cross-legged on the bed. “What did you decide? And how does that work, anyway? Are you the only one in charge, or are you an Autarch with a democratically elected council of advisers?”

“I am the absolute authority on anything I decree myself the absolute authority on. My magic keeps this place safe and sustained; our greatest concern when the new arrivals stopped was how long I’d be able to do so without their regular deliveries of fresh pneuma to be harvested and redistributed among the effects.”

“They do more than translate, I’m guessing.”

He grimaced. “Quite. Without the spells I’ve been building into this place, agriculture is more difficult, as is water collection. Things we would never have had to worry about on Earth are major concerns here. And then there are the boundary alerts, the lines which keep our enemies from sneaking up on us, and the weather shields that prevent the worst of the local storms from slamming into us. In a few more years, we’ll probably need more atmospheric shielding as well, or the oxygen will dissolve as the atmosphere itself continues to degrade.”

I must have looked shocked. He shrugged, expression turning wry. “You knew this was a dead world. It’s been rotting since long before I arrived here, and the speed of decay has only increased since the connection to the crossroads was broken. Soon enough, the few systems still working will collapse. You said I wouldn’t be willing to leave here without freeing the people in my care. To be honest, I’m not sure I’ll be willing to go without finding a way to get all the people in this world out of here.”

I blinked slowly. Annie killing the crossroads might have opened the path that allowed me to get here in the first place, but it had also shut off the one channel this place had to any kind of fresh pneuma, any ability to recover itself from the damage that had been done to it. I should have realized it would be dying faster now. I leaned forward and put my own hand on Thomas’ knee. He glanced at me.

---