Or you could be like me and end up sprawled over their feet in the morning.

Time passes, and my khui hums stronger, and I know Skarr must be close. I can hear the others laughing and talking by the fire. The suns go down and it gets dark, and still Skarr doesn’t come. I yawn and curl up in the blankets, and I must doze off because when I wake up, Colleen and Isadora are crawling into bed, and it’s late.

Skarr didn’t come to talk to me.

Well…fine. I didn’t want to talk to him, either.

The next few days feel agonizingly slow.

I sleep fitfully each night, piled in with the other women sharing blankets. It’s innocent enough, but my dreams are full of Skarr and I wake up throbbing and yearning. The last thing I want is another woman snuggled up against my back when my khui is humming out of control. When I’m not dreaming about Skarr, I’m tending to fires or fishing in the woods, talking to a person I can’t see. My surroundings are full of mountains and tall green trees, and I wear black waders with the pants and boots built into a float at the waist. We laugh at how ugly my pants are, but that the color is a good choice because I always wear black.

Those dreams are always more disturbing than the ones about Skarr, because I wake up aching and missing the person in my dreams. I think it’s my father, but I never see his face or remember his name. Just that I loved him.

The days are not much better than my troubling nights. Skarr keeps away from the main camp, and because the other women are sticking close, I do, too. Gail, Flor, and the other women who have been here a while take time each day to try and show us skills—how to skin a dead animal, how to butcher it, how to make food over the fire with the tripod bags and hot stones that are slipped inside the bag to warm the contents. There’s sewing and the making of clothes, since we’ll be in charge of dressing ourselves. There are skins to be worked, fish to be gutted, seaweed to be dried, roots and herbs to be collected. It’s an exhaustive, never-ending list, but the women here support each other and tackle the chores as they come. No one is expected to be superhuman or skilled, just to give it their best effort.

So I do my best to learn everything that’s put in front of me. I sew an ugly tunic for myself that fits and is warm. I help cook food and gather herbs and roots. Instinct takes over and I seem to already know how to scale and gut a fish, and one day I get stuck gutting everyone’s fish, which isn’t my favorite, but at least no one tries to approach me and make conversation.

I’m still not comfortable speaking. They all yet feel like strangers.

Skarr is avoiding me, too, I think. If resonance keeps him up at night, he doesn’t show it. He’s up bright and early, going hunting or working on his “secret project” with Jason and Ashtar. He doesn’t come near the fire when I’m there, and at night, when a large group gathers to tell stories, share food, and enjoy company, I retreat to give him a chance to talk to me privately.

He never seeks me out, though. He never comes looking for me, and it bothers me. Am I the only one being woken up with wet dreams? Does he not get hit out of the blue in the middle of the day with need so strong that it makes his limbs shake?

Is he not troubled by resonance at all? Or is he tired of pursuing me?

I could go after him, of course. Demand that he sit down somewhere quiet and talk to me. I could make the first move.

In theory, anyhow. In reality, I’m too tongue-tied. Every time the idea of talking to him crosses my mind, I think about how I grabbed his privates and then ran like a virgin. Maybe there weren’t two. Maybe he was just really big and I mistook girth for two dicks. I obsess over that moment.

Okay, to be fair, I obsess over every moment as I work. I play our conversations back in my head and scan the beach for him even though I tell myself I’m not interested. That I’m going to talk to the healer about shutting things off any day now. That I don’t want him. Or babies. Or resonance.

Truth of the matter is, though…I don’t dislike Skarr.

He’s a blowhard, yes. A braggart and a bit too enthusiastic about violence. He loves attention. We’re complete opposites in that respect. But he’s never been openly unkind to me, just clueless. He’s taken care of me in the past and tried in his own way to be caring.

So no, I’m not as horrified as I was about resonating to him. It just feels complicated, especially after I ran.

Three days pass. Then three days more. Skarr continues to move in different circles than me. We don’t run into each other on the beach.

And all the while, my dreams get filthier and filthier.

After a week of avoiding each other, I wake up just before dawn, aching and aroused. In my dreams, Skarr opened his pants to reveal a line of cocks going down his leg, and I rode every single one of them. It’s a ridiculous, stupid dream that shouldn’t make me wet, but it does. My khui throbs and hums constantly, and I know it’s not helping. I get to my feet and put on my shoes, but when I come out of the tent and see a cluster of people by the fire, I don’t want to join them.

I don’t want to sit by the fire today. Or anyone, today. I just want to be left alone.

So I move to the first person I see that’s preparing to go out hunting. It’s Penny and her big mate, S’bren. She’s got snowshoes in one hand and a spear in another, watching as S’bren straps their toddler into a carrier on his chest. I tap her on the shoulder and give an anxious smile of greeting. “Hi. Do you know if anyone has skis I can borrow?”

Penny blinks at me in surprise. “Skis?”

“Yes. Skis.” I keep my voice casual, as if it’s no big deal to ask for something so I can go off wandering the hills by myself. I’m not worried about danger. I can take care of myself, and in one of my dreams I’d been cross-country skiing through those mountains I’ve dreamed about. “It’s something I’ve done before. I’ll be fine.”

But Penny just gives me a long, thoughtful stare. “Skis.”

“Yes.” Why is this a big deal?

She turns toward Harlow—the freckled redhead—who is beside the fire. “Why don’t we have skis?”

“Skis?” Harlow seems just as surprised.

“Does no one here ski?” I ask in a timid voice. “I thought since there were snowy mountains…”

Penny turns back to me and gives a helpless shrug. “I think most of us are from the south or not sporty. No one has skis.”

Well, that seems rather ridiculous to me. “Oh. I can make some.”

Harlow moves toward us, a thoughtful look on her face. Nadine—one of the women here and a hunter on her own—also seems interested. “I think Liz probably tried to make skis once but no one had any skill with them,” Harlow continues. “But it wouldn’t hurt for us to learn if you know how to use them.”

I just nod.

Nadine wiggles her eyebrows at me. “I am all about some ski action. Can I help?”

“Sure.” I smile at her. Maybe this is what I need—a distraction from Skarr and his avoidance of me. A new task to keep me busy and out of camp so I don’t feel the ache of him missing.

After all, it’s silly to miss someone that’s been thrown at you. I should be glad that he’s not here.

Chapter Twenty-One

VIVI

“We might have to try a few different sorts of materials before we find the right one,” Nadine says to me as we hike through the snows. Her dark skin glows against her pale leathers, and she looks radiant with excitement. “I’ve got three different things in mind at the moment, so we can gather a little of everything and experiment.”

We’re at the rocky base of the mountains a few hours away from camp, and the landscape changes dramatically, just as I remember. The cove of the beach is protected by high cliffs, but once you get past those, the cliffs continue to scale up and up, the snows growing deeper and the winds more bitter as you get to the base of the mountains proper. I’m starting to get used to the cold weather, and thanks to the khui and my new, better-fitting clothing, it just feels brisk and refreshing instead of life-ending.