Content warning: in this chapter, there is substantially more violence and swearing than in previous chapters, and gendered and transmisogynistic slurs without the coyness that has so far been standard.
TWELVE: LESSONS LEARNED
Tuesday, 20th September
Some time later, Gwyneth wakes. It's the same old thing: tired, but sleep is suddenly not an option. Apparently it can happen even when she's as exhausted as she is now. She lies there for a while, trying to slump out of wakefulness and back into sleep, but it doesn't happen. She almost cries in frustration. Not now. Not tonight of all nights. After all that walking, and with so much more to go, can she not just sleep, for once?
No, comes the answer from her body. She can't.
Gwyneth lies there for what feels like forever, like a corpse in a tin tomb. Her eyes adjust to the darkness and she sees a very faint red light at the edge of the window. The campfire, she supposes. She could stand at the window and look out at that instead of her reflection. If she could move. Which she can't.
When she shifts her gaze away from the window again she thinks she sees someone standing in the opposite corner and her chest seizes up in terror but a moment's reflection tells her it's probably not real. Even when she sees it move.
Time passes. The shadow person in the corner does not seem interested in moving any more, or in leaving.
Gwyneth lies there, staring, and wishes she could sleep till morning.
Dawn finds her in exactly the same position. She did get a little sleep; not nearly as much as she needs, but at least the shadow person has gone. Gwyneth forces herself out of bed, more angry at the effort it takes than hurt by the pain it causes, and tells herself she's being silly for checking. It was the middle of the night. Everything looks like a shadow person in the middle of the night.
Still, she can't help looking again. Just to be sure.
"Hey, asshole," she says, trying to banish the silence. "How you doing?"
The venipede looks up at her from underneath the opposite bed and rattles, raising her forelegs and waving them back and forth.
"I don't speak bug," says Gwyneth. "Don't suppose you can do Unovan?"
Click click click.
"Yeah, I figured as much." She rubs some of the stiffness out of her neck and reaches for her bag. She's after food, but while she's looking for it she finds her tablets and realises she never took them yesterday. Any of them: the ones ze'Naarat gave her, and the ones she already takes. Do better today, she commands herself, and digs out some bread.
When she sees it, the venipede's rattling and waving gets more intense, and Gwyneth finally understands.
"You're hungry? Okay, sure. Not what you got in the Centre, but it's all there is."
She gives her a banana and one of the vitamin gummy worm things, at least one of which is the sort of thing a venipede is supposed to eat, and watches her carefully murder each of them while she chews her roll.
"That's a banana, dude," says Gwyneth, as the venipede bites through its stalk in lieu of a throat. "It's not gonna run away."
The venipede is less certain. Only when she's sure that it isn't getting back up again does she take her eye off it to deal with the vitamin worm.
"Okay, whatever." Gwyneth washes down the bread with the remains of yesterday's water and pulls on her jacket. "Back in a minute."
Outside, it's cold and damp. The fire in the pit has burnt down to embers, and the only sign of movement is that watchog, standing guard outside one of the kids' tents. When it sees her, it stands up straighter and hisses.
"You and me both, dude," she tells it, and goes looking for water.
It's not a long quest. This campsite has a water pump, which Gwyneth in her current state barely has the strength to work but which, in the end, gives her a modicum of clear water that she takes inside to boil on the hot plate. It doesn't come on, and she remembers that she never activated the generator. So it's back outside, and round the back to flip the switch and get the chargestone spinning.
When she gets back in she turns the hot plate on and sits down heavily in the chair, breathing hard. This isn't good. Two short trips that didn't even take her out of the campsite, and she's already exhausted. How much time did she give herself to get through White Forest? Two days if she's fast? Good estimate there, Gwyneth. Great job. Not only is this place much bigger than she thought, the whole idea of going fast is very quickly starting to seem like a distant dream. She doesn't even know if she can make it to the next campsite before the day is out.
She closes her eyes and hunches her back, holding her bad hand close to her chest. Her pulse oozes sluggishly through the inflamed flesh, thick and slow as molasses.
Is this it, she asks herself. Is this as far as you get?
It's not too late. She can go back to the bus stop, fake her way aboard or hell, just pass out in the middle of the road so they have to take her; go back to Nimbasa, ask Dr. ze'Naarat to help her before she ends up dead. It won't be easy. It's a long walk, and maybe even worse than that, she'd have to swallow her pride; still, it would probably work. Even if she can't do that she could get the kids camping here to signal for a ranger. When they came they'd give her hell, sure, for coming out here alone and sick and unprepared, but they'd have to get her out all the same.
Gwyneth remembers what ze'Naarat asked her, the day before she left the Pokémon Centre: do you really think you can come out in one piece at the other end?
