Page 72 of Seven Oars
So many other things to be glad for: that she hadn’t found pirates in their beds, that Daphne hadn’t pitched a fit when Rosamma pulled her away from the Meat Locker, that the Striker hadn’t harmed either of them.
Now, she wasn’t even sure there had been a Striker. Or smoke. Maybe it was just a hallucination born out of a massive swell of emotional distress, overlaid onto her diminishing mental state.
In other words, she was losing it.
Rosamma told the women about finding Daphne in the Meat Locker, but spared them the details.
Afterwards, she joined Gro at Eze’s bedside. Eze was conscious but in too much pain to follow Rosamma’s account of snooping in the Crew Quarters.
“There are weapons,” Rosamma told Gro.“Locked up on the wall. I’m thinking we should go back and see if we can get to them.” The idea sounded wild even to her ears.
Gro wasn’t taken in.“I still can’t believe you went into the pirates’sleeping area by yourself. You’re mad. And I’m mad at you.”
“Yes, it was nerve-wracking,” Rosamma acknowledged.“I was very lucky no one was there.”
“Good. Don’t do it again.”
Rosamma centered her attention on Gro’s lined face, with flinty gray eyes that weren’t as forbidding as the older woman wanted the world to think.
“You sound like my brother Ren, Gro.”
“And so I should. He must worry about you.”
“Of course. But Ren isn’t here to protect me. The cavalry isn’t coming. There’s no white knight to sweep in on his high horse and save us. We’re on our own.”
“What’s your point, Rosamma?” Gro frowned slightly.
“Only that if I have to go back to the Crew Quarters for any reason we think important, I will. I’ll do anything, for as long as I have a drop of energy left in me, to send a distress signal. To get those weapons. To shoot them! Whatever it takes to get us out of here.”
Gro’s frown deepened ominously.“What is it about your energy?”
Rosamma only shook her head, pretending to rearrange Eze’s covers.
“You’re sick, aren’t you? Like, with cancer or something?”
Rosamma sighed with resignation.“Yes and no.” She gave Gro a high-level explanation of her condition and the role her brother played in keeping her alive.
Gro’s face softened. Hesitantly, she lifted a hand to Rosamma’s face and tenderly moved a stray hair from her cheek. The gesture was so heartfelt that it brought tears to Rosamma’s eyes. Such simple human contact, freely given, even if it came from pity.
From Gro, she’d take it.
“It’s funny, Gro,” she confided under her breath,“that here, now, I’m starting to make peace with my condition. I wish I could share my energy with Sassa and Eze, but it wouldn’t work on them.”
Gro also had tears in her eyes.“Silly girl, what do you have to share? You don’t have enough for yourself.”
“I only share small bits,” Rosamma said, telling Gro about Phex and severely understating the toll the energy sharing took on her.“It works on him. That’s why he recovers so fast.”
They sat side by side, enjoying the closeness, until Gro cleared her throat.
“I know you care for Phex and think he’s deserving, but I wonder if your sacrifice is prudent in the long run.”
In light of what he’d done to Sassa, Rosamma understood where Gro was coming from.But she wouldn’t give up on him yet, like she wouldn't give up on Daphne.
“He isn’t the enemy, Gro. It’s this place. It’s evil. It’s trying to break us before it kills us.”
“It ain’t the place so much as those malicious alien turds that run it. That’s what’s evil.”
Eze moaned and moved restlessly. Rosamma caught her flailing hand as Gro gently soothed her battered face with a wet cloth.
