Transcendence (30 page)

The gash no longer seeps blood, but it is nasty looking even in the firelight.

“
Beh?”

Nothing.

I feel tears in my eyes again, and I sniff loudly. It’s hard to breathe through my nose. I touch Beh’s cheek and then the edge of her lip. I press my mouth to hers, but I get no response.

I can feel her breath coming from between her parted lips.

I wrap my arm around her waist, and I bring her against me. I lay my head on the furs beside hers and watch her face, waiting for her to open her eyes or mouth and make a sound. How many times have I been annoyed with her strange noises, wishing her to be silent like she is now?

My chest clenches again.

Finally, I realize I would give anything to hear my mate’s sounds again.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

I sleep very little, waking often to see if Beh’s eyes have opened. I wonder if she just needs to rest and will wake up when the sun rises in the morning, just like she does every morning, but she doesn’t. I try shaking her and yelling, but it doesn’t help. I hold her head up and attempt to get some water down her throat, but it mostly spills out around her mouth. I think she swallowed a little, but it is hard to tell.

I can’t make her eat though.

Dipping a scrap of cloth from Beh’s old leggings into water I warmed by the fire, I slowly wash the blood off of Beh’s face. Beh doesn’t like being dirty at all, and I hope cleaning her off will help wake her up. I try to get the blood out of her hair as well, but that’s not very easy because her hair is so tangled. I try a little water first, rubbing the strands between my fingers to loosen the dried mess, but it doesn’t work well. I pull her up against my chest and try to use the wood carving to get the snarls out, but holding her limp body and using the wood carving at the same time isn’t easy. It takes a long time to make it smooth.

I take the time—Beh likes her hair clean and without tangles.

What does it matter if she’s asleep?

My own head is throbbing, and my cheek is sore and swollen from where the other man hit me. As long as I don’t touch it, it’s not too bad. If I forget and bump it with my hand, it hurts, but it is nothing like how Beh is hurt.

I sniff and feel my sore eyes begin to tear up again.

“
Beh?” I push some of her hair off her forehead and look at the cut. It doesn’t bleed anymore, but it’s bright red around the edges, and her skin is bruised all around her temple and down around her eye. I touch my nose to the spot below the black and purple marks and close my eyes.

I wonder what I will do if she doesn’t wake up, and I don’t have an answer. As I lie back down next to her and pull her into my arms, my stomach growls, and suddenly I know exactly what I will do. If she doesn’t wake up, then I will just lie here with her until I don’t wake up, either.

I don’t bother to move from the furs when I wake. I hold Beh against me, checking to make sure I can still feel her heartbeat in her chest and her breath on her lips. I run the tip of my nose over hers and whisper her name-sound, but there is no response from my mate.

Remembering how she woke up every time I tried to put a baby in her while she slept, I wonder if I can wake her up that way. The air in the cave is chilly as I remove my wrap and try to enter her body, but I can’t stop the ache in my chest, and my penis doesn’t get hard, so I lie back down and pull her close to me again.

“
Beh.”

I rock her body as I had back at the lake, whispering her name-sound over and over again and wishing I could hear her say mine. Choking sobs escape from my mouth as I tighten my grip on her and wonder if there is anything else I can do.

When the sun goes down, the cave is pitch black.

It’s dark.

The wind howls outside, and I wrap the furs tightly around Beh, making sure she doesn’t get cold. I have to hold her close to me because I can’t see her in the dark and cold of our tiny home.

“
Ehd?”

“
Beh…”

“
Ehd…”

I feel the soft touch of fingers against my cheek and squeeze my eyes shut. I don’t want to wake from this dream. I might be a little colder than I prefer to be in my dreams, but I can hear the funny sounds my mate likes to make, so I will take the cold without complaint.

“
Ehd!”

My eyelids part, and I see Beh’s beautiful face turned toward mine. Her lips are dry and cracked, and she is pale in the subdued light coming from outside the cave. I feel as if my body is covered by giant rocks as I look at her and realize I must still be dreaming. When I wake up, she will have her eyes closed and won’t say my name-sound again.

But she does. She does say my name-sound, and her eyes are still open.

“
Beh?” My eyes open wider as I realize I am not dreaming this time, and her eyes are really open. She is really awake and making sounds again. “Beh!”

I cradle her against me and hold on as tightly as I can without hurting her. I sob her name-sound over and over again as I hold her, and my chest feels lighter as she raises her hand to grasp my upper arm. Pulling back a little, I look over her face—just to be sure she really is awake—and run my hands softly over her skin. As my fingers touch her parched lips, I quickly jump up to bring her some water.