She answers again. This time she's honest.
Half an hour later, Gwyneth is on the move. She's decided. No going back. Not for anything, ever. She's always said that, hasn't she? Or whatever, she said it one time at least. You can never go back. And she's sticking to it.
What is there to go back to, anyway? Some people get chosen and some do not, and if you're one of the ones who are not then to hell with it, there's nothing left for you to lose.
So. She grits her teeth and tries not to limp and walks the trail through the forest.
Her footsteps are loud and awkward, a cacophony of breaking sticks and crumpling leaves trailing in her wake. Her head starts to ache, a dull pounding like the first ominous signs of illness.
Not the first sign, she corrects. She's already ill. Her hand is infected and her nerves are messed up from the poison. (At least, she thinks they are. She wasn't listening very hard when Tasnim explained, a lifetime ago in Virbank.) Really, it's surprising she hasn't got a headache already.
There's nothing to be done. Gwyneth drinks water until the bottle is empty and her stomach uncomfortably full and still her head keeps on hurting.
She would be angry, but even anger seems like too much effort now. She imagines collapsing here and being eaten by wolves or oddish. That's a thing that happens, isn't it? She's sure she saw a TV documentary where some species of oddish found a corpse and planted itself inside it to wait out the day, sucking in blood and rot-liquefied flesh through its roots.
Maybe you don't get oddish like that here. She doesn't remember where it was filmed, but she thinks it was some kind of desert.
Her thoughts get circuitous. She feels light-headed and has to pause when the forest wobbles momentarily around her.
Eventually, she stops.
There's nothing special about this patch of woodland: it has trees, bushes, piles of wet leaves, not even an interesting fallen log or rock formation that might set it apart from the rest of the forest. It's just the place where she ran out of momentum and had to sit down. Gwyneth puts her back against a tree and eases herself onto the ground, desperate and sweating.
"Dude," she whispers, with cracked lips and not-quite-coping lungs. "How you doing?"
The venipede clicks, uncomprehending, and crawls slowly around in the dirt beside her, favouring her wounded side. Her antennae move back and forth, sometimes fast, sometimes slow. Like she's conducting a symphony only she can hear.
"Okay," says Gwyneth, wiping her forehead on her sleeve. "That's okay too."
She stays there a little while, watching the venipede explore the leaf litter. She is tempted to stay longer, to stay forever, to close her eyes and lean back and wait for the centuries it will take for the earth to swallow her body and feed its fading remnants to the worms and the questing roots of trees, but she doesn't. She gets her breath back, and she gets to her feet, and she starts to walk again.
Now she moves very slowly, and she knows it. She thinks about finding a branch or something to use as a walking stick, but even now she can't bring herself to admit to that much weakness. The landscape shuffles by at a snail's pace, and the sun slips down towards the horizon, and somehow it's dark again and Gwyneth still hasn't even seen so much as a sign for the next campsite.
But she doesn't stop. Once was enough, she tells herself. A few more yards, and she'll see the sign, and then it's only going to be another few minutes till the cabin itself …
Gwyneth comes close, but she doesn't fall over. She can't. There's a venipede on her shoulder, and she is hurt. So she can't fall over, so she doesn't fall over, so she keeps walking, keeps cajoling and bribing and bullying, somehow dragging just one more step out of her failing body over and over again, and against everyone's advice, against all sense, she keeps on walking.
Even the past won't go right. She tries to unstick her mind from the pain, to cast herself backwards into memory, but her concentration is shot to hell. It's all she can do to stay upright. Complex thought would seem to be off the cards.
By the light of the moon, she fumbles her wallet from her pocket and takes out the photograph to look at, hoping for she doesn't know what, for energy maybe, for love, for just a little hope. She stares at it and sees nothing more than ink on paper, forming soft-edged shapes in red and brown and green and white. Blinking, she tries again, but she can't see her face there, or Nika's.
She puts the photo away, slowly, mechanically, and walks.
It's strange how she never noticed it before, she thinks, but there really isn't very much to a forest. Lines of light and dark, shapes, planes, angles. It's just geometry. Just a way of arranging space.
Up ahead there is a square of yellow light, and Gwyneth walks into an area of cleared woodland with a big log cabin at its centre.
For a while she stands there, uncomprehending. The yellow square and dark bulk of the cabin do not seem to make sense after all the forest shapes she has come through. But slowly, as the minutes pass, she realises what she is looking at, and then something in her screams its relief and she is suddenly and disorientingly back.
She lets out a long breath. She might have been holding it; hard to be sure.
"Okay, dude," she says, trudging towards the door. "Guess the oddish are going hungry tonight."
The instant Gwyneth walks in, she knows there's going to be trouble.
