She was in the ravine again, in winter, wearing a snug jacket, too-big boots with thick waffle-tread, and thermal tights that insulated so efficiently she was sweating by the time she and Nadie reached the end of the short tunnel. She paused in the tunnel-mouth, poised between captivity and freedom, and had called out softly, “Dis?”
“We’ll talk again,” Dis said. “I’ve already emailed my diff. I love you, Iceweasel.”
“I love you, too.”
She didn’t meet Nadie’s eyes. She’d just confessed to loving software. She hated herself for being embarrassed by it.
She’d seen pictures of Toronto winters in her father’s childhood, her grandparents’ – snow-forts, plows on the roads, salting trucks. But in all the time she’d spent in the city, there’d never been enough snow to make a decent snowball – not like the high-altitude snow she and Cordelia hurled at each other atop Whistler and Mont Blanc – just a gray frozen custard that froze to the sidewalks and streets in late January and lasted until April or sometimes May. On very cold days, it turned into treacherous ice, slippery to walk on and thin in places, your foot plunging through into lurking reservoirs of frozen water.
The floor of the ravine was that texture – frozen enough to almost burn if it touched your skin, unfrozen enough to be a gelatinous hazard that sucked at Iceweasel’s boots. She staggered through it in her borrowed clothes – some of Nadie’s ninja-wear, a bizarro-world version of walkaways’ printed cold-weather clothes, also lacking in manufacturer’s markings, also wicking and dirt-shedding and soft inside and rip-stopping on the outside, but printed with dazzle-textures that hurt the mind to look at. Looking at her knees as her legs fought the mud and slope as they sloshed downhill made her dizzy.
Even Nadie – wearing dazzle-stuff, hard to look at for more than a few seconds – struggled with the terrain, dancing a few steps down the hill, getting caught, lumbering a few more, using sickly trees to catch herself. Even so, she soon got ahead of Iceweasel. Iceweasel reminded herself she’d been a prisoner for months and had hardly exercised. Also, she wasn’t a ninja mercenary bad-ass.
Iceweasel breathed chest-heaving pants. It wasn’t just the dazzle fabric that made her dizzy. She had to keep going, but she’d be in trouble if she hyperventilated and keeled over. She slowed, used trees for handholds, rough palms of her oversized gloves gripping the trunks so ferociously they threatened to come off her hands when she put too much of her weight on them.
Nadie disappeared down the riverbank. Iceweasel was careful to eyeball the spot where she’d gone down, use it as a navigational aid. She considered running off, but she needed Nadie to get away. And Nadie could catch her without breaking a sweat.
Before she reached the riverbank, Nadie reappeared, snow-suit sheened to the waist with water. She slogged through the slush to Iceweasel, gripped on her upper arm.
“We need to be faster now.”
“I’m going as fast as I can—”
“Faster.” She pulled. She had the strength to make it mean something, and to keep her upright. Supporting both of them made Nadie stagger like a drunk, but a quick drunk. Iceweasel’s heart hammered, but she didn’t resist. She was in the world, in default, out of her cage. She breathed the same air as Gretyl. She looked at the same sky. This was what she wanted. This was freedom.
The riverbank was scored with ruts where Nadie heel-slid into the swift river. She planted Iceweasel on her butt. “Slide.” She skated into the water, knees bent like a shushing skier. She didn’t stop at the water, merely tucked deeply, then levered herself upright, braced against current, holding her arms out to Iceweasel as she skidded after her, scooting over the frozen mud on her butt, the air turning colder and wetter as she descended.
Seconds later, she was alongside of Nadie, facing upstream, wading, pulling herself with the help of Nadie’s sure grip and the branches and scrub growing on the side of the bank, some of which gave way when she put her weight on it.
The water deepened to their waists. The riverbed was uneven and slimy against her boots. They did an admirable job of keeping out the water, as had her not-tight-enough tights. But there were three places where her borrowed ninja gear failed to attain a seal – her left ankle, another right below her belly button, over one hip. The water trickled into these spots, making spreading numb-patches that started coin-sized but were quickly entire continents of burning cold that sprouted questing archipelagos every time she stretched.
Just as she thought she was going to have to demand that they get onto land, Nadie scampered up the bank, dropped onto her belly and reached for her. They locked wrists and Nadie supported her while she got her grippy soles under her and wall-walked up to the scree. She shivered uncontrollably.
“My suit leaked,” she said around chattering teeth.
“Up.” Nadie pulled.
They were further up the ravine, somewhere near where Serena Gundy Park gave way to gate-guarded complexes on its north side. Nadie led them toward the condos, ninja-suits shedding dirt. Moving briskly made Iceweasel marginally warmer. The fabric wicked away water, but still she shivered.
“Here.” Iceweasel couldn’t tell what Nadie meant for a moment, then she realized they were in a small parking lot that must serve dog-walkers who wanted exercise, but not as much as they’d get slogging to the park through the service road behind the condos’ fences. There was nothing parked there, no one using the washed-out trails in the middle of winter. Then a nearly silent taxi swung off the road, up the short slipway to the lot. Its doors clunked.
“In.”
The taxi’s interior was warm and smelled of pumpkin-spice. There were two half-liter go-cups from Starbucks wedged in the cup holders, and a pair of machine-wrapped parcels that they had to slide over on the bench before they could sit. They were heavy.
“Drink up, should be hot.” Nadie slammed the door and the car slid into motion, fishtailing slightly as the tires tried the slushy ground, stepping through their characteristic exponential backoff dance as they sought optimal torque. It was a sensation from the days when she’d been a good girl and a Redwater, with cars from exclusive, bonded services pulling up whenever she summoned them, whisking her from a weekend cottage or a cousin’s jealousy-inducingly huge place in the Bridle Path or King City. She still reeled from captivity and the water, hypothermic patches on her skin and near hyperventilation.
But none of those journeys had been in the company of someone like Nadie, whose microexpressions had been exchanged for a macroexpression: satisfied, flare-nostriled animal excitement. This was Nadie’s element, the uncoiling of the spring she kept wound tight during the days of guard-keeping. This brought Iceweasel to another time, that half-remembered traumatic night when she’d been taken, after the downing of the Better Nation, the look on Nadie’s face that night, how it shone. Somehow, Iceweasel had forgot that expression until she saw it again. The shine in her eyes was only a shadow of the fully awakened Nadie that took her from the woods.