Moving is difficult because I am weak from lack of food and drink. I force myself to haul the water skin over along with one of Beh’s clay cups. With my arm around her shoulders, I help her sit up a little to drink. She ends up taking too much and coughs but only for a moment. She quickly takes another drink after the coughing subsides.

I place the cup down and touch the side of her face gently. Her eyes move slowly to mine.

“
Beh…” I stroke over her cheek with the pad of my thumb, and I am rewarded with her smile and strange sounds.

I love them and press my lips off to the side of her mouth so she can keep making noises.

Carefully, I lay her back against the furs and go to warm up something for her to eat. I move over to the circle of stones next to the clay dishes and the dried meat and use a short stick to poke into the fire pit to find coals.

I am met with nothing more than cold air and ashes. I drop down to my rear in front of the cold ashes as the reality of it sinks into me.

The fire is out.

There is a pounding ache all around the back of my head, which makes it hard to think, but I know exactly what I have done. I didn’t think Beh was going to wake up, and I had let the fire go out.

I glance over my shoulder at Beh, still lying on the furs but at least with open eyes. I can see her fairly well from the light coming in the cave’s entrance, and she smiles at me when our eyes meet. She must not realize what’s happened.

Taking the risk, I move my hands through the ash, trying to find any bit of heat in the pile, but there is none. It is only cold and dusty. Some of the ash billows into the air and makes me sneeze.

When the fire burned my home and tribe, I had taken part of it with me and kept at least a spark of it alive through the first season I was alone. As the days grew colder, I forgot to bank it one night and woke to a cold campsite. Though I had made fire before, it had always been with the help of others to keep pressure on the stick and blow at the tinder if enough heat was created to light a bit of wool or hair to get the fire started.

I had no one to help me, and it had been three days of trying before I managed to get another fire started. Beh can’t wait that long. She is awake now, but she is still injured. I need to be able to care for her, and to do so, I will need fire. I don’t think Beh is well enough to help me.

I take a deep breath, fighting the desire to go lie back in the bed and succumb to the weakness I feel and the leftover despair of thinking Beh would not wake up. I can’t let myself give up now, though, just because I feel weak and tired. I have to help Beh, even if it will be hard to get another fire started. I also can’t take three days to make it happen. The cave is cold, and my mate needs warmth and food to get better.

Lining up some of the kindling Beh collected with the hide on a stick, I find a long, straight branch that should work well to make fire. I stumble outside to the cache of firewood and find a dry piece of outer bark that is fairly flat. I also strip off strands of inner bark from one of the logs. Running my fingers through my hair, I pull out several strands and bunch them up with the shavings from the log. Together, they should make good tinder if I do manage to produce a spark.

When
, not
if
.

I failed my mate when I let the fire die, and I have to make it right, now. I have to make a fire for Beh. I won’t fail her again.

I get everything I need together and go check on Beh. I bring her water and dried meat along with one of her cups full of acorns. I quickly break them open with a stone and place my lips against her forehead before I go back to my fire-building materials. I can hear Beh making her sounds, and I look back over my shoulder at her, listening closely.

I love her sounds.

Placing the shavings to one side of the flat piece of bark, I use my flint knife to carve out a small depression in the center of it. Once it is the right size to firmly hold the straight stick, I place the end of it in the hole and raise myself up on my knees. I hold the stick between my palms and take a deep breath. My hands begin to rub back and forth rapidly, setting a quick rhythm as I push down on the stick to create more pressure along with the friction.

Beh continues to make sounds, and I feel my heart quicken just to know she is there behind me in the furs, awake and okay again. She still needs care –I know that. I also know I will never, ever fail her again. I will not leave her alone for even a moment, and I definitely will not allow our fire to go out again.

As if to remind me of the reason, a cold wind blows through the mouth of the cave.

When my hands reach the bottom of the stick, I quickly move them back to the top again, trying to keep the pressure on the end of the stick against the bark. The stick rotates as fast as my palms can move, and I try not to let myself slow down as my knees begin to ache against the stone cave floor and the muscles in my arms fatigue. I’m weakened by lack of nourishment and a little dizzy, but I keep going.

I glance toward the fur and see Beh’s eyes are closed. In a panic, I drop the fire-starting stick and rush to her side. Groggily, her eyes open, and I hold her tightly against my chest for a moment as I feel my cheeks moisten with tears of relief. I feel her hand against my face, and the tips of her fingers rub the tears from my cheek.