She sees the room: table and chairs on the right, couch facing the fire in the middle, five beds on the left. A couple of prints on the walls. Old curtains, not drawn. Wood, tiles. Clean and homely.
The real issue: she also sees five people here, sitting around the table. Three of them are adult men, late twenties or early thirties, chatting over the remnants of a meal. One is a guy in his late teens, feeding peanuts to a colourful bird pokémon that Gwyneth doesn't recognise. The last is Tor, hunched a little in their chair, and looking nervous.
These five people see her back, and it is in their eyes that she sees how things stand.
She sighs. She could leave, it's true, and take her chances in the forest. Maybe if she felt better she would, except that Tor is here, and even now, as messed-up as she is, she knows she can't abandon them.
So. She swallows, and breathes, and summons up the last of her energy to speak.
"Hi," she says. "Full house, huh?"
"Hey, the more the merrier," says the teenager she doesn't know. "I'm sure we can find space. Come on in, you look beat."
"Perceptive of you," she says, grabbing the venipede and dropping her pack with a sigh. "I'm Gwyneth."
"Nick."
The men don't say anything, which is about what Gwyneth was expecting. She picks one and holds his gaze while she takes a seat between Nick and Tor.
"Hey, Tor," she says. "Didn't know you were coming this way."
"Hey," they reply. They look obviously, desperately glad that she is here. Her heart sinks to see it. "Yeah, I thought I'd do some exploring in the woods. Stay in this cabin for a while and see what I can find around here."
They must have come around the north way. Which means that somehow, by luck or stubbornness or the grace of Nika's God, Gwyneth has made it all the way down the east path to the place where it joins up with the north one and the trail to Route 14. It's incredible, although she isn't really in the right frame of mind to appreciate it right now.
"Your sigilyph okay?" she asks. "I mean, I'm sure she is, after beating Elesa like that, but I know sometimes they get funny if you take 'em too far from the ruins."
Gwyneth actually does not know this, is in fact inventing all of this wholesale, and maybe the three men can tell this and maybe they can't, but that's not the point. The point is that they now know Tor has a sigilyph (which is intimidating) that beat an electric-type Gym Leader (which is more so). The point is that Tor is now safe.
Gwyneth has seen eyes like these men have before. They are afraid of her, on some level, and they are infuriated by her, and they are sickened by her, and they might express this in any of several violent and unpalatable ways and it would not even be personal. It would just be a lesson in human history, in the forces that shape her world. It would be the kind of lesson she learned from the boys who beat her up when she was a kid, or the police officer in the station at Nacrene, back when Martin died. Hands. Eyes. Symbols of power. And always, always, the knowledge that she exists only because they permit it.
Tor might have been taught this lesson already, but they're a kid and a trainer and Gwyneth isn't, and so even if it draws attention she'd rather not have she has to stand between them and those who would teach them. She asks them her question, and out of the corner of her eye watches the three men's faces shift minutely as they register her words.
"Oh yeah, she's fine," replies Tor, oblivious. "I think the rain bothers her a bit, but she's okay."
"Good." Gwyneth turns to the men on the other side of the table. "I didn't catch your names?"
There's a suitably chilly pause, and then she gets her answers. Harry. Abel. Truman.
"What brings you out here?" she asks.
"Hiking," says Truman.
"You guys trainers?"
Another pause. Maybe they've figured out that she's probing them. Maybe they just don't want to talk to her. Gwyneth supposes the second option's probably more likely. Generally the people who have the power only have an intuitive sense of how a dynamic like this works. It's left to the other person to calculate the nuances. And okay, Gwyneth is not so good at math, but she's had a long time to run these particular numbers.
"No," says Abel. "No, we're just hiking."
(Then Tor will be fine.)
"Cool. You?"
"Me?" Nick sits up, blinks. "Uh yeah, sure. I'm visiting friends in Undella. Just taking the scenic route with my partners."
The bird pokémon whistles, and in Gwyneth's lap, the venipede rattles warningly, forefeet raised in a feeble attempt at a threat display.
"Hey, keep your damn bug under control," says Abel, and Gwyneth is so tired she can hardly keep back the anger, but she knows better than to reply, so she just pushes the venipede gently back down into her lap, nodding something that might be an apology.
"She's cranky sometimes," she says blandly. "Anyway, that's nice. I'm going to a wedding in Humilau. Also taking the scenic route."
"You a trainer?"
"Kinda. Travelling with pokémon, anyway." This is getting hard. That initial buzz of fear and hate is wearing off, leadening her limbs and clouding her head. Come on, Gwyneth. Keep it together, for just another damn minute. End this conversation naturally, like you're a real person and not whatever the hell it is you actually are. "Haven't trained properly for years now."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah."
There is an uncomfortable silence. Maybe she can't end this naturally after all. Nick looks uneasily at the hikers. He's sensing something, clearly, their anger and animosity, but he hasn't clocked her yet, hasn't worked out what's going on. Tor is quiet and hunched in their chair, folded as small as their long limbs will allow.
Gwyneth yawns. It starts off fake but turns real halfway through.
"Well," she says, climbing stiffly out of her chair. "I'm gonna get some sleep. Don't mind me, now."
"Sure," says Nick, a little too fast. "Hey, I can sleep on the couch―"
"Nah, 's okay. I'm not hurt as bad as I look." Gwyneth appreciates it, though. His offer is much nicer than she expects of a kid his age. "Uh – Tor, can you give me a hand with my bag? I only got one arm and it's carrying my venipede."
"Oh." They look startled to be drawn back into conversation. "Um, sure."
They grab her backpack from where she dropped it by the door, hefting it with enviable ease, and takes it over to the couch. Behind them, Gwyneth hears the hikers start to talk again. Okay. She deposits the venipede on the couch and puts her hand on Tor's arm.
"Hey," she mutters. "Everything okay?"
They nod, but their eyes say otherwise.
"Seen their type before," she tells them. "They're assholes, I know, but you'll be okay. Keep Vega out of her ball, just in case."
Tor blinks, and Gwyneth notices along with the firelight a glimmer of understanding in their eyes that makes her feel old and dirty. They're only now realising the game she's played, the calculated gambles that form the fabric of her life. Cynical jerk that she is.
"Okay," they say, very quietly. "Um – thanks."
She smiles. It's not a very good smile but it does the job.
"'S nothing," she says. And then, louder: "Thanks, Tor. Goodnight."
"Night."
They go, not back to the table but to one of the beds in the corner to the left. Gwyneth hears a low, inhuman murmuring as she unlaces her boots, followed by a momentary pause in the conversation at the table, and nods to herself in a kind of dissatisfied satisfaction. Okay. Her job is done, her duties discharged. For once.
She takes off her jacket and sling and drapes them over her bag. She moves the venipede to one side, then lies down. It's the one time her height, or lack of it, ever comes in handy. She can't reach tall shelves, but she fits better on a couch than most people she knows. It's not perfect, but then, what is?
She listens to Nick and the hikers talking for a moment, then closes her eyes. The fire is warm on her face, and as she at last lets go and drifts off to sleep she finds herself reminded of the bright Humilau sun.
This time, it takes. Gwyneth sleeps, and sleeps deeply, without dreams or fear or shadow people, and she does not wake for a long, long time.
Wednesday, 21st September
Gwyneth opens her eyes, finds herself stiff and uncomfortable but otherwise more all right than she has any reason to expect, and sits up.
"Ugh," she mumbles, blinking until the fireplace comes back into focus. Just embers now, but the room is still warm.
She looks around. Four empty beds, one occupied, Nick yawning over coffee at the table. The hikers are gone, she realises. The hikers are gone, and Vega's still hovering over Tor's bed like the world's creepiest guardian angel. Okay, then. Things are looking up.
Or they do for a moment, anyway, until she remembers what day it is. It's Wednesday the twenty-first. The day before the wedding, and she's still hundreds of miles from Humilau.
Gwyneth swallows, and puts this information down carefully somewhere at the back of her head. It's fine. She's going to make it. She isn't sure how, yet, but she's going to do it. One foot in front of the other, right? And don't die. You do that, you're halfway there already.
"Morning," she says, and Nick starts. His bird, still on his shoulder, shrieks indignantly and flaps to keep its balance.
"Oh. Hey! Morning." He looks at her a little differently this time. Probably he's figured it all out by now. The fact that she needs to shave is almost certainly something of a giveaway. Still, no overt hostility, which after last night is actually kind of refreshing. "I'm making more coffee," he says. "Do you want some?"
"Yes. Thanks."
"There's no milk, though. Or sugar."
"'S okay. I'll live."
Gwyneth rubs her eyes and looks around for the venipede. For a moment she can't see her, and her eyes leap automatically and irrationally to the fireplace, in case she somehow managed to jump in and burn herself to death, but then she looks again and sees the antennae poking out from underneath the sofa.
"Hey, asshole," she says, leaning down. "You awake?"
She can't get low enough to see under there, but she hears the clicking and straightens up, satisfied.
"All right. You hang out under there then, I guess."
She gets out her mirror, props it against the cushions and applies her tweezers to her face. There doesn't seem much point in being coy about it now, and anyway it's more for her benefit than anyone else's. Not many people see Gwyneth and think she's cis even on a good day, but looking in the mirror and seeing hairs sticking out of her face makes her want to remove her skin with a vegetable peeler.
"Here," says Nick, coming over with coffee, self-consciously not looking at her.
"Thanks," she says, taking it and putting it down on the floor. "The other guys gone already?"
"Hm? Yeah, they're like serious hikers. I think they're going most of the way across Calarat."
The Arat and the Norn, two rivers whose names are corruptions of old Heniil words, divide Unova into three. Calarat, Khel Aaràt if you care about these things, is everything east of the Arat. It's a long way, although not as long as the trip Gwyneth is trying to make.
"Guess they wanted to make the most of the light," she says.
"Guess so," agrees Nick.
There is a pause.
"Thanks for the coffee," says Gwyneth, and Nick goes back to his seat at the table.
Gwyneth finishes with her face, covers the red blotches of irritated skin with foundation, and starts looking for food in her pack. She finds her tablets, and realises she forgot to take them again, so she gulps them down now with her coffee and follows it with very stale bread and slightly wrinkly apples. She actually has an appetite this morning, which is a pleasant change, and she makes the most of it.
"So did you come round the north way?" she asks Nick. "That's where we are, right? The bit where the paths join up?"
"Yeah," he says. "And no, I came round the east way. But I've been here for a few days. I'm trying to find a ralts. I caught one here a year ago, so I'm back to find one for a friend."
"There are ralts here?"
"Yeah."
Nick takes a ball from his pocket and releases a kirlia, a lithe little figure in green and white that as far as Gwyneth see has no feet. It must stand with its psychic power instead, she decides, and looks up hurriedly. Those pointed legs are making her feel like her own feet might fall off.
"His name's Celio," says Nick. "And he's a damn thief, hence why he's been in his ball. Didn't dare let him out while there were so many people around with bags and stuff."
Celio folds his arms and gives Nick a look of wounded pride.
"What does he steal?" asks Gwyneth.
"He likes pencils most. But he'll take pens, and, failing that, anything that can make a mark on anything else. I don't know why, he doesn't draw or write or anything, he just likes to take them and pile them up in a corner where he never looks at them again."
"Huh," she says, eyeing him. Celio eyes her back, unnervingly smart. "Weird."
The conversation dies out. Vega drifts soundlessly from her position above Tor's bed to investigate Celio, scrutinising him carefully with her fake-looking eye. Celio squirms and retreats behind Nick; Vega, apparently satisfied that he poses no threat, moves slowly back into place.
Gwyneth takes a breath. She's rested, she's fed, she's drunk at least some coffee. It's time to make use of what little time she has left and get going.
"Okay," she says, leaning down and beckoning the venipede out from her hiding place, "I got to go if I want to stay on track for this wedding. Thanks for the coffee."
"Oh sure," replies Nick. "No problem. You got far to go?"
"Humilau."
"Oh yeah, you said."
Gwyneth fills her bottle at the tap – an actual tap, what a goddamn luxury – and arranges her stuff on her back: jacket, backpack, venipede. It's heavy, but she doesn't feel nearly as close to falling over as she did this time yesterday morning.
"Say bye to Tor for me, would you?" she asks Nick. "If you're still around when they get up."
"Sure, I'll be here a while yet," says Nick. "Till we find that ralts. Or the end of the week, whichever comes sooner." Celio twitters and the bird pokémon caws softly. "Good luck!"
"Thanks," replies Gwyneth, from the doorway. And then, when the door has closed between them and she knows he can't hear her: "I think I might need it."
Just outside the cabin, there's another map, right where the path splits three ways. One branch goes back the way Gwyneth came; one goes west-northwest, round the other side of the loop; the last goes northeast, up towards Route 14. Gwyneth looks at the scale and measures it against the paths with her fingers. Even she is impressed at how far she's come now. The only problem is, none of it means a damn thing unless she somehow gets out of the woods, up Route 14, through Undella, over the hills and across the water out to Humilau – all before tomorrow.
"Maybe the wedding isn't till the afternoon," she says, as if an extra couple of hours makes any goddamn difference.
She sighs, and starts walking up the northeast trail.
Today, the forest is warmer and drier. Gwyneth isn't sure whether that's because she's going east or just because the weather's changing, but it's welcome either way. The damp wasn't making the aches and pains she's picked up over the past couple of weeks any easier to bear. It's a small thing, but right now even small things make a difference, and she walks a little lighter for it.
White Forest really is beautiful, in the right weather. Gwyneth will concede that much. The russet leaves, the first early berries on the bushes, the glint of light on water when the path veers close to a stream. Birdsong, the pops of colour from cardinals and blue jays, the sudden flash of white overhead as a togetic glides between trees. Under different circumstances, with a working arm and better diet and a friend to walk with, Gwyneth might like to linger, to follow the streams to their sources, to find caves or waterfalls or spectacular trees grown massive with age and lack of human interference. Now all she can do is look, and let the little part of her that isn't concentrating on Humilau and one-foot-in-front-of-the-other nod and say, that's cool.
It reminds her a little of Route 6, in a way – of that particular forest, that particular beauty. Light filtering through leaves, the sound of boots on dirt and fallen sticks. Of course that was different, that was at the height of summer and anyway she herself was different (younger, bouncier, hopefuller); still, there's something there. Some kind of beautiful that only forests share in.
Still, Gwyneth remembers being glad to get out, in the end. She has that time down in her mind as taking a long time, an extended ramble playing out over several weeks. Probably it isn't even really about the forest, in the end; it's about Nika, or from Nika's point of view, she supposes, about Gwyneth.
They stay for several days in that cabin, walking around in the woods, looking for pokémon – not really with an eye to catching any, since Nika's fairly happy with her team for now, but for the pleasure of seeing them, of creating moments in which the two of them at once witness the same amazing thing. They never get bored. Later, after she becomes something of a connoisseur of boredom, Gwyneth will look back on that and not understand; at the time, however, it makes perfect sense. Everything is special and everything is fun, because they're both doing it and that, in the end, is all that really matters.
And out here they really are alone. They don't have to play the game that dances around Gwyneth's untouchability, the wrongness in her; there's no one to perform for but themselves, and so they can just be that, be themselves. They hold hands and sing badly and quote poetry and video games. They watch Hekate crow with delight and burst free from the broken skull she wears around her legs, suddenly huge and powerful and rising up above them on wings broader than Nika is tall. They don't exist. They live, and they flourish.
What drives them back towards civilisation is, in the end, the knowledge that there is so much more of this to come, in so many more places, and also (being practical for a moment) the lack of laundry facilities out here in the middle of nowhere. So they pack up their stuff and head west along the riverbank, and though it's a little sad, it's hopeful too. Because if it happened once, it can happen again, right? And there will always be cracks in the pavement through which even a life as unlikely as theirs can push.
They wait for hours at the deserted bus stop outside Chargestone Cave, and eventually manage to get a ride through the mountain pass to Icirrus. (They didn't intend to skip Mistralton, but this bus apparently does not stop there.) It's a long ride, eight hours of winding between snow-capped walls of ice and stone, the road getting higher and the air colder with every turn, and they fall asleep somewhere along the way, waking to darkness and a chill that makes them shiver in their shorts. Apparently summer only reaches so far, and one of the places it struggles to get to is Icirrus, way up here among the mountains.
Stumbling through the gathering dusk, trying to find the Pokémon Centre, both of them feel lost in the freezing night, and wonder if they made a mistake in coming here. But they get there, and the night passes, and in the morning it's as bright as it ever was, and okay it's not as warm as it looks but whatever, who cares, the point is Icirrus is fine after all. It's windy, and everything is wet all of the time, even when it's not raining, but that's part of the charm, right?
Right, they agree, and get to exploring. And there are things to see, people to meet, trainers to defeat (and it is always defeat; Britomartis is slowing down, saving energy for evolution, but Hekate is revelling in her new strength as a mandibuzz and under Nika's direction shreds the competition), and the rhythm of travel begins again. Gwyneth forgets about Kit, forgets about autumn. She does know by now that Nika's parents have only given her this year – that she has to be back in Humilau by October – but she forgets this too, blanks out everything, even as the days pass and Nika starts to think about how to divide up her remaining time.
I think we can do Twist Mountain and Mistralton, she says. It's really not so hard going in summer.
Mm, says Gwyneth, non-committally, and fiddles with the ends of her hair.
Of course, there's a Gym challenge to do here. They're both pretty confident Nika can handle Brycen, even if he is her fourth Gym. Astyanax is obviously not going to be much use here, defensively weak as he is, but despite her weakness to it Hekate tanked an aurora beam to the chest the other day, and Britomartis has never had a problem with ice-types. The main reason why Nika waits at all is for Britomartis to finish evolving, so she'll be at her best, and sure enough one morning she's woken by a crash like a steelworks collapsing to see her flexing new muscles among the twisted remnants of her old shell, as tall now as Nika and much, much sharper.
After they've managed to get rid of her baby armour (the Centre staff give them the number of someone who buys this kind of thing, and actually Nika makes a couple of hundred dollars out of it; dark-infused pawniard steel is pretty valuable stuff), they head down to the Icirrus Gym, which is up in a cave to the northeast. It doesn't sound very impressive, says Gwyneth, but Nika, who of course has seen pictures, assures her that it is – and when they get there, Gwyneth has to admit, it's actually not bad at all. Calling it a cave is kind of like calling a wailord a large animal; it's not wrong, but it isn't exactly right, either. You could drive a train in through the entrance and not even chip the carved ceilings or the pillars. It's the kind of place you look at and think immediately, this is old, and someone spent their life in making it.
It's also freezing. Maybe they ought to have expected this, but the waiting area near the lobby is cold and the arena itself, a big circular chamber lit spectacularly by light refracted through icicles, is colder still. Gwyneth zips up her coat and huddles while Nika walks out onto the icy floor.
Brycen is meant to be a tough Gym Leader to beat: most pokémon don't like the cold, and the arena is slippery underfoot. But the size of the room means Hekate doesn't have to touch the floor, and Britomartis' metal nerves are like circuitry more efficient when chilled, so Nika feels she's in with a chance. And if Nika thinks she can do it, well, so does Gwyneth; she's not quite certain enough of her footing to jump around cheering her on, but she has a quiet confidence. Clay? Well, he was a jerk anyway. Brycen, now, here's the guy to beat.
He leads with a beartic, not as big as Nova's but with a beard the size of a small iceberg that it smashes free from its jaw and hurls into Britomartis' face. She, with a speed normally beyond her, raises a bladed arm and punches it out of the air, so cool that all the kids watching stare and murmur, and Brycen nods, impressed.
"Done your homework, huh?" he says. "All right, then."
Britomartis closes the distance, heavy claws ripping up the ice in sprays of water and crystal; she drives her steel arms into the beartic's chest, but it's fast too and it keeps breathing out more ice across its chest and arms. The armour breaks with every blow, but if it's getting hit the beartic isn't and the big bear looks like it can keep this up all day, blocking Britomartis' hits and striking back with heavy chops from its paws that flash brown with the telltale light of fighting moves, putting dents in her new armour. Nika orders her back; Britomartis obeys, and the beartic takes advantage of the space to get down on all fours and charge. She hunkers down, shoulder braced against the onrushing bear, and Brycen raises his eyebrows, smiling – but at the last minute Britomartis steps aside, lashing out with one arm and catching the beartic a blow on the side of the head that knocks its beard clean off. It stumbles, loses its footing and slides straight past Nika into the protective barrier, which it hits with enough force to leave a bear-shaped dent.
"Ah," says Brycen, disconcerted. "You're the one Elesa mentioned, aren't you? Took out her zebstrika with a vullaby."
Nika grins and Gwyneth, no longer feeling the cold, jumps up and leads a general cheer among the spectators; did you hear that, zebstrika with a vullaby, and anyway did you see how quickly that beartic went down? Did you see?
"That's me, yeah," says Nika, with just a touch of teenage boastfulness. "I'm glad to see my reputation precedes me."
Next out is a vanilluxe, double-headed and soft; Gwyneth thinks that this one should be easy, after the beartic, but though it is slow and squishy it out-ranges Britomartis considerably, filling the arena with whirling snow, disappearing into the mist only to needle her with ice beams from unusual angles. Britomartis' new speed disappears under the frost riming her limbs; she stumbles, slashes blindly, utters growls like grinding metal in her frustration. The vanilluxe can't quite get through her armour, though, and in the end it needs to come in close to try and snap-freeze her to finish off. It gets the angle of approach wrong, and that's its last mistake. Nika spots it through the mist, directs Britomartis, and watches in satisfaction as she grips its cone with both hands and drags it bodily out of the air.
Brycen recalls it before it gets needlessly hurt and sends out – something, nobody's sure what exactly, hidden in the fog of ice crystals as it is. There are murmurs in the crowd, and then a few yells and sudden gasps as suddenly a looming shape appears behind Britomartis and spouts a pale mist that freezes her solid. In one of those dramatic flourishes Brycen seems to like so much, the fog clears in eddying swirls, revealing a huge, floating nest of angled ice lit by burning eyes: a cryogonal.
Its next blow knocks her to the ground, stiff and motionless, and Nika recalls her, conceding the point. She registered all three of her pokémon for this, and now she selects Hekate, timing the throw to release her midair. Gwyneth remembers watching the two of them practice this trick, Nika tossing the ball up and Hekate bursting forth, wings straining against the sudden pull of gravity, and her heart is in her mouth in case it fails and drops Hekate into the mouth of the ice demon below – but works fine, works perfectly even, and Hekate throws back her head and crows in delight as she makes a showy lap of the arena, easily avoiding the cryogonal's attempts to pin her down with ice beams.
The crowd loves it, of course. So does Brycen, always the actor, who is smiling now as he urges his cryogonal up into the air to engage the mandibuzz. Its problem, as quickly becomes clear, is speed: cryogonal are ambush predators by nature, and while Hekate isn't fast by the standards of flying-types she can easily avoid most of its attacks. She keeps her distance, swoops in to dive-bomb it with pulses of darkness, and then pulls back again. It lashes out with its chains of ice, but they're too heavy and its freezing breath too slow, and really it's a foregone conclusion. Nika gives the word, Hekate dives in, and in the centre of the arena she takes a bone in her claw from the collection on her breast and clubs the cryogonal down onto the ground.
It's perfect. This is, although no one knows it yet, Nika's greatest battle; it's big, it's showy, it's precisely coordinated. It's her last big victory as a trainer, and the only one of her Gym challenges to make TV. The crowd goes wild and Brycen spreads his hands and smiles, what can you do, and in the middle of it all Nika looks back up at the stands and meets Gwyneth's eye.
In this moment Gwyneth knows that this is, somehow, her victory too, that in a way that she doesn't understand but which is nevertheless very important this wouldn't have happened without her. And then Nika looks away again, at Brycen approaching with her badge, and the feeling passes. Now she's just excited again, exulting in the knowledge that Nika has beat another Gym Leader and balance has been restored to the universe. Clay was just a blip, obviously. This is how things are meant to be, and how they'll keep on going from now on: victories, cheering, her and Nika, winning, forever. It won't matter any more, what she did, how she failed (as son, as Henuun, as trainer, as girl), because this is her future. It's like she thought in Driftveil. Everything can be okay again. All she has to do is be a good sidekick.
She will remember this, years from now, and she will almost laugh. But not quite. Some things are too personal for even her savage mockery.
It's strange now to think she was ever that optimistic. She really did think everything would just go away, didn't she? Or maybe not, maybe she's being unfair. Could just be that she wanted everything to go away so bad she convinced herself it would. Even after Kit, even after Nova. All those reminders that bad things never die, and she still clung on to hope.
Gwyneth sighs. She's not mad about it, really. If anything, she's jealous.
"Hey, you."
She stops dead. She curses under her breath. She knows the voice, and she knows the tone, and now she knows that one of those hikers must have been unable to let go of his frustration at her, her, a Relic bitch, a six-letter word, daring to play him and his buddies yesterday evening; and she knows that that rage sat in him and festered all night like the infected wound on the back of her hand, that this morning he looked at her and Tor asleep and Vega above them and fumed at the injustice of the weak being protected by the strong; and she knows that he made his excuses, doubled back, waited, knowing that she was on a deadline, that it would not be long until she too started heading along this trail. Alone. Because Tor and Vega are staying back to explore.
Gwyneth knows this the way she knew there would be trouble last night. She may not speak Heniil, but she is more than fluent in hatred.
She turns to face him. He's a little way off the side of the trail, among the trees. His face is pale and tight with anger.
"Hey, dude," she says. She can't run. He'll be faster. This is just one of those times where you have to take a hit, it seems.
It is a very practical conclusion, but it does not offer much in the way of comfort.
"You think you're so smart, don't you?" he says, walking towards her. "You think you're so fucking smart." He uses words. All her old friends: Relic, six-letter words ending and beginning with T, a few newcomers that don't really seem to apply to her but which slip in almost without him noticing, the rest of his pathetic, dangerous hatred caught up in the outburst and revealing itself by accident.
"I'm not," says Gwyneth, mechanically, without faith that this will work. "Seriously, dude, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to―"
"Shut the fuck up," he tells her, too close now, close enough for her to count the veins in his eyeball, it's strange the things you notice at times like this she thinks because she can even now tell you what the boys who beat her up that time were wearing, that red shirt and the broken shoelace vivid in her mind like blood―
She feels every ounce of his eagerness to do this collide with her face, knuckle first. The venipede screams weakly and she reaches for her, desperately trying to grab her before she does anything that gets her hurt, too, but the next blow comes before her arms arrive and she doubles over, silent, the venipede tumbling off her shoulder into the dirt.
"Where's your fucking sigilyph now, you fucking Relic tranny bitch?" the hiker asks her, or she thinks he does, she isn't paying attention, and there's another impact and she falls too, next to the venipede. For some reason all she can think about is that she's glad she didn't land on her. The hiker is saying more stuff, shouting it, even, but her mind is now a long way off and Gwyneth lies there holding her stomach and saying nothing, being hit, until with one last kick the hiker's energy is spent, and he backs away, staring horrified or admiring or both at what he has done, before turning and running off down the trail.
Silence. Gwyneth coughs. She does not think she can move from this position without everything hurting even more than it already does.
"You okay?" she whispers, through the bloody soil caking her lips, and the venipede crawls slowly into her field of view, blurry through the haze of tears. "That's good," she mumbles. "That's real good, dude."
She lies there, not moving. This goes on for some considerable time.
It occurs to her that getting to Humilau by tomorrow is starting to look a little unlikely.
